JP Beaumont 11 - Failure To Appear (v5.0) (20 page)
“What’s that?”
“If I go to jail or prison, you won’t let my parents get Amber. No matter what. I’d rather she were dead.”
“Believe me,” Ralph Ames declared. “I’ll see to it.” He turned to me. “Give me the keys to the 928, Beau. Tanya and I will go down the road and head off your friend Fraymore before he has a chance to come into the yard.”
“What about me?” I asked. “Shouldn’t I come along?”
“Not on your life,” Ralph answered. “I have the protection of professional privilege. You don’t. I don’t want Gordon Fraymore knowing you were privy to this entire conversation. Maybe this good man here…” Ralph waved distractedly in Romeo’s direction. “What is your name, sir?”
“Renthrow,” Romeo answered. “James Renthrow.”
“Well, then,” Ralph said, “maybe Mr. Renthrow will be kind enough to give you and the baby a ride into town. Come on, Tanya. Hurry.”
With that, Take-Charge-Ralph led an uncomplaining Tanya away. Moments later, the engine of the Porsche roared to life, and they were gone.
Romeo turned to me. “What now?” he asked.
“We do as we’re told,” I answered. “We find a diaper bag and pack same.”
One of Tanya’s housemates, the deep brown one I had seen baking herself to a cinder on the front seat of the old Chrysler, directed us to Tanya’s upstairs room. There, with Romeo’s help, I pulled together what looked like a relatively complete baby kit. For overnight or longer.
After that, we woke Amber up and carried her out to James Renthrow’s fire-engine-red VW Bug with the proper Shakespearean vanity plate of 2BRNOT2B. His scanner was still tuned to police frequencies when we got in the car, but there was nothing on the air about the arrest of Tanya Dunseth.
“Nice of you to take care of Amber this way,” James Renthrow said, in his melodic sounding accent, as we headed for Oak Hill. “Not everyone would take in somebody’s baby like that, especially with Kelly so badly hurt and all. You seem to have more than enough to worry about on your own.”
It seemed like that to me as well. “Most people don’t have friends like Ralph Ames,” I returned darkly.
I admit to being moderately grumpy when I said it. I was glad someone had noticed and appreciated it, even if it was only Romeo. With Kelly still hanging in limbo, I did have certain troubles of my own. Not only that, I was more than slightly bent out of shape by Ralph’s high-handed attitude. He took off in my car, leaving me stranded and having to beg rides from total strangers. Then, of course, there was Amber.
It was easy for Ralph to wave his wand magnanimously and say he’d take care of something when, in actual fact, some other poor chump was the one who’d be left holding the bag.
To say nothing of the baby.
A
gain I found Alex waiting on the front porch. She met us at the car to give me a quick update. Karen Louise was fine. Kelly had been moved from Recovery to a private room where her condition had been upgraded to serious but stable. She had not regained consciousness. In other words, we still weren’t out of the woods.
Inside, the Oak Hill B & B was alive with activity. Bed-and-Breakfast establishments don’t usually supply evening meals, but this wasn’t a usual circumstance. Florence made pot after pot of coffee, regular and decaf. She served that along with plates heaped high with salvaged wedding cake to an informal gathering that threatened to last all night. Most drop-by visitors were friends of Kelly and Jeremy’s, people who had expected to attend a wedding. They came instead to express dismay and to glean progress reports on Kelly and the baby.
Word of Tanya Dunseth’s arrest preceded us. When James Renthrow and I arrived with Amber in tow, the response was enthusiastic and immediate. Maybe there’s something in that old line about no people like show people. The people gathered in Florence’s spacious living room, Tanya and Jeremy’s fellow cast members, were very much concerned, and they wanted to help. Someone started a sign-up sheet for volunteers to take turns watching Amber. Most mentioned they’d be happy to care for Karen Louise as well. It warmed me to know help would be available for Kelly once her out-of-town relatives returned home.
Florence had been busy doing more than just making coffee and serving cake. Calling in some of her B & B chips, she had found lodging for everybody, although not at a single location. At that time of year, last-minute accommodations in Ashland are the exception, not the rule. Still, Florence had managed.
Alex and I were scheduled to stay where we were. Dave and Karen ended up at someplace called the Auburn Street Cottage, where, I was told, although the shower was tall enough to stand up in, it was also outdoors—across a long backyard and concealed behind a lacy curtain of green growing vine. Scott and Ralph Ames shared a double room at the Ashland Hills.
There was a considerable fuss when Romeo and I first showed up, me carrying Amber and James Renthrow packing the diaper bag. Within minutes Alex personally took charge of the child. Since Alex’s underhanded scheming had precipitated this current crisis, that seemed only fair. I repaired to the kitchen, where I found Dave Livingston bird-dogging the phone. He poured two cups of coffee, kept one for himself, and handed the other to me. We both leaned against the kitchen cooking island to drink it.
“I hear Kelly’s condition has been upgraded,” I said.
He nodded. “The doc says it’ll be several days before we know if there’s any residual damage—paralysis, memory loss.”
My stomach knotted at the prospect. We stood in silent commiseration—two fathers caught in the aftermath of disaster—agonizing about an injured child, fearing the worst but stubbornly hoping for the best. Dave, a likable, ordinary guy, seemed as frazzled as I felt. His concern for Kelly mirrored my own. Realizing that—in the face of hearing Tanya’s appalling story, of knowing there were some other awful fathers out there in the world—made me feel incredibly lucky. And grateful.
I remembered then that I hadn’t seen Mrs. Livingston as I came through the house. “Karen’s still at the hospital?”
Dave shook his head. “I took her back to our place so she could rest. I’m waiting for Jeremy to call here when he’s ready to leave the hospital. There’s no phone in our room.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I told him. “Karen’s not the only one who needs rest. When Jeremy calls, I’ll go pick him up. I wanted to peek in on Kelly anyway.”
Dave examined my face, checking to see if I meant it. “You’re sure it’s no trouble?”
“None at all.”
“All right then,” he agreed. “Thanks. I don’t like leaving Karen alone for very long.”
I almost told him not to worry about Karen, but it was none of my business. When Dave left a few minutes later, I helped myself to some cake and wandered back through the house. Alex and Florence were making phone calls and trying to find a crib. Boris, Florence’s gray tomcat, meandered through the room, took one look at Amber, and departed for parts unknown. Natasha, Oak Hill’s tiny dust mop of a dog, stood her ground and regarded the child with wary curiosity.
The house seemed crowded, noisy, and overly hot. I ventured outside to the front steps and gazed up at a dazzling array of stars. When puny human frailties overtake me, stars can help put things in perspective, although stargazing in Seattle is a relatively rare occurrence.
I was still outside when the phone rang. Moments later Alex appeared at the door to tell me that Jeremy was ready to leave the hospital. She handed me the keys to Ames’ Lincoln. I found Jeremy waiting for me, pacing up and down the sidewalk outside the hospital entrance. Although official visiting hours were long over, I parked the car. “How’re things?” I asked.
“Better,” he said. “Lots better than they were.”
“Wait here a sec, if you don’t mind, Jeremy. I’d like to see for myself.”
He nodded. “First room on the left, just beyond the nurses’ station.”
I walked down the hall, ready to battle any nurse who tried to stop me. None did. Kelly lay sleeping, her long blond eyelashes resting on pale, bruised cheeks. Trying to see beyond the marks on her face and the bandages on her head, I recalled her as an impish little girl, sweet and innocent only when she’d been in bed asleep. Now she was asleep again, and I hoped to God she’d wake up. Trouble or not, I sure as hell didn’t want to lose her. Biting back tears, I rushed from the room.
Jeremy waited in the car, sitting with his eyes closed, leaning wearily on the headrest. He didn’t look up as I climbed into the car and switched on the ignition.
“I’m still scared, Mr. Beaumont,” he said doggedly. “And I feel so damn helpless.”
It might have been only three days since I’d first met him, but Jeremy no longer seemed like a kid to me. Maybe we both were growing up. Tragedy had temporarily scrubbed the wedding, but I sensed Jeremy Todd Cartwright III was a keeper. Bearing that in mind, it wouldn’t do to have him calling me Mr. Beaumont for the rest of our lives.
“We’re all scared, Jeremy,” I assured him. “And by the way, call me Beau, would you? Everybody else does.”
He sat up then and glanced in my direction. “Having a baby…I just never thought about it that much before. You have to take her home, feed her, take care of her, read to her, teach her things, help her grow up. How do you know what to do so you don’t hurt her? What if she gets sick? I mean, being a father is just overwhelming, isn’t it?”
“I’ll say,” I agreed, with remarkable restraint.
We were quiet, both of us presumably musing about the responsibilities of fatherhood. At least, that’s what I was doing. When Jeremy spoke again, though, he changed the subject. “I hear they arrested Tanya. Do the cops really think she killed both those people?”
“That’s the general idea.”
“Not Tanya,” Jeremy said decisively. “Never in a million years. She wouldn’t do such a thing. She’s one of the kindest people I know. She won’t even kill a spider. She carries them outside. I’ve seen her do it.”
Jeremy didn’t know even the barest surface of Tanya Dunseth’s real story, and I wasn’t at liberty to tell him. There’s a pervasive belief that the kinds of abuse suffered by Tanya Dunseth provide a fertile breeding ground for many of society’s psychopathic killers. And there’s a common tendency to forgive the trespasses of those once-tormented children. I had learned that myself when it came to Anne Corley.
To Jeremy I said, “Not killing bugs doesn’t necessarily translate into not killing people, but Tanya claims she’s innocent.”
“What’s going to happen to Amber in the meantime?” he asked.
“She’ll be all right.” I explained our hastily arranged child-care program.
Jeremy shook his head. “It’s not fair. Tanya’s worked so hard. Now she’s going to lose everything, probably even Amber.”
“We’re working on the problem,” I said.
And “we” were. My use of the plural pronoun was accidental. I realized only after the fact that I actually meant it, that I was now a committed member of the Save Tanya Dunseth Movement. Roped into the program reluctantly at first, now I qualified as a full-fledged volunteer along with Ames and the people who offered to baby-sit.
I asked Jeremy if he wanted to come by Oak Hill and visit with some of his friends, but he declined. He was scheduled for
Majestic
Tuesday afternoon. He wanted to get some rest.
The idea of rest—of crawling into a bed and actually sleeping—seemed uncommonly sensible. In fact, I was more than ready for an entire night’s worth of serious shut-eye myself, but it didn’t turn out that way. To begin with, Ralph was back at Oak Hill when I returned from the farm.
I asked how things were going, and he gave me a surprisingly dour response. “Not so good.”
“Why? What’s the matter?”
“Fraymore found a note in Daphne’s sweater pocket signed by Tanya. It says to meet her at the house after the play. Or maybe it says after
Juliet.
I’m not sure, because I didn’t see the note itself. Fraymore is sending it out for fingerprint analysis.”
“Does Fraymore know about the rest of it? About the Daphne-Shore connection and that bastard in Walla Walla?”
Ralph nodded. “Tanya told him. I figured we’d be better off telling him before he learned about it himself. Not that it made any difference. The arraignment’s sometime late tomorrow.”
“Any hope of posting bond?”
“What do you think?”
“I agree,” I told him. “It was a dumb question. Not even Ralph Ames is that much of a miracle worker.” Ralph greeted that with a sickly smile.
“What about Child Protective Services?” I asked. “When do you think they’ll get into the act?”
“I’ve held them off for the time being,” he said, “but I don’t know for how long.”
All in all, it wasn’t an uplifting conversation. Later that night when I tried to go to sleep, Ralph’s comments kept replaying themselves in my head, giving me something constructive to worry about. The two of us together hadn’t been able to save Anne Corley, and I doubted we’d be able to rescue Tanya, either.
The other obstacle to sleeping was Amber. Florence of Oak Hill is a miracle worker in her own right, but only up to a point. She hadn’t been able to conjure a crib out of thin air on such short notice. There was a second bed in the Iris Room—a twin—but it had no sides. There’s a good reason cribs and playpens are made the way they are. It’s hard to keep a rambunctious two-year-old confined to a bed with no rails.
So Amber Dunseth slept in Alex’s and my queen-sized bed. With us. Between us, actually.
“I’m sorry,” Alex said as we lay in bed with a restless and still wide-awake child wiggling between us. “I shouldn’t have interfered, especially not when you already had so much going on.”
Amen, I thought. I said, “It has been one hell of a day.”
“Do you think Ralph will be able to help Tanya?”
“I doubt it.”
“Oh,” she said.
Any more than I had with Jeremy, I wasn’t free to tell Alex the details of the harrowing story Ralph and I had heard from Tanya. I had no right to. If she chose to reveal that part of her history to others, that was her choice. It wasn’t up to me to make that decision for Tanya Dunseth, not even with Alexis Downey.
