Hanging Hannah

Jane felt someone bump her from behind and turned her head. It was Ernie, who was staring past her with a look of alarm.

“Ginny, what on earth is going on?” he demanded.

Ginny's face was white, almost green, and she looked as if she was trying hard not to pass out. She said nothing, instead pointing with her eyes to something deeper in the woods.

They could see only feet, grimy feet in sandals, dangling about a foot and a half off the ground. Foliage obstructed the rest, and Jane, followed by the others, moved slowly around.

Jane's hands flew to her face. It was a young woman, thin, in a simple pale blue cotton dress sprinkled with tiny white flowers. She hung by the neck from a noose at the end of a rope that had been thrown over a heavy branch; from the branch the rope extended straight and tight at a downward angle to where it was tied to the base of another tree's trunk....

Books by Evan Marshall

 

 

MISSING MARLENE

 

HANGING HANNAH

 

STABBING STEPHANIE

 

 

Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

Evan Marshall

KENSINGTON BOOKS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.

—Job 13:15

I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to my editor, John Scognamiglio; and to my agent, Maureen Walters of Curtis Brown, Ltd. Two brighter and more supportive colleagues a writer could not hope to find.

There were marigolds in her salad, bright spiky orange petals among the radicchio. With a groan of disgust, Jane pushed the plate away.

Across the table, Bertha looked up from her own identical salad, crunching with gusto on a mouthful of greens. “You don't like it?” she asked, eyes wide with concern.

“No,” Jane said petulantly, “and I don't like this restaurant, either.” Why had she agreed to have lunch here? The establishment, called Dig, was, in Jane's opinion, one of the most pretentious of New York's expense-account lunch spots. Faux archaeological “finds” that looked like gargantuan stone bowls hung by massive chains from the ceiling of the cavernous room. There happened to be one of these bowls directly over Jane's head, and every so often she cast a wary glance upward at its grimy bottom, wondering how much it weighed. A ton? Two?

“I'm sorry, Jane,” Bertha said. “I should have suggested something more . . . down-to-earth. Maybe Smith and Wollensky, or Gallagher's.”

Jane forced a smile and shrugged. Where they ate, she realized, didn't really matter. It was self-centered Bertha she disliked more than she could dislike any restaurant. But Bertha was one of the most successful clients of Jane's literary agency, a writer of historical romances beloved by hundreds of thousands, and once in a while Jane was obliged to lunch with her because, unfortunately, Bertha lived here in New York City, no more than twenty-five miles east of Shady Hills, the village in northern New Jersey where Jane lived and worked.

Bertha was a pouter. That was what Jane disliked about her most. In fact, Bertha was pouting now, her lower lip pushed out like a child's, her pale blue eyes sullenly downcast. With her index finger she played with a lock of her badly dyed yellow hair—a yellow, Jane realized, that was uncannily close to that of the marigolds in their salads.

“Jane,” Bertha said, “have I done something to offend you?”

“Offend me?” Jane feigned horror. “No, Bertha, of course not.”
I just don't like you
. “What makes you ask that?”

“You're not yourself today.”

“Oh, yeah? Who am I?”

Bertha looked impatient. “Come on, Jane, we've been working together too long for you not to be honest with me. We're
friends
. What's wrong?”

Yes, they'd been working together a long time—four years—and for the commissions she earned on Bertha's novels, written under the famous pseudonym of Rhonda Redmond, Jane was grateful. But Jane rarely allowed herself to become true friends with her clients. She'd tried that once, had become far more than just friends with one of her clients, and the result had been disastrous.

Besides, Jane wasn't sure herself what was making her so grouchy, other than having to take Bertha to lunch.

“Is it that you have a birthday coming up?” Bertha asked in a coy voice, watching Jane obliquely.

Jane looked at her sharply. “How did you know that?”

“I've always known your birthday. Don't you remember—when I first met you, I asked you your astrological sign and you told me your birthday.”

“Oh, right.” Yet another reason she disliked Bertha, who had made Jane's astrological sign an important criterion in her decision as to whether to hire Jane. Thank heavens Jane's moon had been in the seventh house, or whatever had happened to be right for Bertha to sign on.

But despite her irritating qualities, Bertha was perceptive, and she was right—Jane had been feeling depressed at the thought of her upcoming thirty-ninth birthday.

“It's May 26, right?” Bertha said.

“Right.”

“Mm.” Bertha nodded as if suddenly understanding everything. “You're already lonely without Kenneth, and this is an especially bad time for you in that respect.”

“What respect?”

“Being with people. Your natural tendency right now is to avoid people, to be reclusive. But you have to fight that tendency.”

“Or else what?”

“Or else stay lonely!”

“Bertha,” Jane said with exasperation, “I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about.” But to herself she admitted Bertha was right. She was lonelier these days than she could ever remember feeling in the two and a half years since Kenneth's death. She had told herself that time would make the loss easier to bear, but it had done the exact opposite. The longer he was gone, the more she missed him. He had, after all, been not only her husband, the father of Nicholas, but also her business partner, the other (and principal) literary agent at the Kenneth Stuart Agency. Thus he had been the person with whom she'd spent nearly all of her time. There would never be another Kenneth—of that she had been bitterly reminded half a year ago when she had hoped to take an intimate friendship with one of her clients to an even more intimate level. In the end she had lost him as both a friend and a client—and realized how faulty her judgment could be.

The waiter approached their table. “Are you ladies finished with your salads?”

“Quite,” Jane said, watching him take Bertha's empty plate.

He frowned down at Jane's salad, barely touched. “You didn't care for it?”

“I like to keep my flowers in the garden, thanks,” Jane said, but the young man didn't hear her because he had already stepped away to take plates off a tray held by a white-aproned young woman who had followed him from the kitchen.

“Now then,” the young man said, placing a plate before Bertha, “for you we have the warm buffalo calzone with eggplant chutney.”

Bertha smiled and eyed the plate eagerly, like a child. “Yum.”

“And for the other lady, the free-range chicken with the yucca frittata.”

“Ooh, doesn't that look nice,” Bertha commented, leaning forward to study Jane's plate. “Jane, you
must
try this buffalo. It's simply heavenly. Have you ever had it?”

Jane had, once. It had tasted like liver. “No, thanks,” she told Bertha with a smile, and cut into her chicken. She'd figured there wasn't much they could do to chicken. As for the yucca frittata, she had no intention of even touching it. With her knife she pushed it to the extreme edge of her plate.

When Jane looked up, Bertha was watching disapprovingly. “No sense of adventure.”

“What do you mean, no sense of adventure? This chicken is
free-range
.”

Bertha shrugged. “All that means is that it was allowed to forage.”

And eat bugs and worms,
Jane thought.
My goodness,
she told herself,
I am in a bad way.
Maybe Bertha was right. Maybe the cure for her funk was to do something new, get out more, see people.

“You know, I've been thinking,” Bertha said, cutting her buffalo.

Good
, Jane thought.
Keep it up and maybe someday you'll be a decent writer
. Then she felt ashamed at such a mean thought and made an effort to listen to Bertha.

“This year,” Bertha said, “the annual convention of Romance Authors Together is in New York City. June 17 through 19—Thursday through Saturday. Why don't you come, circulate, maybe give a workshop?”

“A workshop? About what?”

“Since it
is
a romance convention, what about—romance!” This was Bertha being sarcastic.

“What about it?”

“I don't know, Jane, think of something! What your agency is looking for . . . the qualities you look for in the books you take on . . . what constitutes the perfect client!” Bertha threw back her head and laughed. “You and I should give that one together!”

Jane would have laughed, too, but there was a very good possibility Bertha was serious. Could she actually consider herself the perfect client?

“Nah,” Jane said. “I'm not a convention person. Can't stand people swarming around me. And some of those romance writers—you know how catty and backbiting they can be.”

Bertha seemed to take her remark as a personal affront. She looked on the verge of pouting again. “Present company excluded, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Oh, come on, Jane.” Now Bertha was absolutely pleading. “It would be so good for you. A workshop is about fifty minutes long, with ten minutes for question-and-answer. An hour. What's the big deal?”

Jane had to smile. “You've been put up to this, haven't you? Someone asked you to recruit me?”

Bertha seemed about to protest, then to decide it was no use. She looked down, abashed. “Yes,” she whispered. Then she seemed to fill with new courage. “You should be flattered. The people on the board really want you, Jane. You have no idea what an excellent reputation you have. Besides, after that piece in
People
. . .”

Not
that
again. Two months ago the magazine had finally run its profile of Jane and her fellow inhabitants of Shady Hills, where last fall Jane—with the help of her tortoiseshell cat, Winky—had solved the mystery of Jane's missing nanny, Marlene.

Bertha had bent over to rummage around in her bag and now sat up brandishing the magazine, folded to display a half-page photo of Jane sitting on her sofa with her assistant, Daniel, and his fianceée, Laura. Above the photo ran a headline in bold capital letters: AGENT OF JUSTICE and below it: “Book peddler Jane Stuart is North Jersey's Miss Marple.”

Jane rolled her eyes. The notion of being profiled in the magazine had sounded fun at first, and the whole village had gotten into the act: On the following page was a shot of hundreds of Shady Hills residents, all in matching detective-style trench coats, standing in a huge cluster on the green, the white Victorian bandstand behind them.

But now the idea of making her search for Marlene the subject of one of the magazine's lighthearted human-interest pieces seemed obscene to Jane, and she inwardly cringed whenever she thought of it.

Bertha giggled. “I still can't believe it. You can't
buy
this kind of publicity. Anybody who didn't know who you were certainly knows now! You owe it to yourself to cash in on this exposure.”

“I don't want exposure,” Jane said. “I want clients.”

“That's what I'm trying to tell you. People who are considering approaching you to represent them will have a chance to meet you at the RAT convention. It's the largest writers' convention in the country! Think of the possibilities!”

It was true that Jane needed more clients. Her roster of mostly B-level writers of genre novels barely provided her with a living and allowed her to pay Daniel and Florence, her son Nick's nanny. Jane realized now that she'd known she would eventually have to get out there and beat the bushes for new business. She supposed this was as good a time as any—a better time than any, if Bertha was right. But Jane did hate these things.

She sat pondering for a moment, while Bertha watched her, eyes wide.

“All right,” Jane said at last, “but on one condition. That Daniel present my workshop with me.”

“I'm sure that's fine,” Bertha said. She smiled suggestively, wiggling her eyebrows. “He's dreamy.”

“He's also half your age, Bertha Stumpf.”

“Age!” Bertha dismissed the whole issue with a flip of her chubby hand. “I'm surprised you didn't point out that he's African-American.”

“I think age matters more. But it's a moot point, because he's engaged. To a Caucasian woman!”

“Jane.” Bertha leaned forward, her tone that of a parent trying to be patient while lecturing a child. “Love is love! Love is the answer!
C'est l'amour!
Love knows no color or age. Love doesn't even know time!”

Oh, brother
. Jane remembered that Bertha's last novel had been a time-travel romance. Jane felt a wave of nausea coming on. Bertha was quickly sliding into Rhonda Redmond mode. Was it too soon to leave?

“Speaking of love”—Bertha leaned even farther forward, eyebrows rising—”who knows who you might meet at the convention?”

Jane looked at her aghast. “You mean a man? At the RAT convention?”

“Why not? There
are
male romance writers, you know. And some of your fellow speakers are eligible male agents and editors. It's just one more reason you should attend.”

“I've already said I would!”

“I know, I know,” Bertha said, as if deciding to let up on Jane. “Now,” she said briskly, “I'll need a brief bio on both you and Daniel, and also a nice photo of each of you for the convention program booklet. Oh, and a line or two describing your workshop.”

Jane, who was fully aware of her own absentmindedness, pulled a small notebook from her purse and jotted these things down.

As their waiter appeared to remove their plates and take their coffee order, Bertha changed the subject to the plot of her current romance, a vintage Rhonda Redmond about a prim English heiress who is separated from her party during a tour of the Sahara and found wandering half-dazed by a darkly dangerous sheikh. Bertha was calling it
Casbah
.

It was a good forty-five minutes more before Jane felt comfortable looking at her watch and exclaiming that she'd better get back to the office.

Outside on the sidewalk, Bertha gave Jane a hug. “Happy birthday. Now don't forget those things I need. And thanks for lunch, sweetie. We really must do it more often.”

Sweetie? Jane forced a big smile and waved as she backed toward Seventh Avenue, where she would hail a cab that would take her to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and her bus to New Jersey.