The Alpine Betrayal (4 page)

“You don’t know squat about that slut! She’s not fit to set foot in this town! Wait and see. She’ll be lucky to get out alive!” He started to heel around, slipped in a puddle of catsup, and caught himself on the edge of the table. The gray eyes glittered like cold steel. “If ever a woman deserved to get herself wasted, it’s Dani Marsh! Don’t be surprised if I kill her with my bare hands!” Having steadied
himself, Cody Graff stood up straight and looked down at his clutching fingers.

They looked as if they’d fit neatly around Dani Marsh’s throat.

C
ARLA INSISTED THAT
I go with her to Mount Baldy and check out the movie company. Despite some confusion about the print order, the press run was underway in Monroe. Ordinarily, I should have had my weekly bit of slack time on a Wednesday, but the extra work caused by Loggerama was interfering with our routine. I demurred, but Carla was adamant.

“Come on, Emma, you got your sixty pages,” Carla argued. “Ed came through for once. Celebrate. How often do you get to see real movie stars?”

How often do I want to?
was the retort that almost crossed my lips. But Carla was so enthusiastic that I finally gave in. It wasn’t that I didn’t admire actors—I am actually a devoted film buff—but the idea of seeing them in the flesh has never thrilled me. Maybe I don’t want my illusions spoiled. Maybe I want to keep the on-screen magic untarnished. Or maybe I figure those celluloid gods and goddesses will turn out to be every bit as human as the tabloids insist they are. Why make a pilgrimage to meet somebody who is just as flawed as I am?

But I went, piloting my precious green Jaguar across the Skykomish River and down to the highway and veering off onto a switchback logging road leading up the side of Mount Baldy. I noticed that what was known as Forest Service Road 6610 had been recently resurfaced, perhaps even widened. When we stopped at about the three thousand-foot level, I saw why: four enormous truck-trailers rested at the edge of a meadow miraculously covered with snow. Even
under the afternoon sun, I marveled at how much cooler I felt. Phony or not, the delusion seemed to lower the actual temperature by at least ten degrees.

Carla was hopping about, looking for someone she recognized. Although there must have been thirty people milling around, I saw no sign of either Dani Marsh or Matt Tabor. But Carla had zeroed in on a lion-maned man wearing a straw hat, cowboy boots, and faded blue jeans.

“Mr. Hampton!” she called. “It’s me, the press!”

Mr. Hampton’s teeth sparkled in his tawny beard. “Carla, my favorite media personality! Are you here to do a behind-the-scenes feature? Maybe you’ll get it picked up by the wire service.”

Carta’s petite body jiggled with pleasure. Proudly, she introduced me to Reid Hampton, a director whose work I’ve sometimes admired but rarely enjoyed. Hampton’s pictures tend to be gloomy, not so much film noir as Kafkaesque. Come to think of it, Ed Bronsky would love them—if he ever stopped watching
Mister Ed
reruns long enough to see a movie.

“Road Weary
was very provocative,” I said, knowing it was his most recent directorial effort. In truth I had seen only the trailer. Two hours of watching three derelicts beat each other over the head with tokay bottles had not impressed me as entertainment. But Reid Hampton was still holding my hand and beaming that dazzling smile.

“It was a statement,” he said in as modest a tone as his deep, rumbling voice would permit. “I hope George Bush saw it.”

Personally, I hoped the president had better things to do, but I, too, kept smiling. “Is this picture a statement?” I inquired, feeling my fingers shrivel.

He finally let go and made a sweeping gesture.
“All
my pictures are statements. Poverty, politics, sex, violence—the whole human condition. The camera not only conveys truth; it demands a response from the audience. What did you think of Little Louie?”

“Ah …” Little Louie, Big Louie, even Medium Louie
were all outside my frame of reference. Whoever Louie was, he probably had been one of the three grubs in
Road Weary
. “Vulnerable,” I said, taking a guess. “Strong, though, in many ways. Under the surface,” I added hastily.

Still grinning, Reid Hampton slapped his hands together. “Exactly! It isn’t every cocker spaniel you can get to put those emotions across. Cockers in particular aren’t too bright. I should have used a collie, but then everybody thinks
Lassie
and all that sentimental crap. On screen, animals always have a—” He stopped and looked over my head. I turned to see Carla outside one of the big trailers talking to a slim blonde who had to be Dani Marsh. Hampton took my arm. “Come on, you must meet our star, your own hometown heroine. Dani’s great, a real talent, absolutely catches fire in front of the camera. And Matt Tabor—together they’ll scorch the screen. I’ve been trying to put this package together for over two years.”

Dani Marsh was one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. She had honey blonde hair, limpid brown eyes, and not-quite-perfect features with a mouth too wide and brows too thick, but the overall effect was stunning. I realized I had never seen her in a movie, but according to Vida’s reworking of the studio press release, Dani had zoomed to the top of the heap with only three major roles, two of them in pictures directed by Reid Hampton.

Dani was almost as expansive as her director. She shot out a hand and gave me a dazzling smile. “Ms. Lord! Carla has told me all about you! I think it’s wonderful that a woman has taken over from that old curmudgeon, Marius Whatsisname. Is he dead?”

“No,” I answered, finding her forthright manner irresistible. “Just retired and moved away. Marius Vandeventer is indestructible.”

Dani laughed, a lovely, tinkling sound that made Carla’s frequent bouts of giggling sound like a car crash. “I’ve so much catching up to do in Alpine. Five years! And it
has
changed. I’m so glad I talked Reid into doing some location shooting up here.” She threw back her head and looked up
toward the twin, flat crests of Mount Baldy. “I used to go berry-picking up there. My mother and I would make pies and jam.”

From what I’d seen of Patti Marsh, making book would have been more like it. Fleetingly, I wondered if Dani had attempted a reunion with her mother yet. I tried to see any resemblance between Dani and Patti, but my recollection of the senior Marsh was fogged by the dark smoky interior of Mugs Ahoy.

At the edge of the meadow, activity was suddenly underway. Cameras were being moved into position, equipment was being set up, a background—which looked to me like a replica of the view I was looking at—had even been dropped in the middle of the fake snow.

“Excuse me,” said Dani, “I have to get into my costume.” At the moment, she was wearing a dark green leotard that displayed finely toned and roundly contoured body parts. I had an insane—and fleeting—urge to exercise. “Believe it or not,” she laughed, “I have to put on a parka and ski pants. I may melt before this picture is wrapped!” With a graceful little wave, she climbed the four portable stairs that led to the trailer that housed her dressing room.

Reid Hampton was off consulting with his assistant director; Carla was hobnobbing with a bald man behind the camera; and descending from the cab of the trailer was Matt Tabor, carrying a can of diet soda. I allowed myself to stare. I have seen Matt Tabor in at least four films, and although his acting range may be limited, his sexual attraction is not. Matt had been cast in the heroic mold, with chiseled features, wavy black hair, a terrific torso, and those seductive green eyes that had earned rave reviews from Carla and fifty million other females. Indeed, Matt Tabor was so incredibly good-looking that I not only stared, but laughed out loud.

He shot me a curious glance, and I actually flushed. I felt fourteen instead of forty-two. As he strolled in my direction, I seriously considered bolting. Then I remembered how unimpressed I was by movie stars and that I was a
newspaper publisher and that I had once met Gerald Ford. Somehow, the comparison was inadequate, especially since Ford had seemed far more at a loss for words than I had been.

“Are you from the logging company?” Matt Tabor’s famous baritone echoed off the evergreens.

It was the last question I expected. “What?” I sobered quickly. “No, I own the local newspaper. Do you mean Blackwell Timber?”

“Right.” He was wearing some sort of black vest over his bare chest and had on a pair of very tight black pants. I tried not to notice. “Those jackasses can’t make up their minds,” Matt remarked, not necessarily to me. He was wearing his brooding look, which had served him so well in
Beau Savage
.

“Oh?” I pretended we were having a conversation. “You mean Jack Blackwell and his crew?”

He nodded, the black forelock somehow staying in place. “I guess that’s his name. He tells us we can use this place for the location shoot, extorts twenty grand for the privilege, then pitches a fit because we cut down eight lousy trees.” Matt Tabor sneered. I remembered the expression from
No Mercy at Midnight
. “What the hell, he can’t log anyway because his workers get too hot. Or something like that.” He gave a contemptuous shrug of his broad shoulders, just the way he did when he walked out on the heroine at the end of
Jericho in Jersey
.

“It’s because it’s too dry,” I said, trying to keep my eyes on Reid Hampton and a tall redhead with what looked like a script in her manicured hands. “There’s a danger of forest fire.”

“Hell.” Matt Tabor reached inside his vest and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Where’s Smokey the Bear when we really need him, huh?” For the first time, he looked directly at me as if I were really there. I looked at his cigarettes. Even after three years of not smoking, I hadn’t lost my craving. But maybe it was safer to lust after Matt Tabor’s
tobacco than the rest of him. “Who are you?” he asked, in a tone that implied I might not know.

“Emma Lord. I own
The Alpine Advocate.”
Matt was puffing away, and I resolutely returned my gaze to the preparations in the meadow. I decided I must be seeing double. Two people who looked exactly like Matt and Dani Marsh were standing knee-deep in snow while several others peered, prodded, and conferred. It dawned on me that the man and woman were the actors’ stand-ins, helping the crew get ready for the actual shooting.

Reid Hampton was coming toward us, a copy of the script under his arm. “Bundle up, Matt. We’re almost ready.”

“Hell.” Matt Tabor dropped his half-smoked cigarette but didn’t bother to stomp it out. I watched it nervously and as soon as he turned away, I pounced.

“Is it true,” I asked, hoping Hampton would find my safety zeal contagious rather than laughable, “that Matt Tabor and Dani Marsh plan to marry?”

Hampton’s smile seemed to stick, rather than merely stay in place. “So I hear. We’ll see if they survive the picture.” He tipped his cowboy hat, then moved off to speak with his cinematographer. Carla had settled into a folding chair, obviously keen on watching the filming. I strolled around the meadow’s edge, looking for wildflowers.

The mating of Dani Marsh and Matt Tabor struck a discordant note. Visually, they were a perfect pair: beautiful blond Venus; dark and handsome Adonis. But Matt Tabor seemed like a first-run version of Cody Graff. Surely five years and dazzling success in Hollywood should have changed Dani’s taste in men.

Standing next to an old-growth Douglas fir and hearing the cedar waxwings chatter among its branches, I could believe they were talking about me. Who was I to criticize Dani Marsh’s love life? In over twenty years, I not only didn’t have a new man in my life, but I’d never gotten over the one who got away.

Out in the snow, under the bright, hot sun, the two people
who so resembled Matt and Dani were embracing. In their heavy parkas and ski pants, they didn’t look like they were having much fun. All the same, the idea of embracing appealed to me. A lot. Maybe it was time to call the sheriff.

Milo Dodge was too busy with Loggerama to have dinner with me. Or so he began, speaking in his laconic voice from the sheriff’s office just before five o’clock. Carla had endured a bee sting and I had fought off boredom to see less than thirty seconds of film finally ready to go into the can. It had taken almost three hours, with Reid Hampton no longer so genial, Matt Tabor cursing a blue streak, and even Dani Marsh beginning to show signs of impatience under her fur-lined hood.

“If we went about eight o’clock, I could do it,” Milo finally allowed. “I’ve got to check on Durwood on the way home. I let him out this morning if he promised not to drive for a month.”

Whatever spark of passion I’d felt igniting in the meadow had been doused by Milo’s lack of enthusiasm for my company. To be fair, Milo and I weren’t exactly an item. We were friends, comfortable together, mature adults who didn’t feel the need to leap into the sack to keep close. At least that was the theory.

“I could fix dinner here,” I offered. Occasionally, within the past year, Milo and I had traded home-cooked meals. He was good with the basics, but God forbid he should have higher aspirations. After five months, his beef tournedos were still a bad memory.

“What?” asked Milo.

“Whatever. I can stop at the Grocery Basket on the way home.” It occurred to me that after this weekend’s grand opening, I could stop at Safeway. Maybe they wouldn’t have gray meat.

“I feel like chops,” said Milo.

“Pork or lamb?”

“Lamb. Wait—which one is the real little kind?”

“Lamb.” I winced. According to the Grocery Basket’s
ad, which even now lay before me in the new edition of
The Advocate
, pork chops were on special. Lamb would cost me about three times as much. “Say, Milo—who is Curtis Graff? I meant to ask Vida, but I forgot.”

“Curtis? He’s the older Graff kid. You know, Cody’s brother. I think he went to Alaska.” In the background, voices erupted. Milo apparently had visitors. “I’ve got to go, Emma. Mrs. Whipp just broke her Mixmaster over Mr. Whipp’s head up at the retirement home. See you around eight.”