The Hanging Hill

46

Judy and Zack sat with Meghan and her mother at a diner table with chrome legs and a speckled top.

“You’re Meghan McKenna!” said a fan about thirteen years old, trembling near their table, flapping a napkin and a pen.

Meghan smiled. “Hi. Would you like an autograph?”

“Yes! Ohmigoodness!” The fan had just recognized Judy, too. “You’re Judy Magruder! I’ve read all your books!”

Judy’s turn to smile. “Do you have another napkin?”

“Here,” said Mrs. McKenna. “You can use mine. No body ever asks for the mother’s autograph.”

“Or the stepson’s,” said Zack.

“Guess we’re just not very interesting, hunh?”

“True. But we do get to eat first!”

After Judy had signed about a dozen napkins (to Meghan’s fifty), she watched Zack and Meghan devour their late lunch, made even later by the flurry of fans that descended on their table once word hit the street that Meghan McKenna was “inside eating!” Both kids wolfed down hamburgers and french fries from tissue-lined baskets and sucked hard on extraordinarily thick chocolate milk shakes. The talented young movie star had quite an appetite; Judy was confident she wasn’t a ghost.

“So,” Judy said to Mrs. McKenna, “is this your first trip to Connecticut?”

“No. Meghan did a movie here once. Something about a horse.”

“Fredericka the Faithful Filly,” said Meghan.

“Don’t talk with you mouth full of food, honey.”

“Sorry.”

“Your daughter’s a terrific actress,” said Judy. “I wasn’t surprised when she was nominated for an Oscar.”

Mrs. McKenna shrugged. “She’s having fun. As soon as it isn’t fun …”

“We’re done!” said Meghan, dabbing at her lips with a napkin.

“Meghan has a gift,” said Mrs. McKenna. “However, I refuse to become a stage mother, making my kid miserable by dragging her off to auditions when she’d rather be home playing soccer in the mud. I will not live vicariously through my daughter’s triumphs.”

“What’s ‘vicariously’?” asked Zack.

Meghan raised her hand and answered: “Vicariously: Experienced through another person, rather than firsthand.”

“Very good,” said Mrs. McKenna. “I’m glad to see you studied your vocabulary words. However, we still have math homework to do tonight. Science, too.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“You’re Meghan’s teacher?” asked Judy.

“When she’s on the road, which it seems like we have been for over a year. Before my daughter became an actress, I taught middle school. My husband still does.”

“You still teach, too, Mom,” said Meghan.

“Yes, but only one student in a one-room school-house,” Mrs. McKenna said warmly. “Typically a hotel room or trailer near a movie set. I have my master’s degree in history.”

“I’m impressed,” said Judy.

“Don’t be. It’s why we almost didn’t do your show.”

Now she was confused. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” said Mrs. McKenna hesitantly, “let’s just say the Hanging Hill Playhouse does not have a very good history when it comes to productions featuring children.”

“Really?”

“The Music Man was the last show they did with any children in the cast and it closed after two performances because the young actor playing the part of Winthrop refused to come out of his dressing room!”

“Why?”

“There are rumors that the theater is haunted.”

Judy pretended to be surprised. “Is that so?”

“I did a little research. Dug up all sorts of stories about frightening ‘presences.’ Stage lights going on and off by themselves. Footsteps and voices up on the catwalks when nobody’s there. Odd breezes and odors. There’s even an actress named Thelma Beaumont who died of a heart attack, right at center stage when the audience rose to give her a standing ovation. They say she keeps coming back to take one more curtain call.”

There was a clink.

“Sorry.” Zack had just dropped his fork.

“Even Mr. Justus Willowmeier the Third is rumored to show up from time to time.”

“Is he the one who built the Hanging Hill Publick House?” asked Judy.

“No, he was that Willowmeier’s grandson and the one who transformed the hotel and tavern into an entertainment emporium. Justus the Third loved show people. Particularly showgirls. He was seldom seen without a cigar in his mouth and a pretty woman on each arm. He also kept one of the apartments on the top floor. Liked to host rowdy parties up there, and according to several of the stories, he still does!”

“That’s where we’re staying,” said Judy. “The top floor.”

“Us too. Maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll all get invited to one of his cast parties!”

“So all these ghostly presences scare the kids away?”

“Yep.”

“I wonder why the theater wanted to do my show,” said Judy.

“Maybe because your script only needs two children,” said Mrs. McKenna. “But—I’ll be honest—if Meghan didn’t love your books so much, well, we wouldn’t be here.”

“Why?”

Mrs. McKenna took in a deep breath. “Seventy years ago,” she said, “a child performer died here. A girl.”

Judy was horrified. “In a show?”

“I’m not sure. My information right now is sort of sketchy. Got it from Florence, the ninety-year-old sweetheart who volunteers in the box office. Anyway, Florence told me there was a fire ‘of suspicious origin’ back in the late 1930s and she vaguely remembers the police arresting a man, one of the touring vaudeville performers, charging him with arson and first-degree felony murder.”

“Oh my.”

“The little girl who died in the blaze was also on the vaudeville bill. Part of a brother-sister juggling act.”

Now there were two clinks.

This time, both Zack and Meghan had dropped their forks.