Alpine Hero (8 page)

Buddy was in the darkroom when I arrived. His wife, Roseanna, was closing up for the day. With her blonde pageboy swinging at her wide shoulders, Roseanna went to the filing cabinet behind the antique mahogany desk that served as the reception counter. She presented the three portraits with a certain dramatic flair.

“Well? Aren’t they gorgeous?” she enthused. “Aren’t you and your menfolk gorgeous?”

We weren’t quite that, but I was pleased with the result. Ben had debated whether or not to wear his clerical collar, but to my surprise, Adam had talked him into it. My brother’s sun-bronzed face, engaging grin, and warm brown eyes looked out at me. His features are sharper than mine, and his brown hair crinkles. Ben is just above average size for a man, while I am a bit under for a woman. Still, the resemblance is there, particularly in the mouth and eyes. No, we are not gorgeous, but we do have our charms.

Except for Adam’s eyes, which are also brown, he doesn’t look like Ben or me. As his face grows leaner and becomes more chiseled, he bears a remarkable likeness to his father. Adam is also tall like Tom, six-foot-two at last measuring. The mother in me was proud of my handsome son; the cast-off lover in me was suddenly saddened.

“What’s wrong?” Roseanna asked in obvious disappointment. “Don’t you like it?”

“Oh, yes!” I exclaimed, forcing a big smile. “It’s great. I was just thinking how Adam has … changed.”

Roseanna uttered a small laugh. “Babies one day, grownups the next. Don’t I know it?”

The Bayards had three children, all but one now out of high school. Their own family portrait was proudly displayed in a gilt frame on the opposite wall.

Since Wednesday was payday, I felt safe writing a check for the pictures. Roseanna would mail Ben and Adam’s copies to their respective residences in Arizona. I was putting my checkbook back into my purse when Ed Bronsky burst through the front door.

“Hey, hey!” cried my former ad manager and Alpine’s newest millionaire, courtesy of his late aunt in Cedar
Falls, Iowa. “Just in time! I’ve been having cocktails with Mayor Baugh at the country club.”

“Ed,” I said, “we don’t have a country club in Alpine.”

Ed pulled back, creating three chins where there were usually only two. “Well! That’s what you think, Emma Lord! We do now. Fuzzy Baugh and I have decided to turn the caddy shack into a country club.”

If it was true, that was news. If it was news, I didn’t want to hear it. Not just now, thirty minutes after
The Advocate
had gone off to be printed in Monroe. Besides, Ed’s pretentious manner irked me these days. I actually preferred his preinheritance sloth, pessimism, and obsequiousness.

“We’ll have to do some fund-raising,” Ed went on, whether I wanted to hear it or not. “Oh, sure, I’m willing to fork up some big bucks as seed money. But what’s a golf course without a country club? Where can you go for a couple of drinks and maybe a big steak after you finish that last hole?”

For Ed, the last hole was probably on the fifth green. I couldn’t imagine him playing a full round of golf, even with a caddy. Furthermore, Ed was the only man I knew who had broken three ribs in a head-on collision with a golf cart. He’d run into Durwood Parker last September, which wasn’t entirely Ed’s fault. Durwood is the worst driver in Alpine—nay, in the world—and has had his license pulled by Milo Dodge.

I was determined not to discuss Ed’s plans. “I must run,” I said, glancing at my watch. It was shortly after five-thirty. Milo wasn’t picking me up until seven, but nobody, especially Ed, needed to know that.

“Now hold on, Emma,” Ed said, putting a pudgy hand on my arm and suddenly looking serious. “I need some advice. You’re a publisher, you must have some contacts
in the book business. How should I go about getting my autobiography published?”

It was all I could do to keep from screaming. I know I didn’t do a very good job of hiding my dismay. “Your autobiography? Why, Ed?”

Ed’s round face frowned at me. “What do you mean,
why?
It’s a Horatio Alger rags-to-riches story. Small Town Boy Makes Good. People love that stuff. It inspires them.” He and his cashmere overcoat turned to Roseanna. “Where’s Buddy? He was supposed to have those prints ready by five.”

“He’s working on them now. I’ll go check.” It was to Roseanna’s credit that she kept a straight face and a businesslike demeanor.

“You see,” Ed explained even as I edged toward the door, “I’ve had Buddy blow up several photos from my early days. Baby pictures, first tricycle, altar boy, high-school football, the prom, graduation, wedding—you know, a retrospective. That would go in the middle of the book.”

I was still trying to envision Ed in a football uniform. He was shaped more like the football. Perhaps he’d been slimmer then.

“That sounds … swell,” I said, trying to smile. “Listen, I’ve got to scoot. As you know,” I continued, appealing to Ed’s ego, “Tuesday is always such a wild day at work. And this week, with that homicide at Stella’s …”

“Yes.” Ed grew confidential, moving closer and pinning me with my back to the door. “I don’t like saying this, Emma, and I wouldn’t, except that … well, you and I go way back. But people around here are beginning to
talk.”

My eyes grew wide. “About what?” Surely no one was
gossiping about Milo and me. We hadn’t done anything yet, except eat.

“It’s like this,” Ed said, lowering his voice another notch. “You see, I’m in a position now where I hear things. That happens when you hang out with the top dogs. No offense, but this was a quiet, peaceful little town until you came along. There were maybe two, three murders in the ten years before you bought
The Advocate
from Marius Vandeventer. Since you moved to Alpine, we’ve had—what?—eight, nine killings in six years? And this time I hear you even found the body! How do you expect people to react to those kind of statistics?”

While I didn’t quite understand Ed’s insinuation, his words were still appalling. “Ed, you aren’t seriously blaming
me
for the increase in homicides, are you? Violence is growing all over America; everywhere, for that matter. All I do is report it. You know that.”

Ed gave me a helpless look. “All I know is what I hear. People—important people—are beginning to wonder.” Clumsily, he patted my arm. “Just a word to the wise, Emma.” He turned as Roseanna and Buddy entered the reception area.

Fuming, I left. I was still irritated when Milo picked me up more than an hour later. He wasn’t in a much better mood, so I let him gripe first.

“This case is a pain in the ass,” he announced before we got as far as the turn onto Alpine Way. “Honoria and her brother and mother insist Kay didn’t have an enemy in the world. The woman was a saint, if you believe her husband.”

“Do you?” I asked, turning just enough to observe Milo’s profile. It was long, particularly the chin, but otherwise undistinguished. The sandy eyebrows grew almost together, and the nose was rather blunt. Still, it was an agreeable face, especially when Milo smiled. He
had good teeth, even great teeth, big and strong and white. I checked myself, wondering why I felt like Leo Walsh, trying to sell a double-truck ad to the Grocery Basket.

“I never believe anybody, let alone the spouse of a murder victim,” Milo said in answer to my question, which I had actually forgotten in my perusal of his features. “Trevor Whitman seems like a stand-up guy, but he’s an ex-con, and never mind how he got that way. Oh, sure, I’m sympathetic as hell, on a personal level. If I had a sister, instead of that stuck-up biologist brother of mine in Dallas, I might have whacked her lout of a husband, too. But I can’t let emotions run my job. I’m trying to keep with the facts.”

Milo always did. It was his greatest strength—and sometimes his worst weakness. I didn’t make any comment, since we were now turning off Tonga Road for the ski lodge.

The lodge is over fifty years old, but Rufus Runkel and the Norwegians had built for the ages. The solid log-and-granite exterior, soaring lobby, and flagstone floors almost seemed to grow out of the mountainside. Over the years there have been renovations and additions, including King Olav’s itself, which opened only about four years earlier.

While the lodge’s basic decor is Pacific Northwest natural embellished by Native American masks, totem poles, blankets, and carvings, the restaurant itself evokes the blue and white of Norway’s fjords, mountains, and valleys. The overall theme is Scandinavian, and so is most of the menu. Milo chose meatballs. I went with the salmon. But first we ordered drinks.

“We didn’t get much information out of you regarding the crime scene,” I noted after our waitress took the bar requests. “Can’t you do that in-house now?”

“We can, but we had to wait until this afternoon,” Milo replied, lighting a cigarette. “Dale Quick had to come over from Wenatchee, you know.”

I did know. Quick was the part-time forensics pathologist who worked for Skykomish, Chelan, and Douglas counties. His surname didn’t suit him. As Jack Mullins once put it, “Quick may not be fast, but he sure is slow.” He was, however, thorough.

“So? Has Dale come up with anything yet?” I inquired, trying to sound artless, and failing. It didn’t matter. Milo was rarely fooled by my clumsy attempts at subterfuge.

“Nothing startling,” Milo replied. “There’s quite a bit of foot traffic in and out of that rear area, including the facial room. Becca had six other clients already that day. Stella figured another six had used the rest room, and eleven in all had traipsed back to the changing area. That doesn’t count anybody from the optician’s, the travel agency, and the medical supply who might have used the women’s room. And in this weather, with snow and slush and water getting tracked in, footprints are hard to come by.”

“The facial room is carpeted, isn’t it?” I hadn’t really noticed, but somehow assumed it must be so.

Milo nodded. Our drinks arrived, and he waited until the waitress was gone before speaking again. “It’s that indoor-outdoor stuff, the same thing Stella’s got in the rest of the salon. We’ve got it, too, since the remodeling. It’s made to
not
show dirt or prints. The most we vacuumed out of it was the usual, including a bunch of cosmetic gunk.”

“Fingerprints?” I asked hopefully after tasting my Jack Daniel’s and water.

“Lots of those. Mostly Becca Wolfe’s.” Milo sighed
into his Scotch. “We’ve got one thing, Emma, but it’s not much help.”

I gave Milo an interested look. “What’s that?”

“A towel.” Milo paused. “Stella didn’t find it until this afternoon when we let her go back into the salon so she could open up tomorrow. Jack Mullins and I should have noticed, but you women are always dyeing your hair and—”

“I don’t dye my hair,” I interrupted, shaking my shaggy brown locks.

“You know what I mean.” Milo seemed peeved, though more with himself than with me. “Anyway, Stella took the wet stuff out of the dryer this afternoon. She couldn’t do it Monday, because we told her not to go beyond the reception area, and the laundry room is in back. She noticed that one of the towels still had stains on it. Jack had glanced in the washer and dryer, but didn’t see anything odd. Stella said they always add bleach and let it soak before they start the wash cycle. According to her, this towel had to have been thrown in after the bleach process because it was still dirty. Dale Quick isn’t sure because he hasn’t run all his tests, but he thinks the stains are human blood.”

Milo and I both ordered a second drink. We finished our first ones while he theorized about the bloodstained towel. Wanting to avoid getting blood on his or her person, the killer had grabbed a towel, committed the murder, then thrown the towel into the washing machine, which was already turned on.

“I heard the washer and dryer,” I said, feeling a bit shaken. “They were both going just before I went into the facial room. The door was ajar.”

Milo grew thoughtful. “You’re sure?”

“Absolutely. That’s why I knew that door didn’t lead to the changing room.”

“I wonder if the killer heard you coming and that’s why the door was ajar.”

I shivered. It hadn’t occurred to me that Kay Whitman’s murderer might have been only a few feet away from me when I discovered the body. He or she might have been in one of the rest rooms, or the changing room, or even the laundry room itself.

There was no point in being terrified after the fact. “Did you ask Stella if she kept that door ajar? I would. The room must be very small, and the heat from the dryer might cause a fire hazard. That’s a very old building.”

“I’ll ask her tomorrow,” Milo said. “What I’d like to know is that if this perp used the towel as a shield, where did it come from? The laundry room, the facial room, or some other place?”

Sipping my second drink, I nodded. “I see your point. If the towel came from the laundry room, it would indicate that the killer knew his or her way around the building.”

“It could,” Milo allowed. “But Stella said Becca kept a stack of towels on a stand right by the door. We just have to make sure the stained one came from there.”

“Would Becca know? I mean, did she keep close count?” I waited for Milo’s answer while our salads arrived.

“I haven’t talked to her today,” Milo said, lavishly applying salt and pepper to the iceberg lettuce and small mound of shrimp. “We spent the morning back at the salon and interviewing potential witnesses.”

I thought of Ella Hinshaw, who would have been getting her blue rinse curled and furled when the murder occurred. She was deaf, but she certainly wasn’t blind. “Did anybody see anything odd?” I asked.

“Hell, no,” Milo responded. He’d raised his voice just enough to attract the attention of a young couple at the next table. Like most of the other diners, they were skiers visiting from out of town. Milo’s status as sheriff meant nothing to them. “There was a three-man work crew, fixing that busted pipe off Pine Street, but the damned drill is new and they were having problems, so they didn’t pay any attention to what was going on around them. Even Janet Driggers, who’s got an eagle eye along with a dirty mouth, didn’t see jack-squat from her angle at Sky Travel. She was helping some ski bum figure out how to get from here to Sun Valley for next to nothing.”