The Alpine Nemesis

by Mary Daheim

  “Not much,” I replied, propping the phone between my chin and shoulder as I reached for the bourbon bottle. “Tim Rafferty was just setting the scene.”

  “Ridiculous,” Vida huffed. “How could Tim and Tiffany have found that body? It's too much of a coincidence.”

  “I thought so at first,” I said, plunking ice cubes into a glass, “but then I visualized the scene. The rain starts pouring down, they seek shelter, and who knows what they were really doing under that ledge?”

  “True,” Vida responded, then switched to a tone of reproach. “Is that ice I hear?”

  “Yes,” I said, knowing what was coming next. Vida was antialcohol, except on those very rare occasions when she felt it absolutely necessary to have a drink, usually a Tom Collins.

  “Are you making an adult beverage?” she demanded, still in that critical tone.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you drinking alone?”

  “Vida,” I said with a big sigh, “you know perfectly well that I often have a drink after I get home from work. Usually, I am alone at that time. Do you really think I'm becoming a hopeless sot?”

  “It can sneak up on you,” Vida said. “Look at Ernest's brother, Edwin. And Elmo Runkel. Not to mention his father, Rufus, in his later years.”

  As far as I could tell, all of the Runkel men had been raging drunkards. Except, perhaps, for Vida's late husband, Ernest. Either he hadn't dared to take a drink, or he was very good at keeping secrets, even from his wife.

  “I'm merely thinking of your welfare, Emma,” Vida said, then paused and turned away from the phone.

  “You're back, Roger dear. Did you get the ice cream that Grandmums forgot?”

  I heard a grunt in the background, apparently signifying that Roger had indeed brought home the gallon or tub or truckload of ice cream his fat stomach desired.

  “But it's the rest of the story that bothers me,” I said, giving Roger the heave-ho from my mind's eye. “Maybe I can buy the part about following the Hartquists down from Second Hill. Maybe I believe that they got as far as Alpine Meats. But why sit around and watch what they were up to? And especially, why decide to dump poor Brian in with the O'Neills?”

  “Exactly,” Vida said. “It doesn't make sense. If I had a corpse in the back of my car, I wouldn't want to sightsee. I'd go directly to … Roger dear, don't pour out so much of that chocolate syrup. And really, you might consider taking the ice cream out of the carton first. Yes,” she went on, now speaking into the phone again, “I'd go to the sheriff straightaway.”

  I'd gone back into the living room with my drink, and plopped onto the sofa. “There's something else that bothers me, now that I think about it. If Tim and Tiffany took Brian to the walk-in after the Hartquists were there, why was he—Brian—on the bottom instead of on top?”

  “An excellent point,” Vida said. “Does Milo know all this?”

  “Yes, I told him,” I replied. “I made him late for dinner at Tara Peebles's house.”

  “That's too bad,” Vida said absently, then added, “I certainly hope this isn't some sort of hoax.”

  “I wondered, too,” I said. “But it wouldn't explain the body.”

  “No,” Vida agreed. “It'll certainly be interesting to find out what Milo learns when he interrogates Tim Raf-ferty. I've had one question to put to that young man for quite awhile.”

  “Which is what?” I asked.

  “Why doesn't he marry Tiffany Eriks? They've been going together for years.”

  That wasn't a bad question, but not exactly Milo's line of inquiry.

  I'd just finished my dinner of pasta, prawns, and a green salad when I heard someone at the door. It was a few minutes after seven o'clock and still broad daylight. Through the peephole, I could see Milo gazing up into the roof that covered my small front porch.

  “What's up?” I asked, letting him in.

  “That damned Rafferty,” Milo cursed. “Screwing around with a crime scene. Not once but twice. I'd like to kick him from here to Everett.”

  It took me a moment to understand what Milo was talking about. “Oh—you mean at the meat warehouse and up on the Ridge.”

  “Right.” Milo sat down heavily in the armchair that matched my sofa. “I've got him and Jack and Dwight on their way up there to comb the place under the ledge where the body was found. The rain's stopped; they'll have daylight for a couple of hours.”

  “Do you think Tim's lying?” I asked.

  “About what?” Milo removed his hat and punched in the high crown. “Finding Conley or the rest of it?” He took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and proceeded to light up.

  It was apparent that Milo was settling in. “Do you want a drink?” I inquired.

  “Sounds good,” Milo replied, finding the ashtray I kept in the drawer of the side table next to the chair.

  “What happened to your dinner date?” I asked, halfway to the kitchen.

  “Tara had to go into Seattle with Dan,” Milo said. “They're taking Conley's body to the airport.”

  “Tonight?” I was surprised.

  “They had to catch a certain flight,” Milo responded, “and the sooner the better. Even Conley won't keep forever, unless we put him back in the meat locker.”

  I supposed that was true enough. I put several ice cubes in a glass and poured out a measure of Scotch for the sheriff. “So you haven't eaten, I take it?”

  Milo accepted the drink with a grateful look. “No. I'll stop at the Venison Inn on my way back to the office. I've got to stick around there to see if Jack and Dwight come up with anything from the Ridge.”

  “Anything new on the Hartquists?” I asked, sitting back down on the sofa.

  Milo shook his head. “Just what you'd expect. A lot of cussing and complaining from their jail cells. Protests of innocence. The usual crap.”

  “What's the charge?”

  “Rosie's thinking second-degree homicide for all three Hartquists,” Milo said, referring to our relatively new prosecuting attorney, Rosemary Bourgette.

  “That sounds about right,” I remarked, “unless it was a gangland-style killing.”

  Milo wrinkled his long face at me. “The Hartquists aren't the Norwegian Mafia.”

  “You know what I mean,” I responded, getting on my feet again. “Wasn't at least one of them shot in the back of the head?”

  “Right,” Milo allowed. “The other two were shot in the chest. That doesn't necessarily mean they were assassinated. Hey, where are you going?” he asked as I started toward the kitchen.

  “To feed you and freshen my drink,” I replied. “Want to join me?”

  “Come on, Emma,” Milo protested, though he was already out of the chair, “you don't have to do that.”

  “I know I don't,” I said, searching the freezer for a steak. “But you've had a long, hard day, and you're not finished yet.”

  “You've had a tough day yourself,” Milo said, leaning against the kitchen counter. “Want a cigarette?”

  “Of course I do,” I replied crossly, “but I'm not going to have one. T-bone or rib steak?”

  Milo shrugged. “Whatever's easier.”

  I put the T-bone in the microwave to thaw. “You went outtoKSKY?”

  Milo sat down at the kitchen table. “I listened to a transcript of Tim's statement first. Then I questioned both him and Fleetwood.”

  I readied a large potato to zap in the microwave when the steak came out. “Did Tim omit anything on the radio?”

  “Not really. He was more specific about the details, but it didn't tell me much.”

  Steak out; potato in. “Did Tim explain why Brian Conley was on the bottom of the pile?”

  “He said he couldn't remember much about being in the warehouse. It was all a daze. Oh,” Milo added in a disinterested manner, “Tim mentioned the meat. You know, pork chops, lamb steaks, pigs' feet. He said he'd never seen so much meat, especially whole carcasses.”

  Milo's chunk of meat was sizzling in the ski
llet. “Do you believe him?”

  “I don't know what to think,” Milo answered slowly. “Put yourself in Tim's place. He's out for a nice spring evening with his girlfriend. They go up on the Ridge—it's not really that much of a hike to Spark Plug Lake, not for folks who've been raised around here—and they get caught in the rain. They go under a ledge to keep dry, and they find a corpse. That'd shake up most people, and if I remember right, Tiffany's the hysterical type. For whatever reason, Tim decides not to go for help, but to bring the body down the mountain. Then he spots the pickup on the Icicle Creek Road. Oh …” Milo stopped for a moment. “I forgot, Tim didn't mention this on the air, but he said the lights were out on the truck, which made him suspicious.”

  I was putting a small green salad together—romaine, tomato, scallions, cucumber. “Do you think that's true?”

  “It makes sense from the Hartquists' point of view. The bodies were in the back, covered with a tarp. It was dark, and they wouldn't want to be spotted if they could help it. I haven't asked them about this yet, but I will. Anyway, I can see that might be how it was.”

  I turned the steak over. “So Tim and Tiffany are following a vehicle with no lights. That would arouse curiosity.”

  “I agree,” Milo said. “Say, that smells good. I'm hungrier than I thought.”

  “It'll be about five more minutes,” I said, setting a place at the table. “You insist on medium well when it comes to meat.”

  “Not too well done,” Milo cautioned. “I just don't want it to get up and walk out the door.”

  “What about Spence?” I inquired. “Was he preening all over the place?”

  Milo grimaced. “Well … not exactly. I mean, there's nobody around to preen for at the station.”

  “You didn't get any hint that this was a publicity stunt?”

  Milo shook his head. “No. How could it be?”

  “I'm not sure,” I admitted.

  “You and Spence may wind up killing each other one of these days,” Milo said with a crooked grin. “I take it you don't much like competition.”

  “Mainly, it's cut into our revenue,” I replied, removing the baked potato from the microwave. “Oh, I realize that when you put out a weekly, you're going to get scooped. But it's the big stories—like Brian Conley disappearing in the first place—that really bother me.

  And now this—Tim's confession. It certainly makes me suspicious that he also happens to work for Spencer Fleetwood.”

  Milo nodded slowly. “I can see that. You're not hurting for money at the paper, are you?”

  I sighed. “We've never had a big profit margin. Spence cutting into it doesn't help. But with Kip MacDuff using the backshop for commercial jobs, we'll get by. I'd just hate to see some of the national advertisers drop us in favor of KSKY. You know, like Safeway and Starbucks and UPS. That would really hurt.”

  “I kind of like the music he plays,” Milo remarked in what I took to be a teasing manner.

  I put the steak and microwaved potato on Milo's plate, then handed him the salad. “I don't. I'd forgotten how many of those songs from way back when were god-awful.”

  “Better than that junk the kids listen to now,” Milo declared, slicing open his potato.

  “I'm not entirely sure,” I said, sitting down at the table across from the sheriff. “The lyrics are better today. They're more innovative, more realistic.”

  Milo's only response was a grunt. I sipped my drink and watched him eat. With the kitchen full of cooking smells and the crows cawing out in the cedar trees and the soft twilight at the windows, a familiar sense of comfort swept over me. For a long time, I thought I'd lost it, that friendship could never resume where desire had intervened. But this was a different kind of intimacy than the merging of bodies, and I cherished what Milo and I had managed to salvage between us.

  “So tell me about Tara,” I said. “I've met her a couple of times, but I don't really know her.”

  “Nice woman,” Milo said, putting what looked like about a quarter of a pound of butter on his potato. “Tara lost her husband two years ago to cancer. She was raised in Montana on a sheep ranch. She met her husband in the Peace Corps in… I forget—one of those countries in Africa they keep renaming. Anyway, they settled in San Francisco.” He paused to eat a forkful of salad. “Her husband, Charlie, was in the banking business. He got transferred north to Seattle after a couple of years. Then, after Charlie died, Tara decided she'd had enough of city living, so she moved up here.”

  “I can see that, since she was raised in the wide open spaces of Montana,” I remarked. “All that big sky. Tell me, how does a young man decide to become an undertaker? I've always wondered about that. In Al Driggers's case, he inherited the business. But what about Dan Peebles?”

  Milo didn't answer until he'd chewed and swallowed a large chunk of steak. “I don't really know. I gather that both boys—Don's the other one—were a handful growing up. Charlie worked long hours and traveled quite a bit. After their father died, the boys seemed to drift. Tara talked Don into joining the navy, but I'm not sure how Dan ended up in the funeral business. He's got an A.A. degree from one of the community colleges in Seattle. Maybe he's just filling up time.”

  “And graves,” I said.

  “Right,” said Milo.

  Tim Rafferty worked the morning shift at KSKY, and I wasn't going near the place. I'd wait to catch him after work. He and Tiffany had moved in together a year or so ago. I planned to give them both a call in the mid-afternoon.

  “Such a rush,” Vida remarked that morning. “I don't understand why Brian Conley had to be shipped out of here as if he had to keep an appointment.”

  “Vida,” I said with a smile, “you resent anybody who leaves Alpine, even if they happen to be dead.”

  “It's unseemly,” she declared. “I'm calling Al Driggers to find out what all the hurry was about.”

  Hoping that Al had recovered sufficiently from the flu to deal with Vida, I went back into my cubbyhole to handle the first phone calls of the day. Several pertained to Tim Rafferty's confession, as I knew they would. Others either complimented me or complained about the special edition that had come out the previous day. Those in favor felt that we'd done an outstanding job of keeping Alpiners apprised of local news. The critics didn't understand why we couldn't have gotten the Rafferty story into the Tuesday Extra. At least two people griped that the Advocate had never come out on a Tuesday, and now their whole week was out of sync. Another crank insisted that Vida couldn't spell “toilett.”

  Just after eleven, Toni Andreas called to say that Alfred Svensen, known familiarly as Sven, was in town and that the arraignment would take place at the courthouse before noon. I debated whether to send Scott or to go myself. But Scott was at the sheriff's office, trying to get Jack MuUins to tell him what kind of evidence had been found at either the Hartquist or the O'Neill property. Jack, naturally, was playing it close to his chest.

  Vida had finally gotten in touch with Janet Driggers. “That makes sense,” she said as I came into the newsroom to get a coffee refill. “Janet says Al still isn't feeling well, and with Oscar Nyquist's service coming up Saturday morning, they thought it best to dispatch Brian Conley as soon as possible. Oscar should have a very large turnout.”

  I agreed, though I didn't see how the number of mourners would increase Al and Dan's workload. Vida announced that she was going with me to the arraignment.

  “I wouldn't miss it for the world,” she avowed.

  We arrived at the brown brick courthouse at eleven-thirty. The old-fashioned rotunda with its WPA murals of loggers, miners, and railroad workers was crowded with curiosity seekers.

  “My, my,” Vida murmured. “The Hartquists have certainly drawn a crowd.”

  Most of those who milled about on the worn mosaic tile floor greeted Vida like the old friend or relative that she was. I left her to work her way through the gathering and headed straight for the courtroom. It was a drab place, with fir-paneled wa
lls, a bank of vertical windows on the street side, and the hardest wooden benches this side of the pews at St. Mildred's.

  Our superior court judge of long standing had become incapacitated the previous autumn, and in his stead was a fortyish woman originally from Monroe. Marsha Foster-Klein was her name, and a brisk demeanor was her game. She was already in her place when I slipped onto the high-backed bench that was reserved for the press. Marsha, who wore her pale blonde hair in a Dutch bob, was giving hell to a teenaged D.U.I. I didn't recognize. In a county as small as SkyCo, the judge was forced to handle everything but speeding tickets. I was informed by the bailiff that Judge Marsha had already handed down the ruling on Doc Dewey's postmortem of Brian Conley: death by foul play, by a person unknown. That came as no surprise.

  Hearing a commotion nearby, I turned, half expecting to see Vida shaking off overly inquisitive pests. Instead, I spotted Spencer Fleetwood, Gucci shades in place and wired for sound.

  “This is Spencer Fleetwood, live and direct from the Skykomish County courthouse,” I heard him intone in his mellifluous voice. “We're here reporting for radio station KSKY. Judge Marsha Foster-Klein is already on the bench, dispensing her own particular brand of rough justice.”

  “If I ever see you so much as looking at another half-rack of Coors,” Judge Marsha berated the young man before her, “I'll run over you myself. License suspended for six months, thirty days in jail, eighty hours of community service.” She banged her gavel. I wondered that wood chips didn't fly. “Get out of this courtroom, and don't let me ever see you in here again.”

  The dejected perp shuffled off, apparently into the arms of his obese mother who had been sitting in the front row. Spence kept up his commentary with the microphone.

  Vida finally appeared, her floral bonnet askew. “Goodness, people are snoopy! Why do they think I always know everything that's happening?”

  The answer was as obvious to me as it should have been to Vida, so I said nothing. The courtroom was filling up. Judge Marsha was listening to a divorce proceeding involving an adulterous relationship, spousal abuse, and the question of which party would be awarded custody of a ferret named Yvonne.