They Never Came Home

by Lois Duncan

  “Okay. I just thought, with the Fourth so close and everything …”

  Eddie got to his feet. There was something about the droop of his shoulders, the vulnerability of long arms and legs on the skinny boy’s body that caught for an instant at Frank’s heart.

  He started to speak, to call him back, and then Eddie said, “You’re no fun at all any more. You act so snarly all the time. I wouldn’t want to cook out with you, even if you wanted to.”

  “Great,” Frank snapped. “Because I don’t want to. So—scram.”

  “You didn’t have to be so hard on him, Frankie.”

  His mother’s voice spoke from the back doorway. She opened the screen door and came outside, crossing over to him.

  “He’s just lonesome.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I know. He just … gets to me.”

  Frank started to get up, and his mother put a restraining hand.

  “Don’t. Stay put. Do you mind if I sit with you for a few minutes? Dad had to go out on a service call tonight, and the house seems so empty.”

  “Sure, Mom. Sit down.” Frank felt ashamed of himself. “Don’t you want this chair where you can put your feet up?”

  “Oh no. This one’s fine. If I got into that one I might never be able to hoist myself out again.”

  His mother sank down with a sigh into the green and white plastic chair and leaned back to look up at the stars.

  “It’s a nice night. So clear and cool. You wouldn’t guess it had been so hot during the day.”

  “We ought to get an air conditioner,” Frank said.

  “It would be nice, wouldn’t it? Well, maybe next year. Till then, it helps just knowing the evenings are coming.”

  “You do too much,” Frank said. “You run around too much in the heat. All that baking and stuff—you don’t have to do that, Mom. That pie tonight and everything.”

  “You hardly touched it,” Mrs. Cotwell said. “Eddie was the only one who ate it, and even he doesn’t eat like he ought to for a growing boy. Oh, don’t worry about me, Frankie. I like to keep busy. Baking keeps my mind off things. It keeps me from doing my own worrying.”

  There was a long pause.

  Then Frank said, “About Dan? Mom, surely you know—”

  “I know. Sure, I know. I don’t worry about Danny any longer.” His mother’s voice was quiet. “It’s my other boys I worry about now. About you, Frankie. You’re not yourself any longer. You’re so quiet all the time. You’re pulling away from us. What is it, son? Is it Mrs. Drayfus—her getting sick while you were there and everything?”

  “I guess so.” Frank tried to keep his voice even. “When I think what I did! I did it, Mom—I was the one! It was seeing me there in the doorway. You should have seen her face, like I was a ghost. And then, she screamed.”

  “She was a sick woman, dear. She had to be, in the first place, or she wouldn’t have reacted that way. You didn’t do it. You were just there.”

  “But, I did do it. I was the one who told her that Larry was dead. I didn’t have to do that. If I hadn’t said anything, if I’d just given her a few minutes to see that I really wasn’t Dan, then Joan could have talked to her.”

  “But Larry is dead,” his mother said gently. “Like Dan. It’s been two and a half months now. If they were alive, we would have had some word about them by now. It’s a heartbreaking thing, but we have to accept it.

  “Mrs. Drayfus couldn’t have gone on hiding from the fact indefinitely. There had to be a point where she realized it, and whenever that happened, it would have been just as bad. Maybe, if she had gone on the way she was, it would have been worse.”

  “She fainted,” Frank said. “At least, that’s what I think happened. She went all limp, and Joan grabbed her and held her up and yelled at me to help her. We carried her into her room and laid her on the bed. She was so light. I didn’t know she was such a little woman. Joan could have carried her by herself, I think.”

  He paused, the memory flooding through him.

  “Joan went to the telephone to call the doctor, and while she was calling, Mrs. Drayfus opened her eyes and looked up at me. She screamed. I never heard a woman scream before. She just lay there, looking at me and screaming and screaming.”

  He shuddered, sudden sickness churning in his stomach.

  “It was awful!”

  “I can imagine,” Mrs. Cotwell said softly. “It must have been.”

  “Joan tried to quiet her. She had me go into the living room, where Mrs. Drayfus wouldn’t see me. She told me to call her father. I phoned him at his office, and he came—he must have driven like a demon all the way, because he got home by the time the doctor arrived. The doctor gave Mrs. Drayfus a shot of some kind, and she stopped screaming, but she was crying. A funny kind of crying, like she never would stop. The doctor said she had to go to the hospital.

  “They put her in the car. They had a blanket around her like it was cold outside. Like it wasn’t the middle of the summer.”

  “Poor thing,” his mother said softly. “Poor, poor woman.”

  “All I wanted to do,” Frank said brokenly, “was to take Joan swimming. I was sorry for her and—and after all, she was Dan’s girl friend and—it was so hot …”

  “I know. I know, son. You couldn’t possibly have known what would happen.” His mother sighed. “Poor woman. I wish there was something we could do to help.”

  “Why did it hit her like that, Mom?” Frank asked. “I know she had a shock, hearing about Larry, but you did too. Dan’s gone too, and he was your son, and you cried and all, sure, but you didn’t go all apart like that. You’re here baking pies and stuff. You’re able to sit here in the yard and talk about it.”

  “Nobody can tell the ‘why’ of these things,” his mother said. “I guess I’m luckier than Mrs. Drayfus. I’m made differently. Some of us are built like china cups and some like plastic mugs.”

  Frank digested the comparison.

  “I’m glad you’re a mug,” he said gratefully. “What would we do if you smashed up?”

  “Just what Joan and her father are doing, I suppose. Make the best of it and try to get me mended. How are they doing, Frank? Have you been over there since Mrs. Drayfus … went away?”

  “No. I … I couldn’t. I know I should have but …” Frank did not even attempt to make excuses. “I phoned Joan a couple of days later. She said they’d taken her mother to a place—it’s not exactly a hospital—it’s more like a private nursing home where people go when they have breakdowns. Her friend Anne was over there with her when I called, and she sounded like she didn’t want to go into it. I couldn’t blame her. I’d think she’d never want to talk to me again.”

  “You couldn’t have known.” His mother’s voice was very gentle. “You’re a good boy, Frank—the best. You wouldn’t hurt anyone if you could help it.”

  “It’s Dan who was the best,” Frank said ruefully. “Dan wouldn’t have done something so clumsy. Dan always knew just what to say to people. Everything he did was always so—so—right.”

  “Dan was one of those lucky people,” Mrs. Cotwell said. “He was born with a way about him, a security, a kind of knowing. He was a good boy too, but no better than you, son. Life is a little harder for you, that’s all. You have to learn the things he was born knowing. But you’ll have a chance to learn them. And Eddie too.

  “You must be patient with Eddie. Dan used to pay him so much attention, and now, with him gone, he needs you more than he does the rest of us. We all need each other.”

  “Sure we do. I’m sorry, Mom. I guess I’ve been thinking too much about myself and not enough about Eddie and the rest of you.”

  Frank was glad of the gradually descending darkness, which hid his face. He raised a hand and brushed it across his eyes.

  “The Fourth—well, why don’t I take the kid on a cookout like he wants? I can do that. It might even be fun once we get there.”

  “Maybe we could all go,” his mother suggested. “We c
ould make a family thing out of it like we used to do. Some of your friends—Roger, maybe, and Scott Kimball—they might like to go with us.”

  “Sure. Great. I’ll ask them.”

  He paused and glanced up at the rustle of footsteps approaching around the side of the house.

  “Eddie?”

  “It’s Joan.”

  The voice spoke out of the shadows an instant before the girl herself appeared, silhouetted against the light from the kitchen windows.

  “I rang the front-door bell, but no one answered, and I thought maybe you were sitting out back here. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “We’re glad to see you, Joan,” Mrs. Cotwell said warmly. “Sit down and join us. Frank and I were just cooling off a little. How is your mother?”

  “The doctors say we shouldn’t look for any real changes too quickly.” Joan seated herself on the glider across from Frank. “They say it takes time for emotions to heal up, just like it does for the body itself. You wouldn’t expect somebody to come out of a car accident, all perfect again, overnight. But she’s getting treatment, and she’s going to get better. The doctors seem sure of it. I—I hope they’re right.”

  “You’re a brave girl, Joan,” Mrs. Cotwell said approvingly.

  Hearing her, Frank thought again of her reference to the china cup and the plastic mug. The mug was not as beautiful on first sight, but when stresses came, it stood strong. Could this have been the quality that Dan saw when he turned away from a dozen prettier girls to settle his heart upon Joan Drayfus?

  Now he looked at her with new respect as she said, “Not so brave really. There are times—”

  She let the sentence break.

  “I know,” Mrs. Cotwell said softly. “There are those times for us all.”

  Giving herself a little shake, she got to her feet.

  “I think I’ll go in and fix some iced tea. Would you young people like some?”

  “Thank you,” Joan said. “That sounds wonderful.”

  “Frank?”

  “Yes, thanks, Mom. Do you want me to help you?”

  He had already swung his feet over the side of the chaise when his mother said, “Of course not. You sit right there and talk to Joan. Since when does it take two people to make iced tea?”

  “I just thought …”

  Now it was he who did not complete a sentence. The truth was, and his mother knew it as well as he did, that he dreaded the thought of being left alone with Joan Drayfus. To face her again, after their last tragic encounter, was difficult enough, even with his mother present.

  Now, leaning back in the chair, listening to the brisk sound of her retreating footsteps as she mounted the kitchen steps, he felt utterly deserted.

  The screen door opened and banged closed, and then there was silence. A long silence, a stillness so heavy that the drone of night insects sounded loud in the honeysuckle along the back fence. Music from a radio floated over from one of the houses behind them.

  “Joan—”

  “Frank—”

  They spoke at the same time, stopped, laughed.

  “What were you going to say?” Joan asked him.

  “Nothing that you don’t already know, I guess. Just that, I’m sorry. About your mother—my part of it. I was such a dope.”

  “You haven’t been blaming yourself, have you?” Joan asked in surprise. “Why, you weren’t responsible. It would have happened anyway, her breaking down like that. The doctor, when he heard about everything that led up to it, was surprised that it hadn’t happened sooner.”

  “I’m glad.” Frank let out his breath in relief, and then, horrified at his own words, amended them hastily. “What I mean is, I’m glad it wasn’t just because of me.”

  “The person I’m worried about now,” Joan said, “is my father. All this is a terrific strain on him. But he seems to be holding up wonderfully. Just knowing that Mother is getting help seems to have lifted a weight off his shoulders.”

  She paused and then said, “I talked to Mr. Brown last night.”

  “You what?” Frank was startled. “You mean the guy who phoned you and then never showed up? Did he call you again?”

  “You’re behind on things,” Joan said. “He did show up. I haven’t had a chance to tell you about it, but he followed me, that night, after we left the library. When I got off the bus he was there, waiting in his car.”

  “Oh my God!” Frank exclaimed in horror. “I should have walked home with you! You shouldn’t have been by yourself!”

  “If I hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have talked to me,” Joan said. “Don’t sound so worried. He didn’t try to do a thing to me. All he did was talk. He showed me the receipt with Larry’s signature. It was his signature, Frank. I don’t have any doubt of that. He was really involved in business with this man, and he had a large amount of money in his possession at the time he went camping with Dan.”

  “Did he tell you what this business was?” Frank asked her.

  Joan nodded. Briefly she outlined the conversation with Mr. Brown.

  “He was supposed to go out to the Pueblo that weekend,” she concluded, “but, of course, he couldn’t. Dad had clamped down on him because of the party at the Brownings’, and he wasn’t allowed to take the car. That’s why he was so keen on the camping trip. He knew it was the only way he’d get out of the house that weekend. Larry couldn’t stand being tied down and restricted.”

  “He couldn’t have taken the money with him,” Frank said. “Nobody would haul cash like that along in a knapsack!”

  “It doesn’t seem reasonable,” Joan agreed. “Still, I’m beginning to wonder if he might not have done exactly that. I’ve called the banks—the one where he used to have a savings account and all of the others in town as well—and he hasn’t deposited the money anywhere. I’ve been through his room from one end to the other. There’s no money there, Frank. That fifty thousand dollars has vanished completely.”

  “And last night Mr. Brown called back to find out about it?”

  “Yes,” Joan said. “He was pretty angry. I gather he’d called a number of times before that and got no answer. Daddy and I have been out a lot lately. He thought we might have moved or left town.”

  “What did he say,” Frank asked, “when you told him you couldn’t find the money?”

  “He thinks …” Joan paused. “It’s so ridiculous I hate to even tell you. He thinks that Larry didn’t go on a camping trip at all. He thinks he took the money and ran away.”

  “That’s crazy,” Frank exclaimed. “Ran away? And Dan along with him, I suppose? Letting us all believe they’re up on the mountain, lost? Letting their folks go crazy worrying and grieving—shoving your mother into a sanitarium! All for fifty thousand dollars? Why, Dan wouldn’t do such a thing for a million times that much!”

  “Of course, he wouldn’t,” Joan agreed heartily, “and Larry wouldn’t either. Only some kind of monster would do that. The point is, he mustn’t be allowed to suggest such a thing to my parents. I don’t know how much further Daddy can be pushed, and as for Mother—she’s only now beginning to learn to adjust herself to the idea of Larry’s death. What would it do to her if, somehow, she learned about this?”

  “Is that what he threatened?” Frank asked angrily. “To tell your parents?”

  “It was at first. I tried to explain to him, to plead with him. I told him I would pay back the money myself as quickly as I could, that I was going to start looking for a job immediately. I don’t have training in anything special. I’ve always planned eventually on being a teacher. Of course, I don’t have the schooling for that yet, but I’m sure I could find something I could do.

  “That’s when he changed.” A puzzled note crept into her voice. “He stopped sounding angry and seemed to get more understanding. It was as though he were thinking something over. And then he offered me a job.”

  “A job? Working for him?” Frank said in surprise. “Doing what?”

  “Actually, what he
offered me was the same job Larry had, picking up jewelry samples and designs from his associates in Mexico. Its only once every other week.”

  “You’re thinking of taking this?”

  “I don’t know how I can afford not to,” Joan told him. “As I say, I have no training in anything. The best I can hope to find around Las Cruces would be work in a coffee shop or something. It would take my entire day and maybe even into the evening. The delivery job for Mr. Brown would take only one day every two weeks, a two-hour drive down and two hours back again. That way, I’d be free to go to see Mother at the nursing home, and when she’s well enough to come home, I’ll be there to take care of her.”

  “And what is he offering to pay for this cushy job?” Frank asked skeptically.

  “He’s going to allow me to work off Larry’s debt at 200 dollars a trip.”

  “Two hundred dollars a trip, just to flit down to Mexico!” Frank could not restrain his astonishment. “Something doesn’t ring right here! This jewelry you’re bringing back, what does it consist of? This could be some kind of smuggling operation.”

  “No,” Joan said, “it can’t be, Frank. The jewelry is just sample pieces, of no great value in themselves. I’m to take them through customs and declare them. The really important thing is the designs that go with them, the ones that will be used by the Indian silversmiths.

  “I know it sounds funny, but I honestly believe that offering me this opportunity is Mr. Brown’s way of being kind. As crazy and mixed up as this whole situation is, people don’t really like to hurt people.”

  “I don’t like anything about it,” Frank said shortly. “The whole business, if you can call it that, sounds slippery. Otherwise, why would this guy be trying to keep it all so secret? Calling himself Mr. John Brown, arranging mysterious meetings. Honest people don’t act that way.”

  “Honest people don’t disappear with other people’s money either,” Joan said quietly, “but Larry seems to have done so. And Larry was honest, Frank. He was my brother, and I can’t believe anything else of him. There’s a lot of wheeling and dealing behind any business. Everybody tries to figure out ways of beating the competition. Even in the trust department where my father works, the whole idea is to avoid taxes and beat other people to investments. I’m sure that Daddy knows a lot of secrets and uses them to help his clients, but that doesn’t make him dishonest.”