Bitter Alpine

by Mary Daheim

  I forced myself to stay solemn. All three of Vida’s daughters were built in their mother’s image, though none of them had her strength of character. Amy and her husband, Ted Hibbert, were the only ones who lived in Alpine. The other two and their families were in Tacoma and Bellingham. The Hibberts were also the parents of the wayward Roger.

  “I’m afraid Amy may have to be hospitalized again,” Vida went on. “Ted is beside himself, but again, men have no idea how grueling menopause can be. When I went out of town last summer for the weekend to visit an old friend in Spokane, my addled sister-in-law Ella forgot to tell my daughter where I’d gone, and Amy ended up in the hospital. When I went through the change, I managed without more than the usual minor symptoms. I had to earn my living. I recall you had your own problems.”

  I shrugged. “I survived. Like you, I had to put food on the table.”

  The waitress came to take our orders. I didn’t need to look at the menu. The daily special was an open-face Dungeness crab sandwich on toast with a small salad, an easy choice for me. Vida asked for the same.

  “Amy has never had to work,” Vida said, her gaze flickering across the aisle to two men in well-cut suits. I assumed they were from out of town. In Alpine, only bankers, lawyers, and Henry Bardeen wore suits. “Oh, she did some volunteering before she became pregnant. But once she became a mother, she was devoted to her task.”

  I realized Vida hadn’t mentioned Roger by name. It was all I could do to keep from asking if she’d seen him since he’d been in prison. “Amy’s lucky that Ted has such a good job with the state,” I said.

  “Yes. He’s a most diligent worker.” Vida paused. “Obviously, he can’t take time off to care for Amy, which is why I must devote myself to helping her get through this crisis. You understand, I’m sure.”

  I smiled feebly. “Your readers and listeners will miss you.”

  “They’ll survive,” Vida replied with a touch of irony. “Family comes first. Amy had intended to send Dippy to daycare, but I put a stop to that. Donna Wickstrom does her best, but she has five other children to watch. Dippy is used to having all the attention.”

  That was undoubtedly true, but not necessarily a good thing. I didn’t say so, of course. Dippy’s birth mother was dead. With his father in prison, the little guy had gotten off to a poor start. Vida’s grandson had impregnated Holly Gross, the late and unlamented town hooker. She and her drug-dealing boyfriend had been killed last spring in a high-speed chase when their car went off Highway 2 and plunged into the Skykomish River. Holly had named Roger’s son for Leonardo DiCaprio. “Dippy’s what now? Three?”

  “Yes, and so clever for his age! I went with him to his last checkup with Doc Dewey, who was impressed with his curiosity. Dippy was very intrigued by the skeleton in the examination room. He kept trying to take it apart. Doc indicated he’d rather keep the thing all of a piece, but I reminded him that he shouldn’t squelch a child’s thirst for knowledge.” She paused. “Here comes our food.”

  Having passed on information about Dippy’s current status, Vida studied the salad with a frown. “Goodness!” she exclaimed, eyeing our waitress with dismay. “You can’t be running low on crab so early in the noon hour! Or is this not Dungeness, but Alaskan king crab? I know some people like that type, though I find it…pallid.”

  Kerry—or so the young waitress’s nametag identified her—looked stunned. “Oh, no, ma’am! It’s Dungeness, the only crab we serve here. Should I bring you a side portion?”

  “Yes,” Vida replied with her cheesiest smile. “You’re new here, aren’t you, Kerry? I’m Vida Runkel and I write for The Alpine Advocate. Emma Lord is the publisher.”

  “Oh.” Kerry’s own smile was forced. “I haven’t seen the paper yet. I just moved here from Forks. I don’t know Ms. Lord.”

  “You do now,” Vida said with a flourish of her hand in my direction. “Ms. Lord puts out a very fine publication. Of course,” she added with an attempt at modesty, “I’ve worked for the paper twice as long as she has. You really must subscribe so you know what’s going on here in Alpine.”

  Kerry shuddered. “I heard a woman got killed only a few days after I moved from Forks. That’s really creepy.”

  “Violence is part of life,” Vida declared. “Now do bring the rest of the crab, and I’d also like more sugar packets for my hot tea. After you pour it, of course. I hope it’s steeped long enough and that there’s real cream and not that anemic imitation.”

  “I’ll make sure everything’s okay,” Kerry promised. Thus chastened, she all but ran off down the aisle.

  I shook my head. “Poor girl. I’ll bet she’s just out of high school.”

  Vida was staring at some point beyond me. “Why did she move here? I’ll have to find out. We always mention newcomers.” She paused, the gray eyes sharp as lasers as she watched Kerry’s progress by the service counter. “Of course,” Vida went on, looking again at me, “a brief interview would be up to Mrs. Walsh.”

  I avoided wincing. For some bizarre reason, Vida refused to call Liza by her first name. I suspected that even though my former House & Home editor had voluntarily retired, she somehow resented her replacement. Fortunately, Liza had heard enough about her predecessor’s quirks to not take offense.

  Upon returning with the tea and my Pepsi, Kerry was subjected to Vida’s inquiry about why she had made the wise decision to move from Forks to Alpine. Kerry merely smiled and said she wanted to see more of the state than the Olympic Peninsula.

  Vida harrumphed after Kerry left our separate bills. “She has a lot to learn. Forks indeed! It’s not as big as Alpine, and Amy told me the other day that someone was making a television series about the town. Why would they do such a thing?”

  I shrugged. “Ask Kerry. Maybe she knows.”

  “Certainly not. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.” Vida attacked her meal. “There still isn’t enough crab in this dish. So chintzy.”

  I refrained from commenting. Instead, I asked if her nephew, Deputy Bill Blatt, thought the new hire was fitting in.

  Vida looked a bit prune-like. “I haven’t spoken to him since last week. Billy spends his free time with Tanya. I wouldn’t be surprised if they got married. They’d better, since they’re living together at Milo’s former home. I understand he’s charging them rent, though not as much as he could charge for that place if his daughter and his deputy weren’t the ones living there. Of course, he originally intended to sell the house.” Vida’s gray eyes glinted. “My evil sister-in-law must be wild. Lila swore she’d put a stop to it, but Billy finally rebelled. Only she would have the nerve to go up against your husband!”

  “It didn’t bother Milo,” I said. “If Bill and Tanya do get married, they may want to buy the house. They’ve both been doing some work on it.”

  “Yes,” Vida murmured. “After Tricia left him and took their children with her to Bellevue, Milo neglected to keep up the house, except for his workshop downstairs. Tanya must be happy to be back here. The Eastside suburbs are so wearing. So many people, so much traffic! My, my!”

  “As you may recall,” I reminded Vida, “she wasn’t very fond of Bellevue after her fiancé shot her and then killed himself.”

  “Not surprising that he did that,” she declared. “Living in such a place would drive anyone insane. It’s a wonder they don’t have murder-suicides on a daily basis. I know it would upset me very much. I’m glad I’ve never been there.”

  “Bellevue only had two homicides the last time I checked the statistics.”

  “Nonsense!” Vida huffed. “They obviously lied to keep up their outrageous real estate prices.”

  I gave up and changed the subject to the weather. That was always a relatively safe topic, even with Vida. But she did have a quibble: we hadn’t yet had enough snow to ensure that the ski lodge would have a busy season. Buck worried about
his brother’s lack of visitors, something that had happened a few years earlier during an unusually warm winter in the Cascades.

  Somehow, we managed to keep the conversation on the colonel, a usually safe topic. Yes, Buck’s move from the house he’d lived in some twenty miles west of Alpine to a condo at Parc Pines had been a success. He was closer to shops and services. Very wise of him, of course. No garden to keep up, no big household chores to do. Vida didn’t add that Alpine was as close to heaven as Buck would get while he was still alive. She probably thought we were already there.

  On the way back from the ski lodge, I saw Milo’s Yukon parked in its usual place outside of headquarters. The old cast-iron clock across the street by the bank told me it was a quarter to one. I decided to stop in and see if my husband had any news.

  Dustin Fong was at the front desk. Of all the deputies, he was the most polite and unflappable. Dustman, as he was known to his co-workers, had been partially raised by his Shanghai-born grandmother, who had been obsessed with good manners. In all the years I’d known him, he’d never called me by my first name.

  “I see the boss has his door closed,” I said. “Is he berating one of your fellow deputies?”

  Dustin smiled. “No. He ate lunch in his office today. Go ahead, he won’t mind if it’s you.”

  I walked through the counter’s half-gate, approached the sheriff’s lair, and knocked. A gruff “Who’s there?” came from the other side of the door.

  “Your loving wife,” I replied, opening the door. “Why did you eat in?”

  “Because those freaking Californians aren’t in the fast lane after all,” he replied as I sat down in one of his visitor chairs. “First thing this morning we requested a photo of the vic when she didn’t look dead. Mullins was assured we’d have it ASAP. It didn’t get here until right before noon. That’s why I ate in. We’ll post it around town and hope for the best.”

  “Gosh,” I said, fluttering my eyelashes just to annoy my husband, “why not run it in the Advocate? Quite a few people actually read it.”

  “Smartass,” he muttered. “That might not be as nutty as some of your other ideas. You want to see it?”

  “Sure. She must look better than she did in the post-death photo.”

  Milo removed the photo from its padded envelope. “Don’t screw with it.”

  I glared at him. “I run a newspaper, remember? The only staffer who ever screwed up photos was Ed Bronsky. He thought they made good placemats for his morning pastries.”

  “Ed probably never thought about much else,” Milo remarked. “Hey—I just remembered that you’re my wife. Want to make out?”

  “No. I’m trying to focus on your victim. She was really quite attractive. Did you find out what her married name was?”

  “Chastaine,” he replied, and spelled it out. “His first name is Charles, known as Chuck. He remarried and lives with the new wife and their two kids in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. Rachel dropped her married name after the split.” Milo leaned forward. “Are you trying to memorize her face or looking for hidden clues to who whacked her?”

  I shook my head and handed over the photo. “Somehow she reminds me of someone. Maybe a girl I knew at Blanchet High School.”

  Milo chuckled. “You and your fancy private Catholic schools. Did they try to turn you girls into nuns?”

  “Not even close,” I said. “One of my best friends—also Catholic—once asked me if there was any difference between Catholics and Protestants. We had quite a few Prots in our class, even a couple of agnostics. I will admit that the school chaplain, Father Doug, inspired Ben to become a priest, but he also tried to talk my brother out of it, figuring it was an adolescent whim. Obviously, it wasn’t.”

  Milo nodded absently. “How did your parents feel about that?”

  “Mom was okay with it,” I replied, “but Dad wasn’t. He was raised Catholic, but practically had to be dragged to church. In fact, sometimes he stayed home or went fishing.”

  “I think I’d have liked your old man,” my husband said, grinning. “He sounds like my kind of guy. I forget—what did he do for a living?”

  “Dad was a machinist. He worked mainly on boats that were moored in Lake Union. Mom was an accountant by trade. She stayed home, but kept the books for the neighborhood businesses in the small commercial area a couple of blocks away.” I narrowed my eyes. “Come on, Sheriff. I told you all that years ago. You’re fobbing me off about the victim.”

  Milo looked indignant. “No, I’m not. We talked to some of her co-workers, including Jason Campbell. She didn’t have an active social life, but she was good-hearted, with a concern for homeless people. Rachel helped get housing for them, especially single mothers with kids.”

  “I suppose she was close to her adoptive parents.”

  “They’re both dead,” Milo said. “The mother died three years ago of an aneurysm, and the father was a hit-and-run victim last October. No other children, only Rachel.”

  “Good grief! The Douglas family sounds hexed.”

  Milo looked unusually solemn. “I can almost believe they were.”

  Chapter 11

  Driving to my office, I considered calling on the Alpine Falls Motel’s Will Pace, but Mitch was touchy about any infringement on his assignments. Besides, I figured Will wouldn’t tell me anything helpful. I only knew the motel owner by sight. He was a stumpy, gnomelike guy of the antisocial variety. I’d always wondered why he’d gotten into a people-oriented business. What little I knew about him was piecemeal, and if memory served, those pieces often didn’t fit together. I decided to leave Pace up to Milo. He had more resources than I did.

  Mitch was the only staffer on hand when I went into the newsroom. “Where are we with the homicide?” he asked. “Do you know anything I should know?” There was a hint of reproach in his voice.

  “Only that the sheriff got a picture that shows her when she was still alive.” I didn’t go into details about the connection with the Campbell family. “You should probably take a look at it.”

  “I will.” The faint reproach became self-righteous. “I’ll do that now.” Mitch grabbed his raincoat and was out the door.

  I’d just sat down when Alison came in via the back shop. She didn’t look happy. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Lunch was a bummer,” she announced in a doleful voice. “We’d just been seated when his roommate showed up. Boyd couldn’t tell him to buzz off.”

  “Jeffrey?” It was the only thing I could think of to say.

  “Jeffrey Nichols.” Alison slid into a visitor’s chair. “He’s trying to find a job here. If he can’t, maybe he’ll move back to Wenatchee.”

  “Do you know what Jeffrey does for a living?”

  Alison nodded faintly. “He’s a graphic designer. Freelance. What if he can do his job no matter where he lives?”

  “He might,” I said, searching for words of comfort. “Jeffrey won’t find much work here, but that means he’d have to travel to meet with clients.”

  “So? Wenatchee’s ninety minutes away. He can do that in a day.”

  I couldn’t cheer up Alison short of running over Jeffrey with my Honda, but I gave it one last shot. “You and Boyd will be living in the same complex. You’re bound to see each other when you’re both unencumbered. I’m sorry I had to assign the story to Mitch, but you know what he’s like if he feels he’s being shortchanged. Meanwhile, you’re giving up on Boyd before he’s settled in.”

  Alison appeared to think over what I’d just said. But then she asked, “What if he has a girlfriend in Wenatchee?”

  “Then you’ll have to forget about him.” Seeing the hopeless look on Alison’s face, I felt guilty. “How about the new paramedic? I think Janos Kadar is single.”

  Alison frowned. “He’s got a weird name. Not,” she went on, “that it means he’s wei
rd. Maybe I should check him out. How old is he?”

  I tried to remember what the official announcement had said. I couldn’t. Maybe his age hadn’t been included. “Why don’t you fall down and sprain an ankle? Then you could see him in person.”

  “I could think of something. Was there a photo with the story?”

  “No. We only ran a couple of inches. But his name indicates he’s part Hungarian. They’re often good-looking. Slavic, dark, and lean.”

  “Interesting,” she murmured as my phone rang. “Oh! I’d better get back to the front desk!” She sprang out of the chair and rushed away.

  “Alma?” the male voice said, and I wondered if the caller had misdialed. But when he spoke again, I realized it was Leonard Hollenberg. “Violet told me she never heard of anybody named Danforth around here. My better half is pretty danged good about remembering names.” That was a good thing, since her husband couldn’t.

  “It was a long shot,” I admitted. “But thanks for checking with her.”

  “Not a problem,” Leonard responded. “Say, when are you running Violet’s story and the pictures of our trip to Leavenworth?”

  I’d forgotten all about them, but in a flash, I realized that the former county commissioner had given me an idea for our special edition. “We’re organizing a big section about SkyCo residents’ recent travels and where they’re planning to go this year. You and Violet will fit right in.”

  “I’ll be danged! Glad to hear that, Erma. So will Violet. I’ll tell her as soon as I hang up. If you need any more stuff from us, give me a ring.”

  I assured him I would, despite already hearing more than enough from Leonard. But having revealed my off-the-cuff idea, I’d actually have to do it. At least it might bring in enough advertising to cover the time and a half I’d paid my staff for working on MLK Jr. Day.

  Shortly after four-thirty, I held an impromptu staff meeting to inform them of my idea. “We’ll run a front-page boxed item in this week’s edition asking readers to let us know of future travel plans and to submit photographs from their previous trips.”