The Alpine Obituary

by Mary Daheim

  “Yes,” Ruby replied, “now that the decorations are up. Mary and Kate threw me out of the kitchen.” She looked Harriet straight in the eye. “According to my sisters-in-law, my talents don’t include cooking.”

  “Nor mine,” Harriet responded. She waved a hand at the piano. “Shall we?”

  Ruby was about to answer when her husband hurried into the social hall. Louie Siegel do fed his snap-brim cap at Harriet. “Excuse me, Mrs. Clemans,” he said, his voice taut, “may I speak to my wife alone for just a moment?”

  “Of course,” Harriet replied. “I’ll check on the cooking crew, though Mr. Patterson seems to have everything well under control,” she added, referring to the camp’s head cook.

  “What is it?” Ruby hissed when Harriet was out of hearing range. “You look agitated.”

  “I am,” Louie said, “but I’m worried, too. I just hauled Jack and Georgie back from that damned railroad trestle.”

  “They know better than to go there,” Ruby exclaimed, alarm over her two older sons’ adventurous spirits written large on her face. “Especially this time of year! Were they alone?”

  “They were when I got there,” Louie said, “but they finally told me that Jonas Iversen and Hiram Rix had been with them. Hiram took off back home, I guess, but Georgie and Jack stayed with Jonas. I’m damned sure I heard Jonas run off when I came calling for our boys. I could see his big boot prints in the snow, going the other way.”

  “Are the boys all right? Had they been on the rope?” Ruby asked, a hand to her breast. Georgie was only six and Jack was barely eight, a year younger than the Rix boy.

  “They had,” Louie replied, “though it took a couple of swats to get it out of them. Dammit, something’s got to be done about that Jonas. I’ve tried speaking to Tryg Iversen, but he just sco fs and pretends his English isn’t so good. After dinner tonight, I’m going to get together with Frank and Tom and Earl Rix. We’ll talk to Mr. Clemans. We’ve got to sort this Jonas thing out once and for all.”

  “What can Mr. Clemans do?” Ruby asked with a helpless gesture. “Fire Trygve Iversen?”

  Louie frowned. “I don’t want that. Tryg still has Lars at home, along with Jonas. Lars is only ten. And I think Tryg helps out with both Per and Karen, even if they have gotten married.”

  “I know,” Ruby said. “Per and his wife Susan lost one of the twins just before the baby’s first birthday. But they’re expecting again in the new year. That will make two little ones for them. As for the Iversens’ daughter, Karen, I wouldn’t be surprised if the stork wasn’t due one of these days at the Frolands’house. Karen and Gus have been married for over two years.”

  “Don’t give me moonshine where the Iversens are concerned,” Louie said with unaccustomed sternness. “Tryg has to do something about Jonas, and that’s that. The boy’s a predator.”

  Ruby flinched at the word. “Don’t say that!”

  Louie’s chin jutted. “It’s true, Ruby. We can’t pussyfoot around Jonas’s doings. He’s immoral, he has no conscience. If,” Louie went on, lowering his voice as Monica Murphy and Kate Dawson came into the social hall, “Trygve can’t stop Jonas, somebody else will have to.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  DESPITE HER BRIEF display of triumph, Vida was castigating herself. “I can’t believe I’d forgotten the bride’s name,” she lamented. “Am I getting senile?”

  “Vida,” I consoled her, “the Thorstensen-Foster wedding was a quarter of a century ago. Even you can’t remember everything.”

  “But it was my first wedding assignment!”

  Leo, who had come into the newsroom, came up behind Vida, who was holding her head.

  “What’s up, Duchess?” Leo inquired, knowing better than to be concerned at Vida’s histrionics. “Did you catch Crazy Eights Neffel wearing some of your hats?”

  “Don’t be beastly,” Vida cried, whipping off her glasses and torturing her eyes. “Ooooh . . . I’m such a ninny!”

  Bemused, Leo glanced at me. “Why this self-flagellation? Shall we buy the Duchess a hair shirt?”

  I explained that Vida had forgotten the bride’s name from a wedding she’d covered back in the Seventies.

  “Hey,” Leo said, with a pat for Vida’s back, “I’ve been known to forget my own name. And that’s when I haven’t been drinking.”

  “Bother!” Vida snapped, putting her glasses back on. “That’s not the same. I take great pride in my powers of recollection.”

  Leo made a bow. “We stand in awe.” He grinned at me and placed several ad mockups on the desk. “Have a look. It’s shaping up better than I expected.”

  I, too, was pleased. “You think this co-op venture with KSKY could work long-term?”

  “We’ll see,” Leo said as Vida stalked out of my cubbyhole. “Spence has to get out in the trenches more instead of using those college kids to solicit ads. He used to be more of a presence. I don’t want him leaning on us to bring in revenue. What does he do with his time? How many hours a day can you spend stringing a bunch of tapes together?”

  I didn’t know. But I agreed with Leo. “This has to be fiftyfifty,” I said as the phone rang. “It’s early days, though. Let’s see how he does next week.”

  Leo picked up the ads, gave me the high sign, and went back into the newsroom. Milo was on the other end of the line, sounding grumpy.

  “It’s pretty damned tough to get a warrant for the judge’s brother,” he groused. “Marsha insisted I had no probable cause. No warrant. Hell, it’s not my fault Zeke Foster’s a creep. Marsha acts like we’ve got it all wrong, her brother’s just a flake. She should know better after all these years on the freaking bench.”

  “Maybe she didn’t know what Zeke was up to,” I said. “Any idea of where you can find him?”

  “No known address,” Milo said, still grouchy. “The last one was a P. O. box from eight years ago in Corte Madera, California.”

  “He married Clare Thorstensen in his younger days,” I said. “Did you know that?”

  “Clare Thorstensen. Hunh. Is she related to Vic Thorstensen, the EMT? Or the Thorstensens out in Ptarmigan Tract? I think they’re Vic’s cousins.”

  I explained what I knew of Clare’s background, including the fatal car accident. “I was going to call her parents myself. Do you remember her?”

  “Vaguely. She was younger than me. Hey, I have to run. That lamebrained Woodson woman’s finally showed up. She’s fifteen minutes late. How can you get lost in Alpine?”

  I’d forgotten about Vic Thorstensen, one of the medics. I decided to call him first on the off chance that he wasn’t on duty. I’d barely glimpsed him at Le Gourmand in the wake of Max Froland’s collapse.

  Vic was home but sounded half-asleep. I apologized for rousing him, then inquired about Clare.

  Vic yawned before he answered. “Clare? She’s my cousin, Don and Marcella’s daughter. She got married and moved away. That must be twenty years ago. I haven’t seen her except once or twice since. Why are you asking about Clare?”

  “The man she married is wanted for questioning in the meth lab fire.”

  “Huh?” Vic yawned again. “I don’t believe it. They live in Chicago or somewhere around there. Are you sure? Darryl—or is it Derek?—anyway, he’s a minister. Dodge must be nuts.”

  I took a deep breath. “I thought his name was Zeke.”

  Vic laughed. “That was the first husband. It lasted about six months. God only knows where that bird is now.”

  “What happened?”

  “Oh—you know. It was the Seventies, Clare was into the whole hippie scene.” Vic stopped. “Why do you need to know?”

  I felt like saying that journalists always needed to know. “I’m following the story, of course. Deadline’s tomorrow. If the sheriff picks up Zeke, I’ll need some background.”

  Having seen me at disaster scenes over the years, Vic must have felt I had credibility. “You wouldn’t believe it with Clare if you saw her as the minister’s wife
now, but back then she was kind of wild. She’d met Zeke skiing a few years earlier, when they were dating other people. In fact, Clare was dating about every warm body she could find. Anyway, she and Zeke hooked up again one winter on the slopes. On the last day of ski season, she crashed and broke her arm. They got married a couple of months later. Clare really got into the funny stuff with Zeke, but that wasn’t his only hippie habit. He believed in free love. Clare didn’t, not once she got married. They split right before Christmas that year. It was a wakeup call for Clare. She straightened herself out after that.”

  “And Zeke? Did she completely lose track of him after the divorce?”

  Another yawn from Vic. “She wanted to lose him, period. Clare went off to Concordia College. She met her future husband there. Dirk, that’s his first name. We exchange Christmas cards. That’s about it.”

  “Do you think her parents would know more about Zeke?”

  “I doubt it. He wasn’t Don and Marcella’s kind. Hey, how much did that Froland guy drink the other night?”

  “Enough,” I said.

  “Wine, huh? You’d think . . .” Vic stopped. “Hey, got a call, see if I’m needed.” He hung up.

  The other Thorstensens weren’t home, but they had an answering machine. I asked them to call me back at their earliest convenience.

  For the moment, I was stymied. I saw that Vida was out, so there was no one to speculate with. The sheriff was tied up with Lorena Woodson. After he finished interviewing her, he’d plunge deeper into the investigation. Surely he was trying to find buyers who had dealt with Terry Woodson or Zeke Foster-Klein. But most of all, I had a newspaper to put out, and a fat issue at that. I tried to put the whole Froland/Foster-Klein/Woodson mess out of mind and concentrate on work.

  A few minutes later, Ginny poked her head into my office. “You were on the phone when Vida left. She said to tell you she’d been called over to June Froland’s house.”

  “Why?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Ginny.” I returned to my article on the meth lab fire. I was writing it backward, hoping that Milo would pick up Zeke Foster-Klein before deadline and give me the hot lead paragraph for the front page.

  Shortly before four o’clock, I checked on Scott, who often needed prodding to get his stories in on time. But on this mid-September afternoon, he was in high gear, his long, lean fingers flying across the keyboard.

  “Big date tonight,” he said, still typing. “Tammy has a fiftydollar gift certificate to the Union Square Grill in Seattle, but it isn’t good on weekends, so we’re going tonight. I have to get out of here at five on the dot. Tammy’s a stickler for being on time. Oops.” He stared at the monitor. “Gosh, that last line is gibberish. I better pay more attention to what I write.”

  I was still trying to get used to Professor Tamara Rostova being called “Tammy.” With her tall, angular figure and classic features she didn’t quite fit the mold.

  I’d just gone back into my cubbyhole when Marcella Thorstensen called. She and Dan had just gotten back from a weekend of staying with friends on the Kitsap Peninsula. They had visited a couple of exotic nurseries during their stay and were planting their treasures before it started to rain again. Marcella asked if I could stop by about seven-thirty.

  I’d hoped to dispose of the Thorstensens over the phone, but Marcella sounded as if she were in a hurry. I had no other plans for the evening—certainly not a big date at the Union Square Grill—so I agreed to come calling.

  The phone rang again.

  “It’s incredible!” Vida cried as I took the call. “Come quick, to the Frolands!”

  “What is it?” I asked in a startled voice. But Vida had hung up.

  It was clouding over when I went out to the car. In the distance, I heard sirens. I wondered if they had triggered Vida’s frantic call. Perhaps Vic Thorstensen had been called to duty.

  Five minutes later, I was on Spruce Street, where I could see Vida standing by the curb, waving her arms. I could also see an EMT van parked in front of the Froland house. Pulling up a full space away from the medics’ vehicle, I jumped out of the car as Vida hurried to meet me.

  “You’ll never guess what June did!” she shouted.

  “No, I wouldn’t. So tell me.”

  “She tried to commit suicide! Before my eyes, she took all the sleeping pills Doc Dewey gave her. She was so quick, I couldn’t stop her.”

  “Is she alive?” I asked as we all but galloped toward the front door.

  “She was when I called 911,” Vida replied, now a bit breathless. “But that’s not the worst of it.”

  I was getting confused. “What?”

  “Wait.” Vida led the way down the all-too-familiar passage to June’s bedroom. Vic Thorstensen wasn’t among the medics who firmly waved us off. We retreated into the living room where Vida paced the floor. “June asked me to come over, she said it was an emergency. Naturally, I was disturbed—and curious. For a moment, I thought that the college girl Max had hired to stay with his mother hadn’t worked out. But even though the girl wasn’t here when I arrived, that wasn’t the case.” Vida took a big breath.

  From the rear of the house, I could hear the medics’ ministrations. If they were still working on June, she must be alive.

  Vida sat down next to me on the sofa. She cleared her throat and looked me in the eye. “June admitted that she cooked those mushrooms to poison Jack.”

  “What?”

  Vida nodded so hard that the velour cap slipped down to meet the top of her glasses. “Yes, she did. She knew they were poisonous. It’s true that Jack’s sight was failing, but hers wasn’t. She still did needlework, remember?” Vida paused to adjust the cap, but it left her glasses cockeyed. “June claims it was a mercy killing, but I wonder.”

  “Why?” I sounded a little breathless myself.

  “Think about it.” Vida stopped, listening to what was going on in the other room. The medics’ voices were an inaudible murmur. “Jack was better, not worse,” Vida went on. “He didn’t seem to be suffering. Jack and June haven’t gotten along for years; they led separate lives for the most part. I think June thought that Jack might recover and she’d be stuck with him for another five, ten years at least. She murdered him, and that’s that.”

  I wasn’t convinced that June’s motive was entirely selfish. Jack had suffered for quite a while. June had been his sole caregiver. I knew how hard that role could be. “Why did she tell you this?”

  Vida shrugged. “She thinks she’s dying. Or that God is going to punish her for poisoning Jack. After he died, she went to pieces. You saw that for yourself. She tried to tell Max, she asked for Pastor Nielsen to come, but he was out of town this weekend, officiating at a niece’s wedding in Iowa. I suppose she called on me because . . .” Vida faltered, perhaps from modesty, though I doubted it. “Because I’d spent time with her recently. She has no close friends.”

  I grew thoughtful for a moment before speaking again. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing, perhaps. This is a dreadful moral dilemma.” Vida yanked off her glasses, but apparently she was beyond her customary grinding of her eyes. Instead, she set the glasses down in her lap, removed her cap, and ran both hands through her hair until it stood on end. “I don’t know when I’ve been in such a quandary!”

  “It’s more than difficult,” I allowed, aware that I was now a party to Vida’s problem. Another siren sounded and then died down outside the house before I could voice my own concerns.

  Vida leaped to her feet and looked out the front window. “Ambulance,” she announced. “They must be taking June to the hospital. I wonder why they’re not transporting her in the EMT van?”

  The answer came swiftly: June was moaning like a deranged ghost, a much lower key than the shrieking she’d dished out after Jack’s death. The ambulance attendants must be considered more experienced in dealing with thorny cases.

  Vida held her
head. “I find this all very depressing. Why does life have to come to this? Why can’t people get along? Especially married people. I don’t approve of divorce, but it’s certainly better than murder. I think.”

  For the next few minutes, we kept out of the way as we lived through June’s hysteria as she was unwillingly propelled out of her house. The experience seemed unreal.

  “I should call Max,” Vida murmured as the gurney was rolled down the walk. “Poor man. How can he bear it?” She squared her shoulders and tromped to the telephone.

  I watched out the window while June was loaded into the ambulance. Vida had gotten through to Max who apparently was still on campus.

  “Vida Runkel here,” she began, sounding more like her usual self with a phone in hand and news to dispense. “No, no . . . Not so serious, but your mother has had a . . . set-back. . . . Yes, she’s going to the hospital now, but just to make sure everything is . . . No, Max, please don’t come. I’m sure she’ll be fine. . . . Yes. I’ll keep you posted. . . . Certainly. I plan on going to the hospital as soon as she gets . . . settled. . . . Of course I will. Now don’t worry too much, please. Good-bye, Max. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  As soon as Vida hung up, she let out a yelp. “Good grief! I forgot to ask Max who was staying with his mother. The girl should be notified. Maybe I can find her name around here some place.”

  I offered my help, but Vida insisted that I run along. She wanted to straighten things up before she went to the hospital. I suspected that she also wanted to make another, more thorough search of the house, though at this point, I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was just because she could snoop in an unfettered atmosphere.

  “Such a nuisance,” Vida declared as I made my exit. “Really, it would almost have been better if June had succeeded in killing herself.”

  “Vida!” I was aghast.

  “I’m merely being practical,” she asserted. “What’s going to happen to her?”

  “That depends,” I said, “on whether or not you turn her over to the sheriff.”