by Mary Daheim
“Good. She’s the first real shrink we’ve had in SkyCo. It’s a wonder half the population isn’t lined up outside of RestHaven.” I realized we’d gotten off-track. “Did Dodge have any news other than what he told me?”
“Deceased found by the fork in the river was a Hispanic male between twenty and thirty. There was ID, but name’s withheld pending notification of survivors. He’d been stabbed in the abdomen. No weapon found. Apparently not a robbery, as he had over thirty dollars in a money clip. Doc Dewey estimated he’d been dead for six to twelve hours. The body’s on its way to the Snohomish County ME for a full autopsy.”
“Damn. That means we might not have any further information before tomorrow night’s deadline. SnoCo’s got so many autopsies of their own that SkyCo gets pushed to the end of the line. If only we could get things changed here to free up funds for facilities and services that’ve been put on hold forever.” I smiled wanly. “It’ll be interesting to see how the locals respond to your interview with Fuzzy and my editorial.”
Mitch ran a hand through his thatch of gray hair. “Let’s hope it’s not with what you’ve termed their usual state of negativity—or torpor.”
“Yes, let’s,” I said. “Frankly, hope is all we’ve got.”
I didn’t get home until after six. Milo still hadn’t arrived, which didn’t surprise me. No doubt he had a lot of paperwork, a task he loathed. I’d decided to make stir-fry with the chicken breasts. It was quick and easy. I’d use the strawberries for dessert. Ever since the sheriff had undergone gall bladder surgery, a little over a year ago, I’d tried—not always successfully—to wean him away from some of the less healthful foods he liked. It was hard to avoid grease when dining out in Alpine. Lean cuisine had never gained popularity in the former logging town.
Milo finally showed up a little after six-thirty. He came in through the kitchen door looking grumpy. “I told Gould not to bother checking out the river this soon,” he said, taking off his regulation hat. “Then the dumb bastard had to find a stiff late in the day. Why didn’t he go there in the morning? The body wasn’t going anywhere. It was caught on a snag. Too many of those damned useless alder trees along the river. I can’t count how many lures I’ve lost on those things.”
I gazed up at my husband and smiled sweetly. “Hi. Remember me? I’m your wife.”
Milo had the grace to look abject. “If you weren’t, I couldn’t bitch the minute I came in the door. I sure as hell couldn’t do that with the ex–Mrs. Dodge.” He put his arms around me and kissed me—hard, long, and hungrily. “That better?” he asked, his face still almost touching mine.
“Uh-huh,” I said, sounding a bit overcome and then leaning against him. “No Tanya?” I inquired into his chest.
“She’s having dinner with Bill and then seeing a movie at The Whistling Marmot. I’m thinking of promoting Bill to … something. I sure as hell don’t have the money to give him a raise.” He let go of me, but not before squeezing my backside.
“Go change,” I told him. “I’ll make our drinks. You’ve had a longer day than I have.”
“So I have,” he said wearily, loping out of the kitchen.
I smiled as I got out his Scotch and my Canadian. I even laughed to myself. Or at myself. For some perverse reason—perversity always having been my middle name—I’d been reluctant to go through the marriage ceremony. My only excuse was that I’d never done it before. There was also the Lord family trait of indecisiveness, shared by my only sibling, Ben. Being a priest, he admitted that the sacrament of Holy Orders meant he had to follow them according to the vow of obedience he’d taken upon his ordination. Otherwise, he conjectured, he’d still be trying to make up his mind about choosing a college major. I understood, though I was glad that somehow my son, Adam, hadn’t inherited that particular gene. For years I was afraid he had, jumping from college to college and uncertain about what he wanted to do with his life. Then he’d spent time with Ben in his mission work with the Navajo and Hopi tribes in Tuba City, Arizona. My brother had inspired him, and Adam had discovered that he had a religious vocation. I wasn’t very happy about it at the time, mostly for selfish reasons, but my son seemed content serving his parishioners at St. Mary’s Igloo in Alaska.
His father, Tom Cavanaugh, had taken Adam’s decision in stride. Of course, Tom had only met our son twenty years after his birth. My former lover had impregnated me—and his loony wife—about the same time, when I was still in college. I’d broken off the relationship when Tom said he couldn’t leave Sandra Cavanaugh. Father and son had finally met when Adam was in college. A few years later, Sandra died from an overdose of her medications. Tom was free to marry me, and I said yes to his proposal. A bullet erased our future together. He died at my feet. Only in the past few months had I realized that being the second Mrs. Dodge was much better than being the second Mrs. Cavanaugh.
By the time Milo entered the living room, I was already seated on the sofa. He paused on his way to the easy chair and ruffled my hair.
“I figure you’re going to keep me from having a stroke someday,” he said, ambling over to collect his drink off the side table before he sat down. “All the years I was married to Mulehide,” he went on after lighting a cigarette, “I never could say a word about what went on with my job. It was all about her and what had happened to the kids, the house, the bills—everything including the kitchen sink. She wouldn’t have cared if I’d found a stack of stiffs piled up in my office.”
“So you’ve told me,” I said, laughing. “Don’t apologize. You’re a news source, big guy. It’s what you don’t tell me that I find annoying. Did Tricia know you had an office?”
“The only time she stopped by headquarters was to ask for money,” Milo said, stretching out his long legs on the ottoman we’d recently bought. “She controlled our finances, but she knew I had a side account for my fishing and hunting gear. When Mulehide ran short on the home front, she’d ask to dip into that. I usually let her, but it pissed me off.” He gestured toward the rear of the house. “Did you take a look at the holes in the ground after you got home?”
I grimaced. “No. I was carrying groceries. I’ve seen holes in the ground before. We’ve got gophers and marmots, you know. Are the Bourgettes finished with the pounding?”
“Yeah. Dick Bourgette told me they’d gotten done early this afternoon.” Milo paused to sip his Scotch. “If you’d bothered to check outside, you’d have seen that they’ve taken off some of the logs in back of the house. Those will all get treated when the project is completed. As you may recall, you’ve neglected the upkeep on them the past few years.”
“I know. You offered to do it for me, but that was a couple of years ago and I didn’t want to impose. I mean, we weren’t actually dating.”
“Gosh,” Milo said in mock dismay, “I’d forgotten all about that.”
The reference was to our off-and-on-again sexual relationship, which had resumed after Tom was killed. Our earlier attempt to become a couple had failed when I’d dumped Milo, almost a decade ago.
“We were still involved,” I said with a steely glare.
“When it suited you,” he responded. “Meanwhile, I had to put up with that asshole from the AP. It’s a good thing he took off for France.”
My romance with Rolf Fisher had lasted about a year and a half. He was everything I’d thought I wanted in a man—a cultured, charming, attractive widower—but with a gift of gab that drove me nuts. I tried to take Rolf seriously. I even tried to fall in love with him. It didn’t work. Maybe the reason was because what I really wanted was the big guy from the small town sitting in the easy chair just a few feet away from me.
I got up from the sofa. “I’ll get dinner on. Ten minutes.”
“Fine.” Milo picked up the Seattle Times and all but disappeared behind the sports section.
It took me closer to fifteen minutes, which lured the sheriff out to the kitchen. “Is that chicken?” he asked, peering at the skillet.
&nb
sp; “No, it’s one of the gophers from the backyard. The Bourgettes bored right through his once-happy home. The little guy committed suicide in despair.”
Milo’s gaze shifted to the kettle. “Are those noodles? Did you run out of spuds?”
I turned to face my husband. “Damnit, you know I’m trying to change some of your—I mean our—eating habits. Maybe you’d like it better if I bought a truckload of those wretched TV dinners you lived on before you moved in here.”
“Some of them weren’t that bad,” Milo said.
I pointed a wooden spoon at him. “You haven’t gained back the ten pounds you lost during the Bellevue standoff aftermath with Tanya. Doesn’t that make you feel better?”
“Better than what? I didn’t feel bad before I lost the weight.”
“You’re impossible.” I turned back to the stove. “Move. I have to drain the noodles.”
“I weighed under two hundred when you first met me. It’s your fault I gained over twenty-five pounds.”
“Huh?” I looked at him over my shoulder. “What do you mean?”
Milo finished his drink and set the glass on the counter. “After Mulehide ran off to Bellevue with Jake the Snake and took the kids with her, I lost my appetite when she decided to become Mrs. Sellers instead of Mrs. Dodge.”
“You lost your appetite for five years?”
“That’s right.” He looked serious. “The divorce dragged on for over two years. You know that. I wasn’t used to being on my own. I didn’t give a damn what I ate or even if I ate.”
I’d put the rest of the dinner on the table. As I sat down, I thought back to what Milo had looked like when I’d met him. He had been lanky then, but the change was so gradual I hadn’t really noticed.
“You never told me that,” I said, touching his hand. “About your weight, I mean. No wonder you look better now than you did back then. But what did I have to do with it?”
“You started feeding me,” Milo replied. “Not the first year or so, but we ate lunch together quite a bit, and sometimes we’d go out to dinner. Even after I started dating Honoria Whitman, you kept right on feeding me. I’d gained all the weight back by the time Honoria and I broke up.”
I propped up my head with my hand and stared at him. “I guess I never knew what Honoria fed you.”
He waved his fork. “A lot of that California health food crap. I liked your cooking better. Hell, let’s face it—I liked you better, but I kept telling myself I was in love with her because …” He heaved a sigh. “I didn’t think I stood a chance with you once Cavanaugh showed up on the scene.”
“Honest to God, Milo, I still can’t believe we finally got it right. No wonder the local grapevine was always buzzing about whether or not we were sleeping together. How do you like the gopher?”
“Tastes like chicken,” he said. “How come you aren’t asking me a lot of your usual dumb questions about the stiff in the river?”
“Because you won’t tell me anything, and I quote, ‘this early in the investigation.’ ”
Milo grinned at me. “You’re catching on. You’ve always been a little slow about that, too.”
“It doesn’t sound as if it’s anybody from around here. Yes, I know we have Hispanics at the college, but you would’ve told Mitch if the guy’s a local.”
“He’s not. His driver’s license says he’s from Wapato. Big Hispanic population over there.”
I nodded. “I wonder what he was doing here in the first place. I suppose you’re trying to find an abandoned car.”
Milo gave me a warning look. “I’ve told you all you need to know.”
“And to think Fleetwood thought I could inveigle information out of you in the bedroom. I told him he was wrong.”
Milo’s hazel eyes sparked. “You could try it.”
I shook my head. “It wouldn’t work.”
“Would you care?”
“No.”
“Want to give it a try after dinner?”
I smiled. “Yes.”
Around nine o’clock, I rolled over in bed to poke Milo in the chest. “Hey, is Tanya staying here tonight?” I asked.
“Huh?” He opened his eyes after nodding off for a few minutes. “Damned if I know. Maybe Bill’s staying with her.”
“Do you think they’re sleeping together?”
“I don’t ask,” he said, wrapping an arm around my waist. “Since they spent our wedding weekend at Lake Chelan after his car broke down, I figure they probably are. That’s their business. As long as they aren’t rolling around on the floor at headquarters, I don’t give a damn. Tanya couldn’t find a more solid guy than Bill.”
“She hasn’t gone for that type in her previous relationships.”
“Maybe she learned something.” Milo’s hand moved to my breasts. “Why don’t we just stay here for the rest of the night?”
“I have to make the morning coffee and empty the dishwasher,” I said. “Or do you mean we might as well go to sleep so we’ll get more rest before the Bourgette gang arrives in the morning?”
Milo rolled over, his chest pressing against me. “You know damned well what I mean, you goofy little twit. Tanya and Bill are at the movies. We’re the ones in bed. Let’s make good use of the time. I don’t count strawberries as real dessert, but this kind was a lot better. Now how about a nightcap?”
I put my arms around his neck and giggled.
FOUR
MAKING LOVE IN THE EVENING WAS GOOD FOR US. GETTING up in the morning wasn’t. We both turned into grumps. We rarely speak to each other before Milo leaves first for work. On this Tuesday morning, the Bourgettes arrived just after the sheriff left. John and Dan were vexingly chipper when they showed up, a little after seven-thirty.
“Say,” Dan said, smiling broadly from the carport, “we’ll be starting to enlarge your bedroom next week. Are you and the sheriff going to stay here or at his place in the Icicle Creek Development?”
This part of the schedule was news to me. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “There’s not much space in the spare bedroom. We’ve stored my old bed and some of Milo’s things in there.”
John had joined his brother. “Why don’t you donate the old bed to the women’s shelter in the Alpine Hotel? They could use more furniture, according to Father Kelly.”
“Good idea,” I said. “Milo’s dumping a lot of his household items.”
“We can collect them,” Dan offered. “We like to help Father Den out as much as we can. He’s always on overload.”
“That’s really kind of you,” I said. The Bourgettes’ good works and good mood were having a salutary effect on me. “Your family does so much for St. Mildred’s. I feel like a piker.”
John shook his head. “You’re the voice of the parish in the paper. You don’t ever talk much about religion, but everybody knows you bring a Catholic viewpoint to whatever you write.”
“Maybe,” I conjectured, “in a mostly Protestant town with a Lutheran majority, it’s not always a good thing. Readers aren’t fond of spending money on civic projects. Thrift should be their middle names.”
Dan shrugged. “That doesn’t matter. Well—it does, as far as levies and bond issues are concerned, but it makes the Catholic minority feel better. We all know you’re on our side.”
“I’m not supposed to take sides,” I said. “I mean, except in my editorials. What are you doing today?”
“More log removal,” John replied. “We should finish off the back and the east side of the house today. Tomorrow we’ll do the carport side and of course the logs in the front will stay put. We might be able to start framing up the double garage, too.”
“Great,” I said, sounding a bit wispy. I still couldn’t quite get my head around how my little log cabin seemed to be turning into a mini-mansion. “Be careful,” I added lamely before going back inside.
I was still musing over the remodel during the five-minute drive to the office. Stopping for the arterial at Fourth and Front, I looked down the s
treet to the sheriff’s headquarters. I couldn’t see if Milo’s black Yukon was parked there or not. Unlike his previous vehicle, the red Grand Cherokee, its replacement wasn’t as easy to spot.
Kip, Leo, and Amanda were all in place—that place being the table where the coffee urn was still perking. “Who,” I asked, noting that the goodies tray was empty, “has the bakery run?”
“Vida,” Amanda replied. “She should be here any minute.”
“Okay,” I said. “Is everybody set for deadline day?”
Kip frowned. “I have to update a couple of programs, but it shouldn’t take long. I hope.”
I didn’t ask for details. When it came to high tech, I was low Emma.
“The Safeway ad won’t be in until this afternoon,” Leo said. “They’ve got some technical problems of their own.”
I nodded and looked at Amanda. “You’re all set with the classifieds?”
“Yes, unless we get some last-minute ones. Have you heard anything more about that body? Walt and the rest of the people at the fish hatchery are really curious.”
“So am I,” I said. “If you think the sheriff gave me any late-breaking bulletins, think again.”
Mitch made his entrance just as the coffee urn’s red light came on. He gazed longingly at the empty tray. For such a skinny guy, he was able to consume large quantities of rich pastry without gaining an ounce. “Did the Upper Crust burn down?” he asked in a plaintive voice.
“Vida’s turn,” Leo said. “Maybe she’s catching up on gossip for her ‘Scene Around Town’ column.”
“Oh.” Mitch waited for Amanda and Kip to fill their coffee mugs. “Brenda wasn’t feeling very well this morning, so I didn’t get breakfast. I suppose the dead guy in the river is our lead or will the mayor’s interview still be the big story?”
“Fuzzy wins,” I said. “The body isn’t one of our own.”
Mitch looked faintly dismayed. He still hadn’t grasped small-town priorities. “Your call,” he murmured, taking Leo’s place at the coffee urn.