The Alpine Quilt

by Mary Daheim

  “I’m sorry,” she finally said in a lackluster voice, “I simply have no appetite.”

  “And I simply have no time for excuses,” Betsy snapped. “You eat that soup or Jake and I won’t donate any more food to the parish, not even the food bank. I mean it. You won’t get well if you don’t eat.”

  Startled, Annie Jeanne tasted the soup.

  My brother looked amused. “You can’t work if you don’t recover,” he said lightly. “Then I’d have to fire you.”

  “Oh, Father Ben . . .” Annie Jeanne slurped some soup.

  After we’d eaten, I asked Ben if I could speak to him in his office. He led the way. Dennis Kelly had been well organized. My brother wasn’t. In fact, when it came to tidiness, his work ethic resembled mine. Maybe that was because our parents had been very neat people and we had rebelled.

  Once the door was closed, I gave him the results of the lab tests. As I knew he would, Ben said he’d keep his mouth shut.

  “The cheesecake, huh?” he said in a thoughtful tone. “Do you remember if Father Fitz had diabetes?”

  My mind went back to my early years in Alpine. It seemed so long ago, much longer than it felt. Maybe that’s because I measured time by deadlines, not months and seasons. Had I really spent almost fourteen years in this semi-isolated town deep in the forest and perched on a mountainside?

  Ben must have sensed my ruminations. “Only yesterday,” he murmured. “Except that it wasn’t.”

  I smiled at my brother. “How true. Did I really expect to stay here so long?”

  Ben shook his head. “You expected Tom Cavanaugh to carry you off on his milk-white charger.”

  “No!” I wasn’t smiling anymore. “When I moved here, I hadn’t spoken to Tom in almost twenty years!”

  Ben said nothing; he merely tipped his head to one side.

  I shifted in my chair and put my brain back on track. “I don’t remember if Father Fitz had diabetes. He might have, since he was elderly and the problem often develops in old age. Were you thinking he might have had insulin tablets stored away in the rectory?”

  “It’s possible,” Ben said, “but unlikely. Fitz went to a retirement home for priests, right? He’d take his medications with him. And the tidy and orderly Dennis Kelly—no doubt because his father was a career army officer who inspected his room every morning—would have thrown out anything that was no longer useful.”

  “Except in the kitchen,” I pointed out. “Sometimes people keep their medicine there because they take it with food or before eating. But the kitchen’s always been the housekeeper’s domain. Unfortunately, none of the previous housekeepers who served before Annie Jeanne are still with us. I doubt that Annie Jeanne ever throws anything out.”

  “Milo took all that stuff,” Ben said.

  “He wouldn’t have it if it was used up.”

  “That’s true.” Ben clasped his hands and frowned. “That’s odd.”

  “What?”

  Ben moved in his swivel chair and accidentally knocked over a pile of pamphlets from the Knights of Columbus. He didn’t bother to pick them up off the floor. “Something Annie Jeanne said that day . . . damn, what was it?” He grimaced and stared at the hand-carved statue of Saint Joseph in a niche above his desk. “It was about the crust,” he finally recalled. “Annie Jeanne told me that Ethel Pike had given her some chocolate cookies at the party for Gen Sunday night. That gave her the idea to make a cheesecake for her old pal because she could use the cookies for the crust.”

  I was startled. “That’s strange. Charlene Vickers mentioned something about cookies at Gen’s party.” I stopped, trying to resurrect the conversation. “Where’s your copy of today’s Advocate?”

  Ben looked around his cluttered desk, the serviceable carpet, on top of the filing cabinets, the bookcases, and the homely pine table that had once been used as an altar by Father Fitz but was now a catchall.

  “Maybe,” Ben said sheepishly, “it’s still in the box outside.”

  “Never mind.” I knew he had had other things to do than retrieve our weekly edition. “I wrote the party story. I should remember it.” I paused again, trying to visualize what I’d typed. “Ah. Gen brought homemade cookies for all of the guests. Some of them were served, but not the ones she made for Ethel Pike. Ethel has diabetes, and gave her cookies to Annie Jeanne. Of course, I didn’t include most of that in the article because Ethel doesn’t want people to know she’s diabetic. Unless there really was insulin squirreled away somewhere in the rectory, we’ve come full circle back to Gen.”

  Ben leaned back in his chair. “You’re kidding.”

  “I wish I were,” I said grimly. “The worst of it is, I can’t make any sense out of it.”

  Ben gazed indifferently at the hole in the sleeve of his blue cardigan sweater. “The problem is when the insulin was added to the cookies, right?”

  “Yes, and who did it.”

  “Were all the cookies Gen brought the same kind?”

  “I don’t know. I could ask Charlene, or someone else who was at the party. In fact,” I went on, realizing I’d been remiss in making plans for a follow-through of the investigation, “I should ask someone else. Several of them, in fact.”

  Ben twirled in his swivel chair. It was a novelty for him. When I’d visited my brother in Tuba City a few years back, he’d had a very uncomfortable-looking straight-backed chair with a wicker seat. “Will Vida help?” he asked. “She must know the members even better than you do.”

  “That’s the problem.” I gave my brother a vexed look. “Three are related to her—Mary Lou Hinshaw Blatt and Nell Blatt, who Vida usually doesn’t speak to, and Ella Hinshaw, who’s kind of gaga. Frankly, Vida doesn’t seem too interested in Gen’s death. It’s not like her to be so lacking in curiosity. I’m pretty sure that Vida and Gen had a falling-out a long time ago.”

  “Vida can hold a grudge,” Ben remarked. “That’s too bad.”

  “I know,” I agreed. “Don’t you remember when I told you a few months ago about Thyra Rasmussen and how Vida loathed her because she’d once stepped on Mrs. Blatt’s prizewinning gourds?”

  “Which happened fifty years ago at least?” Ben’s expression was wry. “Yes, I remember. I suppose this rift with Gen was over some trifling thing, too. It’s a shame, but it happens.”

  “Yes, it does,” I said. “But in fact, Mrs. Rasmussen was just plain mean. I knew her, too. She was a magnet for hostility.”

  “Hostility needn’t always be hatred,” Ben pointed out.

  “True.” I knew what my brother was thinking. Hate the sin, love the sinner. That was easier said than done with someone like Thyra.

  But Genevieve Bayard didn’t strike me as being cut from the same cloth as Thyra Rasmussen. On the other hand, I didn’t know her. I’d only spoken to her once on the phone.

  Maybe, judging from Vida’s attitude toward Gen, once was enough.

  Nor had Vida’s attitude changed. “Of course Annie Jeanne didn’t poison Genevieve,” she asserted when I asked her to come into my office after lunch. “But I can’t say I’m grieving. I’ve no time for that Bayard woman, dead or alive.”

  I’d closed the door behind Vida to give us privacy. “Why not?” I asked in what I hoped was a casual tone.

  Vida looked away, gazing at the calendar from Harvey’s Hardware with its full-color picture of Tonga Ridge. The photo, like all those that had graced Harvey Adcock’s calendars over the years, had been taken by Buddy Bayard.

  “I’d rather not discuss it,” she finally said, looking back at me. “It was a long time ago, but there are some things that are just too despicable to talk about.”

  That didn’t sound like Vida. “Gosh,” I said innocently, “Gen must have made a lot of enemies in the old days. How did she manage to keep her buddies in the BCTC?”

  “I have no idea.” Vida was looking very prim.

  “Were you ever a member?” I asked, still hoping to sound casual but not succeeding very well. />
  Vida took umbrage. “Are you interrogating me?”

  “Of course not.” My expression was ironic. “I’m doing what I always do when there’s a local homicide. I’m trying to figure out whodunit. In the past, you’ve always helped me—tremendously. I’m just curious why you don’t seem interested this time around.”

  “Genevieve hadn’t lived here for years,” Vida replied. “Nor do I think she was purposely poisoned. And, no, I never belonged to the Burl Creek Thimble Club. My mother did, but she was clever at crafts. I wasn’t.” Vida looked down at her big hands with their stubby fingers, as if to blame them for her lack of talent.

  “Let me fill you in,” I said. “Then maybe you’ll be more interested.”

  “I doubt it.”

  Nevertheless, I told her everything, even breaking my promise to Milo not to reveal the part about the cheesecake crust containing the glipizide. I hated doing it, but I was that desperate to engage Vida in the crime.

  “My, my,” Vida said after I’d finished, “that is rather intriguing.”

  “Then you’ll work on the story with me?”

  Vida blinked twice behind her big glasses. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Why not? You said the case was intriguing.”

  “I wasn’t referring to the case,” Vida responded. “I meant the homemade cookies. I don’t think Genevieve ever baked so much as a cupcake as long I knew her.”

  My shoulders sagged. “That’s hardly the point. She was in Spokane for over twenty years. She could’ve been baking marzipan and Russian rye and marble cake for all you know.”

  “That’s highly unlikely.”

  “Okay, so maybe Roseanna baked the cookies for her,” I allowed, and sent my mind off on a different, frightening tangent. I pushed the thought aside. “Maybe she bought them at the Upper Crust, or even at the airport. There wasn’t much time in between her arrival in Alpine and the party that night.”

  “That sounds more like Genevieve,” Vida conceded. “You should ask Roseanna. Of course, Milo will do that as well. I assume he’ll have to search the Bayard kitchen, if, in fact, the cookies were made there.”

  Did I sense that the fish was cautiously circling the bait? “I’d think,” I said slowly, “that if you and Gen didn’t get along, there’d be others who didn’t, either. Like your mother, for instance.”

  “I told you,” Vida said adamantly, “I don’t wish to discuss it. Please, Emma, let’s stop talking about Genevieve Bayard. I don’t even like to mention her name.”

  The fierceness in Vida’s gray eyes told me that she wasn’t going to nibble after all. I couldn’t believe it. But I had to let it go.

  “Fine, I’ll shut up.” I rose from my chair. “I’m going to see Buddy and Roseanna now.”

  Vida also stood up. “I have several stories for next week. The Skylstads are going to Boise to spend Thanksgiving with their daughter, who owns a pet-sitting service. Edna Mae Dalrymple just returned from a library conference in Yakima. There are two weddings over the weekend. My page will be full, I assure you.”

  I didn’t doubt it. But I was still irked.

  Buddy and Roseanna were both at work. She was behind the front desk; Buddy was in the studio, photographing a newcomer to Alpine High School who hadn’t yet had his senior picture taken.

  “It’s Jason Crowe,” Roseanna explained, “the son of the Upper Crust owners. It’s hard for kids to change schools in their senior year.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “By chance, I bought the paper right after Adam graduated in Portland. How are you and Buddy doing?”

  “Ohhh . . .” Roseanna ran a hand through her blond curls. “It’s rough. We’ve finally tracked down somebody in Spokane who knew Gen’s attorney. We’re waiting to hear back from him. Then maybe we can find out if she had special wishes about her burial. Meanwhile, we’re still going nuts trying to understand what happened. Our sheriff isn’t very forthcoming.”

  I gathered that the Bayards didn’t know exactly how Gen was poisoned. “It’s a mess,” I allowed. “It’s a hard story to cover, but at least we have several days before the next edition. You’re on a tighter schedule, I’m afraid.”

  Roseanna grimaced. “Gen’s not going anywhere. As Janet Driggers told me, Al doesn’t hand out weekend passes at the mortuary.”

  That sounded like Janet. She was a rambunctious woman with a runaway tongue, and I couldn’t help but like her for it. “Gen must have had some fine qualities,” I said. “Obviously the women from BCTC liked her.”

  “I guess so,” Roseanna said without enthusiasm. “Maybe it was my fault that I never warmed to her. Who knows?”

  “Gen certainly went out of her way to bake all those cookies for the club members,” I remarked. “She must have had to hustle.”

  Roseanna grinned, the first smile I’d seen since before the tragedy. “Bake? Gen? We stopped at the Upper Crust after we got back from Seattle. She practically cleaned the place out. It’s a good thing we called ahead. Ah.” She turned around as a medium-size adolescent with straight black hair and rimless glasses emerged from the studio. He was already undoing the tie that he wore with a white shirt and navy slacks.

  “All finished, Jason?” Roseanna inquired. “We were just talking about your parents’ bakery. Have you met Emma Lord, the newspaper owner?”

  He looked at me as if I were cat dirt, but put out a hand. “Hi.”

  “Jason works at the bakery, too,” Roseanna said, poking keys on the computer that sat just below the reception counter. “How’s that going?” she asked the youth as his invoice was printed out.

  Jason shrugged. “Okay.”

  I kept my distance as Roseanna explained the billing procedure to Jason and told him how soon he’d see the contact prints. After the transaction was complete, Jason Crowe slouched out the door.

  “Typical for his age,” Roseanna murmured. “What else can I do for you?”

  I’d hoped Buddy would come into the reception area, but he didn’t. “I wanted to make amends with you two for pulling the darkroom business,” I said. “I know it won’t be the same in terms of immediate cash, but I’d like to ask Buddy to take some color photos for the paper. Stock shots, that we could use anytime. That’d give him exposure—excuse the expression—to wider markets so that he’d eventually make more money.”

  Roseanna looked thoughtful. “That’s considerate of you, Emma. Are you talking about the kind of scenic stuff he does for Harvey Adcock’s calendar?”

  “That, plus more arty-type pictures,” I replied. “He could show off his creativity.”

  Buddy emerged from behind the velvet curtains that led into the studio. “Is this appeasement?”

  I should have guessed he’d been eavesdropping. “Call it what you like,” I said, trying not to be annoyed. “Let’s face it, Buddy—you’ve pretty well cornered the market in Alpine. Losing our darkroom business won’t put you and Roseanna and the kids out on the streets. I just don’t want any hard feelings.”

  Buddy came over to where I was standing by the reception desk. “Oh—hell, Emma, I don’t want to end up in a feud, either.” He offered his hand, which I took. “It was just bad timing. And now, with Ma’s death . . .” He released his grip on me and threw both his hands into the air. “Heck, life’s too short. I think you’ve got a good idea. I’d like to try some different kinds of photography. I get into a rut, especially after taking almost a hundred high school senior pictures. I feel stale.”

  “I understand,” I said. It was true: I could do only so many county commissioner reports, weather stories, and local features before I felt like a robot. One of the things that kept me going was that it could be worse: I might be rewriting Ed Bronsky’s autobiography.

  “How’s Annie Jeanne?” Buddy inquired. His voice was noncommittal, as if he wasn’t sure whether she’d purposely killed his mother or not.

  “She’s back at the rectory, but still very distraught,” I replied. “I’m sure she’s completely
innocent, though that doesn’t make her feel any better. She seems so genuinely fond of your mother. I don’t suppose you’d know of anybody around here who wasn’t?” Except Vida, I thought to myself.

  Neither of the Bayards could name anyone who hadn’t been on good terms with Gen. Vida wasn’t mentioned, which I found curious. She certainly made no secret of her dislike.

  “Ma had been gone from Alpine long enough,” Buddy added, “that she never got involved in some of the local feuds. As for Spokane, I wouldn’t know. She was such a private person.”

  Roseanna was leaning on the counter. “I don’t ever recall Gen mentioning anyone she’d quarreled with except for disagreements at work. But they weren’t serious. On the other hand, I don’t remember her talking about friends, either.”

  “What about the man she had living with her?” I asked. “Do you think he’s still around?”

  Roseanna shook her head. “The last few times we visited, there was no sign of him. I guess they broke up. For all I know, he could be dead.”

  “Surely the attorney must know who he is—or was,” I pointed out.

  Buddy and Roseanna exchanged glances. “We didn’t ask,” Roseanna said. “I mean, Gen didn’t want us to know about him when she was alive, so what’s the point of finding out who he was now?”

  “She could have left her money to him,” I said.

  “No,” Buddy responded. “About two years ago, she made a simple will and left it all to me. Not that it’s any fortune. Ma liked nice things, especially clothes. That’s why she always worked for apparel stores; she could get discounts. And she wasn’t an investor, except for some Nordstrom stock. I suppose in the end we’ll get around ninety thousand dollars, including the condo sale, the stock, and her savings.”

  That sounded like a substantial sum to me. Roseanna, however, spoke bitterly. “It’ll help pay for the kids’ college tuition when they get beyond Skykomish Community College. It’s only fair, since Gen didn’t do diddly-squat for them when she was alive.”