The Alpine Advocate

by Mary Daheim

  “Nothing.” I raised my palms. “Really, Simon, you were strangers to Chris as far as I could tell.”

  Simon put his hand to his head. “I don’t understand any of this. Emma,” he said in a plaintive voice, “do you think Chris killed my son?”

  “No.” It was the truth. I scarcely knew Chris Ramirez, but despite the acrimony for his grandfather, I genuinely didn’t believe he could commit murder.

  Simon drummed his fingers on the desk. It was almost bare, except for a fresh blotter, a calendar, and a matching pen and pencil set. “If not Chris, then who?”

  I shook my head. Outside, the rain continued to fall, spilling from the downspouts by the room’s single window. “Who stands to gain from Mark’s death?” I inquired.

  “Gain?” Simon’s heavy dark eyebrows lifted. “No one.”

  “He had no will?”

  “No.” He gave me what might have passed as a smile before warmth was invented. “Typical, eh? The lawyer’s son without a will, the cobbler’s children with no shoes. Oh, I tried talking to him about drawing one up, but it upset him. You know how young people are. They think they’re immortal. They don’t want to discuss death.” Simon grimaced, his sad and empty gaze somewhere beyond my right shoulder.

  “He had money, I take it?” It seemed the logical conclusion to draw. If he hadn’t, then there would be no need for a will.

  “Some.” He clamped his mouth shut as if he’d been wildly indiscreet. But Simon Doukas must have had the need to talk. There was so much repressed within the man, and his wife wasn’t very helpful at the moment. As for his daughter and her husband, I couldn’t imagine Simon engaging either of them in meaningful conversation. “Fifteen years or so ago,” Simon went on, “my father set up trusts for each of our children—two-hundred fifty thousand dollars apiece, to be turned over to them absolutely on their twenty-fifth birthdays. Naturally, the sums have grown considerably. Mark came into his money almost two years ago. Jenny will get hers next month.” He fingered his sharp chin and waited for my response.

  “So Mark’s money will revert to you—or to Neeny?” I asked.

  “To Cece and me, as his next of kin.” He gave a pathetic little laugh. “You aren’t thinking we killed our son to inherit his trust fund, are you?” His voice showed a trace of his well-known sarcasm.

  Stranger things had happened, of course, but I knew Mark Doukas’s nestegg couldn’t compare to Simon’s. I also assumed Mark had probably already blown a portion of the money. I ought to know; I’d done it myself.

  I passed over Simon’s comment. “What about this quarrel between Mark and Chris? What started it?”

  Martin frowned. “I don’t know. I didn’t hear any of that.”

  “But they did quarrel?”

  “Kent says so.” His tone suggested that Kent wasn’t the most reliable source in town. I tended to agree, but my own suspicions were based on something more concrete. The problem was, I couldn’t remember exactly what.

  “Simon,” I began, taking another tack, “do you remember much about Chris as a little kid?”

  A spark of life flickered in his black eyes. “He was a good-natured little fellow. Cute as a button. I used to try to make up to him, but he …” Simon paused, a catch in his voice. “He was a bit shy. And of course Margaret and Hector kept to themselves.”

  I tried to imagine Simon Doukas fifteen or twenty years ago, coaxing a small boy into a romp. The picture was out of focus. Even as a young attorney, Simon must have been stiff and intimidating, especially to a child. “Where did they live?” I asked, wondering how long it would take to wear out my welcome at this interview.

  “East of town, by the golf course. It was one of my father’s rentals.” He gazed at the desk calendar; it hadn’t been changed in a week. Simon carefully turned the pages. “Who would have thought …” he murmured, then placed his hand on today’s date: Thursday, September 26. “Emma.” Pushing back from the desk, he again looked down that long nose at me. “You don’t intend to publish any of this, do you?”

  “What?” I bolted forward in the chair.

  Simon straightened his tie. “Over the years, we’ve been very loyal to The Advocate. I presume you’re willing to show your gratitude for our family’s support. We certainly don’t want the Doukas name smeared all over the newspaper”.

  I was aghast. Neeny’s demand for a reprint was bad enough, but Simon’s request was outrageous. And impossible. I leaned on the desk, suppressing an urge to pound my fist on the smooth oak surface. “Simon, you can’t keep a story like this quiet. I’m surprised the met dailies haven’t been up here. It might not make page one outside of Alpine, but it’ll certainly find its way into the regional sections.”

  Simon’s face had grown very tight, his shoulders rigid. “I think you’re wrong. We haven’t heard from anyone. And if we do, I know the phone numbers of some very important people in the media.” He raised his head slightly, as if he were looking over a courtroom full of rabble, and I was the lowliest of the bunch.

  I stood up. “Sorry, Simon. It won’t work. You haven’t got that big a Rolodex.” I spoke with more confidence than I actually felt. There had been, alas, a couple of recent occasions when the local media had indeed suppressed stories. “You’ve got almost a week of peace as far as The Advocate is concerned. We’ll be as careful and as tasteful as possible.”

  Simon had also risen to his feet. He was so angry he was shaking. “If you print this, I’ll run you out of town! Do you hear me? You … whore!”

  My own temper was about to explode. But miraculously, I kept my wrath under control. “I was wondering who’d be the first one to call me that to my face,” I said in a musing manner. “Funny,” I went on, turning toward the study door, “I honestly didn’t think I’d run into anyone that small, even in a small town. Until now.”

  I slammed the door behind me.

  Chapter Seven

  EXCEPT WHEN SHE was eating sugar cookies and chocolate truffles, Vida was always dieting. It wasn’t easy coaxing her into driving down to Index for lunch. I didn’t want to eat in Alpine, because I knew we’d be overheard. Index was just far enough away that we were guaranteed a certain amount of anonymity.

  Naturally, Vida was wild-eyed when I told her about Simon’s insistence that we not run the murder story. It took me most of the drive to calm her down. By the time we reached the little café just off the highway, she had stopped shrieking and rubbing her eyes long enough to look at the menu.

  “I’m not hungry,” she announced, and promptly ordered the hot turkey sandwich with gravy and cranberry jelly.

  After raking Simon over the coals one more time, we finally moved on to Mark’s murder. “Did you find out what happened at dinner last night?” I asked as an elderly waitress brought us each a small green salad.

  Vida pitched into her lettuce. “Not much, from what I could tell. Of course I only had that idiot, Kent, and that ninny of a Jennifer to go by.” She huffed a bit between mouthfuls of salad. “Simon and Cece and Chris sat around and visited before dinner. Since Kent and Jennifer weren’t there yet, I haven’t a clue as to what they talked about, but everybody seemed to be on good terms when the MacDuffs got there around six-thirty. Mark showed up a few minutes later, drank a beer, and then they all sat down to dinner. They finished up around seven forty-five. Chris talked quite a bit about Hawaii.” Vida paused, noting my look of incredulity.

  “Chris opened up?” I asked.

  Vida shrugged and brushed a crouton off the front of her blouse. “He drank beer, too. Maybe it loosened his tongue. Anyway, about eight-fifteen, Mark said he had to go out. Which he did. Chris left about ten minutes later.” She pursed her lips and gave me a shrewd look. “Simon dropped him off at your house. It was eight-thirty.”

  “At my house?” I almost dropped my fork. Then I remembered the car I’d heard while I was talking to Dave Grogan on the phone. “But Chris never came in. Where did he go?”

  “You should have ask
ed him,” Vida said matter-offactly. “As for Kent and Jennifer, they went home right after Chris and Simon left. Cece cleaned up from dinner, read the paper—both papers, ours and The Times—and went to bed.” She gave me a significant look.

  “So when did Simon get home after allegedly dropping Chris off?”

  Vida paused as the waitress delivered her turkey and my BLT. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I got most of this from Jennifer, so the part about Cece is second-hand. She never came back down, as you may have noticed when you flew out of Simon’s study.” She sprinkled her plate with lavish doses of salt and pepper. Across the aisle, three middle-aged fishermen eased into a booth, ragging each other about their abysmal luck. An elderly couple moved past us, the woman wheezing, the man shuffling. A Persian cat swished by, its plumelike tail exuding disdain.

  “Cats!” Vida exclaimed, making a horrible face. “Dreadful animals. Have you ever dissected one of those things?”

  I considered reminding Vida that we were eating, thought better of it, and replied that I had not. Luckily.

  “It had to be the crowbar,” she remarked, apparently apropos of nothing, except that I knew Vida well enough by now to follow her train of thought—which had led from dissecting cats to the autopsy on Mark Doukas. “Emma,” she said in a more serious tone, “are you trying to cover this story—or solve the murder?”

  Despite having raised three children, Vida wasn’t particularly maternal. But she was old enough to be my mother, and once in awhile, she acted like it. I appreciated that. After all, I’d been an orphan for almost twenty years.

  I mulled over the question. “Maybe I have to do one to do the other,” I said.

  But Vida shook her head, the derby slipping further down over her forehead. “No, no. That takes away your objectivity. Stick to the facts, Emma. That’s your job. Don’t try to play detective.”

  She was right, of course. Over the years, I’d covered a variety of murder investigations in Portland. Except for some random piecing together of information, I’d never concerned myself much with solving the cases themselves. But then I’d never had a personal stake in any of those homicides. The victims were all strangers; the killers, if indeed they were discovered, were just names.

  “I feel responsible for Chris,” I asserted. “He’s my son’s best friend. I may not need to find out who killed Mark,-but I have an obligation to prove who didn’t.”

  Vida chewed on her white meat and looked thoughtful. “Are you sure you just don’t want to get back at Simon Doukas for being such a jackass?”

  I hadn’t told Vida exactly what Simon had said in dismissal, but she was shrewd enough to guess that it had something to do with my status as an unmarried mother. “The only way,” I said slowly, “I could get back at him is if he did it. That may not be the case.”

  “It might be one of the other Doukases.” Vida lifted her graying eyebrows, which met the brim of her derby. “Simon wouldn’t like that.”

  I suppressed a smile. “But you would, Vida?”

  She cut up her gravy-slathered bread with vigor. “You bet I would. If any family ever needed a comeuppance, it’s that bunch.”

  The cat sidled past again, looking even snootier than before. Vida made another face, then she leaned closer, almost dipping her bust in her lunch. “All right, Emma, you’ve made up your mind. I’ll do what I can to help, but you have to be candid with me. Why was Chris trying to buy a handgun from Harvey Adcock?”

  I was wondering when Vida would get around to asking me that. I debated, but not for long. I not only like Vida, I trust her. She could tell the world about every scrap of gossip, but she could also keep a secret. It was one of the reasons she knew so much; I wasn’t the only one in Alpine who trusted Vida Runkel. So I told her about Chris’s animosity toward Neeny and the frightening conclusions I’d drawn.

  Vida’s reaction was typical. “Well, good for Chris. He’s got some spunk. But that doesn’t mean he intended to shoot his grandfather, tempting as the prospect may be. In fact, it doesn’t mean much, since it was Mark and not Neeny Doukas who got killed.”

  I agreed. “The only reason I can think of for Chris trying to buy a gun is for self-defense. His mother may have told him some pretty hair-raising stories about her family.”

  Vida rolled her eyes. “As Margaret well might.” Polishing off the cranberry jelly, she dabbed at her mouth with the paper napkin, then pitched it at the cat, which had parked its carcass next to our booth. The cat flinched but stayed put. “I wonder,” she mused, rummaging in her purse for compact and lipstick, “whatever happened to Hector Ramirez?”

  So did I, but at the time, it didn’t seem pertinent.

  This time Vida was right and I was wrong.

  Vida took her own car up to see Neeny Doukas. I suggested joining her, but Vida was adamant. “Let me handle the old sap this time. If he’s really sick, I may have to use tact. It’s not a pretty sight.”

  Back at the office, Carla was agog about the murder, but Ed, who always expected the worst anyway, took it in stride. I fended off their questions as best I could before barricading myself in my office.

  Predictably, a stack of phone messages had piled up. Ginny, Ed, and Carla had tried to intercept the ordinary snoops, but at least twenty callers had insisted on speaking personally to the editor and publisher. Before I could start dialing, Ginny Burmeister slipped into my office to complain that Gibb Frazier hadn’t brought back the overage on the print run. She needed at least two dozen extra copies to mail for special requests, and we needed the rest for our files. I told her to give Gibb a call; it wasn’t like him to be so absentminded.

  For almost an hour, I wielded the phone, talking to the Methodist minister, the owner of the Venison Inn, two of the three county commissioners, the city’s head librarian, and Cal of Cal’s Texaco and Body Shop. All of them prefaced their inquiries with other, unrelated business, but the bottom line was Who Killed Mark Doukas? I kept repeating that Sheriff Dodge was working hard to solve the case. I certainly wished him luck, since I was baffled. None of the callers was satisfied, but at least they didn’t cancel their subscriptions.

  I had just hung up on Cal Vickers when Fuzzy Baugh, our current mayor, lumbered into my office. Fuzzy was the retired owner of Baugh’s Fine Home Furnishings and Carpet, which had recently moved from Front Street to the new mall, causing a ruckus over whether or not downtown Alpine was dying. Since the entire commercial district was only eight blocks long and two blocks wide, the controversy struck my city-bred mentality as odd. But all things are relative, and when, two months later, Barton’s Bootery also vacated Front Street, I actually asked Carla to poll the remaining downtown merchants and find out if they planned to stay put. As far as she could tell, they did. But with Carla, you could never be quite sure of her data.

  Fuzzy was a tall, heavy-set man with curly blond hair, which I presumed was dyed. His face was nicely crinkled and his eyes were green and small. He had been mayor for the past six years, though his first election back in ’84 was also steeped in controversy. It seemed that Fuzzy and Irene, his wife of thirty years, had decided to split up. Irene stayed at their house in town, and Fuzzy moved out to a cabin he’d built on the Skykomish River, about ten miles downstream. When Fuzzy announced he was running for office, the opposition declared he wasn’t a resident and therefore was ineligible to stand for election. Fuzzy moved back in with Irene, a gesture that was dismissed by his detractors as merely expedient, but the couple actually reconciled and went on a second honeymoon to Mexico. Politics might make strange bedfellows, but in this case, they had reunited a pair who probably should never have stopped sleeping together in the first place.

  “This is bad, Emma,” Fuzzy announced, dropping into the vacant chair on the other side of my desk. “Drugs, of course.”

  “Drugs?” Though that was often a factor in homicides I’d covered on The Oregonian, I hadn’t seriously considered the issue. Not that we didn’t have our share of substance ab
use—but for all of Mark Doukas’s failings, I’d never heard him accused of taking or dealing drugs. “What makes you say that, Fuzzy?”

  Fuzzy leaned forward in the chair, trying to find a bare spot to place his elbows. As usual, he was dressed impeccably in suit and tie, never having overcome his salesman’s need to look his best. Perhaps he felt such formal attire was worthy of his mayor’s role, though his predecessor, Elbert Armbruster, had never been seen in anything but overalls. “You haven’t been here long, Emma,” Fuzzy said in a kindly tone that suggested it wasn’t entirely my fault. “This town was originally filled with Orientals. That’s why it was called Nippon. What do you suppose those people brought with them?”

  I resisted the urge to answer tempura and merely looked curious. Fuzzy gave me his sage half smile. “Opium. I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts Mark found a stash of it at the old mine. Other stuff, too, probably brought up there by modern-day drug traffickers. The question is, who’s the kingpin?”

  Every first and third Tuesday, I sit in on the city council meetings, so I was used to Fuzzy Baugh’s strange—and imaginative—hypotheses. Last spring, damage to one of the Burlington Northern spurs had, he insisted, been caused by neo-Nazis. The Fourth of July fireworks hadn’t all gone off due to the devious machinations of the Monroe Elks Club, who were jealous of Alpine’s display. The theft of a birdbath from young Doc Dewey’s front yard was the plot of irate loggers who wanted to avenge their endangered livelihoods by getting back at all avian species, spotted owls or not.

  Thus, I regarded Fuzzy’s latest flight of fancy in context. “Mark might have found something up at the mine, Fuzzy,” I allowed, “but I doubt it was drugs.”

  Fuzzy’s small green eyes opened wide. “See here, Emma, you haven’t thought this through like I have. I know human nature. I had to as a salesman. I still do, as mayor of this fine town. Mark was real anxious to get hold of Sheriff Dodge and get him up there to Icicle Creek. Now what could Mark have wanted to show Milo unless it was drugs?”