The Alpine Kindred

E
INAR RASMUSSEN JR.
was angry. The deep grooves in his face that reminded me of cedar bark were twisted, and the agate-blue eyes never blinked.

“So Miss Steinmetz told me to be here by noon,” Einar Jr. growled, planting both fists on my desk. “It's twelve-fifteen. I've been waiting for her out front, but nobody's there.”

Unseen by Einar Jr., a small child sat on my feet. “Carla—Ms. Steinmetz—left before eleven to do a story on a new restaurant,” I explained, trying to keep my patience along with my composure. The child was bouncing up and down. “She should be back any minute.”

The agate eyes narrowed. “A new restaurant? So you mean that harebrained scheme the Bourgette kids came up with?”

I nodded. “Dan and John. They want to build a Fifties-style diner where the old warehouse burned down by the railroad tracks.”

“Dumb,” Einar Jr. declared. “Alpine doesn't need a new restaurant. My son, Beau, would never come up with such a harebrained scheme. When it comes to business, those Bourgette kids haven't got the sense to pour sand down a rat hole.”

I didn't know the Bourgette kids—who were actually thirty-something—well enough to assess their business
acumen. But then I didn't know Einar Rasmussen Jr. much better, and I'd never met his son, Beau.

“It's different here now with the college,” I countered as little Brad Erlandson started to squeak like a rubber duck. “Alpine's no longer just a stagnant mill town. You ought to know. You've had a big hand in helping build the new community college.”

The flattery wasn't intentional, which was just as well, because Einar Jr. scoffed. “Bull. A few underpaid faculty members and a bunch of hard-up students can't support new restaurants.” Einar Jr. scowled, the hard blue gaze raking my little cubbyhole of an office. “What's that noise? It sounds like a pig's loose in here.”

I reached under the desk and tried to budge one-year-old Brad. “It's Ginny Burmeister's boy,” I explained, gritting my teeth as Brad offered resistance. “Ginny Burmeister Erlandson, that is. Our office manager.”

“So I wouldn't think an office would be the place for little kids.” Einar Jr. smacked one fist into the other. “What are you running here? A newspaper or a babysitting service?”

Einar Jr. had pushed too far. “Look,” I said, finally getting little Brad to remove himself from my feet, “I don't need advice on how to run
The Alpine Advocate.
Would I try to tell you how to run your trucking business? If you don't want your picture taken in front of the Rasmussen Union Building at the college, just say so. When I need an outside consultant, I'll take out an ad in
The Advocate's
classifieds.”

At last Einar Jr. blinked. “Okay, okay, Mrs. Lord—you don't have to get ornery with me. So I'm leaving. If your inconsiderate reporter ever shows up, let me know.”

“I will.
She
will. Have a nice day. And,” I added in an uncharacteristic display of waspishness, “it's
Ms.
Lord. I've never been married.”

“I don't doubt it,” Einar Jr. shot back. “Who'd have you?”

In my youth, there would have been a dictionary at hand to throw at Einar Jr.'s infuriating head. But in the computer age, there was only software. As with so many other aspects of life, high tech had sucked the drama out of human emotions.

It was probably a good thing. As the editor and publisher of
The Alpine Advocate
, I had no reputation as a prima donna. But Einar Rasmussen Jr. had pushed the wrong buttons; Carla might be a flake, but she was
my
flake. Einar Jr. ought to stick to supervising his fleet of eighteen-wheelers.

Getting little Brad out from under the desk proved hopeless. I had just unwrapped the tuna-salad sandwich I'd made at home when the phone rang. My former ad manager, Ed Bronsky, assaulted my ear with a jumble of words that I didn't quite catch. “Sorry, Ed,” I interrupted, “would you mind going over that one more—”

Ed was exasperated. “Emma, have you got a bad connection down there at
The Advocate!
I repeat, Shirley and I are getting an opergirl, and we want you to meet her.”

“That's what I thought you said, and I don't know what you're talking about. What's an opergirl?” I winced as little Brad tickled my legs and started to giggle.

A heavy sigh rolled over the line from Ed and Shirley's so-called villa above the railroad tracks. “A live-in, a helper, a …” Another sigh followed, shorter and conveying frustration. “It's spelled A-U space P-A-I-R. I think it's French, but she's a Swede.”

“Oh. An
aupair
girl.” I pronounced the term as well as two years of French class at Blanchet High School in Seattle would allow.

“Right, right,” Ed said impatiently, “you got it. She
gets here tomorrow, Tuesday, and Shirl and I are giving a little party up here at Casa de Bronska. Friday, May sixteenth, eight o'clock. You and Vida and Leo and Carla and everybody else at the paper are invited. Tell Ginny to bring her husband and their little boy. We'll have a big spread.”

The biggest spread at Casa de Bronska was Ed himself, but naturally I kept that thought to myself. Maybe my mean-mindedness was caused by envy at Ed's soft life since inheriting money from an aunt in Iowa. Or perhaps it was little Brad, now shinnying up and down my legs and threatening to bump his head on the underside of my desk. With the boy toddling at my side, I went into the news office, and expressed my annoyance to our current ad manager, Leo Walsh, who had just returned from making his Monday-morning rounds.

“Is Ed as big a dim bulb as I think he is or am I crabby these days?” I asked of Leo.

“Ed's a dim bulb, all right,” Leo agreed, his weathered features amused. “On the other hand, you may be crabby because you haven't gotten laid lately.”

“That's a really rotten thing to say,” I retorted, flashing angry eyes at Ed's successor. “Besides—how do
you
know?”

Leo shrugged. “Ever since you and the Sheriff broke up last fall, I haven't seen you hanging out around Alpine's hot spots with any other guys.”

“There
are
no hot spots in Alpine,” I said with a straight face. That much was true—in our small mountain aerie in the Cascades, nightlife generally consists of unemployed loggers dumping pitchers of beer over each other's heads at the Icicle Creek Tavern. “Where's Carla?” I asked, changing the subject. “She was supposed to meet Einar Rasmussen, Jr., here at noon for a photo shoot out at the college.”

Leo shrugged. “I haven't seen her since I left around nine-thirty.”

“Where's Ginny?” I demanded as Brad suddenly decided walking wasn't such a good idea after all and began crawling around on all fours.

“It
is
the lunch hour, boss lady,” Leo replied. “She probably went over to the Burger Barn.”

“She shouldn't have left Brad,” I complained as the boy crawled under Carla's desk. “Ginny is usually so responsible. What if I weren't here? What if you weren't here?”

“But we are,” Leo said reasonably, then pulled out his wallet. “Are you seeking male companionship? Bright lights? Fusion cuisine in a sophisticated setting? Look. I got five of six numbers in the lottery Saturday night. Want to drive into Seattle and have dinner this weekend?”

“Wow!” I was impressed. “How much?”

“Six hundred and forty-seven bucks,” Leo replied, fingering a half-dozen Big Bens. “What do you say?”

While occasionally Leo and I fraternize in a platonic sort of way, his offer sounded suspiciously like a date. “Why me? Why not Delphine?” I asked, referring to his off-and-on-again girlfriend, who happened to be the local florist.

Leo wrinkled his broad nose. “We don't do it for each other anymore. To tell the truth, I think she's stalking one of the construction workers out at the college.”

“Well.” I fingered my chin. Invitations to big-name city restaurants didn't come along very often. In fact, invitations of any kind—except for Ed's, which somehow didn't count—were as rare as an environmentalist at the Icicle Creek Tavern. “Okay,” I said, diving after Brad, who was trying to pull a desk drawer onto his head, “why not? I haven't been into Seattle for a couple of months.”

“Five months.” Leo had stood up, stretching and ironing out the kinks in his broad back.

“What?” I stared. “Are you keeping score?”

“Yeah, I am.” Leo grinned and ran a hand through his graying auburn hair. “I was only partly kidding when I made that crack about your sex life. You've been spending too much time alone lately, babe.”

I despised the nickname, and Leo knew it, but obviously didn't care. “So you're taking it upon yourself to save me from myself?” I asked, my tone rather stiff.

“Something like that. Hey,” he continued, leaning on his cluttered desk, “a while back you were worrying about me, remember? I let you. Now it's my turn.”

I had indeed fussed about Leo's temporary withdrawal almost two summers earlier, and had wondered if he'd started drinking again. But my ad manager had merely been going through an introspective phase. The life he'd left behind in California looked better from a distance,
was
better, in the sense that he had reconciled himself to his ex-wife's remarriage and resumed speaking to his children.

“Okay,” I finally said, pulling little Brad out of Carla's wastebasket. “Saturday it is. But don't forget, you're invited to Ed and Shirley's soiree Friday.”

Gazing through one of the small windows that looked out onto Front Street, Leo sighed. “How can I forget? Nobody can forget Ed. Though we try.” He sighed again.

My House & Home editor, Vida Runkel, was neither surprised nor dismayed when I told her about Ed's invitation. “I heard he and Shirley had sent for an
au pair”
she said, shrugging out of her new orange raincoat. “Frankly, I didn't think they'd get one. Whatever is the point except that the Bronskys want to show off?”

I had no explanation. The oldest of the five Bronsky children was now attending Skykomish Community College;
the youngest was an eighth-grader at St. Mildred's Parochial School. “Maybe,” I ventured, “Shirley needs help with that big barn of a house.”

“Then she should hire a housekeeper, not an
au pair.”
Vida sniffed. “Of course Shirley did hire at least three housekeepers, including Frieda Wunderlich, who told me it was utterly useless to clean the Bronsky house. They litter, like vagabonds. Food, clothes, appliances—they simply drop them as they walk—or waddle, as is the case with Ed.”