The Alpine Scandal

by Mary Daheim

  I heard Ed clear his throat. “It was a gloomy winter morning,” he began, sounding pretty gloomy himself, the way he used to sell—or not sell—advertising for the Advocate. “I was out driving around, sort of contemplating life in general, and I happened to pass by the Nystrom place. I knew it was their house because once, a long time ago, when I was working for The Alpine Advocate, I had to drop off an ad for Elmer, who was home with a bad cold.”

  I remembered that incident all too well. With Elmer sick in bed, Ed had composed his own copy for a Nordby Brothers ad on brake maintenance. He’d written “fiction materials” instead of “friction materials,” listed “rooters” rather than “rotors,” and referred to calipers as “caliphs.” At the time, even I knew Ed had screwed up beyond misspelled words, but I didn’t know how to correct the ad. Only the ailing Elmer could rescue us.

  “What time was this, Ed?” Spence asked in his usual smooth style.

  “Seven-seventeen,” Ed replied promptly. “I knew that because I’d just glanced at the digital clock in my Mercedes. And, of course, I was listening to KSKY.”

  “Good for you, Ed,” Spence said, the faintest hint of impatience in his mellow voice. “What did you see while you were passing by the victim’s home on the Burl Creek Road?”

  “A hamburger?” I whispered to Vida.

  She smirked.

  “I saw a car.” Ed spoke dramatically and paused for effect. “The car was coming from the other direction—from the center of town—and it slowed down when it got near the Nystrom house. Naturally, I figured whoever it was intended to turn in there at the driveway. I thought it was kind of early for visitors, so I slowed down, too, and watched the car in my rearview mirror. It almost stopped, right there by the Nystrom place. But I had to go around that bend in the road, so I lost sight of it. But it definitely struck me as suspicious.”

  I didn’t dare look at Vida, who I knew was about to bust a gusset.

  “Can you describe the car or the driver?” Spence asked.

  “Like I said, it was still pretty dark. The car was dark, too, like black or brown or blue. One of those dark colors. I’d guess it to be an American-made midsized sedan. Of course, these days, so many cars look alike.”

  “And the driver?” Spence persisted.

  “A man.” Ed cleared his throat again. “I’m pretty darned certain it was man. Or a woman with short hair.”

  “Have you reported this sighting to the authorities?”

  “Not yet,” Ed said quickly. “You know how it is—you see something that doesn’t mean much at the time—and being a trained media type, I see plenty—and anyway, later you realize maybe it was important after all. I’ve been mulling over what I saw and finally decided this morning I should go public. Sheriff Dodge, of course, is in the hospital, so I thought, well, maybe I should do this over the air because it might alert somebody else who saw something suspicious, too, and then they’d come forward.”

  “Sound thinking,” Spence said with less than his usual conviction. “Thank you, Ed Bronsky, for bringing this information to light over KSKY. Now let’s hear from one of our local sponsors.”

  “Ed’s job hunting,” Vida declared. “Ed’s a ninny. And Spencer Fleetwood has been his dupe.”

  “Incredible,” I said, shaking my head. “How could a sharp guy like Spence let Ed talk him into that so-called interview? Was it Spence’s way of getting out of hiring Ed?”

  “If so, it was a very stupid thing to do.” Vida turned in her chair as Leo came through the newsroom. He looked at us and kept coming.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  I signaled for him to be quiet. The commercial had ended. But it wasn’t Spence’s voice that came out of the radio; it was Rey Fernandez, announcing the continuation of the rock ’n’ roll programming. I wondered if Spence was pummeling Ed into the station’s cinder-block wall.

  I switched off the radio while Vida started to explain what we’d just heard. Leo, however, interrupted.

  “I know,” he said. “I heard it in my car. What a jackass!”

  “Which one?” I said in disgust.

  “Good point.” Leo leaned on the back of my empty visitor’s chair. “What if Ed’s telling the truth?”

  “What if he is?” Vida snapped. “It means nothing. A car driving on the Burl Creek Road—it could have been headed to the college, the fish hatchery, anywhere along that route. Maybe the driver slowed down to see who was driving a Mercedes. There aren’t many of them in town.”

  “True,” Leo allowed.

  “Besides,” I put in, “if Ed really saw anything suspicious, even he would’ve told the sheriff before this. For that matter, why didn’t he tell me?”

  Leo smirked. “Because you’d already turned him down for a job?”

  Vida uttered an exasperated sigh. “Really! This is all too ridiculous! Can’t Ed be arrested for bearing false witness? Or something like that? At the very least, there should be a law against such nincompoopery!”

  “I think,” Leo said in mock seriousness, “the word has to be invented by someone other than you, Duchess. I’d better get back to work, or maybe Ed will replace me.”

  Leo went back into the newsroom. Vida rose from the chair.

  “Maybe,” I muttered, “I should talk to Ed.”

  “Don’t,” Vida ordered. “It’s a waste of time.” She tromped away in her splayfooted manner.

  My phone was ringing. I answered it to hear Cal Vickers’s voice on the other end of the line.

  “Say, Emma,” he said, “I was just listening to Ed Bronsky on KSKY. How’s the sheriff doing?”

  I assumed this wasn’t a complete non sequitur. “I don’t know anything you don’t,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well…” Cal’s conversation meandered when he wasn’t talking about fuel pumps or tire pressure or any of the other subjects connected to his Texaco service station. “I had an early morning tow job Monday out by the Burl Creek Bridge. Gus Tolberg had a little too much beer at Mugs Ahoy Saturday night, and he went off the road. He wasn’t hurt, but his pickup got banged up and had to be towed back into town.”

  I thought back to Scott’s weekly listings from the police log. “I don’t recall that item. Did Gus report it?”

  “Uh, no. Being a bailiff, Gus didn’t want to get into trouble.” Cal lowered his voice. “I shouldn’t have mentioned his name. Can you keep a lid on this one, Emma?”

  “I have no choice,” I said. “If it’s not in the log, it’s not in the paper.”

  “Okay. Good. Thanks,” Cal said, sounding relieved. “Anyway, this was just before seven because I wanted to get the pickup out of the way before all those college kids came down that road. You know teenagers—they don’t always pay attention, especially on these dark mornings when they’re still half-asleep.”

  I was getting impatient, but I knew there was no hurrying Cal unless he was presenting me with a large bill for doing a brake job. Even then he stalled, probably savoring the moment. “Right,” I said.

  “So I went out to the bridge and hooked up the truck and started back into town,” Cal continued. “I had to go pretty slow past the part of the road near the Nystrom place because—wouldn’t you know?—a couple of kids were riding their bikes to the college. I mean, I guess that’s where they were going. The high school is in the opposite direction.”

  “Right,” I repeated as Cal paused for breath.

  “Oh, they had lights on their bikes, but still, that time of day in January and the road being kind of bumpy—well, you have to be careful, especially if you’re driving a tow truck with a load. So I was only doing about fifteen miles an hour when I passed the Nystrom place. The lights were on—most working people are up that time of day, of course.”

  Cal paused again. “Of course,” I agreed, filling the void and letting him know I was still conscious.

  “But there was another light out back, near the henhouse,” Cal went on. “I didn’t think much about it un
til I heard Ed on the radio.”

  I was mystified. “How do you mean?”

  “Well, Elmer always took care of those chickens before he went to work. When he’d stop by to get gas, he’d talk about feeding those chickens. They had names—like Alice and Ruthie and Hazel. Elmer called them ‘his girls.’ Elmer could go into details, you know. Anyway, when Ed mentioned that he was going by the Nystrom house at seven-seventeen, that didn’t sound right to me, not from how Elmer talked about his chicken schedule.”

  “I see,” I said, though I was not completely enlightened.

  “So this was a couple of minutes before seven. Now, how long does it take to feed the chickens and collect the eggs?”

  “I’ve no idea,” I admitted.

  “Not long, not with the few chickens Elmer had,” Cal said, sounding on almost as firm ground as if he’d been discussing wheel alignment. “So I started to wonder. Was somebody else out there by the henhouse?”

  I was still puzzled. “What makes you think that?”

  “Because there wasn’t any light on in the henhouse,” Cal said slowly. “The light I saw was bobbing around off to the left of it—away from the main house.”

  “Oh.” I thought for a moment. “It still might have been Elmer. Maybe he’d heard an animal on the prowl. Maybe he liked to check things out before he went to work.”

  “What things?” Cal asked.

  “I don’t know,” I confessed. “This time of year, cougars and deer and even bear come down from the mountains. I’m sure Elmer was very fussy about keeping his chickens safe.”

  “Well, maybe. But do you think I ought to tell the sheriff? Or one of the deputies if Dodge is still in the hospital?”

  “Why not?” I sounded flippant and was immediately sorry. “That is, any information connected with the investigation is worth mentioning.”

  “That’s kind of what I thought,” Cal said. “On the other hand, I don’t want to be an alarmist.”

  “I’m sure that they’ll be glad to hear what you have to say, Cal.”

  “Okay. I’ll wander over to the sheriff’s office when things slow down at the station.” Cal rang off, though not before I remembered to ask him if his wife, Charlene, was feeling better. He said he thought so. I took that typical male response to mean that Char was still breathing.

  My other line blinked, indicating a call on hold. I pressed the button, and Ginny put the caller through.

  “Emma!” It was Janet Driggers, the wife of the funeral home’s impresario, Al Driggers. “Are you playing bridge tonight at Edna Mae’s?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll go over there as soon as I finish listening to Vida’s Cupboard.”

  “Oh, sure,” Janet said. “Nobody skips Vida. But why doesn’t she ever have any really juicy gossip? I could fill her ear if I wanted to.”

  No doubt Janet wasn’t kidding. If there was ever anyone who could learn—or invent—the most salacious sort of dirt, it was the ribald wife of our local funeral director. “Vida doesn’t want to get sued for slander,” I said. Furthermore, Vida didn’t consider Janet a reliable source. My House & Home editor insisted that Janet embroidered her gossip with lurid details that weren’t fit to repeat.

  “I could add something to this Nystrom whack job,” Janet asserted.

  “Such as?”

  “Check out the next-door neighbors,” she replied.

  “The Della Croces?”

  “The very same. Their teenage daughter, Gloria, is known as SuperSlut. I’ve heard that she’s got all kinds of boys coming to their house at all hours. I figure one of the Nystroms complained about all the moaning and groaning and other cries of sexual ecstasy, so Gloria or one of her adolescent studs got revenge by killing poor old Elmer.”

  “No kidding,” I said.

  “I never kid when it comes to sex. Well…I do, but that’s part of the fun. Anyway, I thought I’d spill this to you now because sometimes our fellow bridge club members are easily shocked. Or pretend to be. But,” she added in an insinuating tone, “you know how that goes.”

  I did, which was why I’d been exiled from the club several years earlier. My own alleged affairs had branded me with an A. As far as I was concerned, the letter stood for Absent.

  As for Janet’s assertions about Gloria Della Croce, her theory concerning a motive for Elmer’s murder seemed far-fetched. But the problem was that no better reason had come to light. This seemed to be a murder without a motive. Random, perhaps, senseless, a terrible waste. Yet it had happened. I knew that from experience, especially when I’d worked for The Oregonian in a bigger city like Portland.

  But I didn’t think that was what had happened to Elmer.

  Chapter Nine

  THE AFTERNOON, HOWEVER, was dwindling away. Shortly after four, Vida returned to my office, looking annoyed.

  “I just fielded a complaint over the phone,” she declared.

  “About what?” I asked.

  “Amer Wasco’s distant cousin,” she replied, tucking her blouse with its bright red amaryllis pattern into the waistband of her black pleated skirt. “Jan Wasco died in Seattle last week, and we didn’t run his obituary in today’s paper.”

  The Wascos owned the local cobbler shop. “Oh?” I remarked as Vida paused to rearrange the black sweater vest that she wore over her blouse.

  “Yes. Amer—well, having emigrated from Poland, he doesn’t spell terribly well, though he’s certainly a fine shoemaker—so he asked his niece—this Jan Wasco’s granddaughter—to send us an obituary. Amer and Dee-Dee thought the death notice should appear in the Advocate because he—the deceased—and his wife, Irena, visited here once in a while. Anyway, he called to find out why we hadn’t run it. I told him it was because we never got it. He was very put out.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Is Amer certain his niece sent us the obit?”

  “She told him she’d mailed it last Friday,” Vida replied. “I told Amer we still might get it, and we’d run it next week. I also suggested that his niece resubmit it, just in case. Marlow Whipp isn’t always the most dependable postman, and I don’t think the other carriers are much better.”

  To dissipate Vida’s annoyance at our alleged oversight, I divulged the gossip that Janet Driggers had passed on over the phone.

  “Janet!” Vida said scornfully. “Everything and everybody is all about sex with that woman! Really, I’m not sure I believe this tale.”

  Because of my promise not to mention my pastor’s name, I still couldn’t elaborate about Mrs. Della Croce’s phone call to the rectory. But the incident—and Father Den’s reaction—strengthened the plausibility of Gloria Della Croce’s wanton behavior. Maybe the mother needed pastoral advice on how to handle her wayward daughter.

  “I’d still like to call on the family,” I said, “if only to find out how miffed Anna Maria is about not being hired by Carter Nystrom.”

  “By all means,” Vida urged. “Will you go tonight?”

  “I can’t,” I said with regret. “I have to meet Ben for dinner and then play bridge.”

  “You could go now,” Vida pointed out.

  “We still haven’t heard anything about Milo.”

  “I know.” Vida looked solemn. “That worries me. I’m going to call Doc Dewey directly. My niece Marje will put me through to him unless he’s in surgery.”

  Vida returned to my cubbyhole five minutes later. “Honestly! It’s impossible to get a straight answer out of anyone in the medical profession! You’d think that being a practitioner was some sort of secret society, like the Black Hand.”

  “Did you talk to Doc?”

  “Of course.” She made a face. “He says they still don’t know for sure. Doc thinks that because Milo smokes it could be a minor heart attack. Dr. Sung is leaning toward gallbladder. Marje told me on the QT that it sounds like a virus to her.”

  “Are they keeping Milo overnight?”

  “Yes. For observation. Naturally, Milo is very angry. That’s probably because
he can’t smoke in the hospital.”

  “Then I should visit him instead of the Della Croces. I can see them tomorrow, maybe in the morning.”

  One of the things I wanted to do before I left work was to call Spencer Fleetwood. Luckily, he was at the station. But he wasn’t very happy to hear my voice.

  “Look,” he said before I could get started, “don’t you think I quizzed Bronsky before we went on the air? He made it sound as if he’d actually seen something or someone he could identify. Of course I cautioned him that he couldn’t suggest he’d seen who killed Elmer, but he felt that whoever this figment of his imagination was would be a useful witness.”

  “Sucker,” I said.

  “I know, I know.” Spence paused. “Frankly, I felt sorry for Ed. I’d had to turn him down when he asked about a job here. Then he came up with this so-called information, and I caved. No matter what you think, I’m not totally heartless.”

  I didn’t think that. Not anymore. I’d seen Spence when he was at his lowest ebb. Mr. Radio had turned out to be as vulnerable as the rest of us.

  “Have you gotten any calls about the interview?” I asked.

  “Oh, sure. At least a half-dozen other people have phoned in to say they saw something suspicious, including Averill Fairbanks, who insisted that cloven-hoofed aliens from Neptune wearing LA Lakers uniforms killed Elmer.”

  Averill was our resident UFO spotter. Two days before Christmas he’d phoned me to report that Santa’s sleigh had been hijacked by terrorists from a distant star called Scroogii.

  “Maybe,” I said, “I share some blame in this. I rejected Ed’s offer to come back to work for me a couple of days ago.”

  “Good thinking,” Spence said. “Got to go. I’m doing the five o’clock news.”

  “Got anything good?”

  “Would I tell you if I did?”

  “Of course not. But I will be listening to Vida’s Cupboard.”

  “So will everybody else. Her ratings are sky-high. If she could extend her grapevine to Monroe, I might apply to the FCC for more power.” Spence hung up.

  Great. That was all I needed—Spence acquiring outside ad revenue because he’d snagged my House & Home editor for KSKY. On the flip side, however, that might mean more co-op deals with the station. I decided not to look for trouble where it hadn’t yet happened. I had enough already.