by Mary Daheim
“I know, I know,” she said impatiently. “I actually mentioned that to him already, but then we agreed that it…Never mind. I’d better shut up. He’s coming inside, and I don’t want him to think I blew it.”
I hung up and sat on the sofa trying to think what—or maybe who—Dick Bourgette had seen at the Tall Timber. It could have been anyone, including our pastor, Dennis Kelly; Mayor Fuzzy Baugh; or even Averill Fairbanks, our resident UFO freak, who thought he’d seen a space pod land on top of the motel’s neon sign.
I phoned Vida again and told her about the call from Mary Jane Bourgette. “She refused to tell me what or who Dick saw at the motel.”
“Nonsense!” Vida exclaimed. “How could she be so reticent when it comes to a murder investigation?”
“She called whatever he saw ‘stupid,’” I said, “implying that she didn’t see any way that it was connected to the homicide. I figure the Bourgettes are protecting someone. Mary Jane didn’t want to start a rumor that would lead to gossip racing all over town.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes!” Vida was utterly exasperated. “Did she believe you’d put whatever it was in the paper? How ridiculous!”
“Probably,” I agreed, “but it does make me want to eliminate possibilities. Are you certain either you or Leo didn’t notice anything when you went to the motel?”
“Of course,” Vida declared. “We’d have said so. When Dylan didn’t respond to our knock, we left. Both of us had better fish to fry that afternoon.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to call Snorty now.”
“Very well.” Vida sounded prickly. “By the way, did I tell you I had three-way calling on my phone?”
“If you did, I forgot. Are you suggesting that you call me back and then dial Snorty’s number so you can listen in?”
“What harm would it do?”
“None, I guess.” As long as you keep your mouth shut.
“Good. I’ll hang up now.”
“Please do.”
My phone rang fifteen seconds later. “I have Snorty’s number,” Vida said. “I’m dialing it now. Be ready.”
To our mutual annoyance, we got Snorty’s recording. “Snorty Wenzel here, glad you called, but I’m unavailable at the moment.” A faint snort followed. “Our real estate firm has got just the right home for you in the right place at the right price.” Another faint snort. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, so please leave your name and number.” Snort, snort. “If you’re calling to order Play Hard to Get, my special fast-acting vitamin supplement for men, give me your name and address so I can mail you a free trial supply. Discretion is my middle name. Wait for the beep.” Snort, beep, click.
“Oh, good grief!” Vida shrieked after quickly disconnecting. “He’s also a quack?”
“I suppose,” I mused, “there’s a story in that somewhere, but I don’t think I want to go near it.”
“I should hope not!” She paused. “You didn’t leave your name and number.”
“That’s because I don’t want him to call me at home,” I replied. “I’ll try again from work tomorrow.”
After I’d hung up, I contemplated my next move. Tomorrow was Tuesday, our deadline. Although I didn’t want to do it, I felt compelled to interview whichever Cavanaughs I could run down before they left town. Unless Milo had some solid evidence, I assumed he couldn’t order any of them to stay in Alpine. I was certain that the entire clan would probably head back to California as soon as possible. In fact, I was surprised they hadn’t already gone.
Or had they? Feeling panicky, I called the ski lodge. The young man named Carlos who was working his way through the community college answered.
“The Plattes and the Cavanaughs are still here,” he informed me, “but Mr. Platte told Mr. Bardeen they’d be checking out early Thursday morning.”
“Are they at the lodge right now?” I asked.
“They’re finishing dinner in the Viking Lounge,” Carlos replied. “Do you want to leave them a message?”
“Um…no. Thanks, Carlos. I think I’ll drop by to pay them a visit.”
I hadn’t yet changed out of my work clothes. It was going on nine, not the usual hour for me to still be out and about in Alpine on a work night. But I didn’t want to change my mind about meeting Tom’s children. I applied fresh lipstick, ran a brush through my hair, heard Stella’s voice saying, “That didn’t help much, Emma,” and grabbed my purse.
Eight minutes later, I was entering the ski lodge lobby. Carlos recognized me from behind the front desk and nodded toward the restaurant area.
Only a handful of diners were still seated amidst the ersatz greenery and stone statues of Norse gods and goddesses. I spotted the Cavanaugh group immediately, only because they were the youngest guests in the lounge. I stopped halfway to their table, virtually lurking behind an artificial tree trunk. Kelsey’s appearance had improved since I last saw her, though she still looked wan.
One of the men had slicked-down black hair; the other man’s brown hair was in a ponytail. Recalling Milo’s description, I figured he must be Graham. Despite his coloring, he, like Kelsey, seemed to take after his mother rather than his father. I assumed the woman with the mass of black curls was Graham’s wife, Sophia. Taking a deep breath, I approached their table. Except for the dark-haired man, whose back was turned, the others all stared at me. Nobody spoke.
“I’m Emma Lord,” I said, gazing at Kelsey. “Remember me?”
Kelsey pressed her lips together. Finally, she nodded. “Yes. Hello.”
The ponytailed man half-rose from his chair and put out a hand. “I’m Graham Cavanaugh. Would you like me to pull up a chair for you?”
The gesture was unexpected. “That would be nice,” I said, shaking his hand. “Thanks.”
The other man also offered his hand. “I’m Dylan Platte.” He chuckled as he clasped my hand in a very firm grip. “Dylan Platte, alive and well. My pleasure.” He waved a hand at the young woman with the raven curls. “My sister-in-law, Sophia Cavanaugh.”
Sophia nodded and smiled. She was more striking than beautiful, with strong features and sea green eyes that seemed to bore into me. “I didn’t get to Alpine until this afternoon,” she said in a husky voice. “I’m a writer who had a deadline. You know how that is.”
“Oh, yes,” I agreed. “Tomorrow is ours for the Advocate.”
Graham had brought the extra chair. I sat down between him and Sophia. “Amazing,” he said, settling back into his own seat. “We’d just decided to set up a meeting with you for tomorrow evening. You read our minds.”
“I did?” I said in surprise.
Dylan Platte put aside the folder that apparently contained the dinner bill. “We were about to leave, but may I suggest a round of after-dinner drinks? I assume you’ve already eaten, Ms. Lord.”
“Yes.” I felt stupid. Dylan’s voice had a grating quality, not at all like that of the person who had claimed to be him during our phone call. My gaze kept flitting from Graham to Kelsey and back again. I simply couldn’t see much of Tom in either of his children, except perhaps for their blue eyes. Graham was about six feet, almost as tall as his father, but his build was slighter. Maybe, I thought, I didn’t want them to resemble Tom. Maybe I had a problem with Tom having had children by someone else. It was only Adam who had inherited his father’s chiseled profile and strong build. My sole contribution was the color of my son’s brown eyes.
“Then,” Dylan said after signaling for their server, “you want to talk business.”
“Business?” I echoed.
“The purchase of your newspaper,” he responded, looking as if he thought perhaps I wasn’t the local publisher but the village idiot.
The server, one of the lodge’s several blond and often buxom girls of Scandinavian extraction, arrived to take our orders. I asked for a Drambuie straight up. Suddenly I felt as if I needed a stiff drink.
Graham spoke up after the waitress left. “It’s understandable,”
he said in a kindly voice, “that you’d think the man who called you last week was part of a hoax. The sheriff explained to me that this poor devil who was killed had contacted you about buying the Advocate. We’ve tossed that bombshell around the past day or so and can’t figure out who he is or why he made the offer. All we can suggest is that he must’ve been someone who’d gotten wind of our proposal and decided to act on his own. I can’t think why.”
Dylan smirked. “Hey, Graham, you of all people know why. Business is a cutthroat world, now more than ever.”
Graham was unabashed. “You can’t blame me for thinking that people who still love newspapers have to have higher standards. My dad always taught me that’s the way it should be.”
My dad. I could barely keep from cringing.
“Such an absurd stunt,” Sophia declared. “It’s a wonder it didn’t get him killed.”
I was confused. My brain didn’t seem to be functioning. Maybe I didn’t need a drink as much as to stick my head under an ice-cold water tap. All the memories, good, bad, and horrendous, weighed me down. I felt so close to Tom and yet even further away, as if these four people had erected some kind of wall between us. “Excuse me,” I said, sounding like Emma the Meek and Humble. “He was killed. What do you mean?”
Dylan waved a slender hand. “Of course. But it had to be some sort of shakedown or a robbery, a hooker, a vagrant. Who in this town would want him dead?” He paused for a scant second. “Unless,” he said with a crooked smile, “it would be you, Ms. Lord.”
ELEVEN
I TRIED TO PRETEND THAT DYLAN PLATTE’S REMARK WAS A joke, but my laugh was hollow. “I haven’t gotten to the point where I have to create my own headlines,” I said.
Graham’s smile was deceiving. His blue eyes were hard as glacier ice. “That’s not entirely true, is it? You had quite a big story when my father was shot in front of your eyes.”
I gasped. “That’s a terrible thing to say! It ruined my life!”
Graham slowly shook his head. “Did you ever think what it did to us?”
Before I could respond, our waitress delivered the round of drinks. Only Kelsey had abstained from an alcoholic beverage. She’d ordered a Diet Coke and stared warily at her soda, as if she suspected I’d had it spiked with arsenic.
I started to lift the small flutelike glass of Drambuie but realized that my hands were shaking. “I never knew you. How could I understand…what you felt?” My voice cracked.
Sophia swirled her brandy snifter with a languid hand. “I gather my father-in-law wasn’t anxious for his children to meet you. Unfortunately, I didn’t know Mr. Cavanaugh. He died before I met Graham.”
The hostility that surrounded me stiffened my backbone. I was tempted to retaliate with my own hurtful words, but escalating the situation seemed foolish. I’d only reinforce the conflict of interest that I’d felt from the start.
“Look,” I said, folding my hands in an effort to steady them, “I don’t want to go to war over any of this. Let’s get one thing straight once and for all. I am not selling the Advocate to you or to anyone else.”
Graham leaned back in his chair. “Well. I guess that concludes our meeting.”
I was finally able to pick up my glass without spilling any of the liquor. “So I assume you won’t be moving here after all,” I said, looking at both Dylan and Kelsey. She turned away from me and gazed questioningly at her husband.
“Oh, I think we probably will,” Dylan said, taking Kelsey’s hand in his. “We’re going to go through the house tomorrow. Apparently, the present owners want to do some fixing up before they show it to us.”
I could imagine the disarray at Casa de Bronska. A shovel and a match would probably have been the best way to clean up Ed and Shirley’s vulgar mansion. What I couldn’t imagine was Kelsey and Dylan’s move to Alpine.
“Why?” I asked, not bothering to disguise my incredulity.
“Change,” Dylan replied easily. “The Bay Area is obsolete, overcrowded and overpriced. We want some room to roam. A house like the Bronskys’ costs a fortune in San Francisco. The Bronskys are asking 1.1 mil, but we figure they’ll take 850 and kiss our feet in gratitude. I’m told the place needs work.”
Work. Not a word Ed had ever understood. “Good luck,” I said, focusing on my drink instead of the company I was keeping. The silence that followed seemed uncomfortable to me—but I sensed that no one else felt that way. They were enjoying themselves at my expense. Except, perhaps, for Kelsey, who struck me as being withdrawn from the others even though her husband still held her hand. “I’m going now,” I announced and took a last, fiery sip of Drambuie. “Thanks for the drink.”
“Of course,” Graham said softly.
I got up with my usual lack of grace, though at least I didn’t drop anything, trip, or walk into a wall. I heard a woman’s throaty laugh—Sophia’s, I was sure—as I moved out of the dining area. As soon as I got into the Honda, I regretted my hasty retreat. There were dozens of questions I wanted to ask that foursome, and not just about the allegedly unknown murder victim. Did Kelsey and Dylan have children? What about the child she’d been expecting before she got married? Had she and Graham sold Tom’s condo on Nob Hill in San Francisco or the house in Pacific Heights? What were their memories of their father? Or their mother? Had Tom talked to them about the marriage we were planning before he was killed? Did they know or care about their half brother, Adam?
I sat in the parking lot for several minutes, watching the sky darken as night descended over the mountains. Just before I was about to turn the key in the ignition, I was startled by a tap on the window of the passenger door. Anxiously, I looked to see who was trying to get my attention.
“Open up, Emma,” Leo called, looking a bit sheepish.
I unlocked the door. My ad manager scooted inside. “I was afraid you’d already left,” he said.
“You were at the lodge?” I asked, still feeling unnerved.
He nodded. “I was spying from the bar. I wanted to see what those Cavanaugh kids looked like now that they’re grown up. You came in just before I was going to leave. They didn’t recognize me, of course. But then I wasn’t trying to be seen.”
“Carlos should have told me you were there when I talked to him at the front desk,” I said.
“Carlos is fairly new on the job. He doesn’t recognize me.” Leo rolled down the window and took out his cigarettes. “Do you mind?”
“No,” I said, opening my own window halfway. “What did you think?”
Leo lighted his cigarette before he answered. “I don’t know. Graham’s changed the most, gone from gawky boy to manly man. Kelsey seems to have lost her bounce.”
“She bounced?”
“She was what I’d call perky,” he said. “Graham was more reticent, sometimes a little surly. But he was at that awkward age, between twelve and twenty. Frankly, I’m not even sure how old those kids were when I last saw them. A permanent alcoholic haze will do that to a fellow.” Leo shifted in his seat to look at me more closely. “Are you okay? I had the feeling your get-together wasn’t a bundle of fun.”
I laughed weakly. “True. I don’t know what I expected, but they put me on the defensive from the start.”
“Not surprising. It seems that Dylan Platte is the little group’s driving force.”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “He seems to be, but Graham’s no slouch, and his wife, Sophia, strikes me as fairly tough. Kelsey’s the only one who doesn’t quite fit in. I have to admit, I wonder if she’s inherited some bad genes from Sandra.”
“It’s possible.” Leo tapped ash into the small tray under the dashboard. “Did they badger you about selling the paper?”
“They tried.” I shrugged. “I told them to forget it.”
“They won’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have a feeling they’re in this for the long haul,” Leo said. “The waitress who was serving them—Britney, Brandy, Brianna, whatever—told
me she’d overheard them talking about moving to Alpine. I assume that means Ed still has a buyer.”
I sighed. “Dylan insists they’re going ahead with the deal.” I turned to look Leo in the eye. “Do they think they can wear me down with a war of attrition?”
“That’s my guess,” he replied. “I suppose Dylan and Kelsey figure that if they’re living here and they keep upping the ante, eventually you’ll give in. You’re not at retirement age, of course, but down the road, in a couple of years, you might start thinking about it.”
I made a face. “Not likely. What would I do with myself? The only close relatives I have are Adam and Ben. Neither of them is around here and probably never will be. I won’t ever have grandchildren. I’m not a joiner. I have no intentions of writing the Great American Novel. My whole life is the Advocate.” I clapped my hand to my forehead. “Oh, God! That makes me sound pathetic!”
Leo grinned. “That’s probably what they’re counting on. Then they can rescue you and be heroes. Hey,” he said, tugging on the sleeve of my cardigan, “don’t ever let the bastards see you sweat.”
I smiled at Leo. “I’m not sweating. But that whole encounter temporarily unhinged me. I thought I was doing okay, putting Tom into some quiet corner of my mind after all this time. Then his kids come along and…” I made a helpless gesture.
“Neither of them is much like Tom,” Leo remarked. “If you didn’t know who they were, you’d never guess they were related. Kelsey looks kind of like her mother, but Graham doesn’t take after either of his parents.”
“Adam doesn’t look like me,” I pointed out.
“No, he doesn’t. He’s mostly Tom.” Leo took another puff off his cigarette and shook his head. “My kids look like both their mother and me, though the gene pool actually improved. You never can tell what goes into a kid’s makeup. Throwbacks, sometimes.” He opened the passenger door. “I’d better let you get home. Tomorrow’s deadline day. You’ll need all your strength.”