Alpine Hero (25 page)

Vida frowned. “I know what you’re thinking. Ordinarily, the knife and the purse would have sunk. But that’s not accounting for the swift current this time of year, particularly when it rains so hard and the snow at the upper levels melts. We’ll be lucky if we get out of this weather without flooding.”

I recalled other winters when the river had spilled over its banks and threatened adjacent businesses and residences. In years past, before my time, the Sky had gone on rampages that had actually swept away some of the older, flimsier structures in the vicinity.

Vida’s sidelong gaze was fixed on Milo, who was still on the phone. “He does go on,” she said. “Or someone does. I wonder if it’s about Becca.”

My own eyes scanned the coffee shop. I recognized only a half-dozen Alpiners. The rest were strangers. “It’s too bad there are so many skiers in town over the weekend. Otherwise, somebody like Eric Forbes would stand out.”

“True,” Vida agreed. “I trust Milo has had his vis-à-vis in King County try to locate Eric in Seattle. If he’s not there, then we could surmise that Becca is right, and he came up here. Dear me.” She sighed deeply, then polished off the last spoonful of cobbler.

Milo returned to the table just as the waitress brought his entrée. He sat down with the usual awkward effort of arranging his long legs, then grimaced at both of us.

“That was Grants Pass. They put me through to Honoria. She and her mother are staying at the Holiday Inn Express.” The sheriff was back at the salt and pepper, now doctoring his steak and fries. “Honoria says Dodger disappeared Wednesday morning after she let him out. He never came back. She figures he sensed that they were leaving and took off. Cats do that, I guess. Maybe they’re smarter than I thought.”

“They’re not,” Vida retorted. “It would have been more likely for Dodger to try to follow Honoria. What was she planning to do with him during her absence?”

Milo was eating hungrily, popping steak, fries, and toasted French bread into his mouth at once. “That woman in Gold Bar who makes stained glass—Paula Rubens. Honoria said she would have taken the cat.”

I leaned closer to the sheriff. “Did you tell Honoria what happened?”

Milo looked pained. “I had to. She was appalled. Shit!” He forked in more steak and bread.

Vida gave a faint, reproachful shake of her head. “Did you ask her about the money order?”

The sheriff was now attacking his neglected salad. “I did. That’s when I lost the connection.” Milo kept his long face straight, then narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t get a chance to ask about all those long-distance calls. But Dustin checked them out and they’re mostly art types or galleries or studios. Except,” he added with a sly expression, “for the one in Edmonds. It turns out that number belongs to Toby Popp.”

The sheriff downed three fries at once. I almost swallowed my spoon. Vida looked like the cat that ate the canary. Except the cat was dead, the canary was alive, and it seemed to me that we had a viable suspect in Toby Popp. The only problem was that I didn’t know what crime the billionaire computer king had committed.

C
ARLA HAD MENTIONED
that Toby Popp lived north of Seattle. The suburb of Edmonds is just across the King-Snohomish county line, on Puget Sound. It’s a relatively quiet area, with spectacular views of the water and the Olympic Mountains. If I were a computer king, I might want to live there, too—at least until my multimillion-dollar house in the forest was completed.

Milo’s response to the obvious query of bringing Toby Popp in for questioning was ambivalent. He’d consider it, of course. He needed some grounds, other than a couple of phone calls. He’d never heard of Toby Popp until the last few days. But what he’d learned made Toby sound like some kind of god who probably had about two dozen six-figure lawyers at his beck and call. Unfamiliar with the rich and semifamous, the sheriff didn’t know how such wealth and power would affect an investigation, but he figured to come out on the short end.

After that last remark, Vida excused herself to go to the ladies’ room to freshen up, as she put it. I didn’t just lean into Milo, I punched him in the arm.

“Listen, kiddo,” I said, making sure my voice was low, “I’ve watched you interrogate witnesses. Nobody around here cows you. Are you going to let some computer nerd turn you into a wimp?”

Wiping a dab of Roquefort dressing off his upper lip,
Milo frowned at me. “What’s with you, Emma? When was I ever a wimp?”

“About thirty seconds ago. You were waffling on Toby Popp. Don’t. He’s Laurie Marshall’s father, he’s more than a little weird, and for all we know, he and Kay Whitman may have had a torrid affair back in their California youth.”

“Nerds aren’t torrid.” Milo tossed his rumpled napkin onto the table. “Okay, but I’ll bet anything this Popp character wanted to buy some pottery from Honoria for his snazzy new house.”

The suggestion was plausible. Now that Toby was retired, perhaps he was broadening his horizons. Jane Marshall had mentioned a rare edition of poetry. Perhaps she knew or guessed that her former husband would spend some of his huge fortune on collectibles. Art was often a sound investment.

Deciding not to badger Milo further, I reiterated my lament about Honoria’s lack of friends and neighbors. “There must be somebody she knew fairly well besides you in the area,” I said in a fretful voice. “Honoria lived in Startup for several years. Surely she got close to some of the people in the art community. What about the woman in Gold Bar with the stained glass?”

“Paula Rubens.” Milo paused, chewed and swallowed before speaking again. “Oh, Honoria would talk about certain people from time to time—but not as if they were pals. Usually, they were Everett or Seattle types. I met some of them when she dragged me to those gallery deals. Face it, Emma—Honoria came up here to get away.”

I could see Vida reentering the coffee shop. As usual, she recognized more of the diners than I did. Her return to the table was typical, a royal progress of greetings and exchanges.

“Everybody needs friends,” I muttered, echoing my House & Home editor. A sudden thought struck my mind. I grabbed Milo’s arm just as he was putting his silverware down. “Hey, I just remembered something! When were those calls placed to Edmonds?”

“Monday,” Milo answered. “And Thursday. Why?”

Vida and I had been in Startup on Wednesday. Toby Popp had been at the Index building site that same day. “What about Wednesday? Are you sure a call wasn’t made?”

Milo didn’t think so. Judging from his indifferent expression, the topic didn’t intrigue him. My perverse nature surfaced, though in a righteous cause. I played my trump card, which should appeal to his male vanity.

“You’d better look at Wednesday, after two o’clock.” I gave Milo an arch little smile. “A man called for Honoria while Vida and I were at her house. Mrs. Smith answered. When she told Honoria about the caller, Mrs. Smith referred to him as her daughter’s friend. Honoria indicated she’d talk to him later, so I assume the call was returned. Has it ever occurred to you that you might have had a rival whose name is Toby Popp?”

Out in the ski-lodge parking lot, Vida praised me for my cunning. “I can’t think why we didn’t jump on that phone call sooner. Mrs. Smith sounded downright unctuous when she was talking to whoever it was.”

We had taken my Jag from Vida’s house. Getting behind the wheel, I gave my House & Home editor a wry sideways look. “You mean she sounded the way you’d expect an ordinary middle-class woman to talk to a billionaire?”

“Precisely.” Unused to the low roof of my car, Vida knocked her pillbox askew. “Awed by dollar signs. Moneybags dancing through her head. What I’d call the
Fat Cat Syndrome. Of course, you might also interpret it as the way a mother might speak to her daughter’s suitor. Assuming, of course, that she approved of him.”

“I don’t think Mrs. Smith is the type who’d disapprove of a billion dollars.” I put the car into gear, then drove out of the parking lot. Milo’s Cherokee Chief was somewhere on the road ahead of us. He had reluctantly agreed to let us go over the list of phone calls a second time.

Crossing Burl Creek, Vida was muttering away. The “Fat Cat” reference had made her think of the late Dodger. “Fingerprints—Milo should have checked the parcel immediately. One couldn’t expect much off the wrapping paper, because it was handled by so many people, including me. But the box itself is another matter. Oh, dear—of course I touched it, too, and I’d removed my gloves. Still, I wonder if Milo …”

“I’m sure he did,” I interjected, taking the alternate route into town, along Alpine Way. “Speaking of gloves, I’ll bet the cat killer wore them. Even if I didn’t care who knew I’d sent the thing, I wouldn’t want to touch poor Dodger with my bare hands.” Involuntarily, I shivered.

Though Vida had attempted to right her hat, it now tilted in the opposite direction. “True. The heart of the matter is that we don’t know if there’s any connection between Dodger’s demise and Kay Whitman’s murder. Some people don’t care for cats. I certainly understand that—they’re such perverse, unfriendly, spoiled creatures. Dogs are more helpful, though I’m not fond of them, either.” Vida was still speaking more to herself than to me. “This Dodger calamity strikes me as the kind of cruel prank a youngster might dream up. But why would someone mail the cat from Sultan to the Marshalls?”

We had arrived at the sheriff’s headquarters, where Milo waited at the door. After he led us into his office,
the first thing I did was study the wall map of Skykomish County and the adjacent areas. I knew Highway 2 by heart, but maybe I felt that staring at the place names would provide inspiration.

The town of Skykomish lies six miles west of Alpine. Coming down through the Cascade foothills, three more minutes takes the traveler to Grotto, and another three to Baring. The turnoff into the secluded town of Index is about five miles farther. Then, heading onto flatter terrain, the distance between Gold Bar, Startup, and Sultan can be covered in a quarter of an hour. The last, more populated, eight-mile stretch goes into Monroe, a virtual gateway to Seattle’s suburbs. For those of us used to plying Highway 2, the ground was usually traversed quickly, with no annoying stoplights, arterials, or gridlock.

It was the corridor along the Skykomish River between Index and Sultan that captured my attention. Sultan was by far the largest of the little towns that dotted the highway. Who was the mystery mailer living in that still sparsely inhabited stretch? Or had someone traveled that twenty-seven miles of road from Alpine to mail a dead cat?

“This is stupid,” I said flatly. “Are we getting hung up on something that’s irrelevant?”

Milo shrugged. “Probably.”

Vida was already seated, going over the complete list of phone calls to and from Honoria’s house for the past week. My House & Home editor let out a little yelp before Milo or I could speculate further.

“Here!” She thrust the computerized list in front of me. “Three-oh-three, Monday afternoon, the thirteenth. Someone called Toby Popp’s number in Edmonds.”

Milo came around from behind his desk to hang over my shoulder. “So?”

“Think, Milo,” Vida urged. “This call was placed while Honoria and Trevor were in Alpine.”

Having always considered Milo to be slower on the uptake than I am, it was humbling to realize that at first, neither of us understood what Vida was saying. She was beginning to look peeved when we both stumbled into comprehension.

“Popp has an alibi for Kay Whitman’s murder,” Milo finally said with a faint nod.

Ironically, I was the one who wasn’t willing to leap to any such conclusion. “We don’t know that he actually answered the Monday-afternoon call. What we do know is that Monday evening, Toby Popp was in Alpine. He came into
The Advocate
and talked to Leo Walsh.”

Vida had reclaimed the list of phone calls, turning it over. “Goodness!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t realize there was anything on the back. These are the incoming toll calls. Seattle, Everett, Bellingham, Portland, Vancouver, BC.” She tapped the page with her index finger. “What’s this queer number? It says Index, but it’s the wrong prefix.”

Milo leaned across his desk. “That’s a cell phone. The call was placed at two-oh-three Wednesday.”

“Well now!” Vida was exultant. “We were at Honoria’s then. She received a call that Mrs. Smith took. Who would have a cellular phone in Index except Toby Popp?”

I hadn’t been able to convince Milo that Toby was panting after Honoria, and apparently Vida wasn’t going to have much better luck. “It’s possible,” Milo allowed. “We’ll check it out. But these days all sorts of people have cell phones around here, especially the logging crews. I still say Toby’s in the art market.”

“A simple question will do,” Vida said, looking prim. “Ask Honoria.”

Milo shrugged again, then ambled over to his phone. As usual, his desk was in disarray, as chaotic as my own. Still, he found what he was looking for almost at once—a pale green Post-it note with a phone number. I sat down next to Vida while the sheriff dialed.

Neither Honoria nor her mother was in at the Grants Pass motel. Leaving a message, Milo hung up and turned to us with a wry expression.

“They’re probably out to dinner. Honoria knows she can call me late.”

The sense of intimacy in Milo’s comment was unsettling, at least from a professional point of view. I tried to glance at Vida to see how she was reacting, but my House & Home editor was fingering her strong chin and gazing at the ceiling.

“Milo,” she said in a musing voice that fooled nobody, including herself, “I trust you’ve contacted people who know the Whitmans in Pacific Grove.”

“I put Sam Heppner on that,” Milo answered in a matter-of-fact tone. “He’s tracked down some neighbors. None of them were home during the day, but he reached a couple last night.”

“And?” Vida sounded expectant.

Milo made what I could only consider a slight grimace. “They weren’t much help. Trevor and Kay live in a condo. Nobody sees their neighbors unless they show up at the monthly owners meeting. The Whitmans didn’t do that. But then they’ve only been there about six months.”