The Alpine Kindred

by Mary Daheim

  “Deirdre had to know,” Milo said.

  “That Beau was a killer? Maybe she did, and that's why she took off with Davin. I don't blame her. She was probably afraid for their lives.”

  “She had a reason.” Milo grunted. “But what about Scott Kuramoto? I thought they were a duo.”

  “They may be. But can you see Scott married into that family?” I countered. “He wouldn't want it, the senior Rasmussens would hate it. Let's call it a fling. Lonely people do strange things.”

  Milo's hazel eyes were fixed on my face. “They sure do.”

  I didn't want to get sidetracked. “I came to the Rasmussen house because I thought you'd be here with the search warrant. Where were you? I almost got killed.”

  Milo looked indignant. “I was with Vida. Do you think I'd leave her alone for a third attack? I had to wait for Bill Blatt to relieve me. What was the deal? Why try to kill Vida?”

  I had to smile. “Vida's reputation almost did her in. Thyra must have learned that Vida had come calling on Marlys, more than once. The old witch knew that Vida's persistence—and curiosity—could pay off. I think Thyra gave Vida more credit than was due, but of course there was that ever-present fear of being found out. The Ras-mussens had lived with that for most of Beau's life. It must have eaten at Thyra like a cancer. Knowing that Beau had already killed, I suspect she told him to get rid of Vida. Like the rest of them, he danced to her tune.”

  Milo leaned back against the driver's seat. The storm had passed over, and the thunder was now a distant rumble. “Jesus. What a family. They even fed on each other.” Jerkily, he turned back to face me. “So what the hell happened today?”

  I explained about the pet cemetery, then about Beau's arrival. “We heard of cougar sightings at the edge of town,” I said. “I don't understand it, but that big cat went right for Beau, and completely ignored me. Thank God.”

  Milo gave a nod. “Animals are like that. Especially cats. They're protective, they sense danger to their species. And sometimes they seek revenge.”

  Milo's upbringing had made him familiar with all forms of wildlife. I'd watched him fish, but I'd never seen him hunt. He had lowered the gun on the cougar, because he respected the animal's grief. I respected Milo's understanding.

  A squad car and an ambulance were arriving behind us. I hesitated. Should I wait to see what happened? But for once, my personal needs overcame my professional duties. Milo could tell me what went on. I had to get away from this place of horror.

  “I can drive now,” I said, opening the door. “You have to wait here, right?”

  Milo hesitated. “Yeah. I'll wait here.”

  For a moment, I stared straight into his eyes. “I'll be at the hospital with Vida. I'll wait there.”

  “Okay.”

  I went out into the rain. When I drove past Milo on my way out, he was still waiting.

  “Ooooh!” Vida was punishing her eyes again, distraught because she hadn't been in on the denouement. “You behaved so recklessly! You might have been killed! Why couldn't you use sense!

  “I already explained that I was sure Milo was there— or would be coming very soon. Anyway, you're the one who got shot and almost strangled.”

  “That's different.” Vida put her tortoiseshell-framed glasses back on, then smiled wickedly. “I can't help it, I would love to be a little mouse in the corner when they tell Thyra about Beau. At last, that nasty woman will get what she deserves.”

  “Actually,” I responded, “she's every bit as much of a killer as Beau. Her manipulation of the family and her obsession with keeping up appearances helped turn him into a murderer. She, too, has blood on her hands.”

  Vida scowled at me. “Yes, yes, of course she does. I'm not talking about that.” She paused, clearing her raw throat. “I meant my mother's gourds.”

  Ron Bjornson, relieved but belligerent, was released from jail Monday morning. On Friday, after the story of Beau's death and the carefully worded statement from Milo that the Rasmussen case was closed, Einar Sr. killed himself with his shotgun. I had written and rewritten the article at least six times, to avoid a libel suit. But the inferences were there: the late Beau Rasmussen had killed his parents.

  If Einar Sr. had no longer been able to endure the web of evil which entwined itself around his family, Thyra was unrepentant. She wouldn't talk to me, but she'd issued a statement which all of the local papers picked up, including The Advocate.

  “When a family becomes prosperous and prominent,” she had said, “there are always envious parasites who try to bring them down. Lies, rumors, and unfounded allegations are their tools. We have had our share of undeserved tragedy, but we shall persevere and maintain our status in the community.”

  Vida, who was out of the hospital, but confined at home for another week, had no comment. She was still savoring what she considered a personal victory over Thyra Rasmussen.

  It was a subdued, haggard Deirdre who was the most willing to talk to me. She came into the office the following Monday, after her grandfather's funeral.

  “Davin and I are moving to Seattle,” she said, almost in a whisper. “I don't care what I have to do to get work. I could never stay with Grandmama, and Davin needs a big support network for his drinking, which he can get in a big city. I don't belong around here, anyway. I've never liked small towns.”

  I smiled, a bit sadly. “Belonging is a tough concept. I'm not sure I belong in Alpine. And I know that even after all the years I've been here, the locals know I don't belong. I guess it comes to where your heart feels at home.”

  “I never felt at home with my family,” Deirdre declared, her usually soft features strained and hard. “Beau and his horrendous problems got all the attention. That's why I married Jerk-off when I was so young. I had to get away. Then I came back to this.” She made a sharp gesture with one hand. “Beau was what they used to call manic-depressive. My parents took him to doctors when he was younger, but they didn't have as many medications then. Later Grandmama put a stop to more sophisticated treatment. She insisted Beau was fine, just moody. My mother did her best to get him to take some kind of medicine, but as he got older he became more rebellious. If that's the word for his kind of madness.” She spoke with great bitterness.

  “Did your father tell you that Beau had killed your mother?” I asked.

  Deirdre shook her head. “He said she'd just gone off, she couldn't take being Beau's keeper anymore. I almost believed it. But I immediately sensed the tension between my father and Beau. I knew what had happened. Then Dad was killed, and I was sure I was right. I thought I'd go mad myself when Beau decided to dress up as Mom at Dad's funeral. It was horrible.”

  “But you wouldn't tell?”

  “No. I couldn't, then. I was too upset. And I was afraid for Davin. Can you imagine what a nightmare this has been since I moved in with Dad and Beau? That house— I'd like to give it away.”

  “Not at that price,” I noted.

  Deirdre snorted. “That was Beau's idea. He wanted to live with Grandmama. He knew she'd take care of him. I think they were kindred spirits.”

  It was Deirdre who enlightened me about the woman Einar had been seeing on the sly. She was Cynthia Kit-tikachorn, not Maylene Bjornson. Scott Kuramoto knew about the affair, and thought that Cynthia and Einar had gotten together briefly just before his appointment with Carla at the RUB. Cynthia, afraid of getting in trouble with Nat Cardenas, had spread rumors about Maylene even before the murder.

  Deirdre left my office around five. I was bringing dinner in for Vida, which meant a stop at the Grocery Basket's deli. As I drove down Front Street, Milo hailed me from the curb. Almost getting rear-ended, I pulled around the corner and waited for him to join me.

  “I solved the Bjornson problem,” he said, looking more cheerful than I'd seen him in a long time. “I hired him.”

  “What?” I started to laugh.

  Milo was leaning through the Jag's side window. “You got it. By cutting out some of the
overtime the deputies are working, especially behind the desk at night, we can afford Ron. He's used to working graveyard, so that won't bother him. He can do some of the handyman stuff around the office, even repairs on the patrol cars.”

  “That's brilliant,” I said. “So no lawsuit.”

  “Right. Ron's pretty pleased. He gets benefits, too, as a county employee.”

  “Wonderful.” The smile that had lingered from the laugh felt frozen on my face as a sudden silence grew between us.

  “You want to catch the Mariners on TV tonight?” Milo finally said. “I'll make dinner at my place. I owe you one.”

  “You don't owe me anything, Milo.” The smile was gone. “Anyway,” I said, trying to make my voice sound light, “I'm taking dinner to Vida. Some other time, okay?”

  Milo ducked his head under his regulation hat. “Tomorrow?”

  “Call me in the morning before I leave for work, around seven-thirty.”

  “Okay.” The Sheriff sounded a little uncertain. He stood up, leaving me to stare at his midsection.

  I wished I could have seen his face. I hoped he couldn't see mine.

  After dinner and a long visit with Vida, I went home to my little log nest at the edge of the forest.

  There were no letters in the mail, no calls on the answering machine. I considered phoning Milo. But I didn't.

  As I was finishing my second cup of coffee around seven-forty the next morning, the phone rang. I started to reach for the receiver, then stopped. It rang again.

  And again.

  A CONVERSATION

  WITH MARY DAHEIM

  Q. First, Mary, tell us about your surname. I know you get asked all the time. But once and for all, how do you pronounce D-a-h-e-i-m?

  A. My (married) name is pronounced DAY-hime. Which is incorrect. It's a German name, and when my husband's grandparents came to this country in 1902, they decided that DAY-hime sounded “more American” than the German pronunciation, which is Da-HEIM. Thus, I'm Mary DAY-hime to most of the world, except when I make reservations at German restaurants.

  Q. According to your biography, you started writing when you were in grade school. What was that literary effort— and what writing did you publish before you turned your attention to crime fiction?

  A. I was first published while in fourth grade. I'd entered a statewide essay contest and won first place for my age/class group. The story was about five puppies who fell in the fish pond. I posed for a picture with my pet chicken in the neighborhood newspaper and they ran the entire (extremely short) story on page one. A slow news week, I suspect. I also wrote my first real short story a year or so later, which was a mystery that had a beginning, a middle, and an end. It was not published, though I still have it somewhere in the basement. I've worked for newspapers (both in small towns, though they were dailies) and done tons of p.r. I also worked on a corporate magazine for several years, so I was published frequently in that format. My first novel sale was an historical romance, Love's Pirate. I published six more in that genre before taking up a life of crime.

  Q. What is your (daily or weekly) writing routine—or, considering your active family life, is routine the wrong word?

  A. Now that our kids (three girls, nineteen, twenty-seven, and thirty-one) are older, my routine is more settled. I'm not a morning person, so I write in the afternoons, usually five days a week, from one to five. I edit and revise in the noon hour, when I'm fully conscious. This is not to say that there aren't interruptions—the washer and dryer are in the basement, which is where I write, so I do laundry while I'm working. Also, I occasionally wander out into the yard and weed.

  Q. Longtime readers of your Alpine novels are aware of the real-life inspiration for the series. (Your account serves as the foreword for The Alpine Advocate, the first book featuring Emma Lord.) But for newcomers, could you explain the origins of your fictional Alpine?

  A. Alpine was once a real town, a small logging community off Highway 2, eight miles west of Stevens Pass in the Cascades. It was also a mile from the highway, which meant the only access was by train, or, for the very hardy, hiking a mile uphill, usually in snow. My maternal grandparents and other relatives lived there from about 1916 to 1921. My grandparents had six kids, one of whom was born in Alpine. (Grandma went into labor when she fell in a snow bank in late April 1917.) There were never more than two hundred people in the town, which was actually owned by Carl Clemans. In 1926, my parents were married and my dad took a job in the mill. My folks lived there for a couple of years, leaving shortly before the logging operation halted and the town was evacuated and purposely burned to the ground. This was because Mr. Clemans was afraid that hobos on the trains would move into the abandoned buildings and set fires that would burn down the woods. (Bear in mind, the depression was just beginning.) In recent years, a group of train enthusiasts have been working their way along the old Great Northern route (now the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe) and have uncovered two cornerstones. Not only does this pinpoint Alpine (which had previously been swallowed up by second-growth timber), but it indicates where either the mill itself or the social hall was located. They were the only buildings in Alpine that had foundations. The houses weren't much more than shacks, or so I'm told. I was born almost ten years after the town was destroyed, but all my life I heard wonderful, nostalgic tales about Alpine, including how the troops would pass through on their way to “Over There” during World War One. While I'm sure Alpine wasn't the Utopia that my relatives described, there was definitely a strong sense of community. Being so isolated, they had to make up their own amusements, and they seemed to throw themselves into these activities with enormous enthusiasm and a sense of fun, doing everything from Shakespeare's plays to musicals. In fact, I have several of their yearbooks and the social calendar is absolutely jammed. The friendships that were formed have endured through my generation and into the next. Alpine had its flaws and its hardships, but I never heard any of its former residents say a negative thing about living there. I decided that it was well worth reviving, albeit in a contemporary framework.

  Q. Emma Lord is one of those series characters who keeps growing, evolving — in her private life and in her associa-tion with her colleagues and neighbors. Without spoiling any plots for those readers who might not be Alpine “com-pletists,” could you discuss some of Emma's growth?

  A. Emma is nudging fifty. Can she change? Does she want to? Her brother, Ben, understands her better than anyone else, and he talks to her very candidly in The Alpine Kindred. He tells her that she, like him, was never meant for the married vocation. She wants to think she'd like to be married, but she actually treasures her independence too highly. Now, as I'm in between books, I think she'll remain single. However, characters have a way of surprising the author, so I'm not carving my predictions in concrete. Still, I see her growing in other ways, perhaps coming to terms with her single state. I also believe she'll grow spiritually, especially if Adam carries out his decision to become a priest. However, she will never feel quite at home in Alpine, if only because the natives won't let her. After all, Emma is a city girl at heart, though it rarely shows in the books.

  Q. What's next for Emma Lord — and Mary Daheim?

  A. Emma is about to find herself in deep trouble. You cannot be a newspaper publisher in a small town without making enemies. So far, Emma has been lucky. But nobody's luck lasts forever, and she is about to encounter someone who genuinely hates her. Emma will have to deal not only with danger but with the issue of hate and what it means to the hater and the hatee. (Did I just make up a word?) What's next for Mary Daheim is The Alpine L book. I don't know what it stands for yet, but it should probably have something to do with hatred.

  Q. We know by your own admission that you don't read many contemporary mystery authors. Could you elaborate on why that is?

  A. I don't read many contemporary mysteries because I don't want to risk copying other authors. I would never do that consciously, but it can be done subconscious
ly. There's also the danger of ego-bruising. “How could anybody write a book that's so dumb and sell more than I do?” Or, “How could anybody write a book that's so much better than mine?” It's rather like critical reviews. As Richard Burton once said, defending his rationale for never reading a review of his own performances, “If they're bad, they're too upsetting, and if they're good, they're never good enough.”

  Q. When you do have time for pleasure reading, to which authors (and what kind of books) do you turn?

  A. I read and reread a lot of old favorite!?—Christie, Sayers, Rinehart, Ross Macdonald (who taught me more about writing than any class I ever took). I also read Ross Thomas. But my interest in history has always been great, so I read quite a bit of history and biography. Right now, I'm reading Cal Ripken Jr.'s The Only Way I Know. Before that, I finished The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. The made-for-TV movie Gettysburg was based on that work. Some day I'd like to write a historical biography of Cecily Neville, Richard Ill's mother, who was known as the Rose of Raby.

  In Alpine, murder always seems to occur

  in alphabetical order…

  THE EMMA LORD MYSTERIES

  by Mary Daheim

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  Published by The Random House Publishing Group

  Copyright © 1998 by Mary Daheim

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  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-96262

  eISBN: 978-0-307-55428-4