by Mary Daheim
“Principal Freeman’s going to rant about all the high school kids sneaking out to smoke pot over at the cemetery? I wonder if he knows half of what those kids are really up to.”
My nose for news twitched. “Do you?”
Milo yawned. “We try to keep track of what they’re doing, just in case it might be illegal. Freeman’s a damned clam when it comes to what’s goes on in his little kingdom. You remember that from when he didn’t cooperate about the girls who were being lured into prostitution down somewhere near Chehalis.”
I nodded. “And fired Helena Craig for letting me know the truth. Then it turned out that Roger was involved in the procurement of those girls and ended up in prison. Vida still hasn’t recovered from her grandson’s disgrace.”
“Not to mention dealing and using drugs,” Milo said. “Vida claimed he’d fallen under evil influences. Hell, I’d been waiting to bust that prick since he was fourteen. I remember when he and the O’Toole kid went up Tonga Ridge to check out the bikers who were growing pot there. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s when he started getting high.”
“You’ve got a scar on your forehead to prove it,” I reminded him, recalling how the bikers had resisted arrest and hit Milo with a beer bottle before being subdued. “Ted and Amy rarely disciplined Roger, and Vida doted on him.”
Milo lighted a cigarette, started to offer the pack, and then thought better of it. I’d quit on New Year’s Day. Again. Maybe this time it might actually take.
“Let’s check out some NFL action,” my better half said. “There should be a game on tonight.” He, of course, was in charge of the remote. Never having been married before, I hadn’t realized that was one of the perks bestowed on a husband upon taking a wife. Or so Betsy O’Toole and Roseanna Bayard had informed me. Luckily, I liked sports.
But before Milo could aim the clicker, his cell rang. “This better not be one of my deputies….Dodge here,” he said. He listened for a moment, then put a hand to his forehead. “Hey, Will, can’t whatever this is wait until morning?” Apparently, it couldn’t. “No, the room has been processed and I won’t get the lab results back…Yeah, I know tomorrow’s Friday and it’s ski season….Because the lab’s in Everett, that’s why. If you’ve got a problem, call them.” Milo raised his thick eyebrows and stared at the cell. “The SOB hung up on me.”
“I gather Will Pace is losing money,” I said. “What does he charge for a night in his dump?”
“Too much.” He resumed pointing the clicker. “I don’t know, but I’d guess maybe a hundred or so for a night. He’d have to pay me to stay there.”
Milo turned on an NBA game between the Lakers and the Cavaliers before getting up to join me on the sofa. “Sonics aren’t playing tonight, so we don’t have to focus on who wins. Want to snuggle?”
“Sure.” I leaned my head against his shoulder. I got the impression that the game was very tight all the way down to the wire. But I couldn’t remember who won. Neither could Milo.
Janet Driggers was the first call on Friday morning. “This is your reminder that bridge club will be on Thursday night instead of Tuesday next week. Three of our members are going to attend a bridal shower Tuesday in Startup. You and I aren’t invited because we don’t know her.”
“If we don’t know her, how did the other three get suckered?”
“It’s a Gustavson,” Janet replied. “One of Vida’s five hundred relatives. Ask her who it is and why Edna Mae Dalrymple, Linda Grant, and Lila Blatt got themselves invited. Wait—Lila’s somehow related to Vida, right? Come to think of it, they may all belong to Edna Mae’s book club. They asked me to join years ago, but I told them I only read porn. And look at the pictures, of course. You’d be amazed by some of those shots. Whoever poses for them must be contortionists.”
I was accustomed to Janet’s bawdy mouth. She was the wife of funeral director Al Driggers, and I figured that was her way of facing death on a regular basis. “Thursday’s better for me anyway,” I said. “I wish they’d keep it that way. Tuesday is our deadline. Maybe I’ll mention it when I come to bridge. Who’s hosting?”
I heard Janet sigh. “Edna Mae. Being the head librarian, she likes to keep close to home in the evenings. Do you think she’s ever gone on a date with a man?”
“How would I know?” I responded. “She was well entrenched in her job when I moved here. The funny thing is, she never seems to age. She’s sort of perennially forty-three.”
“How true. By the way, is there any chance the motel murder victim could have a funeral here? Al and I need the money. Sky Travel has a package deal later this month for a sexual bondage tour to Tonga. I gather they have some terrific tribal rites. Since I work here part-time, we’d get a discount. Even now I’m staring at a poster of an incredible Tongan hunk. But the trip is still kind of pricey. Nobody’s died around here since the end of the year.”
“Sorry, Janet,” I replied, “but once the autopsy is a done deal, Ms. Douglas goes back to Oakland.”
“Darn.” She sighed again. “Oakland. Not on my world tour wish list. San Francisco is another matter. That city was created for sin. Al and I haven’t…My other line’s ringing. Maybe somebody else died. I can but hope.” Janet rang off.
Alison showed up with the mail a few minutes later. “Boyd’s still at the ski lodge,” she announced in solemn tones befitting the death of a prominent Alpiner. It crossed my mind that would suit Janet just fine. “Lori and I went to the ski lodge coffee shop for dinner last night.”
“He’ll probably move into Pines Villa over the weekend,” I said. “You and Lori could offer to help him.”
Alison leaned on the back of one of my visitor chairs. “That sounds pushy. His apartment is on the second floor. He’s already put his name in the slot for residents and he apparently has a roommate, but Lori and I didn’t recognize the guy’s name. Jeffrey Nichols. He’s not a local, right?”
I admitted the name wasn’t familiar. “That doesn’t mean he isn’t. Even after all these years, I don’t know everyone in Alpine. If Nichols is moving here, I wonder if he has a job. We’ll have to find out.”
Alison brightened. “You mean I should ask about that when I write the story on Boyd?”
I grimaced. “Mitch is going to interview Boyd,” I said. “I should’ve told you sooner. You know how touchy he is about turf, and the county courthouse is part of his beat. You’re going to live in the same building, Alison. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to…get acquainted.”
Her crestfallen expression lessened a bit. “I guess. But I don’t want to be obvious. Lori might be interested in the other guy. Her long-distance romance with Cole Petersen hasn’t turned out very well. He travels too much in his Microsoft job. Last month he was in Tanzania. Or was it Tasmania? I forget.”
“Cole probably has forgotten, too,” I said as my phone rang.
“Ohmigod! I should be answering the phones out front!” She whirled away through the newsroom.
I took the call, which was from a female voice I didn’t recognize at once. “Is it true that there’s a madman loose in town? All my poor kitties are afraid to go outside. What should I do?”
I leaned back in my chair. Grace Grundle, retired schoolteacher obsessed with her feline menagerie, was always worried about something. “No such person has been reported in Alpine,” I assured her. “Yes, a young woman was killed at the Alpine Falls Motel, but Sheriff Dodge assured us it’s an isolated incident.” Milo hadn’t done any such thing, but it sounded good. “You and your cats are in no danger.”
“How can you—and Sheriff Dodge—know that?” Grace asked in a querulous tone. “Milo sometimes assured me he’d studied his homework when in fact he’d merely skimmed through it. If someone has been brutally murdered and nobody knows who did it, what should the rest of us do? I can lock all my doors, but homicidal maniacs break windows. They can eve
n set fire to a person’s house. What’s worse, it may snow.”
I wasn’t sure why the weather would have any effect on Grace’s homicidal maniac, but I wanted to get her off the line. “I’ll ask Milo to send a deputy by to check on you, okay?”
“How soon will he be here? If he sends Jack Mullins, he’ll dawdle. I never had a student who could waste time the way Jackie could.”
And I never had a caller who could waste my time the way Grace could. But she wasn’t finished, even if I was now listening with half an ear. After more details about Jackie’s miscues, something she said about our mailman, Marlowe Whipp, snapped me back to attention. “…late as usual, after six o’clock, but that woman stopped him to ask how to get to Mr. Blackwell’s house. He gave her directions, of course, but you know how Marlowe has problems with addresses….”
“I’m sorry,” I interrupted, “I got distracted for a moment. Who asked for the directions?”
“The woman who managed to get herself killed, of course,” Grace asserted impatiently. “Who else but a stranger would need directions? Though I’m afraid Mr. Blackwell spends more time at Patti Marsh’s home than at his own. Frankly, for such a successful man, his house is rather shabby. I have heard—though I don’t like repeating gossip—that Mrs. Marsh’s place isn’t much better. Apparently, she’s dilatory about housecleaning. Dino—my garbage collector—told me that there are always several liquor bottles to be picked up every week. Quite shocking, really!”
But no doubt true. Patti liked her liquor. And she loved Jack, despite his often abusive way of dealing with his longtime girlfriend. Luckily for me, Leo entered my office. I told Grace that my ad manager needed my help. After she told me how glad she was that Mr. Walsh had stopped drinking so much and that Milo had hardly ever raised his hand in class, she finally rang off.
I rubbed my ear as Leo shot me a curious look. “Grace Grundle,” I said.
Leo merely nodded. He’d dealt with Grace a few times when one of her cats had strayed for more than a few hours and she insisted on taking out an ad complete with a photo of wandering Tiddlywinks or Sweetie Pie Eyes in the classified section. Luckily for Leo—and for Grace’s checkbook—the errant felines had always come home the same day.
It was going on eleven when I finally had a free moment to call Milo and tell him about Ms. Douglas’s query for Marlowe Whipp about where she could find Jack Blackwell.
“Jesus,” he said softly as I pictured him running a hand through his hair. “How could this woman from Oakland have anything to do with Blackwell?” He paused, but spoke again before I could say anything. “Jack came here from California. The vic’s not quite forty. Blackwell arrived in Alpine some thirty years ago, when I was still a deputy. That would make the vic a little kid back then. Unless…” He paused, apparently in thought.
I couldn’t keep quiet. “Unless she’s Blackwell’s kid?”
Milo didn’t respond at once. “Well…maybe. The nurse at RestHaven, Jennifer Hood, was his first wife. They were married somewhere in northern California, right?”
“Yes, in Dunsmuir,” I said. “It’s a logging town—or was back then. But Jennifer never mentioned anything about having a child by him. She was only seventeen when they got married and she can’t be more than late forties now.”
My husband sighed. “I suppose Black Jack didn’t molest little girls. I’ll have to give him a pass on that one. Hell, if she’s his kid, he might never have known she existed. It could’ve been a one-night stand. He would’ve been just out of his teens back then.”
“But will you talk to him about Rachel Douglas saying she was going to see him?”
“I suppose I’ll have to,” Milo replied grudgingly. “Face it, Marlowe Whipp and Grace Grundle aren’t exactly the most reliable sources.”
I couldn’t argue that point.
* * *
—
By noon the office was deserted except for Kip in the back shop. His wife always made his lunch for him. We tried not to encourage visitors during the lunch break. Our hours were posted on the glass in the front door as eight to noon and one to five. Needing the quiet time to think about a special edition for the month of January, I called the Venison Inn to order takeout. Fifteen minutes later I was back at my desk with a medium-rare hamburger dip, fries, a small salad, and a Pepsi. The VI, as it was locally known, was only two doors down, with the dry cleaners in between us.
Unfortunately, my mind was blank. Winter sports, keeping homes snug and cars safe, dealing with ice and snow on the roads, off-season getaways—we’d done it all. I was still staring at my Blue Sky Dairy calendar when Vida came through my door.
“So busy today!” she exclaimed, settling her imposing personage into a visitor chair. “All this to-do over our new pastor’s innovations. Really, he’s been here for over a year and continues to make changes. He’s young, of course, so he has what he terms ‘fresh insights.’ As you might imagine, some of the older parishioners won’t adjust well. Presbyterians generally prefer familiar traditions.”
“He probably means well,” I said, trying to avoid staring at the fur pillbox Vida was wearing at such a rakish angle that one of her eyebrows was partially obscured. “I’m sure he hopes to attract younger members.”
“Perhaps.” But Vida sounded skeptical. “He did refer to small at-home gatherings. I find those intimate get-togethers suspect, as if he’d be prying into his parishioners’ private lives. I’d hate to think his reason for having those gatherings is of a prurient nature. That would be un-Christian.”
It crossed my mind that Vida’s interest in others might not be prurient, but she was certainly a world-class snooper. She spoke again before I could respond. “The woman who was killed at that dreadful motel,” she began with a frown. “Who can she be? And why would she stay at such a wretched place?”
I hated keeping information from Vida, but I wouldn’t pass on what Grace had told me. It was hearsay, after all. Instead, I related the official word from Oakland.
“Oakland,” Vida echoed, as if the city were on a yet undiscovered planet. “I believe it’s near Frisco, isn’t it?”
It always galls me when San Francisco is called by its nickname. It wasn’t just because Tom Cavanaugh had made his home there. When I was growing up, my family’s vacation travels often led us as far south as the Oregon-California border. Once, my father grudgingly agreed to go all the way to “The City”—as it was known to its residents—but after one look at the traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge, Dad turned our car around and headed north to Seattle. In my young adult years, San Francisco was a magical place, with steep hills, cable cars, and even the omnipresent fog. I’d never suggested that Milo take me there, though. It was in a hotel on Nob Hill that Tricia had told him she was leaving him for another man.
Vida was still rattling on, but I’d missed part of what she had to say. I tuned in when I heard “…severe bruises and a possible concussion. Honestly!” She threw up her hands.
I had to save face. “How did it happen?” I asked, hoping I looked as if I knew what she was talking about.
“How do you think?” she demanded, leaning forward and resting a hand on one of the few uncluttered places on my desk. “I suppose Patti and Jack had been drinking. They usually are in the evening. Why she puts up with him, I’ll never know.”
“He’s been her meal ticket since she started working for him years ago,” I said. “They were a couple when I moved here. Say, someone mentioned that Patti’s daughter, Dani Marsh, was visiting over the holidays. I forgot to follow up on that with so much else going on. Is it true?”
Vida shook her head, causing the pillbox to slip a bit more. “No,” she replied, adjusting the hat. “Dani had to stay in Los Angeles for something to do with that TV series she’s in. Her father is the…producer. I believe that’s what they call people who are in charge of such things. I’
ve never watched it on television. Too much sex and violence, or so I’ve heard from how Patti described it. Of course, she thought it was wonderful. ‘So lifelike,’ she insisted. I suppose it was—for Patti.”
“Too true,” I agreed. But Vida never watched much of anything on TV. She was always too busy ferreting out the latest local gossip, which she, of course, considered news. If it didn’t happen in Skykomish County, it didn’t happen. “Her ex used to be a director,” I went on. “That was his title when he made the movie starring Dani up here many years ago.”
“I never saw it.” Vida dismissed the film with a shrug of her broad shoulders. The pillbox again skidded a bit. “As I recall, only certain outdoor scenes were filmed here in Alpine.”
That was probably true. By the time Blood Along the River had been released I’d lost interest in Patti’s ex-husband and her movie actress daughter. The film crew had only been in town for a couple of weeks, but they’d painted all of the buildings on Front Street, including the Advocate. We’d put up with the canary yellow exterior until last September, when someone had thrown hand grenades into the newsroom. Kip and I had been in the back shop putting out the paper. We were unharmed and the damage was surprisingly minimal, but the exterior required a new, brown paint job. I’d never liked the association between yellow and journalism.
Vida removed her majestic self from the chair. “I must attend to those wretched letters from people seeking my advice. If any of them had a shred of common sense, they wouldn’t have to ask for help.” She sighed heavily, sending ripples through her floral-print polyester blouse. “Oh, well.”
By the end of the workday, Leo told me we might be able to go twenty-four pages in the next edition. He’d twisted enough merchant arms to get at least a half-dozen of them to extend their year-end clearance sales. That was good news. But I still hadn’t come up with a fresh idea for my editorial. That wasn’t news. I told myself that something might come up over the weekend that would inspire me. I knew better, having often held that thought. But at least I could forget about it until Monday morning.