The Alpine Quilt (5 page)

Milo was angry. “Goddamn it, why does Buddy want to make trouble? He knows we have to ship his old lady to Everett. Doc doesn’t have the time or the equipment for a full autopsy.”

Ben offered Milo a sympathetic look. “But you have to comply, don’t you?”

“Hell, yes.” Milo’s voice was still raised along with his temper. “It’s up to the immediate family,” he continued, lowering the volume a bit. “That’s the problem. At least twice a year a survivor wants an autopsy even if the deceased has a chronic history of high blood pressure, heart trouble, or has drunk enough booze to boil six livers. It costs the county money, and it’s a pain in the ass. We’re always at the bottom of the list when we have to ask Snohomish County for help.”

“Gen wasn’t that old,” I pointed out. “I realize that you can get a clean bill of health one day and be dead the next, but I can’t blame Buddy for wanting to know what happened.”

Milo glared at me, and I think he said “candy ass” under his breath. Judging from my brother’s slight smirk, I knew it was something derogatory.

Scott, Del, and Vic all arrived at the same time. For starters, I told my reporter-photographer to take a couple of outside shots first. It was dark, it was raining, but if he used color, the darkened church and the amber lights in the rectory might create a little visual drama.

I stood on the rectory steps while Scott worked, peering out from under the hood of his black peacoat. He was concentrating so hard that he didn’t turn around when a beat-up SUV pulled into the parking lot. I recognized the vehicle as belonging to Dwight Gould. An ardent hunter and fisherman, the longtime deputy had a reputation for driving on any kind of surface short of straight up.

“Why me?” he called as he stepped down from the driver’s seat. “Why do I have to leave my easy chair and a good Monday night football game to take a picture? You already got a photographer here.”

“Ask Dodge,” I called back. Dwight also had a reputation for griping.

Scott finished his exterior work. “Is this a story or just an obit?” he asked as we went inside.

“It’s a front-page story,” I replied. “ ‘Native Alpiner Comes Home to Die’—or something like that.”

“Poor Buddy,” Scott murmured as I beckoned him into the empty parlor. “This has been a bad week for him.”

“I know,” I agreed. “Now I feel guilty about taking our business away from him.”

“You had to,” Scott reasoned.

He looked around the room. Ben had added a couple of Hopi kachina dolls and a framed Navajo petroglyph from one of the canyons near Tuba City. Coupled with Dennis Kelly’s Swahili masks and headdresses, the parlor was a far cry from Father Fitz’s romanticized paintings of the Madonna and the saints. After seven years, Father Den had left his mark on Alpine in more ways than one. As the first African-American clergyman in town, he’d been every bit as much of a pioneer as the early miners, loggers, and railway workers. Over the next few months, I hoped Ben would put his own stamp on Alpine.

“Is this room worth shooting?” Scott asked.

“No,” I replied, studying the petroglyph, which depicted two figures playing long, slim horns. “I just want us to keep out of the way until they remove Gen’s body.”

Ben poked his head into the parlor. “Where’d you go, Sluggly? Oh, hi, Scott.” My brother grinned at the younger man. “I thought Emma was raiding the poor box.”

Scott, who had met Ben only once before, didn’t seem to know what to make of a priest who wasn’t in a movie or on a TV show.

“Hi . . . Father,” Scott said in a deferential tone. “I’m sorry for what happened here. It must be awful for you.”

Ben shrugged. “It’s life. Death, that is. I’m more concerned about Annie Jeanne Dupré. She was a real wreck when they hauled her out of here. I’m going to the hospital later to see her.”

Rolling the gurney that carried Gen’s covered body, Del and Vic went past the parlor door. I made the sign of the cross and said a short, silent prayer.

“See ya,” Del called.

His jaunty farewell unsettled me. It seemed I ran into Del Amundson only at disaster scenes. He was a remarkably cheerful man, somehow wearing death and suffering as comfortably as his EMT uniform.

Milo and Dwight came along a few seconds later. The sheriff was still exasperated. “We’re going to have to treat the dining room and kitchen like a crime scene until we get the autopsy report. That could take a couple of days.” He grimaced at Ben. “Sorry. Maybe you can move in with Emma. Gotta run. I’ve got freaking paperwork to do tonight.”

Ben rubbed at his forehead. “Damn.”

“Hey, Stench,” I said, calling Ben by my girlhood nickname for him, “it’s no problem if you bunk with me. I’ve already started cleaning out Adam’s room.”

Scott looked aghast.
“Stench?”
he said under his breath.

I didn’t enlighten my reporter. Maybe he’d think it was some kind of Catholic term, like
eminence.

Ben grinned at me. “I’m not going to start a rumor that I’m sleeping with my sister. That’s about all the church needs right now, a good case of incest. I’ll eat with you, but dinner only. I’ll go out for brunch. You know I always have a late breakfast after morning Mass.”

“Deal,” I said, grabbing Ben’s hand.

Scott and I went out to the dining room so he could take some photos of the death site. “We’ll do the kitchen next. We should hurry before Dwight comes back with the crime scene tape.”

Scott eyed me with curiosity. “This really isn’t a crime scene, is it?”

“It is until Milo says it isn’t,” I replied with a sigh. “You’re right, though—the sheriff doesn’t think Gen was murdered. This is all a formality to satisfy Buddy.”

Scott looked relieved. “Got it.” He started clicking off photos.

“Besides,” I added, “if there was even the hint of foul play, Spencer Fleetwood would already have showed up with a remote setup so he could put the news on KSKY.”

“Right.” Scott kept moving, taking shots from every angle, including the overturned chair and the remnants of the meal. “Fleetwood never misses a beat.”

“Don’t use that word,” I said drolly. “It equates with
scoop.
”

Scott laughed. “It does, doesn’t it?” He moved on to the kitchen.

I didn’t want to follow him. The kitchen smelled bad. I went back down the hall to find Ben.

Dwight was coming into the rectory with his roll of black and yellow tape.

Spencer Fleetwood was right behind him.

FIVE

“Emma,” Spence said in his most unctuous voice. “I see you’re already on the scene. The brother connection, right?”

I merely looked at him.

“So is this murder or what?” Spence asked, setting his equipment case down in the hallway.

“It’s ‘or what,’ ” I said. “Buddy Bayard’s got his bloomers in a bunch because he thinks his mother was immortal. Milo’s ticked off. The autopsy’s an exercise in futility.”

Spence raised one eyebrow. “There
will
be an autopsy?” He’d opened the case and taken out a tape recorder. “May I quote you?”

“You may not. Quote Milo. Or grab Dwight when he comes out.”

“Okay,” Spence said, dropping his radio personality facade. “What really happened?”

I shrugged. “Gen Bayard came to dine with her old buddy Annie Jeanne Dupré. Gen keeled over right after dinner. Ben made emergency calls. Buddy overreacted. End of story as far I’m concerned.”

Spence gazed down the hall with those keen brown eyes and the hawklike nose that always made him look like a bird of prey. “I’ve seen Annie Jeanne around town. She doesn’t look much like Lucrezia Borgia to me.”

“Exactly.”

Spence and I both stepped aside for a grumpy-looking Dwight. “Just when I was planning to go home and catch the rest of the football game . . .” he muttered as he passed us.

“Now what?” I said aloud.

Spence chuckled. “Probably the break-in at the Shaws. I picked it up on the scanner. That’s why I was late getting here.”

I stared at Spence. “Another break-in? Weren’t the Shaws at home?”

“A couple of alert joggers chased the burglar away.” Spence regarded me with a patronizing expression. “The Shaws were supposed to be dining at the ski lodge with your brother. Apparently, he forgot to call the restaurant and tell them he couldn’t make it. They got notified about the robbery attempt and came straight home.”

One of Ben’s faults is that he’s sometimes absentminded, though I’ve never believed his tale that he once forgot his vestments and celebrated Mass in a T-shirt and boxer shorts. In this instance, however, he could be excused.

“Ben will feel terrible when I tell him,” I said to Spence. “In fact, here he comes now.”

After I’d relayed the message, Ben started directly for the phone. I cautioned him to wait; the Shaws probably still had deputies with them.

“Was anything stolen at the Shaws?” he asked after evincing dismay.

Spence shook his head. “Not that they know of. They were trying to break a window when the joggers spotted them and called us on their cell phone. The perps took off the back way.”

Bernie and Patsy Shaw lived in a house on the east side of town, overlooking the river, and not far from Casa de Bronska, as I called the Italianate villa owned by Ed and Shirley. Maybe the next break-in would be at Ed’s, and they’d steal his latest manuscript.

Spence got a quote from Ben, packed up his equipment, and left. But not before he needled me about how he’d gotten the stories of Gen’s demise and the latest break-in before the
Advocate
’s pub date.

The next hour seemed anticlimactic. I waited for Ben to get hold of the Shaws around nine-thirty. They’d tried to call my brother from the ski lodge, but the line was busy. Bernie said he figured that some emergency must have come up at the rectory, but was shocked to hear of Gen’s death, adding that he hadn’t heard of her in years and had wondered if she’d already died.

“She wasn’t insured with me,” Bernie added, as if her life and death didn’t matter unless he had to pay out on a policy.

“Go easy on him,” Ben cautioned as we walked through the rain to the hospital. “Bernie’s a good guy. He and Patsy are already upset, what with almost getting robbed.”

“I’m in a grumpy mood,” I admitted. “I hate having Spence gloat when he scoops me.”

“There’s nothing you can do about that,” Ben said in consolation. “He always will. That’s the trouble with owning a weekly as opposed to a radio station.”

“I know.” But it still grated.

Doc Dewey, looking tired, met us outside of the intensive care unit. “Just a precaution,” he assured us. “Annie Jeanne’s sleeping. I want to keep her under observation. She was quite ill when we brought her here.”

“In what way?” I inquired.

Doc made a face. “Sick to her stomach, disoriented, complaining of a terrible headache, blood pressure dangerously low, and she’d started to turn blue.”

Ben had brought his kit, which contained the oil for the Sacrament of the Sick. “Any way I can nip in and anoint her?”

Doc, who is an Episcopalian, considered briefly. “Why not?” He opened the ICU door for Ben.

“I don’t get it,” I said to Doc. “Are those symptoms of hysteria?”

“They can be,” Doc said with a frown. “At least the headache, the stomach upset, and even the disorientation. But . . .” He stopped, glancing through the glass that separated the ICU from the corridor.

“But what?”

Doc hesitated again, before meeting my gaze. “I administered ipecac to cause emesis, and activated charcoal to prevent absorption, just in case.”

I was puzzled. “Just in case . . . what?”

Doc looked distressed. “Just in case she’d ingested poison.”

I didn’t exactly reel, but I was certainly startled. “Accidentally, you mean?”

Doc, who was looking more and more like his revered father, nodded. “Of course.” But he didn’t meet my gaze.

On the way back from the hospital, I told Ben what Doc had said. My brother stopped short of scoffing.

“I suppose,” he allowed, “that in her excitement and general ditzlike state, Annie Jeanne may have used the wrong kind of ingredient.”

“That’d be terrible,” I asserted. “It’d mean she poisoned her best friend. Assuming Annie Jeanne recovers, she’ll never forgive herself.”

Ben looked grim as we stopped by my Honda in the church parking lot. “That’s the trouble with the Sacrament of Penance. God can forgive people, but often they can’t forgive themselves.”

“At least the autopsy on Gen will show cause of death,” I noted. “Maybe Milo shouldn’t be so hard on Buddy after all.”

Ben glanced through the rain toward the hospital. “Maybe if Buddy hadn’t asked for an autopsy, Doc would have, based on Annie Jeanne’s symptoms.”

The rain was coming down harder and the wind had picked up. My brother and I were getting wet. But that wasn’t the reason for the shiver I felt along my spine.

Homicide—accidental or otherwise—was nagging at the back of my mind.

Precisely at ten o’clock, my phone rang. I figured it might be Ben, calling to see if I got home safely. Just as I left him, sharp gusts of wind had blown down from the mountains, snapping a few tree limbs along my route. Ben wasn’t a worrywart, but he also wasn’t used to the vagaries of weather in the Cascades.

The caller wasn’t Ben. “Emma, I’m so happy to be home!” Vida exclaimed. “Tacoma! So big, so busy! How do people cope? And all those stoplights on the main streets! Really, I almost went mad!”

“I’m truly glad you’re back,” I declared. “How’s Beth?”

“Limping, but able to get around,” Vida replied. “Randy is taking tomorrow and Wednesday off since she can’t drive yet. He has to prepare for a trial, so he can do that at home.”

Beth’s husband was a member of a law firm with offices in Tacoma and in Olympia, the state capital. His specialty was insurance fraud.

“I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news,” I said to Vida. “Genevieve Bayard died this evening.”

“No!” Vida sounded shocked. “What a shame! To think she’d just gotten here. Very sad for Buddy and Roseanna and the grandchildren. How’s your dear brother, Ben?”

“Not as good as he could be, since Gen died at the rectory,” I replied. “She was having dinner with Annie Jeanne Dupré.”

“Really.” Vida paused. “Quite upsetting for Annie Jeanne. I suppose she went to pieces. Such an emotional creature, I’ve always thought, and not really a very good musician.”

Although Vida was a Presbyterian, she’d attended enough funerals at St. Mildred’s—and every other church in Skykomish County—that she’d been subjected to Annie Jeanne’s thumping.

“Annie Jeanne’s in the hospital,” I said, somehow put off by Vida’s reaction to the latest grim news.

“Dear me,” she remarked. “A nervous collapse, I suppose.”

“Maybe.” I hesitated before dropping my bombshell. “Doc Dewey thinks she may have been poisoned. I assume he’s thinking that Gen was, too.”

“Gracious!” Vida’s cry almost ruptured my eardrum. “Poisoned! Isn’t that far-fetched?”

“Please don’t tell anyone until after the autopsy on Gen,” I urged. “It wouldn’t be fair to Gen—or to Annie Jeanne.”

“Autopsy!” I could almost hear Vida smacking her lips. “Really, now!” She paused again. “If that’s the case, it must have been an accident. My, my. I wonder if the funeral service will be held here?”

“I’ve no idea,” I replied. “That’s up to Buddy. I imagine most of Gen’s current friends are in Spokane. Where’s her husband buried?”

“Ex-husband, you mean,” Vida huffed. “I have no idea.”

“Did you know him?”

“Vaguely.” Vida’s voice had cooled. “I must go. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Vida’s return caused a predictable stir. She preened a bit, obviously pleased by the reception. Leo even refrained from calling her Duchess, despite the red satin toque that lent her a regal aura.

But it was Scott who captured the limelight later that morning. He didn’t get back from his usual beat until almost ten-thirty.

“Not one,” he announced to Vida and me, “but two break-ins yesterday. The Shaws
and
the Pikes.”

“The Pikes?” I said with a curious expression. “They’re not home.”

Scott nodded. “Right. Their neighbors, Roy and Bebe Everson, noticed a broken window by the Pikes’ front door this morning when Roy left for work. Bebe called the sheriff, and Sam Heppner went out to take a look. Sure enough, the place had been ransacked.”

I stared harder at Scott. “Ransacked? What do you mean?”

Scott hung his peacoat on the oak hat rack Ginny had recently purchased at a garage sale. “Just what I said, according to Sam. The place was really torn up. The funny thing was that nothing of value seemed to have been taken.”

Vida was standing by her desk, tucking in the red-and-white-striped blouse that had inched its way out of her gray skirt. “I thought the Pikes weren’t leaving until today.”

I told her they’d changed their minds and had spent the night at the airport. Turning back to Scott, I asked if the Pikes had been informed.

“Dodge managed to have them paged at the airport,” he replied. “They don’t take off until around noon. Mrs. Pike said they wouldn’t cancel the trip if nothing seemed to be missing. Roy Everson’s going to fix the window for them and try to straighten things up before they get back.”

Puzzled, I shook my head. “This doesn’t sound like the usual MO.”

Scott agreed. “The others have been quickies. The burglar gets inside, grabs whatever looks like it could be fenced, and takes off.”

“I don’t suppose,” Vida put in, “that the Eversons saw anything. Roy may be the postal supervisor, but he lives in his own little world. And Bebe is even worse. I wonder sometimes if she doesn’t have early Alzheimer’s.”

That seemed a trifle harsh. Bebe was the vivacious type with a short attention span.

“The fact is,” Scott said, sitting down in his swivel chair, “Sam isn’t sure when the break-in happened. Roy was at work all day, and Bebe went into Monroe for the afternoon. Neither of them got home until after six. It gets dark a lot earlier than that this time of year, especially when it’s raining.”

Vida also sat down. “Maud Dodd lives on the other side of the Pikes. She hardly ever comes out of the house anymore. Arthritis, you know. As for Ethel and Pike, I can’t imagine what they’d have that was worth stealing. The last time I was in their house they still had a black-and-white TV.”

“Then they still have it,” Scott said, grinning.

Vida rested her chin on her hands and tapped her cheeks with her fingers. “Yes.” She was looking thoughtful, even a bit worried.

Maybe she was thinking about Beth. Whatever the cause of her mood shift, I couldn’t let it gnaw at me. This was Tuesday, and we had a paper to put out.

Scott went off to take pictures of both the Shaw and the Pike houses. He’d already photographed the previous break-in sites. We could run the most recent shots on page two, with a jump from page one. For now, the burglaries were our lead story.

“ ‘Scene,’ ” Vida said, just as I was heading into my office after checking the wire service. “I have two items from Ginny and one from Leo. I need four more.”

“How about you?” I asked.

“You mean my trip to Tacoma to take care of Beth?” Vida frowned. “Isn’t that self-serving?”

“We ran an item about Leo a few years back when he slid downhill on the ice and sprained his ankle,” I countered. “In September, you all but announced Scott and Tammy’s engagement before they did.”

“I merely hinted,” Vida said with a sniff. “How did I put it? ‘Which beautiful educator and which handsome journalist are hearing the tinkle of wedding bells in the distance?’ Or something like that.”

“I don’t think you wrote
tinkle,
” I said dryly. “At least, I hope not.”

“You’re not helping me,” Vida admonished.

I thought back over the weekend. I’d love to announce that my son was coming home, but that would definitely be self-serving, as if I had to see it in print to believe it. Anyway, it was a two-inch item for Vida’s page when he got here. Or maybe twelve inches. Adam and his Alaskan adventures were worth a feature, publisher’s son or not.

“We’re in a bind,” I admitted. “It’d be inappropriate to use the Pikes’ early departure, because it’d sound as if they were to blame for the break-in. We should avoid the Burl Creek Thimble Party’s event for Gen, since she died a day later. How about mentioning the old-time photos at the Upper Crust?”

“We did that in the story about the renovation,” Vida reminded me.

“Oh. Right.” I ruminated some more. “The wind blew down some branches on Third Street last night, and probably elsewhere in town.”