“I’m glad you’re on our side,” Stang said dryly.
“A month,” Matthew said, “thank you, thank you,” and he bowed low from the waist and then went back to his own office, smiling.
And in April, his daughter Kate formulated a plan of her own.
She did not put the first part of her plan into effect until the beginning of May, when she finally worked up enough courage to translate theory into action. By that time, she had learned that David Regan was leaving for California in July, and this knowledge, rather than her own impending trip to Europe, was what lent urgency to her plan. For whereas she knew that she and Julia would be gone only two months, she had the oddest feeling that if David were allowed to go to California without ever seeing her as a woman, he would never again return East. She was seventeen, and she believed this with firm conviction, never once doubting her intuition.
She was used to making plans, because everything about seventeen involved planning. But the planning she had done up to now was usually a group activity and rarely involved anything conceived and executed alone. This was different. She couldn’t even breathe to anyone the slightest hint of what she intended to do or hoped to accomplish. David was her exclusive problem, and so she planned alone all through April and the beginning of May, and when she learned he was going to California, she daringly put her plan into motion.
The plan would only work, it seemed to her, if it were made to appear accidental. If David once suspected she had worked this out in detail, she was certain he would bolt. He still thought of her as a seventeen-year-old, a nice kid who was the daughter of two of his adult friends. She wanted him to know that, yes, she was seventeen, but she was something much more than a nice kid. She was an adult in her own right, and quite capable of loving and being loved. And she wanted him to know this before he left for the Coast.
She began working on Julia weeks before she hoped to launch her main offensive. Like a good general, she studied the terrain and chose her own battleground. She had decided that she and David had to be alone somewhere, away from other people, and she concluded that the Regan house at Lake Abundance would be empty and isolated in May, and would serve her needs excellently. And then, like a good general, she began considering the various approach routes to the house, choosing Julia as the most likely and most reasonable, and beginning her early shore bombardment by casually stating she had begun packing her clothes for the European trip already, and then leading the conversation into the various items of clothing, and finally asking Julia how many bathing suits she should take.
Two days later, she told Julia she had bought a new bathing suit, but couldn’t find a suit she had worn all through last summer, a suit she was very fond of, a basic essential to her European wardrobe. Julia, unsuspecting, innocent, sympathized with her, and told her it would probably turn up somewhere, had she looked very carefully through the summer stuff that Amanda had undoubtedly packed away at the end of the season? Kate let the matter drop.
But casually, within the next few days, as they discussed passports and hotels, she brought the conversation around to that bathing suit, “The red one, don’t you remember, Mrs. Regan? I wore it all last summer at the lake. I practically lived in it. The red wool.”
“Yes, I remember it,” Julia said. “I’m sure you’ll find it before we leave, Kate.”
And again the conversation drifted off into more important matters, or seemingly more important matters; the one thing on Kate’s mind was access to the Regan house at the lake.
The next day, she called Julia and said, “I remember now, Mrs. Regan.”
“What’s that, darling?” Julia said.
“Where I left the bathing suit. The red wool.”
“Oh, good. Did you find it?”
“No, I didn’t. But I remember where I left it.”
“Where, dear?”
“At the lake.” Kate paused. “At your house.”
“My house? At Lake Abundance?”
“Yes, Mrs. Regan. Do you remember once at the end of the summer, we came over for a barbecue? And I’d been swimming, and I went into the bedroom at the end of the house, the little one that has the picture of a ship on the wall, and I changed my clothes in there, do you remember?”
“Well, no, I don’t exactly, Kate.”
“Yes. I put on dungarees and a sweater, don’t you remember?”
“If you say so, Kate. But I had the house cleaned thoroughly before I left it, and I don’t remember seeing your suit anywhere.”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s there,” Kate said.
“Well, what would you like to do? Shall we drive out some day to have a look?”
“Yes, but there’s no real rush,” Kate said. “Now that I know where it is.”
“All right, darling, let me know when you want to go, will you?”
“I will,” Kate said, and she hung up triumphantly.
The first part of the plan, then, had been carried off successfully. She had convinced Julia that the red bathing suit was at the lake house — or at least led Julia to believe that she was convinced it was there. And Julia had offered to drive her out one day. The next part of the plan was to make sure that Julia did not drive her out, and this required a little bit of maneuvering and a great deal of luck. For one thing, she had to synchronize David’s presence with Julia’s absence, and this would not be easy. Julia often went into New York on her shopping sprees, but she went invariably on Mondays or Thursdays when the stores stayed open late, and when she could spend the entire day looking and buying. She had, in fact, once mentioned that she wouldn’t dream of going into the city on a Saturday because the stores were unimaginably crowded and the train service was too erratic. But the only tune David came to Talmadge was on weekends, so it was essential that Julia be gone on a Saturday — Sunday would have been equally acceptable, but far too difficult to manage — and it had to be a Saturday when David was there for the weekend. By a series of discreet questions, she learned that David would be coming up on the twenty-first, less than a week away. Desperately, Kate tried to figure a way of getting Julia out of Talmadge.
Her break came unexpectedly. Julia told her that she was going into White Plains that Saturday to pick up a few things she needed, and Kate thought about this all the way home, her heart pounding, and called her the moment she reached the house.
“What time did you plan on going, Mrs. Regan?” she asked.
“Oh, I thought I’d get there before lunch and come back sometime in the afternoon,” Julia said.
Quickly, her voice expressing disappointment, Kate said, “Oh, I thought I could join you.”
“Why not, Kate? You’re entirely welc—”
“I have some library work to do in the morning, Mrs. Regan. Could I possibly meet you there later in the afternoon?”
“How late?”
“Three o’clock?”
“I hadn’t planned on staying that late,” Julia said.
“Oh well, then never mind. I guess I can get a lift back somehow.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, one of the girls was going to drive me in, but she’s going right on to New York, and I don’t have a way of getting back home.”
Julia sighed and said, “I suppose I can find something to do until three.”
“I’d certainly appreciate it, Mrs. Regan.”
As soon as she hung up, Kate called Suzie Fox. “Sue,” she said, “I need a lift to White Plains on Saturday.”
“I’m not going to White Plains on Saturday,” Suzie said
“Yes, you are,” Kate said.