by Mary Daheim
“Soup.”
“Get serious.”
I stood up. “You’ve eaten part of my lunch. That’s a meal and a half. And you don’t need pie for dessert. Do you want to gain back the weight you lost last year helping nurse Tanya back to health after she got shot?”
“I’ve stayed at that weight,” Milo asserted. “Ditch the soup.”
I’d reached the door. “I’ll think about it.” I blew him a kiss before moving on. As I walked back to my office, I realized Milo hadn’t reimbursed me for his lunch. Maybe I should serve him soup for dinner. But I wouldn’t. Having eaten barely half of a lunch, I’d be starving by six o’clock. Maybe a stop at the Grocery Basket on the way home was in order.
Just as I was about to enter the front office, I heard Alison call to me as she came past the Venison Inn.
“I skipped lunch,” she announced as we went inside. “Jan called and asked me out to dinner tomorrow night. I went to Francine’s Fine Apparel to get something new to wear. She didn’t have the sweater I wanted in my size, but she checked with the outlet in Seattle and they’ll have it here by late morning.”
“Wow!” I exclaimed with a smile as we went inside. “Things are heating up.”
“I hope so. Oh—Marlowe Whipp came by just as I was leaving. He forgot to give me a postcard for you from somebody in Montana. Now where did I…Ah! Here it is. I hope you can read the handwriting. I can’t.”
The glossy picture on the front was of cows grazing in a big green pasture. “Greetings from Hardin, Montana” was printed in a script font at the top. I turned it over and understood why Alison had a problem with the handwriting. The only thing I could read was the sign-off at the bottom: “XXX OOO Patti.”
“Maybe I need glasses,” I muttered, peering more closely at Patti’s erratic handwriting. She might have written the postcard while she was drinking. My name had been spelled as “Emma Lard” and the message was relatively short. I finally made out the first sentence and read it aloud: “ ‘We are here in Hardin on my ranch.’ ” The next two lines were indecipherable. I passed the postcard back to Alison. “See if you can figure it out. I give up.”
“Wow!” Alison exclaimed. “Is this really from Patti Marsh?”
“The very same,” I assured her. “She inherited a big chunk of land in Montana.”
Alison sat down at her desk and got a magnifying glass out of the drawer. “Let’s see if this helps,” she murmured. “Omigod! Patti and Jack got married! Can you believe it?”
I started to say I couldn’t, but realized I had to. “Read it to me—if you can. I do believe it. Blackwell wouldn’t pass up the chance to prevent Patti from keeping all that land for herself. Washington is a community-property state.”
“It is hard to make out,” Alison said. “Translated into actual English, the gist is that she and Jack are honeymooning on the ranch. Patti doesn’t spell very well.”
“No surprise there,” I said, wondering how Milo would react to the news. Suddenly the personals ad we’d run came back to me. I reminded Alison about it. “Patti always went by her ex-husband’s last name, Marsh. They divorced, but she kept his last name because of their daughter, Dani Marsh, the actress. But now I recall that her maiden name was Erskine. I hadn’t thought of that in ages.” I couldn’t help but wonder about the other Erskines who had popped up.
“I wanted to meet Dani when she was supposed to come here at Christmas,” Alison said wistfully. “I’ve never met a movie star. But then she had to cancel. I was really bummed.”
“Dani’s nice. At least she was back then. That was over fifteen years ago.”
“I’ve seen her in a couple of movies,” Alison said, handing the postcard to me. “Something on TV, too. She still looks good.”
I glanced outside. The rain was coming down very hard and the temperature sign now read thirty-three degrees. That suggested we were in for more snow. I wanted Milo to see the postcard, but I preferred not to get drenched in the process. I decided that common sense was better than valor, so I’d give him a call. But before I could do that, my phone rang.
“Emma,” Kay Burns said in a stilted voice, “Dr. Woo just heard from Iain Farrell. He’s in Helena, Montana, and he just got married.”
I was momentarily speechless, though if Jack and Patti could finally get married, why not Iain Farrell? But all I could say was, “He did?”
“Yes,” Kay paused. “If you recall from his résumé, he worked in Montana for a few years. With children, I think. His wife is one of the patients he had while he was there. She must be considerably younger.” The last words smacked of disapproval.
I still wasn’t sure what to say. “Isn’t Iain about fifty?”
“I believe so. He was a bit cagey about his age.”
Pot, meet kettle. Kay had always been. “I’ve held off putting anything about Farrell’s resignation in the paper.” The truth was, I’d forgotten about it. “Do you want me to go public?”
“No, not yet,” Kay replied. “It may take some time to find a replacement. I wouldn’t want RestHaven to sound understaffed. It might upset our patients.”
“Understandable,” I agreed. Their patients were already sufficiently upset, which was why they were patients. With an exchange of pleasantries, we rang off. I made a few notes, then finally called the sheriff’s headquarters.
Lori answered. “The boss man can’t talk to you right now,” she informed me. “He’s just leaving.”
“For where?” I asked.
“There’s a situation at the Alpine Falls Motel.”
“What kind of situation?”
“I honestly can’t say. Dustin and Consi went with him. Really, I’m sorry, but I’m not sure except that it must be…serious. All I know is that Fred Engelman called for help, but didn’t say why. I think he got cut off.”
I paused long enough to hear sirens. “Okay. We’ll check it out. Thanks, Lori.”
Looking into the newsroom, I could see Mitch walking toward his desk. I hurried off to tell him that there was some kind of dustup at the Alpine Falls Motel. “The sheriff and a couple of deputies are on the way there now. I hate to send you out in this kind of awful weather, but we have to know what’s going on.”
Mitch grimaced as he grabbed his all-weather coat. “This is nothing. I’m from Detroit, remember?”
One of the problems with Mitch was that he could never forget to remind me.
Chapter 25
Liza was the only person still in the newsroom. “What’s going on?” she asked after Mitch had hurried away.
I explained that the sheriff and two deputies apparently had been summoned by Fred Engelman to the Alpine Falls Motel. “Fred’s the temporary manager while Will Pace is in Mexico.”
Liza rolled her eyes. “How long will it take me to figure out who everybody is in this town? Isn’t the motel just a couple of blocks from here?”
“Right,” I replied, seeing a curious Alison in the doorway. “And no,” I added for the benefit of both my employees, “I haven’t a clue about what’s going on.”
Liza shrugged. “I recognize Pace’s name. Leo complains about how hard it is to get him to pay for his postage-stamp-sized ad in the paper. I’ll bet he has hookers at his motel. Will strikes me as a real sleazebag.”
“The description is apt,” I assured her.
Alison was nodding in agreement. “He came into the office once when I was the only one here except for Kip, who was in the back shop. He seemed like a total perv. I was afraid he was going to try to touch me. He leaned so close over the desk that I could smell his awful breath. I told him I wasn’t able to answer whatever his question was and he should talk to Kip. But he just shrugged and went away.”
“Typical,” Liza remarked. “That kind of guy is basically a coward.”
I was getting antsy. There had been t
wo sirens, one of them the familiar ga-goo-ga sound from Milo’s Yukon, and the other from a SkyCo cruiser. That struck me as more than a drunken motel guest raising hell. I considered calling Mitch to find out what was going on, but my reporter could be prickly when I appeared to interfere with him doing his job.
A glance through the window above Liza’s desk showed that the rain had definitely turned to snow. If I sneaked out the back way, it would take me only a couple of minutes to get to the motel. Alison had gone back to the front office and Liza was making a phone call. I returned to my cubbyhole, grabbed my jacket, and went out through the newsroom’s rear door. Kip was studying something high-tech that I wouldn’t understand even if he tried to explain it to me.
“Don’t rat me out,” I said to him. “I’m on a secret mission.”
Kip grinned at me. “Sneaking off to Francine’s Fine Apparel?”
“That’s my cover story,” I said, and went out the back door, pulling my hood up over my head. The snow was picking up momentum.
Despite the weather, the Yukon and the cruiser had attracted the attention of at least a dozen other people. Milo and his deputy had obviously gone inside. I couldn’t see Mitch. Maybe he’d followed them. I considered doing the same thing, but now another half-dozen curious Alpiners barred the way.
Then I remembered that there was a second entrance in the little courtyard off the parking area. I scooted around the corner and collided with Lloyd Campbell.
“Emma!” he exclaimed, looking very red in the face. “What are you doing here?”
“My job,” I replied. “There’s some kind of trouble going on here.”
Lloyd suddenly looked conflicted, and took a deep breath before he spoke. “Yes. I’m here to help. Why don’t you go back to your office?”
“My reporter is already inside,” I said, wondering why Lloyd had made such a strange request. “Why are you here?”
Lloyd seemed to shrink into himself and couldn’t look me in the eye. “Please, Emma,” he finally said. “I have to save Jean.” He brushed past me, almost staggering across the open space to the motel door.
If he was going inside, so was I. To the surprise of us both, the door opened before we reached it. Mitch gaped at me as Lloyd almost knocked him down and barreled his way into the motel.
“Is that Campbell, the Alpine Appliance owner?” he asked as I crossed the threshold.
“Yes.” I paused to catch my breath. “What’s going on?”
Mitch closed the door. “Craziest thing I ever ran into, even in Detroit. His wife—Jean?” He paused, and I nodded. “She just confessed to killing Rachel Douglas. The sheriff is taking her to headquarters.”
* * *
—
Almost an hour later, Mitch, Spencer Fleetwood, and I sat in Milo’s office. According to Fred Engelman, a distraught Jean Campbell had come to the motel office and told him she’d killed a guest. Jean was so upset that he didn’t know if she was talking about the present or the past. He tried to calm her down, but she got more frantic, starting to tear at her clothes and her hair. That was when Fred called the sheriff.
“She’d passed out before we got here,” Milo explained. “When Jean came around, she was incoherent. I had Consi take her to the ER. I hope they can keep her there at least overnight. I’ll make sure there’s a deputy on duty. What I’m really afraid of is she might try to off herself.”
I asked if Lloyd could stay with her, but Milo felt that was a bad idea. “He’s tapped out,” my husband replied. “She’d already told Lloyd about killing Rachel. She swears it was an accident. Jean had met Jason’s previous girlfriend on a trip to the Bay Area and thought she’d make their nephew a good wife. Somehow she got it into her head that Rachel had broken up that romance and was hell-bent on marrying Jason. Jean went to the motel to tell her to back off. Rachel denied it, but Jean thought she was lying. She started shaking Rachel and lost control. Jean told Lloyd she blacked out after that and didn’t remember how she left the motel or got back home.”
“She really isn’t of sound mind,” I said, more to myself than to Milo or Mitch. “How very sad.”
Milo nodded. “Lloyd was so worried about what Jean might do next, maybe even to herself, that he consulted Simon Doukas about having her certified as legally insane.”
“She must be.” I looked at Mitch. “This is your story. All of it.”
Spence spoke up for the first time. “Jean needs to be admitted to RestHaven. Rosalie will try to help her. And Lloyd.” He glanced at me. “As you know, Rosalie traveled that rocky road with a mentally ill spouse before he finally died.”
Milo sat back in his chair. “I’ll have to charge her,” he said in a reluctant voice. “Jean has already confessed, at least informally. But she’ll never make it to trial. The plea will be that she’s of unsound mind.”
Mitch and Spence merely nodded.
Back at the office, my reporter was busy writing the story, and I wondered if I should let Vida know what happened. As a member of the Presbyterian church, she might have already heard. There had been enough of a crowd at the motel that the news Mitch would post online in a few minutes probably had already spread from Alpine Baldy to Mount Sawyer.
But Alison hadn’t heard of the tragedy. She’d spent her lunch hour at Stella’s Styling Salon getting highlights for her hair in preparation for her date with Jan. While Stella was usually a major source for gossip, the salon was far enough away from the motel that the news hadn’t yet traveled there. Alison was briefly agog, but she quickly changed the subject, asking me what color eye shadow she should use for her evening with Jan. I suggested mauve before fleeing to the peace that was my cubbyhole.
What was left of the workday wound down without incident. I tried to call Vida, but her line was busy. Even while taking care of Amy, she couldn’t give up her need to know all things Alpine. I wondered how she’d react when she saw the Danforth obituary. Maybe I shouldn’t run it. But that would be wrong. The family obviously wanted it to appear in the Advocate. I owed it to the readers along the Highway 2 corridor to learn of Julia Danforth’s death.
Milo called me five minutes before quitting time. “I don’t want you driving home in eight inches of snow. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.” He hung up before I could say anything.
By the time I was standing at the front door a few minutes after five, my entire staff had left. I saw Liza’s car still parked two spaces down from my Honda, but no sign of Leo’s Toyota. Obviously he, too, didn’t want his wife risking a nasty accident. Liza had probably never seen snow this deep except on Christmas cards. And it was still coming down.
Milo pulled in a couple of minutes later. “Try to get in without falling on your cute little ass, okay?”
“Try to act like you’re glad to see me,” I snapped, struggling to get my feet planted on the snow-covered ground. “At least you closed a case today.”
“A damned pitiful case,” Milo muttered as he pulled into what was fairly light traffic in our slower-than-big-city rush hour. “I’ve never felt this crappy about charging somebody with homicide. What’s worse is that poor Jean had no intention of killing Rachel.”
“You go by the book, Sheriff,” I reminded him. “You have to. The real fault lies with Lloyd for not getting help for Jean before she went completely around the bend.”
“I can’t charge him for willful neglect,” Milo replied. “He may not have realized how…” The beeper on his cell went off. “Grab that thing off the dashboard. I have to keep both hands on the wheel going up the hill.”
I said hello. There was a pause; I heard voices in the background. “Emma?” Sam Heppner said as I heard a siren. “Are you with the boss?” I said I was. “We’ve got a situation at the O’Neill house. It’s on fire and there may be somebody inside. Got to go.” Another siren could be heard in the distance.
“D
amn!” Milo had been able to get the gist of Sam’s information. “You’re going to have to come with me. But don’t even think about getting out of the Yukon. I mean it.”
He turned on the siren and the flashing red lights before executing a U-turn in the middle of Front Street that almost gave me a heart attack. It was probably only one of the few byways in town that wasn’t totally covered in snow. I could hear tires squealing like so many hungry pigs. But I didn’t worry about the Yukon getting hit. It was built so solidly that any other vehicles would probably bounce off of it.
We turned onto Disappointment Avenue, where there was less traffic. The O’Neill house was in what I would describe as a cul-de-sac, for lack of a better term. It was still snowing a bit, so all I could see at first were the emergency vehicles. A fire truck, an ambulance, and a sheriff’s cruiser blocked part of the view. I could see some flames but couldn’t tell exactly from where in the house they were coming from.
Milo pulled in behind the cruiser. “I’m locking you in, so don’t even think about trying to get any closer.”
Obviously, my husband remembered the time I’d done just that on a previous occasion. As he got out, I called Mitch on my cell. We had to have photos, and the story—whatever it might be—was his.
“Good thing Brenda doesn’t have dinner ready yet,” he said. “I won’t give her any details. She might worry herself into a knot if she thought I was in danger.”
I’d lost sight of Milo beyond all the parked vehicles. I could see streams of water being poured on the house, though the flames didn’t seem to be dying down yet. Less than a minute passed before I heard a siren and the ambulance rushed past the Yukon toward the hospital. Who? I wondered. Could this be a repeat of Mickey O’Neill holding Sofia Nelson hostage? He’d done it once before. I was starting to feel giddy, thinking about Mickey having a lack of imagination.
A couple of minutes later, the flames flickered out. But now it was hard to see through all the smoke and the increasing snowfall. I’d gotten a grip on my emotions by the time Milo emerged from what seemed like a dense fog. He unlocked the Yukon’s door on the driver’s side and got in.