Liz looked straight into the camera. “That’s a possibility, Ramona. Certainly everyone was ready to leap on the characterization of the men as Arabic or foreign. Our competing paper reported the police were contacted by an oil deliveryman. He told police he’d seen two men on the missing woman’s doorstep in the hour before the bloody scene in the kitchen was discovered. According to their report, the oilman called the men ‘foreign.’ My first sources, a mailman and a jogger in the neighborhood, called the car dealers ‘out of place’ in the neighborhood.”
“The neighborhood seems to have been full of people.”
“Certainly there were several. In addition to the father-and-son car dealers, there were the oilman, the mailman, and some joggers. While all of these people were in the vicinity around the time of the disappearance, police did not take the non-Arabs in for questioning.”
“Why didn’t you fall for the assumptions made by your first sources?”
“I try to look at facts, not skin color or accent. When I learned the car had no plates, I went back to the neighborhood and interviewed joggers until I found two who guessed the truth. When they pointed me to Maksoud Motors, I learned the nature of the car dealers’ errand. The men just wanted to do a favor for their customer.”
Now Hobart changed her friendly tone to one that was much more challenging. “And you believed them, just like that? Isn’t it true, proof of their good deed didn’t surface until this morning, after your article went to press? Couldn’t that have been just dumb luck?”
Liz saw James Conrad and Dick Manning through the bright lights. They were watching the interview on the technician’s monitor. The editor looked worried. The reporter looked pleased.
“I believed Sam Maksoud because he told me an anecdote about the car deal that jibed with information I had from Ellen Johansson’s neighbor. He also admitted he phoned Mrs. Johansson about the car’s title. I knew from another household insider that he’d done that. I filed that report because I knew—not just believed—it was true.”
Liz blinked as the lights went off and the commotion of packing the equipment away ensued.
“Nice job, Higgins,” Conrad said, as if he hadn’t doubted her for a moment.
Manning was nowhere to be seen.
Thanks to the television spot—and to ongoing problems for the basketball star—Liz was granted another day to work on the missing mom case while Dick set his sights on the hoop star’s lawyer. Although she had not succeeded in having anyone else smooth the way toward an interview with Ellen’s mother, she made a call to the Wellesley telephone number Laura Winters had provided to her. A male voice answered and repeated her name aloud. Was it a police officer or male relative screening calls for Mrs. Swenson?
Apparently, Veronica was within ear range. “Liz! Liz! I want to talk to her. She said she would find Mommy. I want to know if she found her! I want to talk to Liz!”
Olga Swenson came on the line.
“What do you want with us?” she asked. “I’m not talking to the press.”
“It’s my hope you will consider talking with me, off the record if you insist. The more I know about your daughter, the more I can do to find her.”
“My son-in-law talked to your paper and they made him appear to be a man looking for an alibi. In fact, wasn’t your name on that piece?”
“My colleague wrote that piece, using some quotes I supplied. But he cut short your son’s remark about wishing he had stayed home. I know that made Erik look suspicious. I apologize.”
“It’s bad enough that they always think the husband did it, without the newspapers adding fuel to the fire. But I saw in the paper today that you got the whole story about those car salesmen. You were more thorough than the World’s reporter.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Swenson. I have an advantage: I know Ellen and Veronica enough to care about finding the whole truth.”
Olga Swenson said nothing.
Liz waited out the silence.
“Please, Grandma!” Veronica said at a distance.
“Let’s go find Hershey,” a voice in the background said, apparently succeeding in leading Veronica away.
“I always walk my dog along the shores of Lake Waban at around one-thirty p.m. If you park at the Wellesley College Faculty Club and walk west around the lakeshore, you’ll see me. If you bring anyone else, I won’t talk. No notebook. No recorder, either. I caution you, my dog can be protective.”
Liz wanted desperately to ask Olga Swenson to bring a hairbrush or personal item of Ellen’s to their rendezvous. But, fearing the request for a source of DNA would turn off the woman altogether, she said only, “Thank you, Mrs. Swenson. You can count on me.”
Next, Liz dialed up her voice mail. It was full of messages from public relations people trying to get attention for authors coming to town, community group events, and the like. Nothing useful. Liz’s ATEX machine held only internal messages. Nonetheless, she looked them over. Again, nothing germane to the Johansson case.
It was a thorn in the side of most Banner staffers that they did not have PCs at their desks. Consequently, they also did not have e-mail access unless they worked on a PC in the Banner’s photo library. It was a place filled with battered filing cabinets—topped with brave and dusty philodendrons and filled with photos—arranged in a backward, right-to-left alphabetical order around the room. Some of the file drawers were made more noticeable by cutouts of notables—ranging from dead presidents to Miss Piggy—pasted or taped on them.
Since the PC was in demand more often than not, staffers had to take turns using it. Such was the case this time, too, as an editorial assistant from the sports department was using the machine to call up statistics—and perhaps look for former faux pas—regarding the troubled basketball star. Probably, he was compiling the information for Manning. Liz stormed out of the library and headed for the photo department. There she picked up the manila envelope DeZona had left for her in his cubbyhole.
Liz retraced her steps to the library, where the PC was unoccupied at last. She put in her password and called up a long list of e-mail messages. Like her voice mail, most of the messages were from PR people. She ignored all but a few. Beginning with addresses she did not recognize, she opened a message that turned out to be an ad for printer cartridges, then one from a self-proclaimed expert on astrology, and finally a one-word message from an e-mail address she did not recognize. “Blister,” it read.
Perplexed, Liz moved on to the next message from kinnarddoc@northeastern.edu: “Poinsettia productive. Need sample for comparison. Tir Na Nog tonite at 7?—CK”
It was clear the message was from Cormac Kinnaird. But what was ‘Tir Na Nog’? Liz returned to her desk and picked up the Boston Area phone book. Sure enough, Tir Na Nog was listed at an address in Somerville. She dialed the number. It was not yet open at eleven in the morning, but a recorded message revealed it was an Irish pub. “Why didn’t I think of inputting the pub name on the Internet?” Liz scolded herself. Without ready access to the system, such Internet use simply didn’t occur to her.
Liz returned to the library to reply to Cormac Kinnaird’s e-mail message. The PC was occupied.
“What else is new?” she asked herself as she sat down at a small table and opened the envelope of photos. The first few pictures were of Veronica and Erik selecting, sawing down, and dragging away a tree at a Christmas tree farm. The next handful were of New York City street scenes, including a shot of traffic passing by a large building, a photo of a chestnut vendor and newsstand, a much better-framed shot of Ellen standing in a city street with a skyscraper completely filling the background. Then there was an indoor shot showing a restaurant table with a chic woman seated at it and another shot of the same woman and Ellen raising their glasses in a toast. Finally, there was a photo of the two women dwarfed by a large, globe-shaped sculpture, and another of the two carrying shopping bags, standing before one of the lion statues at the New York Public Library.