Missing Marlene by Evan Marshall Read Free Book Online

wary.
    “My name is Jane Stuart. Marlene Benson worked for me.”
    At the sound of Marlene’s name he visibly flinched. “How’d you know I work here?”
    “I asked at the Roadside Tavern.”
    “Asked who?”
    Remembering Helen’s request for anonymity, Jane shrugged.
    “What do you want?” Gil demanded.
    “I’m trying to find Marlene. She left on Monday, and I have no idea where she’s gone. I understand you and she had a relationship.”
    He looked her in the eye. “That relationship’s over—did you know that?”
    “Yes, I had heard you broke up, but that was only two nights before she left.”
    “I don’t know about that—I mean, her leaving. I don’t know when she left, or why. All I know is we broke up, and I don’t give a damn where she is now.”
    From out of the corner of her eye Jane saw that the woman at the desk had looked up, finally taking an interest.
    Jane said, “Did she ever mention wanting to leave? Wanting to go anywhere? Please, anything you can tell me would be helpful. Her mother and I are worried about her.”
    He put his hands on his hips in a challenging pose. “She always talked about leaving. She hated working for you. Hated you , actually.”
    People seemed to take great pleasure in telling her this. Hearing it again now, Jane found herself growing alarmed. Why had Marlene so disliked working for her? The only answer Jane could come up with was that she, in her dislike for Marlene, had ignored her, treated her like a nonperson. She felt a sharp pang of remorse.
    “I see,” she said. “And when she talked about leaving, where did she say she wanted to go? Home to Detroit?”
    “No. She wanted to go somewhere with me—that’s what she wanted.”
    “But that’s not what you wanted?”
    “Not anymore, not after we broke up.”
    “Did she want to go anywhere in particular with you?”
    “No.” He seemed to grope for words. “She was a—a dreamer—you know what I mean?”
    Jane made no response. She had no idea what he meant. They might have been discussing someone Jane had never met.
    “Do you mind if I ask why you and Marlene broke up?” she asked.
    He flushed darkly. “Yeah, I do mind. It don’t matter. All you need to know is we’re finished, and I don’t know where she is. I don’t want anything more to do with her.”
    Abruptly he turned and strode back through the door to the warehouse. The door clanged shut behind him.
    The woman at the desk was typing again, but Jane could feel the other woman’s gaze on her as she went out.
     
    Traffic was heavy on Route 46 because of construction. Two lanes of westbound traffic squeezed down to one; then Jane was crawling past T-shirted men wielding jackhammers. She winced at the noise and rolled her window all the way up, inching along the road.
    She forced herself to think about Marlene—really think about her, as a person. That was something Jane hadn’t done before. Just who was Marlene Benson? Certainly more than just a beautiful girl. A girl with bad judgment, to have become involved with a man like Gil Dapero. It wasn’t surprising that Marlene had questionable judgment when it came to relationships, when you considered that from the age of two she’d grown up without a father and with Ivy for a mother. Erratic, hysterical Ivy, the last person Jane would have imagined as a mother—though there had never been any doubt that Ivy loved her only child.
    Ira Benson, Marlene’s father, had done nothing for the girl beyond flying her down to Fort Lauderdale for two or three weeks every summer and leaving her in the care of his housekeeper while he tended to the rich clients of his law practice. So, basically, Marlene had had no father at all. Nor had Ira helped Ivy out financially—at least, no more than the court had decreed. Ira and Ivy’s divorce had been especially violent, and the bitter Ira had done nothing to lift Ivy out of her near squalor, even though it would have helped Marlene, too.
    That had