Authors: Mary Daheim
“This is not good,” he said. “What’s Milo up to?”
I tried to explain the sheriff’s conduct of the investigation. I tried to rationalize his small-town racial prejudices. I tried to excuse his lack of progress on the grounds of the case’s complexity and the county’s lack of resources. I tried
to keep the entire conversation on an analytical, objective plane.
“Milo kissed me.”
Ben’s laughter exploded in my ear. “Milo
what?
Why? When? Where? How?”
“Oh, shut up, Stench,” I retorted, resorting to my own nickname for Ben. “It was all very silly. Milo’s under some heavy pressure, and he’d been sort of rude to me earlier, and I think he was just trying to show me that I was a woman and he was a man.”
Ben was still laughing. “What about birth certificates? You know, the box where they check
M
or F?”
“Stop it, you jerk.” I was growing testy. “I’m sure Milo feels like an idiot. Which he should. I haven’t had the nerve to call him, and I ought to, because I need to know the facts about this last murder. He hasn’t called me, either. I’m sure he’s embarrassed. Now let’s talk about something else, like why St Mildred’s parishioners are a bunch of bigots.”
At the other end, Ben paused. “No surprise there, Sluggly. Christianity embraces everybody. Christians don’t always do the same. It’s okay to love your brother—or sister—as long as they’re the same color as you are. Want to hear some tales from the reservation? And I’m talking about both sides of the coin. Don’t ever think that white people are the only ones who can work up a hatred for the other guys.”
“I know that,” I said, bristling at Ben’s accusation of naïveté. “Racists come in all colors. I expect better of Catholics, that’s all. I mean, lowercase the word and it means universal, right?”
“Right. Wrong.” Ben sighed. “It’s a great theory. It might even work someday. The key—and don’t quote me, especially not around Tuba City—is love. Don’t laugh, you cynic. I mean romantic love, as well as the spiritual kind. Intermarriage. A hundred years from now, I wouldn’t be surprised if racism was passé. Look around you—but not in Alpine. Not yet.”
“You paint an optimistic picture,” I mused. “What are you puffing down there in Tuba City? Is it strong enough to let you take Adam on for a few weeks this summer?”
Ben chuckled. “Adam’s okay, Emma. You deserve to pat yourself on the back.”
My brother was right. Being a single parent is rough, but Adam and I survived. There had been big sacrifices for both of us. It was harder on me because I knew what I was giving up. Never having had a father, Adam didn’t know what he’d missed. Or so I’d always rationalized.
The chat with Ben lifted my spirits. I cleaned up the kitchen, ran the dishwasher, put in a load of laundry, and postponed calling Milo until morning. Shortly before ten, Vida called me. She had spent the evening at her Cat Club, a dozen or so women in her age group who’d started out sewing for the needy, moved on to playing cards, and now used their monthly gathering to stuff their faces and wag their jaws. Or so Vida claimed.
“This is too much,” Vida exclaimed after I’d filled in the details she hadn’t yet heard. “Dot Parker said Charlene Vickers told her that Irene Baugh thinks a gang has moved into Alpine. She wants Fuzzy to issue a proclamation or some fool thing. Irene swears she’s seen at least six African-American men loitering around the mall.”
“Has she?”
“Of course not! Irene sees black men the way Averill Fairbanks sees UFOs. But I don’t like the sense of panic she generates. Dot Parker believed every word of it. So did my idiot sister-in-law, Lila Blatt.”
I mentioned the letters Marilynn had received, adding that I assumed they contained more hate messages and that I felt partly responsible. “It’s Thursday—those lamebrains probably read yesterday’s story in
The Advocate
about Kelvin Greene and dashed off some more ugly stuff to Marilynn.”
“Don’t be silly,” Vida admonished. “The news was all over town days before the paper came out. But Marilynn’s theory is intriguing. About Wesley Charles, I mean. It doesn’t speak well for Alpine, does it?”
“We’ve had murderers here before,” I pointed out.
“Yes, yes, I know that.” Vida sounded exasperated. “It’s the
kind
of murder. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it’s a racist. Neo-Nazis, or something. But I suppose it’s not.”
I was making a wry face into the phone. “Would you like that better than homicide with a motive?”
“No,” Vida retorted. “I’d like it even less. But it might be easier to solve.”
In the background, I could hear Vida’s canary, Cupcake, chirping up a storm. “There sure are a lot of guns around here,” I remarked. “You don’t have one, do you, Vida?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Vida replied blithely. “Ernest’s old .45, from World War II. He enlisted on his eighteenth birthday in 1944. There’s a shotgun and a .22 around here someplace, too. My husband used to hunt.”
I sighed. “I must be the only unarmed resident of Alpine.”
“Possibly.” Vida seemed unperturbed by the idea. “I must run, Emma. I forgot to cover Cupcake before I left, and he’s getting fractious. I’ll see you in the morning. Oh—don’t let Milo kiss you again, at least not in public. It’s not good for either of your reputations, and Tommy wouldn’t like it.” She hung up.
Ginny Burmeister had a new hairdo. The thick auburn mane had been cut close to her head, with natural, artful curls clinging to her temples. Her fair skin was free of makeup, but there was a hint of brown eye shadow on her lids, mascara had been applied, and her lips were outlined in a subtle, but becoming shade of bronze. Overnight, Ginny had been transformed from a plain young woman into almost pretty.
I complimented her, and predictably, she blushed, which added to her new attractions. “Rick and I are going to Seattle tonight with Carla and Peyts. Carla talked me into getting a new do. I’m not sure about it—my head feels bare.”
“It’s not,” I said with an admiring smile. “You look wonderful.”
“That’s what Rick said.” Ginny blushed some more. “He’s thinking of changing his hair back to its natural color.”
“Well.” I wasn’t quite sure how to react. “Maybe he wants to move up in the banking business.”
Ginny turned skeptical, then slapped a hand against her cheek. “Oh! I forgot to tell you! Rick says he heard Washington
Mutual is going to open up a branch here in the fall. You might want to check that out.”
Naturally, I would. The First—and only—Bank of Alpine had no competition within a thirty-mile radius. Another financial institution would hit the Bank of Alpine hard. Nor did the timing seem right, with so many people in the timber industry out of work. I made a note to call Washington Mutual’s corporate headquarters in Seattle.
The mail had not yet arrived, so girding myself, I decided to amble down the street to the sheriff’s office. Maybe I imagined it, but I could have sworn that Milo’s deputies leered at me when I came through the door. Milo, however, seemed preoccupied.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t try to call,” he muttered into his mug of coffee. “I’m not talking to anybody this morning. Every crank in Skykomish County wants to know why the morgue is filling up with black guys from Seattle.”
“Wesley Charles was on his way to Monroe,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, right, you know what I mean.” Milo set his mug down on the desk and gave me a sheepish look. “Damn, Emma, I don’t know what got into me last night. I’m stressed. Honoria’s talking about going back to California. She misses her family.”
Jarred, I rested my elbow on the desk and held my head. How had I become a sub off the bench for Honoria Whitman? “Well …” I began, trying to be tactful and actually wanting to punch Milo in the chops, “I gather you two aren’t all that serious?”
Milo’s long face seemed to droop onto his chest. “I don’t know. Sometimes I thought we had a future, but when I remember what it was like being married to Old Mulehide, I don’t think marriage is a good idea.”
“Honoria isn’t Old Mulehide,” I noted, referring to the unfortunate nickname Milo had given his ex-wife. “And you aren’t like her first husband who made her a cripple. There are lots of happy second marriages. And they wouldn’t be second marriages if the first ones hadn’t gone sour.”
Milo’s hazel eyes were fastened on the ceiling. “After six years of being single, I’m used to it. I’m married to the job,
I guess. It wouldn’t be fair to Honoria, especially with her … problems.”
It seemed to me that problems or not, Honoria coped very well from her wheelchair. She lived alone in a quaint little house near Startup, she drove a specially rigged car, and she was busily involved with her pottery. I said as much to Milo.
He lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. “It’s up to her. I can’t move to California.”
I wondered if Honoria was giving Milo a shove by threatening to return home. They had been going together for almost a year. Knowing Milo, it was possible that he and Honoria had never discussed a future together. But this time, I kept my mouth shut.
“She hasn’t left yet,” I pointed out.
“Mmmm.” Milo gave a slight nod, then gazed directly at me. “You’re not mad about last night?”
I was more amused than mad. I supposed that wasn’t the thing to say, either. “Forget it, Milo. Given the circumstances, we’ll chalk it up as comic relief.”
It was Milo’s turn to look hurt. “Jeez, Emma, you make it sound like we’re a couple of clowns.”
“We are. We all are. Now skip it, and let’s talk about the murder investigations.”
We did, and as it turned out, I had more news for him than he had for me. Perhaps Milo was doing penance for kissing me, but he actually seemed interested in my background on Wesley Charles, in Shane Campbell’s work relationship with Kelvin Greene, in the account of the arsenal that was kept by everyone in the Campbell family as well as Marilynn Lewis.
“Wesley Charles was shot with a .45 caliber,” Milo said, digging a roll of mints out of his pocket and following up with a couple of sniffs on his inhaler. “Fairly close range, no cartridge found, so it probably wasn’t a revolver.”
I was frowning. “Two killers?”
Milo shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Nobody saw anything?”
“Nope. Who would? The houses on Fir Street don’t look into the cul-de-sac. Coach Ridley had his kids working out
on the other side of Fifth at the field, but they didn’t see anything. Or hear it, either.”
I felt my shoulders slump. “The damned starter gun again,” I murmured.
“Probably. Your next-door neighbors are the closest, but they weren’t home.”
My neighbors to the east were from Alaska, and not overly friendly. They had a couple of kids, around ten and thirteen. The kids weren’t friendly, either, at least not since I’d scolded them for using my front yard as part of their touch-football field.
I was fingering my chin and diving deep into speculation. “Why did Wesley come here, I wonder?”
Milo was shaking his inhaler. I gathered it was almost empty. “You’d think he’d head back to the city. But the truth is, he could only go east. There was a roadblock at Monroe and another one at Sultan. He must have gotten through before the second one could be set up.”
It was my turn to borrow a map. Unlike the one in my office, Milo’s was full of red, blue, and green pins. “There’s a back road into Sultan out of Monroe. Have you traced the stolen car?”
Milo nodded. “It belongs to some kid from Maltby. He left it parked—with the keys in it—at Dan’s Mainstreet Grill across from the high school in Monroe. The only problem is, he did that three days ago.”
I gaped at Milo. “So where did the kid go?”
“Back to Maltby with some buddies. Dan’s discourages high school kids from turning the restaurant into a hangout. The kid had to leave in a hurry. He was going to collect the car over the weekend.”
“So why didn’t Dan’s have the car towed?”
Milo bestowed a half smile of approval. “Good point. Maybe that’s because it got stolen by somebody else before they could get hold of a tow truck.”
I tried to picture the scene. An escaped convict flees from a prison bus on a major highway, hobbles off right past the reformatory in full daylight, goes to a busy restaurant on one of Monroe’s main drags, and drives off in an abandoned beater that just happens to have the keys in the ignition.
“This is making no sense,” I said flatly.
“It sure isn’t,” Milo agreed. “That’s why I’m guessing somebody else swiped that car first. The people at the restaurant don’t remember seeing it after Tuesday afternoon.”
“Who took it first?”
“Who knows? Kids, I suppose. But it means that car could have been anywhere—I figure someplace close to the site of the stalled prison bus.”
I tapped the map. “Show me exactly where the tie-up took place.”
Milo pointed to the long, downhill curve of Highway 522 just before the first Monroe exit. “It’s steep, it bends, it’s kind of narrow. People tend to go too fast in there, especially when it’s raining. There’ve been so many accidents that the locals call it The Highway to Heaven. Ever notice all the skid marks between Monroe and the Paradise Lake Road?”
I hadn’t, of course. I suppose I was usually too busy trying to keep from skidding. “There’s a guardrail in here,” I said, etching the accident site with my thumbnail. “Where could Wesley go? He’s practically on top of the reformatory.” The road into the Twin Rivers Correctional Center was less than a hundred yards from where the tie-up had occurred.
“According to the people from Shelton, the guards herded the prisoners off the bus and had them stand on the shoulder,” Milo explained in his painstaking style. “The guards were supposed to be watching, but they got distracted by all the commotion from the school bus. Kids yelling and crying—you can imagine. The next thing they knew, Wesley Charles was gone.”
I was slightly incredulous. “What about the other prisoners? Didn’t they notice him clanking off down the road?”
“Hey—imagine the scene. You got cars, trucks, that school bus. You got people rear-ending each other and raising hell. In this day and age, it’s more likely that some of the drivers are going to be armed and dangerous than it is that a bunch of shackled convicts will cause trouble.” Milo glowered a bit. “Everybody’s looking out for their own backside—or else they’re worried about those kids. These prisoners weren’t considered high risk. Not even Wesley
Charles. They said that he’d been a model con during his stay at Shelton.”