The Alpine Legacy (7 page)

“Did you quarrel?”

“No. We argued, but only briefly.”

“Then what?”

“We compromised.”

“What kind of a mood was she in?”

“Acerbic, which I assume is standard.” I leaned forward in my chair. “Look, Milo, you tell me what this is all about or I won't answer another damned question.” For emphasis, I slammed my hand down on the desk.

Leaning back in his chair, Milo kept his eyes on my face. “Dennis Kelly called on Crystal this morning. He felt that one of the religious leaders should explain the local churches' position on the shelter and what was
being done. Father Den knocked, but no one came to the door, though her sport utility vehicle was parked outside. He went around to what he assumed was the back door. As you know, it leads off the deck.” Milo, who is not given to lengthy speeches, paused for breath. “He found Crystal in the hot tub. Her wrists had been slashed and she was dead.”

U
NTIL AN AUTOPSY
had been performed, Doc Dewey, who also serves as the country coroner, was ruling Crystal's death a suicide. “You're sure Crystal didn't seem upset?” Milo persisted after I'd recovered from the shock of his news.

I summoned up the nerve to glare at him. “You should know. You talked to her after I left. How come, Milo?”

Milo gave a sharp shake of his head. “That doesn't matter.”

“The hell it doesn't,” I shouted, then lowered my voice. “You had a conversation. How did she sound to you?”

Grimacing, Milo finally looked off toward the opposite wall and his array of NRA posters. “Like she usually does. We didn't talk long.”

My eyes narrowed. “It was a business call?”

The grimace turned into a snarl.
“You
don't ask
me
questions, goddamn it. In fact, if you don't have any more information about Crystal, take a hike.”

I practically jumped out of the chair. “The only thing I know is that you're a jerk and Crystal was a mean-minded bitch.”

“Nice thing to say about the dead,” Milo growled.

“Being dead doesn't improve her,” I retorted, then managed to trip over my handbag and fall sideways back
into the chair. Several four-letter words spurted from my lips.

“Serves you right,” muttered the sheriff. Then, perhaps thinking of lawsuits against the county, he asked if I was okay.

“Yeah, fine, swell,” I said, standing up and wresting the handbag's strap from where it had gotten caught under one of the chair legs. “Let me know what happens next.”

“Aren't you being kind of half-assed?” Milo called out as I reached his door.

“You told me to take a hike. That's what I'm doing.” Without turning around, I yanked the door open and tromped through the outer office.

I
was
being half-assed, of course. But our deadline wasn't until Tuesday afternoon, and I refused to give Milo satisfaction. Besides, I had another source. Getting into the Jag, I headed up Fourth Street, turned on Cedar, and pulled into St. Mildred's empty parking lot.

By coincidence, the woman I had helped seek shelter was now working for Father Den. Della Lucci was reeducating herself at Skykomish Community College and living in the rectory with her four children. In a bygone era, two maybe even three priests would have served the county's Catholic parishioners. But the shortage of vocations meant that we were lucky to have a single priest in residence. There was sufficient room left over for the Luccis.

“I don't know where Father is,” Della informed me in her wispy voice. She was a plump, docile woman in her forties who had finally left her abusive husband a couple of years earlier. Nunzio Lucci, or Luce, as he was known, had taken up with a woman he'd met at Mugs Ahoy and moved to Arlington. The Luccis had never divorced, and despite Luce's abusive nature and rotten disposition, he
and Della had agreed to sell their small frame house by Burl Creek and split the profits.

I smiled reassuringly at Della. She was one of those poor creatures who always seemed to need reassurance. Whatever self-confidence she had as a young woman must have been peeled away by Luce's constant bullying.

“I know Father Den went out earlier,” I said. “Would you mind if I wait?”

“Oh, no, Ms. Lord,” Della said, wide-eyed, and deferring to me as she always did to those she considered her social betters. Which, I realized, was just about anyone who didn't walk on all fours. “Come into the parlor. Would you like some coffee?”

I declined, but followed Della inside. The parlor had been refurbished since Father Fitzgerald's tenure as pastor. In those days, it had been a dark little corner, full of mohair furniture and sentimental holy pictures. Now the drapes were open and the furnishings more modern, if utilitarian. All but one painting of the Scared Heart of Jesus had been replaced by brightly colored African wall hangings.

For Dennis Kelly was a black man in a white community, and like Dustin Fong and other minorities who had managed to wedge their way into Alpine, he had found resistance, suspicion, and even hostility. But Den had courage as well as charity, and had won over his parishioners, as well as many of the town's more broad-minded Protestants.

I reflected on his fortitude while I waited. Della had gone off to supervise her two younger children, who had put on snowsuits and were going outside to build a fort.

Father Den arrived about ten minutes later, looking strained, but not surprised to see me. “Dodge must have told you about Crystal,” he said, sitting down across from me. “That was pretty ghastly.”

“For you,” I remarked.

“For her.” His brown eyes conveyed the merest hint of reproach. “I didn't know her, but she must have been a troubled soul.”

“Tell me about what you found,” I said. “I didn't beg Milo for the details. He was in a foul mood.”

Father Den sighed and crossed his legs. “Dodge told me not to talk about any of this. But I suppose he meant idle gossip.”

I saw the glint in Den's eyes. “This isn't idle gossip,” I said with a straight face. “This is my job.”

Den nodded once. “Then it's okay. Besides,” he added, “you're a member of my flock. Dodge isn't.” He smiled a bit slyly before starting his recital. “Crystal was floating in the hot tub facedown. At first, I thought she might have passed out. I grabbed her by the ankle and somehow managed to get her up onto the deck. That's when I saw the cuts on her wrists. Of course I knew right away she was dead. I gave her the Sacrament of the Sick, though I've no idea how long she'd been gone.”

I refrained from commenting that Crystal would have scoffed at Father Den's administration of what used to be called the Last Rites. While the sacrament was sometimes given to individuals who weren't terminally ill, the new name struck me as ironic, especially in a case like Crystal's. I suppose the mutation was intended to give hope; it seemed to me that it was meant to avoid the suggestion of death. Crystal, of course, wouldn't have cared if Den had poured a bucket of tar over her head.

“Milo told me you went there to talk to her about the clergy's position on the shelter,” I said.

Father Den nodded. He's about my age, a pleasant-looking man whose dark hair is beginning to show signs of male-pattern baldness. “After I saw the special edition of
Crystal Clear
the other day where she berated you
over not berating me, I thought about it and prayed on it. Then I decided to extend a hand. I'd have preferred a left hook,” he added in his wry manner, “but the Holy Spirit told me it was a bad idea.”

“What were you going to tell her?” I asked, relaxing a little for the first time since I'd gotten out of bed. Father Den has that kind of effect on me. He is always the calm place in the eye of the storm.

“Oh—you know, that we're trying to sign a lease for the old Alpine Hotel, but the Californians who bought it a while back are involved in some kind of litigation.” He paused and smiled. “Californians usually are, aren't they? Anyway, all I could tell her was the truth, which I assume she already knew but ignored in her crusade for the shelter.”

The Californians were actually very nice people who had planned to renovate the old hotel on Front Street. They had run out of money early in the project, but hadn't yet decided whether to sell or lease the property. Like the former Doukas home, the hotel required extensive repairs, but it had been rewired and replumbed, which were big-ticket items. It was also much larger than the house on First Hill.

“What did you do after you hauled Crystal out of the hot tub?” I asked.

Father Den grimaced. “I went inside—the back door wasn't locked—to find the phone. I looked all over the place, but it turned out the portable was right there on the deck. I hadn't seen it.”

“No wonder. It must have been an awful shock,” I commiserated.

“Exactly.” Father Den cleared his throat. “I called for help, and then I stayed out there on the deck with the body and prayed. Milo showed up about fifteen minutes later, along with some of the other emergency people.”

“Any sign of a struggle?”

Den grinned. “This sounds like an interview.”

“It is.” I grinned back. “Remember, it's my job.”

“You're not taking notes.”

“I don't need to so far. These kinds of facts stick.” At some point, I would get out my notebook and a pen. Unlike Vida, who absorbs and retains information like a sponge, I had trouble remembering details. “As I was saying, signs of a struggle?”

“Nothing. The snow around the deck had pretty much filled up whatever tracks had been made earlier,” Den said, his high forehead creasing. “Dodge found a straight-edged razor at the bottom of the hot tub. Or so he told me after we got back to his office. I assume he passed that on to you, too.”

“He did not,” I retorted. “He acted as if I were the one who slashed Crystal's wrists.”

Den was silent for a few moments. “I wish I'd known Crystal,” he finally said.

“You mean so you could figure her for a suicide?”

He shook his head. “No. So I could have found out why she was so troubled.” Den put up a hand. “Don't think I feel I might have helped her. I've no illusions about that. But sometimes in learning what makes people tick, down the road you
can
help someone like them.”

“She didn't strike me as the suicidal type,” I put in. “Too arrogant, too sure of herself.”

“Emma.” My pastor gave a sad little shake of his head. “You know better. You're letting your personal resentment get in the way. The arrogant, the overconfident are often masking all sorts of fears and disappointments. I should have thought that Crystal was a perfect candidate for self-destruction. It's not for me to judge, but she may have been killing her soul for a very long time. Killing the body is the final step in denying God.”

I considered Den's words. No doubt he was right, but I had trouble accepting his assessment—not on a spiritual or even a rational level, but as a practical approach to people like Crystal Bird.

Thus, when confronted with the ethereal, I chose to deal with the mundane. “The razor was in the pool? That may mean no fingerprints.”

Den's smile conveyed what I took as pity. “You don't believe it was self-inflicted?”

I made a face. “I suppose I have to, unless the autopsy reveals otherwise. I suppose that'll have to be done over in Snohomish County. We still don't have the proper lab facilities here.”

“Crystal looked like a strong, healthy woman,” Den said in his usual reasonable tone. “How do you think someone might have slashed her wrists for her?”

“I don't.” I sighed. “But I do wonder why a woman keeps a straight-edged razor around the house.”

“Maybe someone left it there,” Den replied. “I heard that one of her ex-husbands had been around lately.”

My ears felt like they were jutting out from my head. “Where'd you hear that?”

Den frowned. “I'm not sure. One of the parishioners, I suppose.”

I searched my memory for the names Vida had mentioned. “Ramsey, that was one of them. I forget the other.”

“It wasn't Ramsey,” Den said. “It began with a
C.
I believe he's a musician.”

“What did you hear about him?” I asked.

“Just that he'd visited Crystal.” Den snapped his fingers. “Betsy O'Toole talked about him last Sunday after Mass at coffee and doughnuts. She'd seen him at the Grocery Basket with Crystal.”

“Interesting,” I remarked as Della Lucci came into the parlor with Vida looming behind her.

“Mrs. Runkel is here to …” Della began, but Vida sailed right past her.

“Well!” My House & Home editor planted herself between Father Den and me. “Why did I have to find out about Crystal Bird's death from Harvey Adcock at the hardware store? I thought I was on the staff of a newspaper, which would indicate that I should be kept informed of breaking stories.” Her gray eyes raked over me, then took in Den for good measure.

“I was going to come by your house as soon as I got through talking to Father Den,” I said, meek as milk. As often is the case, Vida was having trouble remembering who was the boss. So, apparently, was I.

“But I wasn't home,” Vida cried. “Nor, I might add, did my nephew Billy call from the sheriff's office to keep me informed.”