Alpine Hero

by Mary Daheim

  Vida’s phone rang just as she was about to pour more tea. She picked up the receiver from the extension by the refrigerator and uttered her usual imperious greeting. And, as is also characteristic, her voice then fell into a conversational lilt:

  “Why, Laurie—how nice! No, I came straight home … Well, certainly. No, that would be fine … Yes, take a right on Sixth, then a left on Tyee … Bye.” Vida’s eyes glittered with triumph as she hung up the phone. “Laurie and her mother are stopping in for a chat. Isn’t that nice?”

  It took a moment for the news to register; my mind was still bogged down with Vida’s advice. “Laurie—and Jane? What are they going to chat about?”

  “I can only guess,” Vida said, whisking my teacup off the table. “You don’t mind, do you? Leaving, that is. I didn’t tell Laurie you were here.” Vida had the grace to look sheepish.

  I had no choice but to make my exit. By way of apology, Vida hugged me at the door. She is not a demonstrative person, so I felt partially mollified. Burrowing into the hood of my duffel coat, I trudged through the rain to my Jag.

  I was almost there when Vida called out: “Stop! No, no! Keep going—but stop at your car!”

  Confused, I reached the driver’s side. Raindrops were rolling off my hood, impairing my vision. In the deepening twilight, Vida was a blur on her front porch. The next thing I noticed were headlights, pulling in behind the Jaguar. I didn’t recognize the car, but I knew Jane and Laurie Marshall as soon as they got out.

  “Oh, my!” Vida cried, waving her arms in apparent agitation. “Everybody is here at once! Hello, Emma! Do come in, Jane, Laurie! Hurry now! It’s so very wet!”

  I hid my smile. Vida’s ruse had fooled me; maybe it had also fooled the Marshall women. The three of us went inside, while Vida exclaimed about the fortuitousness of already having made tea.

  Neither Jane nor Laurie accepted Vida’s offer, however. After removing their raingear, they both sank onto the chintz-covered couch while I sat in a tufted club chair, and Vida enthroned herself in her late husband’s favorite dark green wing chair.

  To my surprise, it was Laurie who introduced the reason for the visit. If my presence put her off, it didn’t show.

  “I owe you an apology, Mrs. Runkel,” Laurie said, then glanced at me as well. “You, too, Ms. Lord. I’ve been thinking about what happened to Ms. Whitman on Monday, and now what might have happened to Becca. I talked it over with my mother.” She turned to Jane, who was twisting her hands and biting her lower lip. “There’s something terrible going on at the salon, or at least with people who are attached to it in some way. I don’t want to be responsible for hampering the investigation.”

  Laurie’s precise, articulate speech was a far cry from her usual vague manner. Indeed, the attitude of mother and daughter seemed to have been reversed: it was Laurie who now appeared concerned for her mother’s welfare, instead of the other way around.

  “I never meant to mislead you,” Laurie continued, “or anybody else, for that matter. But I’ve lived my life as Laurie Marshall for so long that I never think of being anyone else. My early childhood hardly exists, even in my memory.”

  At last, Jane managed to speak up: “If there’s blame, put it on my shoulders. I didn’t want Laurie to remember. It wasn’t a happy time for either of us.”

  Thoughts of abuse—physical, verbal, sexual—ravaged my mind. Another ugly marriage, with mother and child battered and beaten. The theme kept recurring: Honoria and Mitch; Becca and Eric; Jane and—who?

  But I wasn’t quite right. Jane had now taken up the tale. “My first husband wasn’t a bad man,” she asserted, still unable to control her fidgeting fingers. “The worst thing I could accuse him of was selfishness. He simply didn’t have time for us. I might as well never have been married in the first place.”

  There are worse things than not being married. The words tripped through my head, an old refrain of my mother’s on one of those rare days when she and my father weren’t getting along. Over the years I’d often found solace in the phrase. Apparently, Jane Marshall wouldn’t agree.

  “The truth is,” Laurie put in with a wry glance at her mother, “Mom doesn’t like to admit she let go of Toby Popp. Do you blame her for giving up on a future billionaire?”

  Hindsight is a wonderful thing, as Vida had indicated in her comforting commentary. “You wanted a normal life for yourself and Laurie,” Vida asserted, resting her hands on the leather arms of the wing chair. “Work can be more devastating to a marriage than a mistress. Toby Popp obviously cared more for his computers than his family.”

  “That’s the point!” Jane exclaimed, her voice now taking on its usual excitable edge. “We weren’t a family. And if we’d stayed married, if I’d nagged, if I’d made threats, if I’d been able to make Toby feel guilty, then maybe he wouldn’t have become so rich and successful!”

  Somehow, I suspected that Jane had tried all those tactics and failed. But maybe it made her feel better to think otherwise.

  “So,” I noted, “you divorced Toby, married Martin, and he adopted Laurie. Your story really does have a happy ending. I assume Toby didn’t put up a custody fight.”

  Jane gave her daughter a quick, guilty look. “Toby didn’t want to cause trouble. Really, he hardly noticed we were gone. I like to think he wanted what was best for us.”

  Toby didn’t want anything except his software, I thought cynically. My reaction must have shown, because Laurie was again wearing her ironic expression.

  “What Mom’s not telling you is that whether or not she’d stayed married to Toby, he would have been impossible to live with. If we didn’t live like a normal family while you were still married to him and he was holed up at work, things would only have gotten worse. Face it, Mom,” Laurie said, poking her mother in the arm, “Toby Popp may be a genius, but he’s also crazy.”

  Jane’s face sagged. “Oh, Laurie! That’s not fair! You can’t understand the pressures he’s had to put up with. He was always shy—I asked him out first. His idea of jokes and such may have been … unusual, but that’s because his brain works on a much higher plane.”

  Laurie lifted her carefully plucked eyebrows. “Like outer space?”

  In the wing chair, Vida was nodding. “I can imagine that Mr. Popp would be eccentric. Is that why you refused his parcel, Jane?”

  Jane’s pale face flushed slightly. “I’ve always refused his so-called gifts. So has Laurie. He can’t buy his way back into our lives just because he decided to move nearby.”

  Now Vida and I exchanged swift glances. “Gifts?” Vida echoed. “What sort of gifts?”

  Jane threw up her hands. “Money. Stock options. An Italian sports car. A house in Rancho Mirage. Toby must be going through midlife crisis. Now that he’s retired, I think he wishes he had a family after all.”

  I found myself sinking into the soft club chair. Knowing it was Roger’s favorite, I suspected that he had broken the springs. “Has Toby just started doing this since he bought the property at Index?”

  Jane nodded. “He began last fall by sending these silly little notes, like riddles. He and I used to play word games, you see.” The flush deepened as she avoided her daughter’s gaze. “I was always better at them than he was. Mine would rhyme.”

  “How nice,” Vida remarked tersely.

  “Finally,” Jane went on, “we—Martin, Laurie, and I—figured out that he was building a house at Index. I wrote him a letter, asking him not to bother us. After all, we hadn’t heard from him in almost twenty years.”

  “But he wouldn’t stop,” Laurie said, with a vexed shake of her head. “In fact, he started sending the … bribes. I don’t know what else to call them. I don’t think Toby knows of any other way to win people over except with money. Naturally, we sent everything back.” She paused, giving me a wry look. “Yesterday, in the salon, there was a letter addressed to me from Learjet. I never opened it, but I’ll bet you anything it was my own plane. Now what on earth would
I do with a private jet in Alpine?”

  Vida had edged forward on the wing chair and was addressing Jane. “And the parcel you returned to the post office?”

  Jane gave a forlorn shake of her head. “Who knows? Jewelry, maybe, or a rare edition of Lord Byron. I made the mistake of opening the first package Toby sent us. It was two dozen tins of Beluga caviar. They came the day before New Year’s, and I was so angry that I served them to our guests New Year’s Eve and nobody could tell the difference between Toby’s high-priced stuff and the Safeway special. I’d loved to have told him that. The truth is, Toby wouldn’t know the difference, either. His idea of exotic food is tuna fish.”

  “So,” Vida said slowly, “you’ve no idea what he sent in the box yesterday.”

  “None,” Jane answered promptly. “But in a way, I felt heartened.”

  “You did?” I turned wide eyes on Jane Marshall. “Why?”

  “Because,” she replied, meeting my gaze head-on and without apparent guile, “Toby must have delegated that one, which means he may be losing interest. You see, that wasn’t his handwriting. His penmanship is a terrible scrawl.”

  Only the rain and a couple of chirps from Cupcake could be heard in Vida’s living room. The silence encouraged Jane and Laurie to rise from the sofa.

  But Vida wasn’t finished with her guests. “You’re certain?” she asked, barring the way with her imposing presence.

  Jane, who had lost the flush from her pale face, eyed Vida quizzically. “I think so. I mean, the address was printed. Toby always wrote everything out in longhand. I don’t know how anybody ever read it. But then I suppose he used his computer to communicate at work.”

  Vida stepped aside. “I must thank you both for being so candid. Though I wonder why you didn’t contact Sheriff Dodge first.”

  Laurie uttered a little laugh as she put on her rain slicker. “We tried, but he’d just left the office. Besides, he never asked about Toby. You did. Mom and I didn’t want to leave you with a bad impression. After all, you’re the local opinion makers.”

  “Yes.” Taking the statement as a matter of course, Vida wore a thoughtful expression as she opened the front door.

  Jane turned under the porch light, her expression pleading. “This isn’t for publication, I hope? Laurie and I intended this as a private conversation.”

  Vida shrugged. “Emma and I are off the job. Don’t fret. At this point, I see no reason to mention any connection between you and Toby Popp in print.”

  The qualified disclaimer seemed to satisfy Jane, who started down the five steps that led to the walkway. At the last moment Vida put a hand on Laurie’s arm. “Laurie—are you going to go on pretending?”

  The blue eyes revealed surprise, then understanding. “Why not? It’s easier that way. Look what being brilliant did for Toby. He’s a head case. I want to lead a normal life. I always have, since we left California.”

  “That makes a certain amount of sense,” Vida murmured. “Good night. Drive safely.”

  After closing the door, Vida turned to me. “Laurie truly doesn’t even think of Toby as her father. I can’t say as I blame her. But I hate to see a fine mind go to waste.”

  “It’s not wasted,” I said brightly. “She’s creating wonderful hairdos.”

  Vida looked askance. “Not for you. Maybe you ought to switch from Stella.”

  I turned down Vida’s offer of whipping up a bit of supper. My stomach was growling, but I wasn’t desperate enough to endure one of my House & Home editor’s ill-got meals. Instead, I talked her into eating at the ski lodge’s coffee shop.

  Despite the rainy Friday night, the number of visitors was still up. Obviously, skiers who had already planned their weekend weren’t following the weather report. Or else they hoped for a dramatic change, which would bring new snow. Vida and I had to wait ten minutes for a table.

  We spent most of the meal talking about the Marshalls. Vida still wasn’t convinced that Toby Popp hadn’t sent the dead cat to the Marshall residence.

  “Who else?” she argued. “And if it were someone else, why?”

  “Why send it at all?” I asked with a little shiver. “It’s a gruesome stunt.”

  We were just finishing our dinners when Milo strolled into the coffee shop, wearing his civilian clothes and looking sort of lost. Halfway to the counter seating, he saw us and stopped.

  “My microwave broke,” he announced. “I decided to eat out.”

  We were at a table for two, but Vida was undaunted. “Why don’t you borrow a chair from those people?” She pointed to a nearby gathering of five at a setting for six. “Emma and I have finished dinner, but we were just talking about dessert.”

  We’d been doing no such thing, but I kept my mouth shut. When the waitress brought Milo a menu, Vida ordered blackberry cobbler. I chimed in and did the same, though I usually disdain dessert. For some peculiar, amazing reason, I’m not particularly fond of sweets. Grease is another matter. Maybe—hopefully—it all evens out.

  Milo chose the steak sandwich, which was what I’d had. As soon as he gave his order, Vida related the account of the Marshall women’s visit to her house. Predictably, the sheriff showed minimal interest.

  “Let’s say Toby Popp actually mailed Honoria’s cat to the Marshalls,” he mused, looking around for an ashtray. “That might—might, mind you—be a federal offense, violating some postal law. That’s none of my business. Then, let’s say you two think Toby Popp is involved in Kay Whitman’s murder because at one time he and Kay lived in the same state, which just happens to be one of the most populous in this country. Given that kind of tenuous connection, I could also haul in Leo Walsh and maybe a hundred other former Californians. That would cost the taxpayers a lot of money and drive me nuts. What’s your point?”

  Vida’s gaze was steely. “That cat was named for you, Milo. Don’t you care?”

  Milo arched one sandy eyebrow at Vida. “I never liked cats much. I wasn’t exactly flattered when Honoria named the damned thing after me.” He motioned to the waitress, requesting an ashtray. The sheriff was informed that he was sitting in the No Smoking section. Milo swore and Vida smirked.

  “Anyway,” Milo continued after the waitress had drifted away, “since you’ll find out Monday, I might as well tell you now. We ran a routine check on Honoria’s bank account in Sultan. Last week—the tenth, to be exact—she withdrew twenty-five hundred dollars. The teller said she put it into a money order. That’s weird, because Honoria always wrote checks.”

  Vida and I gazed at each other. “A major art purchase?” I finally suggested.

  Milo shrugged. “Could be. There’s no way of telling. The thing hasn’t been cashed yet.”

  I’d sent Adam enough money orders to know that the payer always filled in the payee’s name, usually after leaving the bank. “It’s too bad Honoria didn’t have close neighbors,” I remarked. “How far is the nearest house?”

  Milo sighed. “Not within shouting distance. One of the things she liked best about the place was the privacy. There’s a woman named Paula who makes stained glass a few miles up the road, but I don’t think they were bosom buddies. I’m having whoever’s on patrol pick up her mail.” The sheriff’s expression turned a bit sheepish.“That’s both personal and professional interest, I guess. Anyway, nothing turned up today.”

  Milo’s salad arrived, along with the blackberry cobblers. Without my noticing, Vida apparently had requested a side of vanilla ice cream. Doggedly, I dug into my dessert just as the sheriff’s cell phone went off.

  Milo juggled the phone and the salt-and-pepper shakers. After the initial, “Dodge here,” he didn’t say anything, but I could tell from his somber expression that this was a business call. Finally, he stood up and ambled over to the coffee-shop entrance, the phone glued to his ear. Vida and I watched him as he leaned against the wall next to the coatrack.

  “Most vexing,” Vida noted. “The least Milo could do is talk at the table.”

  “H
e’s okay,” I replied, deciding that even if the black-berries had been frozen, they were still delicious. Maybe dessert wasn’t such a bad idea after all. “Have you nagged him lately about the weapon?”

  Vida shook her head. “It’s useless. If they’d found it, they’d tell us. I suspect that knife or whatever it was made its way into the Skykomish River.”

  “And Kay’s purse?” The ice cream was pretty tasty, too.

  Vida frowned. “I know what you’re thinking. Ordinarily, the knife and the purse would have sunk. But that’s not accounting for the swift current this time of year, particularly when it rains so hard and the snow at the upper levels melts. We’ll be lucky if we get out of this weather without flooding.”

  I recalled other winters when the river had spilled over its banks and threatened adjacent businesses and residences. In years past, before my time, the Sky had gone on rampages that had actually swept away some of the older, flimsier structures in the vicinity.

  Vida’s sidelong gaze was fixed on Milo, who was still on the phone. “He does go on,” she said. “Or someone does. I wonder if it’s about Becca.”

  My own eyes scanned the coffee shop. I recognized only a half-dozen Alpiners. The rest were strangers. “It’s too bad there are so many skiers in town over the weekend. Otherwise, somebody like Eric Forbes would stand out.”

  “True,” Vida agreed. “I trust Milo has had his vis-à-vis in King County try to locate Eric in Seattle. If he’s not there, then we could surmise that Becca is right, and he came up here. Dear me.” She sighed deeply, then polished off the last spoonful of cobbler.

  Milo returned to the table just as the waitress brought his entrée. He sat down with the usual awkward effort of arranging his long legs, then grimaced at both of us.

  “That was Grants Pass. They put me through to Honoria. She and her mother are staying at the Holiday Inn Express.” The sheriff was back at the salt and pepper, now doctoring his steak and fries. “Honoria says Dodger disappeared Wednesday morning after she let him out. He never came back. She figures he sensed that they were leaving and took off. Cats do that, I guess. Maybe they’re smarter than I thought.”