The Alpine Scandal (4 page)

The woman shook her head. “Not really. But I always talked to Mr. Nystrom when I saw him out in the yard.” She hesitated. “I suppose I should call on Mrs. Nystrom. Later.”

“That would be very kind,” I said.

“Of course.” She backed inside and closed the door.

I looked down at the mailbox in front of me. The name was gracefully lettered in red:
DELLA CROCE
.

I’d already heard it that morning. It was the same name as that of the troubled woman who had called my brother asking for counsel.

The college president was shocked and sympathetic when I explained why I’d been almost half an hour late for our interview.

“I don’t know the Nystrom family,” May Hashimoto said, “but I feel for them. I lost my own father when he was in his early sixties.”

“My parents were both in their fifties,” I told her. “They were killed in a collision coming from my brother’s ordination.”

“That’s even worse.” May shuddered. “On the other hand, I’ve known of couples who can’t live without each other, and the survivor dies not long after the husband or wife goes.” She shook her head. May’s hair was distinctive, with a natural white streak growing among the short ebony tresses. “I have trouble understanding that, since my one attempt at marriage ended abruptly in divorce.”

“I’ve never been married at all,” I said, “but I lost my fiancé not long before our wedding.”

“That was terrible,” May declared. “I wasn’t here yet when it happened, but I heard all about it. Violence. It plagues our times.”

“It’s plagued most times,” I noted. “In other centuries we didn’t have CNN.”

May smiled ironically. “You’re part of the media, Emma.”

“I know.” I smiled, too. But the clock—stylized metal hands on pine paneling—was ticking away. I knew she wanted to go to lunch soon, and I’d promised to treat Leo, though I’d given him a quick call to say I’d be a little late. May and I got down to business, which didn’t take long. Unlike many educators, May didn’t use lengthy, sometimes incomprehensible discourse or speak in what I termed “Educationese.” She tended to be blessedly brisk.

I arrived at the Venison Inn by twelve-fifteen. Leo was waiting in the bar, where he could smoke, a habit that wasn’t permitted in the main dining room except for the sheriff, who simply ignored the
NO SMOKING
sign and refused to arrest himself.

“Well?” Leo said as I sat down at a small table for two. “What happened to poor old Elmer?”

“Autopsy pending,” I said, catching my breath.

Leo’s weathered face grew curious. “Oh? I wondered. Your tone of voice implied that something was off.”

Mandy Gustavson, who was somehow related to Vida, came to take our order. Leo already had a mug of black coffee. I asked for a Pepsi and the rare beef dip with fries. “Go for the steak sandwich,” I urged Leo. “It’s my treat, remember?”

Leo, however, ordered the same thing I’d requested. “Never get a steak sandwich on a Monday,” he said after Mandy had left us. “It’ll be something left over from the weekend and taste like a spare tire.”

“Good advice,” I said, my eyes wandering around the dimly lighted bar with its deer, elk, and moose antler motif. Although the dining room had been remodeled awhile back, the serious drinkers preferred the original décor. Thus, the trophies from the long-dead animals had endured far longer than had many of the patrons who’d decorated the bar stools.

“Nice guy, Elmer,” Leo remarked, leaning back in his chair. “If I didn’t like my Toyota so much, I’d have bought a GM car just to get the good service Elmer always gave his customers. The Nordby brothers have been lucky to have him all these years.”

I agreed. “I really didn’t know the family,” I admitted. “It’s amazing that despite the fact I’ve lived in Alpine for going on fourteen years, there are still some longtime residents I barely recognize.”

Leo shrugged. “Some people don’t mix much. The Nystroms are like that. At least,” he went on, extinguishing his cigarette, “Elmer and his wife weren’t active in the community. He did his job and went home. She kept house. The son’s more outgoing, but he’s been pretty involved in getting his orthodontist practice up and running.”

“Do you know Carter?” I asked after Mandy had delivered my Pepsi and the small salads that went with our entrées.

“I’ve met him a couple of times,” Leo replied, sprinkling salt and pepper on his greens. “He bought a two-by-four-inch space with us when he first opened his practice. Then he took out a standing ad with the rest of the professionals on page five.” He gave me a slightly mocking look. “You do occasionally read the
Advocate
’s ads, don’t you?”

I laughed. “Occasionally. But I trust you enough to not go over them with a fine-toothed comb.” That was the perfect opening to segue into Ed’s problem. “In fact, we’re having lunch because I want to make sure you know how much I appreciate your contribution to keeping the newspaper solvent. I know it’s not easy. The print media often seems like it’s in the death throes.”

Leo munched on iceberg lettuce. “So,” he said after he’d swallowed, “just seeing Bronsky on the premises suddenly made you grateful for my existence.”

“Yes.” I scoured the bar to make sure no one could overhear us. “Ed’s broke. He wants to come back to work. I use that term loosely.”

Leo laughed out loud. “I wondered. I’ve heard the stories, too. Ed pilfering a DVD from Videos-to-Go. Ed giving a rubber check to Pete Patricelli for the family-size Super Lollapalooza pizza. Ed trying on a pair of shoes at Barton’s Bootery and walking out into the mall wearing them—without paying, of course. It’s a wonder he hasn’t been arrested.”

“Everybody probably thinks he’s gone goofy,” I noted. “The eccentric millionaire. They probably believe—or want to believe—that no matter what he swipes, he’s good for it down the line.”

Mandy brought our beef dips and fries. “Word will get out,” Leo remarked after Mandy once again had left us. “I actually feel sorry for the poor slug. At least he’s got his kids mostly raised.”

“Three of them are still in high school and junior high,” I said. “This must be terrible for Shirley. Vida had a good idea about selling Casa de Bronska.” I told Leo about turning the place into a commercial site.

“Not bad,” he responded. “Good for Alpine, too. Ed could probably fetch at least a million bucks right there. It’d take time, though. Do you suppose he’s considered a line of credit on the house?”

“I’ve no idea,” I admitted. “It’d see them through until they found a buyer.”

“Let me talk to him,” Leo said. “You know, one ad guy to another. He’ll know damned well that you had to tell me about his troubles. I’ll give him a call after lunch.”

I smiled fondly at Leo. “You’re not just a good employee, you’re a really good person.”

“Right, right.” Leo seemed uncharacteristically embarrassed. “I’m a prince. Too bad you’re not a princess.” He paused for just a beat. “What’s going on with you and the AP wire service guy?”

Despite my affection and respect for Leo, I’d never felt genuinely attracted to him. In the beginning he’d wished otherwise. Leo had come to me with Tom’s blessing as an ad man but seemed like a poor substitute for my longtime lover. Everybody did, of course, including Milo. Going to bed with Leo would’ve been like sleeping with Tom’s proxy. Fortunately, Leo had understood. Or at least he had accepted my lack of response to his overtures.

Rolf Fisher of the Associated Press was another matter. I’d met him after Tom died. Rolf was a smart, good-looking widower who lived in a condo near the Seattle Center. We’d dated for about a year, though it was difficult for us to be together, being separated by eighty-five miles of highway. Then I’d managed to screw up the burgeoning relationship by completely forgetting about a weekend date we were supposed to have in Seattle. Eventually I’d made amends, but in the four months that had followed, we’d seen each other only twice.

“Let’s say that Rolf and I seem to have plateaued,” I said. “‘Madly in love’ does not describe us. Let’s stick with ‘warily fond.’ We have a tentative date to go to the opera to hear
Norma
toward the end of the month.”

Leo nodded. “I get it. He’s gun-shy. Who burned him?”

The question startled me. “No one that I know of. His wife died of cancer.”

“Okay.” Leo resumed eating.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what he was implying, so I changed the subject. “Tell me about Carter Nystrom.”

He shrugged. “Not much to tell. Ask Scott. He did the interview. All I know is that Carter’s bright, smooth, good-looking. He’s a little taller than Elmer and broader, too. Maybe he resembles his mother more than his father, although I’ve never met Mrs. Nystrom. I imagine he’s got a very good chairside manner.”

I tried to picture the young man. Fair-haired, I thought; glasses, a pleasant, earnest face. I must have seen him since he’d returned to Alpine after completing his studies, but somehow I remembered a much younger version.

Leo seemed to be reading my mind. “I suppose he’s been away at school for most of the time you’ve lived in town. It takes several years to complete the orthodontist courses, not to mention the prerequisite dental degree. I’d never met him until he came back to set up a practice.”

I’d dated a would-be dentist briefly in my younger years. He’d flunked out of school because he couldn’t carve teeth. His professor had told him his efforts looked like pinto beans. Maybe he was highly suggestible. He’d gone on to get a business degree, and the last I heard of him, he was the head produce buyer for a grocery store chain in California. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember his name.

Our conversation drifted away from the Nystroms, back to Ed, and on to the newlywed Chamouds. Tamara taught at the college; she was contracted to stay through the spring quarter. Sadly, Leo and I figured they’d move on when June rolled around. Scott and his bride possessed marketable skills, and lately he’d shown signs of wanting to stretch his journalistic muscles. Both he and his bride were originally from the city. Unlike Leo and me, who were old veterans of the small-town weekly wars, they were young and ambitious.

As we walked back to the office, I noticed how ordinary Front Street looked: cool but fresh air, steady rain, rugged tree-lined mountains rising up into the low-hanging gray clouds above the town. A trickle of cars and trucks moved through town. Other working stiffs like us also were returning from lunch. No one seemed in much of a hurry. A driver at a four-way stop honked and waved at a middle-aged man crossing the street. A young woman bent over a squawking infant in a covered stroller by the dry cleaners. An empty school bus made its way up Sixth Street toward Alpine High.

Everything seemed normal, even peaceful. Life was going on at its usual mundane pace. Except, of course, for Elmer Nystrom, who was lying in the morgue at Alpine Hospital. But what was more mundane than death?

Unless, I thought, Elmer had been murdered.

Chapter Three

V
IDA DIDN’T GET
back until after one-thirty. “Honestly,” she said, stripping off her fuzzy woolen gloves, “some people are no good in a crisis. Polly Nystrom is one of them.”

“Did she fall apart?” I asked as our production manager, Kip MacDuff, came into the newsroom from the back shop.

“My, yes!” Vida exclaimed. “Especially after Carter got there. I waited until he could come from his office. He, I might add, was quite calm and composed.”

“What happened?” Kip asked.

Vida related our discovery of Elmer Nystrom’s body. I went over to Scott’s desk to see if I could tell from his calendar when he’d be back in the office. I’d write the main story, but I’d need him for any sidebar articles. Vida, of course, would handle the obit.

“You want me to call the Nordby brothers?” Leo asked.

“I’ll do it,” I said, seeing that Scott had scheduled a one-fifteen meeting with Rita Patricelli at the Chamber of Commerce. “Just tell me how I can differentiate Skunk from Trout.”

“Easy,” Leo replied. “Trout has fish lips. Skunk’s got fur on his back.”

I stared at Leo. “He goes shirtless in January?”

“I’m working off of rumors,” Leo said with a grin. “Trust me.”

Kip was shaking his head. “I’ve known Elmer ever since I got my first car. It was a seventy-nine Chevy Impala. I thought I’d have an emotional meltdown when I got that car. It was really
hot
, even if it was ten years old at the time. I blew the engine two years later racing a buddy up one of those logging roads near Martin Creek. Elmer gave me a bad time about that. But in a nice way.”

“Everybody liked Elmer,” I murmured as I approached Vida’s desk. “Let’s hope it was an accident.”

Kip’s earnest face expressed disbelief. “What do you mean?”

Vida frowned at Kip. “Precisely what I told you. The sheriff’s investigating to make sure foul play wasn’t involved.”

“That’s bunk,” Kip declared. “Only a nut case would hurt Elmer.”

“Let’s hope so,” I said. “Vida, we must turn that obit over to Milo.”

“Oh.” She put a hand to her cheek. “Y-e-s. Of course we do. I’ll get it out of my purse.” She stopped in midreach. “No. I’ll take it to him right now.”

“What obit?” Kip inquired.

Putting her gloves back on, Vida looked disgruntled. “I didn’t mention that part to you. We got an obituary for Elmer in this morning’s mail.”

Kip looked even more incredulous. “Weird!”

“Very,” Vida agreed. “Or prescient. I won’t be long. I have to go through Elsie Overholt’s retirees column when I get back. Such an editing job she requires! My, my!”

Leo watched Vida leave. “How long will it take her to put Bill Blatt on the rack?” he asked in a bemused tone.

Deputy Blatt was one of Vida’s numerous kinfolk. He often served as a source, albeit a reluctant one, for law enforcement information. I often wondered what cajolery, what flattery, what threats, what dark family secrets Vida used to wrench confidential facts out of the poor guy. If anyone but Vida had forced an employee to spew out unofficial pronouncements, that deputy would have been canned long ago. But Milo knew my House & Home editor too well. She was irresistible when it came to getting others to spill secrets.

Still looking dismayed over the news of Elmer’s sudden death, Kip returned to the back shop. Leo was on the phone again—his usual mode of coddling advertisers when he wasn’t meeting them in person. I felt adrift. There was no point calling on the Nordby brothers until I knew how Elmer had died. Maybe I should begin work on my weekly editorial, I thought. All I needed was a topic that wouldn’t put the readers to sleep.

Roads. I could always write about roads. Even if we weren’t getting much snow, the roads would need repairing in the spring.

No. I’d beaten that subject to death.

Flood control on the Skykomish River. But the thaw wouldn’t be as bad this year because there shouldn’t be a dangerous runoff from the mountains.

Skip flood control.

The Alpine Wilderness bill that had been stalled in Congress for years. Despite efforts to safeguard a wide swath of forest in the adjacent area, the nation’s governing body didn’t seem to care. My previous editorials hadn’t done one jot of good.

Shut up, Emma
.

When I had bought the paper from Marius Vandeventer, one of the pieces of advice he’d given me was to avoid writing essays that enlightened and informed. Stick to changing people’s minds, make them move in the direction you want, stir the pot, show some passion. That, he said, was what good editorials accomplished.

But week after week, that wasn’t easy. My brain felt arid. Maybe I had the postholiday blues.

My phone rang, making me jump in my swivel chair.

“Hey, Sluggly, let’s get the hell out of town.”

“Where?” I asked my brother, whose crackling voice had exploded in my ear.

“What about that very fine French restaurant out on the highway?” he inquired.

“Not open on Mondays,” I replied. “Try again.”

“Monroe? Everett? Hong Kong?”

“You can’t have cabin fever,” I pointed out. “You’ve only been here ten days.”

“It’s not cabin fever,” Ben explained. “It’s that I need to taste some really good food. Tonight’s the night. I’ve got nothing on my slate, and I’ll bet you don’t, either.”

“How true,” I admitted. “I am not Alpine’s party girl.”

“If not French, then seafood,” Ben said. “Why is the ski lodge the only place where you can get decent fish in this town?”

“Alpine’s a raw beef kind of place,” I replied. “All those loggers.”

“Most of the early ones were Scandinavians,” Ben pointed out. “They like fish.”

“So they go to the ski lodge. Or catch their own. When they get lucky.” I flipped open the phone directory for Everett and went to the restaurant section. “How about Anthony’s Homeport? It’s on the water, by the naval shipyard and the marina.”

“Sure,” Ben said. “If you don’t mind driving. Or do you want me to?”

“No!” I was emphatic. For years I’ve regarded my brother as the craziest driver I know, not counting Durwood Parker, retired Alpine pharmacist, who’d had his license pulled by the sheriff years earlier. Nothing was safe in Durwood’s path: not pedestrians, not other vehicles, not concrete sidewalk planters. He could mow anything and anybody down, though, thank goodness, he’d never caused a serious injury. One of the worst accidents had occurred when he drove through the Bank of Alpine—before they had a drive-through window. The debacle had given the bank’s officials the idea of creating a drive-up. According to Ginny Erlandson’s husband, Rick, who worked at the bank, it was cheaper than making the full repair.

As for Ben, I don’t know how he managed to keep from killing himself in East Lansing. My brother drove a beat-up Jeep that he’d owned since moving to Tuba City, Arizona, where he ministered to the Native American population. He had gotten used to rocky dirt roads and almost no traffic. When he’d come to Alpine the previous year to fill in for Father Den, I was sure he’d kill somebody—or himself—before he got out of town. I had been horrified when he’d informed me that he planned to drive to Alpine from East Lansing, but somehow he and the Jeep had survived.

“It’s about an hour’s drive to Everett,” I said. “A little over fifty miles. But it’s probably our best bet for a really good meal, especially seafood.”

Ben told me he’d be ready by five. I didn’t bother to make a reservation, since it was a Monday night, which usually is slow in the restaurant business. I saved my question about the Della Croce family for our preprandial cocktail time.

Vida returned to the newsroom shortly before two. There was no news from the sheriff’s office.

“Doc Dewey will have preliminary results later today,” she informed me with a disgusted expression. “He admits, however, that he’ll probably have to send Elmer to Everett’s medical examiner’s office. You know Doc—he’s even more cautious than Milo. Not a bad thing, of course, but sometimes frustrating.”

“Especially when Everett gets busy and has to put us at the end of the waiting list,” I remarked. “Any word of funeral arrangements?”

Vida shook her head. “The Nystroms go to the Episcopal church. Polly’s choice. She was a Carter before marrying Elmer. Their son was named for his mother’s family—English ancestry, I assume.”

Scott still wasn’t back from his meeting, and Leo had gone out to hustle ads. “Maybe,” I said, as much to myself as to Vida, “I’ll write an editorial on how strapped the sheriff’s office is for personnel. This county’s growing. Our population’s over seven thousand. Milo’s been shortchanged forever.”

Vida frowned. “Are you suggesting a bond issue?”

I shrugged. “For now, I merely want to make readers aware of the sorry state of affairs. It affects the voters’ safety.”

Vida seemed skeptical. “They know,” she said softly. “Look how narrowly the last school levy passed. People here believe in thrift.”

“Thrift—or lack of vision?”

“Call it what you will.” Vida turned to look at something on her desk. “I do wish Elsie Overholt would type and not write in longhand. She’s very spidery.”

“Elsie’s ninety, at least,” I noted. “She’s earned the right to be spidery or any other thing she wants to be. Don’t her reports make sense?”

“Usually,” Vida conceded. “But this paragraph about Maud Dodd moving into the retirement home’s indecipherable. I’ll have to call on Elsie to see what she means.”

“Call on? Or call?”

“Elsie’s deaf as a cedar stump,” Vida explained. “She won’t get the kind of phone that will amplify her ability to hear. It’s not really a problem to visit her. The retirement home is close to my house, so I’ll stop in after work. Perhaps she’ll invite me to dinner there. The meals are bland but wholesome.”

Vida neglected to mention that the retirement home’s food was also better than what she’d fix for herself at home. My House & Home editor dispensed recipes and offered cooking advice on her page in the
Advocate
, but the truth was, she couldn’t create a decent meal. I would rather graze on grass in my backyard than eat a casserole from the Runkel kitchen.

The afternoon dragged along. I did some research in our files for facts and figures to bolster my editorial about the sheriff skating on thin financial ice. Then I wrote an unsatisfactory first draft. By four-thirty I figured there’d be no news from Milo or Doc Dewey. It was pointless to write even a boilerplate story about Elmer’s death. Most of the other loose ends were tied up for the weekly edition.

Scott still hadn’t returned, and I was beginning to wonder what he was doing. Maybe a story had broken somewhere else after he’d finished his meeting at the chamber.

He walked in at four thirty-five, looking embarrassed and disheveled. “The sink blew up. At home, I mean. Tammy was in water up to her ankles.”

“So now you’re a plumber?”

He looked askance. “Not a very good one. But I can bail.”

“What was the problem?” I asked, putting on a sympathetic face.

“That’s the good news,” Scott said. “For you. The water main broke at Alpine Way and Stump Hill Road. About three dozen households were affected. I’ve got the story and some pictures.”

“Excellent,” I declared, ignoring the misery of others for the sake of a newsy page-one article. “The cause?”

“Roots got into the main line from a weeping willow in a corner house across from our condo,” Scott informed me. “The Stuart place, in The Pines.”

The Pines was Alpine’s upscale development, built on acreage that originally had been a stump farm. The Stuarts owned what was once called Stuart’s Stereo but had been rechristened Stuart Sound when technology rushed forward.

My own little log house was on Fir, four blocks directly east of the trouble spot. “Did the flooding go past Alpine Way?”

Scott grinned. “Not in your direction. But some of the houses in The Pines have problems.”

“The people who live there can afford them,” I said crassly. “Nancy and Cliff Stuart have made a pile of money.”

Scott left my office to write the water-main story. The mention of Nancy Stuart, who was Doc Dewey’s sister, spurred me to call Milo and check on the medical findings, if any.

“Doc won’t rule on Elmer’s death,” Milo informed me. “He shipped Elmer off to Everett about an hour ago.”

“Thanks for the heads-up,” I said sarcastically.

“I told Vida that’s what’d happen,” the sheriff replied in an irritated voice.

I spoke in my most formal journalist’s tone. “You did—but we didn’t get confirmation.”

“Shit. You want it in writing?”

It was useless to argue with Milo about media protocol. I got frustrated when he went by the book in a law enforcement investigation; he became irked when I stuck by my journalist’s rules. And after all these years, he seemed to have no grasp of the deadline concept.

I just had time to hurry home and change clothes before I picked up Ben at the rectory. My brother was in civvies, a red sweater over a navy blue shirt and jeans. He didn’t bother with a jacket. After all those years in the Arizona desert, and before that on the Mississippi Delta, he insisted he was getting acclimated to cold weather because his last two temporary assignments had been in Wisconsin and Michigan. I wasn’t sure I believed him. He hadn’t spent a full winter in either state.

The rain let up just before we crossed the flat, fertile sloughs outside of Everett. It was dark, of course, the sun having set beyond the Olympic Mountains at least an hour before we left the Cascades behind us. I mentioned to Ben that it was always better to drive the late afternoon and early evening westerly route in fall and winter. Otherwise, the sun can blind you when it suddenly appears from around the many bends of Highway 2.

“I miss the mountains,” Ben said as traffic slowed just before we finished crossing the flats. “I didn’t miss them that much in Arizona because of all the formations in the desert country. But the Middle West—that’s different.”

It took us another fifteen minutes to drive through Everett’s rush-hour congestion. Shortly after six we reached Anthony’s. I was right: The restaurant had several vacant tables, including one by a window where Ben and I could sit and watch the well-lighted marina.