Free In the Still of the Night by Dorothy Salisbury Davis Page A

her aunt’s house for dinner. In other words, Juanita has been missing since you last saw her. You simply must call the police.”
    “Julie, please!” The woman’s voice rose hysterically.
    “I’ll call you later,” Julie said and hung up.
    The counselor was watching Julie with an appraising eye. “You know, don’t you, you’re the best thing that ever happened to Juanita.”
    “Doesn’t help much now, does it?”
    “If there’s anyone she’ll get in touch with it’s you.”
    “So if I don’t hear from her, where is she? What’s the worst possibility you can think of, doctor?”
    The counselor gave an enormous sigh. “That she was abducted. But if she was, she must have set herself up for it willingly—the lie about dinner at Elena’s.”
    “Her mother thinks it’s all about boys,” Julie said.
    “I wish it were. Ridiculous of me to say that, but the boys are a lot more interested in Juanita than she is in the boys.”
    “Do you know what her home situation is like?”
    Alverez nodded. “Her father works long hours. Whatever her mother does while he’s away, Juanita’s ashamed of it.”
    “She usually stops at my place on the way home if I’m there. Yesterday she didn’t. I just happened to see her go by. I think she’d been to the street fair. If you’d ask her classmates whether anyone saw her—where and what time—it would be great. When I went out not long after I saw her, I found a flyer stuck in my mail drop. Now I wonder if she put it there. Maybe. You try to think of everything. This was about a rally of the West Side women to close up the porn shops in the neighborhood.”
    Alverez smiled. “Well, I can tell you this: If there’s a budding feminist in the sixth grade, it’s Juanita Rodriguez.”
    “Take a bite, honey, or I’ll eat it. Didn’t your mother ever say, ‘If you don’t eat it, I will’?”
    Juanita did not answer. She was sitting at the table, the big woman between her and the door. It was daylight, but the room was lighted mostly by long tubes in the ceiling. There weren’t any windows except the one in the roof. The man, Danny, was poking around among the statues and moving some boxes. There were paintings, too, one on a three-legged stand and others stacked on their sides. Danny wasn’t doing anything, only moving things around. With his little eyes and skinny moustache he didn’t look to her like an artist.
    The woman broke off a piece of the Danish, touched Juanita’s tight lips with it, and then ate it herself. Her fingernails were like dabs of blood, her mouth a red smear. Even her hair was red. She was as old as Mama, a lot older than Julie. Everybody would be looking for her, but where would they look? Papa would shout and whack her mother. Then he’d cry.
    “Take some coffee, Juanita. It won’t hurt you, I promise.”
    “You promised there were puppets.” Her first words except for the “No” to the needle.
    “We do make puppets.”
    The man gave a bark of laughter.
    “Shut up, Danny. And you’re not supposed to touch any of their things back there. It’s in the agreement.”
    “Fuck the agreement.”
    “Don’t you talk like that in front of her,” the woman shouted.
    “What in hell is going on with you, Dee?”
    “Why don’t you go out and look for what you’re supposed to be looking for?”
    “Because it’s nine A.M. and nothing’s open yet.” He came out from among the statues and stopped at the table. “The lights in here are no damn good for us. We should’ve known that.”
    “Then get some that are! Honest to God, Danny, you’re in New York City.”
    “Don’t hassle me, Dee. You’re the one jumped the gun, though I’m damned if I see why. Little Miss Perfect here.” He caught a handful of Juanita’s hair and pulled her head back—not roughly, but not gently either. He looked at her from her eyes to as far down as he could see and then let go. He poked his finger at the woman’s face. “Just don’t get too