The Alpine Menace

by Mary Daheim

  “You haul me out of my own house? Just because of a little smoke? You sons of bitches, I'll sue you for that!”

  A final glance at the Harquist homestead told me that it was probably destroyed. I should have felt sad, but instead, I figured it served them right. As I went to my car, I glimpsed Bill Blatt, using his cell phone. Bill was Vida's nephew, and her source of all things that pertained to the law. I took in the stretch of road until it curved alongside of the creek. There was no sign of Vida's big white Buick. It wasn't like her not to follow such a full symphony of sirens.

  I expanded my worries to include Vida.

  MILO WENT DIRECTLY into surgery. He'd given me a feeble wave as they wheeled him down the corridor. He was so tall and the gurney so short that his head sort of lolled off the top in order to make room at the other end for his injured foot. His Smokey the Bear hat had sat on his stomach, and I hadn't known whether to laugh or cry. So I laughed, but not until he was out of sight.

  I telephoned Vida from the hospital lobby, but she didn't answer. Then I remembered that she was going to Startup to have dinner at Buck Bardeen's house. It was now past ten o'clock, and while Vida didn't retire early, she usually tried to get home by nine-thirty on work nights.

  I considered calling Edith Holmgren to tell her I'd retrieve the cats, but thought better of it. I preferred not leaving them with Amber while I went back to Seattle. Edith might as well enjoy the company of Rheims and Rouen for a couple of extra days.

  One of the nurses informed me that Meara didn't seem to be seriously harmed, though she had a few bumps and bruises. Delicately, I asked if she'd been sexually assaulted.

  “I don't think so,” Debbie Murchison, RN, replied dryly. “She may have put them off.”

  I was mystified. “How do you mean?”

  Debbie, who was young and a newcomer to Alpine, leaned close to my ear. “She's four months pregnant.Some men don't find that a turn-on, even when they're drunk as skunks.”

  “But she's only fifteen,” I said in astonishment.

  “So? Meara O'Neill's fifteen going on thirty-five. Besides,” Debbie added, “she'll be sixteen next month.”

  I was reminded of Carol Stokes, and wondered if Debbie's impregnator was any more gallant than Darryl Lindholm had been almost twenty years earlier. But who was I to criticize? I'd also been an unwed mother.

  The surgery was supposed to last less than an hour. The bullet had gone right through Milo's foot. It didn't sound serious, though he'd be hobbled for a couple of weeks. I had started back to the waiting room when a breathless Jeannie Clay caught up with me.

  “Is he all right? Will he lose his foot?” Jeannie asked, her round, pretty face looking distressed.

  “He'll be fine,” I reassured her. “I gather he can't walk on it for a while. That won't make him easy to live with.” I winced. I didn't know if Jeannie was living with Milo or not. I preferred not to know. We had never lived together, nor did I ever want to. That had been one of the reasons for our breakup.

  “Gosh,” she said, her face falling even further, “that's awful. For him, I mean. We were supposed to go skiing at Sun Valley this coming weekend. I've taken Friday and Monday off, because we planned to drive to Idaho. I don't think Dr. Starr will let me change it. He and Mrs. Starr have their own plans.”

  “That's a shame,” I lied. “I imagine this is getting to be the tail end of the ski season over there.”

  “Pretty much,” Jeannie said, now thoughtful. “I'll have to see if Heather Bardeen can go instead.”

  Heather is the niece of Buck Bardeen and the daughter of Henry, who runs the ski lodge. The two young women had been best friends forever. But that didn't prevent me from thinking that Jeannie's attitude was rather callous and self-serving.

  “Milo will probably need some help at home for the next few days,” I said as we continued on our way to the waiting room.

  “Probably,” Jeannie agreed. “I'll bet his aunt Thelma will be glad to stay with him. She must get tired of that grumpy husband of hers.”

  It seemed incredible that Jeannie didn't consider it her duty to nurse Milo back to health. But I was a creature of another generation. The Young—in this case, anybody under thirty-five—were different. They were self-serving. And sometimes callous. It's not all their fault. They've been raised in an era of disintegrating families, which makes their sense of self-preservation much keener.

  I took one look at the waiting room, saw Rusty and Dusty O'Neill, and decided I didn't want to be there. If Jeannie had come to see Milo, he didn't need me. I made a flimsy excuse and left.

  I called Vida again from home. She still didn't answer.

  I'd barely gotten in the door of The Advocate Monday morning when Ginny Erlandson handed me a phone message from Detective Tony Rojas of the Seattle Police Department. The primary on the Carol Stokes homicide case wanted to let me know that he was taking the day after Easter off, but would be in the office Tuesday.

  That worked out better for me, since I wouldn't return to Seattle until that afternoon. I was hanging up my coat when Vida entered, wearing a three-tiered straw hat I'd never seen before. It was covered with fruit, and I couldn't help but think of Carmen Miranda.

  “Emma!” she cried. “What are you doing here?”

  I explained why I'd come back to Alpine. “At lunch we can go over what I learned in your absence,” I said. “By the way, your luggage is still in my car.”

  “I'm all ears,” she declared, sitting down behind her desk.

  “I'm sure you are,” I replied with a smile. “Vida, where'd you get that hat?”

  “I've had it for ages,” she replied, touching a couple of mangoes. “I found it when I was packing for our trip.”

  “It's amazing,” I said, and waited.

  “I think so. Very springlike.” She sounded defensive, and it made me curious.

  “The feathers you wore in Seattle were a bit winterlike,” I said.

  Vida harrumphed. “More than just that, apparently.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Did you notice that disreputable man with the beard who approached me at the bus stop on Aurora?”

  I said I did. “Did he ask for money?”

  “No.” Vida lowered her voice. “He offered it. Fifty dollars, but I had to wear the hat. Can you imagine?” She had actually gone pale.

  I put a hand over my mouth to stifle a burst of laughter. “No!” I exclaimed, eyes wide. “He must have been… drunk.” Or crazy or blind or the kinkiest man in western Washington. “What did you say?”

  “I told him he ought to be ashamed of himself,” Vida replied. “I can't think when I've been so insulted.”

  Regarding Vida with a keen eye, I wondered. Deep down, I suspected she'd been thrilled. But she made no further comment and began going through her in-basket. “Goodness, such a bunch of nonsense. There must be a dozen different recipe mailings in here, not to mention all the other unnewsworthy releases from businesses and organizations that have nothing to do with Alpine.”

  “I get them, too,” I said, and waited some more.

  “There were three weddings over the weekend,” she continued. “Diane Skylstad's bridal gown was orange. Why? I wonder. Oh,” she continued, reading from the standard wedding release we provided, “her groom went to Oregon State. He wore a black tuxedo. Beaver colors, it says here.” She paused while I fought my impatience. “Beverly Iverson accompanied herself on the piccolo while she came down the aisle singing ‘You Are the Wind Beneath My Bings.’ ”

  “That should be wings,” I interrupted. “It's a typo. Vida…”

  “The Petersen-Huff nuptials took place in a hot-air balloon at Snohomish,” Vida broke in, scribbling the correction. “Talk about wind—the Petersens have enough hot air to fly an airplane. Not to mention the Huffs. The name says it all.”

  “Very cute,” I remarked, my curiosity at the bursting point. “Vida, where have you been?”

  She glanced up from t
he handwritten piece of paper she was perusing. “Nowhere in particular,” she said, but avoided my gaze. “You wouldn't think people would get married on Easter weekend, would you?”

  “Vida…”

  “What?” Finally, she stared at me through her big glasses.

  “Don't you want to know all the details about last night?”

  “Last night?” The faintest and most uncharacteristic of blushes emerged on her cheeks. “Did I miss something?” I could swear I heard her groan.

  “Yes,” I said. “Where were you?”

  “Oooh…” She whipped off her glasses and began to rub her eyes in that fierce fashion that always drives me nuts. “I was with Buck. We spent a very leisurely evening.”

  “That sounds… nice,” I said, keeping a straight face. While Vida would use every means short of thumbscrews to elicit the most personal information from others, she is a clam when it comes to revealing details of her own private life. Unlike many nosy people I've known, there is no mutual exchange of intimate affairs. In Alpine, it's understood that my House and Home editor takes no prisoners on the battlefield of gossip.

  “All right,” she said, putting her glasses back on and blinking several times, “tell me what I somehow missed last night.”

  Scott Chamoud and Kip MacDuff arrived together, so I waited until they'd settled in with coffee and the doughnuts that I'd picked up at the Upper Crust Bakery. Ginny came in with more phone messages, and Leo showed up just after I began my account.

  “Wow!” Scott exclaimed after I'd finished. “I leave town, and everything blows up.”

  “It's all yours now,” I said, “though you'll need background from Vida on the Harquist-O'Neill feud.”

  “You keeping the sheriff for yourself?” Leo asked with a bland expression on his craggy face.

  “No,” I said with a hard stare for my ad manager. “I have to go back to Seattle tomorrow. There's no point in me staying with any of the stories just before deadline.”

  “You can't go back to Seattle,” Leo said. “We've got lunch with Spencer Fleetwood tomorrow.”

  I'd forgotten. “Can we put it off until Friday?” I asked, feeling stupid.

  “I'll check with Fleetwood,” Leo replied, but he didn't look pleased.

  Throughout this exchange, Vida had remained silent. At last she spoke, her bust thrust out, her mangoes bobbing: “It was bound to come to this. The Harquists and the O'Neills have been building toward a showdown for years.”

  Leo turned in his swivel chair. “Aren't family feuds kind of dated, even in Alpine? This isn't Albania, Duchess.”

  Vida glared at Leo. “Really, what do you know about it? You're still a newcomer. At least the Harquists and the O'Neills take some pride in family honor. I find it rather heartwarming.”

  “Sicily,” Leo said. “It's more like Sicilian families, having a ritual bloodbath.”

  “Not at all,” Vida asserted. “Everyone involved is fair-complected. The O'Neills are mostly redheaded, and the Harquists are very blond. Of course Cap is bald now, but…”

  I left Vida and Leo to their argument and retired to my cubbyhole. The workday commenced. I called the hospital to check on Milo and was put through to his room.

  “I'm stuck here until tomorrow,” he complained. “I argued with Doc about it, but I lost. Now I have to run this whole Harquist-O'Neill mess from here. It's damned aggravating.”

  Milo was never one to delegate. I sympathized, then asked how he was going to manage when he went home. Surely he'd have to stay off his foot for a few days.

  “That's another thing,” he said, still grumpy. “Doc wants me to keep off of it until next week. Hell, it's not that big a deal. I shot myself in the foot once when I was a kid.”

  “But you're going to need some help,” I pointed out. “I talked to Jeannie last night at the hospital, and it sounded as if she's going out of town for a few days.” I couldn't resist putting the needle into Milo.

  “Right,” the sheriff responded. “You have to give seven days’ notice at the place where we had our reservations. The deadline passed last Saturday. Janet Driggers tried to wheedle an exception, but no luck. They're sticklers in Sun Valley.”

  So Milo was making excuses for his youthful sweetheart. “Goodness,” I said, “you wouldn't want to be out two or three hundred dollars just because you got shot in the line of duty.”

  “What does that crack mean?” Milo snapped.

  I was silently chortling. “Get well, cowboy. I'll bring you a tuna casserole when you get home.” Milo hated tuna casserole. I hung up, still chortling.

  Vida and I ate at the Venison Inn, where she listened in relative silence to my adventures the previous day in Seattle.

  “I'm actually relieved that I didn't have to go to those seedy bars,” she admitted. “However, I can't help but wonder if things might have gone more smoothly with Darryl Lindholm had I been there.”

  I bristled a bit. “How? You couldn't have avoided mentioning Kendra.”

  “Perhaps you should have inquired about Carol first,” Vida said, taking a bite from her Reuben sandwich.

  “Why?” I shot back. “I was trying to add a positive note to what was otherwise an extremely negative conversation. Mr. Rapp said that Darryl, Carol, and Kendra looked happy together, like a family. I thought that mentioning Kendra would make him feel better.”

  “Apparently not,” Vida murmured, looking faintly smug. “Oh, well. I'll call on him tomorrow.”

  “You're going with me?” I said. “What about the paper?”

  “I told you, I already have my section well in hand,” Vida said calmly. “All I need now are some ‘Scene Around Town’ items,” she added, referring to her gossip column. “I could use some of the information from the encounter last night at Cap Harquist's—if you could make it amusing.”

  “It didn't seem amusing at the time,” I retorted. “Besides, I don't think that would be in very good taste.”

  “Oh—it could be,” Vida said airily. “You know— ‘Half-clad but doughty Cap Harquist protesting removal from family homestead built in thirty-three.’ ‘Forty years later Sheriff Dodge gets shot in other foot. Was he waiting for the other bullet to drop?’ ‘Meara O'Neill uses old copies of Advocate to start fire.’ That sort of thing.”

  “Those are not funny,” I asserted. “And you know better.”

  Vida shrugged. “Then give me something I really can use.”

  “I haven't been here much the past few days,” I said, then brightened. “How about ‘Darryl Lindholm, formerly of Alpine, now working for Microsoft in Redmond’?”

  “You know I'm not one to use ‘formerly of Alpine’ items,” Vida said, frowning. “I like to keep things local.”

  “I know,” I agreed, “but what if somebody who's known him since he left comes up with something interesting. Something recent, maybe.”

  Vida sprinkled extra salt and pepper on her potato salad. “Hmm. That's possible. But it's rather unfortunate that his name would appear in the same issue with his ex-girlfriend's murder, don't you think?”

  She was right. “It probably wouldn't do any good anyway,” I allowed. “Darryl cut his ties with Alpine a long time ago.”

  “But did he do it willingly? I wonder,” Vida mused.

  I looked up from my hot pastrami and rye. “As in?”

  “It seems to me that his parents moved from here not long after he graduated from high school,” Vida explained. “He was two, maybe three years older than Carol, and already enrolled at Pacific Lutheran in Tacoma. Carol went off to have the baby in Seattle—where she lived with Olive and Burt Nerstad. It wasn't long before the Lindholms sold their house on First Hill and moved to Mount Vernon.”

  “You're suggesting that Darryl was coerced out of marrying Carol?”

  Vida nodded. “Perhaps. This is all coming back to me. Darryl was quite bright. I believe he'd won a scholarship to PLU. The Lindholms were fairly well-off, however. Mr. Lindholm had been a superintende
nt at the old Tye Lumber Company before it closed. Darryl's mother came from Sultan, where her parents owned a great deal of property north of the town. The Lindholms had enough money to buy that bulb company in the Skagit Valley. They certainly didn't want to see their son marry too soon or beneath him.”

  “His first marriage failed,” I remarked.

  “Probably because it wasn't to Carol,” Vida said. “Perhaps he really loved her. Perhaps he didn't mind what she'd become.”

  “Perhaps,” I noted dryly, “he blamed himself for that.”

  “Perhaps,” Vida said with an ironic smile. “He certainly must have blamed himself for the accident that killed his second wife and their two boys.”

  “I'm afraid so,” I said. “All right, we'll leave at noon tomorrow for Seattle. I had the motel reserve a room for Tuesday night.”

  Amber seemed relieved that I was going away again. Obviously, she enjoyed the freedom to pig up the place. In her favor, she'd actually fixed dinner: overdone rib steaks, a can of string beans, and baked potatoes. I'd been trying to teach her how to cook. It was an uphill battle.

  I'd tried to see Milo on my way home from work, but he was conducting a staff meeting in his room, so I left. Scott had learned earlier in the day that Cap Harquist had been hospitalized for smoke inhalation, but was already released. Rudy Harquist was back in jail, charged with unlawful discharge of a firearm. Apparently, even Milo wasn't sure that the shooting hadn't been an accident. Meara O'Neill was also out of the hospital. The Harquists wanted to charge her with arson, but our new prosecutor, Rosemary Bourgette, was probably going to nail both Rudy and Ozzie for kidnapping. The two O'Neills, who had carry permits, had been brought in on unlawful brandishing of a firearm. I'd written the first part of Scott's story myself. It was a big one, and I didn't mind giving him credit, but I'd have to go over his part with a fine-tooth comb. The whole mess was fraught with libel possibilities. Assuming, of course, that any of the feuding instigators could read.

  About an hour after I'd cleared away the dinner things, I urged Amber to clean up the living room with its usual obstacle course of toys, tabloids, and wearing apparel, both large and small. The phone rang while she was still staring at the litter.