The Alpine Uproar (5 page)

I stood up. “To get to KSKY, go back down Front Street, turn right onto Alpine Way, and make a left to the Burl Creek Road. Just follow it until you see the transmission tower and a small cinder-block building. I don’t know if Mr. Fleetwood will be there or not. In the evenings he often turns the programming over to students from the community college or lets his engineer run tapes.”

Jica glided along beside me as we left the newsroom. “Thank you. Do you really think I should talk to the sheriff?”

I didn’t say that I wondered why Jica Weaver hadn’t been interviewed already. Maybe it was because she hadn’t been inside the tavern at the time of the brawl. “If you think it’d do any good,” I said, opening the front door, “you might call him tomorrow. I take it he wasn’t in when you dropped by with your note for Clive.”

We’d reached the sidewalk. “The sheriff had left for the day,” Jica said.

I checked to make sure I’d locked the door. “You’re going back to Snohomish tonight?”

“I think so,” she replied. “It’s a long drive, though.” Without another word, she wandered along Front Street in the direction opposite the sheriff’s headquarters. I watched her for a few moments to see if she was going to her car, but she crossed Fifth and waited for traffic at the corner. After a half-dozen vehicles had gone by, Jica went across Front Street and stopped to study the window displays at Harvey’s Hardware. Wherever my ethereal visitor was going, she wasn’t in any hurry to get there.

When I arrived home, the only item of interest in my mailbox was the PUD bill, which, as usual, had gone up. There were two calls on my answering machine. One was a wrong number, but I recognized the apologetic voice at the other end. It was Grace Grundle, a slightly addled old lady who doted on
her many cats. Apparently, she’d intended to call the pet store, but had misdialed. It wasn’t the first time I’d had calls for Tye-Tonga Pet Shop. Our numbers were different by only a single digit.

The other message was from Edna Mae Dalrymple, our local librarian, asking if I could substitute tonight at bridge club. “Charlene Vickers has come down with a nasty cold,” Edna Mae said in her twittering voice. “As soon as school starts, so does the cold and flu season. Not that I’m blaming the children, of course,” she rattled on. “Still, I do think that when the weather changes, their parents should dress them more warmly. I saw one of the Wilson boys at the library this afternoon in shorts! I don’t know what people are thinking of.” Edna Mae stopped to catch her breath. “Anyway, could you fill in for … oh! It’s Wednesday, isn’t it? Bridge club isn’t until tomorrow at Janet Driggers’s house. I’ll call you back.”

It was a typical episode. Edna Mae is extremely competent at her job, but outside the library she tends to be a bit dizzy. With the phone still in hand, I dialed Milo’s number at home. It was going on six o’clock. After four rings I got his recording: “Not available. Leave a message, name and number.” The sheriff didn’t go in for elaboration—unlike Vida, whose messages always demanded every scrap of information except for the caller’s blood type. I hung up. Milo disliked messages that weren’t informative.

As I sautéed a chicken breast and boiled rice, I wondered if he’d accepted Delphine Corson’s offer of a free dinner. The sheriff’s social life was about as dull as mine. He dated even less frequently than I did. As far as I knew, there had been no woman in his life in recent years except me, and that was a casual relationship based on friendship, trust, and propinquity.
Not such a bad basis for sex, I thought as I gazed out through the front window while my dinner was cooking, but not even close to the kind of love and passion I’d experienced with Tom Cavanaugh, the father of my son. After Tom died, I’d had a rocky liaison with Rolf Fisher, who lived and worked in Seattle. I’d unintentionally stood him up in early July and hadn’t heard from him since. At first, I missed him. He was smart, attractive, and amusing. But Rolf was a game player, and I’d never figured out the rules. Maybe I was better off without him.

Then again, I reflected, seeing my long-married next-door neighbors walk hand in hand from their car to their house, maybe not. Val and Viv Marsden had celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in August. They’d hosted a barbecue in their backyard for relatives, friends, and neighbors. Although we’d never been close friends—my fault, not theirs—I’d known them well enough to see the comfortable intimacy they shared. On many occasions, including that warm August evening, I’d noticed the gamut of emotions they could express without ever saying a word or even a glance. Never having been married, I envied the Marsdens. Watching them now, I recalled a day in June five years ago when Val had helped Tom clear away some of the overgrowth in my yard and haul it off in the Marsdens’ truck. Tom was staying with me to plan our wedding. I remembered thinking how wonderful it would be when we got married, how good it was to have congenial neighbors, how well Tom seemed to fit into the role of my home’s caretaker.

Before the weekend was over, Tom was dead. So were my dreams. I still wondered what it might have been like if he’d lived. Maybe it wouldn’t have been as blissful as I’d imagined. Tom was a city person, born and raised in Seattle, then living
in San Francisco for almost thirty years. Still, the fantasy of our life together occasionally came back to haunt me.

Love plays strange tricks on our brains. I couldn’t help but wonder if Jica Weaver’s description of Clive Berentsen was accurate—or if she, too, was prone to spin fairy tales with happy endings.

V
IDA WAS AGOG THE NEXT MORNING WHEN
I
TOLD HER
and Mitch Laskey about Jica Weaver’s after-hours visit. “Clive has a lady friend?” my House & Home editor cried, batting at the little black balls that hung from the brim of her Spanish hat. “And she’s not a tart as I might expect? I didn’t know she existed. How can that be?”

“Because she’s from Snohomish?” I suggested, not daring to look at Mitch—who was intrigued as well as amused by his colleague’s encyclopedic knowledge of Alpine. “Or maybe
you
should visit the ICT.”

Vida shuddered.
“Please!
I wouldn’t dream of it!”

Leo, who had been on the phone, rang off and chuckled. “Come on, Duchess. Tag along with Emma and me tonight. We’ve decided to have a romantic rendezvous there if we can find two bar stools next to each other that still have all their padding.”

Vida gaped at Leo. “You’re not!”

Leo glanced at me; I gave him a thumbs-up. “Yes, we are,” he insisted. “Crime scene stuff.” He looked across the room at
Mitch. “Tell us what to look for. Maybe small claw prints on the burger patties?”

“It’s combat duty,” Mitch said. “Though to be honest, it’s upscale compared with some of the watering holes I was forced to visit in Detroit. There was one place that served gopher …”

“Stop!” Vida put her hands over her ears, knocking the Spanish hat askew. “Don’t tell me any more disgusting tales of your past life. I haven’t had my morning pastry.”

“Try the elephant ear,” Mitch said. “They were still warm from the oven when I bought them.”

“I believe I shall,” Vida said, going to the coffee table and cutting off a generous slice of the big, almost round cinnamon-and-sugar-covered pastry. “Is your wife’s loom working properly?”

“I hope so,” Mitch replied. “I’m wondering if maybe the thing got damaged in transit from our home in Royal Oak.” He stood up after Vida took a large chunk of elephant ear to her desk. “I’m off on my rounds,” Mitch announced. “Anything else I should know before calling on Sheriff Dodge’s crew?”

“Not really,” I said. “Do you have that list of people who were at the tavern Saturday night? I only took a quick look at it Tuesday before the arrest was made.”

“Sure,” Mitch replied, bony fingers on his keyboard. “I’ll zap it into your computer.”

He’d barely left the newsroom when Vida followed me into my office. “Well? I’d like to see that list again, too.”

I printed two copies and handed Vida the first one. “It’s quite a mix,” I pointed out. “Not the same rough-and-tumble types they had at the ICT in the old days.”

“Of course not,” Vida agreed, sitting in one of my two visitors’ chairs and frowning as she went over the names. “Some-what
more … refined these days. Not that I’m denigrating the character of those who frequented the tavern in bygone years. Being loggers, they had to be very hardy, rugged, and willing to take risks. The work was—it still is—dangerous, both in the woods and in the mills.”

“Yes,” I agreed, finding some irony in Vida’s exclusion of the riffraff that had often patronized the ICT in a different era.

“Mugs Ahoy,” she went on, “has always drawn a somewhat higher class of clientele. That’s because it’s located in the heart of the commercial district, rather than on the fringe. Before World War Two, that section of Alpine was virtually out of town. It wasn’t until the fifties that the Icicle Creek development was built and the golf course was laid out.” She tapped a name on the list. “Marlowe Whipp strikes me as an unlikely customer. So does Delphine Corson.”

“As a matter of fact, Delphine isn’t a regular,” I explained, telling Vida about the local florist’s attempt to keep her presence a secret.

“How silly,” Vida scoffed. “I heard she was there the next day. Billy mentioned it,” she said, referring to her nephew, Bill Blatt, who was a sheriff’s deputy. “I thought it unlike her, but she’s seeing Gus Swanson, and his car dealership is right by the tavern. Delphine is basically a sensible woman with a good head for business, but when it comes to men, she can be quite foolish. Gus and Beverly Swanson are merely separated at this point. He shouldn’t be dating until one of them files for divorce.”

“Maybe she’ll fall for Marlowe Whipp,” I said. “He’s not married.”

“He was, years ago. His wife, Cathie, died young. That’s why the elder Whipps have helped raise Marlowe’s son, Frankie. Goodness, I meant to talk to Marlowe yesterday, but I never saw him on his mail route.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s
going on nine. He should be coming by with our delivery soon. I’ll go look for him in a few minutes. Let’s review these other people quickly.”

“Clive Berentsen, the accused, and Alvin De Muth, the deceased. Regulars?”

“Probably. Both worked with trucks, Clive as a driver, Al as a mechanic.” Vida studied her copy of the list. “Fred Engel-man, who should have been spending the weekend in jail, but wanted to attend his ex-wife’s birthday party. I think that’s rather nice.”

“The ex-wife, Janie, now married to Mickey Borg, who owns Icicle Creek Gas ’n Go next to the tavern, a natural hangout for them.”

“Yes. I never go there for gas,” Vida said. “I much prefer Cal Vickers’s Texaco station. Nor would I go to the Borgs’ minimart. Prices are higher than in grocery stores, and I’ve heard that he sometimes sells beer and cigarettes to minors. If so, Milo ought to look into it. The practice is despicable.” She moved on swiftly to the next name. “Holly Gross. Do I need to say more?”

“She
is
gross,” I said, “in many ways. Did she ever marry any of her children’s fathers?”

Vida shook her head. “There was a teenage marriage years ago. No children and the union lasted less than a year. Holly prefers living on welfare and off men who … well, accept her favors.”

“I wonder if she went to the tavern alone.”

“Maybe. She was probably trolling.” Vida wrinkled her nose in disapproval. “She’s definitely a regular, and not just on Saturdays. Occasionally, she goes to Mugs Ahoy, though Abe Loomis wishes she wouldn’t. Abe can be fussy about standards for his clientele.”

The owner of the rival tavern could also be depressing. Over the years, his employees had tactfully tried to tell him that he shouldn’t chat with customers because his expertise was managing the business. The truth was that patrons who unloaded their troubles came away feeling much worse after listening to Abe’s doleful responses. Known around town as Abe Gloomis, he survived as a barkeep by serving good beer and edible food at reasonable prices. He also ran a fairly tight ship and kept the tavern relatively tidy.

Vida pushed the Spanish hat farther back on her head. I gathered that those dangling black balls were bothering her. “What caused the fight? Billy told me it was over money, but he didn’t sound sure.”

“I honestly don’t know,” I admitted. “Money is always a good way to make people mad. Who pays for what, who doesn’t pay their tab, who borrowed money from somebody else and didn’t pay it back or got turned down when they asked for a loan …” I shrugged. “Mitch said Sam Heppner thought it started at the pool table. Maybe they were betting on the games.”

“Perhaps.” Vida glanced again at the list. “Norene and Bert Anderson. Norene works at the tavern and Bert owns the local body shop. Obviously, they belong with this crowd. As for the Peabody boys, I assume they’re regulars. They almost fit the old mold—big, strong, and not particularly bright.”

I nodded. “Purvis and Myron, our local jacks-of-all-trades, especially heavy lifting. Good-natured, though.”

“True. As for Averill Fairbanks, I don’t know what to say.” Vida frowned. “I’ve never considered him a tavern type of person. He can’t spot space ships and aliens in a bar.”

“No, but he might see more of them when he leaves.”

Vida gave me the courtesy of a small smile. “Perhaps. He
must bore the other customers with his far-fetched tales of aliens landing on Flapjack Peak or little green men paddling down Troublesome Creek.” She paused. “Walt and Amanda Hanson strike me as a bit odd for this group. He works at the state fish hatchery. But what does she do? Did she ever get on full-time at the post office?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think she works there only during the holiday rush. They have no kids. Amanda filled in last spring at Barton’s Bootery for someone who was ill or out of town.”

“Yes, I remember now. I used it in ‘Scene.’ Clancy and Debra Barton went to the UK for three weeks.” She paused, resettling her hat. “That leaves the owners, Spike and Julie. Have we left out anyone?”

“Not unless the sheriff’s head count isn’t complete,” I said. “He didn’t have Jica Weaver’s name on the list, but I suppose that’s because she wasn’t inside the ICT at the time of the incident.”