greeted that with a sickly smile.
'What about Child Protective Services?' I asked. 'When do you think they'll get into the act?'
'I've held them off for the time being,' he said, 'but I don't know for how long.'
All in all, it wasn't an uplifting conversation. Later that night when I tried to go to sleep, Ralph's comments kept replaying themselves in my head, giving me something constructive to worry about. The two of us together hadn't been able to save Anne Corley, and I doubted we'd be able to rescue Tanya, either.
The other obstacle to sleeping was Amber. Florence of Oak Hill is a miracle worker in her own right, but only up to a point. She hadn't been able to conjure a crib out of thin air on such short notice. There was a second bed in the Iris Room-a twin-but it had no sides. There's a good reason cribs and playpens are made the way they are. It's hard to keep a rambunctious two-year-old confined to a bed with no rails.
So Amber Dunseth slept in Alex's and my queen-sized bed. With us. Between us, actually.
'I'm sorry,' Alex said as we lay in bed with a restless and still wide-awake child wiggling between us. 'I shouldn't have interfered, especially not when you already had so much going on.'
Amen, I thought. I said, 'It has been one hell of a day.'
'Do you think Ralph will be able to help Tanya?'
'I doubt it.'
'Oh,' she said.
Any more than I had with Jeremy, I wasn't free to tell Alex the details of the harrowing story Ralph and I had heard from Tanya. I had no right to. If she chose to reveal that part of her history to others, that was her choice. It wasn't up to me to make that decision for Tanya Dunseth, not even with Alexis Downey.
'Couldn't Ralph do one of those plea-bargain things?' Alex asked much later. 'They're in the news all the time. Maybe Tanya suffers from some form of post-traumatic stress syndrome, and it caused her to go temporarily insane.'
On the face of it, temporary insanity really wasn't totally out of the question for a change-if she had done it, that is. But I kept going back to Tanya's insistence that Martin Shore hadn't hurt her, that he and Daphne had, in their own dreadful way, made her life better. They had rescued her from a hellhole of unremitting abuse.
I could understand how the shock of seeing Daphne Lewis might trigger the return of Tanya's loathsome memories and allow her to see into a murky past she had obscured in an effort to survive. Yes, it must have been terrible to recall all those years of pain and degradation. But if Tanya really was the kind of person who avoided killing spiders, why would she set out to murder the very people who once helped her? What was the point?
If she was going to go against her own beliefs and kill someone, why mess around with Daphne Lewis and Martin Shore when she could instead go after someone who really deserved it-like her father, for instance?
With those conflicting thoughts circling in my head, sleep became more and more elusive. When I dozed at all, it was on tiptoes for fear of crushing Amber. Several times I woke up in a panic and lay there listening for the sound of her breathing, afraid that something had happened to her while I slept. Once or twice a baby knee or elbow dug deep into my gut and shocked me awake. How do pregnant mothers ever get any sleep?
So much for yet another romantic night in Ashland, Oregon, I told myself grouchily around 4:00 A.M. Next time, we could just as well bring Hector along. That cat is trouble, but at least he's trouble of a predictable nature. When everything else seems strange and out of control, it's nice to have something you can count on, something whose behavior you can predict with reasonable accuracy.
In a universe awash in uncertainty, there's reassurance in knowing that some things in life are unchanging, that they respond in an entirely preordained fashion, even if it's only to bite a chunk out of your naked toes.
The one good thing about lying awake most of the night was that it gave me lots of uninterrupted thinking time. Since Tanya Dunseth was already in jail, it would seem I should have focused on her, but for some reason my thoughts turned again and again to Guy Lewis. Why had he suddenly checked out of the Mark Anthony? Was it before or after Daphne Lewis died in the basement at Live Oak Farm?
Between five and seven, I finally slept. At seven, Amber landed squarely on my chest and giggled uncontrollably at my startled 'Oomph!' Alex and I were both still groggy, but Amber was wide awake and ready to play. She missed her mother, but she was willing to accept these two slow-moving folks as tolerable substitutes.
The child struck me as a happy-go-lucky, well-adjusted little kid who had no fear of strangers. What that said to me was that Tanya-despite her straitened circumstances and her own ill-used childhood-had somehow provided her child with a world peopled by a collection of trustworthy adult care-givers. Alexis Downey and me included.
It was a considerable challenge corralling Amber and bathing her before we were all due to go downstairs for breakfast. When Alex, kneeling wet-handed beside the bathtub, passed me an armload of squirming, towel-wrapped toddler, I forgot how short the bathroom ceiling was and rapped the top of my head a good one in the process of taking her. I whacked myself hard enough that I saw stars, but I didn't drop the baby.
Minutes later I carried a fully dressed child downstairs while Alex grabbed a quick bath for herself. In order to avoid complicating breakfast preparations, I took Amber out on the porch to play. We were there when Live Oak Farm's decrepit Econoline van turned into the yard and stopped. Jeremy Cartwright climbed out.
After returning Amber's gleeful greeting, he went around to the back of the van and emerged carrying a high chair, which he set on the porch beside me.
'It's Amber's,' he said. 'It'll make mealtimes easier.'
Bless Jeremy's thoughtfulness and consistent good sense. For someone who wore Birkenstocks, he wasn't bad.
'Thanks,' I said. He turned down an invitation to breakfast, saying that Kelly was awake and he was headed to the hospital to see her.
'You actually talked to her? How'd she sound?'
'Much better,' he said. 'But I want to see for myself.'
I was trying to decipher the workings of the unfamiliar high chair when Florence appeared at the front door saying I was wanted on the phone. 'Who is it?' I asked. 'Kelly?'
'It's a man,' she answered. 'I think he said his name is Peters.'
Ron Peters was my partner in Homicide before an on-duty accident robbed him of most of the use of his legs. A less stubborn man might have taken his disability pension and run, but Ron had fought his way back onto the force and into full-time active duty, first with a long, boring stint in the Media-Affairs Division and now, much more happily, as a special assistant to Captain Anthony Freeman, head of I.I.D., Seattle P.D.'s Internal Investigations Division.
'Hey, Ron,' I said. 'How's it going?' I had taken the call with Amber balanced gingerly on one hip the way I had seen Tanya hold her. Except my hips aren't shaped quite the same way. As soon as I tried to talk, Amber slid down my leg.
'Why don't you tell me what's going on?' Peters demanded.
Where to start? I wondered. With Kelly and Jeremy and their almost-but-not-quite wedding? With the brand- new granddaughter I had barely seen? With Tanya Dunseth and a double homicide? With Kelly's serious fall that had landed her in a hospital?
'Not too much,' I said. 'Just enjoying a little R and R.'
'That's not what I heard,' Peters replied pointedly.
Right about then Florence's Natasha made an appearance. Amber greeted the animal with a delighted squeal. 'Dog! Dog! Dog!'
The ungodly racket in my ear meant she was also screeching directly into the telephone's mouthpiece. 'What's that?' Ron demanded. 'Where are you-a day-care center? Sounds like you're locked in a room with a whole tribe of ankle-biters.'
'There's only one child here at the moment,' I answered, hoisting Amber again. 'Hang on.' Alex appeared just then and took charge of the wiggling Amber, carting her off to breakfast.
'That's better,' I said with a relieved sigh. 'Now that I can actually hear you, what were you saying?'
'I said it sounds as though you've been busy.'
'Not really. How are things up there?'
'Interesting,' Peters replied. 'Captain Freeman dropped a bomb on my desk a little while ago. He suggested I handle it first thing.'
