Where Love Has Gone (1962)

by Robbins, Harold

  “They wear their religion like a cloak. And you know another thing I’ve noticed about them?”

  “What?”

  “They’ve all got such sad eyes,” she said. “Like the paintings of Christ.”

  The door opened and Charles came into the library. “Dinner is served, madam.”

  The dinner was too much. It began with cracked crab, served on lettuce leaves spread over shaved ice, and with it that wonderful tangy mustard sauce that only Charles seemed able to conjure up. After that, cioppino, a kind of San Francisco bouillabaisse which is more a fish stew than a soup, with everything in it that the Pacific has to offer. Then roast beef, a great thick slab with the rib still attached, medium rare with the blood running out on the plate. And finally, great halves of yellow cling peaches, over rich chocolate ice cream, just the way I’d always liked them. I looked up at Charles as he filled my coffee cup.

  He smiled. He remembered how much I liked canned peaches. At first he’d been horrified by my taste and had ordered giant fresh peaches especially for me. But after awhile he gave in and bought the cans. He had also remembered that I liked a large coffee cup after dinner, not a demitasse.

  “That was a great dinner, Nora,” I said.

  She smiled. “I’m glad to liked it, Luke.”

  I liked it all right. I’d eaten like a horse but she’d merely picked at her food in her usual manner.

  “I think I know you well enough that you won’t mind if I go into the kitchen and tell Cookie how great it was.”

  Nora rose from the table. “You go right ahead. We’ll have more coffee and brandy in the studio when you come out.”

  I went into the kitchen. Cookie was there, her face red and steaming from the stove, as I always remembered it. Only her hair was gray now, to remind me of the passing of time.

  “Colonel Carey!” she exclaimed in a pleased voice.

  “Cookie! I couldn’t leave without telling you what a wonderful meal that was.”

  “I loved preparing it for you, Colonel. You was always a good eater.” Then her face clouded over. “There was only one thing missing. I wish Miss Dani had been here too.”

  “Maybe she’ll be home soon,” I said gently.

  “Do you really think so, Colonel?”

  “I hope so, Cookie.”

  “I hope so too. If only we’d been home that day maybe it would never have happened.”

  I’d started to turn away but I turned back to her. “Weren’t you home that day?”

  “No, sir. Thursday is our day off. But since Miss Hayden was in Los Angeles and would not be home until late Friday evening, Mr. Riccio had also given us Friday.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “I went to Oakland to visit my sister and didn’t get back until late. Until it was all over.”

  I looked at Charles. “And you?”

  “I was back at six o’clock,” he said. “Miss Hayden was already home.”

  “What about Violet?”

  “Violet came in a few minutes after I did.”

  “Then you must have heard something of the quarrel,” I said.

  Charles shook his head. “No, sir. No one wanted the cold supper I’d prepared, so Violet and I stayed in the kitchen. You can’t hear anything in the house from here.”

  He was right about that. I remembered laying out the house so that the kitchen and servants’ quarters would be away from the rest of it. Nora had always said there was nothing quite so annoying as trying to talk over the sound of dishes being washed in the kitchen.

  I turned back to the cook and smiled. “It was still a wonderful dinner, Cookie,” I said. “Thank you very much.”

  She smiled at me. “Thank you, Colonel.”

  The brandy and coffee were on the cocktail table in the center of the small conversational grouping in the corner of the studio. Nora looked up from her chair and smiled as I came into the room. I knew from that that she was ready to get down to business.

  “How was it?” she asked. “Was Cookie glad to see you?”

  “It was like Old Home Week.” I closed the door and sat down opposite her.

  She poured some brandy into the glasses, then handed one to me. I closed my hands about the bottom of it and sloshed the brandy around to warm it. I sniffed the bouquet as it came up from the glass. It was rich and warm and exploded like tiny firecrackers in my nose.

  Nora was watching me. “Well?” I asked.

  She picked up her brandy glass and took a small sip from it. When she spoke her voice was husky. “I want you to help bring Dani back here, where she belongs.”

  It was as if the mountain finally came to Mohammed.

  “Why me?” I asked finally.

  Her voice was still husky. “Because together we could do it. You and I. We could bring Dani home.”

  I took a swallow of the brandy. “You’re forgetting one thing. I don’t live here anymore.”

  “That could be arranged,” she said softly.

  I sat there watching her and suddenly I realized she hadn’t changed at all. The laws she lived by were the same as they had always been. The only thing important to her was what she wanted to do. What damage she’d do, whom she would hurt, didn’t matter at all.

  “Uh-uh,” I said.

  “Think about it, Dani would be better off with us than with Mother, certainly better off than in one of those youth homes. Gordon thinks we might carry it off if we got together. Dr. Weidman feels the psychology is sound, that the court would have to agree.”

  “It might be a good idea if I were still single,” I said. “But I’m not.”

  “You said your wife was an understanding woman. She must know how you feel about Dani, or she wouldn’t have let you come out here. We can make it very attractive for her. She need never have to worry about money for the rest of her life!”

  “Don’t waste your breath, Nora,” I said. “It’s impossible.”

  I put down the brandy snifter and started to get up. She leaned forward in her chair and put her hand on mine. She looked up into my face. “Luke.”

  I stared down at her. I could feel the electricity reaching through the pressure of her fingers. I remained very still, not speaking.

  “Remember how it used to be, Luke?” she said softly.

  “I remember.”

  The pressure of her fingers grew stronger. “It can be like that again, Luke. It never was with anyone else that way it was with you and me, was it?”

  It was almost as if I were hypnotized. “No,” I answered.

  “It could be like that again.”

  I tore my hand away angrily, more angry with myself than with her. I knew that the way I felt was the wrong that Nora always tried to make right. The spell was broken. “No,” I said harshly. “Nothing could ever be like that again. Whatever it was, it was never the truth. It was never real. I can’t go back to living with lies again.”

  “That’s just it, Luke! We don’t have to. Now there are no illusions left, remember? It can be a very sensible arrangement.”

  “Don’t be a damn fool, Nora!”

  “I have my work,” she said, still looking at me. “You’d have yours. I spoke to Cousin George. He said they’d be delighted to have you back. And most important, we’d have a home for Dani to come back to.”

  Suddenly I was weary. There wasn’t anything that Nora had missed, but she couldn’t see that none of it was real. I began to feel sorry for her. “No, Nora,” I said gently.

  She leaned back in her chair, a hint of anger coming into her voice. “You cried too much over your daughter,” she said harshly. “About how much you loved her, about how much you wanted to do for her. And now that you have the chance to really do something for her, you won’t lift a finger!”

  There were so many things that I’d just begun to understand. Like what Elizabeth had meant when she said she wanted me to come home without the ghosts that had plagued me for so long. Somehow she must have known it would come to this. That I w
ould have to choose between her and Dani.

  I felt my heart begin to swell. She’d known, and still she had let me come. There wasn’t much more a man could ask of his wife.

  I looked down at Nora and in a way it was as if I were seeing her for the first time. Sam Corwin had been right when he’d said the only thing she had was her art. Outside of that there was nothing else that she could share with anyone.

  “I came here to help Dani,” I said quietly. “But not by building a life for her on pretense and destruction.”

  “How very noble. The next thing, I suppose, you’ll be telling me that you love your wife!”

  I looked at her thoughtfully. Then suddenly I smiled. She had put everything into words for me. “That’s right, Nora,” I said. “I do.”

  “How much do you think she’ll love you after I send those pictures?”

  I’d been waiting for that. I didn’t answer.

  “What reason will you have then for refusing me?”

  “The best reason in the world, Nora. I just don’t like you.”

  Love dies with words like those. It burns up and destroys itself with the language of hate and recrimination. It tears apart in anger and violence. But after the explosion, some vestige of it still remains, clinging to the mind and heart like an unfulfilled hope, the memory of a passion that never came to fruition. Then it dies finally, with a few simple, almost childlike, words.

  And the ghosts are gone, the guilts vanish. This was the way it was, this is the way it would have been. No matter what you did.

  I put down all the windows of the little car as I drove back to the motel. The cool clean night air washed even the hate I had felt out of my soul. Nora didn’t matter that much to me. Not anymore.

  17

  __________________________________________

  I got back to the motel at a quarter to eleven and went directly to my room. At exactly eleven o’clock there was a knock at my door. I opened it.

  Anna Stradella stood then, an almost frightened expression on her face.

  I stepped back. “Come in, Anna,” I said. I closed the door behind her. “Why did he send you?”

  “Because he didn’t think you’d turn me over to the cops if they were here.”

  “You don’t have to be frightened. They aren’t here.”

  A hint of relief came into her eyes. “I didn’t think they would be.”

  “You have the letters?”

  Silently she opened her handbag. She took them out and gave them to me.

  “What if I said I didn’t have the money?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “It wouldn’t matter.”

  “What would you tell your brother?”

  She turned to me, her eyes filled with a secret hurt. “I don’t have to tell him anything. I gave him the hundred dollars before he gave me the letters.”

  “Why did you do that?” I asked.

  “Because I wanted you to have them. We did you enough harm.”

  She began to cry. I stood there looking at her. “Anna,” I said, “please don’t. I have the money.”

  “I’m not crying about that,” she said. The tears were rolling down her cheeks now, leaving heavy mascara streaks. “Everything’s so mixed up!”

  “What is?” I asked. “What are you crying about?”

  “Steve. He asked me to marry him today. And I didn’t know what to tell him!”

  I smiled. I still didn’t understand women. “I thought that was what you wanted.”

  “I do.” She sniffed into a Kleenex she had pulled from her bag.

  “Then what’s the problem? He knows about his brother?”

  She looked at me. “He knows about Tony. But he doesn’t know about anything else.”

  “What else does he have to know about?”

  “The same things Tony knew about,” she answered. “A girl works for Coriano, she does things.”

  I took a deep breath. “Do you want to marry him?”

  She nodded.

  I put a hand on her shoulder. “Then go ahead. Whatever else you did doesn’t matter.”

  She looked up at me. “Do you really believe that?”

  “He loves you or he wouldn’t want to marry you. That’s the only thing that counts.”

  She started to smile.

  “Now go into the bathroom and wash your face. I’ll call down and have them send up some coffee. We can both use some.”

  She went into the bathroom and closed the door. I called room service and then I sat down and looked at the letters.

  I opened Dani’s first. I felt sick inside when I read it. It was the kind of a letter only a child could write, yet the things that were written there no child should know. It was exactly the kind of a letter Lorenzo had said it was.

  A knock came at the door. Room service in this place was prompt, I thought, as I went to answer it. I opened the door.

  It was Nora. I stood there gawking at her.

  “May I come in?” she asked and walked past me into the room. “I came to apologize, Luke.” She took an envelope from her handbag. “Here are the pictures. I wouldn’t have used them.”

  Automatically I took the envelope. I still hadn’t said a word when the bathroom door opened and Anna came out.

  She still held a towel in her hands, her face was clean of makeup. “Is the coffee here yet, Mr. Carey?” she asked. Then she saw Nora and stopped.

  They stared at each other for a moment, then Nora turned back to me. Whatever it was that I had seen in her face before was now gone. She looked hurt and angry and duped.

  “I should have known better,” she said coldly. “I was beginning to believe everything you said.”

  I put a hand on her arm to stop her. “Nora.”

  She shook my hand off roughly and looked up into my face. “You can stop acting now Luke,” she said. “You’re not God. You just talk like you are!”

  The door slammed behind her.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Carey. I’m always messing things up, aren’t I?”

  I stared at the closed door. I’d never heard Nora apologize for anything before. Never. I looked down at the enveloped in my hand. The pictures were in there. I put them in my pocket.

  There was another knock at the door. This time it was room service. I paid for the coffee and filled the cups. “Here,” I said, holding one out to her. “Drink this. It will make you feel better.”

  Then I went back to the table. Anna sat down opposite me, her eyes large and sad. I picked up Nora’s letter and began to read it.

  Suddenly it was as if no one else was in the room. Everything was there in the letter. Everything. All the missing keys. All the answers I’d been searching for without knowing it. I reread the last paragraph again, just to make sure.

  And now, my darling, that we’ve definitely set Thanksgiving as a wedding date, let me warn you about just one thing. I’m a jealous and possessive woman and if I ever catch you so much as looking at another woman, I’ll cut your heart into tiny little pieces. So be careful.

  All my love,

  Nora

  Anna’s voice seemed to come from a long way off. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Your face is as white as a sheet!”

  I looked up from the letter. There was pain binding my temples; it began to go away as I saw the look of concern on Anna’s face.

  “I’m all right,” I said gruffly. “Nothing’s the matter.”

  Everything fell into place now. All the bits and pieces. All the tortuous turns and twisted lies. I knew the truth now, though I was the only one besides Dani and Nora who did. Now there was just one problem remaining.

  To prove to the court that my daughter had not committed murder. And that her mother had.

  PARTFIVE

  LUKE’S STORY

  The Trial

  ________________________________________________

  1

  __________________________________________

  Dani seemed pale and tense as she came
into the courtroom. She paused in the doorway behind Marian Spicer and looked around the room.

  We were seated at the long table as we’d been seated for the last hearing, only this time Dr. Weidman sat next to Nora and Harris Gordon sat between Nora and her mother. That left me at the opposite end of the table from where Dani would sit with the probation officer.

  The judge was already on the bench, the court clerk and the recorder with his stenotype machine were seated too. The court attendant, in his deputy sheriff’s uniform, leaned in his usual negligent manner against a closed door.

  I reached up and touched Dani’s hand as she passed behind me on her way to her seat. Her hand was ice cold. I smiled encouragingly.

  She forced a smile to her lips but it was only a travesty of one. I held my thumb up in a gesture of courage. Dani nodded and went on. She paused a moment to kiss the old lady and Nora, then went to her seat.

  The judge didn’t waste any time. His gavel rapped almost before Dani was settled in her chair. “It is the purpose of this hearing,” he said, “to determine the future custody and care of Danielle Nora Carey, a minor, in accordance with her own best interests and the best interests of the state.” He looked down at Dani. “Do you understand that, Danielle?”

  Dani nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “You may also remember,” he continued, “that when you were in this court last week I informed you that you have certain rights: the right to call witnesses on your behalf; the right to counsel; the right to question any statement made about you which you regard as derogatory or harmful.”

  “Yes, sir,”

  “I understand also that you, together with your family, have agreed on Mr. Gordon to represent all of you mutually. Did you agree to that, Danielle?”

  She didn’t raise her eyes. “Yes, sir.”

  The judge looked at all of us. “We will proceed then,” he said, picking up several sheets of paper from the desk in front of him. “We have before us two separate petitions for the custody of this child. One has been filed by the probation officer, Miss Marian Spicer, requesting that the state retain custody until such time as the child has undergone satisfactory rehabilitation and care and we can be reasonably sure that she will not again bring harm to herself or others by her actions. The other is a petition filed by Mr. Gordon, acting for the parents and relatives of the child, requesting that the child be made a ward of, and custody be entrusted to, Mrs. Hayden, the child’s material grandmother. She would undertake the education, care and guidance of the child until she comes of age.