Alpine Zen : An Emma Lord Mystery (9780804177481) Read online

  “You weren’t working at the hospital,” Milo shot back. “There was no story.” He frowned. “I wonder if I should call Doc.”

  “Why?” Taking in my husband’s thoughtful expression, I grew suspicious. “Give, Sheriff, or I will take that cigarette from you.”

  “Hell,” he said, “maybe it doesn’t mean anything. Prune Face, or whatever you call that old bat, read off Doc’s preliminary findings, which stated the patient was suffering from dehydration, malnourishment, low blood sugar, and nutty as a fruitcake.”

  “You made up the part about the fruitcake.”

  Milo acknowledged the comment with a brief nod. “It’s the preliminary part I wonder about. Gerry usually goes by the first results. He only digs deeper if he suspects a more serious problem.”

  “Such as what? Drugs?”

  “No. They’d show up right away.”

  “If Doc’s gone home, he won’t get the final results until tomorrow.”

  “Right.” Milo put out his cigarette and stood up, rubbing the back of his head. “There’s something wrong about all of this.” He leaned an elbow on the fireplace mantel. “Maybe I should run a background check on the mother to see if she’s really dead.”

  “Do you want to use my laptop instead of going all the way out to your workshop?” I asked, hoping to sound innocent.

  “Nice try,” my husband drawled. “You won’t sit on my lap, so I won’t use your laptop. You’d look over my shoulder.” He wheeled around, heading through the kitchen to the new door that led to his man cave.

  I’d fix him. I’d use my laptop. But it needed recharging. I was still cussing to myself when Milo reappeared, looking bemused.

  “I couldn’t find any record of Kassia Arthur, dead or alive. What do you make of that, my cute little investigative reporter?”

  FOUR

  A manda Hanson had given birth to a baby girl shortly after midnight. Vida, of course, found out before I did. Her niece, Marje Blatt, works at the medical clinic, and like her brother, Deputy Bill, is bound to report to Vida immediately, under pain of mortal peril.

  “Six pounds, six ounces,” Vida announced, standing by her desk like the town crier. “I hope Dr. Sung doesn’t send her home this afternoon. All this modern twaddle about new mothers being discharged so soon after giving birth is absurd. Old Doc Dewey must be rolling in his grave. But Young Doc is often prone to peculiar modern notions.”

  “Do they have a name for the baby?” Alison Lindahl asked.

  “Not yet,” Vida replied. “It can’t be as atrocious as the last two newborns I wrote up—Athens and Nirvana. Really now!” She tromped over to the pastry tray and snatched up a bear claw. “Bear,” she said under her breath. “That’s what my Gustavson relatives named their baby boy after debating for two weeks. What next? Ocelot? Platypus?”

  I headed into my office. Vida was, as she would put it, on the peck this morning. Deadline day wasn’t off to a good start. Alison followed me, barely able to suppress a giggle fit.

  “Mrs. Runkel’s hat,” she whispered, catching her breath. “Did she lose a bet or is it really made of sponges?”

  “I haven’t seen that one in years,” I replied, making sure Vida was out of hearing range. “One of her granddaughters in Bellingham made it for her in a crafts class. If you look while she’s sitting down you’ll see it has no crown. In warm weather, it’s probably cool. The sponges are thin.”

  Alison grew serious. “She seems…different from when I worked here last December. Is that because of what happened to Roger?”

  I nodded. “She’s taken his disgrace hard. She never mentions him.” I noticed Vida was heading in our direction, but veered off past Mitch’s desk to the back shop. She hadn’t even glanced at Alison and me. That spoke volumes. Vida’s sharp gray eyes usually darted every which way, including, it seemed, behind her.

  My phone rang, so Alison left to assume her front-office duties. I heard Milo’s voice in my ear.

  “Roy Everson was waiting for me when I got here this morning,” he said in a beleaguered tone. “If we don’t have any crises, I’ll send Dwight Gould and Jack Mullins to the dump site before it gets hot. If nothing else, it’ll disprove your wacky theory about Myrtle being buried there next to the Everson property. It might even get Roy off my back until some moron digs up a turkey drumstick.”

  “Maybe I’ll send Mitch to get a picture,” I said.

  “Of what? Mullins’s ass while he’s digging through a bunch of garbage? Forget it.”

  “It’ll show how diligent and sensitive the sheriff’s employees are,” I said in a bright voice. “When will they go out there?”

  “I don’t know. Why does it matter?”

  “Because,” I said for what felt like the hundredth time since I’d met Milo Dodge, “today is our deadline.”

  “It is? Hunh. You’d think I’d remember that by now.” He actually sounded sincere.

  “Guess what? For once, I’m hanging up on you.” I banged the phone down.

  The good news was that by eleven o’clock, most of the copy was in to the back shop. The bad news was that if it hadn’t been for the Summer Solstice festivities, the front page would’ve been deadly dull. Not that the past few issues had contained earthshaking news, but the previous edition featured a five-inch, four-column photo of an overturned eighteen-wheeler that had jackknifed on a hairpin curve two miles east of Alpine. Miraculously, the driver had escaped with only minor cuts and bruises. Mitch had written the upbeat copy that went next to a photo of the sheepish Wenatchee man who’d been heading home.

  I was coming back into the empty newsroom ten minutes later when I heard an all-too-familiar voice call my name. “Hi, Ed,” I greeted my former ad manager, who’d done almost nothing in the early years of my tenure and nearly put the Advocate out of business.

  “Hot enough for you?” Ed asked, never one for an original turn of phrase. Apparently the relatively pleasant morning was too hot for him. He was stuffed into plaid Bermuda shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt emblazoned with the words Remember de Bronska. The allusion was to the so-called villa Ed had built with a large inheritance from an aunt in Iowa. He’d managed to fritter it all away in a few short years before finally selling the property to the rehab facility now known as RestHaven. The T-shirt had been made for the booth Ed had set up in Old Mill Park to sell souvenirs from his villa during the Summer Solstice celebration.

  “It’s not supposed to get really hot until the end of the week,” I said, perching on the edge of Leo’s desk. I had no intention of getting stuck in my office without an escape route.

  “Right, right,” Ed murmured, staring disconsolately at the now-empty pastry tray on the other side of the newsroom. “Say, Emma, you got some room on the front page?”

  Of course I did—or could, but not for Ed. There wasn’t room for Ed in a lot of places, given his girth. Before the advent of cell phones, I’d always wondered how he dealt with a phone booth. Or the rides at Disneyland, where the Bronskys had made their first splurge after his aunt’s money landed at the Bank of Alpine.

  “We’re pretty tight,” I said. “Summer Solstice, you know.”

  Ed winked and pointed a chunky finger at me. “You got it! A tie-in.”

  “What,” I inquired, trying not to sound leery, “do you mean?”

  “Well,” Ed began, looking as if he’d like to sit down, “I didn’t sell as many souvenirs as I hoped over the weekend. And we didn’t have very good luck with the Mr. Pig float this year.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, “having your float break down at the start of Saturday’s parade was a blow.”

  “It sure was,” Ed mumbled. “Everybody missed the spectacle.”

  “A real shame,” I noted. Except there had been some entertainment involved in the fiasco. Two of the float’s real pigs from the Overholt farm had run away. They hadn’t been found until the next morning, eating out of overturned garbage cans not far from the site of Ed’s souvenir stand. But the only spe
ctacle was when someone threw a firecracker into the float’s cardboard silo and it blew up all over the hood of Mayor Baugh’s aging Cadillac. “I’m glad you weren’t badly hurt when you fell off the float, Ed.”

  “I’m tough. Just got kind of bounced around,” he said. “Bounced” was an apt word for Ed. Before I could say anything, he continued on a brighter note: “I did sell four copies of my autobiography, Mr. Ed. They were all tourists, so they had no idea about my life and times in the limelight, especially the Japanese TV cartoon version, Mr. Pig. Too bad nobody over here ever got to see it. So how about it? If you need art, I can whip up something by deadline.”

  I felt I’d missed a beat. “What did you have in mind?” I asked.

  “More description of Casa de Bronska’s souvenirs. You know most people here have no idea about different kinds of antique furniture. Take my racuckoo escreetor, for example. How many folks in Alpine—”

  “Your what?” I couldn’t help it. Usually I can translate Ed’s mangling of foreign words, but this time I was stumped.

  “You know,” he said, scowling. “My personal writing desk. Or maybe you never saw it in my private study.”

  “You mean…” I still wasn’t sure what Ed meant, but I took a wild stab. “A rococo escritoire?”

  Ed nodded, the scowl still in place. “Isn’t that what I said?”

  Luckily, I didn’t have to answer. Alison stood in the newsroom doorway, telling me the sheriff was calling. Even Ed could take that hint, though he sighed—heavily. “Guess I’ll have to wait,” he mumbled, waddling off. “You might have more room next week after…”

  I couldn’t hear the rest of what he said from the safety net that was my office. “News?” I asked my husband in an overly eager voice.

  “Not exactly,” Milo said. “Mullins and Gould are going to the dump site after lunch. If you want a picture, tell Laskey. What I want—besides you—is a big T-bone tonight. I’ll barbecue it, but you buy it. Get those baked potatoes to zap in the microwave, but no topping glop on mine. I made two grocery runs last night.” Not surprisingly, he hung up on me.

  Five minutes later, Vida showed up. She looked remarkably cheerful. My evil self wanted to ask if Roger had been let out on bond.

  “It’s official,” she declared, beaming at me in her toothsome manner. “Bobby Lambrecht is the Bank of Alpine’s new president.”

  I could practically hear a blare of trumpets. Vida’s longtime friend, Faith, was the mother of Bob Lambrecht, and the widow of a minister who’d served for several years at First Presbyterian Church. Bob had been born and raised in Alpine. He’d gone to high school with Milo, but later had moved on and up in the banking world.

  “Can we announce his new post?” I asked.

  Vida nodded, the sponges bobbing above her silver-rimmed glasses. “Yes, it’s official as of July first, but Bobby and Miriam won’t arrive until after the holiday. However, I understand they’re ready to put money down on a condo in Parc Pines. They’re considering the purchase of a house, but even if they eventually move into a house, they’ll keep the condo for the children’s visits. I must call Faith. I do hope she goes ahead with her plans to move here from Spokane. So hot there in summer, so cold in winter.”

  And not the least like Alpine, I thought. But then heaven would probably disappoint Vida. “How did you hear the news?”

  “Andy Cederberg,” she replied. “He’ll stay on. Frankly, he’s relieved. His wife, Reba, told me Andy’s lost twenty pounds since he took on the job of running the bank. He never wanted the responsibility after Marv Petersen retired.”

  “What about Rick Erlandson? Is he still in as second in command?”

  “Oh, yes. No one will be let go,” Vida asserted. “Goodness, I wouldn’t want Ginny’s husband to lose his job with three children to support. She might want to come back as our receptionist. Ginny can be rather gloomy. If anything, the bank’s been shorthanded. Alpine has grown in recent years with the college and RestHaven.” She frowned. “I do hope we don’t get overcrowded. Look at the mess Seattle and its suburbs are in. Why, my daughters in Bellingham and Tacoma can’t believe the changes where they live. The freeways are impossible.”

  “I doubt SkyCo will burst its seams,” I said dryly. “We’re still holding at a little over seven thousand.”

  Vida wasn’t reassured. “It’s creeping up on us. Growth, I mean. Look at Monroe. Every time you turn around, they’ve added two hundred people. My, my!” She adjusted her glasses. “I must call Faith.”

  I decided I should ask Andy for an official statement even if I had to make up one for him. The acting president was just fine when it came to banking, but he wasn’t the most articulate guy in town. On the other hand, I could never balance my checkbook.

  After calling Andy and putting words in his mouth, I took the brief article to Kip. We could get a picture of Bob from the Bank of Washington in Seattle for next week’s edition. Mitch returned from wherever he’d been, so I told him about the dump site photo op. I also had to reiterate what Milo called my wacky theory about Myrtle Everson’s body being buried there. In nineteen years of searching, no sign of her had ever turned up after she’d gone berry picking. The Eversons’ futile search had gone on since then, with every bone they found handed over to the sheriff for DNA.

  By noon, Vida was still on the phone, presumably chatting with Faith Lambrecht. I was hungry, especially for a turkey sandwich. Milo should never have mentioned the word “drumstick.” Maybe I’d walk to Pie-in-the-Sky at the mall. My office hadn’t yet become a sauna, so I hoped the outdoor temperature was still benign.

  I was right. There was a slight breeze ruffling the nasturtiums and ageratum in Mayor Baugh’s concrete planter boxes along Front Street. The odor of gasoline hung on the air from a Blackwell Timber truck that had passed me as I exited the Advocate. A train whistled in the distance, and by the time I was passing the sheriff’s office, I could hear the warning bells signaling for traffic to stop at the crossings between River Road and Railroad Avenue. I was almost to the corner of Second when Milo yelled my name. I turned around and saw him heading toward me.

  “Where are you going?” he asked. I told him. He glowered at me. “You’d let your husband starve?”

  “I assumed you were having your usual grease fest at the Burger Barn,” I said. “Why aren’t you?”

  “I’m sitting out front for Mullins,” Milo replied. “Jack wanted to eat before he started digging up the dump site. Get me corned beef on rye, butter, mayo, mustard, lettuce, potato salad, two bags of chips, and a slice of…” He paused. “Banana cream pie. Oh—two dill pickles.”

  “You expect Little Emma to carry all that without a wheelbarrow?”

  “You can get one at Harvey’s Hardware,” he said with a straight face. “I wouldn’t mind some of Pie-in-the-Sky’s good coffee.”

  “As opposed to the paint thinner you drink at headquarters? Give me a break, Dodge. I don’t have enough money to cover all this.”

  He let out a big sigh as he reached for his wallet. “For a kept woman, you sure are broke most of the time.”

  “I’m not a kept woman,” I declared. “I’m your wife.”

  He handed me two twenties. “You’re right. But unlike the first wife I had, I’m keeping you. You’re too damned cute to send back.”

  I looked up at him. “Someday I’ll stay mad at you for…hours.”

  “I’ll wait.” He started to turn around, but stopped. “If they don’t have banana cream, get boysenberry.”

  I growled low in my throat and headed for the mall.

  The line was long, and to my dismay, Vida’s despised sister-in-law, Mary Lou Hinshaw Blatt, was in front of me. She, too, is a big woman, and just as opinionated. Also like Vida, she seems to have eyes in the back of her head.

  “Hello, Emma,” she said, turning to stare down at me. “I drove by your house the other day. You certainly put a lot of work and money into the remodel. The newspaper must be raking it in.�
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  I felt the two twenties in my wallet might catch on fire. “Milo paid for all of it,” I said in sort of a squeak.

  “Oh?” Mary Lou sidled up a place in the line. “I heard the sheriff was letting his daughter stay at his house in the Icicle Creek Development with my nephew Bill. I’m glad Lila put an end to that. It’s reassuring to know one member of the Blatt family has good sense.”

  The barb at Vida rankled, but I held my tongue. Luckily the line split in two as a second person showed up behind the counter. Mary Lou barged in front of a hapless dark-haired girl who looked like a college student. I stayed put. Ten minutes later, I entered the sheriff’s headquarters where my husband was still working the front desk.

  “Where’d everybody go?” I asked, glancing at receptionist Lori Cobb’s empty chair.

  “Lori’s grandma had a stroke this morning,” Milo said. “The old girl’s at least ninety. Maybe she misses her husband. He’s been dead for six months.”

  I began unloading the box with the bold brown PITS logo, an unfortunate acronym for an eatery. “I thought she was dating.”

  “They broke up. Lori’s grandma said the guy cheated on her—at Bingo.” Milo grabbed the corned beef sandwich. “Jack’s at lunch, Dwight’s on patrol, Doe Jamison and Sam Heppner are breaking up a fracas at RestHaven. Where are my pickles?”

  “Your…what fracas?”

  Milo didn’t answer until he’d swallowed a big bite of sandwich. “The drug and booze rehab unit chief, Iain Farrell, called a few minutes ago. A couple of patients got into it. It’s not the first time.”

  I glared at the sheriff. “It’s not? You’ve never informed the press about any such incidents.”

  Milo found his damned pickles. “The set-tos were in the log.”

  I was puzzled. “Then why didn’t I notice? I always go over what Mitch takes down every day.”

  “Let me check something.” Milo popped a couple of potato chips into his mouth and went to flip through the log on the counter. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered. “You know we list only addresses with domestic disturbances that don’t require a citation or an arrest. Those RestHaven bastards changed their address from River Road to Bonneville Way. They must be using the medical rehab center as the address instead of the main entrance. If the change is official, I wonder how much mail Marlowe Whipp has lost for them.”