The Alpine Menace (27 page)

“Very generous,” Vida said in approval. “Still, such tawdry little scenes must be played out all over the city. Tsk, tsk.”

I didn't contradict Vida, because I knew she was right. Instead, I asked her to explain the envelope from May-beth to the Addisons.

“I can't,” she confessed. “We already made those conjectures. I've nothing new to add.”

I glanced over at the serving area, where what looked like our orders were being placed under heat lamps. “Let me call
The Advocate
before we get served,” I said, digging for the cell phone in my capacious—and cluttered— handbag. “I want to make sure everything went off all right by deadline.”

Since it was barely eight o'clock, I wasn't surprised to find that only Ginny Erlandson was at work. In her accurate, if phlegmatic way, she informed me that there had been no big problems. Nor had there been further
developments in the O'Neill-Harquist matter, except that everyone involved was threatening to sue everyone else.

“All systems are go,” I informed Vida as our breakfasts arrived, “and the rest is status quo. Where were we?”

“I believe,” she said dryly, “we'd finished studying our clues. I suggest we now discuss the suspects themselves and their possible whereabouts the night of the murder.”

“Okay,” I agreed, drizzling syrup on my pancakes. “We don't know where Kathy and Sam Addison were, but even if they're estranged, I'd guess they'd alibi each other.”

“Probably,” Vida said, diving into her eggs, sausage, hash browns, and toast. “Maybeth was home, Roy wasn't. Now, if he's living with her, where did he go that night? Do we know?”

I tried to remember. “Playing poker? A night out with the boys? It might be true. Let's leave Roy hanging. Figuratively speaking, of course.”

“And Maybeth as well,” Vida put in.

“Which leaves Darryl,” I continued, “who we know was in the vicinity because he met Ronnie at the Satellite Room.”

“Darryl's arrival at the apartment house would have been noted,” Vida said, daintily sipping her orange juice. “He has a motorcycle.”

“He probably has a car, too,” I said.

Vida, however, shook her head. “He managed to kill his entire family while driving a car. It's quite likely that he has only a motorcycle. They can be even more dangerous. Darryl may have a death wish.”

I thought that was stretching it, but not by much. “Okay, so maybe we can rule out Darryl, but only because he wouldn't have been offering Ronnie money to leave Carol. By ten-thirty that night, if Darryl had been the killer, he would have known that Carol was already dead.”

“Unless he wanted to establish that sort of alibi,” Vida said. “It would be very clever. Let's say he'd set up the meeting with Ronnie, but went first to see Carol. He told her what he planned to do. Or perhaps he asked her to marry him then. She refused his proposal. Darryl strangled Carol in a fit of rejection, but realized he must still keep his rendezvous with Ronnie.”

I grinned at Vida. “If you ever kill someone, I swear you'll get away with it. You have a very cunning mind.”

Vida shrugged. “Not at all. I consider myself extremely straightforward. But I'm trying to think like a murderer.”

“And doing it very well,” I insisted. “But that doesn't explain the lack of motorcycle noise at the apartment complex.”

“He could have parked down the street and walked,” Vida argued.

“No. If your theory is correct, then he wouldn't have known he'd be rejected by Carol. It wouldn't matter if anyone heard him approach. He didn't know that the encounter would lead to violence.”

Vida grimaced, not an easy thing to do considering that she'd just forked in a massive load of hash browns. “Do motorcyclists travel with drapery cord wrapped around the handlebars?” she inquired.

“Good point,” I admitted. “We're back to that stupid murder weapon.”

Vida nibbled sausage, then spoke again. “We're leaving Kendra out.”

I winced. “I hate to put her in. She seems to have been genuinely fond of her birth mother.”

“Yes, yes,” Vida said a bit impatiently. “But how much of that was rebellion? She's still a teenager. What if her relationship with Carol was a fraud, to get back at Sam and Kathy? And by the way, what was the issue that sent Sam
Addison flying out of the house after over twenty years of marriage?”

“Money,” I said. “Kathy's extravagant expenditures for the house.”

Vida gave me her gimlet eye. “Do you believe that?”

I thought about it. “No,” I confessed. “It may have been the last straw, but it wasn't the real reason. Maybe Sam and Kathy had stuck together for Kendra's sake. Then, when she moved out, he split. I suspect it was a cumulative situation that festered over many years. That's usually what happens when couples with long marriages separate. Some event finally spurs them to break up. Usually, it's when the children are grown. They've stayed together for the sake of the kids.”

Vida's expression was wry. “Spoken like a true single woman. Even if you've never married, you have at least observed.”

“Thanks, Vida,” I said sarcastically. “But you know I'm right.”

She gave a nod. “Which brings us to the Addisons themselves. Why would either of them kill Carol?”

“Because she'd created a wedge between Kendra and her adoptive parents? Because they hated her for the attention Kendra was giving Carol? Because Sam had a perverse lust for Carol and felt guilty? Because Kathy is menopausal and had a hot flash that went awry?”

Vida sprinkled more salt and pepper on her fried eggs. “That's the trouble. It's so difficult to get inside other people's minds. We can't know for certain what demons are driving them.”

“I think we know Darryl's,” I said. “He's racked with guilt and still in mourning. He was trying to create another family for himself.”

“Yes,” Vida said thoughtfully, “out of what he'd started in the first place with Carol. That makes sense. Not having seen Darryl since he was a teenager, I can't
judge how the years have changed him. I'll rectify that this afternoon.”

“Darryl works at Microsoft,” I pointed out. “It's Wednesday. He won't be home until evening, and by then, we'll be headed back to Alpine.”

“Hmm.” Vida rested her chin on her fist. “I could call him tonight after I get home, but that's not as good as a firsthand impression. Tell me exactly what you thought of Darryl.”

Darryl's angry expulsion of me from his condo had colored my assessment. I ran the tape backward in my brain and reflected on his manner when I'd first met him. He'd been suffering then, after his visit to the cemetery. He'd needed someone to talk to, a grieving man with a heavy heart.

I expressed those thoughts to Vida. “I liked him. He seemed like a straight-arrow type. Responsible, reliable. He's got a good job, and even if he lost his real home, the condo is very nice and didn't come cheap.”

“In other words,” Vida said dryly, “not Carol's type anymore.”

“No. But he does have an explosive temper and I would guess that he's living on the edge. That makes him unpredictable, not to mention altering his good judgment.”

“Grasping at the past,” Vida murmured. “Understandable. But dangerous.”

I couldn't dispute Vida's opinion. Still, I didn't want Darryl to be the killer. “We're at loose ends,” I announced. “Maybeth, Roy, Darryl—they're all at work. Henrietta Altdorf may be, too. We've run out of interviewees. What do we do next except visit Ronnie?”

“Henrietta,” Vida said in a musing tone. “We have only her word for it that she was at work that night, correct?”

“Surely the police questioned her about that,” I said.

“But took her at her word,” Vida noted. “As we did.”

“Surely you can't suspect Henrietta?” I said, flabbergasted. “What kind of motive could she possibly have?”

Vida shrugged as she chewed the last of her sausage. “A quarrel between her and Carol over the noise and carryings-on? Henrietta works long hours. She needs her sleep. And she's no spring chicken.”

“That's not much of a motive,” I remarked.

Vida's expression grew enigmatic. “Hidden agendas. Dark secrets. Forbidden passions.”

I made a face at my House and Home editor. “You're off base on this one,” I said. “Henrietta is a very straight-arrow kind of person.”

“You just said the same thing about Darryl,” Vida pointed out.

So I had. We were still going in circles. As we left the restaurant, the shabby man was standing by the driveway into the parking lot. We had no choice but to go right by him.

“Got any spare change?” he mumbled.

Reacting to the Good Samaritan's example in the restaurant, I reached into my wallet and handed the man two one-dollar bills. He mumbled his thanks as I started to move on.

Vida, however, was not so easily gulled. “See here,” she admonished, “you look like a healthy specimen. Why don't you have a job?”

The man, who must have been asked that question before, just stared past Vida.

“The economy is quite good,” she went on, “so I don't understand why you aren't employed. Do you drink?”

The man kept staring, his watery gaze fixed on Aurora's busy traffic.

“Really!” Vida huffed. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” She stomped away in her splayfooted manner.

“You should have saved your breath,” I remarked after we'd gotten into the Lexus. “He doesn't want to
work. And he probably couldn't hold a job. I suspect he has mental problems.”

We reached the driveway just in time to see the object of Vida's disdain get into the backseat of a Yellow Cab and drive away.

Our immediate destination was the jail to check on Ronnie. Vida, however, was warring with herself about seeing my cousin again.

“He's quite useless in terms of information,” she said as we passed the old site of Frederick & Nelson, which had been transformed into Nordstrom's flagship store. It was one change I deeply regretted. In its heyday, F&N had been on a merchandising pedestal all by itself, a full-fledged department store that sold everything from English lawn mowers to the latest Paris fashions.

“I know Ronnie isn't very helpful,” I admitted. “I'm only going to see him because I feel an obligation. I'd really rather not come back down here over the weekend.”

“We may have to,” Vida said, and I knew it was true. “If I could figure out some way to get Ronnie to stay with the pertinent facts. If,” she added with a big sigh, “he'd just divulge some facts in the first place. It's rather like he can't grasp reality, isn't it? What has made him hide from facing up to life?”

I swiveled around to look at Vida. Fortunately, we were at a stoplight in the middle of Fifth Avenue. “That's it. Ronnie's hiding. He's hiding in jail.” I paused as the light turned green and also to organize my thoughts. “He finds the world a scary place. Serving time doesn't seem to bother him much. Now, why would anyone feel that way?”

“Because life has become unbearable,” Vida suggested. “Because it always was.” It was her turn to twist around in the seat and look at me. “You mentioned that
his parents live in Arizona. Why not call them? After all, you
are
their niece.”

I wondered why I hadn't done it earlier. But Ronnie's vague references to his mother and father had suggested that he'd virtually lost touch with them.

“I will,” I said. “Maybe I should do it before we see him. We're early for visiting hours, so we have some time to kill.”

Much of that time was taken up finding a parking place that wouldn't bankrupt me. I had to park the car deep in the bowels of a garage two blocks away from the county-city complex, which meant that the cell phone probably wouldn't work. Thus, I ended up using a pay phone in the building's lobby.

It took Directory Assistance several minutes to search for Gary Mallett in what I assumed was the greater Phoenix area. He was finally located in Apache Junction, apparently a suburb.

It was only when I heard Uncle Gary's whiskey baritone that I realized I didn't know how to begin the conversation. Would he remember his niece from Seattle? Did he know that his son was in jail? Would he care?

“Who?”
he rasped into the phone.

“Emma Lord,” I repeated, grimacing at Vida, who was leaning on the stall of the next booth. “Your wife's niece. From Seattle. Martha and Ray's daughter.”

“Ray? He's been dead for years. Plane crash or some damned thing. You got the wrong number.”

I gritted my teeth. Uncle Gary sounded as if he were already in the bag at ten
A.M.
“Let me speak to Marlene,” I said, investing my voice with what I hoped was authority.

“Marlene?”

Good grief, the man was drunk
and
deaf. What a combination. And, as I recalled, he was stupid, too. “Your wife. Mrs. Mallett.”

Uncle Gary turned away from the phone, his words
muffled. I assumed he was calling for Aunt Marlene. After what seemed like an interminable wait, a husky voice reached my ear.

“Who's this?” demanded my aunt.

Marlene Lord Mallet had always been on the heavy side. I pictured her weighing about three hundred pounds, wearing a muumuu, with flip-flop sandals. “It's Emma, your niece,” I said. “Ray's daughter. You remember Ben and me?”

“Of course I do,” Aunt Marlene retorted. “What do you want? If you're stranded, we can't get you. Gary don't drive no more. His legs got too bad.”

Hoisting those cases of Old Snootful will do that, I thought nastily. “No, I'm in Seattle. When was the last time you spoke with Ronnie?”

“That little shit?” Aunt Marlene, all warmth and charm, paused. “A couple of years ago, maybe. I forget. Why do you want to know?”

It didn't seem like a good idea to tell Aunt Marlene that her son was in jail on a homicide charge. Obviously, her opinion of Ronnie wasn't very high.

I fabricated. “I'm doing a family retrospective, and I'd like to—”

“A what?” Aunt Marlene cut in. “You're expecting? How old are you anyway?”

“It's like a family tree,” I said, wishing my patience wasn't on such a short leash, “only with old pictures and souvenirs. Tell me about what it was like raising Ronnie and his sisters.”

Aunt Marlene snorted. “Are you kidding? It was like hell. Isn't that what raising kids is all about? Say,” she said, lowering her voice, which had grown suspicious, “what are you doing? Is this for some book?”