Alpine Zen : An Emma Lord Mystery (9780804177481) Page 9

  “Vida would know—of course,” I said. “Maybe I’ll wander down to Milo’s office and ask him. My office is starting to overheat.”

  Leo chuckled. “Can’t keep away from the guy, huh?”

  “More like I’m trying to avoid Vida,” I responded, lowering my voice. “She’s so unpredictable these days.”

  “She doesn’t talk as much,” Leo allowed. “That’s not all bad.”

  A couple of moments later, I headed on my way, pausing only to wave at Alison, who was on the phone, apparently taking a classified ad. Vida’s Buick wasn’t in sight, but Milo’s Yukon was in place. When I walked into headquarters, a tearful Lori was seated behind the counter with Jack Mullins patting her back.

  “Her grandma just died,” he said, sounding unusually solemn. “Her mom called. They’d moved Grandma Cobb out of the ICU because she wasn’t responding. She was ninety-two. No real surprise. Right, Lori?” He kept patting her. “Go home. I’ll hold down the fort.”

  “No,” Lori said in a small voice, wiping away the tears. “Mom and Dad are taking care of everything. I’ll probably have to take time off for the funeral anyway.” She pulled a tissue out of the box on her desk and blew her nose. “Grandma and Grandpa are together again. That should make me happy. But it doesn’t.”

  “It will,” I assured her. “The only good thing my brother and I could hold on to when our parents were killed in a car accident is that they were with each other.” Never mind that even as Ben grieved as much as I did, he’d told me that was lousy theology. We would all be with God was as close as he could come to envisioning life after death.

  Jack finally stopped patting Lori. Maybe his arm was tired. “You here for the big guy?” He nodded at Milo’s closed door. “Your old man is seeing another woman.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Lori and I didn’t recognize her. Whoever it is told us she’d been in here Monday talking to Dodge. She’s kind of a dish. You sure you can trust him?”

  “After sixteen years?” I paused, thinking of my reaction to his call from Jeannie Clay Hobbs. “Yes. I think I know who his visitor is. How long has the door been closed?”

  Jack looked at Lori, who’d composed herself. “Twenty minutes?” she said. “She got here quite a while before Mom called about Grandma.”

  I considered how long Ren could natter. The picture could wait, I supposed. On the other hand, if Vida was back at the office, I preferred to stall. “Say,” I finally said, “do either of you know what’s happening with Bill and Tanya? We old folks are out of the loop, especially since your boss doesn’t like his staff bringing their personal lives to work.”

  Jack shrugged. “That doesn’t bother me. I don’t have a personal life. I’m married to Nina.”

  “Jack…” I began, but saw Milo’s door open. Ren was in front of him and he looked as if he wanted to kick her rear end all the way to Front Street. To expedite her departure, I dove behind Jack so Ren couldn’t see me. She walked by the three of us without a glance. Lab results or not, I still wondered if she was on drugs.

  “Well?” the sheriff called to me after his visitor was out the door. “What now?”

  “Gosh,” I said, “I’ve got a question for you.”

  “No shit,” the love of my life growled. “Let me grab a coffee refill.”

  “I get it,” Jack said under his breath when Milo disappeared. “It was his charm that won you over.”

  “Right,” I muttered. “Along with his sunny disposition.” Seeing the sheriff enter the open area behind the curving front counter, I headed for his office and sat down.

  Milo returned with a mug of the swill known as coffee in the Skykomish County sheriff’s headquarters. I’d never figured out what it would be known as in other parts of the civilized world. Maybe Tricia couldn’t make good coffee. What really bothered me was that my husband didn’t seem to notice the difference between decent brew and dreck.

  “My query is,” I began, “were there ever any hippie communes along the Highway Two corridor?”

  The sheriff sipped his sludge before answering. “Yeah, I vaguely recall at least one somewhere outside of Sultan. That was probably about the time I got drafted right out of high school. It may’ve been gone by the time I got back from Nam and headed off to Everett to study law enforcement. What’s your point?”

  Annoyingly, the sheriff’s response was understandable. “The guy’s hair wasn’t gray, was it?” I countered.

  “So what? Neither is yours.”

  “That’s a family fluke,” I retorted. “Ben’s older and has only a few gray hairs. You already stated the dead man was under fifty.”

  “Right,” Milo agreed, leaning back in his big swivel chair. “Let’s consider the hippie angle, if only because I’m worn out from listening to your California caller. We’ll get back to her later. For the sake of argument, let’s say the guy was under fifty, but not by a lot.” The sheriff paused to light a cigarette. “You want one?”

  I shook my head. “Why do you say ‘not by a lot’?”

  Milo looked vexed. “Doc said what hair was left might—get that?—indicate the stiff was balding.”

  “Were the remaining hairs hippie-long?” I asked.

  “No. Just longer than average. And don’t ask—like Ren did—if hair and fingernails grow after you’re dead. That’s an optical illusion turned into a myth and a lot of bad horror movies.”

  “I’m not Ren,” I huffed. “Why did she ask you that?”

  Milo held up a big hand. “Back off. Stay on the subject. Doc and I guess the guy was in his forties when he died. Except for the manner of body disposal, there’s nothing to indicate death was unnatural. I’m emphasizing this because you’ll post some of it online, right?”

  “If,” I replied haughtily, “I find it newsworthy.”

  Milo stared at me without blinking, a favorite tactic he used on perps. “You’re such a pain in the ass. Go ahead, you do the math.”

  “What math?” I asked, genuinely clueless.

  “Damnit,” he said, shaking his head, “you’re not only cute, but you’re smart, right up until you get a case of the dumbs. You’re lousy at numbers. I’m talking about a forty-year-old dead guy who’s wearing a hippie belt. Maybe he kept wearing it because he never shed his early politics.”

  I still looked blank. “I’ll take your word for it. You’re the sheriff.”

  “So I am.” Milo sighed wearily. “What do you intend to put online?”

  “Nothing,” I replied. “It is speculation. I don’t like going public with guesswork, either. Now tell me about Ren.”

  The hand that wasn’t holding the cigarette held his head. “She read the story in the paper after she got back to the ski lodge. Ren thinks the dead guy’s her father. She wanted to see the stiff. I told her it had gone to Everett. For all I know, she hightailed it over there.”

  I felt like holding my head. “Wouldn’t he be too young?”

  “Not if he was late forties when he died. Hell, even if he hasn’t been dead for ten years, he could’ve knocked up her mother in his teens.”

  “Did she have any reason to think he’d ever been in Alpine?”

  “That postcard,” Milo replied. “She wonders if her father gave it to her mother. That could make sense. Or else they came here together.”

  I considered the possibility. “Why such an old postcard? We’ve had SkyCo postcards forever. And where did they get it? It’s ninety years old.”

  “I’ll be ninety years old before I figure out what’s going on with Ren,” Milo grumbled. “I asked if she was sticking around. She thought so—if the atmosphere stayed positive. Don’t ask me what that meant.”

  I stood up. “Who else can she pester? Ren’s talked to both of us and to Vida. She’s scoured the library sources, which probably included the Advocate along with other area publications. Unless she does personal interviews of random residents, Ren’s at a dead end.” I winced. “I shouldn’t have said
that. Digging into the past is a risky business.”

  He nodded. “You should know. It’s a good thing you married me. You’ve got police protection.”

  “True.” I gave my husband a bleak smile and left, hoping I wouldn’t need protecting in the foreseeable future.

  —

  As I trudged back to the office, I realized that the one visit I’d left out in recapping Ren’s tour was the art gallery. I felt remiss, given that was where she’d collapsed. The gallery opened at five, but Donna was usually there by a quarter to. The old iron clock by the bank said it was going on four. I’d leave work early. Vida’s parking slot was still empty. Maybe she’d succumbed to her disgust with me and gone home.

  Alison provided the answer as soon as I stepped through the door. “Vida called to say she’d heard from an old friend’s daughter who’s married to the new bank president. Mrs. Lambrecht is in town looking over the two vacant Parc Pines condos. Vida was meeting her to offer advice and have supper at her house.”

  I made a face. “That might make Miriam Lambrecht decide to stay in Seattle. There ought to be a city ordinance that our House & Home editor should never be allowed within ten feet of a stove.”

  “If she puts all those recipes in the paper and gives helpful kitchen hints, can she really be such a terrible cook?” Alison asked.

  “In a word, yes,” I stated without hesitation. “And I’m not saying that because she and I had a spat this morning.”

  Alison grimaced. “Do you think she’s sick, but won’t talk about it?”

  I’d never thought about Vida being ill. Except for a rare cold or touch of flu, she was as healthy as she was opinionated. Which was saying a lot about her iron constitution. I admitted to Alison that a physical ailment hadn’t occurred to me.

  “The problem is,” I went on, “she’d never admit it. Nor could I worm anything out of her daughter, Amy. She, along with her sisters, guard their mother’s privacy as if she were the Queen of England.”

  “She is the Queen of Alpine,” Alison said with a wry smile.

  I nodded. “That’s another obstacle for me. I may be her boss, but she considers me a pretender to the throne.”

  Alison’s phone rang. I paused, giving her a questioning look to see if the call was for me. She shook her head, so I headed to my office, which had grown uncomfortable. I wondered if Harvey Adcock had received his shipment of new fans. Feeling enervated, I decided to go into the larger and better-ventilated newsroom. Maybe I could spend the rest of the workday researching Alpine in the hippie era. It’d be more comfortable sitting at Vida’s vacated desk instead of in my airless office.

  I pulled out the 1967 volume for starters. I’d been thirteen during that year’s “Summer of Love” and living in Seattle’s blue-collar neighborhood of Wallingford. Back then, I was more interested in dealing with zits than reading about sit-ins at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

  Apparently, Marius Vandeventer wasn’t any more intrigued with counterculture than I’d been. Except for brief wire service stories he’d plugged into the back pages, there was nothing hippie-related. I moved on to 1968. Still nothing, nor did 1969 or 1970 yield any SkyCo references to what was by then a waning movement. The only hint of hippie politics was Marius’s staunch pro–Vietnam War stance. It was quite a switch from the Socialist-Labor leanings in his early Alpine years.

  Yet the hippies hadn’t evaporated in a puff of weed. Their spirit had remained alive, as the dead man in the dump site might have attested. They’d evolved into protesters of many things, including environmental abuse. I flipped through the 1970 and 1971 editions. For the first time I saw some local young people with longer hair and hippie-like attire. Along with progressive ideas, fashion statements take a long time to reach isolated small towns like Alpine.

  A glance at my watch told me it was almost four-thirty. Mitch and Leo had come and gone and come back again. My reporter finally asked me what I was doing. Realizing he hadn’t been here when Ren had visited the Advocate on Monday, I filled him in.

  “So what’s the tie-in?” he asked. “Is she a developing story along with hippies? Or is Ren a suspect in the long-ago murder of a man she thinks is her father?”

  I sighed. “Unfortunately for our front page, I doubt she’s either one. For all I know, she may be headed back to California.”

  “But Dodge doesn’t think so?”

  “Sometimes he likes to think the worst,” I replied. “If Ren turns out to be a story, she’s all yours.” Aware that my reporter was touchy about divisions of labor, I added that so far all we had was a curious flake seeking her roots.

  Mitch didn’t agree. “That’s a feature, with so many people getting interested in their ancestors. I noticed that back in Detroit not long after this country’s bicentennial. Do you want me to take a shot at her if she’s still at the ski lodge?”

  It wasn’t the worst idea he’d ever had. In fact, Mitch had plenty of good ones. After the giddy, enthusiastic Carla Steinmetz Talliaferro, the good-looking yet journalistically raw Scott Chamoud, and finally the disastrous, mad-as-a-hatter Curtis Mayne, I wasn’t used to a savvy, veteran reporter like Mitch.

  “Go for it,” I said. Better him than me.

  “I will,” he responded, taking a quick look at his watch. “Maybe I’ll head for the ski lodge now.”

  “Good luck,” I said—and meant it.

  Shortly after four-thirty, I decided to peruse only one more volume before heading to the art gallery. More hippie fashions, more beards on men, more long hair on both sexes. Yet no editorial allusions to the politics that had created the movement. No snide comments from Vida about nontraditional attire—she hadn’t started working for the paper until 1980. I was about to quit halfway through 1973 when a wedding picture caught my eye. The 18-point type read, STANLEY-DODGE NUPTIALS. I let out a shriek just as Leo came out from the back shop.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, halting halfway to his desk.

  I’d started laughing. All I could do was point to the photo in the bound volume. Leo took one look and laughed, too. “Jesus,” he said. “Is that really the sheriff?”

  I tried to control myself. “I…think…he still had…that suit…when I first met…him,” I gasped between gusts of hilarity.

  “Hey,” Leo said, “I had three of those with the wide lapels and bell-bottom pants, along with the two-button look. I thought I was one cool-looking ad dude.”

  “But you didn’t wear them after 1980,” I pointed out.

  “I might’ve,” he said, no longer amused. “That’s about the time I started hitting the sauce too hard. Man, does he look young—and sort of scared. Mulehide or whatever is really into the hippie thing. Pretty girl. I can’t believe she’s the same woman who came to see you back in February.”

  “Tricia hasn’t aged well.” I took another look at the photo. “The hippie bride look was in, even here. Roseanna Bayard had carried an artichoke instead of flowers, and Buddy’s hair and beard were all over the place. Back in the day, our future photography-studio owners were into composting and growing their own vegetables.”

  “Milo’s clean-shaven,” Leo observed. “Was he already a deputy?”

  “Yes. After he got back from Nam, he went to Everett Junior College to get his criminal justice degree. He was hired as soon as he finished. Somewhere in there, he met Tricia. She’s originally from Sultan, but was working in the ski lodge gift shop.”

  “I see her real first name is Patricia,” Leo noted, scanning the copy. “Married in the Sultan Community Christian Church by the Reverend J. C. Peace. Real name?”

  “Good question,” I murmured. “It sounds as hippie-like as Tricia’s long, flower-covered hair, baggy gown, and love beads. I wonder…”

  “What?” Leo asked, noting I’d drifted off to some other place.

  “What?” I echoed, giving a start. “Oh. The annulment.” Suddenly, I was excited. “You may know this, but if you’re married in a Protestant church, the ceremon
y has to be conducted by an authorized Christian minister or it’s not recognized as valid by Catholics.”

  Leo smiled. “You’re looking for a loophole?”

  “You bet I am,” I replied. “Tricia’s dragging her feet. Meanwhile, Ben’s pressing me to get it done. Milo and I have to talk.”

  “After seeing this picture of him, I thought maybe you were considering your own divorce.”

  I stared again at the tall, lanky young man standing somewhat ill at ease beside his beaming, bright-eyed bride. “I think he seems kind of sweet. But age has greatly improved his looks.”

  “I’ll grant that much,” Leo conceded. “But sweet, he’s not.”

  “That’s good,” I asserted. “If he was, I’d never have married him.”

  Leo just shook his head and wandered off to his desk.

  —

  I set aside my research. After telling Alison I was leaving early, I headed for the art gallery across Front Street and four blocks east. I found a parking spot near the corner of Eighth. The CLOSED sign was on the door, but I could see Donna inside. She hurried to let me in.

  “I was going to call you,” she said, smiling. “I sold Craig’s new work today to a man from Longview. He liked it a lot better than you did.”

  “He probably knows more about art than I do,” I said, a trifle chagrined. “I can only respond on a visceral level. Most of Picasso’s works are a total mystery and the Pop Art movement looks like junk.”

  “Some of it was,” Donna agreed. “I’m no expert, but I studied art in college and I try to keep up with what’s current. This,” she went on with a sweeping gesture, “is more personally rewarding than running the day care. There are only so many diaper changes and nose-wipings you can do in a day before you need something more aesthetic. Of course I couldn’t afford to run the gallery if it wasn’t for my day job.”

  “Does Craig know you’ve sold the painting?”

  “I left a message on his cell,” Donna replied, rearranging two pairs of ceramic candleholders on top of a display case. “He’ll get in touch when he feels like it. You know time and money mean nothing to him.” Her gratified expression changed. “I heard Ren Rawlings got out of the hospital today. Do you know how she’s doing?”