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Authors: Mary Daheim

Alpine Hero

BOOK: Alpine Hero
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Praise for Mary Daheim
and her Emma Lord mysteries

THE ALPINE ADVOCATE

“The lively ferment of life in a small Pacific Northwest town, with its convoluted genealogies and loyalties [and] its authentically quirky characters, combines with a baffling murder for an intriguing mystery novel.”

—M. K. W
REN

THE ALPINE BETRAYAL

“Editor-publisher Emma Lord finds out that running a small-town newspaper is worse than nutty—it’s downright dangerous. Readers will take great pleasure in Mary Daheim’s new mystery.”

—C
AROLYN
G. H
ART

THE ALPINE CHRISTMAS

“If you like cozy mysteries, you need to try Daheim’s Alpine series.… Recommended.”


The Snooper

THE ALPINE DECOY

“[A] fabulous series … Fine examples of the traditional, domestic mystery.”


Mystery Lovers Bookshop News

By Mary Daheim

Published by Ballantine Books:

THE ALPINE ADVOCATE

THE ALPINE BETRAYAL

THE ALPINE CHRISTMAS

THE ALPINE DECOY

THE ALPINE ESCAPE

THE ALPINE FURY

THE ALPINE GAMBLE

THE ALPINE HERO

Copyright © 1996 by Mary Daheim

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

http://www.randomhouse.com

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-96831

eISBN: 978-0-307-55425-3

v3.1

Contents
Chapter One

M
Y HAIR WAS
three inches too long and my bank balance was thirty dollars short. I wasn’t due for a paycheck at
The Alpine Advocate
for another two days. As the newspaper’s editor and publisher, I could have given myself an advance. But that was cheating, which I despised. I’d done it once, with somebody else’s husband, and the price had been high. In this winter of my introspection, I’d finally closed that long-overdue account.

Waiting to cross Front Street, I pondered my old sin and my new attitude. The affair twenty-three years ago had given me a son, a broken heart, and a skewed slant on love. The object of my blighted affection was currently separated from his certifiably crazy wife. But divorce wasn’t imminent. Waiting for Tom Cavanaugh to leave Sandra was like winning the lottery—there was always a chance, but the odds were terrible.

My patience with Tom had run out. I’d finally exorcised him on New Year’s Eve. He’d called from San Francisco to tell me how much he loved me. I’d said that was nice. Tom was justifiably bewildered. I wished him a Happy New Year and hung up. Six weeks had passed, and I hadn’t heard from him again. Maybe he’d gotten the message.

I had no regrets. I felt liberated, even exhilarated. On an overcast February day in Alpine, Washington, with
four feet of snow covering the ground and a sharp wind blowing down from Mount Baldy, I felt buoyant. It didn’t bother me that the buildings along Front Street were small and drab, with piles of dirty snow hugging their facades. I ignored the jarring sound of a drill at the corner of Front and Second. All it meant to me was a two-inch story, about a frozen pipe across the street at City Hall. I could sniff the sweet cedar smoke from the sawmill and the heady aroma of chicken soup from the Venison Inn. As far as the eye could see on the main thoroughfare, there were no more than twenty vehicles in transit. With not quite four thousand residents, the town neither hustles nor bustles. While I often missed the city, Alpine’s quiet, arctic isolation suited my present mood just fine.

The thought of submitting my unruly brown locks to the capable hands of Stella Magruder was very appealing. Heedlessly, I allowed a logging truck to fling slush on my boots. Recklessly, I crossed Front Street before one of its two traffic lights changed. Giddily, I entered Stella’s Styling Salon and greeted her assistant, Laurie, at the counter.

Laurie is pretty, pleasant—and dumb as a rope. As usual, she couldn’t remember my name. This might be common in a busy metropolis, but Stella’s Styling is the only beauty parlor in town.

“Emma Lord,” I said with a big smile. Nothing was going to shake me from my newly acquired sanguine state.

“Umm.” Laurie scanned the appointment book. “Would that be a haircut or a facial?” Her bland blue eyes gazed beyond my left ear.

The salon had recently begun offering facials. There were rumors that massage might follow. I kept smiling. “A haircut, with Stella. Two o’clock.”

Miraculously, Laurie found my name. “Ms. Lord,” she said, with doubt in her wispy voice. Reaching under the counter, she handed me a black smock. “You can change next to the facial room. It’s in the back, by the rest room. Okay?” Laurie sounded as if it probably weren’t.

The smock-changing routine was new, along with the facials. Vaguely, I recalled where the rest room was located. As I passed by the two workstations, Stella’s reflection smiled at me in the big mirror that covered most of the wall. She was putting the finishing touches on an elderly woman I’d met somewhere around town. The blue rinse bordered on the garish, but the soft curls looked nice.

“Hi, Emma,” Stella said in greeting. “I thought you’d died. You should have been in here before the end of January. Now I’ll have to get out the hedge clippers.” She laughed, a husky, happy sound that followed me through the door that led to the salon’s nether parts.

The rest room was clearly marked. But there were four other doors. One of them was ajar, but I could hear the swishing sound of a washer and the hum of a dryer. I remembered that this was the salon’s laundry and linen room. Uncertain as to which was the changing area, I opened the door opposite the rest room.

I’d made a mistake. This was the facial room. It was lighted only by a pair of thick aromatic candles. A woman was lying on the table, swathed in a sheet and a couple of towels. Her face was covered with dark green cream, and there were cotton pads over her eyes. I intended to apologize for the intrusion. But before my brain could connect with my voice, I saw that the woman’s throat had been cut from ear to ear. There was no doubt that she was dead.

I screamed.

My sanguine mood was shattered.

*  *  *

Stella was the first to hear me. She rushed into the dimly lighted corridor gripping a comb. My initial reaction was that it was a weapon, and Stella was going to stab me. I screamed again, took in the alarm on her face, and tried to calm down.

“The woman in there is dead,” I said, gulping and gesturing. “Her throat’s been cut.” My unsteady legs forced me to lean against the wall next to the facial-room door.

Stella visibly steeled herself, then pushed the door all the way open. Dropping the comb, she put both hands over her mouth to stifle a cry. Laurie appeared at that moment, along with a dark-haired young woman I didn’t recognize. Stella whirled, grabbed her assistants by their shoulders, and spun them back down the narrow corridor.

“Becca! Call the sheriff!” Stella gave herself a shake. “Better yet, run over and get him or whoever’s there. Hurry!”

The Skykomish County Sheriff’s Office was almost directly across the street from the Clemans Building, which houses the salon. Becca, who I knew only by sight, now hurried away. Laurie stood dumbly by the rest-room door, watching her employer with uncomprehending blue eyes.

“Let’s go back into the salon,” Stella said, firmly closing the door on the dead woman. “I don’t want to see
that
again.”

Still shaking, I followed Stella and Laurie. The bright lights of the main salon hurt my eyes. Indeed, I seemed to hurt all over.

“Who is it?” I finally breathed as I half fell into the vacant chair at Laurie’s station.

Before I could get an answer from Stella, she saw her Blue Rinse waiting patiently at the front counter. I suddenly
remembered that the woman’s name was Ella Hinshaw. She was a shirttail relation of my House & Home editor, Vida Runkel. Ella was about seventy, and deaf as a post. It appeared that she hadn’t heard my screams, though she was eyeing all three of us with curiosity.

Stella arrived at the counter. It sounded as if she was trying to get rid of Ella before the sheriff arrived. Laurie was leaning against the shampoo bowl, looking bewildered.

“Who was it?”
I hissed at her.

Laurie turned her wheat-colored head in my direction. Every time I saw her, both her style and shade were different. “Ms. Whitman,” she said in a hushed voice. “You know—that woman from Startup.”

I knew Honoria Whitman very well. She and Sheriff Milo Dodge had been seeing each other for about three years. Honoria lived twenty-five miles west of Alpine in a converted summer cottage off Highway 2. She was a potter who was confined to a wheelchair. I admired her courage and her independence. I liked her, but was sometimes put off by what I considered a faintly patronizing manner. Laurie’s words caused me to start shaking all over again.

Stella had gotten rid of Ella Hinshaw. Watching the sheriff’s office through the front door, Stella spoke sharply to Laurie: “Did you say that was Honoria Whitman?” Stella’s usually husky voice was thin and strained. “Good God, Laurie, it’s not
her
—it’s Kay Whitman, Honoria’s sister-in-law.”

I felt dizzy with relief. I’d never heard of Kay Whitman; I vaguely recalled that Honoria had a sister-in-law. The only reason I knew that much was because the brother had killed the husband who had pushed Honoria down a flight of stairs and turned her into a cripple. After
putting my head between my knees, I looked up to see Milo Dodge loping into the salon with Becca and Deputy Jack Mullins right behind him.

“Okay,” Milo said, his usually laconic voice a trifle loud and fraught with authority. “What do we have here?” One hand was at his sidearm.

Stella took command, her full-figured body positioned in the middle of the salon where the reception area ended and the workstations began. “Emma went into the facial room by mistake. She found our client with her throat cut. It’s true. I saw her myself. She’s dead.”

“Who is she?” Milo asked with a swift, reproachful glance at Becca. “This one couldn’t remember her name.”

“She was new,” Becca began in an apologetic voice. Becca was new, too, at least to me. Stella seemed to have surrounded herself with employees who didn’t know their clients, dead or alive. “In fact, she wasn’t—”

Milo cut Becca off with a slashing motion of his hand. “Who is it, Stella?”

Stella was keeping her composure remarkably well, though she was pale under her carefully applied makeup. Still, she swallowed hard before answering. “Kay Whitman. She took Honoria’s appointment.”

Now the color drained from Milo’s long face. He turned jerkily, staring out into Front Street. I had finally managed to get out of the chair and had edged close enough to see through the window. Sure enough, Honoria and her wheelchair were being pushed out of the sheriff’s office by a man I didn’t recognize. They appeared to be heading toward the Clemans Building.

BOOK: Alpine Hero
11.34Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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