The Alpine Vengeance: An Emma Lord Mystery (7 page)

“How wonderful to see you,” Vida enthused. “I’m glad I found out. I’ll put it in this week’s paper. We must have a chat. But business before pleasure, Astrid. I don’t think you’ve met Emma Lord, the
Advocate
’s editor and publisher.”

“I haven’t,” Astrid said, shaking my hand. “I’ll bet you two are here about that poor soul who got shot. Is he homeless?”

“No,” I said, making sure Astrid knew I could talk. “He lives out of town. Is he going to be okay?”

“I don’t know,” Astrid replied, a frown creasing her high forehead. “The wound didn’t strike anything vital, but apparently he lost a great deal of blood. I understand he was found in the woods by—” She stopped as Milo and Spence came into the hallway.

“… not a damned freak show,” Milo was saying angrily to Spence. “There you are,” he went on, approaching the three of us. “Any news?” The query was for Astrid.

“Not yet,” she replied. “Dr. Sung is with him. I believe his main concern is blood loss before he removes the bullet.”

“Right,” Milo said, taking off his tall regulation hat. “I think Laurentis had been lying where the park rangers found him since last night. He was lucky anybody got to him before it was too late. Damned poachers. Hacking down trees is bad enough, but shooting people is worse. Make sure Sung gives me that bullet.”

Astrid nodded. Spence, who had pinned a microphone on what looked like a top-of-the-line ski parka, moved closer to Milo. “Are you saying, Sheriff, that Mr. Laurentis was shot by someone who was poaching trees on forest service land?”

The sheriff scowled at Mr. Radio. “What did you think I said? They weren’t kidnapping mountain goats on Mount Sawyer.”

Spence retained his usual broadcasting aplomb, mellow voice and all. “This is for our KSKY listeners in the greater Highway 2 corridor.”

“I don’t care if it’s for the Congress in Washington, D.C.,”
Milo retorted. “And it better not be live. I’ve got an attempted-murder case on my hands, Fleetwood. Hold your damned water and shut off that mike.”

I’d managed to edge closer to the sheriff. “Will Craig make it?”

Milo turned his scowl on me. “How the hell do I know? Do I look like Dr. Kildare? Go back to the waiting room—all of you. I’ll let you know when I find out.”

At least the sheriff wasn’t playing favorites. Vida, however, balked. “I need just a few minutes to talk to Astrid. She’s a news item, too.”

Milo regarded the two women warily. “Then do it at the nurses’ station,” he said, nodding toward the area by the ER entrance. “But don’t get the nurse distracted if she’s needed.”

“I won’t,” Vida promised in a firm voice. “Come, Astrid, I must get caught up with you for my page.”

Spence opened the door for me. “What do you know that I don’t about the tree poachers?” he asked.

“Not much more than you do,” I replied, noticing a teenaged boy in a wheelchair with a woman I assumed was his mother. “You’ve reported the earlier thefts. Wes Amundson phoned to tell me about two more just before he was apparently called away by whoever found Craig.”

We sat down by the waiting room’s aquarium, out of Bree’s line of sight. “I was coming from Monroe when I got word about the shooting,” Spence said, keeping his voice down. “I’ve got some co-op Christmas ads from the local merchants there. That should cheer you up.”

“It does,” I said, pleased that Spence was keeping his word about sharing some of the ad revenue in east Snohomish County after KSKY’s signal had been upgraded to reach beyond the county line. “And no,” I went on, “we haven’t had a chance to
post anything about the shooting or the poachers on our website yet.”

Spence flashed one of his almost-sincere smiles. “You can’t complain much anymore about getting scooped by me. I think we’ve managed to put the rivalry to bed, don’t you?”

The mischief in his brown eyes unsettled me. “Maybe.” I craned my neck to make sure Bree couldn’t see or hear us. “Speaking of bed, are you sleeping with the cranky Kendall?”

Spence chuckled. “Because she let me know about a possible news item? Has it occurred to you that she did it because she doesn’t like you as well as she likes me?”

“That’s what I meant,” I said. “I thought she was dating the dashing
young
CPA, Freddy Bellman,” I said, reminding Spence that he’s in my peer group and old enough to be Bree’s father.

“You’re not making sense.”

“About what?”

We both noticed that mother and son were staring at us. Apparently I’d raised my voice. “I meant,” I said quietly and slowly, “that she has the hots for you and maybe the feeling is returned. A simple yes or no will do.”

“Yes. No.” He paused. “How’s that?”

I turned away. “Forget it.”

Astrid Overholt appeared in the ER doorway. “Logan Brooks?”

“Here, Nurse,” the woman said, wheeling the boy across the waiting room. “I think Logan broke his ankle playing basketball.”

Astrid smiled. “Let’s have a look,” she said. “Room Two is vacant.”

The boy, who appeared to be about fourteen, didn’t seem to be in pain. Maybe he was a stoic. Maybe his mother was overly
protective. An old pang of guilt resurfaced. When Adam was eight, he’d fallen off some apparatus at the neighborhood playground. Two of his buddies had helped him limp home. It was a Sunday afternoon, and I had a deadline on the first of three articles for
The Oregonian
about the start of construction on Portland’s light rail system. It was a complicated assignment, requiring most of my weekend to write the kick-off story for Monday’s edition. I looked at Adam’s foot, told him it was only a bruise, and went back to work. By Tuesday, he couldn’t walk. I finally took him to the ER that evening, where he was diagnosed with a broken bone. Needless to say, I felt like the worst mother in Rip City.

“Where’s your sidekick?” Spence asked.

The question yanked me out of my reverie. “What? Oh—maybe she and Astrid haven’t finished their chat.”

Spence looked skeptical. “Nurse Astrid has a patient. I’d go see what Vida’s up to, but if I make her mad, she might threaten to quit her weekly radio show.”

“You’re in a pickle,” I remarked. “A lot of your bread and butter is stored in
Vida’s Cupboard
.”

Spence nodded. “I’m glad we let her switch from Wednesdays to Thursdays. Too many midweek activities around this town, including some of her church events. That program she did with Roger and his parents after the trailer park debacle practically blew our ratings right over Tonga Ridge. He didn’t say much, but he actually sounded contrite. I wonder how much of it was real and how much was from the drama classes he took during his off-and-on college career.”

“Mostly off,” I murmured. “I hope it was a wake-up call for him, but my evil self tells me he may’ve only been sorry for getting caught.”

Spence leaned back in the chair, long legs extended out onto
the durable burgundy carpet. “It’s quiet around here,” he said after a pause.

“It’s Monday,” I pointed out. “A Monday after a holiday, at that. Besides, most people with sudden problems call Doc Dewey or Dr. Sung. Both are very good about seeing patients on an emergency basis—unless the patient arrives by ambulance. Then one of them rushes from the clinic across the street.”

“We could use another doctor around here,” Spence said. “You wrote an editorial on the subject a few weeks ago. Any response?”

I shot him an ironic glance. “Are you kidding? I’m lucky if anyone reads my editorials, let alone takes action, except for the perennial grouches. They jump me for wishing readers a happy Thanksgiving.”

“How was yours?”

I shrugged. “Quiet. What about you?”

Spence looked away, apparently intrigued by the activity in the aquarium. “I took the holiday off and drove to Seattle. I’d done a couple of interviews that played while I was gone and had two college kids do the rest. There’s plenty of canned programming I can use for Thanksgiving, even some of the old radio shows.”

I looked at my watch. “It’s almost two. I’ve got work to do. Maybe I’ll let Vida stay here. If the surgery’s complicated, it’ll take a while.”

Spence stood up before I did. “I’ve got a news show on the hour turn. Let me check.”

Instead of heading back to the ER, Spence went to Bree’s workstation. I followed—at a distance.

“Go ahead, Bree,” Spence said. “If anybody comes in bleeding to death, I know how to make a tourniquet. Just try to get back to me in under four minutes, okay?”

“Well?” I said, after Bree had disappeared from my line of sight. “As Vida might say, have you sent a boy to the mill?”

“Probably not,” Spence said. “Bree’s worked here going on six months. She knows what she’s doing. I think I’ll interview her.”

“Then I will, too,” I said, feeling perverse. “Or maybe I should see if Vida’s learned anything.” I wasn’t just being contrary. My concern for Craig Laurentis was real. I’d seen him only a handful of times, and we’d probably exchanged no more than a few words. Every time I looked at
Sky Autumn
on my living room wall, his presence was palpable. I felt some kind of visceral connection to the painting. The river rippling over the moss-covered rocks was so authentic that I could almost sniff the fragrant evergreens and the earth’s sweet damp decay.

I abandoned Spence and went into the ER area. Vida was just coming from the nurses’ station.

“Well?” I said. “What’s going on with Craig?”

“I don’t know,” Vida said tersely. “Milo disappeared. He can’t be in with Dr. Sung and the patient, or does he have some kind of medical training I don’t know about?”

“He probably went out the back way to smoke,” I said. “Did you get what you needed from Astrid about her move?”

“Enough,” Vida said, stopping short of the exit doors. “She married Lyndon Overholt when they were both very young. He died a few years later in an unfortunate tractor accident on the family farm. They had no children, so she went to nursing school and has worked for years at Providence Hospital in Everett. She’s temporarily living with her mother, Hertha Sundgren, but the old lady has dementia and Astrid will eventually have to put her in the nursing home here.”

“That’s a good three inches,” I said.

“It’s enough,” Vida said, peering through the door’s window. “Where’s Spencer?”

“Covering for Bree,” I replied. “She’s trying to find out what’s going on before his hourly newscast.”

Vida looked at her watch. “It’s two now. I didn’t see Bree come through here. There’s another way from her desk that comes out into the hall connecting the ER to the rest of the hospital.”

“You’re right,” I said, and explained that I should get back to the office. “Do you mind staying here until Milo shows up with some news?”

“Of course not.” She glanced at the nurses’ station. “Very interesting information in there. I know who the teenaged girl is in the letter I received this morning. She miscarried shortly before seven
A.M
.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised by Vida’s knowledge, though I felt it best not to ask how she’d obtained it. “Anybody we know?”

Vida grimaced. “Alas, no. The family name is Harlowe and they live between Baring and Skykomish with an RFD address. I suppose the mother mailed the letter while shopping in Alpine.”

“How will you answer her?”

“Oh, with some Pollyanna cliché about how things work out for the best, but meanwhile you—meaning the idiot mother—should set a good example for your children and blah-blah. Not that it will do a bit of good. The advice is twenty years late. So many people have
no sense
.”

“You can’t do much else,” I said, “since you stated at the start you’d respond to all letters as long as they weren’t salacious, libelous, or obvious fiction. You can’t let on you already know how the pregnancy ended. And don’t forget the pickled
herring recipe.” I gestured toward the other end of the hall. “I’ll go out the back way. See you later.”

My guess about where Milo had gone was right. He was stubbing out a cigarette in an empty planter box on the corner across from the clinic. He didn’t seem surprised to see me.

“How long does it take you to shake off Vida and Fleetwood?” he asked. “I’ve smoked two cigarettes and damned near froze to death waiting for you to show up.”

“You might’ve told me,” I shot back. “I can’t read your mind.”

Milo snorted. “Yes, you can. Sometimes, anyway.”

“What’s wrong with Vida? Why couldn’t she come out here, too?”

“Because I had to ditch all three of you to keep Fleetwood from tagging along.”

“You really dislike him that much?”

“I don’t dislike him,” Milo said. “But … hell, I don’t know. He’s too damned slick, and I don’t like being interviewed over the radio. It’s an easy way to make a fool of yourself.”

“So what’s happening?”

Milo waved halfheartedly at one of the Blue Sky Dairy’s truck drivers. “That’s the other problem. I’m still piecing this together. Laurentis was barely conscious when the rangers found him. It was hard to get much out of the guy, but it sounds like he was shot last night or early this morning. He was about fifty yards away from where the maples had been harvested. I figure he caught the poachers in the act and they shot him. He ought to pull through, but it may be several hours before we can talk to him to find out if he can ID the perps. Poaching’s bad enough, but now we’ve got attempted murder.”

A few drops of icy rain blew into my face. I pulled the duffel coat’s hood up further. “Where were these trees in relationship to the other ones that’ve been cut down?”

“Not that far from the last three, but closer to the road,” Milo said, hunkering down into the turned-up collar of his jacket as the rain started coming down harder. “The other ones were between Burl Creek and the fish hatchery on the other side of town.”

“But all of them have been well out of sight.”

“Right,” Milo responded. “They find maples off the beaten path, but all the cuttings seem to have been done at night. Only somebody like Laurentis who holes up God-only-knows-where would ever see them. The closest private property to those trees is my aunt and uncle’s old farm. Even that’s a good two, three hundred yards away with plenty of woods in between.”