The Alpine Scandal

by Mary Daheim

“Two goldfish floating upside down in a bowl at the pet store,” Scott offered. “Or is that too grim?”

  “It is,” Vida informed him. “Something more cheerful, please.”

  “That leaves out Ed,” I remarked.

  Vida shot me a dirty look. “It’s always good to leave out Ed.”

  Leo snapped his finger. “I saw something. The Reverend Poole riding his tractor lawn mower down Fourth Street yesterday afternoon. Don’t ask why. I didn’t. But this is a weird time of year to mow your grass. Maybe it’s a Baptist thing.”

  “Very well,” Vida said. “I’ll use that. One more.”

  “I’ve got one,” I said suddenly. “Stella and Richie Magruder’s grandchildren—the twin boys—standing at the top of First Hill with a brand-new sled and no snow.”

  Vida passed judgment. “Poignant but acceptable.”

  I’d been standing in the doorway to my office. As Vida entered the latest tidbits, I walked over to her desk. “What did Milo make of that obit on Elmer? I didn’t ask him at lunch because I was verging on being a nag.”

  Vida looked disgusted. “He thought it must be a very unfortunate joke.” She paused and pursed her lips. “Of course that was his initial reaction. You know Milo—like most men, he needs to think things through and come to his own conclusions.”

  “A joke seems unlikely,” I pointed out.

  “Of course it does,” Vida agreed. “But you must admit, it’s very strange. Surely Milo must realize that the only person who knew in advance that Elmer was going to die would be the person who killed him.”

  “Yes. Or Elmer himself,” I said. “Maybe he had a premonition.”

  “Elmer doesn’t strike me as a fanciful person,” Vida noted. “Perhaps he had been threatened. On the other hand, he must have been a very careful and well-organized man. Polly might know if he’d written his obituary to save her—or Carter—the trouble by doing it himself.”

  “Possibly,” I allowed. “A trustworthy and conscientious service department manager would want to help customers prevent problems before they happen. Elmer probably was the type who considered all sorts of contingencies. But he wouldn’t have mailed it to you.”

  Vida sighed. “I regret in some ways I didn’t know Elmer better. Except for anything complicated, my nephew Billy has always been kind enough to work on my Buick. He’s quite handy with cars, you know.”

  “He’s probably saved you a bundle of money,” I pointed out.

  “Oh, my, yes. But I always buy him ice cream afterward.”

  I didn’t comment. Bill Blatt was now over thirty, but that didn’t mean he had lost his taste for ice cream. I was about to say something else, but Vida had craned her neck to look around me as someone came into the newsroom. “Tara, how nice to see you! Have you brought us a news item just before deadline?” The hint of reproach in Vida’s voice may have been detectable only by me.

  Tara Wesley, who owns Parker’s Pharmacy along with her husband, Garth, approached Vida’s desk. The usually unruffled Tara seemed tentative, as if she were approaching the prison warden, begging for special privileges.

  “Hi, Vida, Emma,” she said with barely a nod at me but her eyes fixed on my House & Home editor. “I have a favor to ask.”

  “Of course,” Vida said smoothly. “What is it? Do sit,” she urged, indicating her visitor’s chair.

  I backed away, going over to Scott’s vacant desk to see if he’d left any loose ends in his stories or photos before we went to press. He was a good writer, an excellent photographer, and a better-than-average interviewer, but he still had trouble meeting deadlines.

  Tara had sat down, though she obviously wasn’t relaxed. “This morning on my way to the drugstore I mailed you a story about Jessica.”

  “Oh, yes,” Vida said. “Your pretty daughter.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tara nod. What I wasn’t seeing was any problems Scott had left on his desk or in his in-basket. But Tara had aroused my curiosity. I stalled to listen in, pretending to concentrate on my reporter’s work area.

  “Ordinarily,” Tara went on, “I would have dropped the little story off, but I had to mail three Christmas cards to people I didn’t expect to hear from and whose greetings didn’t get delivered until Friday or Saturday. You know—every year you hope to eliminate some names from your list, but they pop up anyway.”

  “Of course. So awkward,” Vida said in her most sympathetic tone.

  “I put the cards and a couple of bills and the article all in the mailbox by our house,” Tara continued. “But it turns out that I should have held off. The story’s no good.”

  “Oh?” Vida was giving Tara her most owlish expression.

  “You see,” Tara said, leaning forward in the chair, “Jessica quit the UW at the end of the winter quarter. She doesn’t want to follow in our footsteps and become a pharmacist, after all. She’s decided to take some time off from school.”

  “Very sensible,” Vida said. “There’s no point in wasting money on tuition these days when you don’t have a goal.”

  “Yes, right,” Tara agreed. “Jessica’s only eighteen. Anyway, she decided to get a job here in town. So yesterday she started work for Dr. Nystrom as a receptionist. That’s what I wrote the little story about because I know you like to print that sort of thing.”

  “Yes, always of interest to our readers,” Vida said, shifting slightly in her chair, which I recognized as a sign of impatience. “And?”

  “She quit this morning.”

  “Oh?”

  “So would you please just toss the thing out when it comes?”

  “Of course,” Vida assured her. “My, my—this hasn’t been a very good day for Dr. Nystrom. Not, certainly, that Tara quit because his father passed away. Or was your daughter terribly upset by the news?”

  Tara had gotten to her feet and was putting the hood of her jacket up over her salt-and-pepper hair. “I’m not sure Tara knew about that when she gave notice. I haven’t had a chance to really talk to her. Both Garth and I are working today. Frankly, this is embarrassing. I expected better of Tara. When she worked for us at the pharmacy, she was very reliable.”

  “A mismatch, perhaps,” Vida said. “Personalities sometimes clash. I must confess my grandson, Roger, had a bad experience this past summer working for Sky Dairy. He and Norm Carlson simply never hit it off. Norm can be very unreasonable and demanding. That’s terribly hard on a young person, particularly when it was Roger’s first job.”

  And his only one so far, I thought. Along about August 1, Roger had finally gotten off of his fat rear end and gone to work at the dairy. He’d lasted less than a week. Leo insisted the kid had fallen into the ice cream vat, but I wasn’t sure I believed him. It was more likely that he’d gone to sleep on the job or simply not shown up.

  Tara said goodbye, remembering to include me as an afterthought. I was used to it when Alpiners came calling on Vida.

  “Drat,” Vida said, using her strongest oath. “I wish I’d gotten to know Carter Nystrom better. His name keeps cropping up.”

  “Of course it does,” I said, walking back toward her desk. “His father died this morning. Though I admit, I was surprised to hear it in another context when I was at the car dealership.”

  Vida regarded me with interest. “Oh?”

  I told her about the yellow Corvette that Carter was interested in buying. “I suppose he can afford it,” I said, “though he’s only been in practice a couple of years.”

  “Orthodontists charge the world,” Vida remarked. “Still, you’d think he’d have student debts. I’ve always understood that doctors and dentists and such have to pay off some very large loans before they actually start making money.”

  “Did Polly ever work?” I asked.

  “Heavens, no!” Vida’s expression was disparaging. Upon becoming a single mother in her forties, she had begun her career with the Advocate to support her three daughters. “I’ve always thought of Polly as a hothouse flower. Pampe
red. Catered to. Husband and son only too eager to wait on her hand and foot. You wouldn’t believe the fuss that was made a few years ago when Polly had hammertoe surgery. You would have thought she’d had all of her extremities amputated. Elmer and Carter were running around like chickens with their heads cut off.” Vida clucked her tongue, sounding appropriately like a noisy hen.

  “I sort of recall that,” I said. “It happened not long after I moved to Alpine.”

  Vida nodded. “That’s right. Carter hadn’t yet started college. It’s no wonder I’ve never been particularly friendly with Polly. I did try when they moved here. I had an ice cream social for her. But I heard afterward that she’d complained about the cookies I served. Imagine! Talk about an ingrate.”

  Maybe that was why Carter had decided to go into dentistry. If Vida had made the cookies, his mother might have broken a couple of teeth trying to chew them. But I merely nodded sympathetically.

  “Very critical,” Vida murmured. “And inclined to embroider her tales. That serves no purpose with gossip. The truth is always sufficiently damaging. When it’s told, of course.”

  I left Vida to ponder Polly Nystrom’s errant tongue. I had some loose ends of my own to clear up before five o’clock. One of them was the sheriff. I called him around four.

  “Anything on that obit Vida gave you?” I asked.

  “Like what?”

  “Invisible ink. Poisoned paper. A secret code.” I paused. “What do you think, Sheriff? Fingerprints, DNA, how it was generated—what you law enforcement types call evidence.”

  “Get real,” Milo said in a tired voice. “We don’t have expensive forensic testing equipment in SkyCo. The damned thing went over to Everett. And what kind of DNA do you expect? A long blond hair?”

  “The envelope,” I snapped. “Whoever licked it would leave DNA.” Did Milo think I never watched TV?

  “Maybe, maybe not. The sender could have moistened the flap with water.” He sighed into the receiver. “Frankly, I don’t know what to make of it unless we’re dealing with a nut case. You’re not going to print anything about the obit, are you?”

  “No,” I replied. “It can wait until we—you—find out who might have sent it to Vida.”

  That was fine with Milo. “By the way,” he added, “Spence broke the homicide story on the three o’clock news.”

  “Of course.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You can’t help it,” I said. “Who’d he get to?”

  “Dustin,” Milo replied. “You know how damned polite he is. Anyway, he couldn’t lie.”

  “What did he and Bill find at the Nystrom place?”

  “What you’d expect,” Milo answered. “Lots of garden tools, all the usual hardware. They kept that place up, I guess. Hard to tell this time of year, when nothing’s in bloom.”

  Since I was fond of puttering in my own sloping patch of mountainside, I sensed who was good at gardening and who was not. “I imagine their yard is very pretty during the spring and summer. Shrubs, a fruit tree, probably lots of flowers. If a place looks tidy in January, you can bet it’s lovely during the growing season.”

  “I’m not much good at that stuff,” Milo confessed. “Old Mulehide used to nag me about pruning this and planting that on my days off. All I wanted to do was veg out in front of the TV. She never figured that law enforcement was hard work.”

  I’d often heard that complaint about Milo’s ex-wife, who’d finally left him for a high school teacher. Fortunately, I’d never met Old Mulehide, or Tricia, as she was known to the less bitter. Maybe it was just as well that we hadn’t crossed paths. I might have liked her.

  “Give me a quote,” I said.

  “About Old Mulehide?”

  “Of course not. Something to wrap up the front-page story.”

  “Make one up,” Milo drawled. “That’s what you usually do, isn’t it?”

  In the past, I had put words in Milo’s mouth, but never without running them by him first. “Okay. How about ‘The victim was a well-respected and a well-liked member of this community. The sheriff’s office is expending every effort to solve this tragic murder.’ How’s that?”

  Milo didn’t respond immediately. “Ditch the ‘expending.’ It doesn’t sound like me.”

  That was accurate. I suggested “will exert” Milo quibbled briefly but gave in. I rang off and finished the article.

  After conferring with Kip MacDuff about the Advocate’s layout and checking the wire for any last-minute news that might have had a local tie-in, I shut down my computer and got ready to go home.

  But I was antsy. As much as retreating to my little log house appealed to me on a winter night, I felt there must be something I could do to help move the Nystrom investigation forward. It wasn’t conceit. Over the years, I’d become so involved in various homicides that I couldn’t dismiss this one just because we’d met our deadline. Instead, I felt compelled to act.

  But I didn’t know what to do.

  When in doubt, ask Vida.

  She was putting on her raincoat when I went into the newsroom. “What are you doing this evening?” I inquired.

  “As a matter of fact,” she replied shamelessly, “I’m having the Bartlebys to dinner.”

  I was startled. “Is this a date you made in advance?”

  “No,” she admitted. “I called this afternoon.” She had the grace to look sheepish. “They’re going to England next month for some sort of Episcopal—or Anglican—I can never quite understand the distinction—convocation or such. I decided to do a pretrip article.”

  “You’re a fraud, Vida,” I said.

  “Yes, but they don’t know that.” She buttoned her raincoat. “I was fortunate that they didn’t have a previous commitment.”

  “You really don’t expect Regis and Edith to gossip about their parishioners, do you? They’re the soul of genteel discretion.”

  “Yes, yes,” Vida said, gathering up her purse and gloves. “Nor will they gossip in the way that most people do. But they’ll say things, and discreet or not, interesting information can slip out.” She peered at me through her big glasses. “Do you want to join us?”

  I hesitated. Revealing comments about the Nystroms versus Vida’s awful cooking. Me as interloper versus my role as editor and publisher. Two non-Episcopalians versus the vicar and his wife.

  “No, but thanks all the same,” I said. “I should e-mail Adam. Besides, if there’s any information to be had, you’ll get it on your own.” And my stomach won’t have to suffer.

  “That’s true,” Vida allowed. “Nor would we want them to think we were ganging up on them, as the phrase goes.”

  I agreed. Still, I was left at loose ends. After Vida left, I remained alone in the newsroom. Maybe it was time to talk to Dennis Kelly, after all. I started to pick up Vida’s phone to call the rectory but remembered that the first Tuesday night of each month was reserved for my pastor’s meetings with the parish council. Another dead end. Frustrated, I grabbed my handbag and deserted the Advocate.

  But I didn’t head for my Honda. Instead, I walked down the street to Parker’s Pharmacy. There are always items to buy at an all-purpose drugstore.

  Tara was working the front end, checking out a customer. I dodged her on my way in and went straight to the pharmacy section at the rear of the store. Garth Wesley was behind the glassed-in area, reading a prescription. He saw me right away and smiled, exhibiting uneven but very white teeth.

  “Hi, Emma. What can I do for you?”

  I asked if he had any of the Band-Aids that stopped bleeding almost immediately. “They’re hard to find,” I said, “and they really work.”

  “Paper cuts, huh?” he said.

  I chuckled obligingly.

  “If they aren’t with the rest of the first-aid items,” he said, no longer smiling, “then we don’t have them. Maybe I can special order some.”

  “That’d be great,” I enthused. “I’ll make do with the antibiotic ones in the meantime.”
I fumbled around in my handbag, stalling for time. “I thought I had a list in here,” I fibbed. “Oh, well. I’ll remember what I need most. Say,” I said, as if the idea had just popped into my head, “how come kids these days don’t go into journalism? If Jessica was interested, I might be able to hire her someday. Tara says she doesn’t like being a receptionist.”

  Garth made a face. “Who knows what this younger generation likes? Jess wanted to be a pilot at one time, then a lawyer, and after that some kind of environmental type. The one thing Tara and I are sure of is that we aren’t spending money on tuition and room and board for her to go to the UW and mess around without any real goal.”

  “Good thinking,” I said. “I went through that with Adam. He changed majors and colleges so often that I wrote his address in pencil. And then he stunned me by becoming a priest. I never saw that one coming.”

  Garth slid his hands into the pockets of his white lab coat. “At least our Aaron figured it out. He’s still over at Pullman, studying to be a veterinarian. Of course, we figure he’ll go into practice some place other than Alpine. Jim Medved’s got this town sewed up.”

  “The county’s growing enough that we could use two vets,” I pointed out. “Look how overworked Dr. Starr is with his dental practice. At least now he doesn’t have to refer patients to an orthodontist out of town.”

  Garth looked rather pained, as I figured he might. “Right. It’s too bad Jess couldn’t have stayed with Nystrom. He’s got a good thing going for him. His patients aren’t just kids but adults, too.” He bared his own uneven teeth. “I’ve thought about having him straighten these. But it’d cost quite a bit, and I’ve lived with them this way for over forty years.”

  “You wouldn’t look like you,” I remarked. “Of course I assume Carter Nystrom does good work.”

  Garth shrugged. “As far as I know. If he didn’t, I’d hear complaints by now. Patients tend to gripe to their pharmacists if they’re not satisfied with a doctor or dentist—or even a veterinarian. We fill plenty of prescriptions for animals, too.”

  I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, so I decided to play the frustrated mother. “Oh, Garth,” I said, shaking my head, “raising kids gets harder all the time. I’m so glad Adam made a good choice—and that he’s over thirty. I don’t know how your peer group manages to parent these days. Young people seem to drift even more than they used to.”