Alpine Hero

by Mary Daheim

  The boxcars rattled and clattered along the tracks as the warning signal flashed and clanged. Four cars were empty, a waste I always wondered about while watching trains pass. Maybe they’d been unloaded at an earlier stop; but why not send them off to a sideline? Or maybe they were going to take on freight somewhere farther along the route. My idle musings made the time pass faster. Maybe … a fragmentary thought flitted through my brain and was lost.

  The caboose, or crummy, as it’s locally known, disappeared past Alpine’s tiny smoke-smudged brick station. A moment later I crossed the tracks, then the river, and headed for the highway.

  Sunday cross-state traffic was fairly heavy, especially with returning skiers. I decided not to turn off the road at Skykomish or Index, but to wait until I got to Gold Bar Gas. That way, if Paula wasn’t home, I’d be close enough to Monroe to head for the strip malls and do some shopping. Travel items were on my mental list, mostly toiletries and panty hose. I didn’t want to waste the trip.

  It was exactly four o’clock when I pulled into the service station to use the phone. Paula answered on the third ring. She sounded surprised to hear from me.

  “Emma! I figured you’d forget I existed! What’s up? Do you want to grill me again?”

  “Not really. Although,” I added, “I’ve got some interesting news about the victim. I stopped here in Gold Bar for gas and I thought if you weren’t busy, I’d … ah … drop in for a couple of minutes.”

  The pause at the other end unsettled me. “Oh, damn all, Emma!” Paula finally exclaimed. “It sounds great, but I’m in the middle of something. You ever work with glass?”

  I said I hadn’t, not in the way she meant, anyway. Paula mentioned temperatures and textures and other things I didn’t understand. “How about Tuesday night? You could come for dinner.”

  Trying not to feel another surge of disappointment, I told Paula I’d rather do dinner on Wednesday, since Tuesday was our deadline. That didn’t work for Paula; we compromised on Thursday. Like a sulky child, I withheld my information about Kay Whitman. If Paula wouldn’t see me now, she could wait to read about it in The Advocate.

  Back inside the Jag, I pulled out onto Highway 2. Suddenly driving the sixteen additional miles to Monroe didn’t seem very appealing. There wasn’t anything in the stores there that I couldn’t buy at Parker’s Pharmacy in Alpine. At the next turnoff, I’d reverse my tracks and head back home.

  Ironically, the next turnoff was Honoria’s drive. Going off the highway, I geared down and let the car creep among the trees. The vine maples’ bare branches formed an arch over the narrow, rutted road. As the sun started to set somewhere out over Puget Sound, clouds moved in. No doubt there was rain coming, maybe even snow at the higher elevations.

  Honoria’s house wore a curious, lifeless look. I stopped where the drive broadened into a wider paved track that led to her empty carport. But the carport shouldn’t be empty. Trevor and Mrs. Smith and the ersatz Kay had arrived by car; Honoria had her specially rigged model; Trevor had flown back to Pacific Grove with the body. Honoria had told Vida and me that she and her mother were going to drive Trevor’s van. Not wanting to make the long return trip without her own car, Honoria would fly home.

  That was it. Honoria must have left her car at the Sea-Tac airport. I nodded in agreement with my rationale.

  But I was still uneasy. Getting out of the Jag, I walked up the path to Honoria’s porch. Everything was as I remembered it, with the covered summer furniture and barbecue, and the storm door installed in place of the summer screen. Everything, that is, except Dodger. On other occasions, he’d been there to greet me, a surly presence who seemed to resent my intrusion. I missed him anyway.

  The melancholy I’d sensed upon first seeing the house now returned as I tried to peer through the front windows. Honoria had pulled the drapes, obscuring all but a sliver of view. I left the porch and went around to the back. There, I could see through a small window that looked into the kitchen.

  It was tidy. Too tidy, I decided. I jiggled the window sash. Nothing happened, except that I broke a fingernail. It looked as if the window was an original, unlike the large sheets of glass that Honoria had installed at the front of the house. Pressing my face against one of the four rectangular panes, I saw a simple hook and eye. The window should swing inwards. I gave the sash a hard shove.

  The bottom pane cracked. Feeling guilty, I bit my lower lip. But instead of cutting my losses and going away to mind my own business, I tapped the broken glass. It fell onto the kitchen floor.

  News was my business, I argued, feeling the need to placate my conscience. Maybe I could find the family photos Vida wanted to run in the next edition. Cautiously, I reached inside and lifted the hook. The window swung open. With the aid of a chopping block I found near the woodpile, I hoisted myself through the opening.

  The kitchen hadn’t been stripped, but several important items were missing: the microwave, the toaster, the coffeemaker, the breadmaker, the Cuisinart, and the finely glazed set of blue dishes Honoria had made.

  In the living room, the furniture was in place, but all signs of personal effects were gone, including the art that Honoria had collected over the years. The same was true of both bedrooms. As for the bath, it was bare. The only reminder of Honoria was the alterations she’d made to accommodate her wheelchair—the widened hallway, the bathtub with its steel bars, the counters that were lowered to suit her sedentary lifestyle.

  Back in the living room, it was growing dark. I switched on a light, but nothing happened. Apparently, Honoria had had the power turned off. No wonder her car was gone. So was she, and it looked as if there were no plans for a return trip to Startup.

  There was no telephone either. That struck me as strange, until I realized that in this day and age of independent communications, many people owned their own phones. I smiled ruefully as I pulled out a desk drawer.

  Honoria hadn’t bothered to take her old bills or correspondence. If this were a movie, I’d find a clue among the discards. But this was real life, and in the gathering gloom, I couldn’t read anything smaller than eighteen-point type.

  Under the bills and letters and gallery announcements, I felt something cold and hard. It didn’t take a magnifying glass to see that it was a gun. Being fairly ignorant when it comes to firearms, I thought that maybe it was an automatic. At least it looked more like it would belong to a gangster than a cowboy.

  I reminded myself this wasn’t the movies. Honoria couldn’t be blamed for owning a gun. She lived alone and was confined to a wheelchair. So why hadn’t she taken the weapon with her? Was it because the gun wasn’t hers?

  I realized as I closed the drawer that Milo had been right all along. Honoria wasn’t coming back. The sheriff knew his erstwhile lover better than I did. But none of us had known her very well. For Honoria, who had always seemed steeped in integrity if not in candor, told lies. What were lies and what were not? The woman who had been murdered at Stella’s Styling Salon wasn’t Kay Whitman. The real Kay Whitman was alive and divorced from Trevor. Honoria had loved her late husband. He may or may not have crippled her, depending upon which story could be believed. Honoria had said she was coming back to Startup, but it was obvious now that her intentions were quite different.

  The previous evening in Milo’s office, I’d wondered about Honoria’s lies. I thought they might be motivated by shame—her mother had married often and badly; Trevor had taken to wife a woman who had proved disloyal; Honoria had made a poor choice, unless I believed what she’d told Paula. If I accepted that Honoria loved Mitch Harmon, the marriage had still come to a tragic end.

  But if Honoria lied for other reasons, could she be covering up for someone else? It had occurred to me that she had lied to deceive, but all lies are a deception. Was it possible that Honoria was deceiving herself?

  I pictured Honoria as I had last seen her in this very living room. She’d been edgy, fretful, and lacking her usual composure. She’d sat there in her
billowy pajama outfit, fidgeting with the serape, keeping a wary eye on her mother and brother. She hated being dependent, she missed her wheelchair, she was uncomfortable, she was … afraid. Fear wasn’t part of Honoria’s usual makeup. Courage was the trait I most associated with her. But last Wednesday, Honoria had been frightened.

  Stick to the facts, Milo always said. Don’t go off on a tangent. All along, we knew that Honoria had made a facial appointment and that she had given it up to her so-called sister-in-law. Only the Whitman ménage was aware of the change until “Kay” showed up at the salon. Ten to fifteen minutes later the woman was dead. The facts had been obvious from the start. All of us, including Milo, had ignored them. In a way, I couldn’t blame the sheriff. Like Vida with Roger, Milo had a blind spot.

  I stood by the buffet, which had been stripped of its artifacts and personal mementos. There were no family photos here, though I wondered why Honoria had bothered to take them. Her family had only brought her grief. A rustling noise startled me, but it was the Alpine Medical Supply shopping bag, dangling from a filigree knob. It swayed in the wake of my movements, and my brain began to spin. Facts. Verifiable information, dates, names, official records, tangible items—like that empty shopping bag. I wasn’t sure why the woman at the salon had to die, but at last I knew who killed her.

  I was eager to get out of Honoria’s house, which suddenly seemed not only melancholy, but sinister. I used the back door to make my exit, turning the old-fashioned lock, but unable to do anything about the dead bolt. Across the herb garden, about twenty yards from the woodshed, Honoria’s small studio sat among the cotton-woods. I had never been inside, but the front was built almost entirely of glass. There was also a skylight. A breeze stirred the trees as I followed the paved path up to the level entrance. Suddenly feeling cold, I pulled the hood of my duffel coat over my head.

  Unfortunately, what little sun was left reflected off the long windows. It was all but impossible to see much inside. Or maybe there wasn’t much to see. If Honoria had stripped the house, she’d probably removed everything of value from the studio, too.

  “You’re early.” The voice floated out from behind me. “That’s a change. You used to always be late.”

  Startled, I turned around. The sinking sun was now directly in my eyes, making it hard for me to see much more than the figure of a man on the path. He moved closer, then stopped and let out a strange little cry.

  “You’re not Kay!”

  I recognized the voice before I could actually see the face. It was Trevor Whitman. Taking a deep breath, I moved quickly down the path.

  “I was just leaving,” I said, not breaking stride. As I started to pass him a swift glance showed me that he was as startled as I was.

  Trevor grabbed my coat before I could break into a run. “Hold it!” he cried. “What are you doing here?”

  I was beginning to tremble, now more from fear than from cold. We stood on the path, so close that my coat and his jacket touched. Forcing my brain to work, I took my cue from the first words out of his mouth:

  “I’m meeting Kay.” My voice sounded thin. “She called from Seattle.”

  “That’s bull!” Trevor snatched at my arms, twisting them and turning me away from him. “She doesn’t know you!”

  “She called Alpine last night.” It wasn’t a lie, though I didn’t know why I cared. Honesty didn’t seem very important at the moment. “Where were you when I pulled in?” The question might seem irrelevant, but time was my only ally. Kay Whitman must be on her way.

  “I went into Sultan for a drink. Your damned Jag is blocking my way.” Trevor gave me a sharp little shake. “I thought it belonged to … someone else.”

  Vaguely, I recalled that Vida and I had driven to Honoria’s in the Buick. Of course Trevor wouldn’t recognize my car.

  “Look,” I said, trying to sound casual, and sure that I failed, “why don’t I move the Jag? Otherwise, Kay will have to park almost on the highway.” It was an exaggeration, but I couldn’t think of anything more plausible.

  “Let her,” Trevor snapped. A sideways glimpse showed that his puffy, pale face was downright ugly. And terrifying. “We’re going inside.”

  Trevor had a key that he made me use. The ramp to the back door was a few feet away from the broken window. Apparently, he didn’t notice the shards of glass. Now he had wrapped one arm around my neck while the other gripped my waist. It took me a while to unlock the door. Even under the best of circumstances, I have problems with keys.

  It was now almost completely dark in the house. Trevor propelled me into the living room, where we stood by the small opening in the drapes.

  “She’s always late. It’s five. I know it’s five. She should be here by now.” Trevor’s manner was growing agitated.

  I thought of the gun in the desk drawer. If I could get free for even a moment, maybe I could reach the gun. Was it loaded? Did it matter?

  Even as I cast about for a way to break Trevor’s hold, he hauled me over to the desk. When he opened the drawer, I realized that the gun was his. It must have been the service automatic he had used to kill Mitch Harmon.

  “You’re excess baggage,” he said, taking out the gun. With his free hand, he spun me around. I stumbled and fell against the wicker chair. When I righted myself, I saw that Trevor held the gun in both hands, pointed straight at my head. “You got no business being here, fouling up my plans.”

  “Yes, I do,” I said, sounding surprisingly firm. If I had figured out Trevor and Honoria and the rest of the Whitmans in the last few minutes, I knew there might be a way to divert my captor. “Family,” I intoned, taking a deep breath. “You’ve got family. Lots of people don’t have any close ties these days. Think of the example you’re setting.”

  “What the hell are you jabbering about?” He gestured with the gun. “Move away from that chair, closer to the window so I can see out.”

  I obeyed. “I’m talking about loyalty. You’ve demonstrated that all your life. When your mother kept marrying and remarrying, you and Honoria formed an unusually close bond. You felt responsible for each other. You’d have died for each other. You would kill for each other. And you did. Twice.”

  “The so-called law doesn’t see it that way,” Trevor retorted, glancing through the drapes. “Damn! I wish the power wasn’t turned off! It’s getting pitch-black out there!”

  “You’re right, the law doesn’t always take strong feelings into account.” I was forcing myself to remain calm, which seemed to be working on an external level. Internally, I felt hollow and vague and disjointed. My voice seemed to be coming from somewhere else in the room, as if I were a ventriloquist. “That’s why you need somebody like me. As part of the media, I can tell your story so that people will understand what real family bonds are all about.”

  Until that moment I don’t think Trevor had considered me as anything but an obstacle. It was too dark now to see his eyes, but I guessed that something new flickered in them, a self-serving spark that I needed to fan. As long as that little flame was kept alive, I might live, too.

  “Newspapers and TV don’t tell the real story,” Trevor declared. “They hide stuff, the stuff that doesn’t fit their cut-and-dried ideas of justice.”

  “That’s right,” I agreed. “Sometimes it’s because they’re lazy, sometimes it’s because of legal …”

  Again he gestured with the gun. “There’s a candle on the mantel. Matches, too. Light the thing, will you?”

  Honoria had owned a great many candles, most of them handmade. Only one remained on the mantel, a thick, round factory product that had been burned halfway. My hands were shaking so hard that I had to strike three matches before the wick caught.

  “What really happened when Mitch Harmon got killed?” I asked, obediently returning to my place between the wicker chair and the window. “If Mitch wasn’t an abusive man, why did he have to die?”

  The candle was casting eerie shadows across the living room. Trevor’s featur
es became exaggerated, almost grotesque. “I warned him, over and over. He didn’t own Honoria. She might be his wife, but she was still my sister. What made him such a big shot that he wouldn’t let me drop in whenever I was in the neighborhood? Why couldn’t I ask for Honoria’s help when I had problems? Why,” Trevor demanded, his voice rising, “did Mitch Harmon have to get between us?”

  “What did he do—try to throw you out?” The question crawled from my throat so low and raspy that it sounded like a handful of gravel.

  Trevor nodded vigorously. “You bet he did! He even said he’d call the cops! Like hell, I told him! He came at me, right there at the top of the stairs to their fancy condo! He was going to pitch my ass into the street! God! I couldn’t let him do that! Honoria was trying to explain how things were, but she sounded all upset and weird. I had my gun”—Trevor gripped the automatic even tighter, the skin on his knuckles now taut—“so I shot him.”

  Trevor lowered the weapon a scant half inch. “That was when Honoria fell down the stairs. That damned Harmon crashed into her. Jesus, I couldn’t believe it!”

  Envisioning the scene, I felt dizzy. Honoria must have tried to reason with Trevor, which would have sounded “upset and weird” to her irrational brother. Maybe she, too, had asked him to leave. When Trevor took aim at Mitch, Honoria might have tried to dive between the two men. Whatever had happened, the bullet had torn into Harmon, toppling him onto his wife, who had fallen down the stairs and ended up paralyzed for life.

  I couldn’t speak. I didn’t need to. Trevor was like a bottle of carbonated soda that had been shaken and kept under pressure until it finally exploded. Maybe the years in prison had taught him to keep his counsel; maybe his only confidante was Honoria; maybe he needed to babble and blurt and defend himself.

  “But Honoria realized I only meant to help her. She didn’t want to see me go to jail. Oh, after she got out of the hospital, she talked to me about getting evaluated and all that shit to see if my mind wasn’t unhinged from being in ’Nam. That was a crock. I liked serving my hitch in ’Nam. Except for being away from Honoria, it was the best part of my life. Mom thought Honoria’s advice sucked, too. Nobody in our family had ever been crazy. Between us, we got Honoria to say that I was defending her, which was the truth. I didn’t see how she put up with that Harmon guy. He wanted to cut her off from her family, like locking her up in a tower someplace. Better for me to be a prisoner, than her.”