The Alpine Nemesis (28 page)

“I can't see it,” she said. “His eyes may change color. So may his hair. At least that's what Mom says.”

“It's a shame his father didn't live to see him,” I remarked, sitting down in one of the side chairs. “Does Cornelius look like him?”

“Maybe,” Meara allowed. “I'd like to think so.”

I took a deep breath. “How did his father die?”

Meara looked up sharply. “Why do you want to know?” Her blue-green eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Did you bring me here to ask a bunch of questions for your newspaper? Is this a trick?”

What little I knew of Meara O'Neill indicated that she was smart and spunky. I wouldn't try to fool her. Hedging would be a better approach.

“I'm not interviewing you, if that's what you mean,” I
replied calmly. “I'm interested, that's all. Your family has had a triple tragedy, with the deaths of your father and your uncles. On top of that, Cornelius's father is also dead. It seems too much to bear, and yet you're holding up. I admire you for raising your son when you're not much more than a child yourself.”

I can't say that Meara seemed placated, but her features softened a bit. “I don't feel like a teenager,” she said, holding Cornelius against her shoulder to burp him. “I've felt old all my life. Maybe it was having two older half sisters. They always ganged up on me, so I had to learn to defend myself. Then there was Mom. She needed my support when Dad got out of control. Kathy and Peggy were no help. Even though they never really knew their own mother, Mom was the wicked stepmother as far as they were concerned.”

“Would you rather not talk about your baby's father?” I asked.

Meara put the bottle back in Cornelius's mouth. “What's the point? It isn't as if we were going to get married, even if he'd lived. He was older, he had a steady girlfriend.” She paused, her eyes flashing. “You think he must have been a creep, right? And I must have been a slut. But it wasn't like that.”

“Strange as it may seem,” I said quietly, “I believe you. Did you know that my son was born out of wedlock?”

Meara's face registered surprise. “No. I thought you were divorced.”

It wasn't the proper time to go into details about my own checkered past. “So,” I said, “you can see why I'm not making any snap judgments.”

“Right.” Meara turned her attention to the baby, who had suddenly decided he didn't want to eat anymore. “Okay, I'm sorry. But I still don't want to talk about it.”

“That's fine,” I responded, hiding my disappointment.

“Can you tell me what the commotion was at the Hib-berts' just now?”

Cornelius flailed his small arms, pushing the bottle away. “That was weird,” Meara replied, rocking the baby in an effort to quiet him. “It's that Roger. He's got a big, fat crush on me.”

“Roger?” I was aghast. I thought the only thing Roger yearned for was adult videos and a bucket of ice cream.

Meara gave me an ironic glance. “We were in the same grade at Alpine High. He always trailed around after me, a real pest. His grandmother—Mrs. Runkel—wanted to talk to me for some story she's doing for your paper. We were going to do it over the phone, but this afternoon Mrs. Hibbert called, all upset. She said that she and Mr. Hibbert had to see me. They wanted Mom to come, too, but she had an appointment with somebody at the apartment and I got the feeling that she'd rather not have Cornelius and me around. So I said I'd drive over to Alpine and that way I could do the story thing with Mrs. Runkel and find out what was going on with the Hibberts.”

Cornelius let out a big squall and Meara stopped speaking. “I think I'd better change him,” she said after he refused his pacifier.

“So Vida—Mrs. Runkel—met you at her daughter's house?” I asked as Meara delved into the diaper bag while the baby cried and kicked.

“Yes,” Meara said, though not before she'd divested Cornelius of his wet diaper. “Mrs. Hibbert must have called her. Anyway, I guess Roger had been bragging to some of his buddies that he was the one who'd gotten me pregnant. His folks heard about it and had a five-star fit.”

“What?” I could hardly believe my ears.

“You heard me,” Meara said with an ironic expression.

“That's incredible,” I gasped.

“Yes.” With a dry diaper in place, Cornelius settled
down. Meara gave him the bottle and he began to suck contentedly. “I wasn't there very long, because Roger was acting like a total creep and insisting that we'd been carrying on for ages,” Meara continued. “I don't think his parents believed him, but Mrs. Runkel defended everything he said and blamed me for leading him on. Can you imagine?”

Unfortunately, I could. What I couldn't imagine was that Vida believed Roger's wild claim. Perhaps she had only been trying to help him save face.

Dry pants had increased Cornelius's appetite. He finished the last ounce in the bottle and began to coo.

“We'd better go,” Meara said, smiling back at the baby. “Mom should be finished with her meeting or whatever it was. Would you mind if I use your bathroom?”

“Go ahead,” I replied. “I'll hold Cornelius.” I'd had some practice in the not-too-distant past. A young woman and her illegitimate son had lived with me for several months. I seemed to attract unwed mothers. There was no mystery to that.

Cornelius O'Neill seemed perfectly content in my arms. I made weird clucking noises that amused him. He was a good-looking baby. Not all of them are. Mavis, my old friend and coworker from
The Oregonian,
had a firstborn who was so homely that when I saw him in the hospital I could only blurt out, “How … baby!” Happily, he had grown into a very good-looking young man.

Despite what Meara had said about Cornelius, I thought he did resemble her somewhat. I wasn't sure how, and then I realized that none of his features really reminded me of her or any of the O'Neills.

But they were familiar.

I was still puzzling over this when Meara returned from the bathroom.

“Thanks again,” she said, taking the baby from me.

“No problem,” I replied, gathering up Meara's belongings. “I'll carry them out to your car.”

“Thanks,” she repeated, then smiled, and I realized for the first time that she was very pretty. Maybe I hadn't noticed before because Meara O'Neill hadn't had much to smile about lately. But the smile still didn't suggest a resemblance to Cornelius.

While Meara fastened Cornelius into the infant seat, I put the diaper bag and purse up front. Then she got behind the wheel and wished me luck with my car.

I'd forgotten about the ruse, and must have looked blank before I caught on. “Oh—yes, I'm sure it's nothing serious. Please don't worry about Roger. Even his grandmother will acknowledge eventually that he's doing some macho bragging.”

Meara's face was grave. “Probably. But that's not what worries me.”

“Oh?” I hadn't closed the door on the passenger side, so I leaned farther into the car. “What do you mean?”

For a moment, Meara stared out through the windshield. “I told you that little creep has been following me—stalking, really—for ages. He knows who Cornelius's father was. I just hope he keeps his fat mouth shut.”

I
WASN'T SURE
why, but I felt uneasy walking back to The Pines to collect my car. It was only seven o'clock and the sun hadn't yet begun to set. There was a scent of roses from a nearby garden as I crossed Second Street on that mild Tuesday evening, and chipmunks chattered in a cedar tree at the corner. But as the Burlington-Northern whistled on its passage through town, I was reminded of something less ordinary. I'd only heard the “dead whistle” twice since my arrival in Alpine, but the memory made me shiver. The whistle was sounded at the mill when someone died in the woods or in the mill itself. Fred En-gebretsen, father of four, had been killed when he fell from a sixty-foot fir on Windy Mountain; Duane Gris-wold, only nineteen, had fallen under the wheels of a logging truck near Martin Creek. Vida had once told me how the dead whistle had haunted her while she was growing up. She said you always feared that the whistle signaled the passing of a loved one. And because Alpine was so small, the victim was always someone you knew. Fatalities were more frequent when logging was king— and killer.

Yet Alpine Way looked perfectly normal. Traffic was sparse, a middle-aged couple walked their dog, a young man on a bicycle cruised down the wide street's slope. When I arrived at the Hibberts', all seemed calm. Vida's car was still there, however, so I assumed the family was

thrashing its way through Roger's crisis. I got into the Lexus and drove back home.

The feeling of gloom remained. I tried to call Janet Driggers, but there was no answer except a recorded message. It wasn't until almost eight o'clock that I realized I hadn't eaten dinner. Something had spoiled my appetite. I was in the kitchen searching the freezer when Vida arrived at the back door, out of breath and out of temper.

“What's gotten into you, Emma?” Vida raged as she stamped into the kitchen. “Has becoming engaged destroyed your sense of loyalty?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I said, calmly. “Shall I make tea?”

“No.” Vida sat down hard on one of my kitchen chairs. “This isn't a social visit.”

“Oh, great!” I exclaimed, dropping into one of the other chairs and holding my head. “What did I supposedly do this time?”

Under the crinkled brim of her green taffeta cloche, Vida looked very stern. “You took sides. You chose Meara O'Neill.”

“Oh, Vida.” I shook my head. “I did no such thing. I wanted to talk to the girl, just as you did. How was I to know there was some sort of ruckus going on at your daughter's?”

“You might have guessed,” Vida retorted.

“Come on, Vida,” I said, “you know damned well I had no idea what was going on. I saw your Buick when I drove through The Pines and thought I'd wait for you to find out what Meara had to say for herself and why she was at Amy and Ted's. It occurred to me that we could go to dinner and talk about it.”

“Dinner!” Vida waved a hand in front of her face. “Who could possibly eat? And don't swear,” she added.

“I'll swear I didn't know what was happening,” I de-

clared. “Now I've heard Meara's side of the story. What about Roger's?”

Under her summer coat, Vida's shoulders slumped. “It's most remarkable.”

“I imagine.”

Vida sighed. “Young people grow up so fast these days.”

“What?”

“One day they're tiny tots, the next, they're adults.” Vida shrugged. “You blink, and the years have flown by.”

Vida was floating on that same pink cloud she ascended whenever she spoke of Tom and me. Now, apparently, she had put Roger—and maybe poor Meara—on a similar puff of romantic gauze.

“Vida,” I said firmly, “do you actually believe that Roger got Meara pregnant?”

“Young love, first love,” she murmured. “It seems so right when it's so wrong. My, my.”

I almost thought a tear glistened in Vida's eye, but it was probably the light reflecting off the dishwasher's rinse button. “You sound like an idiot.”

Vida scowled at me. “Mind your tongue, Emma.” She paused, and her expression softened. “We're quarreling. That's not right.”

“Of course it's not,” I agreed. “Tell me why you believe Roger.”

Vida was taken aback. “Why, I've always believed him. He's a very truthful boy. Oh, he's told the occasional fib as children do. But he's not a liar by any means.”

I doubted that. “Why would Meara deny it, then?”

“Notions,” Vida answered promptly. “Meara must have invented a romantic idea as to who fathered her baby. A mysterious older man, now dead. So tragic. And such a lovely fantasy.”

In my opinion, Meara could have fantasized Quasimodo as the father of her baby, and he would have been
more appealing than Roger. But though I refused to admit it out loud, Vida's rationale wasn't completely unbelievable.

“Meara's Irish, you see,” Vida said as I sat there cogitating. “The Irish are so clever with words, they have such wonderfully sentimental music. Sadness and loss seem to be their motif.”

But Roger?
I wanted to say. There are limits. Instead, I offered Vida a sympathetic look. “Sadness and loss are a prominent cultural theme. It's natural, it's their history.”

“Victims,” she said. “Perhaps they like being victims, like women who stay with abusive men. And vice versa. Those famines—they lived on an island. Didn't anyone have a fishing rod or a gill net?”

Vida was off on a tangent, perhaps to divert me. “Do Amy and Ted believe Roger?” I asked.

She snatched off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Ooooh … you never can be sure with them. They want not to believe him, of course. Legal and financial reasons. Responsibility.”

“Meara doesn't want to marry Roger,” I declared, practically quivering at the very thought.

“Not at present,” Vida replied, giving her eyes a final rub. “But down the road, who knows?”

I reached out and grabbed her hand. “Vida,” I said, forcing her to look at me straight on, “I don't believe Roger. His parents don't believe him. Meara says he's lying. Why can't you, of all people, see the truth?”

As soon as I'd spoken, I knew the answer. Because nobody else believes him. Someone must have faith in Roger or he will become a lost soul. “Never mind,” I blurted before Vida could open her mouth. I let go of her hand and gave it a quick, fond pat. “Al Driggers is missing.”