The Alpine Vengeance: An Emma Lord Mystery (37 page)

“She might have,” I said. “If Larry had taken his father’s place, then in some weird way, maybe Denise thought she’d follow in her father’s footsteps. But if Linda was the heir apparent, there was Denise looking at Alison Lindahl as a future rival. As I mentioned, Denise had already talked about quitting the bank. Maybe she was hedging her bets.” A sudden thought occurred to me. “Oh, my God! I wonder if Denise was pregnant.” The possibility appalled me.

Vida looked stunned. “You mean about her being sick before she left work Thursday?”

“Yes. Doc’s autopsy will …” I stared at Vida. “No. There was a different reason. Denise got sick because she read the paper Thursday.”

Vida stared right back. “What are you talking about?”

“Denise didn’t know Craig was still alive until she read about it at the end of the workday. She mentioned she hardly ever looked at the paper. I told her she should start ASAP to stay informed about the town’s happenings in order to deal with subscribers. When Kip came to work Friday, he had to clean the front office because Denise left in a rush after throwing up. A copy of this week’s
Advocate
was under her chair. She hadn’t known until then that the man she’d shot had survived. The revelation literally made her sick. Craig was still a threat.”

Vida nodded. “A terrible shock to her, I’m sure. Denise lived in a world of her own. And a very twisted world it was. Even if she’d heard any of us talk about Craig Laurentis or an artist, she wouldn’t realize who he was and make the connection. In fact, she was so wrapped up in herself that she was the type who
probably didn’t bother to listen in on other people’s conversations. I find that very hard to understand.”

“Takes all kinds,” Buck remarked, looking not at Vida but at the ceiling.

“Indeed,” Vida said, before changing the subject. “I had a chance to speak with Olga Bergstrom at the hospital. Debra Barton had called JoAnne right after my program was over. Naturally, JoAnne was alarmed by what Larry had told Cole on that last prison visit. When I heard JoAnne had decided to come to Alpine sooner than expected, I considered something like that. Of course Olga feels terribly guilty for having those sleeping pills on hand, especially when she began to realize that JoAnne’s emotional state was precarious.”

“Did JoAnne tell her any specifics?”

Vida shook her head. “But Olga’s smart. She’d always sensed there was something wrong about Larry’s conviction, but couldn’t figure out what it might be. She’d even speculated that somehow JoAnne had been involved in Linda’s murder.”

“But not Denise?”

“No. Like everyone else, she dismissed Denise as too brainless to do such a thing.” Vida sighed. “No one should ever assume anything about other people.”

“Brains are one thing,” Buck remarked. “Scheming, cunning, conniving—they come from some dark place in the mind. I’ve seen plenty of that in the military with the enemy. And,” he added more quietly, “sometimes with our own.”

“Oh, yes,” Vida agreed. “Even in Alpine we’ve had some very odd ducks.” She stood up, studying me for a long moment. “Will you be all right if we leave you? Buck has to drive back to Startup.”

I assured her I’d be fine. Vida dithered a bit, but Buck finally managed to haul her away. I saw them to the door, trying to act
as normal as possible despite the pain I felt after the battle with Denise.

Denise
. I still couldn’t fathom the depths and intricacies of that poor creature’s warped mind. Evil isn’t an easy concept to understand, but it exists. I sat back down on the sofa. It was going on eleven. Now that I was alone, the events of the past twenty-four hours came crashing down on me like a sudden spring avalanche. It was too late to call Ben. I couldn’t contact Adam except by e-mail, because of the often faulty phone connection between Alpine and St. Mary’s Igloo. And Milo was in his own private hell at Harborview Hospital.

Mitch? He was still dealing with the Petersen saga, having returned to the hospital to await Doc Dewey’s postmortem results. Leo? I’d have to unload the whole story on him, and I didn’t have the strength to do that. Kip? He’d never called back. Maybe he and his wife, Chili, had gone out for the evening. My production manager had earned a night off, especially on a Saturday.

Then there was Spencer Fleetwood. I no longer cared how or if he broke the story. Spence wasn’t a bad person. He was a professional who just happened to be in the same business. On top of that, he was about as screwed up in his own way as I was. He’d shown me kindness even as he’d milked every bit of information he could get out of me. “Payback,” he’d called his offer of help. I believed him at the time. I still did. After his own tragedy, I’d made that story the centerpiece of the
Advocate’s
front page for two weeks. Now we were even.

It was nearing midnight when I decided I had to get off the sofa and go to bed. I staggered around, putting the mugs Vida had used for tea in the dishwasher and turning off the kitchen light. I went back into the living room to make sure the fire Buck had started was almost out. Looking between the drapes to
check on the weather, I realized that the rain seemed to have stopped, but the wind was up, making the trees and shrubs dance in the moonless night.

I was about to close the drapes when I saw headlights turning in to my driveway. Mitch, probably, stopping by to tell me what he’d put on our website. Going to the front door, I cursed myself for not checking my computer earlier. I’d flunked my vocation as badly as Ruth Sharp had flunked hers.

I opened the door before the bell rang. Milo swept me up in his arms as he crossed the threshold.

“Emma.” He carried me inside, kicked the door closed behind him, and stood still, holding me tight and not saying anything at all. I was the one to break the silence.

“Tanya?” I asked hoarsely.

“She’ll be okay.”

“And you?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. I already knew.

M
ARY
R
ICHARDSON
D
AHEIM
started spinning stories before she could spell. Daheim has been a journalist, an editor, a public relations consultant, and a freelance writer, but fiction was always her medium of choice. In 1982 she launched a career that is now distinguished by more than fifty novels. In 2000, she won the Literary Achievement Award from the Pacific Northwest Writers Association. In October 2008 she was inducted into the University of Washington’s Communications Hall of Fame. Daheim lives in her hometown of Seattle and is a direct descendant of former residents of the real Alpine when it existed in the early part of the twentieth century.