Hidden Treasures

by Judith Arnold

  “I’m sorry but I must interject here,” the taller one said. “I’m afraid Toad Regan is going to say something about Erica Leitner—”

  “You mean, that she’s Jewish?” Toad said helpfully.

  Both women rolled their eyes. “Erica Leitner is a lovely young woman,” the taller one went on. “She’s a third-grade teacher—”

  “What did I say?” Toad demanded. “Did I say anything bad about her?”

  “You’re a drunk old fool,” the shorter woman declared. “Go home.”

  Toad glowered at her. “Yeah? And where might that be?” Turning back to Sonya, he said, “Did I say anything bad about her?”

  “Is the fact that she’s Jewish relevant to this story in any way?” Sonya asked.

  “Only that they don’t carry any Hebrew National at the Superette, if you get my meaning.”

  “We’re very proud of our diversity here in Rockwell,” the taller woman from the crafts store said.

  “She’s an excellent teacher,” the shorter one said. “My neighbor’s little girl had her last year and said she was excellent. She went to Harvard, you know,” the woman added, giving Derrick an oddly coy look. “Not my neighbor’s daughter, but Erica Leitner did. I’ll bet, Mr. Messinger, that being a big TV star you know lots of Harvard folks.”

  If Derrick wasn’t mistaken, the news director who’d fired him for asking unseemly questions of a Supreme Court justice had been a Harvard folk. He couldn’t swear to it, but the Supreme Court justice might have been one, too.

  “I don’t think you should interview Toad,” the woman continued. “You’d be much better off interviewing us. Wouldn’t he, Harriet?”

  The taller one had fixed Toad with a look of diamond-hard disapproval, but at the sound of her name she shifted her attention to Derrick and her face softened. “Yes, I think that would be more appropriate. We’ve lived in Rockwell longer than Toad has.”

  “That’s on account of you’re so much older’n me,” Toad pointed out.

  Sonya sent Derrick a meaningful look. He interpreted it to mean she wanted him to take over the questioning. Not a problem, except who the hell were these ladies? Where was his research on them?

  They smelled better than Toad, at least. “Erica Leitner hasn’t lived in town very long, has she?” he asked.

  “She’s much younger than we are,” the short one said.

  “So is she an integral member of the community now?”

  “There’s no temple here, if you get my meaning,” Toad commented.

  The women from the crafts shop ignored him. “She’s very much a part of this community,” the short one said. “We’ve embraced her like one of our own.”

  “Well, that’s not exactly true,” the tall one corrected her. “She’s certainly a part of this community, and we’ve embraced her, but you can see she still hasn’t lost her big-city ways.”

  “What do you mean?” the shorter one asked.

  “Well, her vocabulary, for one thing.”

  “Does she swear a lot?” Derrick asked. As far as he knew, the only difference between big-city vocabulary and small-town vocabulary was that living in a big city, a person was exposed to a much wider variety of curse words, in assorted languages.

  “Oh, no!” The shorter one shook her head indignantly. “She’s a very nice girl. She uses very clean language.”

  “It’s the big words,” the taller one explained. “She uses lots of bigger words. And she dresses—”

  “In all that L.L. Bean stuff.” The shorter one completed the sentence. “It makes her look a little touristy.”

  “People around here don’t wear L.L. Bean stuff?” Derrick asked, surprised. He would have assumed everyone laced on a pair of those trademark Bean hybrid boots in November and didn’t pry them off until Easter.

  “Well, mostly. Just the summer-home people.”

  “And the leaf peepers in the fall.”

  “I don’t own anything from L.L. Bean,” Toad Regan added vehemently.

  A thin, balding man swept out of Hackett’s Superette on the opposite corner. “Hey, why don’t you do a little filming over here?” he shouted across the street. “I think you’ve given Harriet’s store enough of a plug.”

  A woman followed him out and continued into the street, brandishing a pen and a pocket-size notepad. “Mr. Messinger? Mr. Messinger, could I have your autograph? Not for me, of course—for my aunt Louise.”

  “I didn’t know you had an aunt named Louise,” the tall, silver-haired woman remarked dryly.

  “Small world,” Toad added. “Your name is Louise, too.”

  Derrick tried to catch Sonya’s eye. The situation was deteriorating. But she was beaming at the proliferation of hicks, and Mookie was capturing it all on tape.

  At least the other reporters weren’t there. They were a group of local hacks, and he’d made nice with them while they’d been cooling their heels at Erica Leitner’s house that morning. But they clearly weren’t in his class. The Manchester Fox affiliate? Please.

  “All right,” Sonya announced, her brassy voice slicing through the din. “Let’s film a little by the supermarket.”

  Derrick forced a faint smile as Louise with the coincidentally named Aunt Louise thrust her pad and pen at him. He preferred to think of himself as a reporter, but in this era of celebrity, what could he do? People recognized him. He had to keep his public happy.

  Of course, his scribbling “Best wishes, Louise—Derrick Messinger” onto her pad meant everyone else would start rummaging through pockets and purses in search of paper for him to sign. He braced himself, flexed the fingers on his signing hand and dug into the inner pocket of his blazer for his own pen. To his surprise, no one asked him for his autograph.

  Obviously, they respected him more than Louise did. They understood that he was a journalist, not a pop idol.

  In front of the Superette, Derrick found himself surrounded by locals, all of them grinning wildly at the camera. The thin balding man who’d requested that they film in front of his store had the temerity to wrap an arm around Derrick’s shoulders. There was nothing pansyish about his embrace, but it still gave Derrick the willies.

  “Okay, everybody back off,” Sonya ordered the crowd. “We’ll interview you in a minute. But first, everybody take a giant step away from Derrick and let him do his thing.”

  Reluctantly, the man disengaged from Derrick and joined the others milling around behind Mookie. Derrick shrugged as if to slough off any residue the man might have left on him. Then he read a couple more pages of Sonya’s script.

  “Good,” Sonya said when he was done. “Now, you.” She located the skinny bald man among the crowd, grabbed him by the wrist and hauled him over to stand next to Derrick. “Derrick will interview you. Interview him, Derrick.”

  Easier said than done. It wasn’t as if he were chasing a real story. This wasn’t a drive-by shooting. It wasn’t a sordid account of drugs and the Mafia. How was he supposed to interview this guy?

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Pop Hackett.”

  Derrick imagined the twangy lilt of “Dueling Banjos” again. He lifted his mike, gazed soulfully at the camera and said, “I’m standing in front of Hackett’s Superette with Pop Hackett. Tell me, Mr. Hackett, have you ever had any experience here in Rockwell with ancient artifacts?”

  “Ancient, I can’t say. I’ve got a couple of cans of cream of asparagus soup that’ve been sitting on the shelf a pretty long time. Don’t suppose that’d count.”

  The onlookers chuckled. Oh, that Pop Hackett. What a card.

  “That’s great,” Sonya enthused, her attempt at courting the crowd. Derrick could hear the phoniness in her tone, but they probably couldn’t. “That’s really funny. Thank you, everybody, for your help. We have to go to another location now.”

  Mookie lowered his camera and gave everyone a good-natured smile. Sonya slung her arm around Derrick—he didn’t mind so much when she did it—and ushered
him across the street. “We’re going to film over at the school,” she murmured. “That’s where Erica Leitner teaches. Just to get a sense of who she is and where she’s coming from. We want to humanize the story, you know?”

  “Sure.” Derrick hoped they wouldn’t get besieged by another gang of Yankee yokels there.

  Mookie drove unerringly to the grade school. Among his many assets, besides his general affability and his skill behind the camera, he seemed incapable of getting lost. Derrick wondered whether he snuck out late at night and cruised whatever town they were in, familiarizing himself with the roads and landmarks, or whether he pored over maps into the wee hours. He was probably the only man in the world who never asked for directions because he didn’t need them.

  Derrick’s mood, not particularly bubbly to begin with, went seriously flat once they reached the school. The Boston reporter with the Pepto-Bismol-hued suit and the chipmunk cheeks had beaten them to the scene.

  “Don’t worry,” Sonya said, evidently reading his mind. “Let her get her two minutes. Who cares? She hasn’t got any more on the box than we do.”

  “You hope,” Derrick muttered.

  “Erica Leitner is in that building right now. How could that lady have gotten anything on the box?” She twisted in her seat to face him. “Remember that cartoon Pinkie and the Brain? She’s Pinkie. You’re the Brain.”

  Derrick didn’t remember the cartoon—Sonya was a good ten years younger than him, so she had an entirely different pop culture reference—but he felt better anyway. He considered giving his bottle of scotch a farewell kiss, but thought better of it. Not in a schoolyard. It wouldn’t be right.

  He’d seen sprawling elementary schools before, elaborate structures with angular roofs, banks of windows and awnings along the bus circle. Rockwell Regional Primary School was the antithesis of those schools. A sad box of faded brick, it had undoubtedly been built as a public works project in the Depression, and it was still depressed. The playground was colorful, at least, lots of vivid molded plastic accenting the swing sets and climbers. The playground was empty, though. All the kids must be inside.

  Climbing out of the car, he gave Pinkie a polite nod. She sent a grimacing smile his way before resuming her stand-up, chattering calmly into her microphone while her cameraman filmed her. She didn’t have a producer with her, he noticed. Probably the cameraman doubled, or else she produced herself. Low-budget. Her station hadn’t invested serious resources in this story. She’d be lucky if she got a sixty-second closer after the weather recap at eleven-thirty.

  Not like him. He was going to have a whole documentary, with national syndication. Eat your heart out, Pinkie, he thought, his spirits lifting.

  “My son’s in there,” a man shouted, loping over to him. “Mr. Messinger? My boy’s in there. You’ve got to talk to him.”

  Derrick turned from Pinkie to acknowledge the man. He had the longest face Derrick had ever seen, and most of the length seemed to be chin. “Can I help you?” Sonya intervened.

  “Glenn Rideout,” he said, extending his hand. “I heard from Potter Henley—he’s a regular of mine—that you were filming out on Main Street, but by the time I got there you were driving away. So I followed you here.”

  “How resourceful,” Sonya said pleasantly. A hank of hair flopped into her face and she shoved it back behind her ear. “We’re trying to set up a shot here. You can watch if you’d like, but please don’t—”

  “You don’t understand. I’m Glenn Rideout. My son, Randy, found the box.”

  “Your son did?” Sonya leaned closer to him. So did Derrick and Mookie. They didn’t want Pinkie to hear this. “According to my research, Erica Leitner was digging in her garden with a former student of hers—”

  “Yeah, that’s my son.”

  “And they unearthed the box together.”

  “That’s her story,” Glenn Rideout grumbled.

  “And your story is?”

  “My son found the box. I’ve got a lawyer says that box is Randy’s as much as the teacher’s. If you’re going to interview anyone around here, I think you should interview Randy.”

  Sonya shot Derrick a look. He shrugged back. Why not?

  “Does your son want to be interviewed?” Sonya asked.

  “He damn well better. He found the box. You want me to get him out of his classroom?”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary, Mr. Rideout,” Sonya said. As if in response to her assertion, a pair of double doors on the side of the school building suddenly swung open and a raging horde of children spilled out, screeching and shoving like wild beasts just sprung from their cages. Pinkie, who’d been standing about twenty yards down along the chain-link fence from where Mookie was setting up, let out a yelp and jumped away from the fence, as if she feared some of the kids might mistake her for a very large piece of bubble gum and leap over the fence to dig their teeth into her.

  “He’s here,” Rideout insisted, scouring the mayhem on the other side of the fence with his gaze. “He’s one of the older kids. A fifth-grader.”

  Derrick searched the group, too, looking for an older boy with a disproportionately long chin. But the kids all blurred into a shouting, running, tumbling mass, and the only people he could distinguish were the adults—teachers and staff. He spotted Erica Leitner hovering on the concrete steps near the double doors, beside her a woman with blunt-cut hair the color of strawberries. Punk, he thought, despite her tailored slacks and sweater set. Anyone who’d color her hair that shade of red had a bit of the rebel in her.

  “Look at Erica’s friend,” he whispered to Sonya.

  “What about her?”

  “She looks a little out of place, don’t you think?”

  “Don’t be so provincial. They’ve got Lady Clairol even in Rockwell, New Hampshire.”

  “Lady Clairol doesn’t make that shade of red.”

  “So…what? You wanna ask her out? What’s your point, Derrick?”

  “No, I don’t want to ask her out. I was just curious about why she was here instead of, say, selling bustiers in some boutique in the East Village.”

  “What do you know about bustiers?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “I already am.” Sonya surveyed the raucous scene on the other side of the fence and shouted to Mookie, “You think you’ll pick up Derrick’s voice over this noise?”

  “Huh?” Mookie shouted back, cupping a hand around his ear.

  “All right, look, we can’t tape here while those banshees are shrieking their heads off. Mr. Rideout, we’ll meet with your son after school. How’s that? Do you know what time school ends?”

  “Around three,” Rideout said. “Why don’t you come to my neighborhood tavern and meet Randy there. Rideout’s Ride, on the corner of Main and Elm. Four blocks down from Hackett’s—only, the door’s on the Elm Street side.”

  “Fine. Okay. We’ll try to get over there then. Mookie, get some of the chaos on film. We can do a voice-over later.”

  “Huh?” Mookie leaned toward Sonya and scowled, obviously unable to hear her.

  Sighing, she marched over to the fence to confer with him. Derrick eyed Glenn Rideout skeptically. Did he want Derrick to interview his fifth-grade son at his neighborhood tavern, surrounded by smoke and mugs of beer?

  Once again, the “Dueling Banjos” theme rippled through his mind. The box had better be worth it, he thought, turning back to watch the mayhem on the opposite side of the fence. The box had better contain something of great value. Because if Derrick had trekked all the way here, spent a night in that drafty little inn and interviewed the offspring of someone who ran an establishment named Rideout’s Ride, and then the box turned out to be empty…

  Well, it had better not be. That was all.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “YOU DIDN’T RETURN my call yesterday,” Erica’s mother said.

  “I’m sorry.” Erica wasn’t really sorry, but what else could she say? “I got your message, but by the
time I could have called you back, it would have been too late.” That wasn’t too far from the truth, at least. By the time she’d come home and recovered from Jed’s kiss—well, she still wasn’t completely recovered, but in any case, phoning her mother at that hour would have given the woman a heart attack. Of course, Erica could have solved the situation by taking her mother’s call in the first place, instead of letting the answering machine pick up.

  Sometimes dishonesty was the best policy.

  “So, you were with friends?”

  “Yes.” Erica carried her cordless phone down the short hall to her bedroom. The curtains at her front window were crooked, exposing a sliver of window, and as soon as she’d slid her feet out of her loafers, she crossed to the window and straightened the drape. She’d started that day peeking through that sliver of window and discovering the press camped outside her door, as if she were someone famous or important.

  “You have friends there?” her mother asked.

  “Of course I have friends here.” Erica didn’t bother to disguise her irritation. She’d been living in Rockwell for nearly three years. Her mother knew she had friends. She talked about them sometimes when she was visiting Brookline. Whenever she did, her mother would click her tongue and say, “What kind of people would live in a town like that?”

  People like Erica; that was what kind.

  “So you were out partying with your friends on a school night?” her mother grilled her.

  “Mom.” Erica laughed to keep from screaming. “I’m a grown-up. You can’t give me a curfew.”

  “I don’t know how you can stand to live there,” her mother went on, as if Erica hadn’t spoken. “They pay you nothing.”

  “Nothing goes a long way here,” Erica pointed out. She lifted her hair off her neck and shook it loose, then wandered back toward the dining room, where she’d dumped her tote and a stack of math quizzes when the phone had rung. Maybe she should have let the answering machine take her mother’s call tonight, as it had last night. But she’d had only three messages waiting for her when she’d arrived home from school, none of them obnoxious, so she’d decided to live dangerously and answer the phone.