JP Beaumont 11 - Failure To Appear (v5.0) Page 7

  For a long, tense moment, Detective Fraymore and I stared at each other, then he shuffled through the stack of papers piled on the conference room table in front of him. Pointing with one thick finger, he scanned down one of the sheets. Eventually, his finger stopped moving, and his ears reddened. By the time he raised his eyes from the paper, his face was glowing deep purple.

  I knew just from looking at him that both Fraymore and I would have been better off if he had uncovered the error himself.

  “You can go now,” he said coldly.

  And I did. As the door to the conference room closed behind me, I realized I was in almost as much trouble with Detective Gordon Fraymore as Monica Davenport was with Alexis Downey.

  When she saw me, Alex hurried to my side and gave me a quick, anxious hug. She carried my bloodstained jacket. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Pretty much. Let’s get out of here.”

  Alex had found me at the scene of the accident, and she had driven me to the hospital in the Porsche. Now, though, as we left the hospital, she handed me the keys. I gave them right back.

  “You drive,” I told her. “I’m worn out.”

  The Oak Hill Bed-and-Breakfast was a mile or so south of the theaters on Siskiyou Boulevard. Without knowing it, I had driven past it several times earlier in the afternoon while searching Ashland for Live Oak Lane. The big old two-story house was quiet and dark when we arrived, but Alexis had a key. She let us in through the front door, then led the way through the living room and up a creaking set of stairs.

  “This is it,” she whispered, opening a door at the top of the stairs. “It’s a blue room, so they call it Iris.”

  While I was at the hospital having my wrist sewn up, Alex had moved our luggage in from the car and had carried it upstairs. All we had to do was undress and fall into bed. My wrist hurt like hell. To keep it from throbbing, I lay with it propped up on an extra pillow next to my head. Alex snuggled up close to my left side and put her head on my chest.

  “You should have seen that boy’s parents when they showed up at the hospital. The mother was crying. The father didn’t say much, but I could tell he was frantic. I felt terrible for all three of them.”

  “Great minds think alike,” I told her.

  Alex continued, “It made me glad I don’t have kids. I kept trying to put myself in their place. How do parents cope with something like that? The man is dead. Nothing’s going to fix that. I mean, Mom and Dad can’t kiss it and make it better.”

  She paused. For several minutes, we lay in silence while an occasional car drove past on the street outside. There are lots of things in life parents can’t fix. I didn’t speak because I couldn’t, not with the huge lump back in my throat.

  “You’re so quiet. Are you asleep?” Alex asked.

  “No.”

  She turned toward me, snuggling her head under my chin. “What about you, Beau? What would you do if something like that happened to Kelly or Scott? How would you handle it?”

  Alex was only making conversation, but this was the worst-possible time for her to ask that particular question.

  “Kelly’s pregnant,” I answered. That response was both unforgivably abrupt and totally indirect, but it covered the bases. Alex propped herself up on my chest and stared thoughtfully into my face, her concerned frown visible in the pale moonlight.

  “Oh,” she said. “So that’s it. I’m so sorry.”

  “Me, too,” I mumbled. “Kelly doesn’t seem to be, though. She’s happy as a clam, and so’s that damn fiancé of hers. The wedding’s set for Monday afternoon at two-thirty. Since I’m invited, I suppose you are, too, if you want to go, that is.”

  I made no effort to disguise the hard edge of bitterness in my voice. Why should I? My eighteen-year-old daughter was pregnant and throwing her life away for some jerk of a two-bit actor.

  Wordlessly, Alex lay back down and once more snuggled her head under my chin. The soft heat of her breath warmed my skin. My nostrils inhaled the clean, fresh scent of her hair. As gentle fingers began stroking my breastbone, some of the aching tension drained out of my body.

  “What about your ex-wife?” Alex asked softly much later when I was almost asleep. “Is she coming?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I doubt it. Karen doesn’t know about this, and I don’t think it’s my place to tell her.”

  “Oh,” Alex said, and that was all.

  I had meant to ask Alexis Downey about the denouement of the donor party and exactly how things were going in the theater-development wars. I meant to ask her if she had been able to keep Monica Davenport’s grubby little paws out of Guy Lewis’ wallet, but before I had a chance, the comforting touch of her caressing fingers lulled me to sleep.

  It wasn’t at all how I had imagined spending the first night of our romantic weekend away from the man-hating Hector and Alex’s damnable futon, but in lots of ways it was much nicer.

  And it was probably far better than I deserved.

  When I woke up, brilliant rays of warm morning sunlight streamed in through the window. Alex—wide awake, showered, and wearing a terry-cloth robe—was curled up in a rocking chair by the window. She sat with a pair of reading glasses perched on her nose and with a thick, leather-bound volume tucked under her face.

  “What are you reading?” I asked.

  “Shakespeare,” she replied. “The complete works. We’re scheduled to see Shrew tonight. The dialogue’s great. I wanted to review it for myself. By the way,” she added, “breakfast is in fifteen minutes. You’d better get a move on.”

  Sniffing the air, I savored the mouth-watering aromas that drifted upstairs from the kitchen. “I think that’s what woke me up,” I said, crawling out of bed and heading for the bathroom.

  “Hope you don’t mind baths,” Alex cautioned. “Showers are out. Oak Hill was the only place in town with a last-minute cancellation, and this was the last available room. Consider yourself lucky.”

  As soon as I walked into the bathroom, I understood what Alex meant. Space for this recently added bathroom had been carved from an attic area directly under the slope of the eaves. The tub-enclosure alcove wasn’t tall enough to accommodate a shower stall. In fact, I couldn’t even stand up in it without bumping my head on the ceiling. With my arm bandaged, though, showers would have been out of the question anyway.

  I missed my morning shower, but breakfast more than made up for it. Alex and I arrived in the huge dining-room and took the last two places at the far end of a spacious dining-room table that comfortably seated twelve. By the time we appeared, the room was abuzz with lively chatter. Talk ceased long enough for a round of introductions. Guests came from as far south as San Diego and from as far north as Alex’s digs on Queen Ann Hill.

  The Oak Hill’s owner—a retired schoolteacher named Florence who functioned as hostess, chief cook, waitress, busser, manager, and concierge—passed platters heaped high with French toast, delectable sausages, and sliced fresh fruit. She plied us with pitchers of juice and hot coffee and kept conversation flowing. Table talk focused mostly on who had seen which plays yesterday, what they thought of same, and who would see what today.

  Toward the end of the meal, someone asked about the bandage on my arm. With little encouragement, Alex told a rapt audience about the previous night’s activities. There’s nothing like murder and mayhem to liven up a waning meal-time discussion.

  Once the topic of murder came up, I figured I was in for it. Being identified as a police officer—especially a homicide detective—in a group of civilians is no favor. The cop immediately becomes the focus of all kinds of public pet peeves concerning the judicial system—from police brutality to overly enthusiastic traffic enforcement. With a brand-new local murder under discussion, I figured I was in for a real grilling.

  And that would have happened most places. Ashland was different. To my surprise, that highly literate group of breakfast conversationalists quickly veered away from the specifics of Martin Sh
ore’s murder into a hotly contested philosophical discussion on the ethics of the death penalty. It’s no news that I was the only person unconditionally in favor of capital punishment, but everyone else turned out to be just as opinionated as I was.

  All in all, it was a delicious, interesting, and altogether enjoyable meal. It put me totally at ease, lulled me into a false sense of security and lighthearted fun. As a consequence, when Alexis and I walked back up to our room afterward, I was shocked when we ran into Kelly coming down the stairway. She was headed for the laundry on the other side of the kitchen, her arms laden with a huge bundle of dirty sheets and wet towels.

  “Kelly!” I exclaimed in dismay. “What are you doing here?”

  She glanced first at Alexis and then at me. “Hello, Dad,” she said. “I work here mornings. I thought you knew that. I saw your car outside and thought that’s why you stayed here.”

  “I had no idea!”

  Alexis stepped forward with a ready smile. “Hi, Kelly. I’m Alexis Downey. Alex for short. I’m so glad to meet you.”

  Now it was Kelly and Alexis who stood looking at each other and sizing one another up in the same way Jeremy Todd Cartwright and I had surveyed one another the evening before. At last Kelly smiled. “I’m happy to meet you, too, Alex,” she said. The dignity of her response belied both her age and the dirty linen.

  “Right now I have to start the wash, or it’ll never get dry. We’ll talk later—at lunch. I’m off around eleven-thirty.” With that, she continued down the staircase and disappeared.

  I watched her go with a very real sense of wonder. I was so amazed that for the time being I forgot to be embarrassed about her seeing Alex and me together. “She’s all grown up, Alexis. How did that happen? Where have I been?”

  Alex grinned. “Daddies are always the last to know.”

  We proceeded up the stairs and into our room, where the bed had been neatly made. Two sets of clean towels and washcloths hung on the bars in the bathroom. I was astonished to think that Kelly—my very own messy Kelly—had carefully placed them there and that she had actually made a bed. With her own hands. That was so out of character, I would have been less surprised if someone had told me she was an alien being from another planet.

  “If you had known her when she was little….”

  Alex turned to me. “How long have you been divorced?”

  “Six years, going on seven. Why?”

  “When you don’t see someone on a daily basis, especially little kids, they tend to stay frozen in your mind at the age they were when you knew them best. For years my grandmother sent me three pairs of panties on my birthday. Every year I had to exchange them because every year they were too small.

  “Kelly’s all grown up now, Beau. She’s not eleven or twelve anymore. It looks to me as though she’s behaving in a very responsible fashion.”

  I thought about that. “In other words, butt out and mind my own business?”

  Alex shrugged. “Maybe that’s a little stronger than I would have said it myself, but yes, that’s pretty much what I mean.”

  Alex left me standing in the middle of the room, walked over to the door, and clicked home the security lock. When she came back, she kissed me full on the lips.

  “Hey, big guy,” she murmured. “How about a quick roll in the hay? This is supposed to be our romantic getaway, remember? So far you haven’t laid a glove on me.”

  God knows I wanted her, but my ears reddened at the very suggestion. “With Kelly right downstairs?” I croaked.

  Alex laughed. “Why not? She’s doing laundry, remember? She won’t even notice.”

  “But what if the bed squeaks? What if the floor does?”

  “What if?”

  Taking me by the hand, Alex led me over to the bed. I sat down on it tentatively and bounced once or twice, testing the springs. I couldn’t hear any telltale squeaks, but without being downstairs to listen, how could I be sure? Meantime, Alex slipped out of her shorts and panties and peeled her T-shirt off over her head. Seconds after the T-shirt hit the carpeted floor, so did her lacy white bra.

  Alex walked over to me and pulled me against her bare skin with fierce, hungry urgency. Grasping my head, she buried my face in the soft, fragrant swell of her breasts.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Kelly will never know. Even if she did, she won’t mind. I think she knows where babies come from.”

  “But…”

  “Kelly isn’t a virgin anymore. She doesn’t expect you to be one, either.”

  Put that way, with Alex’s suddenly taut nipples grazing against my skin and lips, I could hardly turn her down. No right-thinking male would have, not unless he was totally crazy—and, most assuredly, I am not crazy.

  Eventually, with some careful urging on her part, I did manage to rise to the occasion. But given the choice between making love while my daughter was downstairs washing clothes or doing it with Alex’s crazy cat lying there eyeing us malevolently from the opposite pillow, I confess I’d choose Hector every single time.

  CHAPTER

  6

  We fell asleep. Considering the lateness of the hour when we’d arrived home from the emergency room, that was hardly surprising. Alex woke me just in time for us to go to lunch with Jeremy and Kelly. Before we left the room, I personally made sure the bed was perfectly straight.

  Jeremy showed up wearing his Birkenstocks and driving the Live Oak Farm van. Once we were all together, he recommended we go directly to a restaurant called Geppetto’s in hopes of beating the noontime crowd. I soon saw the wisdom in that advice. Within minutes of our being shown to a table, twenty people stood waiting in line for seating as matinee theatergoers came out in droves, prowling the area for pre-play sustenance.

  Ashland, like an army, travels on its stomach. Each day the town fills up with hundreds of out-of-town visitors who expect to be fed regular meals before, after, or between performances. The fact that nobody goes hungry is one of the logistical miracles of unrepentant capitalism.

  When the harried waiter arrived to take our order, all three of them—Jeremy, Kelly, and Alex—ordered the eggplant hamburger. Eggplant, for God’s sake! It reminded me of Ron Peters, my longtime friend and ex-partner, in his old bean-sprout days. I fumed and ordered a real hamburger.

  Kelly shook her head in disapproval. “Daddy,” she chided, “how can you eat all that red meat?”

  “Easy,” I returned. “Years of practice.”

  My comment provoked the slightest hint of a smile in the corners of Jeremy Cartwright’s otherwise strained mouth. I wondered if he was nervous about having lunch with me. I certainly hoped so. I remembered being scared witless the first time I had dinner with Karen’s folks.

  “I have tickets for Majestic this afternoon, if you’d like to go,” he offered.

  “Oh, Jeremy. How awesome!” Kelly exclaimed, sounding every bit the eighteen-year-old she was.

  “How did you manage that?”

  Jeremy shrugged modestly. “Just lucky,” he said.

  Alexis Downey beamed. “Majestic’s a terrific show. One of my favorites. I understand you play the Laredo Kid?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I only auditioned for the part on a dare. I never thought I’d actually get it.”

  The in-crowd theater talk left me in the dark. “What’s it about?” I asked.

  “About this old-time movie character—that’s me,” Jeremy answered. “I appear like a vision to this other guy who grew up going to movies and watching those real old western serials.”

  Watch it, Buster, I thought. I used to love those “real old” western serials.

  “Now he’s out West working on an Indian reservation,” Jeremy continued. “My character is stuck in the past with all these old scripts and stereotypes of what women should and shouldn’t do. He can’t adjust to this new kind of modern woman who can go to school, cook gourmet meals, fix her own car, and save her boyfriend every time he gets into hot water.”

  “Sounds f
ascinating,” I said.

  Alex kicked me in the shins. “It is,” she said. “And we’ll be delighted to go, Jeremy. It’ll be a good counterpoint to Shrew tonight.”

  If I personally had any objections, they’d been summarily overruled. The waiter brought our orders. Even he looked somewhat disgusted as he slapped the loaded real meat hamburger platter on the table in front of me.

  With the arrival of food, conversation ground to a halt. Uncomfortable silence expanded until it seemed to stretch to the far corners of the universe. Each bite of hamburger turned to dry saw-dust in my mouth, although everyone else at the table wolfed his or her food with obvious relish. I could just as well have ordered the eggplant.

  “Is your mother coming to the wedding?” Alex asked, innocently lobbing a live hand grenade onto the table. Fortunately, I had just swallowed a mouthful of burger; otherwise I would have required an on-the-spot Heimlich maneuver. Kelly’s gaze faltered, and her hands dropped nervously to her lap while a vivid flush spread up her neck and cheeks.

  “Mom doesn’t know about it,” she responded. “Coming to the wedding would just upset her.”

  “Upset” didn’t quite cover it. I doubt that’s the word Dave Livingston would have used, either.

  The expression on Alex’s face remained utterly composed. “If I were your mother,” she said with an impassive smile, “I’m afraid I’d be terribly hurt if I wasn’t invited.”

  “Even if you thought your daughter was making a horrible mistake?” Jeremy chimed in.

  I did choke at that one, couldn’t help it. At least the kid was smart enough to recognize the lay of the land.

  Alex nodded. “Even if,” she replied.

  That was followed by another period of dead silence. “We’ll think about it,” Kelly said finally, but Alex wasn’t finished.

  “If the wedding’s tomorrow,” she pressed, “there isn’t much time for your mother to make arrangements. She’s in California, isn’t she?” Kelly nodded. “She’ll have to make plane reservations, and all that.”