by Mary Daheim
Vida shook her head. “I haven't seen much of Buck this week, what with Roger staying at my house. So awkward, you know.”
“Yes, of course.”
Vida's eyes suddenly narrowed. “Where's Tommy?”
“At the dump.”
“Oh.” She stared at me for another long moment. “What's happening with you two? You seem … different since he returned.”
I feigned surprise. “I'll bring you up to date. In fact, if Roger's parents get in early enough tomorrow, would you and Buck like to come to dinner?”
Vida tipped her head to one side. “Yes, I think that would be nice. I'll let you know as soon as I can. My daughter Amy should call from Sea-Tac when their flight arrives from Hawaii.”
“Good,” I said.
Vida, however, wasn't about to let my evasion pass by. “You do have news,” she declared.
“We'll let you know tomorrow,” I said.
It was a measure of Vida's concern for Roger that she surrendered without further probing. It was probably a measure of my devotion to Tom that I didn't tag along to help make Roger talk.
Tom, however, laughed at Vida's conundrum. “It's the first time she's had to make a moral decision about Roger, I'll bet,” he said when he returned from the dump and was drinking a glass of red wine at the kitchen table. “Besides, the kid undoubtedly found the snowboard someplace where it had been chucked by somebody else who found it up on the mountain where Brian was lost.”
“Probably,” I agreed, opening a Pepsi. “Oh, it's not that Vida thinks Roger was involved. She just doesn't want Milo to give him a bad time.”
“I gather,” Tom said with an amused look, “that Dodge isn't any fonder of Roger than you are.”
“That's right,” I said. “Roger is not terribly popular around here with the adult community.”
Refreshed, Tom returned to yard duty. Surveying the increasing number of bare spots in the yard, I drove the Lexus to Mountain View Gardens across from the mall. It seemed as if everyone in town had gone garden-crazy. Roseanna Bayard was pushing a trolley filled with begonias and impatiens; Harvey and Darlene Adcock were discussing the merits of various rock garden plants; the Reverend Poole and his wife were picking out marigolds and petunias.
I selected flats of snapdragons, cosmos, dwarf dahlias, and several varieties of daylily. Shoving my trolley up to the counter, I recognized Tara Peebles.
“We've met,” I said with a friendly smile. “Sort of, anyway. I'm Emma Lord.”
I could see her heavy-lidded hazel eyes look me up and down. The Ex-Squeeze. The One Who Got Away. The Potential Rival.
“That's right,” Tara said with a smile almost as friendly as mine. “You run the newspaper.”
Tactful, very tactful. I nodded. “I heard you worked part-time at the nursery.” Then, boldly, I added, “Milo says you have a green thumb.”
Tara laughed, a musical sound. “I love flowers and I like to garden. But believe me, I have my failures just like most people. In fact, I'm still getting used to how short the growing season is at this altitude.”
As she spoke, I was sizing her up. Of course. Tara was tall, very slim, sharp-featured, with silver-streaked dark hair. Attractive, I supposed, in a no-nonsense kind of way.
“Everything blooms late in Alpine,” I said, “and the first frost can hit in September. But tubers and bulbs winter surprisingly well unless it gets unusually cold for long periods of time.” Thus I babbled, while I wondered what Milo saw in her compared to me. At least I had a noticeable bosom.
“So I've learned,” Tara responded with a glint of amusement in her eyes. “You've made some good choices, I see.”
I'd seen those eyes look beyond and realized that a line was forming. I paid for my purchases, gave Tara another friendly smile, and hauled my flora out to the car. She was sharp in mind as well as features, I decided, and had a sense of humor. Maybe she, too, liked baseball.
I didn't hear from Vida until almost five o'clock that afternoon. When she called, she was steaming.
“Honestly,” she declared in her most exasperated tone, “having raised children of his own, you'd think Milo would be more sympathetic. Of course, after his divorce, his wife took the children to live in Bellevue, so I suppose he doesn't have as much experience as you'd think. But still—”
“What happened?” I interrupted. “Where did Roger find the blasted snowboard?”
“Ooooh …” I could picture Vida rubbing fiercely at her eyes. “At the O'Neill place. It was right there, all along, in the front yard. If Milo and his idiot deputies— and that includes my nephew Billy—had actually looked for things instead of acting just like men and having whatever it was right under their noses, they would have found it themselves. The snowboard was in a bit of a hole, but it was there just the same.”
I recalled stepping in a depression when Scott and I were at the O'Neill house. I'd figured it was a gopher hole. Maybe I would have found the snowboard if I hadn't been more concerned about falling down and embarrassing myself in front of Scott.
“So,” I said, keeping an eye on Tom through the kitchen window, “nobody knows how the snowboard got there in the first place.”
“Correct.” Vida's voice had dropped a notch. “Really, you'd think Roger and his chums put it there, to hear Milogoon.”
“I wonder who did,” I remarked as Tom turned the soil in a newly cleared patch of earth. “The killer?”
“Well…” Vida finally sounded normal. “That's possible, but it's more likely that someone else found it first and tossed it aside later. They probably had no use for a snowboard.”
“They cost money,” I said. “Whoever found it might have sold it. On the other hand, if they saw Brian Conley's name on the board and made the connection … Say, you don't suppose Tim Rafferty and Tiffany Eriks found the snowboard and dumped it off at the O'Neills'?”
Vida considered. “Why?”
I admitted I didn't know. Tim had denied finding the snowboard in the first place. The only reason he might lie about it would be if he himself intended to keep it or sell it. He'd done neither one. And he and Tiffany claimed they had followed the Hartquists from the O'Neill place. There would have been no opportunity to dump the snowboard off on Second Hill.
“It probably has nothing to do with the murder itself,” I finally said. “If one of the hermits killed Brian, he might have kept the snowboard, then brought it into town when he was foraging for supplies. They do have to get in touch with civilization eventually.”
“Some do,” Vida allowed. “There are others who don't. They live off the land. That's why they're in the mountains to begin with.”
“When I told Tom where the snowboard had been found by Roger and his friends, he agreed that it was probably a coincidence. “You don't think the O'Neills— or the Hartquists—killed Brian Conley, do you?”
“I don't know what to think,” I admitted. “Those two families are so crazy they could have done just about anything. Look what they did to each other.”
“But they were in a long-standing feud,” Tom pointed out. “Brian Conley was a stranger.”
That was true. There was dinner to prepare and the rest of the weekend to enjoy. Tom would leave Monday morning, though he promised to return in a month or so. I wanted to savor my time with him. Unlike his visits in the past, this time I was looking at the future. With Tom. I smiled and took a package of prawns out of the fridge.
Sunday passed quietly. We attended Mass at St. Mildred's, where we were the cause of head-turning and whispered comments. Nor did tawdry gossip matter now. I was going to be married, and I could ignore it. I held my head high; I was soon to become Mrs. Tom Cavanaugh.
Roger's parents arrived on time, thus releasing Vida for our dinner date, and allowing her to bring Buck. Tom had met him once, very briefly. The retired air force colonel was a congenial man, big, bald and, as pilots always are, keen-eyed.
Vida, who gushed over “Tommy,” deigned to accept a glass
of white wine before dinner. Buck, I noticed with amusement, took his Scotch on the rocks, no water back. Tom made the announcement, proposing a toast.
“To my future bride,” he said, lifting his glass.
Vida let out a shriek that could have been heard all the way down at the Advocate office. “I knew it, I knew it!” she cried. “Oh, Emma!” She hugged me and sloshed wine on the carpet in the process. “I was certain you were going to announce your engagement! We have to put it on the front page!”
“Hardly,” I said, laughing. “It'll go just fine on your page.”
But Vida vigorously shook her head. “No, no, no. You're a public figure. Tom is a very important newspaper magnate. It's definitely page one.”
I didn't argue then. Buck was pumping Tom's hand and offering him a cigar. I couldn't help but stare: Vida was opposed to any kind of smoking, but especially hated cigars. I wondered if she allowed Buck to smoke inside her house.
“We have some news, too,” Vida said, sitting back down and glancing at Buck, who was lighting his cigar after giving me a nod to ask permission.
I'd remained standing, about to check on the progress of my rib roast. “Oh? What is it?”
Buck, in turn, glanced at Vida. “I'm going to move to Alpine,” he said. “I'm too far down the highway where I am now. Oh, it's fine this time of year, but in the winter, driving can be treacherous.”
Vida's forehead was wrinkled in a frown. “It won't be easy finding a nice place,” she said. “We were thinking that perhaps he could buy Lona O'Neill's house if she puts it on the market.”
“So Lona won't be coming back to Alpine?” I asked.
“No,” Vida responded. “She and Meara like their new place in Everett. Lona has a job at the naval air station now, and Meara is going to get her GED. I gather they have too many unhappy memories of Alpine. So sad, really.”
I wasn't sure if Vida meant that their memories were sad or that it was sad that the memories had forced them to leave Alpine. The latter, I suspected. A 7.5 earthquake with its epicenter under Carl Clemans's statue in Old Mill Park wouldn't force Vida to leave her beloved hometown.
The evening had passed pleasantly, however. Buck was good company; he and Tom talked sports, but veered away from politics. I saw Tom off early Monday morning for his nine-thirty flight to San Francisco. I felt a trifle wistful until he said he might be back the following weekend. Maybe he planned to commute on a regular basis.
After the usual morning get-together with my staff, I forced myself to write a lead editorial. Guns-and-violence was too trite. Besides, if the Hartquists and O'Neills hadn't owned firearms, they would have poured boiling oil on one another or broken out the bows and arrows.
Harping on feuding families—and they were hardly the only ones in a small town like Alpine—would be useless. Feuds provided, among other things, entertainment. If you couldn't go to a professional theatre or an NBA basketball game, you might as well snipe at your relatives. Literally, in some cases.
My head was full of distractions—the Brian Conley murder, the O'Neills and Hartquists, the upcoming trial, and, most of all, Tom. I gazed lovingly at the photograph I'd placed on my desk that morning: It was a picture of Tom and me at Leavenworth two winters ago. He had asked a stranger to take it in front of one of the Bavarian-style buildings. We looked happy, even handsome, standing together by a huge stuffed teddy bear in front of a candy store. I could display the photo now with pride and optimism.
But it didn't inspire an editorial. I was still stumped when Scott Chamoud came into my office. “Let me get this straight,” he said, one foot planted in my visitor's chair, the other on the slightly uneven floor. “The O'Neill story is not the lead this week?”
“I'm not sure,” I hedged. “The discovery of Brian Conley's snowboard is real news, and so far, Spencer Fleetwood hasn't gotten hold of it.”
“He may, though,” Scott pointed out. “I mean, Sheriff Dodge can't keep it a secret from him, can he?”
I winced. “He could, but he shouldn't and he probably won't. Let's wait and see what happens.”
Scott left, looking unsettled. So was I. It wouldn't do to tell him about the arms cache at the O'Neill rental until I got it cleared through Milo. Abandoning my editorial once more, I decided to go see the sheriff.
On this overcast morning, Milo was standing at the corner, looking uncertain.
“Hey!” I called, hurrying my step. “Wait up!”
“I was thinking of going to the bank,” Milo replied as I joined him. “I ran out of money over the weekend.”
I crossed Front Street with him, trying to match his long strides. “Did Tara Peebles force you to lavish money on her?” I asked in a teasing tone.
“No,” Milo replied as we reached the sidewalk. “My pipes rusted out in the bathroom. I had to get a plumber from Sultan and pay triple time. He's still there this morning. It's a hell of a job. I'd have done it myself, but I've got too damned much on my plate at work.”
I stopped at the entrance to the Bank of Alpine. “Can we run the story about the weapons cache this week?”
Milo grimaced. “Hell. I guess so. But keep a lid on it for now, okay? I'm waiting for some official information.”
I was puzzled. “From who?”
Milo looked around as if he expected to be overheard. Only Crazy Eights Neffel, Alpine's unofficial loony, was chasing imaginary butterflies across the street in front of Parker's Pharmacy.
Milo looked pained. “I can't say. That's why I don't want you telling anybody about the weapons yet. You haven't, have you?”
Opting for candor, I told Milo that I had passed the information on to Tom. “But Tom knows how to keep a secret. Remember, he's a longtime newspaper person, too.”
Milo shrugged, though he kept one eye on Crazy Eights, who had abandoned his butterfly net and was shinnying up a light standard. Our local nut's long, gray beard almost reached his waist, and he was dressed in logger's pants made of canvas (known as tin pants), heavy boots, and bright yellow suspenders over his union suit. One suspender strap had slipped down to his elbow, something of a fashion statement for Crazy Eights.
“You're right,” Milo agreed. “Besides, Cavanaugh left town this morning, didn't he?”
“Yes,” I said, “but he may be back this weekend.”
The sheriff gave me his lopsided grin. “This is new territory for you.”
I grinned back. “It sure is. Until now, my life has been on an uncertain course.” Alone. “It may take some getting used to. Right now, I'm still riding a cloud of euphoria.”
An older-model Chrysler sedan had stopped at the intersection to let a couple of elderly ladies cross the street. Crazy Eights was also coming our way. But he walked directly toward the car, opened the back door, crawled through the backseat, and came out on the other side. The driver, who looked vaguely familiar, cursed and started to roll down his window. Then he recognized Crazy Eights, shrugged, and drove off.
“You forgot your net,” Milo called to Crazy Eights, who was on the opposite corner. “It's on the other side of Front, in that concrete sidewalk planter.”
“I don't need it,” Crazy Eights called back. “There aren't any butterflies around here. Any damned fool should know that.” Pityingly, he shook his head and continued on up the hill.
“What about Roger's find?” I asked the sheriff. “Where do you think that snowboard came from?”
If Milo had looked pained a few moments ago, now he appeared downright miserable. “What do you think?”
“I'm asking you.”
Milo stepped aside as a woman pushing a stroller exited from the bank. He tipped his regulation hat at her and grimaced at me. “I have to wonder—did the O'Neills kill Brian Conley?”
The thought had briefly crossed my mind. It made some sense. Presumably, Brian had the snowboard with him when he was murdered. Ergo, the O'Neills had stabbed the young man and stolen his snowboard. Then, either not knowing how to use it, or not giving a
damn, they had chucked it with the rest of their junk in the front yard of their ramshackle house on Second Hill. It was a logical solution to a thorny problem.
Still, it was unlike Milo to jump to conclusions. “How did you deduce this?” I inquired.
“I was awake half the night,” Milo replied. “Mainly, I was worrying about how much the new plumbing was going to cost. But then I got to thinking about Roger and the snowboard. Vida's so damned protective of that kid, and it took about half an hour to get the story out of him. He's not exactly talkative, at least not with adults.”
“She thought he'd be scared,” I said with a droll expression.
“He wasn't,” Milo retorted. “He was kind of surly. But then he's at that age … Anyway, along about four in the morning while I was wondering if the shower would work, I had a thought. Maybe it wasn't a coincidence that the snowboard was found on the O'Neill property. You know me, I'm not too keen on coincidences. So the logical explanation was that they put it there. The next question was how did they get hold of it.” Milo lifted his hands. “Bingo. Maybe they took it off of Brian Conley. He was probably dead when they did it, which doesn't mean they killed him. But the body was tucked under that ledge. If the killer didn't take the snowboard, then where did it go? My money's on the O'Neills, but we'll never know for sure.”
“You keep using the plural for them,” I pointed out. “Why not just one O'Neill? I mean, it would appear that there was only one assailant, two stab wounds notwithstanding.”
Milo looked skyward where the morning clouds were starting break away. “That's what I mean. We'll never know.”
“WHAT WERE THE O'Neills doing up on Tonga Ridge?” I asked Vida after explaining Milo's theory. “They weren't exactly athletes.”
“They fished and hunted,” Vida said between sips of hot water.
“But this was the tail end of winter,” I countered. “The fishing and hunting seasons weren't over, except for steelhead, and they wouldn't climb up the ridge to fish there.”
“True,” Vida allowed. “They would fish the Sky or Martin or Beckler Creek. The streams closer to Alpine and the highway.” She paused, looking thoughtful. “Still, it makes some queer kind of sense. The O'Neills probably paid no attention to the state regulations regarding seasonal restrictions. They might have been at one of the lakes.”