The Alpine Yeoman (6 page)

“We can collect them,” Dan offered. “We like to help Father Den out as much as we can. He’s always on overload.”

“That’s really kind of you,” I said. The Bourgettes’ good works and good mood were having a salutary effect on me. “Your family does so much for St. Mildred’s. I feel like a piker.”

John shook his head. “You’re the voice of the parish in the paper. You don’t ever talk much about religion, but everybody knows you bring a Catholic viewpoint to whatever you write.”

“Maybe,” I conjectured, “in a mostly Protestant town with a Lutheran majority, it’s not always a good thing. Readers aren’t fond of spending money on civic projects. Thrift should be their middle names.”

Dan shrugged. “That doesn’t matter. Well—it does, as far as levies and bond issues are concerned, but it makes the Catholic minority feel better. We all know you’re on our side.”

“I’m not supposed to take sides,” I said. “I mean, except in my editorials. What are you doing today?”

“More log removal,” John replied. “We should finish off the back and the east side of the house today. Tomorrow we’ll do the carport side and of course the logs in the front will stay put. We might be able to start framing up the double garage, too.”

“Great,” I said, sounding a bit wispy. I still couldn’t quite get my head around how my little log cabin seemed to be turning into a mini-mansion. “Be careful,” I added lamely before going back inside.

I was still musing over the remodel during the five-minute drive to the office. Stopping for the arterial at Fourth and Front, I looked down the street to the sheriff’s headquarters. I couldn’t see if Milo’s black Yukon was parked there or not. Unlike his previous vehicle, the red Grand Cherokee, its replacement wasn’t as easy to spot.

Kip, Leo, and Amanda were all in place—that place being the table where the coffee urn was still perking. “Who,” I asked, noting that the goodies tray was empty, “has the bakery run?”

“Vida,” Amanda replied. “She should be here any minute.”

“Okay,” I said. “Is everybody set for deadline day?”

Kip frowned. “I have to update a couple of programs, but it shouldn’t take long. I hope.”

I didn’t ask for details. When it came to high tech, I was low Emma.

“The Safeway ad won’t be in until this afternoon,” Leo said. “They’ve got some technical problems of their own.”

I nodded and looked at Amanda. “You’re all set with the classifieds?”

“Yes, unless we get some last-minute ones. Have you heard anything more about that body? Walt and the rest of the people at the fish hatchery are really curious.”

“So am I,” I said. “If you think the sheriff gave me any late-breaking bulletins, think again.”

Mitch made his entrance just as the coffee urn’s red light came on. He gazed longingly at the empty tray. For such a skinny guy, he was able to consume large quantities of rich pastry without gaining an ounce. “Did the Upper Crust burn down?” he asked in a plaintive voice.

“Vida’s turn,” Leo said. “Maybe she’s catching up on gossip for her ‘Scene Around Town’ column.”

“Oh.” Mitch waited for Amanda and Kip to fill their coffee mugs. “Brenda wasn’t feeling very well this morning, so I didn’t get breakfast. I suppose the dead guy in the river is our lead or will the mayor’s interview still be the big story?”

“Fuzzy wins,” I said. “The body isn’t one of our own.”

Mitch looked faintly dismayed. He still hadn’t grasped small-town priorities. “Your call,” he murmured, taking Leo’s place at the coffee urn.

Vida showed up as I finished filling my own mug. She looked unusually pleased with herself, especially for someone who was wearing a yellow duck on top of her pillbox. The hat was new to me, and my surprise—more like dismay—must have shown.

“Well?” she said, giving me her gimlet eye. “Have you never seen a duck before?”

“Not that duck,” I admitted.

“Good thing it’s not hunting season, Duchess,” Leo said, using the nickname Vida claimed to hate. “You already got shot in the line of duty.”

“So did you, Leo,” she retorted. “My daughter Amy found this hat at a rummage sale in Sultan. She thought it was quite amusing. I’m wearing it to dinner tonight with her and the rest of the family.”

“You have to use it in ‘Scene,’ ” Leo asserted. “Sure, I know we don’t usually put staff into the column, but you don’t have to name names.”

“I most certainly will not use my duck as an item,” Vida declared, setting out Danish pastries, cinnamon twists, and cupcakes. “However, I need at least two more items for my column.”

“Could we use our new roof?” Kip asked. “I mean, it’s not personal, but we’d do it for any other business in town.”

“Yes,” I said, for once beating Vida to the punch. “It
is
news.”

“Very well,” she agreed. “Who else has something?”

I, as often is the case, was blank. Leo snapped his fingers. “Scooter Hutchins shaved his goatee.”

“Thank goodness!” Vida exclaimed. “He looked absurd. Is he running an ad for his home decor business this week?”

Leo nodded. “Bigger than usual. He’s got a sale on flooring.”

“Excellent,” Vida said, finishing her duties with the pastry tray.

I grabbed a cinnamon twist and headed for my office. All was quiet this morning. In my usual mental fog, I hadn’t noticed how our new roof looked when I’d driven down Fourth
Street. I’d once again flunked my role as a trained observer. Fifteen minutes later, I observed something I didn’t want to see headed for my office.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Ed Bronsky called out, barging through my door and plunking his rotund self in one of my visitor chairs. “Do I have news or what?”

“What do you consider news?” I inquired, noticing that he’d snatched up three cupcakes en route.

Ed licked chocolate frosting off one of the cupcakes before replying. “Remember back in January when you and Dodge were making headlines by almost getting yourselves killed?”

“Yes, I vaguely recall the incident,” I said with a straight face.

“Right.” My former ad manager paused to flick his tongue over some frosting residue on his upper lip. “You know how my autobiography was made into a Japanese cartoon called
Mr. Pig
. It was never shown over here, but it dawned on me that with all my media experience, why not weave your story into the original, only using Shirley and me as you and Dodge. How’s that for an idea?” He wiggled his eyebrows at me.

There are times when I truly don’t know how to respond to Ed short of pulling out my hair by the roots and screaming hysterically. This was one of them. All I could say was “Go on,” while trying not to slide out of my chair and under the desk.

Ed chuckled, spewing some of the cupcake crumbs onto my computer. “I can see you’re stunned by the idea, but I can’t help myself. These things just come to me from nowhere.”

Could you please send them back?
I thought. In the five years Ed had worked for me, the only idea he’d ever had was to discourage local merchants from advertising. Putting together ads was
work
, a four-letter word Ed found far more
offensive than any vulgarity. Having frittered away his sizable inheritance and been forced to sell his ersatz villa to RestHaven, he was still trying to figure out ways to make money from his self-published autobiography,
Mr. Ed
.

“…  a pig with a badge,” Ed was saying, though I’d missed what had come before. “But the Smokey the Bear hats Dodge and his deputies wear wouldn’t look right. Do you think the sheriff would be offended?”

“In fact,” I replied, “Milo has ordered a different kind of hat for himself and the deputies. They should be arriving in another week or two. He’s been planning to do that for quite a while.”

“Hmm.” Ed rubbed two of his three chins. “What are they like?”

“They’re similar to Australian hats,” I said, for want of a better description. Just being in Ed’s presence turned my brain into goo resembling cupcake frosting. “The crown isn’t as high. As you know, Milo’s kind of tall.”

“Right.” Ed frowned. “I don’t know how Sheriff Pig would look in a hat like that. It’s the ears, you see.”

My phone rang. “Oh, darn,” I said, reaching for the receiver. “Can we talk about this later? I’m expecting an important call.”

“That’s okay, I can wait.”

I tried to control my temper and said hello in what I hoped was an excited tone.

“Is your office on fire?” my brother, Ben, asked in his crackling voice.

“Yes, yes, of course it is!” I replied. “Let me take notes. Or would you rather read me those statements? It doesn’t matter how many pages you’ve got. I don’t want to leave out anything.”

Even Ed could take that broad of a hint. “Maybe I should
come back later,” he murmured, still clutching the last cupcake as he heaved himself out of the chair.

“Holy crap,” Ben said, “are you being held hostage? Or has Dodge driven you to despair?”

I watched Ed waddle out through the newsroom. “Ed,” I replied. “Need I say more?”

“Please don’t,” my brother begged. “Even Dennis Kelly, who has the patience of a saint, sometimes wishes Bronsky would defect to another religion. What’s Ed up to now or dare I ask?”

“Don’t,” I said. “There are some things that shouldn’t be conveyed by telephone. How are things in El Paso?”

“As I told you, it’s not what I expected,” Ben replied. “It’s
huge
, especially when you combine it with Juárez, across the Rio Grande. There’s a mountain range on this side and another one in Mexico. The altitude here is higher than Alpine. I thought I’d be hanging out at the border or some damned thing, but mostly I’m helping new immigrants get settled. It’s a far cry from the Mississippi delta and the Native American reservations around Tuba City.”

“Do you like it?”

“I think so. You know I wanted to be in a city again after spending so much of my priesthood on rural assignments. But the past couple of years filling in for priests in big cities cured me of that. Still, this is a whole different culture in all sorts of ways. And would you believe El Paso is one of the safest big cities in the country? Hell, it may be safer than Alpine.”

“You could be right,” I admitted. “Dwight Gould found a body in the Sky late yesterday afternoon.”

“Probably easier to do than catch a fish,” Ben murmured. “Anybody I know?”

“Not a local,” I said. “A Hispanic male from east of the mountains.”

“Maybe Catholic. Got a name so I can offer up a Mass for him?”

“Dodge isn’t releasing any ID until next of kin are notified.”

“Okay. I’ll do a
folano benecito
, as we call it in Spanish. That’s ‘blessed stranger’ to you. God knows who the guy is, even if I don’t. Say—what’s up with the annulment process?”

Having been married the first time in a Protestant church, my husband had to go through the process of having his union with Tricia annulled. Then we could have a Catholic ceremony or at least have our marriage blessed by a priest. That meant a lot to me, even if Milo didn’t give a hoot. He’d been raised as a Congregationalist, but his real religion was fishing. It gave him a sense of peace as well as time for introspection. If, he’d told me, hanging out with fishermen was good enough for Jesus, it was good enough for him.

“Milo looked through the papers, but he’s been busy. The process is … daunting. Don’t worry. You know how he is. The sheriff always takes his time, though once he gets onto something, he’s thorough.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Ben paused. “How are you two doing otherwise?”

“Fine, really. Tanya’s still hovering, but that’s okay. She’s dating Bill Blatt.”

“Vida’s nephew? Oh, my God! Don’t tell me that eventually even
you
are going to end up related to Vida in some weird Alpine way?”

“I never thought of that,” I said. “She’s still mad at Milo—and Rosemary Bourgette and Judge Proxmire.”

“Roger, right?” Ben didn’t wait for an answer. “They don’t teach forgiveness at the Presbyterian church? I expect better of them. And of Vida. Hey—got to go. Jorge Valdez and his six kids just showed up. Peace, Sluggly.”

“Same to you, Stench,” I said, retaliating with my childhood nickname for him.

I’d no sooner hung up when I saw Mitch come into the newsroom. I went out to meet him. “Anything new at the sheriff’s office?” I asked, empty coffee mug in hand.

“If you mean an ID on the body, no, not yet,” Mitch replied, shedding his black raincoat. “Otherwise, it’s the usual. The sports car driver is still listed in critical condition at the hospital in Monroe. Two other minor accidents in town, the usual traffic violations, one reported prowler up on First Hill, and shoplifters at both Safeway and Grocery Basket. Oh—Dodge is shorthanded. Heppner called in sick.”

I was surprised. “Heppner is never sick. He’s too ornery. No germ would dare land on his prickly hide.”

“He
is
human,” Mitch said, beating me to the coffee urn. “Gee, who ate all the cupcakes?”

“Ed Bronsky,” I informed him. “You’re lucky he left a Danish and a couple of cinnamon twists.”

“He seems like a real character,” Mitch said, picking up one of the twists. “Was he really such a bad advertising guy?”

“In a word, yes. By the way, what’s wrong with Sam?”

Mitch shrugged. “I didn’t ask. A virus, probably.”

“I suppose even Sam could succumb to one of those.”

I filled my mug and returned to my office. Deputy Heppner had never been a warm and fuzzy guy. Over the years, he’d become even more irascible. If he had caught a virus, he’d get over it on his own. That’s the way he lived.

It didn’t occur to me that it was also the way he could die.

S
HORTLY BEFORE NOON
, I
CALLED THE SHERIFF.
“I’
M AWARE
you don’t realize this is our deadline day,” I began, “but I thought I’d remind you in case you’ve forgotten to give us the body’s name.”

“Nope,” he replied in an aggravatingly complacent tone. “Do you know how many people named Fernandez live in Wapato?”

“I think you just told me his name,” I said.

“You didn’t hear that. Besides, you’d never print only a last name and the address on his driver’s license is out of date.”