The Alpine Scandal

by Mary Daheim

  “Let me see.” I’m only a few rungs above Vida on the high-tech ladder, but the least I could do was try to help her. The monitor showed a blank screen. “You turned it off by accident,” I said. “Let’s reboot.”

  “Reboot, my foot!” Vida exclaimed. “Such silly terms with these computers. Mice, menus, icons—it’s all so very confusing.”

  “Computer people don’t speak real English,” I said, waiting for the computer to come back on. “How well does Marje know Jeanne Hendrix?”

  “Only as a patient,” Vida replied. “Jeanne had some minor surgery a month or so ago. She told Marje at the time it was scheduled so that she could be up and doing by the time she started her new job. I might add that we can probably eliminate Jeanne as a suspect because in order to get to her job in Everett at seven-thirty, she has to leave Alpine long before seven in the morning. Oh, you got it started again. Good.”

  “Did Marje know anything about Milo as far as the tests were concerned?” I asked, watching Vida scowl at the monitor.

  “No. Being a receptionist, Marje doesn’t always learn of hospital patients’ test results. She only finds out when they come back for a follow-up appointment. Very disappointing.”

  “Milo doesn’t seem to know anything, either,” I said, “including the murder investigation.” I went on to relate my insight about the multiple stamps on the envelope containing the obit. “Milo thought I was nuts, but I still think it means something.”

  “Quite right,” Vida agreed. “Goodness, I don’t think I got a single Christmas card this year with the old postage stamps on it.” She drummed her short fingernails on the desk. “A loner, you say—yes, that fits. Cat stamps. Now let me think…” She drummed her fingers some more. “I recall that series of commemoratives because that ninny Grace Grundle happened to be at the post office when I was there, and she was buying an entire sheet and simply had to show them to me. ‘So adorable,’ she said, ‘but they spoiled it by putting dogs on every other stamp.’ It was, I believe, an issue to foster neutering pets. I felt like saying I wished her cats’ ancestors had all been neutered before they ever had kittens. But of course I kept mum.”

  “So we may be talking about an animal lover,” I conjectured.

  “Or quite the opposite,” Vida pointed out. “Someone who wants to obliterate pets altogether.”

  “What about a stamp collector?”

  Vida shook her head. “A collector would have more recent stamps.”

  “True.” I sighed. “We’re not getting anywhere. Did Marje have the scoop on Bree Kendall’s new job at the hospital?”

  “Alas, no. Marje has been out of the loop lately for medical gossip. The holidays, you know. So busy.”

  I had begun pacing the newsroom. “Bree must have made some friends. She’s been here two years. Somehow, we’ve got to talk to those other women who work for Dr. Carter. In fact,” I said, “we should talk to him.”

  “I intend to,” Vida responded. “Tomorrow, at the funeral. There’s nothing like a death in the family to get people to open up. Are you coming?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “One of us is enough. It’s not as if we know the Nystroms.”

  “Nobody does,” Vida said softly. “And I still think that’s the key.”

  Chapter Twelve

  A HAPPY SCOTT Chamoud went off to confer with Dwight Gould at the sheriff’s office a little after two. Jessica Wesley hadn’t proved to be a font of information, but she had confided in Scott by telling him that she “didn’t feel comfortable working in Dr. Nystrom’s office.” The Wesleys’ daughter was too immature to put her finger on what bothered her, alluding to “atmosphere,” “tension,” and “stress.” Even if Jessica had a lively imagination, I suspected that she could be right. Bree Kendall’s resignation might point to some kind of problem. It wasn’t as if receptionist jobs grew on Douglas firs in Alpine. The fact that she already had gone to work at the hospital indicated that she needed the money. Or at least planned to stay in town. That in itself seemed odd, since Bree was a city girl. But maybe I was transferring my dream of eventually moving back to the bright lights of Seattle.

  I praised Scott for his ability to conduct an insightful interview. He wasn’t the moody type, but I’d certainly noticed that he’d grown restless lately. Of course it had taken me long enough to assign him more responsibility on big stories. Then again, we didn’t have many of them in Alpine.

  Leo, however, was unusually quiet that afternoon. Vida noticed and asked if he was ailing.

  “We don’t need another person rushed to the hospital,” she warned my ad manager. “The doctors are overworked as it is, especially this time of year with flu season.”

  Leo rolled his chair around so he could look at Vida. “You know what the Bard said, Duchess: ‘Now is the winter of our discontent.’”

  “Piffle,” responded Vida. “Unlike Shakespeare’s Richard the Third, you’re not deformed, nor, I trust, are you determined to play the villain. Unless, of course, you insist upon lighting another of your filthy cigarettes.”

  I’d just come out of the back shop, where I’d been conferring with Kip about a computer program he thought we should get for our income taxes.

  “Do I hear discord among my staffers?” I asked.

  “Discontent,” Vida said, “on Leo’s part.”

  Still feeling pleased about my dealings with Scott, I was taken aback. “How come?” I asked my ad manager.

  Leo gestured at Vida. “Did you tell the Duchess about Ed?”

  “Ed!” Vida cried. “Of course Emma told me. Are you actually fretting about him? It serves Ed right if he has to work, however menial the job. It’s not your fault he’s an idiot.”

  “Hey, there but for the grace of God—and Emma—go I,” Leo retorted. “I was inches away from jumping off a ferryboat when she came along and threw me a lifeline. So to speak.”

  “Well,” Vida said, “you’re not the one working at the Burger Barn. What does that tell you? I daresay that if you’d inherited several million dollars, you wouldn’t have wasted it on foolish show-off purchases or made ill-advised investments.”

  “No,” Leo replied, the twinkle returning to his eyes. “In my bad old days, I’d have sucked it out of a bottle. An endless number of bottles. Then I’d have gone out in my new Porsche and killed myself and probably some other poor SOB.”

  “Really,” Vida huffed, “you’re getting me down, Leo. Forget about Ed. He’s his own worst enemy—as people usually are.”

  “Yes.” I spoke the word involuntarily. Vida and Leo stared at me.

  “Well?” said Vida.

  I shrugged. “It’s true, of course. But I wasn’t thinking of Ed. Elmer Nystrom came to mind.”

  “You mean,” Vida said with her most owlish expression, “Elmer brought his murder upon himself?”

  I nodded faintly. “I guess. Of course it may be a crazy notion. But hasn’t it been pointed out that often you can discover the killer by knowing more about the victim?”

  “Certainly,” Vida agreed. “And as I’ve mentioned, we don’t know that much about Elmer. But at the funeral I’ll—”

  For once, I interrupted Vida. “Fine. But now, I’m going to do some deep background of my own.” I hurried into my cubbyhole, grabbed my purse and hooded jacket, then dashed back through the newsroom. “See you in an hour or so.”

  Vida ran after me, catching up just as I was turning the ignition key. “You can’t go to the Nystroms’ without me!” she shouted through the closed window.

  “Get your coat,” I shouted back. “And your crazy hat,” I added under my breath after she’d zipped back inside.

  As soon as Vida got into the car, she insisted that we stop at Posies Unlimited and pick up a bouquet of flowers. “We can’t burst in empty-handed,” she said.

  “How about the Grocery Basket’s deli?” I suggested. “We can bring Carter and his mother a meal. The store’s not too far out of our way, and I have to get some steak
s for Milo anyway.”

  “You buy deli food?” Vida asked in a tone that suggested I might also eat small children.

  “Sometimes,” I replied, backing out onto Front Street.

  “It can’t be wholesome,” she declared. “Just sitting there all day in those cases. Ugh.” She leaned closer and peered at me. “You’re making Milo dinner, too?”

  “It’s the least I can do,” I said.

  “Also the most, I hope.” Vida sounded stern. She had never approved of the sexual relationship between the sheriff and me.

  As usual, I wasn’t inclined to discuss the matter with Vida, so I reverted to the original topic. “It seems a waste of our efforts for both of us to go to see Polly. Why don’t you think up some excuse to talk to Carter’s assistants?”

  “The office is closed until after the funeral, remember?”

  “Oh.” I braked for the red light at Front and Alpine Way. “Did you ever find out if Christy and Alicia had last names?”

  “Yes. Christy’s is Millard. Alicia’s is Strand. Christy lives in those condos on Spruce by the RV park, and Alicia has an apartment in that newer building on Tonga Road.”

  I took a left onto Alpine Way. “Anything else?”

  “According to my daughter Amy, they’re both around thirty, unmarried, and quite attractive. They also seem highly qualified. Amy told me they were always very patient with Roger when he was having his braces worked on.”

  Canonization now. I could imagine what kind of horror Roger would’ve been at the orthodontist’s office. “I thought Roger had his braces done out of town.”

  “He did,” Vida replied as I waited to get into the Grocery Basket’s parking lot. “But he needed some maintenance work after he finished. I’d forgotten about that. Amy managed to get a referral to Dr. Nystrom for the follow-up work.”

  No doubt it was a referral gladly given. I had visions of his original orthodontist digging a moat around the office.

  I volunteered to go get the meal for what was left of the Nystrom family. Vida said she didn’t mind waiting in the car; parking lots could be very interesting. “You never know who’s going to show up,” she asserted. “What’s even more intriguing than who goes into the store is who’s left behind. Especially at night.”

  Inside the store, I got the T-bones first. At the deli counter, I decided that a small roasted chicken would be in poor taste, considering Elmer’s demise in the henhouse. Instead, I settled on the Betsy’s Buffet dinner special—the Swedish meatballs, egg noodles, and broccoli. Our ads claimed that the specials were always from “Betsy O’Toole’s busy kitchen,” but I knew that she spent so many hours working in the store that the family did more takeout and frozen meals than most people in Alpine.

  It was raining again by the time I got back to the car. Vida was still rubbernecking.

  “Lois Dewey had eight grocery bags,” Vida informed me. “How often does she shop? She and Doc are alone in that big house. What do you suppose they eat? Of course they can afford the best.”

  I concentrated on avoiding a collision with a small car that had whipped out of a parking space without looking to see if anybody was coming.

  “Kay Gould had only one bag, and she was carrying it most carefully,” Vida continued. “I suspect it was wine. Why doesn’t she buy it at the liquor store? Have you ever noticed Dwight being tipsy? I haven’t. I don’t think he drinks.”

  “Maybe that’s why she does,” I remarked, heading back down Alpine Way to the Burl Creek Road. “Dwight can be a pill sometimes.”

  “And the children!” Vida exclaimed. “As soon as school lets out, they go to the grocery store and buy all kinds of sodas and sugar treats! Why do their parents allow it? I must have seen a dozen of them, some as young as eight or nine. Tsk, tsk.”

  Vida would have made a great undercover surveillance cop if it wasn’t for those wacky hats.

  The rain had almost stopped by the time we reached the Nystrom house five minutes later. To my surprise, Polly answered the door.

  “Oh, hello, Mrs. Runkel, Ms. Lord,” she said in a subdued voice. “Come in. I was getting Elmer’s pictures out for the funeral tomorrow. Would you like some tea?”

  I started to decline, but Vida accepted. “Very kind of you,” she said. “We brought dinner for you and Carter so you wouldn’t have to cook.”

  I handed over the bag containing the food. “You might want to put this in the refrigerator, Mrs. Nystrom.”

  “How thoughtful,” Polly said softly. “I’ll do that, and I’ll put the kettle on. Please sit.”

  We both sat on the sofa. But as soon as Polly left for the kitchen, Vida rose and went to the dining room table. Several photo albums and individual pictures were scattered over the hand-crocheted lace tablecloth.

  “I don’t see the portrait of Elmer that we used in his obituary,” she called out to Polly. “Are you using it for the service? It was very nice.”

  Polly didn’t answer right away. The living room and dining room were contiguous, their demarcation created by a polished hardwood floor between two large Persian rugs. From my place on the sofa, I could see into the kitchen. Polly had gone first to the fridge but was now out of sight, presumably at the stove or sink.

  She reappeared a moment later, stopping near Vida in the dining room. “There. The kettle’s on. Now, what did you say about a portrait?”

  “We had a file portrait from Nordby Brothers taken a few years ago,” Vida explained. “You know, the one that hangs on their showroom walls with the other employees’ pictures. It was a very good likeness, taken by Buddy Bayard. I assumed you’d use that on the altar.”

  Polly straightened her apron. “I don’t think I have a copy of that picture,” she said vaguely as I came over to join the two women. “I hadn’t thought about having a picture in church. Mr. Driggers suggested having some on a bulletin board in the reception area afterward. This one’s nice.” She pointed to a black-and-white snapshot showing a much younger Elmer in a shirt and tie. He had hair, and I could see a grain silo in the background. “That was taken in Williston before we moved west.”

  “Surely,” Vida said, “you have a more recent photo.”

  “Oh…Let me see.” Polly pulled at her lower lip and studied the disorganized photos on the table. “There’s one from a few years ago out in the garden, but his back is turned.”

  I stared. Carter was in the foreground, holding a rake and making a face for the camera. In fact, most of the photos seemed to be of Carter with or without Polly at his side: baby pictures, toddler pictures, kid pictures, teenage pictures, college-age pictures, adult pictures. I glanced around the living and dining rooms. There were framed photos of Carter in graduation regalia—one, I assumed, for his undergraduate degree and another for the completion of his orthodontist studies. There was also a large tinted picture of a youthful Polly, looking svelte and pretty as a prairie rose.

  “Don’t you have a family picture?” I blurted.

  “Well…not really.” Polly cleared her throat. “Elmer took most of the pictures, you see.”

  Maybe that explained his absence from the photo collection. But it seemed a bit weird to me.

  Vida was flipping through one of the albums. “So many memories,” she murmured. “I do enjoy looking at people’s cherished photos. Ah!” She tapped a color photo. “This one seems to be more recent than the shot taken in Williston.”

  Elmer was proudly standing in front of a white Chevrolet Caprice. “Oh, yes,” Polly agreed. “Carter took that one. He’d just turned twelve but was very clever with a camera. We’d got him one for his birthday.”

  I was looking at the picture, too. “Is that a brand-new car?”

  “Uh…” Polly removed her glasses to stare at the photo. “I think so. It was the one that Carter learned to drive on later.”

  I judged the picture to be almost twenty years old. “Any Christmas or other holiday photos?” I asked.

  Polly chuckled softly. “Yes, indeed. All
of Carter’s Santa pictures are in a special album. I didn’t bring it out. Would you like to see the Christmas albums? Carter was only a few months old when he celebrated his first Christmas, but he seemed to understand what it was all about. I can get them if you’d like.”

  “I don’t think…” I began as the teakettle mercifully whistled. Polly excused herself and went back to the kitchen.

  Vida headed for the sofa. “Honestly!” she exclaimed under her breath. “You’d think Elmer didn’t exist! If Carter was so clever with a camera, why didn’t he take more pictures of his father?”

  “Spoiled only child,” I whispered, hearing Polly rattle cups and saucers in the kitchen. “But smart.”

  “So?” Vida sniffed disdainfully. “Being smart doesn’t mean you can’t also be a dreadful person.”

  I had, of course, immediately thought of Roger. But Roger wasn’t very smart. Or so I’d always figured. Vida, of course, didn’t consider her grandson spoiled. We all have a blind eye when it comes to people we love.

  “Here we are,” Polly announced cheerfully, setting a tray on the coffee table in front of the sofa. “I’ll pour. I baked oatmeal cookies this morning. They’re one of Carter’s favorites. Do try them.”

  “Where is Carter?” Vida inquired, immediately scooping a large amount of sugar into her tea after Polly had filled two Royal Albert Lily of the Valley bone china cups.

  Polly didn’t answer until she’d poured herself a cup and had sat down in a side chair with a needlepoint seat and back. “He had to do some things regarding the funeral. Oh, and pick up his new car.”

  I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. “The Corvette?”

  Polly beamed at me. “Why, yes. How did you know?”

  “I went to see Trout Nordby,” I said, “to ask about Elmer.”

  Polly looked blank. “To ask what about him?”

  “How he was regarded by his employers, his coworkers, his customers.” I shrugged. “The kind of information that readers like to know about their fellow Alpiners.”