The Alpine Menace (22 page)

“Perhaps,” I noted dryly, “he blamed himself for that.”

“Perhaps,” Vida said with an ironic smile. “He certainly must have blamed himself for the accident that killed his second wife and their two boys.”

“I'm afraid so,” I said. “All right, we'll leave at noon tomorrow for Seattle. I had the motel reserve a room for Tuesday night.”

Amber seemed relieved that I was going away again. Obviously, she enjoyed the freedom to pig up the place. In her favor, she'd actually fixed dinner: overdone rib steaks, a can of string beans, and baked potatoes. I'd been trying to teach her how to cook. It was an uphill battle.

I'd tried to see Milo on my way home from work, but he was conducting a staff meeting in his room, so I left. Scott had learned earlier in the day that Cap Harquist had been hospitalized for smoke inhalation, but was already released. Rudy Harquist was back in jail, charged with unlawful discharge of a firearm. Apparently, even Milo wasn't sure that the shooting hadn't been an accident. Meara O'Neill was also out of the hospital. The Harquists wanted to charge her with arson, but our new prosecutor, Rosemary Bourgette, was probably going to nail both Rudy and Ozzie for kidnapping. The two O'Neills, who had carry permits, had been brought in on
unlawful brandishing of a firearm. I'd written the first part of Scott's story myself. It was a big one, and I didn't mind giving him credit, but I'd have to go over his part with a fine-tooth comb. The whole mess was fraught with libel possibilities. Assuming, of course, that any of the feuding instigators could read.

About an hour after I'd cleared away the dinner things, I urged Amber to clean up the living room with its usual obstacle course of toys, tabloids, and wearing apparel, both large and small. The phone rang while she was still staring at the litter.

“What's this about Cousin Ronnie?” Ben demanded, the crackle in his voice more apparent than ever. “I haven't thought about him in thirty years.”

I'd briefly mentioned in my message that I'd been trying to help get Ronnie out of jail. Since Danny was yelling his head off because he didn't want to surrender a big plastic toy that looked like an octopus wearing bells, I scampered into my bedroom.

“You're a good kid,” Ben said after I'd given him the details. “Now I feel guilty for not being there to help him, too.” He paused and lowered his voice. Some of the crackling lost its snap. “You aren't on some kind of family-connection search, are you?”

“Of course not,” I replied, still able to hear the leather-lunged Danny. “Ronnie contacted me. Why would you ask such a question?”

This time the pause was longer. “I haven't mentioned this before, Sluggly,” he said, using his childhood nickname for me, “but I've felt a little guilty ever since Adam went into the seminary.”

Amber was calling my name. She sounded desperate. “Hang on, Ben,” I interrupted, removing the cordless phone from my ear and rushing into the living room.

Amber was trying to loosen Danny's grip from a box of fireplace matches that had somehow fallen off the
mantel. He'd pried the lid open and was trying to stick one of the matches into his mouth. His anxious mother was hampered from rescuing him because—or so I gathered from her incoherent yips—she'd sat down in my new recliner and the footrest part had gone up instead of down. She was stuck in the chair.

I snatched the matches away from Danny, put them out of harm's way, and gave the footrest a terrific yank. It came down. I shot Amber a look that said, “If you'd been picking up all this junk, you wouldn't have gotten stuck in the damned chair, you lazy little twerp.”

“As you were saying?” I said to Ben with a sigh. “About guilt?”

“Right,” my brother responded. “Let's face it, I was very pleased when Adam told me he wanted to become a priest. He said I'd been his inspiration. Naturally, I was flattered, not so much on a personal level, but that the idea of my own vocation and the way I was handling it had influenced him. It's hard to explain.”

“You don't want to brag,” I said dryly. “Never mind, go on.”

“Well—” He stopped to clear his throat. In the living room, Danny was crying again. “You know Adam's track record better than I do when it comes to choosing careers. Over time, he's wanted to be everything from an anthropologist to a circus clown.”

“He was only twelve when he got that idea,” I put in.

“But you know what I mean,” Ben continued. “He was off in every direction. I figured that maybe the vocation thing was just another wild hair.”

“I guess not,” I said. “He's been in the seminary long enough now to know if being a priest is what he really wants.”

“I agree.” Ben had grown very serious, almost formal. I could picture him counseling someone with a crisis in faith or a broken marriage. “And that's what makes me
feel guilty. I've robbed you of your earthly immortality. Robbed myself, too, in a way.”

A terrible crash resounded from the living room. I didn't want to interrupt Ben again, not when he was in such a solemn mood, so I ducked out of the bedroom to see what new horror had occurred.

Danny had pulled the lace cloth off the dining-room table, and with it, a potted azalea I'd bought at Alpine Gardens the previous week. He was screaming his head off. Amber was nowhere in sight.

I started running to the child, tripped over the plastic octopus, and fell flat on my face. The toy's little bells played a cheery tune. It should have been a dirge.

“So,” Ben went on, “when you told me about Ronnie, I began to feel guilty all over again. I sense that you want grandchildren after all, and somehow, it's my fault you don't have them to jiggle on your knee.”

It was my knee that hurt most. Amber appeared from the kitchen with a broom and a dustpan. I struggled to sit up. Danny began eating dirt from the potted azalea.

“Shut up,” I said to Ben. “Don't ever mention the word
grandchildren
to me again.”

Ronnie had a smaller bandage on his ear when I visited him Tuesday afternoon in jail. The first thing he asked about was Budweiser.

I lied. “He's fine,” I said, relating how I'd gone to Pete and Jenny Chan's house. “The little boys are darling. Their own dog had been run over, so they're taking good care of Buddy.”

It was the wrong thing to say. “They'll get attached,” Ronnie said, bowing his head. “They'll want to keep him.”

“No, they'd prefer a snake,” I said, finally telling the truth.

“You sure they didn't eat him?” Ronnie looked suspicious.

“Of course not,” I retorted. “I think they were having lasagna for dinner.”

“Hunh.” The idea of Asian-Americans eating Italian food seemed to stump Ronnie. I felt like telling him that back in Alpine, Deputy Dustin Fong's favorite foods were chimichangas and quesadillas.

Instead, I asked Ronnie about Darryl Lindholm.

“You mean Kendra's real dad?” Ronnie's eyes shifted away from me. “Yeah, I met him once before he tried to buy me off. He acted like a big shot.”

“Did he?” I remarked. “He's had kind of a terrible life.”

“Right,” Ronnie said sarcastically. “He works for Microsoft. I'll bet he's loaded.”

“I'm not talking about money,” I said, sounding testy. Ronnie's value system seemed to be skewed along with the rest of him. “His wife and children were killed in a car accident last year.”

Ronnie blinked twice. “No kidding. That's rough.” The words didn't sound very sincere.

“How did you happen to meet him the first time?” I asked. Interviewing Ronnie was like questioning a two-year-old. My patience was ebbing. I'd had better luck getting Danny Ramsey to spit out most of the dirt from my potted plant.

“This Darryl character was with Carol one night about a month ago when I came home from work. I got bad vibes off that dude.”

“They were talking, I assume?”

“Yeah. Really talkin’. Like serious. Like maybe I should go sit out in the parking lot in my 4 × 4 and play fetch with Buddy.”

“Did Carol ask you to leave?” I inquired.

Ronnie shook his head. “Nope. I went and changed and got a beer and by that time Darryl was takin’ off. I guess he wanted to see Kendra, but she wasn't around.”

“Is that the only time you met him until you talked to him at the Satellite Room?”

“Right.” Again, Ronnie wasn't looking at me. He gave a single nod. “He pissed me off. He just struck me all wrong, that's all. Him and his big freakin’ bike. Who needs it?”

“Did Carol ever talk about Darryl Lindholm?” I asked.

“Nope.” The answer came too fast, especially for Ronnie.

“Not regarding Kendra?”

“Oh—maybe she said something about… I forget.” He stopped, then wagged a finger. “I know— ‘too little and too late.’ I suppose she meant his showin’ up.”

“Do you know if he met Kendra?”

“Nope.” This time the denial struck me as genuine. But I knew better. Mr. Rapp had told me so.

“Did you ever meet Sam or Kathy Addison?”

“Who're they?”

“Kendra's adoptive parents.”

“Nope.”

I'd run out of questions for Ronnie. “Look,” I said, glancing at my watch, “I've got a two-thirty appointment with Detective Rojas. I want to find out why the homicide investigation was so sloppy. From what I've learned so far, the police did a poor job. They arrested you because you were the obvious suspect. There's no evidence against you, really. Maybeth Swafford's statement is worthless.”

“Maybeth?” Ronnie showed a spark of interest. “Whad-daya mean?”

I explained about the mistake in time, the probability
of at least one and maybe two other visitors arriving before Carol was killed. “The police took her evidence verbatim,” I said. Then, seeing Ronnie's blank stare, I elaborated. “That is, they didn't dig enough to realize she was wrong. Or perhaps Maybeth was lying to make you look bad.”

“Maybeth wouldn't do that,” Ronnie said. “We broke up, but she was cool about it.”

Men. If a discarded woman didn't ram a shish-kebab skewer through them, everything was just fine. I'd not only run out of questions, I'd run out of patience.

But Ronnie had one last question for me. “Why don't you get Buddy from those kids and take him with you? Then I'd know he's okay.”

I'd already stood up. “I'll see,” I fibbed.

Then, feeling a tug of guilt for the simplicity of my cousin, I walked away.

I almost collided with Vida. “I've been given permission to see Ronnie, too,” she said, radiating triumph. “His aunt, you see. So concerned. So loving. So near death's door.”

I was surprised, though I shouldn't have been.

But not as surprised as Ronnie would be.

I definitely felt sorry for him now.

M
AYBE MY SYMPATHY
had been misplaced. After fifteen minutes Vida emerged with the swallows on her silk cloche wobbling up and down.

“My!” she exclaimed. “Your cousin is a bit dense. All I could get out of him was that he didn't do it, and he can't think who did, unless it was Darryl Lindholm.”

As we waited for the elevator, I frowned at Vida. “Ronnie didn't tell me that. Did he have a reason other than bad vibes?”

“He thought Darryl wanted revenge,” Vida replied.

“For what?”

We stepped into the elevator, which was crowded with police personnel, office workers, and at least two obvious perps. Vida stared straight ahead and whispered through taut lips:

“Betrayal.”

“With whom?”

“Ronnie.”

“Huh?” We'd reached the floor that would lead us to the detectives’ offices. “That's nuts,” I declared as we exited the elevator.

“Of course,” Vida replied at her normal decibel level. “But it raises a pertinent question. Why did Darryl try to buy Ronnie off?”

“I never got the chance to ask Darryl before he threw me out,” I said as we approached the main desk. “It
might indicate that he was serious about getting back with Carol.”

Vida nodded. “But in that case why would Darryl kill her? And was her murder really premeditated?”

I shot her a curious glance before giving my name to a ruddy-cheeked blond behind the wide desk. We were directed to go down the hall and turn to our right.

“What do you mean?” I asked as we passed a couple of men in plain clothes who had cop written all over them.

“Who might be carrying around a length of drapery cord? In a pocket, a purse, a shopping bag.”

I made a face at Vida. “When was the last time you stuffed a drapery cord in your handbag?”

“February fourth,” Vida responded. “My mother's birthday. I took it to the cemetery to tie up a big chrysanthemum I was putting on her grave. As you recall, we'd had so much wind last winter. I didn't want the pot blowing over, so I tied it to my parents’ tombstone.”

I laughed so hard that a white-coated woman who was passing by stopped to stare. Thinking she might be the prison psychiatrist, I sobered up fast. But Vida had an answer for everything. I hoped Tony Rojas would have some answers for me, too. A petite, pretty Filipino woman pointed the detective out to me. He was sitting at the second desk on the left, a telephone cradled between his shoulder and his ear.

Rojas gestured for us to get another chair so that we could both sit down beside his desk. Even seated, I could tell he was a big, shambling man with a drooping black mustache and electric-brown eyes.