The Alpine Obituary

by Mary Daheim

  “Yes.” She tapped her fingers against her cheek. “I suppose it does. Oh, dear.”

  I left Vida in her quandary. To take my mind off June Froland’s dilemma, I turned the radio on as I drove back to the office. It was almost five, but I was determined to finish my half-baked editorial. As I listened to a trio of Oldies But Goodies—all of which I’d hated when they were popular thirty years ago, all of which were still as Irene and I remembered—I realized that I shouldn’t be writing about one-way streets. Plundering old growth trees and selling drugs out of meth labs were not only timely, but far more worthy. But the trees and the meth lab would require some research. If I hadn’t squandered so much time on Marsha’s stupid project, I would have gotten a head start on this week’s issue.

  A youthful male voice identified the singers and the songs on the tiresome three-pack. “This is Rick Corrolla, sitting in on the drive-home show for our good buddy, Spencer Fleetwood. It’s four-fifty-eight, and we’ll be back with the latest news after a word from our sponsors.”

  I was pulling into my parking place when the commercials for Alpine Toyota, Barton’s Bootery, Safeway, and Stuart’s Stereo concluded. Rick came back live with the news, so I waited to turn off the ignition.

  “Only minutes ago,” Rick began after the brief intro, “long-time resident June Froland was taken to Alpine Hospital by ambulance after a severe stomach upset. Mrs. Froland is the widow of Jack Froland who died barely two weeks ago. Medics referred KSKY to the hospital staff to learn the cause of her complaint. We have a reporter on the scene, and will keep our listeners informed with breaking news. Meanwhile, at Blackwell Mill, a study is underway to . . .”

  I turned off the car and the radio. I knew about the mill study, which had been in the works for some time. Jack Blackwell was trying to expand, perhaps to add a paper mill. Except for Jack and a few of his employees, nobody else was for it because paper mills smell bad.

  As I walked to the Advocate’s front door, I saw Milo out of the corner of my eye.

  “Wait up,” he called as a few drops of rain began to fall.

  Typical Puget Sounder that I am, I ignored the rain as it began to fall harder. “What’s new?” I asked as Milo joined me.

  “Saw you pull in just as I was coming out of the drugstore,” Milo said. “I ran out of cigarettes. It’s been a crazy day.”

  Cigarettes from the drugstore. Maybe they’d do me more good than the Paxil that still awaited me. Maybe they’d do more harm than good. Maybe Paxil would, too. There were side effects. Maybe the medicine would make me want to smoke again.

  “What happened with Lorena Woodson?” I inquired.

  Milo gave me a knowing look. “Probably what happened when you and Vida grilled her. “Terry was nothing but trouble, Lorena hardly knew him, never kept up with the guy, bitched because she supposed they’d have to pay for a funeral.”

  “He’s already half-cremated,” I remarked. “Maybe Al Driggers will give her a discount.”

  Milo uttered a halfhearted chuckle. “I doubt it. What I wanted to tell you—to keep you onboard—is that we rounded up a couple of local kids who bought meth from Zeke Foster-Klein or whatever he calls himself these days.”

  “Here?” I saw Milo nod. “No names, of course.”

  “Right. They’re under age. Even if they weren’t, I couldn’t tell you because . . .”

  “. . . Because it’s part of an ongoing investigation,” I finished. “Are the kids sure it was Zeke and not Terry?”

  “Pretty sure. They said the guy was dark. Terry was fair. Of course there could be a third party involved,” Milo added as the rain came down harder.

  “When was this?”

  “A month ago. Dwight Gould picked the kids up for speeding on River Road after school this afternoon. They had a bunch of outstanding warrants, not to mention a half-ounce of pot in the car. Dwight and I made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.”

  The outstanding warrants meant that I could check the police reports in the paper and probably learn the kids’ identities for myself. But that didn’t seem necessary at this point. Milo would handle the drug-related part of the case.

  “So Zeke’s been in Alpine recently,” I mused.

  “He’s probably been working the whole Highway 2 corridor.” Milo glanced up at the sky. “This is just a squall. It’s brightening over Baldy.”

  My hair was damp, but I wasn’t cold. Typical weather, fifty-odd degrees and raining. “Keep me posted,” I said. “I’m going to see the Don Thorstensens tonight.”

  “They won’t know anything about Zeke’s whereabouts,” Milo said over his shoulder. “Save yourself a trip.”

  The sheriff was probably right. But I’d told Marcella Thorstensen I was coming, so I had to keep my word. Besides, I could work another hour or so, pick up Chinese at the mall, and then go out to Ptarmigan Tract before I called it a day.

  Before I could step inside the office, Milo shouted at me. “Hey!” He loped back down the sidewalk. “What’s the deal with June Froland? We got an emergency call about a half-hour ago.”

  I hesitated. “June had to be taken to the hospital. Give Vida a call. She’s probably there with her by now. Or I’ll have her paged and tell her to call you.”

  Milo looked suspicious. “You’re not telling me everything.”

  “I can’t.” I looked apologetic. “As you would say, it’s part of an ongoing investigation.”

  “Sounds weird to me,” he muttered. “You sure you can’t say?”

  I let out a big sigh. Milo would know soon enough about June’s suicide attempt. “June deliberately took an overdose of sleeping pills. Vida was there when she did it. Get the rest of it from her. Please.”

  “Jesus! What next?” Milo shook his head, but gave in. “Good thing Vida likes to talk,” he said as he started on his way again.

  But would she? I wondered. Vida could also be discreet. She loved gossip but she kept secrets. It was a big part of her maven’s magic. It was also the reason that so many people— such as June Froland—confided in her.

  It was seven o’clock when I finally turned away from my computer. Since it was after-hours, I couldn’t call the state department of forestry in Olympia, so I decided against the tree piracy for this week. Instead, I concentrated on the meth lab, piecing together the facts I’d acquired so far as well as some research I gleaned off the Internet. All my other stories were pending, so I’d finish them tomorrow in time for deadline.

  I picked up the usual mediocre Chinese food at the mall but decided to save it until I got home. The rain was still coming down, and it was getting dark, earlier than usual for mid-September. I passed KSKY on my way to Ptarmigan Tract. Spence’s Beamer was parked outside, along with two other vehicles I didn’t recognize.

  Marcella Thorstensen met me at the door of their neat cookie-cutter house, where I noted that an exotic-looking evergreen and a couple of other shrubs looked as if they’d just been put in the ground. She introduced me to her husband, Don, who was watching Monday night football. They were both well into middle age, and I realized that I had indeed seen them, not only around town, but a couple of times at Don’s parents’ house across the street from me.

  Marcella offered cider. “We bought it over on the peninsula,” she said. “Our friends live at Kingston. We love going to the nurseries around there. They have so many unusual plants.” She turned to Don, who had his eyes glued to the TV. “We got our new babies in the ground just in time, didn’t we, Don?”

  “Unh,” Don replied as the Forty-Niner quarterback got sacked.

  “I could spend hours going through those places,” Marcella said with a sigh that was almost orgasmic. “Fronds are my favorite. We got six new ones, all for out back. Aren’t they gorgeous, Don?”

  “Enh,” said Don as the Niners punted.

  “Now what can we do for you, Ms. Lord?” Marcella asked just before I began to wonder if I was going to spend hours listening to a recital from the catalogs of th
e Kitsap Peninsula’s nurseries.

  I explained—gently—how their former son-in-law was wanted for questioning in the meth lab fire. Marcella expressed shock; Don expressed displeasure over two broken tackles on a first-and-ten play.

  “That Zeke!” Marcella exclaimed. She was a small, rail-thin woman who looked as if she spent most of her time outdoors. “We never could stand him, even though we tried. And how we warned Clare that she should never marry him! You won’t believe the hard feelings it caused back then. Didn’t we try to tell her what Zeke was really like, Don?”

  “Aargh,” Don said as the Niners failed to recover a fumble at midfield.

  The rest of the conversation went nowhere, right along with the Forty-Niners. Just as they tried to stop a field goal from their own thirty-yard line, I heard what sounded like a sonic boom. Maybe, I thought, it was Don imploding.

  Marcella apparently didn’t notice the loud noise. She’d gotten off onto what a successful marriage Clare now enjoyed with her minister husband. The next thing I knew, I was looking at pictures of three grown grandchildren. It was half time at the football game. Don got up and left the room, presumably to get a refill of the Doritos he’d been munching.

  “The pity is,” Marcella was saying as my eyes glazed over a high-school graduation photo of a happy young man who looked like he’d slam-dunked his SATs, “with Clare and Dirk’s involvement with their parish, they don’t get out to see us often. We’d go back to Chicago more, but the weather there is so bad in the winter, and when it’s nice here, I like to work in the garden. Do you garden, Ms. Lord?”

  I was afraid she’d ask me next if I mulched. But my cell phone rang, sparing me an immediate reply.

  “Emma?” It was Milo, and he sounded unusually excited. “Where are you?”

  Briefly, I told him.

  “Then you got a big story right down the road,” Milo said as I heard his siren turn on. “Somebody just blew up the radio station.”

  December 1917

  MARY DAWSON TIPPED her head to one side, then the other. “It’s crooked,” she announced to her husband, Frank. “That tree needs to go a bit to the left, and don’t be such a crosspatch about fixing it.”

  “The tree’s fine,” Frank countered, eyeing the six-foot Douglas fir with dislike. “I’ve already moved it four times.”

  “You’ve only moved it three,” Mary retorted, “and that’s because you butchered the top. It had a perfect top before you got at it.”

  “It had two tops,” Frank declared. “You can’t have two tops.”

  “Then you should have left one of them,” Mary said. “Honestly, Frank, every year we go through this. Why do you have to take a perfectly good Christmas tree and . . .”

  “It wasn’t perfectly good,” Frank interrupted, snatching up his pipe from the kitchen table. “The ones that Tom and I cut down yesterday were better than this one or that other shrubby thing you and Kate hauled out of the woods.”

  Mary tried not to laugh. Every year, it was the same. Frank and Tom would cut down their families’ trees, their wives would criticize their selections, and the next day Mary and Kate would go out and harvest what they considered a superior fir. Neither of the Siegel sisters could figure out why their husbands made such poor choices year after year.

  “All right,” Mary said. “Leave it be. I’ll straighten it before we start decorating after the kiddies are in bed. Right now, I’m going to get Kate and find some pine boughs. It’s not snowing, so it shouldn’t take long if we climb up a ways on Tonga Ridge.”

  “For God’s sake, be careful,” Frank cautioned as he managed to light his pipe on the second attempt.

  Ten minutes later, the sisters were walking up Icicle Creek, their sturdy boots leaving impressions six inches deep. With the temperature above freezing, the creek was running high from the melting snow on the ridge. The river was also up on its banks, but there was no fear of flooding. Yet.

  “Billy’s so excited for Christmas Eve,” Kate said, her chronic asthma shortening her breath. “Monica is too old to admit she’s agog, but I can tell otherwise.” She stopped, coughing a half-dozen times.

  “Let’s stop going uphill,” Mary said. “You’re going to wear yourself out before you get the tree decorated. I think there’s some pine trees closer to the train tracks that have branches low enough to cut.”

  Kate didn’t argue. The women turned right, carefully picking their way to avoid objects hidden by the snow. “How far down the line?” Kate asked as the tracks came into view.

  “Just before the trestle,” Mary answered, sniffing at the wood smoke that hung in the air. “Maybe it’ll be nice tomorrow for Christmas. I’m glad they’re sending a priest up here to say Mass.”

  “Yes,” Kate agreed as they walked along the tracks, where the snow had been cleared away in a three-foot swath. “I hope we get Father McDermot. . . .” She stopped again as a sharp crack sounded nearby. “What was that? A power line snapping?”

  Mary shook her head. “They usually only do that when they’re frozen. It sounded more like a gun to me.”

  “A hunter, maybe, going after venison for Christmas dinner.” Kate shrugged and kept walking.

  Turning a bend in the tracks, they saw the trestle up ahead where Burl Creek tumbled into the Skykomish River. Like Icicle Creek, Burl was running high. Brush, logs, even small trees were being swept along on the swift current.

  “The pine trees are just above the creek,” Mary said, “maybe twenty feet up. . . .” This time Mary stopped speaking. “Did you see that?” she asked, taking Kate by the arm. “Someone just ran up through the trees.”

  But Kate hadn’t seen anything. “Our hunter, maybe,” she said. “Let’s hope he doesn’t think we look like a deer. Maybe we should start yelling so he knows we’re here.”

  “A good idea,” Mary replied. “Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!”

  “Hey!” Kate shouted. “Hallooo . . .” She began to cough again. “Drat. Let’s hope he heard you.”

  Staying on the alert, the women moved to the creek. Kate noticed fresh footprints in the snow. “Somebody’s been here, all right. Look.”

  Mary stared at two sets of footprints, one large, one not so large. They led down from the hill to the edge of the creek. “Oh, my God!” Mary cried. “Is this blood?”

  Crimson spots spattered the snow next to the rushing waters. Kate flinched and put a hand to her breast. Then her eyes followed the smaller set of prints back up the hill. “Two people were here. Only one left.”

  Mary stared at the prints. “What do you think happened?”

  Kate gazed in horror at the creek, running full spate. A person could get swept away downstream. Especially if that person had been shot. “Forget the pine. Let’s follow these single prints back up the hill.”

  “You’ll get out of breath,” Mary protested. “Besides, whoever it is may have a gun.”

  “It could be a woman,” Kate said. “The prints are small enough.” She straightened her shoulders. “If we go slow. I’ll be all right.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t try,” Mary said, looking up at the trestle. “That’s odd. The rope’s gone.”

  “Good,” Kate declared, her face grim. Then she turned a worried face to her sister. “My God, Mary, what do you think happened here?”

  “I’d rather not think about it,” Mary responded bleakly. “But we have to do something. We can’t stand around here all day.”

  “Then let’s go,” Kate said, her expression now determined. She started up the hill, heedless of her wet skirts and petticoats.

  “Oh, Kate,” Mary said in a wretched voice, “I don’t know if we . . .”

  But Kate was already several yards away. With a shake of her head, Mary followed.

  Within another ten yards, the footprints turned back toward town. At one point, it looked as if their prey had fallen. Mary and Kate now moved faster along the more even ground. It was beginning to get dark and it felt as if the temperature was dropping.
Coming out into the open at the edge of the forest, Mary looked up. Heavy clouds had begun to move in. Across the valley, Baldy was already half-hidden.

  The footprints began to mingle with those of other people. On Christmas Eve, Alpine was a-bustle. Rufus Kager was hauling a Sitka blue spruce on a horse-drawn wagon. Tom Bassen was nailing a cedar wreath to his front door. Harriet Clemans was delivering a basket of her famous potato rolls to the Rix family. Somewhere voices were raised in the third verse of “O Come All Ye Faithful.”

  It should have been a perfect holiday scene.

  But Mary and Kate felt sick at heart as they sorted out the most recent footprints and realized that they led to the Iversen home.

  “Mother of God,” Kate whispered as she looked at the darkened house. “Now what do we do?”

  Mary didn’t answer for a long time. Finally, she heaved a sigh that was almost a wail. “Nothing.”

  “But Mary,” Kate objected, “we can’t just let things go.”

  “Yes, we can,” Mary insisted. “It’s none of our business. And it’s Christmas. Maybe,” she went on slowly as she turned her back on the Iversen house, “it’s all for the best.”

  “You’re a Pollyanna,” Kate burst out. “You always were!”

  Mary didn’t reply, but kept walking.

  Kate stood in place for a few moments. Maybe Mary was right.

  It was Christmas.

  Chapter Seventeen

  WITH ONLY THE briefest of explanations to the Thorstensens, I raced out of their house and drove away as if Satan himself were in pursuit. It took me less than five minutes to reach the radio station site. All the emergency vehicles were roaring to the spot. I slowed down within about fifty feet and surveyed what was left of KSKY.

  Frankly, I couldn’t see much through the smoke and flames. The clearing was alight as the fire raged. I flinched as a couple of small explosions went off somewhere inside the inferno. I could barely make out the rear part of the building that had been left standing. Not that Spence had built himself a broadcasting Taj Mahal—KSKY was a small cinder-block edifice consisting of a half-dozen cramped rooms. Some fifty feet away from the building, I noted that the radio tower was still intact. Apparently whoever had bombed the station had wanted to destroy the people, along with the place.