Kissing the Beehive

I picked up the phone. "Hi, Fra

"Bingo! I've been calling all over for you. Joh

Veronica asked if she could come with me and I was glad for the company. We got to Crane's View in an hour and drove straight to the police station. There was no time for the Bayer guided tour, but I pointed out some things along the way.

At the station there was only one cop on duty. With a tired wave he directed us to Fra

The chief of police was sitting with his feet up on his desk. Club Soda Joh

Fra

"Hi, Joh

"Hello. I don't know you."

"Well, I used to know you. This is my friend Veronica."

"Hello, Veronica. You have hair like the woman in the Clairol ad."

She smiled and moved to shake his hand. His first reaction was to pull back. Then, like a frightened but interested animal, he slowly put his big one out and they shook.

She spoke to him in a gentle voice. "Sam told me you know all the commercials."

Fra

"My mother died. Fra

We nodded and waited for him to go on. "He was nice, but he went into my room and took my books. They're my books, Fra

"Take it easy, big guy. I got a friend of mine to come over and talk to Joh

"Pauline gave me the books and then she died."

"Says he didn't kill her."

"Nope. I never killed anybody. I saw a dead dog once but that's not a person."

I gestured toward the door. Fra

"Yeah, a lotta crucifixes and pictures of Dean Martin. Those houses down on Olive Street are like a fuckin' fifties time capsule, you go inside. It's strange he had the books, Sam, but I don't think he's involved. Maybe Pauline did give them to him for some cockeyed reason."

"Where did you find them?"

"On a bookshelf in his room. He asked me to come in and look at it. Place was as spick-and-span as a Marine barracks. Showed me all his comics and there they were, right up next to Little Lulu and Yosemite Sam."

"Did you look at them yet?"

"There's nothing there. Just scribbles and blah blah. I'll tell you one thing: It's an odd feeling seeing her handwriting all these years later. I'm going to copy them and give the originals to her mother. I'll give you a set too. You haven't talked to her mom yet, have you?"

"No, but this will give me a good excuse."

Back inside, Joh

Fra

"He wanted to touch my hair. I said no."

"That's not true! You liar! That's not true!"

I wondered if she was telling the truth. Despite the warm, close afternoon we'd spent together and everything we had talked about, I realized I still didn't trust her.

Jitka Ostrova's house was a shrine to her dead daughter. The walls were crammed with framed awards, pictures of the girl at all ages, high school and Swarthmore pe

No shoes tossed left and right, no underwear draped over a chair or flung haphazardly onto the bed. I knew how it should look because I lived with a teenager. Kids and order rarely agree on anything. But no kid lived here, only ghosts and an old woman.

Outside that odd room, the rest of the Ostrova house was a cozy clutter. You liked being there, liked looking around and seeing this sweet woman's life in every nook and cra

Mrs. Ostrova was a gem. She was one of those people who had come to the United States early in life but had never really left Europe behind. She spoke with an accent, peppered her sentences with what I assumed were Czech words and phrases ("I took my five plums and left"), and rowed her little boat above a sea of bad fortune and pessimism a thousand feet deep. In everything she said, it was clear she loved her surviving daughter, Magda, but adored the dead Pavlina.

Magda was also there that day. She was a tough, attractive, tightly wound woman who looked to be in her early forties. She had the bad habit of watching you with the eyes of a museum guard who's convinced you're going to steal something. Very protective of her mother, she surprised me by speaking as reverently of Pauline as the old woman did. If there was any residual filial jealousy, I didn't see it.

When we handed over the notebooks, Jitka's face took on the expression of someone touching the Holy Grail. Until then very effervescent and chatty, she went silent for minutes while slowly turning the pages and sounding out some of the words her lost daughter had written so long ago.

When she was finished, she gave us a million-dollar smile and said, "Pavlina. A new part of Pavlina is back in our house. Thank you, Fra

She wasn't surprised when she heard where they'd been found. Joh

"Poor Joh

Fra

Jitka stuck out her tongue and gave him a raspberry. "Yeah, that's the story you like just so you can laugh at me every time! Fra

"You see, that was my lesson from Pavlina. She was teaching everyone sometimes. You understand, my terrible English always embarrassed her. She'd put her hands over her ears like this and scream, 'Ma, when are you go

I am the very model of a modern major general;

I've information vegetable, animal and mineral;

She sang it so badly, so offkey and with pronunciations so horrendous that it could have made the whole of England shift on its axis. But she also looked so happy and proud remembering it that we all clapped. To my great surprise, Fra