Alpine Hero (12 page)

Whatever appetite I’d had earlier now turned into a knot in my stomach. “Adam, you’ve gone to three different universities, all at great expense. You’ve finished the basic requirements for most degrees. You’ve spent two years at ASU. Surely you can’t need more than thirty or forty credits to graduate. Another year or so won’t make that much difference to civilization as we know it.”

“You don’t sense the urgency,” Adam asserted, still condescending. “If you hung out with Uncle Ben the way I’ve done the last couple of summers—”

“What does Uncle Ben say about this latest scheme of yours?” I interrupted.

“It’s not a scheme. It’s a blueprint.” Adam paused, then lowered his voice. “I haven’t told him yet.”

Deciding that Ben might have more influence on Adam than I would, and realizing from twenty-two years of experience that it was pointless to argue, I tried to relax.

“Talk it over with him when you’re in Tuba City for Easter break,” I said. Then, because a mother never can resist giving unwelcome advice: “Meanwhile don’t do
anything … precipitous.” I’d almost said “dumb.” “That degree is your ticket to helping more people in better ways than you could do otherwise.”

There was a brief silence at the other end of the line. Maybe my son was actually thinking about what I’d just said. But when Adam spoke again, he had gone off in a different direction.

“Are you pissed because you think my father wouldn’t fork over any more travel money if I was out of school?”

Tom had been providing Adam’s transportation for the past three years. He and my son—our son—had never met until Adam was in college. In my war of independence, I’d kept them apart. I had gone for twenty years without any contact with Tom. Then, after we met again and eventually ended up back in bed, we had discovered that time hadn’t diminished our passion. In the meantime I’d let Tom get acquainted with our now-grown child. The two had seemed to forge a tentative bond. If Adam thought about it at all, he probably figured that Tom and I were nothing more than friends. We were no longer even that. I hadn’t told Adam that I had again excised his father from my life.

Nor would I tell him now. I’d already uttered words he’d rather not hear. “I’m not concerned about your father’s contributions,” I said stiffly. “We got along before he made them, we can get along without them again. But I suspect he’d like to see you finish college.”

“Do his other kids have degrees?” It was the first time I’d ever heard Adam refer to Tom’s two children by Sandra.

“Not yet,” I hedged. Tom’s daughter, Kelsey, was threatening to quit Mills College to become an actress. The last I heard, his son, Graham, was finishing at USC.

“He won’t care,” Adam said easily. “He’s told me that I should be whatever I want. He’s not a dictator.”

The implication was clear. Mom was the Black Hat. “You can be a bricklayer or a dentist or a warlock, if that’s what you want. But you’d damned well better do it with a diploma in your hip pocket.”

The vigor in my voice must have made a dent on Adam. “I’ll talk it over with Uncle Ben at Easter,” he mumbled, not sounding happy at the prospect.

“Good,” I said, tempering my tone. “How’s it going otherwise?”

It was going, sort of. There was yet another new girl, whose name I didn’t bother to file in my brain. Classes were hard, and most of the instructors were boring. The roommate that he’d acquired in the fall had turned out to be a drug user and had left the campus the previous week. Without asking for money, clothes, or other merchandise, Adam finally rang off. He sounded glum, and that made me unhappy.

I’d call him back tomorrow night; maybe I’d insist that he come home for Easter. But that would disappoint Ben, who couldn’t desert his parishioners during Holy Week. My brother and I were lucky to get together twice a year.

My spirits plunged still deeper. On weary legs, I finally left the office. The Jag had sat too long in the cold weather. It didn’t want to start. Given my mood, I could empathize.

I went back into the office to call Cal Vickers and ask for a tow. Fortunately, he was still open. Alpine’s merchants are whimsical when it comes to keeping hours. Cal said he’d be there in about ten minutes. It was six straight up, and he was about to close. He offered to give me a ride home in the tow truck.

I killed five minutes by trying to balance my checkbook. It had been payday, and I’d gone to the bank in the morning, but forgotten to enter my deposit. Grimly, I
wondered how much the car repair would cost. There were only two other Jaguars in Skykomish County. I doubted that Cal would have parts, if they were needed. Usually, they were.

It was still snowing when I went outside to stand beside my precious, if aggravating, car. Traffic on Front Street had begun to dwindle. Most of the shops and businesses were closed. I glanced down the street toward the sheriff’s office, but saw no sign of Milo’s Cherokee Chief.

My teeth were beginning to chatter when Ed Bronsky pulled up in his Mercedes. “Emma!” he called. “Got a minute?”

“No,” I shouted back. “I’m waiting for a tow from Cal.”

“Then you’ve got more than a minute.” Ed backed into the space usually reserved for Vida. He got out of the car, walking slightly pigeon-toed in his hand-tooled leather boots. “I’ve been thinking since we talked yesterday at Buddy’s studio. Ever realize how you can be too close to see something for what it really is?”

“Don’t start that again, Ed,” I warned. “I’m not responsible for anything in this town except myself and
The Advocate.
Nobody in their right mind could accuse me of—”

“No, no, no.” Ed waved his gloved hand. “I don’t mean the murders. You’re going to have to fend for yourself when it comes to—”

It was Ed’s turn to be interrupted. Cal was slowing down in the middle of the street, amber lights flashing on top of his tow truck.

“I’ve got to go,” I said with a toothy smile for Ed.

“Wait.” Ed’s voice conveyed his recently acquired self-confidence. Money, especially unearned, often bestows imagined attributes that are taken seriously by both the beneficiary and the beholder. “What are you doing
for dinner?” Ed inquired. “Shirley’s putting on one of her gourmet meals. An extra mouth won’t matter.”

As far as I knew, Shirley Bronsky’s idea of gourmet cooking was roasting hot dogs on an imported fire poker. Going to the grocery store suddenly held enormous appeal. Except, of course, that I couldn’t get there and back under my own power.

Cal had gotten out of his truck. Apparently, he’d heard the last part of my conversation with Ed. “Let’s see if I can start this thing. Maybe you flooded the engine.”

I brushed snowflakes from my eyelashes while Cal slid inside the Jag and Ed drummed his fingers on the Mercedes’s ice-blue hood.

“Nope,” Cal announced, getting out of my car. “Dead as a doornail. Go ahead, Emma. I won’t be able to look at your Jag until morning anyway. I’ll take it over to the station now and call you before noon.”

I was trapped. Trying not to look like gallows bait, I turned back to Ed. “Okay, thanks. But you’ll have to drive me home later.”

Ed beamed. “No problem.” He patted the Mercedes’s front fender. “This baby runs like a gem in any kind of weather. Hop in and feel what it’s like to travel in style.”

Maybe the dig at my ailing ten-year-old Jag wasn’t intentional. The Mercedes was beautiful and did indeed drive like a dream. But the pearl-gray leather interior was all Bronsky: sticky fingers had plied the upholstery; the ashtrays overflowed with gum and candy wrappers; the floor was littered with paper cups and bags from fast-food outlets. Absently, I wondered if Ed traveled with a towel. He could use one, along with a mop and a shovel.

The Bronskys still lived in their crowded split level on Pine Street. Ed had bragged about buying a new house ever since he’d inherited his fortune from Aunt Hilda a year and a half ago. Shirley wanted to build her “dream
palace” from the ground up. It appeared that they hadn’t yet come to a meeting of the minds.

The Bronskys had, however, acquired new furnishings, mostly of Italian Provincial design. The result was that they had less room to move around in, but more surfaces to clutter. Ed, Shirley, and their five children surrounded by ornate credenzas and naked Roman deities gave me something akin to the vapors.

So did Shirley’s gourmet meal, which turned out to be a random assortment of microwavable entrées from the higher-priced end of the Grocery Basket’s frozen-food section. On my left, Molly Bronsky was eating a pot pie; to my right, Joey was gulping down lasagna; I had what passed for creamed turkey on a wedge of something that looked like a small sponge, but wasn’t as tasty.

The Bronskys eventually got around to talking about their future home. Shirley had won the war. They were going to build on property just past the golf course and across the river.

“The county commissioners are still dragging their butts about the new bridge,” Ed stated, oblivious to the trickle of chicken Kiev sauce on his chin. While my host liked to eat just about anything that didn’t come marked with a skull and crossbones, he fancied himself a gourmand. His tastes, however, remained lowbrow; Ed was merely paying more for better-looking boxes. “I’m going to have to do a little arm-twisting with the local engineering folks. I’d like to see the road branch off closer to our house. Not that I want to be right on a main drag—we’ll have a tree-lined drive. And a gate, of course.”

“With lions,” Shirley put in, her banana satin-covered bosom jiggling. “You know, one on each side, sitting on a pedestal.”

Ed nodded solemnly. “The family coat of arms can be worked into the gate itself. Wrought iron, I suppose.
Gold tarnishes. We’re hiring a Seattle architect. The best. But we’ll let Nyquist Construction do the building. If they’re good enough for Toby Popp, they’re good enough for us.”

I stared at Ed, trying to keep eye contact instead of watching the cheese sauce run onto his shirt. “Toby Popp? You know him? Who is he?”

Ed stared back. “Emma! You don’t know who Toby Popp is?” Obviously, he found my ignorance appalling. “Toby Popp,” he said, lowering his voice as if the revelation might shock his children or whoever else spied on Ed and his riches, “is a former computer executive who retired this fall at the age of forty-two. He’s worth billions. Toby’s been written up in the business and investment publications, including
The Wall Street Journal.
I subscribe, you know.” Ed puffed out his chest, so that it met his stomach.

In my job, I try to keep up with the met dailies out of Seattle, Everett, and Wenatchee, as well as the weeklies from Snohomish and Chelan counties. Occasionally, I read
The New York Times.
But there weren’t enough hours in the day to catch more than a rare peek at
People
or
Newsweek
, let alone
The Wall Street Journal.

Ed, however, was more than willing to educate me about Toby Popp. “He dropped out of Stanford in his sophomore year, got a job in Silicon Valley, and took off like a rocket. Software, that was his strong suit. Toby was always a hundred miles ahead of everybody else. About ten years ago he moved to Seattle to revolutionize one of the fledgling companies on the East Side. The man’s a genius, but he’s been there, done that, and now he wants to kick back and enjoy life. What a guy!”

Shirley, who had been nodding her gilded curls, giggled in her squeaky manner. “Just like Ed! It’s so
terrific to be able to give up the drudgery when you’re still young.”

I refrained from pointing out that Ed’s idea of drudgery at
The Advocate
had involved drinking coffee, eating sweet rolls from the Upper Crust Bakery, and digging through his dog-eared clip-art file.

“So,” I remarked, relinquishing the rest of the sponge, “Toby Popp’s building a snazzy house down by Index.” I wasn’t about to confess that Vida and I had met the man and not known who he was.

“Yes,” Shirley said, her plump body writhing some more under the satin pantsuit. “We’ve seen the architectural drawings. It’s going to be fabulous.”

“Big?” I kept my tone casual.

“Huge,” Ed responded as the Bronsky offspring began to leave the table in relays, returning with large bowls of ice cream topped with various syrups. “The main house is four bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, five bathrooms, den, video-viewing room, and sunroom. There’s a pool and an exercise room, too. Then he’s got a separate triple garage with his computer lab attached, and another bathroom with an adjoining sauna and whirlpool. It’s all cutting-edge stuff, solar heating, the works.”

“Does Popp have a Mom Popp and some Poppettes?” I asked.

Ed grimaced. “I haven’t gotten
that
chummy. In fact, we haven’t exactly met yet. But we will. We have so much in common.”

I assumed Ed had garnered his knowledge of Toby Popp through the media and Nyquist Construction. I was vexed. A retired billionaire software king was news. Index was less than twenty miles from Alpine. Ed should have passed the tip along to his former boss. Toby Popp might not like the media, but his presence was still worthy
of a story. I’d ask Carla to step up her news-gathering efforts.

Shirley’s efforts in the kitchen apparently ended with pressing the buttons on her microwave. I wasn’t offered dessert, which was fine. I was anxious to get home. The Bronskys made feeble protests about my early departure, but Ed put on his cashmere overcoat before I could reconsider. When we were back in the Mercedes, he sprang his next surprise.

“Remember what I was saying when I stopped in front of the office this evening? What I meant by being too close to a thing is this book deal.” Ed pulled onto Seventh, where the snow was falling harder. “I’m not sure I’ve got the perspective to put my life on paper. I can organize all the facts, the highlights, the insights, everything like that, but I need an outsider to capture the real me.”

A butterfly net would have captured the real Ed about now, as far as I was concerned. We passed the Lutheran church. I knew what was coming. The sponge turned over in my stomach. Throughout my career I’d been approached by many leeches who wanted to collaborate. “I’ve got a great book in me,” they usually began. I always tried to think of a tactful way to tell them that’s where the book should stay.