The Alpine Kindred

by Mary Daheim

  It was also Ron's job, and his rancor indicated an attitude problem. My job, however, was not that of a therapist. “How did you find out about Rasmussen's death?”

  Ron stubbed out his cigarette and took a big swig of coffee. “The Chinaman told me.”

  It sounded cryptic until I realized he was referring to Dustin Fong. “The deputy?” I kept my exasperation in check. “When was that?”

  “Sometime before ten. I'd just come across the road from the dorms. They had a plumbing problem. Those dumb girls shouldn't put whatchamacallits down the toilet. They plug up the line. But you can't tell them anything.”

  I guessed that the whatchamacallits were tampons. I knew they were a problem, but the only time I'd ever suffered from such a backup was when Adam was about three and put mine down our toilet while they were still in the box.

  “You were surprised?” I asked in that stupid manner characteristic of journalists in search of a meaningless quote.

  “Hell, no. Our own daughter, Jenny, has pulled that stunt a couple of times. That's how I knew what caused the backup.”

  I was gritting my teeth again. “I mean about Mr. Ras-mussen getting murdered.”

  Ron blinked a couple of times. “Oh. Well, sure. You don't expect that kind of stuff, right? It's really too bad.”

  I agreed. “Did you know him?”

  “Rasmussen?” He gave a shrug. “Sure. Didn't everybody?”

  “I guess so. He was very prominent in Skykomish and Snohomish counties.” My notepad was blank. So was my mind. But I dredged up one last question. “Did you ever hear anyone make any threats or indicate they wished harm to Mr. Rasmussen?”

  Ron laughed, a barking, harsh sound. “You kidding? How about half the population along Highway Two?”

  “Why was that?”

  Ron leaned forward, elbows propped on the counter-top. “Because he was an SOB, that's why. Hey, you run the paper. Don't you ever hear the news?”

  I refused to let Ron Bjornson bait me. “Such as?”

  Ron seemed perplexed by my ignorance. “Like the way he treated people. Like how he ran his businesses. Like thinking he was God Almighty because he was Einar Rasmussen Jr. Like being the biggest bastard from here to Snohomish.” He sat back on the stool and scratched his temple. “Hell, it's no wonder he got himself killed. You asked if I was surprised—I guess I was only surprised that it didn't happen sooner.”

  Chapter Six

  I SHOULD HAVE guessed: Vida had been on the prowl.

  “I've known the family for years,” she said in a defensive tone. “It would have been amiss if I hadn't called on Marlys Rasmussen. Whatever would she have thought?”

  But Marlys hadn't come to the door, a fact that secretly pleased me. Vida might horn in on the family, but she wasn't going to get a piece of the homicide investigation. My House & Home editor handled her own section admirably, but when it came to hard news, her style tended to ramble into homey family ties. Hopefully, writing the obituary and covering the funeral would satisfy her.

  “Who was there?” I asked, sitting on the edge of Vida's desk.

  Behind the big glasses, Vida looked rueful. “I'm not sure. It might have been Gladys. It certainly wasn't Beau.”

  “Who's Gladys?” I shifted my weight slightly. The midday sun was slanting right through the small window above Vida's desk and trying to blind me.

  “Harold Rasmussen's wife. Gladys would be Einar Jr.'s sister-in-law.” Vida still seemed full of regret. “Whoever it was said Marlys was unavailable. I sympathize, of course. It did no good to coax. And I didn't want to make a pest of myself.”

  Vida, no doubt, had made a pest of herself. But in vain.

  I suppressed a smile, then told her about my encounters with Nat Cardenas and Ron Bjornson.

  “The college president will be guarded about the situation,” she allowed. “As for Ron, he can't be blamed for being bitter. Like so many of our out-of-work loggers, he's had problems adjusting to a different lifestyle.”

  I understood. For the men who worked in the woods, often following in their fathers' and grandfathers' muddy footsteps, the timber industry was a vocation. It was as hard to tell a logger to quit logging as it was to make an actor stop acting. When the parts—or the trees—ran out, they were utterly lost, displaced, adrift in a world where their services were no longer required.

  I slid off the desk just as Leo breezed through the door. “I need a decision, and I need it now. Is the RUB special section on or off?”

  “On,” I responded. “I'll make the editorial changes. You should contact our advertisers to see if any of them want to add an 'in memoriam' line or some such tribute. Instead of a picture of Einar at the RUB—alive—we'll run the stock publicity shot. Okay?”

  Leo was already picking up the phone. “Got it. I'll start making calls. Oh!” He paused with a finger on one of the telephone buttons. “There's something weird going on over at the warehouse site. It looks like a giant Easter-egg hunt, except that these are all grownups and there's no rabbit in sight.” Leo resumed tapping digits.

  “Damn!” I didn't have time to go on a wild-goose chase. I turned back to Vida. “Can you … ?”

  Vida nodded once, setting the pink paper primroses on her black straw aquiver. “Of course. It sounds interesting.” She picked up her camera and headed out of the office in her splayfooted manner.

  Passing Leo en route to my cubbyhole, I gave him a wan smile. “I'm glad you recovered so fast. Where would we be if you were out sick, too?”

  Leo, who apparently was on hold, glanced up at me sharply. “Did you think I was faking it the other night? Why would I do that?”

  I was aghast. “No, no, of course not! I know you were under the weather. You've been coughing for the past two days.”

  Leo automatically looked down at his overflowing ashtray. “So I was. Okay, forget it. Maybe this damned bug has made me irrational. Are we still on for—Jake, it's Leo,” my ad manager said into the receiver. “Now that poor old Einar has met his Maker, we were wondering if you'd like to add something to your Grocery Basket ad that would …”

  I went into my office and started revising Carla's RUB dedication copy. It took me over an hour, and by that time my stomach was growling fiercely. I was out the front door, headed for the Burger Barn, when Vida pulled up in front of The Advocate.

  “Goodness!” she exclaimed, grappling with her camera, her purse, and her swing coat, which seemed to have gotten entangled in the seat belt. “There's a mad treasure hunt at the new restaurant site! The Bourgette boys had to call the Sheriff.”

  “What triggered that?” I asked.

  Closing the Buick's door, Vida shook her head. “I'm not sure. What's this about a boxful of nuggets?”

  I'd forgotten that Vida had never read—and much more amazingly—hadn't heard about the steel chest which had been found by the firemen. “Grab a burger with me and I'll explain,” I offered. “I was going to do takeout, but I'd better fill you in.”

  Vida looked as if she were about to take umbrage; she despised having to be “filled in.” “I'm dieting, you know. I brought carrot and celery sticks.”

  Vida's diets were a sometime thing, and never seemed to affect her weight, which, like the rest of her, remained constant. “Have them for dinner. You look gaunt.”

  Vida ignored the lie, but surrendered. As usual, her curiosity got the best of her. After returning her camera to the office, she came back outside, and we made the short trek across the street and down one block to the Burger Barn.

  Since it was almost one, there were a half-dozen empty booths. I waited until after we had given our orders before enlightening my House & Home editor about the gold stash. Naturally, she was outraged.

  “How could I not know about the nuggets? What's the matter with my nephew Billy? Are you sure Milo had possession of this so-called treasure?”

  “Yes, according to the Bourgettes. The box is at the assayer's office. But I guess it hasn't been trace
d yet. Now, what's going on at the warehouse site?”

  Vida didn't answer immediately, apparently taking a moment to digest my account and the enormity of her ignorance. “John and Dan started clearing the property Sunday afternoon,” she finally said. “They had most of the debris out of the way by this morning. Apparently that was the signal for the scavengers to start digging. I must say,” she continued, “they have enough gumption to dig, but not to haul.”

  “How many were looking for so-called treasure?” I asked as our waitress brought my Pepsi and Vida's hot tea.

  “I counted twenty-two,” Vida responded. “Naturally, I recognized everyone except for a half dozen who may have been college students. Two of them were engaged in a rather ugly tug-of-war with a faculty member from sociology. Several of the trespassers had metal detectors.

  Really, Emma, I can't imagine how I could have missed such an incident!”

  “As I said, it happened while we were out of town last fall. You were gone longer than I was, and I suppose by the time you got back, the initial gossip had died down.” I paused, wondering why the treasure hunters had waited so long. “Maybe it was too dangerous to dig until now. The place was a real mess.”

  Vida inclined her head. “That's so. Though I heard just now that the railroad had sent someone to watch the property for a few weeks. I also learned that there had been a rash of scavengers right after the fire, but when Averill Fairbanks was knocked unconscious by a falling timber, the others decided to stay away.”

  “Averill was hurt?” I said in surprise. Averill was our resident UFO spotter and more inclined to scan the skies than dig the dirt. “It must have happened before I got back from Oregon.”

  “It was. Indeed, the ashes were still hot. Averill also burned his shoes.” Vida made a face. “People are so foolish. And greedy. Sam Heppner and Dwight Gould practically had to resort to force to remove the trespassers. I'm afraid the Bourgettes will have to hire a night watchman.”

  “Could be.” My answer was detached. I was wondering if in fact there really was more buried gold on the warehouse premises. “As soon as Carla gets back, I'm going to have her do some research on the early mining days around here.”

  Vida stopped blowing on her tea. “Carla? Why? She's been here only a short time. I'll do it.”

  I suppressed a beleaguered sigh. “She's been here almost as long as I have,” I noted. Which, I was well aware, was also a short time in Vida's opinion. “This is a news story or at least a news feature. It won't go in the House & Home section. Besides,” I added ominously, “the mining was done before your time.” Vida hated it when an event had occurred “before her time.” She considered such past history as neolithic, or at least inconsequential.

  “Nonsense,” Vida retorted. “I've often done historical features, not only for my page, but for special editions. Besides, I might not have been born while they were mining in the area—goodness, there was no Alpine then, only a whistle-stop called Nippon—but I'm well versed in the background.”

  I didn't doubt it, so I gave in. At least Vida wouldn't have to start from scratch. “Okay, but even you will have to do some—excuse the expression—digging.”

  “Certainly. If nothing else, I'll need to refresh my memory.” Vida sipped daintily from her mug of tea.

  My burger basket arrived, along with Vida's fish sticks. Fish, she assured me, was far more slimming than beef, and never mind that the minnow-sized slices of whatever bottom feeders the Burger Barn bought in bulk were thick with deep-fried breading.

  “Okay,” I said, after filling my face with food, “enlighten me about Einar Jr.'s reputation in Skykomish and Snohomish counties.”

  Vida dabbed a fry in tartar sauce. “I thought you knew. His father owned a sawmill, dabbled in real estate, and grew quite prosperous. There were three children— Harold, Mary Jane, and Einar Jr. Harold had no head for business, so Einar Jr. worked more closely with Einar Sr. I believe Mary Jane worked in the mill office for a while as well. But of course that ended when she became engaged to Dick Bourgette. You can imagine what a blow it was to the Rasmussens not to be able to marry their daughter off with a big fanfare. It would have been the event of the season in Snohomish.”

  I was trying to picture Mary Jane and Dick Bourgette as I remembered them from church. She was a pretty, vivacious, dark-haired woman in her fifties; Dick was a good-looking man about the same age with silver hair and glasses. Maybe it was time for me to do more than merely nod and smile at them in the St. Mildred's parking lot.

  “What did they do?” I asked as an RV about the size of my house purred down Front Street.

  “Dick was from Everett, so they were married by a priest from his church. Mary Jane became a convert just before the wedding. Thyra was particularly outraged. But,” Vida added, with unexpected malice, “she would be. She's a loathsome person.”

  “Thyra?” The name rang a faint bell.

  “Einar Sr.'s wife. She thinks she rules society in Sno-homish.” Vida all but sneered.

  “Good grief,” I exclaimed, “the woman must be almost ninety! But of course,” I added in a more musing tone, “it was almost forty years ago when her daughter cheated her out of a splashy wedding.”

  Vida gave a nod, her hat tipping to the left. “Yes, and of course that was before the influx of commuters and growth in general. Snohomish was much smaller then, about the size of Alpine. But Thyra Rasmussen is still the sort of self-centered woman who considers herself the queen bee. Why, when the Clemans family permanently moved to Snohomish from Alpine after Carl closed the mill, Thyra all but snubbed Mrs. Clemans. She didn't want any competition. But Mrs. Clemans was a wonderful woman who didn't let such things bother her. I'm quite sure she put Thyra in her place. Nicely, of course.”

  A haggard Doc Dewey and Fuzzy Baugh were passing our booth on their way out of the restaurant. Doc merely nodded politely and continued on his way, but the mayor stopped at our table, his heady aftershave mingling with the Burger Barn's prevailing odor of grease.

  “Kid gloves,” he murmured, leaning in between Vida and me. “This story about poor Einar must be handled with kid gloves. Consider the family, not to mention the college. I play racquetball with Nat Cardenas.” Fuzzy withdrew his hands from the table and followed Doc Dewey out the door.

  “Ridiculous old fool,” Vida huffed. “Fuzzy wouldn't last five minutes playing racquetball. The only exercise he gets is giving long-winded speeches.”

  I smiled in agreement, then returned to the subject at hand. “You didn't really answer my question about Einar's reputation. Ron Bjornson said it stinks.”

  “Of course he would,” Vida responded, pouring more hot water into her tea. “The haves are always envied by the have-nots. Though,” she continued, jiggling her tea bag up and down in the mug, “I've heard stories about Einar's ruthlessness. Of course his father, Einar Sr., was the same way. It's often the case, with successful people. They don't let things—or other people—stand in their way. Mr. Clemans was an exception. To this day, I've never heard anyone criticize him.”

  Carl Clemans had definitely achieved saintly status in Alpine. Perhaps it was deserved; perhaps it was a fluke of memory. But Clemans had been dead for almost sixty years and Einar Rasmussen Sr. was still alive. His son, however, was not, and that was paramount in my mind.

  By three-thirty, our deadline loomed before me. Whether I liked it or not, I had to check in with the Sheriff before the end of the day. I trudged the two blocks to Milo's office, aware that the sun was playing peekaboo with some ominous gray clouds. Just as I pushed open one of the double doors to the Skykomish County Sheriff's Office, Milo came through the other.

  “Emma,” he said, looking startled. “Hi.” He kept going.

  “Hey!” I whirled around. “Hold it! I need two minutes.”

  At the curb, the Sheriff hesitated but didn't turn toward me. “For what? I'm busy.”

  “So am I,” I snapped. “I've got a paper to put to bed in about nin
ety minutes.”

  “You do that,” Milo said, still without looking at me. “You can put whatever the hell you want to bed without me.” He yanked open the door of his Cherokee Chief and slammed it shut.

  “Asshole!” I yelled just as Edna Mae Dalrymple approached with a shocked expression on her face. She'd heard me, but Milo probably hadn't; he'd gunned the engine and was already pulling out of his diagonal parking space.

  “Are you all right?” Edna Mae gasped, her overbite making her look even more like a scared rabbit than she usually does. Edna Mae is not only the local librarian, but a fellow member of my bridge club. Though she and others have exasperated me many times with their lamebrained card playing, I've never actually called any of them an asshole.

  “I'm upset,” I admitted. “I'm up against a deadline, and the Sheriff isn't cooperating. Sorry. I shouldn't be so … irked.”

  Edna Mae tittered. “You certainly sounded annoyed. Really, Emma,” she said, pressing so close that I could smell the baked goods she carried in a bag from the Upper Crust, “is it true that you and Milo are on the rocks?”

  “It's been true for months,” I said, my irritation returning. Where the hell had Edna Mae been since October? Stuck in the stacks in the library basement?

  But Edna Mae was wide-eyed. “Maybe it's just a tiff,” she said in her customary nervous manner. “I always thought you and Milo made such a cute couple.”

  I started to snap back at Edna Mae, but fortunately, my better nature came to the fore. I couldn't take out my frustrations on a poor woman whose only serious fault— besides not knowing a short club bid from a singing telegram—was lack of judgment when it came to her fellow human beings.

  “Thanks,” I said, “but things just didn't work out. See you soon, Edna Mae.” I dashed into the Sheriff's office.

  Jack Mullins was laughing. At me, as it turned out, though he tried to hide the fact. “Just missed Dodge, huh?” he said, and made an attempt at turning serious.