Hanging Hannah (5 page)

The next morning Jane stopped at Whipped Cream, as she did every morning before work, for coffee and an apple-raisin muffin. She took her usual table near the fireplace, which was now filled with a brass pot of dried flowers.

Ginny came over with the coffeepot.

“You okay?” Jane asked her.

“Yeah. I was mostly upset for the kids, that they had to see that. Me, I've seen that sort of thing before.”

“You have?”

Ginny shot a glance over the tall counter to make sure George, the owner, wasn't around. When she was sure he wasn't, she dropped into the chair opposite Jane's.

“When I was twelve I found my Uncle Dave hanging in our attic.”

“Ginny, how horrible! You never told me.”

“It's one of those things you block out. But it sure came back yesterday.”

Jane decided not to tell Ginny Nick's murder theory. What would telling her accomplish other than upsetting her further? “I'm so sorry. Why did he kill himself?”

“Because he was gay and he didn't want to be.”

“How sad.”

Ginny's gaze was downcast. “I loved him like I can't tell you.”

“It might have been different for him now.”

“I often think that—which just makes me sadder.” Ginny looked up sharply at a sound behind the counter. George's beady black eyes stared at her from just over the top.

“Oops,” she whispered, “back to work.”

“Hello, George!” Jane called cheerily.

George made a grunting sound and disappeared.

Ginny crossed the shop and poured coffee for a man who was reading the
Star Ledger
. He held the paper high as he read something inside, and Jane could read the front page headline from where she sat: CLOWN GIRL FOUND HANGING BEHIND AFFLUENT VILLAGE'S INN.

“What do you think of that?” Ginny asked on her way past Jane's table.

“Not much,” Jane said. “ ‘Clown girl' . . . That's awful.”

“Heard anything more about it?” Ginny asked, on the lookout for George.

“No.”

“Louise is very upset.”

“Of course she is,” Jane said. “You would be, too, if it had happened behind your inn.”

“It's not just that,” Ginny said. “I talked to Louise last night—called her to make sure she was okay. She sounded funny, like she knew more than she was telling.”

“You mean, as if maybe she
did
know who that young woman was?”

“I don't know. . . .” Ginny looked bewildered. “All I can say for sure is that she wasn't upset only because it happened behind her inn. Better get Mr. Raymond's croissant.” She hurried behind the counter.

Jane didn't feel like lingering that morning. She finished her coffee and left half her muffin. Leaving a nice tip for Ginny, she took her bill to the register.

“You were quick today,” Ginny murmured as she rung up the amount and handed Jane her change.

“Mm, lots to do.” Jane noticed a stack of placards lying faceup on the counter near the register. They were upside down but she could tell they were for the upcoming church bazaar, a major spring event in Shady Hills. George was always willing to post placards on the front of the counter under the register.

“You going?” Jane asked, indicating the placards.

“Of course! Who doesn't? Besides, I have to. Rob sells his jewelry there every year, remember?”

How could Jane forget? Every year, out of loyalty to Ginny, she bought a piece of Rob's jewelry, even though she disliked Rob's designs almost as much as she disliked Rob. “Nick loves the bazaar, and I enjoy it, too. But this”—she tilted her head toward the man's upraised newspaper—“should put a bit of a damper on the festivities.”

“Can't be helped,” Ginny said on a deep sigh, and slammed the register drawer shut. “See you around.”

Jane gave Ginny a smile and left the shop. She crossed Center Street and started down one of the brick paths that crossed the village green. The massive ancient oaks, towering above the grass and the white Victorian bandstand, were in full leaf now, and a gentle breeze passed through them with a shooshing sound. It was another glorious day—brilliant blue sky with only a few puffy clouds, sun shining brightly, probably a perfect seventy degrees. But very bad things could happen on glorious days, Jane reminded herself, and a chill passed through her as she crossed Center Street again and entered her office.

Daniel had the
Star Ledger
open on his desk. He was reading the story under the clown headline. He shook his head. “This is reprehensible! They make us sound like some tawdry little cauldron of sin.”

“Hey, I like that! Write it down for Bertha.”

“I'm serious, Jane. You should read this. This reporter is absolutely salivating. But what is there to salivate about? A pathetic young woman decides to kill herself, and for whatever warped reason, she decides to do it behind the inn. Why is that so . . . salacious?”

Jane sat down in his visitor's chair. “Is that what they call it? A suicide?”

“Yes.”

She considered. “Then I guess the angle is that she's a mystery woman. I really should read that, I suppose,” she added.

“Laura's been crying off and on since it happened. This kind of story doesn't help. I still don't see why it's such big news.”

“Neither does the newspaper, obviously.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

Jane leaned forward. “Nick gets the credit for this one.” And she told Daniel Nick's two theories.

“
Nick
said that?”

“Yup. Smart kid, huh? What do
you
think?”

Daniel thought for a moment. “I vote for theory number one. I still believe she killed herself. And I'm sorry, Jane, but just because Nick says he studied the way the tree was shaped doesn't mean he's right. She may in fact have found a way to put the noose around her neck and then jump from a branch, or she may have stood on something and then kicked it far enough away that Nick wouldn't have seen it. The police will determine exactly what happened, I'm sure.”

The police . . . Jane thought about Detective Greenberg as she entered her office and tossed her bag onto her desk. He had been quite pleasant to her, under the circumstances, and it was kind of him to have remembered her. She realized now that he was quite a good-looking man, something she hadn't noticed the first time she'd met him.

She spent the first half of the morning reading book proposals by her clients. Bill Haddad had written a synopsis and the first hundred pages of a new thriller for St. Martin's. It was really a very clever idea—that a woman would stage her own murder to shed her unhappy life, only to find out someone had taken her place—with her husband's complicity. The story's heroine—and her replacement—were avid tennis players, and Bill had called the book
Doubles
. Very clever.

Barbara Ianelli had sent Jane a proposal for a romance she hoped Silhouette would want for its Desire line, but the proposal had a lot of problems. For one thing, all of Barbara's previous novels had been for the Christian inspirational market, and though she was an excellent writer, she had carried that tone into this proposal intended for sexy, secular Desire. “Too inspirational,” Jane jotted on the title page.

In need of a break from proposals, Jane picked up an advance reading copy of
Relevant Gods
, a novel by Carol Freund that she had sold for a high advance last fall to Holly Griffin, executive editor at Corsair Publishing. The book's official publication date was in two weeks, and Corsair would be throwing Carol a lavish publication party on Thursday. Jane remembered that she was scheduled to have lunch with Holly, whom Jane could barely tolerate, tomorrow, and that at this lunch Holly would give Jane details of the party.

Jane studied the front of the reading copy, which bore a less expensively printed version of the book's jacket. In the background was a detail from Michelangelo's
The Creation of Adam
panel on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel—the hand of God not quite reaching Adam's. The novel's title ran across the top in lettering meant to look old like the painting, and Carol's name was at the bottom in the same type. Jane felt that this jacket was just all right, not especially imaginative—that hand image, in Jane's opinion, had become a visual cliché—but she didn't hate it, and Holly and her colleagues at Corsair
adored
it, so Jane hadn't made a fuss, especially since Carol herself liked it.

Shaking her head, Jane swiveled in her chair and tossed the reading copy onto the cluttered credenza behind her. As she turned back to her desk, there was a soft knock on her door and Daniel popped his head in. When he had ascertained that she was not on the phone, he slipped into the room and quietly closed the door.

“Jane,” he said, a perplexed expression on his face, “
Doris
is here.”

She frowned. “My knitting Doris? Doris Conway?”

He made a shushing gesture with one finger. “Yes.”

Doris had never come to Jane's office before. “Why is she here?” Jane whispered.

“No idea. She wants to talk to you.”

Jane shrugged. “Okay.” She got up and went to the door, following Daniel into the reception area. Doris stood near Daniel's desk. It seemed to Jane that she looked more stooped than usual, more frail.

“Hello, Doris,” Jane said brightly. “This is a pleasant surprise.”

Doris didn't return Jane's smile—not that Doris smiled much anyway. She looked quite serious; Jane even wondered if she was upset about something. Perhaps what had happened at the inn.

“Jane, can I talk to you?”

“Of course. Come on in. Coffee?”

“No.”

Jane showed the older woman into her office and shot Daniel a baffled look before closing the door. “Have a seat,” she said, indicating her visitor's chair, and sat behind the desk. What could Doris possibly need to talk to her about that couldn't wait until their next knitting club meeting? Jane noticed that Doris was pale and that her hands were shaking ever so slightly. Jane had never seen her like this. “Doris, what's wrong? Is it about what happened at Louise's yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“We're all upset about that, of course.”

“It's more than that.” Doris met Jane's gaze. She seemed to be trying to decide where to begin. “Jane,” she said at last, “you know I volunteer at the Senior Center on Mondays and Wednesdays.”

Jane nodded. The Shady Hills Senior Center was an upscale nursing home on Cranmore Avenue, on the west side of town. What could this possibly have to do with the girl found hanging behind Hydrangea House? “Yes . . .”

“Did you know that my nephew Arthur works there, too?”

Jane shook her head, frowning slightly. “I didn't even know you had a nephew, Doris.”

“Well, I do. He's my younger sister Marge's boy. I've told you about Marge, I'm sure I have. She passed away six years ago. Pancreatic cancer.”

Jane nodded sympathetically.

“Arthur—Arthur Sullivan is his name—he works at the Center full-time. He's been there about two and a half years. I helped him get the job there.”

“Is he . . . a doctor?” Jane asked.

“No,” Doris scoffed. “Arthur . . . he's mildly retarded. He's thirty-eight. He can pretty much take care of himself, lives in a group home here in the village, but there are only certain jobs he's qualified to do. He works as an orderly at the Center.”

“I see. But I don't see how this relates to what happened at the inn.”

“Lemme finish. This morning when I got to the Center, Arthur came to talk to me. He was very upset. I'd never seen him so upset. He asked to talk to me privately. He said he had ‘a secret.' ”

“A secret?”

“That's right. I took him into an empty TV room and he told me what was on his mind.” Doris paused, clearly reluctant to reveal Arthur's secret. At last she continued. “A week ago Friday—that would be ten days ago now—Arthur was walking along Cranmore Avenue. It was lunchtime, and he was on his way into the village to buy a sandwich at the Village Shop. He does that every day.

“As he was walking, he heard a sound behind him. He turned and saw a young woman come out of the woods. When she saw him, she started to run back into the trees, but he called after her, and she came back. She walked with him.”

Jane stared at Doris intently. “Who was she?”

Doris shook her head. “She wouldn't tell him. Wouldn't tell him where she'd come from, either. Arthur grew up in Shady Hills. He knows everybody. He knew she wasn't from here in town. He said she was pretty, with brown hair. She was wearing a pale blue dress with little white flowers.”

“Like the hanging woman,” Jane said quietly.

“Yes, like the hanging woman.”

“Why was she here?”

“She wouldn't tell him that, either. But the strangest thing was that when he asked her where she was going, she told him she was on her way to Shady Hills! He told her she was
in
Shady Hills, and when she heard this she was—overjoyed! Arthur tried again to get her to tell him what she was doing here, but she refused. All she would tell him was that she had a ‘wonderful surprise'—that was how she put it. Then, after they'd walked a little more, she told him she had come to meet someone here in town. She couldn't say who because she didn't want to ruin the surprise for that person—and she wasn't ready to approach that person yet. She told Arthur that in the meantime, she needed a map of the village and was looking for a place to stay where no one would find her.”