The Alpine Recluse

by Mary Daheim

  “Like Old Nick,” I noted.

  “Yes.” She shot me a look that smacked of reproach. “I can’t believe you haven’t seen him—or anything else suspicious—going on a mere block from your home.”

  I felt defensive. “I explained, I don’t take that route to work or to church or much of anywhere else. Furthermore, both the vacant house and the Rafferty place are set back from the street. You know we don’t have sidewalks on Fir. Every time they propose Local Improvement District funding to build them, the idea gets shot down.”

  Vida’s expression didn’t change. Clearly, she believed I was oblivious to my surroundings. I couldn’t say out loud that I wasn’t the type to take evening walks so I could peer into my neighbors’ windows when they didn’t pull the drapes. Vida did it all the time, which was another reason she didn’t like summer or daylight saving time. People didn’t turn on their lights until after dark.

  “Anyway,” I continued when Vida didn’t honor me with a response, “Milo’s checking on Old Nick’s whereabouts. I plan to see him after lunch.” For emphasis, I bit off another chunk of bagel.

  “Bagels,” Vida muttered. “I’ve never understood them.”

  I ignored the comment. Vida occasionally ran a contemporary recipe she received in the mail, but she usually resorted to her basic old-fashioned cooking file. Tuna noodle casserole with a cornflake crust and Jell-O mold in the shape of a fish were about as exotic as she got. The strange part was that readers seldom complained.

  I kept my word and walked down Front Street to the sheriff’s office shortly after one o’clock. Milo wasn’t in. Toni Andreas informed me that he’d taken a late lunch.

  Toni managed to retain her receptionist’s job only because over the years Sam Heppner had exhibited the patience of a saint. The deputy had taken the trouble to guide her like a teacher with a special-needs student. Long before she ever got the job, Toni had dated my son, who found her pretty and sweet but dim. She was also the person responsible for the sheriff’s loathsome coffee. As I leaned against the curving mahogany counter, she didn’t look up from her console. “Dodge said he’d be back around two,” she mumbled.

  Doe Jameson was nearby, flipping through a stack of reports. “Can I help you?” she inquired in her brisk manner.

  I hesitated. Doe was quick to notice my reluctance to query her. “Sheriff Dodge is keeping me in the loop on the Rafferty homicide,” she assured me.

  “Oh, of course.” I smiled, probably looking a bit silly. “Any progress?”

  Doe’s sharp dark eyes studied me. “In what way?”

  “In any way,” I retorted, unaccustomed to anything but a certain amount of deference from the sheriff’s employees. “Specifically, I was wondering if he’d found any sign of Old Nick at that vacant house next to Tim’s.”

  “Other than that somebody’s been occupying it?” Doe shook her head. “No. What’s with these recluses anyway? If I believed half of what Jack Mullins says—which I’ve learned not to—I’d figure that the woods are full of them.”

  I shrugged. “It’s not uncommon. You must have heard about people who want to disappear, cut themselves off from society, live off the land.”

  “Oh, sure.” Doe waved a hand. “I understand all that. I’m half Muckleshoot; I know the lure of becoming one with the earth. But SkyCo seems to have more than its share. And I’m not talking about the perps running meth labs, either. That’s different.”

  My smile became more genuine. “Maybe it’s because we’re so isolated. There was no road into Alpine until 1930. Fewer than four thousand people live in Alpine, with not quite half that many in the rest of the county. Unlike in a city, the sighting of a peculiar stranger is a real event. When one of these hermits shows up, everybody talks about it. That’s one of the things you’ll get used to after you’ve lived here awhile.”

  Doe considered my words. “I suppose. It is different. I wanted to live away from traffic and be closer to the outdoors. But I guess everything has its downside.”

  I wasn’t sure what she meant. “You’re referring to . . .” I wanted to be tactful in front of Toni, who was answering the phone, and Deputy Bill Blatt, who had just emerged from the jail area. “To the excitement that an unusual occurrence causes?”

  Doe stared at me as if I were some kind of garrulous relic. “No. I’m saying that just because some nonconformist shows up on the scene everybody jumps to the conclusion that he must have murdered Tim Rafferty. What’s wrong with not marching in lockstep with the rest of society? Anybody in this town could have bashed Tim’s head in with a baseball bat.”

  Before I could agree, Toni Andreas yanked off her headset, burst into tears, and ran out the front door.

  SIX

  “WHAT’S THAT ALL about?” Bill Blatt asked in his mild way after Toni had dashed out the front door. He went over to the console and picked up the headset she’d abandoned in her distress. “Hello? Hello?” Removing the device from his ear, he set it down. “Nobody there. Did the call upset her? I don’t get it.”

  “Toni’s acted weird for the last few days,” Doe declared, disgusted.

  I looked outside. Toni had disappeared, but she couldn’t have gone far. “Excuse me,” I said, and left.

  I turned in every direction, but Toni was nowhere in sight—not across Front Street by the Burger Barn or the Clemans Building, not down by the post office on my right or the Advocate on my left. But Parker’s Pharmacy was situated on the other side of Third Street, between my office and Milo’s headquarters. It seemed the most likely place that Toni could have gone in such a short time.

  I found her in the cosmetics aisle. She had her back to me and wasn’t studying the displays, but stood hunched over as if she was still crying.

  Several customers were in the store, including two at the dispensary window in the back, but no one else was in the cosmetics section. I approached Toni in the same cautious way I try to get close to a deer that has wandered into my backyard.

  I whispered her name as soon as I got within three feet. She stiffened, then turned slowly to look at me.

  “Emma? Go away.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t leave you when you’re so miserable. What’s wrong?” I saw Otis Poole, the Baptist minister, on the other side of the aisle in the corn plaster section. “Come on, let’s go outside.” Gently, I took Toni’s hand.

  She didn’t resist. We were halfway to the entrance when Tara Wesley came toward us. She and her husband, Garth, had bought the drugstore from the Parkers almost fifteen years ago.

  “Hi, Emma, Toni,” Tara said in a cheerful voice. “How—” She stopped, noticing Toni’s pitiful state. “What’s wrong? Are you ill? Did you hurt herself?”

  “Toni’s just upset,” I said, keeping hold of her hand. “She needs some air. See you later.”

  Luckily, Tara didn’t try to detain us. She was probably relieved that a display hadn’t fallen on Toni and left the Wesleys liable for damages.

  “Do you want to walk down to my office and tell me what’s wrong?” I asked when we got outside.

  Toni shielded her teary eyes from the midday sun. “No.”

  “You need to talk to somebody,” I said kindly, steering Toni away from the pharmacy. Front Street’s sidewalks weren’t busy, no doubt due to the hot weather. The only passerby was a teenager on a skateboard. The hobby shop was next to the drugstore, and the Sears catalog pickup was around the corner on Third. An alcove was located next to the main entrance, where customers could collect large items. We rounded the corner while I kept speaking. “Take a few minutes to pull yourself together,” I said. “Do you want to go across the street to the Burger Barn and get some coffee?”

  Toni shook her head. I honored her wishes and led her in the opposite direction. A moment later, we were inside the alcove at Sears and out of the sun.

  “I’m okay,” she asserted, wiping at her eyes with a finger. “It’s just stress.”

  “Are you due for a vacation?” I aske
d.

  Toni nodded. “I was supposed to take the first week of September, but I put it off.”

  “How come?”

  Toni sighed and sniffed. “My plans didn’t work out. I thought I’d wait until things were . . . more settled.”

  “You’ve got more than one week’s vacation, don’t you? Have you taken any this year?”

  “I get three,” Toni replied, looking beyond me to the street where a tow truck was driving by. “I took a week at Easter to visit my cousin in Oregon.”

  “Aren’t your parents retired in Arizona?”

  Toni nodded. “It’s too hot to go there in the summer, even with AC. Maybe I’ll go for Thanksgiving and take the other week at Christmas.” She spoke slowly, as if she were figuring it out as she went along.

  “That sounds nice,” I said.

  Toni shrugged and wiped at her eyes again. “I did that a couple of years ago. Christmas, I mean. It doesn’t seem right to have Christmas with all that sunshine and desert.”

  I understood. During the years that Ben had spent at the Native American mission in Tuba City, Arizona, he’d griped about the lack of atmosphere. Luckily, he’d been able to spend a few Christmas holidays with me in Alpine.

  “Do your folks ever come back to Alpine?” I couldn’t remember Vida writing about any visits from the Andreases. Toni’s parents had still lived in Alpine when I first moved to town, but they left a couple of years later.

  “No,” she replied. “That is, my mom came once. After the divorce.”

  “Oh. I didn’t realize your parents divorced.”

  Toni, whose dark complexion had been deepened by the sun, bowed her head. “They moved into one of those retirement communities in Chandler. They ended up swapping.”

  “Swapping?” I must have looked surprised. “You mean—swapping mates?”

  She nodded sadly. “They’ve been too embarrassed to visit here. My mom came only because I had appendicitis a couple of years ago. But Dad and her and the other two all get along real well.”

  The former Mrs. Andreas must have somehow sneaked into town under Vida’s radar. My House & Home editor would have a conniption fit when she found out she’d missed this juicy piece of news. “Your parents and their new spouses are friendly?”

  “Oh, really tight. They golf and play tennis and party together. I suppose it’s kind of nice.” She stiffened suddenly. “I’d better go. Here comes Janet Driggers.”

  Before I could delay her, Toni hurried past me and crossed Third in the middle of the street. I looked in the direction of Front where the wife of the funeral director was marching briskly toward me.

  “Well?” Janet said in her direct manner. “What was that all about? I watched from my desk at Sky Travel. I’m working for the living instead of the dead today.”

  Full of energy and bawdy speech, Janet not only helped Al at the funeral parlor, but had a part-time job with Sky Travel. As she put it, “I’m always sending somebody someplace, but some of them never come back.”

  “Stress,” I said tactfully. “Toni needs a vacation.”

  “She already booked one and then cancelled,” Janet retorted. “She was going to Hawaii in September. Now she’s lost most of her airline deposit. I never did think she was very smart.”

  “She’s not,” I agreed, “but she tries hard.”

  Janet looked disgusted. “I figure Lover Boy dumped her. I hope he pays her back for the money she lost.”

  “Who is it?” I asked, realizing that job stress wasn’t the only pressure Toni was under. “I remember hearing that she was serious about some guy a while back.”

  “That was then, this is now,” Janet declared, removing her sunglasses and brushing her dark red hair off of her perspiring forehead. “I forget who he was, but it was short-term. And she never gave this new one a name. I assumed he was from out of town. She’s always been one for a traveling salesman. You know, ‘Did you hear the one about the sheriff’s receptionist and the etc.?’ The last guy I saw her with sold tools. That seemed to fit, if you know what I mean.” Janet gave me her patented leer.

  “Interesting,” I said. “She never mentioned her love life to me.”

  “You never mention yours,” Janet said in reproach, “and I hear you have one. What’s he like in the sack?”

  “We’ve never done it in a sack,” I deadpanned.

  “Try it,” Janet said. “Did I ever tell you about the time Al brought a body bag home from the—”

  “Stop!” I held up my hands, but laughed. “I’ve got to go back to work.”

  “And I have to collect the blender I ordered from Sears,” Janet said. “It’s supposed to mix amazing aphrodisiacs. See you.” She breezed off toward the catalog pickup’s main entrance.

  When I returned to the office, Ginny handed me several messages. At first glance I could see that most of them were from our usual cranks who had taken their first look at this week’s Advocate. Ginny had made a two-words notation regarding Grace Grundle’s call—“pyromaniac loose?” Fuzzy Baugh wanted to make an official statement, assuring his constituents that he was making every effort to prevent fires of any kind. He didn’t mention stopping people from smashing each other over the head with a baseball bat. Averill Fairbanks, our resident UFO spotter, had seen a spacecraft shaped like a pumpkin hovering over First Hill Monday night, spewing seeds that turned into flames.

  The only call I returned was from Rolf Fisher.

  “You people lead dangerous lives up in your mountain aerie,” he said drolly. “I didn’t see the homicide-arson story until about an hour ago when we picked it up here. Did you know this Rafferty?”

  I related my casual acquaintance with Tim and his wife, as well as my proximity to the crime scene.

  “On-the-spot reporting,” Rolf remarked. “I’m impressed.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “That’s true. But still, it was a little too close for comfort, right? The woods must be tinder-dry.”

  “We were lucky it didn’t spread,” I replied. “There was no wind that night.”

  “So are we still on for this weekend?” he asked, which I knew was the real reason for his call.

  “I hope so.” I meant it. I wanted very much to be with Rolf.

  “Good. But,” he added, “if this thing heats up—excuse the expression—I won’t hold it against you if you’re chin-deep in breaking news.”

  And Rolf meant that. Like Tom, he was a journalist who understood that the story came first. “Milo thinks it’s a bungled burglary.” I explained about Tim’s baseball collection, which hadn’t appeared in the story picked up by the AP.

  “Do you agree?” Rolf asked.

  “It’s the obvious explanation,” I admitted. “But our sheriff goes by the book. He’ll work that angle until something proves him wrong.”

  “You being that something,” Rolf noted. “And you are something. Maybe I should come up to Alpine if you can’t get out of town. We could do some deep, penetrating research together.”

  I giggled before I noticed Ed Bronsky lumbering toward my cubbyhole. He was wearing a tank top and floral-patterned shorts. His fat, hairy legs and arms reminded me of an overfed gorilla. Vida let out a squawk. Fortunately, she stopped Ed in his tracks just before he crossed my threshold.

  “I should go,” I said into the receiver. “I’m about to be invaded by a tank wearing a tank.”

  “Could that be your former ad manager, Ed Bronchitis or whatever his name is? You’re lucky he’s not contagious.”

  “Lucky guess,” I said. “I’ll call you tonight or tomorrow.”

  I hung up just as Ed managed to get away from Vida’s reprimands for his unseemly attire.

  “Really, Ed,” she was saying, “there’s altogether too much flesh when you’re almost in the altogether. It’s truly obscene.”

  “You’ll put it in ‘Scene’?” Ed asked, looking confused. “If you do, mention my proposed bond issue.”

  “I will not mention any
such thing,” Vida declared. “I don’t use unsightly items in my column. It’s intended to inform readers, not frighten them to death. We are, after all, a family newspaper.”

  “I’ve got a family,” Ed growled, thumping into my office. “Dang, Emma, Vida’s on the peck today. Is it the weather?”

  “Partly,” I said, trying to avoid the expanse of stomach between Ed’s tank top and the shorts. “Sit down.” Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have encouraged him to take a seat but I was desperate. The less I could see of him, the better.

  “I’m disappointed in you,” Ed asserted. “I didn’t think I’d have to remind you what your editorial should’ve been this week.”

  I looked blankly at Ed. “Oh?”

  “As for that reporter of yours, what’s with him?” Ed leaned forward, chins a-wagging. “He hardly mentioned that those stupid county commissioners tabled my proposal. I mean, he gave it one sentence at the very end of the story.”

  “That’s because nothing happened, Ed.” I shrugged. “You handed your information over to the commissioners. You know perfectly well they have to study it in detail. Authorizing a bond issue or a levy to be put before the voters is a serious matter.”

  Ed looked aghast. “Study? Detail? Those old duffers can’t concentrate for more than two minutes before they nod off.”

  I couldn’t argue that point. But I said nothing as I watched Ed’s round face light up. “That’s it! I’ll run for county commissioner! That’s the real problem; nobody ever opposes them except Crazy Eights Neffel or one of the Dithers sisters’ horses.”

  Ed was right about that, too. Crazy Eights, our local loony, had filed several times for election to the office. Four years ago, the Dithers sisters had put their Tennessee walker, Andrew Jackson, on the ballot. The horse had gotten over two hundred votes, ten times the amount that Crazy Eights had ever received.