The Alpine Betrayal

by Mary Daheim

  Curtis wrapped his fingers around the lamp’s slim column and stared straight at me. “But,” he said softly, “it wasn’t his child.”

  I sucked in my breath. My jaw must have dropped, and I knew I was gaping stupidly at Curtis. “What …” I began, but Curtis’s face had closed up, as if he had given everything he had, and the larder was empty. Judging from the blank look in his gray eyes, his soul was empty, too.

  “I’d better go meet Dani,” he said in his normal voice. “It takes a while to drive down to Café de Flore if there’s heavy traffic coming over the pass on a Saturday night. You got Adam’s stuff?”

  I did, having hastily packed everything into a large cardboard box just before Curtis arrived. I thanked him, wished him well, and hoped he enjoyed his dinner. It was almost dark when I watched him go down the walk to the street where Cody’s pickup was parked. I wondered if Curtis intended to drive it to Café de Flore or if Dani was going to borrow Matt’s Zimmer.

  Most of all, I wondered about little Scarlett’s father. Perhaps Curtis had been suffering from grief as well as shock when he’d thrown up in his brother’s bathroom. It struck me as very likely that Curtis Graff hadn’t lost a niece that summer night, but a daughter.

  It was after ten o’clock when Vida called. “Did you have a good time?” I asked, envisioning the Pacific Science Center in ruins.

  “Yes, yes, never mind that,” she said in a voice that sounded as if her engine was racing. “Listen, Emma, I just tucked Roger in and went through his belongings to get his dirty clothes. I found the medicine young Doc Dewey gave him. Amy had sent it along, but Roger forgot to tell me.” Vida took a deep breath while I waited for her to launch a new attack on the modern approach to child-rearing. “Emma, it’s Haloperidol. Doesn’t that beat all?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I DROVE OVER to Vida’s in my bathrobe. She couldn’t leave Roger, of course, lest he parboil a burglar or engage in some other childish prank. Insisting that I see for myself, and convinced that despite modern electronic switching equipment in the telephone company’s central office, our words could be overheard, Vida had asked me to come to her house.

  I arrived just as she was putting a green-edged cloth over the cage of her canary, Cupcake. “Roger’s asleep,” she said in a whisper. “The poor little fellow is all worn out. He had no idea those security guards could run so fast at the Center.”

  I decided not to ask why Roger was being chased, and could only hope that he also had been chastened. At the sound of the tea kettle, Vida whisked into the kitchen. I followed her while she made tea.

  “Here’s the stuff,” she said, pointing to an innocent-looking bottle on the counter. “It’s also called Haldol.”

  I read the label, with its usual cautions. “Okay,” I said, sitting down at her Formica-covered kitchen table, “so we know the drug existed in this form in this town. So what?”

  Vida, unlike most people I know, actually serves tea in teacups. She carried a Radford’s yellow rose pattern for me and an English garden scene by Royal Albert for herself. “Emma—look at that label.” She blew on her tea and waited for my reaction.

  I started to read aloud, but Vida gave a vigorous shake of her head. “I’m not talking about what’s there—I’m talking about what’s not.” Her eyebrows arched above the tortoiseshell frames. “No pharmacy label. Young Doc Dewey took it right off the shelf in his office.”

  “Oh!” I sighed at my obtuseness. But I still didn’t see Vida’s point. I admitted as much.

  “It means,” said Vida, “that this stuff—which was what Cody ingested—was available at the clinic. Someone could have gone in to see either of the Deweys and made off with a bottle of it and poisoned Cody.”

  The theory fell flat with me. “No, Vida. They lock up drugs. You know that.”

  Vida’s chin jutted. “I know they don’t. They’re really rather careless. Back by the lab, they have a room which is part dispensary, part supply closet. It’s never locked. I walked right in once and helped myself to one of those travel-sized boxes of Kleenex for the car. I think we should check with Marje and see who had appointments in the week or two before Cody died.”

  “I suppose.” I fingered the little bottle as if it could give me inspiration, then set it back down on the table, accidentally knocking it against Vida’s cut-glass sugar bowl. The small sound triggered a random thought in my brain, but I couldn’t grasp it quickly enough. “There are other sources,” I suggested. “Parker’s Pharmacy. The hospital.”

  “Certainly,” agreed Vida. “But I daresay either of those places is more secure. I still opt for the clinic.”

  I rested my chin on my hand, mulling over the idea. Certainly there was one person involved with Cody who had access to the clinic’s supply of Haloperidol: Marje Blatt. But maybe it wasn’t wise to say so to Vida.

  In the end, after we had hashed over the doings of the day in Alpine, I hinted to Vida that Marje couldn’t be dismissed as a suspect.

  “We can’t leave anyone out,” I said. “That’s what Milo and I were discussing this afternoon—how somebody may be protecting somebody else.”

  Vida, who was still exclaiming over Matt Tabor’s attack on Reid Hampton, frowned at me. “Are you making too much of Marje having dinner with Matt? Really, I admit it’s a bit odd, but I’m sure Marje will explain it to her old auntie. After all, Matt may be a movie star, but basically he’s probably just a young man who enjoys the company of a pretty girl.”

  “When he isn’t out creaming his director with a shovel?” I threw Vida a caustic look. “Come on, Vida, who do you think Matt was arguing with the other morning up at the lodge?” I watched her roll her eyes, but didn’t wait for her answer. “It wasn’t Marje, I’ll admit. I don’t know why your niece was being wined and dined by Matt Tabor, but I doubt it had anything to do with her feminine charms. Am I right?”

  “Probably.” Vida looked exasperated.

  “So who was the other half of the lovers’ quarrel?”

  Setting her teacup in its matching saucer, Vida drew herself up in her customary majestic style. “Really, it’s so galling. It shouldn’t be, of course, but it is, because I’m a woman. I suppose I hate to see good men go to waste.” She pursed her lips, glanced into her now empty cup as if she were going to read the dregs, and gave a little shudder. “Obviously, the great love of Matt Tabor’s life is Reid Hampton.”

  It made sense that when Reid Hampton found himself up against a double exposure, he chose the lesser revelation of the two secrets. Patti Marsh knew her husband. Perhaps Reid’s homosexuality had caused the breakup of their marriage, rather than his unwillingness to take on the responsibility of a wife and child. Reid Hampton, or Ray Marsh, had paid $50,000 to Patti Marsh not to keep his real identity a secret, but to guard his sexual preference.

  Vida and I both doubted that Reid was ashamed of being gay. Instead, we figured that he didn’t want his hot new protégé, Matt Tabor, to be labeled anything but a raging macho man. Box office was the bottom line, and a hero who called his male director Honey wouldn’t bring in the paying customers. And if the trade reports were accurate, Reid Hampton’s production company desperately needed a hot ticket.

  Just before midnight, I pleaded exhaustion, more from the heat than any stress or strain. Naturally, Vida was tired, but she seemed too involved in the murder case to wind down. She was particularly fascinated by the notion that Curtis Graff might have been little Scarlett’s father, a lapse on Dani’s part that Vida found not only excusable, but commendable.

  As Vida escorted me to the front door, she gave the sleeve of my bathrobe a little shake. “We’re getting close, Emma. I can feel it.”

  I offered a weary smile. “What you’re feeling is polished cotton, Vida. And I feel as if my head is full of cotton wool. Good night.”

  “I mean it,” she shouted, heedless of her sleeping neighbors. “We’re hot on the heels of that killer!”

  I got into the Jaguar and lock
ed the doors. I only hoped that the killer wasn’t hot on our heels as well.

  Father Fitz was on vacation, replaced by a young priest from Wenatchee who was into social justice. With my own quest for justice nibbling at my attention, I caught only the high points of his sermon. Everyone is equal. Christianity is not a passive state. Taking action is better than not taking action. Society is upside down. Purify your soul, but if you can’t handle that, clean up the water. At least it was better than listening to Father Fitz rant about fast young women with shingled hair or the atrocities of the Bataan Death March.

  After mass, I strolled out into the parking lot. Beyond Mount Baldy, a few wispy clouds teased the land with the promise of better things to come, such as rain. Ninety again today, with no break in sight. No precipitation in the five-day forecast, fire danger in the extreme. I slumped into the Jaguar and headed home.

  I was pulling into the driveway when the young priest’s sermon hit me like a punch in the stomach. With a squeal of tires, I put the car into reverse and headed straight for Vida.

  Vida’s first reaction was that I was crazy. Ten minutes later, over tall glasses of iced tea, she began to accept my inspired theory.

  “I don’t see how you can prove it, though,” she remarked, keeping one eye on me and the other on Roger, who was out in the front yard catching bugs in a jar.

  “I’m going to have to rely on Milo. I thought of asking everybody who was at the Icicle Creek Tavern, but I’ve covered too many court cases to not know how much conflicting testimony eyewitnesses can come up with. I’m afraid it would be a waste of time.” I gave Vida a semi-reproachful look. “I wish you’d been there.”

  Vida lifted her chin. “I did my duty at Mugs Ahoy. You can’t expect me to be everywhere.”

  “I know.” My smile was meant to placate. “It’s just that you’re a better observer than Milo is, for all of his law enforcement experience.”

  “That’s because he’s only a man,” said Vida, pouring more iced tea from a fat green pitcher. “They don’t notice things the way other people do, Emma. Their vision is limited, as if they’re wearing blinders. They rarely see the whole picture.”

  “True,” I agreed in a vague voice, wishing I could lay claim to seeing more than I had. The bar stools on which Carla, Ginny, and I had been seated hadn’t given us a particularly good vantage point except for the immediate vicinity. There were too many bobbing heads and moving bodies blocking our view. As for Carla, she was a hopeless witness. I might expect better of Ginny, but in cursory conversations during the past few days, she hadn’t been able to tell me any more than I already knew. The tavern had been such a jumble of people, noise, and movement that isolated incidents were hard to recall. After more than a week, I could barely keep a coherent account in my own mind.

  Vida had gotten up to call to Roger through the screen door. “No bees, dear. Just grasshoppers.” She paused as Roger responded in a voice I couldn’t hear. Vida gave a shake of her head. “I can’t tell which are boys and which are girls, either, Roger.” She turned to her chair, still shaking her head. “He wants to dress the grasshoppers, according to sex. Isn’t he the one?”

  Resisting the urge to ask one what? I started to steer the conversation back to the topic at hand. But despite the distraction, Vida was already there. “You’re forgetting someone,” she said, pushing her glasses farther up on her nose. “I have a feeling that one of those people at the tavern would make an exemplary witness.”

  I winced as I saw Roger go from A to Z in a single bound, trampling a bed of asters and zinnias. “Who?”

  “The sort of person who isn’t as physically active as most people.” The glasses slipped a notch. Vida regarded me over their rims. “Honoria Whitman.”

  Vida couldn’t come to Startup with me because she wasn’t sure when her daughter and son-in-law would be back. I almost suggested we take Roger along, stopped long enough to question my sanity, and said I might give Milo a call. But Vida informed me that Milo had gone to Seattle to take his son to the Mariners’ game. Briefly, I cursed Milo for appearing to regard Cody Graff’s murder less seriously than I did.

  There was heavy traffic going both ways on Stevens Pass. The sun beat down on the broad highway; the south fork of the Skykomish River was so low you could walk across it; and I had to search to find patches of snow in the mountains that lined both sides of the road. My directions to Honoria’s house had been divined from Milo’s description. Feeling guilty because I hadn’t phoned ahead, I stopped in Gold Bar to call Honoria.

  To my relief, she was in; to my surprise, she sounded genuinely glad that I was coming. I took the turn she had given me and wound my way a quarter of a mile on a dirt road through overhanging vine maples.

  Honoria’s house probably had once been a summer cottage. But somewhere between the need for indoor plumbing and rising real estate prices, the cedar shake dwelling had been renovated. Tucked among the trees near a sluggish creek inching through ferns and cattails, the little house possessed a certain charm.

  Honoria was sitting in her wheelchair on the front porch, which spanned the width of the cottage. “I made separators,” she said as I trudged up the ramp to join her. “Kahlua, brandy, and milk. Not really a hot weather drink, but somehow it sounded wholesome.”

  “It does at that,” I agreed, sitting in a rough-hewn chair that was surprisingly comfortable. For the first quarter of an hour, we sipped our separators and made polite if congenial conversation. I thanked Honoria for her gift, emphasizing that I intended to find one perfect rose to set in the hole.

  Honoria laughed, a delightful, husky sound. “Oh, Emma! Did Milo tell you it was a vase?” She laughed some more, shaking her head on her graceful neck. “It’s nothing! It’s just a … thing. But Milo is so practical, I had to tell him it was … useful.” Her laughter subsided into a rich giggle.

  I laughed, too, but not quite as heartily. “And I thought it was a small bowling ball for a one-fingered amateur,” I murmured. “Oh, dear.”

  Honoria giggled again and tucked her linen shirt into her neatly pressed slacks. “It’s the shapes and the textures I like,” she explained, growing more serious. “I don’t see why pottery always has to be useful. It’s like any other art. It can be whatever you want it to be, which in this case, is really nothing but a blob. Except to the Milos of this world, bless them. They’re so practical, they can fix dripping faucets and replace fuel pumps and shingle your roof. We’d be lost without them.”

  I had visions of Milo with a ladder, scrambling about on Honoria’s roof in the middle of a winter windstorm. I tried to refocus, with Milo on my roof, but all I saw was him asking me to move the ladder and help him get down. Just the same, I admired Honoria’s candor. Indeed, I admired Honoria. Only in the most perverse corner of my often perverse soul did I wish I didn’t.

  It was time to get down to business. My curiosity was rampant, not only on a professional level, but because I sensed that I was on the right track in discovering the killer’s identity. If only Honoria were as keen an observer as Vida thought she was …

  I began by asking Honoria if Milo had questioned her—in his official capacity—about the Icicle Creek Tavern. He had, she assured me, but there had been very little she could tell him. As a newcomer, she didn’t know most of the people involved. It was only after the fact that she had discovered their identities.

  “Dani Marsh and Matt Tabor, of course,” she said, refilling my glass from a green and yellow carafe I presumed she had created. “I recognized them from their movies. But the others …” She gave a simple shrug. “They were new to me.”

  “You were sitting near the bar, and fairly close to Cody and Marje,” I pointed out. “Do you remember anything about Cody being served that last beer?”

  Honoria paid me the compliment of pausing long enough to consider my question seriously. “Milo asked me that, too. At the time, I told him I didn’t. But the more I tried to remember …” Her oval face puckered in c
oncentration. “So much was going on, with those angry exchanges between all sorts of people, including Matt Tabor and Cody Graff … Dani’s mother, that was easy to figure out, there is a resemblance … And Reid Hampton—I’m sure I’ve seen his picture in some film magazine or the newspapers—and the timber company fellow … It was all so distracting, and yet predictable.” Honoria gave me a helpless look. “Do you know what I mean? It was almost like a movie, the cliché barroom brawl scene.”

  Recalling that my reaction had been similar, I tipped my head in assent. “Do you mean phony?” I asked.

  Again, Honoria stopped to consider my query. “Phony … not that, but not exactly genuine, either. It was as if everyone was playing a part, not staged in that sense, not rehearsed, but doing what was expected of them.” She made a sudden impatient wave of her hand. “I can’t quite get a fix on it. I do know, however, that I was quite fascinated, and in watching all the action, I didn’t pay strict attention to where the beer was going.”

  “That,” I said, “may have been intentional.”

  Honoria’s gray eyes locked with mine. “I see.” She ran her tongue over her upper lip. “Why?”

  “I’m riot sure,” I admitted. “Maybe as cover for the murder.”

  The gray eyes grew very wide. “But … that would mean that somebody else—other than the killer—was involved.”

  My gaze kept a steady pace with Honoria’s. “That’s right. At least I’m guessing it is.” I leaned forward on my rough-planked chair. It was very quiet at Honoria’s place, the highway sounds muffled by the trees, the slow-winding creek making barely a gurgle, the leaves unruffled by the still, warm air. Only the occasional chatter of a chipmunk or caw of a crow broke the silence. “Beyond all the fuss and furor, what else did you see, Honoria?”

  She slumped slightly in the wheelchair, her eyes following a shaft of sunlight between the vine maples and the Cottonwood trees. “That’s what I’ve been trying to remember. I don’t think I saw anything. Except,” she went on, more slowly and with great care, “there was that awkward moment—for me, that is—when Patti got playful with Milo. You understand,” said Honoria, returning her gaze to my attentive face, “that I wasn’t reacting in a possessive way. It was more as if I were watching Milo take a test—how would he handle the situation? He passed beautifully.”