The Alpine Christmas

by Mary Daheim

  The best cure for freezing, I decided, was work. It was Tuesday, after all, and our deadline for the weekly edition of The Advocate. Despite a sagging economy and Ed Bronsky’s best efforts to discourage advertisers, we were putting out a thirty-six-page paper, crammed with holiday specials. It was a good thing, since we were running light on real news. This was the season for Vida to shine, with plenty of party coverage, charity functions, and how-to holiday articles. I’d allotted her six pages this week, but of course they were all inside. The front page was unusually bland; Carla’s lead story recounted the city council’s decision to allow a ten-foot plastic Santa Claus to tower over Old Mill Park.

  “It will blow away,” said council president and ski lodge manager Henry Bardeen.

  “It will detract from the memorial to our town’s founder, Carl Clemans,” said council secretary and apparel-shop owner Francine Wells.

  “It will be the target of every snowballer and potshot artist in town,” said council member and building contractor Arnold Nyquist.

  “It will be an appropriate seasonal reminder, and a compromise in response to criticism of the manger scene that has stood in Old Mill Park every Christmas since 1946,” said Mayor Fuzzy Baugh. “Let it not be said that the City of Alpine is insensitive to those who do not share basic Christian beliefs. No matter how misguided, these fine folks still vote.” Fuzzy was your basic Baptist.

  He was also a savvy politician, but his quote needed pruning. I was about to exercise my editor’s pencil when the phone rang. It was Milo Dodge. He didn’t sound excited so much as disturbed.

  “Emma, can you come over for a minute?”

  I started to fabricate an excuse, then realized that Milo’s office might have heat, and said I could. The Skykomish County Sheriff’s office was only two blocks away, after all. “Shall I pick up some doughnuts?” The Upper Crust Bakery had recently moved into the space formerly occupied by the hobby and toy shop, which had graduated to the Alpine Mall. The town’s original source of baked goods had dried up three years earlier when its current owner had left Alpine to dry out and had never come back. The Upper Crust was owned by a pair of upstarts from Seattle who had a yen for the wide open spaces—and cheap real estate prices. Their baked goods were fabulous.

  But Milo declined. “Just come over, quick as you can,” he said, then hastily added a word of warning: “Be careful—it’s slippery out there.”

  I agreed not to turn cartwheels on Front Street. After putting on my car coat, I trudged over to the bakery, which was closed. No heat, I supposed. No ovens, no doughnuts. The marzipan reindeer in the window display looked as if they were seeking shelter in the gingerbread house. Next door, Parker’s Pharmacy was open, but I noticed that the clerks were wearing heavy sweaters and the fluorescent lighting had taken on a jaundiced tinge. Across the street, the Burger Barn was completely dark.

  Luckily, Milo isn’t afraid of space heaters. He had a large one going full tilt next to his desk. I sat down opposite him and cozied up to the glowing coils. Milo asked Bill Blatt to bring me a cup of coffee.

  “At least the lights work,” I noted, though they gave an ominous flicker even as I spoke. “What happened?”

  Milo thought I meant him, rather than the PUD. He shook his head slowly, incredulously. “Emma, it was the damnedest thing. I hit the river above Anthracite Creek, six miles down the highway. I got there just before first light. Jack Mullins got a twelve-pounder in that hole Saturday morning,” he went on, referring to another of his deputies. “Within the first fifteen minutes, I had a couple of bumps. I was sure it was going to be my lucky day.”

  Milo paused as Bill Blatt brought my coffee. I could visualize the scene, the river rushing among big boulders, the leaden sky overhead, the freezing air, the wind cutting to the bone, the snow swirling everywhere. Perfect steelheading weather. Only a true masochist could love the sport.

  “And?” I encouraged Milo after Bill had made his exit.

  Milo leaned on his elbows. He was a big shambling man in his mid-forties, with sharp hazel eyes, graying sandy hair, and a long face with a square jaw. It was a nice face, even an attractive face, though I made a point of not usually acknowledging the fact. When it came to the male-female thing, Milo and I had our own agendas. Or so it seemed.

  “Then something really hit,” Milo continued, his high forehead creasing. “It didn’t feel like a fish, but it didn’t seem like a snag, either. I let the line play out a little, but there wasn’t any fight. So I started to reel in. I damned near died when I saw what I had.” Milo gulped, blanched, and gave a shudder. Impatient, I stared at his stricken expression. He’d been the sheriff of Skykomish County for over eight years. Surely he’d seen it all.

  “Well, what was it?” I demanded.

  He passed a big hand over his face. “It was a leg, Emma. A human leg. And it was still wearing a tennis shoe. With no sock.”

  Chapter Two

  I FELT A bit pale, too. For a long moment, Milo and I stared at each other across the desk. Finally, I spoke, my voice a trifle weak: “What did you do with it?” I clutched at my Styrofoam cup, feeling the warmth, but not benefitting from it.

  Having related his grisly tale, Milo sat back in his chair. His color was returning, but he was shaking his head again. “I had a big garbage bag in the Cherokee Chief, so I got it and put the thing in it. Then I came back here and called Bill and Jack to come over quick. Doc Dewey will do the rest. I tell you, Emma, it’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen in twenty-five years of law enforcement.”

  I sipped my coffee and reflected. We could get the story on page one, but it wouldn’t run more than a couple of inches. Later, when and if we knew more, we could do a detailed article. Over the past two or three years, several body parts had been hauled out of rivers in Snohomish and King counties. This, however, was a first for Skykomish.

  “So it’s all up to Doc?” I inquired. Gerald Dewey, M.D., known locally as young Doc, had recently taken over not only his late father’s practice, but old Doc’s coroner’s duties as well.

  Milo nodded. “It’s pretty routine. Try to make an ID, figure out time and cause of death. If foul play is suspected, then we go to work.” Draining his mug with its NRA emblem, Milo seemed to have regained his composure. He actually chuckled. “Weird, huh? Except for a couple of those Snohomish County cases, nobody’s been able to figure out if we’ve got another serial killer or a lot of accident-prone people in western Washington.”

  “Or too many nuts living in the woods and playing with their Skilsaws,” I remarked.

  “Always a possibility,” agreed Milo. “City people don’t realize how many goofballs take to the high country. Recluses who were strange to start with and keep getting stranger.”

  “Transients, too,” I pointed out. “Either as victim or as hermit. Or both. Do you figure this was a man?”

  Milo turned serious again. “My guess is that it was a woman, or maybe a kid. It had been in the river a long time. I’ll spare you the decomposition details, but judging from the sockless tennis shoe alone, I’d say maybe two or three months.”

  I was grateful to be spared. One of my flaws as a journalist is my squeamish stomach. “Will you check out a list of missing persons?”

  Milo gave a grunt of assent. “It won’t do much good. Nobody I know of is missing around here, except for the usual wandering husband or fed-up wife. If it’s a juvenile, we’d have a better chance—most of them are on the National Crime Information Center computer. After the Green River killer investigation, there was a move to report missing prostitutes on a national basis, but the truth is that the people who first miss them usually aren’t anxious to get tangled up with the law.”

  I had taken my notebook out of my handbag and was writing swiftly. Maybe the story could run at least six inches if I included the background Milo was giving me. I could dump all of Carla’s quotes about the plastic Santa and cut the last two grafs of my latest spotted owl piece, which was merely a rehas
h of the most recent plan to resolve the environment-logging industry controversy.

  “Let me know if you find out anything more,” I requested as I stood up, loath to leave the space heater. “We’ve got the rest of the day to get the story in this week’s edition.”

  Milo grimaced. “Don’t make me look like a damned fool.”

  I cocked my head to one side. “Have I ever?”

  The sheriff looked the other way. “No—I can probably manage that on my own.”

  “Can’t we all?” I gave him a wave and headed out through the reception area where Arnold Nyquist was pounding his fist on the counter and griping at Jack Mullins. Nyquist was a large, bluff man in his fifties, with a fringe of gray hair and a ruddy complexion. Known to most Alpiners as Arnie, but to some as Tinker Toy, he was the biggest building contractor in Alpine. The nickname had been coined by some wag who didn’t consider Nyquist’s residential dwellings up to snuff. Since three of the thirty homes in the Ptarmigan Tract west of town had collapsed during the early 1980s, the criticism might have been justified. Of late, Nyquist was concentrating on commercial construction.

  “ … couldn’t find a two-by-four up your butt!” Nyquist was saying to Jack Mullins.

  Mullins, who had a reputation for drollery, turned his head to look down at his backside. “Golly, I don’t see anything. Do you?”

  Nyquist banged his fist again, causing ballpoint pens to jump and papers to flutter. “Don’t be a wiseass, Mullins! That stuff cost close to a grand. And the fountain pen belonged to my granddad. He brought it over from Norway in oh-seven.”

  Standing at the bulletin board, I pretended to scan the various announcements and notices. Arnie Nyquist stormed out, with a parting shot for Jack: “This isn’t the first time I’ve had problems with theft and vandalism. That moron of a sheriff and the rest of you dumbbells couldn’t arrest anybody if they broke into the county jail. I’ll expect to hear from you or Dodge by five o’clock this afternoon. You got that?”

  Jack nodded his shaggy red head. “I’ll put it with the two-by-four,” he said after Nyquist had made his exit. “Hey, Mrs. Lord, isn’t old Tinker Toy a world-class jerk?”

  “He can be,” I conceded. Luckily, I hadn’t dealt much with Arnie Nyquist. The kind of news he generated usually came through cut-and-dried building permit or zoning council stories. I had, however, dealt with his father, Oscar, who owned The Whistling Marmot Movie Theatre. At one time, in the 1920s, Oscar and his father had owned the entire Alpine block where the theatre was located, kitty-corner from The Advocate. Although Lars Nyquist had chosen Gösta Berling’s Saga with Greta Garbo for the opening of his new picture palace in 1924, his son had refused to show foreign films for decades. Oscar asserted that they were all obscene, obscure, and anti-American. He had been tricked into presenting Wild Strawberries because he thought the Bergman involved was Ingrid, not Ingmar. According to Vida, at least four people in Alpine noted the irony of one Norwegian getting confused by two Swedes.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked of Jack, sensing another late-breaking, if minor, story.

  Mullins pushed the official log my way. “Somebody got into Nyquist’s van last night and stole a bunch of stuff. Portable CD player, half a dozen CDs, some tools, a box of Jamaican cigars, a couple of fancy photographs … whatever. Nyquist left the van unlocked. It serves him right.”

  It probably did, but people in Alpine still have a tendency to trust each other, at least with their belongings, if not with their spouses. “Could it be the same thief who stole the band equipment up at the high school?”

  Jack shrugged. “Maybe. But Nyquist’s van was parked at his son’s place on Stump Hill. That’s a good mile or so from the high school.” The implication was that Alpine’s crooks were too lazy to cross town to commit a second burglary. Especially in the snow.

  I jotted down some more notes, just in case Carla had forgotten to check the log. I recalled some other incidents involving Arnold Nyquist. Last December, a display of Christmas lights at his home on First Hill had been swiped; his second floor office in the Alpine Building was egged in the spring; a load of garbage had been dumped on his front lawn in July; a small fire was started at his construction site for the new bowling alley across the river. Nyquist was right about one thing, though—if memory served, no one had been apprehended for any of the mischief. I supposed it was only natural that Arnie would take it more seriously than the law enforcement officials did. Indeed, the family’s string of minor bad luck was ongoing.

  “How is Travis?” I asked, referring to Nyquist’s son, who was recovering from a broken ankle suffered in a skiing accident over the Thanksgiving weekend. Until the theft of last night, Travis’s mishap on Tonga Ridge had been the most recent Nyquist calamity.

  Jack grinned, which always seemed to make his teeth sparkle and his freckles dance. “If I had that wife of his to take care of me, I’d break a leg three times a year. Trav’s doing fine, and why shouldn’t he? There’s a guy who’s got it all.”

  On the surface, at least, Travis Nyquist had attained many a young man’s dreams before he was thirty. A graduate of Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, he had gotten his M.A. in finance at the University of Washington, gone to work for a big brokerage house in Seattle, met his future bride, Bridget, and moved back to Alpine to mull over his stock options. The young Nyquists had been married for a little over a year. They now lived in a handsome Pacific Northwest version of a Cape Cod on Stump Hill, otherwise known as The Pines. The house had been built six years earlier by Arnie Nyquist on speculation, but this time he’d spared no expense. When the well-to-do commuter family from Everett had gotten fed up driving back and forth on Stevens Pass, Arnie put earnest money down and held onto the place until his son carried his bride over the threshold.

  “Trav and I went to high school together,” Jack was musing, his freckled face now wistful. “He never seemed to work that hard, but he always got good grades. The other guys and I used to say that he charmed his teachers, at least the women, but I guess Trav is really smart. He must have gotten his brains from Mrs. Nyquist. Old Tinker Toy’s IQ isn’t so hot, if you ask me. My dad says it’s a wonder Arnie didn’t flunk out of UDUB in his freshman year.”

  Briefly, I considered Arnie Nyquist’s wife, Louise, a meek ex-schoolteacher who had reputedly jumped out the window of her seventh-grade classroom during a particularly arduous social studies session. Fortunately, she was on the first floor at the time and landed virtually unharmed in a rhododendron bush.

  With some reluctance, I left Jack Mullins to his musings about The Life and Times of Travis Nyquist, and headed out into the snow, which had turned fairly heavy. Through the curtain of white, I could barely make out the Christmas decorations along Front Street: golden strands of tinsel, big red shiny bows, and tall amber candles that covered the regular streetlights.

  Back in the office, I found Ginny Burmeister distributing the mail. There was nothing much of interest: only the usual press releases, bills, promotions, and a couple of letters to the editor and/or publisher. The first missive was in response to our front-page article about cutting Christmas trees on state lands, an activity that was permitted in certain areas every year from the last week of November until mid-December. The irate correspondent, Ruth Rydholm, asserted that such plundering of the forests was unnecessary and even dangerous. Since Mrs. Rydholm’s son Cliff owned a Christmas tree farm in Snohomish County, I figured she was a bit biased.

  The other letter, also tree-oriented, chided me for my previous spotted owl story. A week without a spotted owl letter was like a week without a Monday. Alpiners, except for the recycled Californians, were generally anti-owl and pro-logger, which befitted a town founded on the timber industry. Even though the original mill had closed in 1929, logging was still an important, if severely jeopardized, source of income. Most of the locals viewed efforts to protect the endangered spotted owl as no more necessary than saving the pterodactyl. The longer I lived in Alpin
e, the more I tended to agree, but I hoped, in my fair-minded journalist’s way, that a compromise could be reached.

  What I could not reach was my son. Adam was taking a final. He was due to arrive at Sea-Tac Airport Saturday from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. Although I’d spoken to him by phone, I hadn’t seen him since he’d spent two days with his father, Tom Cavanaugh, in San Francisco. It was the first time Adam had met his dad. My son indicated that all had gone well. Young men—most men—aren’t much for relating intimate details. Wish I’d been there. Wish Tom were here. Wish my life away. That’s what I’d done for over twenty years.…

  Just as I was entering Milo’s fishing incident on my word processor, the phone rang. I hoped it was Adam, returning my call, but the voice at the other end of the line was equally pleasing to me.

  “Hi, Sluggly,” said my brother. “I’m at the hospital. Mrs. McHale was right: Father Fitz has had a small stroke. Dr. Flake wants to keep him for a couple of days. I’m wondering if I should move into the rectory.”

  I was torn: Ben was currently staying in Adam’s room, but had insisted he’d take up residence on the living-room sofa once my son got to Alpine. I had argued that I would sleep on the sofa—Ben was on vacation. But maybe the rectory was a good idea. Someone besides the housekeeper should be there during Advent.

  “Have you called the Chancery?” I asked. Ben had. The archbishop—or an underling—had given my brother a green light. Priests were scarce; priests were needed. The Chancery office was only too glad for someone who had actually taken holy orders to run St. Mildred’s. Otherwise, we might have been stuck with liturgical services conducted by Helga Wenzler, parish council president and manic-depressive—or worse yet, Ed Bronsky, eucharistie minister, who would immediately change the Good News to the Bad News. Or no news at all … Such was Ed’s morbid style.