The Alpine Recluse (2 page)

Still, I’d be with Rolf. That was worth consideration. We weren’t in love yet; we were still at the being-in-lust stage. And because we lived eighty-five miles apart, we’d been together less than a dozen times since our first real date the previous November.

I decided to wait until after seven to return Rolf’s call. In the summer, he often worked late, helping to fill in for vacationing colleagues. Unlike some of the younger bureau staffers, Rolf didn’t have to go home to a family, only to his aging mutt named Spree.

But Rolf didn’t answer when I dialed his number at seven-thirty. I didn’t leave a message; I’d try again closer to nine o’clock. I could have called him on his cell phone, but I didn’t want to bother him if he was at work. Nor did I want to seem like a besotted teenager, tracking him down, checking his whereabouts, fretting over what he was doing and who he was doing it with.

When the phone rang an hour later, I thought it might be him. But it was Vida, and she sounded annoyed.

“I may have a hole on my page,” she said crossly. “Dot and Durwood Parker aren’t home.”

It took me a moment to recall why the Parkers’ absence was noteworthy. Or why they were newsworthy. “Oh,” I finally said. “They’ve been on an Alaskan cruise, right?”

“The Inland Passage,” Vida responded. “They got back yesterday. I swore I’d never write another Alaska cruise feature, but this was different because they ran aground. You’d think Durwood was steering the ship.”

Durwood Parker was a retired pharmacist and the worst driver who’d ever lived in Alpine. Indeed, Sheriff Milo Dodge had yanked Durwood’s license years ago. “What time was your interview?” I inquired.

“Six-thirty,” Vida replied. “I was invited to supper. Dot was making a Chinese chicken salad. I ran the recipe a year or so ago. It’s actually quite good.”

“I assume you drove to their house,” I said.

“Of course. Everything was closed up, except for a window or two. Their car was gone. Naturally, Dot would’ve driven. But there was no note, and there’s certainly not enough wind to blow anything away. So airless these days. I waited for over fifteen minutes.” Vida paused for breath. “I’ve telephoned twice since then, but they don’t answer. I’m also tempted to call the hospital to see if something happened. The Parkers aren’t spring chickens, you know.”

I knew. Durwood and Dot must be close to eighty. “Did you try calling their daughter?”

“Yes, I phoned Cookie a few minutes ago, but her line was busy,” Vida replied. “I refuse to pay seventy-five cents to have the phone company ring me back when the line is free. That’s a terrible gyp.”

“Maybe they’re getting forgetful,” I said. “You’ve got until deadline tomorrow afternoon to do the interview.”

“But not with Chinese chicken salad,” Vida pointed out. “Dot wouldn’t bother making an elaborate lunch.”

That, I figured, was a sacrifice my House & Home editor would have to make in order to fill her page. I rang off, then placed another call to Rolf. Still no answer. Maybe there was breaking news in the city. I wondered how Scott was doing with the county commissioners’ meeting. The old farts droned on for hours. My unfortunate reporter probably wouldn’t escape until after ten. I was certain that Scott was sitting in the stuffy meeting room at the courthouse, longing to be back in the embrace of his fiancée, Tamara Rostova. They were planning an October wedding, and making noises about eventually moving away from Alpine. I dreaded the thought of finding someone to fill Scott’s place. The list of competent journalists who were willing to work for a small weekly paying small wages was short.

By eleven o’clock I still hadn’t reached Rolf. Maybe he’d gone out to dinner after work. Maybe he was still manning the AP desk. Maybe he’d found another woman. Feeling faintly sorry for myself, I got ready for bed.

My bedroom is small, but not airless at night. When my son visited in June the weather had already turned unusually warm. Before his priestly duties sent him to a remote Alaskan village, his mechanical aptitude was only a notch better than my own, which consists of sometimes operating an electric can opener. For Adam, necessity had been the mother not only of invention, but application. He had installed fans in both bedroom windows. The whirring noise bothered me the first two nights, but I got used to it. Again, I blessed my son for making my summer nights bearable.

Still, I lay awake for a while, wondering what had happened to Rolf. I suppose it was the sound of the fan that kept me from hearing the distant wail of fire engines. Usually, I’m alert to any emergency calls, as they signal news in Alpine. But it was only when the sirens multiplied and grew near my house that I sat up in bed.

I looked out the half-opened window. An orange glow filled the sky. Blinking several times, I focused and saw sparks not more than a hundred yards away. Out of the corner of my eye I caught the sight of flashing lights as the emergency vehicles hurtled along Fir Street. Only a few seconds passed before the sirens stopped. I judged that the fire was no more than a block away.

Hurriedly, I got out of bed and threw a bathrobe over my short summer pajamas. Instead of slippers, I put on sandals. By the time I reached the street, my next-door neighbors, Val and Viv Marsden, were already outside. So were several others, all cautiously moving toward the conflagration.

“We were just getting ready for bed,” Viv Marsden said breathlessly. “It must be the new house in the cul-de-sac. You know—where Tim and Tiffany Rafferty live.”

I knew all too well. Tim and Tiffany had been married for less than a year. They’d bought the vacant lot at the end of Fifth Street a few months before their wedding. Six months later they moved into the finished three-bedroom house that had been built by Dick Bourgette, a local contractor.

If it had seemed hot during the day, the temperature soared as we edged closer to the burning house. The firefighters were already plying their hoses. The Marsdens and I couldn’t get any farther than a few yards from the corner.

I peered around through the smoke, which was beginning to sting my eyes. Other neighbors were outside, too, but I couldn’t recognize them. Sparks were flying, and the crackle of the flames was deafening. Two loud explosions assaulted my ears, like back-to-back bombs. I heard glass shatter, too. The windows had blown out.

“Holy Christ!” Val cried in a ragged voice. “It’s a damned inferno!”

It certainly was. The night air smelled not only of smoke, but other, more repugnant odors: chemicals, plastics, fabric, food—everything that was used to make life livable.

I winced as I heard timbers break and crumble inside the Rafferty house. “Do you see Tim and Tiffany?” I asked Viv.

“I can’t see anything.” She coughed. “This is awful.” She turned to Val. “Let’s go back. Maybe we should use our own hoses. If the fire spreads to the trees, our house could be in danger, too.”

“You’re right,” Val said. “Let’s go.”

I didn’t blame Viv and Val. Only one other house was between their property and the cul-de-sac, a small rental that had stood vacant for over a year. Maybe I should follow the Marsdens’ lead. The evergreens and the wild berry bushes and the rest of the undergrowth could burst into flames at any moment. The only saving grace was that Dick Bourgette had cleared a swath of ground for a garden that had yet to be landscaped.

While I was putting a tissue over my nose and mouth, the sheriff pulled up in his Grand Cherokee and the medics arrived from the opposite direction. Milo Dodge awkwardly got out of his vehicle, looking as if he’d thrown his clothes up in the air and run under them.

“Anyone inside?” I heard him shout to the firefighters.

The answer was lost in the din and the smoke. From across the street, I could hear Edith Holmgren calling frantically to her various cats. My not-so-congenial neighbors to the west, LaVerne and Doyle Nelson, were ambling down the street with one of their obnoxious teenagers.

I stood rooted to the dirt track that passed for a sidewalk in my part of Alpine. There was something so primeval about fire. Even though my eyes hurt and my breathing was impaired, I couldn’t stop staring at the flames, licking ever upward above the roof.

Or what was left of it. I heard more sounds of crashing timbers. Despite the firefighters’ best efforts, the house was doomed. I knew that the main concern now was to contain the blaze. I also knew that I should be taking photographs.

Incredibly, a familiar—and welcome—voice was speaking in my ear. I turned to look up into Scott Chamoud’s handsome face.

“I followed the sirens,” he said. “I didn’t get out of that damned commissioners’ meeting until almost eleven.”

He had his camera. Without waiting for me to respond, he began to prowl around, looking for a good—and safe—angle. I’d started to cough and sneeze. The heat was still intense, although it appeared that the fire was burning down and the smoke was turning white instead of black. Having used up the single tissue I’d tucked into my bathrobe pocket, I wiped at my eyes with my sleeve.

Scott kept shooting film. Milo was still across the cul-de-sac, talking to the medics. Walking out into the street and between the various emergency vehicles, I approached the sheriff. He didn’t see me until I poked him in the upper arm.

“Where are Tim and Tiffany?” I inquired.

He glanced at me impatiently. “How the hell do I know?”

I realized he couldn’t know. A sickening feeling overcame me. What if the fire had started while Tim and Tiffany were sleeping? They might have been overcome by smoke inhalation. They might be dead.

As the night’s tragic events unfolded, it turned out that I was only half-right.

TWO

I
STAYED NEARBY
, keeping watch with Scott. The sheriff looked angry and helpless, shifting his tall frame from one foot to the other, occasionally exchanging a word with Del Amundson, one of the medics, or Deputy Sam Heppner, who had shown up in his regulation uniform. Sam, I figured, was on night duty, and probably had been patrolling Highway 2 or some of the side roads in Skykomish County.

Waving my hand in front of my face in a hopeless attempt to dispel some of the heat and smoke, I tried to figure out where the flames seemed most concentrated in the house. It was impossible. Virtually all of the wooden structure was burning except for one wall to the east. Ironically, I could see a brick chimney that apparently had been part of a fireplace. On a hot August night, that wouldn’t have been the place where the blaze would have started.

“No sign of Tim or Tiff?” Scott asked, echoing my own thoughts.

I shook my head. We both had to raise our voices to make ourselves heard over the crackling cacophony of the fire. “Maybe they weren’t home.”

Scott didn’t speak for a moment, standing motionless with his camera at the ready. For the moment, there was too much smoke for picture-taking. “Tiffany’s working,” he said suddenly. “I saw her at the Grocery Basket on my way to the meeting. I had to pick up a couple of things Tamara forgot this afternoon after she finished teaching at the college. Tiff checked me out, and was griping about her back.”

I suddenly remembered that Tiffany was pregnant. The news had appeared in Vida’s “Scene” column a month ago, mentioning that the baby was due in December.

“I wonder if she knows,” I said, grimacing. “Doesn’t the evening shift work until the store closes at midnight?”

Scott looked at his watch, which had hands that glowed in the dark. “It’s getting close to that now. God, I hope somebody tells her before she gets home.”

“Maybe Tim went to the store to give her the bad news,” I said hopefully.

The flames were dying down, though the heat was still fierce. More people had gathered in the area between Fifth and Fir streets, including a half-dozen cars. I spotted Milo’s new deputy, Doe Jameson, directing traffic. Doe had been hired only a month earlier after the sheriff had squeezed enough out of his budget to accommodate some much-needed extra manpower. Or, in this case, womanpower. Doe was a solidly built twenty-seven-year-old part Native American from Seattle who preferred small towns to big cities because she liked to fish and hunt. Scott had written a feature story on her for the
Advocate,
and informed me that she was tough but fair. At present, she was ordering the gawkers to move on.

In fact, Doe was moving in our direction. “Ms. Lord,” she called, “Scott. Are you done here?”

“Done?” I responded. “As in, ‘to a crisp’?” I immediately regretted the smart-ass remark. “We want to find out about Tim and Tiffany. Where are they?”

“No idea,” Doe replied. “Somebody said Mrs. Rafferty was on the evening shift at the Grocery Basket. Tim may be tending bar at the Venison Inn or working at the radio station. You can’t put anything in the paper tonight anyway, right?”

As uncomfortable as I felt, my journalistic instincts compelled me to stay put. But it was Scott who intervened.

“I’d like to get a couple of shots of the firefighters after they’ve gotten everything under control,” he explained. “They’re mostly volunteers, you know. Showing how hard they work is a way to reward them. Gritty, grimy, all worn out, but willing to serve.”

Doe Jameson must have been the only woman in Alpine who wasn’t susceptible to Scott’s considerable charms. She narrowed her dark eyes at him and frowned. “Can’t you just write that in the story?”

Scott tried his dazzling smile. “One picture’s worth a thousand words.”

“Ohhh . . .” Doe shrugged. “Just keep out of the way.” She turned around as a couple riding a motorcycle roared up to the intersection. “Damn! Bikers! That’s all we need!”

Sam Heppner was already confronting the bikers, who appeared to be harmless, ordinary Alpiners. I recognized them when they removed their helmets. Jerry and Mary Beth Hedstrom ran Mountain View Gardens, the local nursery, and had bought a Harley when they both turned forty-five in April.

Milo had stopped Doe, apparently giving her some instructions. She nodded once, moved quickly to the squad car, and drove away. The sheriff headed in our direction.

“I sent her to meet up with Tiffany,” Milo said, looking grim. “Sam says she’s still at the Grocery Basket. I don’t know where Tim is. He’s not at the Venison Inn or KSKY. Fleetwood’s out of town, and Rey Fernandez is in charge.”

The reference to my archrival, Spencer Fleetwood, made me realize that I hadn’t seen the radio station owner at the current scene of breaking news. That was unusual. As a rule, he was always on the spot, ready to gloat over beating me on a story.

“Maybe Tim’s already with Tiffany,” I said, looking beyond Milo to what was now the smoldering wreckage of the Rafferty house. There was still smoke, still embers, still parts of the frame, and a section of roof that dangled like a ragged black blanket.

The sheriff didn’t comment. I coughed and sneezed several times, resorting again to my sleeve.
Dignity
had never been my middle name. Scott was moving in on a couple of the firefighters, aiming for a close-up. Milo didn’t stop him. Instead, he looked down at me and scowled.

“You got any coffee?” he asked.

“I can make some,” I said. “Are you going to leave the scene?”

“For a couple of minutes,” the sheriff replied. “I have to take a leak.”

“Come on.” I made a vague motion for him to follow me. Having been lovers as well as friends, there was no state of disarray in which Milo hadn’t seen me. But we’d shared more than physical intimacy over the years. We’d suffered our personal tragedies and disappointments—along with our professional confrontations with evil. The sheriff and I trudged back to my house like two old warriors, comrades in arms, weary veterans of murder and mayhem, carrying our personal and professional wounds like battle scars.

The first thing I did when we got back to the house was to grab a bunch of tissues, try to clear my respiratory passages, and put some drops in my eyes. After blowing my nose and blinking several times, I faced the kitchen counter. I always prepare the coffeemaker at night, not only to save time in the morning, but because I tend to be in a bit of a fog until I’ve been up for at least a half hour. Before I could turn on the switch, Milo returned from the bathroom, opened the cupboard door, and was gazing at my liquor stock.

“Maybe I’ll just have a short shot of Scotch,” he said, reaching for a bottle of Ballantine’s. “What about you?”

I hesitated. “About a half-inch of bourbon,” I finally replied, getting glasses out of another cupboard. “Pepsi might keep me awake. Coffee certainly would.”

We moved out into the living room, where Milo flopped into his favorite easy chair and I sat down on the sofa. “Do the firefighters have any idea what started the blaze?” I inquired.

“Not yet.” Milo took a deep sip of his drink before lighting a cigarette. I opened the drawer in the end table and procured an ashtray I kept for him. For me, too, upon that rare occasion when I relapsed into my old cigarette habit. “They didn’t smoke,” Milo said, gazing at the match he held in his big hand. “At least, not this stuff.”

I’d known Tim Rafferty for years, back when he was a college dropout who’d tried to find himself by tending bar in various local watering holes. He and Tiffany—whose maiden name was Eriks—had been a couple forever, finally making it legal after moving in together about three years ago. I’d figured at the time that Tiffany wanted to start a family before her biological clock started ticking down. Tim was well over thirty; I guessed she was a couple of years younger. When Tim wasn’t slinging drinks, he worked part-time as a DJ on KSKY. He also did some E-trading on the Internet. Tiffany had held a series of jobs, the most recent being her stint with the Grocery Basket. Somehow, they made ends meet, though Tim was no genius, and I’d always considered Tiffany something of an airhead.

But that didn’t mean I wasn’t worried about them. “I hope they’re okay,” I said.

The sheriff grunted, not an encouraging response.

I’d taken my watch off before I went to bed. The digital clock on my DVD player informed me that it was 12:17
A.M.
“Tiffany and Tim can stay with her folks,” I remarked. “Or Beth, Tim’s sister. She still lives in the family home.”

Milo still didn’t say anything. Beth Rafferty was one of our 911 operators, but she didn’t usually work nights. A divorcée who’d taken back her maiden name, Beth had lived at home with her ailing mother. Recently, the senior Mrs. Rafferty—who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease—had been placed in the local nursing home. She had gotten to the point where Beth didn’t dare leave her mother alone. It was the usual tragic story wrought by the disease: unable to recognize her nearest and dearest, leaving food cooking on the stove until it burned away, going outside and forgetting how to get back into the house—if she could remember that she had a house. Beth and Tim’s father, Liam, had been dead for a couple of years.

“What’s going on with the boyfriend?” the sheriff asked, seemingly from out of nowhere.

The question caught me off guard. My log cabin smelled of smoke from the fire and seemed oppressive. Maybe my brain was smoky, too. “Boyfriend?” I said stupidly.

“Right.” Milo’s expression didn’t change. “Rolf.”

Rolf and Milo had met only once. The occasion had been my first date with Rolf, an evening spoiled by a break-in at my house. Since that time, the sheriff hadn’t really quizzed me about the relationship.

I shrugged. “We don’t get to see much of each other. It’s one step above an online romance.”

“He seems like an okay guy,” Milo noted casually. Too casually? I could never be quite sure with Milo.

“I think so.” The truth was, I found Rolf difficult to read. He was a great kidder. I was never sure when he was teasing or when he was being serious. Maybe that was part of the attraction.

Milo’s cell phone rang. He dug it out of his shirt pocket and answered.

“Shit,” he said after listening for a moment. “You sure? Okay, I’ll be right there.”

The sheriff downed the rest of his drink, put out his cigarette, and stood up. “That was Sam. He said they found a body in the rubble.” Milo grimaced. “Tiffany’s okay. It must be Tim. Goddamn it.”

I
FELT SICK
, physically and emotionally. The weather, the fire, the smoke—and now this. It was the summer from Hell. I’d seen Hell before me tonight, consuming Tim Rafferty. I slouched on the sofa in a stupor, staring at the front door that Milo had slammed behind him.

Finally, I gulped down the rest of my drink and sat up straight. The digital clock read 12:38
A.M.
Only a few minutes had passed since Milo had received the disastrous news.

News.
If I’d still been working the city beat on the Portland
Oregonian
as I’d done for years before buying the
Advocate,
I would have been back at the fire scene, interviewing Sam Heppner and Tiffany Rafferty or on my way to the morgue in the hospital basement or at the sheriff’s office consulting with Milo. But I was in Alpine, and the newspaper wouldn’t go to press until tomorrow night. Maybe that was my excuse for staying in my little log house, even if the odor of death and destruction filled its muggy air. Maybe I was losing my edge. My mind might be next.

I was being ridiculous. I was upset, hot, and tired. And I missed Ben. My brother had spent over six months in Alpine, filling in for St. Mildred’s pastor, Dennis Kelly. Father Den had returned April 1 from his sabbatical, but Ben had stayed for two weeks so that he and Adam and I could spend a few days in Vancouver, British Columbia. We’d had a wonderful time—right up until I had to say goodbye to both of them at Sea-Tac airport’s check-in curb. Adam had gone back to Alaska. Ben had headed for Milwaukee to fill in for yet another priest who was taking a six-month leave, an old buddy from their seminary days. My brother’s intention had been to return to his work in the home missions, but because of the clergy shortage, he was willing to bail out a friend who needed a break. The half year Ben and I’d spent together had been wonderful. It was the first time in over thirty years that we’d lived in the same place at the same time for more than a couple of weeks. The previous occasion had occurred when Adam was born. Because his father, Tom Cavanaugh, was married to somebody else, I’d gone to stay with Ben at his mission parish on the Mississippi Delta. The final trimester of my pregnancy had been a bittersweet three months for both of us.

I tried to stop thinking. If I didn’t go to bed, I’d be worthless the next day. After another five minutes, I emptied Milo’s ashtray, put our dirty glasses in the dishwasher, turned out the lights, and headed into the bedroom. Even the window fan system couldn’t dispel the odor of acrid smoke.

As if I needed a reminder of what had happened that night.

“I
SHOULD HAVE
been there,” Vida declared the moment she stepped into the newsroom. “When I heard those sirens, why on earth did I assume it was just another grass fire?”

I offered her a weak smile. “Because we’ve had several already?”

She shook her head, which was covered with an enormous orange straw hat. “I should have known. There were so many sirens, though admittedly, they weren’t that close to my house. Poor Tim. Of course, he always was rather foolish.”

I was standing by the coffeemaker, where Ginny Erlandson, our office manager, was placing sweet rolls from the Upper Crust Bakery on a tray. “I sort of liked Tim,” Ginny said. “We were in high school together. He was kind of a show-off, though. But he wasn’t stuck-up like some of the other kids.”

Vida shrugged. “Smoking in bed, no doubt. And drinking. It’s that combination that starts fires. Do you want me to talk to Tiffany?”

I considered the suggestion. My initial reaction was to have Scott interview the Widow Rafferty—when Tiffany was up to it. But I knew Vida was bursting with curiosity. Maybe she could use her coaxing soft-soap manner. It might be better to have a woman handle the story, given that Tiffany was pregnant.