The Alpine Advocate (30 page)

Vida finally withdrew her weapon and all but recoiled from Eeeny. She turned not to Milo, but to Billy. “What took you so long?” she asked her nephew crossly. “I’ve been here for ages, tramping about in the dark like a mole. I even lost my favorite mauve pillbox.”

Billy Blatt automatically removed his hat. “Well, you see, Aunt Vida, we had to rendezvous and make sure our guns were ready to fire and that we had a warrant and—”

“Oh, hush!” With her flatfooted walk, Vida headed back toward the road. I followed her, with Chris at my side. As a journalist, I should have stayed glued to Milo and Eeeny, but the arrest of one sheriff by another was not a pretty sight. Besides, I had more than enough news to fill up the extra inches.

“What on earth made you come here and bring the sheriff?” I asked, catching up with Vida at the edge of the road.

Vida gave me an impatient look. “Those letters, to Margaret. Half of them were full of mush from Eeeny. He was in love with her, too. But then I always said most of the men in Alpine were.” She sighed. “I just didn’t figure Eeeny was one of them. The old fool.” She palmed her gun and waved the megaphone. “My car’s parked in Neeny’s driveway. We’d better get back to the office and get this story out.”

“Wait a minute.” I grabbed her sleeve. “Where did you get a gun?”

“What?” Vida looked blankly from behind her glasses. “Oh!” She held out her hand.

In it was Roger’s water pistol.

The paper was put to bed, but the rest of us were still wide awake. Vida, Milo, Tom, and I were in the news office, drinking brandy out of paper cups and going over the extraordinary events of the past few hours. It was almost midnight. Milo had arrived only a few minutes earlier, looking exhausted. He was already into his second brandy.

“Where’s Chris?” he asked, peering around as if he expected the young man to leap out of Ed Bronsky’s desk drawer.

“I dropped him off at Jennifer and Kent’s,” I said. “What happens next is up to the family. He
is
a Doukas, after all.”

Milo leaned back in Ed’s chair and put his feet up on the desk. “I’m glad we caught Neeny and Phoebe at the airport. They’re spending the night at a hotel and driving back in the morning. Neeny can’t believe his old pal is guilty, but Phoebe will convince him.” He laughed into his paper cup. “Damn, she thought Neeny killed Hector. When Mark came up to the house, he told her about digging up a body. He saw that medal, too, and remembered that Hector wore one like it. Phoebe wouldn’t let Mark see his grandfather and she sent him away—to get killed, as it turned out. But she was in a stew, figuring that Neeny would have been the most likely person to have murdered
Hector. She went to see Simon, but she couldn’t find him because he was out screwing Heather Bardeen.” Milo laughed some more.

“Poor Cece,” said Vida. “She’d better settle his hash, quick.” The look she transmitted through her glasses should have melted the frames.

Tom was tapping a pencil on Carla’s desk. “Jealousy and fear.” He shook his head. “Ugly motives, when you think about it. Did Eeeny really think Margaret would marry him with Hector out of the way?” The question, as usual, was for Vida.

“How would I know, Tommy?” she replied. “He was certainly crazy about her. He didn’t stop writing those letters until the postage rate went up to twenty-two cents. The sad thing is that he thought he had to kill again. Twice.”

It occurred to me that I hadn’t eaten since lunch. Along with that startling insight came another, one I’d been harboring ever since Chris Ramirez had walked in my door seven nights earlier. “The first one was the wrong person.” I saw three stunned faces and clarified my statement. “With Mark, I mean. Eeeny thought it was Chris.”

“Hey, Emma …” Milo began.

“Now, Emma,” said Tom.

“Of course, Emma!” cried Vida. “Eeeny was blind as a bat! Mark was wearing Chris’s cap and jacket!”

I nodded. “And they looked so much alike.” I gave a little shake of my head. “Chris was really Mark’s uncle, not his cousin. No wonder Simon cried when he saw Chris. He knew he was looking at his brother. I wonder how the Doukases will sort all that out?”

“Oh, they will, they will, knowing Neeny,” said Vida impatiently. “But why kill Chris? Because he’d seen Eeeny shoot Hector?”

“Sure,” I replied. “The return of Chris Ramirez spelled terrible trouble for Eeeny Moroni. The six-year-old boy who ran and hid was far different—and much less dangerous—than the twenty-year-old young man. You
see,” I said, leaning on Carla’s desk where I sat next to Tom, “Eeeny never got a phone call from Mark. But he left a note on my door for Chris. It blew away. Chris never saw it. I don’t know if he signed it
Eeeny
or
Neeny
. That doesn’t matter. It was a ploy to get Chris up to the mineshaft. But of course Chris never went. Mark did, because he’d found Hector’s remains. Maybe he actually told Eeeny—or Eeeny guessed. That in itself was no serious problem, but coupled with Chris’s arrival, it spelled trouble. But when Eeeny went to meet Chris, there was Mark, waiting for Milo—and wearing Chris’s clothes. Eeeny may have used Mark’s crowbar or one of his own, but he was light on his feet, and he probably sneaked up from behind. I suspect Eeeny swung first and discovered later he’d gotten the wrong Doukas. But it was easy to say he’d been called up there and found Mark already dead.” I lifted my hands like a conjurer. Brandy on an empty stomach had magical effects.

Vida was nodding. “Yes, yes, then Gibb shot his face off—as usual—about the second mineshaft opening, so Eeeny had to lure him out of town, down to Reiter to watch the salmon come upstream or some such blarney, and then shoot him.” She gazed at Milo. “Well?”

He gave her an off-center grin. “Same caliber bullet killed Gibb, killed Hector. We found the old casing in the dirt late yesterday afternoon. Fourteen years apart, but I’ll bet they were both fired from Eeeny’s .38.”

“No wonder,” said Vida, “that Eeeny didn’t want Chris brought back to town, Milo. The farther away from Alpine, the better.”

Milo turned solemn. “Damn. Eeeny was a good sheriff. He had a fine reputation around the state.” Slowly, he swirled the brandy in his paper cup. “I might never have gone into law enforcement if it hadn’t been for him. He set a hell of an example.”

“Of what?” snapped Vida. “Homicidal mania? Honestly, Milo, if you ever grow up, you’ll turn into an old fool,
too!” She yanked off her glasses and nibbed her eyes with a vengeance.

Next to me, Tom was on his feet. “It’s late, and I’ve got a plane to catch in the morning.” He looked down at me. “Emma, I’ve got a lot of background for you at the lodge. Some suggestions, economic indicators, an overview and so on. I’ll have Heather bring it by tomorrow.”

I stood up, not too steadily. “You’re leaving?”

He smiled. “You know what they say in news stories: personal reasons.” Taking his navy blue blazer off the back of Carla’s chair, he threw it over his shoulder. “Congratulations to all of you.” The smile turned into a grin for me. “You not only caught a killer, but you got a terrific story. That should up circulation for a couple of weeks anyway.” He paused to shake Milo’s hand and give Vida a kiss on the cheek. I followed him out to his rental car, the brandy buffeting me against the cold night air.

“Tom …” I began, not certain of what I should say.

“Sandra took a jade penguin from Gump’s this afternoon. It was worth eleven thousand dollars. She dropped it running up California Avenue.” He looked less alarmed than bemused.

“Oh!” I felt terrible for him. I laughed. “Oh, Tom …”

He leaned down and kissed me, briefly, firmly. Then he turned away and looked over the top of his car, past the low-lying rooftops of Alpine, beyond the dense cluster of evergreens, up to the dark outline of Baldy with the moonlight bathing its contours. “You don’t really need me, you know.” He spoke so softly that I wasn’t sure of his words.

My voice came out in a bit of a squeak. “I’m not the greatest publisher in the world.”

He was still looking at Baldy. “I like this town.” At last, he turned back to me. “Is it all right if I come back some day?”

I gave him a crooked smile. “Sure. Just don’t wait twenty years.”

“No,” he said, opening the car door. “I don’t want to
meet my son for the first time when he’s middle-aged. Men get funny about that time.”

“So,” I said, “do women.”

I watched the red taillights until they turned off on Alpine Way.

Kip MacDuff had driven the paper into Monroe. Vida was interviewing the mother of the bride about an upcoming wedding. Ed Bronsky was trying not to sell an ad to Stella’s Styling Salon.

And Carla was chin-deep in reviewing the triple murder story. “I can’t stand it!” she shrieked. “I didn’t get to write a word about all these horrible things! Can I do the follow-up?”

“I tell you what,” I said, stopping in the middle of the news office to take a handful of phone messages from Ginny Burmeister, “you can interview Chris Ramirez about his future plans. When he has some.” For all I knew, Chris would be heading back to Hawaii in the next twenty-four hours. Unless, of course, Phoebe told Neeny Doukas the truth and he acknowledged the young man as his son.

Vida had put the phone down and was looking at me over the rims of her glasses. “She spelled it Al and Son.”

“Who did what?” I tried to ignore Ed, who was telling Stella that he could solve all her problems with clip art.

“The mother of the bride,” said Vida, shaking her head. “She submitted a description of her daughter’s gown and spelled the lace on it as …”

“Oh,” I said. “Alençon.” That sort of thing happened a lot in Alpine.

“Exactly.” Vida swiveled in her chair and began pounding her typewriter.

I paused in the doorway of my office to survey my domain: Ed was still on the phone, Carla and Ginny were arguing about the minutes of the county commissioners’ meeting, and somewhere down the highway, the latest edition of
The Alpine Advocate
was going to press. Neeny
Doukas and Simon and Fuzzy Baugh and maybe a lot of other people might not like what they were going to read, but truth has a way of triumphing over human beings’ petty emotions. Usually.

I smiled to myself. Another week, another paper. We were still in business. It was always a relief to make a deadline. And I’d done it on my own.

I strolled over to my desk. Something was not quite right. I looked around the crowded, cluttered office. Adam’s picture was gone from the filing cabinet.

Maybe there are some things we can’t do on our own.