by J. A. Jance
Nearby the woman continued to sob hysterically. Fearing the worst, I checked the interior of the Duster but found no passengers. Off to the side, I saw a man crouching on the curb of the sidewalk. He held his face in his hands, and I thought he was hurt.
I hurried over to him. "Are you all right?"
The man, a kid of eighteen or nineteen, looked up at me and nodded mutely, but I saw he wasn't nearly all right. His face was awash in a mixture of tears and blood. He was bleeding profusely from a deep gash over his left eyebrow.
"I didn't see him, honest," the kid whimpered brokenly. "I swear to God, I didn't see him at all."
"Was there anyone else in there with you?" I asked.
He stared up at me blankly. "Just me," he mumbled as if in a daze. "Nobody but me." Shaking his head, he attempted to mop the blood away from his eye with his shirtsleeve.
"I don't know where he came from. One second he wasn't there, and then he was. He just stumbled out in front of me. Stepped right in front of the car. I never had a chance to stop."
In the background, the woman was still sobbing, with people trying to comfort her. She was saying pretty much the same thing the boy did, that whoever it had been had come flying toward her vehicle out of nowhere.
"Is he dead?" she asked. "Somebody please tell me."
When he heard those words, the boy closed his eyes and sagged heavily against me. I eased him down onto the sidewalk, resting him on his back. Convulsive shivering indicated he might be going into shock. I slipped out of my jacket and draped it over him, then I handed him my handkerchief.
"Hang on, buddy," I told him when his eyes blinked open. "Hold this against that cut of yours. Put some pressure on it so it doesn't bleed so much. I'll be right back."
With that, even as I heard the sound of sirens in the distance, I went looking for the pedestrian who'd been hit. He wasn't hard to find. I'd heard the sound of the impact, and I knew what to expect. At least I thought I did.
The victim lay on the hood of a second vehicle-the woman's older-model Oldsmobile. One foot and arm had smashed through the shattered windshield. I hurried over to him and felt for a pulse. Finding none in his limp wrist, I thought I'd check his carotid artery just to be sure. As I reached across his chest, however, a sharp pain bit into my own arm. I looked down at my wrist and found, to my surprise, that I was bleeding. Thinking I must have cut myself on a piece of broken glass, I tried moving the man's sports jacket aside.
That's when I saw the knife. The blade protruded stiffly from his chest like an evil shark's fin. The force of his landing on the hood of the Cutlass must have driven the knife handle well into his back and pushed the blade up through his rib cage. From the position in his chest, I was sure the blade had gone directly through his heart, killing him instantly.
"Step aside," someone was saying urgently. "Coming through. Coming through."
A young uniformed cop appeared at my elbow and bodily shoved me aside. "Is he dead?" the cop asked as he, too, began searching for a pulse.
"I think so," I told him. "But be careful of the knife. It's sharp as hell. I already cut myself on it."
"What knife?" the young officer demanded shortly. "I thought this was…" And then he saw it, too. "I'll be damned!" he exclaimed. "There is a knife here."
Gingerly, avoiding the blade, the cop checked the man's throat and shook his head. "He's a goner all right," he said. "Hell of a way to go!" Then he added, more to himself than to me, "But what did it, the knife or the car?"
That was the $64,000 question. I didn't answer because it wasn't my place to. After all, I was on vacation. It seemed like a good idea for me to find myself an EMT and see if my wrist needed stitches. I started to walk away, but the young officer stopped me.
"Wait a minute, sir," he said. "Maybe you'd better tell me exactly how it is that your arm got cut like that."
Vacation or not, I knew it was the beginning of another long, long night.
CHAPTER 5
No doubt things would have gone more smoothly if the dead man hadn't turned out to be someone else I knew from Seattle. It seemed as though the whole goddamned city had jumped in their cars and followed me down 1–5 to Ashland. I half expected my old hometown nemesis, Maxwell Cole-the intrepid, walrus-mustached columnist from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer-to turn up any minute for an impromptu interview. I was surprised he didn't.
An hour and a half later, after the emergency-room doctor finished stitching my wrist back together, I found myself closeted in a small conference room in Ashland's Community Hospital while Gordon Fraymore, Ashland's sole police detective, swallowed Tums by the fistful and gave me a going-over.
Fraymore was older than I by a good five years, which meant he had been a cop that much longer as well. Since we were both long-term police officers, it seems reasonable that we would see eye-to-eye. We didn't. Not at all. He took an instant dislike to me. Just because cops are sworn to uphold the peace doesn't mean some of them won't be assholes. That's how Gordon Fraymore struck me-a born asshole.
"Tell me again how it is you happen to know this Martin Shore character," Fraymore said, drumming his fingertips impatiently on the smooth Formica tabletop.
The murder victim's identification had been accomplished through picture I.D. discovered on the body. As soon as Detective Fraymore mentioned Martin Shore's name aloud, I realized I knew him.
"I already told you."
"Tell me again."
"Shore had his own private-investigation firm up in Seattle. Specialized in criminal-defense-type work and some insurance claims. We ran into each other now and again, usually at the court-house. I knew him, but just in passing. We weren't friends by any means."
I neglected to mention the degree to which Martin Shore and I weren't friends. His offices were in a run-down part of Georgetown, a neighborhood in Seattle's South End. Scuttlebutt had it that Shore was an ex-cop who had been drummed off the force in Yakima, Washington, where he was alleged to have been moonlighting as a porno distributor. He weaseled out of the charges without even having to cop a plea. Given that kind of history, I don't know how he managed to come up with a P.I. license, but then, I don't work for the Department of Licensing.
I'm not fond of private investigators, so Martin Shore started out with one strike against him. In my book, porn dealers are the scum of the earth. Strike two. Since this was a murder investigation, it seemed best to keep those very personal opinions well under wraps. Rat or not, Martin Shore was dead, and Gordon Fraymore was the detective charged with finding his killer. Fraymore was casting his net in every direction, and I didn't want to wind up in it. Actually, Fraymore already had himself one convenient scapegoat-Derek Chambers, the unfortunate driver of the Duster, who was still waiting and agonizing somewhere in the hospital.
From a few things he said, I suspected Fraymore was somewhat confused, that he had inadvertently mixed up exactly who had been driving what. He was off on a wild tangent, thinking the woman had been driving the Duster and Derek Chambers the Cutlass. And while Fraymore blundered around in total ignorance, Derek and his worried parents were isolated in a hospital room down the hallway with a uniformed cop standing guard outside the door.
I wish I could say those kinds of mistakes never happen. I can't. I've made a few of them myself. In the heat of a new investigation, when a cop is working under incredible pressure, one piece of a puzzle unaccountably gets shifted to the wrong side of the board. With any kind of luck, the detective realizes where he went wrong and corrects his mistake, straightening out both his mind and his paper before any harm is done.
As an impartial observer of events in Ashland, I found it easy to see what was happening. I wondered how long it would take for Gordon Fraymore to wise up. It sure as hell wasn't my job to point out the error of his ways. Cop or not, Fraymore struck me as a heavy-handed jerk. The longer the mix-up was allowed to continue, the more harm it would do to Derek Chambers and the more embarrassing it would be for Detective Fraymore. I
n fact, if it hadn't been for what Fraymore's stupidity was doing to Derek and his anguished parents, I could have cared less.
"Let me ask you this," Fraymore was saying. "Did you have any idea Martin Shore was going to be in Ashland this weekend?"
"None whatsoever. As a matter of fact, I didn't know I would be until just yesterday morning."
Fraymore frowned. "I thought you said your daughter was getting married, that you came here for a wedding."
"I didn't know about the wedding until yesterday, either," I snapped. Gordon Fraymore could go ahead and draw his own conclusions on that score. "I may have been late getting my invitation," I added, "but the wedding is scheduled for two-thirty Monday afternoon, if you want to check it out."
"Oh, I'll do that," Gordon Fraymore assured me. "Most definitely. I'll be checking everything. Twice if necessary. Tell me again what you were doing just prior to your being found at the crime scene?"
I took a deep breath and told him again. "I left the donor party in the Bowmer. I told Alex I wanted to get some air."
"I take it Alex is Alexis Downey, the lady waiting for you out in the lobby?"
I nodded.
"She your wife?"
"We're just good friends," I answered.
"I see. Where exactly did you go when you went out to get some air?"
"Out into that little brick courtyard between the theaters and the ticket office. I was standing near the telephone booths looking up at the stars when I first heard the crash. As soon as I heard it, I knew what it was. I ran down the stairs between the buildings to see if I could help."
"Commendable," Gordon Fraymore said. "Did you see anybody else on the stairs or in the courtyard?"
"No."
"Hear anything?"
"Other than the crash and breaking glass? No."
"I understand you work Homicide in Seattle?"
I didn't remember telling him that. "That's right."
"You're sure there isn't a chance that Martin Shore screwed up one of your cases and you decided to get even?"
"There's no chance." It was time for a little cop-to-cop courtesy. "Look, I'm tired. My arm hurts. Can't we finish this tomorrow?"
"Where are you staying?"
"One of the B and B's. Oak something."
"Oak Hill?"
"Probably. Sounds like it, but I don't remember for sure."
"Both you and Miss Downey are staying there?"
"Ms. Downey," I corrected. If I couldn't get away with calling Alexis "Miss," then neither could Gordon Fraymore. "That's right. We're both staying there."
"Why not with your daughter?" he asked pointedly. "Didn't Marjorie Connors offer to put you up?"
I wasn't in the mood to discuss my daughter or Marjorie Connors' singular style of nonhospitality, and where Alex and I stayed was none of Gordon Fraymore's damn business.
"Live Oak Farm doesn't have enough room," I answered. "Can I go now?"
He studied me for a long moment. "I suppose," he said deliberately. "Just don't head back for Seattle without letting me know."
"Right."
I got up and walked as far as the doorway, but by then Fraymore had pushed once too often. I couldn't resist a parting shot. "What about Derek Chambers?" I asked.
Fraymore had picked up a nail clipper and was digging something out from under his fingernails. "What about him?"
"When are you going to tell him what really happened?"
Fraymore looked up and glowered at me. "About the knife, you mean? When I get damned good and ready. With smart-assed kids like that, it doesn't hurt to let 'em squirm awhile. That's what we do in small towns, Mr. Beaumont. We scare the shit out of kids in order to get them to straighten up and fly right."
The Constitution notwithstanding.
I said, "That kid deserves better than sitting out there thinking he's killed a man. So do his parents."
"What makes you think he didn't kill him?" Fraymore countered. "Maybe the knife wound wouldn't have been fatal if he hadn't been hit by the kid's car first."
"You'd better check the investigating officer's paper, Detective Fraymore. Derek Chambers' car may have hit Martin Shore first, but it was landing on the hood of the Cutlass that rammed the knife through his heart. Derek was in the Duster."
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 fiance 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."