Bitter Alpine
Page 27
“Right.” Milo headed into the living room, where he settled into the easy chair. I sat down on the sofa. “What I suspected turned out to be right,” he went on. “Pace not only rented rooms to hookers, but recruited them via a network of pimps operating in the western part of the state. I couldn’t get a search warrant because there were no reported violations. Pace obviously kept a lid on what was going on behind his motel’s closed doors.”
“You never mentioned that to me!” I was practically shouting. “You should’ve told me what you thought he was doing.”
Milo shook his head. “It was what you call ‘speculating.’ You know I don’t like to do that.”
I was still irked. “But you did it. You know I would never run anything about your speculating in the paper.”
“Hell, Emma,” Milo said with a wry expression, “can you honestly tell me that if you’d known what I was thinking, you wouldn’t have nagged me to do something about it even though I didn’t have any evidence?”
I grudgingly allowed that my husband was probably right. “Is Pace putting the motel up for sale?”
“No, he’ll keep it. He told Fred to stay on, and he’ll pay him a regular salary that will come out of the monthly rentals. Pace is opening a bank account in Honduras. Maybe that’s his new home.”
“That’s good news for Fred,” I allowed. “But he can’t live there like Will did. He and Janie have a house.”
Milo shrugged. “They’ll work it out. Meanwhile, I’ll have to decide if it’s worth trying to extradite Will Pace. I’m guessing Fred won’t encourage the hookers. He strikes me as a straight arrow when it comes to his morals.”
“Fred’s fundamentally sound,” I agreed as Milo’s cell went off.
“Damn! Now what?…Dodge here.”
I watched as his expression changed from annoyance to disbelief to anger and then to resignation. “Okay, Sam. There’s nothing we can do about it from here. They can’t stay away forever.” He put the cell back in his shirt pocket. “That was Heppner. Blackwell and Patti took a plane to Chicago and left from there for a Paris honeymoon.”
I was speechless. But Milo’s expression was wry. “Are you jealous because we’ve never had a honeymoon?” He stood up. “Want to have one now?” He nodded toward the hallway.
Awkwardly I got to my feet. “Yes.”
Later, after we emerged from the bedroom, I felt rejuvenated. The tragedies, frustration, and crises of the past two weeks melted like the snow that had covered Alpine. There was a cure for the ills of the world. In middle age, Milo and I had found it.
We called it Love.
BY MARY DAHEIM
The Alpine Advocate
The Alpine Betrayal
The Alpine Christmas
The Alpine Decoy
The Alpine Escape
The Alpine Fury
The Alpine Gamble
The Alpine Hero
The Alpine Icon
The Alpine Journey
The Alpine Kindred
The Alpine Legacy
The Alpine Menace
The Alpine Nemesis
The Alpine Obituary
The Alpine Pursuit
The Alpine Quilt
The Alpine Recluse
The Alpine Scandal
The Alpine Traitor
The Alpine Uproar
The Alpine Vengeance
The Alpine Winter
The Alpine Xanadu
The Alpine Yeoman
The Alpine Zen
Alpha Alpine
Bitter Alpine
MARY RICHARDSON DAHEIM started spinning stories before she could spell. Daheim has been a journalist, an editor, a public relations consultant, and a freelance writer, but fiction was always her medium of choice. In 1982, she launched a career that is now distinguished by more than sixty novels. In 2000, she won the Literary Achievement Award from the Pacific Northwest Writers Association. In October 2008, she was inducted into the University of Washington’s Communication Alumni Hall of Fame. Daheim lives in her hometown of Seattle and is a direct descendant of former residents of the real Alpine, which existed as a logging town from 1910 to 1929, when it was abandoned after the mill was closed. The Alpine/Emma Lord series has created interest in the site, which was named a Washington State ghost town in July 2011. An organization called the Alpine Advocates has been formed to preserve what remains of the town as a historic site.
marydaheimauthor.com
Every great mystery needs an Alibi
eOriginal mystery and suspense from Random House
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