The Alpine Uproar (16 page)

“Life’s hard.” With her fists on her hips, Betsy looked at me. “Honestly, Emma, I wonder how any of us can raise kids these days. You get to the point where you feel you’re a successful parent if your children haven’t been arrested by the time they’re eighteen.”

“Your four seem to have turned out well,” I said.

Betsy sighed. “At least they all got through high school. Ryan’s doing okay at Seattle U, but Erica keeps changing majors at WSU, Melissa isn’t interested in going to college, and Tim is … well, sometimes I think Tim’s just hanging around the house waiting for Jake and me to croak so he can take over the store.”

“Tim’s working, isn’t he?”

Betsy shrugged and waved a hand. “He’s supposed to be learning how to run this place. But he spends most of his time playing computer games in the office. I have to boot his butt out just about every time I go in there to work. And you know how small and cramped that office is—about the size of yours.”

I stepped aside for an elderly woman to pass. “Are your kids close to Mike and Kenny?”

“Fairly. You can’t force cousins to be buddies. Let’s face it, Jake and Buzzy are brothers, but they couldn’t be more different. It’s the same way with the younger generation.” She looked sad. “Our four brats think they’re better than Buzzy and Laura’s two, if only because Buzzy’s never had a head for business and has ended up relying on Jake and me. It’s not right, but there’s nothing we can do about it at this late date.
Jake and I should’ve kept our mouths shut around our kids when we griped about having to bail out Buzzy and Laura over the years.”

“But you say Kenny is a good student?”

“He is,” Betsy said, her tone ironic. “Maybe the best of the whole O’Toole bunch. He’s kept out of trouble. Kenny isn’t a risk-taker like Mike or even a couple of ours.”

“But Mike’s never really been in trouble, has he?”

Betsy’s gaze wandered back to the cheese display. “Nothing serious.” She pointed to the yogurt shelves. “I’d better hustle. Obviously, we’re shorthanded. I’m thinking of putting Tim in charge of the produce until Buzzy gets back to work. It’ll be good for Tim to walk in the real world instead of zapping aliens on the computer.”

I finished my purchases and headed home. Milo’s dinner was costing me almost ninety bucks. Along with the crabs and the butter, I bought potato and Caesar salads in the deli, a loaf of garlic bread, and a chocolate torte. By the time I wrote a check for the total, I decided that if the sheriff thought he was going to get a second dessert, he was wrong. The torte, made by a Seattle pastry company, cost twelve dollars. I’d also spent another seven bucks on a pastrami and Swiss cheese sandwich for my lunch.

When I got back to the office, Mitch was sitting at his desk, shaking his head. “I’ve had some weird interviews in my time,” he said, “but even in Detroit, I never met anybody quite like Averill Fairbanks. Anybody, I should say, who wasn’t high on heavy-duty drugs.”

“Averill’s an original.” I sat down in Mitch’s spare chair and took out my sandwich. “How’d you happen to run into him?”

Mitch swung around in his chair and stretched out his long legs. “I stopped at that teriyaki joint in the mall and decided to
eat in Old Mill Park. It’s not bad outside, after the fog lifted. Anyway, Averill was sitting at the base of that statue, talking to himself.”

“He does that,” I said. “Sometimes he talks to the statue. It’s of Carl Clemans, who founded Alpine and owned the first mill.”

Mitch nodded. “So I duly noted. I’d gone over Averill’s statement, and it was totally incoherent. ‘Worthless’ is how Dodge put it. But what the hell, I decided to talk to the old coot just to cover all the bases.” He shook his head. “Bad idea. He kept talking about seeing Venus at the tavern. ‘Luminous,’ he said, ‘a sister,’ a ‘goddess.’ I got that part, having a basic knowledge of the universe from taking astronomy at Michigan State, but when Averill mentioned that Venus was ‘amoral yet enchanting,’ I started to wonder. I asked how he could see Venus if he didn’t take his special UFO glasses outside with him. Of course I know that anybody without special gear can see Venus on a clear night, but Saturday was overcast. Averill said he didn’t need glasses because Venus was standing by the river, her tears mingling with the flow of mountain waters.”

“Hmm.” I finished a bite of sandwich and put the remainder back into the white paper sack. Eating pastrami and its trimmings in front of my reporter wasn’t exactly image-enhancing. “Could he be referring to Clive’s girlfriend, Jica Weaver?”

“Maybe.” Mitch raised his arms and yawned. “I don’t think he meant Holly Gross, though she was at the tavern, too.”

I gestured toward the front office. “So was Amanda Hanson, along with Norene Anderson, Julie Canby, and Janie Borg.”

“But none of them was outside.”

“That we know of. When did Averill come back into the tavern?”

“I don’t know that he did,” Mitch answered. “Heppner told
me they had to take his jacket and glasses and whatever else he left behind to him the next day.”

“Maybe you should talk to Jica in person. I’d like to get your impression. Sam Heppner interviewed her, but he’s not very perceptive.”

Mitch nodded. “Heppner strikes me as a real blue-collar type of cop. Steady, reliable, but no imagination. Not shrewd enough to finesse meaningful answers. Maybe I’ll leave early this afternoon and take Brenda with me. She loves browsing in antiques stores. Having her tag along would make my visit less formal. Jica might open up a bit.”

“Oh, she’ll open up,” I assured Mitch. “But what she says won’t contribute much unless you’re able to zero in on something solid.”

Mitch laughed. “Emma, do you know how many kinds of wackos I’ve interviewed over the years? I’ve got my trade secrets. Trust me.”

“I do,” I said, and meant it.

M
ITCH LEFT THE OFFICE AROUND THREE-THIRTY
. S
INCE IT WAS
Friday, I warned him about heavy traffic between Alpine and Snohomish. He reminded me that the admonition was unnecessary. He’d already seen the carnage that Highway 2 could cause.

“You shouldn’t have sent him to interview Jica,” Vida declared after he was gone. “I sense from what you’ve told me that a woman would have a better chance figuring out if Jica has any real information. Either you should have talked to her again or I should.”

“It’s too late now,” I said. “Besides, you weren’t here when I spoke to Mitch about it.”

“I certainly wasn’t,” Vida retorted. “I didn’t realize he was going to Snohomish until just now.”

Her reproachful tone irked me. “A woman
is
going to talk to Jica. Mitch is taking his wife with him.”

“His wife?” Vida looked exasperated. “What does she know about reporting? She’s a
weaver
, for heaven’s sakes!”

Vida made the word weaver sound as if it were synonymous with
hooker
.

“Brenda probably knows how to talk to other women,” I said. “You met her. She’s smart and sociable.”

Vida’s severe expression remained in place. “I met her for about five minutes. You couldn’t have spoken with her much longer than that. Mrs. Laskey seemed anxious to leave the office. I found that rather insulting.”

“Brenda had to meet with the real estate agent and wait for the moving van and solve about ten other problems that day.” My patience was growing paper-thin. First Leo and now Vida seemed to be off their feed. With Ginny out of action and Amanda an unknown quantity, I was beginning to feel like a skipper on a fishing boat. The
Good Ship Advocate
might be sailing into troubled waters.

“Brenda Laskey should’ve come out with her husband when he interviewed for the job,” Vida said. “She stayed back there in Royal Whatever—Royal indeed! What could possibly be ‘royal’ about Detroit? Then she suddenly showed up the day before Mitch started his job and he didn’t have time to tie up the loose ends of the move. The only thing she seemed concerned about was her loom.”

“She probably had things back in Royal Oak that required her attention,” I pointed out, trying not to sound annoyed. “They’d lived there for almost thirty years. They have family. It couldn’t have been easy for them to pull up stakes.”

“Family?” Vida gave me her most owlish stare. “What do they have in the way of family? I’ve never heard Mitch mention children.”

“He told me they had three, but they’re scattered with one in graduate school, and … I forget where the other two are.”

“Not very close-knit, if you ask me,” Vida snapped. “Oh, I don’t blame them for choosing Alpine, of course. That was very smart of them. But it still seems … odd.”

“Mitch said they were in a rut, especially him,” I explained, and not for the first time. “He’d gotten stale on the job, he was tired of the pressure to meet constant deadlines on a daily, and the paper itself was downsizing, so he knew it was just a matter of time before he’d be forced into retirement. Mitch wasn’t ready for that, and he and Brenda agreed that a change of scenery might give them a whole new slant on life.”

“Well now.” Vida seemed appeased. “They couldn’t have chosen more beautiful scenery or a finer town to escape big-city horrors.”

I could’ve mentioned that even now Mitch was covering one of our own horrors, but having defused Vida’s ill temper, I kept quiet. A moment later Amanda poked her head into the newsroom.

“The sheriff’s on the line,” she announced. “He wants to speak to you
pronto
. His word, not mine.” She retreated into the front office.

Vida harrumphed. “Cheeky, don’t you think?”

I shrugged and went into my cubbyhole.

“What’s the rush?” I said into the phone.

“I have to take a rain check,” Milo said. “Mulehide’s in town.”

I thought I’d misheard. “What?”

“Mulehide. My ex-wife. Are you deaf?”

“No.” I paused, flabbergasted. “Why?”

“Tanya’s finally getting married,” Milo replied. “Not to that last loser I told you about—hell, all of her boyfriends were losers. Anyway, this is some new guy. He’s employed.”

“As what?”

“Damned if I know. Mulehide said he works for the City of Bellevue. He could be the mayor or the guy who stands in the middle of street construction with the
STOP
and
SLOW
sign.”

“I already bought the crab.”

“It’ll keep for a couple of days, won’t it?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “But I may eat most of it myself. Why is Tricia coming all the way to Alpine? She hasn’t been up here in years.”

“She wanted me to come to Bellevue tonight,” Milo replied. “I told her I couldn’t—I was working a homicide. It’s a bitch driving in bumper-to-bumper Friday traffic on Seattle’s frigging Eastside. Mulehide wants to go over the wedding plans with me. I’m supposed to pay for half of it. She’ll be lucky if she doesn’t become the next victim around here.”

I sympathized with Milo, but I was still irked. “Tanya
is
your daughter. She probably wants you to walk her down the aisle.”

“What aisle? The wedding’s going to be held in Marymoor Park by some damned windmill. August. I forget which day.”

“Okay. Good luck.” I rang off first.

I sat quietly for a moment or two, wondering if I should freeze one of the crabs when I got home. They were fresh, but never tasted quite as good after being frozen. I was still mulling when my phone rang again.

“Bonsoir,”
said the male voice. “Or should it be
bonjour?
It’s late afternoon on the Skykomish, but it’s midnight on the Seine.”

With a start, I recognized Rolf Fisher’s voice. I almost snapped that he could say
adieu
instead, but naturally I was curious. “Rolf?”

“It is I,” he replied, “sitting on a balcony overlooking the
glittering lights of Paris. Would you care to join me for dinner tomorrow evening?”

“Are you nuts?” I exclaimed. “I haven’t heard from you in months!”

“True. It seems my absence hasn’t made your heart grow fonder.”

“Quite the opposite,” I retorted, aware that my previous loud remark had caught Vida’s attention. She had shot me a quick glance and now was pretending to be absorbed in an orange flyer she’d taken out of her in-basket. “I think I’ll hang up.”

“Don’t you want to know if I’m really in Paris?”

“Actually, I don’t.”

“Untrue. I don’t hear the sound of a disconnect.”

I lowered my voice even further. “Okay. If you’re in Paris, tell me why and make it short. An inch at most, in column count.”

“I quit my job at AP I figured they were going to retire or can me eventually so why not beat them to it? I wanted to enjoy my sudden leisure, so I flew to London two weeks ago. An old buddy of mine from the UK bureau told me he knew a chap who wanted to rent his cottage in the Loire Valley. Was I interested? I said yes. I move in Sunday.”

“That’s an inch and a half, maybe two. I’m hanging up now.”

“You don’t like France? Or do you hate me?”

“I think France is great. I don’t hate you, but you can be a jerk.”

“Fair enough.” A sound like a wry chuckle reached my ear. “I
am
a jerk. But you’re not much better. Women usually give notice when they stand a guy up. Being a no-show puts you at the top of the would-be jerk class. Or should it be ‘jerkette’?”

“You never bothered to find out why I couldn’t come into Seattle that weekend,” I countered. “You simply went to ground. Yes, I was upset, not just with you, but with myself. And then I was mad and then … I decided you weren’t worth the emotional drain.”

“God, but you’re a rational woman. Not always an attractive feminine quality, but I’m perverse enough to like it. By the way, I did call about the homicide case that made you reject me that weekend.”

“You called the sheriff, not me,” I said.

“I called your office, too, but you weren’t in. Whoever answered sounded flaky.”

“True,” I murmured.

“So what have you got against France?”

I hesitated. “Honestly? My late fiancé and I were going there for our honeymoon. End of explanation.”

“Fair enough.” It was Rolf’s turn to pause. “But Tom’s been dead for quite a while.”

“You think I need reminding?” I snapped.