The Alpine Journey

by Mary Daheim

  Somehow, I managed. As soon as the damp salt air struck my face, I felt the world come into better focus. Using the car to steady myself, I moved clumsily to the edge of the road. By now a dozen other cars were backed up between the turnoff and the highway.

  “Help's on the way,” the man said, coming around to give me a hand. “The driver who came up behind you went back to call the police and an ambulance.”

  “I don't need an ambulance,” I said, then finally looked more closely at my benefactor. He was about my age, maybe a bit younger, just under six feet tall, with a good head of brown hair and a well-trimmed beard that showed a few streaks of gray. He still looked familiar, but I figured I was hallucinating. “Are you okay?” I asked, remembering all those good manners.

  “I think so,” he replied. “I'm afraid you ran that arterial.”

  I let out a weary sigh. “I couldn't see it in the fog. I was going only about ten miles an hour.”

  “A good thing,” he responded. “I wasn't breaking any speed limits myself.”

  I looked at his car, which was parked in the middle of the intersection. Some of the other vehicles were now making their way around it, creeping forward like chastened children who had just received a hard-learned lesson. Which, of course, they had.

  The car that had struck me had a broken headlight and a badly dented front end, but appeared drivable. Yet what captured my attention was that it, too, looked familiar. The vehicle was a green Ford Taurus, just like the one I'd turned in at Seaside.

  In the distance, I could hear sirens. “We'll need to exchange information,” I said, desperately trying to collect my wits. “The Neon's a rental, but I have insurance. I'll give you my name and address, as well as where you can reach my agent.”

  “It's okay,” the man said, and his voice had taken on a sudden urgency. “My car's not badly damaged. In fact, I'm going to move it now. My main concern was that you weren't hurt.”

  “I'll still need your name and address,” I said as he started for the Taurus. “You do have insurance, don't you?”

  But the man didn't seem to hear. The sirens came closer. I leaned against the Neon's trunk and watched the man get into his car. Then, instead of pulling over, he gunned the engine, made a U-turn, and drove back the way he had come. He hadn't learned his lesson, and I was dumbfounded.

  Before I could try to sort out the man's odd behavior, everything seemed to happen at once. A sheriff's patrol car arrived along with an ambulance and a Medex van. Another car, some sort of Chev, pulled off the road a few feet from where I was standing, and a short, muscular blond man in his thirties got out.

  “Wow!” he called to me. “You're okay! I was the one who sent for the emergency guys.”

  They were guys and gals, as it turned out, and suddenly the intersection seemed clogged with people and vehicles. A sheriff's deputy immediately began setting up flares while the Medex team, a man and a woman, hurried to my side.

  Despite my demurrals, they insisted that I should be taken to Providence Hospital in Seaside for evaluation. I insisted that they take me back to the Ecola Creek Lodge. I lost the argument.

  Just as they were asking if I could walk to the ambulance, the muscular blond man who had been gazing intently at the chaos turned to me. “Where's Gord?” he asked.

  “Who?” I still wasn't in any shape for trick questions.

  “The guy in the Taurus, the one who hit you.” He paused, taking another look around as if car and driver might suddenly materialize, like a pookah. “Didn't you get his name? It's Gordon Imhoff.”

  Chapter Eight

  ONE OF THE sheriff's deputies, a fine-featured young man with piercing blue eyes and a name tag that read RANDY NEAL, swung around to stare. “McConnell, is it? What did you say?”

  “Jeff McConnell, Cannon Beach Charters,” the muscular blond said with a nod. “I said that was Gordon Imhoff. Haven't you guys been looking for him?”

  “Yes, we have,” Neal replied gravely as his partner, a husky Native American, joined him. “Are you positive that Imhoff was driving the car that struck the Neon?”

  “Sure,” McConnell answered. “I've known Gord since he moved here. When I saw him just now, I was surprised. But then I figured you guys must have tracked him down and I hadn't heard about it. I've been taking charters out of Depoe Bay for the past few weeks.”

  Depoe Bay was approximately a hundred miles south of Cannon Beach, and about the same size. Outside of tourist season, it probably wouldn't provide a hiding place for a man on the run.

  The deputies exchanged glances. “I'm calling in,” the Native American said, and hurried to the squad car. I managed to glimpse his name tag; he was Charles St. James. I etched both deputies onto my brain; it seemed important to remember their names. Maybe that was because I wasn't sure I could remember my own.

  “Which way did he go?” Randy Neal asked, looking first at McConnell, then at me.

  I found my voice. “South on 101. He was coming from that direction when we collided.”

  Neal shouted the information back to St. James. Meanwhile, the Medex team hovered over me. The woman, who had curly brown hair and red-rimmed glasses, wore picture I.D. around her neck with MARY JEAN PRATT in big, bold letters. She regarded me with concern.

  “You'd better come along with us now,” Mary Jean Pratt said kindly. “The police can sort out this other matter. You need to be checked.”

  “Actually,” I said in a surprisingly firm voice, “I don't.” The identification of Gordon Imhoff had acted as a steadying influence. “I'm fine, really. I have a friend just down the road at the Ecola Creek Lodge. After I get my luggage out of the Neon, I'll walk back.”

  The two Medex people looked at me, then at each other. Mary Jean shrugged. “If you insist. We can't force you. But you're not walking back down this foggy road. If you have any symptoms later, please call this number.” She gave me her card.

  “I'll give her a lift,” Jeff McConnell volunteered. “I ought to stick around anyway. I'm a witness. Do we fill out the reports now?”

  Mary Jean's partner, a balding, lean man with a lantern jaw, turned toward the sheriff's men, who were now conferring in the squad car. “You'd better check with them,” he said.

  Charles St. James got out of the car and headed in our direction. I explained that I was returning to the motel with Jeff McConnell.

  “Okay,” said the deputy. “Well come with you. A tow truck's on the way. Where do you want the car taken?”

  I thought of the hassle that would ensue with the rental agency, and felt a headache coming on. If that was a symptom from the collision, I wasn't going to mention it.

  “Find out where the rental agency has repairs done,” I said. “I suppose they use someplace in Seaside.”

  “Okay,” St. James replied. “Let's go.”

  I didn't budge. “What about Gordon Imhoff?”

  The deputy frowned. “You mean his part of the report?”

  “Ah … yes.” I didn't think it would be wise to mention that I knew of Gordon in any other context than the accident.

  “We've got another patrol car on his trail,” St. James answered. “He can't have gone too far. This time,” he added ominously.

  Two minutes later I was back at the Ecola Creek Lodge. Vida was on the phone, talking to Milo. She had to put him on hold to answer the door, and her jaw dropped when she saw me accompanied by Jeff McConnell and the sheriff's deputies.

  “Good grief!” she cried. “You look awful! What's all this?”

  “I ran into Gordon Imhoff,” I said. “Actually, it was the other way around. He ran into me.”

  “What?” Vida yelped. I could imagine Milo at the other end of the phone, hearing our voices and wondering what the hell was happening.

  I sank into one of the armchairs while the three men stood in the middle of the room, watching Vida warily and looking as if they'd been called to the principal's office. It dawned on me that my revelation about Gordon had blown my
cover; the deputies must have realized that I knew who Gordon Imhof F was. Maybe my brain was scrambled after all.

  Vida gave me one last hard look, as if to make sure I was all in one piece, and dashed back to the phone. “Milo,” she said in a tense voice, “Emma's here. She's been in a wreck. The sheriff's men are with her and so is …” She frowned at Jeff McConnell. “So is some other man I don't know. I must go. Please call back when you hear something from Astoria.” She hung up.

  It took over half an hour just to fill out the proper forms. They weren't particularly complicated, but Vida kept interrupting. She fired questions at the officers as well as at me, sending my brain ricocheting off the walls and causing the sheriff's men to acquire a dazed expression. As usual, when Vida was present, the question of authority became moot. Shortly before we finally finished, Milo called back and demanded to speak to me.

  “Are you okay?” he asked in an anxious voice.

  “Yes, yes, I'm fine.” I found myself smiling. “I was shaken up and pretty scared, but now I'm all right.”

  “Jeez.” Milo's relief flowed through the phone lines. “I had a hell of a time figuring out where Vida was staying. It's taken me this long to run you guys down.”

  “I may not be home today,” I said, twisting around on the sofa so that I couldn't be easily overheard. “Could you call the office to tell them? In fact,” I went on, lowering my voice to a whisper, “the guy who hit me is the husband of the deceased.”

  “Hie guy who …? What?” Milo sounded confused.

  “Didn't Vida give you the background?”

  “Yeah, all twenty minutes of it. Say again?”

  I did, though this time I spoke in an almost normal voice. From what I could tell, Vida was pouring out her connection to the Imhoff tragedy.

  “I'll be damned,” Milo said in wonder. “Talk about coincidences—I thought we had a lot of them in Alpine. But I guess Cannon Beach is even smaller.”

  “It is,” I agreed. “Do you think you can find out anything from your vis-a-vis in Astoria?”

  “I don't know the sheriff there,” Milo admitted, “but he can probably fill me in to some extent. The question is why? Didn't Vida say you've got deputies with you?”

  “Come on, Milo,” I said in mild reproach. “You know they won't tell us what they'd tell you. If you don't dredge up something, Vida will make you pay.”

  “I know.” Milo sighed. “You sure you're okay?”

  “Yes, really. How was Bellevue?”

  “The usual shit. Brandon wants to quit school and spend six months in Europe.”

  “Can he afford it?”

  “Are you kidding? He works thirty hours a week at Jack in the Box. He wants me to lend him the money. Old Mulehide might pony up, but not Pop. That's part of the trouble with kids when you get divorced—they can play one parent against the other.”

  I wanted to commiserate, but the deputies and Vida were beginning to stare. Apparently, she had finished her recapitulation.

  “I've got to go,” I said to Milo. “Thanks in advance for any help you can give us.”

  “I miss you,” Milo said, dropping his voice, and perhaps his guard. To my surprise, his admission didn't seem wrenched. The few tender confessions that he'd made in the past had come with all the ease of extracting an impacted wisdom tooth.

  Ironically, I felt compelled to say that I missed him, too. But did I? Except for Vida's insistence on calling Milo, I'd scarcely given him a thought since arriving in Cannon Beach.

  “I'll be home very soon,” I said, trying to inject a sense of intimate enthusiasm into my voice. “See you then.”

  We finished filling out the forms. Jeff McConnell hadn't seen the accident itself, but had arrived on the scene seconds after the impact.

  “I heard it,” he said, “but I was just coming around the bend and didn't see it. Does that count?”

  It didn't. McConnell started to leave, but St. James and Neal wanted to ask some questions about Gordon Imhoff. Had Jeff seen Gordon since his disappearance the day after Audrey Imhoff's funeral? Did Jeff have any idea where Imhoff might have been for the past few weeks? Did he recognize the car that Imhoff was driving? Had he noticed the license plate?”

  McConnell answered no to all of the questions. While he had known Gordon for several years, they had never been close. He was as shocked as the next one when Audrey was killed. And a final no: he couldn't imagine Gord hurting a fly.

  Jeff was dismissed. St. James double-checked the paperwork, then asked me some of the same questions that he and Neal had posed to McConnell.

  I explained that the Taurus Gordon had been driving looked very much like the car I'd rented in Portland and turned in at Seaside Sunday morning.

  St. Charles looked puzzled. “You turned in one car and rented another? Didn't you like the Taurus?”

  “I liked it fine,” I said, and shot Vida a caustic look. “My plans changed. When I inquired if I could get the Taurus back, I was told it had already been rented by someone else. By the way, the license number is …” I rummaged in my purse, searching for the original rental agreement. I recited the plate for the deputies.

  “Was it the same number as Imhoff 's?” Neal asked, joining his partner by the fireplace.

  “I don't know,” I replied. “I never really noticed the plate on his car. But I have a feeling it could be. You see,” I said carefully, “Gordon Imhoff was in Seaside Sunday morning. I saw him using the phone at the Shilo Inn.”

  Vida was as startled as the sheriff's deputies. Once again, she tried to take over the interrogation, but Neal and St. James asserted themselves. I had to state no fewer than five times that I didn't know Gordon Imhoff and that even though I had noticed the unkempt man at the Shilo Inn, his presence hadn't suggested anything to me except that he might be a drifter and that he needed to make a phone call. After the officers had finished questioning me and given instructions on how to proceed with the car-rental agency, they finally left. It was then that Vida whirled on me, her hands clenched as if she wanted to shake me silly.

  “Why didn't you tell me?” she exclaimed. “Are you saying that car was the same one we saw parked at Rosalie and Walt Dobrinz's house?”

  “It might have been,” I answered calmly. “I didn't see the plate there, either. The car was parked too far down the drive. But I couldn't tell you about seeing Gordon in Seaside because I didn't know it was him. He looked like a bum. It was only after Jeff McConnell identified him that I realized why the man who hit me looked familiar. He'd cleaned up, but when my mind began to clear, I knew it was the same person. Isn't that what I just told the deputies about ten times?”

  Apparently accepting my explanation, Vida began to pace around the small living room. “You didn't mention to the deputies that you'd seen the green car at the Dobrinz house.”

  “That's because I can't be sure,” I responded, increasingly aware of new aches and pains. My neck hurt, my back ached, and my right arm felt as if I'd pulled something. “What good would it do? If Gordon had gone to his mother-in-law's yesterday, he wasn't there today. He was driving 101, hitting me broadside.”

  “It explains Rosalie's refusal to let us in the house,” Vida said, pausing at the front window. “Gordon was inside. She couldn't let us see him.”

  “Maybe he's tired of running,” I remarked. “Though he certainly didn't want to stick around for the cops.”

  “An awkward situation for him,” Vida said, still peering out the window.

  “Awkward for me, too. We're going to have to go into Seaside and get this mess straightened out with the car-rental agency.” The comment didn't elicit a response from Vida; she was still at the window. “What are you looking at out there? Is Gordon crawling around in the bushes?”

  Vida gave a shake of her head. “It's a white car. It's driven by twice, very slowly. A man's at the wheel. Who could it be?”

  “Not Gordon,” I said, removing my emergency pill bottle from my handbag. “It could be anyb
ody. I'm going to take some Excedrin.”

  Vida finally turned around. “Are you sure you're not hurt? You could have internal injuries.”

  I shot Vida a disparaging look. “Thanks. Maybe I'll bleed to death before I can get out of Cannon Beach.”

  “You can't possibly drive home in your condition.” Vida's voice followed me into the kitchen. “You should rest today, and perhaps by Wednesday you'll feel well enough to start out.”

  “Wednesday!” I exclaimed, glugging down two Excedrin. “The paper comes out Wednesday. Or,” I inquired as I returned to the living room, “have you forgotten?”

  “Of course not,” Vida huffed. “But I honestly believe Leo and Carta and Ginny can get the paper out in our absence. Have you no confidence in your staff?”

  “You have no confidence in Carla, and mine's pretty shaky.” Everything about me seemed shaky at the moment. Maybe I was suffering from delayed shock. I collapsed on the sofa just as a knock sounded at the door.

  Vida rushed to answer the knock, but not before she peeked out through the front window. A tall, fair-haired man in his thirties stood in the doorway. “Ms. Lord?” he said.

  I could see Vida's shoulders tense. “I'm Mrs. Runkel,” she said crisply. “How may I help you?”

  “I wish to see Ms. Lord,” the man said with a faint Down Under accent. “Is she in?” His long, tanned face appeared over Vida's shoulder.

  Vida, who didn't seem pleased to give way, grudgingly allowed that I was present. “But,” she added in a warning tone, “Ms. Lord is unwell. She's been in an auto accident.”

  “Really.” The man was unimpressed. He waited for Vida to step aside, then headed straight for me. He was wearing tennis shorts and a sweatshirt emblazoned with KANE PROPERTIES—CANNON BEACH AND LINCOLN CITY. I guessed who he was, but he introduced himself in a cool, aloof manner.

  “I'm Stuart Kane. I understand you've been badgering my wife. I must ask that you stop. Christina is very high-strung.”

  I held my aching head. Stina Kane was vivacious, loquacious, and effervescent, but didn't strike me as high-strung. And I certainly hadn't badgered her.