“I see Manning got the husband on the record,” Esther said approvingly. “Watch these pages. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts the husband is guilty as all hell.”
“You can’t assume that, Esther,” Liz said. “He told me he was worried about his wife when he left for work that morning. He blamed himself for leaving anyway.”
“That’s not what it says in here,” Esther said, pointing to the Page-Nine article.
“That’s not my doing. Someone cut the quote I reported,” Liz said, looking at Manning’s empty desk. Unlike her own, it was situated in easy reach of the city desk.
“Dizzy Miss Lizzie,” Manning said from over Liz’s shoulder again. “It’s easy to talk about Tricky Dick when you think he’s not around, huh? Yeah, I know you guys call me that behind my back. I make it my business to know everything that goes on around here. Just make sure your head isn’t spinning with dreams of Page One when you hand over the rest of your reporting.”
“Are you implying I didn’t give you everything Erik said?”
“Oh, it’s ‘Erik,’ now, is it? A word to the wise, Liz: If you get too chummy with your sources, you’ll find it hard to tell it like it is when it turns out they’re scum. Anyway, kid,” he said, switching to a magnanimous tone, “thanks for helping me out on this one. Here’s looking at you,” he added, as he made his exit.
“The answer is no,” Esther said before Liz could say a word. “It’s the mystery writers’ conference for you tomorrow. Here’s the press release.”
“OK, Chief,” Liz said, trying to sound like a good loser.
“Look,” Esther said, softening, “you’ll get more lucky breaks. Just spell out every fact.”
“Thanks, Esther,” Liz said, both surprised to see the night editor express encouragement and peeved that Esther seemed to buy Manning’s lie about the incomplete quote.
As Liz crossed the room to her distant desk, Esther used her password to get into Manning’s ATEX materials. Like his presidential namesake, the Banner’s Tricky Dick suffered from overconfidence. Never thinking anyone would check up on him, he hadn’t killed the material Liz had shared with him. There it was. Erik Johansson’s entire statement.
“Hey Liz,” Esther called out. She had to make it loud to carry across the big newsroom.
Liz looked up from her desk, where she was retrieving a fresh reporter’s notebook from amid the clutter.
“I can’t speak for Dermott,” Esther said, “but I’m sure I wouldn’t reject any hard facts you can turn up about the missing mom. It won’t be a breeze to score any Newton news from Worcester, but who knows? Good night.”
Liz still felt wired as she wound her way through silent streets to her digs on Gravesend Street. It was a dead-end street, but not the kind of cul-de-sac that offered respite from traffic. Perched on an embankment bordering the Massachusetts Turnpike, even in the dead of the night the place pulsed with the soundtrack of fast-moving vehicles, syncopated irregularly with the deep backbeat of trucks slamming over potholes.
Liz pulled into the parking space alongside her building, angling the Tracer carefully between a bare lilac bush and the iron stanchion that stood straight beside the two-room house she called home. Another stanchion, wrapped with the thorny stems of climbing roses, stood just beyond the far end of her house. By any standard the abode was small, but a massive billboard placed directly over it added to that impression. Supported by those stanchions, the billboard made the house appear tiny, since the advertisement space was wider and taller than the building itself.
Not for the first time, Liz regretted that she had no say over what was advertised in her air space. Still, she did not dare jeopardize the flow of money she received from renting it to an advertising firm. Those funds allowed her to indulge her love of a career that offered little in the way of medical benefits. The overhead ads not only paid for her medical and dental insurance, but it covered the lion’s share of her monthly mortgage payments on the quirky property.
Craning her head to read the current ad’s suggestive warning, “Don’t be caught without one!” Liz told herself for the hundredth time, “When I get rich, I’ll hire them to advertise Dr. Ecklenbergh’s eyeglasses, like that billboard in The Great Gatsby. I wonder how many Pike drivers would get a chuckle out of that!”
The billboard of the moment was not so bad. It showed a heel-kicking Gene Kelly singing in the rain, umbrella held high. It might have been an ad for umbrellas, but, judging by the bottle of vodka in the dancer’s other hand, this was a pitch for drink.
“Not a bad idea,” Liz said aloud, indulging the habit of talking to herself when on her own turf. Her gray cat, Prudence, rubbed at Liz’s ankles as the reporter placed her keys in her coat pocket. She kept the keys there in the thus-far vain hope that she would have to grab her coat and rush out to cover breaking news. “Blast!” Liz said as she felt the film can in her pocket. “I should’ve asked René to process this.”
René would have left the newsroom long ago, and there was no way Liz would trust Ellen’s film to the other photographers. They were all too eager to stay in the good graces of Manning. Figuring she could put the film in DeZona’s hands in the morning, Liz poured herself a glass of Chardonnay and put together a meal she’d dubbed “Cask of Amontillado Chicken,” in honor of the famous story by Edgar Allan Poe. Made with chicken, mushrooms, shallots, slivered pecans, and, of course, amontillado sherry, it was one of those dishes that took little time and fuss to make but tasted like it was the result of a professional chef’s labor. She spooned some onto her plate and sat, feet up, in front of one of her luxuries, a gas fireplace that came to life with the flick of a switch.
After eating, she covered herself with her favorite purple and white crocheted afghan. It clashed with her home’s peach and rust color scheme. Its edges were uneven, too. But these characteristics only added to the afghan’s value in Liz’s eyes. Made from donated wool in unfashionable colors, it had been crocheted for Liz by six incarcerated adolescent girls who had opened their hearts to her on the topic of body piercing as self-expression for a Banner feature. Usually, their chaplain had said, they crocheted bedcovers for themselves, but they took a liking to Liz and decided to make one for her, too. Along the way, they proved they could stick with, cooperate, and complete a generous and time-consuming gift.
As one of the girls put it, “A hole in your tongue says as much as words do, sometimes.”
Pulling the afghan up to her chin, Liz decided those words of wisdom were worthy of billboard space, too. “When I’m rich . . . ,” she mused, as she dropped off to sleep, lulled by the sound of passing traffic.
She awoke to the scream of sirens. An accident on the Mass. Pike. Too bad for the people in the fender bender, but terrific for Liz, since she had forgotten to set her alarm. Looking at her watch, Liz saw it was too late to zip over to the Banner to give René the film for processing. The city of Worcester and its public library were in the opposite direction.
Shaking off the afghan and Prudence, who was sleeping on it, Liz removed her slacks and crossed the room towards her shower stall and bathroom area. It was located between the main room and kitchen area, behind a custom-designed, curved partition built by a budding architect whom Liz met while writing an article on design solutions for small spaces. After her article about the architect’s transformation of a studio apartment on Boston’s Beacon Hill was published, his career took off. Meanwhile, Liz hired him to help her improve her then-new-to-her digs. When she rejected his offer to do the work without charge, he surprised her by producing the curved, polished cherry partition instead of the boxy divider of painted pine she had hired him to install. He also installed built-in cherry bookcases.