The Alpine Betrayal (20 page)

“There’s not much from the reports on Art’s death that we don’t already know,” said Milo. “Everything here is consistent with suicide or homicide. Did Donna Fremstad keep Art’s note?”

“Alleged
note,” corrected Vida. “I’ve no idea. She repeated it from memory, I’m sure. But you might ask her.”

Milo nodded. “Okay—so I’ve made a chronology of what happened, going back to Art’s disappearance.”

“No, no,” interrupted Vida. “Go back to little Scarlett’s death. Really, Milo, if Art was killed by Cody, then we have to tie the two of them into the event that brought them together in the first place.”

Milo regarded Vida with skepticism. “You don’t know that it had anything to do with the baby.”

Vida, who had taken off her hat, ran her fingers through her short gray hair in an impatient manner. “Of course I don’t
know
it. But it’s the obvious situation. It’s the one event we
do
know that ties Cody, Dani, Curtis, and Art together. Where’s your file on that?”

“There isn’t one.” Milo gave a shrug. “Dani called the sheriff because Doc Dewey told her to. And the fire department. But there was no criminal activity, so Art didn’t file a report, except for the log.”

Vida cocked her head to one side, her thick curls looking more disheveled than usual. “I did the story. Not that I put anything in it except that little Scarlett died of SIDS, survivors blah-blah, services set for etcetera, memorials to Alpine
Volunteer Firefighters—Oh!” She clapped a hand to her cheek. “How very strange! Why didn’t I think of that before?”

“Before what?” asked Milo dryly.

Vida gave Milo a severe look. “The firefighters. Why didn’t Dani and Cody ask that the memorials be sent to the SIDS foundation?”

Milo had flipped to an empty page in his legal-sized tablet. “In shock, probably. People don’t think straight. Okay, so what happened?”

Vida appeared to be lost in thought. She gave a little jump, then rallied. “Dani had been out somewhere—the grocery store maybe. Cody was with the baby. Dani came home and went to check because it was time for a feeding, or whatever. Little Scarlett was dead. Dani called Doc Dewey who said he’d be over, but to call the sheriff and the fire department. They came first, I have no idea in which order. Then Doc came and Al Driggers was sent for, and they took the baby away to the funeral parlor.” She lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. “That was that. The funeral was three days later, the same day Art Fremstad disappeared. Dani was gone by the end of the week. It turned out she’d filed divorce papers at Simon Doukas’s law office before leaving town.”

I stared at Vida. “That fast?”

“Yes. There was trouble from the start,” said Vida. “Nobody expected it to last. The death of little Scarlett merely sealed the fate of the marriage.”

Milo was laboriously writing everything down. “A week after the baby died?” He was also having trouble keeping up with Vida’s rapid-fire delivery.

“That’s right,” said Vida. “Dani left the day of Art’s funeral. Oh, dear.” She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “So many tragedies all at once. Life’s like that. But could they really be a coincidence?”

I knew Vida didn’t think so, and I was beginning to agree with her. “So when did Curtis and his parents go away?”

“Well, now,” mused Vida, putting her glasses back on and blinking several times, “my guess is a week or two later. I know he left Alpine before his parents did, and they moved out over the Labor Day weekend. Curtis said—or so I was told—he wanted to get in on the late summer salmon run in Alaska. We thought he was going for just a few weeks. But he never came back. Until now.” She looked first at me, then at Milo. “That’s what I mean—everybody suddenly shows up. And Cody Graff dies. Why?”

I
T WAS UNSPEAKABLE
, but not unthinkable. Indeed, I couldn’t keep it out of my mind. Had Cody Graff killed his tiny daughter? If he had, why didn’t Dani turn him in? Perhaps the answer lay not with Dani Marsh, but Patti Marsh: the inexplicable mixture of fear and acceptance at the hands of a violent man. Like mother, like daughter, I thought as I undressed for bed. Dani had taken the easy way out. She’d run away. But she’d left behind a legacy of hate, much of it directed toward herself.

Unless, of course, it was not Cody who had killed that little baby. I pictured Dani Marsh, with her beautiful face and dazzling smile, acting out a scene of violence more tragic than any part she had ever played on the screen. It didn’t fit. But Dani was an actress. I felt as if I were immersed in a drama where the script made no effort to search for truth.

I didn’t sleep well and I awoke to bright sunlight and more heat. While the rest of the world may welcome cloudless skies and rainless days, unrelieved sunshine depresses the true Pacific Northwest native. Like the Douglas fir and the wild rhododendron, we too need our roots watered. After about two weeks of hot weather, tempers grow testy and dispositions turn glum. My soul was beginning to feel parched, my brain withered. I drank three cups of coffee, choked down a piece of toast, and drove to work.

Carla, being young and therefore resilient, had not lost her edge on enthusiasm. But she did feel that the atmosphere was getting dreary.

“All that stuff on Loggerama was okay,” she announced, hopping around my office, “but I’ll bet anything that what readers remember most about that issue was Cody Graff dying.
Downer
. I’ve got this terrific idea to get a really romantic piece about Dani Marsh and Matt Tabor. Pictures, quotes, the whole nine yards. It’ll be like an antidote to death.” She looked suddenly wistful. “Gee, I wish I could call it that.”

“Gee, I’m glad you can’t.” I gave her a baleful look. “But go ahead, see if you can get Dani and Matt to talk about their love life. They probably wouldn’t mind some positive publicity.”

“I’m sure Mr. Hampton would like it,” said Carla, hopping around some more. “I just read in
Premiere
magazine that he’s financially troubled.” She stopped long enough to arch her thick black eyebrows at me.

“Who isn’t?” I responded as the phone rang. Carla danced away, presumably to line up Dani and Matt with a cutout of Cupid. Putting the receiver to my ear, I was half-relieved, half-annoyed to hear Patti Marsh yelling at me.

“Can’t you keep your mouth shut? Why don’t you just run my frigging bankbook in the paper? Everybody in town knows how much I put in my account yesterday! It’s nobody’s goddamned business, and I can’t even walk into the 7-Eleven without four people asking me how I struck it rich!”

I waited for her to run down. “It wasn’t me, Patti. Hey, you’ve lived here all your life—you know how gossip travels around this town. Start with the teller, the bank manager, the rest of the customers who were there. And don’t forget Jack Blackwell. How do you feel today?”

“Fine. And leave Jack out of this.” She had stopped shouting, but still sounded angry. “If I had any sense, I’d take that money and blow this town. Seattle, maybe, or some place on the Oregon Coast. I went there once with Ray. He liked the ocean.”

It took me a minute to recall Ray Marsh, Patti’s ex-husband. “Is that where he ended up?”

“Huh?” She sounded surprised at the question. “No.” Patti laughed, a harsh sound that jangled in my ear. “Ray. That’s funny.” She hung up.

In the outer office, Ed Bronsky was trying to find a picture of a chicken in his clip art. “Whole-bodied fryers, eighty-nine cents a pound,” he said into the phone. “What about lettuce? I got a picture of lettuce.”

Vida was late, and when she came in the door five minutes later I realized why: she had her grandson Roger in tow. I shuddered. The last time she had allowed Roger to spend the day with her at work he had sat on Ginny’s copy machine and made a Xerox of his rear end. It was a wonder Ed hadn’t tried to include it in his clip art.

“Roger’s going to help me today,” Vida said with a big smile for her grandson, who was eyeing me as if I ought to be wearing a tall pointy hat and straddling a broom. “He’s going to organize my files.”

I was speechless. Vida’s files consisted of five drawers stuffed with wedding invitations, birth and graduation announcements, death notices, recipes, gardening tips, household hints, and all manner of articles culled from other publications. She almost never referred to these wrinkled bits and pieces, but carried everything she—and her readers—needed to know inside her head.

“Amy and Ted had to go to Vancouver for the weekend,” Vida explained, yanking out a drawer bulging with paper. “They left Roger with me. He has an eleven o’clock appointment with Doc Dewey, so we’ll be gone for about an hour. In fact,” she beamed at Roger, who had discovered my new cordless screwdriver and was trying to take Carla’s desk apart, “I’m treating him to lunch so we won’t be back until after one.”

Two hours of peace
, I reflected, then asked Roger to give me the screwdriver. To my amazement, he did. He even smiled. “Young Doc Dewey?” I asked as an afterthought.

“No,” replied Vida, putting the drawer on the floor. “Doc Dewey Senior. He got back from Seattle late last night.”
She gave me a meaningful glance. Obviously, Vida had some questions for Doc.

Roger was ignoring Vida’s so-called file drawer. Instead, he had crawled under Ed’s desk. Ed was still on the phone, now trying to talk the Grocery Basket out of a double-truck ad. “Why go two pages when you’ve always done just one? People around here aren’t going to change to Safeway overnight. Alpiners are loyal. Hey!” Ed jumped, almost dropping the phone. He ducked under the desk. “Knock it off, Roger! I don’t want paste all over the floor. I’ll get stuck.”

“Right,” said Roger, emerging on all fours. “Hey, Grams, can I go down to the 7-Eleven and get a Slurpee? I’m bored.”

Roger, with money in hand, went out the door just as Carla came in. There was a blight on her bounce. “They won’t do it,” she pouted. “They’re too busy
filming.”
She made it sound illegal.

“Maybe later,” I soothed. “They’re supposed to wind up shooting in a few days. What about tonight?”

Carla collapsed into her chair, sinking her elbows onto the desk. Something clattered to the floor. “Hey—the knob fell off my drawer! How’d that happen?”

Vida didn’t look up from her typewriter, where she was now ripping away at a story. I took the cordless screwdriver over to Carla’s desk, searched for the screw, and put it back in. “Never mind,” I sighed, keeping one eye on Ed who, judging from the puce color of his face, was giving in to the Grocery Basket’s wild whim to go to two pages. “Carla, talk to Reid Hampton. If he needs publicity for this picture, he may be able to get Dani and Matt’s cooperation. You could get a wire story out of it. Hampton would have to like that.”

Carla, however, was still pouting. “No. Dani was very obstinate. In fact, she was almost rude. Matt Tabor sneered. I think they’re both stuck up. And Dani seemed so nice! She’s a two-faced Hollywood snot!”

Carla’s original idea had struck me as good copy, though I hadn’t been foaming at the mouth over it. Now, in the
face of adversity, and with a building painted the color of egg yolk, I felt
The Advocate
should be treated with more respect.

“I’ll see Reid Hampton,” I said. “They’re right down the street.” Putting on my publisher’s face, I headed out into the bright overbearing morning sun. The camera crew had advanced up Front Street to the Venison Inn, where the sidewalk was covered with fake snow. I had a frantic desire to cross the barricade and wallow in it. Instead I paused, watching Matt Tabor, in parka and ski goggles, approach the restaurant’s entrance.

“Cut!” yelled Reid Hampton, who was aloft on a crane. “Matt, you’re not out for a morning stroll! The woman you love is inside with another man! Purpose, purpose,
purpose!
She’s yours! Claim her!”

It took six more takes before Matt appeared to be full of purpose and ready to claim his ladylove. The shot, which couldn’t have lasted more than five seconds, was pronounced ready to go into the can. Several onlookers applauded. Feeling hot and sweaty, I waited for Reid Hampton to come down off his perch.

“Emma! I was going to call you,” he said, ventilating his wide-open denim shirt with tugs of his hands. “How about dinner before we leave town?”

I hesitated. “Saturday?” I suggested.

“Damn!” He smacked a fist into his palm. “I can’t. I’m going into Seattle tomorrow to meet with some film lab people. I was thinking maybe Monday, if everything goes along on schedule.”

I was about as anxious for a rematch with Reid Hampton as I was to get a tetanus shot, but I realized he might have some pieces of the murder puzzle tucked away inside his tawny mane. At the very least, there was probably a story in it. I should have taken notes the night we ate at the Café de Flore.

Agreeing to the possibility of Monday, I tried to exhibit enthusiasm. I also tried to put the arm on him for Carla’s sake. “She’s been very much entranced by Dani and Matt,”
I gushed. “I’m sure she’d do a wonderful article on them. She takes pretty good pictures, too.” That much was true, as long as she remembered to put film in the camera. And remove the lens cap.

Hampton, momentarily distracted by a query from his assistant director, ran a hand through his thick tawny hair. “It
sounds
good,” he said in his deep voice which was tinged with regret, “but Dani and Matt are very private people. This business with Dani’s ex, Dody? Tody? Cody, right?” He gave me a quick, brilliant smile. “It’s made her skittish. Understandably. Besides, I think she’s committed to
People
or
Good Housekeeping
or
Esquire
. Tell your little reporter we’ll send her some stills from this picture. Steamy clinches. Then she can do a memory piece, you know, ‘I Watched Dani and Matt Make Love in Alpine.’ That approach. Your readers will go nuts.”

I had the impression that he thought they already were. Frustrated, I tried to think of an argument that would sway Reid Hampton. Glancing around the street, I realized that Dani wasn’t present. “Where’s your star?” I asked.

Hampton looked puzzled, then nodded at Matt Tabor, who was complaining volubly to the assistant director about his ski boots. I gathered they hurt. “Matt’s right there. Isn’t he something? If only he could act!” Hampton caught himself. “I mean, if he’d only had formal training. He could be an American Olivier. You wait; he’ll be bigger than Gibson, Costner, Schwarzenegger.”