Failure to appear jpb-11

by J. A. Jance

  I don't believe it was an innocent fluke of casting that caused Dinky Holloway's Juliet, played by Tanya Dunseth, to be a red-haired beauty with translucently pale skin, while Romeo, played by a handsome young actor named James Renthrow, was exceedingly dark. I'd call James Renthrow an African-American, except the playbill says he's from Jamaica. In deference to fully accurate cultural diversity, I don't believe the term, "African-American" correctly applies to Jamaicans.

  I will say that Dinky Holloway was doing her bit for the arts community in showcasing William Shakespeare's immortal story in a "context designed to challenge the sensibilities of the audience." That's also a quote from the playbill. It seemed to me that Romeo and Juliet had enough problems to begin with without adding race relations into the already explosive mix, but then maybe that's just the father in me talking.

  During intermission, in an effort to pick up my end of the evening's flagging conversation, I unwisely asked Alex how Dinky would, in these politically correct times, stage something like Othello, for instance? The question provoked an immediate firefight between Alex and me, much to the amusement of people seated around us. Our neighbors may have enjoyed the fireworks, but I was more than happy when action resumed onstage. I spent the next act worried that we'd still be at each other's throats once the play was over.

  I shouldn't have. Alex isn't one to pack grudges. Our intermission flare-up served to relieve the tension. By the final curtain, all was forgiven.

  We left the theater in a throng of people. Juliet finished earlier than Henry. Outside, the noisy clang of staged swordplay told us the Elizabethan's production was still in full swing.

  "What now?" I asked, shivering in the surprising cold. "Head home, or crash the party?"

  "Are you kidding?" Alexis demanded. "I wouldn't miss it for the world. I want to know exactly what that woman is up to. The party won't start until after Henry. If you want to, we can go over to the Members' Lounge and warm up. Dinky gave us a pass."

  Dinky again, but given the chill outdoor temperature, the option of waiting inside made sense. We dodged across the street through a flock of waiting tour buses and hotel shuttles. Alex led the way to the side, basement entrance of what looked like an old house. Inside, a vestibule opened into a furnished sitting room where a somewhat weary hostess presided over a small bar. She offered us our choice of beer, wine, coffee, or soft drinks. I took a soda. Alex chose wine.

  "What time does Henry get out?" Alex asked.

  She, too, had slipped into Ashland's contagious one-word-title syndrome. From reading the playbill, I knew the full title was actually King Henry VI, Part Two, but then, who's counting?

  Glancing at her watch, the hostess shrugged. "Ten minutes or so," she said.

  Alex and I retreated to a bench seat that occupied one whole wall beneath a row of old-fashioned double-hung windows. Setting aside her wine, she fixed her lipstick and dabbed powder on her nose. She reminded me of a soldier gearing up for battle.

  "How did it go with Kelly?" Alex asked, snapping shut the lid of her compact.

  That was one topic I didn't want to touch. "Can't we discuss something else?"

  Alex retrieved her wine and eyed me shrewdly over the rim of it. "That well, huh?"

  "Worse. I'd much rather make predictions about the party."

  "In other words, focus on my problems instead of yours?"

  "Right."

  Alex gave me a quick smile that was more a reprieve than a pardon. She'd humor me and let me off the hook temporarily, but eventually I would owe her a full blow-by-blow account. I went for the deferment, thinking that later I'd be better able to talk about Kelly Beaumont and Jeremy Todd Cartwright III.

  Leaning back against the window casing, Alex sipped her wine, studying faces as people began to filter into the Members' Lounge. "What do you want to know?" she asked.

  "Who all is coming to the party besides Guy Lewis? Who's this mysterious ‘she'? Whenever you mention her, sparks fly."

  "Monica Davenport," Alex answered, lowering her voice. "She was my immediate predecessor as director of development at the Rep. Monica's down here now, working for the Festival in the same capacity. She and the T.W. were good pals back home in Seattle. In fact, I think Guy Lewis met Daphne at one of Monica's fundraisers."

  "T. W?" I asked, not quite comprehending and thinking I must have missed something. "What's a T. W?"

  Exasperated by my stupidity, Alex rolled her eyes. "Surely, you know about trophy wives," she answered. "I thought every middle-aged man in America wanted one."

  "I don't speak initials," I returned. "Too subtle. Men are usually a little more explicit. Further more, I have it on good authority that T.W. s, as you call them, can be quite troublesome."

  "Really." Alex grinned. "Well, Daphne Lewis fits the T.W. profile-twenty years younger than Guy if she's a day. According to my sources, she's a fast worker. The previous Mrs. Lewis moved out of the house one day, and Daphne moved in the next."

  It felt weird. Hours earlier I had heard Guy Lewis' slightly different version of this same story. Unlike Alex, I knew life with the second Mrs. Lewis wasn't all sweetness and light.

  "I never met Maggie Lewis," Alex continued. "I've heard she was tough as nails and put together like a Mack truck. You may have noticed, Daphne is definitely made of finer stuff."

  "I noticed," I agreed, remembering how Daphne Lewis had looked the night of the charity auction. With her blond-bombshell hairdo and a beaded, split-up-the-side white satin dress, she had easily qualified as one of the most glamorous women in a roomful of top-drawer competition.

  "I guess that's okay," Alex said. "Someone like Guy Lewis is rich enough to pay his money and take his choice. And he did pay. Through the nose. From what I heard, the divorce lawyers made out like bandits."

  And would again, I thought, remembering Guy's comments at the meeting. Still, given the choice between a woman built like an eighteen-wheeler and someone like Daphne, most men would choose the latter. If they had the chance.

  "You don't like Guy Lewis very much, do you?" I said.

  Alex shrugged. "I don't have to like him," she replied, "but I have to get along with him, and with Daphne, too."

  A new group of people came into the room. One of them, a well-dressed woman about Alex's age, breezed through, nodding and greeting people along the way. "Hi, Monica," someone said.

  Like an interceptor missile breaking away from its host plane, Alexis Downey rose from where she sat and glided toward the newcomer with her hand outstretched and an amazingly cordial smile pasted on her lips. "Why, Monica Davenport," Alex gushed. "I was hoping I'd get a chance to see you while I'm here."

  Monica smiled back, but I doubt she was thrilled. Outwardly, Monica and Alex looked like long-lost chums, but I noted a razor-sharp undercurrent in their exchange of barbed pleasantries. Observing them at work was enough to convince me I'd never cut it in the theater-development game. I'm not that tough.

  The next time the door opened, Romeo and Juliet strolled inside. Without makeup and out of costume, they were laughing and joking about something that had gone awry during the performance. I kept hoping Daddy Capulet would show up so he and I could exchange pointers on child-rearing practices. But while old man Capulet failed to put in an appearance, Juliet helped herself to a glass of sparkling cider and meandered over toward me, stopping in front of the seat Alex had just vacated.

  Tanya Dunseth was wearing a purple loose-knit cardigan sweater over an electric-blue leotard. On her feet were a pair of bright pink Keds. At first glance, I would have thought she had come straight from a high school cheerleading session.

  "Is this seat taken?" she asked.

  "No, be my guest."

  She smiled back, then joined me on the window seat, easing herself down and folding both legs gracefully under her, settling into one of those unnatural and highly suspect lotus positions. Just looking at her made my knees hurt.

  For a moment, I was unsure what to do. Kelly had b
een most insistent about wanting to introduce the two of us, but that was before we had our little spat, before Kelly burst into tears. Still, though, Tanya was sitting there next to me. They were friends. My daughter cared for her daughter. It was dumb to sit side by side there and pretend ignorance.

  "Miss Dunseth?" I said tentatively, unsure of her reaction.

  Smiling and still wisecracking with Romeo across the roomful of people, she turned from him to me. "Yes?"

  "You don't know me, but I'm J.P. Beaumont, Kelly's father."

  Looking directly into her face, I could see that she was older than I'd thought. Somewhere in her mid-twenties, she had striking green eyes, high cheekbones, and a sprinkling of freckles that hadn't shown up under her stage makeup. As soon as she looked at me, her smile disappeared. An air of implacable seriousness settled over her fine features.

  "I knew you stopped by today," she said. "I couldn't tell if Kelly was happy to see you or not."

  So much for standing around exchanging inconsequential pleasantries. Tanya Dunseth believed in going for the gut.

  "That's funny," I returned with a short laugh. "Neither could I."

  She regarded me gravely. "Will you be staying for the wedding?"

  "I don't know."

  "Well, my daughter, Amber, is going to be both flower girl and ring bearer. It'll be a fairly non-traditional ceremony."

  "I'm sure," I said.

  "Did you meet Jeremy? He's really crazy about Kelly. They're both very lucky."

  Almost unconsciously, I found myself glancing at Tanya's left hand, where there was no wedding ring and no visible indication of one, either. I didn't know I was being so painfully obvious until she called me on it.

  "Don't bother looking for a ring," she said curtly. "I was married once, but not now. It didn't work out. That's why I know they're lucky."

  More people crowded into the room, laughing and talking. The newcomers came straight from the Elizabethan still wearing their warm coats and jackets, some of them carrying blankets. As they edged toward the bar, Monica held up her hand for attention.

  "I know it's crowded in here," she said, "so don't get too comfortable." In a room too packed for any semblance of comfort, her announcement was greeted with general laughter.

  "We'll be here only a few minutes longer, just enough to give the cast time to change out of their costumes and put away props. I'm so glad you were all able to be here tonight, and I'm looking forward to giving you a behind-the-scenes look at your arts contributions in action."

  She continued with a canned speech, reeling off numbers about goals set and achieved. While she droned on, the outside door opened again. This time only two people came in-Guy and Daphne Lewis, Guy wearing his red down jacket and Daphne in one of those lush Icelandic wool sweaters. Faced with the jam of people inside the room, they paused in the doorway.

  Monica finally shut up, and the din of conversation returned to normal just as Guy caught sight of me and waved. He leaned down and whispered something in Daphne's ear, motioning with his head in Tanya's and my direction.

  Daphne smiled while her eyes strayed across the room, searching the sea of faces. Just as her eyes seemed to settle on me, the smile fled her face, only to be replaced by a petulant scowl, like that of someone remembering some unpleasantness. Beside me, I heard Tanya Dunseth's sharp intake of breath.

  Concerned, I glanced toward her in time to see her mouth drop open. A tremor like an electrical charge seemed to shoot through her body. She stared toward the couple in the doorway in what seemed like stricken amazement, while the cider from her glass spilled, unnoticed, into her lap.

  And that was it. Nothing more. The incident happened so quickly that I didn't even question it until much later. Daphne and Guy started what turned out to be a slow progress across the room, nodding, chatting, and schmoozing as they came. Meanwhile, Tanya grabbed up her sweater, abandoned her empty glass, and melted into the crowd. At first I thought she was going for a refill, but she never returned to the window seat. I didn't see her again for the remainder of the night.

  Eventually, Guy and Daphne fought their way through the crush of people. He approached with a broad grin on his face and with Daphne safely in tow. "I didn't mean to chase away your pretty friend," he apologized. "I wanted you to meet my wife. Daphne, this is the man I was telling you about, J.P. Beaumont."

  Daphne's scowl had disappeared. She looked me up and down in a frankly assessing manner that exuded sex appeal. She tossed her blond mane, then extended a perfectly manicured and much bejeweled hand. "Why, Mr. Beaumont, I'm so pleased to meet you. I understand you're the one who donated that perfectly wonderful Bentley so Guy here could buy it for me."

  The last thing I wanted to talk about right then was the stupid Bentley, but before I had an opportunity to hem and haw very much, Alex showed up at my elbow.

  "Why, Guy, Daphne!" Alex said easily, casually insinuating herself between Daphne Lewis and me. "What a pleasant surprise to see you. I didn't know you'd be down here this weekend."

  Daphne smiled. "We didn't either, did we, Guy? Monica invited us. So nice of her, don't you think? We were just talking about the Bentley Guy picked up at the Rep auction. You know all about that, of course. I certainly hope folks at Belltown Terrace aren't grieving too much over losing it."

  "They're pretty well recovered." I smiled back.

  I could have counted on one hand the number of condo residents who actually missed that damn Bentley. Almost everyone in the building had been stranded somewhere or other due to the machine's infernal "intermittent ignition problem," which none of our so-called handpicked mechanics had been able to fix.

  "So you're able to get along without it?"

  "We're managing," I said. "I understand from your husband that it's running perfectly."

  Daphne Lewis nodded, then frowned. "I didn't know you and Guy actually knew each other. He never mentioned you to me."

  "Come now, Daphne," Alex teased. "All men need a few little secrets now and then. Otherwise they start feeling insecure."

  Someone else showed up, shook Guy's hand, and effectively moved him out of the conversation. I felt as though I owed the women some kind of explanation about how Guy and I knew each other, but I didn't want to bring up the meeting. Anonymous twelve-step programs don't work that way.

  "We ran into one another in the courtyard during the Green Show," I stammered, trying to sound casual. "We both thought it was strange, running into someone we knew this far from home."

  "It's not unusual at all," Alex said. "You'd be surprised at the number of people who come down from Seattle every year."

  Just then Monica Davenport raised her hand again. This time, instead of a long-winded speech, she settled for a mercifully brief announcement, saying it was time to head back across the street.

  The two large theaters in Ashland, the Elizabethan and the Bowmer, share a common courtyard and also a common backstage area. The catered party was being held backstage. While Alex busied herself politicking, I wandered off by myself through a maze of dressing rooms and folded scenery.

  It interested me to see the props laid out on tables. During a performance, when stagehands are working backstage in the dark with cues coming hard and fast, I'm sure every second counts. Each item needed onstage must be in its assigned place in order to be readily available at the exact moment it's needed. To facilitate that, an outline of each prop was painted on table surfaces in orange, low-in-the-dark paint.

  On one table, I recognized several of the props from the evening's performance of Romeo and Juliet. One outline was empty, indicating that something was missing-something roughly the shape of a knife. Glancing around, I suspected it was the old-fashioned kitchen knife Juliet had called her "happy dagger" just before using it to do herself in.

  I noticed the knife was missing from its appointed place, but I didn't worry about it. What the stagehands did with their props was none of my concern. I was an uninvited guest who had been allowed to
crash the party.

  For a time, I cruised the buffet table. Since I knew only a total of three or four people from the entire gathering, there wasn't much else to do but eat and/or drink. Luckily, my earlier urge for MacNaughton's had passed, and I was safe on the other side of it. For that moment, anyway, I no longer wanted a drink, but watching strangers waste themselves at the hosted bar wasn't exactly my idea of a good time. Alexis was too busy mingling to pay any attention to me. Finally, bored and overheated, I stepped outside.

  The outside courtyard was blessedly cool and quiet. I stood there breathing in the still night air and looking up at the dark but starlit canopy of sky overhead. I was so far lost in thought that I almost missed the first warning sounds of squealing brakes and skidding tires. What did penetrate was a heavy sickening thud, followed by the grinding crunch of metal on metal and the tinkling shatter of glass.

  If you've ever heard an automobile smash into flesh, it's a sound that welds itself to your memory no matter how much you want to forget. Years of training drill cops to respond automatically when faced with such an emergency. It's not so much a matter of conscious decision as it is reflex. I ran toward the sound of the accident long before the last of the glass finished falling.

  "Help me!" a woman shouted. "There's been an accident. Somebody please help."

  Racing toward the sound, I came to a Y in the courtyard. Turning right, I charged down a darkened staircase between two buildings to where I saw headlights and milling figures in the street below.

  It was past midnight, an hour when most small towns would have closed up shop, but this was Ashland on opening weekend. Lots of people were still up and about. Already a small crowd had gathered in the street. I had to push my way through to see what had happened.

  A once-perfect '76 Plymouth Duster with its engine still running sat in a still-swirling cloud of dust. The twisted front bumper and mangled hood were buried deep in the shattered plate-glass window of a vacant storefront. As I neared the car, some quick-thinking passerby reached in and switched off the engine.