The Alpine Menace (7 page)

I
CALLED FOR
the guard and went back into the waiting room. Vida rose as soon as she saw me. “Shall I see him now?” She looked particularly imposing, no doubt an attempt at rising above her sordid surroundings.

“No,” I said, irked. “Ronnie went to sleep on me. I guess I bore him.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Vida demanded.

“What I said. Ronnie fell asleep. Nighttime in jail isn't easy for the Ronnies of this world. He needs a nap.”

“Heaven helps those who help themselves,” Vida intoned, then made a face. “Unless they can't.”

“Which is why we're here?” I remarked with a wry expression.

“Your cousin's resources are limited in prison,” Vida replied.

As we made our way to the elevator, I tried not to look at the arriving visitors. No matter what sex, color, age, or size, there was something forlorn about them. A little black girl about four was stumbling along beside her mother, who carried an infant. The mother's eyes were empty, devoid of hope. The little girl clung to a stuffed Curious George, with a yarn monkey's bright-eyed smile. The child stopped and looked up at me. She, too, smiled, more shyly than her toy. Maybe there was still hope for one so young. I smiled back. But there was nothing I could do for her. I walked on.

Forlorn and forsaken, both the innocent and the guilty. I wondered if there was really anything I could do for Ronnie.

Before leaving the motel, I'd called his lawyer at home. Alvin Sternoff lived in a condo in Belltown, a couple of miles away. His offices were in the Public Safety Building adjacent to the jail. Alvin was coming into work for a few hours, and had agreed to meet us at ten-thirty. We were early, but I didn't want to waste my good parking place.

Alvin, however, was already struggling through a tall pile of beige folders. He looked harried, anxious, and incredibly young.

“Excuse the mess,” he said, pulling out an extra chair and hitting his shin in the process. “My office isn't exactly fancy.”

Alvin was right. It was austere, even drab, and the only personal, nonfunctional items were a figurine of Snoopy wearing a mortarboard and Alvin's law-school degree from the University of Washington.

“I hope you don't think I'm not giving your cousin my full attention,” Alvin said after I'd made the introductions. “I'm not, but I want to. It's just that…” He waved a pudgy hand at the stacks of papers and folders on his desk, accidentally knocking a legal pad on the floor. “Sorry,” he said, ducking down to retrieve the pad.

“You're overloaded,” I said.

“Boy, am I,” Alvin replied, his dark eyes wide. He was a chunky young man with black hair and a dimple in his chin. His heavy black eyebrows grew upward, like little bird wings. “I've only been doing public-defender work for six months. I figure it'll help me decide what kind of practice I want to get into if I go off on my own or join a firm.” He jumped up, hands gripping the arms of his chair. “I forgot. Coffee? Tea?”

“We're fine,” I said for both of us. “Can you go over the statement Ronnie made when he was arrested?”

“Statement,” Alvin murmured, shuffling papers, some of which appeared to have food stains on them. “Statement, statement… Here it is. It's not very helpful.”

Alvin was right. I shared the account with Vida, who leaned to one side and frowned.

I came home about one or so
, Ronnie had written in a clumsy hand,
and there were the cops, with Carol dead. I'd been out drinking since nine or so. I think I was at Top's and the Satellite Room and maybe Freddy's, but I don't know where when. Carol and I had kind of a shouting match before I went out, but she was okay when I left and watching TV. I didn't hurt her, not at all. I ain't done nothing wrong, least of all kill Carol who I really loved
.

“The police didn't believe him,” I said, handing the statement back to Alvin.

“Ronnie was drunk,” Alvin said, fiddling with a ballpoint pen. “He had some fresh bruises and scratches, as if he'd been in a fight. Carol was bruised, too, her shoulders, her face, and her chest. Whether or not Ronnie killed Carol, it's hard to believe that the two of them didn't come to blows.”

“Do you think he strangled her?” Vida asked.

Alvin grimaced. “I don't know. If she'd been beaten to death, I'd have to believe he did it. But this strangling business puts a different spin on it. Whoops!” He dropped the pen. “Sorry,” he said, making another dive under his desk. “Anyway, he swears he didn't, and that's all I need to know as a public defender.”

“It was a drapery cord that was used?” I asked.

Alvin nodded. “About two feet long. I can probably plea-bargain the homicide charge down to man two, but your cousin wants me to get him off because he insists he didn't kill Carol. Maybe you could help talk him into a plea.”

I was dubious about that, and said so. “I tried to find out this morning if there were any other suspects,” I went
on, “but Ronnie nodded off and I didn't get an answer. Do you know of anyone else who might have wanted to kill Carol?”

Alvin let out a big sigh, his shoulders slumping. “There's the daughter, Kendra, who found her. Do you know anything about her?”

Vida nodded. “Yes. She was illegitimate. Her adoptive parents seem to be involved in some domestic dispute. Not with her, but with each other.”

“Really?” Alvin seemed interested. “How did you find that out?”

The reaction further eroded my confidence in Alvin Sternoff. Vida, however, explained about the disturbance at the Addison home the previous night. “We just happened to drive by. It was most fortuitous.”

“I guess,” Alvin said, regarding Vida with a trace of awe. “Anything else you've learned?”

“Not yet,” Vida said smugly, “but we will.”

“We met the neighbor, Maybeth Swafford,” I said. “She's convinced Ronnie did it, but her story doesn't ring quite true.”

“Really?” Again, Alvin seemed surprised. “In what way?”

“Have you interviewed her?” I asked, wondering exactly what Alvin had done on Ronnie's behalf.

“Yes. Of course,” Alvin said hastily, giving his knuckles a painful whack on the desk. “Ouch. Excuse me. May-beth said she heard them fighting and then Ronnie left and there wasn't another sound out of the apartment until Kendra arrived and found the body.”

“Is Maybeth a credible witness?” I queried, wondering if Alvin would survive our meeting, let alone the trial.

He shook his head. “She won't hold up very well under my cross-examination.”

“That's good,” I said. “Who have you got for character witnesses?”

“Um…” Alvin riffled some more papers, losing a few in the process. “A couple of Ronnie's drinking buddies.”

“But not able to give him alibis?” I asked.

With regret, Alvin shook his head. “One of them, Bobby Markovich, was out of town the night of the murder. The other, Rick Dietz, was home with his girlfriend. Ronnie's boss will testify for him under duress.”

“So Ronnie was employed,” Vida put in. “What did he do?”

“He drives truck for a roofer named Garvey Lang out in Lynnwood,” Alvin replied. “Lang has a wood yard, too. Ronnie mostly makes deliveries.”

“Why is Mr. Lang reluctant to be a character witness?” Vida inquired.

Alvin looked apologetic. “I guess Ronnie isn't the most reliable employee. He actually works part-time, but Lang said that he didn't always show up when he was supposed to. He would have let him go, but he said he felt sorry for Ronnie. He seemed like such a… loser.”

“That,” I said, “is my impression.”

“Sorry,” Alvin said. “I mean, he's your cousin. I don't want to disrespect him.”

“Don't worry about it,” I said. “As I explained to you on the phone when I was still in Alpine, Ronnie's side of the family and my side weren't close. If he weren't so pathetic—and such a loser—I wouldn't be here.”

“Right.” Alvin grabbed a pencil and jiggled it up and down. “I see plenty of losers in this job, and I've only just begun. It's kind of discouraging. Yikes!”

Somehow, he'd managed to impale his left hand with the pencil. Alvin checked to see if he'd drawn blood, then apologized once more. I asked him about priors, having gotten the impression from Ronnie that this wasn't his first arrest.

“Little stuff,” Alvin replied, sucking on his hand.

“One assault, five years ago. He and some guy got into it in a tavern. Then he got picked up last year for smoking.”

“For smoking?” I asked.

Alvin nodded. “It was in a bar down by the old
Post-Intelligencer
building. They had a big sign outside saying ‘Smoke-Free Lounge.’ Ronnie thought it meant he could go in and smoke free cigarettes. He lit up his own and they tried to throw him out. He put up a big fuss, and they called the cops. Oops!” Alvin knocked over Snoopy.

I was beginning to wonder if Ronnie was the only loser in this scenario.

For the first time since leaving Alpine, I remembered to check the voice messaging on my cell phone. Finally surrendering to the modern age in December, I'd bought the cell phone and spent the first month trying to figure out how it worked. Three months later I still hadn't gotten in the groove of checking it out on a regular basis.

“They
are
handy,” Vida remarked as I poked various buttons while we sat in the Lexus outside the county-city buildings. “Do you think I ought to get one?”

The question surprised me. Vida was still a computer holdout, relying on an ancient typewriter and lightning two-finger accuracy on the keys. Despite the fact that Kip had to enter all her copy in the back shop, she refused to give in. But a telephone was different: Vida could communicate directly with her many sources. Maybe if she got a cell phone, she'd eventually come around to a word processor.

“I think of this as a safety device,” I said, hearing the unctuous recorded voice of a woman who might be dead by now for all I knew. “You have one new message…” I poked two more buttons. “Milo nagged me until I realized it was only stubbornness that prevented me from… Oh, shoot. It's Ed.”

The call was from my former ad manager who had inherited wealth and, with it, a sense of superiority. Ed Bronsky was calling not from his so-called villa in Alpine, but from the Hyatt Regency in Bellevue.

“Shirley and I are taking a meeting with Irv and Skip today,” Ed said, sounding all puffed up even in a recorded message. “I heard you were in Seattle, so I thought you'd want to sit in on it. It's big, Emma, really huge.” Like Ed, I thought. “We've got a producer lined up for
Mr. Ed
.”

Mr. Ed
was Ed's rags-to-riches autobiography, published by a vanity press on the Eastside. The publishers, Irving Blomberg and Skip O'Shea, were representing Ed in an attempt to sell the book to a movie or TV producer. Frankly, I thought they were stringing him along.

“The meeting's at one,” Ed's message continued, “in the restaurant at the hotel. Talk about breaking news! You can be here in person to get the lowdown. By the way,” he added slyly, “I'm buying.”

“That
is
news,” I said after repeating the message to Vida. “I'm almost tempted to go so we can see Ed pick up the check.”

“We don't have time for such foolishness,” Vida declared. “We must figure out a way to get into Carol's apartment.”

The idea seemed useless to me. The police had undoubtedly removed any sign of evidence. Still, Vida wouldn't be satisfied until we got inside so she could snoop around.

But first I had to call Ed back at the hotel. In their room—a suite, no doubt—Ed answered on the first ring. “Bronsky,” he said in that pseudo-gruff voice he'd adopted since becoming rich. While he was my ad manager, he never picked up the phone until it was ready to trunk over to Ginny, and when he did, he uttered a beleaguered “Ed here, what can I do for you?” He always sounded as if he expected the worst, like having to dig our
advertisers out of a rock quarry or save them from a raging bull at the Overholt farm.

Forcing regret into my voice, I explained that Vida and I were on a mission to help one of my relatives who'd gotten into trouble. I didn't want to be explicit, lest all Alpine learn that I had a cousin who was a jailbird. Worse yet, I didn't want Ed incorporating my problem into his life story.

“Darn,” Ed said in a heartfelt tone. “This would be a big break for you, Emma. The producer, Manny Malone, has got the contract with him. It's going to be a series, for gosh sakes!”

“It is?” I gave Vida a startled look. “What happened to the cable-TV movie?”

“It didn't pan out,” Ed replied. “Anyway, this is a much better deal. It's going to be animated.”

“Oh.” I'd maneuvered the phone so Vida could also hear. “You mean a cartoon, like
The Simpsons
or
King of the Hill
?”

“Kind of,” Ed responded, his voice dropping a notch. “Only with animals. I'll be Chester White.”

“They're changing your name to Chester White? How come?”

“It's not exactly my name,” Ed replied, sounding impatient. “I'll probably still be Ed. Chester White is my breed. I'm a pig.”

Surprise.

Maybeth Swafford wasn't home, but the resident of 1-A was. Henrietta Altdorf was a big woman of sixty, short of breath, with a florid face, graying auburn hair, and shrewd blue eyes.

“Maybeth told me you'd be coming by,” Henrietta said with a wink. “Mr. Chan, the landlord, left the key with me this morning. He's anxious to rent the place. You know what landlords are.” She winked again.

By the time Henrietta found the key to 1-B, we'd heard the story of her life. She'd been widowed once, divorced twice, and didn't have much time for men. Four years and eight months to go before she could retire from her job as an RN at Northwest Hospital. Her only son lived in Puyallup, which you'd think was four hundred miles away instead of forty. His two boys had no discipline, and his wife was a scatterbrain. Not that it mattered, since she was lucky if she saw any of them more than once a year.

“The younger generation.” She laughed in a disgusted manner. “I don't understand them. They only think of the big I.”

“So true,” Vida murmured, mildly fascinated by Henrietta's recital. “Sometimes my three daughters and I are at odds.”