Failure to appear

CHAPTER 9

Tires crunched in the gravel beside me, jarring me out of my torpor and back into the present, back to an awareness of the world around me. I had no idea how long I'd been walking, nor did I care. Since I'd left Ashland Community Hospital, time had ceased to exist.

"Get in, Mr. Beaumont. I'll take you back to the hospital." Gordon Fraymore reached across the front seat of his Chevrolet Lumina and opened the door.

"I'd rather walk."

"Don't be stubborn. Do you want to see your granddaughter or not?"

Granddaughter. Granddaughter? It took a moment to assimilate the word. "Kelly's baby? A girl. She's all right then?"

"The baby's fine."

Without another word, I climbed in the car. "And Kelly?" I asked, buckling my seat belt. "My daughter. How's she?"

Fraymore shrugged and shook his head while he wrenched the car into a sharp U-turn and accelerated in the opposite direction.

"Couldn't say. All I know is, they said the baby's fine and asked me to find you and bring you back."

"Thanks," I said.

"Nothing to it. After you see the baby, we have to talk."

"Sure, sure. No problem."

Eager to be back at the hospital, I was surprised to see how far I'd walked and how long it took to drive there. I had covered a distance of several miles without even noticing. Given the kind of mindless daze I was in, it's a wonder a car hadn't hit me.

We drove for some time in silence. Finally, Fraymore cleared his throat. "The way I figure it, your daughter must have fainted when she saw the body there in the basement."

"Must have," I agreed.

"You knew her, didn't you?"

"Knew who?"

"The dead woman."

"Daphne Lewis? Yes. Vaguely."

"You're a regular walking, talking crime wave all by your little lonesome, aren't you, Detective Beaumont? Seems like everyone you know who's here in Ashland is either getting hurt or murdered or both."

Most police officers would have taken the situation with Kelly into consideration and cut me a little slack. Not Gordon Fraymore. His capacity for civility seemed remarkably limited, even for a cop. A few grunted sentences had totally depleted his supply of congeniality.

With my impaired mental faculties, we pulled into the hospital parking lot before I could phrase an appropriately malicious response. Indignant, I hopped from the car and marched off toward the building. When my feet touched the ground, I bit back a yelp of torment. I had been in the car for only a few minutes. As soon as I put weight on my feet, a spike of pain from my bone spurs shot up both legs from heel to hip. So much for signing up for one of those Volkswalks.

Limping toward the door as best I could, I was met by a somber Alexis Downey, who hurried outside to greet me. "How's Kelly?" I asked.

Alex shook her head. "Still touch and go. The doctors are doing a craniotomy to relieve the pressure."

Her words struck terror in my soul. With Kelly suffering a concussion, a fractured skull, and possible swelling on the brain, the options for prognosis included everything from total recovery to permanent brain damage. Informed by a lifetime of having seen too much, I prepared myself for the worst.

"They're afraid Kelly's going to die, aren't they?" I said. "That's why they went ahead and took the baby."

"No, that's not it at all," Alex replied. "She went into premature labor. With her unconscious, a C-section was the only thing they could do."

"How's Jeremy holding up?"

"Not very well. He's been down by the nursery staring in the window ever since they brought the baby up from the operating room. I feel sorry for him. He doesn't have anyone."

"Is that a hint?" Alex said nothing, but I got the message.

Inside the waiting room, I was faced with two distinct types of emotional quicksand. I could venture into the emotion-charged mire with Karen, Dave, and Scott, who were seated on a couch and love seat and huddled in hushed conversation, or I could go talk to Jeremy. He was visible in the hallway outside the nursery window, leaning forlornly against the glass. I chose Jeremy.

He barely glanced up when I stopped behind him. "How's it going?" I asked.

He shook his head and didn't answer. Then, after a deep breath, he said, "Karen's fine."

"Well, of course she is," I returned impatiently. What kind of goofball comment was that? I wondered.

"Why wouldn't she be? She's right out there in the lobby. I saw her just a minute ago."

I looked over his shoulder and peered into the nursery window. Inside, only one baby-a tiny, red-faced, pink-swathed gnome-lay on her back in a movable incubator. Her face was

screwed up in a full-volume screech that sliced through the intervening window. A handwritten three-by-five card attached to the incubator's plastic hood read, KAREN LOUISE BEAUMONT.

So that's who Jeremy meant. This Karen was indeed all right. Pissed off, same as her grandmother, but all right just the same.

"It was the tetracycline," Jeremy said despairingly while I gazed with rapt attention at the squalling infant.

"I beg your pardon?"

"The tetracycline," he repeated. "Kelly was taking it for a strep throat. Nobody told her the medication would neutralize her birth-control pills. Believe me, Mr. Beaumont, we didn't want it to be this way. We both wanted a big church wedding with all the trimmings, but…"

He broke off, sobbing and disconsolate, and slumped against the gray wall. I wanted to hold him, to offer him comfort, but my feet were welded to the floor, my hands Superglued to my hips. I didn't know what to do or say.

"I love her," Jeremy went on hopelessly. "What'll I do if she dies? Oh God, what'll Karen and I do then?"

It was a despairing, gut-wrenching plea for help, for answers. I wanted to say, "Snap out of it, Jeremy. Pull yourself together. Don't even think such a thing." I'm superstitious enough to believe that giving way to such thoughts can open the door for potential disaster.

At last my hands moved, almost of their own volition. I reached out and put one arm across Jeremy Todd Cartwright's quaking shoulder.

"You make do," I said slowly. "You take it one day at a time and do the very best you can for you and for your child."

Jeremy shuddered in a herculean effort to pull himself together. "Is that what you did after your second wife died?"

So Kelly had told him about Anne Corley, about what had happened between us. Anne wasn't exactly a deep-dark family secret, but it startled me to hear Jeremy mention her. It felt strange to be discussing her with a young man I hardly knew, but then I realized that the pain of what had happened to me then uniquely qualified me to help Jeremy now.

"Pretty much," I said.

He was silent for a time. "Do you think she'll die?"

"I don't know. What do the doctors say?"

"The doctors don't talk to me," he snorted bitterly. "They talk to your wife-excuse me, to your ex-wife, to Kelly's mother, but not to me. I'm only the father here, not the husband."

Once more he dissolved in anguished tears. Jeremy Cartwright was a boy in man's clothing. My heart went out to him. This time, I wrapped both arms around his broad shoulders and held him close. He clung to me desperately, like a small frightened child, even though he stood a good two inches taller than I am. Hot tears coursed down the back of my shirt, leaking under my collar and trickling in tiny rivulets between my shoulder blades. At last he quieted and pulled away.

"Come on," I said, taking his arm. "Let's go outside."

"I can't leave," he objected. "She's still in the O.R."

"Just outside to get some air," I told him. "It'll do you good. Someone will come find you if you're needed."

I led him out to the same concrete bench where I had sat some hours earlier. The sun had moved far to the west and was headed down behind the line of encircling hills. Despite sitting in the hot afternoon air where the temperature still hovered in the high 90s, Jeremy shivered uncontrollably.

"Cold?" I asked.

He nodded. "How can that be?" He stared down at the film of gooseflesh covering his arms.

"A kind of delayed shock, maybe," I suggested.

He balled his hands into fists, watching them open and close with puzzled interest, as though they were unfamiliar appendages attached to some alien body.

"I called the hotel and canceled our reservation," he said huskily. "Since we can't use the room, I didn't want to pay for it. We can't afford it. I don't know how we're going to pay the hospital bill. We had budgeted enough for the baby, but this…" He broke off, shaking his head.

"You don't have hospitalization?"

"For me," he answered, "but not for Kelly and the baby. I couldn't add dependent coverage because we weren't married."

"It'll be all right," I said. "Don't worry about that."

Gordon Fraymore came out through the hospital doors just then, looked around, spotted us, and then started in our direction. "They want you inside," he said when he reached us.

"Both of us?" I asked.

"No, him." Fraymore nodded curtly toward Jeremy, who rose at once and rabbited away. Uninvited, the detective took Jeremy's vacated spot on the bench. First he popped a Tums, then he lit a cigarette.

"I'm pissed at you, Beaumont," he said evenly enough. "So's the county sheriff, for that matter. I just thought you should know."

The word "mister" had evidently disappeared from Gordon Fraymore's lexicon.

"The sheriff? How come he's mad at me? I don't even know him."

"Believe me, he knows you," Fraymore said. "I gave him the full scoop. Live Oak Farm's in the county, so Daphne Lewis is theirs same as Martin Shore is mine. We figure the two homicides are related, so we're conducting a joint operation."

Great. Complete stranger or not, whoever the sheriff of Jackson County was, he already hated my guts. Gordon Fraymore had seen to it.

"So why are you bent out of shape?"

"Because you held out on me, for one thing. Why didn't you tell me Tanya Dunseth had some kind of beef going with Daphne Lewis?"

"Because I didn't know."

"Like hell you didn't!" Fraymore returned more forcefully. "We've talked to several people who were in the Members' Lounge the other night. They all tell me the same thing-that Tanya Dunseth fell all apart as soon as Daphne Lewis walked into the room. You were there. You must have seen it."

He had me dead to rights. I nodded. "There was a reaction, but I couldn't tell for sure if it was because of Daphne or because of Guy," I returned. "They came in together. For all I know, it could have been either one of them or both."

"You should have told me about it," Fraymore insisted.

"You're talking twenty-twenty hindsight," I said. "At the time it happened, nobody was dead yet. Later, after Martin Shore died, there was no way to tie those two incidents together. Besides, it didn't seem like that big a deal. I still don't see any connection."

"The connection is none of your business, but it is a big deal," Fraymore countered. "A woman's dead, dammit. I'm tempted to file obstruction charges against you."

"Give me a break. You know as well as I do that if I had volunteered any information, you would have climbed my frame for violating your turf."

Fraymore frowned and seemed to consider. Finally, he said, "I'll think about giving you that break. In the meantime, you'd better tell me everything you know."

"Like what?"

"Like what the hell happened at that party-and I do mean everything."

"We were still in the Members' Lounge waiting for Henry to get out when Tanya came in with that young actor who plays Romeo. She happened to sit down next to me. We started visiting."

"Another coincidence, I suppose?" Fraymore ventured dryly.

"Hardly. She and my daughter are friends. Kelly takes care of Amber, Tanya's daughter. We were still chatting when the Lewises came in. When Tanya saw Daphne and Guy, she looked like she'd seen a ghost. She was so startled she spilled her drink."

"Did she say anything to you about them?"

"No."

"Did she talk to them?"

"No, not at all. As soon as she saw them, she took off. I thought she was going to the bar to refill her drink, but she left the party completely."

"And didn't come back?"

"No."

"Did she show up later at the Bowmer?"

"She might have, but I didn't see her there."

"Let's go back to the Lewises. Did they speak to you?"

"Briefly. We exchanged a few words."

"What about?"

"Mostly about cars, as I recall."

"Cars? Did they say anything to you about Tanya?"

"Not really. Guy mentioned that he had seen her play Juliet and thought she was very good."

"He didn't hint around that something might be going on between either himself and Tanya or Daphne and Tanya?"

"No, not at all. Why don't you ask Guy Lewis about it?" I asked. "Maybe he knows."

"Guy Lewis left town."

"Oh," I said. It didn't seem wise to mention to Gordon Fraymore that I already had spoken to the desk clerk at the Mark Anthony and had learned that very thing. If the detective discovered I'd been nosing around on Guy Lewis' tail, my already shaky situation would deteriorate immeasurably.

"So tell me how it is that you, a lowly Seattle homicide dick, happen to know people like Guy and Daphne Lewis in the first place."

"From the Seattle Rep," I said.

"What's that?"

"The Seattle Repertory Theatre. We're all donors," I explained. "We met through Alex-Alexis Downey, the Rep's director of development. She organized a benefit auction a few months back. My partners and I donated a car to the auction, and the Lewises bought it."

"What kind of car was this?" Fraymore asked.

"I've seen that hot little number you're driving around down here. Or does that 928 belong to your girlfriend?"

"Why don't you run a check on it and find out?"

"Why don't you save us both time and effort and tell me?"

"The Porsche is mine. The Lewises bought a Bentley."

"My, my. Porsches. Bentleys. For a city cop, you do run with a rich crowd."

"Who I run with doesn't concern you," I snapped. "What does this have to do with who killed Daphne Lewis or Martin Shore?"

"Just trying to sort out the players, Beaumont. You know how it is. We've gone eight whole years without having a murder here in Ashland. Longer in the county. This is usually a pretty peaceful and quiet community. Then you appear on the scene. All of a sudden, we're the murder capital of southern Oregon, with two vicious homicides in as many days. You can see how a poor small-town cop might wonder about a high-living Seattle police detective who happens to turn up in the same general vicinity of both crime scenes."

He ground out his cigarette. "Tell me, Beaumont, if you were me, what would you make of someone like you? Seems like a hell of a coincidence that I keep tripping over you wherever I turn, especially since I have a funny feeling you're still not telling me everything you know."

"But I have," I said. Well, almost everything.

"Tell me about Guy Lewis."

"What about him?"

"Did you know he was going to be in Ashland this weekend, or is it the same story you gave me about Martin Shore, another one of those odd flukes that you just happened to land here at the same time."

"You got it."

"The first you saw him was at the donors' party after the play?"

I didn't want to mention the N.A. meeting, because I knew that would send Fraymore off on another wild-goose chase. People who aren't in the program don't often understand people who are.

"No," I said. "We ran into each other during the Green Show before the play-another fluke."

The corners of Gordon Fraymore's mouth twitched ever so slightly, warning me of trouble. "Don't screw with me, Beaumont. I don't believe in flukes, especially not when I know damn good and well it's a lie."

"How so?"

"I may be small potatoes in your book, but I'm nobody's dummy. While you've been out walking the streets the last few hours, I've been doing my job. I spent some time talking to one of our officers who was out directing traffic Saturday night. We were having trouble with the stoplight going up to the Festival. Remember?"

Now that he mentioned it, I did remember waiting to cross the street.

"Jack's a good cop," Fraymore continued. "Young, but very observant. He remembers you and Lewis walking across the street together. Jack says Guy Lewis was huffing and puffing and all out of breath. He say Lewis was packing a red down jacket."

"All right. So we ran into each other on the street before the Green Show. What difference does that make?"

"A hell of a big difference," Fraymore answered. "You know it as well as I do."

Actually, I did. As a homicide cop, I knew exactly how Gordon Fraymore's mind worked. For one thing, even under the best of conditions, cops hate coincidences with an abiding passion. Right that minute Gordon Fraymore's conditions sucked. He was under tremendous pressure. Here it was, opening weekend of the summer season in Ashland-the biggest weekend of the entire year-and Fraymore had his hands full, with not one but two separate homicides. Everyone in town, from the president of the board of directors of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival down to the lowliest busboy in the least expensive restaurant, had a vested interest in Gordon Fraymore's solving those two crimes. Unsolved multiple murders are real bad for tourism.

In order to fix the problem, Fraymore was doing what any right-thinking cop in the world would do-looking for someone connected to the murders whose story contained some small discrepancies. We both knew my story about meeting Guy Lewis at the Green Show was shot full of holes, which meant I was hiding something. Worse, in both murders, I happened to be the only common denominator. Well, not the only one. There were actually two. The other was Tanya Dunseth.

"So you've decided I'm your man?"

"Not entirely. I still haven't figured out what your connection is to all this," he said, "but you can rest assured I will. Since you're a fellow cop, I was more than half inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt. Right up until you lied to me. Now all bets are off."

"Is that a threat?" I asked.

"More like a promise. Take it however you like. All I'm telling you is, if I were you, I wouldn't leave town. You stay right here in Ashland until I say you can go, got it?"

"Come on, Fraymore. Don't go dishing out orders. Remember me? I'm the one who brought you that videotape the minute I saw it. If I weren't on the up-and-up, why would I do that?"

"You tell me. To throw me offtrack maybe? What I can't figure out for the life of me is why a man in your position would get involved with that little two-bit piece of baggage in the first place. Seems to me as though someone with Bentleys and Porsches out the kazoo wouldn't bother with someone like her."

So that was it. He thought I was messing around with Tanya Dunseth. "I already told you. Tanya's my daughter's friend."

Fraymore smiled a mirthless, chilly smile. "Tell your daughter from me that she should choose her friends a little more wisely next time. And so should you. I don't know who Tanya Dunseth is, but I can sure as hell tell you who she isn't. I've been checking into the bio information she gave the Festival. None of it adds up."

My mind zipped back to the lunch at Geppetto's with Jeremy and Kelly talking about Tanya Dunseth's blighted childhood. "You're saying none of it checks out? Her parents didn't die in a house fire when she was a little kid?"

"That's exactly what I mean. The parents Tanya Dunseth listed on her job application aren't just deceased. They never existed in the first place. And, according to the hospital in Goldendale, neither does she. Not only that, I have physical evidence linking her to both victims."

"What kind of evidence?"

"Now, now, that would be telling, wouldn't it. So take this as a warning, Detective Beaumont. If you're somehow in on all this, I'm going to find out and nail your ass to the ground. And if you're not, then stay the hell out of it!"

I could feel the circle of proof tightening around Tanya Dunseth's neck. I couldn't tell for sure if Fraymore actually believed I was in on it, or if he was using me to carry a message to Tanya, hoping to provoke her into doing something stupid.

"Are you going to arrest her?" I asked.

"You just don't understand, do you, fella? You just don't comprende the words MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS. Let me put it another way. Stay the hell out! I may not arrest Tanya Dunseth today or tomorrow or even next week-but I will eventually. In the meantime, I'll be watching her very closely. I wouldn't want Little Miss Porno Flick to slip away.

"I'm not booking her today, and not because I think she's innocent, either. I'm what you might call a fiscally responsible cop. I don't want the city of Ashland to have to pay room and board on her until it's time-until I've built an airtight case. When I do get around to arresting her-and you can count on it that I will-then you can bet I'll make it stick. Watch yourself, Beaumont, or some of her crap will land on you."

"Wait just a minute. What if Daphne Lewis and Martin Shore were in on something together? What if they were trying to blackmail or discredit Tanya Dunseth?" I asked. "Why else would that video show up here after all this time?"

"So what if they were?" Fraymore agreed. "Blackmail's no reason to rub people out. That's not the way it works. Maybe you should take Tanya Dunseth aside and explain the facts of life. That's why we have courts of law in this country, so people don't have to go around killing other people just because they've got their noses out of joint."

"Is there a connection between Shore and Daphne?"

Fraymore shrugged. "You tell me. I'm looking. I haven't found one yet, but I will. I'm that kind of guy."

The hospital door opened, and Ralph Ames emerged. He's from sunny Arizona. Unlike the rest of us, he keeps a pair of sunglasses in his pocket at all times. He slapped them on his face before taking two steps into the glaring sunlight.

"I understand that guy's your attorney," Fraymore growled, watching a tanned and fit Ralph Ames stride confidently toward us across an expanse of grassy lawn. "What's he doing here?"

"He came for the wedding."

"Not because you had some idea you might need him?"

"No, because he's a friend of the family," I replied.

Nodding sagely, Fraymore stood up. "Sure he is, and I'm a goddamn monkey's uncle. Do me a favor. Tell this ‘friend of the family' that he should stick around for a day or two. If I get lucky, he may wind up doing some legal work after all."

Fraymore walked away then, leaving me alone. The emotional turmoil of the past few days had taken its toll, but I wasn't in such a fog that I didn't recognize a barefaced threat when I heard it. The oversized detective crammed his bulk into the Lumina and slammed the door, speeding away in a spray of gravel.

As I watched him go, a very real sense of apprehension settled over me. I didn't worry that he'd find any evidence linking me to Tanya Dunseth. There wasn't any. Not yet. But, given sufficient imagination and vindictiveness, damning evidence could easily be manufactured. From the way he acted, the things he said, I knew for sure that Gordon Fraymore was a vindictive man-vindictive and probably jealous as well.

He was a moderately successful detective on a tiny police force. In terms of official rank, we were on much the same level. But there are hazards connected with being a big fish in a very small pool.

Not only that, the guy drove a damn Chevy. It's both laughable and sad, but the American male has not yet escaped the mental trap of believing you are what you drive. A Lumina doesn't stack up very well against a Porsche 928. I had given away a Bentley for the hell of it as well as for a sizable tax deduction, while Gordon Fraymore would most likely never even touch one.

With someone like him, an old-fashioned, piss-in-your-soup-type threat can be ignored only at your own peril.

Sure as hell, Tanya Dunseth wasn't the only one in what the Laredo Kid would have called deep caca. So was J.P. Beaumont.