The Alpine Uproar (9 page)

“Did anyone else mention that?”

“Not so far. Frankly, the eyewitness statements are a mishmash.” Milo leaned back in his chair. “What else would you expect from a bunch of people who were at least semi-drunk?”

I nodded. “Leo and I are going there tonight to take a look at the place. I haven’t been there in years, not since …” I clamped my lips shut.

“Don’t remind me,” Milo said, turning the tablet around so he could see it. Suddenly, he frowned. “You and Leo? I thought the new guy was covering this case.”

“He is,” I said, starting to get up. “But I want to refresh my memory.”

“With Leo?”

It dawned on me that without intending to, I’d turned the tables on Milo. Or, given the off-and-on nature of our relationship, maybe
small snack trays
would be more apt than
tables
.

“I’ve got to make sure there aren’t any glitches this time around,” I said. “I trust Mitch because he’s experienced, but he’s still not used to small towns. Leo offered to take me there because Spike Canby is an advertiser. He got mad at us for suggesting in his ad that customers went there to get killed.”

“Bullshit,” Milo declared. “Spike’s ad is the size of a postage stamp.”

“That’s the other thing.” I winced slightly as I picked up my heavy handbag from the floor. “Leo’s coaxing Spike into buying more space.”

“He’s a tight bastard. Good luck with that.” He gestured at my handbag. “What do you women carry around in those satchels? Shoes? Or barbells?”

“The older we get, the more stuff we need to keep from looking like hags. I’ve got surgical instruments in here so I can do my own face-lift.”

Milo regarded me with a faint frown. “Your face looks fine to me.”

“Thanks. Your eyes must be going.”

“Hey,” he said as I turned toward the door, “where are you heading?”

I turned around. “To Pie-In-The-Sky for a sandwich. Why?”

“They’ve got soup there. Want to pick up a bowl of chicken noodle for me? With those good crackers? Oh, and a piece of blackberry pie.”

“Sure,” I said. “See you in a bit.”

Emma Lord, Nursemaid to the Sheriff
, I thought, trudging past the post office and the highway department to the Alpine Mall.
Emma the Sap
. At the corner of Front and Alpine Way, I stopped for one of the town’s two traffic lights. Across the street, I could see Old Mill Park with its statue of the town founder, Carl Clemans, and the original mill that had been turned into a museum. The maple, mountain ash, and cottonwood trees had turned from gold to bronze. I gazed to my right, looking up at Mount Baldy. Hardly any snow remained, unusual for the fifty-two-hundred-foot peak. Summer had been too dry and too hot. There had been several forest fires, though thankfully not near Alpine. The ski industry would be in peril if we didn’t get heavy snow this coming winter.
Drought
was almost a foreign word to
the residents of western Washington, but now it was becoming part of our daily vocabulary. I couldn’t write editorials begging Mother Nature to send us rain, but I’d done a couple in August and September about conserving water and electricity. Averill Fairbanks had written me a letter insisting that Alien Forces from Venus had built a shield around the earth and had figured out a way to make our planet dry up so that the Venusians—whom he described as looking like grasshoppers—could use all the water for themselves. The concept of grasshoppers in a bathtub eluded me, but I’d printed the letter on the editorial page because it was signed and not libelous. Except, of course, to the Venusians, who weren’t subscribers.

As usual, the line at the pie and sandwich shop was long. I stepped behind Marje Blatt, Vida’s niece and the receptionist at Alpine’s medical clinic. Marje wore a starched white uniform, which she and Doc Dewey preferred to the casual attire that often made medical practitioners indistinguishable from the window-washing crew. She was a few inches shorter than Vida, but stood straight as a phone pole.

I tapped her shoulder. “Hi, Marje.”

She turned slowly, bright blue eyes studying me as if she were trying to remember if she’d seen me on a
WANTED
poster. “Hello, Emma,” she said. “Aren’t you overdue for your annual checkup?”

Brisk and business-like as usual
, I thought. “I’ll call in the next few days,” I said. We both knew that I’d forget.

“I’ll send a reminder.”

“Thanks.” We each moved up a space. “I’ll get a flu shot, too.”

“Wait until November,” Marje advised.

I realized I hadn’t seen her for several weeks. Her piquant face was pale, and her short auburn hair looked dull. As we
stepped closer to the counter, I wondered if the Icicle Creek Tavern tragedy had brought back some heartbreaking memories. Marje had been engaged to a young man who’d spent his final hours at the same site. But standing in line at Pie-In-The-Sky wasn’t the right place for intimate conversation.

Ten minutes later, I was back in the sheriff’s office. “You owe me eight dollars and sixty-five cents,” I said, setting Milo’s soup, crackers, and pie on his desk. “Unlike Delphine, I refuse to bribe you.”

“Where’s my coffee?”

“You didn’t ask. What’s wrong with your coffee here?”

“The coffeemaker broke,” Milo replied. “Lori’s over at Harvey’s Hardware buying a new one.”

“Wait until she makes it,” I said testily. “Unlike her predecessors, Lori can brew liquid that tastes more like coffee than sink sludge.”

Milo dug into his pocket. “Here,” he said, tossing a ten-dollar bill at me. “Keep the change.”

“Gee, thanks.” I picked up the money and put it in my wallet. “I’ll see you later.”

“You aren’t eating here?”

“I wasn’t going to. I thought you wanted to enjoy the misery of your own company. Why do you ask?”

“Got a call from the Everett ME a few minutes ago,” Milo explained, removing the lid from his bowl of chicken noodle soup. An enticing plume of steam rose up, briefly overcoming the usual stale smell of cigarettes. The sheriff picked up the plastic soup spoon and scowled. “Why can’t they give you a
real
spoon? These damned things are too flimsy.”

“Use a straw,” I said, deciding I might as well eat my turkey sandwich and chips while I heard what Milo had to say. “Is the final autopsy in?”

“No. It probably won’t be until Monday or Tuesday.” He paused to break up some crackers and drop them in the bowl. “Too many people in SnoCo these days. Why don’t they all move to the other side of the mountains and croak over there?”

“Good question,” I remarked. “So why did the ME call?”

Milo waited until he finished his first taste of soup. “Good stuff.” He downed another mouthful. “It’s the pool cue. According to forensics, the one we sent to Everett isn’t the one that killed Alvin De Muth.”

I used a napkin to wipe off some mayo that I’d gotten on my hand. “Are you sure you sent the right one? You’ve got eyewitnesses, and Clive Berentsen doesn’t deny he whacked De Muth.”

The sheriff was still downing his soup and crackers, but ogling the slice of blackberry pie. “When I left the tavern, I made sure we took all of the pool cues, a total of nine. The Hansons and the Borgs were using their cues in the game. After Clive and De Muth started going at it, Clive grabbed one of the other cues from the rack. None of them test out as the weapon.”

“I don’t know much about pool cues,” I admitted, “but could their surface be so smooth that any kind of trace wouldn’t show up?”

“SnoCo’s high tech gizmos should’ve found something,” Milo said. “We’re not talking top of the line or even matching cues, but Spike’s are all made of maple. Most of them are fairly worn and nicked up.”

I had no suggestions. I sat quietly for a moment, watching the sheriff pick up the soup bowl and drain it. “Gee,” I said, “did you do that with your vichyssoise at dinner in Monroe last night?”

“My what?” Milo asked, wiping his chin. “Back off. What should I do? Pour the broth into my empty coffee mug?”

I smiled. “Your table manners are fine. Do you have a theory?”

“You know I hate theories.” Milo took a bite of pie. “Mmm. Damned good.” He took another bite, chewed slowly, and regarded me with eyes that could intimidate a suspect and, at the same time, exude integrity. “You ever play pool?”

“Way back when,” I said. “High school, maybe college. I was terrible at it. Why?”

“Those cues weigh anywhere from sixteen to twenty-one ounces. Oh, some of the expensive ones weigh more, but Spike Canby buys on the cheap. About half of his cues were passed on from the Post family. The cues are long and slender. I don’t have a so-called ‘theory,’ but I wonder how you could kill somebody with a pool cue, especially in a confined area. Depending on how you swung it, the damned thing might break.”

“Doc Dewey’s initial cause of death was a blow to the head,” I reminded Milo. “Did you ask the ME about it?”

The sheriff’s expression was wry. “Most MEs, including this one—Colin Knapp, fairly new guy over in Everett—can be damned cagey until all the final results are in. Knapp’s competent from what I hear, but he’s kind of a wiseass. He told me you could kill somebody with a head of cabbage if you smacked him a certain way.”

“Maybe you should’ve designated the kitchen as a crime scene.”

“I’ve thought about doing that at Vida’s the few times I’ve eaten there.” Milo looked beyond me as someone tapped at the door. “Yeah?”

Lori Cobb, the sheriff’s receptionist, poked her head in. “Coffee’s on,” she said. “Hi, Emma. You want some, too? It’ll be about ten, twelve minutes, according to the directions.”

“No thanks,” I replied. “I’m heading back to the
Advocate.”

Lori closed the door. It was going on one o’clock and I decided to save the other half of the large turkey sandwich for dinner. Or maybe a midafternoon snack. “How’s the prisoner?”

“Berentsen?” Milo shook his head. “Depressed. Upset. Mad at himself and the rest of the world.”

I put my lunch leftovers into the large paper bag provided by the sandwich and pie shop. “No plea bargain request from Clive’s lawyer?”

“Not yet. I haven’t heard anything from her since the arraignment. Say,” Milo said suddenly as I picked up my handbag, “does Marisa Foxx know her? You and Marisa are kind of chummy these days, right?”

“Yes. It took us long enough, though. We have a lot in common. I played my first poker game with her group a couple of weeks ago. I lost twenty-eight dollars.”

“Maybe you can’t afford to hang out with those rich lawyers.” Milo’s tone was droll.

“They’re not all lawyers,” I explained. “There’s a couple of college teachers, an engineer, an architect, and a dot-com retiree from Sultan. The mix changes because of everybody’s busy schedule. Tonight I’m playing bridge. I’m not so rusty at that game.”

Milo got up from his chair and stretched. “God, I feel better. Must have been the pie.” He shook himself like a dog coming out of a bath. “If you see Marisa, ask her if she knows this Esther Brant from Everett.”

“I will,” I promised, “but we don’t play poker again until next week.” I opened the door and was face-to-face with Jack Mullins. He looked faintly startled. “I’m just leaving,” I told him.

Jack, who’s usually the most outgoing of Milo’s deputies, ignored me. “Bad wreck on Highway 2,” he announced from the
threshold. “A panel truck took out a car and went into the Skykomish River. Probable fatalities. Sam’s on his way and I’m going, too.”

“I’ll come,” Milo said, grabbing his hat and jacket. “We’ll take the Grand Cherokee.”

Both men rushed off. I walked into the reception area where Lori was on one phone and Dustin Fong on the other. I could hear the sirens and, after long practice, recognized the ambulance, the medic van, and the fire engine, all heading for Alpine Way and the green truss bridge over the Sky. I decided to wait for Lori and Dustin to hang up so I could find out where the accident had occurred and send Mitch Laskey to take pictures.

Dustin was the first to disconnect. “Did you hear Jack?” he asked, maintaining his usual calm and good manners under duress. “It sounds bad. That’s four accidents involving trucks since Labor Day between Index and Alpine, two of them with eighteen-wheelers. I don’t know why big rigs go over Stevens Pass. They’re better off taking I-90 Snoqualmie, even if it’s out of their way.”

Lori had also finished her phone conversation. “At least it’s not raining or snowing. I wonder what happened?”

“Where did it happen?” I asked.

“Just past the ranger station,” Dustin replied. “In fact, one of the forest service people called it in. The truck was heading west, just beyond the Skykomish deli.”

“Got it,” I said. “Thanks.”

As soon as I reached the sidewalk, I called Mitch on my cell.

“I’m all over it,” he said. “I was just coming back from lunch when I heard the sirens. I’m crossing the bridge right now. Later.”

I hurried back to the office. It seemed strange to find the reception desk vacant. Only Leo was in the newsroom, and he
was about to leave. “Bad accident, I hear,” he said, shrugging into his brown tweed sport coat. “I’m off to see the Wizard of the Airwaves. Assuming Fleetwood hasn’t raced to the wreckage to do a remote broadcast.”

“Don’t forget to ask him about Jica Weaver,” I said.

“Can’t forget that name,” Leo responded as he went out the door.

Before I could reach my office, Kip breezed in from the back shop. “Ta-da!” he exclaimed in an unusual show of exuberance. “We’re online!”

“We’re what?”

“You know the last couple of computer expenses I asked for?”

“Sort of.” Despite the goatee he’d grown in the past year, Kip’s face was still boyishly excited. “And?”

“The Alpine Advocate
is up and running on the Internet.” He beamed at me. “Want a look?”

“Yes, sure.” I let him lead the way into my cubbyhole. After a couple of seconds he’d brought up our brand-new website. I was flabbergasted. “This is what you were talking about when you asked me to pay for all the high-tech stuff?”

Kip nodded enthusiastically. “You’d never let me explain what it was for, so I went ahead and did it.” He suddenly looked uneasy. “Are you mad at me?”