The Alpine Recluse

by Mary Daheim

  “I was engaged. You know what happened.” I couldn’t keep the bitter note out of my voice.

  “But the guy was married,” Toni said. “I mean, he was married for a long time. Adam’s dad, right?”

  “Yes. Tom couldn’t leave his wife. She wasn’t well.”

  “I’ll bet he told you he’d leave her.”

  I sighed. “Sometimes he did. But I knew he never would. He felt a great responsibility toward . . . his wife.” I still found it hard to say Sandra’s name out loud.

  “They’re all like that, I guess.” Toni shifted around on the bench, gazing at a bed of petunias, pansies, and lobelias. “Maybe they’re different in Alaska. It’s a different kind of place.”

  “It is at that,” I agreed, angry at her, angry at myself for letting the conversation turn to Tom. “You sound as if you’ve been burned.”

  It was an unfortunate choice of words. Toni’s body convulsed, as if I’d hit her in the stomach. “How can you say that?” she cried, covering her eyes with her hands. “Oh, my God!”

  I was tired of playing games with Toni. “It’s Tim, right? You were in love with him.”

  She was sobbing, shoulders shaking, hands curled into fists against her eyes.

  “Toni,” I said, more softly, “I understand. You just said so yourself. I lost my lover to an early death. Please, talk to me.”

  She kept crying. I was afraid she was about to have hysterics. Firmly, I grabbed her by the shoulders. “You’re making yourself sick. I understand. Truly. I had to be hospitalized after Tom was killed. I felt like I’d died, too. I wished I had. Come on, Toni. Be brave. Show some courage.”

  It seemed to take forever, but finally Toni began to compose herself. I’d used up almost an entire packet of Kleenex on her tears, sniffles, and coughs. Depleted, she leaned against the back of the wooden bench and closed her eyes.

  “I really loved him,” she whispered.

  “I’m sure you did.” A pair of boys went by the park on skateboards. I waited until they were out of hearing range. “Did Tim tell you he wanted to leave Tiffany?”

  Toni sniffed several times. “He never wanted to marry her in the first place. But she got pregnant. I mean, she told Tim she was pregnant. She must have lost the first baby. Or she lied. They would have been married a year by the time this one comes.”

  “Were you seeing Tim before he got married?”

  She shook her head. “Only to talk to, at the Venison Inn. He was always so nice. Tim was the most sympathetic person I ever met.”

  That might be true as far as Toni was concerned. Apparently, he was a good listener in his bartending guise. My own perception of him was that he was shallow and self-absorbed. Maybe he came off differently to someone like Toni, a member of his peer group, holding similar values, and speaking the same glib, cliché-ridden language.

  “I take it Tim wasn’t happily married.”

  “He was miserable.” Toni shook her head sadly. “All Tiff could do was think about the baby. It was as if Tim didn’t exist. He was just a paycheck to pay for baby things. Poor Tim felt like he was worthless. It seemed to him that all Tiff had ever wanted was to have a baby. She used him for that. He had no self-esteem. It was really tragic. He said he might have killed himself if I hadn’t been there for him.”

  “He told you that?” I tried not to sound incredulous.

  Toni nodded solemnly. “Often. I was like his . . . his safe harbor, he called it.”

  “Did Tiffany know about the two of you?”

  Toni shrugged. “I’m not sure. If she did, she didn’t care. All she could think of was the baby, the baby, the baby. Unless,” she added with sudden bite in her voice, “Tiffany did care.”

  My patience was wearing thin. “Well? Do you think she did?”

  “If she did,” Toni said, looking me right in the eyes, “then she killed him.”

  TWELVE

  MY FIRST REACTION was that Toni wasn’t serious. Surely she didn’t believe that Tiffany had killed Tim and then set their house on fire. But Toni wasn’t a kidder. Indeed, she had virtually no sense of humor, which was another reason Adam had stopped dating her.

  Yet Toni’s opinion was just that. She saw Tiffany as the enemy. Toni had ranged all over the map in responding to my questions. Most people, including me, considered her as simpleminded. But that didn’t mean that Toni couldn’t also be single-minded. She seemed to have finally come to the conclusion that Tiffany was to blame for whatever reason Tim hadn’t been free—or alive.

  The church bells chimed eleven. Coincidentally, the sprinkler system turned on in the park. The lazy spray from the nozzle nearest to us was coming in our direction.

  “We’d better go,” I said to Toni as I stood up. “I don’t know why they don’t water in the middle of the night. The rest of us are told we can’t water at all until it rains.”

  “Oh?” Toni looked disinterested, but she rose, too. “What about Alaska?”

  Toni’s allegation about Tiffany had driven the entire state out of my mind. “I have resources and contacts through the newspaper office that you might not be able to find,” I said, keeping one step ahead of the sprinkler. “Do your own Internet research as Adam suggested, and we’ll take it from there. I think the crab season may be coming up. You might want to try something temporary to see how you like it up there.”

  We had almost reached her car. “Do you think I’m stupid?” she asked suddenly.

  More people were coming out of the church. I’d been caught off guard by Toni’s earnest question. “Why do you ask me that?”

  “Because you’re not taking me seriously. I mean it about Tiffany. Who else would want to kill Tim?”

  She had a point. Old Nick was the best suspect anyone had come up with so far, and I wasn’t buying it. “I think you’re naïve,” I said in what I hoped was a kindly voice. “But Tiffany was at work that night.”

  “Not the whole time,” Toni replied. “She had a dinner break. I know that, because Tim always had to leave my place in case Tiff went home to eat. She didn’t eat, actually, at least not when she first got pregnant. She couldn’t. She’d throw up. So she’d just lie down for a while.”

  I didn’t know if Milo had checked Tiffany’s alibi. For a moment, I just stood there on the sidewalk, staring at Toni. She looked belligerent. During our fifteen-minute conversation, she’d run a gamut of emotions. Had she only convinced herself in the last quarter of an hour that Tiffany had murdered Tim? I wasn’t sure how to deal with her. It was like trying to catch a butterfly without a net.

  “You and Tim planned to go to Hawaii together, didn’t you?”

  Toni’s eyes narrowed. “How did you know that? Never mind.” She whirled away from me and stepped out into the street. “That blabbermouth Janet Driggers! I’ve never liked her! She has a nasty mind!”

  Before I could stop her, Toni got into the Nissan and slammed the door.

  I walked back to my car, which was parked down the street about a block away. Dwight Gould was going into the parking lot. I hailed him before he got to his car.

  “I want to check on something,” I said, jaywalking across Cascade Street and hoping the curmudgeonly Dwight wouldn’t arrest me.

  “Is this business?” he inquired, looking wary.

  “Yes,” I said, making sure no one was around to hear us. “Has Milo verified Tiffany’s whereabouts the night of the murder?”

  “Christ.” Dwight looked even more cantankerous than he usually does. “Ask him. And this is a hell of a time to ask me anyway.”

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized without much conviction. “I know you’re an old friend of Dot and Durwood’s. I didn’t realize you were close to Tim and Tiffany.”

  “I wasn’t. I hardly knew her.” Dwight started to move away. “I came today for the Parkers and for Beth.”

  “How are they?”

  “How do you think?” Dwight opened the door to his pickup. “Beth should take some time off, if you ask me, bu
t nobody ever does. I could tell ’em a thing or two.” He climbed into the cab and shut the door.

  I had asked Dwight. But he hadn’t told me anything.

  I WAS MORTIFIED. The week seemed to have flown by. I’d completely forgotten to call Rolf back. I couldn’t believe it.

  “It’s this murder story,” I explained in my most abject voice when he called me just before noon. “I’ve been so focused on it that my mind has fallen apart.”

  “No kidding.”

  I couldn’t tell if Rolf was being humorous—or acting like Dwight Gould.

  “I can leave here before five,” I said.

  “Don’t.”

  “What?”

  “I gave the tickets away. I figured you didn’t give a damn.”

  This was our first quarrel. I braced myself. It had been a long time since I’d been involved in a romantic squabble.

  “It isn’t as if I haven’t been thinking about you,” I said in a pleading voice. “I have.” That much was true. During brief respites from focusing on murder, I’d envisioned Rolf in an abstract sort of way. Not, unfortunately, as the man I was supposed to be meeting in a few hours for a lovers’ tryst.

  Apparently, the story didn’t always come first for Rolf. “You should never date a journalist,” I said flatly.

  “I am a journalist,” Rolf replied in the same tone. “Maybe I should have stuck to dating myself. I’m always there for me.”

  “How mad are you?”

  “Mad? I’m not sure that’s the right word. Disappointed, hurt, pissed off. That covers it, I think. I could throw in disillusioned, but that’s probably too strong. Besides, I’ve never been one for illusions in the first place. I got the impression that you were real.”

  “You’re not bad at this guilt thing,” I said, my temper flaring up. “I had enough of Irish Catholic guilt with Tom Cavanaugh. Do I have to put up with Jewish guilt, too?”

  “It would appear not,” Rolf said coolly. “Who’s feeling guilty? Not me.”

  “Okay,” I said, “concert or no concert, I’m coming down to see you.”

  “I won’t be here,” Rolf replied. “I’m flying to Spokane this afternoon to cover a story.”

  “Oh. So you were going to cancel on me, is that it?”

  “No. I volunteered this morning to fill in for a sick colleague. You know I usually work the desk, not the field.”

  That was the difference between us: Unlike me, Rolf didn’t have to chase the news on a regular basis. It came to him. We seemed to have reached an impasse. “I don’t know what to say. I feel miserable.”

  “Good. I have to go now. The airport shuttle is picking me up in ten minutes. Goodbye, Emma.”

  Rolf hung up before I could say another word.

  “Well?” Vida demanded, standing on the threshold of my cubbyhole. “You look like the pigs ate your little brother. Or, in your case, your big brother. What’s wrong?”

  I told her. “I can’t believe I forgot,” I finally said. “Am I so caught up in my work that I don’t have time for a real life?”

  Vida shrugged. “He’s a man, and you’ve hurt his vanity. He’ll get over it.” She sat down in one of my visitor’s chairs. “I noticed that you dropped in for the funeral, but you didn’t stay. What happened?”

  I’m convinced that Vida has eyes in the back of her head—or her hat. She takes in every detail, no matter how trivial. Maybe she absorbs it, like osmosis. “Can we wait to talk about it?” I asked. “I don’t feel very clearheaded right now.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Vida looked up at the ceiling in exasperation. “You’re acting like a teenager! It’s a good thing I don’t go mooning around whenever Buck and I have a disagreement.”

  Given that Buck was a retired air force colonel and almost as strong-minded as Vida, I imagined that their “disagreements” were frequent. Yet they had been companions for years.

  She was right about my adolescent reaction. “Okay,” I said, and revealed what Toni had told me.

  “Well now.” Vida pursed her lips. “Toni isn’t reliable, and a very poor judge of human nature. I wouldn’t put much stock in what she said about Tiffany killing Tim. Still . . . the spouse is always the prime suspect.”

  “Surely Milo’s checked her alibi.”

  “One assumes so.” Vida reflected for a moment. “There were serious marital problems. Dot and Durwood hinted as much to me at the reception this morning.”

  I nodded. “Tiffany and Tim could live together, but a legal union spoiled the fun?”

  “So it seems. Not to mention the responsibility involved. Of course,” Vida continued, removing the black hat and fluffing up her gray curls, “the Parkers aren’t the kind to talk about family matters.” She frowned, apparently at the virtue of discretion. “But I could tell they weren’t happy about their granddaughter’s marriage. I got the impression—well, I’ve had it all along—that Tim was a very controlling sort of person. So protective, you know, which can indicate a much darker side, such as cutting Tiffany off from her friends and even family.”

  “It sounds to me as if Tiffany should’ve considered having a baby on her own,” I remarked. “Speaking from experience, I don’t encourage it, but if she was that desperate, it might have been better.”

  “Oh,” Vida said, waving a hand, “she’s the sort who’d have to have a man in her life somewhere. Very dependent, very needy. Unless . . .” She frowned. “Unless she felt that the baby was all she needed to be complete.”

  “That happens,” I said.

  “It’s Beth that worries me,” Vida said. “She’s not herself. Billy mentioned that the other day. Oh, she’s keeping up a valiant front, but she’s very troubled. I could scarcely get her to make eye contact while we were chatting over some lovely pilchard sandwiches.”

  “How was her mother?”

  Vida shook her head. “Mrs. Rafferty just sat there in her wheelchair. She had no idea what was going on.”

  “She’s confined to a wheelchair in addition to having Alzheimer’s?”

  “Not completely,” Vida replied. “She can walk a bit. Though that’s part of the problem. She wanders off. So many Alzheimer’s patients do, you know.”

  “Yes.” At least twice a year we ran a story about some poor soul who had left a nursing home or even a private residence and disappeared, only to be found later, dead from hypothermia. A small town on the edge of the forest was a dangerous place. “She wasn’t aware of what was going on, I take it?”

  “Not as far as I could tell,” Vida answered sadly. “I greeted her when we got to the church hall, but she didn’t seem to recognize me. All she said was, ‘That hat. It’s big. Like you.’ ”

  Frankly, that sounded fairly cogent to me. But it didn’t mean that Mrs. Rafferty could identify the large person wearing the large hat.

  I suggested that Vida use her clout with Bill Blatt to find out if Tiffany did indeed have an alibi. She agreed. “Perhaps I could treat him to lunch if he can get away,” Vida said. “Though I’m rather full. The pickled herring at the reception was delicious.”

  Vida could take on Tiffany. I decided to burden myself with Beth. I liked her, and always felt we could be friends—if I made the effort. I’d try to call her later, after she’d had time to recover from the funeral. Since that was homicide-related, I thought grimly, I might actually remember to make the call.

  Milo wandered in shortly after one o’clock. “Back from lunch, I see,” he remarked, easing into a visitor’s chair.

  “I never went,” I said. “I wasn’t hungry.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you.” He removed his Smokey Bear hat and set it on one knee. “How come?”

  I didn’t feel like telling Milo about Rolf. “I just wasn’t. What’s new?”

  “We’ve been checking deeper into Tim’s moneymaking schemes,” Milo replied. “Nothing new, really. No trace of the baseball stuff. He must have kept it at the house. We did find out that he’d put some of it on eBay an
d sold a few items over the past few years. Nothing big. An Alex Rodriguez rookie card got the top price—forty-five bucks, unsigned.”

  “And the online trading?”

  Milo shrugged. “Nickel and dime. Tim didn’t invest other people’s money, as far as we can tell. He made some, he lost some. He liked to brag about the good ones, though. Oren Rhodes told me that every time Tim made money, he’d try to get him—Oren—to follow his lead. But Oren wouldn’t bite. Oren said his wife, Sunny, provides the extras with her Avon lady job.”

  “Oren probably does okay with tips at the Venison Inn,” I remarked. “That’s your news?”

  “Hey,” Milo said, scowling, “what did you expect? We got no evidence, we got no witnesses, we got no motive. And nobody’s seen Old Nick since you thought you did.”

  I felt defensive. “I’m ninety-five percent certain it was him. Who else would run off like that?”

  “Whoever it was didn’t come out of Mugs Ahoy,” Milo replied. “We checked.”

  The sun, which was now directly overhead, felt as if it were beating down on the newspaper’s tin roof like a blowtorch. “Is Beth coming to work this afternoon?” I inquired.

  “Yep. She’s a trooper. I wanted her to take it easy, wait until Monday, but she told Dwight Gould she’d work a short one-to-six shift. She should be on duty now. Beth had to haul her mother back to the nursing home, but that wouldn’t take long since it’s right across from the Lutheran church.”

  After Milo loped away, I called Beth on her nonemergency number and asked if she’d like to have dinner with me.

  “That’s really nice of you,” she replied, sounding a bit cautious. “But I’m doing okay. And frankly, I don’t have much appetite.”

  “Neither do I,” I confessed, “but I felt bad because I was only able to stay for part of Tim’s service. I didn’t get to talk to you afterwards. Why don’t we meet at the ski lodge? It’s air-conditioned.”

  “That part sounds good,” Beth declared. “All I have is a fan.” She paused. “Six-fifteen?”

  “Perfect.” I decided I could kill an hour by keeping the promise I’d made to Donna Wickstrom to visit her art gallery.