Missing Marlene (14 page)

Had Audrey really intended to confide in Jane? Or had she found another way to end Marlene’s game? How far would Audrey have gone to keep her shameful secret? As far as killing Marlene? Audrey could have walked right up to Jane’s front door, confronted Marlene . . . They could have struggled, perhaps one of them had screamed—in that quiet neighborhood, where most people were gone from early morning until dinnertime, probably no one would have heard it.

How could Audrey have done it? Stabbed her? With a knife she brought over for the purpose? With one of Jane’s knives? No, then Jane would surely have found blood. Unless Audrey had cleaned it up.

Strangled her? Yes, that would work. Audrey was a big, healthy woman. Strong. Easily a match for the petite Marlene. Audrey could have strangled her, then dragged her body out to the dense woods behind the house.

But then who had removed all of Marlene’s belongings from her room? Audrey? Where would she have put them?

Jane turned the car onto Center Street and into the alley that led to the lot behind her building. She cut the engine and just sat for a moment, thinking.

It just didn’t hold together.

When Jane entered the office, Daniel was on the phone, answering someone’s questions and trying to remain calm.

“No, I’m afraid I don’t know when she’ll be back.” He saw Jane and his eyes widened in appeal. “Yes, Rosemary, I do realize she’s been out more than usual lately, but she’s had some personal matters to attend to. If you’ll just tell me what you’re calling about, I’ll be more than happy to—” He broke off and stared at the phone, then looked up at Jane. “She hung up on me!”

Jane’s jaw dropped. “Why, that rude bitch.” She stomped into her office, fell into her chair, and flipped open her address book to Rosemary’s number. She punched it out, seething with anger.

Rosemary’s voice when she answered was its usual meek whine, as if her conversation with Daniel had never taken place.

“How dare you hang up on Daniel!” Jane said.

“Oh, Jane, then you are there.”

“Yes, Rosemary, I just walked in—in time to witness your rudeness.”

“My
rudeness! I’ve left four messages for you and have received no return call. You’re supposed to be my agent. You’re my only connection to the publishing world....”

Jane drummed her fingers on the desk. How often had she heard this from her clients?

“You know how lonely and isolated it is for a writer.” Tears came into Rosemary’s voice. “I just don’t know what to think anymore, Jane. Am I important to you anymore? Do you care about my career? Are you still there for me? Do you still want to represent me?”

“No, Rosemary, I don’t.”

“I beg your pardon?” The tears had disappeared.

“I don’t want to be your agent anymore, Rosemary.” Jane looked up and saw Daniel standing in the doorway, his mouth open in astonishment. “You’re a whining, egomaniacal passive-aggressive with only a fraction of the talent you think you have. Besides which, lately there’s been nothing to represent for you, because you turn down deals—”

“Only the last deal.”

“Because of a frigging dog!”

“That dog is important to me!”

“Good. Keep the mutt in. I’m out.” Jane slammed down the phone.

She sat there, breathing hard. “What did I just do?”

“You fired Rosemary Davis,” Daniel replied, smiling in wonder. “Brava, Jane!”

“Brava? I guess. Crazy, maybe, but it sure felt good. Nah, not crazy. Something I should have done ages ago.” She laughed. “And to think I was just passing through the office!”

“I’d hate to see what happens when you plan to stay.”

“I have been out a lot lately, haven’t I?”

“Yes,” he answered shyly.

“I can’t help it. I’ve got to find out what happened to Marlene.” She wouldn’t tell Daniel about the video, despite what its presence under Marlene’s mattress signified. She couldn’t ever tell him about that.

“Speaking of Marlene,” he said, “Ivy called.”

She sighed. “You might as well bring me all the message slips.”

He disappeared and returned with a thick stack of pink paper.

“Good heavens.”

“It’s not all bad,” he said brightly. “Holly Griffin at Corsair wants to buy Carol Freund’s novel.”

“You’re kidding!” This was fabulous news. Carol Freund had written a riveting literary thriller that Jane had been trying to sell for nine months, collecting more than a dozen rejections. Yet she’d believed in the book and refused to give up. “Please call her back and tell her I’m thrilled and will call her ASAP, but that I’ve got some personal matters to attend to, as you so well put it.”

“Will do. So ... any progress on Marlene? Ivy was—well, she was pretty upset. She said she’d talked to the police—”

“Here in Shady Hills?”

“Yes.”

“Great. It’s my own fault. I should have called her before this. What did she say?”

“That they had nothing to report. She wants to talk to you right away. She’s threatening to fly out here.”

“All right. Put her message on the top.” She took the slips from him and placed them in the center of the mess on her desk. “I will call her, but first I have to see someone.” She got up and hurried out to the front office, stopping at Daniel’s desk. “And if Rosemary calls back to whine an apology—which she will—tell her we’ll be sending along an official letter of termination shortly.”

“Gotcha. Will you be back today?” he called after her.

“Not sure. I’ll call.”

She left the office by the front door, crossed Center Street, and started across the green. She glanced at the Village Shop, and as she did its door opened and Helen emerged, a heavy dark-haired figure in a tight tan raincoat. She crossed the street and started down Jane’s path. She walked with her head down and didn’t notice Jane until they were less than ten feet apart. Even then Helen’s face registered no emotion, nor did she even stop walking.

“Hello, Helen,” Jane said. “I’d like to talk to you, please.”

Now Helen stopped and drew in her breath in annoyance. “I’ve talked to you twice already. I told you I’d tell you if she called.”

“Yes, you talked to me twice, but you didn’t tell me everything. Please, it won’t take long.”

“Where?”

“How about over there?” Jane indicated the bandstand.

Helen shrugged. “Fine.”

Jane led the way to the ornate white structure, and they climbed its four steps. They sat on the bench that ran around the inside.

“I have to be home in ten minutes.” Helen took a cigarette and a book of matches out of her bag and cupped her hand around the match to light the cigarette. “My mother needs me. She’s got MS. She’s in a wheelchair, can’t leave the house.”

Without preamble Jane said, “You lied to me when I asked you about Marlene.”

Helen shot her an angry look. “What do you mean, I lied to you?”

“You never told me you went to see Marlene the day she left. Why not? Because you gave her a ride? Where did you take her?”

Helen fixed her gaze on a squirrel sitting on a branch of a lilac bush beside the bandstand. Finally, she blew out smoke and turned to Jane with an expression that surprised her—a look of disgusted defiance.

“What do you think, that you
own
Marlene? That because you paid her practically nothing to take care of your whining brat, you have a right to chase her around? Why don’t you give it up, give the girl some space?”

Jane gritted her teeth.
This is a young woman,
she reminded herself,
barely more than a child. I must remain calm, mature.

“No,” she said evenly, actually smiling a little, “I don’t think I own Marlene. But you have to understand, she’s my responsibility. At least, she was my responsibility while she worked for me, lived with me. She left without telling me where she was going. I have no way of knowing that she’s safe, or even where she is. I’m sure I told you her mother is a dear friend of mine, one of my oldest friends, from college. I owe it to her to find out where Marlene is and make sure she’s all right.”

Helen seemed to consider this. Then she shrugged indifferently. “All right, I did go to your house that day.”

“Way?”

“To give Marlene a ride, like you said. And no,” she said nastily, “I didn’t tell you, because Marlene made me promise not to. Marlene, she’s
my
dear friend—you can understand that, right? So I was protecting her.”

“Protecting her?” Jane said, brows knitted. “From whom?”

“From
you,”
Helen exclaimed. “She knew if she told you she was leaving, you would have tried to talk her out of it, made things hard for her. You would have called her mother. She didn’t need that kind of trouble. So she just left.”

“Where did you take her?” Jane asked.

“To the station. Her bags were ready, and we loaded my car and I took her downtown and saw her off.”

“Where did she go?”

“To New York, to stay with Zena. That’s the girl you asked me about at the Tavern, right? So you had it figured all along. Why didn’t you just call her?”

“That’s a long story,” Jane answered. “Why hasn’t Marlene called her mother? I can understand her not wanting to talk to me after leaving the way she did, but to not even call her mother—”

“Who would try to pressure her into coming back to
you.”
Helen shook her head slowly. “She’s not coming back to you, and she’s not going back to Detroit. She’s having too much fun in New York.”

“Then you’ve heard from her?” Jane pounced.

“Yeah, sure.” Helen’s tone was casual.

“When?”

“A few days ago.”

“What did you talk about?” Jane asked.

“None of your business.”

Jane stared at her, waiting.

Finally Helen relented. “She wanted to know how Gil was. She’s still stuck on him, still wants him. But that’s over. I told her to get on with her life, find someone new. She started crying. She wanted to come back and see Gil, plead with him to take her back. I told her not to waste her time. It’s not gonna happen.”

“Did you ask Marlene to call me or her mother?”

“I told her you wanted her to.”

“Did you get her address or phone number?”

“No.”

Liar,
Jane thought. She considered all Helen had said. “So Marlene is living with Zena, and doing what?”

“I don’t know, partying, shopping—what difference does it make?”

“She’ll have to earn money.”

Helen smiled slyly. “Maybe she’ll find somebody with money.”

“Has she?” Jane asked.

“I said maybe she
will.”
Helen met Jane’s gaze. “Listen. Now that she’s gone, I don’t see much future in my relationship with her. I don’t think she’ll be keeping me up to date on her life in the Big Apple.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.

“Really?” Jane said, equally sarcastic. “A good friend like you?”

“You can stuff that.” Savagely Helen ground out her cigarette on the white enameled surface of the bench.

Jane winced.

“I gotta go,” Helen said flatly, and left the bandstand.

Jane watched the girl’s back as she crossed the green, the too-tight raincoat pulling with each step, the fat brown braid swinging heavily from side to side.

Helen’s admission explained a lot. Marlene had simply gone to New York to be with Zena. And, judging from Helen’s supposed speculation, Marlene had probably found a man to live on, just as Zena had found Trevor Ames.

Her bags were ready,
Helen had said. Marlene would have been in a rush to leave before she was caught. And in her haste she forgot the videotape she had hidden under her mattress. Most likely she had already realized she had no further use for it: Audrey had made it clear she would pay no more blackmail. And as for showing it to Elliott or sending it to the local news out of spite, Marlene must have seen there was no future in that. After all, she herself was the tape’s other “star.”

Porn star . . .
Once again, the words Gil had purportedly spat at Marlene during their parking-lot breakup echoed in Jane’s head. Had Gil
seen
the tape? Yes, Jane believed he had, and she had a pretty good idea how.

Mesmerized by this new train of thought, Jane left the bandstand and started back along the path toward her office.

Sitting at her desk, Jane regarded with dread the steadily growing pile of letters, manuscripts, book contracts, advance reading copies, and message slips. She knew what she should do first: call Ivy. She dreaded that most of all. But, as Kenneth had always said, “Do the worst first,” so she resolutely picked up the phone and dialed Ivy at work.

Ivy’s tone was cold, her voice tight. “Your not calling me back tells me a lot, Jane. This is my
daughter
who’s missing, and you put me off like one of your trashy writers.”

Jane decided not to respond to that. “Ivy, I don’t blame you for being angry. I apologize for not getting back to you before this. But looking for Marlene is what’s kept me so busy.”

“Oh, really? And have you made any progress?”

Jane couldn’t possibly tell Ivy about the video. “Not much yet, I’m afraid. I’m still waiting to hear from the police, but I understand from Daniel that you called them.”

“Yes, I did,” Ivy said defiantly. “The reason you haven’t heard from them is that they have nothing to tell you. They spoke to that Gil character, and he denies having anything to do with Marlene’s leaving. Really, Jane, I shouldn’t have to be telling
you
this.”

Jane decided to hold out a crumb of hope to poor Ivy. “Actually, I have learned something encouraging. Marlene’s friend Helen has admitted she gave Marlene a ride to the train and that Marlene was going to New York to stay with Zena.”

“Well!” Ivy said. “Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place? That means when we find Zena, we’ll find Marlene.”

“Have Zena’s parents heard from her?”

“No.” .

“Have the New York police found out anything?”

“They spoke to the post office about Zena’s post-office box. On her application, Zena put down a phony address. It turned out to be a Korean grocery store. The police went there. No one had ever heard of Zena. Now why would Zena do that?”

“Because she didn’t want to put down the address of the place she’s really living—Trevor Ames’s apartment. Did you tell the Harmons about my going to the play? About Dorothy Peyton really being Zena and that she’s living with that actor, Trevor Ames?”

“No, Jane, I didn’t.”

“Why on earth not? That’s the trail the New York police should be following.”

“Because that theory’s flimsy at best.”

“Flimsy! I told you, I got a call from this girl. She was looking for Marlene, and when I called her back, I got this Trevor Ames’s answering machine.”

“Yes, but there’s one problem. You have no way of knowing that the girl who called was Zena.”