The Alpine Escape

by Mary Daheim

  “Great,” Paul said with forced enthusiasm. “But how come you didn’t get Italian sausage this time?”

  Jackie clutched her stomach and made retching noises. “Don’t even think about it! Sausage! Yuck!” Reeling around the kitchen, she finally landed next to her husband. “Hey—don’t you know somebody at the college? Rand or Randolph or something like that?”

  Paul put an arm around Jackie. “Mike Randall. But he’s a biologist. I could call him and see who he’d recommend, though.” Paul’s expression was thoughtful as he studied the telephone. It rang even as I followed his gaze.

  The news was not good. For me. Dusty—or his mechanics—couldn’t get to my Jag until morning. Offhand, they’d guess it was an electrical problem. It often was, with the XJ6 model. How many times had the car done this before? It hadn’t, I replied. The man at the other end of the line laughed incredulously and told me I was certainly a lucky person.

  I didn’t feel so lucky when I hung up. “You’re stuck with me, at least for the night,” I said in a humble voice. “Let me buy the pizza.”

  Jackie wouldn’t hear of it. Indeed, she seemed excited about having a houseguest. She urged Paul to telephone Mike Randall.

  “It’s perfect,” she enthused, “just like I told Emma on the phone. We’ve got somebody with an inquiring mind. Let’s start our investigation. It’ll be like a game, only with a real body!”

  Paul winced and I blanched. Over the years my job had brought me into contact with too many dead bodies. It wasn’t a parlor game. It was real life and often tough to accept. But Jackie’s high spirits couldn’t be dampened. Five minutes later Paul was on the line with Mike Randall of Peninsula College. Mike volunteered; he’d taught anatomy at the high school level before coming from Tacoma to the two-year community college in Port Angeles.

  “Mike was my high school biology teacher,” Paul explained while we waited for the pizza at the breakfast counter in the kitchen. Paul busied himself with clearing off the space, neatly placing the paper products in one recycling container, the plastic items in another. “Mike and his wife were divorced a couple of years ago, so he wanted a change of scene. I didn’t realize he was in P.A. until I ran into him having breakfast at Landing’s Restaurant last winter.”

  Jackie perched on her stool and tickled Paul under the chin. “Lamb-love! You were still a carefree bachelor then! Both of you! Now you’ve got me—and baby makes three! But poor Mike … he’s all alone. Think of it, parted from his family, forced to start over in an unfamiliar place, leaning on strangers for emotional support. It’s so sad. Have I met him?”

  “No,” Paul replied firmly. “And it’s not sad, Sweets. His brother works here for the Fish and Game Department. Mike and Janice didn’t have any kids, and she drinks like a fish. He’s well out of it. Mike spent over ten years in living hell. As he says, he’s no quitter, but he’s also a survivor.”

  “Oh.” Jackie seemed taken aback, then she stared at me, her gray eyes sparkling. “Well, now! How would you like to meet an eligible bachelor, Emma? He’ll be here any minute!”

  Paul sighed. “He’ll be here at seven. I couldn’t ask him for dinner. We don’t have enough pizza to go around, and”—he added with a dark look for Jackie—“this house really needs to be cleaned before we invite more company.”

  Jackie tossed her hair. “Oh, pooh! Why bother when we’re in the middle of renovating it? You get too worked up over being tidy. Why can’t you be like other husbands and leave a trail of socks and shorts and stuff all over the place? Then I could nag you.” Jackie’s eyes snapped at her mate.

  Paul’s small sigh of resignation was almost inaudible. But he didn’t argue. The domestic diversion had, however, let me off the hook. The last thing I needed just now was another man to confuse my already chaotic life. I hoped that Mike Randall was a wart-covered gnome, with hair growing out of his nose.

  He wasn’t. Mike Randall was six foot one, middle forties, with broad shoulders, a full head of wavy brown hair, and deep blue eyes. If he wasn’t handsome, he came dangerously close. Involuntarily, I fluffed up my bangs as he strolled through the back door.

  Introductions were made, pleasantries exchanged, and then Paul and Mike went down to the basement. Jackie and I stayed behind in the kitchen.

  “Isn’t he darling?” Jackie squirmed on the tall stool by the dining counter. “I’ll bet every single woman under fifty is chasing him all over town.”

  “I hope he knows his anatomy,” I remarked dryly, then heard Jackie giggle and wished I’d said something else. “Look, Jackie, I’m not on a hunting expedition. If you were your mother, I’d unload my sad story. In fact, she’s heard it a million times. I don’t need any more complications in my life.”

  Jackie grew somber. “Oh. You mean His Royal Pain in the Ass as my mother always calls him. She thinks you’re nuts.”

  “Swell.” Mavis had always seemed sympathetic, but I knew she thought I was carrying the all-time flaming torch. She’d never met Tom Cavanaugh, so she had no right to judge him. Still, it comes as a blow to learn that one of your closest friends thinks you’re an idiot.

  “Mom introduced you to a bunch of guys while you worked together,” Jackie reminded me in a reproachful tone. “One of them played for the Trailblazers.”

  I gave her a quizzical look. “So who needs to feed a man who’s seven feet tall? Who wants to talk to his belt buckle? Your mother meant well, Jackie, but I never dated any of her potential suitors more than twice. My least favorite was the stockbroker who’s doing five-to-ten in some federal guesthouse for using his elderly clients’ funds to keep his assorted girlfriends in riverfront condos by the Burnside Bridge.”

  “Oh, him!” Jackie dismissed the dishonest broker with a wave of her hand. “What about the senator?”

  I all but fell off the kitchen stool. “His wife couldn’t stand me,” I finally replied with a grim set to my lips. I’d almost forgotten how desperate Mavis had become on my behalf. Having been fortunate enough to find lifelong happiness with the man of her dreams, Mavis was determined to see me married, too. I hadn’t been so lucky.

  I was spared further meanderings down memory lane by the return of Paul and Mike Randall. Paul wore a worried look; Mike seemed invigorated.

  “It’s incredible,” Mike declared, accepting Jackie’s offer of a beer before we returned to the den. “That skeleton’s almost in mint condition. We covered it with plastic drop cloths. More respectful, you know. It’s too bad we don’t have carbon-dating equipment at the college. Still, we can come close, just because of the house.”

  “How close?” I inquired, deciding I might as well fling myself into the spirit of the thing. I couldn’t do much else, given my car problems.

  Mike sat down on the small sofa. “No more than a forty-year span.” He saw my dismay and shook his head. “Frankly, carbon dating wouldn’t bring you much closer. We know that construction on the house began in 1904 and ended about 1908, so it has to be after that. Given the humidity in that unfinished basement and the fact that Paul says his uncle never mentioned any major work being done after World War II, we could narrow it down to between 1908 and 1945. That’s not bad, scientifically speaking.”

  Jackie didn’t agree. “You’re taking all the fun out of it.” Noticing Mike Randall’s face fall, she gave him an encouraging smile. “Sorry, Mike—may I call you Mike, even if you were Paul’s teacher a zillion years ago? You sure don’t look that old—does he, Emma? Anyway, we’ve got to be more precise if we’re going to solve this mystery.”

  Jackie’s rapid-fire delivery was making me dizzy. Or perhaps it was the third glass of wine. I was sitting on the floor, having been careful to avoid the small sofa where I figured I might wind up hip-to-hip with Mike Randall.

  Mike was now looking at Paul, who was seated next to him. “If we can’t rely on science, we’ll have to go with history. This was your family’s house, Paul. What do you know about a recluse or an accident or anything that might acc
ount for somebody being left in an unfinished basement? Don’t be embarrassed. Everyone has family secrets. It’s best to bring them out into the light of day and be open about things.” His tone was confidential, very like that of a professional counselor.

  But Paul’s recollections didn’t include any startling revelations. In fact, the account of his Port Angeles forebears was strictly factual.

  “My grandfather lived in this house before and after he was married,” Paul said, rubbing at his forehead as if to stimulate his memory. “It was sort of complicated. His mother, Lena, had been married before, to a man named Melcher, my grandfather’s real dad. The second time around, she married Edmund Rowley—Eddie, they called him, I think. Eddie was several years younger than Lena. They didn’t have any children of their own. The son—stepson, to Eddie—married my grandmother, Rose. They had five kids. The oldest was Uncle Arthur and the youngest was my dad. Uncle Arthur died in a nursing home last year, Uncle Henry’s been dead about fifteen years, and Uncle John was killed in World War II. My dad and Aunt Sara are still around. But they were all Melchers, like me. I’m not a Rowley at all.”

  Jackie was nodding vigorously. “This is good, very good. I’m learning something about my baby’s ancestors. The only other Melchers I ever heard of until now were Paul’s folks, Aunt Sara, and Uncle Arthur. I never met him, though,” she added, suddenly sad. “He was bats by the time I started going with Paul.”

  Her husband flinched slightly. “We should make a family tree. I’ll get some graph paper and a ruler and a pen and …” He paused, fingering his sandy mustache. “Maybe we should do this on the computer. There are programs for family histories.”

  Jackie jumped up and rummaged around in the glass-fronted bookcases. “Never mind, we don’t have forever. Emma’s only going to be here overnight. By the time you get everything organized, we’ll all be dead, too. Here,” she said, dropping back onto the footstool and opening a steno pad on her knees, “let’s start with Eddie Rowley and Lena.”

  Paul grimaced slightly. “We’d better start with the man who built the house—Cornelius Rowley. He was Eddie’s father. Eddie married Lena Stillman Melcher. I showed you her statue in the D.A.R. Park, remember? She was a suffragette.”

  “Oh!” Jackie clamped a hand over her bosom. “Old Hatchet Face! Talk about grim!” She wiggled her eyebrows at me. “Honestly, Emma, that woman could have cut cake with her face! Eeeek!” With an agonized expression Jackie sank deeper into the cushioned footstool, as if she were trying to hide. “I shouldn’t say that! I could mark the baby! That old bag is actually related to you, isn’t she, Paul?”

  “I told you,” Paul explained patiently, “she was my great-grandmother. A very forceful woman, I’ve heard. Temperance, women’s suffrage, a big mover and shaker in civic reform. That’s why they put up that statute.”

  Jackie sighed and sat up straighter. Mike Randall had shot me a sympathetic glance. I meant to smile but smirked instead. Sometimes my social graces seem to have been arrested at about age twelve.

  “Okay,” Jackie agreed, “we put Eddie and Lena at the top.” She started to write with a bright pink marking pen.

  “No, no,” Paul protested. “It’ll make things easier if you start with Eddie’s father, Cornelius Rowley. He’s the one who built the house circa 1904 to 1908. Got that?”

  “Oh, poopy!” But Jackie did as she was told.

  Paul continued with the rest of his family lore. Cornelius Rowley had been a timber cruiser, originally from Saginaw, Michigan. He’d been widowed and left with two grown children, the aforementioned Eddie and Caroline, who was known as Carrie. Cornelius remarried a much younger woman from France, but they had no kids of their own. Carrie had become the wife of an Irish logger named Malone. They’d had several children but had moved away early on.

  “The only one who stayed in Port Angeles was Uncle Arthur,” Paul said after he’d fetched more beer for Mike and himself. I declined a refill on the wine. “As I mentioned, he was the eldest of Sanford and Rose’s five kids, so I guess he got the house. He married, but his only son was drowned in a boating accident when he was just a kid. My dad and the other children were born in P.A., but they all moved away. After Dad got out of college, he went to work for the port of Tacoma. He retired last year. That’s why he and Mom are touring the Orient right now. They waited to go until after Jackie and I got married and were settled in here.”

  The statement seemed to sum up Paul’s history of the Rowleys and the Melchers. Jackie was still writing names on the pad, but she had a lot of blanks.

  “None of this is very interesting,” she remarked, squinting up as a shaft of light from the setting sun penetrated the den. “I don’t see how a ghost ties in, let alone a body.”

  Mike leaned forward on the sofa. “A ghost?”

  Paul repeated the story he’d told me earlier. Mike appeared intrigued. “A female ghost. Well, now. I don’t want to dismiss such apparitions out of hand. It’s highly suggestive, though, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?” Paul regarded his former high school teacher curiously.

  “If I had to guess,” Mike replied, eyeing each of us in turn, “I’d say that skeleton was a woman.”

  Chapter Three

  IN LAYMAN’S TERMS Mike explained how he’d used Paul’s ordinary steel tape measure to determine height and, in a more sophisticated way, sex. As he spoke, I watched Jackie carefully for signs of an emotional outburst. To my relief, she reacted with more fascination than alarm.

  “… right around five foot two,” Mike was saying, “which could mean it was a man, but I doubt it. The pelvic configuration suggests a female. So do the breast and collarbones. The skull has deteriorated some, but again, I’d guess we’ve got a Caucasian here. An anthropologist might narrow it down to certain ethnicities. Slav, Scandinavian, Mediterranean, for example.” He raised his hands in a helpless gesture. They were nice hands, big, strong, clean. I was trying to keep an open mind. “Does that sound like anybody you know? Or knew?”

  Paul laughed apologetically. “I was born in 1961. We’ve already figured out that that skeleton has been down there since long before then. Like most kids I never paid a lot of attention to family history. I wouldn’t know as much as I do if it weren’t for my ending up with this house. My dad filled me in on the background.”

  Mike acknowledged Paul’s response with a thoughtful nod. “Your information is exceptionally solid. It shows a real concern for family. In today’s mobile, disconnected society, it’s a marvel when people can be sure who their parents were, let alone grandparents and beyond.”

  Paul looked faintly embarrassed, presumably at the praise from his former teacher. “But I don’t know enough,” he protested. “I can’t say for certain that this is so-and-so. We definitely are faced with a dilemma. From a practical point of view, we should call a funeral home and have them handle the matter. They’d know what to do.”

  Mike stood up and put a compassionate hand on Paul’s shoulder. “You’re right, of course. This skeleton has nothing to do with you in your new life. We all have to move on. Your main goal is to finish wiring the house. Often, it’s best to bury the past.”

  “But we got it unburied!” Jackie’s big gray eyes appealed to me. “Emma? What do you think?”

  I took my time in replying, and when I did, it was with reluctance. “As soon as you call the funeral home, the story will be all over town. The local paper—The Peninsula Daily News?—will run it, and every person in Port Angeles who has had a disappearance in the family, no matter how long ago, will be on your front porch. There’ll be dozens of people claiming that poor skeleton and fighting over the remains. It might be better to get someone from out of town—say, a funeral parlor in Bremerton or Aberdeen.”

  Mike sat back down, but it was a temporary perch on the arm of the sofa. “That’s a good point.” He eyed me with approval. “On the other hand, if you really want to discover the skeleton’s identity, you might get some ans
wers if The News ran the story. It’s up to you, Paul, naturally. You must do whatever would be easiest to live with.”

  I was beginning to lose patience with the insoluble debate. Or maybe I was tired. I shook my head at the others. My audience was composed of three people who had been born and raised in relatively large cities. They had the wrong kind of mentality to deal with small-town oddities. “A newspaper story at this point will get you too many answers. It’ll raise more questions than it’ll resolve. Believe me, I live in a small town, even smaller than this one, and I know how people fixate on stuff like this. They take everything much more personally, as if they’re trying to establish their own identity with every event that’s ever happened within their own narrow boundaries.”

  My little speech had a sobering effect on my listeners. Paul, in particular, wore an air of defeat. “The best thing, I guess, is to call the prosecutor tomorrow and do whatever he advises.”

  But Jackie wasn’t giving up the chase. “That’s tomorrow. For today, it’s still up to us,” she declared, gazing from her husband to their male guest. “Why don’t you two guys go back down to the basement and search for clues?”

  “Jackie …!” Paul clapped a hand to his forehead. “What do you expect to find? A suicide note?”

  “Of course not,” Jackie replied haughtily. “Despite the damp, there has to be some remnants where those workmen found the body. Or do you think this poor woman walked into the basement stark naked?”

  A grisly idea occurred to me, but I didn’t want to mention it, lest Jackie start to cry, pass out, or, worse yet, get the giggles.

  Mike Randall, however, felt compelled to be candid.

  “Sexual violence isn’t confined to our own era,” he said, his broad forehead creasing. “Sad to say, we might have a victim of rape and murder here. She might have been carried into the basement. Going back to the early part of the century, there was a great deal of sexual repression. These people were all basically Victorians, and the crimes committed in prudish societies are often excessive.”