The Alpine Betrayal (22 page)

I’d assigned myself the task of taking a picture of the new baseball diamond, which was being put in at the high school field now that Loggerama was over. Coming down Seventh Street, between Spruce and Tyee, I saw Patti Marsh’s house. The front door was open and the drapes were pulled back. A white Lexus stood in the driveway, looking as out of place as a tiara on a bag lady.

I stopped and got out. Sure enough, Dani Marsh came to the door. I expected her to be annoyed by my unannounced arrival, but instead, she looked embarrassed.

“Ms. Lord! Are you here to see my mother? She’s at work.”

In the golden glow of afternoon, Dani looked very different than she had in the harsh morning sun. Her eyes were no longer red; her hair was pulled back and tucked into a knot at the nape of her neck; and she wore a mint green leotard that suggested she’d been working out.

“You’re not shooting?” I inquired.

“I finished for the day about an hour ago. Do you want to come in?”

I did, if only to get out of the sun that was beating down on the little porch. Entering the house, I noticed that someone had finally removed the wilted bouquet from the hall. My cyclamen reposed there and looked as if it had been recently watered. Indeed, the whole house looked different, more welcoming. Not only were the drapes open, but so were two of the windows, bringing in badly needed fresh air. Some of the clutter had been cleared away, and the ashtray on the coffee table was empty. Was this Dani’s handiwork, or had Patti used her day off to clean house? It didn’t seem right to ask.

“I’m sorry I was so upset this morning,” Dani said, giving me a penitent smile. “Sometimes I can’t seem to separate my emotions off and on the set. I realize that Sheriff Dodge was only trying to do his job. But it seems to me that he’s going off on a tangent. Poor Cody simply made a terrible mistake. It happens all the time, mixing drugs and alcohol.”

“You really think that’s what happened?”

“Yes, I do.” Her voice was firm, but she avoided my eyes. “Two more days, then I’m done with this stupid picture,” Dani said, going over to the makeshift bar. “Would you like something to drink?”

I requested pop, which she produced from the refrigerator along with a seltzer for herself. “You don’t like the movie?” I asked, sitting on the sofa, which was marred only by a cookbook and a
TV Guide
. It seemed as useless to pursue the manner of Cody’s death with Dani Marsh as it had been with Marje Blatt.

“It’s trash,” she said simply. “They should have brought in a script doctor, but Reid’s too cheap. Oh, it’ll have big grosses the first week or so, but word of mouth will kill it. Still, Reid should make money with all the ancillary rights. It’s hard not to these days, as long as your budget isn’t out of control.”

I marveled at her candor. Didn’t she realize she was talking to a newspaper person? “I thought stars were supposed to ballyhoo all their movies, no matter how lousy.”

Dani sat down, not in the cut-velvet chair her mother favored, but in a blue-and-green-striped lounger that looked as if a cat had used it for a scratching post. “We are.
They
are,” she amended. “I’m thinking of changing careers. I’d rather dance.”

I was startled. “Can’t you do both? I mean, act and dance? Like musicals?”

“Musicals aren’t really in,” said Dani, sipping at her seltzer. “Reid told me that. He thinks I’m crazy. To quit acting, I mean.” The brown eyes caught and held mine, as if she expected me to side with her director.

I was, in fact, tempted to agree with Hampton. Dani Marsh was just beginning to emerge as a bona fide star. At twenty-four, she seemed too old to start a dance career. But it was none of my business. “What does Matt think?”

Dani’s wide-eyed gaze glistened with amusement. “Matt? I’ve no idea. I haven’t asked him.”

I may never have been a wife, but I’ve certainly been a
mother. My maternal instincts took over, suddenly lending me wisdom for the daughter I’d never had. “I’m all for independence, Dani, but husbands and wives—lovers, engaged couples, what have you—should talk things over. You don’t want Matt to feel left out. He thinks he’s marrying a movie actress. Will it change his feelings if he discovers his wife is a would-be dancer?”

Dani laughed. The wondrous sound filled the room, making it suddenly a happy place. “Oh, Emma,” she said, tucking in a strand of hair that had come loose from the knot at her neck,
“Blood Along the River
is almost in the can. I want to stop the charade, at least when I’m off-camera. Matt and I aren’t going to get married.”

Recalling the heated argument Vida and I had overheard at the ski lodge, I wasn’t completely surprised. “I’ve wondered,” I said vaguely. “Somehow, you never seemed … devoted.” It was an old-fashioned word, worthy of Vida, but I suddenly felt like a fogey. “I figured there might be someone else.”

Dani had picked up a videotape that pictured an athletic young woman in a dance rehearsal costume doing something strenuous in a room with big skylights. Dani studied the cassette, then turned her gaze back to me. “There is someone else. There always was.” She put the videotape down on top of the TV and laughed again. This time the musical sound was a trifle discordant. “Matt’s in love, but not with me. I’d tell you who, but you’d print it in your paper. That wouldn’t be right, I guess.”

I was literally on the edge of my seat. “You could always go off the record.”

Dani’s gaze wandered around the room, to the mediocre watercolor of Mount Baldy, the half-naked gods and goddesses, the Harlequin masks, the carved trout, and the one good piece I hadn’t noticed before: a small silver dancing girl, sweetly graceful, realistically posed.

Dani saw that I had followed her eyes. “I got that for my mother when I was in Rome last year on location. Isn’t it pretty? She loves it.”

It occurred to me that perhaps I had missed the little figurine because it hadn’t been there earlier. If Dani wasn’t going to talk about Matt Tabor’s defection, perhaps she’d unload about her mother.

“Dani, what’s with you and Patti? She’s behaved as if you were the worst daughter who ever lived, yet here you are, in her house, talking about sending her gifts. What’s going on? It’s not fair to you for everybody in Alpine to think she hates your guts.”

To my surprise, Dani opened a drawer in the end table next to her chair and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Do you mind?” she inquired. “I don’t do this often.”

“I don’t do it at all. Any more.” I made a face. “I wish I did sometimes. Go ahead.”

Dani lighted up, her awkwardness with the cigarette indicating that she was telling the truth about her amateur smoker’s status. “For a long time, Mom blamed me for what happened to Scarlett. She was convinced I’d been a rotten mother. It preyed on her mind, maybe because she’d lost her grandchild—” Dani paused and bit her lip, the words not coming so easily now “—and, in a way, her daughter at the same time. I was no comfort to her, I couldn’t be, I needed too much comfort myself. So she cast me as the villainess, and it was only after I came home to Alpine and we talked and talked that she realized I wasn’t at fault. Now things are much better.” Dani smiled, a bit tremulously. “We’re almost back to where we were six years ago, before I married Cody.”

“She wasn’t in favor of your marriage?”

“Oh, God, no!” Dani exhaled a thick cloud of smoke. “She tried to talk me out of it, said he was as bad as my father. Maybe worse. But I was young and headstrong and wouldn’t listen. Why,” she asked plaintively, “do we know so much more at eighteen than we do at twenty-four?”

I had to smile. “It goes with being a teenager. My son’s out of that stage now, and one of these days, I’m going to become really smart. I hope.”

Dani smiled, too. “I’ll bet I’d like your son. I wish he
were a little older. Maybe I could fall in love with him. I haven’t done that yet.” She made it sound like an item she was anxious to check off on her list of life.

“You didn’t love Cody?”

Her smile was wry, seen through the fog of her cigarette. “No, it was a typical adolescent crush. All heat and hormones. For both of us.”

I gripped my Coke and slipped farther back onto the sofa. “You realize that the sheriff thinks you’re the last person to see Cody alive?” I didn’t know if Milo really believed that, but it made sense to me. Dani’s jaw dropped and she began to shake her head in denial, but I gave her no opportunity to contradict: “You were seen, out by the turnoff to the Burl Creek Road. That’s where you lost your eyeliner. What on earth were you and Cody doing out there that night?”

Dani scanned the ceiling: left, right, right, left. I had the impression she was looking for answers, the way she’d study a frame of film for dramatic composition. “I had to see him, just once. Not because I cared about him—but to tie up some loose ends.”

“Did you?”

“No. Not really. He was too drunk.” She fiddled with the cigarette, moving it from one hand to the other.

I waited for her to say more, and when she didn’t, I posed another question. “Why did you drive out to the edge of town?” I knew I was pushing my luck with my prying, but Dani seemed more uneasy than annoyed.

“I didn’t want to go up to his apartment,” she replied, her voice steady. “It might have given him the wrong idea, especially since he’d been drinking. I picked him up in Matt’s Zimmer and I drove without thinking.” She waved away the cloud of smoke, the better to meet my gaze. “We used to live out that way, past the reservoir and the fish hatchery. I guess it was an automatic reflex on my part.”

“Was he alive when you left him?”

“Yes.” Her unblinking stare challenged me to disbelieve her.

“Then why didn’t you drive him back to town?”

Dani touched the soft coil of hair at her neck. “He wanted to get out. He was being obnoxious. I figured the fresh air would do him good. And I was by the Burl Creek Road, so I could zip straight up to the ski lodge.”

I studied Dani’s face carefully. She seemed to be telling the truth, but her acting skills could probably convince me if she said there was a blizzard going on outside. It was hard for me to conceive of leaving an extremely drunk man out on a lonely road at midnight. But the man was Cody Graff, and if what I believed about him was true, he would not have invited common courtesy.

I was casting about for other, more pointed questions concerning Cody’s death when I heard a car pull up outside. Dani looked down at her watch which was lying on the coffee table. “It’s after three. Mom said she’d be home early. She was beat.”

In more ways than one, I thought, watching Dani stub out her cigarette. I wondered what the daughter felt about the mother’s passive resistance to Jack Blackwell’s fists. But there was no chance to ask. Patti Marsh came into the house with a sack of groceries. From Safeway. I had a sudden urge to call Ed Bronsky.

“Hi, Dani,” she said, then saw me sitting on the sofa. “What’s this, more news you can get wrong in your paper? Or are you going through my checkbook?”

I started to make a rejoinder, but Dani merely smiled. “Don’t have a tizzy, Mom. Emma and I were just philosophizing. Life, love, career choices. What did you get for dinner?”

Patti appeared appeased. “Beef ribs. Macaroni salad. Jojo potatoes. Safeway’s got a great deli. I don’t have to cook, all I have to do is pay a lot of money. But I’ve got that now, haven’t I, chicken?” Despite the bruises, Patti looked quite smug.

“Right, Mom.” Dani exchanged a conspiratorial glance with her mother. “Let’s go to Paris. I’ll show you how people really eat.”

Suddenly, I felt like the original third wheel. All this mother-daughter camaraderie was making me oddly uncomfortable. Was it real? Maybe. Yet thus far so little about the Marshes and the Graffs and the rest of them seemed genuine. I stood up, making ready to leave.

“Hey,” exclaimed Patti, doing a typical about-face, “don’t run off. Have a drink. What have you got there?”

“Coke,” I said. “But I have to drop a roll of film off at the photographer’s—”

“Buddy Bayard’s open until six,” cut in Patti. “Have a real drink. Gin? Scotch? Bourbon? Vodka? Rum?”

I felt contrary enough to ask for tequila, but settled for bourbon. The truth was, I didn’t like drinking strong alcohol during the day in summertime. But I decided to humor Patti Marsh. Her mood change made me think I might learn something. She had set the groceries on the counter in the kitchen and was now at the makeshift bar, mixing tonic with vodka and pouring me a bourbon over ice.

“Here, kiddo,” she said, handing me my drink. “Has mild-mannered Milo given up yet?”

I was taken aback. “What?”

“The sheriff.” Patti sat down in the cut-velvet chair and lighted a cigarette. “Hey, Dani—you cleaned this place! It looks like a frigging motel. You deserve a husband when you get married.”

Dani smiled. “I deserve a man I can love. You should be so lucky, Mom.”

“So should we all,” I murmured, deciding that the bourbon didn’t taste so unpalatable with the windows open and the living room feeling not quite like a mausoleum.

After a deep swig, Patti Marsh set her drink down on the coffee table. “Men. I could write a book on that subject.” She gazed at me through a haze of smoke. “Can you use
asshole
in a title?”

I uttered a wry laugh. “Probably not.”

Patti nodded. “I didn’t think so. But you could say it in the book. On the pages inside, I mean.” She took another gulp of vodka and settled back into the cut-velvet chair, the
smoke from her cigarette swirling around her like a snake. “Twenty-four years. I waited twenty-four years.” She glanced at Dani who looked faintly alarmed. “Oh, screw it, honey! What do we care? I already told Jack.”

Dani gave a little jump, then reached for the package of cigarettes in the drawer. “You did?” She sounded incredulous.

“You bet. I didn’t mind having a laugh at his expense, but I don’t want a broken jaw.” Gingerly, she touched her cheek. “He was still pissed this morning, so I told him. God, I thought he’d have a heart attack!” She drank some more and laughed uproariously.

Dani cradled her almost-empty seltzer bottle in her slim hands. “Oh, Mom …” She sounded disapproving.