by Mary Daheim
“Ah!” Vida’s eyes lighted up. And then they snapped with annoyance. “You mean those stupid men—including my nephew—at the sheriff’s office hadn’t figured that out right away?”
I gave Vida a wry look. “To be fair, they may have thought that since Linda’s car had been driven to the clearing and back, the murderer had taken the handbag along and then put it back.”
“But the keys had been left on an end table at Linda’s condo,” Vida quibbled. “Oh, dear.” She ran a hand through her already disordered gray curls. “The killer was bold! In and out of the condo and its garage! And hauling Linda’s body to the car! So risky!”
“How risky?” I pictured the short walk from Linda’s back door to the elevator. It was dark. No one claimed to have seen anyone, including Linda, come or go.
Vida, who was sitting on her stockinged feet, gave me a quizzical look. “Did you save that diagram you made of the condo complex?”
I had, though I couldn’t find it at first on my messy desk. I’d torn it out of my notebook and put it under a pile of news releases. By the time I came back out of my office, Leo had returned from the Grocery Basket.
“Money in the bank,” Leo said, waggling the two-page mock-up in my direction. “Or is that a bad joke around here these days?”
I heaved a big sigh. “I’ve been putting off talking to Marv Petersen. But it’s got to be done. We’ll have to use the story for this week’s edition. I’ll talk to him when I cash my paycheck.”
Vida was admiring the Grocery Basket ad with its sketch of a snow-covered New England village that could have passed for Alpine if the ground hadn’t been so flat and the buildings so tidy. “Very nice,” she said. “It’s such a relief not to see all that old clip art Ed used to run.”
Leo seemed genuinely pleased by Vida’s compliment. “There’s clip art and there’s clip art. These days, with all the computer technology, it’s easy to come up with fresh ideas.”
Vida gave a small snort. “Ed didn’t think so.” She checked her boots, which were drying by the radiator, then sat back down at her desk. I handed her the condo diagram. Vida studied it for a moment, and then nodded. “There was risk, yes. But not as much as you’d think. What if Linda left her car parked out in Maple Lane? It’s well shielded by trees and shrubs. All the killer would have to do is strangle her, then carry or drag the body out the front door and down the walk to the car. What’s the distance? Ten, fifteen feet?”
Leo’s attention was captured by our discussion. “What’s going on? Does Milo Drudge think Linda got whacked in her condo?”
I told him that was the case, adding a brief explanation as to why Milo had come to such a conclusion. Now Leo was also studying the diagram. “Parc Pines, right? They had a vacancy when I moved to town. I looked at the place, but decided to wait and see if Boss Woman here would keep me.” Leo winked at Vida and jabbed me in the ribs.
I ignored Leo. “Across Fir Street is the veterinarian’s office, which would be closed at night. Next door to Dr. Medved is the mobile-home park, but it has a high wall around it. I doubt that anyone could see into Maple Lane except maybe a couple of units in the apartment building. But going down the elevator and into the garage would be far more dangerous.”
Leo pointed to the rough sketch I’d made of the condo basement. “But not impossible. As I recall, it’s only a few feet from the lanai to the elevator. The garage isn’t that big, so you wouldn’t have far to go with the body.”
Vida pursed her lips. “You might be seen by someone coming in.”
“You can see the gate from the elevator,” Leo pointed out. “I’m very particular about where I park my car. I’m from L.A., remember.” He gave us both a puckish look.
I gazed innocently at Leo. “You certainly studied Linda’s condo closely. To know about the elevator location and all.”
Leo shrugged. “I was checking out the one next door. Somebody named Hanson bought it, I think.” Leo’s expression was bland.
Vida returned the diagram to me. “I’d like to think a woman couldn’t have done this. But I suppose that’s not necessarily true. Unless she were feeble, she could have managed Linda’s body for such a short distance. The hard part would be getting her in and out of the car. Ugh!” Vida took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes in agitation.
“Adrenaline,” Leo commented. “I’ve seen a hundred-pound broad deck a son of a bitch almost twice her size.”
“Leo,” Vida said, replacing her glasses, “please refrain from using such crude language. It’s—”
Leo waved an unlighted cigarette in Vida’s direction. “You didn’t get to hear the good part. You’ll like this, Duchess. The broad was my wife. The son of a bitch was me. Now don’t you think I picked the right words?”
Vida gave Leo a haughty look. “Yes. But don’t use them again. I’m quite a bit larger than your wife. Think what I could do to you. Adrenaline, you know.” With a flip of her typewriter carriage, Vida began to hit the keys. For some reason, it sounded like a machine gun.
Francine Wells was telling Ed Bronsky he was out of order. She was right in more ways than one, but she did it nicely, with the same persuasive tact that was so effective in getting Alpine women to charge outlandish amounts of apparel on their bank cards.
Luckily for me, the emergency meeting was a working luncheon. There was no time wasted eating and making frivolous talk. With Thanksgiving only a little over a week away, the local merchants were as anxious as I was to get back on the job.
“Ed means well,” Francine was saying in her capacity as this year’s president of the chamber. “But the timing strikes me as off. It’s the holiday season, and somehow a murder hunt doesn’t fit in.”
“We should have had it for Halloween,” Janet Driggers declared, sitting in for the travel agency. “We could all have met at the cemetery. Hey, Ed, have you ever done the Humpty Dumpty on a tombstone?”
A couple of people laughed, but I wasn’t one of them. Neither was Ed, who was shooting dark looks at both Francine and Janet. “We’re talking civic pride here,” he asserted. “What kind of a town do we want Alpine to turn into? Are we going to let cold-blooded killers get off scot-free?”
I took this as my cue to speak up. Francine saw my upraised hand and officially recognized me. That was when I went into my spiel about the need for a county bond issue. Judging from some of the expressions around the table, particularly those of Cal Vickers and Harvey Adcock, the idea had already occurred to them.
A lively discussion followed. Not everyone agreed, with Ed leading the pack of dissenters. But Francine finally called for a vote. A motion to take the bond issue before the county commissioners was passed sixteen to three, with one abstention. Savoring my moment of triumph, I headed for the nearest exit. Ed was blocking the door.
“That was a rotten thing to do, Emma,” he growled. “I thought you were on my side. Don’t you know you just shot yourself in the foot? Look at all the advertising you lost!”
Grasping the lapels of Ed’s cashmere overcoat, I led him out into the lobby with its open beams and Native American motif. “I am on your side, Ed. You want to crack down on crime, right? The most effective way is to beef up the sheriff’s office. You focused everybody’s attention on the issue today. Now we’re taking steps. By March, we may have passed the bond issue and Milo will have the facilities and the staff he needs.”
Ed still looked angry. “So Milo gets to be a hero,” he grumbled. “What’s he doing in the meantime? Busting kids for speeding down Alpine Way?”
“Among other things.” I tried not to smile too broadly at Cal Vickers, who was giving me a congratulatory slap on the back. “Milo’s making progress. You’ll read all about it Wednesday in The Advocate”
Ed snorted. “I used to read all that stuff before Wednesday. I used to be The Advocate.”
If Ed had been The Advocate, the Super Bowl MVP was the water boy. Now I was irked. I gave Ed a flinty smile and hurried across the flagstone fl
oor. My afternoon would be busy. I hadn’t written a word about the bank inquiry, and my homicide story was full of holes until Milo made an official pronouncement. There had been a certain amount of braggadocio in my words to Ed.
Back at the office, I was greeted by a full house. Vida was whipping her way through a wedding at the Baptist church, Leo was laying out the Safeway ad, Ginny was organizing the classifieds, and Carla was winding up her article on the highway construction. Sometimes a busy staff looks like a happy staff, even when they’re not. Still, I enjoy the illusion.
Entering my office, I stopped dead. A huge golden chrysanthemum plant sat on my desk. It was wrapped in deep green foil, with an enclosure card. Hastily I opened the small envelope.
Emma—Coffee Toss II coming up. My place or yours? The note was signed Leo the Lout.
I couldn’t help but laugh. Then I peeked into the news office. Leo was the only one who looked up. I beckoned to him.
“Pretty, huh?” he said, after I closed the door partway. “I wanted roses, orange ones, but Delphine’s been sick and Linda’s funeral wiped her out. I had to settle for a plant. This one just came in today. Delphine says you can put it outside in the spring.”
“I can. I will.” I gave Leo a rather fluttery smile. “You shouldn’t spend your money buying me flowers. It’s nice, and I love them, but it’s not necessary.”
Leo shrugged. “That’s what makes it fun. The unnecessary part, I mean.”
I considered giving Leo a kiss on the cheek, but settled for a handclasp. “Thanks again. I’ll take it home and put it on the coffee table.”
“Perfect,” Leo said. “Let me know where you decide for our next venue.” He winked as he went back into the newsroom.
I called Milo immediately to deliver the news about the proposed bond issue. He was pleased, but in a rush. “We’re primitive, but we’re perking,” he said cryptically.
“If you’re talking about Howard Lindahl, there’s something you ought to know,” I said. I’d withheld my theory in the morning because of Milo’s hostile attitude toward amateurs. Now, however, I felt duty-bound to state my case.
“Later, Emma,” Milo said. “The state auditors have just arrived. Go ahead, do your bank story. It’s official.”
My head was awhirl. I should talk to Marv Petersen, but I hated to face him. The inquiry must be humiliating. And he was still mourning his murdered daughter.
But I also needed to cash my paycheck. Resignedly I went over to the bank.
The tension in the lobby was palpable. With Christie gone, only two teller cages were open. Denise was her usual vague self, but Rick kept peering over his shoulder, as if he expected to be attacked from the rear. Larry Petersen was hiding behind The Everett Herald. Whispering into the phone, Andy Cederberg looked so somber that I expected to see the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse gallop across the marble floor.
Marv was in his office, staring into space. He greeted me with a ghostly smile. “Isn’t this a fine mess,” he said, sounding disgusted and sick at the same time. “How can you ever be sure about the people you hire unless they’re family?”
I assumed he referred to Christie Johnston. “She had references?”
Marv’s nod was doleful. “Plenty of them. Larry said they were impeccable.”
“You’re certain it was her?”
He nodded again. “But we can’t say so until the auditors have done their job. Oh,” he went on, gazing up at the arched window set high in the wall, “I had a glimmer two weeks ago. Crazy Eights Neffel came in to ask why he couldn’t buy pork chops. I thought he was off his noodle as usual, but he got all worked up. I finally pried the facts out of him. He buys on credit at the Grocery Basket, and they hadn’t been paid in three months, so Jake O’Toole cut him off. I stayed here late and did some checking—sure enough, Christie had been handling Crazy Eights’s proxy account. No disbursements had been made to his account with the Grocery Basket since the end of July. But similar amounts—say, a hundred and fifty to two hundred each month—had been withdrawn from Crazy Eights’s savings. Where did they go? Under Christie’s mattress, I’ll bet.”
I gave Marv my most sympathetic look. “I saw you tear out of here two weeks ago Monday night. Where were you going? The Grocery Basket?”
Marv had been nodding so much that he was beginning to wobble. “I couldn’t let Crazy Eights starve. Poor nutty old coot, he’s one of ours, and he deserves better treatment.”
Allowing a moment of silence to observe Marv’s compassion and Crazy Eights Neffel’s nuttiness, I then put the bank president back on the right track. “Did you confront Christie the next day?”
“Oh, yes.” Marv’s expression was bitter. “She said she thought the funds were to be transferred directly into the Grocery Basket’s account here at the bank. Which is what she claimed she’d done. She went off to get a printout to show me, but it took her too much time. I suspect she added in the numbers on the spot and made them retroactive. It would be easy enough.”
I understood that much. But I still had a question. “Where did the money come from? I mean, she couldn’t just type in numbers, could she?”
“She could and probably did. I wanted to believe Christie. To prove her a liar would have meant going through three months of Grocery Basket paperwork to see if everything balanced. Christie knew we wouldn’t take the trouble to do it. We’re talking about a total of under six hundred dollars on one of our biggest accounts. I wouldn’t ask Linda to spend all that time on what might have been an honest mistake.”
“But it wasn’t,” I pointed out.
“Oh, no, it definitely wasn’t,” Marv agreed. “Linda caught Christie in a couple of other foul-ups. Linda was getting suspicious. Then along came Dan Ruggiero from the Bank of Washington. I hate to admit it, but I tried to tell Linda to keep quiet. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as we thought. Maybe Christie was rattled lately. It can happen—Denise has had some real problems settling in.”
I didn’t doubt it. But I kept a straight face and let Marv continue:
“I advised Linda to let Ruggiero check the books independently, with no input from us. But my daughter isn’t—wasn’t—made that way.” His smile was rueful. And sad. “Linda was a stickler. Numbers were everything to her, the way some people love golf or chocolate. And honesty in finance—well, she should have been appointed to the Federal Reserve Board. Linda couldn’t keep quiet about the irregularities. It wasn’t in her. And,” he added, with the glimmer of a tear in his eye, “I’m proud of her. Damned proud.”
Fleetingly I thought that Pastor Nielsen should have let Marv write Linda’s eulogy. If nothing else, she had been a paradigm of integrity. In a shabby, careless world, that was an awe-inspiring virtue.
In my own world, I had to write a story. “Okay, Marv, let’s discuss how the audit is conducted. All we’ll mention at this point is that certain irregularities have been uncovered. You and Linda might as well take credit for that.”
Marv bowed his balding head. “I’d like that. Linda would have, too.”
For the next few minutes, Marv explained the nuts and bolts of a bank audit at the state level. I had to interrupt several times to make sure I understood. If a writer doesn’t know his or her subject, it can’t be conveyed to the public. It’s incredible how many journalists seem to forget that basic rule.
When we finished, I had one last question for Marv. “Were you actually going to sell out to the Bank of Washington?”
Marv fidgeted with his gold ballpoint pen, then straightened his desk calendar. “It wasn’t a buyout as such. It was a merger. And I would have insisted that we keep our name. Of course, the staff would have remained in place. Our customers would never have known the difference. Except that we could have expanded our services. It’s getting to be a complicated world, Emma. There’s not much room left for the little guy.”
Marv spoke the truth. Down the road, there might not be any place for an independently owned weekly newspaper. I’d known that w
hen I purchased The Advocate four years ago. But for now, it was still all mine.
And, until the state audit was over, the Bank of Alpine still belonged to Alpiners. I wasn’t sure that was a good thing. It certainly hadn’t worked out well for the Petersens.
I still had to cash my paycheck. Larry Petersen had finally emerged from behind The Herald. He saw me coming out of his father’s office and a thin smile crossed his face.
“How bad is it?” he asked, leaving his desk and coming over to stand at the brass rail.
“Not too bad. I’ve got a strong quote from your dad about how customers don’t need to worry about their money and that everything will be straightened out as quickly as possible. That’s what the FDIC is for, right?”
Larry looked dazed. “More or less. But people panic. I keep thinking about those bank runs that my grandfather used to tell me about. You know, in the Thirties. I have visions of everybody in Alpine charging through the lobby and demanding to withdraw all their money at once.”
“This isn’t the depression,” I reminded Larry.
He turned an anxious eye on me. “It’s close enough, here in Alpine.”
I tried to give Larry a reassuring smile. “The story I’m going to write won’t be sensational. The Advocate isn’t a grocery-store tabloid.” A final query popped into my mind. “How much, do you think?” Noting Larry’s sudden look of alarm, I waved a hand. “Not for publication, because you can only guess at this stage. But do you have a ballpark figure?”
Larry’s face scrunched up as he gazed off over my head to the medallion of John Engstrom. “This has to be a really rough estimate … but Christie made off with around twenty thousand. Maybe less.”