by Mary Daheim
“It's bilge,” Stina asserted. “It's malicious, it's cruel, and it's destructive.”
I could sense Vida bristling. To her, gossip was merely informal news. She thrived on it, she relied on it, she turned it into her daily bread.
“It's natural for people, even those who live in cities, to speculate and discuss what goes on among their friends and neighbors,” she said in a remarkably quiet voice. “Would you rather have them talk about personalities they see on television instead of real people they know and care about?”
Stina stared. Clearly, she wasn't prepared for a philosophical discussion of gossip. “What I meant,” she said in a heavy tone, “is that gossip shouldn't be vicious and it shouldn't spread lies. I'm sick—and tired—of hearing that I had an affair with Gordon Imhoff.”
Vida and I both exhibited extraordinary calm. “It's not true, I take it,” I said as casually as I could muster.
“Of course not.” Stina uttered a contemptuous laugh. “I like Gordon, he's a nice guy, I've tried to talk him into selling the Jaded Eye, I even tried to help him through his crisis with Audrey. But there was no romance. I'd like to know who started that rumor. How could they get it so wrong?”
“Wrong?” Vida breathed the word.
Stina drank from her glass, nodded, and put a hand to her mouth. “Wrong. Backward. It was Stu and Audrey. Why do you think he stormed out when I said nice things about Gordon? Stu hates him. And why not? One of them probably killed her. I wish to God I knew which.”
It's amazing how people try to hoodwink other people—and themselves—with fallacious rationales for their behavior. Stuart's affairs had started out—or so he'd explained to his wife—as a marketing tool. Women, he'd told Stina, were almost always the ones who made decisions about buying property. Thus it was important to court the wife. Literally.
“It drove me nuts at first,” Stina admitted over her second martini. “But we were making money. Nobody's perfect, I told myself, and this was a second marriage for both of us. I didn't want to be a two-time loser, and I guess Stu didn't, either. We came to an agreement. I could spend whatever I wanted on myself—within reason—if he could have his little flings. Well, I pampered myself for a while, but then I decided we should have a baby. That was three years ago.” She made a face. “No baby. Neither of us had kids the first time around, so maybe there's something the matter. Stu insists it can't be him, and I'll be damned if I'll admit it might be me.” She put her hand to her mouth in that gesture that was becoming familiar. “Why am I telling you this? I don't know you.”
“That's why,” Vida replied. “Your story is safe with us. We have no one to tell.”
“Everybody needs to talk to somebody,” I put in, having proved how companionable I was by also ordering another drink despite Vida's glare of disapproval. “If this were Alpine, I'd—” With a jarring motion, I set my glass on the table. “Good God! I forgot to call the office! Excuse me, I must get to a pay phone.”
There were two phones just outside the restaurant entrance. I dialed hastily and hoped that Leo was home.
Milo answered. In my anxiety, I'd called his number by mistake. “How are you doing?” he asked, sounding relaxed.
I pictured the sheriff on his couch with his feet up, a TV dinner before him, and either the news or a sporting event on TV. It was not an unpleasant mental picture. Indeed, I envied him his repose.
“I'm beat,” I said. Then, because I was unwilling to admit that I'd called him by mistake, I thanked him for contacting the Clatsop County Sheriff's Office.
“No big deal,” he said. “Vida would have killed me if I hadn't. How's it going?”
“Not very well. Tell me—if you were the local authorities, what would you be looking for? Besides the killer, I mean.”
“Motive. It sounds like a crime of passion. Who cared enough to bash in What'sername's head in the middle of the night?”
Vida and I'd already considered the impulsive nature of the crime. “Love? Or hate?” I asked.
“Either. Both.” Milo laughed, a familiar, reassuring sound. “Hey, Emma, since when did you start giving me credit for insights into human nature?”
It wasn't that Milo lacked perceptiveness about people. Rather, it was his narrow focus, his strict adherence to going by the book. The Skykomish County sheriff relied on facts, not feelings, when conducting a criminal investigation.
“I guess you're thinking differently because this isn't your case,” I responded, feeling a breeze stirring the shrubbery next to the restaurant. “You don't have to bring it into court.”
“I'm glad I don't,” Milo said. “It sounds like a tough one. So when are you coming home?”
I sighed. “Hopefully, tomorrow.” I explained about Gordon Imhoff and his apparent willingness to take responsibility for the wreck.
“He's got to,” Milo said. “No matter who's really at fault, if a driver leaves the scene, it's considered a hit-and-run. He's screwed.”
Gordon had only himself to blame, so I tried not to spare him any pity. “Has anything big happened at home?” I inquired. “Anything for the paper?”
“A bunch of cows got loose from the Overholt farm and wandered onto the road by the reservoir. Then a couple got on the railroad tracks, and they had to flag down the Burlington Northern.”
This sounded promising. “Did Carla get a picture?”
“I don't know,” Milo replied. “Oh, Darla Puckett's gourds got stolen off her front porch last night, and whoever did it apparently knocked the head off some kind of statue she had in the yard.”
“Bo-Peep?” I recalled Vida's description of Darla's walleyed garden statuary. It occurred to me that had my House & Home editor been in town, she might be considered a suspect.
“Could be. Jack Mullins checked it out.” Milo paused, and I envisioned him lighting a cigarette or taking a swig of beer or polishing off the last of his Hungry Man frozen TV entrée. “Otherwise, it's been pretty quiet now that they're getting the fire damage cleaned up.”
“Fire damage?” My grip on the receiver tightened. “What fire?”
“The one at the old loading dock and the abandoned warehouse on Railroad Avenue. Didn't I tell Vida?” Milo sounded mildly surprised.
“No.” The word dropped out of my mouth like a rock. If Milo had mentioned a fire, Vida certainly would have passed on the news. “When did it happen? Was anyone hurt? How did it start? What's the damage estimate?”
“Whoa!” Milo laughed, but not as wholeheartedly as usual. “We don't know yet how it started. It was during the night. The first alarm went off around three. No injuries, because the warehouse is vacant and nobody was on the loading dock. An investigative team is being brought in tomorrow. Maybe this'U be the spark—excuse the expression—to put over the bond issue for a paid fire department.”
Alpine had relied on volunteer firefighters for most of its history. Part of the reason was lack of funding; another part was tradition. Most of the fires in the area occurred in the woods, and special crews were always brought in to fight the flames. In the course of any given year, there were rarely more than a dozen alarms, most of them minor. Voters couldn't see why they should spend money to pay for employees to sit around and play cards. But with the advent of the college, I'd mounted an editorial campaign to create a county-wide firefighting department. Coupled with my crusade to get the sheriff appointed instead of elected, I felt I had a large stake in the upcoming election.
“I hope Carla covered the story,” I said, feeling annoyed with myself for being in Cannon Beach instead of on the scene in Alpine.
“She was there,” Milo assured me. “I saw her.”
“Thank goodness.” I leaned against the pay-phone stall. “We should have a strong front page. I'm going to call Leo.” Then, lest Milo think me self-absorbed, I asked how things were going for him off the job.
“Mulehide and I are really getting into it over this Europe deal with Brandon,” he said, sounding vexed. “She says she
paid for most of Tanya's wedding, which is a damned lie, so I should cough up for Brandon's trip. I pointed out that ever since our divorce, she's had the kids almost all to herself. Those visiting rights are so much bullshit. How many times do you remember me having any of them come up here?”
While there had been some holidays and a few weeks during the summer, I had to admit that the Dodge offspring weren't frequent visitors to Alpine.
“You're damned right,” Milo said, more heatedly. “They may have grown up here, but they lost touch real quick. They made new friends in Bellevue, and then they got involved in sports and social activities and they always had excuses for not coming to see me. I'd say fine, no problem, and the truth is, I was usually tied up with the job and didn't have much spare time to spend with them. But now, whenever the subject of money comes up, it's Old Dad who gets tapped. I'm sick of it. I haven't seen Michelle for three months, and the last time I talked to Tanya was in June right after the wedding.”
“Stick to your guns,” I urged, for lack of anything more helpful. “It's not like going to Europe is a necessity.”
“Hell, I've never been to Europe,” Milo grumbled. “The only place I've ever been except for the West Coast is Vietnam, and that was at government expense.”
I couldn't blame Milo for begrudging his son a continental tour. But I had to get in touch with Leo. “I'll call you when I get home,” I promised, and rang off.
Luckily, Leo was at his apartment on Cedar Street, no doubt eating the same kind of TV dinner that Milo had served. I felt a pang for the sheriff and my ad manager: both were casualties of broken marriages, and in each case, their ex-wives had remarried.
“Carla got some great shots of the fire,” Leo informed me. “She may not be able to write a decent story, but she's a damned good photographer.”
“What about the cows?” I inquired.
“We got a break there,” Leo replied. “Ellsworth Over-holt took some pictures of his own, just in case the train ran over Bossy or Bessie. I talked him into dropping off the roll at Buddy Bayard's studio so it could be developed and we could use one of the shots.”
“And Darla Puckett's garden statuary?”
Leo laughed. “That one intrigued Carla. She got some wild hair to juxtapose the headless Bo-Peep next to the photo of the stray cows. You know, run a cutline that said, ‘Little Bo-Peep has lost her head, Overholt cows have left their shed.’ Or something like that.”
I gritted my teeth. “You dissuaded her, I trust?”
“Uh … You don't like it?” Leo sounded taken aback.
“It's dumb.” I wasn't in the mood for whimsy. “How's the issue shaping up so far?”
“Good. Fine.” There was a pause; I sensed that Leo was mentally redoing the page with the Bo-Peep and cow pictures. “We've got the fire with two pix, the college-related stories and photos, a three-car pileup on Highway 2, that story you did about the land exchange between Weyerhaeuser and the forest service, and whatever else comes in at the last minute. Or fits what we have left over.”
The summary sounded satisfactory. “So everything's moving along okay?”
“Sure. I can ride herd over Carla, you know. So to speak. We've got cow fever, I guess.” Leo laughed again.
“Leo, are you drinking?”
“What?” He sounded genuinely shocked. “No. And what if I had been? I almost never have more than two these days.”
I knew that, and was chagrined. “Sorry. I'm not exactly myself.” I stopped before I started making excuses. “I should be back sometime tomorrow afternoon.”
“Don't push it,” Leo said, and I thought I detected a note of concern. “We're doing fine. Hell, babe, you've only missed one day. What do you expect us to do, shut the place down and party? Carla's cute, but she's not my type.”
Leo was right. In terms of work, I'd only been absent today. Somehow, it seemed much longer. The past three days had stretched out in my mind, as if distance could alter time.
“Thanks for everything,” I said. “Make sure you proof all of Carta's stuff. I'll see you tomorrow.”
I hung up, feeling vaguely disappointed. Leo and Carla were getting along without me. And without Vida. Though it shouldn't have, the thought rankled.
Vida and Stina were halfway through their entrees by the time I returned. My panfried oysters had grown a bit cold, but they tasted good anyway. Oddly, Vida didn't inquire about The Advocate. She was still wrapped up in Audrey's murder.
“Stina was telling me that Audrey was moody,” Vida said, giving me an arch little look. “I was wondering if she was on medication. Or something like that.”
Under the influence of a third martini, Stina's own mood had grown expansive. “I heard she was always moody, even as a kid. Maybe it was her folks. They fought a lot, and he was a drinker. Look at Marlin—would you call him normal? I figure the whole family's out there in cuckooland.”
“Not the whole family,” Vida said with a hard stare. “I was thinking more of a nervous condition. Perhaps Audrey suffered from depression. Or perhaps she was simply … high-strung.” The stare softened, but it stayed in place.
Stina wasn't about to be lured into self-revelation. “I don't think so. I don't know much about mental instability, but in Audrey's case, it came down to selfishness. The world revolved around Audrey, in an off-the-wall kind of way.”
Vida frowned. “You mean she wasn't a … braggart or a blowhard?”
Stina grinned. “That's right. It was as if it was her right to get her own way, to be the center of attention. She didn't work at it. She didn't have to. It just was. And always had been.” A note of bitterness crept into her voice.
“That's very hard on children,” Vida remarked. “And husbands,” she added, as an afterthought.
“Gordon's too soft.” Stina finished her martini. “He was a sap to marry her in the first place.”
“They were very young,” Vida allowed.
“She conned him.” Stina removed the tiny plastic sword from her discarded olive and snapped it in two. “She told him she was pregnant.”
My eyes widened. “Was she?”
Abruptly, Stina straightened her shoulders and stared at me. “I don't know. All I hear are rumors.”
“Which,” Vida remarked idly, “you despise.”
“Yes.” Stina gazed into her empty glass. “So let's talk about something else. We went to New Zealand last winter to visit Stu's family. It was my first trip Down Under. I loved it. His family was something else.” She made a puckish little face. “What about you two? Any kids, grandkids?”
While usually delighted to talk about her grandchildren, Vida exhibited mild reluctance. But we both realized that Stina wasn't going to say any more about Audrey Imhoff. The dinner wound down, after I'd flashed a photo of Adam, and Vida had shown off her three daughters, their husbands, and the grandchildren, which included the reprehensible Roger. If ever there was an indication that bad blood ran in the Runkel family, Roger was it. Now entering his teens, he suffered from the Three S's: spoiled, surly, and selfish. Worse yet, Vida doted on him.
Stina expressed what appeared to be genuine interest in our progeny, but may have been part of her professional bag of tricks. Still, I thought I detected a slight wistfulness in her expression when she looked at Adam's baby picture.
Vida offered to give Stina a ride home, but then realized that only two could fit into the pickup's cab. That was all right with Stina—she could walk. The Kanes lived by Whale Park, only a couple of blocks away.
We wondered what kind of reception she would get from her husband. “I'm guessing that Stuart blows hot and cold,” Vida said as we climbed into the pickup.
“Short fuse, quick recovery?” I replied. “Maybe. Did you believe Stina when she said it was Stu who was having the affair with Audrey?”
“I don't know.” Vida was having trouble with the gears again. “She's candid, but not necessarily truthful. If you know what I mean.”
I did, sort of.
We finally pulled away from the curb, and it occurred to me that we weren't heading back to the motel. “Now where?” I sighed.
Vida didn't answer directly. “Such a nuisance, not having two cars. Really, you must get another rental tomorrow.”
“I am. I'm taking it to Alpine.”
Vida ignored my statement. “I want to make sure the Buick's been towed. You can show me where the car went into the tree.”
I started to repeat my intentions to leave in the morning, but a sudden thought struck my brain. “How old was Audrey?”
Vida paused, apparently calculating. “Forty-three. I believe she had a June birthday.”
“And Derek, the eldest child, is what—nineteen, twenty?”
Vida nodded. “He'll be twenty in November or December. I don't recall which.”
“Which means,” I went on as Vida drove out of town toward Elk Creek Road, “Audrey was twenty-three when she had Derek. Either she wasn't pregnant at the time of the wedding, or else they weren't as young as everyone says they were when they got married.” In small towns, especially two decades ago, a twenty-three-year-old single girl would have been considered a virtual old maid.
“You're right,” Vida said. “How strange that I hadn't figured that out for myself. But that's Rett and Rosalie's fault for not keeping up with the rest of the family.”
I didn't bother to correct Vida's attempt at self-defense. “Who told us they married young in the first place? Stacie?”
“I think so, yes.” As Vida turned onto the road that led to Marlin's place, she grew thoughtful. “Of course Stacie was repeating what she'd heard from her parents. At least from her mother. Frankly, I don't recall the precise context.”
I didn't either, yet the apparent discrepancy bothered me. There wasn't time to discuss it further, however: we were approaching the tree that had sent Vida's car off to the body shop. Night had fallen, and it was difficult to see.
“There,” I said, pointing to the left side of the road. “I'm sure that's it, where the ferns and underbrush are beaten down. The Buick's gone.”