The Alpine Traitor

by Mary Daheim

  Ginny shrugged. “You know Doc. He says it’s up to me.”

  I certainly knew Doc, who’d joined his father’s practice long before I arrived in Alpine. Gerald Dewey was a general practitioner, and while he wasn’t able to be quite as hands-on as his late father had been, he had a compassionate, practical bedside manner.

  “Doc’s right,” I said. And frowned. “There’s no return address on this package. It’s postmarked Alpine, though.”

  “It’s not very heavy,” Ginny pointed out.

  I read the address, which had been printed with a black marker pen:

  Emma Lord

  507 Front Street

  Alpine WA 98289

  I uttered a small laugh. “I hope it’s not a bomb from some irate reader.”

  “You never know these days,” Ginny said, shaking her head and taking a few backward steps away from my desk.

  “Right,” I said, aware that the hint of sarcasm was lost on my office manager.

  The small tan box inside had no markings. I lifted the lid, removed a bit of tissue paper, and stared at a pearl-and-diamond bracelet. “If it’s not fake, it’s rather pretty,” I said in a puzzled tone as I dangled the bauble from my index finger.

  Ginny showed a hint of excitement. “Is it a present?”

  “I’m not sure.” I put the bracelet on my desk and opened a gift card that lay on the bottom layer of tissue paper.

  “Mr. Fisher?” Ginny suggested as I opened the card.

  My jaw must have dropped. “What is it?” Ginny asked in a startled voice.

  For a moment, I couldn’t speak. I reread the handwritten message, recognizing the large, inelegant penmanship. “Here,” I said, quickly handing the card to Ginny as if it were on fire.

  She frowned. “I don’t get it.”

  I’m aware that pregnant women tend to be self-absorbed—all their intellect and emotions focused on themselves and the child they’re carrying—but Ginny’s response angered me.

  “For God’s sake,” I snapped. “What do you think it means?” I snatched the card away from her and read the scrawled sentiment aloud. “‘Sandra—Happy St. Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1991. You are the only woman I’ve ever loved. With all my heart, Tom.’”

  Ginny let out a little gasp. “Oh!” Her fair skin grew flushed. “That Tom!”

  I threw the bracelet and the note back into the box. “Yes.” I couldn’t suppress the barb: “That Tom. Not Tom Sawyer, not Tom Hanks, not Tom Seaver.”

  “Tom Seaver?”

  I’d forgotten that Ginny wasn’t a baseball fan. “Never mind.” I tried to stifle my anger. “You might as well know,” I said. “Tom Cavanaugh’s children want to buy the Advocate.”

  “No!” Ginny was aghast. But it didn’t take long for her usual practical nature to reassert itself. “That’s too stupid. It must be a joke.” She pointed to the box while I was covering the bracelet and card with the lid. “I still don’t get it. What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Probably part of a war of nerves,” I said. “They’re serious.” I explained that Dylan and Kelsey Platte were buying Ed’s house. “This is no joke,” I emphasized. “Why would they move here if they didn’t think they could take over the paper?”

  “Maybe they like small towns?” Ginny suggested. “Every so often we get more people coming to Alpine, especially from California.” She looked at me with a hint of dismay. “You wouldn’t dream of selling, would you?”

  “Of course not.” I paused, wondering how ugly the Cavanaugh campaign might get.

  “So,” Ginny said slowly, “they sent the bracelet and the card to upset you. That’s mean. Is this the guy who called just as I was going to lunch?”

  I nodded. “He’s married to Tom’s daughter, Kelsey. If he calls again, tell him I’ve gone to Madagascar for the weekend.”

  “Okay,” Ginny said. I think she knew I was exaggerating, but judging from her stoic expression I couldn’t really tell.

  After she left my cubbyhole, I realized I had to tell Kip and Curtis about the buyout offer. Or the demand, I thought, my anger returning. In fact, it occurred to me, I should hold a staff meeting. Having sat through endless talk fests in my reporting career, I had a long-standing hatred of meetings, most of which were worthless opportunities to add huge quantities of hot air to the ozone layer. I couldn’t remember when I’d held one of my own. Maybe never. It was a record I didn’t want to break.

  Vida and Leo returned together a few minutes before two, just about the time I realized I was famished.

  “No luck,” Leo grumbled. “Platte wasn’t at the motel.”

  “I didn’t think he would be,” I said. “He told me I couldn’t reach him this afternoon.”

  “His car was there,” Vida asserted. “Minnie Harris said she hadn’t seen him leave on foot, but she’d been in the back eating lunch.”

  Minnie and Mel Harris owned two of the three motels in Alpine. Years ago, they had bought the Tall Timber from Alma and Gus Eriks, who wanted to retire. More recently, the Harrises had bought Alpine’s oldest motel, which had started as an auto court after World War Two. Mel and Minnie had spent almost a year remodeling and updating what was now known as the Cascade Inn. The third—and newest—was the Alpine Falls Motel, a squalid bunch of built-on-the-cheap units that had opened a couple of years earlier.

  By coincidence, my entire staff was on hand a little after three-thirty. Bravely, I asked them to come into the newsroom. When my production manager and my reporter heard me drop the bombshell, Kip was shocked, but Curtis thought it was funny.

  “Nothing funny about this,” I said, giving him a reproachful look.

  I showed them the bracelet and the note I’d received earlier. Vida was outraged—and not just at the scare tactic. “Mean-spirited,” she declared, “bordering on harassment. You should take that to the sheriff.”

  I’d already thought about doing that, but I didn’t want to bother Milo Dodge with crank mailings. Certainly I never pestered him with the ordinary crank calls and letters. As long as bodily threats weren’t involved, they were routine for editors and publishers.

  “So,” Curtis put in, fingering his dimpled chin, “this goes back to a guy you were going to marry?”

  I shot my new reporter a dark glance. “Yes. You should look through the archives. The whole horrible story is in there. In fact, it made the Seattle papers, even the AP. You are a newspaper reader, aren’t you, Curtis?”

  “Oh, sure,” he replied. “I belong to that dying breed.”

  “Then you probably read about Tom’s death,” I said in a waspish tone. “It was almost five years ago.”

  Curtis grimaced. “Gee—I’m not sure I knew how to read that far back. I was only six.”

  He was sinking in quicksand, and the expression on my face must have warned him. “I went to Europe that summer on a student tour,” he explained soberly. “I didn’t get back until the end of summer quarter.”

  With a curt nod, I acknowledged what I assumed was meant as an apology. “The important thing now is that you understand I have absolutely no intention of selling the Advocate. These people apparently are playing hardball, but it won’t get them anywhere. Your jobs are safe, and I’m entrenched behind my desk. If anyone approaches you about buying the paper, tell them to forget it. Hopefully, we’ll soon hear the last of this offer. Meanwhile, have a good weekend. I’m going to Seattle this afternoon, but I’ll be back Sunday night. You can always reach me on my cell phone.”

  My small staff began to disband, except for Vida, who stood ramrod straight by her desk. “I’m serious, Emma. Whoever sent you that is meaner than cat dirt. Before you leave, take that ridiculous bracelet and note to Milo.”

  My watch informed me it was three-fifty-three. “Okay,” I agreed after a pause. “I certainly don’t want the damned things. I’ll see Milo as soon as I finish a couple of chores. I’ll start for Seattle right after that.”

  At ten after four I was walking briskly d
own Front Street in mild if cloudy weather. What little snow we’d had the past winter had long since melted on Mount Baldy to the north and Tonga Ridge on the south. From three blocks away, I couldn’t hear the Skykomish River, but I knew it was running well below its banks. A freight train whistled in the distance, followed by the clang of bells for the red and white crossing bars by the bridge leading out of town.

  The sheriff was behind the curving mahogany counter, chatting with Deputy Dwight Gould and the receptionist, Lori Cobb.

  “Don’t tell me on a late Friday afternoon you’ve got a crime to report,” Milo said. “I’m going fishing as soon as I grab a bite to eat.”

  “Not exactly,” I replied, taking the box and its original wrappings out of my handbag. There was no need for privacy. In Alpine everybody knows everybody else’s business. Secrets are almost as scarce as old-growth trees. “Take a look.”

  Out of habit, Milo examined the brown wrapping paper without touching it. “No return. Hunh.” He used a letter opener to lift the lid and the tissue paper. Dwight and Lori were watching. “Bracelet?” the sheriff said.

  I nodded.

  “Pretty,” Lori noted. “Are those real diamonds?”

  “Probably,” I said.

  Milo looked down at me from his six-foot-five advantage. “You’ve already mauled this, I suppose.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you show me the card.”

  I was tempted to say he could damned well pick it up himself, but I complied. “You can read, can’t you?” I snapped as I held it up for him.

  “As long as the words are short,” he retorted. Milo grimaced as he tried to decipher the handwriting. “Did a chicken write this? It’s not legible.”

  “It is to me,” I said and quoted from unhappy memory. “Tom Cavanaugh, to his lovely, loony wife.”

  The sheriff shook his head. “So how did you end up with it?”

  I sighed wearily before relating the story. Milo seemed mildly surprised; Dwight looked indifferent; Lori appeared intrigued.

  “Nasty,” she declared. “Not very professional, either.”

  “I agree,” I said.

  “So what do you want us to do?” Milo asked. His hazel eyes glinted faintly, as if, like Curtis, he thought this was somehow amusing.

  “Nothing at the moment,” I said, “but I don’t want it anywhere near me. I’m going to Seattle for the weekend.”

  The glint in Milo’s eyes faded. “A hot date with Rolf?”

  “A cocktail cruise,” I said without expression. My off-and-on romantic relationship with the sheriff had been off for a long time. But I was very fond of him and never wanted to hurt his feelings. He deserved better. In fact, he deserved a lot better than what I could give him.

  “I’ll put this in the evidence room,” he said. “You aren’t going to consider selling, are you?”

  “Of course not.” I made a face. “But their tactics are unsettling. I suppose it’s only natural that Tom’s children might be a little strange, given their mother’s mental and emotional instability.”

  Milo opened the gate in the counter. “I’ll walk you out.”

  I shot him a puzzled glance. “Okay.”

  On the sidewalk, he stopped just out of viewing range from his office. “That note—you sure it’s Tom’s handwriting?”

  Every once in a while Milo shows an unexpected sensitivity. “It looks like it,” I said glumly. “His penmanship was deplorable but distinctive.”

  Milo nodded once. “Still, it’d be easy to change a number.”

  That hadn’t occurred to me. I realized what the sheriff was trying to say and smiled wanly. “You mean Tom wrote that before I knew him.”

  “Maybe.” Milo shrugged. “Do you know when he got married?”

  “In 1970,” I replied. “A year or so before I met him when I was an intern at The Seattle Times.”

  “So,” he said, keeping an eye on what might have been an unsecured load on a pickup truck that was moving along Front Street, “changing a 7 to a 9 wouldn’t be hard.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “Thanks.” In another uncharacteristic gesture, I stood on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Have a good weekend. Catch some trout.”

  “I’ll try.” The sheriff patted my shoulder awkwardly before loping over to his Grand Cherokee. Before crossing the street at the corner, I turned around to see him pulling away from the curb. The weird ga-goo-ga siren that he’d bought online sounded as he drove south on Front Street. Apparently he’d decided to stop the pickup. The driver’s weekend was off to a bad start.

  Fifteen minutes later I was driving my Honda west on Highway 2 with the windows down, sniffing the evergreen air and catching glimpses of the Skykomish River as it narrowed and tumbled over the rapids near the road. My spirits began to lift as they often did when I could see a slim but lively waterfall cascading over the rocky face of the foothills that lined the route. Moss and lichen, ferns and foliage all spoke to me of the mountain forests. Soothing, no matter what the season.

  Traffic was growing heavier, typical for a Friday in June. I eased up on the gas pedal, dropping to forty miles an hour. I’d just passed Sunset Falls and the turnoff to Index when my cell phone rang. I refused to answer on this winding stretch of dangerous road. Another six miles and I’d be able to pull over at Gold Bar. Whoever was calling could wait.

  Just beyond the next bridge over the Sky, I slowed even more as a big RV loomed ahead. Maybe I’d wait until Sultan. Having skipped lunch, I was starving, and a hamburger and fries sounded good. It was ten to five. I had plenty of time to get to Seattle before seven—if traffic wasn’t tied up too badly in the suburbs. As much as I love the city, its transportation system is a mess.

  When I was a child, back in the fifties, my parents were among those who were opposed to any kind of—gasp!—“California-style” freeway. Along with many others, they believed that if a freeway had to be built, it should not be anywhere near the city. Later, when wiser heads prevailed and the route was destined to go straight through Seattle itself, Mom and Dad sided with those who thought it should be hidden under plantings of trees and shrubs and flowers and vines. I remember thinking that might be rather pretty. But it was too expensive, and I-5 began to creep through the town, asphalt and concrete bared for all the world to see—except for Freeway Park, which was built on top of it, complete with the requisite flora and even a waterfall.

  I was still musing on the past when I drove off the highway at Sultan to the Loggers Inn on Main Street. I was getting out of the car when my cell phone rang again.

  “Damn!” I said under my breath, having forgotten that the cursed thing had rung while I was on the road. I got back in the car, dug out the cell, and answered on the fourth ring.

  “Where are you?” Milo asked in an irritated tone.

  “Sultan,” I replied. “In the parking lot of the Loggers Inn.”

  “Your buyout troubles may be over,” he said. “Dylan Platte’s dead.”

  FOUR

  I WAS STUNNED. “DEAD?” I REPEATED STUPIDLY. “HOW?”

  “How dead? Dead—as in not alive,” Milo said, still sounding irked. “He was shot twice in the chest. Minnie Harris found him in his motel room.”

  I leaned back against the car seat. “He was murdered? Or was it suicide?”

  “Let’s say suspicious. No weapon at the scene.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Well…” The sheriff’s voice dropped a notch. “That’s the problem. You’re going to have to say something, because you’re the only one who knows much about this guy.”

  “Oh, good Lord!” I cried. “I’m a person of interest?”

  “Yes. Come on, Emma. You know the drill. Get your butt back here ASAP.”

  It was tempting to lash out at Milo and tell him I thought he’d shot Dylan Platte just to screw up my weekend with Rolf Fisher. But the sheriff, who always went by the book, was right. Even if I’d never met the victim, at least I�
�d spoken with him and knew the details about his next of kin. What was worse, I had a motive for wanting Dylan dead. That thought sent a shiver up my spine.

  “Give me an hour to get back to Alpine,” I said, hunger pains still gnawing at my stomach.

  “You don’t need an hour. Didn’t I say ASAP? Point your car east and drive. Nobody’s going home early tonight.” Milo obviously wasn’t in an accommodating mood.

  “You’re a real jackass,” I snapped. “I’ll see you when I see you.” I hung up and immediately dialed Rolf’s number at the Associated Press. It was after five, but he might still be in the office near Elliott Bay.

  He wasn’t. He’d left fifteen minutes earlier, according to the honey-voiced female on the other end of the line. I tried his cell, knowing that he usually walked to his lower Queen Anne Hill condo. I got his voice mail, so I didn’t leave a message but called his home phone. This time I got a wrong number. Someone with a heavy Eastern European accent informed me that there was no “R-r-a-a-w-f” at that number. Taking a deep breath, I tried again. Still no answer, just his voice mail.

  “I’m sorry,” I said earnestly, “really sorry, but I got as far as Sultan before the sheriff called me to say that”—did I want to unload the whole story into thin air?—“that there’s been an emergency and I have to go back to Alpine. Maybe I can come down tomorrow. Call me.”

  I had to wait a minute or so to get back on Highway 2. Eastbound traffic was increasing with vehicles from the more heavily populated western side of the state headed over Stevens Pass. It was officially summer, and vacationers were on the move.

  Driving thirty-five miles an hour on a narrow two-lane mountain road with sharp curves and slow-moving traffic keeps me alert but still allows my mind to think about other things. As I was passing Gold Bar again, the impact of Dylan Platte’s murder began to sink in.

  A random killing, maybe. A drug-addled thief who burst in on Dylan to steal the motel’s TV or the occupant’s wallet? A greedy hooker Dylan had hired to while away the afternoon? A drug deal gone bad? A jealous husband with a case of mistaken identity for his wife’s lover?