Alpine Icon

by Mary Daheim

That was just a few minutes before Milo called. The report of incidents at the sheriff's office had definitely picked up. Alpine had an accidental death on its hands, and it hadn't occurred on Highway 2 in a mangling collision of steel and smoke.

  At the edge of town, the Skykomish River tumbles between big boulders before it begins a meandering course over a bed of smaller rocks and underbrush left by the near-flood conditions of late winter. The river appears benign, almost gentle as it flows into Alpine. Nevertheless, Ursula O'Toole Randall apparently had drowned in six inches of water just below Deception Creek. The sheriff thought foul play might be involved. Did I want to come down to his office?

  I was there in less than five minutes.

  Chapter Six

  RICHIE MAGRUDER, WHO is Alpine's deputy mayor, and a retired logging-camp bull cook, had decided to try his luck at trout fishing after dinner. He had driven up Highway 2 by the Deception Falls turnoff. He'd left his van there and intended to fish as far as the eastern edge of town by the golf course and the Icicle Creek development. Richie was about to quit the river when he found the body.

  “I just got back from the scene,” Milo said, slipping into his high-backed padded chair. He was wearing his uniform, and looked tired. “We'll have to send this one over to Everett to determine cause of death.”

  “Where's Richie?” I inquired, not having seen him when I arrived at the sheriffs office.

  Milo lighted a cigarette before answering. “We took his statement at the river. He was pretty shook up. It hasn't been that long since his wife had a corpse on her hands at the beauty parlor.”

  I was the one who had discovered the dead body at Stella's Styling Salon. Stella Magruder had gone through the mill in the aftermath of the investigation. So had the rest of us. Last February had been an ugly time in Alpine.

  But my mind was trying to focus on the more recent death. “Ursula Randall,” I said in wonder. “That's incredible. Is there any possibility that she did drown?”

  Milo was fidgeting with his lighter. “Sure. People can drown in a bathtub. She may have been walking along the river, fallen, hit her head, and landed in the water. It was only her head and shoulders that were actually in the river. But it seems damned odd. For one thing, would you hike along the Sky in satin pajamas?”

  I goggled at the sheriff. “Are you kidding? I don't own any satin pajamas. I don't own pajamas, period.” I ignored Milo's faintly leering grin. “And if I did, I wouldn't go walking in them. What about shoes?”

  “Only one. The other's missing.” Milo was back in business. “What do you call those things that are high but not a heel?”

  The description baffled me until Milo drew a crude picture on a piece of note paper. “That's a wedge,” I said. “Did the rest of it look like this?” I drew an ankle strap and what was supposed to look like a sandal.

  “That's it,” Milo said. “Sort of, anyway. No strap, except around the heel. The shoes were made of shiny stuff, like the pajamas. Definitely not Alpine hiking gear.”

  “Did she have a purse with her?” I inquired.

  Milo shook his head. “If she did, it wasn't at the river.”

  “What about her car?” I recalled that Ursula had mentioned owning a Lexus.

  “Not so far. Jack's looking for it along that stretch of unpaved road.”

  I got out of Milo's visitor's chair and went over to the big map of Alpine on the wall next to the filing cabinets. “Show me where Richie found the body.”

  Extinguishing his cigarette, Milo joined me at the map. A red pushpin had already been inserted in what I assumed was the spot of Richie's gruesome discovery. Ironically it wasn't far from Milo's home in the Icicle Creek development. But it was clear across town from Ursula's handsome residence in The Pines.

  “Okay,” Milo was saying as he traced the route of the river. “Here's the golf course. Along the train tracks are those dumpy houses that originally belonged to the old Cascade & Pacific Lumber Company. Railroad Avenue dead-ends just beyond the golf course, but on the north side of the Sky, River Road keeps going for about a mile.” Milo pointed to the fairly straight line between the river and the tracks. I knew that shortly after River Road crossed Icicle Creek, the pavement ended, and a single dirt lane continued through the woods. At one time it had been a logging road that had continued up the side of Tonga Ridge.

  “There's not much out past the golf course except for what's left of an old water tower, a couple of sheds, and some kind of telephone-company installation,” the sheriff continued. “Except, of course, for the new house Ed and Shirley Bronsky are building/'

  I stared at the map. “That's not on here.”

  “I know. This thing needs updating.” Milo picked up a green pushpin and stuck it in the map. It looked to me as if the Bronsky site was a stone's throw from where Ursula Randall had been found. “See—the body was kind of in between the old dumpy houses and Ed's, new palace, just after the asphalt part of River Road ends. Ordinarily a fisherman has to climb up to the road to get to the next hole. But the Sky's so low right now that there's plenty of room to walk the rocks along the river. Richie was going to give it one last try a little further down, where there's a big clump of brush caught on an old snag. He heard somebody had luck there last week.”

  Ursula hadn't had much luck, I thought, still appalled at the news of her death. “Does Father Den know?” I asked.

  Milo arched his sandy eyebrows at me. “Kelly? No. Why?”

  “Oh …” It was silly, but the thought nagged at me. “What we. used to call the last rites, but are now the Sacrament of the Sick can be administered an hour after death. I think. But I suppose it's too late now.”

  “Hell, yes,” Milo replied, returning to his chair. “Doc Dewey figured she'd been dead at least half an hour, and he made that judgment call around eight-thirty.” Milo and I both glanced at the clock, which showed that it was now a quarter to ten. “The body's on its way to Everett by now.”

  “Its?” I echoed. It always struck me as ironic that human beings lose more than their lives when they die. Ursula Randall might have been an arrogant pain, but until now, no one would have dreamed of referring to her as it.

  Even if he'd been so inclined, Milo didn't get a chance to address the philosophical issue. Dustin Fong poked his head into the office, wearing a perplexed expression on his youthful face.

  “We can't find Mr. Wells, Sheriff,” the deputy announced. “He's not at Ms. Randall's house. Nobody in The Pines knows where he's gone.”

  Milo looked pained as he turned to me. “Warren's living there, isn't he?”

  “I don't know,” I responded, realizing that I hadn't had the sense to check the address on the parcel he'd claimed at the post office. Vida would never have let such an opportunity pass. “There wasn't much sign of a man around the house when I called on Ursula, but I suppose he's living there. Unless they wanted to keep up some kind of appearances until they got married.”

  “Damn,” Milo breathed, then frowned. “Dustin, have you got a local address for Warren Wells?”

  Dustin's almond-shaped eyes widened. “No. Jack Mullins told me to go find Mr. Wells at Ms. Randall's house. I didn't check. Sorry.” The young man hung his head.

  “Check now,” Milo ordered, though his tone was relatively mild.

  Dustin departed. “I never thought to ask Warren where he was staying when I ran into him the other day,” Milo said, more to himself than to me. “I just assumed…. Damn, that's what I always tell my people—don't assume anything.”

  “You could hardly foresee that Warren's fiancee would end up dead,” I pointed out. “It still seems unbelievable.”

  “It isn't.” Milo was looking grim as he poked the buzzer on his intercom. “Dustin—you there? Who's interviewing the neighbors up at The Pines? Dwight? Okay. What?”

  I couldn't catch Dustin's words, but I sensed the deputy was being apologetic. Milo switched off the intercom and sighed. “There's no listing for Warren, which leads me
to believe that he's living at Ursula's.” He got to his feet. “I'm heading back out on patrol. There's not much I can do around here until we get the ME's report from Everett, which probably won't happen until Monday, or even Tuesday, what with the holiday. Jack gave Jake and Buzzy the bad news. Of course,” Milo added as he put on his hat, “it was easy enough to find Buzzy.”

  “How come?” I had joined Milo at the door.

  The sheriff nodded in the direction of the big map. “Those old dumps by the railroad tracks? That's where Buzzy lives. He was less than a quarter of a mile from where his sister drowned. Tough, huh?”

  Vida wasn't home when I tried to call her at ten-thirty. I guessed that she'd been telling Alicia Wells Lowell the truth about going with Buck to a musical in Everett. I connected with Dennis Kelly, however. He was dismayed, but immediately got down to the business of funeral arrangements. Would Ursula be buried out of St. Mildred's or from her former parish in Seattle? I had no idea, of course. Then the pastor asked if Ben would be able to take over for him since he had planned on visiting his mother in Tacoma Monday and Tuesday. I felt like a fool. I'd been so busy feeling sorry for myself that I'd forgotten to let Father Den know that my brother wasn't coming to Alpine. Thus I hadn't told him of the fire at the Tuba City mission. Now I didn't have the gall to ask if he'd put out a plea for a second collection to help Ben rebuild his church.

  Still berating myself, I sat by the phone and wondered what other duties I'd neglected. I couldn't think of anything, but it occurred to me that someone should tell Francine about her ex-husband's fiancee. It was twenty minutes to eleven when I called, and Francine's voice sounded heavy with sleep.

  “Did I wake you?” I said, feeling as if I'd made yet another faux pas. “I guess I figured you'd be waiting up for Alicia to come back from visiting her friend.”

  “No, it's fine,” Francine replied, obviously making an effort to rouse herself. “I just … nodded off on the couch. What's going on?”

  It occurred to me that I should have rehearsed my announcement. Instead I blurted out the words: “Ursula drowned tonight. Has anyone told you?”

  The muffled exclamation at the other end might have been shock—or exultation. When Francine spoke audibly, she asked if she could call me right back. Naturally I said yes.

  The phone rang almost immediately, but it wasn't Francine. Doc Dewey's calm, cautious voice was on the other end. “I just checked in with the sheriffs office,” he began, “and Dustin Fong told me Milo was out but that you'd been brought up to speed on this Ursula Randall business.”

  I allowed that that was true.

  “I know that you have a Tuesday deadline for your paper,” Doc Dewey went on, his careful voice almost lulling me into a somnolent state. “To be frank, I doubt that we'll have an autopsy report by then. With a three-day weekend in a county as big as Snohomish, there are going to be—unfortunately—more than the usual number of deaths. Even if we get the findings in time for your deadline, the pathologist won't be finished. I hope I'm not speaking out of turn here, but this is a case where the pathology report is just as, if not more, important than the autopsy.”

  I spurred my tired brain to focus on Doc's words. “Wait—I don't understand.”

  “Drowning is difficult to determine,” Doc responded. “In fact, it's almost impossible for an autopsy to prove that a person died by drowning. What happens is that the medical examiner tries to figure out if the victim's death was caused by something else—a heart attack, a stroke, an aneurysm. Or,” he added on a sigh of regret, “foul play.”

  Though Milo had already prepared me for the possibility, I still winced. “You mean if the person was held underwater?”

  “That's always conceivable,” Doc allowed. “But it's unusual. What's more likely in such instances is that the victim was already dead before being put in the water. There was no way that I could tell that from my examination at the river. There were some marks on the deceased's face, but they could have been caused by the current and the rocks and the underbrush. Otherwise I saw no sign of injury. But don't quote me.”

  Don't quote me—journalists hate those three little words. Yet in a small town, sources have to be handled with extra-special care. “Okay,” I agreed reluctantly. “What about rigor in terms of establishing time of death?”

  “Well …” Doc hesitated, obviously thinking through his answer. “There were no signs of rigor setting in, so I'd have to guess that Ms. Randall hadn't been dead very long. It's complicated, though—the weather is awfully warm, which slows rigor, but her shoulders and face were in the water, which is pretty cold. Still, I doubt that death had occurred more than two hours before Richie Magruder found her.”

  Two hours sounded like a long time for Ursula to lie undiscovered so close to town. But I was a layman and Doc was an expert. Thanking him for explaining the situation, I'd barely hung up when Francine called back.

  “My God, Emma, I'm still shaking like a leaf!” Francine cried. “Now tell me how this happened. Was Ursula in the hot tub? Did she have heart trouble?”

  As clearly and concisely as possible, I recounted what the sheriff—and to a lesser extent—Doc Dewey had told me. While I didn't mention the possibility of foul play, Francine was still appalled.

  “That's just awful!” she declared. “What on earth was that crazy woman doing in lounging pajamas down by the river?”

  “That's what Milo wants to know,” I said, taking my cordless phone over to the couch, where I, too, lounged, though in less glamorous attire.

  Francine emitted what sounded like a snort. “I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.”

  “Why not?”

  There was a pause at the other end. “Oh … I guess it's just that Ursula seems like the kind of person who'd die in some strange sort of spectacular manner. I mean, doesn't she strike you as someone who likes attention?”

  The comment struck me as odd. Drowning in the Skykomish River was a peculiar way of achieving the limelight. I said as much to Francine.

  “I don't mean it that way,” Francine retorted impatiently. “Didn't somebody say once that the way we die is often a reflection of the way we've lived? Well, there's Ursula for you—she spends her life meddling in church affairs, throwing money around like Lady Bountiful, and owning big houses and fancy cars and expensive clothes that even I couldn't afford at wholesale prices. So when she falls into the Sky and drowns, she does it in a pair of Valentino pajamas and it makes page one in The Advocate”

  “Anybody drowning in the Sky around here would make page one,” I pointed out, feeling defensive and somehow disturbed.

  “Ursula will probably get on page one of The Seattle Times and the Post-Intelligencer” Francine grumbled, then caught herself. “Now I sound like sour grapes again. But it's not that. Not this time.”

  “Of course not,” I said, trying to soothe Francine.

  It was only after we said goodbye that I wondered why her remarks weren't sour grapes.

  I tried to reach Vida one last time before going to bed around midnight. She answered on the first ring. Before I could deliver my bombshell about Ursula's death, my House & Home editor defused me.

  “Really, Emma, it's extraordinary. Ursula Randall was not what I'd call an outdoorsy type. Now it turns out that her car was in the garage at The Pines. How did she get to that part of the river? Why was she dressed like that? Was someone with her?”

  “Wait a minute,” I insisted, feeling not only tired, but a little cranky. “I thought you and Buck went to Everett. How do you know all this?”

  It was, of course, a silly question. “My nephew Billy told me. Buck and I stopped for dessert at the ski-lodge coffee shop. His brother, Henry, sometimes picks up the tab. Very generous of Henry, but of course he is the manager. Buck had chocolate decadence and I ordered the key lime pie. Frankly, mine wasn't quite up to snuff— they've hired a new chef, I don't recall his name, but it's Helmig or Hjellming or something like—”

  “Vida!” I
interrupted. “Skip the cuisine commentary. How did you run into Bill Blatt at the ski lodge?”

  “I didn't,” Vida snapped. “Darlene and Harvey Adcock were there. They'd been to a movie at the Whistling Marmot. They heard all about Ursula drowning when they came out of the theatre. They'd run into Jack Mullins. Naturally I had Buck take me down to the sheriffs office, where I talked to Billy. Dwight Gould is interviewing Warren Wells at this very moment. I got home only a minute or two before you called.”

  “They found Warren? Where was he?”

  “At The Pines, of course. Where else would he be?” Now Vida sounded a trifle cross.

  “He wasn't there earlier this evening.” I paused just long enough to let Vida chew over the information. “What else did Billy have to say?”

  “Ursula's car was parked in her double garage. Her purse was lying on the bar with about two hundred dollars in cash. Her car keys were in it, of course.” Vida paused. “Let me think…. Well, I assume you knew that she was still wearing her very expensive diamond engagement ring when Richie found her?”

  I didn't know, because Milo, curse him, had neglected to tell me. Since Vida seemed to have wound up her report, I told her about Doc Dewey's call.

  “Doc frets too much,” she declared. “His father would have been much more forthcoming.” Vida referred to Doc Dewey, Senior, who had passed away some five years earlier. When both father and son had been in practice, they had been known as Young Doc and Old Doc.

  “Waiting for those reports out of Everett may screw us up in terms of our deadline,” I noted. “What I hate most is that they'll probably be finished Wednesday morning, and then it'll be a whole week before we can print what's very old news.”

  “We are not without resources,” Vida said in a veiled tone.

  “Huh?” Midnight was too late for subtleties.

  Apparently Vida sensed as much. “We'll discuss it in the morning. Why don't you drop by around ten and I'll fix you a nice brunch?”

  “Tea will be fine,” I said hastily. Vida's cooking was to be avoided at all costs. “I'll see you then.”