The Alpine Pursuit (7 page)

My car wasn’t. I realized that I’d have to walk all the way around the theater. I’d be better off going inside and leaving through the main entrance. Without another word, I watched Vida disappear from view.

Fortunately, the rear door was unlocked. I wondered if it had been that way during the play. If so, anyone could have entered the theater and tampered with the .38 special. Of course, I thought, it could have been some sort of accident. I didn’t know which was worse, especially for Nat, who had fired the fatal bullet.

No eyes were on me as I quietly entered the backstage area. The temptation to eavesdrop was great. I hesitated by a pile of stage flats near the workshop’s open doors. Stepping behind the disassembled scenery, I tried to hear what was being said some thirty feet away.

Milo had his back to me and his laconic voice was low. I could hear Destiny, however. She was speaking in high-pitch, verging on hysteria.

“It was an artistic decision,” she declared, “a social statement! I had to use a gun to point out how dangerous they are!”

“You sure as hell did that,” Rip Ridley said in an angry voice. “I could have been shot, too! So could anybody else onstage!”

Milo stepped in to stop the argument. “Hold it,” he ordered in a voice I could hear. “Cut the crap, everybody. Speak when you’re spoken to.” He lowered his voice to pose another question I couldn’t make out.

But I could hear Destiny’s response: “Not just
anybody
could get at the gun. I mean, not without being seen. It was right there in the prop box by the wings until Nat made his entrance in Act Two.”

I moved cautiously to the other end of the flats, hoping to hear better. Admittedly, I felt foolish, like Lois Lane on the trail of the big story. If I needed rescuing, I’d be lucky to get Clark Kent, let alone Superman.

But Milo’s queries were now partially audible. It sounded as if he’d asked Nat about wearing the gun during intermission.

“The gun was in the belt holster,” Nat replied, his educator’s voice modulating each word and carrying across the backstage area. “I never took it off once I put it on.” He glanced down at his hip. The now-empty holster was still there. Nat regarded it with revulsion.

“So . . . long did . . . sit . . . prop box?” Milo inquired.

There was a pause. I leaned around the side of the flats to see who would respond.

“About two hours.” The speaker was Boots Overholt, whose grandparents owned a farm on the edge of town. I vaguely recalled that he had enrolled at the college the previous fall. Apparently, he was one of the stagehands or techs.

“You were . . . of props?” Milo asked.

Boots nodded. He looked like a future farmer, with a forelock of blond hair and a sparse, close-cropped beard. “I put everything out there about seven, including the gun. We wanted to use a starter gun, but Ryan Talliaferro—he coaches track—wouldn’t let us borrow his.”

Ryan taught English but, like many of the faculty members, wore a couple of extra hats. One of them could have been a dunce cap for marrying Carla, our former reporter. I suspected that since taking on his scatterbrained bride Ryan had learned the hard way about lending items. While working at the
Advocate
Carla had borrowed many things from her fellow staffers. Rarely, if ever, did she bother to return them, and often, when pressed, admitted that she’d lost whatever she’d been loaned.

Milo spoke again. “Where . . . been . . . ?”

“Dr. Medved had it,” Boots replied.

Jim nodded. “That’s right. I’d brought it from home. We used a water pistol in rehearsal.”

“Did . . . it loaded?”

“Never. It was my father’s,” Jim explained, his thin face still ashen. “He served in Europe. I kept it locked in the safe at the office.”

“Who loaded it with blanks?” Milo asked, raising his voice.

“I did,” Boots answered, looking miserable. “Honest, they
were
blanks. I hunt, I know what real bullets look like.”

Apparently, the sheriff didn’t doubt a fellow sportsman’s word. “So how long did the gun sit in the box for periods when nobody was around?”

“Never,” Destiny said emphatically.

“Bullshit!” Rip shouted. “What about the first intermission? Half the cast and crew went outside to smoke and freeze their goodies. I was standing all alone by that damned box. I could have switched blanks for bullets and nobody would’ve been the wiser. But,” he added hastily, “I didn’t.”

Several voices were raised. Destiny showered abuse on the coach. Rita was screaming, “I knew it! I knew it!” Rey asserted that there were other opportunities.

“Before Cardenas went on,” Rey declared after the others had shut up, “everybody was onstage except him and the reverend and the kid. The crew wasn’t anywhere near the prop box. Neither were you, Destiny.”

“How do you know?” Destiny demanded.

Rey sneered at his director. “Remember the blocking? I was at the far left of the stage, almost in the wings. I could see the box from there.”

“Okay.” Milo sounded weary. “Cut the arguing.” He stretched his neck and arms. “We’ll stop here. You can go now before you get snowed in, but don’t leave town. Not that you probably could with this weather. We’ll be calling you in separately starting tomorrow morning.”

Words of relief mingled with expressions of protest. Nat Cardenas took the floor, addressing his faculty members and students. “Let’s be cooperative,” he urged them. “Let’s share our knowledge—however limited—with Sheriff Dodge and his deputies. But we mustn’t run our mouths off in the larger community. This,” he said, sounding even more earnest, “is to be kept within the school. We have a reputation to guard and people to protect.”

I wondered what he meant by the last part. Nat wasn’t finished, however, as it appeared that educators couldn’t cut short their lectures under any circumstances. Milo and his deputies had come out of the workshop and were standing between me and the stairs that led to the auditorium. I was trying to figure out how to reach the front door before I was spotted. Thyra Rasmussen, accompanied by her son and his wife, who’d come backstage to fetch her, had left with her head high, as if in defiance of Milo, scandal, and Death itself.

Hoping no one would notice, I decided on an end run. I crept out from behind the scenery flats to join the rest of the small exodus that included Roger and his parents, the Reverend Poole, and Ed Bronsky. Naturally, Ed saw me as soon as I crossed the floor.

“Emma!” he shouted. “You still here? I thought you’d gone. Have you seen Shirley and the kids?”

I hadn’t. But Milo had seen me. He looked away from Sam and Dwight and Dustin to call my name. “Emma! Get your butt over here!”

Obedience meant I’d have to listen to the sheriff berate me for eavesdropping. I smiled and shook my head, pushing at Ed to keep moving.

“Don’t you want to talk to Dodge?” Ed inquired in surprise.

“Not now. Walk, Ed. Hurry up.”

Ed hesitated, so I gave him another shove. “Okay, okay, I’m going. Hey,” he said over his shoulder as he started down the steps, “how was my performance?”

I suppressed a sigh. Ed was being his usual crass and egocentric self. Nothing seemed to shake him except when they ran out of pork chops at the Grocery Basket. “Very believable, Ed,” I replied as I heard Milo shout my name one last time. “What were you eating in Acts One, Two, and Three?”

“Cold cuts, mostly,” Ed replied. “Hans couldn’t actually cook onstage. He probably doesn’t know how.
Didn’t,
I mean. Too bad about the accident. Do you suppose they’ll be able to find somebody to take Hans’s place? He didn’t have an understudy except for some college kid. Actually, I know his part pretty well. I could do it.”

“I can’t imagine they’d want to continue,” I said as we reached the almost empty auditorium.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Ed said, poking a pudgy forefinger at me. “The show must go on, right? Ah. There’s the gang.” He waved like a windmill at his family.

I held back. It was almost midnight, and I was beat. A chin-wag with the Bronsky clan was the last thing I needed. Luckily, they waddled off, leaving the auditorium virtually deserted.

To my relief, someone had been shoveling the parking lot. My dark green Honda sat in isolation, though there were still at least a dozen parked cars closer to the theater. A couple of them were occupied by drivers who were having problems starting up. No doubt the sheriff and his deputies wouldn’t abandon them.

The Honda’s engine purred nicely. My windshield wipers could barely keep up with the constant fall of snow. I drove slowly—but not slow enough to get stuck—toward the road that led from the campus. I was almost there when someone pounded at my window. Startled, I gently hit the brake and looked to see who it was.

“Emma!” cried Destiny. “My car won’t start! Can you give me a ride home?”

I hesitated. If Destiny Parsons had lived anywhere but across the street from me, I’d have told her she’d better ask Milo for help. But she was a neighbor, if not a very good one.

I nodded and gestured toward the passenger door. Destiny, scowling mightily, got in and brushed snow from her knit hat and wool coat.

“Thanks.” She was shivering. “Just what I need right now—a starter that won’t start.”

“You’re sure it’s the starter? Could it be the battery?” I inquired, though I didn’t give a damn. My focus was on following the tread marks that led to the Burl Creek Road.

“Cal Vickers at the Texaco station warned me about the starter earlier this week when I bought a new battery,” Destiny replied in a bitter voice. “I should have had the thing fixed, but I was so involved with the play that I didn’t want to take time out for anything else.”

“Cars can be a problem,” I remarked. So far, the Honda ran well, as had the Lexus. It had been my old and much-loved Jaguar that kept me broke. Despite its constant need for repair, I still missed it.

Destiny kept quiet until I reached the road. With all the theater traffic, it was drivable. “I feel like I’m living in a nightmare,” she finally said. “How could that have happened?”

I assumed “that” was the death of Hans Berenger. “It does seem incredible,” I allowed. But after Tom had been shot to death, there was nothing that could shock me anymore. Life was damned cruel. “I scarcely knew Hans. Did he have a family?”

Destiny shook her head. Her graying hair hung in wet tendrils from under the knit cap. Though I didn’t think she was much more than forty, she looked old and haggard. The hair didn’t help hide her age; the disaster clearly weighed her down. She had well-defined features, which, under different circumstances and after a serious makeover, might render her sufficiently attractive to spark Milo’s interest. Or maybe the sheriff had grown desperate.

“I think Hans was divorced,” Destiny said. “He never mentioned having children. If his parents are still alive, they’ll have to be notified. Damn. I suppose I should do it.”

“Maybe Nat Cardenas will,” I answered. “He’s the college president. It should be his responsibility. Did you know Hans well?”

“No,” Destiny replied rather abruptly. “That is, I’ve only been at SCC for less than two years. Hans has been here somewhat longer. I probably spoke more with him in the past few weeks than I have since I arrived in Alpine.”

“I’ve heard he was standoffish,” I said, cautiously taking a curve near the fish hatchery road. Up ahead, I saw the taillights of another vehicle through the swirling snow. I hoped the driver knew what he or she was doing. A sudden stop could put us both in trouble. “I was surprised he took a role in the play.”

“So was I.” Destiny kept looking straight again. I didn’t take my eyes off the road, but I assumed she was still grim-faced.

I could now see the car ahead. It was Ed’s Range Rover moving along at a proper pace. Despite the snow, I was able to read his vanity plate:
MR PIG
. The name was taken from the short-lived animated Japanese TV series based on Ed’s self-published autobiography. The plate on Shirley’s Mercedes read:
MRS PIG.

I was waiting for Destiny to mention her dog, Azbug, and possibly apologize for letting the mutt use my front yard as a bathroom. This was the ideal time for Destiny to make amends, since I was doing her a favor. I was disappointed, however. She said nothing. We continued in silence until we reached Alpine Way. There the driving was much easier, because the street had been plowed since the new snow started falling. But when I turned off onto Fir, I saw that we were literally at the end of the road. The accumulation was almost half a foot deep and, because of the north wind, was piled even higher on the right-hand side of the street.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to leave the car and walk the rest of the way,” I told Destiny.

My passenger still said nothing. I parked the car as best I could in front of Jim Medved’s animal clinic. We still had almost five blocks to go. I could hardly blame Destiny for not wanting to chat. We needed all the oxygen we could get just to keep going. Heads down and feet deep into the soft stuff, we trudged along past the RV park, some converted condos, and finally the small individual homes that lined Fir Street. The south side of the block where I lived had no real end—my property sloped up into the forest that climbed the face of Tonga Ridge.

The temperature wasn’t that cold—thirty degrees, maybe—but the wind felt raw against my face. Briefly I fretted over chilblains and frostbite. But not out loud. We forged ahead in silence, except for the storm’s howl and a crackling power line somewhere nearby.

It must have taken ten minutes to walk the five blocks. We parted company with only a couple of grunts. I stopped to catch my breath, while Destiny made her way to her door. It was easy enough for her, but the snow had drifted over my mailbox and filled my walk and driveway. I plunged ahead, feeling the chill wind in the marrow of my bones. All I wanted was warmth. Primeval Emma, fighting the elements.

The scream seemed to come from over the mountains and down through the trees. I stood stock-still, trying to listen despite the howling wind. I heard a second scream. It was close, I realized, and turned to look back across the street.