The Alpine Xanadu (39 page)

“You mean enough to sleep with him?”

Kay shrugged. “That’s one way to put it. What’s the quote—‘I kissed thee ere I killed thee’?”

“
Othello
,” I said.

Kay smiled. “Yes. I was Desdemona in a reading we did in our high school English class. Cal Vickers was Othello and Warren Wells was Iago. Not exactly type-casting.”

I smiled back. “Maybe your English teacher had a sense of humor.”

“Not really,” Kay said. “It was Vida Runkel’s future sister-in-law,
Miss Hinshaw, who later became Mary Lou Blatt. Very strong-minded and opinionated, with a tongue that could cut steel.”

I didn’t comment that Vida and Mary Lou had a lot in common. That was probably why they couldn’t stand each other. I put my hand on the doorknob. “By the way,” I said, “I saw Dwight earlier. He’s on duty today at the desk.”

“Oh?” She looked intrigued. “Maybe I should call to say hi.”

“Good idea,” I said, and left Kay to her cleaning duties.

It was raining when I got home at three o’clock. I checked my voicemail, but Jennifer hadn’t called me. Ben, however, had left a message.

“Hey, Sluggly,” he said, “you should have the annulment stuff by now. Maybe Dodge took a look at it and fled the county. Don’t call me—I’m off on the mission circuit for evening Masses. Go with God.”

I hadn’t checked the mailbox. Sure enough, there was a huge packet stuffed inside. It was addressed to Milo in care of me, but of course I’d let him open it. Maybe not today, though. We’d both been through enough already.

The phone rang as I put the mail on the coffee table. “Can you keep your mouth shut?” Spencer Fleetwood asked.

“About what?”

“Rosalie—and me,” he said, sounding subdued. “Hear me out. I met her at a PBS fund-raiser just after her husband had to be institutionalized. She impressed me in a lot of ways. I decided that maybe she could help me out of my funk over losing the love of my life. I’d never seen a shrink before. In the process, she became the new love of my life. But she had a husband. You know how that goes when it comes to the case of the crazy spouse. Maybe now, down the road, we have a real future. But in the meantime, I’d appreciate your discretion. And that of your favorite bear.”

“I’m shaking my head,” I admitted. “Not a negative response.
Naturally, Milo and I wondered. Don’t worry, Spence. We can both keep a secret.”

“Good. Then I won’t worry about him making some crack and having to break
his
nose.”

“Will you tell Vida?”

I heard him heave a sigh. “Hell, I won’t have to. She probably already knows. Doesn’t she always?”

I agreed, and we rang off on a conciliatory note.

Along about four-thirty, I wondered if Milo seriously planned on going out to dinner at Le Gourmand. More to the point, I doubted we could get a reservation at this late date. The restaurant drew diners from all over the region, especially on weekends. I had chicken breasts, more hamburger and tiger prawns in the freezer. We wouldn’t starve. Maybe Tanya would be back with us. Feeling unsettled, I resumed cleaning out not only Adam’s closet, but two of his bureau drawers.

It was almost six when Milo arrived, looking weary. “Sit,” I said, pushing him to the easy chair. “Let me get you a drink.”

“Make it a stiff one,” he said, handing me his wet jacket. “God, Emma, sometimes I hate my job.”

“What else happened?” I asked.

“Just get the drinks,” he said, collapsing in the chair.

I pulled the chicken from the freezer and got out more ice. Obviously, we were going to eat chez Dodge.

After making drinks, I sat on the floor next to the easy chair. “Tell your wife all about it,” I said, looking up at Milo.

He reached out to ruffle my hair. “Mel burned all the photos they could find, but we confiscated Wayne’s computer. He’d used a program that allegedly wipes stuff out, but it’s still there. It just takes some guru to find it, and we will. Even if he’s dead, he may have had customers outside the area. At least he can’t peddle that junk anymore to high school kids or anybody else in SkyCo.”

“You might have gotten on top of that sooner if Freeman hadn’t put the lid on things at the high school.”

“That’s the trouble,” Milo said, lighting cigarettes for both of us and handing me mine. “All this damned secrecy—Cookie and Tiff, Freeman, Woo. Sure, I respect people’s right of privacy, but it impedes justice and causes bad things to happen. Damn it, I’m still not sure what to do about Durwood. Am I getting soft?”

“You’ve had to face this sort of impossible situation before,” I pointed out. “Did you lose any sleep over it?”

“It was different back then. The guilty parties were on their way out. Durwood’s in good shape for his age. Physically, anyway.”

“That’s my point. Deep down, do you feel he should be punished?”

“Hell, no.” Milo sipped his drink and looked thoughtful. “I publicly stated it was a possible homicide. If I retract that statement, how do I look? Like a dope? How does that make the SnoCo lab guys look?”

“Confused.
I’m
confused. Maybe Wayne was almost dead after Tiff jabbed him. Maybe Durwood
was
confused. Have Tiff make a formal statement about why she stabbed her dad in the first place. Eventually the whole town is going to find out what happened to her.”

Milo frowned at me. “How?”

I rested my arm on his leg and smiled. “Vida. How else? You let her broadcast that on her program and she may start speaking to you again.”

“Is that good news or bad news?”

I punched him. Gently. “You know what it is. And it
is
news.”

“For you, too,” he murmured.

I grimaced. “I’m dumping this one on Mitch. I might let Vida and Spence scoop me. We can do a follow-up series on child molestation.”

Milo held out his glass. “How about a refill?”

I polished off the rest of my bourbon. “Why not? The chicken’s not thawed yet.”

Milo followed me out to the kitchen. “I forgot to tell you Dwight got a tip today about Blackwell’s stabbing.”

“Oh?” My back was turned as I added more ice to our glasses. “What was it?”

“Not for publication. Yet.” His gaze was steely. “That nurse at RestHaven, Jennifer Hood. You won’t believe this, but Dwight told me she was Blackwell’s first wife. Maybe she really did make those other so-called threats on his life. It galls me to think I might have to bust her. I wonder if she was afraid the S.O.B. would make trouble for …” He grabbed me by the shoulders. “Emma, you little twit! How’d you figure out that one?”

I fell against him and he put his arms around me. “You told me not to get into trouble, so I didn’t. I just worked on some research.”

I felt him groan. “I’m glad I married you. You’re too dangerous to be let loose on your own.”

I looked up into his eyes. “Are you sure we’re married? You said you got a waiver, but I thought both parties had to sign the application.”

“Right. You signed it.”

“When?”

He chuckled. “When you thought you were signing the quote for Melville. You never looked at the thing. You were still half asleep.”

I tried to pull away, but he held me fast. “You tricked me?”

He shrugged. “I lost you once. I wanted to make damned sure it wouldn’t happen again. Are you sorry?”

I put my arms around his neck. “No. But it must be the only time you didn’t go by the book, Sheriff.”

“That’s because I wanted to write my own book. You realize you’re stuck here with me in Alpine for the rest of your life?”

A flood of memories came back to me, almost as if they were reflected in Milo’s intense hazel eyes: my first day on the job, with Vida overwhelming me with names and places as foreign as if I’d landed in Outer Mongolia; the little town’s cluster of nondescript commercial buildings and mostly modest houses clinging to the craggy terrain of Tonga Ridge; the smallness of it all, the relative isolation, the thick forest encroaching on a tiny patch of civilization. I’d spent my life in cities. I’d come face-to-face with culture shock. All I’d had was a college-bound son, a used Jaguar, and a will to strike out on my own. I hadn’t thought about spending the rest of my life in Alpine. Getting from one deadline to the next and putting out a decent newspaper were my only goals. I never guessed that when I stumbled into the sheriff’s office on a warm August afternoon, I’d met my future. I’d had no dream of finding my own little Eden, my snowcapped paradise, my Xanadu in the Valley of the Sky.

I looked up at Milo. “Maybe this is where I was always headed, even when I wasn’t sure where I was going. I might belong here after all.”

He nodded. “We both do. It’s home, Mrs. Dodge.”

I smiled. “And now it’s
our
home.”

The Alpine Advocate

The Alpine Betrayal

The Alpine Christmas

The Alpine Decoy

The Alpine Escape

The Alpine Fury

The Alpine Gamble

The Alpine Hero

The Alpine Icon

The Alpine Journey

The Alpine Kindred

The Alpine Legacy

The Alpine Menace

The Alpine Nemesis

The Alpine Obituary

The Alpine Pursuit

The Alpine Quilt

The Alpine Recluse

The Alpine Scandal

The Alpine Traitor

The Alpine Uproar

The Alpine Vengeance

The Alpine Winter

The Alpine Xanadu

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