J. Jance - Failure to appear

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.

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.