Rosemary Herbert - Front Page Teaser

Then Liz’s breath was not the only noise in the night. She heard the short pants of the Doberman, too.

Liz knew it would be madness to strike out into the dark woods with the dog on her heels. At least on the Hightower Estate there was the hope of someone hearing her if she screamed. So, slowly bringing her forearm across her chest in case she had to protect her face, Liz turned and, to steady herself, softly muttered the first song that came to mind.

“God rest ye merry gentleman, let nothing you dismay. . . ”

Then, one snow-muffled step at a time, she rounded the rhododendrons.

At first, the dog was nowhere to be seen. Then she spotted him in the fantastic landscape, standing, ears pointed toward her, in front of a corkscrew-shaped topiary. Placing front paws lightly on the snow, he advanced, sniffing. In his new location, the breeze would blow Liz’s odor of fear straight to him.

The dog made a sudden change in posture.

Was he teasing her before attacking? The damnable beast seemed to romp in her direction, circling a gumdrop-shaped conifer before flying down the hillside straight towards Liz.

Liz lifted her arm in front of her throat. But the dog did not leap at her. Instead he circled round and round Liz’s statue-still form and finally sat down in front of her. Louder than her heaving breathing, more steady than her throbbing heartbeat, there was another sound.

Flop, flop, flop, flop.

A stubbed tail beating against the tightly trimmed branches of a topiary shrub.

Amazed, Liz did not question the change in her circumstances. As she walked along the balustrade through the Pinetum and out the eastern gate of the Hightower property, the Doberman trotted at her side like her own protector. At the gate, the dog halted and sat watching her protectively until Liz crossed the arched stone bridge that led, at last, to the lamp-lit campus walkway.

In her car, Liz turned up her heater until the windows steamed over and her teeth stopped chattering. Then she removed her jacket. Pulling her arm out of a sleeve, she found a thin, nearly threadbare scarf that was not her own. It must have gotten caught there when her jacket was hung on a hook in the Swenson mudroom. Holding it to her face, she breathed in the subtle scent of another human, an odor that must have saved her life.

Liz turned on the defroster and, when the windshield cleared, pulled her car out of the faculty club parking lot. It felt as though an entire evening had passed, but it was only 5:50 p.m. She should have called in to the newsroom much earlier to report what she was up to, and now it looked like she would be late for her meeting with Cormac Kinnaird, too. With the faculty club closed, she drove to Wellesley Center to find a phone booth.

“Pissed.”

That was how Dermott McCann described himself at learning Liz had no story for him. When he gave her a piece of his mind about the late call-in, she gave him a piece of hers.

“Why don’t you arm your reporters with up-to-date technology? Have you heard of a cell phone?”

“Some reporters take pride in being up to date for their own sakes. Christ, how do you have a personal life without owning a cell phone these days? You know we’d pay for calls you make for us, if you submit the receipt.”

“But not for the basic bill or the phone itself. Thanks a lot!”

“You got a chip on your shoulder?”

“More than that. If I’d had a cell phone an hour ago, I might have been spared a threatening encounter with a Doberman!”

“Yeah, yeah. A likely story.”

Hoping he’d be lingering over his banjo at Tir Na Nog, Liz left Kinnaird a phone message. Saying she’d been unavoidably delayed, she asked the doctor to phone her at Gravesend Street, where she planned to stop and change her clothes before heading to the Somerville pub.

By the time she arrived in her Pike-side abode, Liz was so beat that she would have greeted with relief a message from Kinnaird postponing their encounter. She wanted nothing more than a very hot shower and an equally steaming bowl of soup. She treated herself to one after the other, and then fell into bed. It was just 7:10.

At 9:30, the ringing telephone startled her awake. It was her mother calling from Mexico, where she and her partner were spending the winter in his Airstream trailer.

“I was gearing up to leave you a voice-mail message, Liz,” she said. “I thought you’d be out on the town or with friends the Friday before Christmas.”

Liz gave her a nutshell account of the story she was covering and told her mother how frustrated she was about the weekend falling just when she needed a business day to follow a great lead.

“You don’t need a business day to take a ride in a New York City taxi. Why don’t you go down to the city and follow up on that taxi receipt you found? You could stay with Aunt Janice and have a good laugh while you’re at it.”

“I thought she was in England this time of year.”

“Not this Christmas. She had to stay in town to play an extra on a soap opera.”

“At Christmas? Couldn’t she turn it down?”

“Normally she would. But she couldn’t resist playing the role of a jaded ballerina-turned-dance critic, after spending so many years in the Radio City Music Hall corps de ballet herself. Of course, she’ll be missing your cousin and the grandchildren. It will do you both good to spend the weekend together.”

“It’s true the Banner will never send me to New York to follow up on that taxi receipt.”

“Then go for it! In fact, I’ll fund the train fare as an extra Christmas present. What does it cost, eighty-some dollars each way? Charge it and I’ll send a check you can pay the bill with. Where will you be on Christmas? Are you scheduled to work? Or has a special someone entered your life?”

“I volunteered to work the holiday. I figured, when a special someone does come along, the Banner ’ll owe me the day off. As it turns out, it may give me the edge on the Johansson story. After all, Mom, this isn’t a story about aggressive people stealing parking spots from one another at the mall. A woman’s life may hang in the balance here.”

“You’re too good. The paper’s lucky to have you. Don’t work too hard, OK? I’ll give you a call on Christmas.”

Enlivened by the nap and, after she phoned her, by Janice’s delight at the idea of having a pre-Christmas guest, Liz arranged for train tickets and packed her bags. She also wrapped up a bottle of Pol Roger to present to her aunt and hand-washed a few pieces of clothing. Recalling Cormac Kinnaird’s appealingly boyish appearance while banjo playing, Liz changed into black velvet pants and a forest-green velvet tunic. The outfit seemed a bit dressier than others she had observed in Irish pubs, but it was one of the few clothing combinations she had neither packed for New York City nor left dripping on her clothes drying rack. And the truth was, she didn’t mind standing out just a little bit in the eyes of Dr. Kinnaird. So, Liz applied some make-up with care, threw on a hooded jacket and dry boots, and went out into the night again to make her way to Tir Na Nog.

At the door of her Mercury Tracer, in the chill of the December night, Liz remembered to return to her house to pick up the Ziploc bag containing the lipstick and hair elastic. At the same time, she remembered Dr. Kinnaird’s self-important posturing at the Worcester Public Library, and the gravity of her investigation, and revised her hopes for the evening.

It was a good thing Liz had downsized her expectations, since the tiny Tir Na Nog pub did not have music on the menu that night. While his banjo lay unplayed on one end of his table, Kinnaird looked ill at ease as Liz greeted him. Feeling overdressed, she hesitated to remove her coat. When she did, Kinnaird studiously registered no reaction.