The Alpine Yeoman (10 page)

“You don’t seem very cheerful,” I said. “There must be something bothering you.”

She looked away. “Certainly not. I was merely trying to give Amanda some guidance about real estate. It’s a big decision. At almost two hundred thousand dollars, Milo should arrest himself for attempted robbery. His house is basically a fixer-upper. The Hansons don’t need to take on such a burden with a new baby.”

“It is
not
a fixer-upper,” I declared, practically speaking through clenched teeth. “Face it, Vida, you have no idea how much work Milo has put into that house, both inside and out.”

She shrugged but still didn’t look at me. “If you say so.”

I may have been talking through my teeth, but Vida was talking through her hat.
Something
was bothering her, and it wasn’t Milo’s house. I wasn’t giving up.

“I meant to ask,” I said, hoping I looked more pleasant than I felt, “how was the birthday party?”

Vida finally favored me with eye contact. “Very nice. Dippy adored the lovely cake I bought. Especially the frosting.”

I felt like saying that was Ed Bronsky’s favorite part, too. Instead, I asked if Roger was still volunteering at RestHaven.

Vida frowned slightly. “He’s taken some time off to mull his future.”

I kept a straight face. “Is he considering going back to college?”

“Among other options.” She looked away again. “Making life choices is so difficult for young people these days.”

In my opinion, life’s biggest choice for Roger was getting out of bed in the morning. “It took Adam a long time to figure it all out,” I said, standing up. “He was the same age as Roger
is now—twenty-four—when he realized he had a religious vocation.”

“Roger is barely twenty-three,” Vida said—and seemed to wince.

Or maybe I did, with a vision of Roger becoming a Bible-thumping preacher. “He’ll find … something,” I said before heading back to my office.

After finishing the doughnut and drinking most of my coffee, I headed out to assume Mitch’s duties at the sheriff’s office. The sun was rising over Cowboy Mountain, to the east. I could hear a freight train whistling as it approached town from the other direction. Front Street was doing its best imitation of a morning rush hour. I counted ten cars, four trucks, and a bicyclist in the little over a block between the
Advocate
and the sheriff’s headquarters.

When I arrived, the receptionist, Lori Cobb, was seated in place behind the curving mahogany counter. The taciturn Dwight Gould looked as if he was about to go off on patrol. Dustin Fong wore an unusually gloomy expression. Even the usually cheery Lori seemed to droop in her chair, though she did attempt a weak smile.

“Hi,” she said in a wispy voice. “Do you want to see the sheriff?”

“Not really,” I replied. “Mitch will be late today, so I’m checking the log.” I glanced at Milo’s closed door. “Is the boss incommunicado?”

Dwight walked out of the office without saying a word. Lori and Dustin exchanged quick looks. The deputy spoke first: “Go ahead. He’ll probably talk to you.”

I took a deep breath, entering through the swinging half door and walking purposefully into the sheriff’s lair. Milo was doing some paperwork. As I closed the door behind me, he looked up.

“If you’ve got a problem, save it for after hours,” he growled.

“My only problem is that Mitch isn’t at work today,” I said, sitting down in one of his visitor chairs. “I gather you’re the one with a problem. Do you want to tell your wife, or is it a state secret?”

Milo expelled a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. “Sam Heppner’s taken off.”

I stared at the sheriff. “What do you mean?”

“He’s gone.” Milo took out his Marlboro Lights and offered me the pack. Like a fool, I took one and let him light it for me before he spoke again. “Sam rarely takes vacation, unless it’s for a fishing or hunting trip. Yesterday he called in sick. He phoned this morning right after I got here to say he needed some time for himself. I was kind of puzzled, but I said go ahead. I asked if he was still sick. He said no.” Milo paused to sip from the Seahawks mug Tanya had given him for his March birthday.

“Where
is
Tanya?” I asked, realizing she hadn’t been out front.

“Still holding Deanna’s hand, I guess.” He made a dismissive gesture. “That’s the least of my worries. Heppner said he didn’t know when—or if—he’d be back and hung up on me. I had Lori try to call him, but he didn’t answer. I checked in with his sister in Sultan. She hasn’t talked to him for two weeks. Mullins had just come off patrol, but I told him to go out to Sam’s place on River Road and see if he was there. He wasn’t. His Jeep was gone, too. By the way, this doesn’t go public. I don’t want would-be perps finding out we’re shorthanded.” Milo paused to puff on his cigarette. “If anybody asks, Sam’s taking some vacation time.”

“Has he been acting any weirder than he usually does?”

Milo shook his head. “Not that I could tell. Face it, he’s grim by nature. I’ll admit that over the years, he’s gone deeper into his shell. Looking back to Monday, I don’t remember him saying much of anything the last couple of hours before he went off duty. I didn’t think more about it, especially when he called in sick the next day.” Again, he paused to sip coffee and take another puff on his cigarette.

“You’re right,” I said. “When I first knew Sam, he was at least civil. Even Mitch has noticed how surly he is.”

“Sam knows better than to give me any lip.” Milo put out his cigarette. “This is all wrong. I don’t like it. He’s an odd duck, but he’s steady. Frankly, I wonder if he’s gone ’round the bend. The only thing I know for sure is that he’s gone.”

I didn’t know what to say. I noticed I’d let my cigarette burn down in the ashtray. Just as well. “Does Sam have
any
friends?”

“Not that I know of.” Milo took another drink of coffee and pushed the mug aside. “I asked his sister, Ruth, about that. She kind of brushed me off, saying I ought to know Sam didn’t socialize much. No kidding.”

“Are you going to search his house?”

Milo leaned his elbows on the desk. “It crossed my mind. But hell, if Sam’s just in some kind of temporary funk and finds out we’ve been poking around in his private life, I wouldn’t blame him for getting really pissed off and quitting. I might do the same thing in his place.”

I didn’t speak right away. “What’s wrong with everybody? Vida’s being a pain again and Mitch took Brenda to the doctor’s this morning. What ever happened to
normal
?”

Milo smiled wryly. “Doe Jamison swears it’s the lack of serious rain. The drizzle we’ve had off and on doesn’t get down to our roots. I won’t argue with her. Being part Muckleshoot, her tribal roots go a hell of a lot deeper than the rest of us. I
asked if she could do a rain dance. Luckily, she laughed. I thought she might slug me instead. Doe’s one tough mama. I wish I had another one like her, but I can’t afford it.”

“Maybe,” I suggested, not without irony, “after the
Advocate
comes out today and everybody reads what Fuzzy and I have to say about reorganizing the county, people will be clamoring for change.”

“Right.” Milo sat back, arms folded. “Go away. I have to work.”

I got out of the chair. “No official ID on your corpse?”

“Nope.”

“Body still at the SnoCo lab in Everett?”

“Yep. Now we wait. As usual.”

I left my husband in peace and almost forgot to check the log. Two minor vandalisms of private property, bear sighting not far from the ranger station, stolen car from Ptarmigan Tract, minor collision of a Ford pickup and a Honda Civic at the intersection of Spark Plug and the Icicle Creek Roads’ intersection by First Hill—no injuries. In short, there was nothing startling—such as a missing sheriff’s deputy.

A
S
I
WALKED BACK TO THE OFFICE, IT DAWNED ON ME THAT
Vida hadn’t made any inquiries about the dead man. That wasn’t like her. No one in Skykomish County had a more rampant curiosity than my House & Home editor.

To test her, I stopped by her desk. “No word on the corpse,” I said.

Vida looked up from a news release she’d been perusing. “I believe he’s not a local.” She turned back to her reading.

Irked, I went into my office. Wednesdays were usually down time that I used for planning the next issue while waiting for the paper to hit the streets and mailboxes. Having editorialized the past two months to pave the way for the mayor’s restructuring plan, a follow-up would be due next week. But that was on hold until I got reader response.

There was nothing I could do about the dead body. More waiting, in this case for Milo and Yakima’s law enforcement personnel.

But I could tackle the runaways. There was something about having two girls run off within such a short time that bothered me. Journalists get hunches, and I’d had my share. I decided to take a chance that my latest hunch was worth pursuing.

New SkyCo phone directories had been distributed the first
week of April. I looked up the Ellisons’ listing. Charles and Janice Ellison lived up on the Icicle Creek Road, not far from the ranger station. I dialed their number. A young female voice answered on the second ring.

“Samantha?” I said.

“No,” the voice replied. “She’s not here. Who’s this?”

“Emma Lord, from the
Advocate
. You are …?” I let the query dangle.

“Chelsea. Did you want to talk to my parents? They aren’t here.”

“That’s okay,” I replied. “I’m doing some background for an article about high school students. What grade are you in, Chelsea?”

“I’m a sophomore,” she replied. “Is Samantha there?”

“No.”

“What grade is she in?”

There was a long pause. “Well … she’d be a senior.”

“I’m sorry. Do you mean she dropped out of school?”

“Um … kind of. I mean, she … moved.”

“Samantha left Alpine?”

A shorter pause. “Yes. She went somewhere with her boyfriend.”

I thought fast. “That’s fascinating,” I said. “In fact, it’s exactly the sort of information I can use in my article. I want to focus on how today’s teenagers have more choices with what they can do with their lives. It’s all rooted so deeply in technology,” I asserted, wondering when my nose would start growing like Pinocchio’s. “You know, the unlimited access they have to family and friends, no matter where they are. Have you got a phone number or an email address for your sister? I’d love to talk to her.”

“Ah … no. Sammy calls here every week, but she uses a pay phone.”

So much for the technology angle. I was undaunted, however, if only because Samantha hadn’t gone the high-tech route. “I’m even more curious about that,” I said in my friendliest tone. “Your sister must be one of the few teens I know who isn’t glued to a cellphone.”

“I guess she lost hers,” Chelsea said vaguely. “Hey, I have to go. My brother’s gone outside and I can’t see where he is. ’Bye.”

To my surprise, Vida was coming toward me. “What,” she asked, “was that all about?”

Relieved that she was at least being civil, I unloaded on her after she sat down in one of my visitor chairs. I concluded by asking if she’d interviewed the Ellisons when they’d moved to Alpine last fall.

For once, she looked stumped. “I
think
I did,” she said, frowning. “In October, which you may recall was a hectic time for me.” Her admission was strained.

“I know,” I said, hoping to sound sympathetic about her reference to the trailer park disaster that had temporarily derailed Vida’s delusions of Roger as the ideal law-abiding grandson. “Do you recall mentioning the Ellisons at all?”

“Yes,” she replied reluctantly, “but only in a monthly wrap-up.”

I shrugged. “No big deal, except, as you might have heard me on the phone, their daughter Samantha was reported as a runaway but later contacted her parents. Now that the Johnson girl is missing, my curiosity’s piqued. Frankly, the younger Ellison daughter didn’t do much to reassure me about her sister’s well-being.”

Vida shifted from chagrin to curiosity. “How so?”

I went back over the conversation. “Samantha’s still a minor. I’m wondering who the boyfriend is. Maybe it’s time you called on the parents and did a bigger story about why they moved to Alpine.”

Vida nodded. “Very wise of them to settle here, of course. The one thing I do recall from a very brief phone conversation with Mrs. Ellison was that her husband had been hired by the railroad. She was hoping to get work in town as an LPN. I assume both parents aren’t home now?”

“That’s right. There’s a younger brother, too.” I handed her the phone number I’d written down on a Post-it note. “Maybe you could call them this evening?”

“Of course,” she agreed. “There’s a potluck at the Presbyterian church, but I’ll do it after I get home. We never stay late. I made a sausage casserole that sounds very enticing. It came out of my file.”

Vida might have added the file—or made the dish
with
a file. Her talent for cooking ended with “Face the stove.”

“By the way,” I said as Vida appeared to be getting out of the chair, “Tanya stopped by last night with the Johnson girl’s older sister, now Deanna Engstrom. Do you know the mother? Her current married name is Moro.” For the sake of Vida’s feelings, I avoided mentioning that she lived in the trailer park. “She’s Roy Everson’s sister.”

“Yes,” Vida murmured, “so she is. I’d forgotten that Wanda made an unfortunate second marriage. When they were young, my eldest daughter, Meg, and Wanda were rather close.” She paused, looking thoughtful. “My, my—it’s no wonder you’re following up on the Ellison girl. I do see a pattern, faint as it is. I can’t recall any runaways reported for some time. Before you arrived, when logging had been curtailed and so many families were devastated by the loss of work, there was quite a rash of runaway teens. Some came back, some never did. Very sad.”

“Alpine was still trying to recover when I got here,” I reminded Vida. “Any chance you might pay Wanda a call?”

Vida stood up. “Well … I’ll think on that.” She exited my office.

At least I’d distracted her from whatever was on her mind. Vida used everything short of waterboarding to elicit information from other people, but when it came to her own life, she was agonizingly discreet.