The same thing happened to the old woman standing before me. Her face went slack, her features slightly fuzzy. She sagged back against the man behind her. He tried to catch her but only succeeded in cushioning the severity of her fall.
He knelt beside her, cradling her head and stroking her face. "Willy," he said. "Willy, wake up. Are you all right?"
Willy? I thought. This can't be Willy! I must be losing my mind.
The screen door was still closed. I had not been invited inside. At first, I was too stunned to do anything but look on helplessly through the door. Moments after she fell, the woman's eyes flickered open. The man started to help her up, but somehow his feet became entangled in a throw rug, and they both went down in a heap. That was all I could stand. Uninvited, I wrenched open the screen door and tried to help lift them to their feet.
Holding Willy between us, Roger and I guided her to a nearby couch. She had twisted her ankle and now could barely put any weight on it. Once seated, she turned on me, leveling a hard, tearstained stare in my direction. When she spoke, however, her words were directed strictly to her husband.
"Roger," she said, "you get this man out of my house, and you get him out now!"
"But, Willy," he objected, "your ankle's swelling like crazy. We should probably carry you to the doctor." He stood up, went back over to the door, and retrieved her wire-rimmed glasses from where they had fallen. Wiping them on his shirt, he handed them to her.
"We're not doing anything at all until that man is gone," she insisted flatly. "Not one thing."
The old man looked at me helplessly. "We'd best step outside," he said.
I was already apologizing before we ever reached the front porch. "Obviously, there's been a terrible mistake. You're Roger Tompkins?"
He nodded. "As far as I know. Have been for going on seventy years now."
"That means the person who claimed to be your daughter was lying."
"You've met someone who says that?" He sounded shocked.
"Yes, a young woman down in Ashland, Oregon. She told us that she was Roseann Charlene Tompkins from Walla Walla, Washington. She said you were a guard in the prison."
"I was, until I retired a few years back."
"She said your wife was a cook at the school."
"That's also correct. Willy retired from there just this past month."
"I'm so sorry to have disturbed you, Mr. Tompkins, and to have upset your wife. Obviously, this young woman can't possibly be your daughter. She's a red-haired Caucasian."
"There's a better reason than that," Roger Tompkins returned with restrained dignity. "Our daughter is dead."
"Dead?" I repeated, sounding like an insubstantial echo.
Tompkins nodded. "Roseann died back in 1968. She was a change-of-life baby-our last one. She was only four months old when she died. That's why Willy's so upset. I'm sure she thought it was someone playing another one of those ugly pranks. We had phone calls about it at the time-some of 'em pretty bad-people saying we must have killed her, that kind of thing. Back then nobody talked about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. People know more about it these days. It's been a long time, but I don't think Willy ever got over it, not altogether."
In all my life, I don't remember ever feeling more the heel. And stupid besides. Tanya Dunseth had seen Ralph and me coming a mile away. Her heartrending tale of monstrous abuse had left us putty in her hands. Even I-a prizewinning chump if ever there was one-could see that Roger Tompkins was no monster.
"I'm sorry to have disturbed you, Mr. Tompkins, and to have brought your painful ordeal back to the surface. I had no idea."
"No," Roger Tompkins said kindly. "I'm sure you didn't. Who is this troubled young woman, anyway? Why would she do such a thing?"
"That," I declared hotly, "is something I intend to find out. She's obviously gone to the extent of learning as much about you as possible. For instance, she knew your address and where both you and your wife worked. It's an old stunt people pull when they have something to hide. They go back through old newspaper files and assume the identity of a child who died at an early age but at approximately the same time."
"In order to get a Social Security number, wouldn't she need a birth certificate? You said this girl is white. As you can see, Willy and I most certainly are not."
"Actually, Mr. Tompkins, it's even more complicated than that. She was using an entirely different identity for official purposes, and it turns out that one's fake, too."
We had walked out to the street and were standing beside my rental car. Roger Tompkins clicked his tongue. "How truly unfortunate," he said thoughtfully. "Circles within circles, wheels within wheels. To spin a trail of lies like that, she must be very disturbed."
"You could say that again," I said. "You certainly could. Please express my sincere apologies to your wife. I hope her ankle isn't hurt too badly. I'd be happy to help take her to an emergency room if you wanted."
"Oh," Roger Tompkins answered with an easy smile, "that won't be necessary. She'll be fine. We'll go to the doctor tomorrow morning if need be. Willy's a pretty tough old bird. We both are. We've had to be."
I hadn't a doubt in the world that was true.
Beside myself, I headed back to the TraveLodge. Wheels within wheels all right! There was no way to make sense of the tangle of lies Ralph and I had been fed, but one thing was certain. Tanya Dunseth was not to be trusted.
Was she the murdered? Maybe. Most likely, in fact, especially the more I thought about it. Why else would she have spun this web of fabrication? Only people with something awful to hide build those kinds of complicated but phony constructs around them.
Ralph Ames had told me that even if Tanya Dunseth was guilty, he was prepared to defend her to the best of his personal and professional capability. You'd better gear up, my friend, I thought. You've got your work cut out for you.
I made it back to my room in what was probably record time for Walla Walla. My rented Tempo didn't come with a cellular phone, so I waited until then before I tried calling Ralph. He wasn't in. I tried again half an hour later and every thirty minutes thereafter, from 9:00 P.M. until midnight. He finally answered the phone at 12:25.
"Where've you been?" I demanded peevishly. "I've been trying to reach you for hours."
"I just came back from the Bowmer," he said. "Alex and I went to see Romeo and Juliet. It is wonderful and Alex didn't mind seeing it again. For such a young woman, Tanya really is an exceptional actress."
"Tanya!" I exploded. "Tanya Dunseth was in tonight's production?"
"What other Tanya would I be talking about?"
"She's out of jail and back playing Juliet?"
"That's right. Her landlady and I posted bail for her around four-thirty this afternoon, just in time for her to make the eight-thirty curtain."
"Jesus Christ! You've got to be kidding."
"Beau," Ralph said calmly. "Of course I'm not kidding. What's gotten into you? Are you upset about something? Is something wrong?"
"You could say something's wrong," I returned morosely. "Just wait until I tell you."
And I did.
CHAPTER 16
Once he heard what I had to say, Ralph was as thunderstruck as I had been. "We've been nailed but good, haven't we?" he said. "No doubt about it. What do we do now?"
That was a switch-a real first-Ralph Ames asking me for advice. "Don't do anything until I get back, except try to keep her from skipping town. By the way, where is she now?" I asked.