The Alpine Fury (24 page)

Honoria was still looking pensive. “If Milo is conducting an investigation of the bank—along with Linda’s murder—he’ll find out that I’m a customer.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Vida replied promptly. “You have an excuse—the proxy banking arrangement. Let’s say Emma told you about Leo Walsh. You thought it was a good idea.”

Honoria lifted her fine eyebrows. “Leo … who?”

It was my turn to offer an explanation. By the time I finished, Honoria had made her decision: “I’ll do it. Actually, it might come in handy, though I suppose my present bank in Sultan could offer the same service. Is there any way I can be sure that I won’t lose money?”

Vida might not claim to be an expert on financial institutions, but as usual, she was well versed in practical information: “As long as you keep receipts and records, the bank will have to reimburse you. It’s the law. But addlepates like Grace Grundle lose things or throw them away. That’s when the trouble starts.”

Honoria seemed satisfied. After we put in our orders, she extracted the latest copy of
The Advocate
from her woven leather purse. “Milo brought me a copy of this week’s edition. I really should subscribe.” Honoria wore a sheepish expression as she pointed to the studio portrait we’d run of Linda Lindahl. “I didn’t read the paper until this afternoon. But I recognize her. She was at this restaurant about ten days ago, having dinner with a man.”

I scooted forward on my seat. “What did he look like?”

Honoria frowned. “That’s the problem. I come here about once a week, with or without Milo. It’s so tiresome to cook for one person. I was sitting over there”—she pointed to a booth across the aisle and down one place—“and Linda was at the next table. She was facing me, and the man’s back was turned. All I recall is that he was about her age and rather average from my limited viewpoint. I think his hair was brown.”

Vida’s mouth twitched with curiosity. “Were they amiable? Romantic? At odds?”

There was nothing glib about Honoria. Perhaps she’d always been reflective. Certainly, spending months of recovery after her tragic accident must have made her introspective. I’d often wondered how much Honoria blamed herself for marrying her violent, abusive husband in the first place. The Honoria Whitman I knew wouldn’t have made such a disastrous choice.

“Linda looked sour,” Honoria finally said. “I remember thinking—in that fleeting way we all do when things don’t seem important and yet catch our attention—that she was an unhappy woman. Rather hard, too. But her unhappiness struck me as a permanent condition, not just a temporary state.” Honoria uttered her husky little laugh. “You probably think I’m embroidering my story in retrospect. But when you’re eating alone, you get in a habit of studying people.”

I understood. But my perceptions weren’t as keen as Honoria’s. “Were Linda and the man openly quarreling?” I asked.

Honoria shook her head. “No. They were talking very earnestly. I left before they did. Unfortunately, I didn’t pass them on the way out.”

Vida was mulling. “Fortyish, brown hair, average. Sitting down, so you couldn’t judge height. It could be anybody.”

Honoria didn’t agree completely. “I don’t think he was overly tall. He and Linda seemed to be close to eye level.”

“Ah.” Vida’s face brightened. “When was this exactly?”

“A week ago Tuesday.” Honoria seemed very certain. “I teach a class at the Monroe Reformatory on Tuesdays.
I stopped here on my way home. It was around six-fifteen.”

Tuesday, November second, seemed like a very long time ago. It was now the twelfth, but I felt as if weeks had passed since Linda Lindahl had been alive.

Vida was still contemplating. “If I had to guess, I’d say that the man with Linda was Howard, her ex-husband. Was his light brown hair thinning?”

But Vida’s guess was off the mark. “No,” Honoria replied. “He had a full head of hair. And it wasn’t light—it was dark brown. Did I mention that he was wearing what looked like a suit? That’s very odd for around here.”

Vida blinked several times. “That’s very odd for Alpine, too. In fact, that’s very odd indeed.”

V
IDA AGAIN HAD
Roger for the day. His parents had gone over to Everett to do some early Christmas shopping. I secretly hoped they were buying him a cage. But his presence at Vida’s house prevented me from asking her to drive up to the murder site. The thought of spending time with Roger was only slightly less horrifying than the murder itself.

Our capricious weather had changed again, with a sudden warming trend, westerly winds, and spasmodic rain showers. When I pulled off the road around eleven that Saturday morning, the rain had stopped. Still, I hesitated before getting out of the Jag. Another car was already parked off Highway 187. I immediately recognized Marv Petersen’s Cadillac.

Cautiously, I moved into the clearing. Had Marv come to pay homage to the site where his daughter had been killed? But a few yards away, under a slim cedar, Marv appeared to be scouring the ground. He didn’t look up until I accidentally stepped on a vine-maple twig.

“Emma!” Marv seemed more frightened than startled. “What are you doing here?”

I felt embarrassed. Marv’s usually rubicund face was haggard, and his eyes darted nervously. “It’s my job,” I said simply. “I needed to see this for myself.”

“So did I.” He cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t let Cathleen come. It would only upset her. Not that she isn’t …” His voice trailed away as he bent his head.

Except for the wind moaning in the evergreens, it was very quiet in the clearing. The wet ground was covered with fallen leaves. Salmonberry vines, which had grown up after the second stand of timber was cut, were now bare and brown, twisted like snakes over fallen logs. All but a few of the ferns were withered; the trilliums had begun their winter rot; the wild bleeding heart had been trampled underfoot. The air smelled of decay, of damp, of death. And yet I knew that under the ground there was new life at work, slumbering, perhaps, but waiting for another season.

There were no more springtimes for Linda Lindahl, however. I searched for the hollow log where she had been hidden, but, of course, it wasn’t there. Milo and his men had taken it away as part of the evidence. Marv followed my gaze and grunted.

“I’m glad it’s gone,” he said, reading my thoughts.

I gave a nod and wondered why I had come. I also wondered why Marv Petersen had come. Paying tribute, I had thought. But my first sighting of him had suggested something else. I could have sworn that he was searching the area. It was impossible to pose the question. Instead, I chose a more neutral topic

“Marv, satisfy my curiosity.” I thought he gave a little jump, but maybe he merely stepped on some uneven ground. There was plenty of it in the boglike clearing. “Why is there a blank medallion on the wall at the bank?”

Marv’s shoulders seemed to slump under his heavy parka. “Oh, that!” The faintest smile played at his mouth. “That was for the silent partner who helped found the bank. According to my father, one of the
early Alpiners was quite a gambling man. Lucky, too. Still, his wife didn’t approve. One night he won over six thousand dollars in a poker game in Seattle. That was a lot of money in 1930. He didn’t know what to do with it—he couldn’t admit to the missus that he’d won it at cards—so he invested it to help start the bank.”

“But you don’t know who he was?” I found that unlikely in Alpine, where everybody knows everything about everybody else.

Marv shook his head. We were wandering around the clearing, retracing our steps. Milo was right about the trees along the highway. They definitely shielded any activity from the road or the golf course across the way. Besides, it had been dark when Linda was killed.

“For all I know, whoever it was didn’t stay in Alpine,” Marv said. “A lot of people left after the original mill was closed. Believe it or not, I was just a little kid at the time.”

There were so many other questions I wanted to ask Marv, especially about the bank. But in that sad little clearing, with the west wind snapping off twigs and the rain pattering down once more, I couldn’t bring myself to play the part of hard-bitten reporter. Monday, maybe, I could brace him in his office.

I stopped walking, my hands shoved into the pockets of my green jacket. “I’d better head back,” I murmured. When Marv made no reply, I turned to face him. “Maybe you should, too.”

He removed his plaid hunter’s cap, then resettled it on his balding head. “I will. But not yet.” Marv’s attempt at a smile was valiant, almost desperate.

I smiled back. I didn’t need to be valiant, but I wanted to be kind. It didn’t seem right to leave him
alone in the clearing with the wind and the rain and his grief.

But of course, he wasn’t alone. Linda was with him.

The peace was broken by the rumble of road machinery, coursing down Highway 187. I recognized Mike Brockelman, driving something that I assumed was a paver. I waved; he stopped.

“We’re done,” he shouted from his perch in the cab. “We worked overtime today to make sure we finished before the snow really hits.”

“Great,” I congratulated him. “Where do you go next?”

“I won’t know until Monday,” he replied. “Wherever it is, it’ll be below the snow line.” An older sedan was coming from the other direction. Mike waited for it to pass. “Say, how’s the sheriff doing with that murder? I don’t get much chance to keep up with the news when I’m working a job like this.”

Peering up from ground level, it was hard for me to read Mike Brockelman’s expression. “He’s making progress,” I said, hoping it might be true. “It must be kind of creepy for you. I mean, the murder happened just about where you were working at the time.”

Mike swiveled in his seat, looking behind him. “We were further up the road by then. But it was creepy, all right.” Big Mike gave a shudder. “Damned terrible, if you ask me. Linda was a nice woman.”

I tried not to show surprise at Mike’s acknowledgment of acquaintanceship. “You were friends?”

“In a way. I met her at the Venison Inn one night a while back. We had a few drinks, a few laughs.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Man, you sure never know, do you? One minute you’re here, and the next—
zap!” He shook his head, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Say, has the sheriff talked to you much about this mess?”

I tried to look innocent. “There isn’t much to talk about yet. Not officially, that is. Why?”

Mike’s coworkers were coming up behind him in a convoy of state highway trucks and other road machinery, including a behemoth with a crane. “Just curious,” he said, easing off on the brake. “I’d better move along before these yahoos rear-end me. So long.”

Mike rolled off down the new smooth surface of Highway 187. His subordinates waved to me as they followed. My hair was now wet from the rain and I was beginning to shiver. Before I got into the Jag, I glanced at the entrance to the clearing. There was still no sign of Marv Petersen. The weather wouldn’t bother him. It was the least of his problems. I sensed that Marv was already cold, all the way through to his soul.

Milo Dodge’s coffee was weak as water, but at least it was hot. I cradled the Seahawks mug in my hands and listened to the sheriff rant.

“What did I tell you? Stop meddling, damn it!”

“I hardly call listening to Janet Driggers talk on the phone
meddling.”
My tone was indignant. I didn’t intend to tell Milo about Leo’s roses or the map Alison Lindahl had given me. Not yet. And I certainly wasn’t going to mention having dinner with Honoria. “As for driving up to the murder site, if I’m going to write about it, I have to know what it looks like. I hadn’t been in the area for quite a while. It’s not my fault I happened to run into Marv Petersen and Mike Brockelman.”

The fluorescent lights in Milo’s office blinked twice, a sure sign of a storm. “So what if Christie and her husband
are going back to Michigan? What’s that got to do with Linda getting killed?”

“But she asked Janet about a one-way ticket,” I said. “Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

“She was probably trying to finagle a deal. Or maybe they’re going on to someplace else.” Milo was looking mulish. “What do you expect me to do? Tell her and Troy they can’t leave town?”

I had to admit that Milo was in a bind when it came to handling potential suspects. There weren’t any, except maybe Howard Lindahl.

“Mike Brockelman admitted to me that he was seeing Linda,” I said, deciding to give up temporarily on Christie Johnston. “You might as well confess that he did the same to you.”

Reaching into his pocket, Milo pulled out a roll of mints. He offered one to me, and I accepted. Maybe it would give the coffee some flavor. “I don’t think it was anything serious. There wasn’t time. Mike only got up here last month. I figure it was just a romp in the hay for both of them.”

Milo’s assessment made sense. Mike hadn’t appeared overcome by grief when he’d talked to me about Linda. On the other hand, he wouldn’t be in mourning if he’d killed her.

“I think Marv was looking for something,” I said suddenly. “Does that make sense?”

Milo scoffed. “We combed that place pretty good. Of course, it started snowing, but we’d have found anything if it had been there. Maybe he was looking for Linda’s car keys. They’re right here.” The sheriff opened a drawer and waved a plastic bag at me. “They’ve been checked out for fingerprints, so we might as well give them to Marv. He’ll probably want to move Linda’s car.”

Milo’s door opened and Bill Blatt poked his head inside.
“Andy Cederberg’s here. He’s having second thoughts.”

Milo frowned at his deputy. “About what?”

Bill’s fair face colored slightly. “The car at John Engstrom Park. He thinks it wasn’t an accident.”

“Jeez.” Milo tossed the bag containing the keys on his desk. “Okay, send him in. Just what we need—paranoia.”

Andy Cederberg entered the office with a diffident air. I waited for Milo to dismiss me, but he didn’t.

“If this is an official complaint, Andy, Emma might as well hear it. She’ll get it from the log anyway.”

Andy sat down next to me, his lanky frame tense. “I’ve been talking to Reba about what happened last week. I’ve dreamed about it, too, and it’s so real that I wake up in a sweat. That car was going real slow, I remember that now, and then it suddenly speeded up and came right over the curb. You know, as if the driver saw me through the fog. In fact, I could almost swear that whoever it was had followed me from when I turned up Fourth Street and started down Pine.” Andy now looked eager, awaiting Milo’s response.