The Alpine Betrayal (17 page)

“Creep,” remarked Ginny, who was dumping Ed’s mail in his already overflowing in-basket. “Maybe that’s why his first wife left him.”

Irrationally, I felt a twinge of guilt. “It must have happened last night, after I left Patti’s. Jack seemed okay, and Patti was practically on her ear.”

But Carla shook her head, long black hair swinging over her shoulders. “No, it was this morning, I’m sure. She had a cut over her eye, and it was still bleeding.”

“Men!” huffed Vida, glancing at Ed’s vacant chair as if he were responsible for the entire sex. “I’ve been tempted to deck Patti a few times myself, but that’s different. I’m a woman.”

“Now Vida,” Ginny began, “violence doesn’t have a gender. You really shouldn’t say things like that.”

Vida had turned back to her typewriter. She veered
around in her chair, giving Ginny a vexed look. “Hush! I’m old enough to be your grandmother! Do you want to get
spanked?”
The typewriter rattled and shook as Vida launched into her latest article. Before any of the rest of us could say anything further, a knob flew off, a couple of screws clattered to the floor, and Vida’s typewriter was dead in the water. “Oh, blast!” she cried. “Now what?”

“Vida,” I began, tossing the mail onto my desk and reentering the news office, “it’s time to upgrade yourself. Let’s go buy you a word processor.”

“No!” Vida recoiled as if I’d threatened to burn her at the stake. “It just needs fixing, that’s all!” She groped with one foot, retrieving the knob. “Get me a screwdriver. I can do it myself.”

“Ed borrowed it to fix his front door,” said Ginny. “That was three weeks ago.”

“Great,” I muttered. Ed had a habit of borrowing items from the office and never returning them. “I’ll run over to the hardware store and get another one.”

“I can go,” offered Ginny.

“You need to answer the phones,” I said, already halfway to the door. “It’s Thursday. I don’t want to talk to every crackpot with a complaint about the latest edition of the paper.”

Harvey Adcock’s Hardware and Sporting Goods Store was only a block and a half away, and coincidentally in the same building as the local florist. I hurried up Front Street, trying to pretend that at eleven o’clock in the morning it wasn’t already stifling. Compared with the previous week, the tempo of the town seemed to have slowed to a snail’s pace.

Across the street, a middle-aged couple looked longingly at the Whistling Marmot movie theatre’s air-conditioning sign. In the next block, three teenagers stood close together in the shade of the Venison Inn’s entrance. At the corner of Fifth Street, the bookstore’s cat had decamped from its usual place in the front window to sit among the leafy greenery of a sidewalk planter. The air, which in other seasons
smells of evergreens and damp and woodsmoke, was tinged with gasoline fumes and cooking grease. The smokestacks at the mill were moribund; the ski lodge catered only to the traveler. In summer, there was a fallow feeling to Alpine, despite the number of tourists and the presence of the movie company. It was as if we were on hold, waiting for the rain and the real business of the community to begin anew.

Harvey’s store, with its high ceilings and two separate showrooms, seemed cool by comparison to the outdoors. He was behind the counter, sorting faucets. His pixie-like face brightened when he saw me.

“Emma! What broke?”

I explained, asking him for a cordless screwdriver, just like the one I had at home. Ed would probably walk off with it eventually, but I might as well facilitate matters for now.

“Regular or bendable?” asked Harvey, coming around the counter to a display rack on the other side of the store.

“They bend now, too?” I was impressed. “Sure, why not?”

Harvey sprinted back behind the counter, ringing up the sale. “That’s $43.27, with tax.”

My jaw dropped. I had only twenty-five dollars in cash, about twice that much in my checking account, which hadn’t been balanced in two weeks, and payday wasn’t until tomorrow. I dug into my wallet for my emergency fund, a hundred dollar bill I kept tucked away for dire necessities. Like bendable cordless screwdrivers.

“Can you change this?” I asked, almost hoping Harvey couldn’t and thus I would be let off the hook. An ordinary screwdriver probably went for under five bucks.

“Sure can,” said Harvey cheerfully. “I went to the bank when they opened at nine-thirty.” He took my hundred; I hoped he didn’t notice how my hand lingered on the bill. “There I was waiting for them to open up, and who comes along but Patti Marsh, sassy as you please.” The cash register
jingled and Harvey made change. “She must have won the lottery.”

I frowned at Harvey as he counted the money into my hand. “What do you mean?”

Harvey’s pointed little ears seemed to move up and down. “What? I mean she was pleased with herself. She had a big deposit, or so I gathered standing next to her in the bank. You should have heard her and that MacAvoy kid carry on! ‘Shall I get a gunny sack for it, Mrs. Marsh?’ he asked her. They were laughing themselves sick. Of course Richie MacAvoy is new at the teller’s job and probably should be a mite more discreet.”

“Wait a minute, Harvey,” I said, leaning on the counter and lowering my voice as an elderly man I didn’t recognize ambled into the store. “Patti Marsh was just treated by young Doc Dewey for … cuts and abrasions,” I said quickly, not sure I should spread gossip any faster than the rest of Alpine. “How did she look?”

Harvey gave a shrug of his slender shoulders. “Fine. You know Patti—lots of goo on her face, even in the morning. I suppose she was on break from work.”

From work at Blackwell Timber, I thought to myself. “Well.” I tried to act unconcerned. “She must have taken that spill after she went to the bank.”

“Maybe so.” Harvey was handing me the paper bag with the screwdriver, but he was looking at the elderly man who was bringing a box of washers up to the counter. “Hi, Marco. What’ve you got?”

Thanking Harvey Adcock, I left the store and scooted around the corner to Posies Unlimited. The owner, Delphine Corson, was a flabby blonde of fifty with high color and a low neckline. She greeted me with a throaty laugh.

“You’re too late,” she announced, slapping the empty plant stand next to the refrigerated case. “I can’t get any more flowers up to the San Juans in time for the funeral, not even by wire or phone.”

To my dismay, I realized that while Cody Graff’s death was never far from my mind, I had completely forgotten
about his services, which were scheduled for today. Hastily, I explained that I didn’t know the family and had only met Cody a couple of times.

Delphine moved with a graceless tread to the bench, where she was arranging red and yellow roses in a wicker basket. “It’s mostly friends of his parents who’ve sent flowers,” she said. “I don’t think Cody had a lot of pals.” She picked up a handful of maidenhair fern and clipped an inch off the stems. “Funny, though—you’d think his fiancée would have had me do a spray for his casket.”

“Marje?” I fanned myself with my hand. It was very warm in the small shop, and the heady scent of flowers was almost overpowering. “Maybe she had something sent from Friday Harbor.”

“Oh, no,” said Delphine with certainty. “The Blatts always use me. Marje had already been in to discuss the flowers for her wedding. That’s off now, so there goes a nice chunk of change. She wanted four hundred gardenias.”

I didn’t comment on the canceled ceremony or Delphine’s unrealized profits. Instead, I steered the conversation back to the Graffs. “I gather Curtis was in the other day. Those tiger lilies were gorgeous.”

Delphine plucked out a red rose that wasn’t up to snuff and put it in her cleavage. “Curtis? The older Graff kid? Oh, right, he’s back from Alaska. He sure had lousy timing. Isn’t your kid in Ketchikan, too?”

“Yes,” I said, trying not to get sidetracked. “I couldn’t figure out why Curtis was taking flowers to Patti Marsh. What’s the connection?”

My blatant probing didn’t seem to bother Delphine. That’s one advantage of being a journalist: other people figure you have a right to know. It rarely occurs to them that you may be just plain nosy.

Delphine gazed at me with cornflower blue eyes. “It was July 30.”

My face must have been a blank. “So?”

“Oh, that’s right,” said Delphine with a little grimace. “I forgot. You’re a newcomer.”

I had the feeling that I would still be a newcomer if I stayed in Alpine until I died. Native Alpiners were not only wary of strangers, but were loath to embrace anyone who hadn’t spent at least a couple of decades in their town.

Delphine had finished with the arrangement and was gathering up leftover leaves and stems. “Five years ago on July 30, the Graff baby died. Curtis was taking a bouquet to Grandma Patti. Nice of him, considering.”

“Considering what?”

Delphine shrugged. “Considering that he’s been gone for so long. And that he and Cody were on the outs. As for Dani, I don’t know—it seems to me he should have taken her a bouquet, too. I suggested it, but he didn’t seem to hear me. So I lost a fifteen dollar sale on that one.” She looked disappointed.

“What about Cody? Did he buy flowers, too?”

“He never has, not in all the years since little Scarlett died.” Disapproval was etched on Delphine’s face, though I couldn’t tell whether it was motivated by Cody’s lack of sentiment or the loss of another order.

“Say, Delphine,” I said, suddenly reminded of another tragedy, “do you remember when Art Fremstad killed himself?”

Delphine’s heavy jowls sagged. “You bet. What a nice guy. Talk about flowers! I made enough off of that one to send myself to Palm Springs for a week! I even had to hire extra help to deliver. Poor Art. Poor Donna.”

I assumed Donna was Art’s widow. “Did she remarry?”

“Yeah, about two years ago. You know Steve Wickstrom from the high school? Trig and geometry teacher.”

I remembered seeing Steve and Donna Wickstrom at the Icicle Creek Tavern with Coach Ridley and his wife. In the spring, Carla had done a piece about Steve’s contribution to a math text. She’d called him
Stove
. Carla’s proofreading wasn’t any better than her typing.

Thanking Delphine for her time, I started to leave but felt her blue eyes boring into my back. “Oh,” I said a trifle giddily, “I forgot. I wanted to get a bouquet.” I cast around the
flower shop. Everything looked as if it would cost at least twenty dollars a dozen. “Or maybe a plant. Yes, how about a nice cyclamen?”

With a grunt, Delphine bent down and picked up a bright pink specimen. “This is a beauty. That’ll be $17.58 with tax. After it finishes blooming, keep it in the dark.”

That figured, I thought to myself. We all seemed to be in the dark when it came to Cody Graff’s death. But I was the only one who was going broke. If I hurried, maybe I could still get back to the office while I had enough money for lunch.

But as I carted the plant and the cordless screwdriver over to
The Advocate
, I decided I could put the cyclamen to good use. The Jaguar was parked around the corner. I jumped in and drove the five blocks down Railroad Avenue to Blackwell Timber.

Patti Marsh wasn’t there. The fresh-faced young woman at the receptionist’s desk said Ms. Marsh had gone home early. Sick, she gathered. Maybe the heat. It was really too warm for Alpine.

It was almost noon. Maybe it was just as well if I skipped lunch. I got back in the car and drove up to Patti’s house. In the midday sun, the tired little house didn’t look any more hospitable than it had last night. Although Patti’s black compact car was in the drive, the door was closed and the drapes were still drawn. I hesitated, then knocked loudly.

On my second effort, Patti called from inside, asking my identity. I told her. Warily, she opened the door a couple of inches.

“I heard you’d had an accident,” I said, feeling a bit foolish as I tried to wedge the cyclamen inside the door. “Isn’t this a pretty shade of pink?”

“What is it?” she asked, opening the door all the way. “Some kind of orchid?”

“It’s a cyclamen, from Posies Unlimited.” I had a fixed smile on my face as I crossed the threshold. The bouquet on the Bombay chest was shedding petals. Patti looked as
if she’d lost all her bloom, too. Her face was swollen, and there was a small bandage above her right eye. “How do you feel?”

Patti took the plant and limped into the living room. The house was still dreary and airless. She went over to the TV and turned off a soap opera.

“I feel like crap,” said Patti, indicating that I should sit down on the cluttered sofa. “I decided to take the rest of the day off.”

“How’d it happen?” I asked in what I hoped was a guileless voice.

Patti eased herself into the cut-velvet chair and lighted a cigarette. She still wore a wary expression. “Hey, Mrs. Lord, cut the bullshit. Since when were we buddies? What do you really want?”

I allowed the smile to die. “Okay. I don’t like seeing women get knocked around. You didn’t fall off your front porch, Patti. You looked just fine when Harvey Adcock saw you at the bank this morning. If somebody’s beating you up, why don’t you file a complaint?”

“Sheesh!” Patti rolled her brown eyes and looked at me as if I were the original babe in the woods. “Where’d you grow up, in a bird cage? Hey, people—like men—get pissed off. They start swinging. That’s how they handle stuff. They don’t mean anything by it, they just don’t know what else to do. Then they’re sorry, and they come crawling back, full of apologies, and maybe a present or two. It’s the way of the world, honey.”

“Not my world.” I spoke firmly, perhaps even primly, judging from the amused expression on Patti’s face. Before she could contradict me, I leaned toward her, careful not to knock any of the items off the coffee table with my knees. “Beating up women is a coward’s way of dealing with problems. It’s also stupid, and men who do it are stupid. What kind of woman wants to hang out with a stupid coward? I can’t think of any present that’s worth the price, and that includes a terrific night in the sack.”

No longer amused, Patti stiffened, apparently surprised at
my candor. Maybe she didn’t expect it from me. “So how do you change a man?” she asked with a sneer.