Flight Dreams (19 page)

By Mark Manning


Journal Investigative Reporter


D
ECEMBER 21, CHICAGO IL
—If the mystery of Helena Carter’s whereabouts is not solved within the next eleven days, the missing airline heiress will be declared legally dead on January 1, and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago will lay claim to a fortune estimated in excess of one hundred million dollars.


Monsignor Andrew Lerner, administrative aide to Archbishop Benedict, told the
Journal
last night that the legal-affairs department at archdiocese headquarters has been working overtime to ensure that all probate mechanisms are secure by New Year’s Day. He said, “We still pray for the safe return of Mrs. Carter, who was a faithful daughter of the church. Unfortunately, we now face the inescapable conclusion that Mrs. Carter has suffered an odious demise. Her memory will be best served by the expedient distribution of her estate so that the good works of the archdiocese may continue unfettered in her absence.”


Helena Carter is sole heir to the late Ridgely Carter, founder of CarterAir. She disappeared from her Bluff Shores estate nearly seven years ago, along with a pair of prize Abyssinian cats, of which she was an eminent breeder. The Federated Cat Clubs of America (FCCA) is also named as heir to a substantial sum under terms of her will. The case of the missing heiress has stymied police and journalists alike, who have been unable to produce any evidence of the woman’s whereabouts, whether dead or alive.


‘HOUSEMAN TRIAL’


SLATED


Arthur Mendel, longtime houseman to the Carter family, has been ordered to appear next week at an inquest beginning January 30 in Cook County Circuit Court before Judge Clement Ambrose. A Chicago newspaper has accused Mendel of complicity in the disappearance, and opinion polls show widespread belief in the charges against him, which have not yet been corroborated. This reporter has also been ordered to answer charges at the same hearing.
□

J
INGLING BELLS INTERRUPT MANNING’S
perusal of his story in the latest edition. Daryl, wearing a Santa hat, arrives with his mail cart. Manning asks him, “Any hot tips for a needy reporter today? I could sure use
something
to jump-start this dead-end story.” He tosses the newspaper aside.

“’Fraid not,” Daryl tells him, handing over a bundle of envelopes. “Just a batch of Christmas cards from the usual bunch of flacks.” Shaking his bells, he strolls off down the aisle with his cart. “Ho ho ho,” he intones in a low voice unnatural to him.

Manning shuffles through the envelopes and determines that Daryl is right—they are all greetings from press agents—so he places them unopened atop a stack that already teeters near the edge of his desk. Then, from the inside pocket of his jacket, he removes another envelope, not a Christmas card, that was received at home more than a month ago. He slides out the note, written in a clear, confident hand, and reads it again, hoping that this time it might say more than it did before. But it remains the same:

Dear Mark. Went to a cat show here in Phoenix this weekend. Wanted to relive something you and I shared. Went alone, stayed all day, came home in a funk. Saw some remarkable Abyssinians—thought you’d want to know. I think of you often (would you believe always?) and wonder if and when we’ll see each other again. Hoping to hear from you—Neil.

Manning hasn’t written back. He hasn’t called, though he’s often reached for the phone, even dialed the area code.

I’ve been
busy,
he tells himself, trying to justify his reticence, but knowing better. How long would a phone call take me? Ten minutes max if it goes well, less if it doesn’t. So it’s not a matter of having time. It’s the … emotional expenditure, the Pandora’s box I’m not ready to open while there’s so much else to deal with.

He has less than two weeks left to locate a woman who has eluded him for seven years—and only nine days to prepare for a court appearance concocted to vilify his investigation. What, then, has consumed his working hours for the past month?

Ethiopia. The crisis at long last appears to be winding down, owing largely to the efforts of an outspoken suburban woman, mother of one of the hostages, who has mounted a headline-grabbing campaign of “personal diplomacy” that has frustrated Washington and tantalized the public. Every edition of the paper now brims with Ethiopia stories—breaking news, sidebars, local-angle features—and Manning’s share of these assignments has diverted his attention from the Carter case.

He has persisted, though. Every spare minute at the office, and much of his own time, has been spent searching for evidence—or even clues, threads, tidbits—that would either incriminate or exonerate the diverse characters on his dwindling list of likely suspects.

He was quickly able to eliminate Archbishop Benedict, Father Matthew Carey, and Timothy Chatman from active consideration. While each would gain from Helena Carter’s demise, Manning concluded that none of these men had the direct means to perpetrate such a crime.

Still on his list are Arthur Mendel, Margaret O’Connor, and Humphrey Hasting. All three had plausible motives. Arthur and Margaret had the means. And Humphrey Hasting’s unsubstantiated finger-pointing at Arthur Mendel serves only to cast darker suspicion on himself. But this is little more than circumstance, all inconclusive.

And what of Nathan Cain? His publisher hobnobs with the archbishop, engages in cocktail chat with a bombastic reporter from a rival newspaper, and orders his own star reporter to ignore the known facts of a major local story. Could Nathan Cain conceivably be
behind
it all—a mastermind of abduction and murder? If not, is he trying to influence the outcome of the story in order to help the Archdiocese hierarchy collect on the will? Or is he simply, as Gordon Smith suggested to Manning back in October, simply exercising his “perverse sense of gaming”?

Lacking hard evidence of foul play, Manning concludes, as before, that Helena Carter must still be alive, but he’s no closer to proving it than he was in the beginning. And time is running out.

“Mr. Manning?”

Manning returns Neil’s note to his pocket and swivels in his chair to find Gordon Smith’s secretary standing behind him with a strapping young man whose owlish glasses and muscular build give him the air of a boyish Clark Kent. Manning clears his throat as he rises to greet them, wondering what mission has coaxed the woman out of the managing editor’s office, since she rarely appears on the floor of the newsroom.

“Mr. Manning,” she repeats, hesitates, then continues, “Mr. Smith asked me to introduce David Bosch to you. David will join us next month as an intern.”

“It’s a real honor, Mr. Manning,” says the eager kid, squaring his broad shoulders as he crunches Manning’s hand. “This is awesome. We’ve studied your stuff in J-school.”

“Just finishing up?” asks Manning, flexing his blanched fingers.

“Yeah,” says David, “one more semester at Northwestern. But the best training in the world will be right here, on the job. I was blown away to find out I got the internship—and now
this.
Who’d believe I’d actually end up working at Mark Manning’s
desk?
Too cool!” The kid doesn’t notice Manning’s sudden pallor. “Where are they putting
you
—‘upstairs’ somewhere?”

As Manning mumbles, “That’s sort of … up in the air,” his phone rings.

“We can see that you’re busy,” says the secretary, sensing the effect of their visit. “I’d better take David down to personnel.”

“Great to meet you,” the rookie tells Manning as the woman leads him away. “See you in January!”

Manning musters a halfhearted smile and waves a cursory farewell as he answers the phone.

The man’s voice on the line sounds nervous. “Mr. Manning? I’ve never telephoned a newspaper before, but I read your article this morning about the heiress, and I thought I should call. You see … my wife has dreams.”

“Your wife,” Manning repeats dryly.

“She dreams about things that might be useful to your stories.”

“Really?” says Manning, feigning interest. “Tell me about them.”

“I’d be delighted, Mr. Manning.” The voice is now effervescent, any trace of nervousness vanishing. “This all started several weeks ago …” the tale begins in a gossipy tone.

Manning dangles the receiver by its cord, holding it at arm’s length, and lowers it into his wastebasket. He sits back in his chair and breathes deeply, clearing his thoughts, then removes Neil’s note from his pocket to read it again. He stares at the paper, but his eyes do not focus on the writing. His breathing stops, and time is suspended for a long moment. Then he blinks, inhaling, and ponders reality. The
Journal
’s management is preparing to give his desk to some upstart
kid.
They already assume he will fail at Nathan Cain’s mandate.

His fists clench, crumpling the note. He wads the paper into a tight ball and flicks it into the wastebasket, where it glances off the receiver. The little voice pauses at the intrusion, then jabbers happily on.

Far from Chicago, in the rectory that stands next to a church in the desert, Father James McMullen sits at his cluttered dining room table. The piles of paperwork have grown in recent months, and he hasn’t made much headway. With Christmas so near, there’s a slew of administrative minutiae that must be resolved while leading his flock toward their celebration of the miracle birth. The priest turns an envelope in his hands—clearly, it isn’t Christmas greetings. So he tosses it on the stack of unpaid bills.

It is midmorning, and down the hall, Mrs. Weaver clatters whatnot in the kitchen. It’s too early for lunch—too early for tuna, thank the Lord. No, by the smell of it, she’s baking cookies. The phone rings. Twice. Four times before she grabs it. She must have had her hands in the dough.

“Telephone, Father.”

Grateful for the interruption, he hoists himself from his chair and lumbers off to the kitchen. There are indeed cookies in the works, an ovenload of Christmas treats set out to cool on the counter top. Turning in time to catch the priest eyeing them, Mrs. Weaver reminds him, “Those are for the
children,
Father,” then she resumes dolloping out the next batch from a big chipped red bowl.

The priest picks up the receiver that dangles from the wall phone near the doorway. He glimpses the approaching holiday on the single page still hanging from the wire spiral of the church calendar. “Merry Christmas,” he says. “This is Jim McMullen.”

Listening to his caller, the priest’s face blanches. He steps around the doorway and into the hall, hoping the housekeeper won’t hear him. “I told you never to call me here.”

The voice on the phone hisses into McMullen’s ear, “This crap has been all over the news lately. We’ll have to act faster than we planned.”

Mrs. Weaver turns on the water to rinse her hands in the sink. The voice on the phone grows louder, spitting an obscenity. The priest inhales sharply, both shocked and angered by the invective. With hand on chest, he feels the pounding of his heart—he’s sure it skipped a beat. “That’s
enough,
” he says into the phone. “Behave yourself. I’ll talk to you later.”

With attempted nonchalance, he steps back into the kitchen and hangs up the phone, but Mrs. Weaver can tell he’s shaken. Wiping her hands on her apron, she asks, “Everything all right, Father?”

“Just another”—he fumbles for the words—“overanxious creditor.”

“Ah.” She nods. There’s been a fair share of
those
calls lately. Twisting her neck to check the clock over the refrigerator, she tells him, “You’d better get a move on, Father. You’ll be late for the assembly. I’ll have lunch ready when you get back.”

“Goodness,” he says, having forgotten the town meeting, “I’m on my way.” He crosses the kitchen, swings open the screen door, and steps outside.

A breath of cool air freshens the desert this morning with nature’s tenuous promise that the oppressive heat of perpetual summer has indeed waned. The sky is radiantly blue—like a backdrop, the artificial handiwork of some overcaffeinated set designer—and there is no smog from the distant city to cloud the horizon beyond the mountains. Any day now, it could rain. Then the desert will bloom, and this place will seem like paradise, like a lost land found, a covenant fulfilled.

The people of Assumption sometimes forget their holy calling during the long, sweltering months that test their faith and divide them into cranky factions. But the cool morning has spruced their zeal and renewed their sense of unity. They are, after all, a people of God.

Father McMullen is thankful for the break in the weather. God’s timing is good—this is the third Monday of the month, the morning when the community gathers in the shabby school hall for its regular town meeting. As both spiritual and temporal leader of Assumption, Father McMullen presides at these forums, noting with alarm lately that their tone has grown contentious. Striding down the center aisle of the packed assembly, he prays with apprehension, Dear Lord, preserve us in our mission. Let calmer heads and peaceful hearts prevail today.