Icing Ivy (14 page)

She drew her gaze from the dilapidated house and returned it to Jane and Stanley. “Well, good night, my dears, and thank you again for coming. Jane, I'll call you about doing lunch.”

Jane smiled, but behind her smile she was already composing a list of excuses.

J
ane spent New Year's Day at home with Nick. Florence had gone to visit her friend Noni. Jane had given Florence a list of the kittens' names and descriptions, reminding her that Noni had said she wanted one.

Stanley had promised to spend the day with his younger sister, Linda, who was divorced and lived with her twelve-year-old daughter, Ashley, at the north end of town.

Winky and the kittens, whose eyes still had not opened, were a constant source of entertainment. Nick, stationed on a chair he had carried into the laundry room, looked up from a spiral notebook in which he'd started to record which kittens nursed at what times.

“Why are you doing that?” Jane asked, amused.

“Just keeping track of things,” he replied, his expression intense as he watched the tiny creatures get their nourishment.

She looked over his shoulder and smiled. He glanced up, sensing her presence, and in his look, at that moment, she saw so much of Kenneth in his face that her breath caught in her throat. She still missed him terribly, even though he had died more than three years ago. She probably always would. Yet somehow the pain had lost its sharp edge. She guessed that was due to time, and to Stanley.

“Why are you wearing that apron?” Nick asked.

“Because I'm making New Year's dinner, remember ? Florence is coming back in time for it.”

“What are you making?” he asked warily.

“All kinds of good stuff. Caesar salad, rack of lamb—”

“Blech. I hate those things. Can I have chicken fingers?”

“No, you may not have chicken fingers. You'll like what I'm making,” she said, though she didn't necessarily believe that. “Besides, for dessert I bought a chocolate cream pie.”

“Now,
that
I'll eat.”

She turned to leave the room.

“Mom?”

“Mm?”

“Can we keep all the kittens? I'm afraid it will make Winky sad if we only let her keep one.”

She gave him a kind smile. “I'm afraid we can't, honey. Two cats are enough for this household. And Winky knows we'll only give her babies to good homes.”

His gaze dropped as he thought this over; then he nodded and returned to his recording. Jane headed back to the kitchen, from which came the tantalizing aroma of lamb roasting with garlic and rosemary.

At around eight o'clock that evening, Stanley called. He was home from Linda's. Would Jane like to come over for a drink? Jane had finished cleaning up after dinner, but felt funny leaving Nick.

“Don't you think twice about it, missus,” said Florence, who had returned from Noni's earlier that day with a promise to take Crush. She gave Jane a mischievous wink. “In fact, if you need to be out for the night, that's okay, too.”

Jane felt herself blush. “No, thank you, Florence—though I appreciate the offer.”

That night, in Stanley's plant-filled apartment, they sipped brandy and danced slowly to his collection of Frank Sinatra LPs, and Jane pressed her cheek softly against Stanley's and closed her eyes.

 

 

“Happy New Year !” Daniel greeted her at the office the next morning.

“Same to you. Hope you and Ginny had a nice day yesterday.”

“Mm, a quiet day, the kind I like best.”

“Did you enjoy Tamara's party Monday night?”

He smiled, wrinkled his straight nose a little. “Not very much, to be honest. I find her hard to take.”

“I know what you mean.”

“He seems very down-to-earth, though. The husband, I mean. What kind of name is Foss, do you know?”

“I believe it's short for Forrest.”

He looked down thoughtfully at his keyboard, then resumed entering information into the database they used to record details of the book deals they made for their clients.

Later that morning, Jane took the Lakeland bus into New York and cabbed to Fifty-second and Third. On the seventeenth floor, a plump, prim-looking woman emerged into the reception area and introduced herself as Judy Monk.

“Let me say again how sorry I am about poor Ivy,” she said in a low, solemn voice, her eyes full of kindness. “I'll show you where her office is—was.” She led Jane back through a nondescript maze of cubicles and stopped at the entrance to one of them. “This is it.”

She allowed Jane to go in first. A desk without much on it stood against the cubicle's back wall, so that Ivy would have had her back to the entrance when she was working. Above the desk was a bulletin board on which had been pinned what appeared to be several publication schedules. Then Jane noticed, at the extreme lower right corner, a photograph of Ivy and Jane herself, taken when they were freshman roommates at the University of Detroit twenty-one years earlier. “Oh, my goodness, ” Jane murmured, moving closer to the photo. The two young women—Ivy, chubby, with brown curly hair; Jane, reed thin, with straight reddish-brown hair—were smiling intently into the camera, their arms tightly around each other's waist.

Judy came up beside Jane. “My word. It's the two of you, isn't it? You
do
go way back.”

“Yes, we do,” Jane said sadly.

“Well.” Judy surveyed the desk as if unsure where to direct her gaze. “I'm sure she was very lucky to have a good friend like you.”

Jane met Judy Monk's gaze directly. “Thank you, but in all honesty, I'm not sure I was always a very good friend to her.”

Judy's jaw dropped a little, and she gave a serious, bewildered nod. She gestured toward the desk. “I suppose I could have shipped her things to you, now that I think of it. There's not much here.”

Jane regarded the desk, on which sat a keyboard and monitor, an uncluttered blotter, a telephone, a Rolodex, and a framed photograph of Ivy's late daughter, Marlene.

“That was her daughter,” Judy said. “I know she passed away, but I don't know how.” She kept her gaze on Jane, as if waiting for an answer.

“It was . . . an accident,” Jane said, feeling for some reason that the truth was probably more than Ivy would have wanted Judy to know.

“How very sad,” Judy said. “You know, I liked Ivy but never got to know her very well, even though she worked here for a good six months. She seemed that kind of person. Private. One thing we all knew, though. She had ambition.” There was admiration in the statement.

“Really?” Jane said, turning to her. “Why do you say that?”

“She made no secret of the fact that she believed she was better suited to the job of reporter, in spite of the fact that she'd been hired as a secretary. She told me once that she hated being a secretary and that a job like that was unworthy of her. She said that back in Detroit she held a much higher position.”

Jane's heart went out to her poor dead friend, who'd needed to impress strangers with lies. In Detroit, Ivy had been a secretary at an insurance agency. “Yes, I believe she did.”

Judy looked disappointed that this was all she was apparently going to get out of Jane. “I can believe it. She told me several times that she intended to be a reporter for this paper. In fact, there was one particular story she was after. Quite often she ran out of the office telling me she was following up on ‘that story. ' ”

“Interesting. Did she tell you what the story was?”

“Oh, no. She wouldn't tell anyone. But she did say that when she was finished getting it,
Skyline
would promote her to reporter.”

“Do you think that was true?”

“To tell you the truth,” Judy replied, “I don't think she would have made it that far.”

Jane frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Mr. Feingold was frustrated with her. He hired her to be his secretary, but she hated the work and was—I shouldn't say this—rather poor at it. I suppose I can say this now . . . I believe Ivy was about to get fired.”

“I see,” Jane said, and sat down in Ivy's chair.

“I'll leave you to it. I brought you a box.” Judy indicated a smallish cardboard carton on the floor to the right of the desk and started out of the cubicle.

Jane thanked her and set to work. Judy was right; there wasn't much here. Clearly Ivy had kept her personal life out of the office, except for the two photographs. Otherwise, Jane found only some makeup, an extra pair of shoes in the bottom left-hand drawer, and a rose-colored pullover sweater neatly folded in the drawer above it. There were no files in Ivy's desk, Jane noticed. The only papers were company-wide memos, takeout menus from local restaurants, photocopies of some not-very-important letters Ivy had typed for her boss, Andrew Feingold. Puzzled, Jane rose and went in search of Judy. She found her in the next cubicle, typing very fast. She gave a little jump, putting her hand to her breast, and turned. “Done already?”

“Not quite. A couple of questions, if you don't mind.”

“Not at all,” Judy said graciously.

“There aren't any files in Ivy's desk, and there's no file cabinet either. Do you find that odd?”

Judy drew her thick brows together. “I do find that odd. Mr. Feingold has asked me to gather up Ivy's files and deal with them, but I haven't had a chance to do it yet.” She shook her head in bafflement. “I suppose she carried her files with her. Now that I think about it, she did carry a briefcase every day. It's the only explanation. As I told you, she was working on something she was keeping a secret, so it would make sense that she wouldn't leave the files lying around.”

“What about her computer? Would there be files there?”

Judy gave Jane a strange look, as if wondering why Jane would want to know that. “Actually, no,” she said slowly. “Everything is stored on the main server, nothing locally. These computers don't even have hard drives of their own.”

“I see. Thanks.”

With a chill at the memory of the man who had posed as Ivy's brother, Jane remembered she would have to check Ivy's apartment. Now that she thought about it, she was, as far as she knew, the only person Ivy had in the world who could dispose of her belongings at home, just as she was the only person who could take away Ivy's personal items here in the office.

Jane returned to Ivy's cubicle and finished up. The last items she placed in the box were Ivy's two photos. Jane gazed wistfully at the one of both of them, then placed it atop the rest of Ivy's things. As she rose from the chair, something on Ivy's blotter caught her eye. Ivy had been a doodler. There were diamond patterns, sketches of girls with long, pretty hair, and a recurrent image of two palm trees, trunks crossed, six coconuts lined up at the base of their trunks. Yes, Jane remembered, this would have been just like Ivy—Ivy who never dressed warmly enough, Ivy who daydreamed about her happier, carefree someday life in the tropics. Ivy who had yearned for a better life, a better job, a good man.

Taking a deep breath, Jane picked up the box and went to tell Judy she was finished. She found Judy on the telephone, apparently with her boss. She gestured to Jane that she would be a moment. Hanging up, she said, “Thank you so much for doing this. Again, I'm so sorry about Ivy.” She smiled kindly. “I'm sure you
were
a good friend to her.”

“Thank you.” Jane set down the box on the floor. “Judy, I wonder if you could give me Ivy's address.” Ivy had never given it to Jane, nor had Jane found it among Ivy's things.

“Her address?” Judy frowned. “I don't understand. Wouldn't you have it? If you and she . . .” Now she eyed Jane with some alarm, as if wondering if she'd made a mistake giving this woman access to Ivy's cubicle.

Jane gave a little laugh. “I guess it does seem like an odd request. You see, Ivy and I had a falling-out. We didn't speak for over a year. Then she moved to New York and we patched things up, but that was only a few weeks ago. I hadn't been to her apartment yet, and I never got around to getting her address.”

Judy lowered her gaze, considering. “Well,” she said, looking up, “I suppose I could get it from Mr. Feingold's secretary.”

“I'd be so grateful. I've got to take care of her things.”

“Of course. One moment.”

Judy went down the passage and disappeared into a cubicle at the end. She reemerged a moment later holding a slip of paper. “Here you are,” she said, and glancing down at the writing on the paper before handing it to Jane, stopped and frowned. “That's odd.”

“What?”

“This address. It couldn't be right.”

Jane craned her neck to see it. “Why not?”

Judy showed it to her. It was an address on West 38th Street, with an apartment number. Jane looked at her, not understanding.