Danielle Steel - Vanished

“So am I,” Malcolm said. “The U.S. Treasury Department is sending us marked notes this morning.”

“We'll have to be very careful how that's handled.” It had been a disaster in the Lindbergh case, and John didn't want anything going wrong this time. “I'd like to speak to you this afternoon, if you have time.” John wanted to know if there was anyone he suspected, or was afraid of. And as he had with Marielle, he wanted to see him alone, but he also wanted to give Marielle time to tell him about Charles Delauney.

“I'll see you now,” Malcolm said with a frown. He had slept in the car coming up from Washington, and he was more rested than either Marielle or John Taylor.

“I'm afraid I have some other matters to attend to first.” If nothing else, he wanted to get back to his office and shower and shave, have another stiff cup of coffee, and take some time to think about what they were doing. The truth was, they had no leads at all. All they had was Charles, and the fact that the driver had admitted that morning that someone had called him a few weeks before and offered him a hundred dollars if he'd choose that particular night to go out with Edith. He had figured the joke was on them anyway, because they'd been planning for ages to go to the Irish Christmas dance in the Bronx, so it was no effort for him. But the hundred had arrived in a plain envelope at the back door the week before, and he'd thrown the envelope away and spent the cash, and never given it another thought. He said he hadn't recognized the voice on the phone, except that they'd had an accent, what kind of accent he wasn't sure, maybe English, maybe German. He insisted he couldn't remember. But even if Delauney had taken the child, he wouldn't have done it himself. And supposedly the week before, he hadn't seen Marielle, and didn't know she had a child … or did he? Was it all a clever plan? Had he been watching her for weeks? Months? Had he been getting news of her while he was in Europe? Had he planned his revenge for years? It was hard to make sense of it, there was so little to go on, and it was still way too early. But why hadn't the driver been suspicious of the call? It could have meant a robbery was being planned or an attack on Malcolm or Marielle. But it was clear to John Taylor that the driver didn't care about his employers.

Malcolm looked annoyed that Taylor wasn't ready to speak to him just then, and just so he understood who he was dealing with, he mentioned his trip to Washington again. But Taylor understood perfectly. The message was, do it right, do it now, do it my way, or you're going to regret it. The trouble was, Taylor wasn't that kind of man. And he wasn't about to take any pressure from Malcolm.

“I'll see you this afternoon, sir. Say around four?”

“That'll be fine. I assume your men know how to find you, if a call comes in before that?” It was a very gentle slap in the face, an inference that he was “disappearing.”

“Of course.”

“Very well. Is there anything you can do with those vultures on our front doorstep, by the way?”

“I'm afraid not. They all think they're out there defending the First Amendment. We can back them up a little bit though, get them away from the house. I'll have my men see to it.”

“See that you do,” Malcolm said with a stern look, instead of “thank you.” Taylor left them then, as Malcolm looked down at his wife and muttered, “I don't like him.”

“He's a nice man. He was very kind to us last night.” She didn't tell him how kind, but it had made a lasting impression on her, in the absence of her husband.

“I'd be more impressed if he found your son. You might keep that in mind, Marielle.” As though she could forget it. She wondered why he was being so cruel to her, except that she knew he was upset, and somehow he seemed to feel that it was all her fault. Or was she just imagining it? Was she feeling responsible again, as she had for Andre and her baby girl? Was everything always going to be her fault? It was that that usually set off the headaches, that and the terrible helplessness she always felt when things went wrong and she couldn't change them. But she couldn't allow herself to think of that now, couldn't allow herself to think of what might be happening to Teddy. She had to be strong. And she knew that before John Taylor returned that afternoon, she had to tell Malcolm.

“Could we go upstairs for a little while?” She looked nervously at her husband, and he glanced at her with a strange expression, as though she had propositioned him and he couldn't believe it. “I have to talk to you.”

“This isn't the time.” He tried to brush her off, he wanted to return the German ambassador's call. He was touched that he had called him.

“Yes, it is. Malcolm, it's important.”

“Can't it wait?” But he could see from the look in her eyes that she meant it. She was surprising him actually. For a woman who seemed to go weak at the knees whenever life became even slightly difficult, she seemed to be holding up remarkably well in this crisis. She looked tired, of course, and pale, but she seemed calm and reasonable, and other than the pathetically trembling hands he had noticed at once, she seemed to be controlling her emotions. What he hadn't seen was the terrible scene in the boy's room only that morning, the crying that seemed to have no end as she held his teddy bear to her and felt terror rise in her throat every time she thought of her son. But she was fighting it, because she knew she had to. If she didn't, she would panic and collapse completely.

“Malcolm, will you come upstairs with me?” She was insistent.

“All right, all right. I'll be there in a moment.” She waited for him in her dressing room, because she didn't know where else to be, and she paced the small room while she waited. She didn't know where to start, or what to say, and she wished she had forced him to listen before she married him, but he hadn't wanted to hear it then, and now he had to.

He came up half an hour later, just as she was ready to go downstairs looking for him. But finally he appeared, and he seemed huge in the small room, as ha took a chair, and looked at her with obvious irritation.

“All right, Marielle, I don't know what you can possibly want to talk about now. I hope it's important, and has something to do with Teddy.”

“It might. I hope it doesn't,” she said quietly, sitting on a small settee across from him. It was odd how far away from him she felt, how distant they were, even in this crisis. In fact, suddenly, it seemed worse than ever. “It has to do with me. And I think it's important. Years ago, when we were getting married, I told you that there were things about me you might not like, and you said that everyone had a past and it wasn't important. You felt it was best left untouched, but I felt I owed it to you to tell you.” She sighed and had to fight for air again. All of this was so difficult that she always seemed to have trouble breathing. But she knew she had to tell him. And this time he had to listen. “Do you remember?” she asked him softly, and for a moment, his eyes gentled. Maybe he was only in pain, she told herself. Perhaps the shock of losing Teddy was so great that he could offer Marielle no comfort, just as she and Charles had been unable to comfort each other nine years before. Sometimes when the common agony is too great one can only struggle alone. She wondered if that was what was happening now, and it wasn't that he held her responsible after all. But she had to go on now.

“I do remember,” he answered her. “But what does that have to do with what is happening now? Or with Teddy?” There was a look of accusation on his face and she forced herself to ignore it.

“I don't know. I'm not sure. But I must tell you what I do know.” She took a breath and went on, unaware of how beautiful she was. “My father told his closest friends that I had had a youthful flirtation and gone a little mad when I was eighteen and we were on the Grand Tour. And then he told everyone that I'd decided to stay on and study in Paris. Well, some of that was true but very little. I had much more than a flirtation. I ran away, I eloped, with Charles Delauney. I'm sure you must know his father.” Malcolm nodded. He had known him, better than he had known her own. He was a crusty old man, but a smart one, with a huge fortune. But he had never met the son. They said he was a renegade of the worst sort, a writer. And he'd run off to the war when he was fourteen or fifteen, and after that he'd stayed in Europe. Old man Delauney said he was no good, and that was all he'd heard, but now he looked stunned at Marielle's confession. “I married him when I was eighteen, and by the time we came back from our honeymoon and my parents wanted to have the marriage annulled, I was pregnant. So they went home, and I stayed. The marriage was never annulled. And we had a little boy …” She had to fight back tears as she said it. After all these years, to tell the story twice in one day was almost more than she could bear. But she knew she had to tell him. Teddy's disappearance made it all different. “His name was Andre,” she gulped again, “and he looked a little like Teddy, except that he had very black hair, instead of blond hair like you.' She tried to smile, but Malcolm said nothing. He was not finding the recital amusing. And she knew that, for Malcolm, she had to keep it to the facts. He didn't have to know how much she loved him, or how desperately she had loved Charles, or how terrible it had been when Andre died. He just had to know that he did, and that Charles had seen Teddy and gone crazy. He had to hear this from her so he didn't think she was protecting Charles. The only one she wanted to protect now was Teddy. And Malcolm had to hear everything if they were going to find him.