The Alpine Kindred (8 page)

“Einar Jr. could make enemies,” Vida murmured. “He's that sort. Cold, abrupt, stubborn. Trucking. Teamsters. My, my!”

“Vida, Einar's not Jimmy Hoffa.” I tried to immerse myself in
Sports Illustrated's
Super Bowl issue.

“Perhaps Marlys is more peculiar than I thought,” Vida continued. “Some sort of mania. Then there's Beau. If there really is a Beau. You have to wonder.”

“Vida …” I hoped my tone conveyed a warning.

“Einar Sr. wouldn't do such a thing—probably. But Harold—so resentful, I'm sure. And drunk. Oh! Mary Jane! Surely she must hate all of her family.” Vida poked me. “Who have I left out?”

“The Green Bay Packers,” I retorted just as a wan-looking Carla came out through the double doors from the examining rooms.

Vida leaped to her feet. “Carla! Are you all right?”

Carla nodded, the black hair hanging limp over her shoulders. “Doc said I was just upset. I'm supposed to go home and stay in bed for a day or so.” Her dark eyes sought mine. “Tomorrow's Tuesday, though. What will you do without me?”

“We'll manage,” I replied. “Come on, we're here to give you a ride. We can go in my car.”

“Nonsense,” Vida huffed. “My Buick is much bigger and more comfortable. Emma, you can come with us.”

“Thanks, Vida,” I murmured. It wasn't worth arguing over the comparative comfort of our aging full-sized sedans.

“Now,” Vida said, after she had stuck me in the backseat and put Carla next to her up front, “tell us what happened at the RUB. You'll have to give a statement to the Sheriff, you know.”

“Sure, I'll do that later.” Carla still sounded subdued, and very tired.

“Well?” Vida had paused at the intersection of Second and Cedar.

“Well what?” I could see Carla wrinkle her nose as she turned to Vida.

Vida sighed and stepped on the gas. “What happened. You had a seven-thirty appointment with Einar Jr., correct? What took place when you arrived at the RUB?”

“I was a couple of minutes late,” Carla said, still in that same dull tone.

“How late?” Vida broke in.

“Um… five minutes?” Carla wrinkled her nose again, and I figured that she probably hadn't gotten to the RUB until almost seven forty-five. “Anyway, the doors were unlocked, so I went inside to the cafeteria where I'd told Mr. Einar—
Mr. Rasmussen
—that I'd meet him. The
lights were on, but I didn't see him anywhere, so I waited a couple of minutes, and then I wandered into the kitchen. That's where I found him, lying on the floor. I thought he'd had a heart attack.”

As Vida glanced at Carla, the bilious green straw hat struck the car's roof. “Did you see anyone? Or hear anything?” With a firm hand, Vida jammed the hat down on top of her curlers.

“No.” Carla leaned back on the passenger seat's headrest. “Nobody was around. And the phones weren't hooked up, so I had to go out to a pay phone by the Ad Building to call Emma.”

At the Alpine Way arterial, Vida swiveled around to look at me. “Where did Einar Jr. park?” She swiveled back to Carla. “Where did you park?”

“I parked in the faculty lot behind the RUB,” Carla replied. “I don't know where Mr. Rasmussen parked. Probably in the same place. That's where they send visitors at the gate.”

I leaned forward, straining at my seat belt. “No one was at the gate when I came in,” I said. “The little kiosk was empty.”

Carla nodded once. “No one was there when I arrived, either. I don't think they have anybody on duty once night classes get under way. There's a sign posted, though, telling visitors where to park.”

In my excitement, I hadn't noticed the sign, and had pulled into one of the student lots that was closest to the RUB. Since I'd been there for close to an hour and hadn't gotten ticketed, I began to wonder about the efficiency of campus security.

Vida had covered the six blocks to Carla's apartment building, which stood across Alpine Way from the upscale Pines development and was sheltered by forest land
on the other. “We'll come in,” Vida announced, shutting off the engine.

“Don't,” Carla said abruptly. “I'll be fine.”

“Nonsense.” Vida opened the door on the driver's side.

“I mean it.” Carla's voice was unusually severe. “Doc Dewey told me I was fine, I just needed to rest.”

Vida hesitated. “I planned to make you a nice cup of hot tea.”

Carla shook her head, very firmly. “That's nice, but hot tea would keep me awake, unless it was herbal, which I ran out of yesterday. Besides, Ryan will take care of me when he gets home. On Mondays, he's done at the college around ten.”

“I see.” Vida closed the car door. “Well now. Will he bring your car back?”

“No. He has his own. We'll pick it up tomorrow or Wednesday morning. See you.” Carla got out of the car and moved with surprising alacrity to the apartment entrance.

Vida waited to see if she got in safely. Even in a small town like Alpine, danger can lurk in unsuspected places. As, I realized, Einar Rasmussen Jr. had found out too late.

“That settles it,” Vida declared. “Carla is indeed living with Ryan. He must teach a class in addition to his other duties,” she mused, pulling away from the curb. “So he was on campus all along.”

“So were a lot of people,” I said, still sitting in the back. “What does Ryan Talliaferro have to do with Einar Rasmussen Jr.?”

“Nothing. But who was there who
did
have something to do with Einar Jr.?”

“That's the most pressing question,” I conceded. “Where are we going?”

“To get your car,” Vida replied.

We had turned west on Tonga Road. “But we're going in the opposite direction of the hospital,” I pointed out.

“My, my. So we are. I forgot.”

It was a lie. We were heading for Skykomish Community College. “Turn around, Vida,” I commanded.

“Why? It's not that late.”

“Because I said so. I want to go home. If you want to see what's happening at the RUB, you can go to the college without me.”

“Oh, dear!” Vida gave me a sharp glance over her shoulder. “This won't do! Whatever occurred between you and Milo?”

I ground my teeth. As a rule, Vida's perceptive powers are much appreciated and admired. But not when she takes my personal life into her purview.

I ignored her question. “Doc probably still hasn't shown up. I did everything I could do while I was there. I'm tired, and I want to go home. Please, Vida.”

She slowed the Buick just before we reached the Burl Creek Road. “No one seems to want my company tonight,” she said in mock self-pity. “Carla has Dean Tal-liaferro and you have—what? Managed to somehow further annoy Milo?”

“It wasn't hard to do.” I could feel my teeth clamp together.

Vida pulled into the road that led to the ski lodge, then turned around. “You'll have to get over it by morning. Both of you.”

“Why?” Now I was starting to get angry at Vida.

“Because Carla isn't coming to work, and you'll have to cover the story for Wednesday's edition. Unless, of course, you want me to handle it.”

Hard news was not Vida's forte. “Naturally I'll cover the story. I'm the editor, for God's sake.”

“I should think so!” Vida, a usually sensible driver, headed back down Tonga Road at what I considered an excessive speed. “Any story of this magnitude involving
the Rasmussen family is bound to be tricky. We'll— you'll—need all the help you can get.”

I didn't respond. It passed through my tired mind that I needed help, all right. In more ways than one.

“W
HY THE HEEL
couldn't they have built a College in Snohomish instead of Alpine?” I overheard Milo say to someone in his office the next morning. “Then Einar could've gotten whacked in Snohomish County instead of here. Hell, they're mostly Snohomish types, not Alpiners.”

Toni Andreas, the Sheriff department's receptionist, gave me an apologetic smile. “I'm afraid the Sheriff isn't in a very good mood today. He's filling in his other deputies about last night's homicide. Dwight Gould and Sam Heppner and Bill Blatt were off duty.”

I didn't know about Sam and Dwight, but guessed that Bill hadn't been working the late shift. He is one of Vida's numerous nephews, and is trained, under penalty of God-knows-what, to relay any big news to his aunt immediately.

“How long before Milo finishes with his merry men?” I inquired as Dustin Fong entered from the vicinity of the evidence and interrogation rooms.

Toni rolled her big brown eyes. “Who knows? Do you want some coffee while you wait?”

The Sheriff's coffee is not unlike the current state of our relationship—weak, bitter, and irritating. I declined Toni's offer. Instead, I collared Dustin.

“What's going on?” I asked the youngest of Milo's deputies, a quiet-spoken Asian-American from Seattle.

Dustin gestured at the Sheriff's office. “You mean the briefing?”

I shook my head. “I mean the investigation itself. You might as well fill me in. I gather Milo may be busy for a while.” Now that I was on the premises, I wasn't sure how much I wanted to go one-on-one with the Sheriff this early in the day.

Dustin motioned for me to come around to his side of the curving wood counter and sit at his desk. “Did you hear anything about a weapon?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

I told Dustin I'd been in the cafeteria kitchen when Jack Mullins found the knife. “Are they sure that's what did it?” I asked.

Dustin, who is the very soul of discretion, cleared his throat. “There has to be an autopsy. As usual, we can't do it here because of our limited facilities, so the body has been shipped to SnoCo, in Everett. It'll take a couple of days. As usual. We're not a priority in the other county. As usual.” He gave me a rueful look.

Despite passage of a bond issue a couple of years earlier, SkyCo still was hampered by lack of adequate funding. Headquarters had been renovated and expanded, a small-scale lab had been added, Dustin had been hired to ease the manpower shortage, and the jail's security had been beefed up so that prisoners couldn't escape by kicking a hole in the wall and crawling out onto the sidewalk across from the Sears catalogue pickup office. Indeed, many years ago an escapee who had been serving time for assault with a deadly weapon had gone directly from his cell to the Sears outlet and tried to order a double-barreled shotgun.

“So nothing definite on the weapon until the autopsy, right?”

Dustin nodded. “Sorry. I know you come out tomorrow.”

That was the curse of the weekly. If news didn't break within twenty-four hours of publication, it was stale by the next edition.

“What about witnesses?” I asked, writing
no weapon news
on my notepad.

“Nothing so far.” Again, Dustin's manner conveyed apology. “Dodge talked to Carla this morning on the phone, but she couldn't give us anything. I guess she'll make her formal statement tomorrow when she feels better.”

“Has campus security reported anything?” I inquired. “Where were they, by the way? I never saw them.”

Dustin offered his engaging grin. “At night, campus security is Ron Bjorason. He's been out of work in the woods for a while now, and that farm of theirs isn't enough to make a living, so he caught on with the college. It turned out that he was unplugging a toilet in the dorm when the murder must have occurred. It seems that Mr. Bjornson gets stuck doing more than making sure the doors are locked.”

I knew Ron and Maylene Bjornson, who lived out on the Burl Creek Road and had teenagers to support. “The college has a bigger force during the day, don't they?”

“Right,” Dustin said, and grinned again. “All two of them.”

I seemed to recall as much from one of Carla's numerous stories. But with a faculty of only thirty, and a total enrollment just under five hundred students, there wasn't any need. Until now.

“What's going on at the campus?” I asked, though I planned on heading there next.

Dustin shook his head. “I haven't been out there this morning. I suppose everybody's pretty upset. Do you suppose they'll cancel the dedication?”

“I don't know,” I answered grimly. If that happened,
our special section was also canceled. I needed an answer fast. “Look, Dustin,” I said, catching a few phrases from Milo in his office, “it sounds as if the Sheriff isn't going to be able to see me for a while. Is there anything else you can tell me that I can use for the paper? What about Mrs. Rasmussen and the rest of the family? How are they taking it?”

Dustin didn't know that, either. Milo had driven the short distance down the highway to inform Marlys Rasmussen of her husband's tragic demise. Dustin guessed that Beau was home when the Sheriff came by. As for the Rasmussen daughter, Dustin didn't know they had one.

“Dodge called the Snohomish County Sheriff's office and had somebody go to Snohomish and tell Mr. Rasmussen Sr. He must be a pretty old geezer.”

I hazarded a guess. “Close to ninety, maybe. Einar Jr. turned sixty-four in April.” I'd done my homework before walking over to the Sheriff's. “I'll check in with you folks before we go to press,” I said, getting to my feet and darting a glance in the direction of Milo's open door. “Right now I should go over to the campus. Thanks, Dustin.”

“Sure,” the deputy responded, also rising and making what looked like a little bow. “Sorry I couldn't be more help. But we're just getting our feet wet.”

“Right.” I hoped my smile was encouraging. The truth was that I felt Milo and company weren't even close to the water. I walked back up Front Street, got into the Jag, and drove out to the college.

It had drizzled a bit during the night, and the freshly planted lawns glistened under the morning sun. This time I parked behind the RUB in the designated visitors' place. Then I headed for the Ad Building and Nat Cardenas's office.

The president's secretary, Cynthia Kittikachorn, is an exotic young woman who was born in Thailand but raised
in Tacoma. Her languid air doesn't inspire confidence, but I'm told that she's very efficient. When I arrived, she had the phone propped between her shoulder and one ear, and was diagramming what looked like a family tree on a legal pad.

“I've no idea when he'll be free,” Cynthia said into the phone, her voice musical but detached. “I suggest you call back around four.” She hung up and turned to me. “Reporters, from Seattle and everywhere else. Why don't they stick to their own crimes and leave us alone? The phone hasn't stopped ringing all morning.” Her usual air of languor wasn't evident this morning.