Missing Marlene (3 page)

Abruptly he stood, startling her. She stared up at him.

“Do—your—job,” he said, and walked out.

Jane sat very still, watching him pass the shop window.

How dared he! The muleheaded fool.

But could she really blame him?
He
had written
A Better Place
, not she. Why
should
he throw it away so easily? She felt a pang of conscience. Had she fought hard enough? Certainly anything she could do to improve the book’s sales would help Roger’s future.

Lost in thought, she took her check to the register.

Daniel looked up apprehensively when Jane came in. “What happened?” he asked.

“I told him,” Jane said, dragging herself past Daniel’s desk and into her office. He got up and followed her in.

Jane tossed her coat on the credenza and fell into her chair.

“Told him what, exactly?” Daniel asked, sitting in her visitor’s chair.

“That Millennium is finished with him. That they’ve written off
A Better Place.”

Daniel winced. “How did he take it?”

“Badly.” She looked down at her hands, spread flat on her desk. “My heart goes out to him—it really does. To find out not only that his publishers have given up on his just-published book but also that they want him to go away. . . . It’s a terrible blow to his ego.”

“Which is considerable.”

She glared at him defensively. “When you’re as talented as Roger is, you’re allowed to have a big ego.”

Daniel, his mouth tactfully shut, glanced at Roger’s new manuscript, sitting at the corner of Jane’s desk.

“So it needs some reworking,” she conceded.

“Reworking!”

“All right, rewriting. I think he’ll come around about that. But he’s right—first we have to deal with the problem at hand. Millennium.” She picked up the phone.

“Should I leave?” Daniel asked.

“No, no, stay.” She punched out Arliss Krauss’s direct number.

The call was answered by Arliss’s officious young assistant, Roberto.

“Ah, hello, Mrs. Stuart,” he said in his velvet tones. “What can we do for you today?”

“I want to talk to Arliss. Tell her it’s urgent.”

“Uh ... Arliss is—”

“Is she in?”

“Yes, but—”

“It’s
urgent!”

“Hold, please.”

A moment later Arliss came on. “Jane, what’s going on?” she asked impatiently.

“Arliss, I’ve just come from a meeting with Roger Haines.”

“Oh.”

“You have no right to sound so bored, Arliss. Roger is a respected author whose novel you have just published. A novel, I might add, for which you paid a healthy advance. You made Roger and me some promises when we made that deal, and we expect you to keep them.”

“Jane,” Arliss said on a massive sigh. “Jane, Jane, Jane. We’ve been all through this. The answer is no. I understand that you have to fight for your client—Do you have him sitting there?”

“No, I most certainly do not.”

“Oh. Well, I can’t help you. We should never have accepted that manuscript in the first place. We’re going to lose a bundle.”

“I’m going to have to speak to Bill about this,” Jane said. “I want a meeting.”

Arliss laughed wearily. “Go ahead. Speak to him. He’s the one who decided all this.” There was a brief silence. “Why don’t you talk to other publishers? Maybe someone will want him—at much smaller money, of course.”

“Oh, I intend to talk to other publishers, Arliss. We even have a manuscript.”

“Oh yeah? How is it?”

“It . . . needs a little work.”

“Mm. Jane, forgive me for saying this, but why don’t you do yourself a favor and get rid of this guy?”

Jane felt her face grow hot. “That is highly inappropriate. You’re talking about a man whom the critics have called a genius, the new Norman Mailer.”

“Yeah, twenty years ago.”

Jane was losing it. Her eyes flooded with tears. “A man my husband said was the brightest talent he’d ever seen.”

This time the silence was long. At last Arliss said, “I’m sorry, Jane.” She sounded truly sympathetic. Jane had never heard Arliss like this. “I wish I could help you . . . with everything. You’re a good person and a good agent. You deserve good things. I . . . I’m sorry.”

Jane wiped at her eyes, sniffed. “All right,” she said quietly. “Good-bye, Arliss.”

Daniel was staring down at the floor. Jane returned her gaze to her hands and was aware of him silently leaving the room.

Why was she reacting this way to Roger’s misfortune? She knew why. Because she cared for him. She wanted to spare him from pain. For all his gruff urbaneness, he was a sensitive soul, easily wounded. He deserved so much better than the coldhearted treatment meted out by most publishers today. It was her job, as his agent, to protect him. But in this case she simply couldn’t. The best thing she could do for him was help him pick up the pieces of his career and move on. He’d listen to her once the shock had worn off.

She slid Roger’s manuscript of
In the Name of the Mother
toward her and began idly flipping through its pages, covered with her notes and comments.

That night she drove north on Highland Road, a narrow, unlit ribbon slicing through the woods at the sparsely populated north end of town. Cara Fairchild, Audrey and Elliott’s fourteen-year-old daughter, had agreed to baby-sit Nick.

In two days Jane would no longer have to worry about baby-sitters. Pia Graven had been true to her word and sent two prospective nannies to see Jane that afternoon. The first was a wonderfully warm and animated young Trinidadian woman named Florence Price. She had just lost her job as nanny to a little boy in Randolph whose father had been transferred to Chicago. Jane liked Florence immediately, but Jane controlled her impulses and said she’d be in touch soon.

The second applicant reminded Jane uncomfortably of Marlene—a sleekly beautiful young woman named Lillian who showed little interest in Nick and, when Jane asked her if she had any questions, wanted to know how many weeks of vacation she got and whether Jane had a pool.

As soon as Lillian was gone, Jane called Pia for Florence’s references. Jane quickly checked them, found them uniformly glowing, called Pia back, and hired Florence. She would start work in two days.

That was a load off Jane’s mind. But there was still the matter of Roger. She dreaded telling him she’d been unsuccessful with Arliss. He would go into a rage, throw more accusations. It would be horrible.

She slowed, knowing that the Roadside Tavern was coming up. Then it appeared, a dilapidated flat-roofed building tucked into the pines. At the edge of the nearly full parking lot a faded wooden sign stood on a pair of peeling posts.

Jane parked and got out. Approaching the entrance, she could feel the deep bass thump of music. She opened the door and it hit her in the face—screaming, bouncing Bee Gees disco. But no one was dancing. To her immediate right was the entrance to the bar, every stool occupied, the air thick with cigarette smoke. The bartender, a slight blond man, took his time filling orders, smiling as he traded wisecracks with his customers—all of whom, Jane noticed, were men and women about Marlene’s age, late teens, early twenties.

To Jane’s left was a larger room filled with small round tables at which sat couples, sometimes four people. At the table nearest Jane a woman with spiked mauve hair and three nose rings gesticulated vigorously as she spoke to a man in tight black leather and studs. Ginny was right!

Jane noticed a waitress coming toward her, a dark-haired woman in a fisherman’s knit sweater tucked into baggy jeans. She was frowning slightly.

“Help you?”

“Yes.” Jane wished they’d turn down the music. “Yes!” she shouted. “I’m looking for Marlene Benson.”

The waitress gave her a funny look. “Marlene? Uh—wait a minute.” She crossed the entryway into the bar and disappeared from view. A moment later she reappeared, followed by a hugely obese man of medium height with a silver-gray crew cut and pudgy, childlike features. He wore jeans that tapered at the ankles, giving his bottom half a triangular appearance, and a vast blue-and-white Hawaiian shirt.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

Jane repeated what she’d told the waitress.

“Marlene’s not here,” he said. “I heard she left town.”

“Yes, she’s my—” The music really was too much. “Can we go outside for a minute?” Jane yelled.

“Sure.” He led her outside, where it was blessedly silent but suddenly biting cold.

“I’m Peter Mann. The owner. Now, you’re lookin’ for Marlene?”

She nodded. “She worked for me, took care of my son. She did leave, two days ago, but she didn’t say where she was going. Her mother and I want to make sure she’s okay. I understand she spent a lot of time here.”

“Yeah.” He considered her for a moment. “There’s someone here you oughta talk to.”

“Yes?”

“Mm, Helen. She’s inside. She and Marlene were always together. Come on, I’ll take you to her.”

She followed him back inside and into the larger room on the left. It was quieter here, the music not as loud. Squeezing through the maze of tables, Mann led the way to one at the back, at which a young woman in a baggy maroon sweatshirt sat alone.

Jane knew the woman from somewhere. She was big-boned; Jane could tell she was tall. Her face was large and plain, pasty and rather flat, with large brown eyes set a little too far apart. The only makeup she wore was pale coral lipstick, messily applied. She had long dark brown hair pulled into a fat braid that trailed down her back.

As Mann approached her table, the young woman’s eyes grew even larger and she frowned, clearly puzzled.

“This lady’s lookin’ for Marlene,” Mann said, indicating Jane. He turned to her. “Didn’t get your name.”

“Jane Stuart.” And to Helen, “Marlene worked for me.”

Mann left. Jane pulled out a chair. “Mind if I sit down?”

Helen shook her head. She was still regarding Jane as if she had dropped from the ceiling.

“Were you aware that Marlene left?” Jane asked.

“Yeah.” Helen spoke matter-of-factly. She bent for a filthy tan vinyl drawstring bag and took out a pack of Marlboros. “She’s my best friend,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “ ’Course I knew.”

“Where is she?”

“That, I don’t know.” Helen blew smoke that hovered in a dense cloud over the table.

At that moment the waitress appeared. Jane asked for a mineral water.

Helen was still studying Jane. “You know about Gil, right?” she said.

“Gil?” Jane shook her head.

Helen gave a little laugh of incredulity. “That’s amazing you don’t know him.”

“Why?”

“Marlene was going out with him. They met here.”

“When?”

“Couple of months ago. Right after she came to town.”

Early August. “And who is this Gil?”

“Gil Dapero. Marlene was, like, obsessed with him. At first he didn’t notice her, but she kept at him—you know, flirting with him. She wanted him really bad, and she wouldn’t give up till she got him.”

“And did she? Get him, I mean.”

“Whoa, yeah. Took about two weeks.” Helen dragged on her cigarette, blew smoke, and studied it. “I told her it was a bad idea.”

“Why?”

“Gil’s dangerous. He’s got a wild temper. Some people say he once killed somebody over some money in Newark. A couple of weeks ago a guy came on to Marlene, and Gil hurt him so bad he ended up in the hospital.”

Jane’s mineral water arrived, and she paid for it. “If she was so obsessed with Gil, why would she leave town?”

“ ’Cause they broke up.”

“When?”

“Uh ... four days ago now. Saturday night.”

That would have been two days before Marlene left. “How do you know they broke up?”

“Well, like I said, Marlene and I are best friends, so she would have told me, but she didn’t have to because they had a huge fight right out there in the parking lot.”

“A fight about what?”

“I have no idea. The next day Marlene came to see me at the store where I work—you know the Village Shop on the green?”

Jane nodded. She stopped there occasionally for a newspaper. That was why Helen looked familiar.

“Anyway,” Helen went on, “Marlene came in and said she was leaving town.” She looked Jane straight in the eye, as if challenging her. “She told me she hated working for you, and she was leaving.”

Jane considered this. “I see. And even though you’re best friends, she didn’t tell you where she was going?”

“No. I just figured she was going home to Detroit. Why don’t you check with her mother, see if Marlene’s there?”

“I have. She’s not.”

“Then I don’t know. She’ll probably call me.”

Jane searched in her purse for a piece of paper and a pen and jotted down her home and office phone numbers. “Do me a favor. If Marlene does call you, ask her to call either her mother or me. Then call me and let me know you’ve heard from her, would you, please?”

Helen took the piece of paper and tucked it in her bag. “Sure.”

“Did Marlene ever mention someone by the name of Zena?”

Helen frowned. “Zena? Who’s that?”

“Her other best friend,” Jane said, and got up to leave. Then she had a thought. “This Gil ... where can I find him?”

Helen’s eyes widened in surprise. “He works at Olympian in Parsippany—that big industrial park next to the Dairy Queen. He’s in the warehouse. You gonna go see him?”

Jane nodded.

“Why?” Helen asked, obviously disturbed at this idea.

“To see if he knows where Marlene is, of course,” Jane said, as if talking to a moron.

“Well, don’t tell him I sent you,” Helen said, her gaze piercing. “I told you. He’s trouble.”

Jane took a last long look at the Roadside Tavern, little more than an oversize shack among the pines, before pulling back onto Highland Road and heading south. So that was where Marlene had spent many of her nights—late nights when Jane and Nick were cozy in their beds.

It was at the Tavern that Marlene had met Gil, a hoodlum—possibly a murderer if Helen’s gossip was true—and relentlessly pursued him until he was hers. But then, only four nights ago, Marlene and Gil fought and broke up. The next day, Sunday, Marlene told Helen she was leaving, and Monday Marlene was gone.

Gil, apparently, had been Marlene’s only reason for staying in Shady Hills. Marlene had hated working for Jane, Helen had said.

Negotiating a sharp curve in the road, Jane pondered whether she might have missed signs of these feelings in Marlene. The girl had never expressed anger or even unhappiness—had never raised her voice or snapped at Jane or Nick. On the contrary, Marlene’s demeanor had virtually always been one of bored nonchalance. Behind that, Jane realized, had lain Marlene’s dislike of Jane, and perhaps of Nick, her charge.

Jane wondered if she had given Marlene reason to dislike her. She thought not. But she hadn’t given Marlene reason to like her, either. Because the fact was, Jane hadn’t liked Marlene, not from the minute she’d laid eyes on the girl walking up the ramp to the gate at Newark Airport. Much as Jane had tried to like this exquisitely lovely creature, the daughter of her oldest friend, Jane had failed. And her dislike, she realized now, must have revealed itself in a cold detachment. Had Jane ever smiled at Marlene, laughed with her? She thought not.

You tend to like people who like you. Jane hadn’t given the girl much of a chance—she saw that now—and a guilty sadness washed over her as she reached the end of Highland, turned left onto Packer, and passed the police station, its lights aglow.

And now Marlene was gone. What would she tell her mother about her few months working for Jane? Undoubtedly she would paint Jane in a very bad light.

Jane shrugged. She couldn’t help that. She would apologize to Ivy, and even to Marlene herself once she was located. Finding Marlene—that must come first.

Marlene would call Helen, of that Jane was reasonably sure, but she doubted that Helen would keep her promise and call Jane when she heard from Marlene. Helen worked just across the green from Jane’s office. Jane would stop in to see her in a few days if Marlene still hadn’t called her mother.

Jane turned onto Grange Road, followed it to Lilac Way, and started up the steep dark hill toward home.