The Alpine Kindred (25 page)

An uncertain smile broke out on Ryan's face. “Put like that, it makes sense. Thanks, Ms. Lord.”

I shrugged. “I'm only guessing. And please, please call me Emma.”

Ryan had finished his wine. “I'm glad I stopped by,” he
said, getting to his feet. “I was afraid I'd made a bad impression on you. I didn't want you to think I was one of those cads who gets a woman pregnant and then has to be hog-tied into doing the right thing.”

The old-fashioned word
cad
would have been endearing in another context. Under the circumstances, it didn't amuse me. I was kind and gracious as I ushered Ryan out of the house. It wasn't his fault; apparently, he didn't know. Maybe he thought I was divorced, or widowed, like Vida.

Or maybe he knew, and was simply being brutally frank.

The phone still didn't ring.

T
UESDAY, BLOODY TUESDAY
, as I sometimes referred to deadline day, was upon us. No matter how hard we try, there is always the possibility of a last-minute change in an ad or a story, late-breaking news, or mechanical failure. For those of us who live with that kind of pressure, there is also the reward. The paper is printed, it's delivered, and it's read, especially in a small town where the weekly is the sole source of local information. Thus, there is a sense of accomplishment, a raison d'etre for our lives. Some people in the business procrastinate and then thrive when deadline draws nigh. They not only do their best work, but probably couldn't function without the warning tick of the clock. I'm not like that, I prefer being ahead of schedule, but the deadline is always there, like home plate or the finish line. Carla once misspelled the word, and it came out
deadlive.
I almost didn't correct it. There is nothing dead about deadlines, but meeting them lets you know you're alive.

Around eight-thirty, Carla had stopped in long enough to drop off a dozen muffins from the Upper Crust, and drink a cup of coffee. Now, shortly after nine, she was at the courthouse, hoping to intercept Birgitta Lindholm. Vida was adding items to “Scene,” Leo was out corralling last-minute advertisers for the Memorial Day section, and Ginny was putting the classifieds together. I'd decided to
forgo my vilification of the Sheriff's office. Maybe Milo would actually come up with some helpful information before five o'clock.

He called a few minutes after three. The usually laconic voice was formal and glum. “Ron's not posting bail,” Milo said. “It was set at three hundred thousand dollars, and I don't know if he can't or won't. He's sticking to his guns, says he didn't do it, and he intends to sue the county.”

“Wrongful arrest, huh? Have you talked to Maylene?”

“Yeah.” The Sheriff didn't elaborate.

“Do you think she believes that Ron's innocent?”

“So she claims.”

This was not an easy conversation. “Does she admit to having an affair with Einar Jr.?”

“No. She denies it.”

“She does?” Somehow, I was surprised. I shouldn't have been. Even a cheating wife can still stand by her man. No affair, no motive. I made a note to myself: “Talk to Maylene ASAP.” I asked if a trial date had been set.

“No, but he's been formally charged. We'll get a date later this week. My guess is July or August.”

Milo's sudden spurt of verbiage gave me heart. “What about those bones?”

I could hear him sigh. “I don't want to talk about them. We still don't know everything.”

“Damn it,” I said, though I tried not to sound impatient, “the bones were found. That's a fact. We're going to print the story. Can't you give us anything other than 'We don't know'? It makes you look bad.”

“So why do you care how I look?” Milo retorted.

“I care about the office. You're law enforcement for SkyCo,” I said, aware that I'd flunked tact. “That's important.”

There was a long pause at Milo's end of the line. “The
reason I don't want to talk about the bones is because we're still trying to identify them.”

I let out a little gasp. “What? Does that mean they're not a hundred years old?”

“Probably not.” The glum, formal tone had crept back into his voice.

“How recent?” I was scribbling notes, sitting on the edge of my chair, excited and expectant.

“A year, maybe less.”

“Do you have a complete skeleton?”

“Just about.”

Naturally, it was impossible to shake Milo over the phone. I took a deep breath instead. “Do you think it's someone local?”

“Can't say just yet. Remember, the old warehouse was right next to the train tracks. We've got a whole new generation of people who ride the rails, and some of them are scum, especially the ones who claim to be FTRA.”

Trains, both passenger and freight, always slowed down upon reaching Alpine. I knew that men—and sometimes women—who bummed rides occasionally were mere thrill seekers. They took off from their jobs as CPAs, housepainters, attorneys, and medical technicians for a couple of weeks each year just to soak up that sense of freedom and adventure that trains offer the American soul. But there was also the FTRA, the Freight Train Riders Association, a vicious gang whose one thousand or more members preyed on those innocent vacationers. The FTRA usually rode the Burlington Northern Santa Fe High Line between Seattle and Minneapolis; Alpine was on that route; I'd grown accustomed to seeing the gang's initials painted on various buildings near the tracks.

Yet there was one flaw in Milo's hypothesis. “Don't the bums or whatever they call themselves these days just dump the body? This one was buried.”

Milo exhibited patience. “Sometimes the trains stop for another train that has the right-of-way. They'd have time to bury a body. This one wasn't deep.”

It was pointless to argue. “Can you tell if the bones belonged to an adult?”

“Yes.” Milo paused again. “Probably female.”

Again, I was startled. “Female? Doesn't that rule out an FTRA connection?”

“Not necessarily. Equal rights, and all that crap.”

It was also pointless to get mad. “Did you find anything identifiable, like jewelry or belt buckles or a watch?”

“Nope. My guess is that the body was naked.”

I racked my brain for more pointed questions, but came up empty. “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

“Nope. That's about it. For now.”

I thanked Milo, and hung up. For once, I didn't rush out to report to Vida. I wanted to write the story while it was still fresh in my mind. Finishing the six inches it would fill, I hit the print key, then took the piece out to my House & Home editor.

She was on the phone. “No, Ella, it wasn't blue, it was green … Yes, of course I was there … Come, come, whoever heard of a blue pear? … Well, that's why you got a stomachache …/
said,”
Vida continued, raising her voice and making a face at me, “that's why you got a stomachache. The pear was too green. I must go now, I'll talk to you later.”

She put the phone down with a clatter. “Honestly! Ella Hinshaw is not only deaf as a post, now she's going blind! A blue pear, indeed! She wants to sue Jake and Betsy O'Toole for selling blue fruit at the Grocery Basket.”

“Maybe it was a plum,” I suggested, recalling that Ella was an aged shirttail relation of Vida's. “Here, take a look at this.” I pushed the bones article across her desk.

Vida is a swift reader. “My word!” she exclaimed when she had finished. “What does this mean?”

I sat down in the visitor's chair. “The bones were charred, so they—that is, the body—was put there before the fire. You see where I quote Milo as saying 'a year, maybe less'? What does that mean to you?”

Vida frowned. “Naked. Charred. A woman. Hmm. I suppose it could mean that there might still have been hair attached to the skull. You didn't see that, did you?”

“No,” I replied, wincing a bit. “Just bones. I imagine Milo's waiting for dental records.”

“No one's turned up missing around here in the last year,” Vida said thoughtfully. “Oh, one of the Gustavsons ran away, but she came back. So did one of the Lucci girls, who'd moved in with some awful boy in Seattle. Then there was Mrs. Iverson, who disappeared from the retirement home, but I heard she'd gone to live with her daughter over on the Olympic Peninsula.”

“That
is
odd,” I remarked as Carla entered the office. “If someone else is missing, Milo would know.” I swiveled in the chair. “Carla, what's up at the courthouse?”

“Birgitta would hardly talk to me,” Carla said in an annoyed tone. “Sometimes I hate being short.”

Since I'm barely average height, I thought I knew what she meant. “Birgitta loomed?”

“Loomed and gloomed,” Carla replied, settling in at her desk. “When I spoke to her, she literally talked right over my head. I was so annoyed. Birgitta answered in monosyllables, long-faced and dry as a bone. I could hardly get two words out of her.”

“But you persevered,” Vida put in, her tone suggesting that evasion wasn't acceptable.

“Yes, sort of.” Carla sighed, then turned in her chair to reach for one of the muffins she'd brought from the Upper Crust. “What she did—and I found this out from the
county clerk—is file a claim on the nuggets. She's supposed to provide proof of ownership, but she has none that I can tell. Hearsay isn't good enough. I gather that Birgitta didn't understand that part. Anyway, I figure she's screwed.”

Vida made a face of displeasure at Carla's terminology, but I intervened before we could get sidetracked. “Did Birgitta tell you anything of interest?”

Carla finished chewing on her muffin before she answered. “Bottom line—believe me, I really tried—Birgitta said that some Oriental man gave her great-grandfather the gold to thank him for saving his life. Her grandfather had told her the man was called 'Yo.' That much figures, since you said the name on the chest was Yoshida. But Birgitta didn't seem to know the full name, and I don't think we've ever run it in the paper, have we?”

If Carla hadn't put the name in her original article, then it hadn't appeared in print. The nickname of Yo was certainly suggestive. “So why did her great-grandfather ditch the gold and never retrieve it?”

“Ulf Lindholm had to flee, Birgitta said. It sounds like he fled all the way back to Sweden.” Carla ate the last bite of muffin and reached for the coffee.

“That's sort of what I gathered,” I said, trying to piece our scraps of information together. “Maybe some of the other loggers or miners knew Ulf had the gold. They might have threatened him, and he feared for his life. Maybe they'd also threatened Mr. Yoshida. Or worse, tried to kill him, and that's how Ulf saved his life.”

Vida was sitting with her chin on her hand, looking thoughtful. “I found nothing about such an incident in the old papers from SkyCo and SnoCo at the college library. Confrontations of that sort didn't always make the news. They happened in remote, isolated areas, and if there was
no arrest or trial, the general public never heard about them.”

“Very likely,” I agreed, turning back to Carla. “Is that it?”

Carla wiped her mouth on a napkin. “Just about. Bir-gitta mentioned a girl named Christina. I couldn't quite track on that one, but it sounded as if Ulf might have given her some of the gold. Christina may have been her great-grandmother, but I honestly couldn't figure it out, Birgitta was so vague and unclear. Then she took off.”

“Christina,” Vida repeated. “Very Swedish, as in Queen Christina. Ulf must have kept enough gold to take home, perhaps even to pay his passage.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “Go ahead, Carla, write up your story, and be sure to include the county clerk's statement about Birgitta not having proof. Attribute it directly. We don't want local resentment built up against her, especially when she's a foreigner.”

Briefly, I considered combining my bones article with Carla's piece, but the two didn't really go together. In any event, it would be better to tuck Birgitta's claim inside the paper than to have it go on page one.

Shortly before eleven, I drove out to the Bjornsons' place on Burl Creek Road. If memory served, Maylene didn't work on Tuesdays. She ought to be home alone, with the kids in school and Ron in jail. Given the circumstances, the family probably felt like they were all in purgatory.

The house had a deserted look when I arrived, though Ron's truck and Maylene's car were in the drive. When I stood on the front porch, I realized that the curtains were gone from the windows. Maylene, however, came to the door, her corkscrew auburn curls in disarray and a spot of high color on each plump cheek.

“Emma,” she said, and immediately grew wary. “Really, I don't think… I don't know …”

“Relax,” I said, smiling broadly. “I want to hear your side of the story before we go to press.”

She allowed me to come into the living room, which was also in disarray. 'Tm spring-cleaning,” she said on a note of apology. “I'm washing the curtains and cleaning out drawers and then I'll shampoo the carpet. I have to keep busy, or I'll go nuts.”

“I don't blame you,” I said, sitting down on a floral-covered couch. “This is a hard time.”

“It's stupid,” Maylene declared, collapsing into a rocking chair. “Ron didn't kill Mr. Rasmussen. I can't think why Milo arrested him. He knows Ron, he knows better.”

“Milo's usually very cautious,” I remarked. “But that's why I wanted to talk to you. From what I gather, he made the arrest based on discrepancies in Ron's log, and because he was told that you and Einar were having an affair.”

Maylene picked up a dust cloth from the arm of the rocker and threw it on the floor. “That is so dumb! Why would I have an affair with that old fart? Einar Rasmussen Jr. was so full of himself that I could hardly stand being around him. Mr. Pompous, I called him. And that lipstick evidence! That's so stupid. Stella sold a case of those lipsticks at half price last month at the beauty salon, and I'll bet four dozen women in Alpine are wearing that shade. Stella ordered the wrong color, and got stuck with them.”

Stella Magruder, who owns Stella's Styling Salon, wasn't the type of woman to take a loss. I vaguely recalled seeing the half-price display when I got my last haircut, but lipstick is one of my vanities. I have two favorite colors, which are only carried by Nordstrom's in Seattle.