J. Jance: Failure to appear

"What girl? Tanya Dunseth?" I asked. Speaking, I moved into the circle of light. I wanted Marjorie to know there were two of us-that she wouldn't be able to talk her way around Gordon Fraymore and get off scot-free. She dismissed me with barely a glance.

"As soon as I found Tanya, I knew she was a gold mine."

"As in blackmail?"

Marjorie regarded me over the rim of her glass. "That too," she allowed, "but also as bait. With Guy's theater connections, it was easy to get them down here when I wanted to."

"What about Tanya? Was she in on it?"

Marjorie smiled. "The only thing Tanya did was become an actress. Many of them do, you know."

"Do what?" I asked.

"Become actresses," she answered. "Incest victims become actresses so they can turn themselves into someone else, so they can live some other life. They often go a little crazy, too," she added with a laugh. "Tanya's crazy as a bed bug. You probably picked up on that."

For the first time, I noticed a slight slurring in her words, but I chalked that up to the gin. She was hitting the water-glass-sized tumbler pretty hard. In the course of that few minutes of conversation, she had drained it once and was filling it yet again. Once the alcohol hit home, I knew we'd have a roaring drunk on our hands. Subduring her and dragging her back to Ashland in Fraymore's ill-equipped Montego would be a real chore. I wasn't looking forward to it.

While she poured more gin, I saw a reflection on the table where firelight glinted off the pearl-handled revolver that lay on the table within inches of her glass. Armed and dangerous is bad enough. Armed and drunk is doubly so.

"You do understand what I'm saying, don't you?" she continued with amazing unconcern. I confess I had totally lost track of her train of thought, if any. In a situation like that, the whole idea is to keep the person talking. About anything.

"No, we don't," I said quickly, pulling Gordon Fraymore back into the exchange. "Why don't you try explaining it."

"Well," she said, her tongue much thicker now. She framed her words slowly and with some difficulty. "You seem like a smart man, Mr. Beaumont. I suppose you know what incest is."

"Tanya told us about her father," I said.

"Which one?"

"What do you mean?"

Marjorie giggled. "The real one or the ones she made up?"

"I'm not sure. We haven't quite sorted all that out."

"You don't need to. I already took care of him, too. The real one, I mean. He was for Tanya. Guy was for me. That's fair, don't you think?" She raised her glass in a mock salute.

Fraymore almost collapsed under the weight of her words. Obviously, there was another still-unnamed victim, someone else we didn't know about.

"How many are there, Margie?" he asked hollowly. "How many besides Guy and Daphne Lewis and Martin Shore?"

"That's all." She tossed the answer off with an air of nonchalance, waving her glass crookedly at him before taking another drink. "Three is all. Martin Shore's like the special of the week-two for one. I got 'em all down here and took care of all of 'em at once," she added with a giggle. "Like in that old story about the guy who killed all the flies on his bread. Remember that one? What's it called? ‘Seven at One Blow,' I think. Yeah. That's it."

I was listening closely, trying to follow and make sense of her drunken rambling while at the same time keeping close watch on the gun. I was so preoccupied that I almost missed the crux of what she was saying as she edged closer to the terrible truth.

"Two for one," I repeated. "What does that mean?"

She looked at me and shook her head. "Mean to tell me you two smart boys still haven't figured it out?" She started to laugh in dead earnest then, pointing a taunting finger first at Gordon Fraymore and then at me. "Two big, clever detectives…" she choked helplessly "…two whole detectives and you still…don't know…"

"Don't know what?"

"The man's her father, stupid," she announced shortly, and laughed some more.

It was as though all the air had been sucked out of the already thin atmosphere around me. I hadn't seen Dinky Holloway's video and didn't care to. Gordon Fraymore had. His jaw dropped. "You mean Martin Shore is Tanya's real father?" he asked hoarsely. "Was Daphne her mother then?"

"Stepmother, but close enough. Before I stuck the knife in him, Shore kept asking me how I got hold of that tape, but I didn't tell him," she said before dissolving into yet another fit of drunken laughter. "Don' hafta tell 'em all my secrets."

"But she told us Martin Shore took her away from her real father, that he was the one…"

"I already told you! Aren't you listening? She's C-R-A-Z-Y. As in loco." With effort she had spoken clearly for a moment, now she lapsed back into mumbling, dropping so many consonants it was difficult to understand her. The heavy dose of alcohol must have finally penetrated her brain.

I emerged from my stunned silence. "I thought Tanya was your friend, but you tried to kill her, too."

"I doan have any frien's, do I, Gordy? Not even you. Sunshine maybe. It's a bith…" she attempted, but was not able to say the word. "It's a bi…Can't say it, can I? Mouth won' work."

Once more her throaty laughter floated through the forest. The sound sent chills up and down my spine. I had warned Fraymore that I thought Marjorie was crazy. Here she was trying to tell us Tanya was, while her haunting, husky laughter provided inarguable proof that she was, too.

Gordon Fraymore dropped heavily onto the bench across from Marjorie, sagging forward across the table. "I don't believe it. Martin Shore was her real father?" He repeated the words as though he still couldn't accept them as true.

"Tha's righ'," Marjorie mumbled drunkenly, "…the real one. Izza a…bi…bi…bitch, isn't it?" She laughed triumphantly when she finally managed to say the words properly.

With visible effort, Fraymore sat up and straightened his shoulders. "What all's in the glass, Margie?" he asked. "Is it really only gin?"

Marjorie's deranged laughter ceased abruptly. "Why'dya wanna know?" she demanded, pulling the glass toward her, guarding it from his hand. "I jus' wanna take a li'l nap. Time for a li'l siesta."

She moved abruptly to one side. For a single, heart-stopping moment I thought she was going for her gun. Instead, she flopped clumsily down on the picnic-table bench and closed her eyes. "Jus' lemme get a li'l sleep. Tha's all."

For several long seconds, neither Fraymore nor I moved. When Marjorie cut loose with a deep, lung-rattling snore, he reached across the table and swept up the gun. "Check her pockets," he ordered.

I hurried to comply. Inside her leather jacket, I found the sleeping pills, or rather, I found the brown plastic child-proof tube. It was open and empty. Without a word, I handed the container over to Fraymore, who held it up to the firelight. With a confirming nod, he wrapped it in a handkerchief and stuffed it in his pocket.

"Seconal," he said.

I put both hands under Marjorie's shoulders, preparing to lift her and take her back to the car. With the potentially lethal combination of booze and pills she'd ingested, we didn't have much time. Even if we took off right then and drove like hell, there was little chance we'd make it to the hospital before she went into either cardiac or respiratory arrest.

"You get her feet," I urged. "Hurry!"

"Sit down, Detective Beaumont," Fraymore said. "Sit down and let her be."

I couldn't believe my ears. "You mean we're not even going to try?"

"This is what she wanted," he returned gravely. "Her choice. I say we wait."

"How long?"

"Long enough."

He propped both elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. What he was suggesting wasn't exactly aiding and abetting, but it wasn't preventing, either. Only Gordon Fraymore and I would ever know whether or not we had arrived at the campsite before it was all over.