The Alpine Journey (32 page)

“He was in an impossible situation,” Vida asserted, maintaining her imperial stance. Then her jaw dropped and she gaped at me. “You
know
?”

“I do now,” I said. “I didn't believe that note, either.”

Derek tore into the house, going straight for the deputies. “How could my dad drown? This is crazy!”

Still flustered by Vida's earlier pronouncement, St. James put an unsteady hand on Derek's arm. “Sit down, son. This is a rough one.”

Surprisingly, Derek sat. Dolores came inside, too, moving to stand behind Derek's chair. I decided I might as well sit; the morning's events and my aches and pains were catching up with me.

There was no way to deliver the news easily, yet St. James tried. At first, Derek seemed uncomprehending. Then he jumped out of the chair and began beating his
fists against the kitchen cabinets. “No! This is bullshit! It's a trick!” He whirled around, accusing eyes on the deputies. “Dad wouldn't do that! You're lying!”

“It's true,” Vida said quietly. “Your father was under tremendous pressure. Do you know why?”

Derek shot Vida a look that was short of malicious. “It can't be true,” he muttered. “It's too crazy.”

Putting a tentative hand on Derek's arm, Dolores spoke softly: “People do crazy things all the time. Your dad's been through a lot.”

The sympathetic remark surprised me. But it seemed to have a calming effect on Derek. He turned again to Vida, his expression now more confused than hostile. “What did you say? What am I supposed to know?”

Vida made a brief dismissive gesture with her hand. “It doesn't matter.” She glanced at me, and I could barely see the slight shake of her head. But I knew what she meant: Derek didn't know why his father had killed himself.

Under Dolores's soothing touch, the young man began to collect himself. Both deputies made tactful, consoling comments, but evaded Derek's specific questions. “Take some time to work with this,” Neal said. “We'll leave you two alone.”

Vida and I caught the signal. We followed Neal and St. James through the living room and onto the front porch, where we couldn't be heard by Derek and Dolores.

Neal turned to Vida. “Can you give us a fuller explanation of what you think happened with Mr. Imhoff?”

“Certainly.” Vida still wore her unsettled expression, but spoke in her normal, brisk tones. “Very soon after the murder was committed, I believe that Gordon realized who had killed Audrey. That's why he ran away in the first place—he's a vacillating sort, and flight was the only
way he could deal with what he felt was an impossible situation.”

“But he came back,” St. James pointed out, “and offered a new piece of evidence.”

“A new piece of flimflam,” Vida retorted. “Surely you people didn't believe that silly story?”

St. James and Neal exchanged glances. “It was impossible to prove one way or the other,” Neal said.

“Naturally.” Vida stood at the edge of the porch, the breeze ruffling her blue-and-yellow print dress. “Gordon was desperately trying to find another suspect, even if he had to invent one. Frankly, it would have been better for everyone if he'd never come back at all.”

“He'd have been found eventually,” I remarked, leaning on a wicker chair. “It's rare that a person can disappear permanently.”

“It can happen, though,” St. James said in an aside.

“Gordon had a conscience,” Vida stated. “Which is why I believe he returned to the area. That, and the fact that he was terribly worried about his children. He believed that they were all in danger. Yet after Gordon got back, he realized he couldn't face the future. His world had been devastated, and life had become unbearable.” Vida's gray eyes turned to Randy Neal. “You're right about people walking into the ocean. The sea has a mighty pull, and Gordon wasn't strong enough to resist it.”

Two county detectives, a big, fair-haired woman and a chubby, balding man, came out onto the porch. Before conferring with their colleagues, they introduced themselves to Vida and me as Anya Kuraskova and Rick Di Palma. Originally assigned to the Imhoff case, they had come to question witnesses and collect evidence.

Having filled in Kuraskova and Di Palma, St. James and Neal turned their attention back to us.

“Could we get to the point?” Neal inquired, trying not to show his impatience.

“In due time,” Vida said with a reproachful look. “This is a complicated task, and one which I don't believe your agency has been able to bring to a conclusion.”

Again, Neal and St. James exchanged hasty glances. I assumed they thought Vida was nuts. I knew better, and waited.

“What pushed Gordon to the breaking point,” Vida continued, “was my involvement. And Emma's.” She shot me a quick look. “It was clear from his manner, as well as certain actions, that he wanted us to leave. He was terrified that we might actually discover the truth.

“Ironically, we weren't the ones who realized the killer's identity. It was Rosalie Dobrinz who stumbled—for lack of a better word—on who killed her daughter. Comprehension dawned on her last night at the Bistro. That's why she collapsed. It was simply too much for her to bear.”

The deputies knew nothing about Rosalie's trip to the hospital. Vida was enlightening them when the phone rang. I glanced inside to see if Derek or Dolores had picked up the receiver, but they weren't in sight. I assumed they were with the detectives.

I grabbed the phone on the seventh ring. The voice at the other end was female, but so agitated that I couldn't recognize it.

“Who's this? What number is it?” the semihysterical voice demanded.

“It's the Imhoff residence,” I said. Giving my name might further confuse the party at the other end.

“Where's my dad? I've got to talk to him!”

I finally realized it was Stacie. With a hand to my head,
I took a deep breath. “He's not here. Where are you, Stacie? This is Emma Lord, your aunt Vida's friend.”

The silence at the other end went on for so long that I thought Stacie had hung up. “I'm in Ashland,” she finally said. “Just north of the California state line.”

I knew Ashland and its Shakespeare Festival well, having covered it three times while working for
The Oregonian.
“Are you coming home?” I inquired, trying to sound calm.

“No. I mean, I don't know. Where's Dad?” Stacie sounded miserable.

I countered with a question of my own. If I had to deliver the bad news; I didn't want to do it twice. “Where's Molly?”

“That's the problem,” Stacie wailed. “She's gone.”

“Gone? Gone from Ashland?”

“Yes.” Another pause. I envisioned Stacie at a pay phone, trying to collect herself. “We were on the bus, coming back to Oregon, and we had a stop here. Molly went to get some M&M's and never came back. The bus left without us.”

“Call the police,” I said. “She can't have gone far. Has another bus come through since you got there?”

“No. At least I don't think so.” Tears choked Stacie's voice. “Do you think she was kidnapped?”

I didn't know what to think; I didn't know what to do. “Are you still at the depot?”

“Yes.” The single word was very uncertain.

“Stay there. Give me the number of the pay phone. If it's the kind you can't call in on, then we'll phone the station and have them page you. But don't leave, not even if Molly shows up.”

“Okay.” Stacie's voice was calmer. Maybe having someone think for her brought relief.

Apparently, Vida had wound up her recital. Both deputies were looking very grave when I returned to the porch with the most recent alarming news.

“We'll notify the Ashland police and the Jackson County sheriff,” St. James said, dashing off the porch and heading around the house to his patrol car.

“Such a bollix!” Vida exclaimed under her breath. “It's like a snowball, with the initial tragedy rolling downhill and collecting yet more sorrow.”

“You mean Audrey's death?” I said, leaning wearily against a porch post.

Vida shook her head. “No. I mean the divorce. Or what would have been a divorce, had Audrey lived. Why can't people use
sense
?”

Neal, who may or may not have still thought Vida was nuts, wore a sympathetic expression. “For some people, divorce is the only answer,” he said mildly.

“For some, yes,” Vida agreed. “But for many, it's just the easy way. Marriage is hard work, and don't I know it! Ernest was no angel. And …” She winced, then her voice dropped a notch. “… I have a few faults of my own. You have to work at being married. Too many couples come up against the first whiff of boredom or some silly flaw in their spouse's behavior, and the next thing you know, they want a divorce. They think it will be easier the next time. It won't, it's themselves they want to discard, and they'll always be discontented. Meanwhile, the children suffer. And don't tell me they don't!” She pointed an accusing finger at Neal, who looked startled.

“I'm not even married, ma'am.”

“That's another thing,” Vida went on, gaining steam. “Too many people enter into marriage without giving it serious thought. Don't make that mistake, young man. You
can't train for marriage, not even by living together. You can't study for it, research it, or get free samples. You have to
do
it, every minute of every day for the rest of your lives.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Neal replied in a meek voice. “I think I'd better go check up on Charles and see what's happening.” The deputy hurried from the front porch.

“Now what?” demanded Vida.

“Ashland is three or four times the size of Alpine,” I said, conjuring up the picturesque town set on a hillside above lush farmland. “There's not much else around there. By the time you get to Ashland, you're heading up through the Siskiyous and into California.”

“In other words,” Vida remarked dryly, “Molly can't have gone far. Unless someone snatched her.”

“I don't think that's what happened, do you?”

“No.” Vida was still standing, her gaze on the ocean where Haystack Rock was beginning to rise out of the waves. “On the other hand, I don't think she's coming back.”

“Probably not. What about Stacie?”

“I hope the sheriff or the police in Ashland have the good sense to escort her to Cannon Beach,” Vida said, then turned around and started for the living room. “I must call Kathy Imhoff and let her know what's happened.”

Vida also phoned Providence Hospital in Seaside. Rosalie had been released, the nurse said, but so far her son-in-law hadn't come to take her home. Was he on his way?

“Not exactly,” Vida replied. “I'll notify Rosalie's husband, Walter.” Then she swiftly changed her mind. “No,” she told the nurse, “I'll come get her myself.”

Rosalie couldn't endure more bad news that would
be delivered in what Vida perceived as Walt's “ham-handed” manner. Thus we must drive to Seaside. I argued briefly, but there was nothing more that we could do at the Imhoff house.

Or so I thought. But as Vida hung up the phone she espied the underwear hanging from Ruth Pickering's metal statuary. “I can't stand looking at that another minute,” she declared, yanking the shorts off the spearlike device. “It's disgusting.”

I didn't know if she referred to the underwear or the sculpture. I caught myself almost smiling for the first time in what seemed like eons. “I think there's a laundry hamper in the bathroom,” I said.

But even as Vida held the waistband of the shorts by her thumb and forefinger, she seemed transfixed. “Remember the Jaded Eye?” she said in a hushed voice. “Do you recall our speculation?”

Vaguely, I did. We had studied some of Ruth's creations, noting that many of them had sharp, lethal points. Like the one that sat on a low shelf in front of the picture window and had been used as a receptacle for dirty clothes. “Do you think that's the weapon?”

“I wonder.” She stomped off toward the hall. “Yoo-hoo! Detectives! Where are you?”

Rick Di Palma came out of Molly and Stacie's room. He was carrying the suitcase in which Vida and I had discovered the marijuana residue. “What is it?” he asked, his brown eyes watchful.

Vida explained. Di Palma listened carefully, then went into the living room. “It's a possibility,” he agreed. “We'll take it into Astoria. Anya?”

The female detective came in from the direction of the master bedroom. After listening to Vida's conjecture,
Anya went outside, presumably to get a bag big enough to hold the sculpture.

Vida pointed to the floral-patterned suitcase. “That's marijuana, isn't it?”

Di Palma started to nod, then became noncommittal. “We'll have the lab check the contents. How did you know about the … flakes?”

Vida didn't respond immediately. From the conflicting emotions that crossed her face, I realized that she was making a decision. “Oh, what difference does it make now? We found the suitcase while we were looking for clues to the murder. If you do your homework, you'll find that my niece—Audrey—used that piece of luggage to transport marijuana from my nephew Martin's place to college students working in Cannon Beach.” Vida shot me a quick glance. “Why should I protect Martin when he damaged my poor car?”

“Vice is working on the marijuana angle,” Di Palma responded. “Do the names Jesse Damon and Jeremy Carlisle mean anything to you?”

Vida nodded. “I've met them, though I don't believe Jeremy gave his last name. There are others, though, some of whom probably worked here the past three or four summers.”

We left after that exchange. On the way up to Seaside, I congratulated Vida on her detective work.

“It was simple,” she averred modestly. “If Audrey wasn't sleeping with those boys, what was the connection? It had to be the marijuana. Remember that scrap of note paper we found in the suitcase? It said to bring two thousand dollars, which, I assume, was Martin's wholesale price. Then it mentioned something about ‘do not go to ja …’ which we thought meant jail, but I now suspect was the Jaded Eye. I don't understand the reference, but
that's not as important as the tie-in with Audrey and the shop.”

“Maybe Marlin was being paranoid and thought Gordon was getting suspicious. Do you still have that note?” I inquired, recalling that Vida had pocketed it.

“Well… yes.” She seemed a trifle sheepish. “I'll hand it over, if necessary. But I believe the police can figure it out. They must have looked into Audrey's bank accounts. Where else could she get that hundred thousand dollars? It couldn't all have come from those silly old men. And how did Marlin support himself? Not that he lives a lavish lifestyle, but he must eat. I suspect that like Rett, he has money stashed all over that disreputable house of his. I don't know much about drugs, thank goodness, but I'm aware that when marijuana is sold directly from the grower, it commands quite a high price.”