The Alpine Scandal (21 page)

“Is that why she quit?” I asked, surprised.

“You bet.” Freddy smiled again. He had very even white teeth in a long, lean face. “She wasted two years of her life on him. But here I am, ready and willing to let her cry on my shoulder. In fact, I’m taking her to dinner tonight at that French restaurant out on the highway.” His gaze still held mine. “You find my candor astonishing?”

“Not as much as your audacity,” I said. “Carter’s your client. I find it odd that you’d be telling me about this in the same conversation that includes the word
trust
.”

“Trust me on this,” Freddy said, leaning closer to my desk. “Carter doesn’t care if I make a move on Bree. As for being candid with you, I grew up in a small town—Darrington, to be exact, which is another old logging enclave much like Alpine. I know that by tomorrow morning at least fifty people will be talking about that ‘tall young man who was wining and dining Bree Kendall at Le Gourmand.’ And since you own the newspaper, one of those people doing the talking—or should I say listening?—will be you.”

He had a point. “Fair enough,” I conceded. “If Carter’s not going to be brokenhearted, I assume somebody else is the object of his affections.”

“Definitely,” Freddy asserted. “Though he does play the field.”

“The field’s not very big in Alpine,” I pointed out.

“Carter still has ties to Seattle,” Freddy said in an offhand manner. “He spends at least two weekends a month there.” At last the unexpectedly garrulous CPA stood up. “I should let you get back to work. Maybe I’ll go to the local Starbucks and get caught up on work over a cup of elegant Sulawesi. Are there any sights worth seeing around here?”

For somebody raised in Darrington, I couldn’t think that Alpine would have anything he hadn’t experienced in his hometown. “No,” I said, though I was tempted to mention that Vida was our most historical landmark. “Drop in before five. Leo should be here then.”

“We’ll see.” He saluted me and left.

Twenty minutes later, Leo and Vida returned together. “We’re a couple,” Leo announced. “The Duchess can’t resist me.”

“You smell like a smudge pot,” Vida declared. “I’m so glad Buck doesn’t smoke. At least not in my presence, though I believe he has the occasional cigar when he gets together with his air force cronies.”

“Clearly,” Leo said, “you’ve never smelled an actual smudge pot. Being from southern California, I know what they really smell like. I’m more of an ashtray guy.”

“Disgusting, whatever it is,” Vida remarked, removing her black hat and rearranging several stray hairpins. “Bree Kendall is not forthcoming. She refused to have tea with me on her break.”

“What was your ruse?” I asked, coming over to Vida’s desk.

“You should’ve offered her a cigarette,” Leo said, shrugging off his barn jacket. “I’ve seen her smoking outside Carter’s office.”

Vida made a face. “Ugh.” She looked away from Leo and sat down. “I told a tiny fib and said I’d left my gloves in the waiting room when I was there last night inquiring after the sheriff. Without even looking anywhere or asking anyone, Bree insisted no gloves had been found. I then tried to strike up a friendly conversation with her—how did she like her new job, was it harder or easier than her previous employment, did she find Alpine a delightful town, and so on. She kept cutting me off, even though there were only two people in the waiting room and none came in while I was there. Indeed, she was quite abrupt.” Vida paused for breath.

“You haven’t broken your own record yet,” Leo said, tapping his watch. “You only had another eighteen seconds to go without breathing.”

“Oh, hush, Leo!” Vida exclaimed. “Finally, I asked her why she hadn’t attended the funeral. She got angry—imagine!—and said it was none of my business. Then she got up and stalked away. I waited—where she couldn’t see me, of course, around the corner by the restrooms. After about five minutes she came back, so I apologized all over myself and invited her for a cup of tea. She refused in a most ungracious manner. At that point I gave up.” Vida put her chin on her fists and shook her head. “I cannot accept failure. Obviously, that young woman is unbalanced. There can’t be any other explanation.”

I tensed, waiting for Leo to offer his own acerbic suggestion. But he was reading the note I’d left him about Freddy Bellman. “Is this guy serious?” he asked.

I hated to admit I’d gotten more out of Freddy than Vida had managed to extract from Bree. “I think so,” I said. “Since he has Carter for a client, he’s looking to pick up a few more around here. He’s also looking to…” I winced as I glanced at Vida. “He’s romantically interested in Bree, who, he says, was dumped by Carter, which is why she quit.” I spoke rapidly and avoided another look in my House & Home editor’s direction.

“What?”
she exploded. “This Bellman person was
here
? While I was
gone
?”

I felt like apologizing for such thoughtlessness on Freddy’s part and for my own role in encouraging him to speak. “Freddy and Bree are having dinner tonight at Le Gourmand.”

Vida’s big bosom heaved with exasperation. “To think I wasted my time trying to talk to that silly little twit! Well, now!” She paused, obviously thinking through this revelation. “That certainly explains why Bree quit her job. It could also explain her dreadful manners and wretched disposition. A temporary state, perhaps.” She paused again. “It may even explain,” she said with an all-knowing gleam in her eye, “why we received the premature obituary for Elmer Nystrom.”

Chapter Seventeen

B
EFORE
V
IDA COULD
explain what she meant about the original obituary, Scott returned to the newsroom and Ginny arrived with a delivery for me from Posies Unlimited.

“There’s a card,” Ginny said, as excited as if the flowers had been intended for her. She set the cardboard container down on Vida’s desk.

I carefully unwrapped the bright green paper. A lavish medley of yellow roses and lilies nestled among assorted greenery in a round glass vase. I opened the card.

“Feeling sorry for myself—see you sooner rather than later?”

“Ah!” Leo exclaimed after I’d read the card aloud. “Mr. AP knows how to treat a lady.”

I was smiling broadly. Rolf had never sent me flowers before. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had sent me flowers. Adam remembered his dear old mother with cans of smoked or kippered Alaskan salmon. Ben sent Mass cards for my special intentions.

“I’ll put the bouquet by the coffeemaker,” I said, “so everybody can see it.”

“I’ll add more water,” Ginny volunteered, dashing off to the restroom just as Kip came in from the back shop.

“Nice,” he said, stroking the reddish goatee he’d grown in the last year. “Who got the flowers?”

“I did,” I replied with a smile.

“Good for you.” Kip, however, wasn’t one to ask cheeky questions. Announcing that he was off to Sky.com to buy something I wouldn’t understand if he told me, our computer genius left.

Finally, I asked Vida what she’d meant about the obit.

“I didn’t have an opportunity to speak with Carter’s assistants at the funeral reception,” she said, “and since I’d seen you sitting with them, I assumed you’d already quizzed them. But I did have a brief conversation with Carter, who mentioned that Alicia had had a difficult week, having attended two funerals. That’s when I discovered that she was related to the Wascos and had sent us the lost obituary on her grandfather, Jan. It occurred to me later that perhaps she mailed it from Carter’s office.”

“She did,” I put in. “Christy mentioned it during our short but not so sweet chat.”

“I thought so,” Vida said while both Scott and Leo listened in. “The younger generation takes advantage.” She glanced at Scott. “Not you or Kip or Ginny. You have higher standards, thank goodness. But I’ve heard so many complaints in recent years about younger employees helping themselves to petty cash, pilfering goods, taking home supplies—and, of course, using the employer’s stamps as if they were their own. Carter probably bought oodles of stamps at a time—all those invoices. So he may still have had the outdated postage on hand.”

“I see what you’re getting at,” I said, wishing it wasn’t taking so long for Vida to arrive at her point. “Alicia put her grandfather’s obit into the office mail, and…?”

“Someone removed it, took out the grandfather’s obit, and replaced it with the bogus write-up for Elmer.” Vida looked around at all three of us. “The obvious suspect is Bree.”

“How come?” Leo asked.

“Her last day on the job,” Vida explained. “Rejection from Carter. Backbiting from Alicia and Christy. Wanting to get back at all the people she’d worked with for two years. Wasted years, in her opinion. Choosing Elmer as the subject of an obituary would embarrass Carter—if we’d run it. It was very childish, but people often act that way.”

“As I recall,” I said, “the obit and the envelope appeared to be typed on the same machine or word processor. But that’d be the case if both Alicia and Bree used office equipment.”

“Of course,” Vida agreed. “Bree would know the salient facts about Elmer’s life, not only by working for Carter but also having been linked romantically with him.”

Scott was shaking his head. “Dumb. Really dumb. Can Bree get arrested for pulling a stunt like that?”

“Malicious mischief,” Leo responded. “In her case, it’d probably mean a fine and a long lecture but no jail time.” He looked at me. “Are we pressing charges?”

“No,” I replied. “It’s not worth the trouble. Speaking of which, Bree’s nasty little piece of revenge could cause some problems for her. If she really sent that obit—and I agree with your theory, Vida—Milo may take a more serious look at her as a murder suspect.”

Scott grimaced. “Wouldn’t it be pretty stupid to announce your victim’s death before it happened?”

I thought so, too. “But we’re talking about Milo. By the book and all that.”

Vida frowned. “That’s so. However, I believe Milo would be taking a wasteful detour. Bree wasn’t in love with Elmer.”

Leo nodded. “Bree couldn’t mistake Elmer for Carter in the henhouse. Except for their height, they didn’t look at all alike. Carter’s got a bigger frame, lighter hair, and Elmer—well, Elmer didn’t have much hair left.”

“We’re back to the same old thing,” I said. “Who would want to kill Elmer? And why?”

Scott grimaced. “Revenge?”

I stared at him. “For what?”

My reporter looked slightly embarrassed. “I saw a TV show a while back where an auto mechanic was murdered because he’d screwed up a brake job and the customer’s wife and kids got killed when the car crashed into a building.” He paused. “Or maybe a family died when the car ran into their house. Anyway, the victims’ father—or husband—beat the auto mechanic to death with a tire iron. Or was it a wrench?” Scott’s dark complexion turned even darker. “I was watching the show with Tammy and wasn’t really focused on the plot.”

Newlyweds
. But Scott had a point. I looked at Vida. “Do you recall any serious problems over the years with the Nordby brothers—or even before the younger generation took over from Mr. Jensen?”

“No.”

Vida’s face was stiff as steel. I’d made a terrible gaffe. Her husband, Ernest, had been involved in a fatal accident caused by faulty brakes. I felt like a fool.

Leo sensed the sudden tension. “If,” he said, looking at me, “you don’t remember anything in the past thirteen, fourteen years you’ve been here, why would anybody wait that long to get back at Elmer? Besides, he didn’t actually do the work, right?”

“Not that I know of,” I said, unable to watch Vida’s reaction. “But sometimes people misplace blame.”

Scott shrugged. “Just an idea.”

Still embarrassed, I retreated into my cubbyhole and immediately dialed Rolf’s number at the AP in Seattle. I got his voice messaging. Not wanting to leave some sort of gushing adolescent thank-you, I hung up, doubling the proof that my maturation level hadn’t gotten much past age seventeen.

Yet Scott had come up with a possible motive. Cars were such an intrinsic part of American life. Boys—and girls, for that matter—eagerly looked forward to such milestones as learning how to drive, getting that first driver’s license, buying or receiving their first car. I’d spent part of my unexpected inheritance on a secondhand Jaguar; Ed’s first purchase when he became a millionaire was his-and-hers Mercedes sedans; Carter Nystrom had wanted to show off his success by driving a flashy yellow Corvette. A car wasn’t mere transportation for most Americans—it was a status symbol, a cherished possession, almost a living thing.

But I couldn’t recall any recent incident involving a vehicle that wasn’t the fault of the owner or another driver. Reports of every collision, even fender benders, were published in the
Advocate
. In the last year we’d had two vehicular-related deaths in SkyCo: One had involved a recent high school graduate on a motorcycle; the other was caused by debris falling off an out-of-town truck on Highway 2 and crushing an elderly man who probably was following too closely in the first place. The truck driver, who lived in Spokane, had been cited and given a stiff fine, but he’d had no Alpine connection other than driving past the town a couple of times a year.

Wanting to mend fences with Vida, I went back into the newsroom. “My dinner guest left town,” I informed her. “I’ve got some frozen sockeye salmon I was going to serve Ben. Would you like to join me? I don’t like to keep frozen fish too long.”

Vida tapped the edge of her desk and thought for a minute. “That would be very nice. I’m sure you’re already missing your brother. I had no idea he was leaving right after lunch.”

I smiled, grateful for what I assumed was her forgiveness for bringing up painful memories. “You can follow me home,” I said.

“No, no,” Vida responded. “I must put Cupcake to bed. He gets fractious if I don’t cover him up as soon as it gets dark. Thank goodness the days will start getting longer now.”

“That’s fine. I’ll serve around six or so,” I said, though I often wondered just how fractious her canary could get since he was kept in a cage. Maybe he spit seeds at her or warbled off-key.

On my way back to my desk, I asked Scott to join me. “I’ve got a job for you,” I said. “Can you check through all the traffic and vehicle citations issued in the last year? Just in case. I think you raised a good point. Or do you recall anything from the police log off the top of your head?”

Scott roamed the short distance between my file cabinet and the map of Skykomish County on the other wall. “Wow, a whole year’s worth of citations. That’s a lot.” He grinned at me. “Wish I’d been here when old Durwood Parker was getting arrested every other month for some seriously bad driving.”

“Be glad you weren’t,” I said. “Durwood was lucky he never killed anyone—or himself. He came close, though, especially the time he drove right through the annual Loggerama picnic at Old Mill Park and ended up on the bandstand. Luckily, the band hadn’t been playing. Come to think of it, everybody was lucky when the band didn’t play. They were terrible.”

“I’ll go over to the sheriff’s and look through the log,” Scott said, glancing at his watch. “It’s after three. I may be gone the rest of the day.”

“That’s fine,” I told him. “It’s Friday. Go home early, say, around five to five.”

With another grin for his not-so-witty boss, Scott left. It occurred to me that I didn’t know what Scott was looking for among the dozens of tickets the sheriff and his deputies handed out every year. The state patrol’s tickets also showed up on the local blotter if the stops had been made within the county. It also dawned on me that Scott, being younger and thus less experienced with the vagaries of human nature, might overlook something of interest. Maybe he could use some help.

By the time I got to the sheriff’s office, Scott was sitting at the far end of the counter with the police binders in front of him. The only other person on hand was Lori Cobb.

“Got a spare chair?” I asked her. “I’m going to join Scott.”

“I can get you a folding one from the back,” she offered.

“Thanks. How’s the sheriff this afternoon?”

Lori shrugged. “Okay. He went on patrol this afternoon. He said he needed to get outdoors.”

I understood. Walking over to Scott, I asked how far he’d gotten.

“End of January,” he replied. “Why couldn’t we do this from our own files? We list all the traffic stops in the paper.”

“Because,” I explained, “we don’t run all the little stuff. Broken taillights, unsecured loads, expired license tabs. You don’t usually take down those citations unless the offender has given the deputies a bad time or caused a serious problem.”

“True enough,” Scott conceded. “What about chronic DUIs?”

“This state’s laws are pretty tough,” I said. “Besides, we always run those. Let’s concentrate on some of the less flagrant violations. We should be looking for something to do with vehicle maintenance, a connection to auto repair or somehow to Elmer.”

Lori brought me a chair and set it up. I took the binder for March, since Scott was about to start on February.

“What,” Scott asked, “about citations for not having traction devices? There’s a half-dozen of those in January and early February.”

“That’s not a big deal,” I said. “Most people around here know how to chain up, and Cal Vickers usually puts on snow tires for customers.”

Scott nodded once and kept reading.

During the third week of March, I found an unsecured load citation for Bickford Pike and his pickup. Ten days later Christina Milland was ticketed for a broken headlight. I made notes on both of them.

Scott was already into April, so I moved to May. “Hey,” he said, “how about Nicholas Della Croce getting pulled over for having studded tires after the removal deadline before April first?”

“He has himself to blame for that,” I replied, “but since he lives next door to the Nystroms, I’ll put him down.”

“Same thing for Elmer Kemp a week later,” Scott said. “Those fines are over seventy dollars each. Wouldn’t you think people would remember to switch their tires on time?”

“I’m not unsympathetic,” I responded. “Historically, we’ve had snow well into April in Alpine. But not, I admit, lately. Frankly, I hate to have Cal take my studded tires off at the end of March. With all the rain, the hills around here are still dangerous.”

“But those studs are so hard on the roads and free-ways,” Scott pointed out. “Not to mention in the bigger cities, where all that traffic really chews up the streets.”

“More broken headlights and taillights in May,” I noted. “Bebe Everson, Mike Corson, Walt Hanson.” I looked at Scott. “Do any of them have a connection to Elmer?”

“The Eversons live out that way off the Burl Creek Road,” Scott said after a pause. “But not that close to the Nystroms. Roy Everson runs the post office, and Mike Corson’s a carrier for the mail that goes outside Alpine’s boundaries. Walt Hanson drives a Toyota. He’d take his car to that dealership, not Nordby Brothers.”

“I’ll put them down, just in case,” I said, closing the May binder. “You’re Mr. June, I’m Ms. July.”

We finished our task just after four-thirty. We’d collected a grand total of thirty citations, none of them involving an injury or an accident. Only four people had more than one ticket. Bickford Pike, Bebe Everson, and Nick Della Croce had three apiece. The winner with five citations—all for faulty equipment—was the Alpine Chamber of Commerce manager, Rita Patricelli. Maybe she felt it was her duty to put money into the county coffers. The prickly Rita wasn’t one of my favorite Alpiners, but she drove some kind of Ford van. I couldn’t think of any link between her and Elmer except, of course, for chamber meetings.