Bitter Alpine

by Mary Daheim

  I knew what it meant to Roy and Bebe, but I wasn’t giving in without an argument. “Haven’t you two gone berry picking over the years?”

  Roy shrugged and pocketed the handkerchief. “A few times. But that wasn’t the bucket we used. It seemed wrong to use hers. It was…” He scrunched up his face. “Mama’s bucket was sort of like…sacred, being the last thing she may’ve touched. But now it means she came back to the house. So what happened to her after that?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “She obviously went somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  “If you and Bebe don’t know, then nobody does, Roy,” I said in a sympathetic voice. “She was what? Sixty-two?” I saw him nod. “I understand she was in fairly good shape. But accidents can happen to anyone.”

  “Mama didn’t have accidents,” Roy declared. “You people don’t realize what she was like. You never even knew her.”

  “No, I didn’t,” I replied. “I wish I had. Everyone seems to have liked her. She sounds like someone I’d have enjoyed knowing.”

  “You would have,” Roy asserted, clumsily getting up from the chair. “You missed out. Everybody liked Mama.”

  “I’m sure they did.”

  Roy hustled off through the newsroom while I wondered if there had been somebody who hadn’t liked Mama. Maybe we’d never know. It might be better if we didn’t, especially for Roy and Bebe.

  Chapter 3

  “What’s our lead story?” Mitch asked around two o’clock. “We don’t have much going on right now.”

  “The new deputy and the new medical practitioner,” I replied. “Did you get much from Deputy De Groote?”

  “Enough for about three inches,” Mitch replied. “Maybe I can run down…what’s his name? Janos something, right?”

  “Kadar,” I said, and spelled it out. “I think he’s from Anacortes. You can somehow tactfully write about how relieved Doc Dewey and Doctor Sung are to finally have some backup.”

  “Good idea.” Mitch grinned. “I don’t know how those two ever manage to get a full night’s sleep with over eight thousand potential patients in Skykomish County. Do you think it’s okay to tie the two new hires together?”

  “Sure. But see if you can get photos. If not, we’ve got headshots.”

  “Got it.” Mitch checked his watch. “I should be able to catch both of the newbies before deadline.”

  “Go for it,” I said. “Oh—if you have time, can you go over to the courthouse and take a picture of the new county extension agent?”

  Mitch pulled on one of his long earlobes. “Lanier, right? I remember the name because Bob Lanier was a big NBA star for the Detroit Pistons.”

  “Right, very imposing. Did you go to a lot of their games back then?”

  “Never did,” he replied with a touch of regret. “Tickets were too expensive. Besides, Brenda’s never cared for sports. I’m off.”

  I watched him walk away through the newsroom. Mitch might be occasionally gloomy, but he was the best reporter I’d ever had. He’d honed his skills for years on the Detroit Free Press. I couldn’t pay him as much as he was worth, but being close to their incarcerated son made up for it.

  At five o’clock my tepid editorial and the rest of the paper were in the hands of Kip MacDuff, my back-shop guru. He’d started out as one of our teenage carriers, but I discovered early on that, like most of his generation, he was a tech whiz. I’m not, and even in my younger years as a reporter for The Oregonian I’d practically passed out when they introduced computers to the staff. I was so panic-stricken on my first attempt that I blew out the entire system. Luckily, I didn’t get fired.

  By the time I got home, we’d reverted to our usual January rain. Milo wasn’t far behind me. After a quick kiss, I noticed he looked befuddled. I asked him what was wrong. He told me to wait until he’d changed out of his uniform and had a drink in hand. Like a good wife, I continued making dinner. My husband could take on the cocktail duty.

  “Well?” I said after we were settled in the living room. “What happened?”

  Milo lighted a cigarette before responding. He’d cut down on his smoking, and I was going through one of my phases of trying to quit. “Blackwell came to see me this afternoon.” He paused, knowing I’d be concerned. “The bastard was all buddy-buddy. You’d think we’d been high school pals.”

  I’d taken a big sip of bourbon. “What did he want? An apology from you for busting him at the Labor Day picnic after his ex-wife filed a complaint against him for slugging her?”

  “No.” Milo rubbed his forehead. “That never came up. She dropped the charges, anyway, though I’ll be damned if I know why. As for Jack, now that he’s county manager, he thinks we should get together every so often to make sure we’re in synch when it comes to law enforcement. You know what that really means.”

  I didn’t, but I took a stab at it anyway. “He wants to run your job?”

  “He wants to run me out of town,” Milo replied. “I figure this is his way of having one of his underlings do some kind of audit or study or whatever the hell he’ll call it and come up with bogus reasons to get rid of me. He won’t find anything, but the sonuvabitch could plant stuff.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I said fine, go ahead. In fact,” Milo went on, “I told him he could start tomorrow. Jack waffled, insisting he needed time to put together his criteria. I was tempted to tell him where he could put it, but I didn’t.”

  I laughed. “You as the soul of restraint?”

  “Hell, I don’t give a damn. But whoever’s the bag man for Jack will be watched like a hawk. I bet I know who it’ll be.” Milo looked at me as if I could guess.

  “His number-two guy, Bob Sigurdson, right?”

  “Probably. Unless it’s Ken McKean, the new hire he brought in last fall.” Milo paused. “I only met the guy once, when Alison fled to the McKeans’ house to escape the crazy strangler. They seemed like decent people. Too bad he’s stuck working for a horse’s ass.”

  “Hey, even you admit Jack treats his employees well as long as they toe the company line.”

  Milo shrugged his broad shoulders. “If he didn’t, they might mutiny. Hell, that guy he fired last fall took a shot at him. He’s doing time on a plea bargain.”

  “Mickey O’Neill came from a long line of feisty males,” I said. “Their feud with the Hartquists wiped out not only his father, but his uncles. They ended up dead in the local meat locker.”

  My husband acknowledged the tragedy with a nod. “Speaking of meat, are we going to eat or are you trying to starve me?”

  I took the not-so-subtle query seriously and announced that dinner was probably ready. The rest of the evening was spent watching an NBA game between two teams we didn’t care about. The Sonics had gone on the road, but it didn’t really matter. They weren’t having a very good season. That didn’t bother either of us. We were content to snuggle on the sofa and let our eyeballs glaze over as the game wound down with a parade to the free-throw line. By morning, we didn’t even remember who’d won.

  * * *

  —

  My first task at work the next morning was to flip through the new edition of the Advocate. There had been no calls from Kip MacDuff while he printed out the paper, so there had been no crises and the new edition was on its way to subscribers. Kip would be in later. He stood by until the press job was finished in the wee small hours of the night, always watching for any hint of a press jam. That could halt the process for at least half an hour. Luckily, we hadn’t suffered one of those nightmares for over a year.

  Alison was looking unusually perky. I asked if she’d finagled a way to meet Boyd Lanier outside of office hours.

  “No,” she replied, “but I did see him drive by Pines Villa. He’s got a Mini Cooper. What could be sexier than that?”

&nb
sp; “A Rolls?”

  Alison made a face. “I’ve only seen pictures of Rolls-Royces. They look stodgy to me. Not the kind of wheels you can cuddle in.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said, starting into the newsroom. “I’m a stodgy middle-aged matron.”

  Alison giggled. “That’s not what I heard a year or so ago when you and Dodge were making out on a street corner.”

  I looked back over my shoulder. “I’d fallen down at the medical clinic. Milo had to carry me out to his SUV. He kissed me to make me feel better. And no, I wasn’t a patient at the time. Roy Everson was having a Mama meltdown.”

  Alison was still giggling. I kept going. Mitch was already at his desk, but staring at the coffeemaker as if he could will it to finish perking. He asked me who had the bakery run. I told him it was one of the Walshes, but I couldn’t remember which. Leo showed up just as I finished speaking. Except for his briefcase, he was empty-handed.

  “Hang in there, Laskey,” he said. “My much better half is at the Upper Crust. Her arrival is imminent.”

  Mitch’s shoulders slumped in relief. “Good. I didn’t have breakfast this morning. Brenda wasn’t feeling well. I hope it’s not flu.”

  “It’s that time of year,” Leo responded.

  I went into my cubbyhole. Brenda had a lot of problems, both physical and mental. I was sympathetic, but I’m never at my best in the early morning. Neither is Milo. To preserve our married state, we barely communicate before he’s the first to leave our log cabin.

  The morning ran its usual low-key post-pub course. Vida hadn’t stopped by, so I assumed she had no complaints about the latest edition. When I went out to get a coffee refill around ten o’clock, Liza was just returning from wherever she’d been and was the only staffer in the newsroom.

  “What’s with the old guy who’s using a telescope to look through the rain for space aliens?” she asked with a bemused expression.

  “That’s our resident UFO expert, Averill Fairbanks,” I explained. “He’s harmless. Just humor him if he tells you he’s spotted some Plutonians trying to sneak into the Whistling Marmot Movie Theatre.”

  Liza reacted with her usual gusty laugh. “And I thought Crazy Eights Neffel was an oddball. Last night he was playing an accordion in front of the statue in Old Mill Park. He kept telling your town founder to sing along with him. Carl Clemans—right?” She saw me nod. “Carl didn’t seem inclined to join the entertainment.”

  “He wouldn’t,” I replied. “Mr. Clemans was a dignified man and a Stanford grad. Vida once related that after he finished his logging operation here in 1929, he stayed friends with some of the families who had lived and worked here. One evening while he was at Frank and Mary Dawson’s house in Seattle they gave him a birthday party. When he blew out the candles on his cake, his dentures landed in the frosting. Mrs. Dawson said he retrieved them without a word and put them back in his mouth. The party continued as if nothing had happened.”

  Liza laughed again. “That’s what I call class. For all of them. Which reminds me—I’ve got a dental appointment this afternoon at three. It’s for a cleaning and to meet Bob Starr. He and his wife just got back from two weeks in Jamaica. I’ll do a piece on their trip and hope they got some decent pictures.”

  “They’re good people,” I said. “Carrie Starr often takes trips on her own. Bob doesn’t feel right about abandoning his patients for more than an annual two-week vacation. And yes, when you need it, he has giggle gas.”

  “Good. I’m a real chicken when it comes to dental work.” She headed back into the newsroom with her usual quick step.

  By noon, I’d somehow managed to devour a cinnamon doughnut, a glazed twister, and a chocolate cupcake. That’s one of the drawbacks of not feeling pressed to meet a deadline. It hadn’t helped that Liza had overbought on the goodies. She’d made as many trips to the pastry tray as I had. Still feeling full, I decided to skip lunch and run household errands instead. I made purchases at Parker’s Pharmacy and Harvey’s Hardware, but paused outside of Francine’s Fine Apparel. She was holding her post-holiday clearance sale, which was tempting. But I had bills to pay, mainly for the presents I’d lavished on my son, Adam, and my brother, Ben. Much to my delight, they had joined us for Christmas. As missionary priests, they’d taken a vow of poverty. After spending so much money on their gifts, I was feeling a bit impoverished, too.

  But that was unfair. Adam and Ben had given me a far greater gift. They, along with Father Den, had blessed my marriage to Milo after St. Mildred’s congregation had dispersed on Christmas morning. My husband was appropriately solemn during the brief ceremony because he knew how much it meant to me. Milo was a believer, but not a churchgoer. It didn’t matter to him who performed the rite.

  A little after two o’clock, I was leafing through some older issues of the Advocate, trying to come up with fresh ideas that Mitch and I could tackle for a series of articles. In the past year, we’d dealt with physical and verbal abuse as well as the change in county government. Hearing the rain beat on our tin roof, I considered the weather. Global warming was no joke. The milder winters had put a big crimp in the snow sports business, especially up at Stevens Pass and here in Alpine.

  Ten minutes later, I heard sirens. Sometimes that signaled breaking news, though it could also be a traffic accident or a minor house fire. I glanced out into the newsroom to see if Mitch was at his desk, but he and his raincoat were nowhere in sight. When he got back from his beat, he’d know if there’d been a fender-bender or a driver with a fifty-dollar speeding ticket.

  Another hour passed before I found out that the sirens had nothing to do with traffic. Mitch still wasn’t back in the office, but Milo called me.

  “If you’re wondering where your star reporter is,” he said in a gruff voice, “Laskey’s here at headquarters. He saw the emergency vehicles—including mine—at the Alpine Falls Motel and smelled a headline.” Milo paused, and I could hear him speaking to someone, probably one of his deputies. “Okay,” he resumed, “here’s your news. A woman’s body was found in her motel room. She’d apparently been strangled with her own scarf. ID pending verification. Laskey can give you what few details we’ve got so far. What kind of steak are we having for dinner?”

  Chapter 4

  Mitch showed up fifteen minutes later. Predictably, his gloom had been lifted by bad news, which was always good news for journalists. Being hardened by the nature of our jobs, we wished the murder had taken place before, rather than after, the paper had gone to press.

  “I’ll say this for Dodge,” he said as he slid his lanky frame into one of my visitor chairs. “He’s a straight arrow when it comes to dealing with a homicide.”

  I tried not to take umbrage, aware of the tension that existed between Milo and Mitch. When Troy’s second escape attempt had failed a year ago, he’d ended up in Alpine Memorial Hospital with pneumonia. The state police had intervened, insisting the patient should be moved to the Monroe Correctional Complex’s infirmary. Mitch had demanded that Milo insist that Troy be kept here. But the sheriff was outranked by the state. Mitch had implied that in Detroit there were other ways to make things happen. Assuming he meant bribery or coercion, Milo stuck to his ethics. The two men hadn’t been on very good terms ever since.

  I acknowledged Mitch’s backdoor praise with a nod. “Any ID yet?”

  “Yes. Rachel Jane Douglas, thirty-nine, resident of Oakland, California. She drove here from Oakland and arrived around six last night.” Mitch glanced at his notes. “Car is a 1998 Kia Sorento, fairly well kept up. Doc Dewey will perform an autopsy after he gets through seeing patients around six. Details of what was in her purse and wallet will come later from Dodge. Maybe he’ll tell you when he comes home.”

  The “maybe” wasn’t sarcasm. My husband was notoriously tight-lipped about his investigations. He had loosened up a bit since we were married, but he still didn’t
allow me to go public until he was ready.

  “If Doc confirms it was foul play,” I reminded Mitch, “you know he’ll send the body to Everett so the Snohomish County lab can do a more thorough job. Maybe someday we’ll have enough funding to get one of our own in SkyCo.”

  Mitch looked dour. “Maybe.”

  I didn’t argue. “By the way,” I said as he started to walk away, “how did Will Pace handle a homicide at his motel? He’s not exactly a gracious host.”

  “What you’d expect,” Mitch replied. “The Alpine Falls Motel would never get a second look for a rating from AAA. He took the poor woman’s murder personally. I don’t envy the sheriff’s interrogation of that jerk.”

  I agreed. Maybe Milo would let Dwight Gould handle Will Pace if the ailing deputy was back on the job. Dwight’s social skills were only a few notches up from those of the motel owner. I’d hear about it when my husband got home. Or at least what he’d be willing to tell me “this early in an investigation.” Those words weren’t music to my journalist’s ears.

  Mitch went off to post the news on our website. I considered calling the sheriff, but abstained. He’d no doubt be tied up in the aftermath of the murder. In fact, he might be late coming home. Maybe he’d call to let me know. Maybe he wouldn’t. When Milo was on the job, he sometimes forgot he had a wife. Since we’d been married less than a year, that was almost understandable.

  But to my surprise, my husband arrived only fifteen minutes after I did. Mitch’s prediction was right. The first words out of Milo’s mouth after a rather perfunctory kiss were to be expected.