The Alpine Betrayal (14 page)

“Mom’s such a hard-nosed person,” she said, then laughed again. “Honestly, she has never forgiven me for getting crummy grades in high school. Somehow, going to Hollywood and breaking into the movie business doesn’t make up for it. I think she hates me because I didn’t enroll in the University of Washington and get a degree in education.” She ran a hand through her honey blond hair. “I
shouldn’t say that. She doesn’t hate me, she’s just resentful. And I understand why. Some day, I hope she’ll get over it. We used to be great pals.”

“The two of you must have made up enough that she’d let you drive her around in Matt’s Zimmer,” I remarked, hoisting my handbag over my shoulder. “I saw you the other night in that gorgeous car.”

For just an instant, a strange look passed over Dani Marsh’s beautiful face. Surprise? Fear? Anger? I couldn’t tell. She composed herself quickly and gave a little shrug. “Matt likes to show off that Zimmer. He let me drive it to go see Mom. She couldn’t resist taking a spin around town. I suppose nobody up here has ever seen a car like that. There aren’t that many even in L.A., not at all like sighting a Rolls or a Lamborghini—
they’re
a dime a dozen.”

Not on my salary they weren’t. But I merely smiled and left Dani to lap up her gin and tonic. She might look like an angel, but she acted like a clam. My trip to the ski lodge had been a washout.

It was only later that I realized Dani—and Reid Hampton—had told me almost everything I needed to know.

H
AVING FLUNKED WITH
Dani Marsh, I decided to make a complete fool of myself and call on her mother. Patti Marsh lived in a small frame house above the cemetery, between Spruce and Tyee Streets. It was almost dark when I arrived, but I could see that the yard was overgrown, the lawn needed mowing, and the house itself begged for fresh paint. I assumed this was where Dani Marsh had been raised. It was a far cry from Benedict Canyon.

Patti came to the door in tight black pants and a green halter top. She had a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. “What do you want?” she asked in her hoarse, hostile voice.

I gave her my most winning smile. “I just wanted to make sure that our article didn’t cause you any problems. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that you had a right to be upset.” The truth was, I hadn’t thought about it at all. But I needed some excuse to get my foot in the door.

Patti gave a little snort. “You’re damned lucky so much other crap was going on around here. Otherwise, half the town would have been sniping behind my back. No, I got no problem with it. Now.”

“Good.” I tried to look relieved. And lied some more. “It occurred to me after you left that we hadn’t told the whole story. After all, we never got your feelings about what it’s like to have a famous movie star for a daughter. Let’s face it: Dani is what you made her.”

Obviously, that idea had never occurred to Patti. She
threw back her shoulders, looking like a candidate for Abe Loomis’s next wet T-shirt contest. “Well now,” she said with a toss of her bleached hair, “when you put it like that … Sure, I did what I could for the kid. Role model, isn’t that what they call it?” She seemed to realize that we were conducting our conversation both inside and outside her house. “Come in, Mrs. Lord. Want a drink?”

I calculated: I was five blocks from home and not feeling much effect from the brandy. “Sure,” I said, following her into the living room. It was small, with aging Italian provincial furniture that would have made a gypsy wince. Reds, greens, and yellows predominated. The sagging drapes were drawn, making the house not only too warm, but oppressive. Half-naked gods and goddesses stood on the mantel, skin-by-fin with several carved trout. The walls boasted Harlequin masks, a watercolor of Mount Baldy, and a bas-relief of Bacchus doing what looked like the bop with a lot of unclothed nymphs.

Anxiously, I searched for a place to sit down. The green and gold sofa was covered with celebrity magazines and tabloids; the chairs were piled high with old
TV Guides
and
Soap Opera Digests
.

“Here,” said Patti, whisking a foot-high stack of tabloids topped by
The Globe
from the end of the sofa. “What’ll you have?”

“Bourbon? Canadian?” I sat down gingerly, putting my feet under the big coffee table that covered most of the floor space between the sofa and the TV across the room. More magazines, several romance novels, three dirty glasses, and a full ashtray shaped like a big leaf stared back at me. The house smelled of smoke, onions, and a perfume I’d once been trapped with in a Portland high-rise elevator. I’d almost gotten carsick.

Patti was at the bar, which was actually a counter between the living room and kitchen. “I was a bit of an actress myself,” she said, shoveling ice out of a mock leather-covered bucket. “In high school, we did
Our Town
and something about a bunch of Pilgrims.”

“Oh?” I was wondering if the change in Patti Marsh’s attitude had been engendered by my soft soap or her previous highballs. She wasn’t drunk, but she wasn’t exactly sober. I tried to pay attention. “Pilgrims?”

“Yeah, right.” She handed me a hefty bourbon on the rocks. Her own drink was fresh, either vodka or gin. “They had this thing about witches. All the women were called Goody something-or-other. They ganged up on people.” Patti sat down in the faded red cut-velvet chair next to the TV. “Imagine, saying all this guff about innocent men and women! What kind of a small town was that, I wonder?” Patti rolled her eyes.

“The Crucible?”
I offered, thinking that Salem, Massachusetts could easily be substituted for Alpine, Washington any day.

“Right!” Patti laughed and held out her glass as if toasting me for my fabulous wit. “I wanted to say
Cubicle
. Oh, well. Cheers.”

“Cheers.” I sipped slowly. “So you encouraged Dani with her acting?”

“Oh—no.” Patti seemed to have gulped a fourth of her drink already. She set the glass down long enough to light another cigarette. “Dani wasn’t interested in acting back then. I just sort of set the stage, if you know what I mean.” She clapped a hand to her cleavage. “The stage! That’s good! Get it?”

I smiled appreciatively. Patti kept going. “Dani was more interested in boys and clothes and boys and hair and boys and makeup—and boys.” She stopped to see if I’d gotten the point. “So she got married right out of high school to Cody, and I could have told her it wouldn’t work. Just a couple of kids, playing house. I should have told them to live together for a while. Everybody does that nowadays, no harm, no foul. But she wanted a wedding with a long white dress and a veil, so off they went to the Methodist Church and tied the knot.” Patti puffed and guzzled. I waited for her to continue. “Then along came the baby. A
little girl, named Scarlett. Dani’d just seen
Gone with the Wind
. If they’d had a boy, he would have been Rhett.”

Patti was losing steam. She stared into her glass while the cigarette burned down in the overflowing ashtray. “Of course she didn’t look like Scarlett. She was blond, blue-eyed, so sweet” Tears welled up in Patti’s eyes. “Then she was gone.” She made an ineffectual snap of her fingers. “Like that. Dani was a rotten mother.”

“But SIDS isn’t caused by anything,” I protested. “At least that they know of. It just happens.”

Patti didn’t seem to hear me. She was crying noisily, her face on her forearm. “Dani wanted to go dancing and do the malls and party. She didn’t give a damn about taking care of that baby! I couldn’t even get her to use cloth diapers! No wonder Scarlett died! She was neglected!”

I waited for the storm to pass. Patti had my sympathy, a grandmother robbed of her grandchild. But somehow I had the feeling she was being too hard on Dani. Her tears seemed to flow out of an excess, either from a pent-up reserve of self-pity or too many glasses of vodka. It was quite possible that at nineteen, Dani Marsh Graff hadn’t wanted the responsibility of parenthood. Still, the infant’s death could not be blamed on Dani’s desire to have a good time. After five years, I figured I didn’t have a prayer of getting through to Patti Marsh.

“Dani’s older now,” I finally said when Patti showed signs of composing herself. “She and Matt Tabor will probably have children of their own. They’ll be able to afford nannies and the best of care. You’ll have another grandchild, maybe soon.”

Patti made a slashing movement with her hand. “Bull! Dani won’t sacrifice her career for a kid! And I wouldn’t want Matt to be the father if she did!” Another wild gesture, this time almost toppling her half-filled glass.

“You’ve met Matt?” It was a guess; there had been a third person in the Zimmer last Friday night.

Patti wiped her eyes with her hand. She sniffed several times, then put out her cigarette and picked up her drink.
“Naw. I seen him, at the tavern. Another loser. Dani don’t know how to pick ’em. If I want to meet a drunk, I can go down to Mugs Ahoy and pick out somebody I know.”

I didn’t argue. In fact, Patti was getting to the point that she could meet a drunk by staggering to her feet and walking over to the gilded mirror above the fireplace. I took another sip of bourbon and decided to take my leave. But before I could say anything, the doorbell rang.

“Who’s that?” asked Patti, as if I should know.

“I can get it,” I volunteered.

But Patti yelled for her visitor to come in. A moment later, Jack Blackwell was in the living room, looking surprised at my presence, but undismayed by Patti’s efforts to drink herself under the coffee table.

“What’s this?” he asked in a contentious manner. “You being grilled by the press, Pats? You don’t know anything about Cody. Or so you told me.”

“’Course I don’t,” growled Patti. “Get a drink. Lord here and me are talking about how I made Dani a star.”

Suddenly I had the feeling I’d taken the wrong tack with Patti Marsh. Or at least a detour. “A lot of people don’t think Cody was poisoned,” I said calmly. “How do you two feel about it?”

Blackwell turned away from the makeshift bar to scowl at me. “It doesn’t matter one way or the other. Cody hadn’t worked for me long enough to get vested. He missed death benefits by six months.”

“Timely of him, wasn’t it?” I smiled sweetly. Probably sappily, too, but the irony was lost on Jack Blackwell, who was making himself a powerful Scotch, no ice, a splash of soda.

“Cody came on with us right after he split with Dani,” Blackwell said, turning around and looking not at me, but at Patti, who was studying her empty glass. At least she still had enough sense to realize there was a decision to make about a refill. “He was a decent worker. Loading and hauling, mostly. At the rate things are going in this crazy business, I’d probably have had to lay him off anyway. If
it isn’t the weather, it’s the chicken-shit environment experts.” Blackwell looked fit to spit.

Pattie learned forward in the red chair and held her glass out to Jack. “Gimme half,” she muttered. “I’m gettin’ sleepy.”

Blackwell took the glass but made no move to fill it. “I thought you wanted to go down to Skykomish and do some dancing.”

Patti slumped in the chair, her head resting against a crooked antimacassar. “Naw. Not tonight, Jack. I’m beat.”

Blackwell put the glass on the counter. Apparently he had made Patti’s decision for her. “Poison is a weird way to go. I mean, for a murderer. How can you be sure it’ll work?” Blackwell belched.

“You’ve got to know what you’re doing,” I said. “Whoever killed Cody must have planned his death very carefully.”

Blackwell raised his dark eyebrows. “That right? Jeez!” He seemed more bemused than dismayed. “With all the ruckus going on at Icicle Creek, the wrong bastard might have got poisoned.”

Patti’s eyes were slits. “Maybe he did.” The words were almost incoherent. But that didn’t make them any less credible. I was about to ask her why she thought so when I realized that she’d passed out.

“I’d better go,” I said, resolutely getting up.

Blackwell followed me to the door. “Patti’s smashed,” he said. “It was Cody, all right. Milo Dodge won’t have to look far to find the killer.”

I gazed up at Blackwell, who was looking faintly smug and drinking his Scotch. There was a saturnine quality about the man that made me feel uncomfortable. “What do you mean?”

Jack Blackwell took a package of long thin cigars out of his shirt pocket. “That actor guy—Matt Tabor. Who else?” He shrugged, jiggled the packet, and caught a cigar in his mouth. “Bad blood between them. You saw what happened with the axe, you were at the tavern. Maybe this Tabor guy
figured Dani still had the hots for Cody.” Blackwell produced a slim silver lighter and touched off his cigar. The little flame made shadows on his face, emphasizing the hollows under his cheekbones, the sharp angle of his nose, the thin line of his lips.

“Could be,” I said lightly, not wanting to argue with Jack Blackwell. Avoiding his gaze, my eyes traveled to the chipped Bombay chest that stood in the narrow entry hall. A wilted bouquet drooped in a green glass vase. Tiger lilies, gladioli, and asparagus ferns: the same arrangement I’d seen Curtis Graff carrying when he’d stopped by
The Advocate
. Had he brought them to Patti? I hadn’t noticed the flowers when I’d come in.

I sketched a wave at Blackwell and started down the three steps that led from the tiny porch. From inside the house, a hoarse, strangled voice followed me onto the overgrown walk:

“Could not!” growled Patti Marsh. “Jack, you don’t know the half of it!”

Apparently, neither did I.

Milo Dodge was sitting on my doorstep, looking like a rejected suitor. It was almost nine o’clock, and I couldn’t imagine what he was doing. I was so surprised to see him that I almost nicked his Cherokee Chief with my Jaguar as I made the turn into the driveway.

“You got a beer?” he asked, unfolding himself and standing up.

“I think so,” I said. “If Adam didn’t drink it all the last time he was home.”

He waited for me to open the door, then trooped along behind me into the blessedly cool living room. My log house smelled like pine needles and sink cleanser. It was a definite improvement over the atmosphere at Patti Marsh’s place.