The Alpine Recluse

by Mary Daheim

  Maybe it was the heat that frayed my temper. I’d put my purse down on the concrete. Reaching into it, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Milo’s number. He answered on the second ring.

  “Milo,” I said in a loud voice, “you’d better be on your way. I’ve got some perps for you to bust.”

  “Burglars?” the sheriff said in surprise.

  “Trespassers, litterers, underage drinkers, use of an illegal substance. You’d better hurry. I haven’t had time to start the grill.”

  “Jesus,” Milo muttered. “You’re serious?”

  “More or less.” I eyed Roger as he turned to listen.

  “I’m coming,” Milo said. “You’d better have the Scotch ready.”

  I rang off. “Now,” I said pointedly, “do you think I’m kidding?”

  Roger again avoided my gaze. He made a flapping motion with his hand. “C’mon, guys, let’s book.”

  Only Davin Rhodes remained as the burly boy and the blond girl hurried after Roger, who was trotting off down the driveway.

  “Are you going to report us to the sheriff?” Davin asked anxiously.

  “Go pick up those beer cans,” I said.

  Davin ran back up the slope. I began to cope with the briquettes and the lighter fluid. A moment later, Davin returned with six cans of very cheap beer, all apparently empty.

  “Where shall I put them?” he asked, still looking worried.

  “The recycling bin’s by the back door.” I paused. “Thanks, Davin.”

  “My folks’ll kill me if I get busted,” Davin said in a miserable voice.

  In his five years as an Advocate carrier, Davin had been generally reliable. The few times that he had missed work or otherwise screwed up had been because of Roger’s shenanigans. Davin was a born follower. Unfortunately, he’d chosen Roger as his leader.

  “Let’s cut a deal,” I said. “You tell me what you kids did today, and I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  “What we did?” Gavin’s cheeks, which had grown pale, now reddened. “Well . . . see, it was like this . . . Roger decided we should be like the command post. We started up Alpine Way, but that was when we ran into Tats.”

  “Tats?”

  Davin nodded. “He’s a guy we know from high school. We call him Tats ’cause he’s got all these tattoos. His real name is Walter. Anyways, he’s older than we are, like twenty-one, ’cause he flunked sixth grade. Twice. We—well, Roger—had Tats get us some beer. So after that, we sort of hung out around town, waiting for reports from the troops in the field. That’s what Roger calls them, see. We were starting back to the park when we stopped here. To . . . rest.”

  I believed most of what Davin told me. I could fill in the gaps for myself. “So has anyone reported good information?”

  Davin brightened a bit. “Yeah. We got a bunch of calls. The troops found lots of stuff, like empty chips bags and grocery sacks and pop cans and even a paintbrush.”

  That sounded like the ordinary leftovers from careless campers and hikers. Except for the paintbrush. Maybe someone had been marking a trail. “But no sightings of Old Nick?”

  Davin shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “Okay.” I smiled. “Get going. The sheriff really is on his way.”

  Davin’s expression was still anxious. “You won’t rat us out?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Go.”

  Davin ran, apparently trying to catch up with the others, who had disappeared down Fir Street.

  Five minutes later, Milo arrived just as I was defrosting the hamburger. “Where’d you put the perps?” he inquired before getting ice out of the fridge. “In the closet?”

  “I let them off with a stern warning,” I said. “That is, I let Davin Rhodes off. The other three fled on foot.”

  Milo sighed. “Roger.”

  I nodded. “Along with a busty blonde and some other kid I don’t know.” Briefly, I recounted my discovery in the backyard.

  Milo yawned. “Sounds like Roger. I suppose the whole goofy crew’ll meet up in Old Mill Park at six. Bill and Doe are standing by.”

  I was slicing potatoes in thick strips, the way the sheriff liked them. “No emergency reports from the field? No drink for Emma?”

  “Oh. Sorry.” Milo put ice into the glass I’d set out and poured a generous measure of Canadian whiskey into it. “Water?”

  “Fine.”

  “No reports,” Milo said after he set my drink down on the counter next to the cutting board. “Beth Rafferty says 911 has been pretty quiet today except for some calls from stalled motorists going up the pass. This heat is killing engines and radiators are boiling over.”

  “It’s killing me,” I grumbled. The kitchen, which faces west, felt like a steam room. “Let’s go outdoors. I think I got the grill started.”

  I’d failed. Milo shot me a look that indicated I was inept when it came to practical matters. I didn’t mind. Not only was it true, it made him feel good to be superior once in a while. A big part of our problem as a couple had been that we shared so few interests except for sports. My affection—or maybe he considered it an affectation—for the fine arts had always bored or frustrated him. I understood that he felt he wasn’t as well educated or as sophisticated as I was. That was partly a matter of background: I’d been raised in the city, he’d grown up in a small town. As Seattle came of age during my younger years, I’d had more exposure to culture. I could do nothing about our differences.

  “We’ll be lucky if we eat by seven,” he muttered, toiling away with the charcoal.

  “If you didn’t want your burgers done to a crisp, it wouldn’t matter,” I pointed out. “Have you heard from Toni?”

  “No. Why would I? She’s sick.”

  “Lovesick, maybe,” I said, trying to keep my voice light.

  Milo stood back from the blaze he’d created. “What?”

  “I hear she’s been involved in a bad relationship.”

  “Who hasn’t?” Milo watched the fire with steady eyes. The flames began to die down. “Or have you forgotten my divorce?”

  “I wasn’t here when you got divorced.”

  “You didn’t miss much,” Milo muttered. “How are you going to cook the fries on this thing?”

  “I don’t. I put them in a deep fryer. That way, I don’t have to turn on the stove and heat the kitchen up to a hundred and twenty degrees.”

  “Oh. Well, if you’d been here, you would’ve met Old Mulehide. I don’t think the two of you would’ve gotten along.”

  “Old Mulehide” was the nickname Milo had given his ex-wife, Tricia. She’d cheated on him with a high school teacher known as the Snake. Eventually, Mulehide and the Snake had married and moved to Bellevue, taking the three Dodge children with them.

  “Maybe,” I persisted, “you might ask Toni what’s troubling her.”

  Milo took a swig of his drink. “Hey, I don’t get into my staff’s personal lives. They’re supposed to leave that stuff behind when they close their front door.”

  “Some people can’t do that,” I pointed out. “It eats them up inside so they can’t perform their jobs.”

  “Then they need to work it out or find another job,” Milo asserted. “One of the reasons I hired Doe Jameson is because she seems so levelheaded. I don’t need three females driving me nuts.”

  I glared at Milo. “Are you counting me as one of them?”

  “Huh?” Milo looked up from the cigarette he was lighting. “Hell, no. You don’t work for me. I meant Toni and Beth.”

  “Beth?” I was puzzled. “She always seems to be in control.”

  “She usually is,” Milo said, puffing out more smoke than the grill was managing. “Oh, sure, I know she’s upset now after her brother’s death, but she was starting to lose it before that. Not like Toni,” he went on more slowly. “No big fit-pitching, but she hasn’t been herself. Jumpy. On edge. Forgetting stuff. That’s not like Beth.”

  I agreed. “She worked the day after Tim died. That was brave.�
�

  Milo studied the coals, which were beginning to glow red. “Beth never takes time off. She’ll feel guilty tomorrow when she has to go to Tim’s memorial service.”

  Quickly, I checked my watch—ten to six. We were on schedule, despite Milo’s misgivings. “How does she get along with Toni?”

  The sheriff shrugged. “They hardly see each other. Beth’s back in her dungeon, as she calls it, and Toni’s out front. Besides, Beth used to be located in the courthouse until we moved her.”

  “Maybe,” I suggested, “Beth’s been worried about Tim.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh—who knows? Money troubles, maybe?”

  Milo chuckled. “I get a bang out of you women. You’re always trying to figure out what’s going in other people’s heads. By the way, yours sure doesn’t have much hair. Why’d you do that?”

  “I didn’t,” I said grimly. “Stella did. What’s wrong with wondering about other people? Don’t you try to get inside the criminal mind?”

  “That’s different,” Milo replied, taking another swallow from his cocktail glass. “That’s business. By the way, we’ve checked on the Raffertys’ finances. They’ve been treading water. I don’t think Tim was very good at the Internet trading stuff.”

  “Did he have insurance?”

  “On the house,” Milo answered, flipping his cigarette butt onto the grill, “and car insurance. But no life insurance. In your thirties, you still think you’re immortal. I never had that problem. In law enforcement, life insurance comes with the job.”

  “So Tiffany doesn’t get anything except for the house, which,” I continued, “probably isn’t the full replacement value. Did Tim sell much of his sports memorabilia?”

  “Nickel-and-dime stuff, I suspect,” Milo replied, finishing his drink. “No sizable amounts of money showed up at the bank. There was no sign of a safe at the house, either. I wouldn’t think he’d keep valuable stuff just sitting around. If he had any.”

  I pointed to the sheriff’s glass. “Refill?”

  He shook his head. “Not tonight. I want to be sharp for this damned library talk. Christ, I don’t know how I got myself roped into it.”

  “Maybe I’ll come,” I said.

  Milo shot me a dirty look. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Hey,” I retorted, “are you afraid of making a fool of yourself in front of me? I make a fool of myself every week when I put out the paper. How many people called you a moron and a jerk this week?”

  The sheriff shrugged. “They do it all the time. You can’t have my job and not have people think you’re dumb as a cedar stump.”

  I put my hand on his arm. “Well, you’re not. Can I come?”

  Milo put his big hand over mine. “Oh, hell. Why not?”

  “Thanks.” I smiled and withdrew my hand. “I’ll get the burgers.”

  “Hey,” Milo called after me. “How come Roger and those other kids ended up here?”

  I turned around by the open back door. “Because this is as far as they got all day?”

  Milo shook his head, but didn’t say anything.

  I sensed what he was thinking, though. My little log cabin was just a few yards from the vacant house where Old Nick had been staying. And just beyond it was the charred rubble that had once been home to the Raffertys.

  Maybe Roger and his friends weren’t as stupid as I thought they were.

  TEN

  THE SHERIFF’S THEME was gun safety. He talked about rules, regulations, trigger locks, and pending legislation at the state and local levels. Gun ownership in SkyCo was high. The right to bear arms was an important issue among voters. He’d given virtually the same speech on other occasions, and seemed at ease before his audience of approximately forty concerned citizens. His presentation was, I felt, worthy of at least a couple of inches in the Advocate.

  A question-and-answer period followed, as it always did when the monthly speaker concluded the formal part of the program. Edna Mae Dalrymple wielded a microphone among the audience members, but couldn’t make it work. She fussed with it in her nervous, twittering manner, but finally surrendered. There was really no need. Except for a couple of deaf old codgers at the back, including County Commissioner Alfred Cobb, who didn’t care what anybody said, everyone seemed to be able to hear.

  Donna Wickstrom, who is Ginny’s sister-in-law, was on her feet. Donna’s first husband, Art Fremstad, had been a sheriff’s deputy who’d died in the line of duty. She had remarried and now ran a small art gallery in the Alpine Building in addition to her day care center.

  “I have a question that doesn’t pertain to guns,” Donna said in her clear, intelligent voice. “I’d like to know what’s being done about the Rafferty homicide and fire. If there’s an arsonist loose, the public should be informed.”

  Milo kept his aplomb. “We’re taking this as an isolated incident,” he replied, speaking far more formally than his usual laconic style. “There’s no cause for alarm as far as we can tell.”

  “Are you saying that the fire was set to cover the murder?” Donna asked.

  “That’s possible.” Milo’s expression was stoic.

  “Have you any suspects?”

  “No one specific.”

  “Have you any leads?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  Donna frowned. “I mean—what I really mean is that it must be difficult to obtain evidence from a fire scene. Everything was destroyed, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has the volunteer search party turned up any information on the whereabouts of the so-called recluse known as Old Nick?”

  “Not to my knowledge, although my deputies are still sifting through their reports.”

  “Are the volunteers going out again tomorrow?”

  “I believe at least some of them will. This is not an official search organization. SkyCo takes no responsibility for their actions.”

  “Thank you.” Donna sat down.

  I wondered if she had been deliberately trying to put Milo on the spot. Maybe, after all these years, she harbored resentment against him because Art had been killed while working for the sheriff.

  High school coach Rip Ridley asked a different sort of question, something to do with hunting rifles and ammo. My mind drifted.

  So did the Q&A session. Alfred Cobb struggled to his feet to ask why the turkey shoot had been canceled at the Overholt farm. Milo responded that it had ended when the Overholts stopped raising turkeys, which had been about thirty-five years ago. Alfred cupped his hand behind his ear, said, “Eh?” and sat down on Ione Erdahl’s lap. Ione let out a yelp. Edna Mae Dalrymple scurried up to the working microphone on the podium, thanked Milo, and announced that the meeting was over. Alfred didn’t budge until Coach Ridley bodily picked him up and carried him to the exit.

  Several people, mostly men, converged around the sheriff, asking more questions. I gave Milo a thumbs-up sign and started out of the stuffy, ill-ventilated room. By chance, I found myself next to Donna Wickstrom.

  “How’s the art gallery doing?” I inquired.

  “It’s a hobby, really,” Donna replied. “It’s something I always wanted to do. When Lloyd Campbell expanded his appliance store, the couple that owned the original gallery in that building moved it to Sultan. You should stop by to see my setup. I’m only open Friday nights and on the weekend.”

  “I should,” I said as we walked down the hallway that led to a side entrance by the parking lot. “Vida wrote about it when you opened a few years ago, but we might be able to do something new. Do you have any special exhibits?”

  “Nothing in particular. Come fall, I plan to hold a holiday crafts fair. Very few people in town buy art for art’s sake. Thank God for the summer tourists. Not to mention the skiers in the winter.”

  “I’ll stop in after work tomorrow night,” I promised. We’d reached the parking lot. A blessed breeze was blowing off from the mountains. “What time do you open?”

 
“Five,” she replied. “I insist that parents pick up their kids by four-thirty on Fridays. Except for Ginny’s, of course. I bring her boys with me and she or Rick collect them at the gallery.”

  “By the way,” I said as I reached my Honda, “I was wondering if you had a theory about the Rafferty murder. You seem to be following it quite closely.”

  Donna shrugged. “Who wouldn’t? It’s a terrible thing. And I know what it must be like for Tiffany, losing your husband at so young an age.” For a moment, a shadow crossed Donna’s pretty face. “I feel for her. I wish I knew her better.”

  “Don’t we all?”

  Donna’s gaze flickered behind the long, curling lashes. “Yes. I see what you mean. Tiffany is . . . well, not standoffish, but she and Tim always seemed so tight that they didn’t have room for outsiders.”

  “Did you know her at all?” I asked, ignoring Alfred Cobb, who was standing on the edge of the parking lot still demanding that the turkey shoot be resurrected, apparently with or without turkeys.

  “No,” Donna replied. “I’m a few years older than she is. I only know Tiffany by sight.”

  “I thought maybe she’d contacted you about day care,” I said as one of Alfred’s sons and Coach Ridley tried to haul the old coot to a big Chrysler parked in a spot marked for the handicapped.

  Donna shook her head. “Maybe Tiffany didn’t plan to work after she had the baby. Besides, I don’t run the only day care in Alpine.”

  “No, of course not.” I paused. “I take it you didn’t know Tim very well, either?”

  Donna shook her head again. “He started high school after I graduated. Our paths didn’t cross much. I always thought the Raffertys were Catholic, but I see that Tim’s services are being held in the Lutheran church.”

  “The Raffertys—at least the father, Liam—were Irish, but not Catholic,” I pointed out. I knew what Donna, born an Erlandson, meant. Going back a generation or two, Alpine’s Irish and Italian Catholics hadn’t always mixed well with the predominantly Scandinavian Protestants. “I’m sure the Eriks family wanted Tim buried out of their own church. I don’t know Beth Rafferty’s religious convictions.”