Where Love Has Gone
“To date, this incredible man, who became a star author with
Never Love a Stranger,
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WHERE LOVE HAS GONE
THE MOST SCANDALOUS, MOST RIVETING NOVEL FROM
AMERICA’S MASTER STORYTELLER . . .
“HAROLD ROBBINS IS A MASTER!”
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IS ONE OF THE
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--Publishers Weekly
by Harold Robbins
AuthorHouse, Inc.
The Adventurers Descent from Xanadu The Dream Merchants Dreams Die First Goodbye, Janette
The Inheritors The Lonely Lady
Memories of Another Day Never Love a Stranger The Pirate
Spellbinder
Where Love Has Gone
AuthorHouse™ 1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com Phone: 1-800-839-8640
© Copyright 2010 Jann Robbins.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.
First published by AuthorHouse 6/23/2010 isbn: 978-1-4520-4133-9 (sc)
isbn: 978-1-4520-4134-6 (hc)
isbn: 978-1-4520-4559-7 (e)
Printed in the United States of America. Bloomington, Indiana
PART ONE
LUKE’S STORY
Friday Night
PART TWO
The Part of the Book
About NORA
PART THREE
LUKE’S STORY
The Weekend
PART FOUR
The Part of the Book
About DANI
PART FIVE
LUKE’S STORY
The Trial
THE PURPOSE OF JUVENILE COURT LAW.
“To secure for each minor under the jurisdiction of the juvenile court such care and guidance, preferably in his own home, as will serve the spiritual, emotional, mental and physical welfare of the minor and the best interests of the State; to preserve and strengthen the minor’s family ties whenever possible, removing him from the custody of his parents only when his welfare or safety and protection of the public cannot be adequately safeguarded without removal; and when the minor is removed from his own family, to secure for him custody, care, and discipline as nearly as possible equivalent to that which should have been given by his parents.”
Section 502, Chapter 2 of the Welfare and Institute Code of the State of California.
LUKE’S STORY
Friday Night
__________________________________________
It was a day for losers.
In the morning I blew my job. In the afternoon Maris hit the long ball, and as the television cameras followed him around the bases you caught glimpses of the expressions on the faces of the Cincinnati Reds and somehow you felt the Series was over even if there were four more games to play. And that night the telephone rang, getting me out of the sleepless bed where I’d been lying staring at the gray-black ceiling, trying to be very quiet as I listened to Elizabeth pretending sleep in the next bed.
The impersonal voice of the long-distance operator sang hollowly, “Mister Luke Carey, plee- uhz. Long distance calling.”
“Speaking,” I said.
By now Elizabeth had her light on. She was sitting up in bed, her long blond hair tumbling down over her bare shoulders. “Who is it?” she mouthed silently.
I covered the mouthpiece with my hand. “Don’t know,” I said quickly. “Long distance.” “Maybe it’s that job in Daytona,” she said hopefully. “The one you wrote about.”
A man’s voice came on the phone. It had a faint Western twang. “Mr. Carey?” “Yes.”
“Mr. Luke Carey?”
“That’s right,” I said. I was beginning to get a little annoyed. If this was someone’s idea of a joke, I wasn’t having any of it.
“This is Sergeant Joe Flynn of the San Francisco Police.” The twang was more noticeable now. “You have a daughter named Danielle?”
A sudden fear clutched at my insides. “Yes, I have,” I said quickly. “Is anything the matter?” “I reckon there is,” he said slowly. “She just committed murder!”
Reactions are funny things. For a moment I almost laughed aloud. I’d had visions of her broken bleeding body lying torn up on some lonely road. I bit my tongue to suppress the words, “Is that all?” Instead, aloud I asked, “Is she all right?”
“She’s okay,” the sergeant’s voice came back. “May I talk to her?”
“Not until morning,” he replied. “She’s on her way to Juvenile Hall.”
“Is her mother around?” I asked. “Can I talk to her?”
“Nope,” he said. “She’s upstairs in her room, having hysterics. Reckon the doctor’s about giving her a shot now.”
“Is there anyone there I can talk to?”
“Mr. Gordon’s on his way to Juvenile Hall with your daughter.” “Is that Harris Gordon?” I asked.
“Yep,” he replied. “The lawyer man himself. He was the one asked me to call you.”
Harris Gordon. The lawyer man. That was what they called him out there. The best there was. And the most expensive. I ought to know. He had represented Nora in our divorce and had made a monkey out of my lawyer. I began to feel a little better. At least Nora wasn’t so hysterical if she had called him.
A curious note came into the policeman’s voice. “Don’t you want to know who your daughter killed?” The way he said it, it sounded like “kilt.”
“I don’t believe it yet,” I said. “Danielle couldn’t hurt anyone. She’s not even fifteen.” “She killed him all right,” he said flatly.
“Who?” I asked.
“Tony Riccio,” he said. Something nasty came into his voice. “Your wife’s boyfriend.” “She’s not my wife,” I said. “We’ve been divorced eleven years.”
“She hit him in the stomach with one of them sculptor’s chisels your wife has in her studio. Sharp as a razor it was. Ripped him apart like a bayonet. There was blood all over the place.” I don’t think he’d even heard what I’d said. “Looks like one a them cases where the man’s been making out with both of them and the kid got jealous.”
I could feel the nausea coming up in my throat. I swallowed hard and pushed it back down. “I know my daughter, Sergeant,” I said. “I don’t know why she killed him or even that she did, but if she did, I’d stake my life on it that that wasn’t the reason.”
“It’s been more’n six years since you seen her,” he persisted. “Kids have a way of changing in six years. Growing up.”
“Not to murder,” I said. “Not Danielle.” I hung up before he could say another word and turned on the bed.
Elizabeth was staring up at me, her blue eyes wide. “You heard?”
She nodded. She got out of bed swiftly and slipped into her robe. “But I can’t believe it.” “I can’t either,” I said dully. “She’s still a kid. She’s only fourteen and a half.”
Elizabeth took my hand. “Come on out to the kitchen. I’ll make some coffee.”
I sat there in some kind of a fog until she placed the cup of hot coffee in my hand. It was one of those times when a person thinks about everything and yet really thinks of nothing. Nothing that is remembered anyway. Maybe little things. Like a little girl’s first time at the zoo. Or laughing at the spray coming up from the sea at La Jolla. And the small voice of a child.
“It’s so much fun to live on a boat, Daddy! Why can’t Mommy come down here and live in a boat with you instead of the big old house on top of the hill in San Fwancisco?”
There was a kind of smile inside me as I remembered the way Danielle had of saying San Francisco—San Fwancisco. It used to annoy Nora. Nora always spoke so properly. Nora was always proper in everything. Everything that people could see. She was a lady on the outside.
Nora Marguerite Cecelia Hayden. In her flowed the proud blood of the Spanish dons of old California, the hot Irish blood that laid track on the Western Railroads, and the ice-water that circulated through the veins of the New England bankers. Stir them all together and they made a lady. With wealth and power and land. And a strange wild kind of talent that lifted her high above everyone else.
For whatever Nora touched, stone or metal or wood, it took on a shape, a life, of its own. And whatever she touched that had a shape, a life, of its own, she destroyed. I knew. Because I knew what she had done to me.
“Drink your coffee while it’s hot.”
I looked up. Elizabeth’s eyes looked at me steadily. I sipped at the coffee. I could feel its warmth creeping into the cold that had been my belly. “Thanks.”
She sat down opposite me. “You were far away.” I forced my mind back to her. “I was thinking.” “Of Danielle?”
I nodded silently, feeling a guilt creeping up inside me. That was another thing that Nora had. A way of creeping into your mind and pre-empting thoughts that should be of someone else.
“What are you going to do?” Elizabeth asked. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”
Her voice was warm and gentle. “The poor kid.” I didn’t speak.
“At least her mother is with her.”
I laughed bitterly. Nora was never with anybody. Only herself. “Nora was having hysterics. The doctor was knocking her out for the night.”
Elizabeth stared at me. “You mean Danielle is alone?”
“Their lawyer went down to Juvenile Hall with her,” I said.
Elizabeth looked at me a moment longer, then got to her feet and walked over to the cabinet. She took down another cup and picked up a spoon from the drainboard next to the sink. Her hand was shaking. The spoon clattered to the linoleum floor. She started to pick it up and then she stopped. “Damn!” she swore. “I feel so clumsy.”
I picked it up as she took another spoon from the rack. She filled her cup with coffee and sat down again. “What a hell of a time to be pregnant.”
I smiled at her. “You’re not the only one to blame. I had something to do with it.”
Her eyes didn’t waver from mine. “I feel so stupid and useless. Like a clod. Especially now.” “Don’t be silly.”
“I’m not being silly,” she said. “You didn’t want this baby. I wanted it.” “Now you
are
being silly.”
“You had a daughter,” she said. “That was enough for you. I wanted to give you a child, too. I was jealous of her, I guess. I had to prove that at least in one way I was just as good as Nora.”
I walked around the table and sat down beside her. She was still looking at me. I took her face in my hands. “You don’t have to prove anything. I love you.”
Her eyes still didn’t leave mine. “I saw the expression on your face when you talked about Danielle. You missed her. I thought if we had a baby you wouldn’t miss her so much.”