The Alpine Escape (6 page)

Mike was fingering his chin and looking pensive. “You’re right about proof, Emma. But the shoe would fit the foot bones. I’ll admit, it’s hard to tell because of the high heel and raised arch. Still, it’s a very small size, and the skeleton has very small feet.”

Jackie all but jumped out of the wooden booth. “I know!” she cried, waving her arms. “We can go through the picture albums! Maybe we can find one of the women wearing the earring or the cross. Or even the bracelet.”

The ponytailed waitress brought our beverages, which included an iced tea for Jackie. Paul waited until we were alone again before he spoke. “This is really kind of weird.” He gave a self-deprecating laugh.
“When those workmen found the bones yesterday, I was surprised, of course. But I figured it was just some kind of freaky thing, an accident of some sort. I didn’t identify with it at all. But now, when we’re talking about somebody whose picture might be in the family albums—maybe a relative, for God’s sake—it’s
strange
.” He took one of Jackie’s hands in both of his and sighed. “You’re right, Sweets—this isn’t good for you and the baby. Let’s call it quits right now before we all get the creeps.”

Jackie was gazing earnestly at Paul. “I don’t think we can. Not now.” Her voice was hushed. “That skeleton is in our house. We’re starting our life together, beginning a family. We’ve got to do right by … whoever it was. What if it
is
somebody who’s related to you? Don’t we have to find out who and give her a decent burial? If we don’t do what’s right, we may be cursed or something.”

Paul studied his bride’s concerned face. Out of the corner of my eye, I tried to gauge Mike Randall’s reaction. In my undergraduate days at the University of Washington, we had divided people into two separate categories: the humanities majors and the science majors. History, English, foreign languages, communications—all were taught on what was known as Upper Campus. Biology, botany, oceanography, engineering, medicine et al. were Lower Campus offerings. They were two separate worlds as far as most of us were concerned. The men I now observed—a science teacher and an engineer—belonged to the Lower Campus group. They didn’t think like the rest of us. Their minds were orderly and unimaginative. They were given to cold, hard facts. When they ventured into the abstract, they spoke of theories. There was no room in their logical thinking processes for fancy or superstition. I waited anxiously, if sanguinely, for their response.

“You’re right,” Paul declared, kissing Jackie’s fingertips.
“It would be terrible to ship my ancestor’s remains off to somebody in Bremerton. For all we know, they’d go into a Dumpster. That’d be real disturbing.”

Mike was nodding in sympathy. “You’ve got to at least give it a try. Identifying the poor creature, I mean. Besides, it’s curious. How did she get there? A history lesson in human behavior, as it were.”

History lesson notwithstanding, it was more than curious to me. If I’d been asked, I’d have said it was just plain fascinating. Still, the men of science had surprised me. I wouldn’t have expected them to show the spirit and verve of Vida Runkel in tackling the antique mystery, but they certainly hadn’t pooh-poohed the concept.

Jackie’s pizza and my garlic bread arrived. I found myself sharing the hot slices of fresh Italian bread with Mike Randall. Paul helped Jackie eat her pizza.

With the food’s arrival the conversation turned to lighter topics. Paul talked about his job at Rayonier. Mike expounded on how college students lacked self-esteem. Jackie wondered about wallpapering the downstairs rooms. I recounted my Jaguar’s troubles but not the reason for making the trip in the first place. Mike accepted another chunk of garlic bread, his deep blue eyes straying in my direction. Feeling uneasy, I engaged in a drawn-out monologue about publishing
The Alpine Advocate
. By some miracle my audience was still awake when I finally wound down.

It was after ten-thirty when we got back to the Rowley-Melcher house. Mike made polite noises about not coming back inside, but Jackie insisted, at least until we finished going through the photo albums.

“It shouldn’t be too hard,” she assured us as we trooped into the den. “Emma says that the shoe is from around the turn of the century.”

“I’m guessing, I’m guessing,” I put in hastily, waving a hand at Jackie. “I did some fashion features on
The
Oregonian
for your mother’s special editions. This heel is stacked, a style that women adapted from men after 1900. It’s straight, not curved, which is unusual for a woman’s shoe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. If I have to stick my neck out further, I’d guess that whoever wore that shoe wasn’t on her way to the opera or a ball.”

Jackie giggled. “In Port Angeles? I’ll bet she wasn’t, either!”

With an air of apology, Mike corrected Jackie. “Actually, there
was
an opera house in town at the time. I understand it was the center of most social activities. I read up on local history before I moved here.”

“Neat,” Jackie remarked without enthusiasm. Suddenly, she sobered and tears welled up in her eyes. “Poor thing! The dead woman, I mean. But what was she doing, wearing her jewelry while she was cleaning house?”

Paul, who was now sitting next to Jackie on the sofa, patted her knee. “They had servants, Sweets. They had to, with this big place.”

“Well, we don’t!” Jackie pulled away and shot her husband an accusing look. “That’s the trouble with this modem age, you men expect us to be superwomen!”

I had resumed my place on the floor while Mike tried not to sink into the footstool. Jackie had a point. When the house was finally renovated, it would be a wonderful place to live. But not to clean. Since Jackie showed no interest in housekeeping, I felt for her. And for Paul.

“Women wore jewelry much more in those days than we do now,” I remarked, trying to steer the conversation away from controversy. “Everyone dressed more formally, even in small towns like Port Angeles.”

The atmosphere perked up as quickly as it had run down. I was trying to get used to Jackie’s mercurial temperament, but it wasn’t easy. My sole reporter on
The Advocate
, Carla Steinmetz, was also given to unpredictable mood swings. But Carla was inherently enthusiastic if basically addled. She rarely resorted to tears and seldom complained. I found myself overcome with appreciation for what seemed like comparative stability. Competence was another matter.

Each of us was perusing one of the old albums. We were silent for several moments, with only the sound of pages turning and a faint breeze stirring the evergreens in the spacious yard. The street was quiet, probably because most traffic used the truck route a couple of blocks away.

Jackie finished her album first. “I wish that earring was bigger. With some of these pictures I can’t see much. The women are looking straight at the camera.”

I was the one to spot the garnet earrings, though I’d had to use a magnifying glass Paul had found in a drawer. The woman was wearing a high-necked dress with a lace yoke. Under a broad-brimmed hat her fair hair was coiffed into a pompadour. She had tilted her head just enough to permit a full view of the left earring.

“That’s Carrie Rowley Malone!” Paul exclaimed in an excited voice. “My God!” He began to pace around the small room, his hands clasping and unclasping behind his back.

The full impact of the discovery had not yet hit Jackie, who was gazing in a bemused fashion at the photograph. “She was sort of pretty, in her way. Do you suppose that’s really her in the basement?”

Paul stopped abruptly in front of the bookcase. His expression was faintly appalled. “All we can do is guess from the evidence. I’d have to say so. My God, Jackie, she was part of the family! This is terrible!”

But Jackie didn’t agree. “She wasn’t family. She was a Rowley. You’re a Melcher. She might as well be a
stranger.” Jackie paused, shuddered, and slumped against the sofa. “You’re right, it
is
awful. But what about serial killers? All those victims who are never found? What do their parents and children and friends think? Do you realize that at this very minute someone is waiting for a loved one who isn’t ever coming home?”

Incredulously, Paul stared at his wife; I looked away; Mike seemed ill at ease. “That’s exactly what we’re talking about, Jackie,” Paul finally said in a stem voice. “Not serial killers, maybe, but somebody who disappeared and was left in the basement.”

Jackie’s eyes grew very wide. She put a hand over her mouth and bolted from the room. Paul hesitated, then rushed after her. I was left alone with Mike.

He got to his feet, hovering over me. “Is she ill?” he inquired in a worried voice.

I recalled that Mike and his ex-wife had had no children. “Probably,” I replied. “No cause for alarm. Morning sickness doesn’t always happen in the morning. It’s normal, especially after all those anchovies.” Feeling a trifle silly kneeling at Mike’s feet, I also stood up.

“Mmmmm.” Mike nodded absently. “I haven’t been through the wonder of childbirth. It’s a privilege to share even in a small way.”

My smile was feeble. “Well, certainly,” I temporized, “it’s a … marvel.” The real marvel was that having once done it, anyone would do it again. Throwing up, being clumsy, having no energy, and going into labor weren’t among my favorite memories. Yet I knew that if I’d had the chance, I would have given birth to more than one child. Not expecting Mike to understand, I didn’t elaborate.

An awkward silence grew between us. We stood an arm’s length apart, he looking vaguely embarrassed, I feeling a flush on my cheeks. Mike Randall was undeniably
good-looking and apparently eligible. He was educated, employed, and in my age group. Why wasn’t I warming to the man? Why did I feel that I ought to? After tonight I’d probably never see him again.

“What should we do next?” he asked, sounding vaguely helpless. But at least he broke the tension.

I checked my watch. It was almost eleven. “We can’t do much. Not this late. I realize there’s no way to be sure that it’s Carrie Rowley Malone’s remains, but it’s a logical conclusion. I suppose I’d have her buried in the family plot and try to forget about it.”

Mike agreed, adding that Jackie and Paul might want to have a graveside service. “I’m not a member of any formal religion myself, though we all have our spiritual side. I can’t speak for Paul and his wife, but getting a minister to say a few words often makes people feel better. You know, a sense of closure.”

I wasn’t about to go into my own philosophy of the soul. “Jackie’s parents are Episcopalian,” I noted, recalling the mutual needling Mavis and I had indulged in over the years. She’d tease me about Episcopalians having purified the existing Roman Catholic Church; I’d retaliate by asking her how she could belong to a religious group founded by a king whose midlife crisis demanded that he marry a younger woman. We both took our faiths seriously but never the arguments. I had a sneaking suspicion that Mike Randall wouldn’t understand that, either. Or, worse yet, that he’d try.

Paul returned without Jackie, who had gone to bed. “She’s worn out from all this,” he said by way of apologizing for his wife. “Jackie takes things too hard.”

Mike Randall took his leave, but not before offering his suggestion about disposing of the unfortunate body. Paul seemed receptive, but after Mike had left, he shook his head.

“Jackie won’t let go so easy,” he declared, helping
me put the old photo albums in a temporary resting place on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. “Now that she thinks she knows who, she’ll want to know why.”

I couldn’t blame her. So did I. If the bones in the basement belonged to Caroline Rowley Malone, if there was no record of her death in the family Bible, if the remnants of apparel could be dated to the first decade of the century, then she couldn’t have been more than thirty when she died. And how had Carrie Malone, wife and mother of three, ended up in an unfinished basement?

It seemed to me that her story was also unfinished.

A
LL WAS NOT
well in Alpine. While I had not yet heard back from Dusty’s Foreign Auto Repair, I felt I should touch base with
The Advocate
. It was Wednesday, publication day. When I left the office early Monday evening, everything had seemed to be under control. If there were any last-minute crises—and there often were, even on a weekly paper—the capable Vida Runkel could handle them.

But even Vida couldn’t make miracles. Carla had come down with the flu the previous morning and was still at home in bed. Her current boyfriend, Peyton Flake, M.D., couldn’t make miracles, either. My ad manager, Ed Bronsky, had suddenly lost the steam he’d finally acquired in the spring.

“Ed lost two half-page ads besides,” Vida fumed at the other end of the telephone line. “Flat out
lost
them! Barton’s Bootery and Harvey’s Hardware! The bootery was having a summer sale to unload all of the sandals nobody’s wearing because it’s too cold, and Harvey Adcock had a special purchase of lumber for Fixer-Upper Week. I don’t want to think about what Ed’s doing with that special section!”

I could almost hear Vida rubbing her eyes, a habit she has when she’s agitated. In my mind I pictured my House & Home editor, the receiver propped between one ear and a wide, rayon-clad shoulder, the unruly
gray curls bobbing on her head, tortoiseshell glasses sitting on the desk, fists grinding away.

The Fixer-Upper issue was due out the following week, and I’d hoped it would run at least twelve pages, bringing the paper’s total to thirty-six. The present edition was set for the usual twenty-four, but with a full page of missing ads, I had to ask the dreaded question: “Have we come up short?”

“Of course,” Vida responded promptly. “We’re going twenty. Carla didn’t finish her story on the proposed swimming-pool bond issue or the Bible school feature. And she didn’t get those pictures taken of the new picnic tables up at the Icicle Creek Campground. That would have filled a page in itself—if there’d been any campers. The tourist count is way down. I did three inches on the Chamber of Commerce’s lament about the downtrend in visitors. I also—God help me—relented and wrote that piece on Crazy Eights Neffel playing board games with a bear.”