AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I'm a woman now, and you treat me like a kid." She came close to him, and he couldn't help recoiling. For a moment he thought sickly that she might touch him, and he didn't think he could stand it
"Francie! Just get out! Go on up to your room and stay there. I'll have supper sent up. And remember, I don't want you leaving your room, and I don't want you talking to the kids or using the telephone—do you understand? Maybe by tomorrow morning we'll both be saner and cool enough to talk."
"Dave, I'm really sorry. Don't stay mad at me! I'll do anything you say. Don't be mad anymore?"
He couldn't respond. His hps tightened, and he turned his head away from her. After a few seconds, he heard her leave the room and run upstairs. But he stayed there a long time, his hands clenched together, until he felt able to walk and move and talk normally again.
Tomorrow morning, things would look different, and he'd know what to do. Tomorrow, he'd come down early, bring Eve with him. Lisa was bound to be upset; she seemed to sense it when things weren't right around the house, and she'd go into one of her silent, autistic moods. Only Eve could talk and love her out of her spells. She'd need Eve when he took Francie away.
But when David came down to Albany with Eve the next day, Francie wasn't there. No one knew what time she'd left, or how. Mrs. Lambert had discovered her room empty, her bed not slept in, just a few minutes before David had arrived.
The woman was almost hysterical; obviously, she'd been fond of Francie.
"I didn't want to wake her too early," she kept repeating. "She always did like to he in bed late of a Saturday morning!"
In the end, after David had sent her to her room to lie down, he'd started to search through Francie's things impatiently, clumsily. There had to be something that might tell him where the litde tramp had gone! Maybe an address book, a diary—did girls still keep diaries? Eve was downstairs with Lisa, keeping her calm. Thank God he'd brought Eve!
Suddenly, David noticed that Rick had come in and was standing silent in the doorway, watching him. He looked up to tell the boy to go away; then he saw Eve behind him, her face worried.
She came in quickly, hardly noticing Rick.
"David, I think we have something—it was Lisa. Suddenly, out of the blue, she announced, 'Francie's gone to stay with Brant this time; shell never come back!' Do you know who—"
"He's the guy in the picture—she said he was her boyfriend."
Rick's voice froze them both, and their eyes went to a magazine clipping on Francie's bulletin board—one of many other pictures and clippings, so that no one had really noticed until now—following the direction of Rick's pointing finger. The man was blond and sun-bronzed. He was on a yacht, leaning against the mast and holding onto some rigging. His shirt was open to the waist, and one could almost see the bulge in his brief white shorts. He was beautiful and decadent-looking, and Eve knew him at once, with a shock of recognition.
"Oh, God, not him! How did Francie ever meet him? He's— Oh, David, he's really evil. That's Brant Newcomb!"
Standing there watching the color recede and then flow back into David's familiar, sharply angular face, Eve suddenly felt sick—for him, her love. The story Marti had told her came back, as well as her own unpleasant experience with the man. Obviously, even David had heard things about him—the look on his face told her that. Francie was seventeen; in spite of her vicious tongue and sneering eyes, she was just a lad— and David's sister, after alL She wanted to protect him, to hold him....
"Oh, David! What will you do? There must be something—"
"I know, Eve, I know. I have to think. I must be clear-minded and rational about this, as if Francie weren't my sister, as if— We can't have a scandal, som
ething that might get in the newspapers—that much I'm sure about."
"But David, how can you find her unless you tell the police? She could be anywhere. We're not even certain she did run away to Brant Newcomb."
He made a sudden, impatient gesture that silenced her.
"Eve, you don't understand! If she did—Newcomb's not only a billionaire, he's a client of ours. Howard Hansen handles some of his oil interests—and Howard won't have scandal attached to anyone who works for him. Don't you see? They're even talking about a partnership for me—I just can't afford to have Francie's name, our name, dragged through the mud. We have to be sure, we have to find out if she's with him, get her away— to a psychiatrist—"
"David!" Concern for him sharpened Eve's voice. "David, listen. You can't let him get away with it, if she's with him. Please listen to me, he's—he's a terrible man! But he's not above the law, is he? I mean, maybe the police will agree not to make it public. After all, Francie's still a minor—they can't put her name in the papers, can they?"
"No, Eve! No police. No. I have to find her, but I can't use the police. God, if I only knew someone who knows the man...."
A sudden recollection made Eve put her hand on David's arm, stopping him in mid-sentence.
"I just thought—David, he's giving some land of a party tonight. Tony Gonsalves was in to do a commercial yesterday, and he was talking about it. In fact, Tony wanted me to go with him to be his front for the evening because he's gay, you know. But I was thinking, maybe you could go? You could mix with the guests— no one ever checks on who's invited and who's not at parties like that—you could look for Francie—"
"No, no, I couldn't, baby. I can't get mixed up in this thing because if Francie were there and I saw this guy, I'd—God, I'd probably want to kill him! I don't have that much self-control that I could stop myself from throwing a punch at him. There has to be some other way; there has to be." Slowly, his words dragging, then pausing, he turned away from the picture he'd been staring at so blankly, his eyes widening as they looked into Eve's. She somehow knew, before he even started to speak again, what he wanted her to do, and her hands came up in a warding-off gesture. "No, David! No, don't ask me. I won't do itl" It was exactly as if he hadn't heard her. "You're the only one who could do it, Eve. The only person I can trust. If this gets out, you know how bad it would be for me, for Francie, for all of us. They'd say she was neglected, that I didn't have sufficient control over her. It would look very bad." He caught her hands, held them tightly as he looked into her face. "Baby, can't you see? You're the only person who can help me. You could go to that party as a guest, not as a gatecrasher. You could find Francie if she's there, reason with her. She'd never listen to me in the mood she's in! And if you had to, you could talk to him, tell him her real age—I'm sure she's lied about it. Sweetheart, you've got to do this, please!"
Oh, she thought helplessly, letting him pull her close, oh, what a treacherous, underhanded bastard he was! He was taking advantage of her, of the way he knew she felt about him. Damn him, damn him! She felt his hands move up her arms, heard his voice become tender, cajoling.
"Eve, you'll do it, won't you? Because it's so damned important to me, because there's no one else I can turn to, and you're my girl. Honey? I know Francie's been a little hellion and she hasn't always been nice to you— I can see that now—but she's just a kid, dammit, and she needs help. I'm asking you to share with me the responsibility of seeing that she gets it."
She leaned against him, shaking her head.
