The Alpine Advocate (25 page)

Vida chimed in. “It sure isn’t, you old noodle,” she said to Moroni. “In fact, that bunch of bones over there probably got killed while
you
were sheriff.”

Moroni sneered at Vida who tipped her gaucho hat over one eye and sneered right back.

I intervened again. “Listen, all this wrangling isn’t getting us anywhere. We’re hindering, not helping, Sheriff Dodge. Does anyone here have any idea who this might be?” I made a stabbing gesture in the direction of the skeleton.

Judging from the shocked looks of my audience, most of them hadn’t considered the possibility that the skeleton had once been a real person who had walked and talked among them.

“Oh, no!” gasped Phoebe.

“Hell,” breathed Kent.

“Indeed,” murmured Simon.

“Screw off,” muttered Neeny.

Jennifer began to cry softly. Al Driggers, finally discovering an object for his professional sympathy, went over to the log.

To my surprise, Cece Doukas asked the first intelligent question of the impromptu gathering: “Are there any clothes or other objects that might be identifiable?” So stunned was everyone that she apparently mistook their blank faces for confusion. “I mean keys or jewelry or possibly credit cards. Even a hobo might carry something other than a little bag on a stick.”

Again, I waited for Milo to make a revelation, this time about the Miraculous Medal. But Milo was proving remarkably reticent. “We’ll have any information available after we’ve removed the remains.” He looked past the little group to the road. “Here come my deputies now. I’d appreciate it if you’d all move on out of here. I’d like to have the van come in as close as possible.” His voice was unusually formal.

To my amazement, the Doukas clan began to disperse. Only Eeeny Moroni stayed put, looking sheepish. “Hey, Milo,
amico
, I apologize a thousand times.” He put a hand on Milo’s rumpled suit sleeve. “I’m what you call, you know, distraught. Mark’s funeral today, Gibb getting killed, now this … I spent my life chasing shoplifters and catching people breaking the speed limit. Maybe,” he confessed with an off-center grin, “I’m jealous. This is bad stuff—but it’s big stuff. And it’s
your
stuff, not mine.”

Milo shrugged. “Forget it.” He glanced at Tom and Vida and me. “You coming or going?”

“I’ll be at the office for quite a while. Will you let us know if you find anything else?” I inquired. “Like what Cece suggested?”

Milo gave me a ghostly smile. “Sure. Thanks, Emma.”

I stared at Milo. “Huh?” But he had already turned away, to where Jack Mullins and Bill Blatt were taking pictures of the skeleton. Then it dawned on me: Milo had appreciated my support in front of the others. Somehow, I was touched. And inexplicably pleased.

*   *   *

“Do all doctors get rich?”

I held the phone out an inch from my ear; I wasn’t sure I’d heard my son correctly. “What did you say, Adam?”

“I was thinking,” he said, sounding vaguely muffled, “that maybe I’d like to go into medicine. Save lives and like that. How long does it take?”

“Many years and many dollars,” I replied, vexed. This was not the time for Adam to discuss his life’s goals with me. “Are you certain you mailed that material?”

“Yeah, like I told you. I guess I had too much to do to get to the post office the other day before it closed. Plus I had to look for Chris’s denim jacket. It was under the bathroom sink. Then I found all those other letters and junk that belonged to Chris’s mom. So I put everything in a box and shipped it off to you. The guy at the post office said it should get to Alpine in five days.” Adam sounded as if he were talking to an imbecile.

I sighed. That meant tomorrow. If I were lucky. “Okay. Did it cost much?”

“About four bucks. There wasn’t a lot, just letters and stuff. I kept the rest, it looked pretty useless.”

I hadn’t any idea what Adam was talking about. “The rest of
what?”

A door banged across the Pacific, and I heard distant voices. Adam had company. “Papers, you know, like old bills and insurance policies and car registrations—stuff like that. Chris got the insurance, so he doesn’t need that, and I thought it would be kind of grim to send him his mom’s death certificate and all the hospital stuff.”

“Probably,” I agreed. “But don’t toss it out. He may want all that some day. Especially the death certificate. They cost money.”

Apparently, Adam had turned away from the receiver to say something to his friends. When he gave his full attention back to me, it was as if I hadn’t spoken. “Like I was thinking—maybe not saving lives. I mean, if you can’t,
then you must feel rotten when a patient dies, right? So being a baby doctor would be better. What’s a
live
birth?”

I screwed up my face. “What do you think it is, dopey?” I was in my editorial office, wishing Milo would pass on any new information he might have gleaned from the remains at the mineshaft. It was after six o’clock, and Vida was out in the front office, typing like mad. Tom was there, too, answering the phones that were now bringing us renewed interest from the outside media.

“Yeah, I know what live birth
sounds
like,” said Adam as masculine laughter erupted in the background. “But it can’t be what I think it is. See, I’m looking at Mrs. Ramirez’s records from when Chris took her to the hospital when she got so sick with the cancer. It says right here on this form:
Live Births: None
. So what does it mean?”

I almost dropped the phone. “Say that again?”

Adam’s sigh vibrated over the ocean cable. Then he repeated the information. “So if it means what it sounds like, did Mrs. Ramirez find Chris under a rock? Hey, Mom, you used to think you were really cool with your open-minded sex education. I think you missed something!”

I stared at my computer screen, which seemed to look very fuzzy. “I think I did, too. Adam, what hospital was that?”

“Huh? Oh, not that big one up on the hill. It’s the other one: Kuakini. Hey, the guys want to know if you think Chris is in L.A.”

“I have no idea.” I wished I did, but there wasn’t time to speculate about Chris’s whereabouts just now. “Is there a doctor’s name on that form?”

“I think so. … Yeah, here it is, Steven Furokawa. He’s Chris’s doctor, too. Nice guy.” Adam responded away from the receiver to a comment about girls and Malibu.

I saw Vida shoot an inquiring glance through the open door, then plod back to her desk. “Have you got a number for Dr. Furokawa?”

The noise inside Adam’s room was building. “What?
Oh—a telephone number? No, but there’s a phone book here some place. …” At last, he came up with Steven Furokawa’s business and residential listings. “Hey, Mom, what’s this all about? I haven’t made up my mind yet. I just thought that being a doctor might be—you know, like fulfilling. You don’t have to start checking around for—”

“Put a sock in it,” I said, then added on a gentler note: “I love you. Hang up.”

He did, and I immediately dialed Steven Furokawa, M.D., at his Honolulu clinic. To my relief, he was in; to my amazement, his receptionist put me through. In my best professional voice, I identified myself. “I understand you treated the late Margaret Ramirez for cancer. Her nephew was murdered five days ago, and her husband’s body may have been dug up from an abandoned mineshaft this afternoon. Over the weekend, there was another homicide. Margaret’s son, Chris, is also a patient of yours. He’s wanted for questioning.” If all that didn’t impress Dr. Furokawa, I couldn’t think what would—except telling him there was five hundred pounds of TNT under his office chair. “Doctor, I don’t want you to breach patient confidentiality, but can you tell me this: did Margaret Ramirez ever bear a child?”

Silence. Then a quick breath. “You said yourself she had a son, Ms. Lord.” His voice was dry, almost humorous.

Obviously, I couldn’t cut corners. I explained about the admitting form from Kuakini, implying that I had it sitting right in front of me.

More silence. Then Dr. Furokawa spoke in a brisker tone. “I don’t recall. I have a very busy practice. Mrs. Ramirez’s records aren’t available right now. Even if they were, I couldn’t tell you.”

“Doctor, this is extremely important. Three people have already died. The county sheriff can get an order to send Mrs. Ramirez’s records to Alpine. But that could take a couple of days, maybe more.” Doggedly, I kept speaking. This wasn’t the first time I’d had to pry material out of an
unwilling source. “You must have treated Margaret for some time.
Think
. Had she borne a child?”

Now the silence seemed to fill the thousands of miles between us, creeping along the ocean floor, washing over the coast, rising up into the mountains.

“No.” Dr. Furokawa uttered the word with reluctance. “That’s all I can tell you.”

It was enough.

“W
E
’
VE GOT TO
go into Seattle tomorrow,” declared Vida, ripping her account of Mark’s funeral out of the typewriter. “That’s where Margaret supposedly had Chris, you know. His birth would be registered at the King County Courthouse.”

I was pacing the office. “It’s a long shot,” I said for the fourth time. “But Chris looks too much like a Doukas to be anybody else.”

“I can go to Seattle,” volunteered Tom.

He struck me as a bit subdued, and I wondered if he would like to have talked to Adam. But that would not be a good idea. My son didn’t know that his father was in Alpine. Indeed, my son knew only the barest facts about Tom Cavanaugh. I’d always felt it was better that way.

“There are a couple of people I should see while I’m in the area anyway,” Tom went on. “You two have a paper to get out.”

Vida and I exchanged glances. “True,” I said. Tom had gotten us a pizza and some salad. I sat down at Ed’s desk. “Okay, let’s nail this down.”

Tom nodded. “Remember, though—even if you’re right, it may have nothing to do with these deaths.”

I didn’t argue the point. Just because Margaret and Hector Ramirez were not Chris’s natural parents didn’t solve the murder investigation. But I still wanted to know who he really was. I doubted very much that Chris himself was aware of his parents’ identity. In this age of candor about such matters, I found that suspicious.

Vida, who had been leafing through the 1971 volume of
Advocates
, clapped her hands. “Here! Chris’s birth announcement—‘August twenty-one, 1971, to Hector and Margaret Ramirez, formerly of Alpine, a boy, seven pounds, ten ounces, at Seattle.’”

Tom jotted the information down in a small leather-bound notebook. “Do you know where Hector and Margaret lived while they were in Seattle?” The question was for Vida.

She took off her hat and vigorously scratched her head. “Ooooh—not really, Tommy. A rental, out in the south end, I think. Neeny might know, or Simon and Cece. But even if they’d tell you, I doubt they’d have an address after all this time.”

The phone rang. It was Milo, and his voice sounded strained. “Doc Dewey’s here. He says the bones are at least five and maybe fifty years old. But because the clothing was so decomposed—all that damp up there by the creek—it’s impossible for him to pinpoint without lab work.”

“What about Dr. Starr?” I asked.

“He’s got Jeannie Clay checking their records.” The sheriff spoke away from the phone, apparently to Doc Dewey Senior. “No papers, of course, but there was that medal, a belt buckle, a key chain, and a wedding ring. Kind of fancy, gold with a sort of scroll design.”

“Are the bones the right size for Hector?” I was making notes of my own on Ed’s memo pad.

“Doc says yes, as far as he can tell.” Milo’s tone was grudging.

I gave Vida and Tom a thumbs-up sign. “Can we quote you as saying this raises the possibility of the remains being those of Hector Ramirez?”

A heavy sigh fell on my ear. “I guess. Hell, Emma, it could be Elvis.”

“Or Elvis. Thank you, Sheriff Dodge.” I imagined Milo’s expression and tried not to laugh. “What about foul play?”

“Doc can’t tell yet. No sign of a blow to the head. Poison, strangulation, stabbing would all be hard to figure at this point. A bullet might leave some mark on the bone, but there’s a lot of discoloration.” Milo paused again as Doc Dewey spoke to him. “We’re going to dig some more in that hole. If the victim was shot, the bullet may be in the ground. As the body decomposed, Doc says the shell would eventually work itself into the earth.”

I grimaced at my pizza. “Right.” Hastily, I tried to think of any other questions I should put to Milo while I had him on the line. Then I remembered to ask about Gibb’s truck. That part of the investigation had gotten shunted aside in the wake of the discovery at the mineshaft.

Milo couldn’t add much, however. “It was just sitting there at Reiter, where all the fishermen park. Gibb’s I.D. was on the floor. So were his keys. Lots of prints, mostly smudged, but we may find something yet.”

After I’d hung up, Vida and Tom mulled over the information I’d relayed from Milo. “I wish,” said Vida, rubbing at her eyes, “I could remember what Margaret’s wedding ring looked like. It just might have been a gold band. I doubt that Hector could have afforded a diamond set.”

Tom polished off his third slice of pizza. “How long were they away from Alpine?” Again, he addressed Vida as the font of all knowledge.

Vida briskly stirred dressing into her salad. “A year, maybe. I know they missed one Christmas, because Cece told me she was glad they were gone so that she wouldn’t have to host what could be an awkward family gathering. But they were back by the next holidays, because Fuzzy Baugh wanted to borrow Chris to be Baby New Year for the Kiwanis festivities in Old Mill Park. Margaret wouldn’t hear of it, since we had three feet of snow on the ground.”

Tom made more notes. I ate more pizza.

Vida stared off into space, glasses in her lap. At last she spoke. “We’re assuming the bones belong to Hector,” she began, obviously having given her theory careful thought.
“Then we must assume Hector was murdered.” She looked at both of us for confirmation. We nodded in unison. “Mark may have found the body when he was prospecting. That could be what set him off. But who did he tell? Not Kevin MacDuff. Could he have given his story to the murderer? Did he know he was talking to the murderer? And Gibb—did he find the body, too, or was he killed because he knew there was another way into the mine?”