The Alpine Advocate

by Mary Daheim

  Suddenly edgy, Jennifer avoided my gaze, hiding behind her veil of fair hair. “There was no fight,” she said in a mumble.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” I said, trying to sound cheerful. “Is Kent trying to cause trouble or is he always so full of bunk?” My guess was both, but I waited with a smile for Jennifer’s reply.

  She prefaced it with a deep sigh. “Oh, Kent can be such a pill! He doesn’t mean to be, but I think he feels he has to act like a big shot because he married into the Doukas family. It’s really very immature.”

  “It sure is. It’s also harmful to people like Chris. It gave Sheriff Dodge the wrong impression. I’m very relieved to hear there was no quarrel.”

  Jennifer seemed to be brooding over her husband’s faults. She looked up suddenly, pushing the long hair off her face. “I didn’t say there was no quarrel. I just said there wasn’t one between Chris and Mark.” She thrust out her small chin in a surprisingly pugnacious manner. “Kent and Mark got into it, just before Mark left. Having him go off and get killed is enough to make me cry for him, too.”

  “Oh.” I took note of the uncharacteristic spark in her eyes. “Yes, I can understand that. What did they fight about?”

  Her shoulders slumped again. “Kevin. Mark was mad because Kent’s brother had told your reporter about the gold. Except there wasn’t any, of course. Mark blamed Kent for having such a dopey brother.”

  I’d meant to talk to Kevin but hadn’t gotten a chance. By the time he was out of school, I was knee-deep in phone calls and Fuzzy Baugh’s visit. Now it was too late to call a teenager who had to get up at seven in the morning. At least that’s the way it had worked at our house.

  I wondered how far I could push Jennifer. I sensed that her anger—or in her case, anguish was a better word—with Kent might temporarily overcome her protective instincts. “Was it a serious quarrel?”

  “Well, they didn’t hit each other this time. I heard some of it. They just yelled a lot, mostly about who had the stupidest relatives.” A flash of alarm crossed her face. “Don’t take this wrong, Ms. Lord—Mark and Kent were always on each other’s case. It was some kind of macho deal. But they weren’t enemies. They even partied together.”

  The kind of partying Mark and Kent had done depressed me. I could envision raucous nights with a half-dozen kegs, stale nachos, and bad jokes, culminating in ghastly trips to the bathroom. By comparison, my bathrobe and a can of Pepsi didn’t look half so bad.

  “But on that note, Mark left?” I asked innocently.

  “I guess.” Jennifer looked glum.

  “Then I gather your dad gave Chris a ride home?”

  She drank more soda. “Yes. A few minutes later, we went home, too.”

  “You didn’t see Chris again?”

  “No.”

  “You stayed home the rest of the evening?”

  Jennifer looked faintly belligerent. “Sure. It was a work night.”

  “When did you hear about Mark?”

  “We’d gone to bed. Around eleven, I guess.” She glanced at her wrist, which was bare. Maybe she was confirming the fact that she didn’t wear a watch. “Dad called. I got dressed and went over to be with him and Mom.”

  “Kent didn’t go?” I was mildly surprised.

  Jennifer shook her head. “No. He’d gone to see young Doc Dewey about a muscle pull. Kent was Dewey’s last patient for the day, and he had to wait forever. That’s why we were late getting to my folks’ house for dinner. Kent had taken one of those muscle relaxant things before he went to bed, and he was out of it.”

  I couldn’t think of anything else to ask Jennifer except how her grandfather was doing. Okay, she answered vaguely, all things considered.

  “Look,” I said, “tell Kent I’m sorry we ever ran that story in the first place. I’ll tell him so myself if it’ll help. But even if we hadn’t printed it, rumors about Mark and the so-called gold find would have spread all over town.” Jennifer didn’t look convinced, but neither was I. While I didn’t believe Mark had discovered gold, our black-and-white reporting job automatically gave authenticity. That’s just the way it works with the media. We’re supposed to be trusted to tell the truth. Fighting down regrets, I changed the subject. “Jennifer, are you going home?”

  Her hair and shoulders drooped in unison. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go stay with Mom and Dad. They could use my help, I suppose.”

  Fleetingly, I considered asking her to stay with me. But my earlier fears of being alone had been tempered by good food and red wine. Besides, I wasn’t having much luck with houseguests this week. I didn’t want Kent MacDuff breaking down my knotty pine front door at three A.M. Then again, maybe he’d taken another muscle relaxant and was out for the count.

  Jennifer got to her feet, the sacklike dress hanging unevenly. “I’m sorry I bothered you, but I was upset and I didn’t want to go crying to my folks. Mom’s pretty racked up. Mark was her favorite. She spoiled him something awful. It wasn’t fair.” The belligerence was back in her eyes.

  “Lots of things aren’t fair,” I remarked, making one of those useless, if true, comments that serve no other purpose than to fill a void. “Feel free to drop in again.”

  Jennifer looked faintly surprised at the invitation. “Okay. Thanks for the pop.”

  I watched her go out into the overcast night, a bulky all-weather jacket thrown over her shoulders. Her white Japanese compact was parked at the edge of the short driveway.

  Poor little rich girl, I thought—she was as unlikely an heiress as any I’d ever met. I’d known wealthy girls at Blanchet High School in Seattle; I’d rubbed elbows with their big sisters in Portland. They not only reeked of privilege, but they were often supremely self-confident. Jennifer, by contrast, could have been a gyppo logger’s daughter. She’d married at twenty, stayed in Alpine, and seemed to have neither ambition nor curiosity. The Jennifer Doukas MacDuffs of this world bothered me.

  Even after she’d driven away, I lingered on my small front porch, inhaling the fresh, cool mountain air. Tonight it was tinged with wood smoke, a sure sign that autumn had settled in. I peered around my front yard, still amazed that the dahlia tubers I’d planted last March had actually come up. There wasn’t much lawn—just enough to separate the walk from the drive on one side and the narrow flower bed and the split-rail fence on the other. A big mapie stood in one corner, by the street. In the back, where the grass sloped gently upward, a half-dozen evergreens protected me from the rest of the world.

  The phone broke my reverie. To my surprise, it was Chris, calling from Seattle. He sounded troubled.

  “Hey, Mrs. Lord, I can’t find your address. Maybe it was in my denim jacket. I need to send back Mark’s leather jacket. I mean, I know he won’t need it, but I don’t feel right keeping it, you know?”

  Carefully, I gave him my address. “Chris, the sheriff really has to talk to you. I’ll drive down and pick you up first thing in the morning.”

  His reply was sharp: “No. I’m going to L.A.” He sounded not only incisive, but older.

  “Why? What’s wrong?” There was no mistaking the sound of panic.

  “I just want to get away from here,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm. “It … it rains too much. I miss the sun.”

  “Okay,” I said reasonably. “I’ll buy that. Can I ask you a question, just to set the record straight?”

  “Sure.” Despite the response, Chris didn’t sound so positive.

  “Where did you take my car last night after your uncle dropped you off?”

  “I just sort of drove around. I tried to find the house where we lived when I was a kid.” He hesitated, and I heard a tapping sound, as if he were drumming his finger-nails on the phone. Impatience or anxiety, I wondered. Both, maybe. “Just for kicks, I went up to the ski lodge to see Heather Bardeen. But she wasn’t there. Not then. I ran into her later, at the Burger Barn.”

  I kept my voice casual. “So you just cruised for over three hours?”

&nbs
p; “I guess.” Apparently, it didn’t strike Chris as strange. For the moment, I gave up pressing him. “Where are you right now?”

  There was a faint pause. “In a motel, near downtown.”

  “Which one?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He could have been hedging. On the other hand, his lack of awareness was typical of his generation. “Have you got a view?” I asked.

  Another pause. “Yeah. Of a parking lot. And the Space Needle. I went up there today.” He definitely sounded more like himself, though I had the feeling it wasn’t without effort.

  “Forget about mailing the jacket,” I counseled him. “I have to come into town tomorrow for a meeting.” It was a lie, but made in a good cause. “I’ll meet you for break-fast. Adam is sending your mail over. I talked to him today.”

  “Oh? Cool. Maybe I got my check.”

  I didn’t disillusion him. “It should be here in a couple of days. Why don’t you wait?”

  “No way.” The incisiveness returned. “I’ll send you an address from California. Oh, hey, when you talk to Adam again, ask him to send my other denim jacket, okay? It’s at the house. The people who rented it let me store a bunch of stuff in the garage.”

  I agreed to convey the message. In some ways, I was ambivalent about keeping Chris around, so I didn’t try arguing with him further. But I was determined to see him before he left. “Is there a restaurant in the motel?”

  “Yeah, I saw it when I checked in. But I want to catch the nine-thirty bus.”

  “No problem,” I said easily, but inwardly groaning at the prospect of another early-morning run into the city. “I’ll meet you in the restaurant at eight. Look on the table by the phone, Chris. There must be some advertising to give you the motel’s name.”

  “There’s some postcards and a sort of phone book thing—oh, yeah, here. It’s a Ramada Inn. But I don’t see an address.”

  “No problem,” I repeated. “I know where it is. I’ll see you in the restaurant at eight.”

  “Okay,” he said a bit dubiously. “Mrs. Lord?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re not bringing anybody with you, are you?” The suspicion in his voice bounced off my ear.

  I laughed. “Hardly. Do you think I’m a police dupe?”

  “Well, it’s all pretty strange, isn’t it?” He sounded very young again.

  “Yes, it is,” I agreed. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Huh? Yeah, I’m fine.” He hesitated, then spoke with less certainty. “It’s just that, well, like, this is really scary, you know?”

  “Yes,” I replied, grateful that Chris couldn’t see my grim expression. “It’s scary, all right. I’ve never been this close to a murder before.”

  “Me neither,” said Chris. He sounded frightened. I wished I knew why.

  Chapter Nine

  THE SUN WAS trying to break through during the last half hour of my drive into Seattle. I’d given myself plenty of time and arrived at the Ramada Inn at seven forty-five. Fueled only by coffee, I was starving by the time I reached the restaurant. It was half full, a mixture of off-season tourists and business types. I drank more coffee but held off ordering breakfast until Chris came down. The pancakes tempted me, but so did the crab and cheese omelette. On the other hand, the ham and eggs special was appealing, too. I amused myself by playing my finely honed game of juggling the menu around in my head. It was a practice borne of countless hours of eating alone.

  I’d picked up a morning paper in the lobby and scanned it for news of Mark Doukas’s murder. Sure enough, the story was tucked away on an inside page. The brief, two-inch item stated that the body of Mark Doukas, twenty-six, had been found in Alpine, just off Stevens Pass. Sheriff Milo Dodge was investigating what was a probable homicide, since Doukas had apparently died from a blow to the head. There was no mention of gold. There was no allusion to the Doukas family’s standing in the community. There was no information about leads or possible suspects. In other words, there was no real interest in the case outside of Alpine. That, I decided, was just as well.

  I’m fairly adept at premonitions, so I was chagrined, but only mildly surprised when Chris didn’t show. I gave him until eight-fifteen to be late, but by eight-thirty, I was worried. I stalled the waitress for the fourth time and went out to the desk.

  A cheerful Vietnamese man told me there was no Chris Ramirez registered. It hadn’t occurred to me that Chris would use a different name, but it made sense. Milo Dodge could have been already looking for him. In fact, it dawned on me that the sheriff might have sent out his APB at the crack of dawn.

  I described Chris, and the round-faced clerk nodded in recognition. Mr. Jones had checked out early, around six A.M. Was I, by any chance, Mrs. Lord?

  I told him I was. The clerk handed me a Ramada Inn dry-cleaning bag that contained Mark’s leather jacket and a note with my name on it.

  The waitress pounced as soon as I got back to my table. Although my appetite had dwindled in the past five minutes, I felt coerced into placing my order and asked for the special. Appeased, she scurried off, leaving me to peruse Chris’s note.

  He had surprisingly elegant handwriting, and his spelling was amazingly accurate for his generation. “Dear Mrs. Lord,” the note on motel stationery read.

  “I feel bad about taking off before you got here. The fact is, I should never have come back to Alpine. It was a mistake for a lot of reasons. I don’t know how to explain this to you, but seeing the town and the people stirred up a lot of memories I’d tried to forget. I’m still not sure what’s real and what isn’t. Maybe if I go away, I can sort it out. Or else forget it all again. Thanks for everything. Yours truly, Chris Ramirez. P.S. Here’s the jacket. Maybe Heather would like to have it.”

  I reread the note. The distress I’d heard on the phone last night was mirrored by the written words. I recalled how tense Chris had been when he came back to the house Wednesday night. I thought at the time it was because of his meeting with his relatives. Now I wasn’t certain. A six year-old isn’t attuned to the nuances of adult behavior. As a child, Chris might have felt disturbed by the estrangement between his parents and the rest of the family, but he wouldn’t have fought to keep the memory at bay. Indeed, it seemed that Margaret had done quite the opposite, and Chris had followed her lead. His hostility indicated that he wasn’t suppressing his emotions.

  So what was Chris trying to forget? Was it something ugly between his parents? That seemed the most likely, yet his mother must have been a constant reminder of any such incident. Chris spoke of the town and the people jarring his sleeping memories. Neeny? But Chris hadn’t seen his grandfather. At least not as far as I knew. Now I wondered. There was that three-and-a-half-hour gap to account for. Milo Dodge knew something about that lost time, but he wasn’t telling me. I’d have to find out for myself.

  The waitress came with my order. I further frustrated her by immediately getting up and going back to the lobby. Sure enough, there was a Greyhound schedule in the tourist information rack. A bus left Seattle for L.A. at six twenty-five. Chris was already two and a half hours down the road. I couldn’t possibly catch up with him, but the sheriff could. I went back into the restaurant and ate my breakfast. The waitress finally looked happy.

  I did not.

  Durwood Parker, a serious competitor with Eeeny Moroni for the Worst Driver in Alpine Sweepstakes, had run over a cow two miles east of Sultan. Debra Barton, of the Barton Bootery family, had announced her engagement to a Tacoma prelaw student. Averill Fairbanks reported a UFO hovering over his toolshed, his fifth sighting of the year. Francine Wells chalked up $350 worth of damages at Francine’s Fine Apparel on Front Street when the wind blew over a bucket of blue paint being used to freshen the exterior, and spattered not only the display window, but the sidewalk and street. Bessie Griswold, up on Burl Creek Road, called the sheriff to report a prowler that turned out to be a cougar who mauled her Manx cat. Vida was pleased.

  Those wer
e the stories facing me when I got back to the office around eleven. I confided where I’d been only to Vida, who took the news of Chris’s departure with a disapproving shake of her head. She was, however, glad to learn that I had not let Milo Dodge ravish me. So, of course, was I.

  After giving Carla specific instructions on the handling of the morning’s accumulation of news, I called to check on Fuzzy’s condition. It was listed as stable. He would not, as far as they could tell, be shipped to a larger medical facility.

  As for the homicide investigation, Milo Dodge reported no notable progress. The funeral was set for Monday in Seattle, since Alpine had no Greek Orthodox church. I designated Vida as the Advocate’s representative. The rest of us couldn’t be spared, since Monday was always a hectic day in getting the paper ready for publication.

  Just before noon, Milo called me back. Could I come down to the sheriff’s office? Certainly. In fact, I could hardly wait, since I assumed he’d unearthed something newsworthy in the course of the investigation.

  The sun was still peeking in and out from behind dirty white clouds, so I walked, taking a moment to admire the darkening red and gold of the trees that mingled with the evergreens on the hillside. Baldy was clear, looking comfortable above the town, its crest still free of snow.

  Milo didn’t seem much like the bemused man of the previous evening who’d relied on my sophistication to distinguish a turnip from a crocus bulb. He was sitting very straight in his leather swivel chair, his hazel eyes steely and his square jaw set. I felt like a criminal, which I supposed I was, having concealed the whereabouts of Chris Ramirez.

  “Emma,” he began, not bothering with small talk, “I have some questions to ask you.”

  “Go ahead,” I responded, sitting down and trying to act unconcerned.

  He consulted his notes. “You stated that Chris didn’t say where he’d been during the time Simon dropped him off about eight-thirty and when he actually showed up at your house around midnight. Is that correct?”

  “It is. I asked, but he didn’t tell me.” Why, I wondered fleetingly, if truth was such a great ally, did I feel so defenseless?