The Alpine Nemesis (25 page)

“Ben,” I interrupted, “I may have a crisis looming. Ginny Erlandson won't go away, which means she needs me. Can I call you back tonight?”

“Only if you remember that I exist,” Ben retorted. “Anyway, I have to go, too. Even a priest can have the occasional fire to put out, and I see one approaching my humble abode in the person of Ronald Twoblades.”

“I'll call. I promise.” I hung up and turned to look at Ginny. “What is it? These are the regular bills, right?”

“Yes, but they're due tomorrow, the fifteenth. I need you to initial them so I can get them in the mail before the one o'clock pickup. I should have done it Friday, but I got busy with other things.”

“Oh,” I said, leafing through the invoices. “I'll do it right now.” Swiftly, I initialed the half-dozen bills and handed the sheaf back to Ginny.

“Thanks,” she said. “I'm sorry I interrupted your phone call.”

“Good,” I replied absently, then noticed Ginny's curious expression. “I mean, that's okay, it was a personal call. My brother.”

“Father Ben?” Ginny said. “He's a very nice man.” She leaned forward and smiled widely. “Oh, Emma, I'm so happy for you. Everybody is, even Leo, though he probably won't admit it.”

“Leo?” Come to think of it, Leo hadn't offered his congratulations. “Why not?”

Ginny shrugged, then lowered her voice. “I think he's jealous. Kip and Scott think so, too. I mean, the two of you have gone out sometimes, right?”

“It was never really a romance,” I protested. “We were just friends. We still are.”

“I may be wrong,” Ginny said, but she gave me a knowing little smile. “Thanks for the initials.”

“Sure,” I said, the little bee in my brain buzzing as it had a few moments ago when I was distracted. Initials. What was it about them that bothered me? Not my own. Then whose?

T C.—Scott had mentioned that if Tim Rafferty went by his initials, he'd be known as T C. Where had I heard those initials before? Did it matter?

I was sure that it did, but I couldn't figure out why.

B
Y THREE O'CLOCK
, I'd finally cranked out an adequate editorial. Somehow I managed to tie together Alpine's history, why we celebrated the summer solstice, the eternal struggle between good and evil, the timber industry, and how every community was a sum of its parts. I'd rambled a bit, made some awkward transitions, and was far too fulsome, but at least the damned thing was finished. My chances for a Pulitzer Prize would have to wait another year.

Vida hadn't returned to the office by four-thirty. I was getting worried. Surely her interviews with Kathleen and Peggy O'Neill couldn't take so long.

Visions of Vida's car plunging into the Skykomish River or Vida waylaid by random kidnappers or Vida falling down an old mine shaft were interrupted by a sight almost as fearsome. At four-forty, Ed Bronsky walked into the newsroom dressed as a pig.

Leo laughed so hard that he almost fell out of his chair; Ginny, close to hysteria, rushed for the bathroom, apparently to stave off a pants-wetting attack; Scott, who had already seen Ed in full porcine regalia, merely grinned. At that moment, Vida entered, glanced at our visitor, shook her head, and sat down without a word.

“Hab anabubby god um mebba cudda?” Ed said through his snout.

Scott's forehead creased. “Have I got the float pictures 207

back yet? No, Ed, Buddy Bayard said they'd be ready first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Bo, bo,” Ed said rather loudly, beating his hooves on his chest. “Mebba cudda. Ahm thuk.”

Scott looked at me, I looked at Leo, and Leo looked at Ed.

“Sir,” Leo said in formal tones, “would you please remove your head?”

Ed's head, with its little pink ears and little pink snout and big blue eyes, moved back and forth in a definite negative response. Then he turned his back—or was it his rump?—toward us and pointed to his little curly tail.

“Buh thippath thuk,” he all but shouted.

Ginny, who had just emerged from the rest room, caught Ed's words. “I think,” she said with a frown, “he's saying his zipper's stuck.”

The pig's head nodded vigorously; Ed again pointed to his curly tail.

“The zipper's attached to the tail,” Ginny said, bending down. “Let me see if I can get it loose.”

Ed was beginning to pant. The afternoon had grown warm, and I suspected it was hot inside the pig suit. As pig suits go, it was very nice, all baby-bottom pink and sort of fuzzy. But then I didn't have a lot of experience for comparison.

“Hold still,” Ginny ordered. “I'm trying to get it loose. Please stop waving your hooves around. And don't wiggle your tail so much. Otherwise, we'll have to find some metal cutters.”

“Thath … wha … I… thaid,” Ed gasped.

“Scott, can you help hold him still?” Ginny asked in a vexed tone.

But Scott was holding his camera. “Hey, I've got a job here, too,” he said, starting to frame his shots.

“I'll help,” I volunteered.

But before I could grab Ed, Ginny let out a triumphant

little yelp. “I got it!” she cried as we heard a zipping sound.

“Ooof!” Ed cried, toppling forward. “Whoa!”

Managing to brace myself against Leo's desk, I broke Ed's fall. It was no mean feat, considering that he outweighed me by at least a hundred and fifty pounds.

“Wardrobe will hear about this!” he shouted after pulling off the head. “Do they want to kill the pig that laid the golden egg?”

Vida, who had been observing all the mayhem with a jaundiced eye, finally spoke. “I thought you were a comic book character, Ed. Why do you—of all people— need a pig suit?”

Ed, whose flabby face was bathed in sweat and whose receding hair stood mostly on end, glared at Vida. “I don't. I had the producers FedEx me a pig suit for publicity purposes. I used to be in advertising, you know. And I'm not a comic character, I'm a serious pig. It's called animation.”

“A quality, I might add, that you often lacked while working for the
Advocate,”
Vida responded.

“C'mon, Vida,” Ed said angrily as he tried to free his hands and feet from his trotters, “don't be so mean! Who else has ever put the spotlight on Alpine? You'll see, come the fall, everybody in America will be talking about the pig who came from Skykomish County.”

“Some of them might even be able to pronounce Skykomish,” Leo murmured. “The ones from Harvard, maybe.”

Hands on hips, Vida merely looked at Ed.

“See?” Ed snarled, still struggling with his costume. “You've got no answer for that. I've got the means, the money, the whole deal. You're all just jealous.”

“Emma isn't,” Vida said quietly. “She's going to marry a very wealthy man.”

Ed's head snapped around in my direction. “Huh?”

I couldn't help but smile. “It's true, Ed. Tom Cav-anaugh and I are going to be married in the spring.”

“Cavanaugh!” Ed's mouth stayed open.

“Tommy's moving to Alpine,” Vida went on in that same smug tone. “It will be an adjustment for the community to have such a sophisticated resident, but in the long run Tommy should contribute more than mere money. We're all so happy for Emma.”

“Gosh.” Ed was gaping at me now. Then, he stumbled a bit and held out his right hoof. “Congratulations. I saw you with him in church Sunday, but I thought he was just visiting. Again. That's really great, Emma. I mean it.”

Ed probably did, in his own weird way. He had a good heart, if you could find it under the puffed-up chest. I accepted his felicitations, and even allowed him to kiss my cheek.

As Kip MacDuff joined the group, the mood in the newsroom turned almost jocular. I mentioned that I should have brought champagne to celebrate. Even Vida didn't object to the suggestion. Indeed, everyone seemed full of smiles and goodwill.

Everyone, that is, except Leo.

That evening, Ben and I had a long, satisfying talk. He reminded me that I had never experienced Holy Matrimony, and that it was a sacrament, not a ceremony. I knew this, but he was right to reinforce the concept. Technically, I should attend classes on marriage with Father Kelly, but our pastor would waive his right and allow my brother to tell his sister everything she needed to know about the wedded state. Since neither of them had ever been part of it, some might find such advice unrealistic. But both were practical men, had been raised in stable families, and possessed good sense. Besides, when Ben told me not to put up my usual emotional barriers
with Tom, I realized he was speaking from the heart, not the pulpit.

Tuesday meant deadlines, and I couldn't wait much longer for Milo to reveal whatever secrets he was keeping about the O'Neills and their arms cache. Unfortunately, around nine o'clock a serious accident occurred out on the highway by the Deception Falls bridge. It involved a jackknifed semi and at least four other vehicles, and it resulted in two fatalities and a half-dozen injuries. The sheriff, along with the staff at Alpine Hospital, was kept occupied for the entire morning.

As the noon hour approached, Vida suggested that we eat in. “Just us,” she said, looking mysterious.

“That's fine,” I agreed. “Shall I get something for us from the Burger Barn?”

“So greasy,” she murmured as Ginny appeared to refill the coffeepot. “I'm dieting, you know.”

Vida was always dieting, an effort—if indeed she actually made it—that never altered her weight one way or the other.

Ginny looked up from the big urn on the table by the far wall. “Did you want me to pick something up? I'm eating in, too. I've got a ton of stuff to finish for the classifieds this week. The first part of June is always heavy.”

“Which is good,” I remarked.

“What would you like?” Ginny asked, picking up a small pad of paper from Scott's desk.

I stated my preference for an all-white turkey sandwich on white bread with butter and mayo. Vida hemmed and hawed, then requested just a small salad. Ginny started for the door.

“Yoo-hoo,” Vida called. “Perhaps I'll have a roll with that. Two rolls. No, make that a tuna-cheese-melt sandwich. And don't let them skimp on the cheese. Sometimes they can be very stingy at the Burger Barn. You
might see if they have any of those delicious chocolate chip cookies today. And Roquefort dressing on the salad. Make certain it's a reasonably generous amount. I don't care for dry lettuce and tomatoes. Thank you, Ginny.”

I kept a straight face, as did Ginny. Fifteen minutes later, at straight-up twelve o'clock, Vida and I were in my cubbyhole, opening our white paper bags.

“I knew you'd want to hear what I learned from the O'Neill women,” Vida said, with a critical eye for her salad. “I didn't get off the phone until almost nine-thirty last night. I was too worn out to call then.”

“What did they have to say for themselves?” I inquired, popping a slice of sweet pickle into my mouth.

“Let's start with Kathleen, with whom I lunched yesterday,” Vida began.

“That's fine with me,” I said. “She's Stubby's daughter by his first wife, right?”

“Precisely,” Vida responded, sprinkling salt and pepper on her salad. She kept the shakers in her desk drawer, along with real eating utensils and an eggbeater I'd never seen her use. “Stubby got a high school girl from Sultan in trouble when he was in his twenties. The family insisted that he marry her, and since Mrs. O'Neill was still alive, she wanted her son to do the proper thing. They had Kathleen—Kathy—and then Margaret, or Peggy as she's called. The girls were only a year apart. Stubby's wife, Nancy, was still a teenager when Peggy was born, and one day she simply walked out and never came back. Her parents told Stubby that she'd gotten on a Greyhound bus and headed for Spokane.”

“And left the little girls?” I asked, appalled.

“That's right,” Vida said. “Grandmother O'Neill took care of them, but four years later, Stubby met Lona when he was logging near Arlington on the north fork of the Stillaguamish. They married, and had Meara. I don't know when the trouble started between Stubby and Lona, but
from what Kathy told me at lunch yesterday, he'd been abusing her stepmother for a long time. I have to think that was one of the reasons that the first wife, Nancy, left so abruptly.”

“Old habits die hard,” I murmured.

“Indeed.” Vida paused to take a bite out of her tuna cheese melt sandwich. “I must say Stubby never touched the children. I interviewed Peggy at the mall where she works in the stockroom for Platters in the Sky. She corroborated what her sister had told me. But Peggy, who I think is perhaps the brighter of the two, felt that there was something odd about her father.”

The midday sun was slanting through the window over Vida's desk, and I had to move my chair out of the way to keep from being blinded. “Odd in what way?”

Vida frowned. “Peggy found it hard to put into words. He was secretive about where he went, which doesn't sound so mysterious if you consider that Stubby was probably visiting a tavern or a bar. But everyone, including Lona, knew that he and his brothers went drinking quite often. It was the fact that he acted so strangely about his whereabouts that made Peggy suspicious.”

“What did she think he was up to?”

“Tona, naturally, thought it was another woman,” Vida replied. “The girls weren't so sure. Why would Stubby usually be in the company of his brothers? Not that they couldn't all go to a brothel, but Peggy says it just didn't fit. She believed it had to be something illegal, such as drugs.”