The Alpine Fury (31 page)

I assumed he referred to Christie Johnston. “She had references?”

Marv’s nod was doleful. “Plenty of them. Larry said they were impeccable.”

“You’re certain it was her?”

He nodded again. “But we can’t say so until the auditors have done their job. Oh,” he went on, gazing up at the arched window set high in the wall, “I had a glimmer two weeks ago. Crazy Eights Neffel came in to ask why he couldn’t buy pork chops. I thought he was off his noodle as usual, but he got all worked up. I finally pried the facts out of him. He buys on credit at the Grocery Basket, and they hadn’t been paid in three months, so Jake O’Toole cut him off. I stayed here late and did some checking—sure enough, Christie had been handling Crazy Eights’s proxy account. No disbursements had been made to his account with the Grocery Basket since the end of July. But similar amounts—say, a hundred and fifty to two hundred each month—had been withdrawn from Crazy Eights’s savings. Where did they go? Under Christie’s mattress, I’ll bet.”

I gave Marv my most sympathetic look. “I saw you tear out of here two weeks ago Monday night. Where were you going? The Grocery Basket?”

Marv had been nodding so much that he was beginning to wobble. “I couldn’t let Crazy Eights starve. Poor nutty old coot, he’s one of ours, and he deserves better treatment.”

Allowing a moment of silence to observe Marv’s compassion and Crazy Eights Neffel’s nuttiness, I then put the bank president back on the right track. “Did you confront Christie the next day?”

“Oh, yes.” Marv’s expression was bitter. “She said she thought the funds were to be transferred directly into the Grocery Basket’s account here at the bank. Which is what she claimed she’d done. She went off to get a printout to show me, but it took her too much
time. I suspect she added in the numbers on the spot and made them retroactive. It would be easy enough.”

I understood that much. But I still had a question. “Where did the money come from? I mean, she couldn’t just type in numbers, could she?”

“She could and probably did. I wanted to believe Christie. To prove her a liar would have meant going through three months of Grocery Basket paperwork to see if everything balanced. Christie knew we wouldn’t take the trouble to do it. We’re talking about a total of under six hundred dollars on one of our biggest accounts. I wouldn’t ask Linda to spend all that time on what might have been an honest mistake.”

“But it wasn’t,” I pointed out.

“Oh, no, it definitely wasn’t,” Marv agreed. “Linda caught Christie in a couple of other foul-ups. Linda was getting suspicious. Then along came Dan Ruggiero from the Bank of Washington. I hate to admit it, but I tried to tell Linda to keep quiet. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as we thought. Maybe Christie was rattled lately. It can happen—Denise has had some real problems settling in.”

I didn’t doubt it. But I kept a straight face and let Marv continue:

“I advised Linda to let Ruggiero check the books independently, with no input from us. But my daughter isn’t—wasn’t—made that way.” His smile was rueful. And sad. “Linda was a stickler. Numbers were everything to her, the way some people love golf or chocolate. And honesty in finance—well, she should have been appointed to the Federal Reserve Board. Linda couldn’t keep quiet about the irregularities. It wasn’t in her. And,” he added, with the glimmer of a tear in his eye, “I’m proud of her. Damned proud.”

Fleetingly I thought that Pastor Nielsen should have
let Marv write Linda’s eulogy. If nothing else, she had been a paradigm of integrity. In a shabby, careless world, that was an awe-inspiring virtue.

In my own world, I had to write a story. “Okay, Marv, let’s discuss how the audit is conducted. All we’ll mention at this point is that certain irregularities have been uncovered. You and Linda might as well take credit for that.”

Marv bowed his balding head. “I’d like that. Linda would have, too.”

For the next few minutes, Marv explained the nuts and bolts of a bank audit at the state level. I had to interrupt several times to make sure I understood. If a writer doesn’t know his or her subject, it can’t be conveyed to the public. It’s incredible how many journalists seem to forget that basic rule.

When we finished, I had one last question for Marv. “Were you actually going to sell out to the Bank of Washington?”

Marv fidgeted with his gold ballpoint pen, then straightened his desk calendar. “It wasn’t a buyout as such. It was a merger. And I would have insisted that we keep our name. Of course, the staff would have remained in place. Our customers would never have known the difference. Except that we could have expanded our services. It’s getting to be a complicated world, Emma. There’s not much room left for the little guy.”

Marv spoke the truth. Down the road, there might not be any place for an independently owned weekly newspaper. I’d known that when I purchased
The Advocate
four years ago. But for now, it was still all mine.

And, until the state audit was over, the Bank of Alpine still belonged to Alpiners. I wasn’t sure that was a
good thing. It certainly hadn’t worked out well for the Petersens.

I still had to cash my paycheck. Larry Petersen had finally emerged from behind
The Herald
. He saw me coming out of his father’s office and a thin smile crossed his face.

“How bad is it?” he asked, leaving his desk and coming over to stand at the brass rail.

“Not too bad. I’ve got a strong quote from your dad about how customers don’t need to worry about their money and that everything will be straightened out as quickly as possible. That’s what the FDIC is for, right?”

Larry looked dazed. “More or less. But people panic. I keep thinking about those bank runs that my grandfather used to tell me about. You know, in the Thirties. I have visions of everybody in Alpine charging through the lobby and demanding to withdraw all their money at once.”

“This isn’t the depression,” I reminded Larry.

He turned an anxious eye on me. “It’s close enough, here in Alpine.”

I tried to give Larry a reassuring smile. “The story I’m going to write won’t be sensational.
The Advocate
isn’t a grocery-store tabloid.” A final query popped into my mind. “How much, do you think?” Noting Larry’s sudden look of alarm, I waved a hand. “Not for publication, because you can only guess at this stage. But do you have a ballpark figure?”

Larry’s face scrunched up as he gazed off over my head to the medallion of John Engstrom. “This has to be a really rough estimate … but Christie made off with around twenty thousand. Maybe less.”

Somehow, I was surprised. As I got in line behind
Ione Erdahl, I wondered if twenty grand was worth killing for. It wouldn’t be for me.

But then I wasn’t a killer.

“W
E’RE GOING OUT
for dessert,” Vida announced at the exact moment I hit the printer key on my word processor. “We won’t have dinner because we might die.”

I had no idea what Vida was talking about. “I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “I still have to find out what Milo’s up to.”

Vida leaned one hand on my visitor’s chair. “Thelma and Elmer invited us to dinner. Elmer, it seems, took a fancy to you, which is very rare for him. It must be your peculiar politics. Anyway, only wild horses could drag me to eat an entire meal at their house. You wouldn’t believe what that kitchen looks like. But dessert is safe. Thelma usually makes something out of a box.”

I had no earthly desire to spend part of my evening with Elmer and Thelma Petersen. But Vida had made the commitment for me, and I knew I was stuck.

“What time?” I sighed.

“Six. They eat at five. That’s because they go to bed so early.”

It was now almost four-thirty. I must have been looking fretful because Vida shook a finger at me.

“You don’t have to finish your homicide story until tomorrow. If Milo had anything new, he would have
called. I’ll pick you up at ten to six.” In her splay-footed manner, Vida exited my office.

The printer was still spewing out copy when the phone rang. I hoped it was Milo, if only to get me off the hook with the Petersens.

But it was a woman, and she sounded upset. At first I couldn’t understand a word she said. Then she collected herself.

“Susan Lindahl? Remember, you and your friend were here last week? In Everett?”

Susan must have thought I was a moron. “Oh, yes, of course. What is it, Susan?”

Susan uttered a strange little squawk. “I … I’m so upset. I’ve spent the last half hour trying to calm down Alison. I really don’t know anyone else in Alpine except you and Mrs. Runkel….” A sob broke through in her voice; I waited for her to go on. “Your sheriff was here this afternoon with a search warrant. Howie wasn’t home. He’s putting in some cabinets at an industrial park near Marysville. What am I going to tell him when he gets home?”

Distractedly I pushed my overlong bangs off my forehead. “It’s routine, I imagine,” I said, lying through my teeth. “If the sheriff wanted to talk to Howie, he’d have tracked him down.”

“He’s coming back, around six. He’d still be here if he hadn’t taken some things to the police lab downtown.” Susan’s voice trembled, but she seemed to be getting the upper hand on her self-control.

“What things?” I asked, ready to jot down information.

“Some of Howie’s clothes. His shoes. A hairbrush.” She paused, and I could distinctly hear her swallow. “And a piece of rope.”

I bit my lower lip. “Milo Dodge is very thorough.” It
was the only comforting thing I could think of to say to Susan Lindahl.

“But
why!
What’s going on over there in Alpine? You own the newspaper; you must know what the sheriff’s thinking.” The quaver had gone out of Susan’s voice, but she still sounded frantic.

I had scribbled Milo’s haul in my little notebook. For a brief, electrifying second I stared at the page. “Don’t get too upset about Sheriff Dodge,” I said, hoping to convey confidence. “He’s just doing his job. As I mentioned, he has to be thorough. Maybe it has something to do with your break-in.”

“That?”
Susan’s attitude was scornful. “The Everett police handled it. It was probably kids, maybe even friends of Alison’s. Nothing was taken.”

“How did you know there
was
a break-in?” I asked in a casual voice.

Now that Susan was off of the subject of Milo Dodge, she sounded more like herself. “There were drawers pulled out, a glass in the kitchen was overturned, one of the living-room lamps had gotten unplugged. As I told you, the police figured it was kids, looking for money or liquor or drugs.”

“How did they get in?”

Susan hesitated before answering. “This is the silly part. Alison’s hair clip broke after she got in the car, and she had to go back to get another one. She swears she locked the door on the way out, but you know how kids are. She was all excited about the open house and she probably forgot. We gave her a little lecture, but as long as nothing was stolen or vandalized, we couldn’t complain too much. It’s a good thing, since Linda was killed right after that.”

“How’s she doing?” I inquired, thinking of the pale-faced little girl at the Lutheran church.

“Oh—it’s hard to say. At this age, kids tend to keep things inside, I think. She seemed to be doing all right until this afternoon when your sheriff showed up. That really threw her.”

I allowed that Milo’s search would certainly be upsetting. We chatted briefly, mostly about the trauma of adolescence. In the end, Susan thanked me and admitted that perhaps she’d overreacted.

She hadn’t, of course. But there was no need for her to know that. Yet.

Thelma Petersen served dessert in the living room, which was probably just as well. Vida’s warning about the kitchen had practically caused me to lose my appetite anyway. I tried not to cringe as I examined the watery chocolate pudding that was slipping and sliding in a slightly dingy cranberry glass dish.

We spent the first fifteen minutes with Thelma and Vida discussing Linda’s funeral. Elmer sat in silence, slopping up pudding. Once or twice, I caught him watching me with a wary eye. If this was Elmer Petersen’s way of extending friendship, I wondered how he showed hostility.

And then I found out. Somehow, after I drifted off course from the conversation, Vida and Thelma had started talking about the old days.

“You remember that dance, Vida,” Thelma was saying. “You wore green tulle.”

“It was my first grown-up dress. My mother made it.” Vida looked oddly wistful.

“What a shame the big fight spoiled everything.” Thelma glanced in her husband’s direction. “Not that I blamed Elmer. After all, the dance was in his honor because he was going overseas. He looked ever so handsome in his Navy uniform, didn’t he, Vida?”

“Very,” Vida replied, while I tried to conjure up a picture of Elmer Petersen ever looking like anything but two hundred pounds of potatoes stuffed into overalls. “Marv was jealous, of course. He was too young to serve.”

“He was too young to drink,” Thelma declared heatedly. A half century apparently hadn’t cooled her ire at her brother-in-law. “Sneaking punch, that’s what he did. And then he tried to kill Elmer!”

“Dutch courage,” Vida remarked, chasing her pudding around the dish. “Marv wanted to be a hero, too. And I think he had a crush on you.”

“Nonsense! I was way too old for Marv.” Thelma simpered just a bit. “Those were the days, weren’t they, Vida?”

Vida inclined her head. “Well … if you number putting Marv in traction among your most memorable moments, then I suppose we had a good time. Frankly, I thought Elmer would have killed Marv if their father and Stilts Cederberg hadn’t broken up the fight.”

“It
was
fierce.” Thelma’s seamed face softened at the memory. “But of course, Elmer and Marv never got along.” She turned again to her husband. “Did you, Elmer?”

To my amazement, Elmer had been listening. Perhaps his wife’s favorable attention had improved his diction. Or maybe I was getting used to the Petersen mumble. “I come back from the Pacific with a bum knee. Marv sits at home all safe and sound, then votes for Dewey. To hell with him.”