In this morning's Glean, I celebrated the gumshoe reporting of Pioneer Press education reporter Doug Belden, who staked out the airport and caught St. Paul Superintendent Meria Carstarphen flying out of town. As we now know, Carstarphen was off to Austin, Texas, where she was named that city's new schools boss today.

But Belden's tale is better than I knew.

He got a tip from Texas that Carstarphen was the sole finalist. Her staff told him she had no time off or travel plans, so he deduced she'd have to fly out Wednesday night. "The obvious flight was a Northwest nonstop to Austin leaving at 7:15 [p.m.]," he says.

He got to the airport around 6, but faced a problem anyone flying out of MSP can appreciate: it's a rather big place to stake out. He walked around the ticketing area trying to find Carstarphen, but by 6:15, still hadn't made contact.

Then he got clever. He decided to do the "airport courtesy phone" trick. He paged her.

"Then I saw her walking through the main ticket area, wheeling her bag behind her," Belden says. "At first, she sort of ducked behind someone, maybe on the chance I was there for my own travel reasons and wouldn't see her.

"But I went up and started talking with her as she walked. She kept walking. I jokingly said, 'Don't make me chase you,' since the night before I had been walking after her asking questions as she left the school district building.

"She was laughing, maybe a little sheepish but not irritated."

Just then, Belden's page rang out over the loudspeaker. "She said something like, 'You're having my name read over that thing?' I told her the page would have had her call in and would have had a message from Doug, so she could have decided to talk to me or not," Belden recalls.

"She told me she thought I was good."

The hunter walked with his quarry, asking questions, which were met with smiles and silence, or non-answers like "I don't know."

But just before Carstarphen entered security, off to her new life and beyond Belden's reach, she made clear there were no hard feelings.

She gave him a hug.