The Alpine Recluse (4 page)

“Well now,” she said after we’d given our order to a plump blond waitress named Courtney, who immediately brought our beverages. “That’s better. I can speak freely. Did you realize that Maud Dodd and her grandchildren were standing behind us? Maud is such a gossip!”

“Really.”

“Yes,” Vida said, her eyes darting around the area at the other customers. “Of course, she’s known Dot and Durwood for years, too. I wouldn’t want to mention them where she might overhear.”

“Naturally.” I waited while Vida laced her iced tea with sugar.

“The Parkers had only gotten the news about the cause of Tim’s death a few minutes before I got there,” Vida explained. “At first, Durwood just sat there in his recliner, not speaking. Dot was in tears. I did my best to comfort them, but you can imagine the shock.”

“They were fond of their grandson-in-law?”

“I shouldn’t go so far as to say
that,
” Vida responded, her gray eyes ever watchful. “They’re fond of Tiffany. Frankly, I always thought they favored Laura over Charlotte.”

“Huh?”

Vida waved a hand. “Cookie Parker Eriks is actually named Charlotte. They’ve called her Cookie forever. Laura is their older daughter. She married Demetrius—Deeky—Kristopolous, some distant relative of the Doukas family. Laura and Deeky live in Bremerton. They have two grown children, somewhat older than Tiffany. Frankly, LaLa and Cookie have never gotten along.”

“LaLa?”

“Laura. That’s her nickname.”

“Ah.” I think I understood the family tree, but I hoped Vida wouldn’t make me take a quiz after lunch. I had, however, lost the main thread of our conversation. “So . . . ?”

Vida quickly saw my confusion. “My point is that Dot and Durwood not only favored LaLa over Cookie, but LaLa’s children over Tiffany. Personally, I suspect that if LaLa’s children had been raised in Alpine and not over on the Kitsap Peninsula in Bremerton, Dot and Durwood would have discovered that they were no better than Tiffany. All those sailors, you know. In Bremerton.”

Bremerton was a naval shipyard, but I still didn’t quite understand what Vida was trying to say. “LaLa’s children are both girls?”

Vida shook her head. “No. She and Deeky have one of each. I’m not saying that their children got into serious trouble. I’m sure I would’ve heard about
that.
I merely mean that their grandparents always saw them when they were on their best behavior. Of course, Bremerton is by far a larger town than Alpine. So much more temptation.”

“I see,” I said, and thought that at least I got the gist of Vida’s meaning. “Was Tiffany a wild teenager? The first time I met her, I think she was out of high school.”

Vida gazed up at the ceiling where tired fans did their best to dispel the hot and greasy air. “Yes. Tiffany would’ve been twenty, twenty-one back then. That was just a year or two before she started dating Tim. My, they were together for a long time, even if they didn’t marry until recently.” She paused as Courtney brought us our meals. I’d ordered my usual burger basket; Vida had requested the chicken version. She ate two fries before she spoke again. “As I recall, Tiffany wasn’t a troublesome teen. She dated a number of boys and was a cheerleader at the high school. Tim was probably a senior when she was a freshman. He was on the football and baseball teams, though he wasn’t one of our outstanding athletes.”

I managed not to smile. To my knowledge, Alpine hadn’t turned out anyone with great athletic ability in the past fifty years.

“Tim went to Western Washington University in Bellingham for a year or two, but dropped out,” Vida continued, adding more salt to her fries. “He never had goals. He isn’t—pardon me—
wasn’t
stupid, simply average and unmotivated. Tiffany strikes me as quite empty-headed.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “She’s vapid.”

Vida munched on her chicken and nodded. “Apt. Cookie and LaLa are both reasonably intelligent, I suppose, but to be fair, Durwood was a very good pharmacist even if he is a terrible driver, and Dot kept the books when they owned the drugstore. Perhaps the brains just petered out over time.”

“Tiffany is an only child?” I remarked. “I thought there was a brother.”

“There was,” Vida replied. “Ringo. He died in a rafting accident on the Snake River several years ago.” She peered at me closely. “Don’t you remember? It was after you moved here.”

I pushed at my memory. “Yes, I do now. But I hadn’t been here long, and I didn’t know the Raffertys. What was his real first name?”

“Ringo.” Vida picked up an onion ring that she’d ordered on the side. “Cookie was a big fan of the Beatles.” Lest she think I was about to criticize the plethora of family nicknames, Vida narrowed her eyes at me. “Gus Eriks—Tiffany’s other grandfather, now deceased—had a sister-in-law who loved the Ink Spots.”

“And?” I waited for Vida to gobble up her onion ring.

“She called their son Ink Spot. Inky, for short.” She bit off another piece of chicken and bun. “I don’t think she realized that the Ink Spots were black. That was before television.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Anyway,” Vida went on after she finished chewing, “after I’d been there a few minutes, the Parkers settled down.”

That was more than I could do after the laborious—and weird—family tree I’d just been climbing. “I assume they can’t guess how the fire started.”

“Certainly not,” Vida retorted. “Dick Bourgette doesn’t build shoddy homes. Dot and Durwood knew of no complaints about faulty wiring or chimney flaws or anything of the sort. The fire must have been set deliberately, as I’m sure Milo would agree.”

We both paused to wave at Stella Magruder, who was hurrying past to the pickup counter. No doubt she was taking lunch back to her beauty parlor down the street. I’d scheduled a Thursday appointment with her to cut my shrublike brown hair. “Did they mention Old Nick?” I inquired of Vida.

She looked owlish. “No. What about him?”

I related my conversation with Beth Rafferty. Vida was intrigued. “I had no idea Nick was lurking around that vacant house off the cul-de-sac. How could you not have known, Emma?”

I shrugged. “It’s not on my usual route. I take Fourth, not Fifth, or go over to Alpine Way in the opposite direction.”

“Hmm.” She turned thoughtful. “Milo will have to hunt him down. I can’t imagine why Old Nick has shown up in town after so many years.”

“What do you know about him?” I asked with another wave for Stella, who was still hurrying but now held two white paper bags bearing the eatery’s red barn logo.

“Let me think.” Vita ate more fries before continuing. “Goodness, it must be close to thirty years ago. I didn’t actually see him, but Harvey Adcock told me that this disreputable-looking creature had come into his store and bought an axe and a hammer and—I forget what else. He had a long gray beard and barely spoke. And he paid for everything in change. At first, Harvey thought he was crippled because he walked with such difficulty. But it turned out he was carrying all those coins in the pockets of his overalls.”

“When did you see him?”

“Much later—a year or more,” Vida replied. “He was going through the bins in back of the Grocery Basket. I saw him once or twice after that, always foraging. And then he simply disappeared. It’s probably been over ten years since the last sighting. What’s odd is that he never seemed to stay in town for more than a few hours. I can’t imagine him holing up in a vacant house.”

“He may be sick,” I suggested.

“Perhaps.”

I finished my burger. “Say, why did the Parkers stand you up last night for the interview? Did they forget?”

Vida suddenly looked uneasy. Her gaze, which had never ceased scouring the restaurant to keep tabs on the other customers, now became fixed on her almost empty plate. “That was rather odd. Dot apologized, but she didn’t explain.”

“Maybe she was embarrassed. Because they did forget,” I added.

Vida looked me in the eye. “I don’t think so. I can’t help but wonder if they aren’t hiding something.”

I made a face. “Like what?”

She sighed. “That’s what bothers me.”

Vida looked more than bothered. She looked worried.

Her reaction made me worry, too.

FOUR

I
DIDN’T KNOW
the Parkers nearly as well as Vida did. Durwood had retired and sold the pharmacy shortly before I moved to Alpine. Except for Durwood’s ghastly driving record, they were highly respectable—and among the few to whom Vida granted grudging approval. If the Parkers had evaded the question of their whereabouts the previous evening, Vida and I could only surmise that they had to attend to personal problems.

“Family matters,” she guessed. “But what? Really, Dot and Durwood are decent people. I’d hate to think—” She stopped, shaking her head.

“Think what?” I asked, glancing at my bill.

“I don’t know,” Vida admitted. She opened her coin purse, where she kept bills as well as change. “Cookie and Wayne Eriks are a trifle old for midlife crises. Still, you can never be sure. Tim and Tiffany are—were—technically newlyweds, though that doesn’t really count since they lived together for so long.” She counted out seventy-five cents for a tip. “Goodness, I’d like to know why Tim was killed.”

I had put a dollar on the table. “You don’t care for Milo’s burglary theory?”

Vida squinted at me through her big glasses. “It does sound glib, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe,” I allowed. And then I did something I rarely do in front of Vida. “Damn!” I swore.

“Emma!” Vida had been sliding out of the booth. She stopped abruptly on the edge, steadying herself by gripping the Formica-topped table. “Are you hurt?”

“Sorry,” I said, looking around to see if anyone nearby had noticed my mild oath. Thankfully, no stares had been turned in our direction. “It just occurred to me. Tim’s death is being treated by Milo—and for all I know, the rest of the deputies—as if his loss is of no consequence. Granted, he wasn’t one of our more outstanding citizens, but I don’t like it. He was a human being, about to become a father, and now he’s dead, and has left Tiffany to raise their child alone. It isn’t right that his murder should be relegated into a cut-and-dried burglary gone wrong.”

Vida slipped back into her original place. “You’re right. It’s not fair to the Parkers, either. We can’t let Milo slough this off. They deserve better. They
are
Alpiners, after all.”

We returned to the office, determined to make sure that Tim Rafferty didn’t become an unsolved mystery.

B
Y THREE O’CLOCK
, I was growing anxious to finish my lead story. Scott’s fire photos were outstanding. Thanks to Kip’s high-tech expertise, we could use color with good resolution. I decided to run the most dramatic picture four columns and six inches deep on the front page. Scott had captured the brilliant orange flames and flying sparks against the dark backdrop of the trees that climbed up Tonga Ridge. We’d put two other pictures, including the close-up of the firefighters, inside on page four. Vida had cropped Tim and Tiffany’s wedding photo to show only the groom. The head shot would go on the vital statistics page. It was the only obituary in this week’s edition.

“That’s really sad,” Ginny said, looking at Tim’s photo. “He’s just about my age, and now he’s dead. It’s kind of scary, isn’t it?”

Kip nodded solemnly. “He’s just a few years older than I am. He’ll never get to see his kid. What did I hear on TV a while ago? Nobody’s guaranteed tomorrow.”

Ginny shivered. “It makes you think.”

“Ah,” Leo sighed, stubbing out his cigarette in a ceramic ashtray he’d swiped from the Flamingo in Las Vegas, “mortality. Even the Young must face it. Consider the rest of us, every day a step closer to the grave.”

“Stop that!” Ginny glared at him. “You’re creepy!”

My ad manager cocked his head to one side. “Truthful. Realistic. Down-to-earth. Or under it, if you will.”

In agitation, Ginny ran her fingers through her curly red hair. “I’m just thinking of Tiffany. I don’t know how she’s going to raise a baby by herself. She’s so . . . helpless.”

“She’ll have support,” Vida put in. “She has parents and grandparents.”

“Women can manage as a single parent,” I asserted. “I did.”

“That’s different,” Ginny said, her plain face very serious. “You had a college degree; you were smart. You weren’t like Tiffany.”

My own expression was ironic. “I think that’s a compliment.”

My office manager flushed. “It is—I guess. But Tiffany is—” She stopped and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Gosh, I’d better pull Tim’s classified ad. Or should I?”

In addition to her other duties, Ginny handled our classified section. “What ad?” I asked, feeling stupid.

“The one he’s been running for months,” she replied. “The baseball stuff.”

Leo handed me a copy of the previous week’s
Advocate.
“Here. It’s under ‘Hobbies and Toys.’ ”

Admittedly, I rarely read our classifieds. They were the purview of Ginny, and by extension, Leo. Only a half-dozen ads were listed under
HOBBIES & TOYS
. It was easy to pick out Tim’s:

MLB All-Star baseball

memorabilia; autographed,

authentic, mint condition.

An e-mail address and Tim’s phone number were included. “Tim’s been running that?” I asked.

Ginny nodded. “For a long time. Maybe since last winter.”

“He’s got some cool stuff,” Kip said. “One time at the Venison Inn I saw an autographed Ken Griffey Jr. baseball from his days as a Mariner. It was in a case. Tim said he could get five hundred dollars for it.”

“Where’d he get this memorabilia?” I asked.

Scott, who had just hung up the phone, came around from behind his desk. “He’s been collecting for years. Tim told me once he had an autographed baseball card showing Griffey when he played in the minors in Bellingham. Tim got it when he was going to Western Washington up there. I don’t know how much he bragged, but he swore he had items signed by Alex Rodriguez and Randy Johnson when they were Mariners. Other guys, too, and not just the M’s. I think he bought some of it on eBay.”

Being a baseball fan, I was impressed. “Did he ever sell any of the stuff around here?”

Scott and Kip both nodded. “Some of the baseball cards, anyway,” Kip said. “He had a ton of those. Kids especially bought them because they didn’t cost a lot. You know—unless it’s a rookie card of a future Hall of Fame player or autographed by some other big name, the cards aren’t worth that much.”

Leo was looking bemused. “No Honus Wagner, huh?”

“Honus Wagner?” Vida repeated. “Didn’t he work in the mill during the 1920s?”

Leo chuckled. “No, Duchess,” he said, using the nickname that Vida loathed. “The only wood he worked with was his bat. He played in the first part of the last century, and his card—that’s singular, and therefore it’s unique—is worth I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

“Oh, good heavens!” Vida exclaimed. “That’s ridiculous! Such a fuss over athletes! I’ve never understood it.”

Leo shrugged. “It’s big business. Don’t tell me Roger has never collected sports items?”

The reference to Vida’s spoiled-rotten grandson softened her features. “Well now—I don’t think so. But then Roger doesn’t tell his Grams
everything.
Of course, he’s in college now and has little time for hobbies.”

Roger was fumbling and stumbling his way through Skykomish Community College, where he dropped classes the same way that I’d always presumed he dropped his dirty underwear. His intention was to major in drama, which, I supposed, was better than majoring in crime. Frankly, I’d always figured Roger’s biggest talent was for getting into trouble.

“Gosh,” I said, wanting to keep the topic off of Roger, “Tim’s memorabilia must have been burned up in the fire. I assume he kept it in the house.”

Nobody seemed to know, but Kip and Scott guessed that was probably true. I wished I’d known about Tim’s collection. It was my own fault for being ignorant. I, of all, people, should check out our classifieds on a regular basis. I might have been able to replace a couple of Adam’s treasured baseball items that had been stolen during last year’s break-in at my house. The fact that Tim was a Mariners’ fan only added to my crusade to make sure he didn’t become just another statistic. I always rooted for the underdog. So did Tim, or he wouldn’t have cared about Seattle’s baseball team.

An hour later, Milo called me. “I heard from the ME in Everett,” he said. “I figured you’d want to know the results. The paper comes out tomorrow, right?”

After all these years, the sheriff still seemed vague about the
Advocate
’s deadlines. Sometimes I thought he was putting me on, though he certainly wasn’t the only Alpiner who didn’t understand that the actual production of the newspaper took more than ten minutes.

“What did the ME say?” I asked.

“It was a tough one,” Milo began. “It seems Tim was killed by a blow to the head. There was enough left of his skull to detect what the ME is pretty sure are wood splinters. He figures it could have been a baseball bat.”

“S
O
,” M
ILO SAID
, “Rafferty had a big sports collection? I didn’t know that.”

I could hardly criticize the sheriff for not reading the
Advocate
’s classified section when I seldom checked it out myself. I proofread everything in the paper but the ads. That was up to Leo and Ginny.

“Maybe that’s why he was killed,” I suggested. “The burglar theory works better now that we know he may have had something worth stealing.” If nothing else, my agreement with the sheriff’s theory might goad him into finding a genuine suspect.

“Yeah, maybe.” As usual, Milo wasn’t one to jump to conclusions. “It’d mean that the thief had to take some time. Break in, get caught by Tim, bust his skull, get the goods out of the house—and set the fire to cover his tracks.”

“It’s possible,” I remarked. “You
are
considering alternatives, though?”

“Like what?”

“Like—” I stopped. Milo hated it when I tried to help him do his job. I couldn’t blame him—I certainly wouldn’t want him trying to do mine—but it seemed that he was accepting the easy, if plausible, explanation. “Never mind. Can I say that you suspect robbery as a motive?”

“Not yet,” Milo replied. “It’s too soon. Possible homicide, possible arson, ongoing investigation. Keep it vague. You know the drill.”

I sighed. “Okay. Have the state’s arson experts arrived yet?”

“They got into town a couple of hours ago,” Milo replied.

I refrained from snapping at him. “Are they at the site?” I asked, jumping up to look out into the newsroom in an effort to locate Scott.

“They were there when I left half an hour ago,” the sheriff said.

It was a quarter after four. I spotted Scott coming in from the back shop. We had time for him to get a photo and a quick interview. Not that the investigators would know or tell him anything, but at least we’d have their arrival in the paper. I’d already told Scott that I wanted him to follow up every scrap of information in the Rafferty case.

There was no point in badgering Milo further. I’d mention Old Nick’s presence later, when he didn’t already have a full plate and I wasn’t facing a deadline. Scott could handle the sidebar on the arson angle. I’d just hung up the phone when Vida returned, presumably from talking to Tiffany.

“Well?” I said to her after I’d sent Scott on his way. “How’s the widow doing?”

“Tiffany’s a mess,” Vida responded, looking more disgusted than sympathetic. “All she can talk about is what’s going to happen to her and the baby.”

“That’s understandable,” I said. “You know how women are when they’re pregnant. It’s all about the child they’re carrying. The rest of the world isn’t very important.”

Vida scowled at me. “Goodness! Was I like that with my three girls?” She paused, apparently thinking back to her own childbearing days. “I can’t imagine being so wrapped up in myself, especially not after the first birth. Of course, you only had one.”

“I’ve seen it in other women,” I countered. “In Tiffany’s case, it’s not as if she has a wide range of interests.”

“Perhaps.” Vida sat down at her desk. She never took notes, and it was obvious that she was anxious to write her story. It wouldn’t take long. Her two-fingered typing was faster than most people’s properly trained efforts. “This will be brief,” she asserted. “What can I say except that she’s upset and concerned for the baby and their future?”

“What about her parents, Cookie and Wayne?”

Vida harrumphed. “It’s ‘poor Tiffany’ this, ‘poor Tiffany’ that. They’re not stupid, but they haven’t got any
sense.
No wonder Tiffany’s such an addlepate. By the way, the funeral’s set for Friday, Faith Lutheran. Not that I ever heard about Tim and Tiffany attending services there. I can’t think why Reverend Nielsen allows it.”

I left Vida to her work—and her indignation. Tim and Tiffany had been married at the ski lodge by a justice of the peace from Monroe. Even though it had been March, there was still snow on the ground, and somebody had played “Winter Wonderland” on the guitar for the recessional. Tiffany had insisted that the guests call the JP “Parson Brown,” even though it was a woman and her last name was Shovelburt.

By five-fifteen, the paper was ready to be sent to Kip in the back shop for his expert final prepublication. At five-sixteen, Spencer Fleetwood strolled into my office.

“Met your deadline?” he asked in his casual manner.

“Why aren’t you at KSKY? Aren’t you a little shorthanded?”

Spence looked chagrined, and I immediately felt callous. “I’m sorry. Really. Have a seat.”

He shook his head. “I thought you might like to have a drink after work.”

Despite the professional and personal accommodations Spencer Fleetwood and I had made over the years, I remained wary of the man. The newspaper and the radio station had done some co-op ads together. The two of us occasionally went out to dinner and had once spent a weekend together—with separate hotel rooms—in Seattle. We had much in common. Yet I still perceived him first and foremost as a rival, and found his superficial arrogance annoying, even though I’d learned that he was as vulnerable as the rest of us.

“Well . . .” I stared at my computer monitor, which was waiting to be turned off. Spence was a source when it came to Tim Rafferty. Getting out another edition of the
Advocate
was always a small triumph worth celebrating. “Okay,” I finally said.