The Alpine Advocate

by Mary Daheim

  I gaped. “Simon?”

  Tapping her fingernails against her mug, Vida nodded. “It wouldn’t be Neeny.” She shuddered, sending ripples along the bustline of her floral print blouse. “Oh, God, I hope not! What a gruesome thought!”

  It was indeed. But not as gruesome as murder.

  After Vida left, I felt honor-bound to start putting together the story on Mark’s death. I did the obituary first, after making a call to Al Driggers. Usually, he would bring obits by the office, but in this case, I didn’t want to wait until Monday. I thought that maybe there would be some snatch of information in Mark’s all-too-brief life story that would help solve the murder case. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t: Mark had been born in Alpine in 1963; he’d graduated from the high school in 1981, where he’d lettered in football and baseball; he’d attended Everett Junior College for one year; he’d worked as a property manager for his grandfather and done a stint selling real estate. His hobbies were listed as prospecting, hunting, fishing, and watching sports.

  I’m always amazed at how little obituaries tell about the deceased. I remember the first one I ever wrote while I was an intern at The Times. It was a woman whose name I forget, but the bare bones stated that she was a Seattle native, an enthusiastic gardener, a member of the First Church of Christ, was survived by her husband, four children, and eight grandchildren, and had “been beloved by all who knew her.” I later learned that for twenty years, she had been the reigning madame in Seattle, with five previous husbands, and that she had also operated the highest-stake illegal poker game in Washington State. No wonder she had been beloved by all.

  As for Mark, he sounded so ordinary. Even dull. Yet he had incited someone to kill him. I started to organize the news story, listing the facts by hand.

  Mark Doukas had been killed outside of Mineshaft Number Three on Wednesday night, around nine o’clock, his head bashed in by a crowbar. Something—or someone—had drawn him back to the mineshaft where he had exhibited some kind of excitement or fear that morning. Whatever had set him off was apparently unknown to anyone but him.

  I paused, rubbing at the neck muscles which had grown stiff while I worked at my desk. The first time Tom had ever touched me was when he’d found me all tied up in knots over a complicated mutual fund story. It was late, almost midnight, and he took pity on me. I still remember the firm, yet gentle hands that relaxed my muscles but created other, more serious tensions. Damn the man, I thought, trying to chuck him out of my mind. I needed to concentrate on Mark Doukas. And the mine.

  Despite Neeny Doukas, it had to be opened. I picked up the phone and dialed Milo Dodge’s home number. He wasn’t there. I tried the sheriff’s office. Milo answered on the first ring. He sounded annoyed.

  “Neeny and Simon are putting on the pressure,” he admitted. “I’ve put out that APB on Chris Ramirez.”

  I suppressed a favorite four-letter word. “Chris could be anywhere,” I said, hoping that wherever it was, the law enforcement officials wouldn’t pay too much attention to the request of a small-town sheriff. Chris, after all, hadn’t been charged with anything. I hoped.

  “That’s what Eeeny Moroni said,” Milo replied, still testy. “He tried to talk me out of it, too.”

  Mentally, I thanked Eeeny for his caution. “Why?”

  “Not enough evidence to require an APB.” Milo sounded even more irked. “I know that, but if Chris didn’t kill Mark—I’m saying, if, mind you, Emma—he may know something. Like what Mark and Kent were fighting about. Or some comment Mark may have made about somebody else.”

  “Or about the mine?” I ventured.

  “Could be.” The faint sound of paper shuffling reached my ear. “You going to the funeral?”

  “No. Vida is, though.” I wished we hadn’t gotten off the subject of the mineshaft so fast. “Are you?”

  “Yes. I shouldn’t take the time away from the investigation, but I owe it to the family, personally, as well as professionally.” His voice had lost its edge. This wasn’t the sheriff talking now, but Milo Dodge, native Alpiner. “I went to high school with Simon, you know.”

  I didn’t. “You aren’t that old.”

  “I was three years behind him.” Milo sounded as if he might be smiling. I decided to take advantage of his improving disposition.

  “Milo, I think you’d better open up that mineshaft.”

  Silence. Then a sigh. “Neeny’s dead-set against it.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” I heard a clicking noise and figured Milo was lighting up one of his rare cigars. He exhaled into my ear. “With Neeny, he doesn’t need a reason. Maybe it’s because he’s afraid somebody will get hurt and sue him. Maybe it’s because Mark was killed there and he thinks of it as sacred ground. Maybe he just doesn’t want the commotion. Hell, Emma, I don’t know. The bottom line is, would forcing the issue be worth it?”

  It was my turn to grow silent. I sat there at my desk, staring at my handwritten notes. “Yes,” I finally said. “Think about it, Milo. Mark died on the spot where he seemed to discover something that made Kevin MacDuff believe he’d found gold. Obviously, Mark found something. Maybe if we knew what it was, we’d know who killed him.”

  Milo chuckled. “You sound like Fuzzy Baugh.”

  I ignored the remark. “Tell me this: do you know if Mark entered that mineshaft?”

  “Not really. Have you ever looked it over? Up close?”

  I’d never seen the blasted place until Thursday. Oh, I’d driven by it lots of times, but I’d never stopped. There was no reason for me to make a pilgrimage to an abandoned mine, especially on private property. “No,” I confessed. “Vida gave it the once-over, though.”

  “Okay, then she might’ve noticed that somebody tried to open it up. Maybe with a crowbar.” He paused to let that information sink in on what he no doubt considered was my thick skull. “But Gibb Frazier told me a long time ago that there was a second entrance, further up the creek. I’m waiting for him to get back from Snohomish to tell me where the hell it is.”

  I was suddenly exasperated. “Can’t you and your deputies find the damned thing?”

  “Sure we could,” Milo snapped, his benign mood blown away, no doubt in a cloud of noxious cigar smoke. “Crank up your cranium, Emma. I’ve got five men for the whole county. One’s on permanent traffic duty, one works nights, one’s sick with the flu, and that leaves Jack Mullins and Bill Blatt. Jack’s taken what little evidence we have into the lab in Seattle, and Bill is helping me at the office. In our spare time, we try to stop whatever other crimes may be going on in a four hundred square mile radius that includes some of the most rugged mountain terrain in North America. Any more dumbassed questions?”

  “No,” I said, hoping he’d swallow his cigar.

  Chapter Twelve

  IT WAS A beautiful fall day. I finished up the draft of my lead story, listened to the University of Washington Huskies trounce their hapless opponent of the week, and spent over two hours working in the yard. The letter to Chris did not come. I cursed Adam anew and considered calling him to see if he’d sent the blasted thing fourth class. But Vida was right. I knew the contents, and I couldn’t see what bearing they had on Mark’s death. I kept on weeding.

  By five o’clock, I was bushed, the kind of tiredness that begets virtuous self-satisfaction. Mental and physical labor had refreshed my soul and let me feel at ease about running off for an evening of bridge.

  Having grown up in a family of games players, I enjoy almost any kind of cards. Time is the problem. What little leisure I have, I prefer hogging for myself. Which, I suppose, is one reason Adam calls me antisocial. But playing bridge in Alpine is akin to doing research for the newspaper. I can learn as much in four rubbers of bridge as I can in four days of interviews.

  Darlene and Harvey Adcock lived in an old but carefully restored house three blocks off Front Street, around the corner from Trinity Episcopal Church. Darlene’s drapes were tightly closed, lest passe
rsby peer in and observe some of Alpine’s leading ladies sipping a glass of wine.

  I didn’t realize until I arrived that I was filling in for the bereaved Cece Doukas. Charlene Vickers insisted there was a madman on the loose and had forced her husband, Cal, to deliver her in his Texaco tow truck. Linda Grant, the high school P.E. teacher, thought the murder must be drug-related, chalking up a point for Fuzzy Baugh. Betsy O’Toole, whose husband Jake owned the Grocery Basket, asserted that it was a suicide. She had once known a man in Gold Bar who had hit himself over the head with a hammer. Eight times.

  “Poor Cece,” said Darlene Adcock, a mite of a woman with enormous gray eyes and flawless skin. “Mark could be a pain in the neck, as our Josh always said, but he was the apple of his mother’s eye.”

  Francine Wells, who felt a professional duty to be the best-dressed woman in Alpine, adjusted the big bow on the blouse that went with her Chanel suit. “Mark was a twit, dead or alive. Cece spoiled him rotten, and Simon has always been too busy to be a real father. It’s Jennifer I feel sorry for. The poor girl has absolutely no fashion sense.”

  My glance took in the other women who made up the three tables for the monthly meeting of what had started out as the St. Mildred’s Mission and Anti-Communist Guild back in 1949 but had evolved into an ecumenical group who sent their annual dues to an inner-city school in Newark. Some day I intended to do a feature story on the guild’s history and find out how both their membership and goals had changed in the last forty-plus years. But this was not the time for it. Instead, I’d see if I could ferret out any information about Mark Doukas and his clan.

  Alas, at the first table, I was faced with the Dithers sisters, Judy and Connie, who owned a horse farm up on Second Hill. Two of the silliest women I’ve ever met, they took only their horses seriously, and were said to allow some of the animals to join them at the dining room table on special occasions, such as Christmas, New Year’s, and, I presumed, the Kentucky Derby. The Dithers sisters spoke in fragments, a strange sort of shorthand that was understood only by them—and maybe their horses. I didn’t expect much help from that pair. My partner was Linda Grant, who is normally very outgoing but seemed subdued by the Dithers sisters’ presence. An hour and a measly part score later, I was glad to move on, to Edna Mae Dalrymple, the exceedingly nervous but very accommodating head librarian; Janet Driggers, the funeral home director’s vivacious, if blunt, wife; and Mary Lou Blatt, Vida’s sister-in-law. Mary Lou is a CPA and the mother of Marje the Indiscreet Medical Receptionist. Mary Lou is at least ten years younger than Vida, and for one of those obscure internecine reasons, the in-laws have not spoken in five years. Vida has never offered an explanation. In fact, if it weren’t for Marje Blatt, I wouldn’t know that Vida and Mary Lou were connected.

  Edna Mae opened with a spade, Janet passed, and I responded with two diamonds. Mary Lou Blatt doubled and, before Edna Mae could react, put her cards face down on the table. “What’s going on with Phoebe Pratt and Neeny Doukas?” she whispered, darting a glance over her shoulder at Vivian Phipps, who was studying her partner’s dummy. Vivian is Phoebe’s sister, and the mother of Chaz, Heather Bardeen’s chum. Both Vivian and Phoebe were Vickers before they married, the sisters of Cal who runs the Texaco station. There are times when I feel as if I should carry an Alpine genealogy tree around with me. This was one of them.

  Edna Mae jumped, making the wineglasses jiggle. “What do you mean? They’ve been seeing each other for years.” Alpine’s head librarian nominally disapproved of gossip. She pursed her lips and gazed into her hand. “Pass.”

  Janet sighed eloquently. “Frig, now I’ll have to bid. Oh, hell … let me think …” Her tongue clicked off points. “Two hearts.” She leaned across the table. “Do you mean Neeny can’t get it up anymore?”

  Mary Lou rolled her eyes, reminding me of her sister-in-law. “Hardly. I heard a rumor that …” She took a deep breath and spoke from behind her fingers. “Phoebe and Neeny eloped!”

  Janet’s sea-green eyes goggled; Edna Mae’s overbite clamped down on her lower lip; I looked up at the small Venetian chandelier.

  “Well!” Edna Mae gasped, clutching the stem of her wineglass. “Well, well!” She frowned, then shook her frizzy salt-and-pepper head and fidgeted with her cards. “You all know what rumors are. At least that one would put some others to rest.”

  Janet Driggers looked down her pug nose at Edna Mae. “Such as? God, I love stories about screwing! It sure beats all those stiffs Al has to put up with.”

  Edna Mae squirmed and turned a shocked expression on Janet. “Really, Janet! I couldn’t say what I heard, could I?” Edna Mae nodded jerkily at me. “What do you say to that, Emma?”

  “I’d say if it’s only a rumor, it’s all alleged. That’s newspaper talk.” I tried to appear ingenuous.

  “No, no, no,” said Mary Lou. “Edna Mae means Janet’s three hearts.”

  “Oh.” I glanced back in my hand. I’d lost track of the bidding. “Pass.” I turned to Mary Lou, awaiting her response.

  “I didn’t hear it from Vida,” she declared, rather huffily. “Vida thinks she knows everything that goes on in this town, but she doesn’t. My sister-in-law is just a big wind-bag.” Mary Lou gave me an arch little smile. “Sorry, Emma, I know you have to work with her. But that’s not your fault.”

  “Thanks, Mary Lou.” I shoved a handful of bridge mix into my mouth and wondered what Tom Cavanaugh was doing on a Saturday night in Alpine.

  “She must be a trial,” said Mary Lou, apparently referring to Vida. “Four hearts.”

  Edna Mae practically passed out. “Oh! You jumped! That’s game! But I opened! Oh!” Her frizzy hair seemed to fibrillate.

  Janet took a big swig of wine and bounced in her chair. “Then double us, you goose. Or get some balls and bid four spades.”

  “Four spades!” Edna Mae twitched and rearranged her cards for about the fifth time. “Oh! Pass.” She scooted around in her chair, eyeing Mary Lou Blatt suspiciously. “Where on earth did you hear that Phoebe and Neeny got married? That’s the sort of story that ought to come from a reliable source.”

  Mary Lou lifted her chin and looked at Edna Mae over her half glasses. “It did. My nephew’s in law enforcement, you know.”

  I had a vision of Billy Blatt, his arms and legs being pulled this way and that by his aunts, Mary Lou and Vida. The poor kid didn’t have a chance. I wondered what his mother was like. As far as I knew, I hadn’t yet met Vida’s other sister-in-law.

  Janet’s green eyes widened. “Deputy Billy? Wow! He ought to know. Simon Doukas must be wilder than a three-peckered goat! Pass.” She swiveled around to look at Edna Mae. “What rumors? Come on, Edna Mae, if you aren’t going to double us, at least dish out the real dirt. Marrying and burying, are damned dull. How about more screwing stuff?”

  Edna Mae blanched. “Really, Janet … It was nothing, just a silly story about Phoebe driving around town the other night.” Her little round face crumpled. “Oh, my, I’m so confused! Who has the bid? Is it no trump?”

  I was overcome with one of my perverse notions. “We’re still bidding,” I said with a sweet smile for my partner. “Five diamonds.”

  “What?” Mary Lou all but rocketed across the table. “Emma! How can you make an overcall like that!”

  I couldn’t, of course. Not with only seven points and five puny diamonds. “Where was Phoebe going?” I asked Edna Mae innocently.

  “I don’t know,” Edna Mae said primly. “I worked late at the library Wednesday night, and I just happened to see that big red car of hers parked by the Clemans Building. That old truck with the wooden side panels was double-parked next to her. Isn’t that illegal?” Still twitching, she cast a guileless look around the table.

  Mary Lou arched her eyebrows. “Gibb Frazier! That’s the old truck he uses to haul stuff in. What.” she demanded, whipping off her glasses and putting her face in Edna Mae’s, “are you implying, Ms. Dalrymple?” Mary Lou didn’t budge as a single
word fell from her lips: “Double.”

  Edna Mae jerked about in the chair, hair flying, hands shaking. “I’m not implying anything, Mary Lou Hinshaw Blatt! All I said was that I happened to see …” She stopped and looked at her cards. “Oh! She doubled us! Oh, no! I pass!”

  Janet Driggers was chortling. “Me, too.” She leered at all of us. “Phoebe and Gibb? That’s hot. Then again, it might be a hoot to make love to a man with one leg.” The leer intensified. “Think about it, girls.”

  Edna Mae shuddered, obviously not wanting to think about it at all. I considered redoubling, just to prove how truly perverse I could be, but decided that such a move might cause my partner to suffer an aneurism. I passed and waited for Edna Mae to lay down her cards.

  “Poor Gibb,” mused Mary Lou. “I wish he would find somebody. He’s a nice guy, really. But of course Phoebe wouldn’t do. Even if she hadn’t gone off and eloped with Neeny.”

  “Yeah, Edna Mae,” said Janet, “how about it? When was the last time you got laid?”

  Valiantly, Edna Mae fumbled with her cards, getting the suits mixed up and blushing furiously. “Honestly, Janet, you say the most horrid things! Have you no decency?”

  I grimaced at Edna Mae’s dummy. She had no more right to open with one spade than I had to overcall with five diamonds. Doubled. We were up a stump.

  To divert attention from what was going to be a slaughter, I posed what I thought was an innocuous question to Mary Lou. “I wasn’t around when Gibb had his accident,” I said, waiting for her to lead. “What actually happened?”

  Mary Lou tossed out the ace of hearts. She turned suddenly sly, no doubt because she knew how badly they could set us. But that wasn’t the entire reason. “Vida thinks she knows so much,” Mary Lou breathed. “Let me tell you, she doesn’t know what happened to Gibb, not even after all these years.”