by Mary Daheim
Laughing as she put the hood of her car coat over her dark red hair, Paula headed for the door. “‘Women of a certain age,’ huh? Aren't we all?”
She was right. Paula was a few years older than I, a woman of the world who appeared to have found contentment in a refurbished farmhouse down the road at Gold Bar.
“Hold it,” I called after her. “You have to fill me in on those simmering stories at the college. You know I won't print any of it until charges are filed.”
Paula grimaced. “I hate to be a snitch.”
Making a clucking sound with my tongue, I reminded her that she couldn't wiggle off the hook so easily. “I need background,” I told her. “When you work with deadlines, you snatch up all the preparation you can get.”
Paula sighed and leaned an elbow against the door-jamb. “Okay. I have no names of the students involved in the date rape, but they were two separate incidents, four different kids, all off-campus. Or so President Cardenas insists. The sexual-harassment charge stems from a nineteen-year-old male who is charging his female instructor with ‘excessive fondling, ‘ whatever that means. Again, I don't know the student's name, but I think the teacher involved is Holly St. Sebastien in botany.”
I ran Holly through my memory bank: single, mid-thirties, on the plumpish side, pretty if she tried harder, given to giggle fits. “What about the Naked Professor?”
“Sad case,” Paula murmured. “It's Earl Havlik, one of the original faculty members when the college started out in the high school.”
I nodded. I recalled Earl as a tall, spare man with glasses and a rather large nose.
“Earl's wife moved to Alpine with him, but she hated it,” Paula continued. “Mrs. P.—I think her name is Margaret—left him about a year ago. He hasn't been the same since. Maybe you know he boarded up all the windows in his house out on the Burl Creek Road.”
I had heard someone mention it—probably Vida—but didn't make the connection with Earl Havlik until now. “Poor guy,” I remarked. “Hasn't Nat Cardenas or somebody else at the college tried to get him into counseling?”
“That I don't know,” Paula replied. “I'll keep you posted.” She exited with a wave, and I heard her greet Vida and Scott in a breezy manner. Scott was cheerful and polite; Vida grunted a goodbye. Sometimes my House & Home editor is possessive of me when it comes to my other female acquaintances.
As soon as Paula had left the newsroom, I informed Scott about the alleged—my favorite journalistic insurance word—activity at Skykomish Community College. As Carla's replacement, my new reporter had inherited the campus beat.
“Tame,” Scott commented. “You should have heard the weirdo stuff that went on at U of O.”
I nodded. “I graduated from Oregon, remember? I was there in the late Sixties. It wasn't Berkeley, but there was action.”
“Such a silly time,” Vida declared, pulling a sheet of foolscap from her typewriter. “We had our share of protesters here, too. Some of the loggers put an end to that nonsense.”
Since even in more peaceable eras, the loggers—particularly those who were unemployed—spent their leisure hours pitching each other through the windows of the Icicle Creek Tavern, I didn't doubt Vida's statement.
“It was chaotic,” I allowed, remembering anti-Vietnam War protests, equal-rights marches for blacks and women, and the violence that had gone along with what basically were just causes. “It changed the face of America, for better or for worse.”
Vida made a tsk-tsk noise. “The women. So ridiculous, demanding equality with men. Why lower yourself?”
Scott stifled a laugh as Leo Walsh entered the office, dusting snow off his dark green parka. “It's started again,” my ad manager said in disgust. “I'm used to the rain, but this damned snow for five months a year makes me wonder why I ever left California.”
Leo, who had spent much of his life in the L.A. area, never seemed to get the knack of driving in snow. When the first flurries hit in late October, he totaled his Toyota by skidding into a mail truck parked by the Alpine Medical Clinic. Fortunately, Leo hadn't been hurt, and the car had been replaced by a newer model, but his insurance premium had jumped.
Vida was regarding Leo with her gimlet eye. “What point is there in living where the weather never changes? How do you know if it's April or November? Honestly, I'd go quite mad.”
Leo chuckled, albeit grimly. “The weatherman in Southern California has the easiest job in the world, Duchess,” he said, using the nickname that Vida despised. “‘Sunny today with highs in the seventies and lows in the fifties.’ Those guys—and gals, nowadays—can't go wrong.”
“They already went wrong,” Vida retorted, “by living in California.” She inserted another sheet of paper and began tap-tap-tapping away.
I was headed back into my office when Leo called to me. “I just saw Paula Rubens leaving The Advocate,” he said, placing his parka on the back of his chair and lowering his voice. “Tell me, Emma, am I uglier than I thought I was?”
Leo wasn't ugly at all, in my opinion. A trifle homely, perhaps, but in an attractive, careworn way. “Why do you ask?” I inquired with a quirky smile.
My ad manager ran a freckled hand through his graying auburn hair. “Paula and I went to dinner about a month ago, Café Flore out on the highway, fine food, fine wines, fine conversation. Or so I thought. I've asked her out a couple of other times, but she's always got some excuse. You know her. What do you think?”
“I think,” I said honestly, “that she's extremely busy. Paula was only supposed to be part-time at the college with her glass-making class, but they've got her teaching introductory art as well, and right now she's putting an exhibit together. Not to mention that she has her private clients. Christmas is coming, it's a hectic time of year for her.”
Leo tipped his head to one side, apparently considering my rationale. “I suppose. But I'm beginning to think Rejection is my middle name.” His soulful brown eyes rested on my face.
I winced. Leo and I did things together, but none of them included sex. His off-and-on-again romance with Delphine Corson, the local florist, had come to a dead end several months earlier. I knew—and Leo knew I knew—that he'd always hoped we might have some kind of future, or at least a fling. He also knew why that wasn't likely.
“Try her again after fall quarter is over,” I suggested. “Paula's a very focused person.”
Leo made a self-deprecating face. “Okay, why not? Or,” he asked, his voice now down to a whisper, “how about dinner tonight?”
He'd caught me off guard. “Sure. What time?”
Leo was looking surprised. “Seven?”
I nodded. “Sounds good.”
He broke into a grin. “You drive?”
I grinned back. “My pleasure.”
Leo sobered. “I wish.”
Glancing at my other staff members to make sure they hadn't overheard, I tried to keep smiling. Scott was on the phone. At the typewriter, Vida never broke stride.
But I knew she'd heard us. Vida hears everything.
I was on my way to the courthouse to pick up a copy of the county commissioners' statement on the bridge proposal when Sheriff Milo Dodge loped out of his headquarters, shouting my name. I stopped in front of the Clemans Building and waited for Milo to cross Front Street.
“You see Crystal Clear yet?” he asked, pulling up the collar on his brown regulation jacket.
“Yes.” I bit off the word. “Are you as annoyed as I am?”
Milo's long face contorted slightly. “Hell, I don't know. Should I be?”
My shoulders slumped in disbelief. “Doesn't it bother you to have our private life in print?”
The sheriff wasn't looking at me, but somewhere over the top of my head, through the snow, toward the brown brick bulk of the courthouse. “Well… I wasn't sure that Crystal was talking about me.”
“What?” I shrieked. “How many so-called enemies do you think I've slept with?”
Amer Wasco, whose
cobbler shop was in the next block, shot me a startled look and decided not to stop for a chat. Head down, he hurried past Milo and me without so much as a murmur.
Nor did Milo lower his eyes to meet mine. “That's not what I meant,” he mumbled. “I mean, who is the enemy?”
“Anyone in authority. Public officials. Men. And,” I added with a touch of bitterness, “me.”
Finally, Milo's gaze made contact. “Oh. I figured sleeping with the enemy was just a term. You know—a slogan or something.”
Milo Dodge is not stupid. But he can be slow, or, to put it more kindly, deliberate. “Unless I'm the one who's dense,” I said between gritted teeth, “Crystal Bird used the word literally, and was referring to you. To us, I should say, and our former relationship.”
Six months ago, perhaps even six weeks ago, I could not have been so blunt without raising Milo's hackles. But after a long and painful cooling-off period, we seemed to have recaptured some of the friendship that had existed between us before we became lovers.
Milo wiped at some snowflakes that had plastered his nose and cheeks. “I don't know about that. I still think maybe Crystal was just playing with words. A metaphor, that's the word I was thinking of.” He looked vaguely pleased with himself.
Maybe Milo wasn't stupid, but he was certainly being obtuse. “Okay.” I sighed. “Have it your way. Let's hope the rest of Skykomish County will have the same reaction. Personally, I like keeping my reputation as unsullied as possible. Which, I might add, is no mean feat when you're the local newspaper publisher. You won't believe the calls and letters I'm going to get on this issue of Crystal Clear. Last issue, when she implied that I was a nincompoop, twenty-seven people wrote to The Advocate to say they agreed with Crystal a hundred percent.”
Milo kicked at the snow with his heavy boots. “You're getting all worked up over nothing, Emma.”
I hesitated. Maybe Milo was right, in some weird, male way. My disposition still wasn't on an even keel, though I'd been able to kick the sleeping pills Doc Dewey had given me back in August when I was averaging as little as three hours of sleep per night.
“At least,” I allowed, “Crystal doesn't put out her little rag very often.”
“That's right,” Milo said, tugging at his earlobe. “Like I told you, I wondered if maybe I should be pissed. But I'm not. Forget it. You won't hear anything from her again for a month.”
Given Crystal's past publishing history, I knew Milo was right.
But it turned out that he was wrong.
The snow had stopped when Leo and I drove the two-plus miles from his apartment on Cedar Street to Café Flore just off Highway 2. We had a pleasant, leisurely dinner in the restaurant's French-countryside surroundings. For a couple of hours, Leo could pretend he was in Beverly Hills and I could imagine being in Seattle. The concept bemused us, and we discussed our fantasies at length. While I have been known to confide in my ad manager, and vice versa, I found it best to keep some distance between us. Every so often, I feel that Leo could be a dangerous man. For me. I have a knack for choosing the wrong partners.
It was snowing hard on the way back into town, and I was glad that it was a short trip. Although I've become used to winter driving in Alpine, I still respect the potential treachery of snow and ice.
I also appreciate winter's beauty. As I pulled my aging Jaguar into the carport, I smiled at the sight of my little log house nestled among the snow-covered evergreens. I'd left a couple of lights on, and they glowed warmly in the dark.
The living room still smelled of turkey from the previous day when I'd hosted my staff to Thanksgiving dinner. Vida, who usually spent the holiday with one of her three daughters and their families, had joined us this year. Meg and her husband had gone to Hawaii, Beth had come down with severe stomach flu, and it was Amy's turn to spend the day with her husband Ted's family in Monroe.
After hanging up my duffel coat in the small closet by the front door, I checked the answering machine. One call was registered. I pressed the message button and heard the voice of my son calling from the seminary in St. Paul.
“Mom,” said Adam, with that new maturity he'd acquired since discovering he had a religious vocation, “Uncle Ben and I'll both be flying into Seattle on the twenty-third of December. He's meeting me in San Francisco so I can introduce him to my dad. See you soon.”
Adam's voice was so assured, so casual, yet so damned serene. The news sent me into a paroxysm, and I collapsed on the sofa. I sat there for at least five minutes before picking up the phone and calling Vida.
“Now, now,” she began after I'd delivered Adam's bombshell, “why shouldn't your brother finally meet Tommy?”
My former lover and the father of my son was Tom or Mr. Cavanaugh to the rest of the world. But after Vida met him only once, he was Tommy. Naturally, he hadn't seemed to mind.
“Everybody except me seems to be in contact with Tom these days,” I replied, anger and frustration causing my voice to tremble along with the rest of me. “It's been almost a year since his wife died, and I still haven't heard a word from him.”
Sandra Cavanaugh, the neurotic woman that Tom hadn't quite been able to give up for me, had been found dead in the master bathroom of their San Francisco mansion right after the holidays. Leo, who had once worked for Tom, had finally learned that she had suffered coronary arrest, possibly induced by an overdose of her many medications.
“That's no reason for Ben not to meet Tommy,” Vida pointed out. “See here, Emma, you kept Tommy and Adam apart for twenty years. Given the circumstances, I'm not blaming you for that. But when you finally let Tommy meet your son, they began to develop a relationship. It's always sounded mutually beneficial. Why deny the two of them the pleasure of each other's company? Or become upset because your brother wants to meet his nephew's father? You're not using sense.”
Sense, as in common sense, was Vida's byword. I sighed into the receiver. “I suppose it's because I'm still mad at Tom. I would have thought he owed me at least a phone call after Sandra died. Or have you forgotten that at one point not too long ago he asked me to marry him?”
“Certainly not,” Vida huffed. “I don't forget things. But he had to withdraw the proposal because he was too guilt-ridden to leave Sandra in her precarious state of mental health. I admire Tommy for that. So should you. Now he's probably still feeling guilty because Sandra may have taken those pills deliberately. A full year is the proper period to mourn. As usual, you're being too hard on him, Emma.”
Vida was being too easy on Tom. As usual. Still, her words calmed me. “I'll be interested in Ben's reaction to Tom,” I said. “He's only heard my side of the story.”
“And Adam's,” Vida remarked. “As a priest, I'm sure Ben will be very understanding.”
Vida, who is Presbyterian, sometimes imbued the clergy with more virtue than I would give them. Ben might be a priest, but he was also my brother. Somehow, I secretly hoped that he would kick Tom's butt. It seemed the least he could do for his poor abandoned sister.
Of course I would never admit it, not even to Vida, but what I wanted most was to hear from Tom.
ON OUR PUBLICATION date the following Wednesday, we were scooped by a special edition of Crystal Clear. There was little comfort in the fact that The Advocate was not alone. Crystal Bird had also beaten the met dailies, the other weeklies, and the broadcast media to the punch on a story about a logging ban near Snoqualmie Pass.
“How in hell did she manage to get this leaked to her?” I demanded of my staff as I waved the latest copy around the newsroom. “Who does she know in Seattle or Olympia where this story must have been broken?”
“It might have come out of Wenatchee,” Scott Chamoud pointed out. “The timber involved is basically in the Wenatchee Forest. In fact, if you look at the map, the tract is close to Stampede Pass. I don't see it as much of a local story.”
As I scanned the big map on the wall behind Scott's desk, I saw that he had a point. Nearby Stevens Pass had been me
ntioned in Crystal's story only as a point of reference. Or to give the article some local impact, since some of our truck drivers freelanced in other parts of the state. I was still galled, however. “It's the principle of the thing,” I groused. “Wenatchee today, the Alpine Lakes Wilderness tomorrow.”
Leo rested his chin on one fist. “You're seeing demons where they don't exist, babe. When they start talking about Stevens Pass, and Crystal scoops us, you can pull your hair out by the handfuls.”
Scott and Leo were probably right. I acknowledged their words of wisdom with a faint nod, then returned to my office to finish reading the unexpected edition of Crystal Clear.
The standard format for the publication was three to four separate articles. She used computer clip art, usually of a generic nature, and displayed a certain visual flair. The logging piece featured a half-column illustration of a cedar tree. The only color in the publication was the logo, the headlines, and the subheads, all of which were deep blue in the current edition. Grudgingly, I admired the graphics, if not the contents.
The second article was an interview with an unidentified woman in Sultan whom Crystal referred to as Zippy. Pointing out that Zippy was not her real name—a damned good thing, in my opinion—Crystal related that the interviewee had escaped from an abusive boyfriend and sought sanctuary in a battered-women's shelter in Everett. Her sanity had been restored, her wounds had been healed, and her life had been handed back to her on a silver platter. Naturally, Crystal went on to point out that if only the local dunces, including me, would take action on a similar shelter, half the female population of Sky-komish County would be rescued, and move on to fame and fortune. Or some damned thing. Feeling more perverse than usual, I skipped the last couple of paragraphs. Since I had encouraged at least one battered Alpine wife to leave her violent husband, I felt it was unfair to point a finger at me.
Unfortunately, Crystal didn't stop there. The third and last article was brief, but galling: