Alpine Hero (34 page)

My dizziness had passed, but I felt weak. “So why did Kay leave you?”

“She was going to after the first year.” Trevor opened the drapes another inch. “But Mom and Honoria talked her into giving it another try. Then, after I had to kill Harmon and went to jail for doing my good deed, Kay walked. Mom refused to believe it. She always thought that when I got out, Kay would come back. But she didn’t.”

“So who was the woman at the salon?” Slowly, I edged backward, moving toward the mantel. To what purpose, I wasn’t sure. But I couldn’t keep standing unsupported in one place any longer. Every nerve in my body felt as if it were about to snap. “Was she your wife?”

“Hell, no. She was Faye Harmon Peake, Mitch’s sister. She’d always kind of liked me, before I married Kay and before I blew her brother away. Faye married someone
else, got divorced, and then showed up last summer after I got out of the slammer. We dated each other for a few weeks, and then she moved in with me. When Mom and I mentioned our trip to see Honoria, she insisted on coming along. I wasn’t for it—Faye was getting on my nerves. Mom said if she came, we’d have to pretend we were married. Mom’s funny about stuff like that. She wants people to think everything’s proper and classy. Faye said, Why not? She thought it was a gas. Then she got the idea to call herself Kay instead of Faye. The names rhyme, see? Mom thought that was great. Who’d know the difference in a backwoods place like this?”

“What did Honoria think?” I’d actually gotten past the wicker chair.

Trevor made a face. “Sometimes Honoria didn’t have much of a sense of humor. But she decided she might as well go along with the gag. Then it turned out to be no laughing matter.”

“That was when Kay—Faye—started blackmailing Honoria, right? What was it—greed, or revenge?” I saw the guess go home, though Trevor took it more calmly than I’d expected.

“Faye was kind of a weird person. Right after she moved in with me, she started in on Mom. Faye said she’d tell everybody that I was some maniac who went around beating up women and killing people just for the fun of it. Hell, I got paid to kill people in ’Nam. And Mitch Harmon didn’t count—he was ruining our family. Anyway, I guess Mom got all upset, but I didn’t know about it at the time. Except for what’s left of Chad’s insurance and her Social Security, Mom’s tapped. I think Mom wanted Faye to come with us on the trip so she could keep an eye on her. Mom didn’t trust Faye. Can you blame her?”

The question was asked in all innocence. Nobody ever
blamed Mom—not out loud. Mom never blamed herself. And her son wouldn’t take the blame for anything, including murder. But Mrs. Smith—and Honoria—couldn’t bear to have the truth come out. They were meaty pickings for a blackmailer.

“Of course,” Trevor went on in his self-righteous, faintly portentous manner, “Faye never hit me up for hush money—I was her meal ticket. But she saw Honoria with all that artsy-craftsy stuff, and she knew my sis had some bucks. Then Faye found out that Honoria had a really rich guy chasing her. A billionaire, for chrissakes! Honoria paid the first installment, just to get Faye out of her hair, but there would have been more—and more, until she was drained. The next thing I know, Honoria’s marrying that billionaire bastard, just to pay off Faye. I couldn’t let that happen, not after everything Honoria’s done for me.”

I recalled the twenty-five-hundred-dollar withdrawal and the money order taken from Honoria’s account. No doubt it had been a token payment as far as Faye Harmon Peake was concerned.

“You couldn’t let Faye live with what she knew,” I said, feeling the hearth tiles beneath my feet. “Not in the long run. I don’t know how Honoria feels about Toby Popp, but I imagine your mother would love to see them marry. If Faye talked to the press, Toby would run like a scared rabbit. She would have been believed, because she was Mitch’s sister. I gather that Faye realized what really happened.”

Trevor’s features twisted into anger. “How do you mean? I told you what really happened!”

He had, for a fact. It wouldn’t do to point out that his account was skewed. Faye might have been conniving and greedy, but that didn’t mean her vision was cloudy. She must have known that Honoria and Mitch were a
loving couple whose lives had been shattered by an obsessed, mentally deranged brother. How ironic, I thought as my hand drifted to the mantelpiece, that Honoria and Trevor could be siblings and yet so different; how fitting that Faye and Mitch should also find themselves at opposite ends of the moral scale. Not much had changed since Cain and Abel.

“Hey!” Trevor shouted. “Get away from that fireplace! What are you trying to pull?”

“Nothing,” I said in a tired voice. “I have to lean on something. Tell me how you’d like to have this written. We publish on Wednesday, so there isn’t much time.”

The practicality of the matter seemed to goad Trevor. He turned away from the window and squinted down the automatic’s sight line. “Time? You’re the one without any time! I can’t let you—”

At the sound of breaking glass, I hurled the candle and dropped to the floor. The living room was plunged into darkness. Trevor swore, but his voice was lost in the shouted command of Milo Dodge.

“Hold it!” The glare of a flashlight captured Trevor’s uncertain form. “You’re covered! Put down your weapon and place your hands behind your head! Now!”

“Fuck you!” Trevor screamed. “I’m taking her with me!”

In the split second of silence, I could hear Milo warring with himself. The crazed man with the automatic pointed at my prone form was Trevor Whitman, the brother of the woman Milo had loved for the past three years. If the sheriff shot Trevor, the rift would never be mended. None of this was worked out logically in my brain, because I was absolutely terrified. But somehow I knew it, at some gut level, where my life hung in the balance between Milo’s heart and his head.

His head won. He fired the King Cobra magnum twice. Trevor died within six inches of my staring eyes.

It was only after Milo had taken me in his arms that I sensed I’d been wrong.

Maybe Milo’s heart had won after all.

K
AY
W
HITMAN WANTED
to see a doctor. She needed Valium or Lorazepam or some kind of pill that would calm her down. She insisted that she was still in shock from having to identify her ex-husband’s body. Never mind that the bastard had deserved getting killed; her nerves were still a mess.

So were mine. But while Bill Blatt escorted Kay Whitman to Alpine Hospital’s emergency room, I settled for some of Milo’s restorative brandy. Almost two hours had passed since Trevor Whitman had died on the floor of his sister’s house in Startup. Driving my Jag from Startup had forced me to keep the trauma at bay. Kay, whom I had met out on the shoulder of Highway 2 just as the snow began to fall, had ridden with me. Milo had stayed behind until Jack Mullins and an ambulance arrived.

On the way back to Alpine, Kay explained why she’d come north on such short notice. “After I called the sheriff, I phoned Trevor in Pacific Grove. I figured he had something to do with this mix-up. Frankly, Trevor was bad to the bone. I didn’t know it when I married him, of course, but it didn’t take long to discover he was a very violent person.”

Kay—the real, living, breathing Kay Whitman—was about my age, my height, and my coloring. Up close, her
features were more refined than mine, but I could see that at a distance, Trevor might mistake one of us for the other.

“Anyway, Trevor tried to laugh it all off,” Kay had continued. “He asked me to meet him in Pacific Grove so he could explain. He scared me silly, so I told him no—I was flying to Seattle and then driving to Alpine. I knew what a liar he was, and I had to see what had happened for myself. That was when he suggested meeting me at Honoria’s. It seemed that he was coming back up here this morning.”

“That wasn’t his original plan, though,” I put in, grateful to be alive and doing something safe and ordinary, such as driving up the Stevens Pass highway at night without chains in what was turning into a blizzard. “He made that up on the spot because he wanted to—”

“Kill me.” Kay had finished the sentence, adding a grim little laugh. “I’m sure his revised plan was to get me out of the way, and then fly back to Pacific Grove. Sheriff Dodge said the services are set for tomorrow.”

I had nodded, thinking that now there would be two services. Honoria and Mrs. Smith would have to face the task of burying Trevor. Maybe, I hoped, they could bury the past with him.

“I absolutely refused to meet Trevor,” Kay had continued, “so I stalled by staying with friends in Seattle. I called the sheriff’s office from there to tell them about Trevor coming back to the area, and the next thing I knew, Dodge showed up at my friends’ house. When I told him about Trevor’s little plot, he decided we should head back to Alpine right away. He wanted to take me into town first, but when we reached that turnoff to Honoria’s, he stopped to see if Trevor had shown up yet. As soon as he saw Trevor’s van, he backed up and parked across the drive, by the highway. He told me to
get down on the floor and not move. I didn’t argue. I get the impression that you don’t mess with Dodge when he’s chasing down a murderer.”

I’d agreed, wondering what Kay would have thought if she’d seen the fear in Milo’s eyes. He’d held me for what seemed like hours, but was probably only a few seconds. “Emma, Emma, Emma,” he said over and over. Then he’d let me go, and made sure that Trevor was dead. After that, the sheriff was all business.

“It was a wild stunt,” Kay had said, referring to the victim’s false identity. “I don’t get it.”

“Motive,” I’d replied. “There was no motive to kill you—not then, I mean—if you had stood by Trevor while he was in prison and resumed your supposedly happy married life after he got out. But Faye was a black-mailer. Once it was discovered that the dead woman wasn’t you, then it was just a matter of time before her background and intentions were unearthed. Trevor—and his mother and sister—were willing to take the chance that you’d never hear of your own demise. Honoria and Mrs. Smith couldn’t face Trevor being put on trial again for murder. This time he wouldn’t have got off so lightly. There are no excuses for a man who slits the throat of a helpless woman. As ever, Honoria shielded him. Faye was to be cremated so that no one else could see the body. Once the services were over, the Whitmans could put the whole sorry mess behind them. They never reckoned with your derailing their deception.”

Kay had nodded, a solemn, ironic gesture. “I wouldn’t have found out if I didn’t have a friend who likes to play with his computer, even on weekends. He works for the state police, and was looking up homicides with Washington—California connections. My name popped up, with a Pacific Grove address. He knew I’d lived there, but he also knew I was in Sacramento when the
murder occurred. So he called me.” This time Kay’s laugh had been softer.

Though Kay insisted she was still in shock, I’d found her remarkably lucid during our journey back to Alpine. Maybe the shock was delayed, triggered by the contrast between the swirling snow and the stark lights of the sheriff’s office. It didn’t matter if Kay had asked for a jug of lab alcohol to calm her nerves. She deserved to ease the pain that Trevor had caused her, not only on this terrifying Sunday, but during the brief years of their unhappy marriage.

For it was Trevor, not Mitch, who was abusive. He had beaten Kay, as well as anyone else who thwarted his wishes. Milo had managed to get Trevor’s criminal record out of California. The dead man had a history of assault, though he hadn’t served time until his conviction for killing Mitch Harmon. When Milo had recounted Honoria’s litany of her husband’s alleged misdeeds, she was undoubtedly talking about her brother.

The sheriff hadn’t yet returned to his inner office, where I sat nursing my paper cup of brandy and giving details to Jack Mullins, who was doing some of the paperwork.

“Dodge never had to shoot anybody before,” Jack remarked, looking unusually grim. “I don’t know if it’s hit him yet, but he’s going to take this hard.”

“It was my fault,” I said. “I shouldn’t have been there.”

Jack grew skeptical. “Look at it this way—if you hadn’t been inside the house with Whitman, he might have seen Dodge approaching and shot him. The guy knew Dodge, and by the time the sheriff got close enough to be recognizable, the SOB wouldn’t have missed.”

I hadn’t considered what would have happened if I hadn’t been foolish enough to break into Honoria’s house
and get caught casing her studio. Jack was right. I had no doubt that Trevor would have taken Milo out. There weren’t too many ways to rewrite the scenario. Somebody would end up dead—Milo, Trevor, or me.

“I’ll point that out in
The Advocate
,” I promised, giving Jack a grateful little smile. “I’ll make Milo sound like a real hero when I write this story.”

The words weren’t quite out of my mouth when the door flew open. Vida stood on the threshold, with Bill Blatt behind her.

“
You
write the story? Emma, you’ve gone mad! This is
my
story! What do you think you’re doing, undermining me like this?”

“But,” I protested, “this would be a first-person account. ‘Crazed Gunman Holds Editor Hostage.’ You can write up the straight news account.”

But Vida shook her head, the ecru high-crowned hat wobbling dangerously. “No, no. It will be an interview. You’re too close to it, you don’t have perspective—just like finding the body. You need someone who can be objective. Really, Emma, I’m surprised at you!”

I was too tired to argue. Maybe in the morning I could cope with Vida. I could use the same arguments I’d trotted out for Ed Bronsky—the personal touch, the unexpected insights, the incomparable style of Emma Lord. Bilge and more bilge. What the hell, if Vida wanted to cover every angle, let her. I needed a good night’s sleep.

“We got sidetracked,” I mumbled as Vida stomped over to sit in Milo’s other visitor’s chair. Bill Blatt deferentially bowed out of the office.

“ ‘We’?” Vida was scornful. “Nonsense! I never got sidetracked! The biggest clue was Will Stuart and the medical supply store. What kept putting me off wasn’t
how
Trevor killed this Faye person, but
why
. I should
have caught on when I heard about the money being withdrawn from Honoria’s account, but we never learned who it was for, so I couldn’t assume blackmail, could I? And we didn’t know Kay was really Faye until last night.”