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Milo had the grace to look sheepish: “It's still a plausible scenario.”

“No, it's not,” I said, and then saw the disappointment in Milo's hazel eyes. Perhaps he'd taken my long silence for agreement. Trying not to flinch, I plunged ahead. “Look at this from another angle. Most of the local deaths caused by drinking don't benefit anybody. That may not be true with Ursula. She was rich. Who gets her money? She was jumping into what may be a really nasty situation at St. Mildred's. Who is sufficiently fanatical to want her out of the way? She had a history of making trouble. Who might have been seeking revenge? If ever there were motives to murder someone, it seems to me that Ursula Randall is pretty high on the list.”

“That's right, Emma,” Vida chimed in. “And that's not the half of it.”

I gave Vida a puzzled look. “Huh?”

“The classic triangle.” Vida nodded sapiently. “Ursula, Warren, and Francine.”

Milo and I both stared.

“Bullshit,” the sheriff scoffed.

“Rubbish,” I declared.

Our disdain had no effect on Vida. “As you will,” she said, snatching up her straw purse. “Come, Emma, we must go. Doubtless Milo has criminals to catch.” She stalked out of the office.

Milo was leaning across his desk, hissing at me. “Are you home tonight?”

“Sure. Want to come over?”

His answer was a thumbs-up gesture. I was still smiling when I joined Vida outside of the main entrance.

“You two,” she muttered in a tone of disapproval. “I just don't know.”

“Know what?” My voice had an edge to it.

Vida sighed, then marched to her car. “It's not a good match,” she declared after I had settled into the passenger seat. “It was inevitable, of course. But I simply don't understand how you and Milo … Oh, never mind. What I think isn't important.”

It wasn't. Or it shouldn't have been. But it really was. In the past six months Vida had never commented directly on my romance with the sheriff. It hadn't occurred to me that she might not approve.

“I don't get it,” I huffed. “You like me. You like Milo. What's wrong with liking us together?”

Vida's lips compressed as she steered the Buick up Front Street. “You're not suited for each other. You have very little in common. You enjoy classical music, movies, theatre, books. Milo fishes and reads gun magazines. What on earth do the two of you watch together on television?”

“Sports,” I answered promptly. “We both like sports. We've got tickets to a Mariner game with the A's.”

Vida sighed again. “I keep forgetting—you actually enjoy watching all those overgrown boys romping around in silly suits with various types of balls or pucks or other such missiles. But that's not enough on which to build a future.”

“It's enough for now.”

“Oh, dear!” Vida actually sounded despondent.

“Vida …” I paused, questioning the wisdom of having to defend my feelings. “Milo and I are very … comfortable with each other. We have more in common than you might think. Milo occasionally does enjoy a movie. I like some country-and-western music. We laugh at the same things. We can talk to each other. What's wrong with that?”

Vida was driving up Fourth Street, apparently taking me home. She didn't reply for a long time, not until she turned right on Fir. “It's not Milo himself. It's you. I truly don't believe you've ever gotten over Tommy.”

“Vida!” I was appalled. For reasons I'd never fathomed, Vida clung to a belief that Tom and I belonged together. A few years ago, when we had been reunited, I'd found her attitude touching. After I'd decided to cut Tom out of my life, her persistence was amusing. Now I was downright disgusted. “What would be the point? Tom is never going to leave Sandra, and even if he did, can you see him moving from San Francisco to Alpine?”

“He could commute,” Vida said doggedly.

I opened my mouth to argue that Tom owned a weekly-newspaper empire, all his family, business, and social ties were in the Bay Area, he was a city person through and through. But debate was pointless. Tom and I were finished; the only connection was our son. If Vida couldn't accept that, then I might as well shrug it off as one of her inexplicable blind spots.

“You're really convinced that Ursula was murdered, aren't you?” I finally said, changing the subject.

“Milo's divorced. He's a Protestant.” Vida pulled up in my driveway.

“Milo and I have never discussed marriage,” I replied testily. “Why are you so sure about Ursula?”

“Could Tommy get a—what do you call them?—an annulment?”

“I agree with you about the bottle. In fact, I think you're right about foul play.” I was forcing myself to sound reasonable.

“I've heard that if you have money, you can buy an annulment from the Vatican.”

Briefly closing my eyes, I let out a loud sigh. “That's not true. And I don't want to discuss it. Really, I don't.”

Vida stared through the windshield, which was now covered with a fair share of dead bugs. “That's very foolish. But I'll keep my own counsel. For now. Goodbye, Emma.”

I despised quarreling with Vida. However, her present mood was impossible to dent. I got out of the car and headed for my front door. It was only after I'd heard the Buick drive off that I realized my Jag was at her house. Running down the driveway, I waved my arms and yelled her name. But she had already turned onto Fourth.

It was too hot to walk all the way over to her house. There were more clouds moving in, which offered hope that the weather might cool off by late afternoon. Feeling tired and frustrated, I went inside. The phone was ringing.

The voice on the other end identified itself as belonging to Alicia Lowell. “Francine's daughter,” she clarified. “Do you know where my mother is?”

Briefly I was speechless. “No. Isn't she at the shop?” Francine's Fine Apparel was open on Saturdays from eleven until five. It was now three-twenty.

“The shop's closed,” Alicia said in a worried voice. “I'm at home—at Mother's, that is. I just got back from Snohomish.”

Francine and I attend the same church, we belong to the same bridge club, we're both members of the Chamber of Commerce. I like her, and I think she likes me, but we aren't close friends. I'm a customer and she's an advertiser. There is more mutual dependency than intimacy in our relationship. Consequently I was puzzled by Alicia's call.

“I tried Mrs. Runkel first,” Alicia said, as if she could read my mind. “But she didn't answer. Mother says Mrs. Runkel always knows everything about everybody. I thought she might be at your place.”

“You mean Mrs. Runkel? She just dropped me off. But I don't think she knows where your mother is.” I had carried the phone to the kitchen, where I took a Pepsi out of the fridge. “Have you called your father? Maybe she's helping him with the funeral arrangements.” Only an emergency would make Francine close the shop. Her ex-husband's plight could qualify.

“I don't speak to my father.” Alicia's voice had turned icy. “Who else would know where she might be?”

The first name that popped into my head was Roseanna Bayard. Over the years I'd gathered that the two women were good friends. “Try Roseanna at home. She doesn't usually work at the photography studio on weekends.”

Alicia thanked me and rang off. Sipping my Pepsi, I, too, began to worry about Francine. My thoughts were interrupted by Vida, calling to me through the screen door.

“Goodness!” she exclaimed, bursting into the living room. “How addled can we be? It isn't as if I knew Ursula particularly well, certainly not in recent years. But her death must have unhinged my brain. Do you want to get your car now?”

I stared at Vida. Apparently she had dismissed our discord over Tom and Milo. There was no trace of anger in her manner as she paced between the green sofa and the
stone fireplace, her eyes darting into every nook and cranny.

“That'd be fine,” I finally said, grateful to be on good terms again. “How about something to drink first?” I held out my can of Pepsi.

Vida doesn't care for soft drinks, but she said that ice water would do nicely. A minute later we were seated in the living room and I was telling her about Alicia's phone call. To my surprise, she evinced no concern.

“Maybe the power went out. You know how often that happens around here.” Vida calmly sipped her water.

Power failures, both massive and individual, were definitely not rare in Skykomish County. Sometimes the cause was lightning; often it was the wind; in winter, it was snow.

But the weather had been perfect, at least by some people's standards. “It just doesn't seem right,” I murmured.

“Unexpected company, in for the Labor Day weekend,” Vida declared. “The register broke. A rat got loose. Crazy Eights Neffel barricaded himself in the dressing room. Don't fuss so, Emma. Francine is very capable. Warren couldn't lose two wives in one weekend.”

“Ursula wasn't his wife—yet,” I reminded my House & Home editor. “Who was his second wife?”

Vida gave a small shrug. “Someone from Monroe. Warren was working in the sporting-goods store there at the time. I never knew her, except by name. They moved to Seattle. I don't believe it lasted very long. They divorced.”

The annulment issue popped into my head. How had Ursula and Warren gotten permission to marry in the Church when he had been divorced twice? But I didn't bring up the question for fear of having Vida start in again on my romantic situation. Instead I asked if Warren had left Francine for the other woman, or if they had already broken up by the time he met Wife Number Two.

“I'm not entirely sure,” Vida admitted. “Warren had been working for Harvey Adcock, but they didn't get on well. Warren took a job with a fishing-tackle store in Monroe. It was a bit of a commute, but he didn't mind. The next thing we heard”—as Vida spoke I had visions of Alpine's residents, ears attuned for any news that was whispered along Highway 2—”he was staying over now and then. Now, whether he quit Harvey's Hardware partly because he wanted to get away from Francine, I don't know. It might have been a kind of trial separation. When he married this other woman,
The Advocate
didn't run the story because the ceremony took place either in Monroe or Everett. I hadn't yet gone to work for the paper, and Mrs. DeBee wasn't much for reporting news that didn't fall in her lap.”

Over time, I had heard occasional oblique references to Vida's predecessor. I knew little about the woman then called the “society editor” except that by the time Vida was widowed, Mrs. DeBee was in her eighties, and unwell. Still, Vida had hinted that she hadn't retired gracefully.

“And Alicia?” I inquired, trying to keep my worry over Francine at bay. “She told me she doesn't speak to Warren.”

“That's true,” Vida said equably. “Alicia was eight or nine when Warren and Francine divorced. She and her father had been very close. Then he was gone. Francine got custody, of course, and while Warren had visitation rights, he didn't exercise them. I suppose it was because of the new wife. Perhaps she hoped to give him more children.”

I felt a breeze stir through the house. “Did she?”

“Not that I know of. Really, I don't think they were together more than four or five years. It's surprising that it took so long for Warren to find someone new.” She set her empty glass down on the coffee table. “Shall we? I'm
expecting Beth and her family for dinner. I believe I'll treat them at the ski lodge.”

Beth was Vida's eldest daughter. She and her husband and their children lived in Seattle. Somehow the idea of a visiting daughter recalled Alicia Lowell. “That's odd,” I said, grabbing my purse. “Alicia told me she'd just gotten back from Snohomish. But Francine said she was coming home last night.”

Vida was already at the door. “Perhaps she made a second trip. Snohomish isn't that far away.”

Vida was right. Some forty miles separated Alpine from the larger town on the Snohomish River. Maybe Alicia had more than one friend who lived there. Or she'd gone back to browse in the many antique shops. The Wells family's problems were none of my own.

Still, on the way back from Vida's, I took the long way home. Driving slowly down Front Street, I eyeballed Francine's Fine Apparel.

The sign on the door read
CLOSED.

Marisa Foxx wasn't home, so I left a message for her to call me at her convenience. The temperature was dropping as the clouds periodically blotted out the sun, but I decided to barbecue anyway. I had no idea when Milo would arrive, but I knew he'd be hungry. At six-thirty I phoned Father Den.

“I thought I'd catch you after five o'clock Mass,” I said. “Did you get a good voter turnout this evening?”

“So-so,” he replied. “We had a lot of tourists. And we won't count the ballots until after Mass tomorrow. In fact, we probably won't count them until Monday. Jake and Veronica and I should do it together, to make sure nobody cheats.” His usually ripe laugh was a trifle weak.

“Say,” I said as if the idea had just popped into my mind, “do you know who put the pressure on Everett to speed up Ursula's autopsy? Milo indicated it was somebody from the chancery.”

“It could have been anybody,” Father Den responded.

“I try to avoid the chancery. With any luck, they'll forget that St. Mildred's exists.”

In layman's terms, the chancery could be equated with corporate headquartersTLike an employee working in the field, parish priests often felt that farther was better. All of western Washington made up the Seattle Archdiocese's flock. If a parishioner in the city had a complaint, it was easy to pick up the phone and dial the chancery. Out in the boondocks, not only did Church officialdom seem remote, but voicing criticism by long distance cost money.

“Ursula must have had some influential friends,” I remarked. “Will you be one of the celebrants at the funeral Mass?”

“I doubt it,” Father Den replied. “I'm not sure who's in charge. I asked Warren, but he seems kind of vague. Besides, I still intend to go see my mother for a couple of days. Sister Mary Joan can handle a prayer service for the daily Mass goers. We only get about twenty during the week anyway.”

Maybe I imagined the faint note of reproach in Father Den's voice. I was not among the twenty faithful who attended Mass on weekdays. “I've got to ask you a tough question,” I said, anxious to change the subject. “This is strictly business. Do you have any reason to think Ursula's death was something other than an accident?”