If Tomorrow Comes by Sidney Sheldon Read Free Book Online Page B

surrounded by enemies. Charles will get me out , she kept repeating to herself. Oh, please, God, let Charles get me out. I can’t have our baby born in prison.
    It was not until the following afternoon that the desk sergeant would permit Tracy to use the telephone. Harriet answered. “Mr. Stanhope’s office.”
    “Harriet, this is Tracy Whitney. I’d like to speak to Mr. Stanhope.”
    “Just a moment, Miss Whitney.” She heard the hesitation in the secretary’s voice. “I’ll—I’ll see if Mr. Stanhope is in.”
    After a long, harrowing wait, Tracy finally heard Charles’s voice. She could have wept with relief. “Charles—”
    “Tracy? Is that you, Tracy?”
    “Yes, darling. Oh, Charles, I’ve been trying to reach—”
    “I’ve been going crazy, Tracy! The newspapers here are full of wild stories about you. I can’t believe what they’re saying.”
    “None of it is true, darling. None of it. I—”
    “Why didn’t you call me?”
    “I tried. I couldn’t reach you. I—”
    “Where are you now?”
    “I’m—I’m in a jail in New Orleans. Charles, they’re going to send me to prison for something I didn’t do.” To her horror, she was weeping.
    “Hold on. Listen to me. The papers say that you shot a man. That’s not true, is it?”
    “I did shoot him, but—”
    “Then it is true.”
    “It’s not the way it sounds, darling. It’s not like that at all. I can explain everything to you. I—”
    “Tracy, did you plead guilty to attempted murder and stealing a painting?”
    “Yes, Charles, but only because—”
    “My God, if you needed money that badly, you should have discussed it with me…And trying to kill someone…I can’t believe this. Neither can my parents. You’re the headline in this morning’s Philadelphia Daily News. This is the first time a breath of scandal has ever touched the Stanhope family.”
    It was the bitter self-control of Charles’s voice that made Tracy aware of the depth of his feelings. She had counted on him so desperately, and he was on their side. She forced herself not to scream. “Darling, I need you. Please come down here. You can straighten all this out.”
    There was a long silence. “It doesn’t sound like there’s much to straighten out. Not if you’ve confessed to doing all those things. The family can’t afford to get mixed up in a thing like this. Surely you can see that. This has been a terrible shock for us. Obviously, I never really knew you.”
    Each word was a hammerblow. The world was falling in on her. She felt more alone than she had ever felt in her life. There was no one to turn to now, no one. “What—what about the baby?”
    “You’ll have to do whatever you think best with your baby,” Charles said. “I’m sorry, Tracy.” And the connection was broken.
    She stood there holding the dead receiver in her hand.
    A prisoner behind her said, “If you’re through with the phone, honey, I’d like to call my lawyer.”
    When Tracy was returned to her cell, the matron had instructions for her. “Be ready to leave in the morning. You’ll be picked up at five o’clock.”
    She had a visitor. Otto Schmidt seemed to have aged years during the few hours since Tracy had last seen him. He looked ill.
    “I just came to tell you how sorry my wife and I are. We know whatever happened wasn’t your fault.”
    If only Charles had said that!
    “The wife and I will be at Mrs. Doris’s funeral tomorrow.”
    “Thank you, Otto.”
    They’re going to bury both of us tomorrow , Tracy thought miserably.
    She spent the night wide awake, lying on her narrow prison bunk, staring at the ceiling. In her mind she replayed the conversation with Charles again and again. He had never even given her a chance to explain.
    She had to think of the baby. She had read of women having babies in prison, but the stories had been so remote from her own life that it was as though she were reading about people from another planet. Now it was happening to