by Mary Daheim
Tom’s voice sounded considerably warmer. I gestured for Vida to pick up her phone, too. He might as well relay any information he had found to both of us. “I hit pay dirt,” he announced. “It took awhile, because there was nothing for August twenty-one, 1971. But I went through the whole month, then back into July. Here, I’ll read from the copy I made.” I held my breath; Vida’s tongue plied her upper lip. “‘Born July twenty-one, 1971, Baby Boy Pratt, to Phoebe Phipps Pratt and Constantine Nikinos Doukas.’”
Vida put her hand over the receiver. “Neeny!” she gasped.
I could hear, if not see, Tom’s grin of triumph. “Well, Emma? Is that what you wanted?”
I laughed. “I don’t know what I wanted. But it fits. Phoebe had Neeny’s baby and gave it up to Margaret and Hector. No wonder she wrote Chris that letter! Wow!”
Tom was chuckling, too. “I don’t know how this fits in with the murders, but we can sort that out when I get back. I’m going to get a sandwich and then wait for Chris.” He paused, then lowered his voice. “Emma, I’m sorry I got upset about you and Milo. I never really believed you were sleeping with him. It’s just that I thought if you were scared or didn’t want to stay alone, you might have asked me to … oh, hell, Emma, we’ll talk about it later. And Adam, too. See you.”
I gripped the receiver tight and dared to dart a look at Vida. She was putting her own phone down and gazing straight ahead. “I wonder who handled the adoption,” she said in an ordinary voice. “A Seattle attorney, I suppose.”
I knew I was blushing like mad. “Margaret and Hector probably didn’t get Chris until he was a month old. That’s why the announcement gave his birthday as August instead of July.”
“Lucky for Phoebe that the Ramirezes wanted him.” She finally turned back in my direction. “No wonder he looks like a Doukas.” She rummaged in her tote bag. “My, my, I seem to have forgotten my cottage cheese and carrot sticks. Want to go get a burger?”
I stood up. “Why not?” What I wanted most was to hug Vida.
Heather Bardeen and Chaz Phipps were just leaving when we got to the Burger Barn. Vida jabbed me with an elbow and then made her move, blocking the young women’s exit.
“We need to have a word with you,” she said in an imperious manner. “Where were you sitting?”
Despite their startled expressions, Heather and Chaz didn’t argue but led us to a booth at the rear of the restaurant. The waitress, who wasn’t Kimberly this time, was already clearing off the table. She pocketed her tip and left us in peace.
“This will be quick,” said Vida, fixing her gaze on Heather. “If the sheriff asks you—and he probably will—can you tell him where Simon Doukas was last Wednesday night between eight-thirty and nine-thirty?”
Heather drew back against the booth’s plastic maroon upholstery. “What a dumb question! Even if I could tell the sheriff, why would I tell you?”
Vida was unperturbed. “Because the sheriff will tell us anyway.” She glanced at me from under the brim of her veiled green fedora. “We have a deadline, you see.” Clearly, Vida was counting on Heather’s lack of curiosity as to how our journalistic endeavor might be tied to Milo Dodge’s interrogation.
But Heather was on her feet, pulling Chaz along with her. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about your deadline. If you want to find out where Simon Doukas and I were Wednesday night, you’ll have to hear it from the sheriff.” She gave Vida a nasty look, ignored me, and hauled Chaz out of the booth.
“Well,” said Vida, picking up a menu, “that takes care of that. Heather certainly gets around. But it doesn’t let Simon off the hook as far as the murder is concerned.”
“Vida,” I said, motioning to the waitress, “you don’t think Simon would kill his own son, do you?” I couldn’t believe it of Cecelia, whom I rather liked; neither could I believe it of the less likable Simon.
“Stranger things have happened,” murmured Vida in her cryptic manner. She threw down the menu and looked up at the waitress. “Oh, why bother with all those decisions about calories and fat and cholesterol? I’ll have the bacon burger, fries, a small salad, and one of those pineapple malts. I hope the pineapple chunks aren’t so big they plug up the straw this time.”
Privacy wasn’t ensured by the booth in which we sat, so Vida and I spoke of the case in whispers, pooling our information and drawing certain conclusions. It was, we agreed, possible that Hector, Mark, and Gibb had been killed by the same person. With Hector, it would be almost impossible after fourteen years to establish alibis—or the lack of them. Even Vida, with her encyclopedic memory, wasn’t precisely sure when Hector had disappeared.
“Only Margaret would have been likely to remember the date,” she said, dumping large pools of catsup on her fries. “A pity she’s dead. Chris would have been too young to recall much.”
Briefly, I thought about the note Chris had left for me at the motel. He had mentioned memories. Was his father’s—or adoptive father’s—disappearance one of them? Could we assume that Neeny was Chris’s real father? Vida felt we could, since she asserted that Phoebe had been carrying on with Neeny long before the boy’s birth.
“Nobody has an alibi,” I said once more for the record. “The real problem is that nobody has a motive, at least not for killing Mark.”
Vida wagged a finger at me. “Not true,” she said around a mouthful of bacon burger. “Hector’s killer had a motive if Mark had found the remains.”
I didn’t agree. “Hector’s killer had no reason to think that finding a bunch of bones could trigger a fourteen-year-old murder investigation.”
Under the brim of her green hat, Vida’s expression wavered, but she wasn’t quite ready to throw in the towel. “There’s got to be a connection. Oh, I know, I know,” she insisted, waving her fork and sending lettuce in the direction of the two men across the aisle. “You said you thought Phoebe had seen Mark the night he was killed.” She swirled more lettuce around in her little plastic bowl. “Would he have come to tell Neeny about finding those remains?” As usual, Vida could best answer her own questions. “I think he would, they were on Neeny’s property. Maybe he told Phoebe. It would be just like Mark to try to get a rise out of her with a ghoulish story—and for some reason, she didn’t want Neeny to know.”
“His health?” I suggested.
Vida gave an absent nod. “That would be my guess. So she put him off. And then went haring off to see Simon. Why?” This time she had no answer. “We’re missing something. Tommy thinks so, too.”
Tommy. I refrained from giving Vida a look of reproach. “I wish he’d get back with Chris. My biggest fear is that Chris won’t show.”
“It’s possible.” Vida assaulted her malted milk, a noisy business at best. “Don’t start worrying until after four. It’s going to take them awhile to get to Alpine, especially if Tommy has to meet with those people he mentioned.”
It was now almost two o’clock. I suggested that we get my car and go see if the mail had come to my home. When we arrived, there was a notice saying that since nobody was home, there would be a parcel from Honolulu waiting at the post office after five P.M. Vida and I decided it would be easier to chase down the mail truck. We found it at Fifth & Cascade, across from the middle school. Naturally, the driver was a Runkel once or twice removed.
We opened the package inside the car, just as the first contingent of prepubescent students charged out of the school. There was Chris’s denim jacket and several piles of correspondence, mostly addressed to Margaret Ramirez. Judging from a cursory look at their varying rates of postage, they went back several years. The letter from Phoebe to Mark was on top.
Vida all but ripped it out of my hand. “You’ve heard it already,” she said, whisking Phoebe’s eggshell stationery from its matching envelope. Swiftly, Vida scanned the two handwritten pages. “Hrmph. If I didn’t know that Phoebe is probably the poor boy’s mother, I’d have lost my lunch.” Thoughtfully, she refolded the letter and handed it to me. “Why did she
write that, I wonder?”
I was about to speculate when Vida slapped at the dashboard. “Let’s go ask her. Now.”
“But Vida,” I protested, “we’ve still got some last-minute details with the paper.”
“So we work late. Let’s go. To Neeny’s,” she added, sitting back and bracing herself as if she expected me to take off at ninety miles an hour.
I didn’t think this was the best idea Vida had entertained lately, but if Phoebe and Neeny were about to leave for Palm Springs, this might be our only chance to talk to either of them for a long time.
Frieda Wunderlich, looking as sour as a leftover lemon, greeted us at the door. “The Queen Bee isn’t here and Himself went to get a tune-up from Doc Dewey. You want them to call you before they take off?” She didn’t wait for an answer, however, but shook her gray head. “Going to the desert! Can you imagine anybody leaving beautiful country like this to go look at nothing?”
“With Phoebe around, Neeny’s always looking at nothing as far as I’m concerned,” retorted Vida. “Where is the old cow?”
Frieda screwed up her homely face, reminding me of a gargoyle. “She’s over at her own place, packing. I heard—not that I’d ask—she’s putting it up for sale.” Her inverted eyebrows lifted like a pair of apostrophes.
“How much?” asked Vida, getting right to the point.
Frieda leaned forward; the two women huddled like a couple of drug dealers on a street corner. “Eighty-five,” said Frieda.
“Ridiculous!” snorted Vida.
“Lucky to get sixty,” agreed Frieda.
They were probably right. Phoebe’s post-World War II rambler needed paint, and the garden showed neglect. A few scraggly dahlias leaned against a fence with several missing pickets. Under a sparse rhododendron, a little stone gnome was covered with moss. The house’s location wasn’t noteworthy, either, just one block off Front Street, facing the rear of the Lumberjack Motel.
A frazzled Phoebe Pratt Doukas met us at the door. “Oh—what a surprise!” Her face indicated it wasn’t a pleasant one. “I’m just packing a few things. My niece, Chaz, is going to take care of the rest while I’m gone. Oh!” She fluttered about in the small entry way where several half-filled cartons, three suitcases, and an old gas barbecue reposed. “Come in, sit down—if you can find a spot.” She sounded dubious.
The living room was also littered with cartons, mostly empty, and there were piles of clothes on virtually every piece of furniture. “I’ll never get everything done in the next three hours,” Phoebe declared, making a valiant effort at freeing up the Naugahyde sofa. Dust was thick on the few surfaces showing, the windows were smudged with dirt, and—as Vida had said—the curtains looked as if they hadn’t been washed in years. The room had a musty smell, and the jade plant on the fireplace hearth looked dead as a dodo. It was obvious that Phoebe spent very little time in the home she had made with the late Clinton Pratt.
On the drive to Neeny’s, Vida and I had discussed the best way to approach Phoebe about her illegitimate child. I had suggested that Vida’s blunderbuss tactics could backfire. To my surprise, she had agreed. Vida and Phoebe had a history spanning almost sixty years, whereas I was only a casual acquaintance. And, as I readily volunteered, Phoebe and I had something in common: our bastard sons.
Consequently, as we tried to get comfortable on the sofa’s sagging springs, I was horrified when Vida unleashed her barrage:
“See here, Phoebe, we know you’re Chris’s mother and Neeny is his father. The only thing we want to know is why, out of the blue, you wrote him a letter a couple of weeks ago.”
Phoebe, who for once wasn’t plastered with cosmetics, went white, then red. She began to shake, while tears welled up in her eyes. “Vida!” she gasped, staring at the other woman as if she’d been betrayed to the Gestapo. “Oh, Vida!”
“Oh, bother!” huffed Vida. “This is the 1990s, and Emma’s an unmarried mother, too. All we’re trying to do is figure out who killed Mark and Gibb and maybe Hector Ramirez.” She turned to me. “Where’s that letter?”
I extracted it from my handbag. “It’s a very nice letter,” I said, hoping to keep Phoebe from having a stroke. “Chris never got it, though. My son forwarded it to me.”
The tears were coursing down Phoebe’s crimson cheeks. She wiped at them with the sleeve of her green print blouse and gazed at the streaked front window. “He was all alone,” she said at last in a thin voice. “Margaret had been a good mother, despite what Neeny said. For all I know, Hector may have been a good father, given his … limitations.” Her head bobbed this way and that, presumably in search of a Kleenex or a handkerchief. I offered her a little packet of tissues from my purse.
“Thank you.” Phoebe gave me a grateful look. I figured we were bonding, in some odd, pathetic way. “At the time he was born, Margaret and Hector were living in Seattle. Clinton had been dead for over a year, so there was no way I could convince people the baby was his. I went to Seattle, too, and got an apartment on Capitol Hill. Doukums didn’t know. It was better that way since his old-fashioned sense of gallantry might have forced him to make an honest woman of me. And a divorce would have killed Hazel. So I let him think I was trying out my wings as a widow.” Her lips quivered in a little smile. “I could have simply put the baby up for adoption, but I knew Margaret and Hector wanted a child so much. They went to Simon and had him make the arrangements. Neeny always assumed the baby was theirs. It was quite clever.” Now Phoebe was really smiling, the tears finally staunched.
“Did they pay for him?” Vida asked on a somewhat sour note.
“Oh, no!” Phoebe’s hands were at her breast. “They had nothing of their own, poor things. And there I was, not quite as young as I used to be, proud to be bearing Doukas fruit!”
I didn’t dare look at Vida. To her credit, she didn’t say anything but allowed Phoebe to continue: “It was so much better than giving little Chris up to strangers. And until Margaret moved away, I got to see him now and then.” She sighed, her hands tearing at the tissue I’d given her. “I was heartbroken after they went to Hawaii. When Margaret died, I thought of writing immediately. But I kept putting it off—I didn’t know what to say.” She made a gesture at the letter I was still holding. “Does he know the truth?” She finally gazed directly at us, her eyes showing both hope and fear.
“No,” I said. “But he’s supposed to be back in Alpine today.”
Phoebe clutched at the neckline of her blouse. “Oh! Dear Chris! Poor Doukums! Is ignorance really bliss? What to do, what to do?”
“What did you do?” inquired Vida. “About your will, I mean. After you and Neeny got married, did you leave everything to him, or to Chris?”
Phoebe had recovered a little of her natural color, but now it drained away as if Vida had pulled a plug. Instead of tears, however, Phoebe resorted to anger. “Vida Blatt, you are the biggest snoop in Skykomish County! No wonder they used to call you Goose Neck in high school!”
Vida smirked. “They used to call you other things, Phoebe Vickers. Like Freebie.”
I thought it best to intervene. “Excuse me,” I said, leaning between the two women like a referee, “but Vida’s question may be valid.” I hated to say what was coming next, but it couldn’t be avoided. “If you intended to leave your estate to Chris, it might have a bearing on the murder case.”
Phoebe was still glaring at Vida. “Of course I left everything to Chris,” she said in a voice still choked with anger. “After Doukums, of course. And a little something for Chaz.”
Again, my question came with reluctance. “Is it enough to kill for?”
The rage was beginning to ebb as Phoebe considered her financial state. “Doukums settled three million dollars on me when we got married. Simon doesn’t know—we had Doc Dewey’s son-in-law in Seattle handle it. Then there’s some stock. Doukums always believed in buying into companies right around here. He’s a great booster for people getting started. Besides,” she noted guilelessly
, “he gets some bargains that way.” She gave us a big-eyed stare. “You know—local businesses. Like Microsoft. Nordstrom. Boeing. He’s done quite well.”
It sure beat my one stock investment—which involved making cat food out of bottom fish. The Japanese had violated about six fishing treaties and wiped out the fledgling company, along with my $200 stake. That was the last time I ever listened to a tip from The Oregonian’s business editor.
Having made an attempt at composing herself, Phoebe got to her feet. “Really, I must get busy. Our plane leaves at nine, so we’re heading for the airport about six.” Suddenly, she was picking up piles of clothing and dumping them into the empty cartons. “There’s nothing more I can tell you. I wish I could, but—”
“You might let us know why you went to see Simon Wednesday night,” Vida said, still sitting on the sofa.
Phoebe came to a dead halt, a stack of shoe boxes in her arms. “Oh! That!” She gazed around the cluttered room as if she expected to see an answer written on the faded striped wallpaper. “It wasn’t anything important. Just something about selling the house.”
Vida slowly but emphatically shook her head, the fedora listing from side to side. “Phoebe, Phoebe, that’s a parcel of pigeon poop! You wouldn’t go out at nine o’clock to track down Simon in his office when you could call him on the phone. Besides,” she went on, yanking her skirt down over two inches of slip, “you didn’t decide to sell this place until the last couple of days. I’d bet my last dime on it.”
Phoebe dropped the shoe boxes, scattering several wedgies, high heels, and a pair of golf shoes. “Get out.” Her voice was cold, with all nuances of the aging coquette vanished. I was already standing, halfway between the sofa and the entryway. To my amazement, Vida also rose. The two women faced each other, the same age, the same height, the same small-town background. Yet for one fleet ing moment, they were titanic, a pair of Olympian goddesses facing each other not over a pile of shoe boxes but a chasm of memory.