by Mary Daheim
“Sorry. I really don’t.”
But I should have.
SIX
BY MORNING, WE HAD TWO INCHES OF WET SNOW UNDER A clearing sky. I’d kept my eye on the weather off and on during the evening, in between going over my Christmas card list and catching some of the Monday Night Football game that had turned into a rout with Green Bay pounding St. Louis into the turf. Apparently, the wintry weather had moved east to the other side of the Cascades. By the time I left for work just before eight, my route had been traveled enough to make driving fairly easy.
Amanda had pulled in just ahead of me. I parked next to her red Miata. “Not a top-down day,” I called out as she paused on the sidewalk.
“I haven’t had the top down since Labor Day.” Amanda opened the front door for me. “It’s odd,” she went on as we stepped inside and stomped slushy snow from our boots, “but I’ve gotten to like this job. What if Ginny decides not to come back?”
“You’d want to work for us full-time?”
Amanda sighed. “That’s the problem. I’ve never worked full-time, and it never was good for me, not just the lack of a regular income, but having too many empty hours to fill.” She looked away. “It’s gotten me into some bad situations. Now that I’m in my thirties, I realize I need either children or a regular job, whatever keeps me grounded. Walt and I both want a family, but who knows how long it’ll take before that happens?” She finally stared me in the eye. “Yes, if Ginny doesn’t come back and nothing happens on the adoption front, then I would like to work here. If you’d have me.”
I smiled. “Of course I would. Once you settled in, you did a fine job. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This is your last day, and you’ll be busy at the post office until into the new year. A lot of dust will settle by that time.”
To my amazement, Amanda hugged me. “Thanks. I really appreciate the vote of confidence.” She stepped back, looking embarrassed. “That’s another thing—I’ve never had a real girlfriend in Alpine. I can talk to you. That’s nice.”
I was touched. Making friends wasn’t easy for anyone who moved to Alpine as an adult. I knew that from experience. “I’m glad to be a friend,” I said, “but I’m almost old enough to be your mother.”
“You don’t seem that old,” Amanda said. She looked at her watch. “It’s after eight. Where’s Denise? She told me she’d come by this morning for another round of instruction.” Her brown eyes grew wide. “Oh, my God! I was late on my first day—remember?”
“Vaguely.” I turned to look at the front entrance just as Denise came in. With a dog.
“Hi,” she said, struggling to control a large black and tan animal tugging at its leash. “This is Doofus. I had to bring him along because he can chew his way out of the house when nobody’s around and then I have to search all over the …” She grasped the dog’s collar. “Come on, Doof. You’ll like it here. I’ve got your ball.” With her free hand, she reached into her coat pocket and took out a beat-up tennis ball. “Fetch!” she cried, freeing the dog and tossing the ball toward the hall between the front office and the back shop. He raced past Amanda and me, brushing against both of us, but not quite knocking us down.
“Hey,” I said sharply. “We don’t allow pets here. You’re going to have to—” Doofus just missed running into me as he brought the ball back to Denise. “You’re going to have to take him home.”
“I can’t,” Denise said, petting the panting dog. “He belongs to Greg. He dropped Doof off with me before Thanksgiving and he hasn’t picked him up yet. I think Greg went to California.”
“Why,” I asked as Doofus sniffed my boots and then panted some more, “can’t you take him back to your place?”
“Besides running off, he ate my down comforter yesterday. He’s very gentle. In fact, he’s scared of cats. I can’t leave him alone.”
Doofus was licking Amanda’s Cole Haan leather boots that must’ve cost her several hundred dollars. She danced away from him and managed to get around to the other side of our reception counter. Doofus started to howl.
“You can’t leave him here, and that’s that,” I said. “If you want to hang out with Amanda later today, that’s fine, but you don’t have to begin work until tomorrow.” Before Denise could argue, I turned my back on her, stomped off through the newsroom to my cubbyhole, and slammed the door behind me.
Ten minutes later, someone knocked. “Emma?”
It was Leo. “Come in,” I called to him. “No dogs allowed.”
He opened the door. “The dog and its owner are gone,” he said. “She literally had to lug that big mutt outside. What’s with that action?”
“First of all,” I responded, “Denise isn’t the owner. The dog belongs to her ex, but she’s mutt-sitting him. I wonder if Rick or Andy let her keep him at the bank.”
“They could always lock him in the vault,” Leo said. “Looks like he’s part rottweiler. Denise called him a rescue dog. Does that mean he can rescue people or that people rescued him?”
“The latter, I think. What have I gotten us into?”
“We should never have complained about Ginny the Mope,” Leo said. “I just ate breakfast at the diner with Fleetwood. He’s got three more co-op ads for us this week.”
“Excellent. Did he say anything about Craig Laurentis? I was just going to call the hospital.”
Leo shook his head. “We were all business, though he did allude to hanging out with you in the ER yesterday. Has Fleetwood ever made a pass at you?”
The question might’ve seemed inappropriate, but I knew Leo was asking more out of concern than curiosity. “Never.” I saw his skeptical expression. “We don’t do anything for each other, except for occasional attacks of mutual aggravation. Are you trying to set me up?”
“God, no,” Leo assured me. “I just wondered. He’s the kind of guy I figured women might find attractive.”
“I’m sure many of them do. I’m just not one of them.”
Leo shrugged. “Forget I asked. I’m off to meet a deadline.”
Vida and Mitch had also arrived. Now that my door was open, I could hear them talking about Denise and the dog. It sounded as if Vida had arrived before Doofus had been removed from the premises.
“… and an ugly animal to boot,” my House & Home editor was saying. “Such big teeth! I’d be terrified around a creature like that.”
“You mean the dog—or Denise?” Mitch responded.
“Oh, you know exactly what …”
My phone rang, forcing me to stop eavesdropping. “Get your butt down here pronto,” Milo said without preamble.
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
“Is it about Craig?”
“No.” He hung up.
I put my coat on, grabbed my purse, and hurried through the newsroom. “Don’t ask,” I said over my shoulder. “The sheriff’s in a tizzy.”
Vida was agape. “Oh, for heaven’s …” I was gone before she finished speaking.
Most of the snow had already melted off the sidewalks. It took me only a couple of minutes to reach the sheriff’s office a block and a half away. Deputies Doe Jamison and Jack Mullins were talking to each other inside the curving counter; Lori Cobb, the receptionist and secretary, was on the phone.
“Where is he?” I asked.
Jack gestured at Milo’s closed door. “Dodge got another letter. I think he’s about to arrest Marlowe Whipp for delivering the mail.”
“Damn. Dare I go in?”
“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” Jack said. “Maybe you can calm him down before he has a stroke.”
I didn’t bother to knock. “Well?” I said, immediately sitting down across the desk from the seething sheriff. “Is that fire and brimstone coming out of your nose or are you smoking?”
“Don’t get cute,” Milo snapped, picking up his cigarette from the ashtray. “Shit. I lighted two.”
“Give the other one to me,” I said resignedly. “This is going to be
a bad day—again. Let’s see the letter.”
Milo handed me the longer of the two cigarettes and the single sheet of paper. It was typed in the same style as the others: “TOO BAD SOMEBODY SHOT THE WRONG GUY—HOPE THEY SAVED A BULLET FOR YOU, YOU BASTARD.”
“Sent yesterday?” I asked.
The sheriff nodded. “Same kind of envelope, same postmark, same stamp, same frigging everything else except that this son of a bitch is escalating the threats. Nut or not, I don’t need this shit.”
“Of course you don’t,” I agreed after taking a puff on the cigarette. It’d been so long since I’d smoked that I felt slightly light-headed. “Do you have even the faintest idea of who might be doing this?”
Milo glowered at me. “If I did, don’t you think I’d do something about it?”
“Okay, okay. It was a dumb question.” I hesitated, unwilling to bring up what could elicit an even more explosive response from the sheriff. “The reason I ask is that there was some confusion over the arrest of Clive Berentsen in the De Muth homicide last month.” I saw Milo start to protest, but I kept on talking. “I know he confessed, I know there were witnesses, I know the whole sad story as well as you do, but the fact that Clive didn’t do it and had to be released later might have put an idea into somebody’s addled brain. The first letter mentioned you’d made a mistake recently. The allusion could’ve been to the Berentsen situation.” I shrugged. “You know crazy people get hold of even crazier notions and take off like rockets.”
“Yeah, I know all that crap.” Milo stubbed out his cigarette and took a swig of coffee from his NRA mug. “What if it’s not a nut?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
He rubbed at his graying sandy hair. “I mean somebody with a serious grudge. It happens. It’s part of the job description. But I can’t think of anyone connected to the Petersen case who’d do something like this. The worst part about Linda’s murder was that it involved one of the rock-solid Alpine families. Except for Larry feeling he wasn’t worthy of running the bank and becoming head of the family when Marvin retired or died, nobody else was weird.”
My mind’s eye flashed back to Denise and the dog. But that wasn’t weird, it was just poor judgment. As for being a bit dim, that was hardly a crime, or half of Alpine would be under suspicion. “I can’t argue that point. By the way, Denise is taking Ginny’s place for the month of December.”
Milo leaned back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling. “Good luck. You must be desperate.”
“I am.” Since the sheriff seemed to have calmed down a bit, I broached the subject of Craig Laurentis.
“I stopped at the clinic and talked to Doc Dewey on my way to work,” Milo replied. “He said Laurentis is listed in satisfactory condition, but to hold off until later this morning to question him. The guy’s still kind of loopy from all the drugs.”
“That’s good news,” I said.
“Yeah. We could use some.” He lit another cigarette. “Where were you last night? Didn’t you get my message?”
“I got it too late,” I replied. “I stopped to see Craig’s new painting at Donna’s gallery. It’s kind of strange.”
“Oh?” Milo’s interest seemed forced. “How so?”
“Just a different style. Sort of gloomy. Donna seemed to like it.”
“She has to if she wants to sell it.” He gestured at his mug. “You want coffee?”
“No thanks. I haven’t even had a chance to get any at the office. You summoned me peremptorily.”
“So I did.” He glanced at the letter. “You think I’m overreacting.”
“Not exactly,” I hedged. “It’s unsettling, but I doubt the writer is dangerous.”
Milo regarded me with a wry expression. “Oh? Want to put that in writing?”
“Actually, that’s my point. I get letters all the time telling me I’m the worst person in the world, I should be run out of town, I ought to be taken out and shot. Ninety-nine percent of them are unsigned or use phony names, so it’s against my policy to print them in the paper. Almost half of them are repeat writers, the same goofballs who are always upset about something, which may or may not have to do with what’s in the Advocate. They’re letting off steam. It’s a harmless safety valve. Your letters could be in the same category.”
Milo thought for a minute. “Okay, I understand what you’re saying. But what bothers me is that these letters started coming just a few days before Larry Petersen died.” He held up a hand to keep me from responding. “I know what you’re going to say—that it’s a coincidence. But it’s a damned strange one. You have to admit that.”
“That’s why the word ‘coincidence’ exists.” It was the only explanation I could offer.
Milo puffed on his cigarette. “Let’s hope you’re right. But it still bothers the hell out of me.”
I realized I’d let my own cigarette burn out and flipped the dead filter tip into the ashtray. “I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“What about the fact that these letters seem to be written by somebody who isn’t a high school dropout?”
The correct spelling and decent grammar hadn’t eluded me. “They were typed on a computer. The writer has spelling and grammar checks available. That tells me—along with the fact that the person’s literate—he or she is also meticulous. It’s someone who’s concerned about not looking foolish or stupid.”
Milo finished his coffee and set the mug aside. “And that doesn’t disturb you?”
I made a face. “Well … I suppose it should. Maybe.”
“It disturbs me.” He waved a hand. “Okay, we’re done here. I have to catch crooks who’ve committed actual crimes, like the poachers who shot Laurentis.”
I stood up. “Will you let me know what Craig says?”
“I will if it’s fit to print.”
I thanked the sheriff and took my leave.
When I got back to the office, Leo and Mitch were both away from their desks, but Vida was ready to pounce. “Well?” she said the moment I set foot in the newsroom.
I brought her up to date on the letters Milo had received, then summed up the conjectures he and I had made. “If you have any other ideas,” I said, “feel free to say so.”
“I don’t,” she admitted, “but I may.” Vida gestured at a handwritten letter on her desk. “Another pathetic creature, this one asking for advice about why her husband goes to sleep on his feet and sometimes while he’s walking. It’s signed ‘Wide Awake Worrier.’ I almost wish I required actual signatures, but of course most people don’t want everyone in Alpine gossiping about their problems. I’d never get any letters at all even if I promised anonymity only in the paper. They’d know I’d know who they were. Not that I’d ever let on, but they can’t be sure of that. Clearly, this husband needs to see a doctor. He’s a narcoleptic.”
“I hope he doesn’t drive that way,” I remarked. “I wish you’d get one from somebody complaining about a spouse or relative who writes crazy letters to the sheriff. It’s beginning to get to me, even though I try to soothe Milo by telling him it’s a nut.”
Vida frowned. “I’ll have to think about it. Right now I’ve got to find that pickled herring recipe for ‘Stumpied.’ ”
I finally got my coffee along with a glazed French doughnut. An hour later I’d gone over most of Vida’s page, all of Leo’s ads that he’d submitted so far, and the local articles Mitch had finished. He wouldn’t be done with the poaching/shooting lead until we had the latest information. The county commissioners’ meeting also had to be put on hold except for the agenda.
Just before nine-thirty I got a call from my next-door neighbor, Viv Marsden. “Emma,” she began, “didn’t you notice that big package on your porch when you got home last night?”
“Package?” I echoed. “No. I came in through the kitchen and left the same way this morning. I didn’t know it was there. Can you tell who it’s from?”
“I didn’t look.” She laughed self-consciously. “I try n
ot to be your nosy neighbor, and in fact I wouldn’t have called you if I hadn’t seen a FedEx truck parked on the verge between our houses yesterday afternoon. I thought maybe it was a Christmas present I’d ordered for Val, but the guy went to your house. Then this morning I decided to walk to Safeway to get some exercise and I noticed the package was still on your porch.”
“Hunh,” I said. “I haven’t ordered anything lately. I’m not quite geared up for Christmas yet. If you don’t mind, maybe you should get it and take it inside your house. I’ll collect it tonight after work.”
“No problem,” Viv assured me. “I worry about things left outside for very long because of your other neighbors and their rotten kids. They’ve made off with some of Val’s garden tools and his chainsaw. Fortunately, we got all the stuff back, but next time it happens, we’re calling the sheriff.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said. “So far, I don’t think they’ve stolen anything of mine, but maybe I don’t have items that appeal to them.”
Viv harrumphed. “I’d hardly call Val’s Weed Eater an enticing object for teenagers except as a weapon. Those Nelson kids are too lazy to do any work around their own house.”
I agreed, and after a few more words of chitchat, I thanked Viv and hung up. The rest of the morning flew by with the usual busy work to meet our Tuesday deadline. It wasn’t until after I got back from getting my takeout lunch at the Burger Barn that I heard from Milo.
“I’ve been at the hospital for over half an hour,” he said, sounding grumpy. “I’m waiting until Stella is finished and I’m damned hungry and I won’t eat any of this crap they call food around here. I had enough of that when I was a so-called patient.”
“Stella?” It was the one thing he’d said that grabbed my attention. “You mean Stella Magruder, as in Stella’s Styling Salon?”
“Who else?” Milo snapped. “She’s grooming Laurentis. Nobody else could untangle Laurentis’s hair and beard. Jesus Christ, you’d think I never interviewed somebody with lousy hygiene.”
“I don’t think that’s exactly the point,” I said. “Given Craig’s lifestyle, he could infect the hospital. I imagine the medics who brought him in sanitized themselves after they left him in the ER.”
