Alex came through the room and asked me what was going on. 'I'll tell you in a minute,' I said. 'First I need to call Ralph.'
The Ashland Hills operator told me Ralph was in the dining room. Someone would have to go find him. While I waited, I could hardly contain myself. Was that what this was all about, then? Was Marjorie Connors nothing more than a woman scorned who had enlisted Tanya Dunseth in a long-term, complex, and exceedingly lethal form of revenge? It was hard to believe, but I was beginning to believe it was true.
I took the picture out of my pocket and examined it again. The news photo wasn't dated, but if it was from late in her marriage to Guy Lewis, that meant Sunshine would be twelve to fourteen years old. And it also meant that Sunshine was Maggie Lewis' Achilles' heel. The woman might have changed everything else about herself-her name, her friends, her past-but she had cared too much to leave the dog behind. Or to change the old dog's name. Or to put Sunshine down.
And then I finally understood why, on that particular day, Sunshine had been missing from her customary place on the front porch at Live Oak Farm. Marjorie Connors had taken Sunshine along to meet Ames in order to save the old dog's life.
Ralph Ames came on the line. 'What's happening?' he asked cheerfully.
'Three questions,' I said. 'Who initiated the meeting between you and Marjorie Connors this morning?'
'She did. She called early, right around seven. She asked if we could get together later on, sometime between ten and noon at the Mark Anthony. Why?'
'Next question. Did she have her old dog with her?'
'Sunshine? As a matter of fact, she did. She talked to the desk clerk about it. He agreed that the dog could sit with us as long as we stayed in the lobby. Beau, what's going on?'
'One last thing. When the house blew up, they say people heard it for miles. Did you?'
'Well, of course.'
'Was Marjorie with you-at the time of the blast, I mean?'
Ralph Ames paused for a moment. 'Why no, now that you mention it, I don't believe she was. I believe she had just excused herself to go to the ladies' room.'
'Bingo!' I said. 'I've gotta go, Ralph. Gordon Fraymore is just now driving into the yard.'
CHAPTER 19
Fraymore and I sat in his Mercury outside Oak Hill B amp; B while I told him in considerable detail everything I knew-or thought I knew-about Guy and Daphne Lewis. And about the fact that there was a good chance the woman everyone in Ashland knew as Marjorie Connors was, in actuality, the original, cast-off version of Mrs. Guy Lewis.
I wasn't sure how or when it happened, but somehow, in the course of revealing this new information, Fraymore and I moved away from our former mutual antagonism into a spirit of grudging cooperation. He listened carefully to everything I said, nodding occasionally.
'Could this friend of yours in Seattle send down the original of that picture so I could have a look at it?'
'I'm sure he'd be happy to,' I answered. 'If he shipped it counter-to-counter, we'd have it by midmorning.'
I looked down at the seat, instinctively searching for the presence of a cellular phone. The Montego didn't have one. 'That's all right,' Fraymore said, starting the engine. 'We'll call from my office.'
When Fraymore had arrived at Oak Hill, I had expected to talk to him for several minutes and then go right back inside. I assumed that once I gave him the information, it would be up to him to take action. Fraymore, however, seemed disinclined to let me loose. I certainly hadn't planned on going along with him, but as we drove toward his office, I still expected I'd return in plenty of time to keep my dinner date with Alex.
After calling Ron Peters and making arrangements for him to ship the photo, I again expected to head back home. Nothing doing. Instead, Fraymore picked up the phone and made a series of offhand, almost casual calls. In Seattle, the first one would have been an official inquiry to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Then, armed with the suspect's vehicle license number, an all-points bulletin would have been issued.
This, however, was Ashland, a place where people knew their neighbors. Without having to consult Motor Vehicles, Gordon Fraymore already knew the kind of car Marjorie Connors drove. He directed his officers to be on the outlook for an '85 brown-and-tan Suburban with a permanently dinged right front-door panel and a rearview mirror that was attached to the frame of the car by massive amounts of duct tape.
Within minutes of passing along this somewhat folksy description, Fraymore's small-town law-enforcement grapevine located the vehicle in question. A downtown church-the same one where the N.A. meeting had been held the previous Saturday-was hosting a hastily organized emergency potluck dinner to feed and collect donations for the burned-out victims of the Live Oak Farm fire. According to Gordon Fraymore's informant, Marjorie Connors was believed to be in attendance.
The detective assimilated the information and stood up abruptly. 'It figures she would be,' he said, nodding in satisfaction. 'It would call too much attention to her if she wasn't. Let's go.' He headed out of his office, and I followed.
'Where to? The potluck?'
'Not just yet. We'll start with the hospital. I want to talk to Tanya Dunseth one more time.'
'Tanya,' I echoed. 'Why her? She's never told the truth, not once in her life.'
'Maybe she's been telling some of the truth all along,' Gordon Fraymore said with a thoughtful frown. 'Maybe we just weren't smart enough to pick up on it.'
We? There was that fateful word 'we' again. I let the questionable usage pass. Obviously, I was included in whatever was going down, but Fraymore said almost nothing on the way to the hospital. When we reached Tanya Dunseth's room, he motioned for me to follow him inside.
Tanya, wearing a hospital-issue gown, lay on her raised bed watching a mute television set.
'Hi there, Tanya,' Gordon Fraymore said easily when she glanced in our direction. 'Mind if we ask you a couple of questions?'
'What kind of questions?' she asked.
Strictly speaking, Tanya should have thrown us out without giving us the time of day. Most homicide suspects, from casual killers to perpetrators of fatal domestic violence, know the drill all too well. Few of them are first-time offenders. They've been picked up before for something, although their previous offenses may not have been murder. Some of them know more about their rights than the cops who arrest them. Habitual offenders can and do recite the Miranda warning without the necessity of any prompting.
Since she didn't send us packing, it crossed my mind that maybe Tanya didn't know all that much about the process, at least not from personal experience. I was sure Ralph Ames had given her strict orders not to answer questions without his being present. But then he wasn't charging her for his services. Free advice is always easy to ignore.
'Do you know why we're here?' Fraymore asked.
Tanya shrugged. 'I suppose it's the same as this afternoon. You think I killed Guy Lewis. You seem to think I killed everybody.'
Her direct reference to the investigation was an answer in itself. It's the kind of forthright response that usually comes from suspects who are actually innocent. Guilty ones generally affect an air of total mystification. They can't think of a single reason why an investigator might possibly come to them asking questions. They have zero idea what has happened or what the investigation might concern.
'Did you?' Fraymore asked straight out. Ralph Ames would have been outraged and rightly so. Tanya answered all the same.
'No,' she answered firmly. 'I did not. I didn't even know the man. Why would I kill him?'
'You knew his wife,' Fraymore prompted.
Tanya nodded. 'I knew Daphne, but not him.'
'How did you hook up with Marjorie Connors?' The abrupt change of subject stymied Tanya momentarily.
