Failure to appear

CHAPTER 8

I 'm not one to spend time worrying about the future. When some people learn they're about to become parents, they peer down a long time tunnel and see everything from front teeth falling out to learner's permits, from Tee-ball games to high school graduations.

My mother always told me that living in the future was borrowing trouble, and I believed her. Consequently, I never gave much thought to my daughter's wedding day; never imagined how it might be with Kelly garbed all in white, in a church festooned with flowers, and all that. Karen had, so the way it turned out was a whole lot harder on her than it was on me.

It didn't start out all that badly. Ralph breezed into town and stopped at the Oak Hill Bed-and-Breakfast at five after ten the next morning. He dragged a loaded suitcase into the living room and set it down.

"What's that?" I asked.

"I wasn't sure you packed any suitable father-of-the-bride attire," he said. "I brought some along just in case."

As a matter of fact, once I knew Dave Livingston and Karen would be in attendance, I had been concerned about clothes. For one thing, Dave Livingston is a natty dresser-he had turned up in Wickenburg, Arizona, wearing a three-piece suit, for God's sake. I was sure he would show me up. Alex had taken me to task, telling me it was Kelly's day, and it wasn't a competition, but it had bugged me all the same.

By the time I woke up that morning and thought about calling Ralph to have him bring along some other clothes, it was too late. He was already on his way. But that's the kind of guy Ralph is-the kind of friend. He had figured it out and acted on his own without needing any coaching from me.

After I carted the suitcase up to Alex's and my room, we took Ralph, some mugs, and an extra pot of coffee and adjourned to the lawn chairs on Oak Hill's secluded backyard deck.

"So tell me about this friend of Kelly's who's in so much hot water," Ralph said. "You all must have had an exceptionally busy time of it down here."

And so we told him. Ralph Ames listened patiently while Alex and I took turns recounting the various pieces of Tanya's story-telling him about Martin Shore's death and about the pornographic-film connection between Shore and the Festival's rising young actress. We told him about the Henckels slicer that had disappeared from a Festival prop table only to show up later as a murder weapon. We did a joint rendition of what we could remember of Tanya Dunseth's background, repeating as close to verbatim as possible what Kelly and Jeremy had told us. We were just in the process of recounting her economic rescue by Marjorie Connors when Florence, the retired schoolteacher/owner of Oak Hill B amp; B, came rushing out onto the deck.

By then Florence had been informed of the father/daughter connection between her part-time maid, Kelly Beaumont, and me. Florence seemed somewhat flustered.

"Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Beaumont," she said, "but someone named Karen is at the front door. She wants to speak to you. She looks a lot like your daughter. Could it be Kelly's mother?"

It certainly could. Nodding and prepared for some unpleasantness, I got up and headed inside. As I walked past, Alex reached out and gave my leg an encouraging pat. "Want me to go along?" she asked.

"No, I'm a big boy. I think I can manage." All the same, I wasn't looking forward to the coming encounter.

I found Dave Livingston and Karen seated on the now-sunny porch swing where I'd discovered Alex concealed in shadows the night before. Karen is an attractive woman-always has been. She seemed to have lost weight since I last saw her, and that was fine. She had regained some of her girlish figure, but her face looked haggard. Her eyes were red and puffy, as though she'd spent most of the previous night crying. The skin on her cheeks seemed drawn too thin over her jawline, and dark smudges encircled her eyes. Standing next to her, Dave Livingston didn't look so hot, either. They were both worn-out.

I glanced around, searching for my son, Scott. I caught sight of him-rangy, well-built, and full grown-still out in the driveway, lounging casually against a rented Lincoln Town Car with his hands shoved deep in his pants pockets. He nodded in my direction, but he made no move toward the porch. Smart boy, I thought. It was wise to stay out of range until it became clear whether or not pyroclastic blasts would be the order of the day.

Before I stepped out the door, I pasted what was supposed to be a sincerely welcoming grin on my face, although I probably succeeded only in looking idiotic. "Hello, Karen," I said.

Secretly, I hoped she'd be impressed by the fact that I'd beaten the odds and stayed sober far longer than she or anyone else had expected. If she cared or even noticed, she didn't say.

Dave got up and ambled over to shake my hand. For some reason, he seemed genuinely happy to see me. Karen didn't. She sat in the swing staring up at my face.

"Hello yourself," she said woodenly.

It's sad to realize how people change; hard to believe that a man and woman who once meant the world to one another can drift apart completely until they're reduced to being virtual strangers; all but impossible to acknowledge that they can evolve so far from what they once were-lovers, sharing their innermost thoughts, dreams, and secrets-to alien beings with less than nothing to say to each other.

"Great day for a wedding, don't you think?" I asked, wanting to lighten things up and hoping no one would notice the sudden catch in my throat. Instant tears brimmed in Karen's eyes just as they had in Kelly's when we'd exchanged words on the farmhouse steps at Live Oak Farm two days earlier. Like mother, like daughter, I thought. I've always been a sucker for tears.

"I wanted her to have a perfect wedding," Karen choked. "I never wanted it to be like…like this!"

Dave hurried back to Karen's side. He sat down next to her and placed a comforting hand on her knee. "It'll be all right, Karen. You'll see."

"Well," I said awkwardly, "I'm glad you came."

Karen swallowed hard. "I didn't want to," she retorted with some of her customary bite. "And I wouldn't have, either, if Dave hadn't insisted. He said if we didn't make the effort now, we might lose Kelly for good."

Dave glanced up at me in a frank but silent appeal for help. His look touched me. For the first time, I realized that having spent years living with the same woman, the two of us had something in common, a bond. So do veterans of foreign wars.

"That's probably true," I said. "About losing Kelly, I mean. I'm sure she'll be delighted to see you."

After that, I floundered around some more, desperately searching for something sensible to say, something relatively noncontroversial. My mother always insisted weather was a safe topic, no matter what. Squinting up at the sun, I gave that a try. "I imagine you've heard that the ceremony's going to be outdoors, at a place called Lithia Park," I said. "It's a good thing the weather's so nice today."

"We haven't heard a thing," Karen responded icily, her voice taking on a sharp and all-too-familiar edge. "I suppose you're paying for all this?"

Allegedly, it takes two to make a quarrel. I'm not so sure. I was doing my best not to fight, but Karen's baiting made it tough to keep from lashing out in return. It seemed to me she had a hell of a lot of nerve acting so pissed. What had I done?

To be honest, probably a lot. I've never claimed to be the best of all possible husbands and fathers. When Karen left me to marry Dave-which she did with unseemly haste, I might add-she wiped me out financially. Took my money and ran, as the saying goes. I know from the kids that Dave makes good money and that he and Karen are pretty well off.

When Anne Corley died much later, leaving me as the astonished sole beneficiary of her estate, I made no secret of my changed and much improved circumstances, and I wasn't chintzy about sharing that money with the kids. Unlike some divorced dads, I never ducked my child support. So why was Karen so mad at me?

At the time, I decided she was simply furious with the world in general, and I was the most likely target. Whatever the cause, over the years I've read all those sad letters in Ann Landers' column, the ones about feuding former spouses routinely spoiling their children's weddings. I was determined not to let that happen here. This particular wedding already had far too many strikes against it.

"I'm not paying for a thing," I answered, keeping my hackles down and my tone civil. "Kelly and Jeremy haven't asked me to. They're doing it all themselves."

"Jeremy!" Karen scoffed. "Who is he, anyway? Where does he come from? What does his father do? Are his parents here? And how pregnant is she?"

In order of importance, I believe Karen saved her top-priority question for last. I realized that once she and Dave saw Kelly, the question of how far along Kelly was would no longer be an issue.

"More than slightly," I said.

"Too late to do something about it?"

Which told me the real bottom line. Like me, Karen had come hightailing it to Ashland thinking she could somehow convince Kelly to call off the wedding. No doubt she hoped to persuade her daughter to give up the baby or to have an abortion and get her life back on track.

One of the differences between us was that I'd had the benefit of an extra day, a critical twenty-four hours of adjustment time that had allowed me to make an uneasy peace with the changed order of things. During that time, I had caught a glimpse of Kelly and Jeremy both. I had seen them struggling together to do whatever kinds of work were necessary for them to live independently, away from all parental influence.

If they were making their own way in the world and not asking for any help, it seemed to me that we, as parents, no longer had a right to tell them what to do. If we ever had that right in the first place.

"It's too late to put the toothpaste back in the tube," I said as kindly as I could. "If we're smart, we won't even try."

"You're saying I'm supposed to come all the way up here, go to the damn wedding, and that's it?"

"Actually," I said with one of Ralph Ames' cheerful, looking-on-the-bright-side smiles, "you get to do one more thing."

"What's that?"

"You get to keep your mouth shut. We all do."

Dave Livingston was suddenly overcome by a paroxysm of coughing that may have disguised a chuckle. When I looked over at him to see if he was all right, he winked at me and nodded.

"That's what I've been trying to tell her ever since we left home," he managed.

Karen turned her scathing glance on him. "Don't you start," she raged.

Dave stifled. Meantime, Scott realized it was safe and gradually edged his way onto the porch. When he got within reach, I grabbed his shoulders and hugged him, holding him close.

"Hiya, Pop," he said with an easy, affable grin. "I hear you're going to be a grandfather."

It wasn't until Scott said the words aloud that it finally hit home-the grandfather part, I mean. Until then, the idea of grandfatherhood had somehow gotten lost in the shuffle of all the other wedding details and logistics. Like I said before, I'm not the kind of guy who puts a lot of focus on the future.

Behind me the front door opened, and Alexis Downey stepped out onto the porch, joining the rest of us as easily as if she were already an official part of this somewhat prickly extended family. She offered her hand to Scott and then waited to be introduced.

At Alex's and my advanced respective ages, the words "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" somehow stick in my craw. I'm never quite sure how to go about explaining our relationship.

"Scott," I said, "this is my friend Alexis Downey, Alex for short. Alex, this is my son, Scott."

Alex looked up at him. Scott's a good-looking kid if I do say so myself. "I'd recognize you anywhere," she said with a cordial smile. "You look just like your dad."

I introduced her to Karen and Dave as well. "I didn't know you had friends in Ashland," Karen said stiffly, taking in everything about Alexis Downey in one long, critical inspection.

"Oh, I'm from Seattle," Alex returned. "Beau and I drove down to Ashland together on Saturday."

With those two sentences, the formal lines of battle were irrevocably drawn, at least on Karen's side, although I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. I thought Karen was done with me. Our divorce had been final for more than six years. She had even been kind to me, years before, when Anne Corley died, so why was she angry or jealous now? None of it made sense. Maybe to someone else, but not to me.

"Kelly just called," Alex continued lightly. "She says the people out at the farm have put together an informal buffet brunch in honor of the bride and groom. We're all invited to stop by before we get dressed to go to the park."

"What farm?" Karen asked. "Kelly lives on a farm?"

"It's a boardinghouse kind of arrangement," I explained. "The landlady lets her tenants work off part of the rent so it doesn't cost so much for them to live there."

"I'll bet it's filthy," Karen said. "The landlady's probably some kind of kook."

It was weird to find me, of all people, defending Marjorie Connors, but in hopes of maintaining the peace, I did.

"No," I said, "you're wrong. I've met the lady in question. She's definitely no kook. Far too severe for that. Jeremy told us that Marjorie is altogether opposed to marriage. I'm surprised she's even allowing a brunch, but let's not disappoint them. Live Oak Farm isn't far, but we'll all need to take cars. Alex and I will lead the way."

We sorted up into a three-vehicle minicaravan, with Ralph Ames and Scott in Ralph's rental Lincoln bringing up the rear. I wondered how many more Lincolns there could possibly be at the Medford airport, but it was a relief for Alex and me to be alone together in the Porsche-and in relative peace and quiet.

"You're doing fine," she assured me. "Just maintain your cool and keep clam."

I smiled at that. "Keep clam" is a Seattle insiders' joke, attributable to Ivar Haglund, one of the Emerald City's best-loved and now-deceased sea-food restaurateurs.

"Karen's really on a tear today," I said, shaking my head. "I don't think I've ever seen her quite this way before."

"Probably just the shock of it all," Alex suggested. "She's upset and taking it out on who ever's within range." Alex stopped for a moment as if considering. "Karen wasn't always like this?"

"No," I answered. "Not at all. One of the things I always liked best about her was her sense of humor, her ability to find the bright side in even the direst circumstances. She had her moments, of course, like we all do, and then she was hell on wheels, but most of the time, she was fine."

"People change," Alex said with a shrug. "That's life."

I was glad Karen was riding with Dave as we threaded our way through the abandoned automobiles and past the remains of the demolished barn. We stopped in the yard near where skeletal but unusable steps led up to the front porch where ancient Sunshine still ruled supreme. The dog hobbled over to the edge of the decking, barking feebly. No one seemed to pay any attention.

"How do we get past that dog?" Karen demanded.

"We go around back," I said, leading the way.

Halfway around the house, Kelly met us. When she and Karen saw each other, they both stopped and stared. Someone had pinned Kelly's long blond hair up in an elegant French twist on the back of her head. The hairdo made her look far older, more sophisticated. She wore a one-piece tent-dress-type smock in navy blue with white collar and cuffs. She looked glowingly happy and healthy, the way pregnant women often do. Her smile was as radiant as any self-respecting bride's.

"Hello, Mom," Kelly said softly. "How are you?"

And then they were in each other's arms, both of them laughing and crying and talking at once.

Alex leaned over to me. "See there?" she whispered. "That wasn't so bad, now was it?"

Dave had dropped back and was walking with Scott and Ralph. He caught up with us just in time to see Karen and Kelly embrace. His jawline tightened.

"I forgot something back in the car," he muttered. Turning around, he hurried back the way we'd come. Dave's a fairly tall man, but he walked with his shoulders hunched forward. As he went, he swiped impatiently at his face with his sleeve. He was crying, and I wondered what about.

God, I'm stupid sometimes!

Live Oak Farm's brunch was held in the great outdoors. There were far more people than I had expected, twenty-five or thirty in all, not counting family, including several cast members I recognized from the two shows we had managed to see. Tanya was there, laughing and talking, most of the time with Amber balanced handily on one outthrust hip. I watched her with some interest, wondering not only whether or not Gordon Fray-more had spoken to her, but also if he was right.

Cop instinct said that Fraymore would have made a move prior to this. For a murder suspect, Tanya Dunseth put on a hell of a show. To a casual observer, she might have seemed at ease, totally in control, but I am first and foremost a detective. My life and the lives of my fellow officers often depend on how good I am at reading people, at deciphering their actions and motives, at predicting behavior. Beneath Tanya's animated facade of forced gaiety, I sensed a brittleness that hadn't been there Saturday night in the Members' Lounge. Fraymore had talked to her, all right, and Tanya Dunseth was scared to death.

As I stood back and observed her, it was strange to compare her smooth portrayal of the doomed Juliet to this other role, a real-life one that didn't suit her nearly as well. I don't suppose that's surprising. After all, a play's just that-a play. Romeo and Juliet, the actors, had laughed and joked with one another within minutes of the final curtain. Martin Shore's murder had occurred in real life; Gordon Fraymore's hulking presence was no laughing matter.

Questions of guilt or innocence aside, I had to salute Tanya for her valiant effort at not letting her personal problems interfere with Kelly and Jeremy's prenuptial celebration. She wasn't big, and she didn't appear to be particularly strong, but Tanya Dunseth was one tough cookie.

Gradually, I was drawn away from observing her and back into the ebb and flow of the party. With all the laughter and easy conversation, it seemed more like a post-wedding reception than a pre-ceremony buffet. Since I wasn't paying for any of it, I kept quiet, opening my mouth only when spoken to or to chow down on the plentiful food.

Heavily laden tables decorated with red-checkered tablecloths dotted the entire back deck. Someone had spread garlands of flowers along the tops of the deck's newly framed handrails. Jeremy had warned us that Marjorie Connors didn't approve of weddings and wouldn't be a part of this one, but I wondered about that. Although she wasn't physically present, I felt Marjorie's handiwork-and her capable touch-everywhere.

The food was festive and delicious-cold fried chicken, various kinds of pasta, Jell-O and potato salads, sliced cheeses, baked beans, fresh fruit pies, and hunks of still-warm, freshly made, round-shaped bread that Ralph insisted had to have come from a DAK automatic bread-maker, whatever that was. The bread looked funny, but dabbed with sweet butter, it tasted fine.

Jeremy showed up wearing a pair of neat new chinos, a clean white shirt, and regular shoes. I was relieved to see he had ditched the Birkenstocks in honor of the occasion. He seemed appropriately nervous as he was introduced to Dave and Karen, then he backed off, leaving them to visit with Kelly. When it came time to eat, he ended up sitting with Alex and me at one of the smaller tables.

"You're probably wondering about all this," he said, glancing around at the milling people while I worried about whether or not he was somehow able to read my mind.

"Since we only have the one night for our honeymoon, we don't want to stay at the reception very long, but two-thirty was the earliest we could have the park. After the ceremony, we'll head over to Salishan, on the coast, just as soon as we can get away. This gives us a chance to visit with some of our friends. And relatives," he added lamely after a pause.

Damn. I was starting to like the kid in spite of myself.

It must have been about one or so when the party started to break up. For one thing, we all had to go somewhere else and change into our wedding clothes. Everyone was busy-clearing away dishes, taking care of food, folding up tables and chairs. And with the adults all occupied, Amber Dunseth managed to slip away.

Losing a child is every parent's worst nightmare, but little kids get lost all the time. One second they're where they're supposed to be. The next minute they're gone completely. Tanya was first to raise the alarm. Before long all the party goers were drafted into the search. We spread out in every direction, beating the bushes, looking, and calling.

Thinking Amber might have toddled off down the road, I went that way, and I was the one who happened to luck out and find her. She had somehow made her way out to that battered hulk of a wrecked Chrysler and had climbed up on the moldering old bench seat. I found her there, sound asleep in the warm sun. Careful not to frighten her, I woke her gently and was carrying her back to the house when Scott came racing down the road toward us, yelling.

"Dad! Dad, come quick!"

I had heard that terrible note of panic in Scott's voice only once before in his whole life. He had been teaching Kelly to ride his bike, even though we'd warned him repeatedly that she was too little and couldn't handle a two-wheeler. When the bike wrecked, she'd gone ass-over-teakettle on a patch of newly graveled pavement. She was lying in the road scraped and bleeding when Scott came running to me for help.

"What is it?" I called back, quickening my pace. "What's wrong?"

"It's Kelly," he managed. "She fell."

I ran then. When we met, I thrust Amber at him like a quarterback handing off a football. "Where?" I demanded.

"Around the side of the house. There's a door with steps leading down to the basement. I think it's real bad," he added. "Go quick."

After that I ran, as fast as I ever remember running in my life. I had to push my way through a milling knot of people clustered around the basement door. A slash of dust-filled sunlight glinted down into semidarkness, lighting a set of heavy plank stairs. At the bottom, another clutch of people crouched on their knees in a tight circle.

"Is she all right?" I heard myself asking as I scrambled down the stairs. "Is she okay? Somebody tell me what happened."

Kelly lay in a rag-doll heap at the bottom of the stairs, her feet still on the next-to-last step. The force of her fall had knocked the pins loose from the French twist, letting her blond hair spill around her head like pooling water on the hard, packed-dirt floor. Dave Livingston knelt beside her while a stricken Jeremy stood over them, staring off into the middle distance with his hands dangling uselessly at his sides.

"What happened, for God's sake?" I repeated when nobody answered me. "Did she faint or what?"

"At least she's breathing," Dave said. "Pulse is rapid but weak. Where's that blanket? Dammit, I told somebody to get me a blanket."

"Here!" I looked up in time to see a white-faced Karen thrust a blanket in my direction. I handed it down to Dave, and the two of us struggled clumsily in our hurry to cover Kelly's appallingly still body.

"Did someone call nine-one-one?" I asked.

"Alex said she would," Dave answered grimly. "I hope to God they hurry."

Behind me on the stairs I heard the unmistakable sound of someone starting to retch. Jesus Christ! Was somebody going to throw up? Why the hell didn't he just go back outside and stay out of the way?

I looked up then, hoping to dodge out of the path of flying puke, and that's when I saw the spectral figure that held Jeremy Todd Cartwright's eyes captive.

In the far corner of the room, a human form dangled heavily at the end of a rope. I was still squinting through the semidarkness and trying to make out exactly who and what it was when someone switched on the light.

There, caught in the frail yellow glow of a single bulb, was Daphne Lewis, still wearing the Icelandic sweater she had worn in the Members' Lounge. The farmhouse was old-fashioned post-and-beam construction. In the course of refurbishing the place, new lumber had been sistered onto old to provide bracing for some of the sagging originals holding up the floor joists. The rope, complete with a professional-looking hangman's noose, had been strung through the intersection of two of those braces.

As soon as I saw the deadly hangman's noose, I knew it was something I had seen before-on-stage at the Black Swan Theater. It was one of the props from The Majestic Kid.

There was no point in running over to Daphne. Obviously dead, she was far beyond help. Kelly was the one who needed all our attention.

I clung to the stubborn hope that she wouldn't die. And that the baby wouldn't either.