The Alpine Advocate (27 page)

As I expected, Simon Doukas’s car was gone from the driveway that led up to the Dutch Colonial in The Pines. I didn’t think Cece would invite me over if Simon was around.

On this first morning after her son’s burial, Cecelia Doukas appeared calm. I couldn’t tell if her manner was induced by tranquilizers or an inner strength I’d never attributed to her. In any event, she was as well groomed as usual, in charcoal gray slacks and a light gray sweater. She led me into her big, airy kitchen, all white, with a few
black accents. The only color in the room was a huge bouquet of autumn flowers, probably sent in memory of Mark.

“I know you’re busy,” Cecelia began, pouring us each a cup of coffee. “I’ll be brief.” She sat down across the dining counter from me on a matching stool. “Neeny and Phoebe are leaving tonight for Palm Springs. Jennifer says you told her they had gotten married. How on earth did you learn that?”

I reflected briefly on my need to protect sources. “We found out during the course of the investigation. Someone called the Clark County Court House in Las Vegas. They verified that there had been a marriage between the two parties back in August. You remember the trip?”

“Certainly.” She offered sugar and cream. “I had no idea they’d gotten married. Neither did Simon.” Cece’s expression was melancholy. “I hope Neeny was sensible enough to have a prenuptial agreement drawn up. He didn’t ask Simon to do it. That I know.”

I could imagine Simon’s fury when he learned of the elopement. And, if that is what it was, it occurred to me that Neeny probably hadn’t bothered to consult a lawyer in Vegas. “Couldn’t Neeny rectify any future unfairness by making a new will?”

“Perhaps.” Cece gave me a wispy smile. “Isn’t life peculiar? So often it blindsides us. I feel as if I’d been knocked down by a logging truck. Will I ever get up again?”

“You haven’t any choice,” I said frankly. “We have to get up if only so we can be knocked down the next time.”

She saw the bitterness in my face and nodded. “Yes—I suppose you’ve had your share of trouble, too. It happens to everyone. But this all seems to have come at once.” Her eyes brimmed with tears.
“All
of it.”

I had the feeling she wasn’t just talking about Mark’s death and Neeny’s marriage. “You mean Chris coming back?”

“Chris?” She seemed surprised. “Oh, well, I suppose, in
a way. It’s funny, though—it seems as if he was here a long time ago. So much else has happened.”

I studied her for a moment in silence. “I gather you don’t think Chris killed Mark.”

Cecelia picked up her mug and stared blindly at the glass-fronted cupboards behind me. “I don’t want to think anybody killed him. If I knew who had, then I’d be forced to accept the fact that he’s dead.” Carefully putting the mug down, she gave me another tremulous smile, the tears still standing in her blue eyes. “That sounds silly, doesn’t it?”

“Not at all.” It had taken me weeks to grapple with the idea that I’d lost both parents. The call from the State Patrol, the visit to the funeral home, the memorial mass hadn’t really sunk in. I was going through the motions. It wasn’t really me. Those two dead people couldn’t possibly be my mother and father. The realization hit me only when their birthdays, just four days apart, came along that September. “Did you know Phoebe was trying to see Simon last Wednesday night?”

“Yes. She called right after Simon left to take Chris back to your house. I told her my husband was going to stop by his office and she might catch him there.” The blue eyes widened. “Oh! Do you think she intended to tell him she and Neeny had gotten married?”

I hadn’t considered that possibility. “Wouldn’t it have been better for Neeny to tell Simon? But Phoebe never found Simon.” Again, I felt like the scourge of the Doukas women. “Your husband didn’t show up at the Clemans Building.”

Cece brushed at the tears with her fingertip. “No. He went somewhere else.” She tilted her chin, looking both proud and vulnerable.

“I trust it was somewhere that gave him an alibi,” I said, wanting to kick myself under the counter.

“It was.” Her voice had turned cold. “But Simon would never use it.”

I had to assume that Cecelia Doukas wasn’t as naive as
she seemed. She must know about her husband’s alleged affair with Heather Bardeen. It occurred to me that Heather might have tried to get revenge on Mark by sleeping with his father. No wonder Cece was so disillusioned with her life. “Do you think that skeleton could be Hector Ramirez?” I asked, going for a more neutral, if equally grim topic.

“It’s possible. I’d hate to think so. I just want all this to end. It’s not
nice.”

“Did you know Hector very well?”

She shook her head. “Margaret and Hector kept to themselves a lot. I saw him occasionally. He seemed well-mannered. But he didn’t fit in, not with the family, not with the town. Neeny was quite unkind to him, and Simon felt the cultural differences were too great. It would have been better if he and Margaret had stayed in Seattle. People there are all rather different.” She slid off the stool, going to get the coffeepot. I declined; I was already late. “By the way, I have no alibi for Wednesday night, if that’s what you’re trying to find out.” She set the pot down and leaned on the counter, facing me. “Tell me, Emma—do you think I murdered my son?”

Impulsively, I put my hand on hers. It was ice cold. “No, Cecelia. I’m a mother, too, remember.”

She gave her imitation of a smile. “Of course. Simon won’t let me forget.” She looked apologetic.

“You mean he won’t let you forget I’m an
unmarried
mother.”

Cecelia gave a sad shake of her head. I assumed it was not for me but for her husband.

Vida all but dragged me into the office. “Where’ve you been? I’ve got Chris on the phone!” She practically hurled me toward her desk. “Line two,” she hissed.

“Chris? Where are you?” I was shouting into the earpiece. I turned the receiver around and repeated myself.

Chris’s voice was calm. “I’m in Seattle. I never got to L.A.”

Maybe that accounted for the fact that Milo’s APB hadn’t brought in any results. “Where have you been?”

“San Francisco. It’s a cool place, but it costs too much to stay there. Everybody in San Francisco said L.A. had too much smog and too many nut cases. So I came back here.” He sounded very matter-of-fact.

“Chris, let me ask you something.” Even as I spoke, I scrawled a note to Vida, asking if Tom had left for Seattle. She didn’t know. “Did you find a message at my house last Wednesday night?”

“What kind of a message?”

I explained to him about the piece of paper Ginny had found in my yard. “No,” replied Chris. “I didn’t see it. Neeny didn’t send me a note. He wasn’t that happy to have me come up to the house.”

“Somebody signed his name and tried to lure you up there,” I said. “Now listen, Chris, all hell has broken loose since you left. I want you to head back to Alpine.” He started to argue, but I ran right over his words. “We think we know what happened to your father.” I avoided telling him about the remains. That news shouldn’t be delivered over the phone.

Chris let out a few obscene one-syllable words. “Won’t the sheriff arrest me as soon as I come back?”

“No, of course not,” I assured him, even though I wasn’t certain. “Gibb Frazier, my driver, has been killed, too. You weren’t around when that happened.” At least Chris claimed he’d been in the Bay Area, but it suddenly dawned on me that he could be lying. After all, he was the one person who knew exactly where I kept that extra set of keys.

But I didn’t want to think about that just now. The important thing was to get Chris back to Alpine. At Carla’s desk, Vida was on line three, calling the ski lodge. She gave me a frantic nod and mouthed the single syllable, Tom.

“A friend of mine is coming to Seattle this morning,” I told Chris, then went into details about the location of the
county courthouse. Chris should plan on meeting Tom there at two o’clock. He would recognize him because I’d have him bring along a copy of last week’s
Advocate
. “Where are you now?” I inquired, fearful that the rendezvous would never come off.

“The bus depot. I just got in.” Chris was beginning to sound nervous.

With more admonitions to be sure to meet Tom, I finally hung up and pressed the button for line three. Tom was still distant, but he agreed to bring Chris back. “I assume I shouldn’t tell him why I’m at the courthouse,” Tom said in a formal voice.

Carla and Ed were coming through the door together. I tried to think of a way to ease the strain between Tom and me with most of my staff listening in. “By the way,” I said to Tom, “Milo left right after you called, but his deputies stayed on to search my car. Gibb’s killer drove it to Reiter.”

Three faces registered surprise. But Tom’s reaction was different. “Then I guess you really do like going it alone,” he remarked. “I’ll see you later.”

Ed looked so downcast that I was sure the murders had hit him harder than I’d expected. But he had other matters on his mind. “I heard Safeway may be coming into town,” he said morosely. “They want to build on the other side of the mall or maybe out by the golf course. God, what a mess that would be! Their media people like to use
color
inserts!” He made it sound as if their advertising department might ride into Alpine like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Carla, of course, was much more upbeat. “Gee, I can’t believe I missed more bodies! I knew I shouldn’t have gone to Leavenworth for the weekend! But what a blast! I met this wonderful hunk who tried out for the Seahawks and he …” Ginny Burmeister came into the office and Carla rattled on, driving me into my inner sanctum.

Five minutes later, Milo called to say that Dr. Starr had
confirmed that the remains from the mineshaft were those of Hector Ramirez. He had made only two visits to the dentist, both in 1975, after he’d chipped a tooth while working on the Pine Street L.I.D. project. But that, coupled with the X-rays, was enough for identification. I relayed the news to my staff. Carla put on a tragic face, Ginny remarked that violence was often triggered by untidiness, and Ed complained that dentists overcharged. Vida, however, grew thoughtful.

“Did they find a bullet yet?”

“Not that I know of,” I said. “Milo would have told us, wouldn’t he?”

Vida gave me an enigmatic look. “Maybe.”

Thanks to the time I’d put in over the weekend, we had the paper well in hand by noon. Since there still might be late-breaking developments, I wasn’t ready to call it a day. At ten after one, Tom phoned from Seattle. Vida and I were alone in the news office, with Carla out to lunch in more ways than one, Ed supposedly getting an ad from Stuart’s Stereo, and Ginny paying bills in the front office.

Tom’s voice sounded considerably warmer. I gestured for Vida to pick up her phone, too. He might as well relay any information he had found to both of us. “I hit pay dirt,” he announced. “It took awhile, because there was nothing for August twenty-one, 1971. But I went through the whole month, then back into July. Here, I’ll read from the copy I made.” I held my breath; Vida’s tongue plied her upper lip. “‘Born July twenty-one, 1971, Baby Boy Pratt, to Phoebe Phipps Pratt and Constantine Nikinos Doukas.’”

Vida put her hand over the receiver. “Neeny!” she gasped.

I could hear, if not see, Tom’s grin of triumph. “Well, Emma? Is that what you wanted?”

I laughed. “I don’t know what I wanted. But it fits. Phoebe had Neeny’s baby and gave it up to Margaret and Hector. No wonder she wrote Chris that letter! Wow!”

Tom was chuckling, too. “I don’t know how this fits in
with the murders, but we can sort that out when I get back. I’m going to get a sandwich and then wait for Chris.” He paused, then lowered his voice. “Emma, I’m sorry I got upset about you and Milo. I never really believed you were sleeping with him. It’s just that I thought if you were scared or didn’t want to stay alone, you might have asked me to … oh, hell, Emma, we’ll talk about it later. And Adam, too. See you.”

I gripped the receiver tight and dared to dart a look at Vida. She was putting her own phone down and gazing straight ahead. “I wonder who handled the adoption,” she said in an ordinary voice. “A Seattle attorney, I suppose.”

I knew I was blushing like mad. “Margaret and Hector probably didn’t get Chris until he was a month old. That’s why the announcement gave his birthday as August instead of July.”

“Lucky for Phoebe that the Ramirezes wanted him.” She finally turned back in my direction. “No wonder he looks like a Doukas.” She rummaged in her tote bag. “My, my, I seem to have forgotten my cottage cheese and carrot sticks. Want to go get a burger?”

I stood up. “Why not?” What I wanted most was to hug Vida.

Heather Bardeen and Chaz Phipps were just leaving when we got to the Burger Barn. Vida jabbed me with an elbow and then made her move, blocking the young women’s exit.

“We need to have a word with you,” she said in an imperious manner. “Where were you sitting?”

Despite their startled expressions, Heather and Chaz didn’t argue but led us to a booth at the rear of the restaurant. The waitress, who wasn’t Kimberly this time, was already clearing off the table. She pocketed her tip and left us in peace.

“This will be quick,” said Vida, fixing her gaze on Heather. “If the sheriff asks you—and he probably will—can
you tell him where Simon Doukas was last Wednesday night between eight-thirty and nine-thirty?”

Heather drew back against the booth’s plastic maroon upholstery. “What a dumb question! Even if I could tell the sheriff, why would I tell
you?”

Vida was unperturbed. “Because the sheriff will tell us anyway.” She glanced at me from under the brim of her veiled green fedora. “We have a deadline, you see.” Clearly, Vida was counting on Heather’s lack of curiosity as to how our journalistic endeavor might be tied to Milo Dodge’s interrogation.

But Heather was on her feet, pulling Chaz along with her. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about your deadline. If you want to find out where Simon Doukas and I were Wednesday night, you’ll have to hear it from the sheriff.” She gave Vida a nasty look, ignored me, and hauled Chaz out of the booth.