Strange Women, The by Miriam Gardner Read Free Book Online

and my father was Alex Bristol. Now you know."
    Nora had never guessed that the Alexander Bristol of the Hartford narcotics scandal, the suicide, the murder indictment, was Pamela's stern father. The tabloid pictures of Cassandra Bristol, white and shrunken, her arm protectingly over her face, had looked like no one on earth—certainly not Pammy's little sister.
    Alex Bristol had been uncovered, after months of detective work, as head of the best organized narcotics ring east of Chicago. The papers had painted him a sinister Fagin, using his beautiful daughters to deliver innocent looking packages—of heroin. When apprehended, he had shot himself; the girl had been held on suspicion of murder, but the formal verdict had been suicide. No evidence had been found to shake her protestations of innocence, or to implicate her in the drug trade.
    "I saw the papers. I didn't know it was you."
    Jill sat down, not deliberately but as if her knees would no longer hold her up. "Mack doesn't know. He was in Peru—"
    Nora laid her hands on the girl's bare shoulders. "Don't, dear. Don't. I'd never believe anything bad of you! The courts found you innocent, and that's enough for me."
    "It wasn't enough for my family." Jill squeezed her eyes tight shut, a child's pathetic grimace. "They thought Daddy shot himself to keep from having to testify against me—my own mother—oh, none of this will mean anything unless you know how I felt about my father—"
    "Jill, you don't have to tell me anything."
    "I was always Daddy's pet. Mother—well, Pammy was so pretty and popular, and Jackie so clever, and Susan—and well, I was the clumsy one in the middle. Mother kept hunting up nice boys for me, but they were just people to dance with, until after I met Jeff. Jeff Stearns—the detective. I know now he—he just got acquainted with us because he was working on the case, but I—I thought it was me he liked. I thought he was in love with me. I didn't have any idea he was a—a policeman. Daddy never liked him, and Mother said he wasn't quite our sort—"
    Nora smiled grimly, remembering Mrs. Bristol's harsh judgments.
    "But I said he was the only man I knew who cared for anything except tennis and cocktail parties, and I liked him—" Jill twisted her hands together and whispered harshly, "and if I hadn't, Daddy might be alive now."
    "And still making addicts. Child, do you know anything at all about heroin?"
    Jill said thickly, "That's the awful thing. If I'd been the one to find it out, I might even have gone to the police myself. Drugs—"
    She began to shiver, and the words rushed from her uncontrollably, as if she could no longer hold them back.
    "Jeff came to pick me up for a swimming party, and I had an errand for Daddy. There was an old man to whom Daddy sent a bottle of brandy every few weeks. At least, that's what I thought. But Jeff went with me, and when I handed it over he—he grabbed it and broke it, and there was some white powder. I thought Daddy had been playing a joke on the old guy. I said right away quick— Talcum powder, and I—I laughed, and Jeff—oh, it was awful, he—he said I'm sorry, Cassandra, and then he said I have a warrant for your arrest on charges of dealing unlawfully in narcotic drugs… "
    She began to sob, tears streaming down her face. " I didn't know—Daddy had been arrested when I left the house. The next day they let us out on bond, and—Daddy took me home and said I mustn't talk about it. He gave me a sleeping pill—oh, I'd cried and cried until my eyes were swollen shut, but I still believed it was some horrible mistake.
    "Daddy kissed me and went downstairs and I heard the shot and ran down in my nightie and I—I found him. He was sitting in his old leather chair and there was blood all over his face and I guess I must have gone crazy because I grabbed the gun and I thought I'd shoot myself too and get it all over with, only it was empty and Mama came and took it away from me. She thought I'd