Jessie closed her eyes and thought of butterscotch sundaes and Christmas morning and flying the box kite with her name printed in big letters on all sides. Her name was away up in the air and she was flying up in the air to join it, carried effortlessly by the wind, higher and higher. She had almost reached her name when she heard a car in the driveway. She came to earth with a bang. The descent was so real and sudden and shocking that her arms and legs ached and she lay huddled in her bed like the survivor of a plane wreck.
She heard a man’s footsteps across the driveway, then Virginia’s voice, sounding so cold and hard that Jessie wouldn’t have recognized it if it hadn’t been coming from Virginia’s back porch.
“You didn’t find him, I suppose.”
“No,” Dave said.
“Well, that suits me. Good riddance to bad rubbish, as we used to say in my youth, long since gone, long since wasted on a—”
“Talk like that will get you nowhere. Be practical. You need Howard, you can’t support yourself.”
“That’s a wonderful attitude to take.”
“It’s a fact, not an attitude,” Dave said. “You seem ready to quarrel with anyone tonight. I’d better go home.”
“Do that.”
“Virginia, listen to me—”
The voices stopped abruptly. Jessie went over to the window and peered out through the slats of the Venetian blinds. The Arlingtons’ porch was empty and the door into the house was closed.
Jessie returned to bed. Lying on her back with her hands clasped behind her head, she thought about Virginia and how she needed Howard because she couldn’t support herself. She wondered how much money Virginia would require if Howard never came back. Virginia had a car and a house with furniture and enough clothes to last for years and years. All she’d really have to buy would be food.
Without moving her head Jessie could see the half-open door of her clothes closet. In the closet, in the toe of one of her party shoes, were the two ten-dollar bills Howard had pressed into her hand. Although she would miss the money if she gave it back to Virginia, it would be a kind of relief to get rid of it and to be doing Virginia a favor at the same time. Twenty dollars would buy tons of food, even the butterscotch sundaes Virginia liked so much.
Once the decision was made, Jessie wasted no time. She put on a bathrobe and slippers, fished the two bills from the toe of her party shoe and tiptoed down the hall, through the kitchen and out the back door.
Moving through the darkness in her long white flowing robe, she looked like the ghost of a bride.
(19)
The illuminated dial on his bedside clock indicated a few minutes past midnight when Ralph MacPherson was awakened by the phone ringing. He picked up the receiver, opening his eyes only the merest slit to glance at the clock.
“Yes?”
“It’s Kate, Mac. Thank heaven you’re there. I need your help.”
“My dear girl, do you realize what time it is?”
“Yes, of course I realize. I should, I was asleep too when the pounding woke me up.”
“All right, I’m hooked,” Mac said impatiently. “What pounding?”
“At the front door. There’s a man out there.”
“What man?”
“I don’t know. I came downstairs without turning on any lights. I thought that it was Sheridan, and I was going to pretend I wasn’t home.”
“You’re sure it’s not Sheridan?”
“Yes. I can see his shadow. He’s too big to be Sheridan. What will I do, Mac?”
“That will depend on what the man’s doing.”
“He’s just sitting out there on the top step of the porch making funny sounds. I think... I think he’s crying. Oh God, Mac, so many crazy things have happened lately. I feel I’m lost in the middle of a nightmare. Why should a strange man come up on my front porch to cry?”
“Because he’s troubled.”
“Yes, but why my porch? Why here? Why me?”
“It’s probably just some drunk on a crying jag who picked your house by accident,” Mac said. “If you want to get rid of him, I suggest you call the police.”
“I won’t do that.” There was a silence. “It gives a place a bad reputation to have police arriving with their sirens going full blast and all.”
“They don’t usually— Never mind. What do you want me to do, Kate?”
“If you could just come over and talk to him, Mac. Ask him why he came here, tell him to leave. He’d listen to you. You sound so authoritative.”
“Well, I don’t feel very authoritative at this hour of the night but I’ll try my best. I’ll be there in about ten minutes. Keep the doors locked and don’t turn on any lights. Where’s Mary Martha?”
“Asleep in her room.”
“See that she stays that way,” he said and hung up. One Oakley female was enough to cope with at one time.
In the older sections of town the street lights were placed only at intersections, as if what went on at night between corners was not the business of strangers or casual passers-by. The Oakley house was invisible from the road. Mac couldn’t even see the trees that surrounded it but he could hear them. The wind was moving through the leaves and bough rubbed against bough in false affection.
From the back seat Mac took the heavy flash-and-blinker light he’d kept there for years in case of emergency. A lot of emergencies had occurred since then but none in which a flashlight was any use. He switched it on. Although the beam wasn’t as powerful as it had been, it was enough to illumine the flagstone path to the house.
The steps of the front porch were empty and for one very bad moment he thought Kate had imagined the whole thing. Then he saw the man leaning over the porch railing. His head was bent as though his neck had been broken. He turned toward the beam of the flashlight, his face showing no reaction either to the light or to Mac’s presence. He was a tall, heavily built man about forty. He wore blue jeans and a sweatshirt, both stained with blood, and he kept one hand pressed against his chest as if to staunch a wound.
Mac said, “Are you hurt?”
The man’s mouth moved but no sound came out of it.
Mac tried again. “I’m Ralph MacPherson. Mrs. Oakley, who lives in this house, called me a few minutes ago to report a man pounding on her door. That was you?”
The man nodded slightly though he looked too dazed to understand the question.
“What are you doing here?”
“My dau... dau—”
“Your dog? You’ve lost your dog, is that it?”
“Dog?” He covered his face with his hands and Mac saw that it was his right hand that was bleeding. “Not dog. Daughter. Daughter.”
“You’re looking for your daughter?”
“Yes.”
“What makes you think she might be here?”
“Her best — best friend lives here.”
“Mary Martha?”
“Yes.”
Mac remembered his office conversation with Kate about Mary Martha’s best friend. “You’re Jessie Brant’s father?”
“Yes. She’s gone. Jessie’s gone.”
“Take it easy now, Brant. How did you hurt yourself?”
“Don’t bother about me. Jessie—”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I was running and I fell. I don’t care about me. Don’t you understand? My daughter is missing. She is missing from her bed.”
“All right, don’t get excited. We’ll find her.”
Mac crossed the porch and rapped lightly on the front door. “Kate, turn on the light and open the door.”
The porch light went on and the door opened almost instantly as if Kate had been standing in the hall waiting for someone to tell her what to do. She had on fresh make-up that seemed to have been applied hastily and in the dark. It didn’t cover the harsh lines that scarred her face or the anxiety that distorted her eyes.