J. Jance - Failure to appear

"It's Kelly," he managed. "She fell."

I ran then. When we met, I thrust Amber at him like a quarterback handing off a football. "Where?" I demanded.

"Around the side of the house. There's a door with steps leading down to the basement. I think it's real bad," he added. "Go quick."

After that I ran, as fast as I ever remember running in my life. I had to push my way through a milling knot of people clustered around the basement door. A slash of dust-filled sunlight glinted down into semidarkness, lighting a set of heavy plank stairs. At the bottom, another clutch of people crouched on their knees in a tight circle.

"Is she all right?" I heard myself asking as I scrambled down the stairs. "Is she okay? Somebody tell me what happened."

Kelly lay in a rag-doll heap at the bottom of the stairs, her feet still on the next-to-last step. The force of her fall had knocked the pins loose from the French twist, letting her blond hair spill around her head like pooling water on the hard, packed-dirt floor. Dave Livingston knelt beside her while a stricken Jeremy stood over them, staring off into the middle distance with his hands dangling uselessly at his sides.

"What happened, for God's sake?" I repeated when nobody answered me. "Did she faint or what?"

"At least she's breathing," Dave said. "Pulse is rapid but weak. Where's that blanket? Dammit, I told somebody to get me a blanket."

"Here!" I looked up in time to see a white-faced Karen thrust a blanket in my direction. I handed it down to Dave, and the two of us struggled clumsily in our hurry to cover Kelly's appallingly still body.

"Did someone call nine-one-one?" I asked.

"Alex said she would," Dave answered grimly. "I hope to God they hurry."

Behind me on the stairs I heard the unmistakable sound of someone starting to retch. Jesus Christ! Was somebody going to throw up? Why the hell didn't he just go back outside and stay out of the way?

I looked up then, hoping to dodge out of the path of flying puke, and that's when I saw the spectral figure that held Jeremy Todd Cartwright's eyes captive.

In the far corner of the room, a human form dangled heavily at the end of a rope. I was still squinting through the semidarkness and trying to make out exactly who and what it was when someone switched on the light.

There, caught in the frail yellow glow of a single bulb, was Daphne Lewis, still wearing the Icelandic sweater she had worn in the Members' Lounge. The farmhouse was old-fashioned post-and-beam construction. In the course of refurbishing the place, new lumber had been sistered onto old to provide bracing for some of the sagging originals holding up the floor joists. The rope, complete with a professional-looking hangman's noose, had been strung through the intersection of two of those braces.

As soon as I saw the deadly hangman's noose, I knew it was something I had seen before-on-stage at the Black Swan Theater. It was one of the props from The Majestic Kid.

There was no point in running over to Daphne. Obviously dead, she was far beyond help. Kelly was the one who needed all our attention.

I clung to the stubborn hope that she wouldn't die. And that the baby wouldn't either.

Tires crunched in the gravel beside me, jarring me out of my torpor and back into the present, back to an awareness of the world around me. I had no idea how long I'd been walking, nor did I care. Since I'd left Ashland Community Hospital, time had ceased to exist.

"Get in, Mr. Beaumont. I'll take you back to the hospital." Gordon Fraymore reached across the front seat of his Chevrolet Lumina and opened the door.

"I'd rather walk."

"Don't be stubborn. Do you want to see your granddaughter or not?"

Granddaughter. Granddaughter? It took a moment to assimilate the word. "Kelly's baby? A girl. She's all right then?"

"The baby's fine."

Without another word, I climbed in the car. "And Kelly?" I asked, buckling my seat belt. "My daughter. How's she?"

Fraymore shrugged and shook his head while he wrenched the car into a sharp U-turn and accelerated in the opposite direction.

"Couldn't say. All I know is, they said the baby's fine and asked me to find you and bring you back."

"Thanks," I said.

"Nothing to it. After you see the baby, we have to talk."

"Sure, sure. No problem."

Eager to be back at the hospital, I was surprised to see how far I'd walked and how long it took to drive there. I had covered a distance of several miles without even noticing. Given the kind of mindless daze I was in, it's a wonder a car hadn't hit me.

We drove for some time in silence. Finally, Fraymore cleared his throat. "The way I figure it, your daughter must have fainted when she saw the body there in the basement."

"Must have," I agreed.

"You knew her, didn't you?"

"Knew who?"

"The dead woman."

"Daphne Lewis? Yes. Vaguely."

"You're a regular walking, talking crime wave all by your little lonesome, aren't you, Detective Beaumont? Seems like everyone you know who's here in Ashland is either getting hurt or murdered or both."

Most police officers would have taken the situation with Kelly into consideration and cut me a little slack. Not Gordon Fraymore. His capacity for civility seemed remarkably limited, even for a cop. A few grunted sentences had totally depleted his supply of congeniality.

With my impaired mental faculties, we pulled into the hospital parking lot before I could phrase an appropriately malicious response. Indignant, I hopped from the car and marched off toward the building. When my feet touched the ground, I bit back a yelp of torment. I had been in the car for only a few minutes. As soon as I put weight on my feet, a spike of pain from my bone spurs shot up both legs from heel to hip. So much for signing up for one of those Volkswalks.

Limping toward the door as best I could, I was met by a somber Alexis Downey, who hurried outside to greet me. "How's Kelly?" I asked.

Alex shook her head. "Still touch and go. The doctors are doing a craniotomy to relieve the pressure."

Her words struck terror in my soul. With Kelly suffering a concussion, a fractured skull, and possible swelling on the brain, the options for prognosis included everything from total recovery to permanent brain damage. Informed by a lifetime of having seen too much, I prepared myself for the worst.

"They're afraid Kelly's going to die, aren't they?" I said. "That's why they went ahead and took the baby."

"No, that's not it at all," Alex replied. "She went into premature labor. With her unconscious, a C-section was the only thing they could do."

"How's Jeremy holding up?"

"Not very well. He's been down by the nursery staring in the window ever since they brought the baby up from the operating room. I feel sorry for him. He doesn't have anyone."

"Is that a hint?" Alex said nothing, but I got the message.

Inside the waiting room, I was faced with two distinct types of emotional quicksand. I could venture into the emotion-charged mire with Karen, Dave, and Scott, who were seated on a couch and love seat and huddled in hushed conversation, or I could go talk to Jeremy. He was visible in the hallway outside the nursery window, leaning forlornly against the glass. I chose Jeremy.

He barely glanced up when I stopped behind him. "How's it going?" I asked.

He shook his head and didn't answer. Then, after a deep breath, he said, "Karen's fine."

"Well, of course she is," I returned impatiently. What kind of goofball comment was that? I wondered.

"Why wouldn't she be? She's right out there in the lobby. I saw her just a minute ago."

I looked over his shoulder and peered into the nursery window. Inside, only one baby-a tiny, red-faced, pink-swathed gnome-lay on her back in a movable incubator. Her face was