Alpine Zen : An Emma Lord Mystery (9780804177481)

by Daheim, Mary

“Not really. How did you learn about the cabin?”

  “Via the Internet,” Des replied. “Craigslist, to be precise. I wanted the western Washington ambience. I’d visited up this way a few times. When I read the cabin’s description, I was captivated, especially since Alpine and Skykomish are former logging towns. I immediately contacted Conley via email. Meeting the delightful Rosemary turned out to be a bonus.”

  “She’s smart, too.” It almost sounded as if I were giving Des a warning. “Where do you work?” I asked, moving to the living room.

  Des pointed to a side table by the little fireplace. “My laptop. It’s many things to me, including my muse.”

  I smiled. “Of course.” Frankly, I wasn’t sure what he meant.

  The living room was also a bust. The bookcase looked as if most of its contents had been owned by Crystal Bird. There were several tomes on women’s issues and liberal politics, a few novels—none of which I’d read—and the standard reference works. Aaron hadn’t left much of an imprint on the cabin. I said as much to Des.

  “Maybe,” he replied, “Conley travels light.”

  “Did he mention if he’d rented this place before?”

  Des shook his head. “I didn’t ask. It was clean, except for cobwebs and dust. I assumed he usually only rented it in summer.”

  Before I could mention that ski season might also attract renters, Milo reappeared. “Zip,” he said, looking glum and gazing at our host. “You got a phone number for Conley?”

  “Yes.” Des frowned. “It’s stored in my cell.” He went out to the patio by the hot tub. “Here,” he said, showing the screen to the sheriff.

  Milo took a small notepad out of his pocket. “Thanks.” He jotted down the number. “Where do you send the rent for the cabin?”

  “Conley wanted to be paid in advance,” Des replied. “I mailed a money order to a PO box in Edmonds. I gather that’s near Seattle?”

  “Just north of the city,” Milo said. “Sorry for the interruption. Have a nice evening.” Putting a big paw on my back he steered me to the door.

  I waited to speak until we were back in the Yukon and the front door was closed. “Well?”

  “I already said I couldn’t find a damned thing that might’ve belonged to Conley. All the stuff in the bathroom was new, same with the bedroom. No sign of the guy. If somebody’s impersonating Aaron, he’s doing a damned good job of it.” My husband backed out far enough to turn around. “I take it you didn’t have any luck, either.”

  “Right. But,” I went on as Milo waited for two cars and a truck to pass before pulling onto the highway, “what little I found in the kitchen drawer that probably belonged to Aaron was from six, seven years ago. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

  “Hell, yes, but I still can’t prove the stiff is him. There is a gap between his front teeth. Do you remember if Conley had one?”

  “He did. He also must have had a family,” I said as we headed for the turnoff to Alpine. “Besides Crystal, I mean. Hey, maybe Dean Ramsey would know.”

  My husband darted me a quick glance. “Ramsey? The county extension agent?” His memory snapped into place. “That’s right, he was Crystal’s first husband, who posted bail for Conley after the forged check bust. That was damned weird, frankly. Hell, you should’ve mentioned him before. He might recognize that belt buckle.”

  “Hey, you’re the sheriff. I’m just a humble journalist.”

  Milo seemed to purposely take the turn off Highway 2 a mite too sharply. “You were never humble. If you were, you might not be such a pain in the ass.”

  I punched him in the upper arm. “Why don’t you arrest yourself for reckless driving?”

  “Why don’t you call Ramsey? Didn’t the daughter he had with Crystal stay with you before he moved the rest of his new family here?”

  “It took him a long time to get settled,” I said, recalling the chaos Amber Ramsey and her son had caused during their extended visit. “For a flake, she was a good mother, but lazy. Gosh, her kid—Danny—must be in third grade by now. Amber married a guy from Woodinville and moved there a couple of years ago. Vida wrote up the wedding.”

  Milo headed straight up Alpine Way. “Did he look like as big a geek as I did in my wedding picture?”

  “I don’t remember if there was a picture,” I replied. “You’ve improved remarkably over the years.”

  “You should’ve seen me in high school,” he said, taking a left onto Fir. “No, you shouldn’t. You’d have run for your life.”

  “Hey, I was no teen queen,” I retorted. “I was lucky I got guys to go with me to the Blanchet Winter Ball and senior prom.”

  “You must’ve changed fast if you caught Cavanaugh’s eye when you were in college. You were engaged before that. Or am I mixed up?”

  “I met Tom after I got engaged to Don,” I replied as we pulled into the garage. “That’s when I broke the engagement.” Milo already knew I’d said yes to Don when he proposed not long after my parents were killed in a car accident. Ben had just been ordained and I was alone. At twenty, I needed to belong to somebody. Don was older and rather serious, finishing his engineering degree after doing his stint in the military. He seemed like sanctuary. Then I met Tom. I thought I’d found the love of my life. Poor Don was collateral damage.

  After opening all the doors to let in some air, I confronted Milo in the living room. “I had a thought while we were calling on Des. I didn’t want to mention it until we got home.”

  Milo looked up at the beamed ceiling. “Good God. What now?”

  “If the body is Conley, is it possible he’s Ren’s father?”

  My husband lowered his head and rubbed at the spot between his eyebrows. “Yes, it’s possible. He could also be Amelia Earhart in drag. Or Elvis. I think I’ll go sit outside now.”

  “Rats,” I said under my breath. This was when I needed Vida. She wouldn’t have scoffed at my nutty idea. Even if it was a wild guess, Vida would have examined it closely, turned it this way and that, seen its merits—small as they might be—and at least considered the possibility. Now I wasn’t merely mad at her for being mad at me, but for defecting over a long weekend. On a whim, I picked up the phone and dialed Amy.

  “Just checking,” I said. “Any word from your mother?”

  “No,” Amy replied glumly. “Maybe she did go to Shelton. There’d be a lot of traffic, so she might’ve stayed somewhere overnight. I’ve tried to call her cell, but she won’t pick up if she’s driving. Sometimes she doesn’t think to recharge it. Mom doesn’t really care for cell phones, you know. They cut out on her too often. She thinks, as she puts it, ‘they’re all for show and not much for go.’ ”

  I didn’t know that, thinking that any form of human communication including smoke signals or notes washed up in a glass bottle would suit Vida just fine, since she always has to know everything. “She might’ve decided to stay the weekend visiting…your son,” I suggested. It was hard for me to mention Roger’s name without gagging. “Have you spoken to him recently?”

  Amy’s voice dropped. “No. He’s only allowed so many calls.”

  “She may stay two nights as long as she’s there,” I babbled for lack of anything more comforting to tell her daughter. “She might have had car trouble and is waiting to have the problem fixed.” Maybe she was trying to help Roger escape and they’d both been arrested. I kept that thought to myself. “Her Buick has quite a few miles on it by now.”

  “Not really,” Amy said disconsolately. “You know she doesn’t leave Alpine often except to visit my sisters and then sometimes we drive.”

  “Look,” I began, sounding stern, “if anything happened to your mother, you’d hear about it. Aren’t you listed as an emergency contact?”

  “Yes, and Beth and Meg,” Amy replied. “But what if she’s been kidnapped?”

  I leaned back on the sofa. “Ah…that’s not likely.” The picture of anyone insane enough to try to make off with Vida was so bizarre that I had to force m
yself not to laugh. Naturally, O. Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief” came to mind. “Really, Amy, if there’s been a serious problem, you’d hear about it from your mother or…someone calling for her.” I didn’t want to say “the authorities.” That sounded a bit grim.

  Amy finally rang off. Briefly, I felt sorry for Ted, but he was just as big a ninny—to use one of Vida’s own words—as his wife. If they hadn’t been a pair of ninnies, Roger might’ve survived his grandmother’s spoiling without turning to a life of crime.

  I joined my husband on the patio. “Disconnected,” he said as I sat down next to him.

  “Huh?”

  “Conley’s cell,” Milo clarified. “If it was Conley, which I doubt.”

  I stared at him wide-eyed. “You’re speculating.”

  “Well…” He ran a hand through his graying sandy hair. “It does fit. You know I like things to fit.”

  “Do you think he was murdered?”

  Milo uttered a brief sigh. “Why else would anybody bury him at the dump? An outside shot is a drugged-up Conley breaking into a house, getting himself killed, and the owner panicking. It can happen.”

  I touched his arm. “Then you’ve got an unsolved murder.”

  Milo stared at me. “Right, from at least five years ago. Where do I start?”

  “Am I still deputized?”

  “Yeah,” the sheriff replied, leaning back in the chair. “Call Ramsey. Do your newspaper thing. Tell him you’re writing a story about his job.”

  “I can’t say that,” I said. “I’d have to actually write it. The county extension agency doesn’t do much that’s newsworthy, with so few farms around here. The last time we had a story out of there was a warning about bad cheese.”

  “You’ll think of something,” Milo asserted complacently. “God knows you’ve practiced enough bullshit on me over the years to wring out information.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Often to no avail. You’re a hard case, Dodge. I rarely had much luck with you.”

  His hazel eyes sparked. “Oh?”

  “Never mind.” I got up. “I’ll call Ramsey now. Maybe he’s got some new fireworks warnings we can put online.”

  I couldn’t find Dean’s home phone in the SkyCo directory. Then I remembered that after a deal in Alpine had fallen through, he’d bought a house in his hometown of Sultan, thirty miles west of Alpine. I had to call Directory Assistance for the number. It felt so warm inside that I was too lazy to dial the number and paid the extra charge to let the operator connect me.

  A woman answered. If I’d ever known Dean’s wife’s name, I’d forgotten it. “Mrs. Ramsey?” I said. “This is Emma Lord from The Alpine Advocate. Is Dean home?”

  “Is something wrong?” she asked in a startled voice.

  I was also too overheated to bother lying. “No, I have a question for him about the background on someone he once knew many years ago. A man,” I added, in case she thought I was asking about an old flame of her husband’s.

  “Just a minute,” she said. “He’s outside.”

  After a few seconds passed, I heard her call Dean’s name. Any exchange between them was muffled. I guessed that Mrs. Ramsey had put her hand over the mouthpiece.

  “Hi, Emma,” Dean said in his pleasant voice. “Has the courthouse caught fire?”

  “Not yet,” I replied, deciding to get straight to the point. “This coming week there’s an article about a screenwriter who’s renting the cabin Aaron Conley inherited. I’m taking a trip down Memory Lane. Do you know where Aaron went after he moved from Baring?”

  “Gee,” Dean said after a long pause, “I haven’t thought about Conley in years. I didn’t know he was still around. I don’t think I’ve seen him since he was let out of jail to attend Crystal’s funeral.”

  “He was released not long after that.” The truth was that I couldn’t remember the exact sequence of events. My main impression of Aaron was that when he wasn’t in custody, he was high on something, but basically harmless. “Except for the funeral, did you see him at any other point back then?”

  “How do you mean?” Dean sounded wary.

  I had started to perspire. To hell with it, I thought. Milo should be making this call. “Did you read this week’s Advocate?”

  “Yes, I always go through it,” Dean answered stiltedly.

  “Then you know about the dump-site body,” I said, having unpeeled myself from the sofa to go back outside. “The sheriff has no way of knowing who it is. Could the belt buckle belong to Conley?”

  “Didn’t the picture of the buckle have a peace symbol on it?” Dean asked, sounding less tense. I told him it did—and having reached the patio, I shoved the phone at Milo. “You’re on, Dodge. It’s Dean.”

  With a glower for me, he spoke into the phone, “I can’t keep the remains forever. If it is Conley, we should try to track down any relatives. Do you know if he had family?”

  I’d sat down, watching Milo scowl.

  “Okay,” he continued, “I thought maybe you knew him better than that. You did post bond for Aaron after I busted him on the bum checks rap. Thanks. I may be in touch with you later.”

  I watched Milo ring off. “Dare I ask why?”

  He shrugged. “There’s still something off about the Ramsey-Conley connection. I sure as hell never bonded with Mulehide’s latest ex.”

  “I don’t think Crystal dumped Dean for Aaron,” I pointed out. “Dean sounded scared.”

  Milo was lighting a cigarette. “Oh?” He flicked the lighter before he spoke again. “Maybe he has a reason.”

  I hadn’t thought about that.

  FIFTEEN

  Along about five, Milo suggested we drive into Monroe for dinner and stop off to visit Tricia’s parents in Sultan as we’d planned to do when we thought we were going to Bellevue.

  “I’m trying to remember what Conley was like,” I said, “at least when he wasn’t high. I vaguely remember his hair was about the color of those strands on the corpse. Frankly, he was kind of nondescript. You think he got into it with his drug dealer?”

  Milo shrugged. “That’s as good a guess as any. Or a fight with another druggie. That’s the trouble with that stuff. It leads to a lot of other bad things. Getting high doesn’t always make you mellow.”

  I considered my husband’s words. “Can you offer an educated guess and ID him?”

  The sheriff shot me a baleful look. “I don’t guess. You know that. But if were a betting man, I’d say it’s him. And I’d only say it to my wife.”

  “Okay,” I said, getting up. “Forget the ID and let’s get in the SUV with the AC and head on out. It’ll be six by the time we get to Sultan.”

  Milo, who had started to doze off a few moments earlier, seemed reluctant to get out of the chair. “Let’s eat in Monroe first.”

  That was fine with me. We were on the road by five-thirty. Traffic still wasn’t too bad, though it worsened the closer we got to Sultan and Monroe. Maybe Vida was right about the exploding population creeping up on us. We’d just turned off Highway 2 and were on Fryelands Boulevard by Lake Tye when Milo’s cell rang.

  My husband swore. “What now?” He hit the gas and pulled into the restaurant parking lot. “Dodge,” he barked into the cell before shutting off the ignition.

  I watched his jaw set as I heard a high-pitched woman’s voice at the other end. “Look, Amy,” Milo finally said, “it doesn’t matter if Fuzzy Baugh’s missing, it’s forty-eight hours before I can put out an APB.”

  Amy lowered her voice, but I could still hear her, though I couldn’t make out what she was saying. “Okay,” the sheriff responded wearily, “here’s what I’ll do. If she hasn’t shown up tomorrow by six o’clock in the evening, call my office and have…” He paused, apparently trying to remember who’d be on duty. “…Doe Jamison put out the APB.” He waited for Amy to speak, making a blah-blah gesture with his free hand. “I get all that, Amy, but we receive traffic advisories and conditions from everywhere in the sta
te. Your mother’s not some addled old lady. Even if you don’t know where she is, I’m damned sure she does. I have to hang up now. I’m working on an investigation out of town. What? No, it has nothing to do with your mom. Take it easy. You’re working yourself into a fit.” He clicked off and looked at me. “Dumb ass. Where do you think Vida is?”

  “Visiting Roger,” I replied. “If she has to make the three-hundred-and-fifty mile round-trip in all the holiday traffic, she might as well spend the long weekend in Shelton. To my knowledge, Vida hasn’t seen him since he was shipped to the facility there.”

  “Did she mention anything about leaving town to you or to any of the rest of your crew?”

  “She’s not really speaking to me, remember,” I replied. “If she told Leo or anyone else, I never heard about it. And I probably would, if Vida said she was going to see Roger.”

  “She might not admit it,” Milo said, opening the door. “Let’s get out of here. It’s heating up with the AC turned off.”

  The restaurant had its own AC. Either out of habit or needing a drink after talking to Amy, Milo headed for the bar. “They serve food in there,” he informed me, steering me in that direction. “I ate here last month when I had to attend that law enforcement meeting and got stuck with a couple of the Skagit County guys I’ve known forever.”

  “Right,” I drawled. “And you didn’t call me until almost six to let me know you weren’t coming home for dinner.”

  “I didn’t know that until…never mind. There’s a spot for two in front of the bar.”

  For a change of pace, I ordered a screwdriver. Milo stuck to Scotch. I admired the simple yet pleasing decor. “I saw some brave souls sitting out on the terrace,” I remarked.

  “Tourists,” my husband said, cradling his glass. “Probably from some part of the country that has plenty of hot, even humid, weather.”

  We sat in comfortable silence, the hum of conversation enveloping us like so many grasshoppers out in the backyard. Except when I thought about it, I hadn’t yet seen a grasshopper this summer. After a couple of minutes had passed, I noted that Milo looked worried.