ANNA

 

 

The bushy-haired young man with long sideburns arrives on deck with two cups of coffee—one black for himself, the other laced with half-and-half and two sugars, the way his wife always takes it. Rows of blue plastic seats, half of them filled with tourists heading back to the mainland, sit bolted to the steel deck. He stops by a row under the awning. His wife’s navy blue sweatshirt is draped over the back of one of the seats but she’s not there. He looks around and doesn’t see her. He asks a nearby couple, strangers, if they saw where his wife went but they say they didn’t notice.

The man strolls through the ferry’s crowded aft deck but doesn’t see his wife. Still carrying the coffee, he ambles forward but she’s not there either. He wanders the starboard side, checking out the tourists leaning on the rails, then does the same on the port side. No sign of her.

The man places the coffee on the seat with her sweatshirt and searches through the inner compartments and the snack bar. He begins to ask people if they’ve seen a blond woman in her mid-twenties wearing a flowered top and bell-bottom jeans. Sure, people say. Dozens of them. And they’re right. The ferry carries numerous women fitting that description.

The man finds a member of the crew and tells him that his wife is missing. He is taken to the ferry’s security officer who assures him that his wife is surely somewhere aboard—perhaps she’s seasick and in one of the rest rooms.

The man waits outside the women’s rooms, asking at each if someone could check inside for his wife. When that yields nothing, he again wanders the various decks, going so far as to search the vehicle level where supply trucks and passengers’ cars make the trip.

When the ferry reaches Hyannis, the man stands on the dock and watches every debarking passenger, but his wife is not among them.

He calls his father-in-law who lives outside Boston. He explains that they were on their way over for a surprise visit but now his daughter is missing. The father-in-law arrives in his chauffeur-driven Bentley and joins the young man in storming the offices of the Massachusetts Steamship Authority, demanding a thorough, stem-to-stern search of the ferry and too damned bad if that will delay its departure. The father-in-law is a rich man, influential in Massachusetts politics. The ferry is detained.

The state police are called to aid in the search. The Coast Guard sends out a helicopter to trace and retrace the ferry’s route. But the wife is not to be found. No one sees her again. Ever.

 

 

* * *

 

“Ow!”

William Morley grabbed his right heel as pain spiked through it. His knee creaked and protested as he leaned back in the chair and pulled his foot up to where he could see it.

“I’ll be damned!” he said as he spotted the two-inch splinter jutting from the heel of his sock.

Blood seeped through the white cotton, forming a crimson bull’s-eye around the base of the splinter. Morley grabbed the end and yanked it free. The tip was stiletto sharp and red with his blood.

“Where the hell…?”

He’d been sitting here in his study, in his favorite rocker, reading the Sunday Times, his feet resting on the new maple footstool he’d bought just yesterday. How on earth had he picked up a splinter?

Keeping his bloody heel off the carpet, he limped into the bathroom, dabbed a little peroxide on the wound, then covered it with a Band-Aid.

When he returned to the footstool he checked the cushioned top and saw a small hole in the fabric where his heel had been resting. The splinter must have been lying in the stuffing. He didn’t remember moving his foot before it pierced him, but he must have.

Morley had picked up the footstool at Danzer’s overpriced furniture boutique on Lower Broadway. He’d gone in looking for something antiquey and come out with this brand-new piece. He’d spotted it from the front of the showroom; tucked in a far rear corner, it seemed to call to him. And once he’d seen the intricate grain—he couldn’t remember seeing maple grained like this—and the elaborate carving along the edge of the seat and up and down the legs, he couldn’t pass it up.

But careless as all hell for someone to leave a sharp piece of wood like that in the padding. If he were a different sort, he might sue. But what for? He had more than enough money, and he wouldn’t want to break whoever did this exquisite carving.

He grabbed two of the stool’s three legs and lifted it for a closer look. Marvelous grain, and—

“Shit!” he cried, and dropped it as pain lanced his hand.

He gaped in wonder at the splinter—little more than an inch long this time—jutting from his palm. He plucked the slim little dagger and held it up.

How the hell…?

Morley knelt next to the overturned stool and inspected the leg he’d been holding. He spotted the source of the splinter—a slim, pale crevice in the darker surface of the lightly stained wood.

How on earth had that wound up in his skin? He could understand if he’d been sliding his hand along, but he’d simply been holding it. And next to the crevice—was that another splinter angled outward?

As he adjusted his reading glasses and leaned closer, the tiny piece of wood popped out of the leg and flew at his right eye.

Morley jerked back as it bounced harmlessly off the eyeglass lens. He lost his balance and fell onto his back, but he didn’t stay down. He’d gained weight in his middle years and was carrying an extra thirty pounds on his medium frame, yet he managed to roll over and do a rapid if ungainly scramble away from the footstool on his hands and knees. At sixty-two he cherished his dignity, but panic had taken over.

My God! If I hadn’t been wearing glasses—!

Thankfully, he was alone. He rose, brushed himself off, and regarded the footstool from a safe distance.

Really—a “safe distance” from a little piece of furniture? Ridiculous. But his stomach roiled at the thought of how close he’d come to having a pierced cornea. Something very, very wrong here.

Rubbing his hands over his arms to counter a creeping chill, Morley surveyed his domain, a turn-of-the-century townhouse on East Thirty-first Street in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan. He and Elaine had spent just shy of a million for it in the late eighties, and it was worth multiples of that now. Its four levels of hardwood floors, cherry wainscoting, intricately carved walnut moldings and cornices were all original. They’d spent a small fortune refurbishing the interior to its original Victorian splendor and furnishing it with period antiques. After the tumor in her breast finally took Elaine in 1995, he’d stayed on here, alone but not lonely. Over the years he’d gradually removed Elaine’s touches, easing her influence from the decor until the place was all him. He’d become quite content as lord of the manor.

Until now. The footstool had attracted him because of its grain, and because the style of its carving fit so seamlessly with the rest of the furniture, but he wouldn’t care now if it was a genuine one-of-a-kind Victorian. That thing had to go.

Tugging at his neat salt-and-pepper beard, Morley eyed the footstool from across the room. Question was…how was he going to get it out of here without touching it?

 

 

* * *

 

The owner of Mostly Maple was at the counter when Morley walked in. Though close to Morley in age, Hal Danzer was a polar opposite. Where Morley was thick, Danzer was thin, where Morley was bearded, Danzer was clean shaven, where Morley’s thin hair was neatly trimmed, Danzer’s was long and thick and tied into a short ponytail.

A gallimaufry of maple pieces of varying ages, ranging from ancient to brand new, surrounded them—claw-footed tables, wardrobes, breakfronts, secretaries, desks, dressers, even old kitchen phones. Morley liked maple too, but not to the exclusion of all other woods. Danzer had once told him that he had no firm guidelines regarding his stock other than it be of maple and strike his fancy.

Morley deposited the heavy-duty canvas duffel on the counter.

“I want to return this.”

Danzer stared at him. “A canvas bag?”

“No.” With difficulty he refrained from adding, you idiot. “What’s inside.”

Danzer opened the bag and peeked in. He frowned. “The footstool you bought Saturday? Something wrong with it?”

Hell, yes, something was wrong with it. Very wrong.

“Take it out and you’ll see.”

Morley certainly wasn’t going to stick his hand in there. Last night he’d pulled the old bag out of the attic and very carefully slipped it over the stool. Then, using a broom handle, he’d upended the bag and pushed the stool the rest of the way in. He was not going to touch it again. Let Danzer find out firsthand, as it were, what was wrong with it.

Danzer reached in and pulled out the footstool by one of its three carved legs. Morley backed up a step, waiting for his yelp of pain.

Nothing.

Danzer held up the footstool and rotated it back and forth in the light.

Nothing.

“Looks okay to me.”

Morley shifted his weight off his right foot—the heel was still tender. He glanced at his bandaged left hand. He hadn’t imagined those splinters.

“There, on the other leg. See those gaps in the finish? That’s where slivers popped out of the wood.”

Danzer twisted the stool and squinted at the wood. “I’ll be damned. You’re right. Popped out, you say?”

Morley held up his bandaged hand. “Right into my palm. My foot too.” He left off mention of the near miss on his eye.

But why isn’t anything happening to you? he wondered.

“Sorry about that. I’ll replace it.”

“Replace it?”

“Sure. I picked up three of them. They’re identical.”

Before Morley could protest, Danzer had ducked through the curtained doorway behind the counter. But come to think of it, how could he refuse a replacement? He couldn’t say that this footstool, sitting inert on the counter, had assaulted him. And it was a beautiful little thing…

Danzer popped back through the curtain with another, a clone of the first. He set it on the counter.

“There you go. I checked this one over carefully and it’s perfect.”

Morley reached out, slowly, tentatively, and touched the wood with the fingertips of his left hand, ready to snatch them back at the first sharp sensation. But nothing happened. Gently he wrapped his hand around the leg. For an awful instant he thought he felt the carving writhe beneath his palm, but the feeling was gone before he could confirm it.

He sighed. Just wood. Heavily grained maple and nothing more.

“While I was inspecting it,” Danzer said, “I noticed something interesting. Look here.” He turned the stool on its side and pointed to a heavily grained area. “Check this out.”

Remembering the near miss on his eye, Morley leaned closer, but not too.

“What am I looking for?”

“There, in the grain—isn’t the grain just fabulous? You can see a name. Looks like ‘Anna,’ doesn’t it?”

Simply hearing the name sent a whisper of unease through Morley. And damned if Danzer wasn’t right. The word “ANNA” was indeed woven into the grain. Seeing the letters hidden like that only increased his discomfiture.

Why this unease? He didn’t know anyone named Anna, could not remember ever knowing an Anna.

“And look,” Danzer was saying. “It’s here on the other one. Isn’t that clever.”

Again Morley looked where Danzer was pointing, and again made out the name “ANNA” worked into the grain.

Morley’s tongue felt as dry as the wood that filled this store. “What’s so clever?”

Danzer was grinning. “It’s got to be the woodworker. She’s doing a Hirschfeld.”

Morley’s brain seemed to be stuck in low gear. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Hirschfeld—Al Hirschfeld, the illustrator. You’ve seen him a million times in the Times and Playbill. He does those line caricatures. And in every one of them for the last umpteen years he’s hidden his daughter Nina’s name in the drawing. This Anna is doing the same thing. The shop probably doesn’t allow its woodworkers to sign their pieces, so she’s sneaked her name into the grain. Probably no one else but her knows it’s there.”

“Except for us now.”

“Yeah. Isn’t that great? I just love stuff like this.”

Morley said nothing as he watched the ebullient Danzer stuff the replacement footstool into the canvas duffel and hand it back.

“It’s all yours.”

Morley felt a little queasy, almost seasick. Part of him wanted to turn and run, but he knew he had to take that footstool home. Because it was signed, so cleverly inscribed, by Anna, whoever that was, and he must have it.

“Yes,” he mumbled through the sawdust taste in his mouth. “All mine.”

 

 

* * *

 

At home, Morley couldn’t quite bring himself to put the footstool to immediate use. He removed it from the canvas bag without incurring another wound—a good sign in itself—and set it in a corner of his study. He felt a growing confidence that what had happened yesterday was an aberration, but he could not yet warm to the piece. Perhaps in time…when he’d figured out why the name Anna stirred up such unsettling echoes.

He heard the clank of the mail slot and went down to the first floor to collect the day’s letters: a good-sized stack of the usual variety of junk circulars, come-ons, confirmation slips from his broker, and pitches from various charities. Very little of a personal nature.

Still shuffling through the envelopes, he had just reentered the study when his foot caught on something. Suddenly he was falling forward. The mail went flying as he flung out his arms to prevent himself from landing on his face. He hit the floor with a brain-jarring, rib-cracking thud that knocked the wind out of him.

It took a good half minute before he could breathe again. When he finally rolled over, he looked around to see what had tripped him—and froze.

The footstool sat dead center in the entry to the study.

A tremor rattled through Morley. He’d left the stool in the corner—he was certain of it. Or at least, pretty certain. He was more certain that furniture didn’t move around on its own, so perhaps he hadn’t put it in the corner, merely intended to, and hadn’t got around to it yet.

Right now he wasn’t certain of what he could be certain of.

 

 

* * *

 

Morley found himself wide awake at three a.m. He’d felt ridiculous stowing the footstool in a closet, but had to admit he felt safer with it tucked away behind a closed door two floors below. That name—Anna—was keeping him awake. He’d sifted through his memories, from boyhood to the present, and could not come up with a single Anna. The word was a palindrome, so reversing the order was futile; the only workable anagram was also worthless—he’d never known a “Nana” either.

So why had the sight of those letters set alarm bells ringing?

Not only was it driving him crazy, it was making him thirsty.

Morley reached for the bottle of Evian he kept on the night table—empty. Damn. He got out of bed in the dark and headed for the first floor. Enough light filtered through the windows from the city outside to allow him a faint view of where he was going, but as he neared the top of the stairs, he felt a growing unease in his gut. He slowed, then stopped. He didn’t understand. He hadn’t heard a noise, but he could feel the wiry hairs at the back of his neck rise in warning. Something not right here. He reached out, found the wall switch, and flicked it.

The footstool sat at the top of the stairway.

Morley’s knees threatened to give way and he had to lean against the wall to keep them from crumbling. If he hadn’t turned on the light he surely would have tripped over it and tumbled down the steps, very likely to his death.

 

 

* * *

 

“That footstool! Where did you get it?”

After a couple of seconds’ pause, Danzer’s voice came back over the line. “What? Who is this?”

Morley rubbed his eyes. He hadn’t slept all night. After kicking the footstool down the hallway and locking it in a spare bedroom, he’d sat up the rest of the night with the room key clutched in his fist. As soon as ten a.m. rolled around—the time when Danzer opened his damn store—he’d started dialing.

“It’s Bill Morley. Where did you buy that footstool?”

“At a regional woodworker’s expo on Cape Cod.”

“From whom? I need a name!”

“Why?”

“I just do! Are you going to tell me or not?”

“Hold your horses, will you? Let me look it up.” Papers shuffled, then: “Here it is…Charles Ansbach. ‘Custom and Original Woodwork.’”

“Charles? I thought it was supposed to be ‘Anna.’”

Danzer laughed. “Oh, you mean because of the name in the grain. Who knows? Maybe this Anna works for him. Maybe she bought his business. Maybe—”

“Never mind! Where can I find this Charles Ansbach?”

“His address is Twelve Spinnaker Lane, Nantucket.”

“Nantucket?” Morley felt his palm begin to sweat where it clutched the receiver in a sudden death grip. “Did you say Nantucket?”

“That’s what’s written here on his invoice.”

Morley hung up the phone without saying good-bye and sat there trembling.

Nantucket…of all places, why did it have to be Nantucket? He’d buried his first wife, Julie, there. And he’d sworn he’d never set foot on that damn island again.

But now he must break that vow. He had to go back. How else could he find out who Anna was? And he must learn that. He doubted he would sleep a wink until he did.

 

 

* * *

 

At least he hadn’t had to take the ferry. No matter how badly he wanted to track down this Anna person, nothing in the world could make him ride that ferry again.

After jetting in from LaGuardia, Morley stepped into one of the beat-up station wagons that passed for taxis on Nantucket and gave the overweight woman behind the wheel the address.

“Goin’ to Charlie Ansbach’s place, ay? You know him?”

“We’ve never met. Actually, I’m more interested in someone named Anna who works for him.”

“Anna?” the woman said as they pulled away from the tiny airport. “Don’t know of any Anna workin’ for Charlie. Tell the truth, don’t know of any Anna connected to Charlie at all.”

That didn’t bode well. Nantucket was less than fifteen miles long and barely four across at its widest point. The islanders were an insular group who weathered long, isolated off-seasons together; as a result they tended to know each other like kin, and were always into each other’s business.

As the taxi took him toward town along Old South Road, Morley marveled at the changes since his last look in the seventies. Decades and an extended bull market had transformed the island. New construction was everywhere. Even now, in post-season October, with the oaks and maples turning gold and orange, new houses were going up. Nantucket ordinances allow little variation in architecture—clapboard or cedar shakes or else—but the newer buildings were identifiable by their unweathered siding.

Nantucket had always been an old-money island, a summer hideaway for the very wealthy from New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts—Old Money attached to names that never made the papers. The Kennedys, the Carly Simons and James Taylors, the Spike Lees and other spotlight-hungry sorts preferred Martha’s Vineyard. Morley remembered walking through town here in the summer when the island’s population explodes, when the streets would be thick with tourists fresh off the ferry for the day. They’d stroll Main Street or the docks in their pristine, designer leisure wear, ogling all the yachts. Salted among them would be these middle-aged men in faded jerseys and torn shorts stained with fish blood, who drove around in rusty Wagoneers and rumbling Country Squires. Deck hands? No, these were the owners of the yachts, who lived in the big houses up on Cliff Road and on the bluffs overlooking Brant Point. The more Old Money they had, the closer to homeless they looked.

“Seems to be houses everywhere,” Morley said. “Whatever happened to the conservancy?”

“Alive and well,” the driver replied. “It’s got forty-eight percent of the land now, and more coming in. If nothing else, it’ll guarantee that at least half of the island will remain in its natural state, God bless ’em.”

Morley didn’t offer an “amen”. The conservancy had been part of all his troubles here.

The cab skirted the north end of town and hooked up with Madaket Road. More new houses. If only he’d held on to the land longer after Julie’s death, think what it might be worth now.

He shook his head. No looking back. He’d sold off the land piece by piece over the years, and made a handsome profit. Prudent investing had qua drupled the original yield. He had no complaints on that score.

He noticed groups of grouse-like birds here and there along the shoulder of the road, and asked the driver about them.

“Guinea hens. Cousins to the turkey, only dumber. We imported a bunch of them a few years ago and they’re multiplying like crazy.”

“For hunting?”

“No. For ticks. We’re hoping they’ll eat up the deer ticks. Lymes disease, you know.”

Morley was tempted to tell her that it was Lyme disease—no terminal s-but decided against it.

Spinnaker Lane was a pair of sandy ruts through the dense thicket of bay-berry and beach plum south of Eel Point Road. Number twelve turned out to be a well-weathered Cape Cod with a large work shed out back.

“Wait for me,” Morley told the driver.

He heard the whine of an electric saw from the shed so he headed that way. He found an angular man with wild salty hair leaning over a table saw, skinning the bark off a log. A kiln sat in the far corner. The man looked up at Morley’s approach, squinting his blue eyes through the smoke from the cigarette dangling at the corner of his mouth.

“Charles Ansbach?”

“That’s me.” His face was as weathered as the siding on his shed. “What’s up?”

Morley decided to cut to the chase. These islanders would talk your head off about nothing if you gave them half the chance.

“I’m looking for Anna.”

“Anna who?”

“She works for you.”

“Sorry, mister. No Anna working for me, now or ever.”

“Oh, no?” Morley said, feeling a flush of anger. He was in no mood for games. “Then why is she working her name into the grain of your furniture?”

Ansbach’s blue eyes widened, then he grinned. “So, you spotted that too, ay?”

“Where is she?”

“Told you: Ain’t no Anna.”

“Then you’re doing it?”

“Ain’t me, either. It’s in the grain. Damnedest thing I ever seen.” He glanced down and blew sawdust off the log he’d been working on. He pointed to a spot. “Here’s more of it, right here.”

Morley stepped closer and leaned over the table. The grain was less prominent in the unstained wood, but his gut began to crawl as he picked out the letters of “ANNA” fitted among the wavy lines.

“It’s uncanny,” he whispered.

“More than uncanny, mister. It’s all through every piece of wood I got from that tree. Downright spooky, if you ask me.”

“What tree?”

“From the old Lange place. When I heard they was taking down one of the big maples there, I went to see it. When I spotted the grain I realized it was a curly maple. You don’t see many curly maples, and I never seen one like this—magnificent grain. I bought the whole tree. Kept some for myself and sold the rest to a coupla custom wood workers on the mainland. Got a good price for it too. But I never…”

Ansbach’s voice faded into the growing roar that filled Morley’s ears. The strength seemed to have deserted his legs and he slumped against the table.

Ansbach’s voice cut through the roar. “Hey, mister, you all right?”

All right? No, he was not all right—he was far from all right. All right for him was somewhere out near Alpha Centauri. But he nodded and forced himself to straighten and stagger away.

“What’s wrong, mister?” Ansbach called after him but Morley didn’t reply, didn’t wave good-bye. He sagged into the rear seat of the taxi and sat there trying to catch his breath.

“You look like you just seen a ghost!” the driver said.

“Do you know the old Lange place?” Morley gasped.

“Course. Ain’t been a Lange there for a long time, though.”

“Take me there.”

My tree! My tree! Morley thought. Have they cut it down?

Perhaps not. Perhaps it had been another tree. He couldn’t remember any other maples on the house property, and yet it must have been another tree, not his tree. Because if they’d cut down his tree they would have removed the stump. And in doing so they inevitably would have found Julie’s bones.

 

 

* * *

 

The taxi pulled off Cliff Road and stopped in front of the Lange place. The house itself looked pretty much the same, but Morley barely recognized its surroundings. Once the only dwelling on a fifty-two-acre parcel between Cliff and Madaket Roads, it now stood surrounded by houses. Morley’s doing. He’d sold them the land.

Panic gripped him as he searched the roof line and saw no maple branches peeking over from the backyard. He told the driver to wait again and hurried around the north corner of the house, passing a silver Mercedes SUV on the way. He caught his breath when he reached the rear. His maple was gone, and in its place sat…a picnic table.

As he staggered toward it, he noticed the table’s base—a tree stump. His tree was gone but they hadn’t pulled the stump!

Morley dropped into a chair by the table and almost wept with relief.

“Can I help you?”

Morley looked up and saw a mid-thirties yuppie type walking his way across the lawn. His expression was wary, verging on hostile. With good reason: Who was this stranger in his yard?

Morley rose from the chair and composed himself. “Sorry for intruding,” he said. “I used to live here. I planted this tree back in the seventies.”

The man’s expression immediately softened. “No kidding? Are you Lange?”

“No. It was the Lange place before I moved in, and remained the Lange place while I was living here. It will always be known as the Lange place.”

“So I’ve gathered.”

“What happened to my tree?”

“It got damaged in that nor’easter last fall. Big branch tore off and stripped a lot of bark. I had a tree surgeon patch it up but by last spring it was obvious the tree was doomed. So I had it taken down. But I left the stump. Put it to pretty good use, don’t you think?”

“Excellent use,” Morley said with heartfelt sincerity. Bless you, sir.

“The center is drilled to hold an umbrella in season.”

“How clever. It’s a wonderful addition to the yard. Don’t ever change it.”

Morley suffered through a little more small talk before he could extract himself. He rode back to the airport in silent exhaustion. When he finally reached his first-class seat for the return to LaGuardia, he ordered a double Macallan on the rocks and settled back to try to sort out what the hell was going on. But when he glanced out his window and saw the Nantucket ferry chugging out of the harbor far below, the events of the most nerve-wracking and potentially catastrophic twenty-four hours of his life engulfed him in a screaming rush…

 

 

* * *

 

The trouble with Julie Lange was that she was a rich girl who didn’t know how to play the part. She didn’t appreciate the finer things money could buy. She was just as happy with something from the JC Penney’s catalog as a one-of-a-kind designer piece. She had no desire for the style of life and level of comfort to which her new husband desperately wished to become accustomed.

But young Bill Morley hadn’t realized this when he started courting her in the big-haired, long-sideburned, bell-bottomed late sixties and early seventies. All he knew was that she was pretty, bright, fun, and rich. And when they eventually married, he was ecstatic to learn that her father was giving them the Nantucket family summer house and adjacent acreage as a wedding present.

That was the good news. The bad news was that Julie wanted to live there year round. Bill had said he wanted to write, hadn’t he? Nantucket would be the perfect place, especially in the winter when there were no distractions.

No distractions…a magnificent understatement. The damn island was virtually deserted in the winter. Bill contracted island fever early on and was a raw nerve by the time spring rolled around. He begged Julie to sell the place and move to the mainland.

But oh no, she couldn’t sell the family home. She’d spent almost every summer of her life at the Lange place. Besides, who would want to leave Nantucket? It was the best place on earth.

She just couldn’t see: The island was paradise to her, but to him it was hell on earth.

Bill fumed. He could not survive another winter on this island. He cudgeled his brain for a way out, and came up with a brilliant solution: How about we keep the house but sell off the fifty acres of undeveloped land and use the money from that to buy a place near Boston? We can live there in the winter and still summer here. Cool, huh?

But Julie simply laughed and said she couldn’t bear the thought of anyone but a Lange living on the land where she’d roamed and camped out during her childhood. In fact, she’d been looking into donating it to the conservancy so that it would always remain in its wild, undeveloped state.

Which left Billy three choices, none of which was particularly appealing. He could stay with Julie on Nantucket and devolve into drooling incoherence.

Or he could file for divorce and never see this island again, but that would mean cutting himself off from the Lange estate, all of which would go to Julie when her old man died.

Or Julie could die.

He reluctantly opted for the last. He wasn’t a killer, and not a particularly violent man, but an entire winter on this glorified sandbar had shaken something loose inside. And besides, he deserved to come out of this marriage with something more than a bad memory.

But he’d have to make his move soon, before Julie handed fifty acres of prime land over to the stupid damn conservancy.

So he convinced Julie that the backyard needed some landscaping. And on a bright Friday afternoon in June, after solidifying the plan and setting up all the props he’d need, Bill Morley sat on his back porch and watched the landscapers put the finishing touches on the free-form plantings in the backyard. He waved to them as they left, then waited for Julie to return from town where she’d been running errands and shopping and doing whatever she did.

Carrying a three-iron casually across a shoulder, he met her in the foyer when she came home, and she looked so bright, so cheery, so happy to be alive that he gave her one last chance to change her mind. But Julie barely listened. She brushed off the whole subject, saying she didn’t want to talk about selling houses or land or moving because she had something to tell him.

Whatever it was, she never got the chance. He hit her with the golf club. Hard. Three times. She dropped to the floor like a sack of sand, not moving, not breathing.

As soon as it was dark, Bill began digging up one of the landscapers’ plantings. He removed the burlap-wrapped root ball of a young maple and dug a much larger hole under it. Julie and the three iron went into the bottom of that, the maple went on top of her, and everything was packed down with a nice thick layer of dirt. He wheel-barrowed the leftover soil into the woods she’d planned to give away, and spread it in the brush. He cleaned up before dawn, took a nap, then headed for town.

He parked their car in the Steamship Authority lot and bought two tickets to Hyannis on the next ferry, making sure to purchase them with a credit card. Then he ducked into the men’s room. In a stall, he turned one of Julie’s dark blue sweatshirts inside out and squeezed into it—luckily she liked them big and baggy. He put on the fake mustache he’d bought in Falmouth two weeks before, added big, dark sunglasses, then pulled the sweatshirt hood over his head.

The mustachioed man paid cash for his ticket and waited in line with the rest of the ferry passengers. As he stood there, he used the cover of his sunglasses to check out the women with long blond hair, cataloging their attire. He spotted at least four wearing flowered tops and bell-bottom jeans. Good. Now he knew what he’d say Julie was wearing.

Once aboard, the mustachioed man entered one of the ship’s rest rooms where he broke the sunglasses and threw them in the trash. After flushing the mustache he emerged as Bill Morley with the sweatshirt—now right-side out—balled in his hand. While passengers milled about the aft deck, he discreetly draped the sweatshirt over the back of a chair and headed for the snack bar.

After that he played an increasingly confused, frightened, and eventually panicked young husband looking for his lost wife. He’d gone to get her a cup of coffee, and when he came back she was…gone.

 

 

* * *

 

Morley smiled at how perfectly the plan had worked. The police and his father-in-law had been suspicious—wasn’t the husband always suspect?—but hadn’t been able to punch a hole in his story. And since Julie wasn’t carrying a speck of life insurance, no clear motive.

The disguise had proved a big help. If he’d stood on line as Bill Morley, someone very well might have remembered that he’d been alone. But as it turned out, no one could say they’d noticed Bill Morley at all, with or without his wife, until he’d begun wandering the decks, looking for her.

But it had been his fellow passengers who’d helped him the most. A number of them swore they’d seen a woman aboard matching Julie’s description. Of course they had—Morley had made sure of that. One couple even identified Julie’s picture. As a result, the long, unsuccessful search focused on the thirty-mile ferry route. No one gave a thought to digging up the yard back on Nantucket.

Final consensus: 1) Julia Lange Morley either fell or jumped unnoticed from the ferry; or 2) she was a victim of foul play—killed or knocked unconscious and transported off the ferry in the trunk of one of the cars riding on the lower deck.

Neither seemed likely, but once one accepted the fact that Julie had embarked but not debarked, those were the possibilities that remained.

Morley had kept the house for a while but didn’t live there. Instead he mortgaged it and used the money to lease an apartment in Greenwich Village. It was the disco seventies, with long nights of dancing, drugs, and debauchery. In the summers he rented out the Lange place for a tidy sum, and forced himself to pay a visit every so often. He was especially interested in the growth of a certain young maple—his maple.

And now it seemed his maple had come back to haunt him.

Haunt…poor choice of words.

And perhaps he should start calling it Julie’s maple.

All right: What did he know—really know?

Whether through extreme coincidence, fate, or a manipulation of destiny, he had purchased a piece of maple furniture made from the very tree he’d placed over Julie’s corpse nearly thirty years ago. That seemed to be the only hard fact he could rely on.

After that, the assumptions grew murky and fantastic. Much as he hated saying it, he had no choice: The wood from that tree appeared to be possessed.

Two days ago he would have laughed aloud at the very suggestion of a haunted footstool, but after numerous injuries and one potentially fatal close call, Morley was unable to muster even a sneer today.

He didn’t believe in ghosts or haunted houses, let alone haunted footstools, but how else to explain the events of the past two days?

But just for the sake of argument, even if it were possible for Julie’s soul or essence or whatever to become a part of that young maple as it grew—after all, its roots had fed on the nutrients released by her decomposing body—why wasn’t JULIE worked into the grain? Why ANNA?

Morley’s second scotch hit him and he felt his eyelids growing heavy. He let them close and drifted into a semiconscious state where floating woodgrains morphed from JULIE to ANNA and back again…JULIE…ANNA…JULIE…ANNA…JULIE—

“Dear God!” he cried, awakening with a start.

The flight attendant rushed to his side. “Is something wrong, sir?”

“No,” he gasped. “I’m all right. Really.”

But Morley wasn’t all right. His insides were strangling themselves in a Gordian knot. He’d just had an inkling about Anna, and if he was correct, nothing was all right. Nothing at all.

 

 

* * *

 

As soon as Morley was through the airport gate, he found a seat, pulled out his cell phone, and dialed Nantucket information. He asked the operator to read off all the names on the short list of doctors practicing on the island. She did, but none of them rang a bell.

“He might not be in practice anymore.” Might not even be alive, though Morley prayed he was. “He was a GP—my wife saw him back in the seventies.”

“That was probably Doc Lawrence. He’s retired now but his home phone’s listed.”

Lawrence! Yes, that was it! He dialed the number and a moment later found himself talking to Charles Lawrence, M.D., elderly, somewhat hard of hearing, but still in possession of most of his marbles.

“Of course I remember your wife. Saw Julie Lange at least twice a summer for one thing or another all the years she was growing up. Did they ever find her?”

“Not a trace.”

“What a shame. Such a nice girl.”

“She certainly was. But let me ask you something, Doctor. I was just out visiting the old place and it occurred to me that Julie had an appointment with you the day before she disappeared. Did you…discover anything that might have upset her?”

“Not at all. In fact, quite the opposite. She was absolutely overjoyed about being pregnant.”

Morley was glad he was already sitting as all of LaGuardia seemed to tilt under him. Even so, he feared he might tumble from the chair.

“Hello?” Dr. Lawrence said. “Are you still there?”

“Yes,” he croaked. His tongue felt like Velcro.

“You sound as if this is news to you. I assumed she told you.”

“Yes, of course she did,” Morley said, his mind racing. “That’s why we were heading for the mainland—to surprise her father. I never had the heart to tell him after she…”

“Yeah, I know. That made it a double tragedy.”

Morley extricated himself from the conversation as quickly as possible, then sat and stared at nothing, the cell phone resting in his sweating palm, cold damp terror clutching at his heart.

On the last day of her life, Julie had driven into town to run some errands and to see Doc Lawrence for “a check-up.” A check-up…young Bill Morley had been too involved in planning his wife’s demise to question her about that, but now he knew what had been going on. Julie must have missed her period. No such thing as a home pregnancy test back then, so she’d gone to the doctor to have it done. That was what she’d wanted to tell him before he cracked her skull with the three iron.

Julie had often talked about starting a family…not if—when. When she talked of a son, she never mentioned a name; but whenever she spoke of having a daughter, she knew what she wanted to call her. A name she loved.

Anna.

Julie had always intended to call her little girl Anna.

Morley felt weak. He closed his eyes. Something had invaded the wood of that tree, and the wood of that tree had invaded his house, his life. Was it Anna, the tiny little life that had been snuffed out along with her mother’s, or was it Julie, seeking vengeance in the name of the child who would never be born?

How did it go? Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.

But what of a woman never allowed to be born?

Morley shuddered. It didn’t matter who, really. Either way, measures had to be taken, and he knew exactly what he needed to do.

 

 

* * *

 

Night had fallen by the time Morley got home. He entered his house cautiously, turning on lights in each room, hallway, and staircase before he proceeded. When he reached the living room he went directly to the fireplace, opened the flue, and lit the kindling beneath the stack of aged logs on the grate.

He waited until he had a roaring fire, then went to the hall closet and removed a heavy winter blanket. With this tucked under his arm, Morley headed up the stairs—turning lights on as he went—to the floor where he’d locked the footstool in the spare bedroom.

He hesitated outside the door, heart pounding, hands trembling. He tried the knob—still locked, thank God. He turned the key and opened the door just enough to snake his hand in and turn on the light. Then, taking a deep breath, he pushed the door open.

The footstool lay on its side, exactly as he had left it.

He felt a little silly now. What had he been afraid of? Had he been half expecting it to jump at him?

But Morley was taking no chances. He threw the blanket over the stool, bundled it up, and carried it downstairs where he dumped it in front of the fireplace. Using the log tongs, he pulled the stool free and consigned it to the flames.

He watched the curly maple burn.

He wasn’t sure what he expected next. A scream? The legs of the stool writhing in pain? None of that happened. It simply lay there atop the other logs and…burned. At one point he leaned closer, trying for one last peek at the name hidden in the grain, but the heat drove him back before he could find it.

Anna…his child’s name…he thought he should feel something, but he was empty of all emotions except relief. He never knew her…how could he feel anything for her? And as for Julie…

“It’s too bad you had to die,” he whispered as the varnish on the wood bubbled and blackened. “But you left me no choice. And as for coming back and interfering with my life, that’s not going to happen. I’d all but forgotten about you—and now I’ll go about forgetting you again.”

Morley watched the fabric and padding of the stool dissolve in a burst of flame, watched the wood of the seat and legs char and smoke and burn and crumble. He remained before the fire until every last splinter of the stool had been reduced to ash.

Finally he rose and yawned. A long, hard day, but a fruitful one. He looked around. His home was his again, purged of a malign influence. But how to keep it from re-entering?

Easy: Morley resolved never to buy another stick of furniture that wasn’t at least a hundred years old.

With that settled, he headed upstairs for a well-deserved night’s rest. In his bedroom he pulled out the third drawer in his antique pine dresser. As he bent to retrieve a pair of pajamas, the top drawer slid open and slammed against his forehead.

Clutching his head, Morley staggered back. His foot caught on the leg of a chair—a chair that shouldn’t have been there, hadn’t been there a moment ago—and he tumbled to the floor. He landed on his back, groaning with the pain of the impact. As he opened his eyes, he looked up and saw the antique mahogany wardrobe tilting away from the wall, leaning over him, falling!

With a terrified cry he rolled out of the way. The heavy wardrobe landed with a floor-jarring crash just inches from his face. Morley started to struggle to his feet but froze when he saw the letters worked into the grain of the wardrobe’s flank: ANNA.

With a hoarse cry he lunged away and rose to his hands and knees—just in time to see a two-foot splinter of wood stab through the oriental rug—exactly where he’d been only a heartbeat before. He clambered to his feet and ducked away as his dresser tumbled toward him. On its unfinished rear panel he saw the name ANNA wrapped around one of its knots.

Caught in the ice-fisted grip of blind, screaming panic, Morley lurched toward the door, dodging wooden spears that slashed through the rug. Julie…Anna…or whoever or whatever it was had somehow seeped out of the footstool and infected the entire room. He had to get out!

Ahead of him he saw the heavy oak door begin to swing shut. No! He couldn’t be trapped in here! He leaped forward and ducked through the door an instant before it slammed closed.

Gasping, Morley sagged against the hallway wall. Close. Too close. He—

Pain lanced into his ankle. He looked down and saw a foot-long splinter of floorboard piecing his flesh. And all up and down the hall the floorboards writhed and buckled, thrusting up jagged, quivering knife-sharp spikes.

Morley ran, dodging and leaping down the hall as wooden spears stabbed his lower legs, ripping his clothes. Where to go? Downstairs—out! He couldn’t stay in the house—it was trying to kill him!

He reached the stairs and kept going. He felt the wooden treads tilting under his feet, trying to send him tumbling. He grabbed the banister and it exploded into splinters at his touch, peppering him with a thousand wooden nails. He slammed against the stairwell wall but managed to keep his footing until the next to last step when he tripped and landed on the tiled floor of the front foyer.

What now? his fear-crazed mind screamed. Would the tiles crack into ceramic daggers and cut him to shreds?

But the foyer floor lay cool and inert beneath him.

Of course, he thought, rising to his knees. It’s not wood. Whatever was in the footstool has managed to infiltrate the wood of the house, but has no power over anything else. As long as I stay on a tile or linoleum floor—

Morley instinctively ducked at the sound of a loud crack! behind him, and felt something whiz past his head. When he looked up he saw one of the balusters from the staircase jutting from the wall, vibrating like an arrow in a bull’s-eye. At that instant the upper border of the wainscoting splintered from the wall and stabbed him in the belly—not a deep wound, but it drew blood.

And then the entire foyer seemed to explode—the wainscoting panels shredding and flying at him, balusters zipping through the air, molding peeling from the ceiling and lancing at him.

Morley dashed for the front door. Moving in a crouch, he reached the handle and pulled. He sobbed with joy when it swung open. He stumbled into the cool night air and slammed the door shut behind him.

Battered, bruised, bleeding, he gripped the wrought iron railing—metal: cold, hard, wonderful, reliable metal—and slumped onto the granite slabs of his front steps where he sobbed and retched and thanked the stars that years ago he’d taken a contractor’s advice and replaced the original oak door with a steel model. For security reasons, the contractor had said. That decision had just saved his life.

He’d lost his home. No place in that building was safe for him—even being this close to it could be dangerous. He fought to his feet and staggered across the glorious concrete of the sidewalk to lean against the magnificent steel of one of the parked cars. Safe.

And then something bounced off his head and dropped to the sidewalk. Morley squinted in the darkness. An acorn. Dear God!

He lurched away from the overhanging oak and didn’t stop moving until he was a good dozen feet from the tree.

An accident? A coincidence? After all, it was October, the time of year when oaks began dropping acorns.

But how could he be sure that even the trees hadn’t turned against him?

He needed a safe place where he could rest and tend his wounds and clear his head and not spend every moment fearing for his life. A place with no wood, a place where he could think! Tomorrow, in the light of day, he could solve this problem, but until then…

He knew the place. That newly restored hotel on West Thirty-fifth Street—the Deco. He’d been to an art show there last month and remembered how he’d loathed its decor—all gleaming steel and glass and chrome, so completely lacking in the warmth and richness of the wood that filled his home.

What a laugh! Now it seemed like Mecca, like Paradise.

The Deco wasn’t far. Giving the scattered trees a wide berth, Morley began walking.

 

 

* * *

 

“Sir, you’re bleeding,” said the clerk at the reception desk. “Shall I call a doctor?”

I know damn well I’m bleeding, Morley wanted to shout, but held his tongue. He was in a foul mood, but at least he wasn’t bleeding as much as before.

“I’ve already seen a doctor,” he lied.

“May I ask what happened?”

This twerp of a desk clerk had a shaved head, a natty little mustache, and a pierced eyebrow that rose as he finished the question. His name tag read Wölf. Really.

“Automobile accident.” Morley fumbled through his wallet. “My luggage is wrecked, but I still have this.” He slapped his Amex Platinum down on the black marble counter.

The clerk wiggled his eyebrow stud and picked up the card.

“I must stress one thing,” Morley said. “I want a room with no wood in it. None. Got that?”

The stud dipped as the clerk frowned. “No wood…let me think…the only room that would fit that is the Presidential Suite. It was just refurbished in metal and glass. But the rate is—”

“Never mind the rate. I want it.”

As the clerk nodded and got to work, Morley did a slow turn and looked around. What a wonderful place. Steel, brass, chrome, marble, glass, ceramic. Lovely because this was the way the future was supposed to look when the here-and-now was the future…a future without wood.

Lovely.

 

 

* * *

 

He did not let the bellhop go—though Morley had no luggage, the man had escorted him to the eighth floor—until he had made a careful inspection. The clerk had been right: not a stick of wood in the entire suite.

As soon as he was alone, Morley stripped and stepped into the shower. The water stung his wounds, but the warm flow eased his battered muscles and sluiced away the dried blood. He wrapped himself in the oversized terry cloth robe and headed straight for the bedroom.

As he reached for the covers he paused, struck by the huge chrome headboard. At its center, rising above the spread wings that stretched to the edges of the king-size mattress, was the giant head of a bald eagle with a wickedly pointed beak. So lifelike, Morley could almost imagine a predatory gleam in its metallic eye.

But no time for aesthetics tonight. He was exhausted. He craved the oblivion of sleep to escape the horrors of the day. Tomorrow, refreshed, clear-headed, he would tackle the problem head on, find a way to exorcise Julie or Anna from his home. But now, tonight…

Morley pulled back the covers and collapsed onto the silk sheets. Hello, Morpheus, good-bye, Anna…

 

 

* * *

 

Wölf spots the night manager crossing the lobby and motions him over.

“Mr. Halpern, I just had a guest here who insisted on a room with no wood—absolutely no wood in it. I gave him the Presidential Suite. I believe that’s all metal and glass and such, right?”

“It was until yesterday,” Halpern says. He’s fortyish and probably thinks the curly toupee makes him look thirtyish. It doesn’t. “The designer moved in a new headboard. Said he found it in a Massachusetts wood shop. Brand new and carved out of heavily grained maple. But he went and had it coated with so many layers of chrome paint it looks like solid steel. Said he couldn’t resist the eagle. Can’t say as I blame him—looks like it came straight off the Chrysler Building.”

“Should I inform the guest?”

“What? And disturb his sleep?” Halpern waves a dismissive hand and strolls away. “Let the man be. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”