The Alpine Escape

by Mary Daheim

  “Good,” I said, then, in a burst of gratitude, offered to make a pot of coffee. To my surprise, Dr. Carlisle accepted. My appreciation for his concern spilled over. House calls in Alpine were not unheard of, but Drs. Gerald Dewey and Peyton Flake never had far to go. Port Angeles was five times the size, in population and area.

  Dr. Carlisle chuckled at my effusiveness. “No big deal.” He settled his bulk onto one of the stools. “Every other week I take Wednesday afternoons off. I was going to go fishing off the Hook, but those killer whales have been through here this morning. The folks coming across on the Victoria ferry think they’re great, but for us fishermen it means there aren’t any salmon. I guess I’ll have to kill weeds instead.”

  Pouring out the first cup of coffee, I commiserated. In Alpine it was the dearth of trout and steelhead. The rivers hadn’t been planted, they were off-color, they were too high, they were too low, it was too warm, it was too cold, it had rained too much, it hadn’t rained enough. Whatever the reason, the fishing was lousy. I hadn’t heard from a happy fisherman since I’d read Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. And if he could be called happy, that shows what a bunch of whiners the rest of them are.

  Dr. Carlisle sipped his coffee, then rubbed at his graying crew cut. “Say, Jackie was telling me about that skeleton she and Paul have down in the basement. I think she was hinting I might want to take a look. Can you lead the way?”

  I could, but I didn’t have to. Jackie appeared just then, looking a trifle wan. Or perhaps merely foolish.

  “I feel better,” she announced, propping herself up against the door frame. “Do you really think it’s all right for me to take Tums?”

  Dr. Carlisle nodded. “Loaded with calcium. The important thing is for you to lay off the pizza.” He downed the rest of his coffee. “Speaking of bones—in a way, of course—why don’t you show me your skeleton? Interesting, that. I’ve been here almost twenty years and I’ve never heard of such a thing before. Not a complete set of bones, anyway.”

  Having finished my sandwich, I trudged along after Jackie and the doctor. The unfinished basement still smelled damp. The flashlight wavered in the darkened area, and the pitiful skeleton was now resting on an old army blanket.

  “You know,” Dr. Carlisle began after making his careful way down the stepladder apparently left by Paul, “I began my practice in eastern Oregon. I’m from Pendleton originally. Anyway, I was the only doctor for miles around in Wallowa County, so I had to be the coroner, too. Tough duty for a young practitioner, especially a guy whose specialty is ob-gyn work. Fortunately, I didn’t have to do a lot of autopsies, but …” He paused, carefully removing the drop cloth and examining the skeleton. “Female, I’d say. Youngish.” He paused again. “Cracks in the right tibia and left fibula. Ankle bones to you. Never mended. Hmmmm.”

  I glanced at Jackie, who was staring at the doctor with rapt attention. Gently, she burped. “What does that mean, Dr. Carlisle?” Jackie asked, either out of genuine curiosity or to cover her embarrassment.

  The doctor didn’t look up. He seemed fascinated by the skeleton. “Remarkably well preserved, considering the damp down here. The house is well insulated, I imagine.” Abruptly he turned, craning his neck to gaze up at us. “What was that? The ankle bones? Hard to say, really. The poor thing may have fallen.” He made a sweeping gesture with one hand, from the edge of the basement floor to the dirt-covered cavern, where he stood. “A ten-, fifteen-foot drop? That would do it.”

  I frowned. “You mean she fell off the … Wait, I don’t get it.”

  Dr. Carlisle was now examining the skull. I held my breath; Jackie didn’t blink. The basement had suddenly become too warm. Fleetingly, I wondered if summer had finally arrived or if we were feeling a sense of oppression.

  “Well.” Dr. Carlisle rearranged the drop cloth, covering the skeleton as gently as if it had been a sleeping baby. He dusted off his hands and climbed up the stepladder. Rubbing one eye, he shook his head. “That’s odd. More than odd. The skull has been badly damaged. It looks to me as if there’d been a blow to the head. But then it’s been a long time since I was a coroner. I’ll stick to babies. They’re much nicer.”

  Chapter Six

  DR. CARLISLE WAS right. Murder wasn’t nice, and it seemed that was how the Melchers’ skeleton had met her end. It could have been an accident, the doctor had pointed out, a fall from the finished ledge of the basement floor. Perhaps the poor woman had hit her head on the way down. But why hadn’t she been found? According to everything Jackie and I had learned so far, the Rowley house had been a hub of activity in the first decade of the twentieth century. A missing woman, especially a family member, would certainly have caused a stir. I was convinced that the body had never been found because somebody had wanted it that way. And that somebody had probably been the killer. A practical man, Dr. Carlisle didn’t try to dissuade me.

  Jackie took to her bed. The doctor’s revelation hadn’t upset her as much as it had me. She exhibited natural curiosity but was more concerned with her recovery from the overdose of pizza. I resisted the temptation to call Dusty’s Foreign Auto Repair and wondered how to fill the early-afternoon void.

  I started by going back to the third floor to see if we’d missed any items of interest. There were more picture albums, but all of relatively recent vintage. There were also two scrapbooks, though one contained souvenirs from the Thirties and Forties and the other was devoted solely to movie stars of the silent-film era. Buster Keaton and Theda Bara seemed unlikely to throw any light on the Melchers’ mystery.

  At last I poked inside a sturdy cardboard tube. The contents revealed the floor plan of the Melcher house. At a glance it seemed to be the same rendering Jackie and I had seen in the library archives. The precise draftsman’s lines revealed nothing new.

  I searched the nooks and crannies. But there were no scented letters tied with ribbon, no locked diaries, no postcards from traveling friends or relations. Discouraged, I knelt by the dormer window that looked out toward Pine Hill.

  Jackie might be right. What was the point of trying to solve a mystery that was over eighty years old? It wouldn’t help Carrie Rowley Malone—or whoever she was. If she had met a violent end, her killer was also dead by now. Why rake up an old scandal?

  Why ever search for truth? Because it’s there, somewhere, obscured by human frailty, delusion, intention, deception, rationalization—and time. I liked to ennoble my profession by calling myself a seeker of truth. But when I am being truthful, I admit that most journalists are part-snoop, party-voyeur. We are eternal observers, distancing ourselves from events, sparing ourselves from direct involvement.

  The gray clouds were moving slowly across Pine Hill. It was a typical day of this strange summer, with cool temperatures, morning drizzle, and the sky not clearing until late afternoon. Only a native Pacific Northwesterner like me could love the cloudy weather.

  And as I searched my soul, I knew that I was allowing myself to get deeper into the Melcher mystery because it diverted me from my own problems. It was easier to try to solve the riddle of a turn-of-the-century skeleton than it was to concentrate on Emma Lord’s contemporary problems. I could face up to the murder of a young woman some eighty-plus years ago, but I didn’t want to look in the mirror. The truth stops at my own doorstep.

  Taking the floor plan with me, I headed back downstairs just as the phone rang. With mixed emotions I wondered if it was Dusty’s, telling me my Jag was ready.

  It wasn’t. Tessie Roo’s husky, cheerful voice was on the line.

  “You got me intrigued,” she said, sounding pleased with herself. “I’ve researched the Rowleys and the Melchers before, of course, but with that skeleton there’s much more to it than just documenting the lineage of Port Angeles’s early residents. Right after you left I called one of my fellow genealogists in Seattle to check on Carrie Rowley Malone and her husband, Jimmy. I heard back just now.”

  I smiled into the phone. Tessie’s enthusiasm
warmed me. “And?”

  “Interesting,” she said as a preface. “Jimmy Malone died in 1953. His survivors included six children, nine grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and his wife, Minnie.” Tessie paused for effect.

  “Minnie? Maybe,” I added quickly, “it’s a misprint.”

  “No,” Tessie replied with conviction. “Minnie died two years later, in 1955. She was born a Burke in Ireland, from Londonderry.”

  I made a murmuring sound. “A second marriage. But nothing on Carrie?”

  “Nothing.” Tessie’s voice conveyed excitement rather than dismay. “Oh, the obituary may be there somewhere, especially if she died much earlier on. But I tried to give my colleague some parameters, figuring Jimmy Malone lived a normal life span. I had her concentrate on 1940 to 1955. He died at eighty-one; Minnie was seventy-two. But the fascinating part is that my source also found a piece about the Malones’ golden wedding anniversary. They celebrated it in 1953, four months before Jimmy Malone died.”

  My mind tripped over the impossibility. “That’s wrong,” I declared. “Jimmy Malone married Carrie Rowley in 1903. The newspaper must have made a mistake.” It could happen, as I knew only too well.

  “No, they couldn’t,” Tessie replied with equal fervor. “People have to submit this sort of thing. It would be the couple who made the mistake, not the paper. And I doubt very much that Mr. and Mrs. Malone forgot the year they were married. Well, Mr. Malone, perhaps. But not his wife. Women don’t do that sort of thing, eh?”

  “Maybe Minnie was senile by then,” I muttered, unwilling to own up to the fact that I should know more about newsgathering than even the estimable Tessie Roo.

  “Yes, certainly, I understand your point of view,” Tessie said in her amiable manner. “And it might have happened that way. It’s harrowing, all these discrepancies we come across, just because somebody got mixed up about Grandma’s birthplace or Cousin Fiona’s first marriage. But we must stay with the facts. We know Jimmy Malone married Carrie Rowley in 1903. Either he was a bigamist or the golden wedding anniversary story is in error.”

  Tessie was right. “Did the anniversary article say where Jimmy and Minnie were married?”

  “Seattle,” Tessie replied promptly. “So it is possible he married both of them in the same year. But next we must account for the children. Three of the six seem to be the ones he had by Carrie—Julia, Walter, and Claudia. Daniel, Joseph, and Mary Ann must have belonged to Minnie.”

  I was lost in a sea of progeny. “Prolific,” I murmured. “I wonder if any of them are still around.”

  “Shall I check?” Tessie sounded eager.

  “Sure, why not?”

  “I’ll call Seattle back. We have an eight hundred number,” Tessie added ingenuously.

  I put the phone down just as Jackie came into the kitchen. “I couldn’t sleep,” she announced with a yawn. “I’m hungry. What should I eat?”

  Having assessed the contents—or lack of them—in the Melcher refrigerator, I suggested a trip to the grocery store. But Jackie didn’t feel up to it.

  “Every time I go there, I run into all these women who want to tell me their war stories about having babies. Nineteen hours of labor, a last-minute C-section, breech births, postpartum depression, the dog got jealous—I’m sick of them! What do you suppose happened to Mr. Walsh?”

  I was taken aback. “Mr. Walsh? I’ve been concentrating on Mr. Malone.”

  Jackie shook her head. “No. His name was Walsh. Do you suppose he’s in jail?”

  “Oh!” I’d already forgotten about the drunk from Culver City. “It depends on how tough the local police are when it comes to DIPs.”

  It was Jackie’s turn to look puzzled. “DIPs?”

  “Drunk in public.” Port Angeles must have a bigger jail than Alpine. Sheriff Milo Dodge was inclined to hold drunks only until they sobered up. Skykomish County’s facilities were lamentably limited.

  “I don’t know much about the jail here,” Jackie admitted. “We haven’t lived in Port Angeles very long. They’re sure tough on parking-meter infractions.” Her heart-shaped face grew sad. “I kept thinking about Mr. Walsh the whole time I was trying to nap. Why is he so far from home? Why is he alone? Why is he drunk? And in the morning! His life must be full of unbearable tragedy. A wife dying young, teenage children lost to drugs, aged parents helplessly crippled, fired from his job, evicted from his house, hounded by creditors—”

  “Stop!” I held up a hand though I couldn’t refrain from laughing. “He’s probably a carefree sightseer who partied too much last night. Let’s concentrate on feeding you. I’ll go to the store alone, if you don’t mind me driving your Honda.”

  Jackie had no objections, but before I could get out of the house, Mike Randall showed up. His last class had been at one o’clock, and he didn’t keep office hours on Wednesdays.

  “My summer quarter schedule isn’t as demanding as the rest of the year,” Mike explained. “The students need an extra sense of freedom. Hopefully, it will help them expand their minds.”

  The last college professor I’d dated in Portland had dreaded office confrontations with his students because, as he put it, “the little shits only come in to bitch about their grades.” Thus, I should have found Mike Randall’s attitude refreshing. Instead, I thought of Carla Steinmetz and wondered how many teachers she’d driven to the window ledge.

  “I hear you two have been doing your homework,” Mike said, discreetly clearing off one of the kitchen stools. “The city librarian called the college librarian. Is there anything new?”

  I was prepared to let Jackie fill Mike in, but she seemed lethargic, toying with her hair and staring at the refrigerator. The burden fell on me. As concisely as possible I recounted the pertinent information we had unearthed.

  Mike was impressed. “You’ve been very busy. That’s astounding about the smashed skull. I should have spotted it myself. Has Paul heard any of this?”

  Paul hadn’t, of course. I made my excuses about going to the store, but Mike insisted on accompanying me. “You’re a visitor and all these gullies and dead ends and one-way streets are terribly confusing. Come on, I’ll give you a lift in my car.”

  I feigned enthusiasm for Mike’s offer. The black Corvette was a handsome automobile, though I felt it didn’t measure up to my green Jag. Except that the ’Vette started and kept going. I wondered what was happening at Dusty’s. If my car was ready by the end of the afternoon, I’d feel compelled to leave Port Angeles. But I hated to give up on the Melcher mystery. I also hated the idea of being alone with my thoughts.

  We weren’t taking the route to the Safeway I’d seen near the courthouse. Instead, we were driving west, away from the business district and along the water where huge freighters lay at anchor. Gulls swarmed on the ships’ pilothouses; longshoremen readied big crates for loading; forklifts rumbled over the docks. Mike explained the town’s importance as a Pacific Rim port. Currently, pulp and paper were being shipped to Japan. The looming presence of a Daishowa America mill confirmed the connection.

  “There’s been a lot of change here in the past few years,” Mike informed me as he turned the car around. “The timber industry’s been hit hard by the environmental concerns. There’s a rumor that ITT Rayonier may close. Poor Paul—he just got here.”

  I knew all about the decline in forest products. In the past logging had been the lifeblood of Alpine. Now the economy was so depressed that the town seemed to be existing on an IV. Too many loggers were out of work. Like doctors or actors or priests, most seemed unable to find another calling.

  But it appeared that Port Angeles was more diversified. Along with the port and the paper and the pulp, there was a helicopter manufacturer, commercial fishing, tourism, a two-year college, and the fallout from a burgeoning retired population. There was also the U.S. Coast Guard, and Mike insisted on taking me out to Ediz Hook to admire the installation.

  The Hook is so narrow in places that the road feels more like
a bridge. I tried to relax and enjoy the view, which was spectacular. To the north, the waters of the strait were ruffled but not choppy. On the south, the town sprawled at sea level, then climbed up into the foothills of the Olympics. Smoke poured from the tall stacks on the Daishowa and Rayonier mills. I suspected there had been great struggles over pollution, but so far I hadn’t noticed that Port Angeles smelled bad.

  “Most of downtown is fill,” Mike explained as we paused in front of the Coast Guard station’s gates. “Originally, there wasn’t enough solid, level land for building, so the early settlers hauled in dirt to create what’s now the business district.” He nodded at the harbor, where the Coho ferry was pulling into its slip. Maybe the Jaguar part was on board.

  Mike was turning the car around again. Civilians weren’t allowed on the Coast Guard base. We headed back along the Hook, past the empty fishing-boat ramps and a picnic area. Another big freighter was moored in the harbor, awaiting space at the docks. Closer in were the logjams, evidence that somebody was still cutting trees on the Olympic Peninsula.

  Back in town, we passed the marina with its proud cluster of pleasurecraft. Mike frowned as we paused at an intersection on the edge of downtown.

  “I was going to show you the Arthur D. Feiro Marine Lab and the city pier’s viewing tower, but the Victoria ferry just got in. Traffic downtown will be tied up.”

  From what I could see so far, that statement was relative. There were more cars in Port Angeles than in Alpine, but compared to Seattle and Portland the local congestion was a lone way from gridlock.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I really should get some food to bring back to Jackie.” I explained that she’d been ill earlier in the day.

  “So that’s how Dr. Carlisle ended up at the house,” Mike mused. “That’s very odd about the skull. I can’t get over it. Do you suppose it was a blunt instrument?” Before I could speculate, he turned left, not right, on Lincoln Street. Safeway was a reflection in the rearview mirror. “Would you care for a quick drink? The Greenery is right off the alley. We’ll miss the ferry traffic altogether.”