Alpine Hero (35 page)

Jack and I regarded Vida with perplexed expressions. “What about Will Stuart?” I asked.

Vida tapped her tortoiseshell frames. “His eyes, of course. He couldn’t see well because he hadn’t picked up his new glasses at the time that Honoria and Trevor were in the store. Even if he had been able to see properly, people can disappear in those aisles.”

I remembered the elderly man who had been cruising the medical aids while I quizzed Will. The old guy had definitely been out of sight for part of the time. “So what did Trevor do? Sneak out the back?”

“Of course. He slipped into the rear corridor which led to the salon,” Vida explained, her voice growing calm. “When we visited Honoria and her family in Startup, she mentioned that she’d had an earlier problem with her wheelchair. Then another, ‘a few days’ later, as she put it. That meant she had already taken the chair in to Will, while her relatives were visiting. She also said that Kay hadn’t yet seen Alpine, implying that Trevor had. I suspect he wandered around then, while Will was tinkering with Honoria’s chair. He must have learned that the back way led into the salon. I don’t suppose it meant much to him then, but later, when Faye took Honoria’s appointment, he planned the murder. No doubt he had the knife hidden in his jacket. All he needed was the towel, to keep the blood off his clothes.”

“What towel?” I demanded.

Vida was trying not to look smug, but was failing, badly. “The towel from the back of Honoria’s temporary chair. I should have guessed—I was sitting on the
answer. My beaded backrests at work and in the car, you see. So comfortable. Will’s such an old fussbudget, he rambled on about trying to give Honoria the proper support for her back. What could he use but a towel to pad her chair? He’s too cheap to hand out blankets.”

I groaned; Jack laughed.

“So what happened to the purse and knife?” Jack inquired.

“You and the sheriff ought to know,” Vida retorted. “If you ever finish searching the garbage, I’m sure you’ll find it in the trash that was hauled out of here. Trevor was carrying a shopping bag when he came into
The Advocate
after the murder. I suspect he had had the purse in it, with the knife inside. While he and Honoria were calling on Milo, Trevor simply dumped it into one of your bins and let the county do its job.” Vida’s eyes slid in my direction. “But you already guessed as much, didn’t you, Emma?”

I nodded. “It took me a while. I began to realize what that empty shopping bag meant when I was watching the train go by this afternoon. I always wonder why they haul empty freight cars—it seems such a waste. But of course there’s a reason. Then, subconsciously, I remembered the train whistling while Trevor and Honoria were in the office. The two thoughts merged just about the time I got to Honoria’s house in Startup. Trevor could only be carrying that shopping bag if he’d had something in it. But whatever it was wasn’t there anymore. Since he’d gone from Alpine Medical Supply to the sheriff’s, it dawned on me that he must have been hiding the knife and purse in the bag.”

“Wow.” Jack rubbed at his dimpled chin. “It’s a good thing we don’t need that stuff anymore. The perp is dead.”

“So’s Dodger,” I murmured. “I’m thinking that Trevor killed the cat and mailed it to the Marshalls.”

Jack was now looking bewildered, but Vida was already nodding in agreement. “Exactly,” she said. “He was cunning, in a childlike way. If what Billy tells me is true, the poor wretched fellow never grew up. He remained the dependent little brother all his life. It’s sad, really.” Vida paused, as if in memory of Trevor’s twisted life.

“He knew that Toby Popp was courting his sister. No, no,” Vida interrupted herself as she saw the question on my face, “I’ve no idea if Honoria was the woman who broke Toby’s heart before he married Jane Marshall. That doesn’t matter now, it’s just another side issue. As I was saying, Trevor knew about Toby, and no doubt Honoria told her brother that her wealthy swain’s former family was living in Alpine. It would spread suspicion around to mail the dead cat to the Marshalls. It was also the cruel kind of prank that a perverted, adolescent mind would invent. Trevor must have known that Honoria’s original intention was to come to the salon to talk with Laurie. I’m guessing, but I think Honoria was acting as an intermediary between Toby and the Marshall women. If Honoria actually married Toby, she wouldn’t want hard feelings. Imagine the demands Faye would have made if Honoria’s husband was a billionaire! Worse yet—from Trevor’s point of view—what if Honoria was driven to marry Toby to keep up with the blackmail payments? Trevor’s rival for his sister’s affections would be an extremely rich and powerful man.”

“Martin Marshall,” I said suddenly, then smiled wryly at Vida. “He called Laurie about Honoria’s appointment. That’s why Laurie pretended to be even dopier than usual. Stella knew she’d received a call, so Laurie couldn’t deny it completely. But her stepfather must have
wanted to talk to Honoria, probably to see if she could stop Toby from harassing the family.”

Vida nodded. “I think so. Martin had probably seen Honoria arrive in town in her special car. There was work being done on those broken pipes right by the Clemans Building and City Hall. The job must have required Martin to be on hand with his heavy equipment, which is when he saw Honoria and the rest of them pull in. But Honoria didn’t go into the salon, so he called Laurie to find out what had happened. Later, after this Faye person was killed, Laurie didn’t want her stepfather implicated in any way, so she acted as if she didn’t know who called. Of course Martin’s concern had nothing to do with the crime. He was disturbed only about Toby.”

“Another goofball,” Jack said under his breath.

Vida ignored him. “By the way, I think I know what Toby meant in that ad he tried to place.”

I was perplexed. “What was it?”

Vida shot me a reproachful look. “We both saw it. ‘One down, one to go.’ It probably referred to the foundations at Index. Don’t you recall that the main house had been poured and framed, and that the secondary building was in progress? Toby may have been trying to get Laurie to move in with him. Or maybe he was merely bragging.”

“You know, Vida,” I said with asperity, “you might have told me all of this earlier. My ideas were way behind yours. You cut me off from your theories and conjectures. That’s cheating.”

Vida’s expression was innocent. “But it’s my story.”

“You almost got me killed!” Forgetting my weariness, I grew angry. For the past week Vida had let me wander aimlessly through a morass of guesswork and side issues—Toby Popp’s eccentricities, the Marshalls’ fears, Becca’s rocky romance with Eric Forbes, a dead cat in a
plain brown wrapper. Except for Dodger, none of those things had anything to do with the murder. If I’d had any inkling that Trevor was the killer, I’d never have gone to Startup.

Or would I? Of course I would. Subconsciously, I had known who the killer was as soon as I saw the fading lights of the Burlington Northern caboose. But I hadn’t foreseen the danger. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that Trevor would fly back from Pacific Grove. I’d probably have gone right ahead and done what I did, maybe hoping to find some sort of evidence that would clinch the case for Milo.

“You should have told Milo,” I muttered.

Vida glanced at the deputy. “He wouldn’t have listened, would he, Jack? There was no evidence. I kept waiting for you people to have someone find the purse and the knife in the garbage.”

“That’s easier said than done,” Jack admitted. “Some of that stuff from the Monday pickup was probably destroyed before Dodge gave the order.”

“I must go,” Vida announced, getting to her feet. “I had to rush over here after Billy called. I haven’t yet cleared the table from my company.”

After Vida closed the door behind her, Jack gave me a bemused look. “She’s something else, huh?”

I nodded. “She sure is. Thank God.”

Jack turned his attention back to the form he’d been filling out, but before he could phrase the next question, he heaved a big sigh. “I feel bad about the boss. Not just him having to kill Whitman, but this whole deal with his girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend, I should say. I never liked her much, but then I never knew her.”

“None of us did,” I said quietly. “Not even Milo.”

“Maybe she’ll marry this Popp dude,” Jack mused. “He sounds pretty goofy, too. Arboria or Honoria or
whatever her name is must like them that way. She sure stuck up for that crummy brother of hers.”

“They had a very unusual bond.” The paper cup was empty; I leaned down to put it in Milo’s wastebasket. “Growing up, they must have felt as if the whole world was against them. Father figure in, father figure out. Mother absorbed in her matrimonial pursuits. I wonder if the other sister, Cassandra, felt the same way that Honoria and Trevor did, or if she cut herself out of the family circle early on.”

“Talk about dysfunctional.” Jack shook his head. “I thought my relatives were weird. I guess I won’t say anything the next time my dad seals himself in the garage, or my sister cracks raw eggs on her head.”

We returned to the paperwork. I kept expecting Milo to come into the office. He never did, and eventually, I headed home and went to bed. Alone.

Ginny Burmeister Erlandson had many souvenirs, dozens of snapshots, and endless anecdotes about her Hawaiian honeymoon. The rest of us listened patiently for the first twenty minutes on Monday morning, but then the phones began to ring, and visitors started to descend upon
The Advocate.
We put on our work faces and got down to business.

Carla caused the day’s first disruption. “You promised to open the back shop, Emma. I don’t see any sign of that happening. Now that Ginny’s back, I’ve got plenty of time to spare.”

Across my desk, Carla’s olive skin was slightly flushed. She was right. I’d kept the back shop on the back burner.

“I’ll call in a consultant this week,” I vowed, looking up from Leo’s new concept for Itsa Bitsa Pizza’s weekly ad. “Whoever it is will be able to tell us what we’ll need,
what we can do, and how much profit we can expect. Then we can set some realistic deadlines. How does that sound?”

Judging from Carla’s sullen expression, it sounded dubious. But she gave a nod of assent. “I’ll check with you Wednesday for a progress report.” Her words conveyed more threat than reminder.

By four o’clock, Vida had finished three murder-related stories. The first was an overview of the case; the second was a feature, giving thumbnail sketches of the Whitmans, while trying to skirt legal entanglements. The third was her interview with me. Like all of Vida’s other straight news, it required a firm editorial hand to rid the prose of its House & Home style.

Emma Lord,
Alpine Advocate
editor and publisher, headed for Monroe Sunday to purchase a few necessities for her upcoming trip to Arizona. Ms. Lord plans to visit her brother, Ben Lord, who is a Catholic priest in Tuba City, and her son, Adam Lord, a student at Arizona State University. While en route down Highway 2, Ms. Lord stopped off at the home of Honoria Whitman, the well-known potteress, whose most recent award was the coveted …

I had my work cut out for me.

Just off the Money Creek Campground Road the Skykomish River rushes over big boulders where the steelhead rest before continuing upstream. The bank is littered with fallen trees, their roots sticking out of the water like skeletal remains. In winter, the river is often high and a murky white. It surges over the gravel bar, concealing the boulders and much of the underbrush that is caught on the bottom. But the experienced fisherman
knows where the prey lurks, searching out the patches of slower water and working the hole carefully and quietly.

I’m not myself at seven
A.M.
, and my footgear isn’t suited for scrambling along snow-covered riverbanks. But Jack Mullins told me that if I wanted to find the sheriff, I’d better look for him by the big cedar snag near the campground. Milo was taking some time off after closing the Whitman case. It was normal, Jack said, that an officer who had fatally shot a civilian would go on leave.

The sun was up when I reached the straight stretch of river about a hundred yards from Money Creek. I could see Milo standing knee-deep in the current, his back turned to me. At the river’s edge, I found a reasonably flat rock, brushed off an accumulation of new snow, and sat down. I knew better than to shout at the sheriff; any unusual noise could spook the fish.

After about five minutes and as many casts, Milo turned just enough to see me. Under the bill of his hunting cap, he seemed to look puzzled. I shook my head and held up a hand, indicating that my presence wasn’t urgent. I might not be a steelheader, but I knew the drill. Milo had to fish out the hole before he could leave the river. I guessed that he’d arrived around five, at first light.

It was chilly, but the snow had stopped the previous night. There was some wind, which felt raw. The air smelled of damp and cold. Icicles formed on the bank upstream that overhung the river. Behind me a crow called out from the evergreens, its cry urgent and shrill. I waited.

Milo waded with the current, now abreast of the big cedar snag. He cast with great care, never taking his eyes off the line. I tucked my hands up into the sleeves of my duffel coat. And waited.

Ten minutes must have passed. I could see the sun, a pale globe trying to break through the gray clouds. Milo worked the hole deliberately, cautiously, trying not to get hung up in the network of branches that lay hidden under the tumbling water.

The river rushed by me, roaring in my ears. I respected its power, its danger, its unpredictability. Next year, this entire section of the Sky might be completely changed. A sudden torrent could take out the snags, wash away the banks, send new boulders hurtling through the chute. I settled my hood closer around my ears. And waited.

Milo had something on his line. He moved the graphite rod this way and that, then jiggled it experimentally. I couldn’t hear him swear over the rush of the river, but I could tell he was angry. It was a snag, not a fish. With a sudden jerk, he freed the hook. It fluttered bare, the cluster of salmon eggs lost among the grasping branches. Milo reeled in and headed for dry land.