The Alpine Xanadu (24 page)

As was her way, Holly lost steam in the face of rational behavior. “Okay, Walsh,” she said, retrieving the cigarette before it burned a hole in the floor. “I almost forgot you’re one of the good guys. There are damned few around here. Let’s hit it.”

Mitch and I watched as they exited the newsroom. I didn’t hear anything out of Amanda and guessed she’d retreated to the back shop with Kip. My reporter spoke first. “Is she nuts or just messed up?”

I sat down by Mitch’s desk. “Both. Leo’s right. We don’t know anything about Holly’s kid. Roger’s the only one who can sort this out.”

“I’ve never met him,” Mitch said. “I remember the trailer park mess, though. Roger was lucky to get off so cheap. Troy didn’t.”

“The situations were different. Roger provided solid information about the drug dealers and the trucker connection. From what you told me, Troy was operating on his own.”

Mitch nodded faintly. “Holly shouldn’t spread rumors about you and Dodge. That’s bad for your reputation. I saw way too much of that hand-in-glove back-door stuff between the press and law enforcement in Detroit. I never went for that. It violated my ethics.”

Mitch had a copy of the
Advocate
on his desk. I picked it up and turned to page three. “Read this,” I said, pointing to the engagements.

“Good God!” Mitch stared at me. “Why didn’t you say so?”

I made a helpless gesture. “Milo and I’ve been close since I moved here. He wanted to marry me ten years ago. I said no because of Tom Cavanaugh. You know that sad story. Except for a fling with Rolf Fisher from the AP, there never has been any other man in my life except Milo. We’ve always loved each other. I was just slow figuring it all out.”

Mitch hung his head. “You must hate me.”

“No. I did wonder why you never realized we were a couple. We got engaged just after Christmas, while you were gone. I had Vida hold back the announcement until all the snoops stopped pestering us. Milo and I both needed time to recover.”

Mitch was staring into space. “I should’ve guessed. No wonder Leo told me I should pull back on investigating Dodge. I thought maybe he and the sheriff were fishing buddies or something.”

“Leo doesn’t fish,” I said. “In fact, it took him a long time to realize that Milo is very good at what he does. The sheriff prefers that people don’t notice how he works. He’s very closemouthed
when he’s investigating a homicide case. I had to learn that the hard way, too.”

Amanda appeared in the doorway. “Thank goodness Holly is gone. Did you throw her out?”

“Leo escorted her,” I said.

“Dodge is on hold for you,” she informed me.

“Okay,” I told her, then patted Mitch’s shoulder. “Don’t be upset. I’m glad you finally know I
am
shacked up with the sheriff.” I hurried to my phone.

“Where the hell were you?” Milo asked. “In the can?”

“Never mind. Has Holly arrived?”

“Yeah, with Leo. I’m barricaded in my office. Never mind that. Doe can handle it. I got the autopsy report. It’s what I thought. Pay attention and write this down. It’s s-u-x-a-m-e-t-h-o-n-i-u-m. Call it ‘sux’ for short. It’s a relatively new poison that can be missed if you’re not looking for it.”

“Wayne was poisoned?”

“You got it. Keep it to yourself for now. The full report won’t be in until tomorrow. I’m telling you because if I don’t spell it a few times, I won’t be able to say it out loud. Besides, you’re cuter than Fleetwood.”

“How in the world did you get on to that?”

“Because the electrocution thing didn’t make sense. You know I don’t like things that don’t fit. I’d seen something on TV about this stuff and it made me wonder. It’s administered where it can’t be noticed—like a mole. Eriks had one on his left shoulder. Now think about that and come up with one of your weird ideas about whodunit.”

“What’s going on with Tanya?”

I heard Milo sigh. “I don’t know what the hell to do, but I’ve got to do it now. I can’t abandon her. We’ll talk later.” He hung up.

I couldn’t pass the poisoning news on to Mitch until it was official. I hoped that would be by the time he checked the Thursday
log. I asked him to call the clinic to see if Patti Marsh had been hospitalized.

“Who exactly is she?” my reporter asked.

I sighed. “Blackwell’s longtime squeeze. I suspect he beat her up just for the hell of it. Tiffany’s not around to take his abuse. If, in fact, he doled some out to her just to show he isn’t playing favorites.”

Mitch frowned. “You don’t like Blackwell, either, do you?”

“No, and it’s not because of Milo. I’ve always been wary of that guy. He may run a respectable mill, but he’s way too oily for my taste.”

“Okay.” Mitch shrugged. “I’ll withhold judgment for now.”

“That’s fine. But check on Patti. She’s kind of pathetic.”

Half an hour later, Vida returned from RestHaven with Rosalie Reed in tow. “Dr. Reed and I have had a most pleasant visit,” she said as the two women stood in my office. “She’s on her way to a dental appointment with Dr. Starr and thought she’d come by to say hello.”

I was on guard. The visit struck me as suspect. But I offered Dr. Reed a chair. Vida beamed at us before heading to her desk.

Rosalie seemed composed, but her eyes darted this way and that before she spoke. “I hope I’m not intruding. Mrs. Runkel was so kind to offer to let me see how a small-town newspaper operates. I’m still adapting to life away from an urban environment. She insisted that Wednesdays are a downtime after your weekly publication.”

“Kip MacDuff, my back-shop manager, can give you the tour,” I said. I couldn’t remember anyone except the sixth-grade class from Alpine Elementary coming to see what went on at the
Advocate
. Most of them had been bored and fidgety, except for a couple of boys who asked how Kip had gotten an autographed baseball from Ken Griffey Jr. “Was somebody in your family involved in newspaper work?”

“My uncle was a reporter for the
Spokesman-Review
,” Rosalie replied. “He covered business and agriculture in the Spokane area.”

“Oh. The Inland Empire beat,” I noted.

“A very important beat on that side of the mountains,” Rosalie said. “It must be exciting … no, that’s a regrettable word.” She grimaced. “I should say a break in routine to have a puzzling death to write about. I haven’t had time to see today’s edition, but I had to answer some questions the sheriff posed. Fascinating, in a way.”

“The questions? Or the answers?”

She laughed—sort of. “It was like a film or TV. ‘Where were you …?’ ‘Droll’ describes it better. Not that I let any amusement show. The sheriff seems rather stern. I thought it prudent not to be flippant.”

I nodded. “Dodge goes by the book.”

“Yes. I found him rather interesting. Very macho, if you like that type. But not the sort of macho who flaunts it. Then again, it’s hard to categorize people at a first meeting.”

I was wondering where this conversation was going. It had certainly strayed from putting out a weekly newspaper. “I’m sure you answered his questions satisfactorily,” I said.

She shrugged. “Frankly, I couldn’t account for my time to the minute. There was the storm, a first for me in the mountains. I’ve lived in the Seattle area long enough to experience bad weather, but one feels more insulated in an urban setting. There’s something raw about storms in primitive surroundings. Our psych ward patients became quite agitated. Oh!” She suddenly clapped a hand to her cheek. “I just realized where I was—with a patient who was disoriented by the thunder. It reminded him of combat in the first Gulf War. How could I forget that? Should I tell the sheriff? I can’t reveal the patient’s name, but … Dodge, isn’t it?” She saw me nod. “He wouldn’t need to know that, would he?”

“I can’t speak for the sheriff, but if you had to identify the person,
the sheriff wouldn’t have Spencer Fleetwood broadcast it over KSKY.”

Rosalie’s pale face turned slightly pink. “No, of course not. That is, the sheriff wouldn’t do that.” She glanced at her watch. “Goodness, it’s going on three. I don’t want to be late for my dental appointment. Then I have to make rounds. How late is the sheriff’s office open?”

“Dodge is usually there until at least five,” I said.

Rosalie stood up. “I can’t believe how the afternoon has flown. Thanks so much for your time. I must take the tour another day. We should have dinner together soon.”

I murmured an appropriate response but didn’t get up. Rosalie Reed might be a fine psychiatrist, but she was a lousy actress. Her role as a forgetful shrink hadn’t played well with me. It was the first thing I said when Vida entered my office a few minutes after my visitor had left.

“I wondered,” Vida said, sitting down. “She accosted me as I was getting out of my car. It was as if she’d been lurking by the cleaners. She knew I’d been to see Clarence Munn.”

“How was Clarence?” I asked.

Vida frowned. “He rambled. Oh, he talked about his mill, but he mentioned so much else. Logging was still the mainstay in SkyCo then. I was in my teens when Clarence came here. He was young, mid-twenties, but his father owned a mill near Forks on the Olympic Peninsula and one by Port Townsend. Clarence wanted to strike out on his own. It was right after World War Two and Clarence had just gotten out of the Coast Guard.” She paused. “Dear me, I’m rattling along, just like Clarence.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “Even after all these years, I don’t know as much as I should about Alpine’s history.”

“I wasn’t born until just after Carl Clemans closed the original mill,” Vida continued. “Mr. Clemans was an exemplary owner. He ran his business like a gentleman. But some of the owners who followed
him in later years were of another sort. So were many of the loggers and mill workers. The Great Depression, you know. Men desperate for work, and not always able to bring their families with them—if they had families. I was a child in those days, but I heard some wild and woolly tales.”

I could imagine a pint-sized version of Vida, a cowgirl hat or a sombrero on her head, listening at keyholes and outside open windows, soaking up every bit of information that came her way. It was more than likely that she retained all of it to the present day. “I assume you’re referring to liquor and women and maybe other vices?”

Vida grimaced. “Yes. The worst, however, were the accidents. There was carelessness and a lack of safety precautions. The workers were often risk takers, but the timber industry has always attracted the bold and the reckless. That’s what Clarence alluded to. Even after the war, some of the vices remained—not in the town, but around the edges.”

“Would this have been while Eeeny Moroni was sheriff?”

“Eeeny—the old fool—wasn’t sheriff until the fifties, though he’d worked as a deputy after he got out of the army. He erased some of the corruption, which was how he kept getting reelected for thirty-odd years. But according to Clarence, Eeeny turned a blind eye to some illicit doings and was on the take. Has Milo mentioned anything like that to you?”

“Never,” I replied. “Up until Eeeny got into trouble a year or so after I came to town, Milo always had nothing but respect for his predecessor.”

Vida nodded. “I was never taken with Eeeny—he was so full of himself—but I didn’t think he was a crook. Clarence feels otherwise. He insists Eeeny took money to ignore a brothel on First Hill. Neeny Doukas, Eeeny’s close friend, was involved, too. There may’ve been gambling at the old Alpine Hotel, and not everything that went on at the ski lodge was above reproach. That would’ve
been after my father-in-law passed away, of course. Rufus Runkel wouldn’t have put up with such shenanigans. He virtually saved the town by promoting the new skiing fad early on.”

“How was all this resolved? I’ve never heard anything about it.”

“The curtailment of logging put an end to it. I suppose that’s why Milo never knew about it. He didn’t start at the sheriff’s office until after he returned from Vietnam and finished his criminal justice degree.”

I leaned back in my chair. “Somehow it seems so long ago. Is there any point in dredging up all this for an article?”

Vida’s gray eyes sparked as she stared at me. “If what Clarence has told me is true, the answer is yes. Oh, Eeeny died in prison several years ago, and Neeny is in a nursing home. But it’s the third person who was involved that the public needs to know about.” She took a deep breath. “You haven’t asked the obvious question, Emma.”

I stared right back, puzzled. “Which is?”

“Why didn’t the press expose this corruption?” She sat up straight again. “The answer is because the person running the whole sorry show was Marius Vandeventer.”

I gaped at Vida. “Marius was a crook?”

She nodded. “He was if I can believe Clarence. I never guessed, not even when I worked for him. That’s why I wonder if Clarence is fanciful. But he insisted it’s true. He is, after all, a fellow Presbyterian.”

“No wonder Marius was anxious to get out of town,” I murmured. “Oddly enough, Milo and I were just talking about my predecessor. But I still have to ask what good it would do. Marius is dead, too.”

“You’d prefer that Clarence tell his story to someone else? He and Marius were very close, almost like father and son.”

“I have to think on it,” I said. “There are descendants to consider,
and one of them is a lawyer—Simon Doukas. I don’t want to get sued, especially by that guy. He was the first one in town to call me a whore.”

“Hypocrite,” Vida murmured. “Wasn’t he having an affair with Heather Bardeen at the time?”

“Yes. She’s young enough to be his daughter. At least Heather finally settled into married life.”

“Losing her mother so young sent Heather briefly off the rails,” Vida remarked absently. “Buck is very fond of his niece.” She stood up. “I assume I didn’t miss anything here while I was at RestHaven.”

“Well …” There was no point in evasion. Bill Blatt would tell his aunt about Holly Gross’s demands. “We had a visitor. Holly came back looking for you. Leo took her to talk to Doe Jamison.”

Vida’s eyes were liked gooseberries behind her big glasses. “And?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know anything else. We suggested Holly talk to Roger. Maybe that’s what she’s doing now.”