by Mary Daheim
“Oh?” I kept my tone mild. “What did happen, Mary Lou?” I watched Janet scoop in the first trick.
Mary Lou was still smirking. “I used to keep the books for Simon Doukas when I was still working at home while the kids were young. I know this because I had to go over the medical expenses Simon paid out that year. Gibb and Mark Doukas got into a fight over some gold or something up above Second Hill, by those old cabins.” She paused to lead the king of hearts. There went another trick. “Mark wasn’t just a pain as a teenager. He was mean.” She led the ace of clubs and exchanged knowing glances with Janet and Edna Mae. “He not only beat up Gibb, but after the poor guy was on the ground, Mark got into his car or whatever he was driving and ran over him.” She led the ace of spades. “That’s how Gibb lost his leg.”
Of course I went set eight tricks and our opponents racked up several hundred points, but at least we weren’t vulnerable. Gibb Frazier was, though, and the idea didn’t make me very happy. I thought about that bundle of newspapers Milo Dodge had found by Mineshaft Number Three. I reflected upon Edna Mae’s seeing Gibb and Phoebe downtown the night of the murder. That explained why Phoebe’s car was splattered with blue paint. It had come from Francine Wells’s store, blown about by the windstorm. Phoebe had lied about staying in that night. But what had Gibb been doing up at the mineshaft?
Shortly before midnight, we adjourned, walking out into the mild autumn air. The old moon sat above Baldy’s black ridge, and the stars seemed so close, as if they were peeking over the mountains. About the time I polished off my third glass of wine and made a small slam to elude the booby prize, some of my fears had begun to ebb. It had been quite awhile since I’d strung together three nights of wine drinking. If, I thought with a giggle, I kept it up, I could be in the running with at least two dozen other people for the title of town sot. Waving good night to Vivian Phipps and the Dithers sisters, I reached my car and remembered to avoid the pothole on Cascade Avenue that I’d stepped in when I arrived. More resurfacing was needed, not just County Road 187, but on several streets in town. I must do some research for another editorial. I kept my eyes focused, more or less, on the dark pavement. Alpine could also use some new streetlights.
There was no pothole. I paused, giving myself a bracing shake. The fact was I hadn’t drunk that much. Three glasses of chablis in a four-hour period had only given me the illusion of giddiness, perhaps a state I wished for to make my Saturday night more exciting than it might have been with Tom Cavanaugh.
The others were pulling out, including Charlene Vickers in Cal’s tow truck. In the glare of Cal’s lights, I saw the pothole just beyond my left front wheel. I was puzzled. Could I have been mistaken? My sense of well-being faded as I got into the Jag and drove home carefully. Maybe the murder case was getting to me. Maybe I was more worried about Chris Ramirez than I cared to admit. Maybe Tom Cavanaugh’s arrival in Alpine had thrown me for a loop.
I pulled into my carport and scanned the front of my snug log house. The lights were on inside and over the front door. As ever, my home looked inviting, even reassuring. Yet I was nervous about getting out of the car. The night was very quiet. Through the trees, the neighbors’ houses were dark.
Steeling my nerves, I slid across the seat and got out on the passenger side, nearer to the house. Dew glistened on the grass; a few leaves drifted off the maple. I hurried up the path, keeping watch over my shoulder. That was how I saw the dent in the Jag’s right fender. Whirling around, I raced back to the car and swore aloud. Six inches across, deep grooves, paint scratched, my beautiful car was ravished. I’d have to call the insurance company in the morning, Sunday or not. A kid, no doubt, cruising on a Saturday night. I stomped into the house and threw my purse on the sofa. Then it dawned on me: the dent was on the right fender. I’d parked that side against the curb. Nobody could hit me at that angle. I thought about the pothole. It hadn’t moved. But my Jag had. Someone had driven it off while I sat inside Darlene Adcock’s closely curtained house, gulping bridge mix and glugging wine.
I called the insurance company first, then dialed Milo Dodge at home. It was shortly after eight A.M. “Somebody stole my car,” I said, not caring that I’d probably awakened him from his much-needed sleep.
Milo sounded fuzzy. “Again?”
“Not again,” I said crossly. “I loaned it to Chris.” I explained what I thought had happened.
“Well,” Milo said, yawning in my ear, “what’s the big deal? You got it back.”
“With a dent in the curbside fender.” I was trying to be patient. “I suppose you blabbed to everybody that I had an extra set of keys under the car.”
“Blabbed?” Now it was Milo who sounded testy. “Hell, Emma, you want me telling people Chris hot wired your damned car? Besides, I only told my men about it.”
Visions of Billy Blatt getting a hot foot from Vida and Mary Lou flew across my mind’s eye. “Look, Milo,” I said, reining in my exasperation, “are you going to do something about this or not?”
Another yawn. “File a complaint. We’ll check the car out this afternoon.” Suddenly his tone became more brisk. “Say—do you think Chris is back in Alpine?”
Somehow, that had not occurred to me. I set my coffee mug down on the desk and winced. “No. Why should he do that?” Innocent or guilty, I couldn’t think of any reason why Chris Ramirez would return to the town he insisted he despised. Unless, of course, he had unfinished business. …
I desperately wanted to ask Milo if Neeny Doukas was alive and well this morning, but I didn’t dare. It took me a moment to realize that Milo, now sounding fully alert, was talking his head off:
“… A baseball bat, or even a shovel. They were probably going for the headlights. We had a rash of that kind of vandalism a year or so ago.”
“What?”
“I said … Emma, pay attention! Jeez, what’s with you?” Milo was annoyed. “Kids. They go around banging up cars, especially snazzy ones. Your Jag probably never budged from where you left it. Or,” he added slyly, “did you check the speedometer?”
Of course I hadn’t. I started to tell him about the pothole, but knew he’d dismiss it as a flight of fancy.
“Go ahead,” he was saying in a more amenable voice. “File the complaint. Then we’ll see if any other folks got their cars smashed, okay?”
It was pointless to argue. I mumbled my thanks and hung up. My watch told me it was 8:15, 10:15 in Anguilla, Mississippi. Ben would be riding his Sunday circuit, saying masses at five mission churches on the delta. He had never left Mississippi, having come to love its black poor and its white poor, and even some of the middle class.
I missed my brother. Except for a few, too-rare visits, we’d been apart for over twenty years. Ben hadn’t been out west since I’d moved to Alpine. I needed to hear his crackling voice, to feel his brotherly love, and, I admitted, to tell him that Tom Cavanaugh had shown up.
I dressed for church with more care than usual, in a red cowl-neck sweater and a black pleated skirt. It wasn’t for Tom’s benefit that I put on black heels and made a serious attempt at combing my hair, but because we were probably going somewhere nice for brunch. Everett, or maybe all the way to Seattle.
St. Mildred’s is old, but not as old as its eighty-eight-year old pastor, Kiernan Fitzgerald, who is officially retired. Father Fitz retains his Irish brogue, is rail-thin, and is completely bald except for three wisps of white hair that tend to stand on end. His sermons have been recycled over the years, and as he is somewhat forgetful, we still occasionally suffer through a Sunday diatribe about the Red Menace. Younger parishioners are mystified.
But on this last day of September, Father Fitz chose his basic Christian charity homily, urging the congregation to put aside their cares in the mill (it closed in 1929), sacrifice their Sunday picnic to Burl Creek Park (now the mall), and take food baskets to the poor families on the wrong side of the railroad tracks (the golf course since 1961).
My mind began to wander somewh
ere between a cautionary note not to let your youngsters ride on the running board of your Model-? and the dangers of drinking unknown beverages from a certain still near Icicle Creek. It was too bad, I reflected, that Fuzzy Baugh wasn’t a Catholic. He might change his mind and decide that Mark Doukas had found white lightning in Mineshaft Number Three.
Naturally, my eyes wandered along with my mind. I was sitting at the back of the white frame church, near a side altar dedicated to St. Anthony of Padua. At the end of the pew, I spotted Francine Wells, resplendent in an Escada ensemble. The O’Tooles were in front of me. Ed and Shirley Bronsky and their fat little brood squatted cross the aisle. Up ahead, in about the third row, I could see the back of Tom Cavanaugh’s dark head. He was wearing a gray tweed sports jacket. I frowned. Those broad shoulders still had their power to make me twitter like a teenager. Damn.
On the way back from communion, Tom caught my eye and smiled. I remained solemn, seemingly wrapped up in fervent prayers of thanksgiving. The fervor that should have been reserved for my post-communion prayers rose up to smite me in a most unspiritual way.
After mass, Tom hailed me in the parking lot between the church and the school. He had a rental car, some kind of American compact I didn’t recognize, though I envied its lack of dents.
“Would you like to show me how you can drive your Jag?” he asked with that big grin.
“You can drive it,” I said in a petulant voice. “I’m mad at it. Look.” I showed him the fender damage, and he commiserated. I’d explain my theory later. At the moment, I was anxious to be gone. Most of St. Mildred’s parishioners were watching us, no doubt speculating on the stranger’s identity. Since Ed had met Tom, the news would soon be out. By afternoon, most of Alpine would figure that The Advocate was going broke and was about to be sold to a newspaper magnate from San Francisco. Or worse yet, they’d note the resemblance between Tom and Adam. I didn’t know which scenario upset me most.
I followed Tom up to the ski lodge where he left his rental. While he was parking the car, I spotted Heather Bardeen and waved. She didn’t wave back. Maybe she really didn’t see me. I gave a mental shrug. What could I say to her anyway? Is it true you’re having an affair with your late boyfriend’s father? Even for an aggressive journalist, that seemed too harsh. Besides, she might sock me.
Once Tom was behind the wheel of the Jag, I regretted my impulsive suggestion that he drive. First my chair, now my car. Maybe he’d like to move into my house. To my horror, the facetious thought didn’t strike me as all that absurd.
I was surprised when we headed east, not west. “Where are we going?” I asked as he pointed the Jaguar up Stevens Pass. “Not Leavenworth, I hope. They’re having the Oktoberfest this weekend. Too much bratwurst and too many tubas for my taste.”
“I know,” Tom said. It seemed as if he always knew everything. “Have you ever been to the Cougar Inn on Lake Wenatchee?”
I hadn’t, though I’d heard about it and had even gone so far as to ask Ed Bronsky to see if they’d like to take out an ad. Ed told me the inn was too far away. As it turned out, it was less than an hour’s drive, a short stretch beyond the summit, then twenty miles north of Leavenworth.
The Cougar Inn was built in 1890, a big farm house converted into a restaurant and hotel. The lavish buffet included ham, sausage, a baron of beef, eggs, pastries, vegetables, fruit, and just about every other imaginable food a brunch addict might desire. With plates piled high, we made our way to a table for two that looked out over the sparkling waters of Lake Wenatchee. The sun was out, but the wind ruffled the evergreens. It was a perfect autumn afternoon.
At first we spoke of trifles. Tom had gone fishing Saturday, somewhere around Gold Bar. No luck, though the salmon were due to come upriver to spawn soon. Living most of the time in the Bay Area, he missed fishing. There was a place he liked to go on the Sacramento River, but that was ruined because of the recent disastrous chemical spill at Dunsmuir.
I asked about his two children. Graham was at USC, studying cinema. Kelsey had just started her first year at Mills. It was just as well that they didn’t spend much time at home. Sandra’s condition had turned Kelsey into an introvert. Tom worried about his daughter. He wished she’d gone back East to school. “The farther the better, I think,” he said, briefly letting his carefully cultivated mask of good cheer slip a notch. He gave me a wry grin. “Sometimes I wonder if mental instability isn’t contagious.”
We were on our second round of plates. I told Tom about my car, including the mobile pothole. Unlike Milo, he didn’t scoff. “The sheriff may be right about one thing,” he said, digging into a mound of crisp hash brown potatoes. “It was probably kids, going for a joy ride.”
Tom could be right. The Jag was tempting, and if word had gotten out that I kept a spare set of keys under the car, some of Alpine’s brasher punks might have succumbed. After all, several of the women at the bridge party had teenagers. The kids might know I’d be at the Adcocks’ for several hours and figure they were safe to take off for a while. At least that’s what I wanted to believe. I didn’t much like the idea of Chris lurking around town in the shadows.
“Well?” Tom spoke, and I realized I’d missed a beat. Before I could respond, he put a hand on my arm. “Hey, this murder really has you upset. Why? I gathered from what everybody said at dinner the other night that Mark was a jerk. Did you think otherwise?”
“No.” I felt the light pressure on my arm and couldn’t help but smile. “To be honest, I didn’t know Mark Doukas very well. It’s his cousin I’m stewing over.”
As briefly as possible, I explained about Chris. Tom listened closely, devouring more hash browns, eggs benedict, croissants, and link sausages. I was finally full, surfeited with cinnamon rolls, ham, beef, scrambled eggs, blintzes, asparagus, and two kinds of juice. When I concluded my recital, Tom took a slice of cantaloupe off my plate. His appetite had always amazed me.
“I can’t see why Chris would kill Mark,” he said, obviously giving the matter his usual thorough consideration. “No fight, no motive. So who had a reason to get Mark out of the way?”
“Nobody. Not a real motive.”
But Tom shook his head. Outside, the wind was growing stronger, whipping up the blue waters of the lake. “Unless you accept the theory of a nut on the loose, your killer has a motive. The question is: what? His sister would benefit from the standpoint of money. She’d get his share, and so would her husband—Kent?” He saw me nod. “But from what you say of Jennifer, she sounds meek as milk. Of course,” he added on an almost wistful note, “you never know about people.”
“And Kent did quarrel with Mark,” I reminded Tom. “Although Jennifer insists it wasn’t serious.”
The waitress was removing our plates and bringing more coffee. Tom waited until she was done before he spoke again. “As for your driver, he had a grudge. But why wait all these years?”
“I know. It doesn’t make sense. All the same, I’d like to find out when Gibb Frazier was up at the mineshaft. It had to be after he got back from Monroe, which would have been mid-afternoon.”
“Have you asked him?”
“He’s been in Snohomish the past couple of days. Milo was going to talk to him when he got back. Today, I suppose.” Gibb had been due in Alpine last night. I wondered if Milo had already seen him. Maybe I’d call the sheriff again when I got home.
The bill appeared at our table. I made a feeble gesture, but Tom laughed. “I’m rich, remember? Besides, this is a write-off. We were talking newspaper revenue.”
“We should do that, I guess.” I sounded vague.
This time he put his hand on mine. “We should do a lot of things, Emma. But not right now. You’re preoccupied.”
I started to bridle, then made a funny little noise in my throat that wasn’t exactly a squeak but came close. “Damn it, Tom. I can’t believe you’re here.”
He still had his hand on mine; his smile washed over me like balm. “Well, I am.”
&
nbsp; “For how long?” I hated to ask the question.
He took his hand away and leaned back in the chair. “Oh—a few days. I have to be in San Diego at a publishers’ meeting the second week of October. Look,” he said, leaning forward again, “I’ve put some preliminary material together for you, but I left it at the lodge. I need some more background anyway—demographics, per capita income, property taxes. It’d bore you. But give me a day or so, and I’ll impress the hell out of you, okay?”
“Wow.” I laughed in spite of myself. “Do you do this for every poor publisher?”
“Yes,” he replied, “I do. It’s the only way I can make a decision about investing.” He glanced over at the buffet, where the last of the brunchers were lining up. “There are lots of appealing weeklies and dailies out there, just like that smorgasbord. But you have to pick and choose, or you’ll end up with the financial equivalent of a stomachache.” He palmed his credit card and stood up. “What are you thinking, that I must miss the writing?”
“Yes,” I said, though that wasn’t what I’d been thinking at all. I’d had an evil speculation about whether or not the inn had a room available for the night.
“I do miss it. In fact, it’s not the writing so much as the editing.” Ever the gentleman, Tom helped me with my chair. “My greatest love was making a good story even better.”
It was a commendable emotion. I resisted the urge to ask Tom to name his second greatest love.
We walked along the lake for a while, but the wind was too brisk to linger. We reached Alpine about four. In the lodge’s parking lot, I felt compelled to inquire after Tom’s dinner plans.
“I’ve got a date,” he said, opening the door of the car. Between the trees, I could see the steep roof and dormer windows of the ski lodge. A weather vane twirled in the breeze and smoke curled from one of the stone chimneys.
“Oh.” I tried to sound casual. “Just as well. I don’t think I could eat until tomorrow.”