by J. A. Jance
"If you want, I can take you wherever you're going."
He nodded gratefully. "I'd sure appreciate it. This place makes my skin crawl."
We canceled the cab dispatch. I brought the Porsche around, and a very brusque, businesslike nurse supervised Guy Lewis' transfer from wheelchair to automobile. The man breathed a sigh of relief when the door closed, effectively shutting the nurse out and us in.
"You saved my life," he breathed. "If I'd been stuck in that lobby for another ten minutes, I would have gotten up and gone looking for the nearest bar."
"We both know that's a bad idea," I told him.
"Yes," he said. "I guess we do."
On the way to the hospital, I had considered dozens of possible ways to begin asking the necessary questions, but that was before I saw how frail Guy seemed. How could a man who looked as though he would be bowled over by a strong breeze hold up under one barrage of questions after another-not only from me, but also from Gordon Fraymore? Studying him, I wondered if the incident of arrhythmia was more life-threatening than I'd been led to believe.
"What brings you to Medford?" he asked, eyeing me suspiciously. "Twelfth-stepping?"
I shrugged, uncomfortable with his use of A.A. jargon. I hadn't come calling on Guy Lewis in a single-minded effort to save him from Demon Rum.
"After a fashion, I suppose. I have a plane to catch later on, around five. That left me with an hour or two to kill."
"How did you know I was here?"
"One of my friends in Seattle. The story about Daphne was in the papers up there this morning. I don't know how he found out about you."
When Guy heard my answer, he made a strange, strangled sound-a choking, hiccuping noise. I looked at him anxiously, thinking maybe the heart problem had returned. Instead, he slouched against the far car door, sobbing.
At last he pulled himself together. "She's dead," he said brokenly. "I don't know how I'll get through all this-making the arrangements, planning a funeral. Some things you never expect to do. Look at me. I'm twenty-three years older than she was, and overweight besides. I don't exercise, and I've had a heart condition for years. I'm the one who should be dead."
With that he broke down again. To hear Guy's anguished sobs and see his quaking body was to experience misery made manifest. Daphne Lewis might have had much to answer for in this life, but her passing had left behind a man stricken by the rampant paralysis of grief. It was impossible not to be touched by his overwhelming suffering-touched and awed.
I believe younger people-those in their twenties and thirties-assume passion will more or less disappear over time. They expect that, with age, raw emotion gradually slips out of our lives, gliding silently from view the way a molting snake abandons the shell of last year's useless skin. Here was Guy Lewis-a heavyset, balding man in an improbably gaudy orange Hawaiian shirt-weeping uncontrollably. At his age-the far end of fifty-one might expect anguished passion to surface as only a rare comic anomaly.
But there was no pretense in the sorrow that etched Guy's face, no playacting in the way he huddled miserably in my car, no phoniness to his hurt. For all Daphne's faults, Guy Lewis had loved his second wife-loved her wildly, with-holding nothing. And that's when I realized something about his arrhythmia episode-something an empathetic doctor might possibly have already recognized. What had been observed medically on high tech EKG monitors was nothing more or less than the outward symptom of a newly broken heart.
When we arrived at the Red Lion, Guy was still in no condition to talk, so I left him in the 928 under a shaded portico and used my own AmEx card to check him in. I explained to the big-eyed young desk clerkette that Mr. Lewis had lost his wife and that the remainder of the check-in procedures would have to be handled when he was better able to deal with them.
As soon as we made it into the room, Guy disappeared into the bathroom for a much-needed shower, while I called room service to order coffee and sandwiches. I know enough about the internal workings of hospitals to realize that they routinely plug you full of decaf and call it the real thing. It's no wonder people come out of hospitals feeling worse than when they went in. They're all suffering from severe caffeine withdrawal.
When Guy Lewis emerged from the shower, he may have felt better, but his looks hadn't improved. The room-service food was already waiting on the table. He sat down in front of one of the two cracked-pepper meat-loaf sandwiches. He looked at it distractedly, making no move to pick it up. I poured a cup of coffee and bodily placed it in his hand.
"Drink some of this," I said. "It'll do you good."
Mechanically, like a child doing as it's been told, he took a sip and swallowed it. The steaming brown liquid could have scalded his tongue with second-degree burns, and he wouldn't have noticed. He slammed the cup back into the saucer with such force I was surprised it didn't shatter into a million pieces. Coffee slopped in all directions.
"That's part of what's killing me," he said hoarsely. "It's going to come out now, isn't it?"
"What's going to come out?" I asked.
"All the rumors."
If ever there was a time for feigned innocence, this was it. "What rumors?" I asked.
"There are all kinds of stories about Daphne's past. Some of them are true. But no matter what they say, she wasn't a gold digger who was only after me for my money. She liked the money fine. Who wouldn't? And she may have had her little flings now and again, but Daphne loved me, dammit! I know she did."
"I'm sure she did," I agreed.
"I don't want to talk about it," he continued as though I hadn't spoken. "I hate the very idea but I have to. I need to talk to someone. Whatever I tell you is in confidence, isn't it, the same as if I said it in a meeting?"
That was putting it to me. "Yes," I said.
"Years ago, when Daphne was a struggling young woman, she got her start making movies. I guess you could call them naughty movies."
Calling child pornography "naughty" is like calling television "intellectual." The two words don't belong in the same sentence. I would term the coupling of a middle-aged man and a prepubescent girl vile or repulsive, to say nothing of illegal. I wouldn't say it was naughty. I wondered if Guy Lewis had ever seen any of the movies in question. And I questioned whether or not he knew about Daphne's role in the forced servitude of Tanya Dunseth and the production of Dinky Holloway's videotape. If he didn't yet know any of those awful details, he would shortly.
"It must have been at least fifteen years ago now," he continued. "Daphne and I have been together for ten. This was long before that."
I added up the numbers in my head. They didn't exactly tally with what Tanya had told us, but I let it pass.
"Now, according to Detective Fraymore, it's all going to come out in the open. He as good as told me there's nothing I can do to stop it. That young woman in jail-the one who played Juliet, as a matter of fact-was in some of those same kinds of movies. According to Fraymore, there was a connection of some sort between Daphne and this Tanya person. Fraymore says Tanya just all of a sudden freaked out and started killing people."
"What about the man who was killed? Was he involved in the movies, too?"
Guy Lewis' eyes darkened. "I don't want to talk about him. You're a police officer, Mr. Beaumont, so I'm sure you'll understand this if I tell you. I believe that man was somehow black-mailing Daphne. Maybe he and that Tanya did it together. I don't know. I just know that when I saw them together…"
His voice trailed off. By sheer force of will, he bit back another sob.
"When you saw who together?"
"Daphne and Martin Shore, talking together, when we first went to the party at the Bowmer. I just flat lost it. They were off in the dark theater, sitting with their heads so close they must have been necking. They didn't think I saw them. I knew about Shore, of course. Daphne had told me all about him long ago. They started out as partners and were even married for a short time. But that was all in the past. At least, I thought it was. Then, when I saw t
hem together like that, acting so cozy, I don't know what got into me. I went crazy. That's when I hit the sauce.
"You saw the bar at the party. There was plenty of booze to choose from, and I chose it all. When we left the party to walk back to the Mark Anthony, I was already drunk and plenty pissed. Daphne and I ended up in a terrible fight. For a while, we walked on opposite sides of the alley, screaming insults, but I don't think anyone noticed because of all the sirens and fire trucks down on the street."
"That must have been when the accident happened, and when Martin Shore got killed."
"That's right," Guy agreed. "I suppose it was, but I didn't know that at the time. By then I was too drunk to know anything, and I probably wasn't much fun to be around, either. There was a message waiting for Daphne at the hotel. When she told me she was going for a walk, I accused her of all kinds of terrible things. I told her she was probably going to meet with Martin Shore up in the park, that they'd go off in the bushes and fuck like a pair of dogs."
He blushed then, recalling those awful words. For a moment, with the ruddy color back in his cheeks, he looked more like himself-the way he'd been on Saturday night when the two of us crossed the street together before the plays. The color faded, almost as fast as it had appeared, leaving him washed-out and sallow.
"I'm sorry I said those things now," Guy said softly. "It hurts like hell that the very last thing I ever said to her was so hateful and mean. I'd take it back if I could, but right then, more than anything, I wanted to hurt her. I said if she walked out of the lobby not to bother coming back, that I'd leave Ashland and go home without her. She probably thought I was bluffing-that I was too drunk to try it-and she was right. I was too drunk, but I did it anyway. That's how I ended up here."
He paused, tracing shapeless forms in the splotches of spilled coffee on the tabletop, connecting the dots with streaks of brown.
"I really did leave her," he went on distractedly. "In my mind, I was leaving for good, but I had no idea I was abandoning her to a murderer. Jesus! What a creep I am! What an incredibly worthless, no-good creep! Where was I when she needed me? I'll tell you where I was-being arrested and carried into a hospital because I was too goddamned drunk to walk!"
Guy Lewis' deep voice quavered, shaken by the intensity of his own self-loathing. "If she's not alive," he added softly, "I don't much care if I am, either."
Veiled threats of suicide are fairly common in those kinds of circumstances. When someone says they don't want to go on living after some unforseen tragedy, it's always easy to stand outside the circle of their pain and give worthy advice. "You don't mean that," and "You'll get over it," and, worse, "Life goes on," are only a few of a thousand empty-minded statements that devalue the shattered treasures of someone else's heart.
Daphne Lewis might have been a consummate scam artist and an unfaithful wife to boot. The things she did might have been reprehensible and criminal both, but she had been the single light in Guy Lewis' life. Without her, he was virtually incapable of continued existence. The rest of the world might have mocked him and called Daphne his "trophy wife," but to Guy Lewis, she had been a rare jewel, a prize worthy of the game at whatever price it cost him.
"How did you meet her?" I asked.
"At the Rep," he said, "at one of the first fund-raisers after we opened the Bagley Wright Theater back in the early eighties. Daphne and Monica, the girl who used to have Alex's job, knew one another from somewhere, although I can't recall now just where. Monica was the one who introduced us.
"It was love at first sight, for me anyway. Unfortunately, I was still married to Maggie at the time. That was a big problem. But someone who deals in chemical toilets gets used to dealing with shit, one way or another. It's godawful. It's messy, but somebody has to do it. My father made a fortune at it, and so have I. I figured if I had to spend some of what I call my hard-earned turd money just to get rid of Maggie, I would. And I did, too. She fought me every step of the way, and her lawyer drove a hell of a hard bargain, but I figured Daphne was worth it-and she was."
As he warmed to the telling, some of the color and animation returned to Guy Lewis' pathetic cheeks. Just talking about Daphne seemed to make him feel better. I felt sorry as hell for him. He wouldn't be able to talk about her like this forever, because I suspected I knew some dark things about Daphne Lewis that were going to poison the well of his treasured memories.
"You said you thought your wife was being blackmailed?"
Guy nodded. "I never balanced a checkbook in my life," he said. "That's why God gave us accountants. But I'm one of those guys, if you ask me what's in my wallet, I can tell you within five bucks. Same way with my bank accounts. I'm not tight. I've met men who are. They make a lot of money and then can't stand to spend it. Or can't stand for their wives to spend it. Not me. I say, ‘If we've got it, use it.'
"Daphne had a real hard life until she met me, God bless her. I wanted to give her everything she ever wanted. I wanted her to have fun. She got a real kick out of having plenty of money. Used to be, if a big chunk disappeared out of the household accounts, something would come back in-a piece of bronze sculpture she liked or a painting maybe. She liked those damned abstracts best. Once she bought a whole damn garden and had them move it into our yard a brick at a time.
"In the last year or so, three big lumps of money evaporated completely. I didn't ask her about it, because I figured maybe she was getting me something for my birthday. I was afraid to ask, afraid I'd wreck the surprise. But now I don't think that anymore. Do you?"
His direct question caught me off base. "How much money?"
"Right at a hundred-fifty thou, give or take."
I shook my head. "No, Mr. Lewis," I said. "There may have been a surprise, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a birthday present."
He nodded sadly. "That's what I thought," he said.
Picking up the coffee cup, he swilled down the remainder of its contents and then took an almost unconscious bite of his sandwich. "Tell me about Tanya Dunseth," he said, chewing thoughtfully. "Know anything about her?"
"Not much."
"Fraymore says she was in some of the movies Daphne and Martin Shore made." Guy paused and took another bite. "That's how people are going to remember Daphne now, isn't it?"
"What do you mean?"
"That she was involved in those movies once."
"Some people may," I hedged.
"I know better," he returned. "Don't try to placate me by telling me any different. Daphne did a lot of good for charities in Seattle. No matter what anybody thinks, she was a hard worker. What I do isn't very pretty, but the nonprofits like having my money on their balance sheets. Daphne was glamorous as hell. Having her with me made me almost…well, legitimate. And I did the same for her. We could go places together that wouldn't have let either one of us in by ourselves. But now that Daphne's dead and gone and can't defend herself, those same society dames who used to suck up to her will throw her to the wolves. They'll probably still want my money, though," he added bitterly.
"Why is the world like that, Mr. Beaumont? Why do people love to find someone like Daphne-someone beautiful or a little different, someone they can smear or tear to pieces?"
"Guy," I said, "if I knew the answer to that, you can bet I wouldn't be working as a homicide detective."
"No," he agreed, "I don't suppose you would."
Listening to Guy's version of the story, I wondered where the truth lay. Had Daphne been carrying on with Martin Shore the whole time or was she being blackmailed by him? If not him, who else was a likely candidate? How much did Guy Lewis know about Daphne's real past? How many other kids besides Tanya had been victimized by taking a starring role in one of Martin Shore's movies?
Given what I had learned from other sources, I tended to agree with people who would say the fates meted out to both Martin Shore and Daphne Lewis were nothing if not just desserts, but sitting closeted in a darkened hotel room with a grieving Guy Lewis, I saw no
reason to tell him that. He didn't deserve it. And somewhere in the world there might be a Mrs. Martin Shore who didn't deserve it, either.
The phone rang, startling us both. I think Guy expected me to answer it. Instead, I picked it up off the nightstand and brought it to him. From hearing only one side of the conversation, I surmised that the fully repaired Miata had just been dropped off. The desk clerk wanted to know if Mr. Lewis wanted her to bring the keys up to his room or should she keep them down at the desk. He told her to keep them and that he'd be down to pick them up later, when his four o'clock appointment arrived.
"What appointment?" I asked, when he got off the phone.
"That detective, the one from Ashland. What's his name?"
"Fraymore," I supplied. "He's coming here?"
"Didn't I tell you? He still has some questions to ask."
The last person I wanted to run into right then was Gordon Fraymore. If he found me in Guy Lewis' room, he'd be ripped, and rightfully so. Worried, I glanced at my watch. Three forty-five didn't leave much time. I stood up. "I'd better be going," I said.
"Fraymore asked about you, by the way," Guy Lewis added.
"About me? How so?"
"He wanted to know how the two of us met. I told him about the Bentley. He seemed to get a real kick out of it."
"I'll bet."
"He also asked how we happened to hook up in Ashland. I didn't want to talk about the meeting, so I told him we met during the Green Show."
By chance both Guy and I had told the same story. Two wrongs don't make a right, and two lies don't make the truth, either-especially not in a murder investigation when the detective already knows better. In homicide-cop mentality, Fraymore was busily adding up provable lies and stirring them into a bubbling vat of conspiracy.
"What did he say to that?"
"Nothing much."
I was almost out the door, but mention of our meeting brought up another question in my mind. "How was it that you and Daphne happened to be down here in the first place? Was it something you had planned for a long time?"
