“Promise.”
Fay felt no sense of unease until after two hours Claudine had still not returned. But she was not frightened. She loved and trusted Claudine. The tears did not come until the pine trees behind the cottage began casting long shadows across the sand dunes.
She decided then to go and look for Claudine and was just leaving the cottage when three men came down the narrow track through the pines. Two were policemen. The third was Daddy.
“I still can’t hate her,” said Fay. “How could I? No matter what Mother and Daddy said about her. How she and Kevin had betrayed their trust, kidnapped me for money, might even have murdered me and buried me out there on that desolate beach. It didn’t change the fact that those had been the happiest two weeks of my young life. And Claudine had phoned the police before she disappeared and told them where to find me.”
Prudence considered this with a frown of mature scepticism. “Maybe the real reason you couldn’t hate Claudine was that if you hadn’t been kidnapped and given your folks such a jolt, they wouldn’t have reconciled. Ever think of that?”
Fay nodded. “Shock therapy for a shaky marriage? It certainly did the trick. I think Daddy blamed himself for what happened. He couldn’t have been sweeter to Mother and me after that.”
“Fine, but that doesn’t change the fact they did kidnap you and extort all that money from your parents. You can’t simply overlook it.”
“No, I suppose not. I suppose it’s my duty to put the police onto Claudine. I have to think about it.”
When she left for work the next morning, Fay did not tell Prudence she was going to keep her appointment with Claudine that afternoon, just in case her friend was proved right and Claudine had already skipped.
But she had not. A smiling Claudine opened the door of the fourth-floor apartment of the brownstone not many blocks from where Fay lived.
“I knew you would come,” she said.
Fay looked around the small but well-furnished living room. “How nice. Still living on the ransom money after all this time?” she inquired with conscious cruelty.
“Hardly. We weren’t that greedy. But I had a friend who gave me good financial advice.”
“Kevin?”
Claudine laughed. “Oh, my dear, God knows whatever happened to Kevin. I don’t.”
“You’ve lived here all this time?”
“No. I lived abroad until about a year ago.”
Fay said sharply, “You mean until you thought it safe to come back?”
“It was always safe.”
“Oh?”
Claudine, with a sigh of reluctance, adopted a more serious manner. “Since yesterday I’ve been debating whether or not to tell you the truth. I decided I had no choice. I like my life. I see no reason to endanger it merely to spare your feelings.”
“Sorry, I don’t follow you.”
“Twelve years ago, remember? When your papa left your mama, possibly forever. You remember how distraught she was. Even panic-stricken. The thought of losing him devastated her. Your mama confided in me perhaps more than you realized at the time. She was desperate. Willing to try anything to get him back. The kidnapping, you see, was her idea. If that didn’t bring him back, nothing would, or so she reasoned. We made a pact, she and Kevin and I. Well, you know the rest. Bizarre a plot as it seemed, it worked, didn’t it?”
Even after the first shock wave of this appalling revelation had passed, disbelief did not enter Fay’s mind, almost as if in one of its deeper recesses there had always remained some tiny formless atom of uncertainty.
“But it was monstrous!” she cried. “What you did to him. To Daddy.”
“Yes, well, your mama could hardly tell him, could she. And I would sincerely hope you never do.”
Fay rose so abruptly her knee struck the coffee table. “No, I’ll not tell Daddy, but I shall never talk to her again.”
“Fay, you may as well know. I contacted your mama shortly after I came back to New York. We had a cozy little visit. Right here.” Fay stared at her. “But why?”
Claudine shrugged. “My investments have not been all that successful. I thought she might lend a hand. Which she did. A very generous woman, your mama — when she has no choice.”
Fay walked until she was exhausted, then wandered into a movie, sitting through it twice without really seeing it, wanting only to huddle in the darkness with her own disturbing thoughts. When she came out it was raining again. Unwilling to face anyone, even Prudence, she had a meal in a restaurant before going home.
“Where the dickens have you been?” Prudence greeted her. “Your father’s called twice. Fay, I don’t care what you think, I was worried. I told him, about yesterday. I told him you’d seen that woman.”
White-faced, Fay lashed out at her. “You fool! You meddling fool. You don’t know what you’ve done.”
“Fay, listen to me—”
“You didn’t give him her address, did you?”
“You didn’t tell me her address.”
“He mustn’t find her. He mustn’t let the police know. The things she would say. It would kill him.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“Never mind. I’ve got to go out again.”
“Fay!”
But she was already out the door.
Fay’s sole thought was that she must warn Claudine, urge her to get away while she still had time. Her mind was haunted by dread of the frightful consequences should the police — or her father — find Claudine and learn the truth. At a phone booth she dialed the number on the card Claudine had given her. The phone rang and rang and rang but there was no answer.
She could think of no other course of action but to talk to her father, tell him something, anything, anything but the truth, somehow persuade him to do nothing.
“For pity’s sake, Fay, why didn’t you tell me you’d seen Claudine Bouchère? At least Prudence had the sense to confide in me.”
“Daddy, I didn’t want to upset you and Mother. Not till I’d had a chance to talk to Claudine.”
“But why should you have talked to her?”
“I don’t know. I can’t explain. Did you tell Mother I’d seen her?”
“Of course. You can imagine how it affected her.”
Fay seized upon this. “That’s why I had to see you, Daddy. Don’t you see what it’ll do to Mother if that business is dragged up again? We must forget I ever saw Claudine.”
He regarded her bleakly. “Too late for that, I’m afraid.”
“But it isn’t.”
“Fay, I kept putting it off. Calling the police, I mean. I wanted to talk to you first and get her address. But I couldn’t reach you. Finally I did call them about fifteen minutes ago. When I gave them her name they told me. Some friend of Claudine’s had a date to pick her up. When he got to her apartment, he found her dead. She’d been shot.”
Fay dropped heavily into the nearest chair. “My God. When did it happen?”
“Earlier this evening apparently.”
“What did Mother say?”
“She doesn’t know yet. She was at Judith’s when I called the police.” Judith was a family friend who lived on the next block. “I’m afraid this is going to upset her terribly. She’s been a bundle of nerves lately. Right now she’s taking a hot bath. Honey, I think we could both use a drink.”
Fay noticed how his hand trembled as he poured, and suddenly, with terrible conviction, she knew.