Bitter Alpine

by Mary Daheim

  “We appreciate you coming here,” Milo said, standing up. “Take it easy. The temperature’s dropping, so we may get more snow. Does your rental have snow tires?”

  “Ah…” Jason looked blank. “I don’t know. I never thought about asking at the airport’s agency.”

  “Check the trunk,” Milo advised. “They may include them this time of year. And watch out for black ice. It’s almost impossible to see.”

  “Thanks.” Jason shook Milo’s hand and then mine. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Dodge. I’ll try to find a copy of your newspaper before I take off. I think I saw a newspaper box at the diner by the bridge.”

  Milo had now moved to the door and opened it. “Ask the on-duty deputy working the desk. There should be one handy. Take it easy with the driving.”

  “Well?” I said after Jason was out of earshot. “You don’t have a spare copy?”

  “I don’t need one,” Milo replied. “I’m married to the publisher.”

  “You never read it,” I asserted. “You never even read it before we got married. You and Fuzzy Baugh and Jack Blackwell get free copies because you’re all such big shots.”

  “I don’t read it because you always tell me what’s in it. Do you want to stand here and give me a bad time or do you want to go home? It’s going on six.”

  “No. We’ve got time to eat dinner out. Let’s walk to the Venison Inn. Suddenly I don’t feel like cooking.”

  Milo heaved a heavy sigh. “Damnit, make up your mind. When it was my idea, you turned it down.”

  Jack Mullins was now at the front desk, and I could see his back shaking with suppressed laughter. Luckily, he was now the only one in the reception area.

  “Ohhh…fine. I’ll make dinner. We have to be home to hear the Walshes fill in for Vida’s program. Then I have to play bridge. Let’s go.”

  Milo glanced at his desk, then grabbed his jacket. “Want to race to see who gets home first?”

  “Not if the streets are iced up,” I said, starting out of his office. “Besides, you’d put on the siren. That’s cheating.” I paused to greet Jack, who had managed to stop laughing.

  “My favorite couple,” he said. “Enjoy your evening together.”

  “I’m playing bridge,” I informed him. “Your boss can watch whatever sports are on TV tonight.”

  The phone rang before Jack could respond. Milo and I made our exit. He grabbed my arm and steered me toward the Honda. “I don’t want you falling on your ass,” he muttered. “Like I told Jason, the temperature’s dropped. It feels like more snow.”

  I was about to open the car door when Mullins virtually flew out onto the sidewalk, calling to Milo. “What now?” my husband asked in a beleaguered voice.

  Jack rushed up to his boss and lowered his voice as a trio of teenagers walked by. “Blackwell wants an APB on Patti Marsh, but he isn’t sure she’s been missing for forty-eight hours. What should we do?”

  Milo lifted his regulation hat, ran a big hand through his graying sandy hair, put the hat back on, and looked at me. “When did Patti leave the hospital?”

  “I saw her Tuesday,” I replied. “She told me then that she wanted to leave, but frankly, she wasn’t in very good shape. Check with Ruth Sharp. She was the nurse on duty that day.”

  The sheriff turned back to Mullins. “Call the hospital, get Sharp’s home phone number if she’s off duty. It sounds as if Patti left sometime Tuesday, so go ahead and put out the APB. You know what she looks like. Oh—have Heppner check her house just to make sure she’s not there.”

  “Got it,” Jack said, and hurried back into headquarters.

  Milo and I got into our respective vehicles. I let him go first. By the time I backed out, he’d already disappeared. That wasn’t a problem.

  But Patti Marsh’s disappearance was more than a problem. It struck me as suspicious.

  Chapter 18

  I rushed around the kitchen, putting dinner together. Milo was changing his clothes, and I’d let him make our drinks when he was done. When he ambled into the kitchen a few minutes later, he came up behind me and leaned down to kiss the top of my head.

  “You got an idea where Patti might have gone?” he asked.

  “Probably not to her own house,” I replied. “She hasn’t got a lot of friends. In fact, none that I know of. If I were her, I’d head to L.A. and hide out with her daughter, Dani.”

  Milo had let go of me, turning to the liquor cabinet. “She can’t be in very good shape. Granted, none of Blackwell’s blows were that serious, but Patti must’ve still been fairly weak when she left the hospital.”

  “She was in pain when I saw her. If she went home…”

  Milo’s cell interrupted me. “Dodge here…Where was the light inside the house?…Okay, Sam…Right…Tell Mullins to add the car’s description to the APB….Keep me in the loop.” He pocketed the cell. “Patti went off in her car. Apparently she took some clothes with her. Where the hell would she go? Maybe she is heading south.”

  “That’s not a bad idea if she did,” I said. “I assume she’d fly down there. But I wonder if she can get as far as the airport in her condition. I suppose she could stop somewhere along the way to spend the night.”

  Milo was pouring our drinks. “The APB may pay off. But if Patti left town when you think she did, she could be in L.A. by now. I suppose she could pay for the flight.”

  “Patti has Jack’s credit card. I’ve seen her flash it around. Unless, of course, he’s cancelled it.”

  “He might do that,” Milo conceded, handing me my glass of bourbon, 7-Up, and ice. “Are you going to sit down for a few minutes or are you still cooking?”

  “Everything’s cooking itself,” I replied, and led the way into the living room. “By the way, have you turned up anything about the missing Mickey O’Neill and Sofia Nelson?”

  Milo shook his head. “Zip. No action on the APB. They’ve gone to ground.”

  “If the car was in the river, is there any chance they might have been in the car but tried to get out and were drowned?”

  “Dubious.” Milo sat down in the easy chair. “It was probably pushed. There were some tire marks farther up on the riverbank that belonged to the Mazda. No usable fingerprints on the car. I’m guessing Mickey pushed it into the Sky. Give it up, Emma. Even if Sofia’s a willing accomplice, she may not want to leave her kid. I hear that LaVerne’s out of the hospital. There was a light on over at the Nelsons’ when I came home.”

  “Maybe Sofia’s there, too,” I said after settling onto the sofa.

  “Stop, little Emma. You’re doing that speculating thing again. I don’t want you going near that Nelson house, okay?”

  I decided to shut up. We spent the next fifteen minutes speaking of family matters. Milo had heard from his son, Brandon. He and Solange had come up with some names for the baby, who was due in March. They hadn’t wanted to know whether the newcomer would be a boy or a girl, so they had three names chosen that would suit either sex.

  “Casey, Riley, and Kerry?” I repeated. “They all sound Irish. I thought Solange was French.”

  “She is,” Milo replied, “but only half. The other half is Polish.”

  “Then…?”

  “Don’t ask,” Milo sighed. “I didn’t. At least they’re real names and not some made-up bullshit.”

  “True. Liza told me a couple of weeks ago that one of the Gustavsons had named their little boy Rocket.”

  Milo laughed. “How did Vida take that? She’s somehow related to the Gustavsons, but I’ve never figured out how.”

  “Me neither,” I agreed as the timer on the stove went off. “Let’s eat.”

  * * *

  —

  After we finished dinner, it was almost time for Cupboard. I turned the radio on a couple of minutes early to hear how Spence was going to deal with Vi
da’s absence. As I should have guessed, he did it with his usual aplomb.

  “Your favorite neighbor, Vida Runkel, won’t be joining us tonight,” he said in his rich radio voice. “Vida was in a car accident, but her injuries were minor and she’s on the not-so-dangerous road to recovery.” He went on to introduce Leo and Liza Walsh with a plug for the Advocate.

  Leo announced that he was officially introducing his wife, Liza, who had recently moved to Alpine. Then he used an interview format to get her impressions about making a new home in Skykomish County. Liza was eloquent and full of praise for the town and the newspaper.

  “Nice job,” I said when the program ended with the usual sound effect of a cupboard door closing. “But Spence didn’t say anything about the possibility of Vida quitting the show.”

  “That’s their problem,” Milo said. “Want to sit on my lap?”

  I’d gotten to my feet. “No! I have to play bridge. Did you forget?”

  “Oh. I guess I did.” He looked faintly chagrined. “Don’t stay all night. Where are you playing?”

  “Just a block away at Edna Mae Dalrymple’s. Obviously, I’m walking there.”

  “Be careful. Watch out for ice.”

  I shrugged into my car coat. “Maybe I should skate there.”

  “You’d fall down before you got to the sidewalk.”

  “Probably.” I leaned down and, for a change, I kissed the top of his head. Then I went out the front door.

  * * *

  —

  Only half of the eight players had assembled when I got there a little before seven-thirty. Edna Mae greeted me at the door. “Oh, do come in! It’s terribly cold outside tonight and the wind has suddenly become very brisk. I’m afraid we’re going to get more snow. We were just talking about Vida not being on her program tonight.” She paused to glance at Mary Lou Blatt. “Will she be all right? Mary Lou told us she’d been in a car accident before we heard the program.”

  I could imagine the glee with which Mary Lou had delivered the news. “That’s true,” I said, taking off my jacket and handing it to Edna Mae. “But she’s doing quite well and may be home in a day or so.”

  Mary Lou’s sharp ice-blue gaze pinned itself on me. “My sister-in-law should give up driving. I intend to do that in another few years when I get to be her age.”

  Having always thought that Mary Lou was a couple of years older than Vida, I merely smiled. “That’s up to her. She may decide to replace her car rather than have it fixed. It did suffer some severe damage.”

  The ice-blue gaze narrowed at me. “I heard it was totaled. A complete mess. Undrivable.”

  “That’s up to her insurance agent,” I said, and was saved from any further comments by the arrival of Janet Driggers, who hadn’t bothered to knock or ring the bell.

  “Just open the wine bottles,” she demanded, all but falling through the front door. “Al’s leaving me!”

  We all stared as Janet braced herself on an armchair by the door.

  “No, no!” Edna Mae squeaked, struggling to shut the door as the brisk wind followed Janet into the house. “Al would never do that!”

  “Well, he is,” Janet insisted, yanking at the sleeves of her faux-fur-lined raincoat. “What will I do without him?”

  “What happened?” asked Linda Grant, the high school girls’ PE teacher. “Is it a midlife crisis?”

  Janet seemed to have regained control of herself. “No,” she said, sitting in one of the chairs by the card table closest to the door. “It’s actually death.”

  Edna Ma gasped. “Death? You don’t mean…?” She couldn’t go on and put a hand to her mouth.

  “You got it,” Janet said. “It’s a weeklong conference in New Orleans. I’d have gone with him, but I’m stuck running the funeral home. That’s taking away from my other job at the travel agency. Meanwhile, Al will be wined and dined in typical Big Easy style while I try to be in two places at once.” She turned to a bug-eyed Edna Mae. “Uncork one of those bottles, Ms. Dalrymple. I need fortification. I also need fornica—”

  Mercifully, just then two loud thumps sounded outside. Our hostess jumped a bit but did her duty. I could see the Dithers sisters stomping their feet in a way that was evocative of the horses they raised on their farm.

  “Sorry we’re late,” Judy Dithers said. “Have to make sure the critters were bedded down. Early for them.”

  “There’s no need to apologize,” Edna Mae assured them. “We’ve been catching up with each other.”

  Connie had already straddled a hardbacked chair in about the same way I assumed she got on one of their horses. “Ooof!” she exclaimed. “Not as soft as Gray Star. Don’t usually put a saddle on him.”

  “Bareback,” Judy murmured. “Best way to ride.”

  Janet smiled slyly. “I know a few ways to ride, too. Bare everything, of course.”

  Edna Mae and the Dithers sisters looked puzzled, but Mary Lou spoke up. “Let’s start playing cards. That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?”

  Linda agreed. “We’ll cut the cards to see who plays with whom. And,” she went on with a sharp glance at Janet, “let’s stay focused.”

  I ended up with Dixie Ridley, the wife of the high school athletic coach. Neither Dixie nor Linda had ever warmed to me. I found out a few years later that Linda and Milo had dated for several months before I moved to Alpine. The sheriff broke up with Linda two weeks after I arrived. During my first year in the town, I only ran into Milo occasionally at the Burger Barn or the Venison Inn. But Linda had always felt I was the reason he’d dumped her. She and Dixie were close friends, which was why they weren’t keen on my company. Small-town grudges last forever. They seemed to ferment among the rocky crags of Tonga Ridge.

  I survived the first round with Connie Dithers, who took card-playing almost as seriously as she took attending her horses. In fact, we made a small slam. I didn’t really mind when Connie whinnied in triumph as she recorded our score. I was paired next with Edna Mae, who twittered and fluttered in her usual birdlike manner when playing a hand. Over the years I’d become immune to her idiosyncrasies.

  Next came Linda Grant. We were pitted against Judy Dithers and Dixie Ridley. Linda was surprisingly benign except for making a snide remark about all the money Milo had sunk into the remodel of our log cabin. Dixie smirked at the comment but kept her mouth shut.

  Last, but certainly not least, was Mary Lou Blatt. To my relief, she seemed unusually benign as we played out the hands. She managed to make a grand slam for us even though I hadn’t much point support in my dummy. Of course, I congratulated her when she raked in the final trick.

  Our opponents had been Connie and Janet, who got up from the table in apparent despair. I assumed it was an act for Janet, who never took bridge too seriously. Connie looked more glum, though she and Judy were dour by nature. Mary Lou, however, remained seated after putting aside the scorecard and narrowed her eyes at me.

  “No Vida on the radio,” she remarked. “Is she washed up?”

  “She can’t broadcast from the hospital,” I pointed out.

  Mary Lou harrumphed. “It’s a wonder she didn’t. Why was she driving like a maniac down there by Baring?”

  “I don’t know that she was,” I said. “She probably hit a patch of black ice.”

  “I heard she was severely injured,” Mary Lou responded with a glint in her dark eyes. “Will she walk again?”

  “Of course. I saw her at the hospital and she was in quite good spirits. Her injuries were relatively minor.”

  Mary Lou mulled that over for a bit. “Why was she going to Baring?”

  “She was going to Sultan, not Baring.”

  “Huh.” She paused. “She’s got you fooled.” Mary Lou stood up. “I can guess why she was headed for Baring. But I don’t tell tales. Good night, Emma.”

 
I watched her bid Edna Mae farewell and go out the door. Mary Lou, like Vida, was overbearing and opinionated. But the difference between the sisters-in-law was that I’d always sensed Mary Lou had a nasty streak. Vida didn’t.

  As I walked home in the softly falling snow, I wondered just how nasty Mary Lou might get. Vida’s mood at the hospital had cheered me, but I realized that it might have been forced. She certainly hadn’t been herself before the car accident occurred. Vida not being Vida was akin to the Skykomish River going dry or Windy Mountain turning to dust. I couldn’t imagine Alpine without her.

  * * *

  —

  “Well?” Milo said as I came in the front door. “Did you win?”

  “Won some, lost some.” I shrugged out of my jacket and brushed off snowflakes before hanging it up on one of the pegs by the door. “Did you survive the evening without me?”

  “I managed. No calls from my deputies.” He stretched and yawned. “Got any hot gossip?”

  I thought of telling him about Mary Lou Blatt’s implication that Vida had been on her way to Baring when she crashed the Buick, but Milo would dismiss that as spite on her sister-in-law’s part. He’d probably be right.

  “Not really,” I said after flopping onto the sofa. “The presence of the Dithers sisters tends to put a bit of a pall on loose lips.”

  Milo chuckled. “You should’ve met their parents. They were two of the grimmest people I’ve ever come across. They always wore black. Pa asked their old man once if they were in mourning for someone. Mr. Dithers said they were mourning for the whole world, which would end in the year 2000. He and Mrs. Dithers missed seeing that not happen by over twenty years.”

  “No wonder their daughters are a bit strange.” I glanced at the clock radio, which read 10:42. “I’m beat. It’s been a long day.” I hauled myself up from the sofa.

  “You’re not going to bed without me,” he said, getting up from the easy chair and taking two long strides to stand next to me. “Did you forget we’re married now?”