by Mary Daheim
“Yes,” I conceded, trying to envision a rollicking clan of Doukases, “but it helps if they don’t hate one another.” I gave her a bright smile and went out the door.
My Jag was wedged between Neeny’s twenty-five-year old black Bentley and Phoebe’s Lincoln Town Car. She had pulled in too close behind me, and I cursed her thoughtlessness. But as I was trying to figure out how to maneuver the Jag out into the open, I noticed that the red exterior of Phoebe’s new car was dappled with blue spots. Curious, I thought, but I wasn’t sure why the blemishes tugged at my brain. The real question I had for Phoebe was why she had written to Chris in Hawaii, but I wasn’t going to broach the subject until I had the letter in hand. There were already too many unanswered questions about Alpine’s extended First Family.
Chapter Ten
LUNCH WAS FISH and chips picked up at the Burger Barn and eaten at my desk. Vida, who was also running late, joined me with a hard-boiled egg, cottage cheese, carrot and celery sticks, and a water pistol.
“Roger shot me this morning,” she said, speaking of her eldest grandson and looking annoyed. “He’s supposed to be home sick with the flu, but he’s running around like a savage. Amy and Ted don’t know how to handle him.”
A staunch fan of Louisa May Alcott, Vida had named her three daughters Amy, Meg, and Beth. Jo had never materialized. Amy was the only one of the trio to remain in Alpine, the other two having moved to Seattle and Bellingham. Roger, who was almost ten, seemed to devote his life to plaguing his grandmother. Naturally, Vida doted on him.
“Gibb’s got some explaining to do,” declared Vida, taking aim with the water pistol at the portrait of Marius Vandeventer that hung over my bookcase. “Maybe he went up to Icicle Creek to make sure there wasn’t any gold after all. He never did trust Mark.”
“That part of town sure was popular Wednesday. Between the mineshaft and Neeny’s house, half of Alpine seems to have passed by.”
“It’s a small town, after all,” Vida remarked while snapping off carrot sticks in rapid succession. “Everybody has to be somewhere.”
I dipped a piece of too-dry cod into a small container of tartar sauce. “At any rate, Neeny says Mark didn’t stop by Wednesday night. And Phoebe didn’t see Chris. She was watching TV.”
Vida dug into her cottage cheese. “Maybe she was trying to figure out how to break the news of the elopement to Simon and Cecelia.”
“I wouldn’t think Neeny would care what his family thought,” I said as the phone rang. It was Richie Magruder, acting mayor in Fuzzy Baugh’s absence. He wanted to know if Carla could take a picture of the raccoon family that was setting up housekeeping at the base of Carl Clemans’s statue in Old Mill Park. I told Richie I’d ask Carla when she got back from interviewing Darla Puckett about her two weeks in Samoa.
“Even Neeny would care about repercussions if he’s changed his will,” Vida said, not missing a beat. “Simon would raise more of a ruckus than a bear with a crosscut saw.” She reached over to the bookcase and pulled out my Seattle phone directory. “I just thought of something.”
“What?” The french fries were better than the fish. I washed them down with a swig of Pepsi.
“Why would Phoebe go all the way to Seattle to see an eye doctor? She only wears reading glasses.” Vida glanced up from the Yellow Pages to wave a celery stick at me. “What if she went to see someone else?”
“Like?”
“Like a lawyer. Here.” She tapped at the page. “Old Doc Dewey’s daughter, Sybil, married an attorney who is in a big firm in One Union Square. Douglas Difienbach. He specializes in estate planning. I think I’ll give Sybil a call.” Vida was wearing her smug expression.
“That’s a long shot.”
“Of course,” agreed Vida, writing down the number and replacing the directory. “But Phoebe couldn’t use Simon’s firm. She wouldn’t want him to know what she was up to. And Sybil’s husband is the only attorney I know of in Seattle. I mean, personally. Phoebe wouldn’t go to a stranger”.
Of course she wouldn’t, I thought. Small-town mentality wouldn’t permit such a digression. Vida might be right. “But what about client confidentiality?” I countered.
Vida shrugged. “It’s no breach for Doug to say he’s seen Phoebe. And he would say so. It isn’t every day that someone from his wife’s old hometown comes waltzing into One Union Square.” She grabbed the phone and started dialing. As it turned out, she had called the law office, not the Diffenbach residence. Undeterred, Vida asked for Doug. I sat back, watching her operate. Vida was a lesson in subterfuge.
“Doug? yes, this is Vida Runkel in Alpine. … No, not since little Ian was christened … Four already? Oh, my! Again in January? How lovely! Phoebe didn’t mention it. … Yes, she was too excited about being a bride, I suppose. … Oh, I know, but life’s like that, marry and bury, laughter and tears. … No, but Milo Dodge is doing his best. … Phoebe was so impressed with your work. … True, she’s easily impressed by a lot of things. … My daughter, Beth … Oh, that’s all she’d want, too, but these things are necessary when you have children Yes, I’ll have her call. … Thanks so much, Doug … My best to Sybil. ’Bye.”
Vida took a deep breath. “Phoebe had her own will drawn up.” She gave me a hawklike stare. “Who do you suppose she’s left everything to?”
I knew Phoebe was childless; I also figured that even if Vida had drawn the bare facts out of Doug Diffenbach, she couldn’t possibly have extracted the details. “I don’t know. Who?”
Vida sat back, munching on her hard-boiled egg. “Really, Emma, I’m not an oracle. I just wish. I knew.”
So did I.
At three o’clock, I swung by Alpine High School and caught Kevin MacDuff climbing on his bicycle. He took one look at my car and turned away. I honked.
“You must be awful mad at me,” he said as I got out of the car and hurried up to meet him. “Kent sure is.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said with a smile. “All I want to know is what you actually told Carla.”
Kevin hung his head. At fifteen, he was far more slender than his eldest brother, and his skin was comparatively pale except for a spot of color on each cheek. His hair was strawberry blond, very short, with a wispy pigtail in back. “I called Carla about the paper route and we got to talking, and I said I’d seen Mark and he acted like he’d found gold.” Kevin’s head bobbed up, his fingers clutching the handlebars of his mountain bike.
I nodded. “Mark acted like he found gold, right?”
Kevin nodded back. “Right.”
“Exactly how did Mark act? Were you at the mineshaft?” I queried as an old beater without a muffler roared past.
Kevin screwed up his face. “Well, he was kind of excited. Out of breath, you know. I was going to see Eric Puckett up the road and Mark came down from the mineshaft just as I was going by. He said …” Kevin paused, clearly trying to recall Mark’s precise words. “Mark said he’d made a big discovery. I asked him what, but he just shook his head and got into his Jeep, so I rode off to Eric’s.”
Briefly, I considered Kevin’s account. “But he didn’t say he’d found gold.”
“No.”
“So Carla misinterpreted your remark.” And, I thought, but didn’t say so, that Kevin had misinterpreted Mark’s reaction.
The entire student body seemed to be whizzing by us afoot, in cars, on bikes. The single-story high school, which had replaced the two-story red-brick building that had become the newly refurbished public library and senior citizen center, sprawled over a full city block, its play-field reaching to the edge of the forest.
Kevin screwed up his face. “Misinterpreted?”
“She took what you said literally,” I said, still smiling.
“I guess.” Kevin sighed.
I suspected he’d been taking considerable abuse from Kent. “Don’t worry about it. I seriously doubt if that bit about the gold had anything to do with Mark’s death.”
Kevin didn’t look c
onvinced. “Kent was really pissed off. I guess so were all the Doukases.”
“I don’t know about that.” I patted his arm. “Just be careful what you tell Carla next time, okay? She tends to go overboard.”
“Yeah. Sure.” He gave me a half smile. “I’d better go home and feed my snake.”
“Kevin, what do you think Mark did find up at the mine?”
Balancing himself in mid-stride, Kevin turned to look back at me. “I don’t know. Whatever it was, it must have been a big deal. He acted … weird.” He gave a shake of his head.
“Scared?” I suggested.
“Maybe.” His fingers clenched and unclenched the handlebars. “Yeah, maybe that was it. Scared.” He gave me a curious look and pedaled off down the street.
I stared after Kevin. Mark Doukas didn’t strike me as an easy person to scare. For a long moment, I stood next to the Jag, lost in thought. Maybe Fuzzy Baugh was right: the sheriff should open the mineshaft. I’d ask Milo what he thought, though I already knew he felt it would invite danger.
But Milo was out when I stopped by his office. Bill Blatt said he was paying a call on Neeny Doukas. That news buoyed me a bit. I hoped that Milo wasn’t going to let the Doukases lead him around by the nose.
The sun was still out and the air felt crisp when I got back to The Advocate. Ginny was mailing out bills; Ed was at the Grocery Basket; Vida had gone to the drugstore; and Carla was taking a picture of the raccoons.
“Only four phone calls,” Ginny said, handing me the slips of paper and showing off perfect white teeth in one of her rare smiles. “Some man is waiting to see you. He got here about ten minutes ago.”
“Not Chris Ramirez?” I asked on a sharp intake of breath.
Ginny shook her head. “I never saw Chris, but it’s not him. This guy’s older.”
I relaxed. Swinging my handbag over my shoulder, I strode through the editorial office and into my inner sanctum. The door was already open, and there was somebody sitting behind my desk.
It was Tom Cavanaugh.
Over the clutter of my desk and a chasm of twenty years, we shook hands. On the surface, we acted like civilized people who were mildly pleased to see each other. Tom was prepared for the encounter, but I was flabbergasted. A bit too quickly, I sat down, not in my own chair, where Tom was seated as if he owned the blasted place, but one of the pair reserved for visitors.
“Well, Tom,” I remember saying in a voice about an octave too high, “how are you?” After that, I don’t recall much except pleasantries. I suppose we spoke in clichés, acknowledgment of the years that had passed, the physical changes we had undergone, the quirks of fate that had brought us together in that tiny office in a small town on the slope of the Cascade Mountains.
Somewhere between noting the gray in Tom’s black hair and his observation that I no longer looked as if I were starving to death, my brain began to take charge of my emotions. I nailed Tom down for the reason he had come to Alpine. Dave Grogan had contacted him, he said in that easy, mellow voice that also could have made a living in radio and television.
“Dave told me you were paddling a leaky canoe. Either you bail out or patch up the holes.” He pointed to a bound volume that contained the first six months of my tenure. “I’ve been studying these. You’d have to be publishing out of a mud hut in the Third World not to make money with a weekly or a small daily these days.”
My eyes narrowed. It was bad enough that he’d invaded my life unannounced, stolen my chair, and forced me into a subservient role. But now he was lecturing me on how to run my freaking paper. I was getting angry, but the sight of him diluted my temper: Tom Cavanaugh was still handsome, whatever softness hammered out by life, leaving him sharp of feature and even sharper of eye. He was a tall man and had apparently kept fit. Tom looked so much like Adam that I wanted to cry.
“Except for Christmas and Easter and your loggers’ festival, I don’t think you’ve run a single promotion,” Tom was saying. “You could do one a month—back-to-school, Halloween, Thanksgiving, you name it. Inserts are what make money, Emma. Chain stores, independents, co-op advertising. Who’s your ad manager, Dopey the Dwarf?”
“Yes.”
Tom lowered his head, looking at me in that dubious manner I recalled from twenty years ago. “That’s what I figured. Dump him. Or her.”
“Can’t.”
He started to look stern, then broke into that wonderful, charming, delicious grin. “Of course you can’t. Old softhearted Emma. But you could hire someone to supervise him, a business manager, let’s say, and …” He saw me start to argue and held up a hand. “In the long run, it would pay off. Unless you’ve had a personality transplant, you make a lousy boss, Emma. You couldn’t even get the gofers at The Times to remember to put sugar in your coffee.”
I shook my head emphatically. “Hold it. Listen, Tom, this is wonderful of you to offer advice. Really.” I tempered my growing irritation with a thin smile. “But I’m in the middle of covering a murder investigation. It’s big stuff, involving a very prominent old line family. I can’t get sidetracked. Frankly, Tom, as usual, your timing stinks.”
His eyes, which were so blue they were almost black, took on a hint of surprise, even hurt. “Dave Grogan painted a desperate plight. Leaky canoe, headed for the falls.” His own smile was now a trifle limp, too.
I sighed. “Dave’s right. But he probably didn’t know about the murder.” It crossed my mind that even as I had talked with Dave on the phone, Mark Doukas might have been meeting his killer. “Look,” I went on, trying to sound more kindly, “come for dinner tonight. I’ll have Ed Bronsky, the ad manager, and his wife, and Vida Runkel and Carla Steinmetz join us.” If necessary, I’d ask the city council and the U.S. Forest Service, too. There was no way I’d share an evening alone with Tom Cavanaugh.
I’d risen, tired of Tom’s advantage in my chair. Now he stood, too, and for one sharp, painful moment, it struck me that he looked as if he belonged behind that desk. But he didn’t. I did.
He was still looking down at the back issues of The Advocate. His attire was casual, a navy blue sweater over a light blue shirt with gray slacks. He didn’t look rich, just comfortable. Then, as I knew he would do eventually, he gestured at the framed photograph on the filing cabinet. “Adam?”
“Yes.”
He stared at the picture. I suspected Tom had looked very much like that when he was in college at Northwestern. “Good-looking kid,” he remarked. “Smart?”
“Fairly. Not motivated, though.”
“Right. Nice?”
“Oh, yes.”
“No big problems?”
In the context of today’s teenagers, I knew what Tom meant. “No. Thank God.”
“Not exactly,” he said dryly. “Thanks to you, Emma. You’ve done well.”
The dark blue eyes held mine just a moment too long. “So have you,” I said lightly.
But Tom shook his head. “No, not really. Sandra did well. She was born into money. I just use it.”
“How is Sandra?” I was trying to keep the light note in my voice, but it wasn’t working very well.
“Bats.” He shrugged.
“Define bats.”
His expression was guarded. “She’s unstable. Delusions. Paranoid. She also shoplifts. Fortunately, we can afford topnotch keepers.”
“Is she at home?”
“Sometimes.” He fingered a sheaf of papers in my inbasket. “If she undergoes a violent episode, her doctors and care givers recommend that I have her …” He stopped, apparently aware that he was reciting like a parrot. With a sheepish grin, he reverted to the irreverent candor I remembered so fondly: “I cart her off to the loony bin.”
“Sounds like the place for her,” I retorted, equally flippant. Now I understood the comment I’d heard about poor Tom at the Sigma Delta Chi banquet. “All the same, I’m terribly sorry.”
He had sobered and shrugged again. “That’s one reason I travel a lot. If I didn’t get a
way, I’d go nuts, too. It’s my version of a paper route.”
“Only you buy them instead of deliver them,” I noted. Fleetingly, I thought of Sandra Cavanaugh. I’d only met her twice, once at an office holiday party, and another time in a restaurant where she was lunching with other suitably well-heeled young matrons. She was a pale, pretty ash blonde, fine of feature, slim, and inclined to keep one eye on her handbag and the other on her conversational vis-à-vis. It not only made her look a little walleyed, but caused me to wonder if she thought the rest of the world was after her Big Bucks. Or maybe, it occurred to me now, after her.
Tom had come around to the other side of the desk, a scant two feet away. “Are you serious about dinner?”
I reflected. “Sure. Seven-thirty?” For safety’s sake, could I possibly assemble another fifty people by then? I berated myself. What was I afraid of? Twenty years over the dam, and what was there still between us? Only Adam.
“Look,” I said, lowering my voice as I heard Vida talking to Ginny in the outer office, “I may be able to use some advice, but I’m not a damsel in distress. Believe it or not, I’ve already come up with some ideas of my own for increasing revenue.”
Tom’s expression didn’t change. “I’m sure you have. Like what? A Color-the-Pumpkin Contest?”
I, too, kept my face impassive. “Not quite. It’s more like an Ask-the-Jackass-to-Dinner Party.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“We’ll see.”
“Who’s the jackass?” asked Vida after Tom had left.
I explained, briefly. Since I’d never told Vida who had fathered my son, I felt there was no need to go into anything but the barest professional details. I invited her to dinner.
