The Alpine Vengeance: An Emma Lord Mystery (36 page)

“What set him off when he saw Denise again?”

“He wasn’t sure,” Mitch replied. “The best he could come up with was that Denise acted
too
nice. He almost changed his mind about leaving the dog with her, then decided not to do anything that might set her off. He canceled the California trip and tried to figure out how to get Dodge to reopen the murder investigation. The letters were his answer.”

“Why did he word them in such a threatening manner?” I asked.

“His reasoning was fairly sound,” Mitch said. “Greg was
afraid to come right out with his suspicions, but he wanted to get the attention of someone in authority that he could trust. He had no way of knowing Larry was going to die. That really threw him, which is why there was a lapse between the last letter to Milo and the one to you. He wondered if somehow he’d hexed Larry.”

I nodded. “That’s understandable, if off-base.”

Mitch nodded. “He shook off that idea pretty fast, though he didn’t feel he’d made any impression on Dodge. After he heard Laurentis had been shot, Greg realized that he and Denise often walked the dog in that part of the woods. She seemed to have an affinity—not his word for it, but I knew what he meant—for the area. He wondered if Denise had taken Doofus there, but couldn’t imagine why she’d shoot the recluse.”

Doe had brought Mitch a visitor’s chair from one of the patient rooms. “You look uncomfortable,” she said. “As long as you’re entertaining your boss, you might as well sit.”

Mitch smiled in gratitude. “Thanks, Doe. Did I ever tell you you’re my favorite deputy?”

Doe looked startled. “I thought everybody liked Dustin Fong best.”

“Fong’s great,” Mitch said, “but you’ve got more soul. I know all about soul, being from Detroit. Run along before I start singing to you.”

Doe giggled. I’d never heard her do that before. “You’re funny,” she said before moving away.

“You do have a way with you,” I remarked.

“It’s a sham,” Mitch said diffidently. “Where did I leave off?”

“Did Greg know Denise had a gun?”

“It was his gun,” Mitch said. “He brought it along on those walks because something creeped him out. It took him a while
to understand that it wasn’t the woods, it was his wife. When he finally split with Denise, he forgot to take the gun with him. All he wanted was out—and the dog.”

“So what about the letters?”

“Greg felt he had to keep writing but switch to another recipient. You were it.” Mitch shrugged. “In a weird way, his campaign worked. In fact, when he was arrested he thought it was for sending the letters. He thought the stamps had given him away.”

“The stamps?”

Mitch grinned. “He used Cloudscape stamps. By coincidence, that was the name of his band. He bought a bunch of them when they first came out.”

“Oh, good Lord!” I shook my aching head. “I never knew that.”

“Who did, among us aging adults?”

“But guitar notwithstanding, Greg’s not the poacher,” I said, recalling what Marisa had told me when she went to get Doofus. “Denise remarked that Greg was so lame and how dumb it was to poach the maple trees. But Marisa never mentioned why Greg was with her. I’ll bet Denise made that anonymous call accusing her ex of being the poacher.”

Mitch considered my words. “Sounds right. Maybe she thought he knew too much about her. Putting him in jail would get him out of the way. At least she didn’t shoot him.”

“Incredible,” I murmured, shaking my head. “A real sociopath. Does Greg know Denise is dead?”

“He didn’t when I talked to him.” Mitch turned somber. “I suppose he does now. Maybe that’s the best ending for everybody.”

“It stinks,” I said. “JoAnne must’ve been aware of the truth. If she knew all along, she and Larry probably realized Denise
wouldn’t last long in prison, and institutionalizing her was an ugly scenario, too. The Laurentis shooting must’ve scared the hell out of JoAnne. I’m guessing that’s why she came to Alpine sooner than she’d planned. It may be the real reason she didn’t want to stay with Denise. No wonder JoAnne looked so haggard when I ran into her the other day. She’s lived her own lie for ten years.”

“If she knew all along, her life must’ve been as much of a prison as Larry’s.”

I paused. “It’d explain why she was so anxious to move away from here. It could also be the reason she didn’t visit Larry. JoAnne probably couldn’t bear to see her husband as a martyr. Or maybe he didn’t want to put her through that torture.”

Mitch looked off into space. “Guilt.” He paused for a moment. “I know all about Jewish guilt,” he finally said wryly, looking at me again, “but I suppose Lutherans can feel as guilty as anybody else. The Petersens must have wondered how they’d created a monster in Denise.”

“The family’s had a history of sibling rivalry,” I said, thinking of Marv and Elmer as well as their two older sisters, who had cut their ties to Alpine long ago. “JoAnne went along with Larry’s lie. Even if she didn’t see him, she knew he was still there. Maybe she didn’t want to live in a world without him.”

“My God,” Mitch said softly. “The things people do for and to each other.” He shook his head. “So we’ve still got a poacher on the loose. And no office manager
pro tem
.”

“We can worry about all that on Monday,” I said. “I’m tapped.”

A familiar voice reached my ears: “Well now, Ruthie,” Vida said from somewhere behind Mitch, “what kind of ward are you running around here? Didn’t I always say you spent too
much time reading charts and not enough time reading people? You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Look at my poor Emma! You’re lucky she’s not dead, too. If she were, I’d have had your head on a silver platter, and it wouldn’t be wearing that funny little cupcake of a cap you have on now!”

T
HE ENORMITY OF WHAT
I
’D DONE TO
D
ENISE DIDN’T STRIKE
me until I was home an hour later. Vida had made tea. Buck had built a fire. I was back on the sofa. All of a sudden I burst into tears.

“Whatever is wrong?” Vida asked, exchanging concerned glances with Buck.

“I killed somebody!” I wailed. “I can’t believe I did such a horrible thing.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Vida exclaimed. “It was self-defense. Would you rather be lying in the morgue with JoAnne Petersen? Besides, Doc told Dwight it was an accidental death. Denise could have fallen down those stairs ten times and not suffered more than a bruise.”

Buck nodded. “Seen it happen many times in the military. Some poor devil takes three, four bullets, recovers, and then gets run over by a messenger on a motorbike. When your name gets called, you go. In any case, your hand-to-hand fighting was combat. I can’t tell you how much of that I’ve seen, even in the air force. Sometimes the fight was between men on the same side.”

“Now, Buck,” Vida said, patting his broad shoulder, “don’t start in on your war stories. Poor Emma’s had enough of that.”

“Okay, Munkie-Runkie. I’ll retire to that easy chair.”

I didn’t object. Somehow it didn’t seem like sacrilege for Buck to take temporary residence there. He was almost as tall as Milo and even broader, at least through the midsection. Buck and Vida made a very imposing couple. “Munkie-Runkie” had not only stopped my tears, but it also made me wonder what rhyming pet name she had for Buck.

Vida had pulled one of my dining table chairs over to the sofa. “You must fill me in on how you concluded that Denise killed Linda. I feel very left out.”

That, of course, was unthinkable for Vida. “I only put it all together tonight,” I said. “The keys to figuring it out were both subtle and not so subtle. From the get-go, I never believed the poacher was the shooter. Milo had to consider they might be connected, if only because of the timing, but that’s how he works a case. Everything has to be considered to see if it fits—and it didn’t.”

“Sound,” Buck murmured. “Dodge served in Nam, right?”

Vida nodded, giving the colonel a fond smile. “Let Emma finish.”

I picked up where I left off. “Looking back at my first visit with Craig in the hospital, I realized he didn’t link the two incidents, either. So what was the motive for the attempt on Craig’s life? He’d also said something I should’ve caught when I heard it, but didn’t until Donna was talking about how artists work. It was the same phrase—“at that time.’ Donna’s remark wasn’t important, but the phrasing was. Craig had been referring to the shooting when he said he hadn’t seen anyone ‘at that time.’ It dawned on me that there must’ve been another time when he
had
seen someone. I finally realized that the answer was in the painting. There were also bare branches in the scene. They had
to be maples because Wes Amundson had mentioned there were no other deciduous trees at the poaching site. Craig might not have seen anyone or recalled exactly how far he’d dragged himself after he was shot, but it wasn’t far from those maples.”

Vida shook herself. “My, my! That was quite clever of you.”

“Devil’s in the details,” Buck said.

“True,” I agreed. “But neither Donna nor I could figure out what it meant. Then—and I reminded Mitch of this when he walked me to my car after we left the hospital—that he’d given me part of the answer while we were talking about Bree Kendall working for Spencer Fleetwood.”

“What?” Vida shrieked. “Bree is on the radio?”

“Never mind—we can talk about that later,” I said. “I referred to Bree as—excuse my language—a ‘blond bitch.’ Then Mitch made a crack about her moonlighting. Craig’s new painting has two muted golden spots on the ground that might be highlighted by an unseen moon. I should’ve paid more attention to the title,
Forest Watch
. In fact, he’d originally called it something else, and one of the words was ‘leg’ or ‘log.’ ”

“The log!” Vida exclaimed before turning to Buck. “That’s where poor Roger found her body. Both Linda and Denise were blondes.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Craig repeated the word ‘saw,’ but I thought he was referring to the poachers sawing down the maples—even though he insisted that wasn’t what he meant. It was what he actually
saw
when Denise hid her aunt’s body in the forest. She must’ve seen him as well, but as a local, Denise assumed—as everybody else did back then—that the man known as Old Nick was much older and probably crazy. It was barely a couple of years ago that we found out his name, his age, and that he might be a recluse, but he was also a talented artist. Even if Denise had wanted to silence Craig, she didn’t know where to find him—until the night he came the same way
to deliver the new painting to Donna Wickstrom. I suppose she’d seen him while she was walking Doofus. If she didn’t have the gun with her then, it wouldn’t take her long to go back to the townhouse and get it. All she had to do was lie in wait for Craig to go back the way he’d come—and shoot him.”

Vida nodded. “So cold-blooded. I wonder if she enjoyed visiting the site where she’d put Linda’s body. A ghastly thought, but perhaps she savored her ultimate triumph over her more accomplished aunt.”

I agreed. “Denise saw herself as a cipher in the family. I remember her alluding to that at the time of the murder. Denise felt like an outsider, despite Larry’s apparent affection for her. I can’t begin to figure how a twisted mind like Denise’s would respond to what she considered being an isolated member of the revered Petersen dynasty. I finally remembered her allusion to that after Linda was killed. She’d told me when she was about to quit working at the bank.”

Buck shifted his weight in the easy chair. “If this Craig hermit saw what was going on, why didn’t he call the police?”

I smiled at Buck. “Recluses don’t always make credible witnesses. Nor do they want any involvement with society, let alone authority figures. Craig’s opinion of human nature is not only low but detached.”

Vida nodded. “Possibly paranoid, too. He may have been afraid of becoming the prime suspect. When the Rafferty house was set on fire, there was talk that Old Nick—as he was known then—had done it.”

“Hmm,” Buck murmured. “I wonder if he was in Nam. Way too many of those vets never did get their heads screwed back on straight when they finished their tours. Lots of dropouts.” He shook his head. “Darned shame. Why did Denise take a gun with her? She had a dog.”

“It wasn’t her dog,” I replied. “It belonged to her ex, and according
to Denise, Doofus—the dog—was very timid. She may’ve always carried a gun when she went alone into the woods.”

Buck snorted. “I hope she had a concealed-weapon permit. Irresponsible gun owners make the rest of us look bad.”

“Really, Buckums,” Vida said, “that’s the least of the trouble Denise has caused.”

I tried not to smile. Vida’s pet name could have been a lot worse. She looked at me again. “I can’t get over Denise’s ability to carry out such a plan in the first place. You recall that Larry supposedly set up Linda’s ex-husband, Howard Lindahl, as the prime suspect. Are you telling us that Denise was that ingenious?”

“Yes, strange as it may seem. The break-in to plant phony evidence implicating Howard was staged by her. That’s another reason why I figure Larry refused to testify on his own behalf at the trial. He couldn’t answer many of the questions he’d be asked about the murder, the stashing of the body, and the break-in. The jury might have begun to wonder if he really was innocent.”

“But,” Vida objected, “a man claiming to be a potential customer called Howard to get him out of the house the night of the murder.”

I cocked my head at Vida. “You think Denise couldn’t sweettalk some guy into doing that for her as a harmless practical joke?”

“Well …” She frowned. “Goodness. That happened while Rick was dating Denise. Ginny was in the dumps. In fact,” she went on, “Denise’s alibi for the night of the murder was that she and Rick went to a movie.”

“I think we could ask Rick about that,” I said. “I’ll bet they went to the late show. As for Rick making the phone calls, it could have been Greg or even somebody else. The Rick and Denise thing was short-lived, as you may recall.”

Vida was quiet for a moment or two. “Denise must’ve hated Linda. Been jealous, too. Not that Denise could ever have believed she’d be in line to run the bank.”