The Alpine Advocate (18 page)

I hastily agreed, pointing her and Ginny toward my gardening shed out back. “Wash your hands after you’re finished,” I urged, turning on the porch light.

It was already dark, though the evening had turned mild. Maybe autumn had suffered a setback.

I served drinks, dispensing with appetizers, which I’d forgotten about, and, naturally, the talk immediately turned to newspapers. Carla and Ginny came back to the house with a couple of handfuls of trash they threw into the kitchen wastebasket. Ginny was violently antilitter, and I was mildly embarrassed that she had found any in my yard. I resolved to spend part of the weekend getting the garden ready for winter.

The evening was a pleasant interlude. In retrospect, it was an island of peace in a tempestuous week. Tom was the center of attention, always a master of anecdote, and delivered several witty stories about his career in journalism, both as editor and publisher. I began to feel like a rank amateur. It was partly Tom’s fault, for making me feel like a semifailure. But I was damned if I’d let him rescue me. Not after twenty years, all of which I’d spent nurturing his son. To hell with him, I thought, after my third glass of pinot noir.

The topic of Mark Doukas’s murder came up only at the door. It was Carla who mentioned it, asking who intended to go to the funeral. Vida had volunteered; so did Ed,
whose gloomy manner would fit right in at anybody’s wake.

Since I had already decided that only one staff member should attend, I was just as pleased when Shirley Bronsky demurred: “I’ve so much to do, and I hardly knew Mark,” she said in the squeaky voice that always sounded at odds with her bulk. “Cece Doukas is a nice woman, but Simon is too stuck on himself. Of course if Cece had raised five kids instead of just two, and if she didn’t have help with that big house, and if I could afford to wear nice clothes like she does … well, we’ll just send a memorial to our favorite charity.”

“It ought to be Weight Watchers,” Vida muttered after the other guests had left. “But I’ll bet it’s the Bronsky family vacation fund.”

I was too tired to quibble. And relieved. Vida had offered to stay on and help me clean up, which eliminated any prospect of being left alone with Tom. “Thanks, Vida,” I said, emptying the first load of dishes while she scraped the dessert plates. “You’re a good egg.”

“Hard-boiled, some would say.” She gave me an ironic glance. “Or gone bad.” She shrugged. “We’ve got to ask the sheriff to open that mineshaft.”

“Vida, you’re the one who told me not to play detective.”

“It’s not the same thing. The mineshaft has become part of the story. It put our mayor in the hospital.”

I didn’t try to unravel her peculiar brand of logic. “Would Milo Dodge force the issue with Neeny?”

“He’s the only one who can,” Vida noted, rinsing silverware. “Unless Eeeny Moroni could talk Neeny into it.” Before I could suggest that I talk to Milo and she should take on Eeeny, Vida eyed me over the butcher block counter in the middle of the kitchen. “He
seems
nice. Where’s the wife?”

I feigned ignorance. “Whose? Milo’s?”

Vida snorted and flapped the dishrag at me. “Don’t act like an adolescent idiot, Emma. Tom Cavanaugh looks
enough like Adam to be his father.” She gave me her gimlet eye, then, to my surprise, turned away so abruptly that she almost knocked an empty wine bottle off the butcher block. “Never mind. It’s none of my business.”

I decided to leave it that way. For the moment. But something she had just said bothered me, and it had nothing to do with Tom Cavanaugh. Unfortunately, I was too tired to figure out exactly what it was. Maybe it was just as well, since a little knowledge can be a very dangerous thing.

Tom Cavanaugh was staying up at the ski lodge, which was still offering off-season rates. Not that the economy rate would matter much to Tom, but the lodge was a lot more plush than Alpine’s two motels, neither of which rated more than two stars in the AAA travel guide. The old Alpine Hotel on Front Street wasn’t recommended by anybody, except the retirees and occasional transients who lived there. But the lodge had four stars pending, due to the current remodeling. Rumors that a restaurant was to be added on to the mediocre coffee shop were yet to be confirmed.

I had thought about driving up to the lodge on Saturday to talk to Heather Bardeen but decided against it. Willi Tom in residence, it might look like a ploy to see him again. As it turned out, I didn’t need to call on Heather. Vida was mining her extensive sources like a squirrel gathering nuts for winter.

“I talked to my niece, Marje Blatt, this morning,” said Vida shortly before ten
A.M
. “She works for Doc Dewey, you know. Old Doc.” She stopped and muttered something I couldn’t hear. A noise that was a cross between a squeak and a squawk carried over the line. “That’s Cupcake. She won’t take her bath.”

“I thought it was Shirley Bronsky.” I tried to envision Vida’s canary in a tiny tub full of bubbles. The idea struck me as funny. Then I thought of Shirley in a much larger
tub, with many more bubbles. That was not so cute. “What did Marje say?”

Vida emitted a little gasp of incredulity. “I can’t repeat it over the phone, Emma.” There was reproof in her voice. “You don’t know who’s listening.”

Since Alpine had been converted to a sophisticated automated electronic switching system the previous year, I doubted if anybody west of Denver could have overheard us. But I didn’t say so to Vida. Instead, I invited her over for coffee.

“Fifteen minutes,” she said. “I’ve got to fluff up Cupcake.”

I made sure I had enough coffee for both of us before using the spare minutes to confirm the bridge date at Darlene Adcock’s that night. Then I emptied the kitchen wastebasket into the fireplace where I burn most of my nonrecyclable junk. On the way into the living room, I stumbled over the vacuum cleaner cord. Several items in the wastebasket were jostled onto the carpet. With a mild curse, I retrieved them. A blurred scrap of paper caught my eye.

It was a note, addressed to Chris. Apparently, Ginny Burmeister had picked it up in the yard, along with a gum wrapper, a UPS delivery notice from the next door neighbor’s, and a pop can some kid had tossed over the fence. Ginny must not have looked at the refuse or she would have commented on the note addressed to Chris.

Unfortunately, most of the words had been smeared by rain. All I could make out was “Urgent …—me r ——— away … off CR 187 … –eeny.”

I was still trying to decipher the note when Vida banged on the door. She flew into the living room, her velvet beret cocked over one eye. “What’s that?” she asked, jabbing at the piece of paper. “You look like somebody sent you a death threat.”

I showed her the note. “Ginny must have picked this up when she and Carla were burying that squirrel. I’ll bet it
had been left on the porch or stuck to the front door. It must have blown off in that storm Wednesday night.”

Frowning, Vida shoved the beret so far back on her head that I marveled it could stay put. “That must be:
come right away
. Is it signed Neeny or Eeeny?”

I considered. “Neeny’s house is on County Road 187,” I said. “But would he send Chris a note? Especially one that said
urgent?”

“Not likely.” Vida paced the room in her flatfooted manner. “But Eeeny Moroni wouldn’t send Chris a note either. At least I can’t think why.” She stopped in front of the sofa, and we locked gazes. “That note is printed. Anybody could have sent it and signed Neeny’s name. Everyone knows he’d never call himself
Gramps
or
Pop-pop Doukie.”

Vida’s reasoning made sense. “I wonder if Chris saw the note,” I said, taking it from the end table and putting it under a dictionary to flatten out the wrinkles. “He might have and then just dropped it.” When Vida didn’t say anything, I went right on conjecturing: “That would explain why he didn’t come in. Simon dropped Chris off, Chris got the note, took my car, and drove up to Neeny’s.”

“Or,” put in Vida, shrugging off her tweed coat, “he
didn’t
see the note but headed straight out to visit Neeny anyway, because that was his plan all along.” She scowled at me; I scowled back. “Yes, yes,” she said testily,
“or
Chris went to the mineshaft and socked Mark over the head.”

“You don’t really believe Chris killed Mark, do you, Vida?”

Almost angrily, Vida hurled her coat onto the back of the sofa. “No, I don’t, though I’ve only your word for his lack of homicidal intentions.” She stared at me over the rims of her tortoise-shell glasses. “By faith alone, as Pastor Purebeck says in his oh-so-tedious Sunday sermons. Really, that man means well, and I suppose it’s unchristian to say, but …”

I allowed Vida her customary diatribe about the First—and
only—Presbyterian Church’s pastor. Meanwhile, I tried to figure out who had tiptoed onto my porch after I got home Wednesday night and left the note for Chris. Actually, tiptoes wouldn’t have been required, not with the storm that had been raging at the time. But whoever it was probably hadn’t bothered to knock. My car was parked outside, and the lights were on. The person who had summoned Chris to an unspecified spot on County Road 187 had not wanted to see me. Or more to the point, had not wanted to be seen by me.

“… Wearing spats and nothing else!” Vida stopped to take a deep breath. “What do you think Pastor Purebeck did then?”

I didn’t have the foggiest idea what she was talking about. “Um—offered to resign?”

Vida looked shocked. “Of course not! He came straight down out of the pulpit, took Crazy Eights Neffel by the arm, and led him outside. It was a genuine act of Christian charity.”

“Oh.” I was as accustomed to wild stories about Crazy Eights Neffel, Alpine’s resident loony, as I was to harangues about Pastor Purebeck. Luckily, the phone rang, sparing me further embarrassment at my lack of attention. It was Tom Cavanaugh. I automatically turned my back on Vida.

“I was thinking that if you had some free time this afternoon, I could help you plot ad strategy,” Tom said.

I was aware of Vida’s eyes boring between my shoulder blades. Frantically, I sought an excuse. “I can’t. I’m going to start writing up the murder story.”

“What about tonight?” Tom was both a patient and a persistent man.

“I’m playing bridge.”

I thought I heard him suppress a chuckle. No doubt he found it amusing that the one-time great love of his life was spending a Saturday night gobbling gumdrops and debating whether to bid one spade or two clubs. “And tomorrow?”

“I go to ten o’clock mass at St. Mildred’s,” I said, wildly casting about for whatever I could possibly be doing on a Sunday afternoon. “Then I really ought to work in the yard.”

Persistence won out over patience. “I’ll see you in church. We’ll drive some place for brunch.” He hung up the phone.

Turning around, I waited for Vida’s comment. But none was forthcoming. In fact, she was stalking off to the kitchen, presumably to fetch us coffee. I followed her, like a kitten trailing a mother cat.

“Marje informs me that Heather Bardeen is not p.g.,” said Vida, handing me a coffee-filled mug, sugar in place. I felt like calling Tom back and telling him I’d trained my staff better than those dimwitted gofers at
The Times
. “She had some sort of nasty infection and thought Mark had probably given it to her. Nothing serious, and according to Marje, he probably hadn’t anyway.” Vida sniffed. “Girls these days have no morals and less sense.”

I wondered if Vida secretly said the same about me. But the very fact that she had made such a remark suggested that she did not. I was glad. But I was appalled at Marje Blatt’s lack of professional ethics. “Does your niece blab everybody’s case history around town?”

Vida looked faintly horrified. “Of course not! But I’m
family?
”

Since half of Alpine appeared to be related to Vida, I didn’t quite see the difference. Still, a female is either pregnant or not, and given enough time, easy to prove one way or the other. I let the matter of Marje’s big mouth rest. “So there’s no help from Heather,” I said, wondering if I should give Mark’s jacket to her as Chris had suggested. Probably not—she didn’t strike me as sentimental, and I supposed that if I didn’t hand it over to Milo Dodge, I ought to deliver it to Cece and Simon Doukas.

“I didn’t say that,” Vida replied, and in my mental meanderings, it took me a moment to figure out what she meant. “Marje says—and this has nothing to do with patient
confidentiality—that she heard from Dr. Starr’s dental assistant, Jeannie Clay, who had talked to Chaz Phipps who said that Heather told her Mark wasn’t the only Doukas in town.” Vida wiggled her eyebrows.

I gaped.
“Simon?”

Tapping her fingernails against her mug, Vida nodded. “It wouldn’t be Neeny.” She shuddered, sending ripples along the bustline of her floral print blouse. “Oh, God, I hope not! What a gruesome thought!”

It was indeed. But not as gruesome as murder.

After Vida left, I felt honor-bound to start putting together the story on Mark’s death. I did the obituary first, after making a call to Al Driggers. Usually, he would bring obits by the office, but in this case, I didn’t want to wait until Monday. I thought that maybe there would be some snatch of information in Mark’s all-too-brief life story that would help solve the murder case. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t: Mark had been born in Alpine in 1963; he’d graduated from the high school in 1981, where he’d lettered in football and baseball; he’d attended Everett Junior College for one year; he’d worked as a property manager for his grandfather and done a stint selling real estate. His hobbies were listed as prospecting, hunting, fishing, and watching sports.

I’m always amazed at how little obituaries tell about the deceased. I remember the first one I ever wrote while I was an intern at
The Times
. It was a woman whose name I forget, but the bare bones stated that she was a Seattle native, an enthusiastic gardener, a member of the First Church of Christ, was survived by her husband, four children, and eight grandchildren, and had “been beloved by all who knew her.” I later learned that for twenty years, she had been the reigning madame in Seattle, with five previous husbands, and that she had also operated the highest-stake illegal poker game in Washington State. No wonder she had been beloved by all.