The Alpine Obituary (15 page)

From the newsroom, a burst of Vida’s startled voice made me look up.

“Well!” she cried, “whatever are you doing here?”

“Boning up on Alpine’s past,” Spence replied in an amused tone. “Is everybody working on Saturday?”

“So it seems,” Vida retorted, then marched into my office and closed the door. “What’s going on with Mr. Fleetwood?”

I explained about Spence’s idea for a radio feature. Vida sniffed. “Marius Vandeventer did that for years in the
Advocate.
We dropped it not long before he sold the paper to you. It was getting redundant.”

“Then,” I pointed out, “it’s all the more harmless for him to do it over the air.”

“Silly,” Vida said, sitting down across from me. “Only the very young will learn anything new.”

The comment amused me, but Vida was quite serious. She gave herself a shake, then plopped both elbows on my desk. “That’s not really why I’m here. After I bought those cute little games for Roger, I went home. The mail had come. You’ll never guess what I got.” She reached into her purse and drew out a letter-sized envelope. “It’s a thank-you from June Froland.”

I stared at the address, which was written in a spidery hand. Then I stared at the brief message on the single page.

“Thank you for the lovely flowers. They mean so much at this sad time.” The note was simply signed,
June
.

But what I stared at even more than the message was the envelope and the paper. They were the same as the missive that had been sent to Marsha Foster-Klein.

“What do you make of that?” Vida asked with a glint in her gray eyes.

“It’s not the same handwriting,” I pointed out.

“True,” Vida allowed. “And I’m sure Parker’s Pharmacy, for example, sells quite a bit of this stationery. But still . . .” She gave me her owlish look.

“If June’s handwriting doesn’t match Marsha’s letter,” I said in an incredulous voice, “did Jack write it? But why?”

“We must try to get a handwriting comparison,” Vida declared. “Going through the guest book for the funeral might help. I’ll drop in on June tomorrow night while you’re out with Max. But there’s another thing—which becomes even more curious since I received June’s note—that I must discuss with you.” She turned to make sure the door was firmly closed. “What about that trestle snapshot in the Froland album? I couldn’t say anything while Max was here.”

I sat back in my swivel chair. The morning had grown warm, especially in my little office with its low, slanting tin roof. “I’ve been thinking about that. Most people—at least in my family—might take two or three shots of a single subject, but only one—the best—would go into the album. The others would get stuffed back into their original envelopes or put in a . . .” I clapped a hand to my head. “I forgot to bring the shoe box in here. I’ll go get it.”

Hurrying into the news office, I discovered it was empty. The shoe box was on the table, but Spencer Fleetwood was gone. It certainly hadn’t taken him long to do his research, I thought. In fact, he hadn’t quite put away the volume he’d been perusing. It stuck out on the shelf by a good two inches. I gave it a nudge, then looked at the year: 1967. A coincidence, maybe. It was the year that Lynn Froland had died. I pulled the bound newspapers from the shelf, grabbed the shoe box, and returned to my cubbyhole.

“You’re right,” Vida said as I sat down again. “It’s very possible that there are more views of that trestle with June and Jack’s other pictures.” She noticed the volume of
Advocate
s. “What are you doing with that?”

“Spence had taken it off the shelf,” I replied. “I thought I might check out the article on Lynn Froland’s fatal accident.”

Vida looked suspicious. “Why?”

“Just curious,” I said lightly. “Have you ever been curious, Vida?”

Vida harrumphed, then said in a normal voice, “It was late January. I remember, because my youngest daughter, Meg, was born two days later. I wasn’t able to attend Lynn’s funeral.”

The 1967 version of
The Alpine Advocate
looked quite different than the current edition. For one thing, it was a standard-sized newspaper then, rather than the tabloid into which it had evolved during the mid-Seventies. The type-faces for the headlines were different, too—much bolder and blacker thirty-odd years ago. But the main thing missing from the earlier
Advocate
was Vida. She was ten years away from widowhood and working mom status. I could hardly imagine the paper without her.

The Lynn Froland story was in the January twenty-sixth issue, written under Marius Vandeventer’s byline. The
Advocate
was published on Thursdays instead of Wednesdays in those days. The accident had occurred on the previous Sunday, with the funeral scheduled for Thursday. Thus, the newspaper was late with the fatality story and early for Lynn’s services. I empathized with my predecessor.

“Alpine mourned former Alpine High School prom queen Lynn Froland today, following her tragic death in an automobile accident near the summit of Stevens Pass last Sunday evening,” I read aloud. “The daughter of Jack and June Froland died at the scene when the 1960 Plymouth Valiant in which she’d been riding skidded on black ice and rolled down a sixty-foot embankment.

“Lynn had been skiing with friends at the summit. An active, sports-loving young woman, Lynn worked as a checker at the Grocery Basket, and was known to most of Alpine for her friendly manner and high spirits. She had planned to en-roll at Western Washington State College in Bellingham this coming fall.”

There was more, but I stopped reading. A one-column headshot of Lynn was probably her high school senior picture. The larger front-page photo showed law enforcement officials—identified as the state patrol—looking at the car’s wreckage after it had been brought up from the embankment. The tangled mass of metal was a chilling sight.

I closed the book. “Was anyone else hurt?” I asked Vida.

For once, Vida looked vague. “Y-e-s... I believe so. But I don’t recall. . . . Such a distracting time for me, with the new baby. . . . It should be in the article.” She paused. “Yes, as I recall, Lynn was with two or three other young people. The driver wasn’t from here, Sultan or Monroe, perhaps. . . . I don’t remember the name. You can look it up in here.” She tapped the bound volume with a forefinger.

I shook my head. “I was only curious. The car looked like a mess.”

“It was,” Vida said, “but Lynn was riding in the passenger seat, the dead man’s seat, I think it’s sometimes called. She took the brunt of the crash. In those days, seat belts were still a novelty. I doubt the car even had them.”

As Vida spoke, I’d started going through the shoe box. There were only a few photos inside, and most of them recent. The rest were postcards, including at least a dozen Max had sent while on his honeymoon in the Far East.

“A dutiful son,” Vida remarked. “You’ll enjoy your dinner with him. He’s always been very bright. If only the community college had been built earlier, he wouldn’t have had to leave Alpine.”

I didn’t comment, either on Max’s defection or what might have been Vida’s attempt to play Cupid. At the bottom of the box, I found Jack and June’s certificate of marriage, the birth certificates for both Lynn and Max, the program from Max and Jackie’s wedding, and the inevitable clippings about both young women’s untimely deaths. There was also a University of Washington commencement program from 1972. I assumed it was the year that Max had gotten his undergraduate degree.

“Yes,” Vida said, “he went on to graduate school at Stanford on a Woodrow Wilson fellowship.”

“Had Max and Jackie been high school sweethearts?” I asked.

Vida shook her head. “Jackie was four years younger. They’d known each other, of course, but didn’t date until he came home on vacation from Palo Alto. They made such a handsome couple. Tsk, tsk.”

I replaced the lid on the shoe box. “I’m going to call on Judge Marsha to give her a progress report. I have a feeling she’s probably already phoned me once or twice at home.”

Vida frowned. “Are you going to accuse the Frolands of sending that letter?”

“Not in so many words,” I said. “But I’ll point out the coincidence—if that’s what it is—of the stationery. Do you mind if I take the note from June with me?”

Vida considered. “You may as well take me with you, too. I’ve no further plans today, though I thought I’d work in the garden since it’s so nice out.”

“Okay,” I agreed, then reached for the phone. “Maybe I’d better call to see if she’s home.”

The judge was in. I didn’t try to tantalize her, but merely said that Vida and I wanted to give her a progress report.

“Let’s hope there’s some progress to report,” Marsha retorted. “I’ll see you in ten minutes.”

Vida and I took separate cars, planning to rendezvous at The Pines Village. As I drove along Front Street, I passed Parker’s Pharmacy and suddenly remembered the prescription for Paxil. I shrugged. I’d pick it up later. Vida was right behind me in her Buick. If I stopped now, she’d ask all kinds of questions I didn’t want to answer.

I expected to pull up in front of the apartment house, but to my surprise, there were no empty parking spaces. I paused at the corner to check out Maple Lane, the short street that ran between The Pines Village and the condos that also faced Alpine Way.

Vida honked. In the rearview mirror, I saw her lean out the window and make a windmill gesture with her arm.

“The Colbys are having a football brunch at their condo,” she called out. “I ran an item about it on my page, remember? Go around to the garage entrance. Marsha must have a guest parking place. I’ll use the one for that idiot, Ella Hinshaw.”

Ella the Idiot was yet another of Vida’s shirttail relations. But the suggestion was sound. I followed instructions and found the space marked PENTHOUSE GUEST.

The only problem was that it was already occupied. I recognized the black BMW at once. It belonged to Spencer Fleetwood.