The Alpine Fury (16 page)

“Linda was killed between seven
P.M
. and midnight Friday,” Milo said in his driest tones. I guessed that he was reading from the medical examiner’s report. “There’s no indication of sexual assault or of intercourse in the last twenty-four hours. There’s no sign of a violent struggle, which indicates she was taken by surprise and possibly wasn’t afraid of her killer.” At this point, Milo paused, not unlike a puppy expecting to be praised for performing a cute trick.

I, also like a puppy, responded. “In other words, she knew him. Or her.”

“Possibly.”
Milo was being the noncommittal lawman.
With an astute look, Leo made his exit. “Time of death is difficult to pinpoint in this case because of weather conditions. The cold slows down rigor. That’s why there’s a five-hour window. The murder probably occurred near the site where the victim was found, since the only external evidence on the clothing was dirt, underbrush, and other matter indigenous to the locale.”

I was silent for a few moments after Milo finished. “So either Linda’s car was driven back to the condo by her killer or she went there with him—or her—of her own free will.”

“Right.” I could hear Milo slurping coffee.

“In the M.E.’s opinion, could a woman have done it?”

“He won’t commit himself.”

“Which means?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“What about crime-scene evidence? Or from the car?”

“What we’ve got is being examined by the lab technician in Everett.”

“Such as?”

“Nothing spectacular.” Milo sounded vexed. “Let’s face it: We haven’t made much progress. In fact, we’re damned lucky to have gotten this far. Snohomish County is barely keeping afloat with their own forensics reports. I’ve had to push, kick, and shove to get this out of them. At least the Petersens can hold the funeral tomorrow.”

I remembered to tell Milo about Dan Ruggiero. The sheriff was not impressed. “So you and Vida went to the Lumberjack Motel to bug Minnie Harris? And you and Louie saw this guy at the Venison Inn? So what?”

“Leo,”
I said, glad that my advertising manager had left the office. “Not
Louie
. Jeez, Milo, pay attention.”

“Ruggiero checked out Thursday morning. Make your point.” Milo was definitely annoyed.

Maybe he had a reason. Dan Ruggiero couldn’t have murdered Linda Lindahl. “Vida’s checking on him,” I muttered. “When she gets back from … wherever she is. Say, could Andy be a news story in the next paper?”

“Andy?” Milo now sounded puzzled. “Cederberg? You mean the lousy driver at John Engstrom Park?”

“Andy finally reported it, right? Anyway, he told me about it, so it’s a matter of record. How should we use it?”

Milo snickered. “Put it on the sports page. ‘Andy seven, Car zero.’ Andy didn’t get hit, did he?”

Milo’s attitude was starting to irk me. The sheriff prefers to deal only in facts. He seldom allows himself the luxury of letting his imagination roam free. I gather it’s an occupational hazard. “Andy was lucky. The point is, was it an accident or deliberate? Could Andy’s near-miss tie in with Linda’s murder?”

“That’s stretching a point,” Milo replied. “It was dark, it was foggy, Andy was wearing a black overcoat. We’ve got newcomers who don’t know how to drive in local weather conditions. Or how to walk. Look at Louie.”

“Leo.”
I was gritting my teeth. But I knew when to run up the white flag. “Okay, so we’ll drop it for now. Are you going to check the closets of suspects for dirt particles that match Linda’s clothes?”

Milo’s tone turned grim. “Have you ever heard of
probable cause!
We’d need a search warrant, and we have no legal grounds to get one.”

I knew Milo was right. “What about Big Mike Brockelman? Did you interview him last night?”

“After you left, I bought him a beer.” The sound of Milo whacking his coffee mug against something solid
resonated in my ear. “He was home in Monroe Friday night. He says his wife backs him up. Or will, when she gets home from visiting her mother in Walla Walla.”

I brightened. “You mean he admitted he was seeing Linda?”

“I didn’t say that.” Milo’s voice held a warning note.

I knew better than to push Milo too far. He wasn’t obligated to tell the press everything, and we both knew that in certain types of investigations, discretion was necessary. “Are you going to ask Mrs. Brockelman about her husband’s whereabouts?”

“If we have to. We aren’t that far along yet. Anyway, she won’t be back until next week. Hey, I’ve got to run. There’s snow up at the summit and three cars just landed in the ditch. No serious injuries. You want Carla to take a picture?”

By the next edition, thirty cars might have gone off the road. I decided against sending Carla. Besides, I didn’t want to give her any ideas about plunging off Stevens Pass in a dramatic bid for tragic fame.

Vida had returned by the time I’d gone through the mail and caught up with phone calls. Leo and Carla were both out, and Ginny was pouting in the front office.

“Two months in Topeka is too long,” Vida declared, slipping a fresh sheet of paper into her typewriter. “If Grace Grundle wasn’t a twittering ninny before she went to visit her sister in Kansas, she certainly is now. All she could talk about was the state fair at Hutchinson. Huge dahlias. Enormous squash. The largest sunflower on record. The world’s biggest ball of twine. Aaaaargh!” Vida plunged her hands into the typewriter keys.

“Any pictures?” I asked hopefully.

Vida glared at me from under the brim of her blue derby. “Of what? Twine?”

“Squash is nice. So are dahlias.” I tried to sound reasonable.

Vida set her fists on her hips. “Grace takes Polaroids. They’re all dark and fuzzy. Just like her brain. No wonder she’s lost all her money! It’s a marvel she could find her house when she got back from Kansas. Grace probably thought she was in Oz.”

Listening to Vida rail, I thought Oz sounded promising. “How’d she lose her money? You mean she spent it on the trip?”

Vida was flipping through her notes. I was surprised that she had taken any. Usually she trusted to her faultless memory. Noting my gaze, Vida felt compelled to explain: “The grandnephews and great-nieces and whatever other gaggle of Grundles or whoever they are. Grace spewed them out like peach pits. I couldn’t keep up.”

I nodded in sympathy. “So she’s broke?” That didn’t seem likely. Grace Grundle was a retired schoolteacher with a less-than-flamboyant lifestyle. She had been widowed long before I came to Alpine, and there were no children. As I recalled, this was the first trip Grace had taken in years.

“She’s not
broke
, as you put it,” Vida replied, typing away. “But after she got home last week, she went to cash in a CD she thought had come due, and they couldn’t find it. I suspect it was never there in the first place. Grace has always been a bit vague.”

Before leaving Vida to her travel story, I filled her in on Milo’s report from the M.E. Vida wasn’t impressed. “He has nothing to go on,” she remarked, then reached for her Seattle directory. “I should know Bobby Lambrecht’s number, but I don’t.” Vida flipped through
the yellow pages, then picked up the phone. After a brief exchange, she put the receiver down with a clunk. “Rats! He’s in an all-day meeting. Tomorrow he’ll be off for Armistice Day.”

I concealed a smile at Vida’s somewhat arcane reference to the holiday. “Are you calling Bob about Dan Ruggiero?” I asked.

She nodded. “I don’t suppose I should bother Bobby at home. It can wait. I suppose.” But the glint in Vida’s eyes indicated that she wanted some answers, and she wanted them now. She returned, however, to Grace Grundle’s adventures in Topeka and the Kansas State Fair.

Because this was publication day, I had the luxury of researching next week’s editorial. Various possibilities presented themselves, including the sheriff’s need for funding. But I chose to congratulate the chamber of commerce on refraining from putting up Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving, and to urge them to do the same next year and forever after. While on the subject of the chamber, I gave them a nudge regarding Ginny’s proposal for the Summer Solstice Festival. Several other logging communities in the Pacific Northwest were inaugurating civic celebrations aimed at boosting tourism and giving the local economies a shot in the arm. Alpine should be among them, I pointed out.

It was midafternoon when I finished my draft. When I wrote an editorial so far in advance, there was always the chance that a more pressing matter might come along before deadline. The chamber piece wasn’t time-sensitive: I could use it at a later date.

But the part about new ideas caused me to remember the two Californians who had been guests of the ski lodge. I put in a call to Henry Bardeen, the manager. He was gone for the afternoon, according to his daughter,
Heather. Her father would return my call in the morning.

“When was the last time you had dinner in Everett?” It was Vida, standing in the doorway of my office.

I didn’t recall. “Why do you ask?”

“We-ll …” Vida was trying to look ingenuous. She never manages it. “If we eat in Everett, we could pay a call on Howard Lindahl and his family. It would be awfully good-hearted of us, don’t you think?”

I was aghast. “Vida, do you
know
Howard Lindahl? I sure don’t.”

“I met him a few times,” she replied vaguely. “I attended his wedding to Linda. He came here with her upon occasion. Once. I think.” Vida’s gaze no longer met mine.

“Then it’d be presumptuous of us to visit. We don’t even have the excuse of researching a story.”

“Yes, we do.” Vida had regained her aplomb. “‘Victim’s Survivors Cope with Violent Death.’ Well? We ran the homicide story, we ran the obit, we ran a sidebar on Linda’s life and times. Now we go for the human interest. We’ll do all the Petersens, too, and Andy and Christie and Rick.”

“That’s pushing it.”

“We’ve already talked to Thelma and Elmer. Not that you can talk to Elmer, but he’s
there
. In his way.”

I was weakening. “It’s an hour’s drive to Everett. The weather forecast is calling for snow again.”

“It won’t snow in Everett.” Vida glanced at her watch. “It’s ten after three. It’s Wednesday, you can leave early. Four, shall we say?”

“I should change,” I protested. My old gray slacks and baggy green sweater were adequate for work, but not for dinner.

“Four-fifteen then,” said Vida. “My car or yours?”

We decided on Vida’s Buick. In case of snow, it was the heavier vehicle. As I headed back into my office, I noticed that Vida was much more relaxed. She had settled on a course of action. Vida couldn’t stand sitting idly by. Some might call it meddling; I wouldn’t have dared. There were few who would, to Vida’s face.

The Dithers sisters were pitching a fit. Judy and Connie Dithers sometimes played bridge with my group when they weren’t home watching TV with their horses. At the moment, they were doing neither, nor were they speaking in the fragmented fashion they often adopt for social occasions. Larry Petersen was on the end of their ire, and both women were up in arms.

“You ought to be reported to … somebody,” Connie was screeching at Larry. “This is dishonest! What’s going on?”

Larry was looking both embarrassed and flabbergasted. “Judy … Connie … It’s just a simple mistake. The computer, probably. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll figure it out.”

Just after the paper was delivered around three, I’d gone into the Bank of Alpine to get some cash for dinner in Everett. Because of the Veterans Day break coming up, the bank was busier than usual. I was at the end of a seven-person line, and thus almost backed up to the mahogany rail that separated Larry from the inner lobby. It was impossible not to hear the Dithers sisters, especially Connie, who couldn’t bid one club without screaming.

“Then do it,” Connie demanded with a swish of her graying brown ponytail. “We’ve got four grand tied up in that CD. Winter’s coming. We need feed for the horses.”

Mercifully, I moved up two places in the teller line.
Christie, Rick, and Denise appeared to be working as fast as they could. A couple of minutes later, I was number three. Judy Dithers had abandoned her sister to wander around the lobby. She saw me standing in line and clutched at my arm.

“They’ve lost one of our money-market accounts. Can you imagine?” Judy whispered, flipping her own chestnut ponytail off her pudgy shoulder. “What’s going on around here? Linda Lindahl is murdered. Now the bank is in a mess. Why don’t they hire a new bookkeeper?”

“I heard they were getting somebody from the CPA’s office,” I said, which was a bald-faced lie. It seemed logical, since I’d never figured out how the local accountant could afford to keep two people besides himself on staff.

“We’ve always banked here,” Judy said, her wide, freckled face looking worried. “There’s never been a problem. I told Connie we shouldn’t have waited so long to order feed. She never listens to me.”

Connie was the elder of the sisters by a year and a half. There had been a brother, according to Vida, who was born a cripple. His wheelchair had gone out of control one fine summer morning twenty years ago and a logging truck had mowed him down. Connie and Judy had inherited the horse farm, a considerable amount of life insurance, and the settlement from their brother’s wrongful-death suit. If local lore could be believed, the Dithers sisters hadn’t left Alpine since they were teenagers.

“Computers get blamed for a lot of things,” I said, trying to remain neutral. “It’s probably a numerical mistake. You know, the wrong account number.”

“It’s Linda,” Judy said in her flat voice. “She was a wonderful bookkeeper. Connie got everything out of
balance last year. We asked Linda for help. In two days, she had it all straightened out. It was worth every penny we paid her.”

Moving up another notch, I gazed at Judy Dithers with interest. “You liked Linda?”

Judy arched her scraggly eyebrows. “Liked? That’s not the point. She was competent. Connie had to admit it. Hiring Linda was my idea.”

At that point, Connie stormed across the lobby. She grabbed her sister by the arm. “Larry can’t find the mistake. I had to tell him to take the money out of our regular savings account. Maybe we ought to move everything to SeaFirst in Sultan.” She paused, apparently noting my presence for the first time. “Hello, Emma. Are you having any problems?”