The Alpine Legacy (14 page)

“Came to mooch is more like it,” Dean growled. “He probably wanted money for his drugs.”

“That's possible,” Vida allowed, never turning a hair, though the fur hat had begun to slip again. “I'll be by later to take your picture. Will you be here?”

Dean said he would. He didn't bother to show us to the door, but remained seated, again staring out the window.

“Drugs.” Vida sighed as we trudged back down the stairs. “I should have guessed. A musician. Wouldn't you know it? And that Victor also has something to do with music. I don't recall Crystal ever being interested in any of the arts.”

“She was interested in men. Or was in the past,” I said, recalling the anti-male slogans on the refrigerator. “Maybe their backgrounds weren't the attraction.”

We had reached the lobby, where Vida nodded briskly at Madge Gustavson, but didn't speak. I suspected that Madge was probably going to be in the deep freeze for at least a couple of days.

“Billy has also been remiss,” Vida murmured as we exited through the revolving door. “He didn't call me this morning about the autopsy report. What do you know about Dilantin?”

Before I could answer, Bill Blatt pulled up to the curb in his deputy's car and called to his aunt. “Could I treat you to some ice cream this evening?” he asked in a humble voice.

“Why, Billy,” Vida replied, “how nice. In fact, let me treat you to dinner. The ski-lodge coffee shop at six? I lunched there with your dear mother today, and the food seemed especially good.”

Bill Blatt slapped a hand to his head. “Ohmigosh! It's her birthday, isn't it? I forgot.” His florid complexion deepened. “We'll have to get together tomorrow night. Butyou're coming to the house after work, right?”

“Oh.” It was clear that Vida had also forgotten, at least the part about the family birthday celebration. “Of course. How silly of me. We'll talk then, all right?”

Bill assured his aunt that it was. I had the feeling that he'd lost out on a free meal. Vida would wheedle everything she could out of the poor guy before the candles
were extinguished on Nell Blatt's cake. The dinner date would be superfluous.

Al Driggers had called while we were gone to say that the funeral services for Crystal Bird would be held Thursday at eleven
A.M.
at First Baptist Church. There would be cremation, because that was what April Eriks thought her sister would have wanted. It may have been, but second-guessing the dead has always seemed self-indulgent to me.

Shortly after four, Scott turned in his brief story on Victor Dimitroff. There wasn't much more in it than we'd already learned from April: Victor's parents were political dissidents who had fled to France shortly before World War II. Their son had been born during the German occupation, and after the war, the Dimitroffs had moved to Vienna for a time, and then back to Paris. Young Victor had studied the tuba in both cities, and had eventually been hired by the Paris Opera. In the mid-Seventies, he had joined the New York Philharmonic, remaining with the orchestra for almost twenty years. During that period, he had begun to compose, and finally chucked his career as a performer to create his own music. He had not bragged about successes, so I assumed he was still struggling.

“Scott,” I said, standing in the doorway to my cubbyhole, “this is fine, except that you didn't include why Victor was in the Alpine area.”

Laboriously, Scott looked up from his next assignment, covering ski enthusiasts' reaction to the new backside runs and lifts at the pass. He had a habit of making every story look like an onerous task, and maybe it was or else it wouldn't have taken him so long to produce his copy.

“Dimitroff didn't say,” Scott replied.

“Nothing? Not a skier, not a tourist? Was he headed
for eastern Washington?” Nobody simply passes through Alpine, though they pass it by when heading across the pass. “Why would he have Janet Driggers making his travel arrangements if he didn't have a reason to be in the area?”

“I don't know. He didn't say,” Scott repeated with a shrug.

“Didn't? Or wouldn't?”

Scott gave me that terrific grin. “The latter, I guess. I did ask. But he was kind of in a rush to get out of the hospital.”

“Okay.” I went back into my office, cursing myself for not having sent Vida in the first place. At the time, I had believed there was no real importance in Victor Dimitroff's visit. But I was wrong. Now that murder was a possibility, his relationship with the dead woman loomed large.

The phone rang, and I picked it up in a distracted manner.

“Can you come over right away?” the terse voice asked.

“Milo?” He sounded very strange, alarmingly harsh. “Yes. Why?”

“Just be here, ASAP.” He hung up.

Not only had I barely recognized Milo, I suddenly felt afraid of him. But I obeyed. After all, I was a suspect.

It was icing up underfoot, and I almost fell twice in my rush to reach the sheriff's office two blocks away. Milo was sitting in a haze of blue smoke, drinking yet another mug of his vile coffee. He had two space heaters going, one aimed at his chair, the other in the middle of the room.

“What's with these?” I asked, pointing to the heater nearest my visitor's chair.

“We blew all the fuses this morning and killed the
heating system,” he replied in a detached voice. “Ron Bjornson's working on it. Coffee?”

“No, thanks.” There was a two-inch story in the blown fuses, but I'd get to that later. “Why am I here?”

Milo set his mug down and riffled some papers on his desk. “Jack and Dwight Gould drained the hot tub at Crystal's this afternoon. They found a pill bottle stuck in the drain. The printing on the prescription label was pretty washed out, but we were able to bring it up under the microscope in the lab.” The sheriff lifted his long chin and stared at me with chilling hazel eyes. “The empty bottle had contained Dilantin, and it was made out to you.”

I
ASKED
M
ILO
for a cigarette. He held the pack out while I fumbled around. Then he leaned forward again and lighted the damned thing for me. All the while, his gaze never left my face.

“This is crazy,” I finally said in a strange parody of my own voice. “How can that be? Can I see it?”

“The bottle?” Milo shrugged. “Why not?”

He opened a drawer and fished out a plastic bag. In it was the small amber plastic bottle that I'd bought at Parker's Pharmacy, where Doc Dewey had phoned in my sleeping-pill prescription.

“Jesus,” I whispered.

“How many were in there?” Milo asked, putting the evidence away.

“Ohhh…” I held my head in my hands, elbows resting on the desk. “A dozen, maybe. I'd had it refilled once, then I finally went off the blasted things. You remember—I must have told everybody in town how glad I was to be able to sleep on my own again.”

“Alone.” The word slipped from Milo's lips and he reddened. I don't think I'd ever seen him blush before. “Scratch that.” Briefly, he turned away, and I sensed that he was swearing at himself.

“The break-in,” I said suddenly. “Whoever broke into my house stole that bottle.”

“What?” Milo had recovered, and was looking at me again. “Oh.” He tugged at one ear, then picked up his coffee mug. “You think so?” There was no inflection in his voice.

“Isn't it obvious?” The idea had put steel in my spine; finally, there was something I could hold on to besides the cigarette. “Did you ever recover the other things that were stolen?”

“No.”

“Did you try?”

Milo stared at me, but didn't respond.

“I know, I know,” I said hastily. “It's almost impossible to find stolen goods because they go to Everett or Seattle or Damascus. But I don't think petty theft was the reason for the break-in. Come on, Milo. Crystal's murder was premeditated, and somebody's trying to set me up.”

“Who?” There was still no emotion in his voice, and it was beginning to gall me.

“Paula Rubens arranged the meeting,” I said, “though I can't imagine why she'd want to kill Crystal. In fact, I can't imagine Paula killing anybody. But everybody in town knew Crystal and I were at odds, and probably half the population knew I was going to meet her that night. Paula's a nice woman, but she talks. And you know how word gets out around here.”

Milo drained the mug's dregs into a sickly-looking cactus. If it survived only on the sheriff's coffee, the plant's condition was probably terminal. “How well do you know Paula?”

“Fairly well,” I replied, beginning to relax a bit. “I like her. We share quite a few interests. You've known her as long as I have. She lives near Honoria's old place.”

Milo grunted. He rarely liked being reminded of his former girlfriend, who had put him through a fair share
of misery. “I know Paula,” he allowed. “She's kind of deep.”

To Milo, that meant Paula read the news before the sports page. “Do you agree with me about the break-in?” I asked, taking the last puff off my cigarette.

“It's possible.” He didn't seem enthused with the idea.

“Don't be a jackass,” I shouted, pounding a fist on the desk. “You know damned well I didn't kill Crystal Bird. Why are you wasting your time grilling me?”

Milo tucked his chin into his chest. “Admit it, it doesn't look good.”

“Screw you.”

He kept looking at me, but a muscle twitched along his jaw. “What?”

Angrily, I waved a hand. “Poor choice of words. I'm sorry. And make up your mind—are you interrogating me or taunting me? I thought we were past all that stuff.”

Milo heaved a deep sigh. “So did I. Okay. When did you last see that pill bottle?”

I couldn't remember. My medicine cabinet, which was above the sink, contained the usual assortment of over-the-counter remedies. The only prescription drugs I had were an ointment for a rash, tetracycline to keep my skin from erupting into adolescent zits, the hormone replacements—and the sleeping pills. I didn't take a daily inventory.

“I wish I could remember,” I said, “but I can't. I open the medicine cabinet twice a day. In the morning, when I'm still fogged in with sleep, and at night, when I'm dead tired. My powers of observation are at a low ebb both times.”

Milo grunted. “If you're right about how many pills were left, it was definitely enough to kill Crystal. Especially since she'd been drinking rum. Was she drunk when you were there?”

“I don't think so. But then it's hard to tell with some people, especially when you don't know them.” I paused, thinking back to her demeanor. She had scarcely looked at me the whole time. I had little memory of her face, and almost none of her eyes.

“What do you know about this Dimitroff guy?” Milo asked.

“Funny you should ask,” I murmured, then tried to recite all the facts from Scott's story.

Milo gave a faint nod. “I checked with Janet Driggers. She said Dimitroff made his flight arrangements a couple of weeks ago. But she didn't know where he was staying. Do you?”

I shook my head. “Did she tell you he wasn't leaving until Friday? Surely you can run him down.”

“We've got an APB on the guy. Let's hope he wasn't headed for Seattle.”

“Could he drive with that broken leg?”

Milo shrugged. “Doc Dewey said maybe, if he took it easy.”

“What about Aaron Conley?” I remembered the incident on Front Street where I'd almost been hit by his van. “I could describe his vehicle.”

“Conley's in custody,” Milo replied.

“What?”

“We picked him up a couple of hours ago. He was trying to pass a forged check on Crystal's account.”

“Wow.” I couldn't help it, I reached for another cigarette. Unfortunately, Milo obliged. “What's his story on Friday night?”

“He was in Monroe, jamming or whatever they call it these days, at a tavern.” Milo's expression was dour. “He's got witnesses, but since when are a bunch of drunks reliable?”

I didn't know, either. Impulsively, I grabbed one of
Milo's hands. “You don't really think I'm a killer, do you, Milo?”

He gave my fingers a quick squeeze. “No. But damn it, Emma, I have to go by the book.”

I knew that. Milo always does.

Despite a little coaxing and a lot of badgering, I couldn't get Milo to open up about Aaron Conley. On the way back to the office, it occurred to me that Scott might have better luck. The sheriff's office was part of his beat, and he was already developing some rapport with Dustin Fong.

“Here's your first sidebar to go with the homicide story,” I announced.

Scott jumped. “So soon? It's officially a homicide?”

“That's the way Sheriff Dodge is treating it.”
And the way he's treating me
, I wanted to add, but didn't. “This is a first, I assume?”

Scott nodded. “You don't cover crime when you work for a suburban shopper,” he said in reference to his previous job on an Eastside weekly.

I was giving him the details when Vida sidled over to Scott's desk. “So Milo's convinced Crystal was murdered?”

I nodded. “We can discuss the details later.”

“When?” Vida folded her arms across her bust. “It's almost five. I have a birthday dinner to attend.”

“Tomorrow, then,” I said with a cheer I didn't feel. “Don't worry. You've got Billy to pump at the party.”