by J. A. Jance
“I’ll try to decide today,” Kelly agreed.
It was a major concession, and I wasn’t entirely sure how it had happened. I smiled at Alex, grateful for the miracle, while Kelly changed the subject. “How was the backstage tour this morning, Jeremy?” she asked.
“Everybody’s upset,” he said, “because of the knife and all.”
Knife? It was as if someone had twanged a gigantic rubber band in the middle of my forehead. “What knife?” I asked.
“The Henckels—the twelve-inch slicer—we use for Romeo. When the stage manager realized it was missing from the prop table this morning, he spent an hour looking before he had Dinky Holloway report it to Detective Fraymore. You know, because of what happened last night. Nobody knows when it disappeared….”
“I do,” I interjected.
“You do?” Three pairs of eyes searched my face.
“It was missing when I looked at the props during the donor party,” I said. “I remember seeing the empty orange outline on the table. At least it was something shaped like a knife. I didn’t worry about it, though. It wasn’t my problem.”
“It’s somebody’s problem now. Dinky came back to the theater practically tearing her hair out. Fraymore was going out to the farm to take Tanya’s fingerprints.”
“Tanya’s!” Kelly exclaimed. “Why would he do that?”
“Don’t worry,” I assured them. “It’s just routine. If it is the knife from the show, both Juliet’s and Romeo’s prints may be on it. So a print technician will take both Tanya’s and James Renthrow’s prints as well as any stagehands who may have handled the knife. Once they catalog the known prints that should be there, then they can sort out the unknown ones that shouldn’t.”
“I see,” Jeremy said. “So it’s a process of elimination?”
“Right,” I answered. “It’s called disqualifying prints.”
Jeremy breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m glad to hear that. I was afraid it meant she was really in trouble.”
“Any reason why she should be?”
“Daddy,” Kelly complained. “Stop being a detective.”
“I can’t help it. Curiosity becomes a way of life.”
Iced tea and eggplant had evidently propped up Jeremy’s confidence. He was feeling expansive. “It’s just that Tanya’s had so much bad luck,” he said. “First her parents died in that fire when she was twelve. Then she got in a beef with her guardian and ended up on her own by the time she was fourteen. She’s been self-supporting ever since. In all that time, she never lost track of her goal.”
“Which was?”
“To be an actress. And look at her. She is. For someone her age, she’s accomplished a lot. Especially when you consider she’s raising Amber all by herself.”
“What happened to her husband?”
“Oh him.” Kelly sniffed disapprovingly. “I guess Bob couldn’t stand the competition. He was ten years older than Tanya. When she landed better parts than he did, he took off.”
“How old was Amber when he left?” I asked.
Kelly and Jeremy exchanged veiled glances before Kelly answered. “Tanya told me he left the day he found out she was pregnant.”
Oops. One more time, open mouth and insert foot. Once again Alex came to my rescue. “How old is Amber?”
“Two and a half.”
“I know what actors make around here,” Alex continued. “It isn’t much. How has Tanya managed?”
“She couldn’t have if it hadn’t been for Marjorie,” Kelly explained. “That’s Marjorie Connors,” she added for Alex’s benefit. “Our landlady. She runs Live Oak Farm, where we all live. Tanya couldn’t afford an apartment by herself. She was about to be thrown into the street when Marjorie invited them to come stay with her.”
Jeremy nodded. “Marjorie’s great. That’s the kind of thing she does. She was volunteering at the theaters when she heard about what was going on with Tanya and Amber. She knew Tanya was broke, so they worked out a way Tanya could help around the farm in exchange for the rent. That’s what we all do, more or less.”
“Is that how you ended up there, too?” Alex spoke with her eyes focused on Kelly’s face. If I had asked the question, Kelly probably would have thrown the remainder of her eggplant burger in my face, told me it was none of my business, and stomped off in a huff. Since Alex asked, though, it was okay.
“Pretty much,” Kelly answered.
“Sounds like a nice lady,” Alex went on. “I’d like to meet her sometime. Maybe at the wedding.”
Jeremy shook his head. “I doubt that. Marjorie doesn’t like weddings. She says marriage is a barbaric holdover from the Middle Ages that turns women into slaves and men into tyrants.” Jeremy delivered that last sentence in a brusque voice that mimicked Marjorie Connors’ clipped delivery perfectly. Both Kelly and I laughed. Maybe Jeremy was an actor after all.
For a change, since Alex alone of the three of us had never met Marjorie Connors, she was the one left out of the joke.
Jeremy glanced down at his watch. “Sorry to rush. I’ve got a cast call pretty soon. If we don’t leave now, I won’t have time to take Kelly home and bring the others into town.”
“I take it you operate the Live Oak Taxi?” I asked.
He grinned. “Like Kelly said, it helps pay the rent.” He started to fumble gamely for his bill-fold, but I told him to forget it, that I was buying. They left a few minutes later, even though it was just barely twelve-thirty. Alex and I lingered at the table. It was hot in the restaurant, and I switched from coffee to iced tea.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“Of them?” Alex shrugged. “They’re sweet. And very much in love.”
She sat there stirring sugar into her iced tea in an artless, casual gesture. Watching her, I was surprised by how much I liked it; by how much I liked her. It was as if she had somehow tiptoed around the defenses and crept into my heart through a back entrance I didn’t know existed.
“Could I ask you a personal question, Ms. Downey?” I asked.
“Shoot,” she said.
“Let me lay it out for you this way, ma’am. Here we are having lunch with my daughter and the young twerp who is all set to marry her without so much as a by-your-leave. In the middle of this highly pressurized lunch, you come right out and ask if they’ve invited Karen to the wedding. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not complaining, but would you mind telling me why you did that?”
She looked up at me and smiled, her deep blue eyes flashing in merriment. “You really don’t know?”
“Haven’t a clue.”
“Karen’s Kelly’s mother, right?”
“Right.”
“She’s also your ex-wife. Divorces notwithstanding, mothers expect to go to their daughters’ weddings. Period.”
“So?”
“So, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not interested in a one-night stand or even a several-month stand with you, Mr. J.P. Beaumont. I’m not that kind of girl. I like you a lot, but if there’s ever going to be anything permanent between us, then we’d better make damn sure that if we’re invited to Kelly and Jeremy’s wedding, Karen and Dave Livingston are, too.”
Just like that, I got the picture. Talk about a slow learner! So when we went to see The Majestic Kid that afternoon, I sat up and paid attention, and not just because my future son-in-law was playing a lead role. I figured since this was a play about a girl who kept bailing her boyfriend out of the drink, then I needed to take lessons.
During intermission, Alex excused herself. I thought she was going to the rest room. Instead, she must have used a phone. When she sat back down beside me, she squeezed my arm.
“It worked,” she said. “I checked with Kelly. She and Jeremy talked it over on the way home. Karen and Dave are invited to the wedding after all.”
“Hot damn!” I breathed. By then I understood Karen’s presence at the wedding was in my own best interest.
“Well,” she hedged. “It’s not all smooth
sailing.”
“Why not? What do you mean?”
“They want you to make the phone call.”
“Me!” I choked. “I have to do all the dirty work?”
Alex smiled and nodded. “I told Kelly you wouldn’t mind at all. That’s what fathers are for. We’ll call Karen as soon as the play is over and before we meet Dinky for dinner.”
I watched the second act of The Majestic Kid, but I can’t say I enjoyed it very much. Alex, of course, savored every minute of it. Why wouldn’t she? She didn’t know Karen Moffit Beaumont Livingston. I did.
Expecting the immediate outbreak of World War III, I wasn’t willing to use a public pay phone to call Rancho Cucamonga. After the play, we took the Porsche, drove to a shady parking place near a park, and called on my cellular phone. I did try Dave’s number at work but ended up with voice mail. Taking a deep breath, I dialed the Livingstons’ home number.
I hoped Dave would answer, but of course he didn’t. “Hello, Karen,” I said. “it’s Beau.”
Her guard came up just like that. “What do you want?”
Karen didn’t used to be that defensive, and I don’t blame her, not anymore. It’s a perfectly understandable device to keep from being hurt again. Since she wasn’t that way back in the old days when we were first married, I have to accept some of the responsibility for how she is now. Being married to an alcoholic isn’t a bed of roses, so I’m willing to shoulder some of the blame. Some, but not all.
“I’ve found Kelly,” I heard myself blabbing into the phone. “She’s in Ashland, Oregon, and she’s okay…. No, she’s fine, really. Karen, listen to me. No, I’m telling you, she’s all right.”
Karen was crying into the receiver so hard I wasn’t sure if she heard a word I said. I looked over at Alex for help and encouragement. She nodded, urging me forward, but she didn’t offer any other help. In this deal, I was strictly on my own.
I forged ahead. “Karen,” I said reasonably, “calm down and listen. This is important. Kelly is getting married on Monday. Tomorrow. I’m calling to see if there’s any way you and Dave and Scott can make it up here on such short notice.”
The words had the same effect as a bucket of cold water. “Married?” Karen sputtered. “She can’t do that.”
“Yes, she can.”
“Who’s she marrying?”
“A boy named Jeremy Cartwright.”
“When?”
“I already told you. The wedding’s set for two-thirty tomorrow afternoon here in Ashland, Oregon.” I paused and took a deep breath before I said the rest. “Kelly’s pregnant, Karen.”
I held the phone away from my ear during the angry tirade that followed, but sooner than I would have expected, Karen grew oddly silent.
“Look,” I said. “I know this hurts like hell, but you’ll have to decide whether or not you want to be part of it.”
Seven hundred and fifty miles away, the telephone receiver clattered noisily onto a tabletop in Rancho Cucamonga. That in itself was a pretty definitive answer. I figured it was a final one, but a moment later Dave Livingston came on the phone.
“Thanks for saving my ass and not letting her know I called you,” he said. “I’ll handle things on this end. Where can I call you once she comes around?”
“You think she will?”
“Yeah,” Dave said. “I’m sure of it.”
I looked down at the phone in my hand. There really wasn’t any place for him to return a call. Alex and I had play tickets for the Elizabethan. I had no intention of spending the remainder of the afternoon and evening in the car waiting for the telephone to ring.
“Call my home number in Seattle,” I said. “Leave a message for Ralph Ames.”
“Who’s he?”
“My attorney. If you have trouble with airline connections or anything like that, call Ralph and let him go to work on it. He’ll sort it out.”
“You have an attorney who handles airline arrangements?” Dave asked. “It must be nice.”
“He’s a friend,” I explained. “Call him if you need help.”
I hung up and looked at Alex. “Way to go,” she said.
Then I dialed my home number in Seattle. Ralph still wasn’t there, but he would be soon. He’d pitch in and do whatever needed doing. I left a message. Maybe voice mail isn’t all bad. After that, I put down the phone and turned to Alex. “Okay. I’ve done my duty. Now what?”
She glanced at her watch. “We’ve just got time to meet Dinky for dinner.”
“Where?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“Great. I love surprises.” I turned the key. “Which way?”
“Back through town then north past the light. Stop at the phone booth.”
“Stop at a phone booth? Are you putting me on?”
“That’s what the directions say,” Alex said. “I’ve got them written down right here. It says there’s no sign outside, just a three-by-five card on the door. Dinky says it’s an old gas station, but the food’s great.”
“Sure it is,” I said, unconvinced. “Every old gas station serves great food. They’ve all turned into AM/PM Minimarts. What are we having? Ho-Ho’s?”
“Beau,” Alex declared firmly, “Dinky would never steer us wrong.”
At the intersection, I turned left on Siskiyou Boulevard. “Wanna bet?” I said.
Fortunately, we didn’t bet. The food at Cowboy Sam’s New Bistro probably would have been excellent, if we had actually stayed around long enough to eat any of it. We drove to an ancient, porticoed gas station north of town. The only distinguishing feature visible from the road really was a phone booth, but the inside of the building had been remodeled into a series of small, intimate lace-curtained dining rooms. The several glossily enameled wooden tables—I counted only eight—were already filling up.
The proprietor, who must have been Cowboy Sam himself, led us to a table where Dinky Holloway was already seated and waiting. Even to someone who had only seen her once, she didn’t look quite right. To Alex it must have been even more apparent that something was dreadfully wrong.
“Dinky, what’s going on? You look terrible.”
Dinky gave Alex a wan smile. We started to sit down. The way the table was arranged, I headed for the chair that was next to the wall, but this was a very old gas station. The low, sloping ceiling was too short for me to stand upright next to the wall. There seemed to be a lot of that going around in Ashland: first the sloping bathroom ceiling at the Oak Hill B & B; now the same kind of construction at a converted gasoline station. I was beginning to think Ashland was built by and for midgets.
Alex and I quickly traded seats while Denver Holloway studied me with a frankly assessing look. “Are you really as trustworthy as Alex says?” she asked.
I glanced at Alex. “I’d like to think so, why?”
Dinky reached into a cavernous purse and extracted a semi-clear plastic container, the kind you get from video stores.
“What’s that?” I asked.
She put it down on the table and then pushed it to the center as though she didn’t want it too near her.
“Just what it looks like,” she answered. “A videotape. It showed up in my inter-office mail this afternoon.”
Since Denver Holloway was regarding the container with the kind of guarded wariness most people reserve for a coiled rattlesnake, it seemed possible she was leaving something unsaid.
“What kind of videotape?” I asked.
“Filth.”
“Filth?” I repeated, not sure I had heard her correctly. “As in porno flick?”
She nodded grimly. “It came today along with this.” She pushed a piece of paper across the table. Typed on it was the following: Dinky, Someone like this is a liability to the Festival and will drive away donors. Get rid of her as soon as possible. Monica.
“As soon as I read it, I went storming down to Monica’s office and bitched her out. I’m a director with some artistic integrity. I’ll be damned if I’l
l be threatened by some hotshot golden girl pulling the purse strings.”
Alex looked at me and rolled her eyes. “That’s one meeting I’m glad I missed. What happened?”
“Monica denied it,” Dinky continued. “Said she’d never seen any videotape, and that she hadn’t sent the note, either.”
“What happened then?”
“I went back to my office to play the tape.”
“And?”
Dinky’s face crumpled. “It’s awful. I’ve never seen anything like it. When I realized what it was, I turned it off.”
Whatever Denver Holloway had seen, it had rocked her to the very core. There are only a few things guaranteed to produce that kind of appalled reaction in decent, law-abiding folks.
“Snuff film or kiddie porn?” I asked.
Dinky swallowed hard. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and she wasn’t even that old. It’s monstrous.” She paused before continuing in a small, constrained voice. “Ever since, all I’ve been able to think about is what’ll happen to her now, and what about the baby?”
Alex reached out and put a comforting hand on Denver Holloway’s wrist. “The girl in the video is someone you know?”
Dinky nodded, her face a pasty white. Two gigantic tears spilled from her highly magnified eyes and dribbled slowly down her pale cheeks. “It’s Tanya,” she whispered miserably. “Tanya Dunseth—my Juliet. She must have been only eleven or twelve, but I recognized her instantly. I’d know that profile anywhere. What’s going to happen to her?”
Full of brisk reassurance, Alex patted the back of Dinky’s hand. “Nothing’s going to happen to Tanya, and no one’s going to hold it against her. She’s the one who’s been victimized. After something like that, it’s even more of a wonder that she’s been able to do what she’s done. What a remarkable young woman!”
“But you don’t understand,” Dinky added shakily. “I recognized the man, too. The one in the videotape. He’s younger than his picture in the paper today, but I never forget a face. It’s him all right.”
Suddenly, it all came together for me. “Martin Shore?” I asked in astonishment. “Martin Shore is the one on the tape?”