J. Jance: Failure to appear

Fortunately, Alex is a very patient woman. For most of the way, she left me alone, but finally even she could no longer tolerate the thick, oppressive silence.

"Have you decided what to do?" she asked.

"Murder's out," I replied glumly, "for professional reasons if nothing else."

She laughed. "No. Seriously, Beau, what options do you have?"

"How about offering him a bribe, sort of a reverse dowry? Maybe Jeremy Todd whatever-his-name-is has heard through the grapevine that I'm supposed to be loaded. It wouldn't surprise me if he's only in it for the money. Kelly has lousy taste in men."

"Getting married isn't exactly the end of the world," Alex argued. "Some of the people I went to school with got married right after high school and are still married to each other. Some of them even seem to be happy."

"He's an actor," I said.

"So? Actors are people, too. Besides, what makes you think he's so awful? You haven't met him yet. If he's working for the Festival, he must have something on the ball."

"Being a part-time actor isn't much of a recommendation for a bridegroom," I retorted. "Not much at all."

In downtown Ashland, Alexis hopped out at a stoplight on the main drag, promising to call me on the cellular phone as soon as she knew for sure where we were staying. Despite all the No Vacancy signs we'd seen along the way, she seemed certain that we wouldn't be forced to sleep on the street. In the meantime, I went off on a solitary hunt for Live Oak Lane. Ashland isn't very big, and I figured if I drove around some, I was bound to stumble across it. Finding it might have been easier if I'd broken down and picked up a map.

The tourist guidebooks all say that Ashland is a lovely, picturesque place. Quaint, I believe, is the operative word. The shady tree-lined streets showcase prosperous-looking, newly rehabilitated but authentically Victorian houses of the gingerbread variety. Most of the bigger ones seem to have been converted into bed-and-breakfast establishments.

To an outsider, although there were lots of cars parked on the downtown streets, the whole place seemed almost deserted. Then, suddenly, at five o'clock and for no apparent reason, I found myself stuck in the middle of a traffic jam while the sidewalks bustled with hurrying pedestrians. That's when I finally gave up, played against gender stereotyping, and stopped at a gas station to ask directions.

"Oh," the attendant said. "You mean the coop. It's not in town at all. It's out in the county on the old Live Oak Farm. A bunch of actors live out there. Cheap rent and all."

It sounded like a damn commune to me. Straight out of the sixties. All the more reason to want Kelly out of there and back home in California where she belonged. Surely, she'd listen to reason, wouldn't she?

Don't bet on it, buster, I told myself sternly. Why would she? After all, she never had before.

Following the attendant's detailed directions, I drove out through the end of town, under a freeway, and past a golf course. In the process, as distracted as I was, I couldn't help noticing that this quiet corner of southern Oregon is beautiful country.

The town of Ashland is nestled in a broad valley only a few miles north of the California border. June in Seattle usually carries on gray, rainy, and cold. Here, the atmosphere had a California feel to it-dry and airy. The sky was a clear, untroubled blue.

With the onset of early summer heat, lush grassland had turned gold in sharp contrast to the fringe of the steep oak-and pine-covered hilltops that formed the valley's border. In one fenced field, a single cow stretched her neck to crop scarce but reachable leaves from a few low-hanging branches. That explained why the trees had such a uniform, trimmed appearance. They all looked as if they were subject to constant, loving pruning, and they were-with hungry live-stock doing the trimming rather than people.

I turned off the blacktop of a well-maintained county road onto what the sign said was Live Oak Lane. The word "Lane" vastly overstated the case. Live Oak Rut would have been closer to the truth. Some of the potholes were deep enough that I worried about the well-being of my low-slung Porsche. Luckily, I didn't have far to go. The kid at the gas station had assured me that once I made it to Live Oak, I wouldn't miss the house, since the road dead-ended just past Live Oak Farm.

At first glance, when I saw the house winking at me through a grove of trees, I was surprised. Expecting a disreputable, run-down shack, I glimpsed instead an enormous two-story farmhouse. The place probably dated from back in the days of large families when hard-pressed farmers had homegrown all the kids they could manage. Then as now, kids had meant mouths to feed, but back then they had been a steady source of unpaid labor as well. They provided the extra hands to gather in the crops and get all the chores done. Back then kids had meant survival, not hassle.

As I bounced toward it, I wondered how many kids growing up in that old house had longed to run away from it, to escape dull country life for the excitement of the city. Any city. Now that very same house was a haven-a place to run to-for my city-bred daughter. More of Mrs. Reeder's miserable irony.

Eventually, the road turned and crossed a cattle guard. On a leaning fence post dangled a bullet-marred sign saying LIVE OAK FARM. Behind the sign stood a junkyard full of wrecked cars. Another rutted track, this one far narrower and rougher than the first, wound off through the cars toward the house.

The Porsche thumped noisily over a bumpy set of metal rails embedded in the roadway. As I picked my way between potholes, I tried to glance up now and then to get my bearings. Derelict cars-rusted-out wrecks in various stages of decay-stood parked in haphazard rows that meandered off in either direction. Doors sagged open on broken hinges, and ambitious, sun-loving weeds grew up through the shattered windshields and cracked floorboards.

The newest model I recognized was a once-dashing '67 Chrysler New Yorker. The flattened roof and caved-in sides testified that the car had rolled over more than once on its way to this isolated auto graveyard. It was easy to assume that sometime in the seventies whoever had been running the wrecking yard had exhausted his supply of money or enthusiasm or both.

The track turned sharply as I passed the Chrysler. Coming around the corner, I could see that the New Yorker's broad bench seat had been pried loose from the car and positioned on the far side of the vehicle, possibly as someone's idea of low-cost yard furniture.

A young woman, clad in an almost nonexistent bikini, lay on this open-air tanning bench, soaking up some rays and seemingly oblivious to the sun-rotted foam leaking out of the seat beneath her. It crossed my mind that the sun was probably doing the same kind of damage to her skin that it had already done to the car seat, but I didn't bother stopping to point that out. At that stage of life, kids are immortal-in their eyes, anyway.

Beyond the cars and closer to the house, I drove past the grim remains of a recently blown-down barn. Only three feet or so of roof line were still visible above the pile of weather-beaten, termite-ridden wood. The shattered barn made me dread what I'd find once the house came under closer scrutiny, but my worries proved groundless.

When I was close enough to see it in detail, I noticed that indeed the exterior of the house was as mottled and spotty as a Dalmatian dog, but not from rotting wood or peeling paint that had been left to its own devices. Instead, someone was systematically scraping the old paint off, from the topmost gable of the slate-gray roof to the old-fashioned columns on the broad front porch. A line of newly repainted but not-yet-reinstalled shutters marched in close formation across the front exterior wall.