by Mary Daheim
“The third party?” Tom asked as he leaned against the counter, mug in hand.
“Me.” I gave him a feeble smile. “I went to see Marisa right before Crystal was killed. How the heck did you get this much out of her?”
Tom's smile was sly. “I told her I was a West Coast publishing magnate canvassing some of the independent weeklies. I wanted to know how often the present owners encountered legal problems. You, apparently, don't get involved in litigation.”
“Luck,” I responded. “And caution.”
“Which then led me to ask about any other publications in the county,” Tom said. “That brought up Crystal Clear. I professed amazement at how such a one-horse newsletter could rile so many people. That was bull, of course. It's always the self-published rags that stir up trouble because that's their owners' intent. If they didn't have an ax to grind, they wouldn't go into the business.”
“That's true,” I remarked. “Congratulations. Frankly, I thought you'd hit a stone wall.”
“I was very magnatelike. I think I impressed her.” Tom grinned over the rim of his coffee mug.
“You're very impressive,” I gushed as the phone rang. Reaching behind Tom, I heard Milo's voice at the other end.
“Good,” Milo said. “You're home.”
“Where else would I be on a day like this?” I countered.
“The Peabodys are plowing,” Milo said, and judging from the interference, he was on his cell phone. “They're up to Cedar, so you'll be clear in another four blocks. Mind if I stop by? I've something to tell you.”
“Ahh …” I locked gazes with Tom. “Can't you do it now? It'll be at least half an hour before the Peabodys get here.”
“No,” Milo replied. “This thing's breaking up. Hell, I can park on Alpine Way and walk to your place. Besides, I owe you one. I've been kind of a butt lately.”
The admission must have cost Milo. But I'd have preferred him not finding Tom at my house. I didn't need the awkwardness; I'd rather not embarrass any of us. “It's five long blocks from Alpine Way to here,” I said. “Believe me, it's all but impossible to get through. You know how the snow gets deeper higher up. I'm marooned.”
“Then I'll shovel you out,” Milo said, though the squawks and tweets on the line made him barely audible. “See you in a bit.”
“Great.” I stood there holding the receiver and looking bleak. “Milo's coming.”
“So?” Tom's gaze was level.
I started to throw up my hands, then opted for discretion. “You don't mind him seeing you here?”
Tom shook his head. “Where else could I have gone last night?” The twinkle was back in his eyes.
So Tom didn't mind. But I did. Not for my own sake—somebody in town already thought I was a whore and a killer—but for Milo's. I might never have been in love with him, but I cared.
“To hell with it,” I said, picking up a dishrag and slinging it at the sink.
Tom stepped in front of me. “Don't get upset. I didn't expect you to live a celibate life. I've always wondered about you and Dodge.”
“Oh.” I let out a big sigh. So that's what accounted for his attitude toward the sheriff. Tom already knew, and didn't condemn me. Not that he had any right to criticize. “Milo and I were friends, then lovers. Now we're friends again, but he doesn't like that very much. Still, I'm very fond of him.”
“A good choice,” Tom remarked, brushing my hair with his lips. “Solid. Dependable. Reliable.”
I jerked away. “That was always the problem. Describe Milo, and you're describing a Kenworth truck.”
Tom's expression was droll. “You prefer a sportier, less trustworthy type?”
“You're not that,” I said in a tired voice. “I trust you. But I couldn't rely on you. You weren't here.”
“And Milo was.” Tom spoke lightly as he moved away and picked up his coffee mug. “What do you think he wants to tell you?”
“Something about Nat Cardenas, I suppose.” A sudden chill came over me. “Good God, do you think Nat killed Crystal?”
The phone rang before Tom could reply. This time it was Vida, and as I should have predicted, she was agog.
“Billy called me from the sheriff's office,” she announced. “He was ever so reticent, though he knows better than to hide things from his aunt. They found some incriminating evidence about Nat Cardenas at Crystal's cabin.”
“Such as what?” I scribbled Vida's name on a notepad I kept on the counter. Tom, looking amused, nodded.
“That's what Billy, the little wretch, wouldn't tell me,” she groused. “The only reason he called was because he was supposed to have the weekend off, and he promised last night that he'd shovel my walk. Then he called this morning to say he couldn't come. He had to work, as there had been some sort of emergency. The most I could get out of him was that it had something to do with Nat Cardenas.”
I was reluctant to admit that Milo was on his way. What was worse, I didn't know if I should tell Vida that Tom was with me. In her contrary way, she would be ecstatic.
Tom made the decision for me by gently but firmly removing the phone from my grasp. “Hello, Vida. It's Tom Cavanaugh. How are you?”
I could hear Vida's gasp from six inches away. Then she sputtered and glowed, though I couldn't make out much of what she said to Tom.
“Yes”—he laughed—“It's been quite a while. I hope I'll see you while I'm here.”
More sputters, more glowing. I heard the words dinner and lovely casserole. Vida's casseroles weren't lovely. They usually tasted like library paste. Finally, Tom handed the phone back to me.
“So wonderful,” Vida enthused. “Didn't I tell you? Aren't you thrilled? Patience is such an outstanding virtue.” Then, her tone much altered, she asked again about Milo. “What should we do? Shall I call?”
“He's coming here,” I confessed. “I'll let you know what he has to say as soon as he leaves.”
“Coming to your house?” Vida shrieked. “Oh, my! Oh, dear.”
“Don't fuss, Vida. I'll manage.”
“Call me at once,” she commanded. “Or should I try to come, too?”
“You can't,” I said. Vida lived on Tyee Street, two blocks from where the Peabody brothers had last been reported working.
“Nonsense,” Vida retorted. “Billy said the Peabodys were on their way. I can always walk. It's not that far.”
It was a good five blocks, two of them uphill. The side streets were always the last to be cleared. “Don't,” I insisted. “It's too dangerous. Maybe later in the day we'll all be able to get out.”
“Rubbish,” Vida replied, though not as forcefully. “We'll see.” She hung up.
Tom was laughing. “She's a marvelous old girl. I wish I had one like her on every paper.”
“You'd think twice,” I muttered, “if you had to cope with her on a daily basis. Sometimes she can be pretty overbearing.”
“You'd be lost without her,” Tom remarked, and of course he was right.
A pounding at the side door startled us both. I hurried to peer out the kitchen window and saw what must have been Milo, looking like a very large snowman.
“Come in,” I urged. “You must be half-frozen.”
Snow fell from the sheriff, creating its own little drift at the entrance to the kitchen. Milo wasn't wearing his regulation clothes, but a heavy parka over snow pants and a hat with flaps that tied under his long chin. All I could make out was his mouth and nose.
He took one look at Tom and swore. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, “it's Cavanaugh.”
“Sheriff Dodge,” Tom said, extending a hand. “Your bravery does you credit.”
Milo reached out a wet, stiff glove. “Bravery? This is nothing. I'm used to it.” He glanced at me. I didn't know if he was referring to the snow or to our breakup.
“Coffee?” Tom inquired, nodding at the carafe on the counter.
Milo shook his head. He was shedding snow all over the floor, but didn't seem to notice. With
a struggle, he pulled off his gloves and removed the heavy flannel hat.
“When did you get in?” he asked Tom.
“Last night,” Tom replied evenly. “Just before the blizzard hit. Did you hear about Emma's brick?”
“Sam told me.” Milo's hazel eyes regarded me with something I couldn't quite fathom. Disappointment? Anger? Irony? “It's not the first time.”
“It's the first time at the house,” I put in, realizing that I hadn't spoken until now. “The other rocks and such have arrived at the office.”
“It's the weekend,” Milo said, apparently dismissing my brick. “Yeah, I will have some of that coffee.” He moved in front of Tom and went to the cupboard. “Don't bother. I can fend for myself.”
I winced. I seemed to be in the middle of a turf war. Milo was establishing his familiarity with my kitchen—and thus, with me.
“I had to question Nat Cardenas this morning,” Milo said as he got out a mug and poured his coffee. “Sam and Dustin finally got around to going through all the stuff we'd taken from Crystal's place last night. They called me first thing to tell me what they'd found.” The sheriff sat down in the chair Tom had vacated. “It was pretty damned interesting.”
“In what way?” I asked, also sitting down.
Milo had unfastened his parka and was taking out a pack of cigarettes. “We'd taken all of Crystal's business papers, along with her financial statements and computer disks. We saved the disks for last, which was probably dumb, since we didn't turn up much in the other stuff.” He paused to light a cigarette, then offered the pack to me. I declined; Tom looked surprised. “She had her newsletter files on three of the disks,” Milo continued. “Some of it was obviously being saved for future editions. One of the files was on Nat Cardenas. It seems he's a bit of a playboy.”
My jaw dropped. “Nat cheats on Justine? Did Crystal name names?”
“Only one,” Milo replied. “Some woman in Olympia. We'll question her, too. But there were others. Crystal referred to them—three different women—only by vicinity. Sultan, Monroe, and Everett. I went to his house today to ask him about this mess.”
I was still staring. “In front of Justine?”
Milo chuckled. “Hell, no. Even I'm not that insensitive.” He shot a quick look at Tom, who had remained standing. I wondered if the sheriff thought I preferred Tom because of his sensitivity. If so, he was wrong.
“Cardenas denied anything serious,” Milo continued, “and did the usual, ‘Why can't a man have a woman for a friend?' bit. We all know it doesn't work that way.” This time the sheriff's pause was barely noticeable. “At least not with four different women. Not that I blame Cardenas in a way—Mrs. C. is so frosty that you could freeze a chicken on her butt.”
If Tom was comfortable with this monologue, I certainly wasn't. Shifting in my chair, I managed to hit my knee on the table leg. “So what happened this morning?” I asked, grimacing with pain.
Milo's smile was thin. “Cardenas would rather hang himself from the roof of the college ad building than be embarrassed in public. Just because he's a big shot, he figures he can get away with things. Maybe even murder.”
“Did you arrest him?” Tom broke in.
Milo shook his head. “No, not yet. I'm not jumping the gun this time.”
The allusion was to a different homicide, where the sheriff had uncharacteristically moved too soon to make an arrest and almost ended up with a lawsuit in his lap.
“But I kept pressing him,” Milo went on, finally taking off his parka. “It seemed kind of funny to me that Dustin had stopped Cardenas so close to Crystal's place the night she was murdered. After about twenty minutes of badgering, he admitted he'd been in contact with her and had gone to Baring to try to reason with her.”
“You mean about the information she had on him?” I asked.
“Right,” Milo answered. “She'd called him a week or so earlier to tell him she planned to run a piece on his affairs. Unless he could think of a good reason why she shouldn't.”
“Blackmail?” Tom suggested.
Milo tugged at his ear. “I don't know about that. None of the other stuff we've found out about Crystal leads me to think she was a blackmailer. Her withdrawals way outnumbered her deposits at the Bank of Alpine. Of course she could have had another account somewhere that we haven't found yet.”
“So she was—in her perverse way—doing Nat a favor?” I said, getting my nerves under control now that we seemed to be on less dangerous ground.
“Maybe,” Milo allowed, “she was covering her own ass. I'm hearing only his side of it. Crystal knew about these women. Somebody actually told her the name of that one, Astrid Something-or-Other, who's a lobbyist for higher education in Olympia. The one in Sultan is an ex-student—not a kid, an older woman, older than Cardenas. I'm not sure about the ones in Everett and Monroe. Anyway, Cardenas said there was nothing romantic with any of them. Crystal thought otherwise. So Cardenas went to Baring to explain, and when he got there, Crystal was already dead. He was going to call our office from her place, but he heard a noise outside and said he panicked and bolted. He was so upset—according to him—that he drove erratically, which is why he got picked up. Cardenas didn't want to admit he'd left the murder scene, so he made up the story about having a few drinks. That's why he didn't take the Breathalyzer test. He wasn't drunk, just scared. Or so he says.”
“Do you believe him?” I asked, trying to make sense out of everything Milo had told us.
The sheriff sighed and put out his cigarette in an ashtray I'd taken from one of the kitchen drawers. “I don't know. If he isn't lying, then I'd sure as hell like to know who made the noise that scared him off.”
“The killer?” I shuddered at the thought. For all I knew, the killer could have been in the house while I was there.
“Could be,” Milo admitted. “But now we've got to look closer at this Dimitroff accident. What made him drive like a madman?”
“Fill me in on the time frame,” Tom requested, finally having fetched one of my dining-room chairs into the kitchen.
Milo took a notepad from an inside pocket of his parka. “Ten-seventeen when Cardenas was cited. Make that closer to ten-twenty, ten twenty-two. Dustin likes to keep his watch a few minutes fast, though I wish he'd synchronize like the rest of us. He'd just sent Cardenas on his way and gotten back in the squad car when somebody called him on a cell phone to report Victor Dimitroff's accident. He was at the scene half a mile down the road at ten-forty. Dimitroff, by the way, was heading west.”
“Dimitroff's the composer and possible boyfriend, right?” Tom saw Milo nod. “Except that Crystal was still married to Husband Number Two, Aaron… I forget.”
“Conley,” I put in as another loud knock sounded at the back door. “Now what?” I got up to peek outside.
Only Vida could have done herself up to look like a clumsily wrapped Christmas package. She was wearing wavy red, white, and green stripes. Under the patches of snow, the fuzzy garment seemed to be mohair and might have been a coat. Something that might have been a belt was wound around her torso at least three times. The collar was pulled up to her nose and she wore a red-and-white striped knit hat. She'd collected so much snow on her person that she looked as if she had rolled all the way from her house at Sixth and Tyee to mine at Fourth and Fir.
“Well!” she exclaimed, tromping into the kitchen. “It looks like you have company. Good morning, Milo.” She gave the sheriff a nod. “Tommy!” Vida engulfed him in an embrace. “How nice!” she cried, her voice muffled. “And such a surprise.”
“Vida.” Tom grinned, pretending not to notice that he was now covered with crusted snow. “You look … amazing.”
Vida beamed and finally stood back. “Yes. Well, now.” She paused, and Tom took the cue.
“Let me get a chair from the dining room,” he offered.
“Thank you, Tommy.” Her gaze traveled to me. “I hate to ask, Emma dear, but could I have a cup of hot tea? It's rather
brisk outside.”
Dutifully, I put the teakettle on the stove. “You're lucky you didn't break something,” I remarked, and almost wished she had. What had started out as a romantic snowbound idyll was now utterly shattered. In novels, Tom and I would have whiled away the hours in bed. In real life, I had a jealous sheriff and a snoopy House & Home editor crowding my small kitchen.
“You could use more coffee,” Milo said, trying in vain for a refill.
“I'll make some more,” I muttered. “Sit down.”
“Are you having fun?” Milo whispered as he passed me on his way back to the table.
“Shut up,” I snapped, observing that Vida apparently couldn't hear us. She was in the kitchen doorway, talking to Tom and unlayering herself from the mohair shroud.
It took ten minutes for Milo to bring Vida up to speed. It took half that time to make her tea and put on another pot of coffee. Since it was going on noon, I asked if anyone wanted a sandwich. Tom and Vida declined. Milo asked what I had to offer.
“Tuna, chicken, or ham,” I replied, giving the sheriff an evil look.
“Ham,” Milo replied. “Got any cheese?”
While I made Milo a sandwich and piled some chips on a plate, Vida commented on the sheriff's interview with Nat Cardenas.
“After he found Crystal, do you think he searched for her files or notes or whatever you call those computer things?”
Apparently, Milo had wondered about that, too. “He might have. Which could explain why he didn't call us. He was too busy.”
“Where were the disks?” I inquired, handing Milo his plate.
“She had boxes of the stuff,” Milo answered, “which is why it took us so long to get through all of it. It would have taken Cardenas hours and hours to make a search. Crystal's labeling system was kind of weird. She used sort of a code, with just key words or letters. The Cardenas disk had ‘ICU' on it. When Dustin first saw it, he figured it had something to do with the hospital and the need for another doctor. You know, Intensive Care Unit.”