The Alpine Xanadu

by Mary Daheim

  “Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate it. Hey, does Spence really have an eyewitness to Eriks’s murder?”

  “Showmanship. Turns out it was Durwood Parker bicycling into the gatepost at RestHaven. Poor Durwood—he doesn’t ride a bike any better than he drove a car. Maybe he needs new glasses.”

  “I hope you told Spence to keep his mouth shut.”

  “I told him I’d shut it for him if he didn’t. How about pork chops?”

  I hung up on him.

  I spent the next half hour working on my editorial, trying to figure out a way to get the ball rolling on Mayor Baugh’s reorganization plan. Until he made his idea public, I had to tiptoe around possible solutions. Over the years I’d written tons of editorials about budget cutbacks, insufficient school funding, and all the needed improvements that were shelved due to lack of money as well as public support.

  I decided to use RestHaven’s opening as the hook for the editorial. A new enterprise in town, new people, new ideas, but old problems, such as decaying streets, threats to cut school classes, shortages of law enforcement and medical personnel. Not inspired and certainly not new, but it was a start. I suggested we needed to change our approach to problem solving so that the town and the county could meet the demands of the twenty-first century. I hoped Fuzzy would be pleased.

  By three o’clock Vida still wasn’t back. I went out to the front office to ask Amanda if she’d called.

  “No,” Amanda said, looking worried. “When she left before noon, she didn’t say anything about her plans. Kip told me about Holly’s release. No wonder Vida’s upset. Mrs. Parker’s been trying to call her. She sounds stressed, too. Why would she be concerned about Holly?”

  “Did Dot say it was about Holly?” I asked.

  Amanda shook her head. “I just assumed that must be it. She was really anxious to talk to Vida. I asked if she’d tried to call her cell, but Mrs. Parker had already done that. No answer.”

  I wasn’t really worried, but I was disturbed. I couldn’t remember when Vida had been derelict in her work duties. The only recent occasion when she’d had to go home early had occurred back in December when she’d had a mild meltdown—over Roger, of course. He seemed to be the only thing that could unhinge my otherwise indomitable House & Home editor. The obvious next step was to call her daughter Amy. I suspected Vida was at the Hibberts’ house in The Pines. But given her current chilly attitude, I refused to do that. If she wasn’t back before five, I’d swing by the Hibberts’ to see if her Buick was there.

  Mitch came to see me around three-thirty. “I’m stalled on the Eriks story,” he said, draping his lanky frame over the back of a visitor’s chair. “I checked a few minutes ago with Heppner, but he told me there were no new developments.” My reporter laughed wryly. “What makes Heppner and that other deputy, Gould, such a pair of hard-asses?”

  I shrugged. “Heppner’s always been that way. I don’t know much about him except that he doesn’t like women. And before you ask, no, I don’t think he’s gay. As for Dwight, he got burned by his first and only wife. By the way,” I went on, wanting to see how tuned in Mitch was to small-town life, “have you met Kay Burns at RestHaven?”

  “Sure,” Mitch replied. “She’s been my main contact. Nice woman. Seems to know what she’s doing.” He suddenly grinned. “I think she’s got a thing for Fleetwood. I figured that out when I went up to RestHaven this afternoon to run some copy by her for accuracy. I’ll bet she’s the leak who’s given Fleetwood the news before we get it.”

  I wasn’t amused. “That’s unfair. You may be right about her being interested in Spence. She’s a widow and he has a certain unctuous charm. Is there any tactful way you could bring up the subject with her?”

  “ ‘Tactful’? No. I’ll just ask her outright. I left tact behind me when I started working for the Detroit Free Press.”

  I told Mitch to go ahead. If he was right, Kay was playing favorites. Having lived here, she should know better.

  The rest of the afternoon seemed to drag, though I kept busy with proofing the copy Mitch and Vida had already handed in. Kip and I had made decisions about photos, carefully choosing which ones to use in the RestHaven section. The best was an outdoor scene in what had been the Bronskys’ so-called Italian rose garden, which had usually been decorated with empty pizza boxes. The area had become overgrown after the family was forced to move out, but the RestHaven staff had hired Mountain View Gardens to spruce it up. We selected a nice shot Mitch had taken of a dozen visitors, including a couple of children, strolling by the fish pond, which was now mercifully free of empty soda cans.

  Just after four, Milo called to say he and Doe Jamison had queried the RestHaven staff. “The lunch hour was over, nobody had gone out during the storm, and most of the employees hadn’t seen anything and could account for their whereabouts at the time Eriks got himself fried.”

  I pounced on the key word the sheriff had uttered. “Most?”

  “An orderly, an L.P.N., and Dr. Reed were vague. The first two maybe went out to smoke, judging from the tobacco stains on their fingers.”

  “Nice detective work, Sheriff.”

  “Shut up. I noticed a pack of Winstons in the orderly’s jacket. Dr. Reed claimed she was lost in thought. I wanted to ask where Thought was located, but I kept my mouth shut.”

  “You? The soul of tact?”

  “I don’t need witnesses with ‘liar’ stamped on their foreheads. Maybe she went out for a smoke, too.”

  “You know she didn’t.”

  “Never mind what I know or don’t know. Farrell was kind of iffy, but he said he could produce a witness for his time, though he had to consider patient privacy. Woo’s solid. He was on the phone to the parent company in New York. Phone records to verify it. Hood was back and forth but used the covered walkway and was with a volunteer. No, not Roger. It was Mary Lou Hinshaw Blatt, Vida’s sister-in-law.”

  “I gather you’re not done with the RestHaven crew yet?”

  “Not quite. Talking to patients is tricky. Woo’s damned protective, especially of the ones in the psych unit. They might not make sense anyway.”

  “Some of them might,” I said. “But I understand Woo’s concern.”

  “Good for you. You can’t use any of this, can you?”

  “No. But I appreciate the heads-up.”

  “That’s for the pork chops. Get me two.” He rang off.

  But by five, Vida was still AWOL. I drove through The Pines, but her car wasn’t in sight. Maybe she’d been there and gone home. Feeling helpless and still angry, I headed for the Grocery Basket.

  To my surprise, I ran into Mel Eriks in the meat department. He, too, was looking at pork chops. I first offered him my condolences. A burly man like his brother, he shrugged his broad shoulders. “That’s a damned dangerous job. Wayne liked to take chances now and then. Maybe it was bound to happen. Do you remember the time he was working with the Bonneville crew and they almost went over that two-thousand-foot drop by the cross-state power lines near RestHaven?”

  I recalled the near tragedy that had occurred in the dead of night six years earlier. “That was a close one,” I said. “I saw your wife with Cookie today at the diner. She seems to be holding up fairly well. Maybe it hasn’t really hit her yet.”

  Mel’s gaze switched to the pork chops. “Yeah, I’m thinking of calling her ‘Tough Cookie’ from now on. But maybe she’ll fall apart later on, especially with Tiff moving out.”

  I gestured at the two packages of chops he was putting in his basket. “Are you grilling again tonight?”

  “What?” Mel looked puzzled.

  “Oh,” I said, faintly embarrassed. “Kip MacDuff thought you were barbecuing the other day.”

  Mel’s laugh seemed forced. “No, I was burning some old trash. A little early spring cleaning. I’m taking the chops to Cookie’s for the three of us. I’ll be glad when April gets home. I forgot what being a bachelor is like.” His smile became genuine. “Nice to see
you, Emma.”

  I chose three thick chops, wondering why Mel seemed evasive. Maybe it was my imagination. One loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, and a head of cauliflower later, I was at the checkout stand and then out the door.

  Just before I turned off Alpine Way onto Fir, I saw Vida’s Buick pulling into the parking area at the Pines Villa condos, where Buck Bardeen lived. I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing she was safe. But I hoped that her longtime companion would pound some sense into her head. He might be the only person who could.

  Milo still wasn’t home when I arrived a little after five-thirty. I changed clothes before I started cutting up the cauliflower and peeling potatoes. I planned to broil the chops, so I’d wait for the sheriff to arrive before I started them.

  Just as I was getting out glasses for our preprandial cocktails, he stalked through the kitchen door at ten to six. “I had to suspend Gould today,” he announced before he’d taken off his regulation hat. “The stupid S.O.B. lipped off to me.”

  Ignoring the raindrops on his jacket, I moved closer and put my hands on his shoulders. “What happened?”

  Milo took off his hat, tossing it onto the counter before wrapping his arms around me. “Amy Hibbert phoned to see if any of us had seen Vida. She’d tried to call her mother at work, but Amanda told her Vida hadn’t been in the office since before noon. Amy hadn’t heard from her all day and wanted one of the deputies to go look for her. Dwight told Amy to stick it. Then Bill Blatt went after Dwight and they got into it. I broke it up before either of them landed a punch, but it wasn’t pretty. Bill was only trying to defend his aunt. Then Dwight said a couple of things I didn’t want to hear about women in general, so I did what I had to. I won’t stand for insubordination or that kind of lip.”

  “Oh, Milo,” I said, heedless of the dampness that was permeating my UDUB sweatshirt, “what a mess!”

  “Yeah.” He sounded tired. “Hey—you’re getting wet.” He brushed my forehead with a kiss and let go of me. “I’ll change while you make the drinks. Stiff drinks. I’m guessing you didn’t have a good day, either.”

  “You got that right,” I called after him.

  Five minutes later, I was on the sofa with my Canadian Club. The sheriff’s Scotch was next to the easy chair. He ambled into the living room, pausing to muss my hair. “Damn, what would I do if I didn’t have you to come home to?”

  I smiled as he loomed over me. “You’re tough. You survived.”

  He sat down in the easy chair. “I wonder how I did it. What in hell is going on with Vida? Bill’s clueless. Is it Rosemary’s statement?”

  “Yes,” I said, and then explained Vida’s reaction.

  I expected the sheriff to blow his stack, but he merely shook his head. “It just shows how messed up she is when it comes to that damned Roger. What are you going to do about it?”

  I told him that I’d seen her car going into Pines Villa and figured she was consulting Buck. “Maybe he can help.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Milo said, after tossing a cigarette and his lighter my way. “She can’t stay mad at you. You’d have to fire her.”

  “I don’t want her staying mad at you—or Rosemary.”

  Milo shrugged. “I don’t give a shit. Rosie probably doesn’t, either.”

  “Well, I do. I won’t stand for her attitude toward three innocent people, including Judge Proxmire, especially when one of them is you.”

  “She’ll get over it. She won’t quit. Vida thinks she is the Advocate.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I said bitterly. “And in a way, she is.”

  “Forget it for now. There’s nothing you can do until she thinks straight.” He grinned. “You could suspend her, like I did with Gould.”

  “Oh!” I exclaimed. “Did you know Kay is back in town?”

  Milo frowned. “You mean Dwight’s ex or his sister, Kay? The sister never left.”

  “The ex,” I said. “Mitch told me she’s RestHaven’s P.R. person.”

  Milo leaned his back in the chair. “God! That’d explain why Gould’s been such an asshole lately. I wonder if he’s seen her around town. Maybe I should take Blackwell seriously.”

  I stared at the sheriff. “You mean Kay might try to kill him?”

  “No, but she might want to scare him. She went after him with a meat fork when he dumped her. Then she left town.”

  “Mitch took a liking to her,” I said.

  “Mitch would. He’s a contrary kind of guy. At least he shows some respect when he sees me at headquarters,” Milo added, referring to the tension that had surfaced between the two men when Mitch’s son escaped from prison.

  “I don’t think he knows we’re engaged.”

  “So? I wasn’t going to ask him to be my best man.”

  “Who will you ask?”

  “Doc Dewey. I feel closer to him than I do to my snooty brother. I haven’t seen Clint in ten years. He likes it in Dallas. Good place for him. I’d like to see him in a cowboy hat. If he wore boots, he might be as tall as I am. He never forgave me for turning out to be taller than he is.”

  “Are you still going fishing with Doc later this week?”

  Milo grimaced. “We can’t. Gerry and I are both on overload. He usually is, and now with Dwight off for two days, I’m short-handed. Besides, we both forgot they had the annual salmon derby at Sekiu this past weekend. The strait’s probably fished out.”

  “Maybe the river will drop and you can go steelheading,” I said, getting up to check on the pork chops.

  “Not if it keeps raining like this,” Milo said, following me into the kitchen. “We’ll be lucky if we aren’t on flood watch again. The only thing that’ll prevent that is the lack of a decent snowpack so far.”

  I turned the chops over and closed the oven. “Six minutes,” I said.

  “Need a short shot?”

  “Why not? Anything new from Tricia?”

  “No,” he replied, pouring a half inch of Canadian into my glass. “Mulehide likes to leave me hanging. She keeps hoping I’ll get an ulcer.”

  We went back into the living room and resumed our places. “I don’t mean to be a pain,” I began, “but … oh, never mind.”

  “Don’t pull that crap,” Milo said. “The answer is no.”

  “Am I that obvious?”

  “After fifteen years? Yeah, you are. And you’re about as subtle as a sawdust grinder.”

  “Okay, so subtlety isn’t my strong suit and my feminine wiles never worked on you. I know …”

  Milo held up a big hand. “You don’t have any feminine wiles. That’s one of the things I like about you. What you see is what you get. And I got it. Took me long enough, though. Tell me what’s buzzing around in your brain. Something’s driving you nuts.”

  Damn the man, I thought, he knows me too well. Why can’t I be at least a little mysterious? “It’s Cookie. She isn’t acting the way I’d expect of a recent widow. I remember what a mess she was when her son-in-law, Tim, died. You probably do, too. What did you make of her attitude?”

  Milo took a sip from his drink and a puff from his cigarette. “I know what you mean. I figured maybe she hasn’t taken it in yet. Doe talked to some of the neighbors, who thought she and Wayne fought quite a bit. At least he yelled at her loud enough so the Dugans and the Lundquists on each side could hear him. But Cookie’d already lost a son, a son-in-law, and now her husband. Maybe she’s numb.”

  “I keep forgetting the son drowned in a rafting accident.”

  “It happened over on the Snake River not long before you arrived. They called the kid Ringo. I guess Cookie was a big Beatles fan. That wasn’t his real name—I think it was Robert or Richard. He was nineteen.”

  “I remember hearing about it. He wasn’t alone, was he?”

  “There were three of them from here. The other two survived.” Milo paused to scratch behind his ear. “Damn. I can’t remember the one kid’s name. The family left town not long after that. But the third one was Travis Nyquist, A
rnie’s son.”

  “Oh.” I avoided Milo’s gaze. “Travis moved away after Bridget left him. Then he got in trouble with his role in that investment scam.”

  “He plea-bargained his way out of that,” Milo said. “Travis still visits Arnie and Louise. I ran into him last month at Harvey’s Hardware. He’s still a jackass. You’re thinking he pushed Ringo off the raft.”

  I sighed and resumed eye contact. “It could have been the third kid who did it,” I said with a straight face.

  “Get up, Nancy Drew. I’m hungry, and I want to rescue those chops before the oven catches fire. Again.”

  I rose from the sofa. “I told you I cleaned it. Didn’t you notice?”

  Milo grabbed my backside as he followed me out to the kitchen. “No, but I knew something was missing. Like smoke and flames.”

  Our dinner conversation turned to the remodeling project. I had to admit that Milo seemed to know what he was doing—or at least he knew what Scott Melville was doing. It wasn’t until we were snuggling on the sofa at halftime of a college basketball game that I asked Milo how Wayne could die from a live wire through his chest.

  “Jesus, Emma,” he said, exasperated, “can you focus on what we’re doing here instead of worrying about Eriks?”

  “I was focusing.” I removed my arm from around his neck and poked him in his chest. “If I had a live wire, I could jab it into you right now. But how would I keep from electrocuting myself?”

  Milo slowly shook his head. “Why don’t you try it and find out?”

  “I will if you don’t answer the question.”

  He sighed but kept his arms around me. “The person would have to wear gloves. But he could have fallen on a hot wire. That’s why the M.E. and I are being cagey until we get more evidence.”

  “If the burn marks on Wayne didn’t match those on his clothes, he must’ve taken them off. What if he was with a woman?”

  Milo stared at me for a long moment without blinking. It was a tactic he used when questioning suspects—and had done it to me on one disturbing occasion. “Yes,” he finally said, “that’s possible. Maybe he was trying to make love to her and got mad when she asked if he’d like her better if she had purple hair. Then she got pissed off, put on his safety gloves, grabbed a hot oven coil, and ran him through. About now, I can believe that scenario.” Abruptly he pulled me closer. “Shut up, you little twerp, and pay attention to what we’re doing.”