The Alpine Pursuit (16 page)

The old girl had gone too far. Vida came out from behind her desk to stand within six inches of the other woman. “See here, you miserable hag, if you want to discuss children and grandchildren, let’s start with yours. Take Einar Jr., for example, who lies six feet under because—”

Thyra let go of the sticks and put her hands to her ears. “Stop!” she screamed. “Stop, stop, stop!” Her face turned purple and she crumpled to the floor before Henry could catch her.

“My God!” Henry cried, on his knees. “Mrs. Rasmussen, are you all right?”

Leo finally emerged from behind his computer and gazed at the old lady’s motionless form. Vida stood in place, her face rigid and her fists clenched at her sides.

“She’s faking,” Vida said, barely moving her lips.

“I don’t think so,” Leo said, reaching for the phone. “If you ask me, Vida, I think you just killed her.”

TEN

Leo dialed 911 but informed the operator that Thyra Rasmussen was dead as a dodo. Henry, who was schooled in first aid as part of his responsibilities in caring for guests at the ski lodge, had already pronounced Thyra beyond help. Beth Rafferty, who handled the county’s emergency calls, told Leo it would be best to call Al Driggers at the mortuary.

“I’m guessing apoplexy,” Vida said, returning to her usual spot. “It would be most fitting. But don’t phone Al. Thyra wouldn’t want him to touch her. Try Dawson-Purdy or whatever they call themselves nowadays in Snohomish.”

“What about her son and his wife?” I said. “Shouldn’t we notify them?”

Vida looked at her watch. “Yes—it’s only nine o’clock. Harold and Gladys should still be sober.” A malevolent gleam surfaced in her gray eyes. “I’ll call them myself.”

“It’s not Dawson and Purdy anymore,” Leo said, looking up from the Snohomish County directory. “It’s called Purdy and Walters with Dawson.”

“That sounds rather complicated,” Vida declared. “For all I care, you can tell the dog pound to pick her up.”

I, too, was growing impatient. “We can’t leave her here lying in the middle of the newsroom floor. On any other Monday, a half-dozen people would’ve trooped in here by now.”

At that moment, both Scott and Ginny came through the door. Scott stopped in his tracks and Ginny let out a little cry.

“Don’t worry,” Vida said to them. “She’s harmless. Now.”

Leo explained what had happened, while Henry spoke to me in low tones. “I feel responsible. I should never have agreed to bring her here. It’s a wonder we didn’t both get killed coming down that narrow, winding road from the lodge.”

“People don’t—didn’t—say no to Thyra,” I reminded him. “The problem is, she has to be moved. Pronto.”

Henry studied his surroundings. “Do you have an extra room? Storage, perhaps?”

“Holy Mother of God,” I murmured. “Not really.”

Leo, who had finished his recapitulation for my other staffers, swiveled around in his chair to look at Henry. “Why not put her in the Town Car? Seriously, there’s a certain dignity to one of those babies. If it was good enough to bring her here, it’s good enough to take her away.”

Vida, looking rather gleeful, hung up the phone. “That was the bereaved son. They’ll drive down from Sultan to make the arrangements in Snohomish and have the funeral home there collect the body at the ski lodge.”

“Good,” I said. “Meanwhile—”

“Leo’s right,” Henry interrupted, apparently having been lost in thought. “If he and Scott can help me, we’ll put Mrs. Rasmussen in the car.”

“The trunk would be better,” Vida remarked.

I ignored her. “Then go ahead. Kip MacDuff should be here, but he was going to the computer store to get some new software this morning.”

“We’ll manage,” Henry assured me. The three men immediately began their sorry task.

“It’s awful,” Ginny said with a shudder. “I’ve never seen a person who just died. Except Uncle Cord, of course.”

I’d never asked Ginny about Uncle Cord, whose name was only mentioned in the most morose situations. I wasn’t going to ask her now. She filled her coffee mug and returned to the front office.

It didn’t take long to gather up Thyra’s body. Scott and Henry carried her out of the room while Leo took her sticks. The emerald eyes of the Egyptian temple dog handles seemed to spit green fire. The old lady had a purse, but because she’d needed to free her hands, it was on a long slim chain around her neck. I said a silent prayer before facing Vida.

“You really are hard-hearted sometimes,” I declared.

Vida looked me straight in the eye. “That woman spent a lifetime causing misery for other people. You know that’s so. And frankly, your lack of support just now didn’t help my disposition.”

I was taken aback. “What do you mean?”

“You were far too polite with her after she insulted me. Then, when she and I truly got into it, you just stood there like a cedar stump.”

“I never had a chance to get a word in edgewise,” I asserted. “Before Thyra collapsed, I was trying to keep a lid on things, if only to get rid of her.”

Vida, chin on palm, looked away. “Perhaps.”

“Hey, come on,” I said. “I walk in the door and hear what sounds like a couple of dueling harpies. For all I knew, there was an innocent bystander or two in the newsroom. How would you like a ‘Scene Around Town’ item for your gossip column that was about a scene here in the
Advocate
?”

Vida sighed. She was looking at me again and her expression was less agitated. “You see? Thyra was nothing but a troublemaker. Even in death, she causes trouble between the two of us.”

I smiled wanly at Vida. “No, she doesn’t. Let’s forget about it. We’ve got work to do.”

As the old-timers in Alpine would say, “Talk’s cheap, but it takes money to buy good whiskey.” I was in no mood to settle in at the desk as if this were any other Monday morning. A woman had died just a few yards from my swivel chair. Even now, with my office door open, I could see Leo and Scott crossing the spot on the floor where Thyra Rasmussen had so recently expired.

“Damn!” I murmured, forcing myself to look at the items on my desk. Thyra was old; she was mean; she was probably the most self-centered woman I’d ever met. She hadn’t mellowed over the years, but I’ve never believed that people do. They soften a bit around the edges, maybe. But basically, they become more of what they always were. If Thyra had really died of apoplexy because she couldn’t get her own way, that seemed an appropriate way for her to exit this world. Vida had been unkind and callous, but she and her mother had suffered at Thyra’s grasping hands. Still, I hated to think that Vida might believe she’d finally gotten her revenge on the old bag.

But I’d been right the first time: There was definitely work to be done. My conscience prodded me to call Spencer Fleetwood and tell him about the death in our newsroom. The irony of being scooped on my own premises rankled. I’d wait to see if he could ferret out the story by himself, like any good journalist.

It was impossible to erase the image of Thyra Rasmussen’s corpse, but I had to finish the tasks at hand. At the top of the agenda was tending to the phone calls that Ginny had taken before I arrived. The first was from Mayor Baugh. Grimacing, I called him back at his office in the courthouse.

“We dodged a bullet,” Fuzzy announced, using a phrase that seemed typically inappropriate, considering the recent shooting death. “The flood danger seems to have abated.”

“For now,” I hedged. “What can I do for you?”

There was a slight pause. “I was right there most of the time.”

“Where?”

“At the river.” Fuzzy cleared his throat. “Indeed, that handsome young man who works for you was kind enough to take some pictures of me helping with the sandbags.”

Gasbag meets Sandbag,
I thought. It would make a great cutline. Except we couldn’t use it. Obviously, the mayor wanted to take credit for sparing the town from a watery grave.

“I haven’t seen any of the photos yet,” I said in a noncommittal voice. “We should have a full front page, between Hans Berenger’s death and the flood danger.” I didn’t mention Thyra. The last thing I wanted was to have Fuzzy poking around the office and asking a trillion questions.

“Well,” the mayor drawled, “just make sure when you choose your pictures that you give credit where credit is due.”

“I always try,” I replied, again sounding noncommittal.

“I know you do, Miss Emma. By the way, did I see a very fine Town Car pull up by the newspaper? The window in the second-floor men’s room looks out on your headquarters, don’t you know?”

“I didn’t know that,” I said. “I’ve never been in the men’s room at the courthouse.”

Fuzzy chuckled, all warm marmalade trickling over a baked yam. “Now who could be riding around Alpine in such a fancy automobile?” he inquired.

“You know that Town Car as well as I do,” I retorted. To distract him, I went on the attack: “Say, Fuzzy, do you really think Hans Berenger’s death was murder?”

“What?” The mayor was taken aback, as I’d intended. “Now, Emma, you know that in my position I can’t take controversial stands. It wouldn’t be right for me to say what I think.”

“Oh,” I said, feigning disappointment. “I thought you’d want to make a statement. You know—as the community’s civic leader.”

The appeal to Fuzzy’s vanity worked. Sort of. “Why, yes indeed,” he replied. “A statement. Though not controversial. Let me think.”

I considered starting a Dickens novel and waiting for Fuzzy to interrupt Chapter Three before he issued his official words on the Berenger death. But he surprised me.

“It is with great regret,” he began slowly, “that as mayor of this fine community, I mourn the loss of an outstanding educator in the untimely demise of Hans Berenger. He leaves behind him a . . .” Fuzzy paused. “What’s the word? Like inheritance.”

I was briefly stumped. “You mean
legacy
?” I finally offered.

“Yes, yes, a legacy of helping young people go out into the world better equipped to meet the challenges of the twentieth century. How’s that?”

“Fine, Fuzzy, but it’s the twenty-first century.”

“Oh. So it is. My, how time flies!”

As a statement, it would have to do. “Did you know Hans very well?” I asked after entering Fuzzy’s quote on my computer.

“Well now, I can’t rightly say we were
close
. Hans wasn’t one to seek out new friends. Though,” the mayor added hastily, “I would have been happy to call him a friend. Educators are special people. The future of this fine city and this great nation rests on the shoulders of the Young. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You may use that as well, Emma.”

I already had, possibly a half-dozen times when I’d been stuck covering the mayor’s speeches at civic occasions. “Thanks, Fuzzy. I appreciate your . . . input.”

“Life’s a funny old thing,” Fuzzy said in a musing tone. “When one door closes, another one opens.”

“What?”

The mayor chuckled. “It seems strange. You see, Hans had put in a bid on some property down the highway a piece.” He stopped speaking, then lowered his soft southern voice to a point where I could barely hear him. “This is off the record now, you understand, Emma darlin’?”

I assured him I did, though I knew I was in for one of the mayor’s long-winded spiels.

“Hans was looking to buy some land and so were we. Now don’t get me wrong—my bride and I don’t plan on moving from Alpine. But Irene gets a notion now and then to do something besides being Mrs. Mayor. She’s the boss, as I always tell folks. ‘The mayor’s mayor’—that’s what I call my Irene.”

My ear was getting sore and I had other things to do. “So what does she have in mind?” I prodded.

“Puppies,” Fuzzy responded. “You know how she’s always loved our doggies, Mutt and Jeff. Well, they’re up in years now—and so are we.” The mayor chuckled some more. “Anyway, the Kruegers down the road are selling out and moving to Arizona. They’ve had their property on the market since right after Thanksgiving, but there wasn’t any action until lately. I can’t think why they’d want to sell out, but they say Arizona will be better for their arthritis.”

I vaguely recalled the Kruegers’ name. There was a sign on the highway at their gate that read:
KRUEGERS’ KENNELS,
with a drawing of a Labrador retriever. At least that’s what I’d guessed as the animal’s breed, not being a dog lover.

“I never knew if they were breeders or boarders,” I remarked. “I think Carla did a story on them several years ago, but I don’t remember much about it.” Except, of course, for the clumsy writing that had implied that Mrs. Krueger was a bitch. Carla had somehow gotten the female owner and the female dog confused in her sentence structure.

“For many years, the Kruegers bred dogs as well as boarded them,” Fuzzy explained, “but when they hit their eighties about four years ago, they concentrated on the breeding. German shepherds, to be exact, with some of their pooches included in the sale. Anyway, that’s right up Irene’s street, since that’s what Mutt and Jeff are. We were all set to buy the place when poor old Hans upped his offer. Now I guess the coast is—sadly—clear.”

Irene’s desire to branch out was understandable. If nothing else, it would get her away from Fuzzy on a regular basis. “I’d heard it was a farm,” I said.

“It was, way back,” Fuzzy informed me. “Marty Krueger’s dad raised dairy cows. But when Marty and Jan took over the place, Jan wanted to turn it into a doggy spot. She’s like Irene, crazy about the pooches.”

“Let me know when you actually buy the property,” I said. “Vida would probably like to do a story for her page.”

“I most certainly will,” Fuzzy promised. “You good folks will be the first to hear.”

“Thanks,” I said, looking up as Milo Dodge arrived to rescue me. “The sheriff’s here, Fuzzy. I’d better talk to him.”

After hanging up, I rubbed at my tired ear and tried to smile at Milo.

“Fuzzy,” I said.

The sheriff needed no further explanation.

“What’s up?” he asked, sitting down across from me. “A call came through from here for the medics, but it was canceled. Did somebody fall into a snowbank?”

I brushed my long bangs out of my eyes. “Thyra Rasmussen dropped dead in the newsroom.”

Milo looked flabbergasted. “No shit!”

I nodded for emphasis. “She was beyond help. Henry Bardeen took her away in the ski lodge’s Town Car.”

The sheriff had turned around in his visitor’s chair, staring out into the newsroom as if he could see Thyra falling to the floor. “Jesus! What happened?”

Keeping my voice down so that Vida’s antenna-like ears couldn’t hear, I related the sad story. “Thyra must have been close to a hundred,” I concluded. “Between the quarrel this morning and the disaster at her theater Friday night, I suspect she was at the end of her tether.”

Milo had turned back to face me. “Not to mention all the family troubles she’s had in recent years. I would’ve thought she’d consider the college campus bad luck after her son got murdered in the RUB. I kind of wondered why she decided to build a theater on the campus.”