Besides, as sure as she was that Wendy was out with Preston and King, she had no proof. She could be jumping to conclusions, and Wendy was somewhere else, with somebody else. Like Clyde Brooks for instance. Yes… yes, there was a good chance that she was with Clyde! She'd call the Brooks home right now; why hadn't she thought of that before? Quickly she stepped over to the counter with the cash register and small desk with its phone. She looked up the number – not being as familiar with the Brooks family as her daughter was and dialed. The phone rang and rang…
Hurry up, please… Her agitation was more emotional than rational, and even as she stood there, receiver pressed to her ear, she couldn't understand her driving sense of urgency. Hurry.
"Hello?"
"I'd like to speak to Clyde Brooks, please."
"Speaking. Who's this?"
"Marleen Franklin. Wendy's mother."
"Wen -! Listen, Mrs. Franklin, I can explain about last night. You see…"
"Last night? I don't know what you're talking about. Is Wendy over there with you?"
Clyde sighed with audible relief. So the little bitch hadn't squealed on him, had she. But now he didn't understand; he sat down in the chair beside the phone, ham sandwich in one hand and the receiver in the other, a frown creasing his forehead. "No, no Wendy isn't here. We… had a fight last night."
"Oh God." Marleen's voice was a dull, hollow mournful tone.
"What is it, Mrs. Franklin? What's the matter? Has Wendy disappeared?" He knew he'd been rough on the girl, more out of anger and frustration than anything. In fact, Clyde had been sitting around, wrestling with the idea of apologizing to Wendy. Now her mother was calling, obviously worried to a fearful pitch. "Listen, Mrs. Franklin," he repeated, catching the fever of hysteria. "Listen, is she gone?"
"Yes. I don't know where, only that the boat is gone and my new tenant and his dog are gone as well. I'm afraid that she'd go out with him, and…"
"Stay right where you are, Mrs. Franklin," the boy said sternly. "Stay there, and I'll be right over and we'll go looking for them."
"But…"
"In my father's cruiser. Stay there, all right?"
"Yes… Yes…"
Clyde hung up and dashed out of the house, not bothering to change from his bathing suit in his haste. God damn that Wendy, going off with some other guy… he'd teach her, he'd fix her wagon good when he found her…
Marleen placed the phone down and took a deep, shuddering breath. Well, she was doing something at last, even if it was only with her daughter's boyfriend. She staggered a bit, clutching the glass top of the counter, and thought to herself that if she was going to go out on the search with Clyde Brooks, she'd better start locking the store up for the night. Why not? Business wasn't going to pick up at this late hour, and she didn't want to wait on any more customers anyway. She was far too worried…
David Preston would have laughed with delight at the turn of events, and as sure as Heaven above, Satan below was having his devil's chortle. The plans which were churning that very moment in Preston's lewd brain weren't half as diabolical as the coincidence which fate had in store for the Franklin daughter and mother…
Twenty minutes later, Marleen and the boy were dashing across the tide waters of Reedsport Bay, searching all the nooks and crannies of the shoreline for signs of the Franklin boat. Clyde handled the craft expertly over the water, and the sun glistened in its last setting rays as if it had been wounded and was bleeding over the ice-blue frostiness of wet skin. But the mother wasn't enjoying the view, not in her agitated condition.
"She must be here someplace, Clyde," she kept moaning. "She has to be… She wouldn't take the boat out past the breakwater. She knows better than that, especially with the tide changing."
"Sure she does, Mrs. Franklin," the boy replied, and looked at her as she sat huddled against the bulkhead, staring through the glass without really seeing anything. He couldn't keep his eyes off her, off the rise and fall of her large, taut breasts and the smooth curve of her thigh through the short summer shift she wore. It was like looking at a reproduction of Wendy, he thought; not exactly twins, but the mannerisms, the way they act and talk and feel… Christ! He'd never really noticed the resemblance before, considering Mrs. Franklin just another mother to cope with and be around as little as possible while taking her daughter out, but she was quite a woman in her own right, and if this is how Wendy was going to look in twenty years, wow!
"Mrs. Franklin," he said, "you're all wound up, like a watch spring. It isn't going to do any good, the way you are."
Her head swiveled around and she managed to smile wanly at the boy. "I'm afraid I've already had a little too much brandy trying to calm down."
"Well, there's a little pint of brandy in the shelf beside you, some very fine French cognac my dad keeps for chilly nights."
"No, no thank you."
"Well, I could use some," he said with a shiver. "I'm cold inside, if not outwardly."
Without thinking about his age or the consequences, Marleen rummaged around in the shelf and produced a flat pint bottle of cognac, with only a couple of sips taken from it. She unscrewed the top and handed it to the boy, who took a large swallow of the dark amber liquor, and then he handed it back to her. "Go on, Mrs. Franklin. You're pale as a new sheet."
She raised the bottle to her lips, suddenly in need of the strong alcohol in her blood, and gave a shudder as the smooth brandy coursed down her throat. She smiled at Clyde then, feeling herself blush with the pervading warmth of the liquor as it rushed from her stomach to her skin.
"Better?"
"Yes, thank you," she said, and took another large sip.
Clyde laughed and had some more himself. He was a nice boy, Marleen thought; considerate and polite, and terribly handsome, with broad shoulders and boyish curls and strong legs bulging with the muscles from his athletics. No wonder Wendy was attracted to him, and in a strange, slight way she felt a little envious of her daughter for being so young and just starting out on her road of sexual relationships. Sexual was a strong word; she blinked at the audacity of her thought, and quickly corrected it in her mind to mean not necessarily the physical mating, but the whole involvement of two people. Yes, like she and Howie had had, and which now seemed to be denied her, her life as a woman dead…
And reflexively she raised the bottle to her mouth again and drank deeply, coughing slightly as the hot liquid fired her belly. She was beginning to feel numb again, and wondered if she shouldn't stop drinking, because she wanted a clear head when she finally found her daughter and/or David Preston. Or did she? Did she really want to be perfectly aware of what was going on, what veneer she was going to have to paint on herself in order to act the proper mother toward Wendy – when after last night she knew that she wasn't that kind of person underneath? No, no she wanted to be a little high so that the play-acting could be easier, and so that she wouldn't have to think about her own guilt so much…
Once more she tilted the cognac bottle, and it felt good and warm and comforting inside her, and she began to feel better, much better, able to handle the situation, whatever it might be…
They passed the old landing site for the Prohibition rum-runners, and then the sprawling Garbonzo estate, now mostly in advanced decay, and turned into a small inlet which Clyde knew to be a popular area for moonlight "parking", full of flat little beaches and overhanging trees, with the tall, statuesque pines and covering shrub climbing on steep hills on both sides, adding to the privacy. He slowed, idling the engine because the water was shallow and his father's cruiser had a larger draft than most of the other craft that used this inlet, and he didn't want to chance shearing a cotter pin or breaking a prop. To Marleen, the inlet was strange and the darkening shadows of the trees over the lapping water filled her with portent; she shivered, drinking the brandy in a vain attempt to ward off the icy grip on her heart…