Leann Sweeney - Pick Your Poison

With so much time having passed, the writer seemed like my best bet to learn more than what meager facts were provided in the article, so I plugged Larry K’s name into a search engine. It seemed he was a syndicated freelancer, and I found pages and pages of Web articles from newspapers all over the country. And I also found his mother’s obituary, which offered the name of his hometown. Finding his phone number was as easy as catching fish with dynamite.

After I dialed, he answered with, “Kryshevski here. I don’t want any.”

“I’m not a telemarketer,” I said quickly. “I’m calling about a story you wrote years ago.”

“Years ago I might remember; just don’t ask me about anything I wrote yesterday.” His raspy, gruff voice sounded like he was a smoker.

“My name is Abby Rose, and the article in question concerned a teenager’s disappearance. Very brief story in the Marysville Sentinel . I’m hoping you know more than what appeared in the paper.”

“Hold on a second.” He didn’t bother to cover the receiver when he started yelling at whoever was in the room with him. “Can you tell I’m on the phone? Or have you added deaf and blind to the hypochondria list?”

I heard a female respond, but couldn’t make out what she said. Larry answered her with, “Now I understand why you sneeze all the time. To remove the dust from your brain.” He cleared his throat. “Sorry, Ms. Rose. Continue.”

“The teenager’s name was Connie Kramer,” I said, hoping to end this conversation quickly. Larry K wasn’t exactly my kind of guy.

“Yeah. Connie. She disappeared.”

“So you do recall the story?”

“The kid, more than the story. In places like Marysville you get to know people.”

“And what do you remember about her?”

“Hold on again,” he said, then barked, “Chicken again? Are you hoping to put enough salmonella in my system to kill me, Phyllis?”

Sounded like a decent plan to me, I thought.

This time the woman’s response was audible. “Kryshevski, you’re living proof there are more horse’s butts than horses. Eat your dinner and shut up.”

It seemed she didn’t need anyone’s help to handle this jerk.

Larry said, “I’m having a conversation with someone far more interesting than a fucking chicken. She wants to know about something I wrote, which of course would never interest you .”

“Uh, maybe I should call you back later?” I said.

“No. Me and the chicken will go in the other room—if that’s okay with you , Phyllis?”

Another muffled response that I was glad I couldn’t understand.

“Women,” said Larry K, and then I heard a door squeal shut. “Okay. Blessed privacy. Now why are you asking about Connie Kramer?”

“I was cleaning out an attic after a friend died and found the article. Looks like it came from one of those ‘police beat’ sections,” I said. “The last line is what caught my interest. You wrote, ‘Foul play is not suspected.’ ”

“Ah, yes,” said Larry K with a laugh. “Snuck that past the night editor and got in trouble with the big boss when he read the copy.”

“Why would that get you in trouble?” I asked.

“Back then,” he answered, sounding like he had a mouthful of food, “you weren’t supposed to confuse gossip with the news. See, I was ahead of the times.”

“And do you remember the gossip?”

“Depends on why you’re asking. Dispensing information is my bread and butter, and it sounds like you want me to work for free.”

“How much?” I said, stifling my irritation and hoping there really was salmonella in his chicken.

“You tell me why this is important to you and we can work something out. If it’s a good enough story, it won’t cost you a dime. My newspapers will pay me.”

No use shooting myself in the foot just because I didn’t like the man. What harm could it do to tell him the truth? So I began with Ben’s murder and ended with finding the inscription in the Bible.

“Hmm. Interesting,” he said when I was finished. “Maybe we can work together on this. You say you found sketchbooks?”

“Yes, but I’m more interested in—”

“And you have a photograph of this woman, Cloris?”

“I do.”

“Can you scan one of the drawings and the photo and send it to me, along with a signed commitment that I get first shot at doing a piece on this?”

“Okay, sure,” I said. Obviously the guy knew something, and I wanted what he had. He gave me his fax number and I hung up.

Thirty minutes later I had him back on the line.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” Larry explained. “Kid ran off because someone knocked her up. And in Marysville, seventeen-year-old unwed mothers were about as welcome as piss in a punch bowl.”

“And they never found her?”

“Not that I heard. Anyway, when you mentioned the sketchbooks, I remembered something else about Connie. She’d won this little art contest sponsored by our paper. I was one of the judges. She was good.”

“Are you saying Connie and Cloris are the same person?”

“That’s her in the picture you faxed. That’s Connie.

And that sure as hell is her artwork.”

I didn’t speak for a few seconds, wondering how this might connect to Cloris-a.k.a.-Connie’s murder.

As if he’d read my mind, Larry K said, “When and if you find out what exactly happened to that girl, you remember we have an agreement, Ms. Rose.” He was all business now. No attitude, no sarcasm. In fact, he sounded downright excited. And I was, too.

I hung up, thinking how everything I’d learned so far seemed to lead to a bigger mystery. Ruth had never mentioned any baby born to Cloris and Ben, in fact, I clearly remembered Sheriff Nemec saying there were no children, no other relatives period.

Okay. So maybe the man’s name that Cloris had written in the sketchbook and on her calendar would shed some light on why she felt compelled to flee town and change her identity. I turned my attention to Samuel Feldman and plugged him into the same search engine I’d used to find Larry K. Ten pages of hits popped up. Not bad. Could have been a thousand. And I soon discovered a number of these hits showed one particular Samuel Feldman lived in Galveston. After scrolling through all the pages, I could find no other Texas connection. So I visited the yellow pages on-line and typed in Feldman’s name. When a number carrying a Galveston area code popped up, I dialed and was greeted by an answering machine.

“You have reached Parental Advocates,” said a soft, professional-sounding female voice. “Our business hours are nine A.M. to five P.M. Tuesday through Saturday. If you would like to leave a message, please do so at the tone.”

I hung up, wondering if I had the right number. But when I tried several other on-line phone books, the same number appeared. So was Parental Advocates Feldman’s business?

The message said they were open tomorrow, and I decided I’d pay a visit. Who knows? Maybe I’d get lucky and come face-to-face with someone from Cloris’s past.

I dragged myself from bed early the following morning and had little memory of the drive to Galveston, despite the double espresso I picked up at Starbucks. I found Parental Advocates without difficulty, located in a restored house in the doctor-lawyer-accountant section of town. I’d been considering what kind of business Parental Advocates might be. The most common options for unwed mothers back in the 1970s were adoption or abortion. Didn’t sound like abortion, not with that advocate word, so I figured adoption was the most logical explanation.

The building was freshly painted, and gold-leaf lettering on a sign next to the leaded-glass front door confirmed I had the right place. The door chimed when I entered, and a woman was seated behind a sleek walnut desk across the large once-foyer-now-office. She looked to be around my age, close to thirty, with stylish straight hair and wearing an expensive-looking summer-weight pale green suit. I took in the burgundy velvet window seats, gleaming oak floors, and expensively draped bay window. No cheap store-front operation, that was for sure.