Marcia Talley - Sing It to Her Bones

Even in that crippled condition I was still going 55 when I reached the pond and I realized with absolute certainty that, barring a miracle, I wouldnt make it around the curve. I pressed both feet on the brake pedal, sending the car fishtailing across the centerline. As I pulled back into my lane, I was vaguely aware that the dark van was still with me, but I was too busy to think about much more than slowing the car down. Hold on, Hannah! Here we go!

My car sailed over the ditch, shot through a hedge, ripped through a barbed-wire fence, and plunged, nose first, into the murky water of the Baxters pond. The last thought I had before everything went dark was not of my husband or daughter or the fear of dying but Oh, damn, Im going to ruin Connies scarf.

PRAISE FOR SING IT TO HER BONES

Hannah Ives is a welcome addition to the mystery landscapesmart, brave, wonderfully human, the kind of woman you want for your new best friend. Sing It to Her Bones is an impressive, polished debut from a writer to watch. Laura Lippman, Edgar Awardwinning author ofButchers Hill

Scenes of Annapolis and the Chesapeake Bay area add an authentic tang of sunlit salt air to this suspenseful debut novel. Hannah Ives is an appealing, believable heroine. Margaret Maron, author ofHome Fires Burning

Published by
Dell Publishing
a division of
Random House, Inc.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 1999 by Marcia Talley

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

The trademark Dell is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

eISBN: 978-0-307-80895-0

v3.1

In Memoriam

Paul Pierre Nash
19501993

W ITHOUT THE HELP OF MANY GENEROUS PEOPLE, THIS book would not have been possible. Any mistakes made are mine alone and should not be attributed to the individuals mentioned below.

To my husband, Barry Talley, for his love, unwavering support, and unflagging fondness for Chinese carry-out food. To Quentin Kinderman, the other sailor in my life, who would be a dangerous man should he turn to crime. To my daughters, Laura and Sarah, who were with me when Emily was born and know her better than I do. To BM3 Christopher Wellington of the U.S. Coast Guard station at Thomas Point in Annapolis for valuable information about rescue at sea. To Dr. Anthony Massey and Dr. Charles Kinzer for hypothetical glimpses inside a doctors files. To friends at the Naval Academy, especially David, Charles, and Bill, for whom no question was ever too off-the-wall, and my colleagues at the Naval Academy library who listened patiently to Hannahs adventures over countless lunches.

To the Malice Domestic Conference for awarding me their grant for unpublished writers in 1998, I am everlastingly grateful. Thanks, too, to my editor, Jacquie Miller, for her perceptive suggestions and to my miracle-working agent, Jimmy Vines.

To my writers groups, who read every word of this manuscript, sometimes more than onceSujata Massey, John Mann, Janice McClain, and Karen Dieg-mueller in Baltimore; and Janet Benrey, Ron Benrey, Carolyn Curtis, Ray Flynt, Mary Ellen Hughes, Trish Marshall, and Sherriel Mattingly in Annapolis1,000,000 thanks. Theres a bit of each of you in every Hannah novel.

To my dear friends Kate Charles and Deborah Crombie, who read the final manuscript and offered constructive criticism and encouragement, and to Sara Ann Freed and Linda Sprenkle, who nagged, thanks for being the best cheerleaders a girl could ever have.

To Dr. Stanley Watkins for saving my life and to the 2,599,999 other breast cancer survivors now living in the United States from whom I draw my strength and inspiration.

I cannot bid you bid my daughter live;
That were impossible: but, I pray you both,
Possess the people in Messina here
How innocent she died; and if your love
Can labour aught in sad invention,
Hang her an epitaph upon her tomb
And sing it to her bones.

William Shakespeare,
Much Ado About Nothing,
Act 5, Scene 1

When I got cancer, I decided I wasnt going to put up with crap from anybody anymore. I would have quit work right then, too, but even with Blue Cross/Blue Shield paying 75 percent, the surgery and the chemo treatments cost me too much to ditch the job.

I thought about it, though. I imagined walking into her cubicle and announcing, loud enough for everyone in the office to hear, Fran, I quit! Just like that. And shed look hurt and confused and go, Buh-buh and Id say, As of right now! Then Id strut right out, past all of them standing in a line behind their desks. I imagined theyd be smiling at me and clapping.

My husband thinks its the job that made me sick. All that stress, he says. It cant be good for you, Hannah. One morning while I was sitting at the kitchen table hugging a bowl of cornflakes and trying not to throw up, he handed me an article hed torn out of a magazine in the doctors office, Stressed to Kill. Families can be so helpful. My sisters are always sending me stuff like that. The Anticancer Diet, Super-food for Women, Cancer: Facts vs. Feelings. I keep it all in a manila folder by my bed, so when they visit, they think Im reading it.

The truth is, I was born stressed. The pediatrician told my mother he had never seen a kindergarten kid with ulcers before. In first grade I went hyper when Mom brought home college-ruled notebook paper. It says wide-ruled, I wailed. It says so, right-here-on-this-list. And I fussed and whined and carried on until she drove out to the 7-Eleven after dinner and bought me exactly the right kind. I stopped having stomachaches after the second grade, so I suppose I learned to cope. You have to stay in school, dont you? So you manage. You work it out. The same goes for jobs. And bosses.

Im not sure when my boss, Fran, started acting like a fruitcake. She was always a little weird, kept her desk locked up tight even while she was sitting at it. Once she attended a two-day seminar at an executive hotel outside the Beltway and came back all fired up about Total Quality Management. Right away she selected six of us to form a group to meet during lunch hour for weeks in order to come up with four or five suggestions to improve our service, like making a telephone training video, installing a second fax machine, and hiring a stress management consultant. When we submitted our list to Fran, she studied it for a long time, then grabbed a black Magic Marker from the ceramic mug on her desk and drew a heavy line through the stress management consultant. We dont have stress here, she said. We all gasped, and I swore to everyone in the lunchroom afterward that I saw the papers on her desk flutter.