The Alpine Vengeance: An Emma Lord Mystery (34 page)

“Milo’s not belligerent,” I said hotly, though realizing that whoever he’d called a “dickhead” was probably another law officer or a medic. If he hadn’t been extremely upset, he’d never have spoken that harshly.

Spence touched his nose. “Huh. You could’ve fooled me.” He went to the coat closet and took out his parka. “In that case, you don’t need me anymore. My work here is done.”

I was surprised. “You’re leaving?”

“Hey—I’ve got a radio station to run. You know where to find me.” With that parting sally, he was out the door.

For about five seconds, I was sorry to see him go. Then I realized that the bastard had used me. It was typical Spencer Fleetwood MO. He’d milked what he could get out of a story—
my
story, at that. I was so angry that I got up, locked the front door, went into the kitchen, and drank the rest of the brandy while I tried to think of how to handle the situation.

It was six-fifteen. The usual quarter-hour newscast was over. Would Spence break into his regular canned programming with the story about Sheriff Dodge’s family disaster? In his place, I would. The only thing I could do about that was to have Kip put the news on our website. But I hesitated. This wasn’t just any news coverage, this was Milo’s private life. I’d once violated my ethics as a journalist by suppressing certain facts in a homicide story involving Vida. More recently, I’d handled Roger’s participation in the trailer park incident with kid gloves. But what came first? My responsibility to the newspaper or my concern
for people I cared about deeply? Journalist or human being? The answer seemed easy, but it wasn’t, especially if Spence was going to broadcast the whole sordid mess over KSKY.

Going back to the living room, I turned on the radio. Due to my perverse nature and the semi-rivalry between the spoken and the printed word, I’m not a regular listener. The music was soft rock. After two songs, a presumably live female voice came on.

“You’ve just heard Lionel Richie’s ‘My Love,’ the Mamas and the Papas’ classic ‘California Dreamin’,’ and the Little River Band performing ‘Cool Change.’ This is Bree Kendall, filling in for Spencer Fleetwood, with KSKY’s usual Saturday night soft rock, two hours of oldies, but always goodies, and easy on the ear. Now let’s hear from one of our local sponsors.”

A commercial voiced by Spence for Nordby Brothers GM dealership followed. Now I knew why Spence and Bree were so chummy. If nothing else, Spence or even Bree should’ve informed us that she was working part-time at the station. It was worth a mention in Vida’s “Scene.”

Bree was back. “Don’t forget, KSKY is always local, all the time. Our next trio of oh-so-soft rock starts with Paul McCartney and Wings, doing ‘With a Little’ …”

I turned Bree, Paul, and Wings down low. Nothing about breaking news. Maybe Spence hadn’t finished putting together his hot news item for Bree to read. I couldn’t imagine his vanity would permit him to do it live in his current stuffed-up vocal state. Or maybe he was checking on the JoAnne Petersen attempted suicide. I tried to put my wrath aside and think through the occurrences of the last hour or more. It was frustrating. I didn’t have Vida to lean on; she was too busy eating dinner with Buck at the ski lodge. My best bet was Mitch
Laskey. Somehow, the obvious had eluded me. I wondered what had caused my brain to misfire. Then I wondered why I was wondering—I knew why, and cursed myself for behaving like an adolescent idiot. It had been a long time since I’d let my heart rule my head.

“Mitch,” I said when he answered the phone, “are you in the middle of dinner?”

“Not yet,” he replied, “but Brenda’s in the middle of the kitchen, thinking about it. Is Alpine being attacked by some of Averill Fairbanks’s aliens?”

“Not that simple,” I said. “Could you meet me at the office? I need your brain for half an hour.”

“It’ll take Brenda that long to find her recipe,” Mitch said. “She’s been weaving all day, trying to fill Christmas orders. As soon as I find my brain, I’m on my way.”

“Okay, I’ll see you there.”

I rang Kip next, but he didn’t pick up. I left a message for him to call me on my cell. Before putting on my coat, I upped the radio’s volume. KSKY was still playing music. I could listen to it in the car on my way to the
Advocate
.

Seven minutes, two commercials, and half of Men at Work’s “Down Under” later, I parked the Honda and unlocked the
Advocate
’s front door. I’d just turned on the lights in the newsroom when Mitch arrived. “What’s up?” he asked, shrugging out of his all-weather jacket.

“Have you watched the news on TV today?” I asked.

“I flipped to CNN a few times between football games,” he replied. “Did I miss something?”

“I meant the local news—Bellevue, that is.”

“No. In fact, Brenda and I’ve only been to Bellevue twice since we moved out here. What’s going on there and why should we care?”

I’d sat down at Leo’s desk. Mitch joined me in my ad manager’s visitor’s chair. “I don’t know where to start.”

“The beginning usually works for me. You know—who, what, when, why, and how.”

Mitch’s laid-back style soothed me. “I’ll have to give you some background first,” I said, and launched into the wreckage of Milo’s marriage and divorce. “Until the past month or two, he hasn’t had a lot of contact with his ex or even his kids, but today he got a call from Tricia about a serious domestic crisis involving his daughter, Tanya, and her fiancé. Milo had to go to Bellevue to help her sort it out. It turned out to be even worse than—” My cell rang. “I’d better take this. Sorry.” I answered with my name, and was surprised to hear the agitated voice of Reba Cederberg on the other end of the line.

“Emma, I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, “but I can’t get hold of Vida, and I have to talk to her. Do you know where she is?”

“Yes, Reba,” I said, hoping Mitch recognized the name. “She’s having dinner at the ski lodge. It’s the one occasion when she ignores a call. Vida feels strongly about observing phone etiquette in public. You should be able to reach her at home in about an hour. Is there anything I can do? You sound upset.”

“Oh, I am,” Reba said. “An hour? Oh, dear. Well … maybe I’ll have to wait. Or … I don’t know
what
to do. Maybe I should call the police.”

I’d scribbled a note for Mitch to turn on KSKY. “Where’s Andy?” I asked as my reporter got up and went over to his desk.

“He’s here, but he doesn’t know what to do, either. Just a minute.”

Reba apparently muffled the receiver with her hand. I could hear voices but not what was being said at the other end of the line. Mitch had turned on KSKY, shrugging and giving me a
questioning look as a band I didn’t recognize played a song I didn’t know. Somehow it seemed like a metaphor for what was going on with the call from Reba.

“It’s my sister-in-law, Diane, Greg’s mother,” Reba said. “She just phoned from Palm Desert. Greg’s in terrible trouble. We don’t know how to help him out of this mess.”

I motioned for Mitch to pick up his phone. “You mean about Greg skipping town after you posted bail?” I asked, raising my voice to keep Reba from hearing the sound of the second phone connecting to the line.

“Not just that,” Reba replied. “It’s such a mess. Diane’s beside herself. She’s afraid that Greg’s on his way to Palm Desert, and that means he’s jumping bail. That’s bad enough, but what’s more disturbing is he … well, he’s done something very foolish. His intentions were well meant, I think. Still, it was unfair of him to involve innocent people.”

I exchanged beleaguered looks with Mitch, who’d turned the radio down so he could hear the phone conversation. I tried to prod Reba. “Can you tell me what he did?”

She began to cry. My headache was coming back. Mitch was holding the phone away from his ear and leaning back in his chair so far that I thought he’d tip over. I could hear a phone ringing somewhere, but it wasn’t in the newsroom. The front office? My cubbyhole? The back shop? The ringing stopped. Reba’s sobs had grown fainter. I heard Andy’s voice in the background. The ringing must have been another phone at the Cederberg house.

“What’s happening?” I said softly to Mitch.

He’d straightened up in the chair. “Maybe they forgot to disconnect the call to you.”

We both sat in silence for at least a minute. I could still hear Andy’s voice, though his words weren’t audible. Suddenly a
high-pitched howl assaulted my ear. I cringed; Mitch grimaced. It had to be Reba. But it was Andy who spoke into the phone. “Emma?” He’d raised his voice to be heard over Reba’s fresh outburst of sobs. “Can we call you later? We have to go to the hospital.”

Why not?
I thought.
Everybody else is going there these days
. “You mean Reba’s collapsed?”

“No,” Andy said, his voice suddenly breaking. “JoAnne Petersen just died.”

I
THINK
,” M
ITCH SAID DRYLY, “YOU’D BETTER FILL ME IN ON
the rest of the story while we go to the hospital.”

“We won’t have time,” I said, trying to collect myself from the latest shock. “In fact, let’s not go to the hospital. We’ve got some work to do here instead.”

“In that case,” Mitch said, “shall I make coffee?”

“I will. I don’t know if Alison cleaned out the coffeemaker Friday.”

Mitch had gotten to his feet. “I’ll do it. You look tired, Emma. Bad night before what I assume was a bad day?”

“Both Vida and I’ve had a touch of flu,” I said.

“It’s that time of year,” Mitch remarked, inspecting the coffeemaker. “Clean as a whistle. Too bad Alison can’t stick around instead of Denise. Or is Ginny coming back Monday?”

“I don’t even want to think about that mess right now,” I said, letting Mitch perform the coffee duty. “I don’t even remember where I left off. Can you turn that radio up a bit?”

“You got a thing for nostalgia?” he asked. “What about going back even further for some Motown Sound?”

“I’m waiting to see what Spence is up to,” I said. “I’ll tell you why.”

Ten minutes later, I’d finished recounting not only Milo’s saga, but Craig’s fruitless attempt to convey something he felt was important about his new painting. Almost out of breath, I ended with JoAnne’s apparently successful suicide. As ever, Mitch was a good listener, asking questions and making comments only when necessary, skills he’d honed during his career with the
Detroit Free Press
.

“Hmm,” he murmured when I’d finished. “Let’s see—two dead, two wounded—I’m counting Laurentis being back in the hospital—and a bail-jumping poacher with an unspeakable secret. Not bad for a weekend, Emma. Even in Detroit, I didn’t usually get that much on my plate in less than twenty-four hours. That doesn’t mean it didn’t all happen—we just had a bigger staff. No wonder you look tired.”

I admitted I’d probably left something out. “My head not only aches, it’s spinning. And I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop with Spence breaking all this on the radio.”

“I wonder why he hasn’t.” He glanced at the radio. “We missed the news recap at seven while we were listening to Reba go ballistic.”

I’d lost track of time. “Damn. You’re right. But if Spence broke the story about Milo and the Bellevue catastrophe, it would’ve taken more than the usual five-minute news segment that always includes sports, weather, and traffic conditions.”

“What’s holding Spence back, I wonder?”

I had omitted something, but that was intentional. I was not going to mention that the sheriff had sent Mr. Radio to the ER. For the first time, it occurred to me that maybe Spence had decided discretion was the better part of valor. He only had one
nose. He probably didn’t want the sheriff to go for his golden throat the next time.

“Checking sources, maybe,” I said. “So what do we do besides wait for official confirmation from Doc Dewey about JoAnne’s death?”

“Call the hospital in Seattle to see how Dodge’s daughter is doing?” Mitch suggested. “Did you hear how badly she was wounded?”

“No,” I replied. “But it had to be more than a graze or they wouldn’t have airlifted her to Harborview.”

“Do you know her very well?”

I shook my head. “I never met her or any of his children. Or Tricia, for that matter, although you may recall that she was up here in October to discuss Tanya’s wedding plans with Milo.”

“Sounds like Dodge just saved himself big bucks on a wedding.” Mitch cocked his head to one side. “You sure the sheriff didn’t shoot Buster just to save ten, twenty grand?”

Ordinarily, I would’ve laughed, but all I could manage was a weak smile. “I don’t think Milo was ever inside his ex-wife’s house today. You’re right. We should call Harborview. It’s your story. You do it.”

Mitch looked uncertain. “It is? No problem, but I didn’t realize I’d gotten the assignment. Isn’t it better if you handle this one? You know Dodge better than I do. I sense he’s kind of touchy about personal stuff.”

It occurred to me that Mitch might be one of the few people in town who didn’t know that Milo and I had a long and often tumultuous history. “Well … let me think about it. But would you mind calling Harborview? I’ve already had my share of dealing with the medical profession the last few days.”

“Sure.” He pulled a Seattle phone book out from somewhere under his desk. “You want me to call the local hospital, too? That
is
my story.”

“What?” My mind was eighty-five miles away, high on a hill overlooking Elliott Bay, wondering what Milo was doing and how he felt. “Oh—yes. I’m going to see if Vida’s home yet.”

I left Mitch to his calls and went into my cubbyhole to make my own. Vida didn’t answer at her home, which meant she was probably still at the ski lodge. I tried to call Kip again, but he didn’t pick up. Then, gritting my teeth, I dialed KSKY’s number.

Bree answered. Her warm, chummy radio voice turned frosty when she heard my voice. “Spencer is busy. Can he call you back later if he has time?”

“No,” I said, and hung up. I, too, could play the cut-off game.

Mitch was still on the phone when I went back into the newsroom. He held up his index finger to indicate the call was almost finished. “Thanks, Olga. I’m sorry about your loss. Take care.”