by Ed Ifkovic
Christ Lempke was nodding furiously.
Miss Hepplewhyte added, “I was surprised, in fact, because Mr. Lempke was actually early today.”
Christ Lempke stormed, “I am not a clock.”
“Perhaps she climbed out the window,” Amos Moss said, and everyone looked at him.
Principal Jones was shaking his head. “No, Zeke Puttman was pruning the bushes at the front of the school, was there all afternoon. I already talked to him. I think he’d have mentioned the sight of a young girl climbing out of the window, don’t you think? It was the first thing I thought of when I found the unlocked classroom.”
Caleb Stone actually yawned. I could read his mind. This was a lot of pettifogging about a wanton, hell-bent youngster who’d obviously schemed her way out of the school to rendezvous with some surreptitious lover. Doubtless she’d be back home by nightfall, punished by her stern father and whipped by the unrelenting Christ Lempke. At this point, the chief was going through the motions of being the marshal in town. It was either this curiously anemic incident or a walk to Lawe Road to warn Farmer Burnett—for the umpteenth time—to keep his sheep from bothering the grazing cattle of the widow Peters, who inhabited the hell-to-ruin cabin by the river.
“Well,” he drawled out the word, “she ain’t disappeared into thin air.”
So we’d come full circle: Frana, the ghost in the sky.
Mr. Timm decided to speak. “I might add that I was in that corridor at half-past the hour, more or less; and I did glance at my pocket watch”—he extracted the elaborate gold timepiece and flashed it to the onlookers—“and all was quiet. The empty classroom door was closed. Of course.”
“But not locked,” Chief Stone said.
“I didn’t check.” Suddenly Mr. Timm seemed flustered, as though he’d said too much. “I mean, why would I?”
“Of course.” The words escaped from the mouth of Mildred Dunne, who suddenly looked sheepish. “I only mean, well, we all were where we supposed to be. It’s a school. It must function…”
Mr. Timm showed a sliver of a smile. “Of course, Miss Dunne. Thank you, but I need no defense.”
Miss Dunne’s cheeks reddened.
Mr. McCaslin made a whistling noise, but a withering glance from Miss Hepplewhyte seemed to elicit an unintentional snicker from him. Mr. Jones looked none too happy with his staff. In fact, for a moment he looked teary-eyed, shaky.
Caleb Stone stuck the phony note into a breast pocket. “Seems to me this Frana girl is pretty clever. Somehow she worked her way out of the building, unseen. Someone batted an eyelid”—a sidelong glance at Miss Hepplewhyte, who was decidedly not happy—“and slipped out. Young children do those things. We can’t keep an eye on them all the time, you know. My own children, well…” He trailed off. “There is no other explanation. People don’t move through walls like Houdini.”
***
Outside, Esther stopped by the willow tree that brushed the building. “Why did Kathe Schmidt tell everybody about someone seeing Frana hopping a train with some drummer from the Sherman House?”
“I’ll tell you. Because she wanted that to be the truth. She’d like to see Frana really disappear from town.”
“Because of Jake Smuddie?”
“What else? Maybe Kathe told people that story because she knew Frana was up to something. Maybe Frana confided in her. Maybe, in fact, Frana did get on that train with a drummer. Maybe it’s not a rumor. But Chief Stone doubts she’s left town. Maybe Frana actually told her fair-weather friend that she planned on being on that train with a certain drummer. So Kathe just assumed it happened.”
Esther was wide-eyed. “And plans changed?”
“Maybe not. Frana could be in Milwaukee as we speak.”
“I can see Frana lying to her.”
“Because Kathe would believe her.”
“You know, Frana is up to something bad.”
“And Kathe is involved somehow. But I don’t understand how Frana mastered leaving the school unseen, not with Miss Hepplewhyte sitting there. Was that the only way she could get away from her uncle’s eagle eye?”
“She was a prisoner at home,” Esther insisted. “They put bars on her bedroom window. They watched her.”
“How’d you first hear of that?”
“Kathe was happy to tell me.”
“So she obviously saw her chance to flee only during school hours…”
Esther looked puzzled. “Why go to such lengths to get out of school unseen?”
“Meeting up with someone,” I concluded. “But she must have known there’d be a price to be paid later on…a beating, more confinement.”
“Unless she wasn’t planning on going home again.”
My mind was racing. “Then maybe she did get on that train.”
“The chief will find her.”
“But where is she? Frankly, I never thought she was that clever to do something like this.” I bit my lip. “Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless someone told her to do it.”
Esther nodded. “The lover.”
“Yes, the lover.”
“But where are they now?”
I clicked my tongue. “Not in a honeymoon Pullman suite, I’d hazard a guess.” A pause. “She’d—they’d—know everyone would look on that train right away.”
“So…”
“So she’d be hiding out in Appleton.”
“Until…”
“Until she can escape.”
“How?”
“Maybe a boat. Catching the Goodrich Line tonight at eight o’clock. From the dock on Sycamore.” In my mind I ran through the possible ways to escape Appleton.
“But the chief will be watching that boat, no?”
“I’d hope so.”
“So long as he doesn’t assign Amos Moss to keep an eye on it.”
“Then Frana can blithely sail up the Fox River, arm and arm with her paramour, waving goodbye to Appleton.”
“Paramour—I love that word,” Esther laughed.
We strolled casually back home, enjoying the idle speculation, gossiping, fascinated with our pretty little schoolmate who now had made herself the subject of discussion. Frana, the girl who never left home without a mirror, now talked of, sought, condemned, hiding somewhere, perhaps by the river or in the mill district. Somewhere. Perversely, I was wondering how I might make it an item in the Crescent, though I realized it was hardly news. Sam Ryan never allowed tidbits of scandal or idle sensation, no matter how scintillating, to pop up in his serious columns. Frana Lempke disappeared on a riverboat with Chester Smedjen, salesman from Minah Malleable Iron Fittings Company.
I was itching to jot down notes in my pad, to describe the scene at the high school.
“I feel sorry for her when she’s found,” Esther whispered.
“If she lets herself be found.”
***
The next morning I woke to the sound of rain beating down on the roof, and I snuggled under the covers. It would be a drifting Saturday, a chance for me to read the F. Marion Crawford romance I’d picked up at the library. For a moment, lying there, I thought of Frana Lempke, disappeared from town. Or had she? Downstairs Fannie was complaining about the rain. There would be no beating of carpets and Kathe Schmidt would simply not show up, most likely overjoyed at not having to help the Ferbers. I’d forgotten the day’s intended chore; I’d have to help, too, working with Kathe, doubtless the two of us ending up in a verbal skirmish.
By midday the rains were worse and my mother returned from My Store for dinner.
“Everyone comes into the store and talks of Frana,” my mother told me. “But everyone thinks it’s…amusing. Like it’s a foolish little-girl adventure.”
“Well, Frana can be a foolish girl.”
“Strangely, her mother stopped into the store just before noon. A nice woman, but not a talker. I asked her about Frana and she just nodded, looked a little embarrassed. You know what I think? Frana
came back home last night, and now the family is a little ashamed of the fuss that’s been made.”
“But I wonder just what she’s up to?” Fannie asked.
I kept my mouth shut.
It rained all day, and Fannie sat by the kitchen window, staring out at the empty clothesline. I avoided her, sensing she was ready to do battle.
Sunday morning was bright and clear, and in the early afternoon I wandered to Esther’s house, where we sat on the veranda, sipping coffee and chatting. Later, buoyed by the welcome sun, we took a stroll, drifting in the placid June air, a gorgeous day, the slight breeze rustling the sycamores and sugar maples. We meandered off the Avenue, headed toward the river by way of Lovers Lane, the quiet promenade of overarching elms and birches, with its hard-packed dirt lanes and the rough-hewn fences. There old men walked ancient hounds, college freshmen from Lawrence University rode their fashionable bicycles, and sixteen-year-old girls sat on the moss-backed hillocks under the aromatic white pines and read Ella Wheeler Wilcox verse aloud…
Most of my most fanciful dreams happened when I sat, alone, on the benches there.
We rambled toward the river, my favorite destination, but our ramble was cut short, when, nearby, Old Man Travers, a man in his nineties who periodically drifted into town from his shack in the mud flats and announced that he was the rightful heir to the throne of Slovakia, started making gasping sounds as he pulled at his border collie who was straining on his leash. The animal would have none of it, yipping in counterpoint to the doddering owner. Esther and I stopped, watched, and saw Old Man Travers crumble to his knees, moaning. Panicked, we rushed to help the old man—Don’t die don’t die don’t die—only to discover, as we neared the gasping, choking man, that his faithful border collie Wilhelm was pawing at the body of Frana Lempke.
Chapter Eight
I sat by myself on a bench. Esther’s father had taken her home. I’d refused to leave, my reporter’s instinct taking over, but, more so, I had to grapple with my own dreadful, numbing discovery. I’d never seen a body before and certainly not a murdered body—nor of a person I knew, maybe not a close friend but a school chum. I preferred to sit quietly, thinking, watching, shaking, removed from the frantic men assembled near the dead body. I’d already told Chief Stone my story, which was no story, really, watching Old Man Travers topple and then…the gruesome sight of sad Frana lying there, her fair hair, as light as moonshine, askew about her head. The eyes wide open, startled, yet glassy. The face ashen and contorted, as though she couldn’t believe her life was ending so horribly.
Caleb Stone and Amos Moss strutted around, out of their element, as Dr. Belford, the district coroner, pulled up in the dark-curtained death wagon. A crew of bustling men—ten or more townsmen—circled the body, trampling the scene. Shouldn’t they keep their distance? In the damp spongy mud perhaps a few foot indentations, left behind, might be evidence. Or maybe a bit of clothing, a hair, or…or what? I tried to think of how police or detectives in Sherlock Holmes or Anna Katherine Green mysteries acted. I’d just finished reading The Filigree Ball, though I disliked mystery romances. All that bother about nothing. Folderol. This murder was the province of those men, with Chief Caleb Stone, the best of the sorry lot, obviously thrown off by the severity of the crime.
Murder had its own rules…or the breaking of rules. I understood that, but I also sensed, emphatically, that this assembly of Appleton gentlemen was delirious with confusion, from the good sheriff himself to Johnny Mason, the local town drunk and all-around handyman, who was positioned over the body.
Dr. Belford mumbled to Caleb Stone as the body was hoisted into the dark mortuary wagon. “Some fool strangled the poor girl.” Said simply, an awful declarative line. Caleb Stone winced.
Head spinning, I stood and walked toward the men. At that moment I heard labored breathing and turned to see Matthias Boon, late on the scene, pipe in his mouth, reporter’s pad in his hand. He stopped short and nearly barreled into me. “Miss Ferber, what are you doing here?”
“I found the body.” I pointed to the disappearing wagon.
Boon rocked on his heels, ended up on tiptoe, hoping to become as tall as I, but he pivoted and teetered, much like a wind-up children’s toy my mother sold in My Store at Christmas.
He sneered through his teeth. “Were you looking for it?”
I frowned and lied. “Frana was a friend of mine, Mr. Boon. My friend Esther is her close friend, too.” Boon stopped looking at me, staring instead at Caleb Stone and Amos Moss, their heads huddled close together, looking like confused referees debating a call at a Lawrence University football game. He headed toward them, pompous as a rooster at daybreak, when I said to his back, “I’ll write up the murder for the Crescent.”
Boon faced me, his face purple with rage. “What did you say?”
“I’m a witness.”
He stepped up to me, narrowing his eyes. “Look, Miss Ferber, this is news.”
“Precisely. I’m a reporter.”
“I’m a reporter,” he mimicked.
“I know the story from the high school through her disappearance, and I’ll put together a piece…”
He interrupted, venomous. “You’ll do nothing of the kind, Miss Ferber. You forget that I’m city editor, and murder is my story.”
“It’s my story. I’m part of it.”
He slid his tongue into the corner of his mouth, making his moustache shift like a caterpillar realigning itself on a tree branch. “All the more reason for me to handle it. Reporters are dispassionate, objective, they…”
“I can tell the facts…”
“Like your Houdini piece, I’m afraid. You do love the flight of fancy, the…”
“The fact of murder, sir, calls for a bitter realism.”
“You’re not Theodore Dreiser, Miss Ferber.”
“And you’re hardly Joseph Pulitzer.”
“No matter. This is a man’s province. Consider yourself one more person to be interviewed for the story. By me. You will not have a byline here.” He turned away to see the mortuary wagon creeping its lugubrious way out of Lovers Lane, and Caleb Stone and Amos Moss and the other officious men already leaving the park. Boon cursed loudly. I’d heard Sam Ryan use every profane word in some sinister devil’s dictionary. Nothing surprised me anymore. Now and then Mac exploded in a volley of scatological fury from the pressroom. After a year on the Crescent, I’d considered using some of the vocabulary myself. So Boon’s blustery “Shit!” simply made me laugh. He went charging after Caleb Stone who tried to avoid him.
***
That evening’s meal, supervised by Fannie, was roast beef, browned and crusted at the edges, pink in the center, juicy and rich; cloud-light mashed potatoes, a well of hot butter pooled in the center of each heap, with thick, steamy gravy; and winter squash blended with a dash of ground pepper and maple syrup. On the counter was Fannie’s creation: the three-layer chocolate fudge cake, the one the family deemed Alpine Mountain, towering, with peaks of chocolate and vanilla icing.
Ordinarily I would have ravaged such a meal, famished, but tonight, dispirited, I had no appetite for food or conversation. The Ferbers were a chatty family. Not my father, to be sure, who’d retreated into monosyllables, but the three fiercely strong women shared vignettes of shopping, passersby, public figures, politics, sewing, chicanery, life’s obstacles: all of it, none of it. Tonight the family scarcely spoke. Fannie pouted. My terse and shaky summary of the horrendous day had silenced them all. Sitting there with mounds of food on the ample table, with that delectable cake beckoning, we lapsed into mournful silence.
The evening ended when my father spoke for the first time. “She was so young.” A pause. “At least she’s spared the agony of life to come.”
The sentence hung in the air, so wrong. Too bitter, too laced with melancholia. This wasn’t my father who lacked my mother’s dark European weltschmerz, the ominous cloud that hung over all our horizons. I’d never heard my father say anything so
cynical, so stark, so plaintive. Or so filled with doom.
Suddenly, helplessly, I started to sob. My mother rose and wrapped her arms around me, soothing, touching. My family thought I was crying for the late Frana Lempke. But I wasn’t. I wept for the death of something beautiful in my father.
***
The next morning the Crescent office hummed. Boon had already written the front-page account, garnered piecemeal from Caleb Stone and Amos Moss, from the other men at the Lovers Lane death scene, even from hasty interviews with Principal Hippolyte Jones and Vice-Principal Homer Timm. I sat at my desk.
“What do you think?” Sam Ryan passed me the typed sheets.
I was mentioned in the article, though gratuitously. “The body was discovered in Lovers Lane by Linus Travers, signaled by his faithful dog Wilhelm, and then assisted by Crescent reporter Edna Ferber and Esther Leitner, daughter of Rabbi Mendel Leitner of Zion Congregation.”
That was it: no more. But Sam Ryan rustled the returned sheets, poring over Boon’s typescript, doodling with a pencil, fiddling with it. Surprisingly, he asked me to share my own observation. I refocused the story that Boon had covered, starting with the mystery of Frana’s leaving the high school, unnoticed. I rambled on and on, never glancing at Boon who sat there, pipe dangling from his mouth, puffing away, while I told Sam Ryan about the mythic chubby drummer secreting the girl away, taking her to New York. I mentioned Frana’s juvenile obsession with becoming an actress. Sam listened, rapt, as did Miss Ivy. Sam scribbled on another piece of paper, rewriting lines here and there, a paragraph. He quoted a line from me, asked me to repeat it, jotted it down. Finally, he handed the sheets back to Boon, wordless. Boon, his lips drawn into a tight, unforgiving line, contemplated the additions to his piece, unhappy, and simply nodded.
“We need a good headline.” Sam was looking at me.
