Hanging Hannah (2 page)

At the corner of Forty-eighth and Seventh, she turned her head sharply when she passed a man who for an instant she thought was Kenneth. Like Kenneth, he was tall and lanky, with sandy hair and light green eyes. She almost called out to him before catching herself.

It wasn't the first time that had happened. Bertha was right. Jane needed a man in her life.

Well, Jane reflected, at least she wouldn't have to see Bertha again until the RAT convention, which Jane was already regretting having agreed to. Beyond that, who knew when she would have to see Bertha again? Lunch with Bertha Stumpf was like jury duty: Get it over with and you're left alone for two years. Laughing at this thought, Jane stepped off the curb at Seventh Avenue and hailed a passing cab.

At the Port Authority she started for her bus's gate, then realized she was starving and veered toward a snack bar for a slice of pizza.

 

At the precise moment Jane entered the office, Daniel uttered a curse she had never heard him utter before. Hearing her come in, he turned to her from his computer, a sheepish smile on his handsome coffee-colored face. “Sorry. I'm having trouble with this database.”

Recently Jane had bought a software program created specifically for literary agencies, and it had fallen to Daniel, whose knowledge of computers far surpassed Jane's, to supervise the entering of client and deal data into the program's database.

Jane plopped her bag on his desk and sat down in his visitor's chair. “What's the problem?”

“The problem is me. Instead of pressing Tab after entering information in a field, I keep pressing Enter, which saves the record and takes me to a fresh record.”

“I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about. Maybe we should just forget the whole thing.”

He frowned at her as if she were crazy. “We paid a fortune for this program.” He nodded with assurance. “We'll get it right. It's just a matter of getting used to it.”

He was right; they
had
paid a fortune for it, and every time Jane thought about that, she felt a pang of money anxiety that tied her stomach in knots and kept her awake nights. But the representative from the software company had convinced her and Daniel that in the long run, the software would save them money—”more than pay for itself,” as he had put it. So, trying to think like Kenneth, who had always been up for a risk, Jane had said yes and invested in the program.

Daniel had turned back to the computer and was typing something. He pressed Enter and immediately slammed his hand down on his knee. “Damn! I did it again.”

“Why not take a break,” Jane suggested. “How did the morning go?”

He swiveled away from the computer, his composure returning. “Pretty well. Quiet. Oh—Angela Nightenson called. She has some questions about her Harper contract.” He referred to a small pile of pink slips on his desk. “Agnes Enright at Fawcett says it's too late to change the back cover copy on Joanna Fairman's mystery.”

“What! Joanna's going to be livid. That copy gives away the whole solution!”

He gave her an indulgent smile. “Now, Jane, it doesn't really.”

“Yes, it does! The caretaker did it, and the copy describes him as sinister.”

Daniel opened his mouth to speak, then seemed to think better of it and instead just shrugged. “It's too late.”

She blew out her breath. “You know, sometimes I would like to march into these editors' offices and wring their necks. How the hell would they like it if someone just whipped out the cover copy for
their
books as if it mattered as much as a—shopping list!”

“My, my,” Daniel said, pulling back in surprise. “And what kind of a day have
you
been having?”

“What kind do you think? I was having lunch with Bertha.”

“Was it that bad?”

“You know I can barely stand her simpering face. But it gets worse.” How should she tell him? She smiled her little-girl smile. “Daniel . . .”

“Uh-oh.”

“Please don't be mad at me.”

“Mad at you?” He frowned in puzzlement. “What have you done?”

“I . . . volunteered you.”

“Volunteered me? For what?”

“Bertha begged me. The steering committee or whatever it's called put her up to asking me.”

“To do what?”

She winced and forced the words out fast. “To present a workshop at the RAT convention.”

“The RAT convention! But you hate conventions. And you hate giving workshops even more.”

“That's true,” she said reasonably. “But I agreed to it on one condition.”

He sat back in his chair and exhaled in tired resignation. “Me?”

“Yes,” she said meekly. “Please don't be angry. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done it, but Bertha begged me and said it would be good for the agency, especially after the
People
article. I knew she was right, that I should do it, but I . . . I didn't want to do it alone. You know how nervous I get speaking in public.”

He smiled understandingly. “I'm not angry. I do know how scared you get—though I've never understood it. You're certainly not shy one-on-one.”

“No, that's true,” she said thoughtfully, “but it's a proven fact that some people fear public speaking more than they fear death.”

“I see. Well, even without the statistic, I'm not mad. I know how hard it must have been for you to agree. I'm happy to help. What is our workshop about, if I may ask?”

“I thought about it on the bus. How about ‘The Changing Face of Romance'?”

He shrugged. “We can do that.”

She rose happily. “Thanks. Really. Guess I better return those calls.” She started for her office.

“Jane?”

She turned.

“Is something else bothering you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You seem . . . down.”

“X-ray vision!” she said, pointing at him. “I am down. It's silly, though. It's my birthday a week from Wednesday.”

“That's not silly at all.”

She cheered slightly that at twenty-six he could understand this. “You don't think so? After all, in nine days I'll be turning
thirty-nine
.”

He frowned slightly. “I understand being a little depressed at growing older, but does thirty-nine have some special significance?”

“Of course! It's one year from forty!”

“Ah.” He gave this some thought, then brightened. “Look at it this way. Kenneth was forty when he met you! You see—that's proof positive that wonderful things can happen even at that advanced age.”

He was right; she had met Kenneth when he was forty. Suddenly, not for the first time, she could envision Kenneth emerging from the office at the far end of the reception room, a room she and Daniel now used for storage. In her vision he was giving her that huge white smile he had used so freely. He was as handsome as he'd been the last time she'd seen him, the day he'd left for a meeting in New York City, only to emerge from the Simon & Schuster building, step off the curb, and get killed by a careless truck driver.

She fought down the lump growing in her throat.

“Jane,” Daniel said, sitting up, “I'm so sorry. That was thoughtless of me. I didn't mean to make things worse.”

“I know, I know.” She smiled. “It's not you. And I've already got a plan for dealing with this thirty-nine problem.”

“Oh?”

“I'm going to do like Jack Benny and stay thirty-nine forever.”

“That works.”

She laughed and walked into her office, throwing her bag onto the top of the work heaped sloppily on her desk. She realized that the image of Kenneth was still with her. She sat at her desk and looked at the phone, thinking of the calls she had to make to Angela Nightenson and Joanna Fairman.

She had a better idea. She'd call Nick. He'd be home from school by now. She punched out her home number.

Florence answered in her lilting Trinidadian tones. “Ah, missus, and how has your day been going?”

“As well as can be expected, Florence. Is Nick there?”

“He sure is, sitting right here having Yodels and milk. Hold on.”

Jane made a mental note to speak to Florence about giving Nick fruit for his after-school snacks.

“Hi, Mom.”

Jane felt her face break into a smile. “Hello, darling. I love you.”

“What? Why are you saying that?”

“Aren't mothers allowed to say that to almost ten-year-olds?” Nick had a birthday coming up too, three days before hers.

“Mom,” Nick said impatiently, “why did you call?”

“Aside from telling you I love you? To ask how your day is going.”

“Fine,” he said. “Can I go now? Aaron will be here in a minute, and I promised I'd have my army men set up when he got here.”

“Okay. I'll talk to you later.” She hung up, feeling better.

Nick always made her feel better. He was all she had left of Kenneth. If only Kenneth had lived to see Nick now; he'd have been so proud. In six days Nick would be ten, only three years from being a teenager.

Jane supposed she would have thoughts like this at various times throughout her life. When Nick graduated from college. When he got married. When his first child was born. And perhaps by then the pain would have lessened. But now that pain was still raw. She glanced at the photo of her and Kenneth and Nick on her credenza, the picture of the three of them in life jackets in Cape May. Had Kenneth known how much she loved him? If she could just be sure that he had, perhaps it wouldn't hurt so bad.

With a deep sigh, she reached for the phone again, finally ready to call her clients.

Was there anything as relaxing as knitting? Jane wondered, ensconced on one of the green-and-gold tapestry-print sofas in the living room of Hydrangea House. She yanked some more yarn out of the bag at her feet, then let her hands fly as she surveyed her friends, fellow members of the Defarge Club, sitting about her.

Next to Jane on the sofa sat Ginny Williams, her pixieish face scrunched up while she tried to untangle a network of different-colored yarns that traversed the back of the sweater she was knitting for Rob, her longtime boyfriend. Jane had lost count of the number of times she had tried to convince Ginny, a neophyte knitter, to attempt something simpler than this complicated sweater pattern she'd selected. More importantly, Jane had recently begun to try to convince Ginny that perhaps her relationship with Rob was never going to work out the way Ginny wanted it to.

Ginny wanted desperately to get married, to have children. Rob, though basically a decent man, was ethereal and free-spirited—not surprising in an artist (he designed silver jewelry)—and even after five years of living with Ginny, he refused to make the move from boyfriend to fiancé.

Jane saw Ginny frequently—more than she saw any of the other members of the Defarge Club—because Ginny worked as a waitress at Whipped Cream, the cozy café across the village green from Jane's office. Jane went there every morning for her muffin and coffee, and often lately she'd been going there for lunch as well. Terribly fond of Ginny, Jane wanted her friend to find happiness and knew she wouldn't find it with Rob. So, when the time seemed right, Jane planned to delicately broach to Ginny the idea of her and Rob separating—ceasing to live together. From there they could end their relationship, and Ginny would be psychologically available to other men, men who would appreciate her.

Jane had it all figured out, the perfect plan. Unfortunately, so far the perfect time had not presented itself for Jane to share this plan with Ginny.

“Oh, pooh!” Ginny exclaimed, almost as if reading Jane's thoughts. Poor Ginny had the colored strands of yarn in more of a tangle than before.

“Ginny, darling,” Jane said gently, “why don't you just cut them and weave them into the back?”

“Because,” Ginny replied, slamming the half-sweater into her lap, “that's not how it's supposed to be done. You told me yourself that I should carry over the yarns that aren't in use, and then pick them again when I need them.”

Jane opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. Ginny was clearly in no mood to be reasoned with.

But old Doris, seated on the matching sofa directly across from Jane and Ginny's, did not sense Ginny's mood—or if she did, she didn't care about it. She had lowered her own knitting—a magnificent magenta shawl she was making for a woman she had befriended at the Senior Center, where she volunteered two days a week.

“Oh, Ginny, for pity's sake!” she said, her wrinkled face growing even more wrinkled in an exasperated frown. “I've never seen such stubbornness. Give it up! You work at that sweater the way you work at Rob—and you should give him up, too!”

Jane, shocked, looked sharply from Doris to Ginny, who just gaped at the older woman. Tears appeared in Ginny's eyes.

“Doris Conway.” Rhoda, in her chair at one end of the grouping, smiled a polite smile, clearly trying to keep things light, or bring them back to their former lightness. “You do speak your mind, don't you?”

The ever-unflappable Doris turned her attention to Rhoda. “You, of all people, should agree with me. Wasting all those years with that—dentist!”

Rhoda, who had been keeping the group up-to-date on the throes of her divorce from the philandering David, abruptly lost her smile. “I'm going to try to keep my temper, Doris, because you always have a big mouth. But I'll thank you not to decide for me that my years with David were wasted. I think that's something for me to decide, thank you. I do, after all, have two beautiful children to show for those years.”

Doris shrugged, though whether it was in concession Jane couldn't be sure. Jane noticed that quiet little Penny Powell, seated only a few feet from Rhoda, was knitting furiously, eyes downcast, her neck-length brown hair shielding much of her face like a curtain. Everyone knew that Penny let her husband Alan, a chauvinist of the classic kind, walk all over her. For example, the reason Penny came to these meetings less often than anyone else was that if Alan suddenly announced he was going out with his buddies, Penny meekly agreed to stay home and take care of one-year-old Rebecca. But anyone who knew Penny knew nothing would ever change—unless Alan changed it.

An uncomfortable silence had descended. At the head of the group, in her customary armchair, bird-faced Louise sat like a statue, only her eyes moving, as if judging the temperament of each club member in turn.

Jane realized that Louise, though uninvolved in the conversation, was more upset than any of them. Poor Louise, so repressed, hated conflict of any sort. And Hydrangea House was, after all, hers—well, hers and Ernie's. It suddenly occurred to Jane that one day Louise, weary of conflict like this, might someday decide to stop hosting the club's every-other-Tuesday meetings in this beautiful old inn. That would be a shame.

“Louise,” Jane said, breaking the silence.

“Yes!” Louise burst out, as if startled.

Jane laughed. “Sorry. I've been meaning to ask you . . . I'd like to have a little birthday party for Nick—he's turning ten next Sunday. Our backyard is so narrow and steep, but I was thinking the inn's backyard would be perfect. I'll pay you, of course. Do you think I could have the party here? I'm thinking there will be about fifteen kids from Nick's class, and maybe ten adults.” Jane looked around the group. “You're all invited, of course.”

Louise was smiling, obviously relieved at the subject change. “Of course, Jane, that would be lovely. But I wouldn't dream of letting you pay me. What day were you thinking? We have been very busy lately.” The inn often hosted weddings, corporate parties, and other such events.

“How about this Sunday?” Jane asked. “That's his birthday.”

“Hmm,” Louise murmured, surprised. “Today's Tuesday—not much notice.”

“I know. I'm ashamed to say I've been so busy with work I haven't taken a minute to think this through till now.”

Louise thought for a moment. “That will work out fine. I'll tell Ernie. We'll set up one of the long tables for the kids and another for the adults. What kind of food were you thinking?”

“Nothing fancy. I'll pick up some pizzas from Giorgio's and a birthday cake from Calandra's.” Calandra's, in nearby Fairfield on Route 46, made elaborate and delicious cakes and pastries.

“Lovely,” Louise said. “We'll work out the rest of the details—balloons and such.”

“Great. Thanks, Louise.” Jane surveyed the group. Her subject change seemed to have worked just as well on the others, who were all smiling to themselves, apparently at the thought of a children's birthday party. For a few moments everyone knitted quietly, the silence broken only when someone leaned forward to retrieve her coffee from the coffee table, or to replace her cup in its saucer.

Jane worked a few more rows on the swimsuit cover-up she was making as a surprise for Florence. This summer Florence would be taking Nick to the Fairfield town pool, and Jane had thought it would be a nice gesture to make Florence this cover-up as a gift. Jane had found the pattern in
Vogue Knitting
and planned to make one for herself as well.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jane saw Louise peering about the room. When Jane looked up, Louise's expression was troubled.

“Is something the matter, Louise?” Jane asked.

Louise shrugged. “It's the weirdest thing. Do you remember the antique quilt I used to keep on the back of that sofa?” She indicated the one on which Jane and Ginny were sitting. Jane leaned forward, looked behind her, and realized the quilt was missing.

“Are you having it cleaned?” Jane ventured. “Repaired?” Jane knew the quilt was quite old and had needed minor repairs in the past.

“No,” Louise said, clearly baffled. “I'm not. It's just . . . disappeared!”

“Disappeared?” Rhoda said.

“Louise,” Doris said impatiently, “quilts don't just disappear. Ginny, look on the floor behind you and see if it fell.”

Louise threw Doris an irritated look. “I think I would have found it if it had fallen.” She shook her head. “It's gone.”

“Did you ask Ernie about it?” Ginny asked.

“Yes. He has no more idea than I do.”

Rhoda, eyes wide, said, “Do you think one of your guests
stole
it?”

Louise looked sad at this thought. “It's the only answer I can come up with. It
is
a valuable old piece. But to just
take
it. Who would do such a thing?”

“You'd be surprised,” Doris said. “My mother, whenever we stayed at a hotel, took everything that wasn't bolted down. Ashtrays, towels, blankets . . . even took a picture off the wall once.” She laughed to herself. “Why, once, when she knew we'd be staying at a really nice old place, she brought an empty suitcase just for the booty!”

All the women stared at Doris in horror.

Doris surveyed the group. “Don't look at me like that.
I
didn't do it, my mother did.” She turned to Louise. “I didn't take your quilt.”

“Oh, Doris,” Louise said with an embarrassed laugh, “of course you didn't.”

At that moment Penny spoke, and Jane realized it was the first time tonight. “I know who could find it,” Penny said in her near whisper, her eyes still fixed on her knitting. Everyone waited. Penny looked up smiling, clearly pleased with herself. “Jane! She's the detective!”

She was referring, of course, to Jane's having solved the Marlene mystery, and
People
magazine's subsequent coverage of the story.

Jane said, trying to keep her tone light, “I thought we agreed we weren't going to talk about that anymore.” She immediately felt bad for having said it, because Penny, crestfallen, immediately looked down again at her knitting.

“Yes, ladies,” Louise said, sounding like a schoolmarm, “we promised Jane. No more talk of—all that.”

“Well, don't look at
me
,” Doris muttered. “I didn't bring it up.”

Now poor Penny looked positively ashamed. Her face red, her lower lip clenched between her teeth, she gave a rapid nod and retreated behind her hair curtain, knitting furiously.

Jane felt awful. “Penny, it's okay, really.”

“Well!” Louise said. “I don't imagine we'll ever find out what happened to my quilt, and now I think perhaps I don't want to know.” She looked at her watch. “Ooh, late.”

Doris was practically hurling needles and yarn into her bag. “Sometimes we're here as late as midnight, Louise Zabriskie, and you know it as well as I do. You just don't feel comfortable when there's tension in the air, and there's plenty in the air right now. Wouldn't you say so, Penny?”

Penny gaped at Doris as if the older woman had just suggested murder. Then Penny turned back to her own knitting and began putting away her paraphernalia.

Jane looked at Louise, who sat perfectly composed, as if Doris had not even spoken. “Thank you for coming, ladies. We'll see you in two weeks.”

“Oh for heaven's sakes,” Doris muttered in disgust, and got up. So did everyone else, heading out of the living room into the foyer.

Ernie, looking plumper than ever in chinos and a too-tight mint green polo shirt, appeared at the end of the hallway that led to the kitchen. He gave a big gracious smile. “Evening, ladies. See you soon.” Then he seemed to sense the tension Doris had cited. His smile vanished, and he darted a glance at Louise. Jane saw her give him a warning frown with pursed lips, telling him to be quiet.

Jane lagged behind. When everyone else had said good night and left, she approached Louise. “I'll give you a call about Nick's party. Thanks again.”

“My pleasure,” Louise said. Her face grew troubled. Jane could tell she wanted to say something, but Louise was watching Ernie retreat back down the hallway to the kitchen, and seemed to be waiting until he was out of earshot.

“Jane,” Louise finally said, in a low voice, “could I talk to you for a minute?”

Jane frowned, puzzled. “Of course, Louise. Anytime.”

“Come in here,” Louise said, and led the way into the dining room. In the far wall, on the far side of Louise's magnificent Queen Anne dining room set, was an immense bow window hung with elaborate drapes and shears. “Over here,” she said, walking to the window and opening them. The moon was out that night—Jane recalled that last night it had been full—and the inn's spacious backyard was bathed in eerie moonlight. White wrought-iron tables and chairs had been placed randomly on the grass. At the far end of the lawn stood the thick woods, massive oaks and maples, a high black wall. Just to the right of the window, Jane could make out the inn's large patio under its green-canvas awning attached to the back of the building.

Jane waited. She looked at Louise, who stood gazing out into the semidarkness.

“Jane,” Louise said at last, “I saw the strangest thing last night. A young woman—a girl . . .”

“A girl?”

Louise gave a slight nod. “Walking in the woods. Right at the edge.” She pointed to the left, toward where Jane knew Hadley Pond to lie. “I was ready for bed and came in here looking for a book I couldn't find anywhere. I thought maybe I'd left it on the sideboard. Well, I hadn't, but as I turned to leave, something moving in the woods caught my eye. Something pale . . . I left the room dark and watched from this window.”