Bitter Alpine

by Mary Daheim

  Mitch was the first to have a quibble. “Most people take color shots or make tapes. Won’t that mean we have to spend more on reproduction?”

  I glanced at Kip. “Will it?”

  My production manager shrugged. “It depends on the quality and what they submit. Remember last summer when Arnie and Louise Nyquist went to Norway and sent us a bunch of fjord Polaroids? They looked like big cliffs. No water. We ran only one. Arnie should know better.”

  “I suspect Louise took those,” I said. “Arnie was in three of them.”

  Leo laughed. “Maybe she tried to drown him. He can be a jackass.”

  I wasn’t laughing. “Arnie and Milo have never gotten along. Even when Nyquist Construction remodeled the sheriff’s office, they had words, despite the fact that my husband was satisfied with the job.”

  Mitch shrugged. “I can see why. They’re both prickly.” He saw me stiffen and held out his hands in a helpless gesture. “No offense, Emma. But you know how I feel about Dodge after Troy was sent back to the reformatory when he had pneumonia.”

  “That was the state’s decision,” I declared. “They outranked Milo.”

  It was Liza who intervened, putting a hand on Mitch’s arm. “You and Brenda must be looking forward to Troy coming home. Will he live with you or find a place of his own?”

  The gesture and the words seemed to signal a truce. Leo was the first to turn away before Kip, Alison, and I moved on to our respective places. I wanted to hug Liza, but she was still talking to Mitch. It was now five minutes to five. There was no point in dwelling on my editorial, but I made a few notes that might kick-start me in the morning.

  I drove home through part rain and part snow, focused on what to make for dinner. Meatballs, maybe. I was in that kind of mood. Almost before I could close the door to the garage, I heard the phone ringing in the living room. Trying not to stumble over my own feet, I rushed through the kitchen, flung myself down on the sofa, and grabbed the receiver.

  “Hi, Mom,” Adam greeted me. “Are you finished eating?”

  “It’s only ten after five,” I said, panting a bit. “When are you going to remember the time change between here and St. Mary’s Igloo in Alaska?”

  “I won’t have to,” he replied. “The Home Missions are sending me to Michigan. I move to Gaylord, up on the Great Lakes, February third.”

  Managing to get myself into a more comfortable position, the only thing I could think of to say was “Michigan?”

  “Right, way up north on the peninsula.” He chuckled. “After being in this icebox, it’ll seem like Florida.”

  “It sounds…remote,” I said, then realized that Adam wasn’t calling via radio relay from the isolated village less than a hundred miles from Asia. Our conversations from there were marred by frustrating delays between our exchanges. “Wait! Where are you? I can hear you just fine.”

  “Fairbanks,” he replied. “I’m here for two days, winding up the business stuff. Then I’ll meet my replacement, Joe O’Leary. He’s originally from Boston, but he knows Uncle Ben somehow. How is that rascal? I should call him after I finish talking to you. He’s still on the Delta, right?”

  “So far as I know. I haven’t talked to him since the two of you were here for Christmas.”

  “I haven’t either.” Adam paused, and I could hear voices in the background. “Got to run. I didn’t charge the call to your VISA this time. Say hi to Dodge for me. I’ll stop over in Alpine on my way to Gaylord. I have to change planes in Seattle anyway. Love you, Mom.” He hung up before I could say goodbye.

  Adam. My son. My sole companion in the younger years of my adult life. Since he entered the priesthood, I was lucky to see him more than once a year, and rarely for longer than a few days. I was fighting back tears when the kitchen door banged open. A moment later, my husband thumped into the living room.

  “Are we eating out?” he asked in a gruff voice.

  “No.” I hauled myself up from the sofa. “Adam just called. Are you going to kiss me or just bellow?”

  “Damn.” He tossed his hat onto the peg by the wall and took me in his arms. “Is Adam okay?”

  I nodded, locked my arms around his neck, and kissed him. “He’s being transferred to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.”

  Milo kept his arms around me. “There’s supposed to be some good fishing up there. Want to go visit him this summer?”

  The suggestion surprised me. “There’s good fishing in Alaska, but you never suggested going there.”

  “That’s different,” he said, releasing me. “Alaska’s so damned big. I’ve only been up there twice, and the first time it was out of Juneau, in the southeastern part, and then over by Anchorage for the second trip. Neither of those places were anywhere near Adam’s digs.”

  “True,” I admitted, turning toward the kitchen. “Are you going to change or have a drink first? My initial impression was that you were…not at your best when you came home.”

  “I sure as hell wasn’t,” Milo replied, following me out of the living room. “Blackwell put Patti Marsh in the hospital this afternoon.”

  “She was sick…or…?”

  “Or,” he said, opening the door to the liquor stash. “He beat the crap out of her. Again.”

  “Why?” It was only a semistupid question, since Jack didn’t always need a reason.

  “I don’t know.” Milo paused to get out two glasses from the cupboard. “The only reason I found out about Patti is that Dwight Gould was fed up with hanging around the hospital and decided to liberate himself. Just as he was going out, Patti was coming in via ambulance. He could see that she was all banged up, so he asked her what had happened. All she said was ‘Jack’ before Del Amundson and Vic Thorstensen hustled her inside.” He paused to hand me my drink. “If Patti finally has the guts to rat out Blackwell, that puts me in a helluva position. I’d have to bust my own boss since he’s the county manager.”

  “You busted him once before,” I reminded my husband.

  Milo’s hazel eyes regarded me with irony. “That was before his job was official. Even if two of the three original county commissioners were old as dirt and one of them—George Engebretsen—was already gaga. I suppose Leonard Hollenberg might have had my back, but so what?”

  I looked up from peeling potatoes. “Leonard submitted a story today about their annual Christmas trip to Leavenworth. Violet wrote it.”

  “Are you going to put it in the paper?”

  “I might,” I replied, putting the potatoes on the stove. “Edited, of course. I decided our special edition would be about traveling Alpiners.”

  “That sounds like a folk music group from the sixties,” Milo murmured—and headed back to the living room.

  He was right. But readers would eat it up. While daily newspapers were fading away like the setting sun in the last scene of an old western movie, small-town weeklies still had a chance for survival. Alpine’s semi-isolation was a plus for the Advocate. It wasn’t quite true that everybody knew everybody else, but they generally knew of their eight thousand fellow SkyCo residents. I picked up my glass and was tempted to raise it in a toast to my fellow Alpiners, but the kettle with the potatoes was about to boil over. I had to yank it off the burner before turning down the heat. So much for my uncharacteristic whimsy. Even in a small mountain town, it didn’t suit a cynical newspaper editor. I’d seen it all and reported most of it.

  Except that it would turn out that I hadn’t.

  Chapter 12

  Alison and I showed up for work at the same time Tuesday morning. As soon as we went inside, she informed me that her roommate, Lori Cobb, was coming down with a cold. “She insisted on going to work,” Alison said, hanging up her jade-green hooded jacket on a peg in the wall. “If she gets worse, I’ll insist on taking her to the clinic. I mean,” she went on, not looking me in the eye, “what a
re friends for?”

  “Of course,” I agreed, deadpan. “If Lori gets worse this morning, feel free to leave anytime.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that, Emma. You’re a really good boss.”

  “I try,” I said with a smile—and went into the newsroom.

  Mitch was looking impatiently at the coffee urn, which was still burbling away. “Who has the bakery run?”

  I had to think about it. “Kip. He’s probably there now. His pickup’s outside, so he must’ve nipped in here first to start the coffee.”

  Mitch gave a jerky nod. “Brenda didn’t sleep well last night, so I stuck around to see if she could go back to sleep. She was still awake when I left, which means I didn’t have any breakfast. After I go on my rounds, I’ll swing by the house to see if she’s okay.” He paused as the coffeemaker went silent. “Ah! Finally. I didn’t get any coffee, either.” He kept talking while he filled his mug. “I don’t suppose the sheriff has any leads about the Douglas woman’s homicide.”

  Mitch’s tone suggested Milo wouldn’t have a lead if he caught the killer holding a severed head and sitting on the rest of the corpse. “He’s gotten quite a bit of background on her. She seems to be an unlikely victim.”

  “Random?” Mitch said with a frown.

  I wasn’t sure how to answer him. Luckily, I didn’t have to. Kip arrived with the Upper Crust goodies. He’d done well, bringing cinnamon rolls, two kinds of doughnuts, and sugar-covered twisters. I stepped aside as Leo and Liza Walsh seemed to race each other across the newsroom.

  I waited for everybody else—except Alison, who remained at her desk out front plotting how to meet Janos Kadar—before fetching my coffee mug. On my way back to the newsroom, I stopped at Mitch’s desk.

  “I wonder,” I said, “if you should take another shot at Will Pace. He’s got to know more than he’s admitted so far. Pace might open up with you. Try your Facing-Off-With-A-Detroit-Labor-Leader guise. You could persuade him to talk by saying you’re doing a follow-up noting that this is the first time he’s had a blemish on his motel.”

  Mitch turned thoughtful. “Surprising, really. Did Pace or the sheriff say how the killer got in?”

  “No. Maybe the vic didn’t lock her unit’s door or she let the killer in. For all we know, she may have had the killer with her. Pace probably wouldn’t have seen her enter the unit. She had a meal earlier, but apparently no one recalls seeing her at any of our local eateries.”

  “Right.” Mitch nodded once. “Blackwell still insists he never heard of her. Do you think he’s lying?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied, but didn’t add that Milo thought Jack was telling the truth. Mitch’s antagonism for my husband would overshadow the admission.

  “Okay,” he said, having finished his pastry. “I’ll head out on my rounds. I probably won’t see Pace until after I check on Brenda.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. There wasn’t much else I could say.

  * * *

  —

  I was struggling with my editorial when Milo called just after eleven with the results of the Everett lab’s autopsy report. “Nothing really new,” he said. “She’d eaten around five-thirty, but it was fast food—burger, fries, coleslaw. That doesn’t tell us much. My deputies haven’t turned up anything from the local restaurants. She might’ve gone to a drive-through somewhere before getting to Alpine.”

  “No reports of anyone else seeing her after she asked Marlowe Whipp about Blackwell?”

  “Not so far,” Milo replied. “Except for Averill Fairbanks. He claimed he saw her arrive in a space capsule piloted by what looked like a giant purple grasshopper.”

  I sighed. “I know we have to rule out Blackwell killing her. We also can’t consider that he had some underling do it. There was no time for Jack to arrange it. He probably didn’t even know she was in town. Or who she was in the first place.”

  “Right. But,” Milo went on, “somebody did.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  * * *

  —

  Just before noon, I decided to visit Patti Marsh in the hospital. Although we’d never been friends, she felt that there was some kind of bond between us. She had no other female friends, at least not since I’d known her. Patti’s life was entirely focused on Jack Blackwell.

  It was still raining, a cold, hard rain, so I drove the Honda up the steep hill to the hospital on Pine Street and turned into the underground parking area. Patient rooms were on the second floor. When I got off the elevator, I grimaced. My longtime nemesis, Ruth Sharp, was at the desk. I had to angle my way around the big stainless-steel container that I assumed held the patients’ lunches. Ruth didn’t look up at me until I’d been standing in front of her for at least thirty seconds.

  “Yes?” Her tone sounded less like a question than a demand.

  “I’ve come to see Ms. Marsh,” I said in my most professional tone.

  Ruth gently touched the white pleated cap on her graying hair. Doc Dewey followed his father’s footsteps when it came to nurses attire. He insisted on traditional uniforms and caps. “I’m sorry. You can only see the patient during regular visiting hours. You do know when they are, Ms. Lord, correct?”

  “I do,” I replied, “but I’m up against deadline. Newspapers also have a schedule.”

  Ruth feigned puzzlement. “Doesn’t the paper still come out on Wednesday afternoons?”

  To be fair, Ruth wasn’t the only one in Alpine who assumed it took only a couple of hours to produce, print, and deliver the Advocate. “Our deadline is five o’clock this afternoon,” I said in my most professional voice. “The paper doesn’t come off the press until the wee small hours Wednesday morning. If we have late-breaking news, it’s sometimes around six a.m. before our production manager is finished.”

  Ruth looked unimpressed. “Then you should come back between two and four o’clock, when we have visiting hours. Our patients will be getting their lunches in just a few minutes. We don’t like to have them disturbed while they’re eating. So many of them have very little appetite, but they need to stay focused on their meals. Distractions are to be avoided.”

  I pretended to look thoughtful. “Well…having known Patti for over sixteen years, I think I know how to encourage her to eat her lunch. In fact,” I went on, moving closer to the stainless-steel container, “I’ll take it in to her and save you a trip.”

  Ruth looked almost bug-eyed. “That would violate…”

  I smiled. “Hey, I know how hard you nurses work and don’t get paid nearly as much as you should. In fact,” I lied, “I plan to write an editorial later this month demanding raises for all of you here in SkyCo.”

  The almost bug-eyed look was replaced by shock. “Really?”

  I shrugged. “You know you’re all underappreciated. Think of what doctors make. It’s not fair to you nurses. I should probably not only write the editorial, but do a series on how overworked and underpaid you are.” Wondering how I could utter those words with a straight face, I headed down the hall, where I found Patti’s name by the second door to the left.

  She was slumped in bed with the TV showing a soap opera. Her eyes were closed, but I noticed that one of them was swollen. There was also a bruise on her left cheek and two more on her right arm. I set the tray down on the stand next to her bed before pulling up a visitor’s molded plastic chair. I also picked up the TV remote and muted the sound.

  After I sat down, I gently put my hand on her shoulder. “Wake up, Patti. It’s me, Emma Lord. Your lunch is here.”

  Between the damage Jack had caused and the lack of makeup, Patti looked at least ten years older. I’d always guessed her to be a few years younger than her abusive lover, but now I realized she was probably about the same age—sixty, I calculated. Of course, all the booze hadn’t helped to retain her looks.

  Painfully,
she twisted her body under the blanket and forced her eyes open. The bruised eye was bloodshot, of course. I tried to keep smiling. “I delivered your lunch. How are you feeling?”

  She was trying to sit up. I reached around to get an extra pillow that was on a shelf behind me. “Here,” I said. “Let’s use this to prop up your head.”

  It took some time and effort, but finally Patti seemed more comfortable. “You brought lunch? Where from?” she asked, sounding groggy. “Not here, I hope. Their food stinks.”

  I grimaced. “I had no choice. The nurse is kind of a hard case.”

  Patti made an effort at shrugging. “What the hell,” she muttered. “I hate hospitals. Talk about grim!” Her effort to scrutinize me was marred by the bloodshot eye. “Why don’t you nip out and get me a nip from the liquor store? Some of those little bottles, like they have on planes.”

  I shook my head, hoping I exhibited regret. “Booze would interfere with your meds and slow down recovery. I assume you want to get out of here as fast as you can.”

  She sighed, which made her wince. “Damn. I should leave right now. I heard that your big stud’s deputy went AWOL from here. Maybe I’ll do the same during the night.”

  “Don’t, Patti,” I said in a severe tone. “You need to stay here so you can get better.” I saw her dubious expression and kept talking. “Do you know why the woman who was killed asked Marlowe Whipp how to find Jack?”

  Patti’s expression was blank. “I don’t know anything about it. Marlowe’s an idiot. Maybe he made it up. He’s been mad ever since his convenience store went tits up and the wife of one of Jack’s employees took it over. I don’t know anything about the murder victim. Where did she come from? All I know is that she was offed at the crappy motel by the falls.”

  “Rachel Jane Douglas was from the Oakland area,” I replied. “Is there any way she or her family members could have known Jack?”