Nowhere to Run (17 page)

This was so unlike Clara. She was always waiting patiently outside her garden apartment when Evelyn stopped to pick her up for church. Every Sunday morning, like clockwork, Clara stood in her best clothes at the curb, not wanting to trouble her friend to have to come inside to get her. The rest of the week, Clara may have worn old slacks and sweaters as she cleaned other people’s houses, but on the Lord’s Day, she wore her very finest as she went to pray and give thanks to God.

Evelyn checked her watch. If Clara didn’t get out here soon they were going to be late. Not that Evelyn minded all that much, but Clara enjoyed being in the pew in time to sing the processional hymn. In her thick Polish accent, she’d sing her heart out, strong and clear.

Snow fell on the windshield, and Evelyn switched on the wipers. Maybe Clara had been too cold and had gone inside to wait. Evelyn craned to look up at the window of her friend’s apartment. There was no one looking down from behind the lace-trimmed glass.

Evelyn opened the car door, feeling a rush of cold air bite into her nylon-covered legs. She should have worn slacks. But she knew Clara thought women should wear dresses to church, and Evelyn humored her conservative friend.

In the vestibule of the building, Evelyn pressed the button for Clara’s apartment. Once, twice, three times.

Clara would have called if she was going away or doing something out of the ordinary. Any outing was a big deal for her, and she carefully planned the slightest deviation in her schedule.
Where was she?

Evelyn was concerned now. What if Clara was in the apartment but unable to answer the buzzer? Maybe she had fallen in the tub or something and had hit her head. Maybe someone had broken in and hurt her. Clara lived by herself. No one would know if anything was wrong inside those tidy rooms.

It was up to Evelyn to make sure that Clara was all right.

She tracked down the super, told him of her worries, and asked him to open the door.

“Maybe we should call the police,” he suggested.

“Let’s not waste time,” Evelyn urged. “They’ll just have to find you to open the door anyway.”

In the Catholic church two miles away, the processional hymn concluded while, on the other side of town, Evelyn and the superintendent discovered Clara’s stiff, lifeless body.

The kids came in to wake their parents.

“It’s snowing, Mommy!” Tara announced with excitement.

“Can we get our sleds out from the storage room?” Thomas hopped next to the bed.

Annabelle kept her eyes shut, not wanting to wake up, remembering why she had slept so soundly. She reached out and felt Mike beside her.

“Come on, Mommy. Get up.”

For children, snow was like Christmas morning, exciting and magical and breathtaking. What happened over the years? Now Annabelle equated snow with boots and snowsuits and soggy mittens that had to be dried out.
You need an attitude adjustment, girl,
she thought as she began to roll out of the bed.

“Stay there, honey. I’ll get up.”

Was this already Christmas morning? Mike was pulling on his robe and stuffing his feet into moccasins.

“I’m in the mood for some French toast and sausage. How about you, guys?” He clapped his hands, and the twins trotted after him, but not before looking at their mother for reassurance. They may have been young, but they were aware enough to sense that this was not the father they had known for the last few months. This was the old Daddy again, and they weren’t sure if they could trust that yet. Annabelle didn’t want to get her hopes up too high either.

Let’s just take it one step at a time,
she told herself, remembering Mike snapping at her the morning before. It had taken a long time for him to get into the dark place. The road out could be bumpy.

For a while, Annabelle lay under the warm comforter, inhaling the aroma of the sausage that sizzled in the kitchen and listening to the happy chatter of the twins. She could readily stay here in the snug apartment all day, the snow falling silently on the street outside. She didn’t want to go to the party this afternoon. She didn’t want to get up and face what she knew she must.

Annabelle decided it would be best to get it over with and begin by calling Joe Connelly. Joe could tell her who to contact in police enforcement about the stolen manuscript. She called the Broadcast Center switchboard and asked to be connected with Security, thinking that she could ask the duty person to call Joe at home and request that he call her. But the security chief answered the phone himself. “Connelly here.”

“Joe, it’s Annabelle Murphy from
KTA.
”

“Sure, Annabelle. What’s up?”

She recounted her story. The manuscript and its theft. “Jerome wasn’t pulling any punches, Joe. I read just a little of it, but the parts I did get to were quite revealing. Brutal, actually. If Jerome had written about me that way, I know that I wouldn’t have been happy. I’m just wondering if this is somehow tied in to the anthrax poisoning and maybe even Edgar’s murder.”

“You’re absolutely right, Annabelle. The police and the FBI should know about this. I’ll call them. I’m sure they’ll want to speak with you.”

The caterer had already arrived with the party food. A large spiral-cut ham, beef tenderloin sliced for sandwiches on crusty French bread, hot potato salad, spicy chili, cheesy nachos, and cases of cold beer and wine. Forget the vegetables and tossed green salads. This was an occasion for real food and hearty appetites.

Linus was in the kitchen watching the catering staff set up when the telephone rang. He grimaced as the caller identified himself.

“Oh, hi, John,” he answered with no enthusiasm in his voice.

“All ready for the party, Linus?”

“Getting there.”

There was a pause before the former medical correspondent blurted, “This is a tad awkward, Linus, but I just wanted to make sure that I was still welcome.”

Linus didn’t skip a beat. “This is awkward for me too, John, but under the circumstances, I think you’ll agree that it’s better all around if you don’t come to the party.”

Lee’s voice rose. “I can’t believe it, Linus. You’re hanging me out to dry. We were in this thing together and now you’re leaving me twisting in the wind.”

“I don’t like being made a fool of, John. You know that.”

“How do you think I feel? I’m a laughingstock. A laughingstock that no one is going to want to hire. And if it turns out they can trace the anthrax that infected Henning to the lab I shot at—and therefore to me—I am going to have legal problems big time.”

“Those are your problems, John. Not mine.”

“Well, they’ll be your problems, Linus, if I tell Yelena that you knew full well what I was going to do.”

Linus’s mind spun as he took a slice of ham from a silver tray and popped it into his mouth. He walked out of the kitchen, out of earshot of the party workers.

“I wouldn’t do that, John. Not if you have any desire to work in this business again,” he warned. “I have friends, and when this whole thing dies down, I might be able to help you find another broadcasting job. But pull me into this and you’re on your own. I’ll make sure that no one will want to touch you.”

They were going to do an autopsy on poor Clara.

Evelyn knew her friend wouldn’t like that, but she also knew that she could do nothing to stop it.

She drove home slowly over the slippery road. Everything looked so beautiful and clean, the giant gray trees covered in white, the lawns blanketed in soft powder. Clara would have enjoyed this early storm. Clara loved the snow.

Taking her hand off the steering wheel, Evelyn wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. She couldn’t stand the silence in the car. Silence where Clara’s animated conversation should have been. Evelyn turned on the radio.

“Jingle Bells” already.
Ridiculous.
She switched to another station. The news report was in progress.

“The anthrax victim, thirty-six-year-old Jerome Henning, is employed at KEY News. Henning is in critical condition.”

Henning. That was the man Clara worked for. She talked about him all the time. He was the one who was always giving Clara tickets to things. The one she thought should have a wife and children.

If Mr. Henning had been infected with anthrax, could Clara have been poisoned too?

When I get home, I am going to call the police,
Evelyn thought, just as her car began its skid into the telephone pole.

The snowsuits were zipped and the boots wedged on. Annabelle tied a scarf around each child’s neck and adjusted their ski caps. Mike was taking the twins outside to make a snowman.

Annabelle wasn’t going to press her luck by trying to talk Mike into going to the party later. That he was taking the kids out to play in the snow was enough to be thankful for today. Annabelle had already called Mrs. Nuzzo to say that she needn’t come to baby-sit while Mike stayed holed up inside their bedroom. He’d announced that he would be just fine with Thomas and Tara while she went to the party. And it was a bonus to be able to save a few bucks.

“Have a good time, you three,” Annabelle called after them as she closed the apartment door. She rested against the back of the door, knowing exactly what she wanted to do with this quiet respite. She put water in the kettle and set it to boil before going to get a pad of paper and a pen. Then she sat at the kitchen table and began to write in outline form.

Recollections of Jerome Henning’s Manuscript

—Executive Producer,
KTA

—Ego-driven and mean-spirited, consumed with ambitions for his broadcast

—Willing to use anyone and anything in his quest for higher ratings

—Examples of vicious browbeatings inflicted by Nazareth on the
KTA
staff

—Associate Producer on the broadcast

—Haunted by a childhood accident that left his twin in a vegetative state. Jerome had done research in old local newspaper accounts of the accident.

—After he’d flunked out of college twice, his father gave Wayne a job at
KTA
. Still lives at home with his dad, and the picture painted by Jerome was pretty pathetic.

The kettle let out a shrill whistle. Annabelle got up, poured the steaming water over a tea bag, then returned to her outline, pulling further from memory.

—Lifestyle Correspondent

—Portrayed as having lots of style but little substance

Gunning for Constance Young’s spot as host of the show and flirting with Nazareth as her way to land the job

—Business Correspondent

—Pompous, uptight, and disgusted that Nazareth is so gauche. Longs for the old ways, the more gentlemanly days of broadcasting

—Lecherous behavior, coming on to every intern who walks in the door

—Veiled suggestions that he may be making money on the side, through his Wall Street connections

—Medical Correspondent

—Self-interested and self-serving

—Trying to make himself a “personality” and parlay his national TV visibility into book deals and even bigger contract at next negotiation

Jerome hit the nail on the head with that portrait,
thought Annabelle as she paused and recalled all the time Lee spent wheeling and dealing on the telephone while it fell to her to do most of the work in getting his pieces together.

—Entertainment Correspondent

—Grew up poor, but has grown to love the good life—acquired a cocaine addiction along the way

—Thrives on going to concerts and movie openings, and hordes the freebies that come to the office

Sipping her tea, Annabelle looked over her outline, wishing again that she had read more of the manuscript. She would type the outline up in the office tomorrow and then send it on to the police. Perhaps none of these people had anything to do with the deadly chaos at KEY. But she had a responsibility to tell the police everything she knew. They needed all the help they could get to solve this nightmare.