Rosemary Herbert - Front Page Teaser: A Liz Higgins Mystery

Copyright 2010 by Rosemary Herbert

Cover photograph iStockphoto.com/4971695

ISBN: 978-0-89272-852-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Herbert, Rosemary.

Front page teaser : a Liz Higgins mystery / by Rosemary Herbert.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-89272-852-7 (trade pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Women journalists--Fiction. 2. Boston (Mass.)--Fiction. I. Title.

PS3608.E7296F76 2010

813.6--dc22

2010012133

Designed by Lynda Chilton

Printed at Versa Press, East Peoria, Illinois

5 4 3 2 1

Distributed to the trade by National Book Network

This book is a work of fiction. While some of the landscapes, businesses, and other venues may be recognized as actual placesor may be seen to be based on actual placesall of the action that occurs in them is entirely a work of the imagination. The author does not recommend that readers assume they may have access to any properties shown herein, especially including university libraries or private landscapes. Similarly, with the exception of the cat Prudence and mystery writer Mary Higgins Clark, the characters portrayed within the pages of this book are entirely fictional, although a few friends and family members have graciously allowed the author to borrow their names or create variations upon them. While a former mayor of the City of Newton reportedly gave Fig Newton cookies to visitors, the Newton mayor depicted here is not that man. The author would also like to emphasize that the names of the fictional characters in these pages who are shown as associated with terrorism are chosen randomly. The author neither possesses knowledge of terrorist networks nor of individuals who are involved in such activities, nor does anyone who advised her about any aspect of this book. While sometimes the characters in this book refer to the Beantown Banner simply as the Banner , this is not to be confused with the Bay State Banner newspaper, of which this author has no experience.

Books by Rosemary Herbert

A New Omnibus of Crime, coedited with Tony Hillerman

Whodunit? A Whos Who in Crime & Mystery Writing

The Oxford Companion to Crime & Mystery Writing

Murder on Deck! Shipboard & Shoreline Mystery Stories (Oxford University Press)

Twelve American Crime Stories

The Oxford Book of American Detective Stories , co-edited with Tony Hillerman

The Fatal Art of Entertainment: Interviews with Mystery Writers

For Bill Wyman

who truly knows how to celebrate Christmas

with love and gratitude

And to the worlds of the newsroom

and public and academic libraries.

May newspaper journalism find its way and thrive again

even as technology changes, because a free press

staffed by professional reporters and editors

is nothing short of fundamental to a democratic society.

Similarly, another foundation of democracy

may be found in libraries, where staff members

protect patron privacy while they also dedicate their

efforts to ensuring freedom of access
to information.

Acknowledgments

I would like to extend my thanks to the following people who provided everything from professional expertise and practical help to friendship and encouragement: Pamela Ackerknecht, Catherine Aird, Alfred Alcorn, Tony Alcorn, Cindy Atoji, Peter Alden, Father Joseph Bagetta and the DYS crocheting group, Jean and Jim Behnke, Dana Bisbee, Paula Blanchard, Henri Bourneuf, Gerry Boyle, Margaret Byer, Mark Chapman, Rochelle Cohen, Neil Cote, Guy Darst, Nancy Day, Rene DeKona, Dick Donahue, Paul Doiron, Jane Gelfman, Dr. Herbert Gross, Bonni Hamilton, Jeremiah Healy, Barbara Herbert, Janice Herbert, P.D. James, Sande Kent, Linda Kincaid, Cara Nissman Kraft, Jeffrey Levine, Tom Libby, Reuben Mahar, Kevin McNamara, Janet Mendelsohn, Jenny Miller, Susan and Steve Moody, Elaine M. Ober, Diana ONeill, Richard Olken, Eliza Partington, Juliet Partington, Mike Pingree, Arthur Pollock, Jeanne and Darrell Ray, John M. (Tim) Reilly, Chris Rippen, Eileen Tomaney Robinson, Tenley Rooney, Daisy and Jeremy Ruggiero, Todd Sawyer, Stephanie Schorow, Michael Seamans, John Sgammato, Al Silverstein, Clara Silverstein, Peter Skagestad, Barbara Sloane, Curtis C. Smith, JP Smith, Katy Snow, Richard Stomberg, Brian Sylvester, Sonya Turek, Cathy Weider, Karin Womer, Wayne Woodlief, and Bill Wyman. I also would like to remember the following people who always believed in me: my father, Robert D. Herbert; my grandparents, Mary and Harry Fransen; my creative writing teacher, Alfred E. Haulenbeek; and to these masters of mysteryTony Hillerman, John Mortimer, Robert B. Parker, and Julian Symons.

With special thanks to Mary Higgins Clark, for her encouragement,

and for consenting to be a character in my mystery.

And with profound appreciation to Dick Sloane,

for his generosity and belief in me as a writer,

and to his mother, the late Vera Sloane, simply for being herself.

New York City, December 16, 2000

Let nothing you dismay.

Christmas Muzak was playing over the loudspeakers in Penn Station as Ellen Johansson strode to the escalator leading from the AMTRAK train waiting area to the taxi stand. So eager was she to make her date that she walked up the escalator steps even as they rose.

There was little to burden her. She carried only a purse and a small briefcase filled with correspondence, much of it written on onion-skin paper, postmarked from one of the worlds hotspots.

In the briefcase, she carried something else. A surprise she longed to present to her foreign correspondent.

Pushing through the glass doors with the crowd, Ellen buttoned up her dressy winter coat and arranged the scarf she chose especially for the occasion. It would help the person she planned to meet to recognize her. She only hoped that person would also remember to wear something similarly recognizable.

If there had been room to do it, Ellen would have paced with impatience as she waited with passengers from Boston and elsewhere who swelled the snaking line of people seeking taxis. Instead, she found herself wringing her hands, a gesture that was quite uncharacteristic.

When, at last, it was her turn for a taxi, Ellen leaned forward toward the drivers rolled-down window and said, Can you take me to the World Trade Center? As she made her request, a gust of wind tossed her strawberry-blonde hair across her freckled face.

She brushed it out of her eyes as the driver barked, Get in, lady, in a heavily accented voice.

Ellen unbuttoned her coat in the overheated cab as it made its way out of the station and turned a corner. At the tail end of the Christmas rush, the area was thronged with shoppers. Ellen knew she looked like the out-of-towner she was, and wondered if the cabbie would try to take a circuitous route all the way to the Twin Towers. Then she would have to deal with the unpleasantness of telling him she knew better

Mind if I smoke, lady? the cabbie said, lighting up a cigarette before she could reply.

Yes, I do, she wanted to say, but decided to pick her battle instead, asking, Are you heading for Seventh Avenue?

Of course, lady, he said, assessing her through the rearview mirror. You think I take you for a ride? he added, chuckling at his own joke.

But his eyes seemed mirthless in the small rectangle of reflective glass.

Alhamdulillah , he mumbled in Arabic. By the grace of Allah.

By the grace of any god, Ill get to my destination, Ellen mused inwardly while matching the mans face, as reflected in the mirror, with his identification picture posted on the seatback in front of her. Same man, all right, she thought. Samir Hasan, his card read.