Alpine Hero (17 page)

Tim’s tirade made no dent on Amanda, who was now leaning against her Subaru and sobbing. Cal had brought out some flares and was placing them around the accident scene. Traffic was now backed up in both directions from Front to Fir.

I was recording the Subaru’s crumpled grill and fender when a vehicle with an amber flasher barged up Alpine Way. Milo’s Cherokee Chief was easily recognizable. Apparently, he was off duty, because he was using his portable emergency light.

The sheriff took note of Cal first. Then he stalked over to the wreck, eyeing the drivers with an annoyed expression.

“I’ve got a deputy on the way,” he announced. “Okay, what have we got here?”

Amanda stopped crying and began yelling again. Tim’s rage resurfaced as he made a variety of accusations, stopping just short of asserting that the culpable Ms. Hanson had crash-landed atop his Jeep on her broom.

Milo, who was still wearing his regulation uniform and hat, glared at the combatants. “Shut up, both of you! Have we got an eyewitness around here?” He glowered at the bystanders, including me.

There was some muttering, but nobody volunteered. Finally, I stepped forward. “I saw it—sort of. This sleet makes things a little murky.”

It appeared that Milo hadn’t taken in my presence until I spoke. “Emma? Okay, come with me and I’ll have you make a statement.”

I protested, however. “Can’t I do it tomorrow? I’m collecting my car.”

The hazel eyes under the broad-brimmed hat were hard as marbles. I knew the sheriff well enough to recognize that he was in a bad mood that probably had nothing to do with the two-car collision.

“Witnesses forget,” he snapped. “I want your information while it’s fresh. Come on, let’s go.” Milo jerked a thumb in the direction of the Cherokee Chief just as Sam Heppner pulled up in his county car.

Cal called for me to wait. While Milo swore under his breath Sam took over at the accident scene. A moment later Cal reappeared with my car keys.

“We’ll finish the paperwork tomorrow,” Cal said, then turned to the sheriff. “Will either of these two need a tow? Or can I lock up and go home?”

“They’re fine,” Milo responded tersely. “Sam’ll get them out of the way in the next few minutes. G’night, Cal.” The sheriff loped back to his vehicle.

“Damn it, Milo,” I grumbled, getting into the passenger seat, “you’re going to have to bring me back over here after we’re done.”

Milo didn’t say anything. He’d forgotten to remove the amber light, so traffic deferred to him as he headed up Alpine Way. When we reached Tonga Road, I realized he had no intention of going to headquarters.

“Okay, what’s up?” I asked with an impatient sigh. “You don’t give a rat’s ass about Tim and Amanda.”

The sheriff still didn’t speak. A sideways glance told me that his long jaw was set and his eyes were focused on the road into the ski lodge. It was only when we arrived in the parking lot that Milo explained himself.

“I need a drink,” he declared. “It’s more private in the bar here than the Venison Inn.”

“It’d be more private in my living room, you dunce,” I chided. “The only reason I keep Scotch on hand is because of you and Ben.”

“What about Leo?”

“What about Leo?” I didn’t care for Milo’s insinuating tone.

“You tell me,” Milo shot back. He banged the car door open and awkwardly got out. He paused just long enough to remove the amber light and put it back inside the car.

I refused to budge. With my arms crossed and my mouth pursed like a prune, I stared fiercely through the windshield. There was snow coming down now, and its big, wet flakes accumulated swiftly. Milo was halfway to the ski-lodge entrance before he realized I wasn’t with him.

He stopped and turned around, a tall, blurry figure in his drab brown sheriff’s uniform. His shoulders were slightly hunched and he had lowered his head. But he didn’t come toward me.

Angrily, I reached over and punched the horn. It let out a loud, blaring noise that made Milo jump. I didn’t stop until he reached the Cherokee Chief.

“Goddamn it, Emma,” he shouted, “what’s the matter with you?”

“What’s the matter with
you
?” I retorted. “Either stop acting like a prize jackass or take me back to Cal’s!”

Milo’s jaw still jutted, but he opened the passenger door. Then, instead of offering his hand, he started to get inside. “Move over,” he mumbled. “Maybe we should talk here.”

Clumsily, I got into the driver’s seat. “Well?” My temper was still on a rampage, but Milo was suddenly looking so downcast that I felt a trace of sympathy. Or, given my own dark mood, maybe it was empathy.

“It’s over,” he said in a flat voice, staring straight ahead into the snow-covered windshield. “Honoria’s not coming back.”

My initial reaction was confusion. Milo and Honoria’s relationship had been strained for months. The impression I’d gotten from the sheriff was that he was more upset by a change in the status quo than by any genuine sense of loss. Now, however, seeing the melancholy look on his face, I realized that I’d misjudged Milo’s emotions. Maybe he had, too.

“Did Honoria tell you that?” I asked, rarely capable of finding the proper words of commiseration unless I could get them down on paper first.

Milo shook his head. “No, but I figure she came to say goodbye. The fact is—” He broke off, rubbing at his upper lip. “Honoria never felt at home around here. My guess is that the move was all a big mistake.” Milo kept his index finger pressed against his lip, with the thumb propping up his chin. I was afraid that he might actually cry.

“Honoria’s in shock,” I declared. “Give her some time. Once they all settle down, she’ll be back.”

Removing his hat, Milo chucked it into the backseat. “I don’t think so. You don’t know how she operates, Emma. Once Honoria gets something in her head, it sticks.”

I knew that was true, yet it could work to Milo’s advantage—if that’s what he really wanted. “Honoria made a big decision to move to Startup in the first place,” I pointed out. “She must have had very good reasons to go through with such a drastic change. If this is how she wanted to spend the rest of her life, what makes you think that—in time—she won’t return?”

“Because it felt like goodbye.”

Between the snow outside and the vapor inside, the interior of the Cherokee Chief seemed cut off from the rest of the world. I felt isolated, not just from my surroundings, but from Milo. Sitting next to me, he
seemed to have withdrawn into a place where I couldn’t follow.

“So why
did
she move here?” I finally asked in an attempt to break down the barrier between us.

“Honoria wanted to start a new life.” Milo spoke as if he’d memorized the reason. When I didn’t say anything, he continued in a more normal tone. “She’d been married to a bum, she’d ended up a cripple, and it took her a while to put her life back together. When she got to the point where she could cope on her own, she decided to put the past behind her. That was four, five years ago. You know all that.”

I did, and yet it wasn’t enough. “She must have left Carmel while Trevor was still in jail.”

Milo kept staring at the windshield. “Right. The disaster with Honoria’s ex happened back in the early Eighties. Trevor was sentenced to twenty years on a second-degree homicide charge. He got paroled just before Memorial Day. I guess he actually served about ten years. The first trial ended in a hung jury.” At last, Milo turned his head. My close scrutiny seemed to annoy him. “What’s the matter—do I have crud on my chin?”

There are times when I marvel that I have ever even remotely considered Milo Dodge as a romantic possibility. It’s not that Milo is ugly or even unattractive. Indeed, I have noticed that his receptionist, the young and pretty, if somewhat dull-witted, Toni Andreas, has a crush on him. But somehow he has a knack for spoiling any kind of potentially sensuous moment.

“No,” I retorted. “You don’t.”

“Well, you do.” Milo reached over and brushed at my jawline. “It’s a potato chip. No,” he contradicted himself on closer examination of the offending particle, “it’s a piece of Frito.”

I held my head. I never eat Fritos, but I must have gotten some residue on my hands during the ride with Leo Walsh. My present ad manager is tidier than his predecessor, but he’s not exactly fussy, either.

Dismissing all notions of sexual tension between Milo and me, I pressed the sheriff about Honoria’s recital of her tragic married life. “Is that it as far as Honoria and Trevor and Mitch are concerned?”

Milo frowned. “Mitch? Who’s Mitch?”

I explained, recounting what Ida Smith had told Vida and me about Honoria’s late and unlamented husband.

Milo was still frowning. “Honoria never said much about the guy, except that he was a skunk. They were together for seven, eight years. She was only nineteen when they got married, and at first, he—Mitch, is it?—seemed like an okay guy. But he was just a year older, and didn’t like having to come home from work on time or paying bills or any of those other things that are part of real life. He drank and smoked pot and eventually started doing coke. When he couldn’t afford the coke, he’d get mean and beat the crap out of Honoria. She put up with it for four or five years and then announced she was leaving him. That’s when he threw her down the stairs.” Milo grimaced. “She should have walked out a lot sooner, but the reason she married him in the first place was because she was fed up with her mother’s parade of husbands.”

Recalling Ida Smith’s account, I could understand Honoria’s feelings. “Still,” I noted, “there must have been some close family ties in the Whitman family. Trevor—unfortunately for him—rushed to his sister’s defense.”

“I know.” Once again, Milo was staring at the windshield, which was now covered with thick snow. “This is all sort of ironic. Now Trevor’s wife has been murdered.
It has to make you wonder, doesn’t it?” The sheriff slowly turned to look at me, his wide mouth twisted. “If Honoria ever finds out who killed Kay, will she return the favor?”

T
HE SOFT, SHIFTING
curtain of lights behind the bar at King Olav’s evokes the Aurora Borealis. Walls of rough granite, with mysterious recesses, and a graceful waterfall splashing into a small pool bring to mind the deep fjords of Norway. After a few drinks, it’s been said that the brooding gods of Norse mythology can be glimpsed among the shadows. I wouldn’t know: the scariest sight I’ve seen in the ski lodge bar was Ed Bronsky in a tux.

Milo and I sat at a small pine table, he cradling his Scotch, me fondling my bourbon. At six-thirty on a Thursday evening, the handful of other customers were mostly skiers. No one appeared to care that the uniformed sheriff of Skykomish County seemed intent on getting wasted.

To be fair, we were both sipping our first drinks. But Milo’s mood was dark, and while he isn’t a heavy drinker, I could tell that he had no intention of stopping until one of the other customers began to look like Odin.

I spent the first five minutes trying to convince Milo that Honoria wasn’t homicidal, and that even if she were, her physical condition was limiting. The sheriff, however, alluded to firearms, poison, and homemade explosives. His former ladylove was clever, as well as determined. If she felt obligated to avenge her sister-in-law’s
death, she’d find a way. Honoria was like that. Milo took a deep drink from his highball glass.

“You know,” I said, leaning back in my chair and wishing there was an easy way to slip off my boots, “you’re missing the point. It isn’t up to Honoria to figure out who killed Kay—that’s your job. And when you finish doing it, and bring the perp to justice, that will be that. How’s it going?”

My inadvertent attempt to catch Milo off guard actually worked. He started to shrug, then dug inside his regulation jacket and pulled out a package of cigarettes, which he shoved under my nose. I shook my head. Milo lighted up.

“The autopsy didn’t tell us much,” he said. “But Vida told you about that.”

“No, she didn’t.” My pique returned. “Vida was too caught up in her dinner plans for Buck Bardeen.”

Milo ignored my irritation. “Well, there wasn’t much for her to pass on. Kay’s throat was slit with something very sharp and fairly wide, which doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure. We can rule out a surgical scalpel, a butcher knife, or anything that Stella and her crew might have had lying around, like scissors or a razor. The ME’s guess is a hunting knife.”

I didn’t want to think about the gruesome details that had prompted the medical examiner’s opinion. “Hunting knives are pretty common in Alpine,” I noted. Not only did a large number of locals hunt, but there were even more who fished. Most of them owned a knife.

“We checked with Harvey Adcock,” Milo went on, puffing at his cigarette and referring to the owner of the local hardware-and-sporting-goods store. “Routine, but you never know. He’s sold a couple of knives in the last ten days, but he didn’t know either of the men who bought them. He figured one of the guys was going for
coyote or bobcat because he brought a new hunting license. Not much else is in season around here, except raccoons. The other one bought a steelhead card. He already had a valid fishing license.”

“So Harvey can identify them?” I asked.

“Neither was a local,” Milo replied, signaling for another round. “That’s why he didn’t recognize them. But Dwight Gould had Harvey check with Olympia. The hunter was some guy from Seattle, name of Brantley. The steelheader was from Edmonds. Funny name—Pope or Popp or Poop.” Milo chuckled.

Without even thinking, I grabbed Milo’s cigarette pack. “Popp? Toby Popp?” My mouth was agape; the cigarette clung to my lower lip.

Milo reached over and clicked his lighter. “Yeah, that’s it. Goofy name. According to Harvey, kind of a goofy guy, too.”

“When was that?” I suddenly remembered that if I was going to smoke, I should try to look more like Bacall and less like Bogart. I removed the cigarette from my lips and attempted to hold it gracefully between my fingers.

“When?” Milo frowned at me. “I’m not sure Dwight said. Saturday, maybe. No—it was Monday morning. I remember now, because Harvey told Dwight that the knife sales were over a week apart. The Seattle hunter had come in Saturday before last. Harvey is closed on Sundays, so it had to be Monday.” The sheriff regarded me with growing curiosity. “You know this Poop?”