by Mary Daheim
After identifying himself as The Voice of Skykomish County, he told his listening audience where he was: “I’m here at Sheriff Milo Dodge’s headquarters, where he and Deputies Sam Heppner and Consuela De Groote have been investigating a domestic incident and possible kidnapping at a home in northwest Alpine. Names have not yet been released, but stay tuned to KSKY, your favorite radio station on the western slope of the Cascade Mountains.”
Spence’s last words sounded as if he were speaking through clenched teeth. I wanted to laugh, but I quickly realized that if Milo wasn’t allowing Spence to name the people involved just yet, he wouldn’t want me doing it, either. I dialed Kip’s number to tell him to hold off on the Nelson story.
“Why?” was the first word out of my back-shop manager’s mouth. “Won’t it be in the log tomorrow morning?”
I allowed that it would, but I wanted to preserve a happy home. “I assume Mitch has sent it to you?”
“About ten minutes ago,” Kip replied. “No names, of course, just the usual vague location unless charges are filed. I was just about to put it on the front page. Mitch’s headline is ‘Two Women Victimized in Domestic Dispute.’ It takes up almost as much space as the story.”
“It might go longer if Milo unloads when he gets home,” I said. “He must be really hungry by now.” I winced at the prospect of my husband’s mood when he finally got here.
“Okay,” Kip responded. “Don’t worry. I’m right on schedule.” With that upbeat note, he rang off.
I decided I’d use the idle time to write a letter to my brother, Ben. I would have called him, but it was well after seven and he was two hours ahead of us on the Mississippi Delta. If he didn’t have a meeting, Ben would probably be making an early night of it because he had to get up to say Mass at whichever church he was headed for in the morning.
I was just signing off a little after seven-thirty when I heard the Yukon pull into the garage. Hurrying out to the kitchen, I decided to dish up dinner and put our plates in the microwave. Milo came in just as I set the timer.
“Holy shit,” he exclaimed, removing his hat. “I had to call in Blatt and Jamison to check out what’s left of the O’Neill house, but Mickey and the girl aren’t there. No sign of the Mazda, either.”
I followed Milo into the living room, where he was hanging up his jacket and hat on the pegs by the front door. “Where else would they go?”
“Damned if I know. I’ve got an APB out on them.”
“Poor Sofia,” I murmured. “She can’t be very bright to have gotten mixed up with Mickey in the first place.”
“Not your problem,” Milo said, grabbing my rear as I led the way back to the kitchen.
I didn’t ask any more questions until after I removed our dinner from the microwave and we sat down. “I gather LaVerne will survive?”
“She’s built like a Sherman tank. Her injuries weren’t all that serious.” Milo paused to wolf down a chunk of rib-eye steak. “No names will be given out unless charges are filed. You know the drill.”
“What if they find out there are internal injuries?”
Milo shrugged. “Then LaVerne might follow through and want to press charges. Meanwhile, she can stay in the hospital with Patti Marsh and they can commiserate about the macho men in their lives.”
“How did Consi handle her first encounter with violence in Alpine?”
“Get serious,” Milo shot back. “You think she’s not a veteran of that crap? Coming from Tacoma? She’s probably dealt with more domestic calls in her eight years on the job than I have in my thirty-plus here in SkyCo.”
“I suppose that’s true,” I said, sounding a bit sheepish. I changed the subject. “Why did Consi decide to come to Alpine?” I asked.
Milo finished chewing a big bite of steak. “Tired of the city. She was raised on a farm somewhere around Puyallup. She’s not the type who talks about personal stuff when she’s on the job. That’s fine with me. I get enough of that stuff when Mullins goes on about the so-called ‘discussions’ he and Nina have over little things like a burned-out lightbulb.”
“That could be a problem if they didn’t have a replacement,” I said in my most guileless voice.
Milo just stared at me and shoveled in more steak.
* * *
—
By morning, the snow had stopped, leaving almost eight inches on the ground. Milo hadn’t set the alarm for his usual six-thirty wake-up call, which meant I was still asleep at seven-fifteen when he came out of the bathroom to get dressed.
“You made me late,” I grumbled, struggling with the covers to get out of bed.
“If you weren’t tired, you would’ve woken up at your usual time,” he said in a reasonable voice. “Isn’t Wednesday the day the paper comes out?”
I attempted to glare at him, but my eyes were still foggy with sleep. Either my mate enjoyed teasing me about the Advocate’s publication schedule or he really didn’t know. I preferred believing the former.
“Right,” I muttered, staggering toward the other bathroom. During the remodeling, we’d added the second bathroom, which became Milo’s, while I retained the original.
“Then you can take it easy at work today, right?”
“Right.” I kept going. Neither of us was very social in the morning.
After getting dressed and applying my makeup, I found Milo in the kitchen pouring a mug of coffee. “How am I going to drive to work?”
Milo stared at me. “What did you do last year or the year before or…” He peered at me more closely. “You’re not awake yet. Get yourself some java and think about what you just said.”
“Oh.” He was right. “I guess I managed, huh?”
“You did.” He began to make his usual hearty breakfast of two fried eggs, bacon, and toast. I always settled for cornflakes, not being sure that I wouldn’t set myself on fire in my morning stupor. As I sat down at the table, Milo glanced at me over his shoulder.
“You can go to work with me,” he said. “No point in taking two vehicles. Besides, I’m not sure you’re fully conscious.”
“What if I have to drive somewhere to do an interview?”
Milo flipped his bacon. “Send Laskey. That guy’s so gloomy, he needs to keep busy or he might have a meltdown. His wife’s already nuts.”
“Brenda’s not nuts,” I declared. “She does have some emotional problems. You might, too, if one of your kids was in jail.”
“They’re not.” Milo dished up his breakfast and sat down. “Despite the divorce, all my kids kept out of real trouble. Mike made that stupid marriage right out of high school, but I figure she did it to convince herself she wasn’t gay. Now that she’s got a partner, Mike’s a lot looser and easier to be around. Tanya’s feeling a lot better, and Bran’s always been solid.”
“Lucky you,” I said wistfully. “Your kids are close by. Adam hasn’t lived near me since he started college. I’ll never have grandchildren.”
“You can be a stepgrandma when Bran and Solange have their baby,” Milo said. His hazel eyes sparked. “Mulehide’s not thrilled about being a grandmother. She thinks it makes her seem too old.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I declared. “Vida told me that before I bought the paper she once interviewed a thirty-one-year-old woman from Startup who was a grandmother.”
Milo shrugged. “Why not? There’s not much to do in Startup except screw.”
“That,” I responded, “is what the young woman told Vida.”
Chapter 14
The Yukon managed to plow its way through what seemed like a foot of snow in some places, but living on a mountainside could be deceptive. I figured that some three inches had fallen since yesterday, for a total of almost double what we had when I came home from work. When we stopped in front of the Advocate, Milo offered to carry me inside, but I declined, remindi
ng him that he’d done that once before and tongues had wagged for days.
Alison greeted me when I came through the door, but she looked a bit glum and immediately announced there had been no further Boyd sightings. “Do you think he’s avoiding me?” she asked in a dismal tone.
“I think he’s probably busy,” I replied. “He’s new to the job. Dean Ramsey is probably breaking him in.”
“How long should that take?” Alison asked with a sour expression. “I’ve never known what a county extension agent does.”
“Whatever it is, it has to do with farming,” I informed her. “I admit, it’s not a job that gets into the paper very often.”
Alison seemed determined to prolong the conversation. “We don’t have many farms around Alpine. I can only think of two.”
“There are several smaller farms in the western part of the county. You have to follow Tonga Road out of town to see them.”
“I guess I’ve never been…” Alison’s phone rang. I escaped into the newsroom.
Liza and Mitch were on hand, waiting for the coffee urn to finish perking. Leo hadn’t shown up with the pastries yet. My priority was to check out how the latest edition of the Advocate looked. Kip had signed out at four thirty-five a.m. to take the papers to their various distribution points in the county. Most of our carriers were kids, which meant an after-school delivery to subscribers. We also had some former Alpiners who still liked to see what was going on in the town they’d once called home. Kip would put preprinted mailing addresses on their copies and drop them off at the post office. He usually didn’t return to the back shop until afternoon. Now in his early thirties, he’d begun as a carrier in his teens only a year or so after I bought the newspaper. He was also the one who posted online updates. If I had to be candid, Kip was probably my most valuable employee. Of course, I could never say that out loud.
Flipping through the pages, everything looked good. Ten minutes later the pastries arrived with a disgruntled-looking ad manager. “My wife,” he said with a quick glance in her direction, “isn’t fond of snow. She wants you to write an editorial demanding that it be outlawed.”
I looked at Liza, who’d been giving her husband the evil eye. “I could write the editorial, but I don’t think it would stop the snow. We actually have had a winter or two since I’ve been here when we hardly had any. Global warming, they tell us.”
Liza had moved toward the cinnamon rolls her husband was setting out. “Leo did mention an occasional flurry now and then. But this must be closer to a foot. It comes over the top of my winter boots.”
“It drifts,” I pointed out. “There’s a bit of wind, and because Alpine is located on a mountainside, the ground is sort of…uneven.”
“So I’ve noticed,” Liza said, but there was a glint of humor in her blue eyes. “Mrs. Runkel told me that many years ago Alpine had as much as eight feet of snow on the ground and the children had to tunnel their way up to the school. Was she trying to make me go back to California?”
I laughed. “No, but that’s true of the town’s early days. The only way in and out of here was via train. The road wasn’t built until the Civilian Conservation Corps came along in the nineteen-thirties.”
Liza shook her head. “It’s a wonder the people who lived here back then didn’t go crazy. What did they do to keep sane in winters like that?”
“They were inventive,” I replied. “There were never more than around two hundred residents until the thirties, but they invited speakers, put on plays, had concerts…” Pausing, I pointed to the bookcase beyond the door to the back shop. “They also put out an annual booklet to sum up each year’s activities. You might want to look through them sometime.”
“Maybe I will,” Liza said, glancing at her husband, who was on the phone. “Has Leo done that?”
“I don’t think so,” I admitted. “But he’s absorbed the history over the years. Alpiners are proud of their hardy past.”
Liza nodded faintly. “I thought he was insane when he took the job up here. But it turned out to be a blessing. Alpine sobered him up. I’m grateful to the town for that—and to you.”
I shook my head. “He did it on his own.”
She’d taken a bite of the cinnamon roll and looked thoughtful. “Maybe. The important thing is that, one way or another, he did it.” Liza smiled softly and moved off to her desk.
I did the same, sitting down and taking a more thorough look at the latest edition. One item I didn’t always check before publication was the personals advertising, which fell to Leo, of course. Most of the postings were from love-starved readers seeking romance. Some were amusing, but most were touching. The first was “Lonely widow with few bad habits wishes to meet widower in same boat.” I smiled, hoping the boat didn’t leak. Another was similar, except the roles were reversed. What caught my eye was a different kind of message: “Anyone in Skykomish County knowing the whereabouts of Piper Erskine please contact J. L. Erskine at P.O. Box 645, Hardin MT 59034.”
There was something vaguely familiar in the message, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Vida might know. I turned on the intercom to ask Alison if our former House & Home editor was coming in today.
“Mrs. Runkel just called,” Alison informed me. “Her daughter Amy is being admitted to the hospital this morning. Apparently she’s emotionally overwrought. At least that’s how her mother describes her.”
I held my head. “It beats ‘crazy as a loon,’ ” I said—and immediately felt ashamed of myself. “I suppose Vida will stay at their house with Dippy. I imagine Ted’s back in town, though he probably can’t take more than a day or two off. He must have to catch up with work here. Amy and her sisters may resemble their mother physically, but they lack her backbone.”
“Poor Mrs. Runkel,” Alison responded. “She’s gone through a rough patch lately. I hope she doesn’t end up in the hospital, too.”
I agreed, and caught myself before I added that Alpine Memorial was in danger of running out of beds. I felt frustrated. The only person I could think of who might know of a Piper Erskine was Vida. But she’d be focused on Amy—and Dippy. I’d try to call her after her daughter was settled in at the hospital.
I wasn’t the only one with Vida on my mind. A little after ten, Spencer Fleetwood walked through the now-empty newsroom and parked himself in my office.
“I assume,” he said, straightening the creases on his charcoal wool slacks, “you’ve heard from our favorite absentee. Do you have news of Vida?”
“Only about Amy,” I said. “Maybe Vida is hedging her bets. Amy is a weak link in the Runkel chain. I don’t know the other daughters, but I suspect they’re also shadows of their redoubtable mother.”
Spence shrugged and leaned forward a bit. “Dare I be brash and ask you to replace Vida tomorrow night?”
“Me?” I literally fell back in my chair. “No!”
“Is that a refusal or just shock?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “You’d be a natural substitute. You can promote the paper and whatever else is buzzing around in your fertile brain. You could even say something laudatory about your brutish husband.”
I sat up very straight. “You two should reestablish cordial relations. It’s been over a year since he slugged you for making an unsavory remark about him kissing me on a street corner. It all sounds so high school on both sides.”
Spence looked faintly embarrassed. “It was. I suppose I was trying to loosen up your beloved. Someone told me after I arrived in Alpine that you and he had been off and on for almost ten years. And then…” He stopped. “Never mind. I don’t want to upset you.”
I smiled. “Mentioning Tom Cavanaugh’s name doesn’t bother me, Spence. I’m way past that. But you were very kind to me right after Tom was killed. I appreciated that. Thank you again.”
“You and I have been through the mill, as the locals say.” H
e, too, was smiling, though a bit ruefully. “You and your bear returned the favor when Rosalie’s husband died.”
Spence and Rosalie Reed, the head of RestHaven’s psych ward, had become lovers long before the facility had opened a little over a year ago in Alpine. Rosalie’s husband had suffered from mental illness for many years. Somehow, he’d managed to escape the previous winter. Before he could be found, Rosalie’s husband had suffered a fatal heart attack.
Now officially a couple, Mr. Radio and Dr. Reed had bought a house on River Road. I refrained from asking Spence if they planned to get married. Maybe I didn’t have the nerve, since it had taken Milo and me almost sixteen years to make our relationship legal.
“It was a sad way to end what had once been his highly respected career as a shrink,” I said. “Is their son still at UCLA?”
Spence nodded. “Cliff’s going for his master’s in cinema. He wants to make informational films. We’d invited him up here for Christmas, but his girlfriend insisted he go with her to meet her parents in Santa Rosa.”
“It sounds serious,” I remarked.
“It does,” Spence agreed. “Rosalie wants us to fly down to meet her, but I don’t like leaving the station for more than a couple of days.” He stood up with an eye on the crease in his slacks. The creases had behaved themselves. “Well? Are you game for tomorrow night?”
I grimaced. “I’ll think about it, okay? I’d really prefer not to, but if you…Hey, what about Liza Walsh? She’s new to Alpine and would be a refreshing change of pace from the usual guests.”
Spence lifted one cashmere-covered shoulder. “Maybe. Why don’t you approach her first? I’ve never met Ms. Walsh.”
“I will,” I promised. “She’s smart and has a sense of humor.”
“Then I shall leave you to do my dirty work.” Spence made a little bow, no doubt checking his creases once more. They were still in place.
* * *
—
Liza didn’t return to the office until almost noon. Leo was gone and Mitch was on the phone. I asked her to have lunch with me, but she showed off her dimples and turned me down.