LARA CHADWICK SCROLLED down through the article she had written on the opening of Boston’s newest art gallery overlooking the Charles river, all steel and glass and urban chic. She had double-checked the names of the artists exhibiting and also the patrons, Boston’s finest, the socialites whose names and faces constantly graced their newspaper’s columns. Some of them had made a point of getting to know her and one had actually approached her the minute she stepped into a room, expecting her to produce her notepad and take down some copy about the latest happening in their crowded lives.
Last week she had gone to see her nephew in his college play and had been waylaid by that same stupid socialite who assumed she was writing it up for the paper, almost as if she was not entitled to a night out on her own.
She had sat fuming for the first few minutes of the show but then had gotten over it and relaxed and laughed at the college humour which thankfully never changed as she watched her nephew Ben, looking most unappealing in a parody of transvestism in her sister Nell’s turquoise satin suit which she hadn’t seen for years. She had to wipe the tears from her eyes as she hooted and hollered with Nell and the rest of the audience. Ben was one of those tall athletic types who would not in a million years pass as a female no matter how much slap was layered onto his chiselled features. He was in his final year of chemical engineering and by all acounts was an honours student.
He had a bright and brilliant career ahead of him, judging by her sister and brother-in-law’s genuine pride and pleasure in their only son.
Lara herself had studied English and politics, taking a Master’s in English literature about three years after she qualified. Then the world had seemed full of hope and opportunity and she had dreamt of a job in publishing or of writing herself.
Her publishing job had entailed posting on multiple fan letters to one of the queen bitches of American literature and booking hotel rooms for her and her partner on endless book tours. Her own simple manuscript never seemed to get beyond the great total of thirty pages. In the end she had binned it, reckoning that if she the author couldn’t entice herself to write it the likelihood of a reader enjoying it was zero. A friend of a friend had called someone who had eventually offered her the job as a junior with Boston’s top newspaper, and filled with high hopes she had joined the fledgeling ranks of journalism.
Any hope of working on the political pages had been quickly dashed and she had been assigned to the wedding and funeral section for a start-off. Checking the daily obituaries was hardly the stuff the Pulitzer was made of, but she had swallowed her pride and done her best to prevent howlers making it into the paper. Dealing with top names in Boston society meant she had got picked to help out on the social column, which appeared once a week. In between, she had taken to hanging out around the news desk midweek hoping that with any luck she would be thrown a story or two to check out or follow up.
She did a final word count on her article before she sent it up and left a message for the photographer to have the photos ready for that evening’s editorial. She was just slipping on her linen jacket when her boss, Ritchie Allen, called her over.
‘You going home, Lara?’
‘Yeah, just for a short while. My cat got neutered two days ago and I want to check she’s OK. I should be back in an hour or so.’
‘You live out Easton direction, don’t you?’
‘Yeah, why?’
‘Picked up a call about some kid getting badly injured at the local grocery store. Witness was talking something about a Good Samaritan coming to help. Listen, would you check it out before you come back. It might just do for the local section or one of those human interest spots.’
Lara sighed. She’d hoped to spend about an hour mollycoddling Pom her cat, and now had to waste time ambulance-chasing. It wasn’t fair! Nothing ever happened in Easton. Ritchie knew it and she knew it but the good people expected their name to appear in the local news for some reason or other.
‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘But it might take a while to track down.’
Ritchie had already lost interest and was busy emailing a colleague as Lara grabbed her keys and headed out the office door.
Pom was feeling very sorry for herself. Lara had to admit she felt guilty about putting her pet through such a procedure, but the thought of her apartment being overrun with kittens, and a recent near-escape with the tomcat down the hall, had strengthened her resolve about the need for the operation.
‘You poor old baby,’ she crooned, lifting the sad-looking ginger cat up onto her lap and talking to her. Pom was not only her companion and room-mate, but made living in this bachelor girl apartment just about bearable. The cat glared reproachfully up at her as Lara petted the silky fur gently, not wanting to hurt the animal. She refilled her milk bowl and opened a foil pack of the most expensive cat food on offer in her local store, forking it out onto the cat’s dish.
‘Here you go, Pom. Just eat a little bit for Mommy, that’s a good girl.’
The cat had dozed off again when Lara crept out of her apartment.
She often shopped in Easton and ate regularly in the Bistro restaurant and Flanagan’s, the well-known oyster and fish restaurant on the outskirts of town.
The main grocery store was Gerald’s and she assumed it was the one Ritchie had mentioned as she turned her Toyota sports car into the parking lot. Parking was at a premium in Easton and she was glad to have found a spot. Grabbing her purse, she decided to have a look around. She noticed a lanky boy with greasy hair collecting the shopping carts. He had absolutely no idea what she was talking about and Lara wondered if she’d deliberately been sent on a wild-goose chase.
She wandered inside the store, hoping to spot a manager or someone she could ask. It was quiet, and judging by the two bored-looking teenagers on the registers probably the crossover period between night and day staff. She asked the one with the name-tag Jeanette and the triple studs in her right ear if she’d heard of the accident a few days before.
‘Someone said something about a kid, I think,’ she shrugged vaguely, ‘but ya know I wasn’t really listening.’
Lara tried to smile nice and friendly, hoping there was somebody left from the day staff who actually gave a toss about what went on in their place of work. Then she spotted an older man. He was standing over near the exit and had pulled a navy shirt on, but she could see he was wearing the store security uniform underneath it. Racing through the frozen goods aisle she managed to catch his attention.
‘Excuse me, sir!’ she interrupted. ‘I was wondering if you could tell me anything about the accident here involving a child on Saturday?’
He looked up. The pale blue eyes which lurked under a clump of rough grey eyebrows were immediately suspicious.
‘You from the insurance company or something?’ he replied.
‘No! No, sir. Nothing like that at all,’ she assured him. ‘I’m a journalist on the Boston Herald and, well, I actually live in the neighbourhood and I was wondering what exactly happened.’
He stared at her for a moment or two, until she produced her ID.
‘Can’t be too careful!’ he murmured as she put it back in her black leather purse. He relaxed a bit and she followed him towards the door.
‘Just one of those things, a crowd of kids on bikes. You know what boys that age are like. Racing and chasing all over the place, use the lot here for stunt riding sometimes. The parents can’t keep watch on them every hour of the day. The lady pulled in too quick, wasn’t watching I guess. Had one of those big fancy Jeeps, high off the ground. She couldn’t have seen him. I heard the brakes and the crash. She rolled right over him and his bike.’
‘The kid?’
‘About nine or ten I guess. Well, he was hurt real bad. I did everything I could to help. The store gives us all a course on first aid. I done mine about six years ago when I came here first, but he was in bad shape. Myself and a few folk tried to help, but he was real bad, trouble breathing. Looked like he was dying, then this lady who was helping just kind of laid her hands on him. I don’t know exactly what she done but she brung him back. Even the paramedics thought he was dead, but the lady she kept saying he was going to live. It was the strangest thing I ever seen in all my born years. She saved his life, gave it back to him.’
‘Where’s the boy now?’ Lara asked.
‘Ambulance took him to Children’s Hospital. My boss Mr Williams phoned to check on him. Doesn’t do a store no good for someone to die in the lot, you know. Hospital said he was critical but stable.’
‘The boy’s name, did you get it?’
‘She knew him . . . Lewis, no – Lucas, that’s it! Timmy Lucas, that was the boy’s name.’
‘What about the woman? Do you know her name?’
The security guard shrugged.
‘I’ve seen her in here a few times but I don’t rightly know her name or where she lives, but it must be somewhere local.’
Lara thanked him warmly for his help. Something about him reminded her of her late grandfather and she wondered what he had worked at before he had taken on the security job to bolster up his retirement pension.
At least she had some information to go on. She went back outside to place a call to the directory service for the hospital number.
The hospital staff would give her no information about the boy: it was hospital policy unless you were next of kin. Thanking them, she rang off and decided to drive back into town. The hospital was en route to the office and she’d have a try at getting a bit more out of them.
The staff on the door assumed she was a late visitor as, gazing straight ahead, she marched right past them. She had spotted the sign for the fourth floor. Trying to look like a parent, she slipped into the lift and pressed the silver-ringed button. The doors opening right in front of the nurses’ station slightly spooked her, but forcing herself to be calm she walked slowly over to the plump nurse sitting near the phone.
‘Excuse me, I’m looking for Timmy Lucas. How’s he doing?’ she asked.
The nurse covered the mouthpiece with her chubby fingers and looked up.
‘You a member of the family or something?’
She smiled and nodded. Not agreeing or denying, just inclining her head in a way that could be seen as a positive.
The nurse hesitated for a second. Lara looked her straight in the eye as the woman pointed down the hallway.
‘He’s in room 14, but I think he’s still very drowsy. Sue’s gone to the day room for a nap but if you run you might just catch her.’
‘Thanks a bunch,’ Lara said gratefully.
Passing the door she could see the sleeping shape of the boy hooked up to a monitor and drip and God knows what else.
The day room was right down the far end of the corridor and she pushed the door gently. An elderly man, concentrating on the sports section of the newspaper, had his back to her. Over in the corner she spotted a dark-haired woman rubbing her face with her fingers. She looked as if she had hardly slept the previous night. There were circles of grey under her eyes and her mascara had smudged under her lower lid.
Lara pretended to be busy and sidled over to the small counter where a pot of coffee was still hot. She got out a mug for herself and turned around as though absent-minded.
The old man studiously ignored her, the woman nodded gratefully.
‘Milk and sugar?’
‘Yeah, please, I could do with the energy boost.’
Lara carried the two mugs over and sat down near enough to the boy’s mother. She looked wrecked.
‘That’s good, thanks,’ she murmured softly. ‘You got a kid on the floor too?’
Lara’s eyes widened and she thought rapidly.
‘No, I don’t. My cousin’s on the fifth floor but the coffee machine’s broken there.’
The other woman thought nothing of it.
‘Have you got a child here?’ Lara asked.
‘Yep, a boy, Timmy. Got knocked down in Easton on Saturday. The car ran right over him.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, how’s he doing?’
‘Not too good. They had to remove his spleen, bleeding everywhere, lacerations to his liver, a punctured lung, broken pelvis and fractured thigh and ankle bone,’ she said, then shuddered. ‘Doctors thought at first he wouldn’t make it and had him on one of those life support machines, but thank God he stabilized earlier today.’
‘I’m glad,’ said Lara. ‘What about the driver?’ she asked.
‘By all accounts she’s fine! My kid’s half dead, but there’s not a scratch on her. Said she didn’t see Timmy at all, that he just cycled out of nowhere.’
‘My other boy Ralph was with him, he said that Timmy almost died out there, would have died too only that this woman – she’s actually a neighbour of mine – apparently she just would not give up on him. The ambulance men, the nurse, the paramedics and my older boy all thought Timmy was dead, but Martha, that’s her name, just kept on trying to help him, laying her hands on him, talking to him real slow, telling him he had to live, and then out of the blue he suddenly began to breathe again!’ Her voice broke with raw emotion. ‘I owe my son’s life to her. Whatever she did, it was some kind of miracle, I guess!’
Lara smiled easily, trying to hide the growing excitement she felt.
‘And you say she’s a neighbour of yours?’
‘I don’t know her that well but the McGills live on Mill Street just two streets away. Timmy’s in school with one of their kids.’
‘Wow, this lady just came out of nowhere and touched your son and . . .’
‘I know, it’s like some kind of miracle. My husband Paul and I can scarcely believe it ourselves, but lots of people saw it. She must have some kind of rare healing gift.’
Lara could tell Sue Lucas was being totally sincere. She didn’t strike her as the kind of woman given to sensationalism or exaggeration; in fact if anything she was probably too honest and truthful. She was simply dressed, wearing well-pressed denim jeans and a white T-shirt, her dark hair pulled back in a neat ponytail and her face without makeup except for a trace of mascara which accentuated her dark brown eyes.
The door of the family room opened and a sandy-haired nurse popped her head around the corner.
‘Mrs Lucas, I just came down to get you,’ she said. ‘Mr Franklin, the orthopaedic surgeon, is up with your son at present and he’d like to talk to you.’
Sue Lucas jumped up immediately and Lara caught her purse as it tumbled to the floor. The boy’s mother’s face had drained of colour and she swallowed hard.
‘Lots of luck,’ offered Lara.
‘And lots of luck with your cousin.’
Sue Lucas was gone from the room before the flush of embarrassment tinted Lara’s face. She hated deceiving people and lying to them, but it seemed to be a prerequisite of her career. She needed to develop a thick skin if she wanted to make her mark in journalism and track down good stories. With this one there was obviously the interest in the Lucas boy but there was more to it than that.
Lara checked back in with the office over an hour later, running through the proofs of the famous and would-be famous at the art opening. She confirmed two of the photos to be used in the gallery piece, as there was always hell to pay if names got mixed up, before starting to work up a few lines on her computer about the Lucas boy. The local police department had confirmed the accident with her and had said there would probably be a charge against the driver who had hit the child.
She read it back, following a spell-check, and knew that somehow she had managed to make the awful minutes that had almost robbed Sue Lucas of her child into something boring. She cursed and decided to hold it over and look at it again in the morning. She pored over her notes again. Funny, the security guard and the mother had both mentioned the woman, the neighbour, the Good Samaritan who had helped with the child. Even Sergeant Kostick had said how lucky the boy was.
Lara’s instincts told her to sit tight, that in twenty-four hours with a little bit of research back in Easton about the McGill woman she might have more worthwhile copy to show her editor. Grabbing her purse and keys and switching off her computer, she waved goodbye to the night staff as she set off home, thoughts of a truculent feline high in her mind.