The Alpine Xanadu (17 page)

Kip smiled ruefully. “She isn’t speaking to me, either.”

I threw up my hands. “Oh, great! She’s
really
mad at the whole world.”

“Hey, she’ll get over it. Vida
not
talking can’t last long.”

I smiled back at Kip. “True. She has to or she can’t do her job. And that matters to her almost as much as Roger does.”

Back in my office, I pondered calling Milo to ask about Dwight’s ex being back in town. But Dwight might be within earshot. I’d save it for when we got home. I wondered if there were any new developments in the investigation of Wayne’s death. As ridiculous as it seemed, I couldn’t get over being self-conscious about checking in with the sheriff now that we were engaged. In the past, I’d have marched to his office and done my journalist’s in-your-face act. But though we weren’t married yet, I felt like a nagging wife instead of a news-hungry editor.
Oh, hell
, I thought,
do your damned job, Ms. Lord. The sheriff is doing his
.

At least Sam Heppner didn’t answer the phone. The receptionist, Lori Cobb, took the call in her pleasant manner, saying that the boss was on the phone, but would I mind waiting? I said I wouldn’t—and sat for almost five minutes until Milo came on the line.

“I missed lunch,” he said. “What’s for dinner?”

“I don’t know,” I shot back. “Ask the cook when she gets home from
work
. If you missed lunch, might it be because you were investigating a possible homicide?”

“It might,” he said without inflection.

“Well? Have you got any
news
?”

“Nope. Early days, as we say in law enforcement. Go away, Emma.”

“Come on, big guy, throw me a crumb.”

I heard him sigh. “Don’t use this. Marlowe Whipp stopped in today when he brought the mail. He remembered that when he began his River Road route, he’d seen Fleetwood’s BMW parked near Wayne’s PUD van. He didn’t see Spence or Eriks. The car was gone when he finished the route and found Wayne’s body, but he spotted Blackwell’s Range Rover going away from RestHaven. Work all that out.” Milo hung up.

I glanced into the newsroom. Mitch and Leo were both at their desks, but there was still no sign of Vida. Maybe she was at Ted and Amy’s house, consoling them over the probable loss of Diddy. I didn’t blame her. But she was my sounding board when it came to tricky stories. Never mind that it was assigned to Mitch. He wouldn’t know Marlowe Whipp from Philip Marlowe. Well, maybe he would, but I doubted he’d want to ponder why Spence’s BMW or Jack’s Rover had been seen near the PUD van. That was Vida’s forte.

Five minutes later the phone rang. “Okay,” Milo said, “I’ll throw you a real bone. Or was it a crumb?”

“Never mind. Just give.”

“I missed lunch because Roy Everson came in just as I was leaving. He seems recovered from his Christmas breakdown over his mama’s bones. Talk about a good news–bad news scenario.”

“And?” I prodded.

“He wants us back on the case. Believe it or not, his goofy wife, Bebe, found some bones in their yard when she was digging up the ground to plant some damned thing. Dahlias, maybe?”

“It’s early for that, but never mind. Bebe was digging in the rain? That’s a little weird even for her.”

“It was yesterday when it wasn’t raining,” Milo said. “Even Roy has enough sense to not show up on a Sunday when we’re short-staffed. As usual, he wants the bones sent to SnoCo to see if they’re Mama’s.”

“How close was Bebe to the dump site where I thought Myrtle might be found?”

“Not that close,” Milo said. “From Roy’s description, fifty, sixty feet. We’ll see what the Everett lab rats come up with. My guess is dog. But I wanted to give you a heads-up.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate it. Hey, does Spence really have an eyewitness to Eriks’s murder?”

“Showmanship. Turns out it was Durwood Parker bicycling into the gatepost at RestHaven. Poor Durwood—he doesn’t ride a bike any better than he drove a car. Maybe he needs new glasses.”

“I hope you told Spence to keep his mouth shut.”

“I told him I’d shut it for him if he didn’t. How about pork chops?”

I hung up on him.

I spent the next half hour working on my editorial, trying to figure out a way to get the ball rolling on Mayor Baugh’s reorganization plan. Until he made his idea public, I had to tiptoe around possible solutions. Over the years I’d written tons of editorials about budget cutbacks, insufficient school funding, and all the needed improvements that were shelved due to lack of money as well as public support.

I decided to use RestHaven’s opening as the hook for the editorial. A new enterprise in town, new people, new ideas, but old problems, such as decaying streets, threats to cut school classes,
shortages of law enforcement and medical personnel. Not inspired and certainly not new, but it was a start. I suggested we needed to change our approach to problem solving so that the town and the county could meet the demands of the twenty-first century. I hoped Fuzzy would be pleased.

By three o’clock Vida still wasn’t back. I went out to the front office to ask Amanda if she’d called.

“No,” Amanda said, looking worried. “When she left before noon, she didn’t say anything about her plans. Kip told me about Holly’s release. No wonder Vida’s upset. Mrs. Parker’s been trying to call her. She sounds stressed, too. Why would she be concerned about Holly?”

“Did Dot say it was about Holly?” I asked.

Amanda shook her head. “I just assumed that must be it. She was really anxious to talk to Vida. I asked if she’d tried to call her cell, but Mrs. Parker had already done that. No answer.”

I wasn’t really worried, but I was disturbed. I couldn’t remember when Vida had been derelict in her work duties. The only recent occasion when she’d had to go home early had occurred back in December when she’d had a mild meltdown—over Roger, of course. He seemed to be the only thing that could unhinge my otherwise indomitable House & Home editor. The obvious next step was to call her daughter Amy. I suspected Vida was at the Hibberts’ house in The Pines. But given her current chilly attitude, I refused to do that. If she wasn’t back before five, I’d swing by the Hibberts’ to see if her Buick was there.

Mitch came to see me around three-thirty. “I’m stalled on the Eriks story,” he said, draping his lanky frame over the back of a visitor’s chair. “I checked a few minutes ago with Heppner, but he told me there were no new developments.” My reporter laughed wryly. “What makes Heppner and that other deputy, Gould, such a pair of hard-asses?”

I shrugged. “Heppner’s always been that way. I don’t know much about him except that he doesn’t like women. And before you ask, no, I don’t think he’s gay. As for Dwight, he got burned by his first and only wife. By the way,” I went on, wanting to see how tuned in Mitch was to small-town life, “have you met Kay Burns at RestHaven?”

“Sure,” Mitch replied. “She’s been my main contact. Nice woman. Seems to know what she’s doing.” He suddenly grinned. “I think she’s got a thing for Fleetwood. I figured that out when I went up to RestHaven this afternoon to run some copy by her for accuracy. I’ll bet she’s the leak who’s given Fleetwood the news before we get it.”

I wasn’t amused. “That’s unfair. You may be right about her being interested in Spence. She’s a widow and he has a certain unctuous charm. Is there any tactful way you could bring up the subject with her?”

“ ‘Tactful’? No. I’ll just ask her outright. I left tact behind me when I started working for the
Detroit Free Press
.”

I told Mitch to go ahead. If he was right, Kay was playing favorites. Having lived here, she should know better.

The rest of the afternoon seemed to drag, though I kept busy with proofing the copy Mitch and Vida had already handed in. Kip and I had made decisions about photos, carefully choosing which ones to use in the RestHaven section. The best was an outdoor scene in what had been the Bronskys’ so-called Italian rose garden, which had usually been decorated with empty pizza boxes. The area had become overgrown after the family was forced to move out, but the RestHaven staff had hired Mountain View Gardens to spruce it up. We selected a nice shot Mitch had taken of a dozen visitors, including a couple of children, strolling by the fish pond, which was now mercifully free of empty soda cans.

Just after four, Milo called to say he and Doe Jamison had queried
the RestHaven staff. “The lunch hour was over, nobody had gone out during the storm, and most of the employees hadn’t seen anything and could account for their whereabouts at the time Eriks got himself fried.”

I pounced on the key word the sheriff had uttered. “Most?”

“An orderly, an L.P.N., and Dr. Reed were vague. The first two maybe went out to smoke, judging from the tobacco stains on their fingers.”

“Nice detective work, Sheriff.”

“Shut up. I noticed a pack of Winstons in the orderly’s jacket. Dr. Reed claimed she was lost in thought. I wanted to ask where Thought was located, but I kept my mouth shut.”

“You? The soul of tact?”

“I don’t need witnesses with ‘liar’ stamped on their foreheads. Maybe she went out for a smoke, too.”

“You know she didn’t.”

“Never mind what I know or don’t know. Farrell was kind of iffy, but he said he could produce a witness for his time, though he had to consider patient privacy. Woo’s solid. He was on the phone to the parent company in New York. Phone records to verify it. Hood was back and forth but used the covered walkway and was with a volunteer. No, not Roger. It was Mary Lou Hinshaw Blatt, Vida’s sister-in-law.”

“I gather you’re not done with the RestHaven crew yet?”

“Not quite. Talking to patients is tricky. Woo’s damned protective, especially of the ones in the psych unit. They might not make sense anyway.”

“Some of them might,” I said. “But I understand Woo’s concern.”

“Good for you. You can’t use any of this, can you?”

“No. But I appreciate the heads-up.”

“That’s for the pork chops. Get me two.” He rang off.

But by five, Vida was still AWOL. I drove through The Pines, but her car wasn’t in sight. Maybe she’d been there and gone home. Feeling helpless and still angry, I headed for the Grocery Basket.

To my surprise, I ran into Mel Eriks in the meat department. He, too, was looking at pork chops. I first offered him my condolences. A burly man like his brother, he shrugged his broad shoulders. “That’s a damned dangerous job. Wayne liked to take chances now and then. Maybe it was bound to happen. Do you remember the time he was working with the Bonneville crew and they almost went over that two-thousand-foot drop by the cross-state power lines near RestHaven?”

I recalled the near tragedy that had occurred in the dead of night six years earlier. “That was a close one,” I said. “I saw your wife with Cookie today at the diner. She seems to be holding up fairly well. Maybe it hasn’t really hit her yet.”

Mel’s gaze switched to the pork chops. “Yeah, I’m thinking of calling her ‘Tough Cookie’ from now on. But maybe she’ll fall apart later on, especially with Tiff moving out.”

I gestured at the two packages of chops he was putting in his basket. “Are you grilling again tonight?”

“What?” Mel looked puzzled.

“Oh,” I said, faintly embarrassed. “Kip MacDuff thought you were barbecuing the other day.”

Mel’s laugh seemed forced. “No, I was burning some old trash. A little early spring cleaning. I’m taking the chops to Cookie’s for the three of us. I’ll be glad when April gets home. I forgot what being a bachelor is like.” His smile became genuine. “Nice to see you, Emma.”

I chose three thick chops, wondering why Mel seemed evasive. Maybe it was my imagination. One loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, and a head of cauliflower later, I was at the checkout stand and then out the door.

Just before I turned off Alpine Way onto Fir, I saw Vida’s Buick pulling into the parking area at the Pines Villa condos, where Buck Bardeen lived. I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing she was safe. But I hoped that her longtime companion would pound some sense into her head. He might be the only person who could.

Milo still wasn’t home when I arrived a little after five-thirty. I changed clothes before I started cutting up the cauliflower and peeling potatoes. I planned to broil the chops, so I’d wait for the sheriff to arrive before I started them.

Just as I was getting out glasses for our preprandial cocktails, he stalked through the kitchen door at ten to six. “I had to suspend Gould today,” he announced before he’d taken off his regulation hat. “The stupid S.O.B. lipped off to me.”

Ignoring the raindrops on his jacket, I moved closer and put my hands on his shoulders. “What happened?”

Milo took off his hat, tossing it onto the counter before wrapping his arms around me. “Amy Hibbert phoned to see if any of us had seen Vida. She’d tried to call her mother at work, but Amanda told her Vida hadn’t been in the office since before noon. Amy hadn’t heard from her all day and wanted one of the deputies to go look for her. Dwight told Amy to stick it. Then Bill Blatt went after Dwight and they got into it. I broke it up before either of them landed a punch, but it wasn’t pretty. Bill was only trying to defend his aunt. Then Dwight said a couple of things I didn’t want to hear about women in general, so I did what I had to. I won’t stand for insubordination or that kind of lip.”

“Oh, Milo,” I said, heedless of the dampness that was permeating my UDUB sweatshirt, “what a mess!”

“Yeah.” He sounded tired. “Hey—you’re getting wet.” He brushed my forehead with a kiss and let go of me. “I’ll change while you make the drinks. Stiff drinks. I’m guessing you didn’t have a good day, either.”

“You got that right,” I called after him.

Five minutes later, I was on the sofa with my Canadian Club. The sheriff’s Scotch was next to the easy chair. He ambled into the living room, pausing to muss my hair. “Damn, what would I do if I didn’t have you to come home to?”

I smiled as he loomed over me. “You’re tough. You survived.”

He sat down in the easy chair. “I wonder how I did it. What in hell is going on with Vida? Bill’s clueless. Is it Rosemary’s statement?”