Murder in the Air by Ellen Hart Page A

than to think our time together had anything to do with research. I was falling in love with her. Maybe I'm flattering myself, but I think she was falling in love with me, too.
    She was incredible, Mom. Beautiful. Funny. Smart. She'd attended the university for a couple of years, but couldn't afford the tuition, so she'd taken a job at Manderbach's until she could save up enough money to go back. Her family was from a small town in Michigan, but Kay wantedto be independent. She was starved for adventure in the big city. I guess, in a way, you could say we had a lot in common. She and Sally and Jonnie had all moved to Minneapolis together in the spring of '55. Sally and Kay were now twenty-three. Jonnie was twenty-six, exactly one month younger than me, and in graduate school over at the U. She wanted to be a psychologist. Sally was nowhere near as serious about life as Jonnie and Kay. Attending the U was just her excuse for getting away from home. She'd been the first one to quit her studies and apply for a job at Mander-bach's. Kay followed a year later.
    As the weeks progressed I began to get a clearer picture of the kind of girl Sally was. She'd grown up poor and had to fight her brothers and sisters for everything she ever got. Basically, I guess you could say she liked men and liked money. In that order. Kay confided to me that it was Sally's dream to one day marry a rich man. Kay felt Sally could be disgustingly shallow at times. When I asked her if Sally had been dating anyone in particular recently, she explained that she'd dated a guy pretty steadily back in July and August, but had stopped seeing him during the first week in September. Interestingly enough, Kay said that a day or two after the breakup, Sally had quit her job at Manderbach's and signed up for driving lessons. One week later she passed her driving test and drove home in a new car. She started taking day trips all over southern Minnesota. Sally called it “seeing the countryside.”
    Kay admitted she had no idea where Sally had gotten the money for the car or her new—far more affluent
—way
of life, but she seemed to have plenty of ready cash whenever she needed it. I smelled a rat. When I pressed Kay to tell me the identity of the man Sally'd been dating, she clammed up. My instincts told me I'd hit pay dirt. If I found out who this boyfriend was, I might also find the identity of the man who'd killed Olga Landauer.
    Of course, my first thought regarding Landauer's death was that it might actually have been Sally herself driving the car the night of the hit-and-run. Yet if she didn't knowhow to drive until the middle of September, that seemed to rule her out.
    Funny, as I think about it now, it never occurred to me that either Kay or Jonnie might've had something to do with the Landauer hit-and-run. No, it was the boyfriend that sounded my journalistic alarm. The way I had it figured, Sally was being bought off, paid for her silence. I wanted to know who was behind it; I already had a good idea why.
    More later, Mom.
    My love always,
Justin

7
    Shortly after eleven on Thursday morning, Bram was standing next to the second-floor reception desk at WTWN sifting through his mail when the elevator doors opened and out walked a massive, bearlike creature, undoubtedly human, but endowed with so much hair—or was it fur?—that Bram could barely make out a face. The man's wiry beard was dark brown. No mouth was visible. And although the hair on his head was reasonably short, it was so thick and unruly, it looked like a wig. Bram tried not to stare, but it was a struggle.
    When the man opened his mouth and spoke to the receptionist, Bram did a startled double take. Whoever this guy was, he had a voice as deep and loud as Duluth's famous foghorn. Actually, he kind of reminded Bram of the cartoon likeness of Paul Bunyan, Minnesota's answer to Rip Van Winkle—or was it Arnold Schwarzenegger?
    “Where is Heda Bloom's office?” demanded the bear, mashing a