by Mary Daheim
“I mean in moral … Oh, shit, do what you want. Just don’t do it in front of the courthouse. In fact,” he went on, the idea apparently just occurring to him, “get married by a JP to give the appearance of legal wedlock.”
“I don’t think either of us gives a damn about that,” I said. “When I get married, I’ll do it in the Church.”
“Think about it. You two lead public lives. Too public, I’m told.”
“You seemed unimpressed by what Milo and I have gone through this past month. Most people would’ve become unhinged. We got giddy.”
Ben grimaced. “You sure as hell got everybody’s attention. Maybe that helped set off your nut-job reporter.” He put his hand on the one of mine that wasn’t holding the sandwich. “Are you mad at me?”
“No. I can never stay mad at …” I stopped. “You’re right. Am I marrying my awful brother?”
Ben stood up. “You could do worse. You can thank Adam for getting my head straight. Where did he get that? Must be from Tom.”
“Hey—what about Marisa?”
Ben laughed. “She apologized. She swears it was the liquor.”
“Maybe. She’s no big drinker. But as Adam said, you’re not bad-looking for an uncle—or a brother.”
Milo had returned. “All clear,” he said. “Your rug went to the cleaners. Doe and Jack just left.”
He started to turn away, but Ben tapped his shoulder. “She’s all yours,” he said, and left the bedroom.
“What the hell did that mean?” Milo asked, scratching behind his ear as he took Ben’s place at the foot of the bed.
“It means he’s okay with us. Did he say anything to you?”
“No. More about what happened and … You’re not going to hell?”
“Not without you.”
“You can explain that some other time. Still mad at me?”
I frowned. “About what?”
“Never mind.” He chuckled. “Dr. Sung finished with Curtis about an hour ago. The little prick will be available for questioning later tonight, early tomorrow. I’m putting Dwight and Sam on it. They can play bad cop and bad cop. Dwight’s back to being in charge.”
“How long are you on suspension?”
“What day is it? I’ve lost track. Friday, right?”
I nodded absently—and realized it was December 31. “It’s New Year’s Eve!”
Milo grinned. “Hell of a way to spend it.” He turned serious, that familiar yearning look in his eyes. “On the other hand, it’s not over yet.”
I smiled. “You didn’t answer the question, big guy.”
“Oh. Until Monday, unless the commissioners fire me for not showing up at Cobb’s funeral. By the way, Bill figured out why Curtis ditched those boots. Our own lab’s limited resources showed blood on them. I’ll bet it belongs to Gus.”
I let out a little gasp. “So he did kill poor Gus?”
“No guesses. I figure Curtis is going to sing like an opera star. He finally got center stage.” Milo grew somber. “How do you really feel?”
“The pain pills are working. Can you hold me, just for a little bit?”
Milo made a face. “You’ve got cheese on your chest.”
“Oh!” I flicked the small bit off onto the floor.
“You complain about my housekeeping?” But he stretched out next to me, and it didn’t matter that I almost fell off the single bed. He put his arms around me and I knew I was safe.
We both went to sleep. I don’t know how we didn’t end up falling on the floor, but we were so exhausted that we never moved. When we woke up two hours later, the house was empty. Adam and Ben were both gone. If our phones had rung, we never heard them.
Milo insisted on carrying me to the sofa. It was almost nine o’clock.
“Fleetwood was here while you were asleep this afternoon,” Milo said, bringing me water for my second dose of Percocet. “I decked him.”
“You didn’t!”
He laughed. “No, but I threatened to if he ever told Vida we missed her show. He’ll bring the tape tomorrow. Vida and Kip handled this mess on your site. She says Fleetwood did okay on the radio. I’d forgotten he’d almost been blown up when his station was bombed.”
“That was when I saw his human side.” I swallowed the pills. “Nothing on Mitch?”
Milo sat down next to me and shook his head. “The Yakima sheriff called back, but I wasn’t available. Sam says my counterpart is as puzzled as I am. The good news is that there’s no way Andrews can nail Laskey’s kid on a vehicular homicide charge. The boy ran out into traffic. If Hitler had hit him, he’d get off, too. I figure Andrews is venting. I’ll tap into my KingCo contacts Monday. The ones I dealt with in Bellevue were good cops. If his wife’s doing better, I’ll bet Mitch is back on the job next week.”
“Really?”
He shrugged. “The Seattle cops let him go.”
I punched Milo’s arm. “You didn’t mention that.”
“I forgot.” He grinned at me. “Even kind of beat-up, you’re still a distraction. But Vida was right. Maybe we should act like grown-ups in public. It’s been kind of fun, but it does call attention to us.”
I nodded. “Maybe dangerous, too. But we’ve never been a secret in Alpine. Ever since we met, people have talked about whether we were sleeping together or whether we weren’t.”
Milo sighed. “Small-town mentality breeds that stuff. I didn’t think we were that fascinating.” He put an arm around me. “We’re not in public now. How do you feel?”
I grabbed his free hand and put it against my cheek. “You tell me.”
And so he did.
Milo was right about Curtis. The next morning, he sang like Placido Domingo. On the June day he’d missed checking in with the sheriff’s office, he’d driven around the area, “getting acclimated to a primeval new world.” He’d come across Gus, with his camera slung around his neck, walking by Cass Pond. Curious, he pulled over, wondering if he, too, was a journalist. They got to talking and Gus said he was going up to Mount Sawyer in search of Myrtle. Curtis was intrigued, so they hiked the nearby trail together. Gus wasn’t happy about having company and they got into a row inside the cave. Curtis said he didn’t start it, but the situation deteriorated when he grabbed Gus’s camera. Being bigger and stronger than Curtis, Gus had the advantage. But Curtis had his very sharp Camillus Boy Scout knife. He insisted he meant to stab Gus only enough to make him back off. His version was questionable. It was possible that Gus had bled out after Curtis bolted, taking a few pictures as he made sure his victim wasn’t following him. Then he ditched the camera and returned to the office.
Later, when he’d confessed to a homicide he hadn’t committed, Curtis figured he could use the experience to write a book. It hadn’t taken me—or Milo—long to realize he was a total flake, but I was so involved with Tom’s children, who allegedly wanted to buy the Advocate, that Curtis wasn’t my priority. Even after his last stunt with the phony confession, I’d considered him delusional—but not mad as a hatter.
“He knew about the Nelson kids,” Milo said, drinking coffee at my kitchen table after returning from the hospital, where he’d gone as an unofficial interested party. “Curtis knew a lot about you—and me, even though we weren’t together much last summer.” He paused, giving me a wry smile. “The grapevine was probably yakking about why we weren’t sleeping together.”
I nodded. “I wonder how long he’d been thinking about revenge. Ben suggested it might’ve been triggered by our public displays of affection, but I think this has been festering inside Curtis much longer. You were gone for three weeks, so he couldn’t get both of us.”
“That’s the weird part,” Milo said, looking chagrined. “Curtis went back to the Seattle area after he left Alpine. He grew up on the Eastside, but his parents had split up while he was in college. They’d set up some kind of trust for him, which is where he got the money for the Nelson kids. Maybe they knew he was weird—both Mom and Dad moved away, so there
was no home to go to. If I can sort through all the bullshit, he bunked with whoever he knew with an empty couch in the Redmond, Kirkland, and Bellevue suburbs. He was always on the prowl for what he called a ‘human horror story’—or some damned thing.” Milo paused to light cigarettes for both of us and shot me a meaningful look. “Guess where he found one.”
I gasped. “Not …?”
Milo nodded. “He saw me. That’s when it’s not good being tall.”
I put my hand on his. “I never saw you on TV.”
“No. I was with a bunch of other law enforcement types and they made damned sure the camcorders were kept off of us. Curtis hung out across the street with some of the other ghouls.”
I shuddered. “And you never saw him.”
He shook his head. “I was too focused on whether my daughter was about to be killed. I wouldn’t have noticed a herd of buffalo in the cul-de-sac.”
“Oh, Milo,” I said, touching his hand. “No wonder we’re nuts.”
“Not as nuts as Curtis.” He paused to puff on his cigarette. “That set him off, but the clincher was after he came up here and Gus’s body was found. He got worried. We were the enemy and we had to go.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. “Will there be a trial?”
“Plea bargain, maybe.” He took my chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Hey, don’t upset yourself over something that might never happen, okay?”
“I’ll try not to. Really.”
He leaned closer and kissed me lightly. “Good. Did I ever tell you you’re cuter than a sandbox full of kittens?”
“I look more like bird crap,” I said.
“Not to me. That was the first thing I thought when I met you.” Milo stood up and went to the window, looking into the carport, where he’d parked my Honda after driving it back from headquarters. “The snow’s stopped. The bomb didn’t do much damage to your house—just more scorching. I’ve got to decide what kind of car to buy. The Nordby brothers are lending me a new Chevy Yukon.”
“Is it red?”
He shook his head. “It’s black. Looks like a damned hearse.”
I got up awkwardly from the table. I was more stiff and sore than I’d been yesterday. It was time to take another pain pill. “Adam’s staying at the rectory tomorrow. He and Ben are leaving right after Mass. They’re coming for dinner tonight.”
“Oh?” Milo turned around and leaned against the sink. “I’ll leave you guys alone. I should go home anyway if I can borrow your car.”
“You can,” I said, moving closer and tugging at his shirtsleeve. “But you come to dinner, too. Things are different now. It’s a whole new year. A whole new life for us.”
Milo cradled my face in his hands. There was no wistful look in his eyes, only a steady calm that bespoke contentment. “You’re right. I don’t need to go home. I’m already there.”
For Jean Hopkins, whose dedication to high
school students and patience with their
parents’ tardy tuition fees has made her a
lifelong friend beyond Bishop Blanchet
High School.
ALSO 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
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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 fifty 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 Communications Hall of Fame. Daheim lives in her hometown of Seattle and is a direct descendant of residents of the real Alpine when it existed from the early twentieth century until it was abandoned in 1929. The Alpine/Emma Lord series has created renewed interest in the site, which was named a Washington State ghost town in July 2011.