Failure to appear

CHAPTER 20

Riding in the car with Fraymore was an emotional nightmare. I knew exactly what he was thinking, what he was feeling, because I had walked in his shoes once. Dreading what was to come, I was scared witless, not just for me but for all of us. The situation was every bit as dangerous as walking into a house filled with highly volatile liquid-propane gas.

We followed Marjorie south and out of town, across the freeway, and past the turnoff to the charred remains of Live Oak Farm. She was speeding, but not as much as I would have expected. Even without hot pursuit, we maintained some visual contact.

"Are you going to stop and call for backup?" I asked as we passed what I knew to be both the last gas station and the last telephone booth on the outskirts of town.

"You are my backup," Gordon Fraymore responded.

I do ask stupid questions.

Outside the car, dusk was fast approaching. Fraymore flipped on the headlights. We swept out through rolling pastureland, around the end of what was evidently a small lake, then up a steep grade laced with switchback curves, and into the mountains, a lower spur of the Cascade Range. Neither the Suburban nor the Montego were particularly good at cornering on the steep, winding road. When Marjorie Connors increased her pace, Fraymore didn't, despite the fact that she was pulling well ahead of us. At times the Suburban's taillights disappeared completely in the deepening twilight.

"We're going to lose her," I warned.

Fraymore shook his head. "No. I think I know where she's going."

After that we rode for almost half an hour in absolute silence while paved road gave way to loose gravel. I don't know what Fraymore was thinking, but I was remembering the horror of finding Anne Corley at Snoqualmie Falls and quailing from what was to come with every atom of my being.

Beyond the fringe of oak trees and well into ponderosa pine, Fraymore turned left onto a dirt road that meandered off into the forest. By then it really was dark. A thick layer of pine needles littered the meagerly lit road before us. There were no visible tracks, no way to tell whether or not another vehicle had come this way for months on end, but Gordon Fraymore pushed on. In the reflected glow of the dashboard, his broad face was a study in grim determination and total despair.

To my credit, I didn't try to tell him everything was going to be all right. This was no time for sugar-coated platitudes. We both knew imminent disaster awaited us around each and every fast-approaching curve.

A half-mile or so later, Fraymore turned off yet again, this time onto a nearly invisible track barely wide enough to accommodate the width of his Montego. By then I found myself hoping he was wrong-that he didn't know Marjorie Connors nearly as well as he thought he did. With any kind of luck, we'd end up stuck out in these thick woods. It would fall to someone else to bring Marjorie Connors down-someone who, unlike Gordon Fraymore, didn't care so damn much.

But then, through a canyon of towering trees, the high beam of the Mercury's headlights bounced off the reflectors on the back of Marjorie's parked Suburban. Without thinking, I reached for my automatic and shifted it into a jacket pocket to make it more readily accessible.

Fraymore noticed. "Remember," he cautioned. "First we talk."

What else could he say? After all, he loved the woman.

"We already tried it your way. She drove off and left us. She's crazy, Gordon. The death toll already stands at three. You said so yourself. We can't let it go any higher."

Fraymore said nothing more, but I followed his lead and left the automatic in my pocket. When he shut off the engine, I felt naked and vulnerable, sitting there waiting for my eyes to adjust to the lack of light.

"There's a cabin off to the right on the other side of the Suburban," he told me, "about ten yards up a little path. Right around the truck there's a picnic table. My guess is that's where we'll find her. You go right; I'll go left."

"Any idea what she's carrying?"

"None whatsoever."

"Too bad," I said.

As I crawled out of the car and eased myself onto the ground, I couldn't help wondering why it is women never tell men the really important things about them-the life-and-death things. A woman lets you know how she likes her steaks, what she takes in her coffee, and whether or not she despises fingernail polish, but who needs to know that?

Gordon Fraymore may have known from the outset exactly where Marjorie Connors might go, but he didn't have the foggiest idea what kind of gun she might use to kill him. Or whether or not she would. Damn Marjorie Connors anyway!

I was halfway around the Suburban and wondering when I'd come face-to-face with a barking Sunshine, when I heard a sharp crack. I froze and held my breath, but it was only the crackle of dried twigs catching fire. Despite what I'd been through earlier that day at Live Oak Farm, the sound of a burning campfire was far more comforting than I would have thought possible. With the noise from the fire helping to conceal the sound of my approach, I edged around the front bumper to where I could see Marjorie toss an armload of wood onto a recently kindled fire laid in an outdoor river-rock fireplace.

The flickering light allowed me to locate Sunshine lying curled up nearby. She was close enough to the flames to take instant advantage of their spreading warmth. No doubt the higher elevation and much cooler temperatures were tough on the frail old dog's aged bones. I suspected Marjorie had started the fire more out of concern for Sunshine than to warm herself. Her regard for the dog was at once touching and revolting. How could she worry so about an ancient, worthless animal and yet show so little consideration for human life?

Finished stoking the fire, Marjorie retreated to the neighboring picnic table just as Gordon Fraymore emerged into the light from a pool of shadows. "Hello, Marjorie," he said softly.

She showed no surprise. "Hello, Gordy," she returned. "It's all right. I'm not going to shoot you."

"I'm not going to shoot" should join "Go ahead and shoot me" on the list of most overused famous last words, but Gordon Fraymore took them at face value. He stepped nearer the table. A pebble rattled under his foot, and Sunshine raised her head.

"It's okay, girl," Marjorie crooned reassuringly. "It's only Gordy."

Sunshine thumped her tail in a brief welcoming tattoo. Then, seemingly unconcerned, she wearily put her chin back down on her paws and closed her eyes while Fraymore edged even closer. I could see that his own gun was still holstered, the damn fool.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Waiting for you. Having a drink. Care to join me?"

"No, thanks. What's in the glass?"

A tall plastic glass sat on the wooden table in front of her. Next to it stood a bottle. "Gin," she answered.

"You don't drink," he observed.

"I do sometimes."

Their voices were so subdued and dispassionate, that I wondered if I had made up the other part, if I had only imagined the charge of passion arc between them, but when Fraymore asked the next question, his voice cracked with pent-up emotion.

"Why'd you do it, Marge?" he asked brokenly. "Why?"

"I was getting even," she answered with a shrug. "Guy threw me out. Once he saw her, he thought I was fat and ugly and old. You can fix fat, but there's not much you can do about old and ugly, is there. Guy dumped me on the garbage heap like an old shoe-and for a slut like that!"

"God in heaven! You didn't have to kill them."

Marjorie paused long enough to pour more gin into the glass. "Didn't I?" she returned scornfully. "If I didn't, who would? You must know what they were by now, or you wouldn't be here."

"It still wasn't up to you," Fraymore insisted doggedly. "Sooner or later, the law catches up with people like that."

"No, it wouldn't," she replied. "The statute of limitations ran out on most of Daphne's criminal activity long ago, and although you may not be willing to do it yourself, there's no law against ditching a worn-out wife."

Fraymore's massive shoulders drooped. "Why didn't you tell me what you knew? If you found out, it couldn't have been that much of a secret."

Marjorie picked up the glass and took a long pull on it. "Oh, it was a secret all right. They really covered their tracks. I found out because I made it my business to find out, because I made it my life's work. It took a long time. It took a lot longer to find the girl."

"What girl? Tanya Dunseth?" I asked. Speaking, I moved into the circle of light. I wanted Marjorie to know there were two of us-that she wouldn't be able to talk her way around Gordon Fraymore and get off scot-free. She dismissed me with barely a glance.

"As soon as I found Tanya, I knew she was a gold mine."

"As in blackmail?"

Marjorie regarded me over the rim of her glass. "That too," she allowed, "but also as bait. With Guy's theater connections, it was easy to get them down here when I wanted to."

"What about Tanya? Was she in on it?"

Marjorie smiled. "The only thing Tanya did was become an actress. Many of them do, you know."

"Do what?" I asked.

"Become actresses," she answered. "Incest victims become actresses so they can turn themselves into someone else, so they can live some other life. They often go a little crazy, too," she added with a laugh. "Tanya's crazy as a bed bug. You probably picked up on that."

For the first time, I noticed a slight slurring in her words, but I chalked that up to the gin. She was hitting the water-glass-sized tumbler pretty hard. In the course of that few minutes of conversation, she had drained it once and was filling it yet again. Once the alcohol hit home, I knew we'd have a roaring drunk on our hands. Subduring her and dragging her back to Ashland in Fraymore's ill-equipped Montego would be a real chore. I wasn't looking forward to it.

While she poured more gin, I saw a reflection on the table where firelight glinted off the pearl-handled revolver that lay on the table within inches of her glass. Armed and dangerous is bad enough. Armed and drunk is doubly so.

"You do understand what I'm saying, don't you?" she continued with amazing unconcern. I confess I had totally lost track of her train of thought, if any. In a situation like that, the whole idea is to keep the person talking. About anything.

"No, we don't," I said quickly, pulling Gordon Fraymore back into the exchange. "Why don't you try explaining it."

"Well," she said, her tongue much thicker now. She framed her words slowly and with some difficulty. "You seem like a smart man, Mr. Beaumont. I suppose you know what incest is."

"Tanya told us about her father," I said.

"Which one?"

"What do you mean?"

Marjorie giggled. "The real one or the ones she made up?"

"I'm not sure. We haven't quite sorted all that out."

"You don't need to. I already took care of him, too. The real one, I mean. He was for Tanya. Guy was for me. That's fair, don't you think?" She raised her glass in a mock salute.

Fraymore almost collapsed under the weight of her words. Obviously, there was another still-unnamed victim, someone else we didn't know about.

"How many are there, Margie?" he asked hollowly. "How many besides Guy and Daphne Lewis and Martin Shore?"

"That's all." She tossed the answer off with an air of nonchalance, waving her glass crookedly at him before taking another drink. "Three is all. Martin Shore's like the special of the week-two for one. I got 'em all down here and took care of all of 'em at once," she added with a giggle. "Like in that old story about the guy who killed all the flies on his bread. Remember that one? What's it called? ‘Seven at One Blow,' I think. Yeah. That's it."

I was listening closely, trying to follow and make sense of her drunken rambling while at the same time keeping close watch on the gun. I was so preoccupied that I almost missed the crux of what she was saying as she edged closer to the terrible truth.

"Two for one," I repeated. "What does that mean?"

She looked at me and shook her head. "Mean to tell me you two smart boys still haven't figured it out?" She started to laugh in dead earnest then, pointing a taunting finger first at Gordon Fraymore and then at me. "Two big, clever detectives…" she choked helplessly "…two whole detectives and you still…don't know…"

"Don't know what?"

"The man's her father, stupid," she announced shortly, and laughed some more.

It was as though all the air had been sucked out of the already thin atmosphere around me. I hadn't seen Dinky Holloway's video and didn't care to. Gordon Fraymore had. His jaw dropped. "You mean Martin Shore is Tanya's real father?" he asked hoarsely. "Was Daphne her mother then?"

"Stepmother, but close enough. Before I stuck the knife in him, Shore kept asking me how I got hold of that tape, but I didn't tell him," she said before dissolving into yet another fit of drunken laughter. "Don' hafta tell 'em all my secrets."

"But she told us Martin Shore took her away from her real father, that he was the one…"

"I already told you! Aren't you listening? She's C-R-A-Z-Y. As in loco." With effort she had spoken clearly for a moment, now she lapsed back into mumbling, dropping so many consonants it was difficult to understand her. The heavy dose of alcohol must have finally penetrated her brain.

I emerged from my stunned silence. "I thought Tanya was your friend, but you tried to kill her, too."

"I doan have any frien's, do I, Gordy? Not even you. Sunshine maybe. It's a bith…" she attempted, but was not able to say the word. "It's a bi…Can't say it, can I? Mouth won' work."

Once more her throaty laughter floated through the forest. The sound sent chills up and down my spine. I had warned Fraymore that I thought Marjorie was crazy. Here she was trying to tell us Tanya was, while her haunting, husky laughter provided inarguable proof that she was, too.

Gordon Fraymore dropped heavily onto the bench across from Marjorie, sagging forward across the table. "I don't believe it. Martin Shore was her real father?" He repeated the words as though he still couldn't accept them as true.

"Tha's righ'," Marjorie mumbled drunkenly, "…the real one. Izza a…bi…bi…bitch, isn't it?" She laughed triumphantly when she finally managed to say the words properly.

With visible effort, Fraymore sat up and straightened his shoulders. "What all's in the glass, Margie?" he asked. "Is it really only gin?"

Marjorie's deranged laughter ceased abruptly. "Why'dya wanna know?" she demanded, pulling the glass toward her, guarding it from his hand. "I jus' wanna take a li'l nap. Time for a li'l siesta."

She moved abruptly to one side. For a single, heart-stopping moment I thought she was going for her gun. Instead, she flopped clumsily down on the picnic-table bench and closed her eyes. "Jus' lemme get a li'l sleep. Tha's all."

For several long seconds, neither Fraymore nor I moved. When Marjorie cut loose with a deep, lung-rattling snore, he reached across the table and swept up the gun. "Check her pockets," he ordered.

I hurried to comply. Inside her leather jacket, I found the sleeping pills, or rather, I found the brown plastic child-proof tube. It was open and empty. Without a word, I handed the container over to Fraymore, who held it up to the firelight. With a confirming nod, he wrapped it in a handkerchief and stuffed it in his pocket.

"Seconal," he said.

I put both hands under Marjorie's shoulders, preparing to lift her and take her back to the car. With the potentially lethal combination of booze and pills she'd ingested, we didn't have much time. Even if we took off right then and drove like hell, there was little chance we'd make it to the hospital before she went into either cardiac or respiratory arrest.

"You get her feet," I urged. "Hurry!"

"Sit down, Detective Beaumont," Fraymore said. "Sit down and let her be."

I couldn't believe my ears. "You mean we're not even going to try?"

"This is what she wanted," he returned gravely. "Her choice. I say we wait."

"How long?"

"Long enough."

He propped both elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. What he was suggesting wasn't exactly aiding and abetting, but it wasn't preventing, either. Only Gordon Fraymore and I would ever know whether or not we had arrived at the campsite before it was all over.

"I don't want her to have to go to jail," he added raggedly. "I don't want her to have to stand before a judge and jury. We'll just say it's a failure to appear and let it go at that."

It was Fraymore's call, not mine. Cops are trained not to second-guess another guy's deal. Without a word, I lowered Marjorie's shoulders back to the bench and went around the table to sit next to Fraymore. He was crying openly by then. I couldn't fault him for his decision. When you're faced with impossible choices, one terrible alternative is probably as good as another.

"All right," I said. "We'll wait."

We sat there together for what seemed like forever. Every once in a while, Fraymore's shoulders would heave, and his whole body would shudder. I let him cry and didn't look over at him. A man deserves at least that much privacy.

Eventually, Fraymore stood up. He walked over to the fire and picked up one end of Sunshine's leash. "Come on, girl," he said softly. "Let's go for a walk."

With a weary but compliant sigh, the old dog sorted herself out and staggered clumsily to her feet. Fraymore walked slowly to the edge of the firelight, leading the limping dog. I knew what he was planning to do. My heart constricted, even though I couldn't fault him for that decision, either. I figured it was a kindness for both Marjorie and the dog-a fitting end for both of them to go together.

I waited in the dark another long while, expecting at any moment to hear the sharp report of Gordon Fraymore's heavy-duty. 38. Despite spreading warmth from the fire, I was chilled. My teeth rattled in my head. A breeze sprang up. Off to the west, I was aware of vague flickerings of lightning as a heavy storm rolled in from the Pacific.

Then, finally, when I was beginning to wonder if Fraymore had fallen off a cliff and broken his neck, I heard the crunch of footsteps coming back up the path. He was still leading the dog.

"I couldn't do it," he said brokenly. "Call me a wimp if you want to, but I just flat couldn't do it."

He left the trembling dog standing beside me-between me and the fire-then turned and stalked off alone into the darkness. When I reached down to pat Sunshine, the coat on the back of her neck was soaked with moisture, even though the coming rainstorm was still miles away.

And sometime in between, silently and without any notice, Marjorie Connors-the discarded, crazed woman who had once been Maggie Lewis-stopped breathing and slipped peacefully into oblivion.