Stabbing Stephanie (21 page)

Stephanie's head dropped, her face screwed up in its rat expression. “Jane, I heard someone behind me. One footstep. I froze. My heart felt like it was going to pound right out of my chest. I've read you're not supposed to run in these situations, so I forced myself to just continue walking, slowly and calmly . . . and he—whoever it was—suddenly grabbed me! It was a man, Jane, a strong man. He grabbed me tight and we struggled. He pulled so hard I heard my mink coat and dress tear.” She indicated the torn sleeve. Jane nodded sympathetically. “I screamed. Then I just ran. When I got to the front of the building, the taxi was just turning in at the drive and I waved him down.”

“Stephanie, you poor thing, that's
awful
. We'll have to call the police. Did you tell Erol about it?”

Stephanie gave her a baffled look. “Who's Erol?”

“Oh—” Jane laughed. “Sorry. That's the driver you would have had at this time of night. Erol's very level-headed; he would have known what to do. Did he radio in to Trudy to call the police?”

“No,” Stephanie said, gazing at Jane as if she were dimwitted, “of course not. Jane, I can't have it known that I've been cavorting around town at midnight. How would I have explained being there? Working late?”

“Certainly not that. Mm, you're quite right.”

“Damn straight I'm right. And in this town? It would be headlines in the—the
Shady Hills Gazette
in the morning.”

Stephanie drew an aggravated breath and looked as if she wanted to throttle Jane. Jane had to admit to herself that she was not trying her best to be sympathetic. Now there was no doubt about it: She definitely did not like this Stephanie—Kenneth's cousin or not—who had embarked on a tawdry affair with the husband of her best friend, her best friend who had given her a job when she needed one.

“Besides,” Stephanie went on, rising, “I don't need to call the police. I know who it was.”

“You do?”

“Of course.” Stephanie's tone implied the word
idiot
at the end of the sentence. “It was that bum person.”

“Ivor?”

“Sure. He hangs out there; I've seen him. He'd probably bedded down in that alley for the night, heard me coming, and decided to try to rape me. I smelled the booze on his breath. It was him.”

Stephanie reached the door and turned. “Thanks for listening.”

“I don't feel I've been much help. Is there anything I can do?”

Stephanie smiled—a nice smile, grateful, sweet. “You've done a lot for me already, Jane, more than you know. I really appreciate it. Good night.”

After she'd gone, Jane took out the book again, but no matter how many times she read the same paragraph, it didn't sink in. She was trying to conjure an image of Ivor—tall, rangy, desperate—grabbing Stephanie from behind and struggling with her, trying to subdue her . . . but it was no use.

What did anyone really know about Ivor? Was Rhoda right? Should he be removed from town? Jane shook her head firmly. Stephanie had accused Ivor simply because he was homeless. Her attacker could have been anyone.

At that moment Winky awoke and a lump traveled up the bed toward Jane until the cat's mottled brown-and-orange face emerged from under the sheet. Jane stroked her soft smooth head and the cat began to purr loudly, like a fluttering motor.

“If Gavin had been a gentleman,” Jane said very softly to Winky, whose eyes popped open at the sound of her mistress's voice, “if he'd given Stephanie a ride home, that wouldn't have happened. He may be married to a former princess,” she went on, placing the book on her night table and switching off the lamp, “but he is definitely no prince.”

J
ane gazed down at the two mailing lists for Carson & Hart's upcoming solicitation for
Classic Dolls
. She was to find and delete any names on list two that were duplicates of those on list one. Bouncing her gaze back and forth, she found one and pounced, drawing a thick black line through
Beecher, Muriel
.

She looked up, aware suddenly of how ludicrous her being here was. Carson & Hart was quirky and idiosyncratic, like any family-owned company, but as far as Jane could see, the only thing out of the ordinary and at all interesting was Stephanie's self-confessed affair with Gavin. But that, of course, was not what Stephanie had wanted Jane to find. Stephanie did not know what it was she wanted Jane to find, had only said something wasn't right.

On that score Stephanie herself could not have been more correct.

Stephanie's door was closed. Jane got up, attracting an interested look from Sam, but ignored him as she crossed the hallway and knocked softly. When Stephanie called to come in, Jane opened the door and peeked inside. “Could I have a word with you?”

Stephanie smiled tightly, which in itself bothered Jane. She entered, closing the door behind her, and sat in Stephanie's visitor's chair. “Stephanie, this is silly.”

“What's silly?”

“My being here.
Why
am I here? What is it exactly you want me to find? I'm very busy at my own business. I have an auction going on for a project I'm handling, and in three days I'm supposed to go on vacation and I haven't wrapped up any of the business I'd wanted to wrap up before I left. I'm sorry,” Jane said, rising, “but I'm going to have to”—Jane made quotation marks with her fingers—“quit.”

Stephanie looked crushed, her eyes bulging out, her black brows knitted together. She leaned forward on her desk. “But you promised to help me. You said you'd have a look around and tell me if things were on the up-and-up.
I
don't know anything about publishing, Jane.
I
don't know what's normal and what isn't. I need someone like you to tell me.”

“Of course this place isn't normal. It's nuts. There's a former queen in the office next door, you're having an affair with your boss, one of the assistants is the former crown prince of Ananda—not to mention a pervert with a disturbing fascination with cannibalism . . .”

At this, Stephanie gave Jane a startled look.

“Nuts!” Jane cried. “On the up-and-up? I don't know. Is a vanity press on the up-and-up? Morally wrong? Sometimes. Legally wrong? Usually not. Because that's what Carson and Hart is, you know: a glorified vanity press. So if your question is, is Carson and Hart a viable commercial publisher on the order of the big guys in New York City, the answer is no. But I think you knew that. So just what is it,” Jane said, narrowing her eyes, “you thought I might find?”

Stephanie paused, her mouth slightly open. “I just thought—oh, I don't know. I just thought things were . . . strange here, and I wanted you to tell me if I was right.”

“Okay, they're strange. Now what are you going to do with that? What would you have done with anything I came up with?”

“I—”

From the office next door, Faith's office, came a resounding thud, as if Faith had fallen. Both women sat up in alarm.

“We'd better go see—” Jane began, but stopped when the thud was followed by a loud and quite obscene curse. “Guess she's all right,” Jane said with a little laugh.

Now there came more bangs and booms, as if Faith were throwing things around her office. Something glass shattered, and Stephanie jumped. “What on earth . . . ?”

“Sounds like she's mad about something.”

Stephanie shrugged. “Faith's always had a violent temper. It'll blow over. Now about you, Jane . . .”

“Right. This is my last day.”

“Oh, Jane, please, I beg of you,” pleaded Stephanie, who fell across her desk dramatically, then lifted her head to look at Jane, at the same time sweeping a stiff lock of hair away from her face. “Just a little longer. I know you'll come up with something. I . . . just need to know that this is a safe place for me to work.” Her eyes welled with tears. “This is all I have, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

Two more loud thumps came from next door.

“I'm not what you think, Jane.”

Exactly what, Jane wondered, did Stephanie think Jane thought Stephanie was? “In what way?”

She tossed back her head theatrically. “You think I'm this glamorous society woman who tossed off her job because it bored her and came down here on a lark. That's not true. I was fired from my job. They told me to get out within thirty minutes. It was pathetic. I asked about my belongings and was told that anything I left behind would be destroyed. I couldn't find a box, so I took a green plastic garbage bag and filled it with my stuff. Ten minutes later I was out on Boylston Street with the bag over my shoulder like Santa Claus, trying to flag down a cab. I've never been so humiliated in my life.

“But there was more humiliation to come. I had to
beg
Faith for a job here.” Stephanie's face twisted in resentment, giving her that rodent look. “As if it would be a hardship for her to give me a job. I practically had to get on my knees.”

“I understand the company was struggling,” Jane said reasonably, “which was why they had to give up their offices in New York and move out here to Shady Hills . . .”

“Oh, bullshit!” Stephanie cried. “Faith and Gavin are loaded. You'll probably never see the house they bought in Mountain Lakes, but I've seen it, and believe me, Jane, it's not a house you or I would ever be able to afford. Loaded. Faith—my old friend, my
roommate
—took great pleasure in making me grovel to get this job, to find some way to make a living.”

“But surely there were other things you could have done. Other jobs in Boston . . .”

“Didn't I tell you that part? I wasn't fired a few weeks ago, Jane. I was fired a year ago. And ever since then I've been trying to find one of those ‘other jobs' in Boston. No one wanted me.” Stephanie's gaze implored Jane. “Who
would
want me—a homely middle-aged woman with no discernible talents and a lousy personality.”

“Stephanie!” Jane felt compelled to say.

“No illusions, Jane, no illusions. I know what I am. That story I told you about Lowell. A lie.
I
was the one who took him from Audrey, not my sister Caroline. Wasn't that a shitty thing to do, Jane? I'm a shit!”

Jane just sat very still, horrified at this explosion, without a clue as to how to respond.

“And now,” Stephanie swept on, “I'm bonking my best friend's husband. Nice, huh?”

“No,” Jane said calmly, “not nice at all. And if you know it's not nice, why are you doing it?”

Stephanie's gaze dropped. “Why do you think? To solidify my position here. Because if it turns out that this company is legitimate, a place where I can work and not get put in jail, then I don't want to lose this gig. As I said, it's all I have.”

Jane shook her head, impatient with Stephanie's self-pitying rationalizations. “There are other ways to solidify your position within a company. Like working hard and being a good employee.”

“But don't you see, Jane! I won't be! I wasn't at any of my other jobs, and I won't be here. I know that about myself. So I exercise a talent I do have—a talent any woman has—to achieve the same effect.”

The image of Stephanie stroking her lustrous mink coat flashed into Jane's mind. “Is that . . .” she hazarded, “how you got your mink?”
You have no
idea
what I had to do to get that coat
.

Stephanie threw back her head and laughed bitterly. “No! That's what you were supposed to think, of course—that some man who was obsessed with me lavished me with outrageously extravagant gifts.” She nodded in the direction of the coat in question, hanging on a hanger on the back of her office door. Jane could see the torn shoulder seam. “I bought that coat myself at a secondhand fur store. It's the most valuable thing I own.”

Another crash came from Faith's office.

Stephanie seemed to have talked herself out and sat staring into nowhere. Jane rose. “I think we'll just table my leaving for now—though you are aware that I wasn't going to stay past Friday in the first place.”

“I know, Jane,” Stephanie said, gratitude in her moist dark eyes, “and if you haven't turned anything up either way by then, I'll let the whole thing drop. But please . . . please see what you can find out.”

Jane gazed down at Stephanie, then gave a quick nod, turned, and left the office. As she sat down at her desk and took up the subscription lists, she was aware of Sam watching her.

“Getting briefed on an important project?” he asked, his tone amused.

She decided not to answer.

Suddenly the door of Faith's office flew violently open and Faith stormed out, her face a dark red, set in an expression of pure hatred. As if no one else were around, she stomped down the corridor to Gavin's office and, without knocking, burst in, slamming the door behind her. Now from Gavin's office came the sounds of Faith and Gavin screaming at each other, though Jane could not make out their actual words. Sam turned to Jane with a look of absolute glee, then returned his attention to Gavin's closed door. There were more shouts, then the unmistakable sound of a hard slap. A very hard slap, Jane reasoned, if it could be heard through a closed door.

Immediately Gavin's door opened again, and Faith marched out, heading toward her office. But she overshot it, stopping to stare into Stephanie's office. From where Jane sat, she could see Stephanie look up with a blank expression. Jane could also see the look of pure loathing on Faith's face. This look lasted a good five seconds; then Faith returned to her office and slammed the door.

“It appears,” Sam observed nonchalantly, returning to whatever it was he'd been doing, “that our queen has been dethroned.”

“What do you mean?” Jane asked, though she knew.

Sam swiveled energetically in his chair to face Jane. “Our Gavin is clearly enchanted by Stephanie, and is now
shtupping
her. Bitch,” he added in a barely audible voice.

“Why do you call her that?” Jane whispered, checking to make sure Stephanie hadn't heard this exchange. Stephanie was on the phone now, half turned at her desk.

“I tried to make time with Miss Stephanie when she first joined our illustrious ranks.”

“Mm,” he said matter-of-factly. “Why does that surprise you?”

“She's a good bit older than you.”

“So are you,” he said.

“And I'm not interested.”

“Yet.”

She rolled her eyes. “Do you find her attractive?”

“Yes, in a sixties sort of way. She's got a kind of—I don't know—Leslie Gore look.”

“I don't think Stephanie would have wanted—”

“She made it all too clear what she wanted. She told me straight out that she would never go out with a
secretary.”

“Obviously,” Jane said drily, “the fact that you are the son of her best friend was not an issue.”

“Obviously not, if even her best friend's
husband
is fair game.”

If Kenneth had only known what his cousin was really like,
Jane thought, then reflected that perhaps he had.

“But it gets better!” Sam said, startling Jane. His mouth was twisted in a bitter grin. “Not only did she reject my advances, but she then told my mother I'd tried to force her to kiss me. A total fabrication. I have no idea why she would have told Mother that, why she would go out of her way to lie. All I did was ask her—a bit suggestively, I admit—if she would have lunch with me. But,” he said with a sigh, glancing down at his papers, “a lowly secretary has no chance with Stephanie Townsend, not even if that secretary is a crown prince.” He tilted his head in the direction of Gavin's office. “Now, the
president
of the company—well, that's evidently an entirely different story. Bitch,” he repeated, and the bitter loathing in his voice surprised Jane.

She returned to her subscription lists as Sam swiveled back to face his desk. Just as she found another duplicate name and was drawing a line through it, she heard Sam mutter under his breath, “She'll be sorry.”

Ten minutes before noon, Jane's phone rang. It was Daniel. “Hello,
Lana
. Two more editors who have
The Blue Palindrome
have said they'll be bidding but have questions for you.”