The Alpine Escape

by Mary Daheim

  I didn’t entirely agree with Jackie. When it comes to love, men and women are unpredictable. The heart follows its own highway, and didn’t I know it. But Jackie had opened up some new avenues of thought for me.

  “Let’s go back to what we know—or think we know,” I said. “Jimmy Malone went to Seattle. From what we’ve heard, he took Carrie and the kids along. If that’s really true, then we may not have found Carrie after all.” Jackie and Paul both tried to interrupt, but I waved them into silence. “My point is, a woman went with Jimmy to Seattle. How do we know for certain that it was Carrie? It could have been Simone. Or Minnie.”

  “Oh, poopy!” In frustration, Jackie twisted her wedding ring on her finger. “We don’t know. We can’t know. But I see what you mean, Emma—if Carrie had been killed, another woman might have taken her place. With those big hats, the same clothes, and long capes, how could anybody who didn’t see them up close tell the difference? How would they have traveled? By train?”

  “No,” said Mike. “The railroad didn’t come through here until much later. World War I, I think. They would have had all their belongings with them, so I’d guess they went by boat.”

  Jackie gave the rest of us a knowing look. “You see? They leave the house in a carriage or a wagon, go down to the dock, and sail away. Nobody sees them off because Simone has already left, or if she’s still in town, she wouldn’t give a hoot. Lena probably doesn’t, either. Good riddance is how she figures it. And her husband, Eddie, is too henpecked to make a fuss over his sister’s departure. Sanford doesn’t care because he’s not actually related to Carrie.” Jackie paused, then gave her ring another frantic twist. “Oh, blast! This isn’t getting us anywhere! Now we’re back to the uncertainty of whether or not we’ve got Carrie in the basement!”

  I stared at Jackie’s hands. “Your ring … Where’s Carrie’s? We found the earrings, the silver bracelet, the cross, and the gold locket. But no ring. Carrie must have had a wedding set, maybe an expensive diamond.”

  Paul’s expression was sheepish. “The rings may still be there. As we said, it’d take a long time to dig through that whole section of dirt.”

  Mike had an idea of his own. “Maybe the killer took the rings. If the set really was expensive, he or she might have wanted to keep them to sell or pawn.”

  “Who needed money?” asked Jackie.

  “Grandpa Sanford?” Paul suggested. “If Lena ran the household, I have a feeling she kept her son on a short leash.”

  “We need that will,” Jackie said, pouting a bit. “Why couldn’t Meriwether and Bell have been in the office this afternoon?”

  “We need marriage licenses,” I put in. “We have to find out when Jimmy Malone married Minnie.” I thought of Vida and how she would relish our task. We knew about Carrie and Jimmy’s wedding, but the only way to verify a ceremony between him and Minnie Burke was through the county offices, either in Port Angeles or Seattle. Vida would expedite matters by revealing that one of her numerous nephews, nieces, cousins, or godchildren worked for the county clerk. I had no such ties, either in Clallam or King Counties.

  “We might coerce somebody in Seattle to check the marriage licenses for 1908 or 1909,” I said, finishing my third Pepsi of the day. “It would take time, though, even if we found a willing accomplice.” Due in part to the Alaska Gold Rush, Seattle had been a rapidly growing city in the early part of the century. Off the top of my head, I estimated its population at between a hundred and two hundred thousand. Going through a full year of marriage licenses would be a big job. Jackie volunteered to make the call in the morning.

  “You’ll be off to Victoria at eight-thirty,” she said to me. “I’ll handle telephone research. Maybe when I call King County I’ll pretend I’m a private detective.”

  Mike decided to call it a night. He had an early class on Thursday and also needed to finish grading some papers. I considered phoning Vida to see if there were any more crises in Alpine. Then I remembered that this Wednesday was her Cat Club meeting. She and several of her contemporaries got together once a month to eat gooey desserts and rake the rest of Alpine over the coals. The following day was always marked by their vows to go on a diet—and to rake over each other, usually by phone.

  It was half-past nine when Mike left with his jar of bones. Since Paul also had to get up early for work, he, too, said good night. Jackie lingered with me in the den. She was studying the gold locket and looking poignant.

  “Dark hair, black, really. Whose?” she inquired in a wistful voice.

  I turned back to the photo albums. “It’s hard to tell what shade of hair the people have in these pictures, since they’re not in color. We can rule out Carrie and Rose because they were both fair. Jimmy, too, because he seems to be redheaded. That may be a cliché, given that he’s Irish, but his hair certainly doesn’t look very dark. Lena’s hair may have been brown, but she appears to be going gray in the photos from this period.”

  Jackie leaned closer to me on the sofa, frowning at the album pages. “I feel I know these people now. Carrie may have been murdered, but it’s Rose I feel sorry for. Maybe that’s because she’s Paul’s grandmother.”

  “Probably,” I agreed. “He knew her. That brings Grandma Rose into better focus.” I turned more pages. “Eddie and Sanford were both dark. So was Simone. But the hair might be from someone further back. Cornelius or his first wife. Lena’s first husband.”

  Jackie sniffed. “Lena with a locket? She wasn’t the sentimental type.”

  I allowed that Jackie was right, though something she had said pricked at my mind. For the moment it proved elusive. “The problem is, if we assume the locket belonged to Carrie, wouldn’t she have her husband’s hair in it? Then it would be red or light brown, not black.”

  Jackie waved her hand, then gave the album a slap. “There’s no locket in any of these photos. The women are all wearing pearl chokers or those high collars with tons of lace.”

  Again some small fragment of an idea passed through my brain, then danced away. But Jackie was on target about the locket. I hadn’t been able to spot it, either. Maybe it came from a later period than the skeleton. Or maybe it was never meant to be seen.

  “A lover,” I said, startled to discover that I’d spoken out loud.

  “A lover?” Jackie perked up. “Who? Carrie? Simone? Not Lena!”

  “Probably not Lena.” But, as Vida would say, you never know. Nothing could be ruled out with people. “But if it was Carrie or Simone, they wouldn’t flaunt the locket.”

  “Simone might,” Jackie said. “She strikes me as … What do you call it? Brazen?”

  “No,” I disagreed. “Simone knew what she was doing when she married Cornelius Rowley. She wouldn’t do anything to throw a spanner in the works. If she had a lover, he was a well-kept secret.”

  Jackie had settled back onto the sofa. She was smiling slyly. “A lover. I like it. Simone would have done something like that. She was French, after all. Don’t Frenchwomen always have a husband and a lover? Sort of like owning a washer and a dryer. They’re practically a domestic necessity in France.”

  I didn’t try to dispel Jackie’s illusion. She was the French major, after all. “We’re going in circles,” I noted, then suddenly captured the elusive idea that had been needling me. “The cross—Lena wore a cross in that first picture. Let’s compare it to the one we found in the basement.”

  One simple gold cross looks very like another. But at least the cross from the basement and the one that adorned Lena’s pristine shirtwaist appeared similar.

  “She was a religious woman, according to Aunt Sara. Her statue in the park doesn’t show her wearing a cross. I wonder …” My weary brain tried to deal with the matter and failed.

  “It’s sure not Lena down there. She lived forever,” Jackie pointed out. “Maybe she lost the cross. It might have fallen off the chain.”

  That was certainly a possibility. But there was another, uglier scenario. “Fallen off in a struggl
e?” I stared meaningfully at Jackie. “I can’t figure a motive for Lena killing her sister-in-law, though. All this speculation is fine, but we need more facts. Maybe we’ll get them tomorrow.”

  “We need more pictures.” Jackie had gotten off the sofa and was going through a bandbox filled with loose photos. We had glanced at them earlier, but they seemed to be from a later era. Women in felt cloches, men in belted polo coats, children in pinafores and overalls recalled the period between the two world wars. But near the bottom of the bandbox were some earlier pictures. One was a duplicate of the Rowley-Melcher house photograph we’d seen on exhibit at the museum.

  Jackie waved the eight-by-ten at me. “This is much clearer, even if it is smaller. I’m going to get that magnifying glass.” She rummaged in the drawer under the glass-fronted bookcase. “Here, let’s see if we can make out who the fifth person is, the one partly behind the front-porch arch.”

  But enlarging the photo under the magnifying glass had virtually the same effect as the blow-up in the museum. The figure became fuzzier, though we were able to discern that it was a woman. “If we could get someone to digitalize this, we could see it much better,” I said. “Does anybody do that kind of work in Port Angeles?”

  Jackie had no idea. Indeed, she didn’t seem to understand what I was talking about. I explained that, basically, digitalizing was a process wherein an image was made sharper.

  “It’s costly, and probably not worth it,” I added. “For all we know, whoever this is might be a neighbor.”

  “A neighbor!” Jackie’s hand flew to her face. “The Bullards! They live next door. They always have. He was a banker. He’s retired now, but his father is still alive. He must be about a hundred. I think he’s in a home.”

  “Check him out,” I said, half staggering to my feet. I was tired, though I hadn’t worked half as hard as I did every day on The Advocate. Researching the past was tougher than I thought.

  Jackie promised to speak to Mr. and Mrs. Bullard in the morning. She still seemed to be in high gear. As I headed up to bed, I envied her youthful energy. I was sure I’d fall asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.

  And I did, though I dreamed of straw-hatted men and tiny-waisted women, riding on bicycles built for two. They went round and round, never reaching their destination. We were doing the same thing in trying to piece together an eighty-year-old mystery. When I woke up shortly after seven, I felt a sense of futility. It was a wild-goose chase, and even if we somehow figured out a solution, there was no point to it. In fact, we could easily bring shame to the Melcher family.

  On the other hand, it was better than thinking about my love life. Or was it the lack thereof that really bothered me?

  I went into the bathroom and took a hot shower. I didn’t need a cold one. That bothered me, too.

  Chapter Nine

  THE CAPACITY OF The Victoria Express was one hundred and fifty passengers. On this cloudy morning in July I doubted that the ship held more than half that number. Of course, there would be several additional crossings during the day. Meanwhile, The Coho, which carried a thousand people and also took on cars, would make at least two trips across the strait.

  I had waited for breakfast until after I boarded. The menu wasn’t elaborate, so I fueled myself on powderedsugar doughnuts and coffee. My desire for a second cup led me to an encounter with an obstinate vending machine, which supposedly accepted both American and Canadian coins. It didn’t seem to want to take either one, and I ended up giving the thing a swift kick. I didn’t get my coffee, but I did acquire a sore toe and eighty-five cents in mixed change.

  Midway, we encountered some heavy seas, and I was glad I hadn’t eaten much. I’d forgotten that the open waters of the strait can cause seasickness. Jackie had been wise to stay home; she would probably have spent most of her time leaning over the rail.

  My stomach settled down and my spirits picked up as soon as we approached Victoria’s harbor. The capital of British Columbia is self-consciously English, yet it never fails to charm. The copper-domed Parliament buildings, the rambling granite mass of the Empress Hotel, and the more modem hostelries that face the water are invitingly picturesque. The Inner Harbor seems to welcome visitors with a hug: It’s not British to behave in such a familiar fashion, but somehow the Canadians have transcended their more austere roots. I caught myself smiling at the horse-drawn carriages, the red double-decker tour buses, and the overflowing flower planters hanging from wrought-iron lamp standards. Victoria is only seventeen miles from Port Angeles, but the city seems a world away.

  I headed straight for the Empress and a phone booth. The hotel had undergone a lavish renovation since I’d visited it last. The fading dowager I recalled from years ago was now truly fit for a queen. Maybe I should have come to Victoria in the first place. I could have sipped tea in the lobby and contemplated my life. Or, more likely, I could have lost myself in the maze of shops that cater to dopey tourists like me.

  Alexander Cameron had an Oak Bay address. I assumed that though he was dead, his widow had kept the listing intact. I dialed the number and was about to give up when there was no answer after seven rings. But a sprightly, if elderly, voice responded on the eighth ring.

  I had readied my spiel while crossing the strait. Explaining that I was a newspaper editor and a friend of the Melcher family, I had undertaken a research project that dealt with early families in Port Angeles. As Mrs. Cameron was the eldest surviving member of one of those clans, I hoped she would permit me to visit and chat.

  Claudia Malone Cameron was delighted, if a bit flustered. “I can’t tell you how often I’ve thought about going back to Port Angeles,” she said with a trace of self-reproach. “It’s so close and yet I never do. I had no idea that younger members of the family lived there.”

  I had to hedge a bit, since I was actually representing the Melchers, not the Rowleys. I told her that the present descendants had moved to town very recently. She didn’t press for details but was more than willing to let me come out to her house. I found a cab under the hotel’s porte cochere and was heading for the Oak Bay district moments later.

  Claudia Cameron didn’t live on the bay itself, which is an enclave of wealthy Victorians. Rather, her neighborhood was more modest, and close to the shopping area a few blocks inland. The house was typical of older, middle-class residences in Victoria, built of stucco, with dark green trim.

  I paid the Iranian cab driver, added a generous tip, and mounted the four cement stairs that led to the walk and the small front porch. Like most gardens in British Columbia, Mrs. Cameron’s was well tended and blooming profusely. Day lilies, roses, phlox, sweet Williams, and hollyhocks grew in an orderly manner behind borders of ageratum, lobelia, and Saint-John’s-wort. The porch was flanked by great shrubs of heather. I wondered if Mrs. Cameron was still able to tend her flowers.

  It appeared that she was not. Claudia Cameron met me at the door in a wheelchair. She had a round, wrinkled face and twinkling green eyes. A shawl was thrown over her legs. She wore a gray twin set and a single strand of pearls. I got the impression that she was glad to see me, not for myself but because I was a connection with the outside world.

  “The teakettle’s on,” she announced, leading the way into her cluttered, comfortable living room. A spinet piano displayed framed photographs, but I refrained from blatant rubbernecking. Later, perhaps, after we’d had a chance to get acquainted. First, however, I clarified my connection.

  “So you know the Melchers,” Mrs. Cameron said with a winning smile. “My, my, I’d forgotten all about them.”

  I swiftly sifted through the family tree. “Paul is Sanford and Rose’s grandson. They inherited the house from Paul’s uncle Arthur. He died a year or so ago.”

  Claudia Cameron nodded slowly. “So many are gone. People of my age group, that is. It’s very sad, living on, when the rest have passed away.” Only the twinkle of her green eyes revealed that she took pride in having outlasted her contemporaries. “I
don’t recall any of the Melchers, really. My parents must have lost touch.”

  “You were raised in Seattle,” I remarked, getting set to jot down items in my notebook. “What did your father do for a living?”

  “He was foreman at a mill along the Ship Canal. It’s gone now, I hear. So many places are.” This time, Mrs. Cameron looked genuinely sad. Perhaps it wasn’t as satisfying to outlive places as much as people. “We lived close by, in the Fremont district. Do you know it?”

  I confessed that I, too, had been raised in Seattle, in the neighboring Wallingford area. Mrs. Cameron was delighted. “Then you must have gone to Lincoln High School. My brothers and sisters and I went there, too.”

  I was forced to disillusion my hostess. “My brother and I attended a private Catholic high school, Blanchet. It was built in the 1950s, just north of Green Lake.”

  “Oh.” Mrs. Cameron definitely seemed disappointed, either by my failure to attend Lincoln or my Catholicism. Fortunately, the teakettle let off a howl and I volunteered to head for the kitchen. Mrs. Cameron, however, insisted on doing it herself.

  “I get around just fine in this contraption,” she said. “Arthritic hips, you know. I had them replaced twice, but they don’t last forever. And at my age it seems like a waste of time and money.” She smiled at me again and whisked off to the kitchen.

  I took the opportunity to study the photos on the spinet. I recognized none of them. Most were graduation and wedding pictures, no earlier than the Depression era. There was one five-by-seven, however, which could have been of Claudia’s parents. The heavy set man had a full head of white hair; the woman was plump, with frizzy gray curls. They were gazing at each other over a wedding cake. Or perhaps it was for an anniversary. Judging from the woman’s fussy jeweled evening sweater, the picture dated from the 1950s. The man could have been Jimmy Malone, but I couldn’t tell whether his wife was Carrie or Minnie. Time, weight, hairstyle, and the possibility of dentures defeated me.