The Alpine Scandal

by Mary Daheim

  He shook his head but didn’t look up.

  I tried again. “Your chest?”

  His only reply was a moan and a “goddamn it.”

  “Is it like what you had before?”

  Again my question was ignored. Frustrated, I picked up the Drambuie bottle and took a big swallow. It was all fire and sticky sweetness, but it put some steel in my sagging backbone. So did the sound of approaching sirens.

  I opened the front and back doors, then collected Milo’s jacket from the living room, stuffed his cigarettes and lighter in an inside pocket, and watched through the front window. After only a few seconds, the street was illuminated by flashing lights. A moment later, the medic van pulled up in the driveway behind Milo’s Grand Cherokee.

  Luckily, the two senior medics, Vic Thorstensen and Del Amundson, were on the job.

  “Where is he?” Del asked, hurrying into the house.

  “Kitchen,” I replied, waiting to follow both EMTs.

  “Hey, Sheriff,” Del said in his most upbeat voice, “you got another bellyache?”

  I was standing in the kitchen doorway. All I could see was Milo’s back, hunched over in the chair. He responded, but I couldn’t hear what he said. It sounded like a grunt.

  The phone rang from the living room. The receiver was on the end table. No wonder I hadn’t found it in the kitchen.

  “Where did those sirens go?” Vida demanded.

  The query caught me off guard. “What? I thought you went to Sultan with Buck.”

  “Thelma got sick and threw up all over the table,” she said. “We left. I just got home. What about those sirens? They sounded as if they were near your house.”

  Thelma, I presumed, was Vida and Buck’s hostess. But she was the least of my problems. “It’s Milo,” I said. “He’s had another spell.”

  “I wondered,” Vida murmured. “Whatever were you doing?”

  “Nothing!” I virtually shouted the word into the phone. “The medics are…” I walked back toward the kitchen. Vic was still with Milo, but Del had disappeared. Probably he’d gone out the back door to get the gurney. “I think they’re taking Milo to the hospital.”

  “A good place for him,” Vida huffed. “They never should have let him out so soon. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Where?”

  “The hospital, of course.” Vida hung up.

  I hadn’t thought that far ahead. But of course I’d follow Milo and his merry band of medics. That silly phrase had slipped into my mind. I suppose I was trying to stay optimistic, cheer myself up, prepare to deal with a long, anxious wait.

  Del returned with the gurney. I still kept my distance, not wanting to get in the way.

  “You coming, Emma?” Vic asked.

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “Want to ride in the ambulance?” he inquired.

  “Uh…no, I’ll drive.”

  Vic frowned. “How’re you going to get your car out? The Cherokee’s blocking it.”

  “I’ll get Milo’s keys and move it.”

  Vic nodded. Milo was making an unsuccessful effort to stand up.

  “Don’t,” Del said. “We provide all the transportation you need.”

  Milo said something unprintable about what they could do with their transportation. But he stopped trying to stand. Wanting to spare the sheriff from having me observe his “lack of manliness,” I grabbed his keys and went back into the living room, taking my time to put on my jacket. As soon as I heard the gurney leaving the kitchen via the back door, I returned to make sure the stove was off and everything was unplugged. I felt kind of unplugged myself. If not dying at the roots, my sturdy oak was being buffeted by the winds of ill health. I was overcome with a sense of vulnerability as unfamiliar as it was disturbing.

  The medic van was out of sight if not out of hearing range by the time I backed onto Fir Street. The most direct route was to go down Third. As soon as I turned the corner, I could see the flashing red lights nearing the hospital. The steep, wet pavement in front of me was safe enough in daylight, but after dark several bumps and potholes were concealed. My editorials urging a bond issue for street improvements had gone for naught.

  I parked on Pine and crossed the street to the hospital’s main entrance. The emergency room was off to the right of the small lobby. Milo would have been taken in through a different entrance, near the corner of Second and Pine. Vida was already at the reception desk, badgering a stout middle-aged woman I didn’t recognize.

  “He’s here, I tell you,” Vida said, wagging a finger. “Sheriff Dodge just came in.”

  I sidled up to Vida, who was wearing what looked like a chocolate layer cake on her head. It was probably the hat she’d worn to her dinner party in Sultan.

  “Tell her,” Vida commanded, turning to me.

  “You just did,” I said.

  The receptionist’s name tag stated that she was Mona Lysander. She sure wasn’t Mona Lisa, judging from her sullen expression.

  “Nothing’s official,” she declared, “until the patient has been formally admitted.” In a gesture of dismissal she swiveled her chair in the direction of her computer.

  Vida leaned on the counter. “Where’s Bree Kendall?” she demanded in a voice so loud that a dozing elderly man sitting by the aquarium woke up with such a start that his glasses fell off into his lap.

  Mona glared at Vida. “She works days.”

  Vida didn’t budge. She remained leaning on the counter, eyes fixed on Mona, who had turned back to her computer. The receptionist looked up. “Would you please take a seat.”

  Vida shook her head, causing the cakelike tiers of felt to sway atop her gray curls. “Not until we hear what’s going on with Sheriff Dodge.”

  An older woman I hadn’t noticed came toward us carrying an embroidery hoop and a threaded needle. “What’s this about the sheriff?” she asked. “Is he dying?”

  I recognized Ethel Pike’s round, pugnacious face. I also saw her husband, Bickford, in a chair by the far wall, staring vacantly at the old guy by the aquarium who was still fumbling with his glasses.

  Vida straightened up, towering over Ethel. “Certainly not! He’s had another spell, that’s all. Indigestion, if you ask me. He doesn’t eat properly.”

  I knew that Vida was worried far more than she’d let on to Ethel. But she wouldn’t start unfounded rumors or give Ethel the satisfaction of knowing that Vida was in the dark when it came to Milo’s health.

  “Well,” Ethel said, “he’d better spend more time on the job and catch whoever killed Elmer. If you ask me, whoever did it croaked the wrong Nystrom. They should have done in his missus.”

  I’d forgotten that the Pikes lived on the Burl Creek Road, probably less than a quarter mile from the Nystrom house.

  “You don’t like Polly?” Vida asked, finally stepping away from the reception area.

  “She’s a pill,” Ethel declared, jabbing her needle into a random spot on what looked like a pillowcase. “Polly’s always complaining about Pike.” She nodded in her husband’s direction. “He’s got the bronchitis. I had to drag him in here before it gets to be the pneumonia. Stubborn as a mule, that’s Pike. Says he wouldn’t be sick at all if we’d spent the winter with our kids in Florida. All he wants to do is go beachcombing, but I tell him he’d get eaten by them crocodiles. Anyways, we can’t afford it.”

  “What did Polly complain about?” Vida asked, steering the conversation back to the Nystroms.

  “Pike’s truck,” Ethel replied. “He hauls stuff, you know. He can’t stay retired from the mill, has to run himself ragged even in bad weather, carting this and that around. No wonder he’s got the bronchitis.”

  Anxious about Milo and impatient in my role of Vida’s mute puppet, I spoke: “You mean Polly complained about the truck making noise?”

  Ethel glanced at Pike, who broke into a coughing fit, perhaps to prove that he was still alive. “The noise—that old Silvery-aydo truck kind of rattles when it’s got a big load of junk�
��and because sometimes things’d fall off along the road. Like a mattress that landed by the Nystroms’ mailbox. As if Pike wouldn’t pick it up! You can’t sell junk from the side of the road.”

  “Certainly not,” Vida agreed, showing uncustomary commiseration for Ethel, who my House & Home editor usually deemed “an idiot.” “Tut, tut,” Vida went on. “Polly sounds quite unreasonable.”

  “That’s for sure,” Ethel said. “Pike picked up that mattress the very next day. Or so.”

  “What,” I asked, “does Pike do with all his…collectibles?” Maybe there was a feature story in his junk business.

  “He takes it to Snohomish and Everett,” Ethel replied as her husband finally stopped coughing. “Snohomish’s got so many of them antique places. Sometimes he gets as much as twenty-five dollars for a load.”

  “Yes,” Vida murmured, “I’ve heard that Pike’s quite a scavenger. So many people—hikers and campers and that sort—leave all sorts of items in the forest. Even automobiles and motorcycles.”

  “Boats, too,” Ethel put in. “Too lazy to haul ’em back down the mountains. ’Course they’re not worth much—usually good only for firewood.”

  I noticed that Mona had left her post and disappeared into the examining room area. Maybe she was in the process of officially admitting Milo. The bold face on the clock above the entrance showed the time as seven thirty-seven. Somehow, it seemed as if it should be much later.

  Mona returned to her post and busied herself with some paperwork and the computer. I half expected Vida to reach over the counter and snatch away what I guessed was the sheriff’s admittance form. Ethel, however, interjected herself between Vida and me.

  “Say,” she barked at Mona, “how much longer does Pike have to wait? He’s coughed up half a lung already.”

  A still-hostile Mona looked up. “He’s next after Mr. Almquist.”

  Mr. Almquist, I presumed, was the old guy who’d gone back to sleep by the aquarium. Or maybe he’d already died.

  “It won’t be long,” Mona said in a voice that was anything but reassuring.

  Vida was about to make her move as Ethel stepped back from the counter and barked at Pike to stop coughing. “You’re driving me crazy. Keep your yap shut and just sit there!” She turned back to us. “Honest, that man’ll be the death of me. Won’t take care of himself, but wait and see—he’ll live to be a hundred while I’ll be moldering in my grave.”

  Before either Vida or I could respond, Jack Mullins suddenly burst through the doors that led to the examining rooms.

  “There you are,” he said to Vida and me. “Come outside. I need a smoke.”

  “You don’t smoke,” Vida pointed out. “How’s Milo?”

  Jack kept walking. “I smoke when my boss gets hauled to the hospital. I stole his cigs.” He opened one of the double doors for us. “Jesus, this is getting to be a habit.”

  “Smoking?” Vida said, holding on to her hat as a brisk wind blew down from Tonga Ridge. “Or Milo’s hospital visits?”

  “Both.” Jack lit up before he spoke again. “Sung’s on duty tonight. Doc may get called in. No news is good news. I guess.” He took a deep drag on the cigarette and blew the smoke well away from Vida. “He wants you to go home, Emma. You can’t do a damned thing waiting around. You, too, Vida. Dodge didn’t know you were here.”

  “Where did he think I’d be?” Vida snapped. “And stop swearing!”

  “Knock it off, Vida,” Jack shot back. “I’m not in the mood for lectures. This stuff with Dodge is getting me down. It’s getting to all of us at headquarters.”

  For once, Vida reined in her reprimands. In fact, she appeared almost docile. “Of course you’re upset. We all are, or we wouldn’t be here.” She tapped my arm. “Jack’s right. Or, rather, Milo is. We can’t do anything waiting all night for news. We should go home. Are you staying, Jack?”

  He took another puff and nodded. “Unless I get called away. I’m on duty along with Doe. She dropped me off in the patrol car.”

  “You’ll call us if you hear anything?” I asked.

  “Sure.” Jack’s usually cheerful face looked drawn and sickly under the harsh overhead light above the emergency entrance door.

  “Call,” Vida said, “even if you don’t hear anything.”

  Jack nodded again. Vida and I walked out the short driveway to the sidewalk.

  “Most upsetting,” she said quietly. “Milo doesn’t take care of himself. He needs a wife.”

  “He had one,” I pointed out as we stopped at the corner. “She didn’t turn out so well for him.”

  Vida frowned. “No. Tricia hated his work. Milo was gone too much and far too involved in his job. But that’s the way it is with law enforcement. She knew that when she married him. So silly of her to have that affair with the schoolteacher. Retaliation, of course, for being left alone. I never thought she’d actually marry the man. If only…” She shrugged. “I’m parked over there,” she said pointing across Third.

  “I’m on the other side, opposite the hospital.” I hesitated. “If only what?”

  Vida stared straight ahead into the intersection, where a beat-up old Chevy was going far too fast for the driver’s own good. Kids, I figured, with nothing better to do than try to maim themselves on a Thursday night in Alpine.

  “Well, now.” Vida sighed and then looked at me. “It’s really a shame you aren’t in love with Milo. Despite what you think about your differences, you two would do well together.”

  “That’s hardly a reason to get married,” I said.

  “But you should,” Vida declared. “Growing old alone isn’t desirable. I’ve been thinking about that myself, but I don’t know…” She stopped and tugged at my sleeve. “It’s not the same with you, Emma. You’ll never find another Tommy. Don’t end up like me.”

  She let go of my sleeve and tromped away into the night before I could speak.

  But I was too stunned to say anything at all.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I MANAGED TO get hold of Ben shortly after nine o’clock. He offered to come over and keep me company, but I knew he was tired. His voice had lost its usual crackle.

  “Stay put,” I insisted. “You’ll have dinner with me tomorrow night, right?”

  “Sure. But I’ll have to pack first. I’m leaving at eight.”

  “In the morning?”

  “No. Friday night.” Ben paused. “If I don’t, I can’t make it to East Lansing by Monday. There’s supposed to be a snowstorm in Montana.”

  “Oh, Ben!” I cried. “Why did you drive out here? Why couldn’t you have flown?”

  “You’d rather have me die in a plane crash than on the highway?” He suddenly swore under his breath. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  I knew he meant the unintentional reference to our parents’ death. “I’d rather,” I said firmly, “not have you die at all. I’ve got enough to worry about with Milo in the hospital again.” I didn’t mention that Vida’s revelation about her loneliness had shaken me to the core.

  “I’m coming over,” he said, and hung up.

  Naturally, I was glad. I needed Ben. I could be selfless for only so long. My inner resources were drained. Milo. Vida. My stalwarts were reeling.

  Ben arrived five minutes later, looking energized. Maybe he needed to be needed as much as I needed him.

  “I’ll make us a drink,” he said, heading straight into the kitchen.

  “Fine.” I remained on the sofa, staring at the phone, waiting for it to ring.

  “Here,” Ben said, handing me a glass of bourbon and water over ice. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

  I watched him in alarm as he sat beside me. “What? Are you sick?”

  “No.” He chuckled and took a sip of his bourbon cocktail. “I’ve been talking to Den Kelly about Mrs. Della Croce’s phone call. He figured that since it had nothing to do with baring her soul, maybe he and I should speak up. Preferably to the sheriff, but he’s not exactly
available at the moment, and you’re our next best bet.”

  My brain, which had seemed numb, began to function again. I had something to do besides worry. “This pertains to the Nystrom murder?”

  Ben sighed. “Maybe not. But it does have something to do with the Nystroms, which is why Mrs. Della Croce phoned the rectory.” He gazed at me with the same brown eyes I saw every time I looked in the mirror. “You know I trust you.”

  “I should hope so,” I said with a lame little laugh. Then I frowned. “You don’t trust Vida? Or Milo’s deputies?”

  “Except for Jack Mullins, who’s a parishioner, I don’t know the deputies,” Ben said. “Let’s face it, Jack can be a little flaky. He doesn’t always think before he speaks. As for Vida…” Ben grinned. “I do trust her, but you’re the editor and publisher, whether you always remember that or not. Besides, she’s not my sister.”

  “Okay. I think I get it. So what did Anna Maria say?”

  Ben cradled his glass in his lap. “When she thought I was Kelly, she started talking in abstract terms—about a neighbor’s duty and a parent’s responsibility. Frankly, I couldn’t make much sense of it. I realized I was supposed to know at least something about what she was saying—or at least who she was. That’s when I stopped her and said I wasn’t Kelly.”

  I nodded. “You never met her when you did your stint at St. Mildred’s.”

  “No,” Ben agreed. “She’s not a regular. The Della Croces may have gone to one of the Christmas Masses, but there was such a mob that I didn’t notice them. I still wouldn’t know them by sight. Anyway, she spoke to Den later. The gist of what she told him was that her daughter, Gloria, was upset about what she’d been hearing from the Nystrom house.”

  “Quarrels?” I asked.

  Ben shook his head. “Far from it. And not recent, actually. It seems that Gloria got an assignment in her senior English class to write about something that had surprised or amazed her or somehow given her a new perspective on approaching adulthood. She’d been mulling over what she’d heard ever since school started. In fact, after that, she hadn’t heard anything because the weather changed and both families closed their windows. But during the spring and summer the houses are so close to Gloria’s bedroom that she could hear plenty. Not all the time, but maybe once or twice a week.” Ben paused to sip his drink. “Elmer, I assume, belonged to various civic clubs around town?”