The Alpine Obituary (29 page)

Vida puffed out her cheeks. “You must have misunderstood. The Blatt person is my nephew, and,” she went on with a munificent gesture that included me, “we
are
the newspaper.”

“Oh!” The woman looked startled. “My goodness. Well, I’m Lorena Woodson. You must be the person I talked to on the phone.” She held out an uncertain hand. “Mrs . . . Blatt?”

Vida took Lorena’s hand and gave it a firm shake. “I was
Miss
Blatt forty-odd years ago. I’m Mrs. Runkel now.” She gave the other woman a toothy grin. “But call me Vida. Why don’t you come into the office and have a cup of tea first? It’s rather a long drive from Monroe.”

“Well . . .” Lorena seemed unsure of what to do. She glanced at the
Advocate
’s entrance, back to Vida, and then down the street. “I should go straight to the sheriff. I told him I’d be there by two-thirty.”

It took me two nudges to remind Vida of my existence. After the introduction, Lorena seemed puzzled over who worked for whom. It was a common source of confusion, even among Alpine old-timers.

If Lorena was pleased to meet me, she didn’t show it. “I’ll be going now. Just point the way.”

“We’ll walk you to the sheriff’s office,” Vida declared, linking her arm through Lorena’s, “but not until you’ve had a chance to catch your breath. After all,” she continued as our visitor dug in her heels, “it’s my nephew’s fault that you got mixed up. It won’t take a minute to make tea. The water’s already hot.”

“Well . . . really, I shouldn’t . . .”

After a tug or two from Vida, Lorena somehow got through the door. Ginny looked up from her desk. She has a knack for sensing awkwardness in other people. “Hi, Emma, Vida,” she said, standing up. “You’re back already. No calls.” She gazed at Lorena, who still looked dubious. “I’m Ginny Erlandson. Would you like some coffee?”

Vida spoke for our guest. “Mrs. Woodson would like a nice cup of hot tea, Ginny dear. Thank you so much.”

The newsroom was empty, but Vida headed for my cubbyhole. I half-expected her to commandeer my chair, but she didn’t. Instead, she guided Lorena into one of the visitor’s chairs.’

“First,” I said, sitting down in my rightful place, “let me express my sympathy for the loss of your stepson, Terry.”

Lorena looked at her hands, which were fidgeting on her desk. “I shouldn’t be here.” She started to get up.

“Now, now,” Vida said from the chair next to Lorena, “you mustn’t rush off. You wouldn’t want Ginny to make tea for no reason.”

Lorena scowled, though not at Vida, but into the space between us. “Well . . . If I’m going to sit for a minute, do you mind if I smoke?”

“Heavens no!” I broke in before Vida could object. “We’ll both smoke.” I got out the ashtray that I kept in a desk drawer and managed to find a pack of Basic Ultra Lights that had two cigarettes left in it.

Lorena looked relieved as we both lit up. In a majority of nonsmokers, she had found an ally, a friend, a boon companion. Vida glared at me as Ginny arrived with the tea.

“Terry was no real loss,” Lorena said after the first puff. “Ever since I met his father, Terry was nothing but trouble. Elmer used to get so upset—he insisted that Terry should have had a bright future. I guess he squandered it on drugs. So many people do. It’s a crying shame.”

Without staring. I looked closely at Lorena Woodson, who I estimated to be in her mid-sixties. The blond hair was dyed and sprayed into brittle peaks on the top of her head. Her lean face was lined, with broken capillaries on the cheeks and nose. Like Elmer’s first wife, Irma, his second choice probably enjoyed her liquor, too. I suspected that all of the Woodsons had their own ways of coping with life.

“You mentioned to Vida,” I began, “that Terry had a friend, Zeke Foster-Klein. Do you know where he is?”

Lorena tipped her head to one side. “What did you say his name was?”

I repeated it. “Maybe,” I added, “he went only by Zeke Foster. I think his brother, Gabe, dropped the second name at some point.”

Lorena’s mouth turned down. “Zeke! Of course I know him. I mean, I only met him once or twice, but he was a bad influence on Terry. Zeke should have been locked up a long time ago. A bad hat, if there ever was one. His brother wasn’t much better. What was his name? Greg? No, Gary. That’s not right.” Lorena frowned.

“Gabe,” I put in.

The other woman’s face brightened. “That’s it—Gabe. Anyway, Elmer told me Gabe almost got Terry killed in a car accident.”

“Really?” Vida feigned surprise. “How did that happen?”

“Showing off,” Lorena said, after blowing on her tea, “according to Elmer. The car went off the road up at the pass and killed the poor girl Terry was dating. That smart aleck Gabe never went to jail, either. Bribes, probably. Elmer said the sheriff up here back then was crooked. I hope you got a better one now.”

“We do,” I said staunchly.

“Let’s hope so.” Lorena glanced at her watch. “Good Lord—it’s after two-thirty. I’d better run.”

“But you haven’t finished your tea,” Vida protested. “Or your”—she winced—“cigarette.”

“I’ll save it,” Lorena said, putting the long Virginia Slim out in the ashtray. “Elmer figured both those Foster boys were headed for big trouble. He told me Zeke and Gabe became hippies, with long hair, beards, the whole thing. Disgusting, dirty creatures if you ask me.” Lorena had gotten out of the chair. “If the sheriff’s close by, I can walk from where I parked.”

Vida escorted Lorena out of my office. I had an editorial to write, and our visitor had given me an idea. While Front Street wasn’t exactly congested, except in our mild rush hour, parking could be a problem. The idea to make Front and Railroad Avenue one-way streets wasn’t new, but maybe it was time to resurrect it.

“It’s time to resurrect the one-way street proposal,” I typed. And stopped. Lorena Woodson had given me some other ideas, too. I swung away from the computer screen and put pen to tablet. I was jotting down some thoughts when Vida returned.

“What did you make of all that?” she asked, flopping down in the chair she’d just vacated. “Do you get the feeling that too many things are tied together and that Judge Marsha—or at least her family—may be at the core?”

I tapped the tablet on my desk. “Just what I was thinking. Everything seems to have a link to Lynn Froland’s fatal accident. I made some notes. Here, take a look.” I turned the tablet so Vida could see it.

“Lynn dates Gabe Foster-Klein, Lynn dumps Gabe, Lynn takes up with Terry Woodson, Lynn dies in car wreck though both boys and Clare Thorstensen survive,” she read aloud, then stared at me. “Why haven’t we talked to the Thorstensens? Don’t they live by you?”

“They do,” I said, “but they’re elderly and keep to themselves. I hardly ever see any visitors over there.”

Vida chewed on her lower lip. “That would be Tilly and Erwin. They must be ninety if they’re a day. Let me think— their son was Don, Clare’s father. Yes, they’re the Thorstensens who used to live on First Hill but moved out to Ptarmigan Tract.”

“We should call them,” I said, “though I’m not sure why.”

Vida didn’t say anything. She was clearly lost in her own thoughts. Abruptly, she got out of the chair and left the office. I was looking up the Thorstensens’ number in the phone book when Vida came back a minute later carrying a bound volume of the
Advocate
.

“This,” she said, putting the big book on the desk, “is from my first year on the paper. Do you remember, I mentioned that the Zeke Foster wedding was the first one I covered?”

Vaguely, I recalled the phone conversation between Vida and Marjorie Iverson Lathrop in Port Angeles. “Something about a bird on the bride’s head,” I remarked.

Vida was flipping through the pages. “I started in May of that year. I believe the wedding occurred a couple of weeks later. Ah!” Vida shot me a triumphant look and passed the volume to me. “Here she is, the bride with a bird on her head and her arm in a cast. May I present Clare Thorstensen, who became Mrs. Ezekiel Foster-Klein.”

Chapter Sixteen

DESPITE HER BRIEF display of triumph, Vida was castigating herself. “I can’t believe I’d forgotten the bride’s name,” she lamented. “Am I getting senile?”

“Vida,” I consoled her, “the Thorstensen-Foster wedding was a quarter of a century ago. Even you can’t remember everything.”

“But it was my first wedding assignment!”

Leo, who had come into the newsroom, came up behind Vida, who was holding her head.

“What’s up, Duchess?” Leo inquired, knowing better than to be concerned at Vida’s histrionics. “Did you catch Crazy Eights Neffel wearing some of your hats?”

“Don’t be beastly,” Vida cried, whipping off her glasses and torturing her eyes. “Ooooh . . . I’m such a ninny!”

Bemused, Leo glanced at me. “Why this self-flagellation? Shall we buy the Duchess a hair shirt?”

I explained that Vida had forgotten the bride’s name from a wedding she’d covered back in the Seventies.

“Hey,” Leo said, with a pat for Vida’s back, “I’ve been known to forget my own name. And that’s when I haven’t been drinking.”

“Bother!” Vida snapped, putting her glasses back on. “That’s not the same. I take great pride in my powers of recollection.”

Leo made a bow. “We stand in awe.” He grinned at me and placed several ad mockups on the desk. “Have a look. It’s shaping up better than I expected.”

I, too, was pleased. “You think this co-op venture with KSKY could work long-term?”

“We’ll see,” Leo said as Vida stalked out of my cubbyhole. “Spence has to get out in the trenches more instead of using those college kids to solicit ads. He used to be more of a presence. I don’t want him leaning on us to bring in revenue. What does he do with his time? How many hours a day can you spend stringing a bunch of tapes together?”

I didn’t know. But I agreed with Leo. “This has to be fiftyfifty,” I said as the phone rang. “It’s early days, though. Let’s see how he does next week.”

Leo picked up the ads, gave me the high sign, and went back into the newsroom. Milo was on the other end of the line, sounding grumpy.

“It’s pretty damned tough to get a warrant for the judge’s brother,” he groused. “Marsha insisted I had no probable cause. No warrant. Hell, it’s not my fault Zeke Foster’s a creep. Marsha acts like we’ve got it all wrong, her brother’s just a flake. She should know better after all these years on the freaking bench.”

“Maybe she didn’t know what Zeke was up to,” I said. “Any idea of where you can find him?”

“No known address,” Milo said, still grouchy. “The last one was a P. O. box from eight years ago in Corte Madera, California.”

“He married Clare Thorstensen in his younger days,” I said. “Did you know that?”

“Clare Thorstensen. Hunh. Is she related to Vic Thorstensen, the EMT? Or the Thorstensens out in Ptarmigan Tract? I think they’re Vic’s cousins.”

I explained what I knew of Clare’s background, including the fatal car accident. “I was going to call her parents myself. Do you remember her?”

“Vaguely. She was younger than me. Hey, I have to run. That lamebrained Woodson woman’s finally showed up. She’s fifteen minutes late. How can you get lost in Alpine?”

I’d forgotten about Vic Thorstensen, one of the medics. I decided to call him first on the off chance that he wasn’t on duty. I’d barely glimpsed him at Le Gourmand in the wake of Max Froland’s collapse.

Vic was home but sounded half-asleep. I apologized for rousing him, then inquired about Clare.

Vic yawned before he answered. “Clare? She’s my cousin, Don and Marcella’s daughter. She got married and moved away. That must be twenty years ago. I haven’t seen her except once or twice since. Why are you asking about Clare?”

“The man she married is wanted for questioning in the meth lab fire.”

“Huh?” Vic yawned again. “I don’t believe it. They live in Chicago or somewhere around there. Are you sure? Darryl—or is it Derek?—anyway, he’s a minister. Dodge must be nuts.”

I took a deep breath. “I thought his name was Zeke.”

Vic laughed. “That was the first husband. It lasted about six months. God only knows where that bird is now.”

“What happened?”

“Oh—you know. It was the Seventies, Clare was into the whole hippie scene.” Vic stopped. “Why do you need to know?”

I felt like saying that journalists always needed to know. “I’m following the story, of course. Deadline’s tomorrow. If the sheriff picks up Zeke, I’ll need some background.”

Having seen me at disaster scenes over the years, Vic must have felt I had credibility. “You wouldn’t believe it with Clare if you saw her as the minister’s wife now, but back then she was kind of wild. She’d met Zeke skiing a few years earlier, when they were dating other people. In fact, Clare was dating about every warm body she could find. Anyway, she and Zeke hooked up again one winter on the slopes. On the last day of ski season, she crashed and broke her arm. They got married a couple of months later. Clare really got into the funny stuff with Zeke, but that wasn’t his only hippie habit. He believed in free love. Clare didn’t, not once she got married. They split right before Christmas that year. It was a wakeup call for Clare. She straightened herself out after that.”

“And Zeke? Did she completely lose track of him after the divorce?”

Another yawn from Vic. “She wanted to lose him, period. Clare went off to Concordia College. She met her future husband there. Dirk, that’s his first name. We exchange Christmas cards. That’s about it.”

“Do you think her parents would know more about Zeke?”

“I doubt it. He wasn’t Don and Marcella’s kind. Hey, how much did that Froland guy drink the other night?”

“Enough,” I said.

“Wine, huh? You’d think . . .” Vic stopped. “Hey, got a call, see if I’m needed.” He hung up.

The other Thorstensens weren’t home, but they had an answering machine. I asked them to call me back at their earliest convenience.

For the moment, I was stymied. I saw that Vida was out, so there was no one to speculate with. The sheriff was tied up with Lorena Woodson. After he finished interviewing her, he’d plunge deeper into the investigation. Surely he was trying to find buyers who had dealt with Terry Woodson or Zeke Foster-Klein. But most of all, I had a newspaper to put out, and a fat issue at that. I tried to put the whole Froland/Foster-Klein/Woodson mess out of mind and concentrate on work.

A few minutes later, Ginny poked her head into my office. “You were on the phone when Vida left. She said to tell you she’d been called over to June Froland’s house.”

“Why?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Okay. Thanks, Ginny.” I returned to my article on the meth lab fire. I was writing it backward, hoping that Milo would pick up Zeke Foster-Klein before deadline and give me the hot lead paragraph for the front page.

Shortly before four o’clock, I checked on Scott, who often needed prodding to get his stories in on time. But on this mid-September afternoon, he was in high gear, his long, lean fingers flying across the keyboard.

“Big date tonight,” he said, still typing. “Tammy has a fiftydollar gift certificate to the Union Square Grill in Seattle, but it isn’t good on weekends, so we’re going tonight. I have to get out of here at five on the dot. Tammy’s a stickler for being on time. Oops.” He stared at the monitor. “Gosh, that last line is gibberish. I better pay more attention to what I write.”

I was still trying to get used to Professor Tamara Rostova being called “Tammy.” With her tall, angular figure and classic features she didn’t quite fit the mold.

I’d just gone back into my cubbyhole when Marcella Thorstensen called. She and Dan had just gotten back from a weekend of staying with friends on the Kitsap Peninsula. They had visited a couple of exotic nurseries during their stay and were planting their treasures before it started to rain again. Marcella asked if I could stop by about seven-thirty.

I’d hoped to dispose of the Thorstensens over the phone, but Marcella sounded as if she were in a hurry. I had no other plans for the evening—certainly not a big date at the Union Square Grill—so I agreed to come calling.

The phone rang again.

“It’s incredible!” Vida cried as I took the call. “Come quick, to the Frolands!”

“What is it?” I asked in a startled voice. But Vida had hung up.

It was clouding over when I went out to the car. In the distance, I heard sirens. I wondered if they had triggered Vida’s frantic call. Perhaps Vic Thorstensen had been called to duty.

Five minutes later, I was on Spruce Street, where I could see Vida standing by the curb, waving her arms. I could also see an EMT van parked in front of the Froland house. Pulling up a full space away from the medics’ vehicle, I jumped out of the car as Vida hurried to meet me.

“You’ll never guess what June did!” she shouted.

“No, I wouldn’t. So tell me.”

“She tried to commit suicide! Before my eyes, she took all the sleeping pills Doc Dewey gave her. She was so quick, I couldn’t stop her.”

“Is she alive?” I asked as we all but galloped toward the front door.

“She was when I called 911,” Vida replied, now a bit breathless. “But that’s not the worst of it.”

I was getting confused. “What?”

“Wait.” Vida led the way down the all-too-familiar passage to June’s bedroom. Vic Thorstensen wasn’t among the medics who firmly waved us off. We retreated into the living room where Vida paced the floor. “June asked me to come over, she said it was an emergency. Naturally, I was disturbed—and curious. For a moment, I thought that the college girl Max had hired to stay with his mother hadn’t worked out. But even though the girl wasn’t here when I arrived, that wasn’t the case.” Vida took a big breath.

From the rear of the house, I could hear the medics’ ministrations. If they were still working on June, she must be alive.

Vida sat down next to me on the sofa. She cleared her throat and looked me in the eye. “June admitted that she cooked those mushrooms to poison Jack.”

“What?”

Vida nodded so hard that the velour cap slipped down to meet the top of her glasses. “Yes, she did. She knew they were poisonous. It’s true that Jack’s sight was failing, but hers wasn’t. She still did needlework, remember?” Vida paused to adjust the cap, but it left her glasses cockeyed. “June claims it was a mercy killing, but I wonder.”

“Why?” I sounded a little breathless myself.

“Think about it.” Vida stopped, listening to what was going on in the other room. The medics’ voices were an inaudible murmur. “Jack was better, not worse,” Vida went on. “He didn’t seem to be suffering. Jack and June haven’t gotten along for years; they led separate lives for the most part. I think June thought that Jack might recover and she’d be stuck with him for another five, ten years at least. She murdered him, and that’s that.”

I wasn’t convinced that June’s motive was entirely selfish. Jack had suffered for quite a while. June had been his sole caregiver. I knew how hard that role could be. “Why did she tell you this?”

Vida shrugged. “She thinks she’s dying. Or that God is going to punish her for poisoning Jack. After he died, she went to pieces. You saw that for yourself. She tried to tell Max, she asked for Pastor Nielsen to come, but he was out of town this weekend, officiating at a niece’s wedding in Iowa. I suppose she called on me because . . .” Vida faltered, perhaps from modesty, though I doubted it. “Because I’d spent time with her recently. She has no close friends.”

I grew thoughtful for a moment before speaking again. “What are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know. Nothing, perhaps. This is a dreadful moral dilemma.” Vida yanked off her glasses, but apparently she was beyond her customary grinding of her eyes. Instead, she set the glasses down in her lap, removed her cap, and ran both hands through her hair until it stood on end. “I don’t know when I’ve been in such a quandary!”

“It’s more than difficult,” I allowed, aware that I was now a party to Vida’s problem. Another siren sounded and then died down outside the house before I could voice my own concerns.

Vida leaped to her feet and looked out the front window. “Ambulance,” she announced. “They must be taking June to the hospital. I wonder why they’re not transporting her in the EMT van?”

The answer came swiftly: June was moaning like a deranged ghost, a much lower key than the shrieking she’d dished out after Jack’s death. The ambulance attendants must be considered more experienced in dealing with thorny cases.

Vida held her head. “I find this all very depressing. Why does life have to come to this? Why can’t people get along? Especially married people. I don’t approve of divorce, but it’s certainly better than murder. I think.”

For the next few minutes, we kept out of the way as we lived through June’s hysteria as she was unwillingly propelled out of her house. The experience seemed unreal.

“I should call Max,” Vida murmured as the gurney was rolled down the walk. “Poor man. How can he bear it?” She squared her shoulders and tromped to the telephone.

I watched out the window while June was loaded into the ambulance. Vida had gotten through to Max who apparently was still on campus.

“Vida Runkel here,” she began, sounding more like her usual self with a phone in hand and news to dispense. “No, no . . . Not so serious, but your mother has had a . . . set-back. . . . Yes, she’s going to the hospital now, but just to make sure everything is . . . No, Max, please don’t come. I’m sure she’ll be fine. . . . Yes. I’ll keep you posted. . . . Certainly. I plan on going to the hospital as soon as she gets . . . settled. . . . Of course I will. Now don’t worry too much, please. Good-bye, Max. I’ll talk to you soon.”

As soon as Vida hung up, she let out a yelp. “Good grief! I forgot to ask Max who was staying with his mother. The girl should be notified. Maybe I can find her name around here some place.”

I offered my help, but Vida insisted that I run along. She wanted to straighten things up before she went to the hospital. I suspected that she also wanted to make another, more thorough search of the house, though at this point, I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was just because she could snoop in an unfettered atmosphere.