Authors: Mary Daheim

The Alpine Menace (36 page)

“Amazing,” he finally said when I'd summed things up as succinctly as I could. “You and Vida. What a team. Tell me, how many different hats did she wear, and were any of them used as a defensive weapon?”

“I feel like I've been away off and on for weeks,” I said, having wandered into the kitchen with the gypsy phone to make a hefty drink. “I still have to go back this weekend to see if Ronnie's really getting out. Honestly, Ben, I don't understand how he and his parents could be so different from the rest of us. Do you remember Uncle Gary and Aunt Marlene very well?”

“Sort of,” Ben said. “They were always loud and often drunk. Sometimes I feel remiss, though. I mean, they're living in the same state as I am, and yet I've never made an effort to visit them. Of course they're at the other end of Arizona. I guess that's my excuse.”

“Don't beat yourself up,” I said. “You've got a full plate as it is. I'd just like to know how our dad and his sister could have turned out so totally unalike. They sure
ruined Ronnie, and probably their two daughters. I suppose it was Uncle Gary's influence on Aunt Marlene.”

“That's a big part of it,” Ben said. “Aunt Marlene must have felt she had to live her husband's lifestyle. And of course you've got to remember that she was adopted.”

“Adopted?”
I shrieked. “I not only don't remember it, I didn't even know it. Are you kidding me?”

“No,” Ben said calmly. “You really didn't know? That's weird.”

“Are you sure?” I demanded, still aghast. “Where did you ever hear such a thing?”

There was a long pause. Finally, Ben spoke. “Well,” he began, and I could picture him scratching his crinkled chestnut hair, “I think Dad told me when we were having one of our heart-to-heart talks before I went into the seminary. I honestly can't remember why he told me. Maybe it had something to do with charity, and how his parents had taken pity on a family they knew who couldn't afford to raise another child during the Depression. Anyway, Grandma and Grandpa took Aunt Marlene off the neighbors’ hands and adopted her. I guess they'd always wanted another baby, but had had no luck.”

“I'll be damned,” I said, a little breathless. “Then Ronnie isn't really family after all.”

Another pause, much briefer than before. “Oh, yes he is, Sluggly. We're all family, and you damned well better not forget it.”

The journey, if that is what it was, had begun in memory, of a small boy tied to Ben in a sack race. Now that small boy was a grown man, seated across from me in a coffee shop several blocks away from the county-city complex where he'd been wrongfully imprisoned. Ronnie Mallett had finally won something, though I feared that his freedom could still be his undoing. Hopefully, the experience had changed him. But I was probably wrong.

“I'm pickin’ up Buddy this afternoon,” Ronnie said with a shy grin. “Mr. Chan is lettin’ me keep the apartment. Maybeth said Buddy showed up two days ago, all hungry and lookin’ kinda bad. He'll be okay, doncha think?”

“He'll be fine,” I assured Ronnie. “I'm so glad Alvin got you out of jail. How do you feel?”

There was still a small bandage on Ronnie's ear. He looked pale and drawn, but otherwise he seemed all right. At least for a guy who was terrified of facing the real world.

“I'm okay,” Ronnie said. “I still can't believe that that nurse killed Carol. And then Kendra's mom killed the nurse. That seems just plain wacko to me.”

Kathy Addison had come out of her coma on Thursday. She had admitted striking the fatal blow to Henrietta's skull, but insisted that the victim had threatened to kill her first. It seemed that Kathy was right: a butcher knife had been found under Henrietta's body. Vida and I had never seen it, because we didn't see the corpse being taken away.

Maybe the Addisons would somehow heal themselves and be a family with Kendra again. She
was
their daughter. Some birth mothers must discard their children, for various reasons. The burden of raising them, with whatever motives, falls on the adoptive parents. We are complicated creatures, and rarely are any of our actions pure.

“Roy's takin’ care of Buddy right now,” Ronnie said, finishing his hamburger. “Roy's okay. Maybeth don't like Buddy, but she'd never hurt him. Can you drop me off at the apartment?”

“Of course,” I said. “Do you think you'll get your old job back?”

“I hope so,” Ronnie said with feeling. “Mr. Lang's a
good guy. Maybe I gave him a lot of shit. I'll try harder this time.”

“That's a good idea,” I said, and picked up the tab.

The last time I saw Ronnie he was running to meet Buddy outside of the apartment house in Greenwood. He embraced the dog, then stood up to wave at me.

“Hey—keep in touch, okay?” he called.

I leaned out of the car window. “I will, Ronnie. I promise.”

Ronnie nodded, then picked up something and threw it about twenty feet away. Buddy ran after the object and brought it back to Ronnie. Man and dog embraced again.

I drove away, wanting to remember Ronnie as happy. After a mile or so, I realized that Ronnie
was
happy, in his own strange way. For him, happiness was a simple thing—a dog fetching a stick. For others, like me, it was more complicated. I shouldn't judge the Ronnies of this world. We were all different.

And, as Ben had reminded me, we were all the same.

Family.

MARY:
Welcome back to the Big City, Emma. You grew up here in Seattle, but you've lived in Alpine for almost ten years. I've lived in small towns twice in my life, and frankly, I had trouble adjusting. How do you manage?

EMMA:
It's attitude, Mary. When I made the decision to buy
The Alpine Advocate
, I knew it would be a long-term investment of my life, maybe even a permanent one. That made it easier for me—I knew I was going to stick around. The other thing that helped was being the local newspaper's editor and publisher. I automatically became part of everyone's life. I had an identity. But don't get me wrong—since I wasn't born in Alpine, I'll always be something of a stranger. And, yes, I definitely miss the cultural and sports activities of a big city. Weekend high school football and the St. Mildred's Christmas pageant just don't do it for me. And while they got rid of Log-gerama, I don't think I can stand another year of Ed Bronsky as the Winter Solstice Parade's grand marshal. Ed should never ever wear anything diaphanous.

MARY:
I don't really want to think about that. Let's talk career paths. Like you, I always thought I had printer's ink in my veins and started out in newspapers. Then I
discovered you had to walk a lot, so I went into P.R. What made you hang in there?

EMMA:
For one thing, Mary, I don't have flat feet like you do. Maybe the real difference is that I do have printer's ink my veins. Keeping the public informed, having the power to wield some influence (though it be rather small) through my editorials, and meeting deadlines all keep me alive. There's an enormous satisfaction to producing a paper every week. You can see what you've done. You can share it with the community. You feel as if your job has some meaning in a nutty world where personal achievement is hard to find.

MARY:
You also have a knack for sleuthing. How did you develop this, or is it a gift?

EMMA:
Journalism is all about sleuthing. It's tracking down graft in the union pension fund, it's figuring out the rationale of timberland swaps, and sometimes it's as simple—and important—as making sure you've identified the right John Smith in an article about sexual perversion. I once made a horrendous mistake in
The Oregonian
. There were two Alan Barkers in the news. Alan L. Barker had won a prestigious poetry prize. Alan R. Barker had been arraigned for indecent exposure at Jantzen Beach. I got them mixed up, and there was all hell to pay. What made it even worse was that at the trial the Barker exhibitionist quoted Tennyson's “Some civic manhood against the crowd.” The jury was bewildered.

MARY:
Speaking of sleuthing, don't you feel that the murder rate is rather high for a town the size of Alpine?

EMMA:
You mean since I arrived? I have to admit, sometimes I feel like a one-woman crime wave. But, in fact, the murder rate has risen in smaller communities over the past few years. People are increasingly transient, communication is so much faster, and while small town residents didn't used to feel the same pressures as city dwellers, that's changing quite rapidly. Also, historically, Alpine has been a lumber town. It's a rough, dangerous way to make a living. Life and death in the woods goes back five or six generations. Violence is no stranger here.

MARY:
Let's get personal, Emma. Do you ever see yourself married to Tom Cavanaugh? Or do you ever see yourself married, perio d?

EMMA:
That's a toughie. I've thought and thought about it, and I can't come up with a straight answer. I love Tom. I've tried not to, but you can't simply tell love to go away. I realize that maybe it's not a healthy attitude. There are practical considerations, too. I can't quite envision Tom living in Alpine. On the other hand, I can't imagine giving up
The Advocate
. Maybe what I'm really saying is that I've put my career between us, though that sounds horrid to me. I mean, newspapers are a dying breed. Ten years from now, there may be no
Advocate
. In fact, there's a radio station starting up in town. How will that affect us? Again, I don't have any cut-and-dried answers.

MARY:
What will you do if Vida Runkel, your House and Home editor, ever retires?

EMMA:
I can't even think about that! An
Advocate
without Vida would be like Alpine with no mountains. But I don't think she ever will—she's strong as a horse, and she couldn't bear not to be involved with the paper. If printer's ink runs through my veins, curiosity runs through Vida's. I'm not sure she needs a rationale to snoop, but as long as she's on the staff, she has an excuse.

MARY:
One last question—do you think that you and Milo Dodge can ever be real friends again?

EMMA:
I hope so. I actually love Milo, but not necessarily in a romantic way. I suppose I've always felt he's rather limited as a person. That's not fair—who isn't limited? But now that I see him in a new relationship, I must admit I feel jealous. Maybe
annoyed
is a better word. Or perhaps I worry about him. He's kind of vulnerable, and I don't want to see him hurt. I already did that to him, and he doesn't deserve another unappreciative woman. I do wonder, if there had never been a Tom Cavanaugh, would there have been an Emma Dodge? But that's speculation, one of the things I am good at.

MARY:
Well, keep your spirits up, Emma. And thank you for the insights
.

EMMA:
I'm the one who should be thanking you

A Fawcett Book

Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

Fawcett is a registered trademark and the Fawcett colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

www.randomhouse.com/BB/

Library of Congress Card Number: 00-103093

eISBN: 978-0-307-55430-7

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