"Why not with your daughter?" he asked pointedly. "Didn't Marjorie Connors offer to put you up?"
I wasn't in the mood to discuss my daughter or Marjorie Connors' singular style of nonhospitality, and where Alex and I stayed was none of Gordon Fraymore's damn business.
"Live Oak Farm doesn't have enough room," I answered. "Can I go now?"
He studied me for a long moment. "I suppose," he said deliberately. "Just don't head back for Seattle without letting me know."
"Right."
I got up and walked as far as the doorway, but by then Fraymore had pushed once too often. I couldn't resist a parting shot. "What about Derek Chambers?" I asked.
Fraymore had picked up a nail clipper and was digging something out from under his fingernails. "What about him?"
"When are you going to tell him what really happened?"
Fraymore looked up and glowered at me. "About the knife, you mean? When I get damned good and ready. With smart-assed kids like that, it doesn't hurt to let 'em squirm awhile. That's what we do in small towns, Mr. Beaumont. We scare the shit out of kids in order to get them to straighten up and fly right."
The Constitution notwithstanding.
I said, "That kid deserves better than sitting out there thinking he's killed a man. So do his parents."
"What makes you think he didn't kill him?" Fraymore countered. "Maybe the knife wound wouldn't have been fatal if he hadn't been hit by the kid's car first."
"You'd better check the investigating officer's paper, Detective Fraymore. Derek Chambers' car may have hit Martin Shore first, but it was landing on the hood of the Cutlass that rammed the knife through his heart. Derek was in the Duster."
For a long, tense moment, Detective Fraymore and I stared at each other, then he shuffled through the stack of papers piled on the conference room table in front of him. Pointing with one thick finger, he scanned down one of the sheets. Eventually, his finger stopped moving, and his ears reddened. By the time he raised his eyes from the paper, his face was glowing deep purple.
I knew just from looking at him that both Fraymore and I would have been better off if he had uncovered the error himself.
"You can go now," he said coldly.
And I did. As the door to the conference room closed behind me, I realized I was in almost as much trouble with Detective Gordon Fraymore as Monica Davenport was with Alexis Downey.
When she saw me, Alex hurried to my side and gave me a quick, anxious hug. She carried my bloodstained jacket. "Are you all right?" she asked.
"Pretty much. Let's get out of here."
Alex had found me at the scene of the accident, and she had driven me to the hospital in the Porsche. Now, though, as we left the hospital, she handed me the keys. I gave them right back.
"You drive," I told her. "I'm worn out."
The Oak Hill Bed-and-Breakfast was a mile or so south of the theaters on Siskiyou Boulevard. Without knowing it, I had driven past it several times earlier in the afternoon while searching Ashland for Live Oak Lane. The big old two-story house was quiet and dark when we arrived, but Alexis had a key. She let us in through the front door, then led the way through the living room and up a creaking set of stairs.
"This is it," she whispered, opening a door at the top of the stairs. "It's a blue room, so they call it Iris."
While I was at the hospital having my wrist sewn up, Alex had moved our luggage in from the car and had carried it upstairs. All we had to do was undress and fall into bed. My wrist hurt like hell. To keep it from throbbing, I lay with it propped up on an extra pillow next to my head. Alex snuggled up close to my left side and put her head on my chest.
"You should have seen that boy's parents when they showed up at the hospital. The mother was crying. The father didn't say much, but I could tell he was frantic. I felt terrible for all three of them."
"Great minds think alike," I told her.
Alex continued, "It made me glad I don't have kids. I kept trying to put myself in their place. How do parents cope with something like that? The man is dead. Nothing's going to fix that. I mean, Mom and Dad can't kiss it and make it better."
She paused. For several minutes, we lay in silence while an occasional car drove past on the street outside. There are lots of things in life parents can't fix. I didn't speak because I couldn't, not with the huge lump back in my throat.
"You're so quiet. Are you asleep?" Alex asked.
"No."
She turned toward me, snuggling her head under my chin. "What about you, Beau? What would you do if something like that happened to Kelly or Scott? How would you handle it?"
Alex was only making conversation, but this was the worst-possible time for her to ask that particular question.
"Kelly's pregnant," I answered. That response was both unforgivably abrupt and totally indirect, but it covered the bases. Alex propped herself up on my chest and stared thoughtfully into my face, her concerned frown visible in the pale moonlight.
"Oh," she said. "So that's it. I'm so sorry."
"Me, too," I mumbled. "Kelly doesn't seem to be, though. She's happy as a clam, and so's that damn fiance of hers. The wedding's set for Monday afternoon at two-thirty. Since I'm invited, I suppose you are, too, if you want to go, that is."
I made no effort to disguise the hard edge of bitterness in my voice. Why should I? My eighteen-year-old daughter was pregnant and throwing her life away for some jerk of a two-bit actor.
Wordlessly, Alex lay back down and once more snuggled her head under my chin. The soft heat of her breath warmed my skin. My nostrils inhaled the clean, fresh scent of her hair. As gentle fingers began stroking my breastbone, some of the aching tension drained out of my body.
"What about your ex-wife?" Alex asked softly much later when I was almost asleep. "Is she coming?"
"I don't know for sure, but I doubt it. Karen doesn't know about this, and I don't think it's my place to tell her."
"Oh," Alex said, and that was all.
I had meant to ask Alexis Downey about the denouement of the donor party and exactly how things were going in the theater-development wars. I meant to ask her if she had been able to keep Monica Davenport's grubby little paws out of Guy Lewis' wallet, but before I had a chance, the comforting touch of her caressing fingers lulled me to sleep.
It wasn't at all how I had imagined spending the first night of our romantic weekend away from the man-hating Hector and Alex's damnable futon, but in lots of ways it was much nicer.
And it was probably far better than I deserved.
When I woke up, brilliant rays of warm morning sunlight streamed in through the window. Alex-wide awake, showered, and wearing a terry-cloth robe-was curled up in a rocking chair by the window. She sat with a pair of reading glasses perched on her nose and with a thick, leather-bound volume tucked under her face.
"What are you reading?" I asked.
"Shakespeare," she replied. "The complete works. We're scheduled to see Shrew tonight. The dialogue's great. I wanted to review it for myself. By the way," she added, "breakfast is in fifteen minutes. You'd better get a move on."
Sniffing the air, I savored the mouth-watering aromas that drifted upstairs from the kitchen. "I think that's what woke me up," I said, crawling out of bed and heading for the bathroom.
"Hope you don't mind baths," Alex cautioned. "Showers are out. Oak Hill was the only place in town with a last-minute cancellation, and this was the last available room. Consider yourself lucky."
As soon as I walked into the bathroom, I understood what Alex meant. Space for this recently added bathroom had been carved from an attic area directly under the slope of the eaves. The tub-enclosure alcove wasn't tall enough to accommodate a shower stall. In fact, I couldn't even stand up in it without bumping my head on the ceiling. With my arm bandaged, though, showers would have been out of the question anyway.