The Alpine Advocate (7 page)

My back and my head both ached as I pushed the last of the logs into the cavernous stone fireplace. It dominated the room and provided enough space to roast a small ox. The wind was blowing down the chimney, sending the sparks flying against the smoke-blackened stones. I still had the poker in my hand when Chris came through the door. I must have looked menacing, because he actually jumped.

“I thought you’d be in bed,” he said, his face not so much sullen as it was wary. His dark hair was wind-blown, and I suspected he hadn’t shaved since yesterday morning in Honolulu.

“Almost,” I admitted, setting the poker back in place. “How was dinner?”

Chris shrugged out of his jacket, which I noticed had suddenly turned from denim into leather. “Fine. They had steak.”

“Were all your relatives there?” I had moved to the door to put the chain on for the night, a habit of my city days in Portland.

Chris was ambling around the living room, hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans. “Some of them.”

I could see this was going to be the usual tooth
extraction sort of conversation I had grown accustomed to with most of Adam’s friends and occasionally with Adam himself. “Not Neeny?”

“No.” He had his back to me, apparently admiring a Monet print hanging above my recently reupholstered sofa.

I picked the leather jacket off the back of the rocker where he’d thrown it. “Where’d you get this?” I asked, trying not to sound like an inquisitor.

“Huh?” He shifted his weight, turning slightly to glance at me. His wiry frame seemed tense. “Oh, it’s Mark’s. He couldn’t find it when he went out so he borrowed mine. Then I had to borrow his because it was so windy and stuff. I’ll take his back tomorrow.”

The explanation made as much sense as anything else at the end of a long, tiring day. I surrendered on eliciting further information from Chris. Maybe he’d talk more over ham and eggs at breakfast.

“I’m going to bed. Is there anything you need?” I inquired.

“No. Thanks,” he added as an afterthought. His back was still turned. Maybe he was crazy about Monet. Certainly he was absorbed in something I couldn’t fathom. His relatives, probably—seeing them again after all these years must have been a traumatic experience.

“Okay,” I said, taking him at his word.

It wasn’t the first mistake I ever made, but it was one of the worst.

I wasn’t entirely surprised that Chris wasn’t around when I got up at seven the next morning. I still felt a bit groggy, and it was raining like mad, a dark, wet September morning that could drain all but the hardiest native of enthusiasm for a new day.

Chris had slept in his bed—or maybe Adam really hadn’t made it before he’d gone to Hawaii at the end of August. I didn’t snoop in my son’s room while he was away. I couldn’t bear to; the disarray gave me the twitch. As long as there were no overpowering aromas and nothing
slithered out from under the door, I figured everything else could wait until the Thanksgiving break.

Instead of ham and eggs, I ate two shredded wheat biscuits and drank a cup of coffee. By ten to eight, there was no sign of Chris, and I had to be on my way to the office. To my surprise, the Jag was parked in the carport. Deferring to the downpour and my new green suede shoes, I drove to
The Advocate
.

Ginny was in the front office, efficiently typing up the end-of-month statements. No one else had arrived yet. Carla was chronically late, Ed breakfasted with the Chamber on Thursdays, and Vida usually didn’t come in until eight-thirty. I put the coffee on, checked the answering machine, and went over some notes I’d made on next week’s editorial calling for the resurfacing of County Road 187 between Icicle Creek and the ranger station.

By the time Vida got in, I’d taken four phone calls, including two subscribers who were dead set against the public swimming pool, one who was for it, and a woman named Hilda Schmidt who wanted to take out a classified ad to sell her exercise bicycle. Instead of referring her to Ginny, I took the ad myself and felt like cheering her on.

I went out into the editorial office to greet Vida. She was shining her glasses and looking sly. I recognized that expression. “What’s new?”

Vida stuck her glasses back on her nose but retained the smug look. “Phoebe Pratt did leave town—but only for a couple of days. Darlene Adcock says she went to Seattle to see an eye specialist. If she ever gets her vision fixed, she’ll see how homely Neeny is and dump him.”

“Not with all his money.” I parked myself on Carla’s desk.

“True,” Vida conceded. “Phoebe always was one for the main chance.” She rummaged around in her enormous purse and pulled out a tarnished gold compact. Flipping it open, she applied powder on a hit-and-miss basis. “According to Bill the Butcher, Cece Doukas bought enough New York steaks—not on sale—for six.” She cocked her
head to one side, the overhead light bouncing off her glasses. “Who do you think? Cece, Simon, Mark, Jennifer, Kent—and your Chris? No Neeny, right?”

“Right so far,” I agreed. “Except I didn’t know Jennifer and Kent MacDuff were there.”

Vida sniffed at my ignorance. “Of course they were. Dot Parker saw them from her driveway. She was on her way to pick up Durwood. He fell off the barstool at Mugs Ahoy again.” She paused to smear on bright pink lipstick. “Last but not least, Heather Bardeen has an appointment with Doc Dewey this afternoon. The
senior
Dewey,” she added with a knowing look.

Since Dewey the son had been the recipient of Dewey the father’s practice, with the exception of maternity cases and a few stubborn patients who refused to be tended by a young whippersnapper, Vida’s meaning was clear: Heather must be pregnant. Or thought she was.

“Where did you hear that?” I asked, fascinated as always by Vida’s sources.

She gave a careless shrug, powder flying from the ruffled, wrinkled collar of her blue blouse. “Marje Blatt. My niece. She works for old Doc Dewey.” Vida obviously thought I had a faulty memory.

She was right. “I forgot.” The phone rang, and I grinned at Vida as I reached to answer it. I stopped grinning immediately. It was Sheriff Milo Dodge. Mark Doukas had been murdered—and Christopher Albert Ramirez was wanted for questioning.

E
D AND
C
ARLA
entered the office just as I hung up the phone. I was in virtual shock. I stared at them open-mouthed, while they stared back. I’d had to ask Milo four times if he meant Mark Doukas rather than Neeny. He insisted he did. There was no mistaking the grandson for the grandfather.

“I’ve got to go down to the sheriff’s office,” I announced, pulling myself together and grabbing my hand-bag and raincoat.

Carla’s cheeks had turned pink with excitement. “Should we put out a special edition?”

The idea hadn’t crossed my mind. Although this was my first Alpine murder—if in fact that was what had happened—I knew the town didn’t have a blameless track record. A drunken, jealous husband had strangled his wife two years ago. A pair of loggers had gotten into a brawl only months before that, and one had beaten the other to death. And going back almost a decade, there had been the Claymore family, some four miles out of town, with a brooding, schizophrenic father who had shot his wife and six kids before turning the .22-caliber rifle on himself. Murder was no stranger to Alpine. I decided this event didn’t merit an extra.

The phone rang before I could get out the door. To my surprise—and relief—it was Chris. I started to tell him about his cousin, but for once he launched into a monologue.

“Hi, Mrs. Lord. This is Chris. Hey, thanks for picking
me up and stuff.” His voice was perfectly natural. “I decided to split. Alpine isn’t my kind of place. I hitched a ride into Seattle. I’d like to see the city and maybe go on a ferryboat. Then I think I’ll head for L.A.”

“Chris!” I couldn’t keep the panic out of my voice. “Wait—don’t go anywhere! Your cousin’s been killed!”

“Huh?” He sounded understandably dumbfounded. “What did you say?”

“It was Mark,” I said, clarifying my report. “Sheriff Dodge just called and said he’d been murdered.”

Chris gave a short laugh. “That’s lame. I just saw Mark last night.”

Fragments of song and verse about Yesterday and Tomorrow skipped through my agitated brain. “I guess it must have happened after you saw him,” I said somewhat stupidly. I took a deep breath; I had to convince him to stay put. “Chris, this probably sounds idiotic, but Sheriff Dodge would like to talk to you about Mark.”

He hesitated. When he spoke again, a wary note had surfaced in his voice. “Why me? The whole family was there. Except Grandpa. They all know Mark a lot better than I do.” He made a strange, muffled noise. “Hey, this is weird! All things considered, I don’t ever want to see Alpine again.”

“It’s not that simple,” I began, but an operator came on the line and told Chris his three minutes were up.

“Got to go,” he said, and rang off.

I stood by Ed’s desk, with the receiver in my hand. The city of Seattle was home to half a million people. I had no idea where Chris’s ride had dropped him off. I dialed the operator and asked if the last call made to
The Advocate
could be traced. She said no. So much, I thought, for modern communications technology.

“Chris has gone to Seattle,” I told my staff. “If he calls again, find out where he is.”

Ed looked mildly puzzled. “I thought you said he was in Seattle.”

I clamped my mouth shut and left the office. We have
no police chief in Alpine, since it’s an unincorporated town, despite the best efforts of civic-minded citizens to change the status. The mayor and the city council have been empowered through a charter allegedly drawn up during World War II in an air raid shelter under Mugs Ahoy. But when it comes to law enforcement, we rely upon the state police and the sheriff, which works out well enough since Alpine is the county seat. The Skykomish County Sheriff’s office is two blocks away, so despite the rain and my green suede shoes, I walked. I needed time to collect my thoughts. I couldn’t imagine why Mark had been murdered. A drug-crazed vagrant passing through, maybe. Or someone who had taken the discovery of gold seriously. Mark was no gem, but he didn’t seem like the type to inspire homicide. Of course there was always Heather Bardeen and her appointment with Doc Dewey Senior. Maybe her father had decided to take the notion of a shotgun wedding seriously.

But why, I wondered, nodding vaguely at the handful of passersby I knew only by sight, did the sheriff want to question Chris Ramirez? Just because he happened to come to town the same day—or night—that Mark had gotten himself killed? I heard the morning freight whistling in the distance. Traffic was heavy on Alpine’s main street—by Alpine standards. There must have been at least a dozen cars. Life was going on, with or without Mark Doukas.

Sheriff Milo Dodge was a big, shambling man, well over six feet, with broad shoulders and pale graying blond hair. He had a long face, sharp hazel eyes, and a square chin. In appearance, he was totally unlike his predecessor, Eeeny Moroni. But in terms of efficiency, he more than matched his mentor and was considered one of the best law enforcement officials in the state.

Which, I must admit, was the main reason I was disturbed over his desire to question Chris. Milo Dodge didn’t act precipitously. His intentions sounded serious.

Dodge looked up from the paperwork strewn all over the desk. His office was finished in knotty pine and a thirty
pound steelhead was mounted over his filing cabinet. He stood up and proffered his hand, which was long and strong. I winced a little as he ground my bones together.

“Where’s the kid, Emma?” he asked without preamble.

“Seattle,” I replied, knowing it was useless to try to hide the fact since Vida Runkel had probably spread the word in the five minutes since I’d left the office. I saw the speculative look in Dodge’s hazel eyes and lifted my sore hand. “I don’t know where. He had to hang up before he could tell me.”

“Damn.” Dodge sat down, making his faux leather chair creak. “Emma—this is urgent. A dead Doukas isn’t just another stiff. You know that. Now I suppose I have to call the SPD and King County and the State Patrol. Couldn’t you have kept an eye on the kid?”

“I can’t keep an eye on my own,” I confessed, sitting in the chair across the desk from Dodge. “Chris Ramirez was a guest. He’s twenty years old. And how the hell was I to know he’d get involved in a murder case?”

Dodge picked up a roll of mints, offered me one, which I declined, and turned the package around in his fingers. “I’ve known you for a little over a year,” he said thoughtfully. The hazel eyes fixed on my face. “How well do you know this boy?”

I lifted my shoulders. “I’ve met him a couple of times when I was in Honolulu with Adam.”

He popped a mint in his mouth. “Are Chris and Adam pretty tight?”

“Yes.” As far as I could tell, they were best friends. Adam is more gregarious than I am. He knows a lot of other students. But like me, he doesn’t form close attachments easily. “He and Chris were roommates last year.”

The door opened and Jack Mullins, one of Dodge’s deputies, poked his shaggy red head inside. “You want to see Doc Dewey now, Sheriff?”

Dodge waved a hand. “In a minute.” Mullins left. Milo turned back to me. “Old Doc Dewey’s still the coroner, you know.”

I did, of course. He was waiting until the next election to turn over the duties to his son. I was beginning to get my thoughts back in order. My presence in the sheriff’s office wasn’t confined to my roles as Chris’s hostess and the mother of Chris’s friend. But before I could start playing journalist, Dodge asked me a question:

“What do you make of Chris, Emma?”

“I told you, I don’t know him very well.” I searched my brain for any help from Adam. But twenty-year-old men aren’t into character analysis, at least not into articulating the subject. “He seemed nice enough. Quiet, polite. He hadn’t declared a major, so I don’t know what kind of ambitions or interests he has. Adam mentioned that he had a bike.” I gave another little shrug. “A motorcycle, I mean. His mother bought it for him.” I paused, watching Dodge’s mobile face take in my scant information. Clearly, he wasn’t satisfied. “Look, Milo,” I said, going on the offensive, “I need the facts. All I know is that Mark is dead and you want to question Chris. What actually happened?”