Missing Marlene (4 page)

Jane pushed scrambled eggs from the frying pan onto a plate, took toast from the toaster, buttered it, and set the plate on the kitchen table in front of Nick. He broke a corner off the toast and passed it surreptitiously to Winky, who sat on the table beside his plate, intently following his every move.

Jane, lost in thought, barely noticed. She stood at the sink and gazed out the window across the narrow backyard that sloped up to dense blue-green pines.

She didn’t know Marlene at all; she saw that now. The girl might just as well have lived somewhere else for all Jane really knew about her. Not that Jane had imagined a different private life for Marlene. The truth was, Jane hadn’t thought much about Marlene at all, beyond her being an unpleasant young woman and a thoroughly unsuitable nanny.

The phone rang. It was Ivy.

“I wanted to catch you before you left for work.”

“I have a phone there, too,” Jane said.

“I know, but I have to go to the office soon, and it’s hard to talk there. I spoke to Bob and Jill Harmon, Zena’s parents. She hasn’t called them in over a week. She always calls them once a week. They’re getting concerned.”

“So why don’t they call her?”

“They can’t. Zena’s never given them her number because her roommate works nights and sleeps days and can’t be disturbed by the phone. Zena always calls them when her roommate isn’t home.”

“Do they have her address?”

“Not her actual address—a post-office box. Zena’s afraid the checks they send her will be stolen if they’re delivered to her building. Apparently she lives in a bad neighborhood.”

“Apparently.”

“Anyway, they’ve written to her at the post-office box, telling her to call them. When they hear from her they’ll ask her if Marlene is there; then they’ll let me know.”

When Jane hung up and turned to the table, Nick was gone and Winky was licking the yolk from his plate.

“Winky! Stop that. Shoo. Shoo.”

Winky gave her a resentful look and bounded off the table and into the dining room, where to Jane’s distress she leaped up onto the antique mahogany hutch that had belonged to Kenneth’s grandmother. Winky then jumped to the hutch’s middle shelf and sat down primly between two of Jane’s favorite Wedgwood plates.

“Winky ...” Jane said menacingly, approaching the hutch one slow step at a time. If she surprised the cat and grabbed her fast enough, she could prevent any damage.

She had managed to get within a foot of Winky, her arms outstretched, when Nick stomped into the room, struggling with the zipper of his backpack. “Mom, what’d you give me for lunch?”

Winky sprang from between the plates onto the hutch’s top shelf, which contained half a dozen of Jane’s most cherished photos in silver frames, including her and Kenneth’s wedding photo.

“Damn!” Jane said.

“Watch your mouth, please,” Nick said.

“Sorry. Honey, can you get her down? She listens to you. I’m afraid she’s going to break something.”

“Sure, Mom. Winky! Come down!”

Instantly, Winky jumped to the floor, walked over to Nick, and sat obediently at his feet.

Jane shook her head. “Maybe if I get some of that cat repellent and spray it up there . . .”

“Mom! How can you say that? How would you like it if I sprayed mom repellent?”

“You’re forgetting one small detail,” Jane said. “This is
my house
.”

Or is it?
Jane wondered. “Come on.” She sighed. “Let’s get you to school.”

Five minutes later they were heading up Lilac Way. At the top of the hill Jane turned onto Magnolia Lane, which took them past Roger’s bungalow. She felt a sick weightlessness in the pit of her stomach as she anticipated Roger’s reaction to what she had to tell him.

“So, Mom,” Nick said suddenly from the back, “what
did
you pack me for lunch?”

She exhaled gratefully at the distraction. “Peanut butter and Fluff sandwich, no crusts—”

“I told you—I’m sick of peanut butter and Fluff.”

“Oh, right. Sorry. Forgot. Never again.”

“What else?”

“Cheese sticks, apple, cookies.”

“What kind?”

“Keebler.”

“How many?”

“Four.” She waited for his ruling.

“Okay,” he said, then added, “Thanks.”

She smiled. He was a good boy; perhaps she would manage to get him raised all right. Alone . . . or perhaps not. And she thought again of Roger.

They were at the bottom of Magnolia now and turning onto Christopher, the school building visible just to the right across the street. Jane pulled into the circular drive and up to the spot where Mrs. DeSalvo, the principal, stood as she did every morning, greeting the children.

Jane rolled down the window on the passenger side and called out, “Hi, Mrs. D!” The older woman smiled sweetly and twiddled her fingers at Jane.

“Bye, Mom,” Nick said, struggling to free his backpack from his seat belt. Finally he managed to disentangle himself and threw open his door.

“Bye, honey. Have a great day. I love you,” she called. To her gratification, he didn’t wince as she saw other children do. She hoped he never would. She waited for him to shut his door, when to her surprise he poked his head back in.

“Mom, don’t worry about Marlene.”

She just looked at him.

“I know you’re nervous about her leaving,” he said, “but I don’t think you should be. Marlene wasn’t so good at taking care of me, but she’s real good at taking care of herself.”

She smiled in wonder. “What makes you say that?”

He shrugged. “You can just tell. Bye!” He slammed the door and headed up the walk to the building.

Jane pulled around the drive and back onto Christopher, turning left to take the most direct route into town.

Nick was right: You
could
just tell that about Marlene. Beautiful, self-involved Marlene . . .

But that wasn’t really the point. Marlene was no doubt fine, but Jane and Ivy needed to know
where
she was just fine. Most likely she was with Zena, her friend in New York. Once Zena’s parents reached her, she would tell them Marlene was with her, and that would be that, at least as far as Jane was concerned. What happened after that was between Marlene and her mother.

In the meantime, Jane felt it her responsibility to speak with one more of Marlene’s friends—Gil Dapero. She would stop in at the office briefly to drop off some manuscripts for Daniel to return; then she’d drive to Parsippany to see Gil.

Later that morning Jane pulled into the parking lot of the Corcoran Industrial Park in the neighboring town of Parsippany. She switched off the engine and checked her notebook, verifying that she had the right building. She did. It was a warehouse painted in the colors of the American flag: a blue background, a wide red horizontal stripe, and white stars spaced along the red stripe. These were the colors of Olympian, the sporting-goods manufacturer in whose warehouse, according to Helen, Gil Dapero worked.

Jane entered through the only door in the building’s side and found herself in a small reception room with painted gray cinder-block walls. An older woman with a shiny brown bouffant sat at a steel desk, typing very fast. “Help you?” she asked without looking up.

“I’d like to see Gil Dapero, please.”

“Moment.” The woman picked up the phone, punched two numbers, and spoke into the receiver. “Gil Dapero to the office. Gil Dapero to the office.” Then she hung up and resumed typing.

Jane studied a display of football helmets on one wall of the reception room. She heard the door open and turned.

Gil Dapero was handsome—she’d give him that. She could imagine him with Marlene. He was of medium height, slim but solidly built, in a skintight white T-shirt and low-slung jeans. His features were even and finely carved, his eyes a startling pale blue-gray, almost silver, fringed with lush black lashes. She noted the fineness of his skin, smooth as a baby’s. Wavy black hair swept back from a well-shaped forehead.

He strode into the room, his hands hanging at his sides. Jane noticed his arms, virtually hairless, sinewy, biceps bulging out of the T-shirt’s short sleeves. He turned to the woman at the desk. “What is it?”

Without looking up, the woman pointed at Jane. He swiveled to her, his fine brows slightly knitted. He waited.

She came forward. “You’re Gil?”

He nodded, wary.

“My name is Jane Stuart. Marlene Benson worked for me.”

At the sound of Marlene’s name he visibly flinched. “How’d you know I work here?”

“I asked at the Roadside Tavern.”

“Asked who?”

Remembering Helen’s request for anonymity, Jane shrugged.

“What do you want?” Gil demanded.

“I’m trying to find Marlene. She left on Monday, and I have no idea where she’s gone. I understand you and she had a relationship.”

He looked her in the eye. “That relationship’s over—did you know that?”

“Yes, I had heard you broke up, but that was only two nights before she left.”

“I don’t know about that—I mean, her leaving. I don’t know when she left, or why. All I know is we broke up, and I don’t give a damn where she is now.”

From out of the corner of her eye Jane saw that the woman at the desk had looked up, finally taking an interest.

Jane said, “Did she ever mention wanting to leave? Wanting to go anywhere? Please, anything you can tell me would be helpful. Her mother and I are worried about her.”

He put his hands on his hips in a challenging pose. “She always talked about leaving. She hated working for you. Hated
you
, actually.”

People seemed to take great pleasure in telling her this. Hearing it again now, Jane found herself growing alarmed. Why had Marlene so disliked working for her? The only answer Jane could come up with was that she, in her dislike for Marlene, had ignored her, treated her like a nonperson. She felt a sharp pang of remorse.

“I see,” she said. “And when she talked about leaving, where did she say she wanted to go? Home to Detroit?”

“No. She wanted to go somewhere with me—that’s what she wanted.”

“But that’s not what you wanted?”

“Not anymore, not after we broke up.”

“Did she want to go anywhere in particular with you?”

“No.” He seemed to grope for words. “She was a—a dreamer—you know what I mean?”

Jane made no response. She had no idea what he meant. They might have been discussing someone Jane had never met.

“Do you mind if I ask why you and Marlene broke up?” she asked.

He flushed darkly. “Yeah, I do mind. It don’t matter. All you need to know is we’re finished, and I don’t know where she is. I don’t want anything more to do with her.”

Abruptly he turned and strode back through the door to the warehouse. The door clanged shut behind him.

The woman at the desk was typing again, but Jane could feel the other woman’s gaze on her as she went out.

Traffic was heavy on Route 46 because of construction. Two lanes of westbound traffic squeezed down to one; then Jane was crawling past T-shirted men wielding jackhammers. She winced at the noise and rolled her window all the way up, inching along the road.

She forced herself to think about Marlene—really think about her, as a person. That was something Jane hadn’t done before. Just who
was
Marlene Benson? Certainly more than just a beautiful girl. A girl with bad judgment, to have become involved with a man like Gil Dapero. It wasn’t surprising that Marlene had questionable judgment when it came to relationships, when you considered that from the age of two she’d grown up without a father and with Ivy for a mother. Erratic, hysterical Ivy, the last person Jane would have imagined as a mother—though there had never been any doubt that Ivy loved her only child.

Ira Benson, Marlene’s father, had done nothing for the girl beyond flying her down to Fort Lauderdale for two or three weeks every summer and leaving her in the care of his housekeeper while he tended to the rich clients of his law practice. So, basically, Marlene had had no father at all. Nor had Ira helped Ivy out financially—at least, no more than the court had decreed. Ira and Ivy’s divorce had been especially violent, and the bitter Ira had done nothing to lift Ivy out of her near squalor, even though it would have helped Marlene, too.

That had left Ivy to fend for herself, bouncing from one secretarial job to another, never staying at any one job for very long because of her basic inability to get along with people. And while Ivy was at work, Marlene was out on the streets of Detroit with what Ivy had described as a “tough crowd.” When Marlene graduated from high school and was offered a college scholarship, Ivy, who could never have afforded tuition, had recognized the scholarship as the opportunity of a lifetime. She was crushed when, at the last minute, Marlene refused to go. How much more demoralizing had it been for Ivy to beg Jane to hire Marlene as Nick’s nanny?

But Marlene had taken the job. What had she expected to find in Shady Hills? What did she want out of life? Perhaps nothing more than good times drinking with her friends at the Roadside Tavern. Perhaps nothing more than a boyfriend named Gil Dapero. And when she no longer had him, and there were no other reasons to stay, she had taken off.

It was all very sad, Jane thought, finally veering off at the exit for Shady Hills.

She was fifteen minutes late for lunch with Roger at Eleanor’s, one of the few decent restaurants in Shady Hills. Once Hadley’s gristmill, it stood beside the Morris River, which ran through the woods about half a mile from the village center. Now the building was a country-elegant combination of rough-hewn wooden beams and the finest china and crystal.

When she arrived at the table, Roger was working on his second Bloody Mary. He always drank like this, though she’d never seen the alcohol affect him much. He rose crisply and kissed her cheek. He looked trim and smart in a black-cashmere turtleneck and gray-tweed slacks.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said.

He waved it away. “You’re looking very pretty today.”

“Why, thank you.” She’d tried. She’d worn a new wool suit in a forest green that brought out the green of her eyes and complemented her auburn hair, and she’d added a favorite silk scarf in a vivid mosaic pattern of russet and gold.

“Drink?” Roger asked.

“Just some seltzer, please.”

He flagged the waiter and ordered it for her.

“I . . . ah ... I’m sorry I walked out on you,” he said, looking embarrassed.

“That’s all right,” she said softly. “Let’s say no more about it.”

He smiled gratefully. “Well.” He stroked his mustache with two fingers, a sure sign he was nervous. “How did you fare with Arliss?”

“Not well. It’s no use, Roger. They won’t budge.”

“You mean
she
won’t budge. Jane, I told you to go over her head. I want you to
meet
with them.”

She shook her head sadly. “Roger, darling, there’s no point. They’ve done all they’re going to do for
A Better Place,
and they’re not picking up their option. To meet with them now would be—humiliating.” She looked into his eyes. “We don’t need them. We’ll go somewhere even better. But we can’t do that unless . . .”

He was watching her, waiting for her next words.

“... unless you rewrite the new book. It’s just not ready to show.”

He sat perfectly still. His eyes narrowed to slits. “I can’t believe you said that.” He looked down at his drink and stayed like that for several moments, motionless. Then he got up, threw his napkin on his chair, and walked out of the restaurant.

She was getting rather tired of being walked out on.

The waiter appeared with her seltzer and a basket of cinnamon rolls. She looked up sharply.

“Will you be ordering lunch, ma’am?”

“Yes. Yes, I will. Bring me a menu, please.”

Damn Roger and his childish rudeness. When she was only trying to help him. When she was the only friend he had.

She abhorred his behavior but understood his frustration. He still wanted to fight, whereas she had already decided to retreat.

She’d give him time to think things over, she decided.

Then, grabbing a roll and ripping it in half, she wondered once more how Kenneth would have handled it, and tears sprang to her eyes.