The Alpine Betrayal Page 14

  Patti Marsh wasn’t there. The fresh-faced young woman at the receptionist’s desk said Ms. Marsh had gone home early. Sick, she gathered. Maybe the heat. It was really too warm for Alpine.

  It was almost noon. Maybe it was just as well if I skipped lunch. I got back in the car and drove up to Patti’s house. In the midday sun, the tired little house didn’t look any more hospitable than it had last night. Although Patti’s black compact car was in the drive, the door was closed and the drapes were still drawn. I hesitated, then knocked loudly.

  On my second effort, Patti called from inside, asking my identity. I told her. Warily, she opened the door a couple of inches.

  “I heard you’d had an accident,” I said, feeling a bit foolish as I tried to wedge the cyclamen inside the door. “Isn’t this a pretty shade of pink?”

  “What is it?” she asked, opening the door all the way. “Some kind of orchid?”

  “It’s a cyclamen, from Posies Unlimited.” I had a fixed smile on my face as I crossed the threshold. The bouquet on the Bombay chest was shedding petals. Patti looked as if she’d lost all her bloom, too. Her face was swollen, and there was a small bandage above her right eye. “How do you feel?”

  Patti took the plant and limped into the living room. The house was still dreary and airless. She went over to the TV and turned off a soap opera.

  “I feel like crap,” said Patti, indicating that I should sit down on the cluttered sofa. “I decided to take the rest of the day off.”

  “How’d it happen?” I asked in what I hoped was a guileless voice.

  Patti eased herself into the cut-velvet chair and lighted a cigarette. She still wore a wary expression. “Hey, Mrs. Lord, cut the bullshit. Since when were we buddies? What do you really want?”

  I allowed the smile to die. “Okay. I don’t like seeing women get knocked around. You didn’t fall off your front porch, Patti. You looked just fine when Harvey Adcock saw you at the bank this morning. If somebody’s beating you up, why don’t you file a complaint?”

  “Sheesh!” Patti rolled her brown eyes and looked at me as if I were the original babe in the woods. “Where’d you grow up, in a bird cage? Hey, people—like men—get pissed off. They start swinging. That’s how they handle stuff. They don’t mean anything by it, they just don’t know what else to do. Then they’re sorry, and they come crawling back, full of apologies, and maybe a present or two. It’s the way of the world, honey.”

  “Not my world.” I spoke firmly, perhaps even primly, judging from the amused expression on Patti’s face. Before she could contradict me, I leaned toward her, careful not to knock any of the items off the coffee table with my knees. “Beating up women is a coward’s way of dealing with problems. It’s also stupid, and men who do it are stupid. What kind of woman wants to hang out with a stupid coward? I can’t think of any present that’s worth the price, and that includes a terrific night in the sack.”

  No longer amused, Patti stiffened, apparently surprised at my candor. Maybe she didn’t expect it from me. “So how do you change a man?” she asked with a sneer.

  “I’m not sure you can change a man. But you can change men. Find somebody who doesn’t think with his fists. They don’t all go around beating women senseless. Jeez, Patti, that can get out of hand pretty fast. You could end up dead.” I stared straight into her eyes, which were so like Dani’s, except for being bloodshot and a bit puffy.

  Patti recoiled as if I’d decided to use her for a punching bag. “Shut your mouth!” she gasped, clearly shaken. “Here!” She struggled to her feet and grabbed the plant from on top of the TV set. “Take this cycling thing and get out!”

  I didn’t budge. “No, I won’t.” If Patti needed a lesson in being firm, I was about to give it. “I’m not done.” I waited for her to sit down, pitch a fit, or throw the cyclamen at my head. Instead, she cradled the plant against her bosom and narrowed her eyes.

  “You’re nervy,” she said. The anger still sparked in her eyes, but she also looked frightened. “What now?”

  I had been sure of my moral ground when I’d lectured Patti about allowing herself to be beaten. But I had absolutely no reason to inquire about her bank deposit. Not even my credentials as a journalist gave me the right to ask such a question.

  I stuck with candor as my best weapon. “I heard you had some good luck today. Then I heard you were at the clinic, all banged up. It didn’t make sense, and maybe I thought there was a story in it, especially since Cody Graff was murdered. Violence breeds violence. I was following my reporter’s instincts, I guess.” My attitude was self-deprecating; I was relying on Patti’s sympathy. If she had any. “After all, we’ve got a murderer loose in this town.”

  Her response startled me. Patti Marsh threw back her head and laughed, a hoarse, unsettling sound that turned into a cough. She stubbed out her cigarette, wiped her mouth, and leaned against the back of the cut-velvet chair. “No, we don’t. Stick to your movie star stories and your raccoon pictures, Emma Lord. You don’t know siccum.”

  I left the cyclamen, convinced that it, too, would wither and die in the sunless, stifling atmosphere of Patti’s house. I didn’t understand a woman like Patti, who seemed content to live off the leavings of an ill-tempered man like Jack Blackwell. Then again, I didn’t understand myself, hanging on to a twenty-year-old dream. Maybe Patti and I weren’t so different after all.

  “Well,” said Vida, when I returned to the office, “you look like a dying duck in a thunderstorm. What happened? I thought you went out for a screwdriver.”

  I recounted my adventures of the last hour and a half while Vida sipped iced tea. “I’m only guessing it was Jack who beat her up,” I said in conclusion, “but I can’t figure out why she hooted with laughter when I told her there was a murderer on the loose.”

  Vida was looking thoughtful, her floppy pink linen hat shoved back on her head. “Why do so many people not want to believe Cody was killed? Isn’t that what it comes to?” Vida peered at me through her glasses.

  “Is it?” I was sitting in Ed’s vacant chair. He had gone to a Rotary Club luncheon; Carla was out getting a story at the fish hatchery. “Vida, do you know Donna Fremstad Wickstrom?”

  “Of course.” Vida looked at me as if I were losing my mind, which I felt wasn’t far from the truth. “Donna Erlandson Fremstad Wickstrom. A four-point student in high school, two years at Skagit Valley Community College, Associate Arts degree, worked in the library, married Art Fremstad, one child, a girl, widowed, remarried Steve Wickstrom about three years ago. She runs a day care in their home, has another baby, a boy, ten months, she jogs, belongs to the Alpine Book Club, is an excellent baker, does their own plumbing. What else do you want to know?”

  I was about to say I couldn’t possibly imagine when I saw an odd movement outside the window above Vida’s desk. Somebody was putting a ladder against the building. “What’s that?”

  “What?” Vida eyed me curiously, then followed my startled gaze. “Oh! Good grief! Public Utility District workers? No—there’s no PUD truck. I’ve no idea.”

  We both went outside. Three men in coveralls were hooking up a spray painter. One of them, a short stocky youth with black eyes and dark brown hair, smiled broadly.

  “I hear you like yellow,” he said, revealing lots of white teeth.

  “Says who?” I gaped as one of the other men began to assault The Advocate’s outer walls with a blast of sun-bright color. “Hey! Stop that!”

  The stocky young man was still grinning. “We’ve got permission. It’ll look great on film. You’ll love it.”

  “The hell I will!” I glanced up Front Street. Half the buildings, from Francine’s Fine Apparel to Adcock’s Hardware, wore new coats of paint. I had returned to the newspaper office from the other direction and hadn’t noticed the change. “Oh, damn! Is this for the movie?”

  It was. I asked who in the name of heaven and earth had given permission to turn The Advocate the color of a giant canary.

&n
bsp; The stocky young man gestured at the entrance to the newspaper. “Your advertising guy. Burnski? Bronsti? We gave him a check for five hundred bucks.”

  I held my head. Vida was standing with her hands on her hips, watching The Advocate take on a jaundiced hue. Ed Bronsky had sold me out for five bills. If somebody had offered to buy that much advertising, he would have fought them tooth and toenail. I didn’t know whether to throttle Ed—or Reid Hampton.

  As I took another look down Front Street, I could see not only the newly painted red, blue, and green facades, but a barricade at the corner of Fifth, by the Venison Inn and the Whistling Marmot Theatre. Ironically, the Marmot needed some work, as its owner, Oscar Nyquist, hadn’t fixed up the exterior since 1967, when an outraged member of a Pentecostal sect had set fire to a life-size cutout of Mrs. Robinson’s stocking-clad leg in a promotion for The Graduate. Further along Front, cameras were perched on big dollies and bright lights shown down on the main drag. As far as The Advocate was concerned, it was too late to do more than groan.

  “This is hopeless,” I muttered to Vida. “Let’s go see Donna Wickstrom.”

  Vida had screwed up her face, observing the paint job in process. “Donna? What for?”

  I was already heading for my car. If nothing else, I wanted to keep its green exterior from getting splattered with yellow dots. “We need to stop another murder,” I yelled over the sound of the spraying machine.

  Vida, with her flat-footed step, hurried to join me. “Who?” she asked, startled.

  I opened the door for her on the passenger’s side. “Ed. If I don’t get out of here, I think I’m going to strangle him.”

  Chapter Twelve

  VIDA’S FURTHER LACK of curiosity about my insistence on seeing Donna Fremstad Wickstrom puzzled me. As we made a detour to avoid the film company’s barricade, she was unusually quiet. At last, as we approached the Wickstrom home in the Icicle Creek Development, I asked her what she was thinking.

  “I’m thinking about what you’re thinking about,” she said very soberly. “You’re trying to tie Cody’s murder into something that happened between him and Dani, that something being little Scarlett and the effect of her death. At least that’s the only incident we know about. And somehow, Art Fremstad fits into it. Maybe.”

  I was trying to concentrate on finding Wickstrom’s address while listening to Vida. “That’s right.” I remarked. “The only common topic in regard to Dani and Cody is their baby. They haven’t been in touch for five years. Curtis has been gone for five years. His parents moved away five years ago. Art Fremstad has been dead for five years. Everything points backwards. If there’s any link between Cody’s death and Dani’s return, it has to be the baby. I don’t know if Milo is on the same wavelength.”

  “Milo is doing fibers and fingerprints and tire tracks,” said Vida, with a shake of her head. “That’s how he works.”

  “Well?” I had turned into Dogwood Lane. “Do you think Art Fremstad was a suicidal type?”

  Vida had taken off her floppy hat and was mopping her brow. “No. He had too much sense. But I’m not a mind reader. If there’s one facet of human behavior I’ve learned in over sixty years, it’s that you can never be completely certain what anybody else is thinking.”

  I spotted the address on my right. Donna and Steve Wickstrom lived in one of the more modest homes in the new development, a two-story version of a Swiss chalet with a single-car garage. There were no goats on the lawn, but there was a tricycle, a sandbox, and a plastic wading pool.

  Donna Wickstrom came to the front door with three small children attached to her legs. She was a pretty young woman with short brown hair and long curling eyelashes. Her unruffled expression indicated that not only was she unfazed by our unexpected arrival, but that there was very little in life that amazed her.

  “Mrs. Runkel,” she said, extending a hand. “How nice! I haven’t seen you since the shower for Angie Fairbanks last May.”

  Vida introduced me to Donna, who somehow managed to lead us into the living room without disengaging herself from the trio of toddlers. Two more children were playing on the floor, pounding colored pegs into a sturdy wooden bench. The room was filled with sunshine, bright colors, and soft furniture. Donna Wickstrom was only a mile from Patti Marsh, but their dwellings were worlds apart.

  I allowed Vida to broach the subject of our visit. She did so with remarkable tact—at least for Vida.

  “This town is in a mess,” she said, after we refused Donna’s offer of tea or coffee. “First Cody Graff’s baby dies. Now Cody is dead, too. Nobody, including the sheriff, knows why. I’m wondering, Donna, do you think Art would know if he were still alive?”

  If Vida’s words upset our hostess, she gave no sign. Donna Fremstad Wickstrom looked very grave, but didn’t seem to find Vida’s line of inquiry peculiar. She glanced into the dining room, where all of the children, including a girl of about five who looked remarkably like Donna, were dumping a pile of toys out of a big cardboard box.

  “Do you mean that Art knew something so awful he killed himself?” she asked in a low voice.

  “Exactly.” Vida, as ever, was brisk. “Has that thought ever occurred to you?”

  Again, Donna appeared undismayed. “Frankly, yes.” She gave a quick look into the dining room to make sure that all was well, then folded her hands in her lap. “I was visiting my sister in Seattle when the Graff baby died. I came back to Alpine three days later, and Art was very upset. Upset, not distraught.” She gave us each a hard look to make sure we understood. “For a long time, I kicked myself for being so caught up in restoring order after my visit out of town. You know how it is when you’re gone, even for a short time. It takes forever to get everything back on track. Anyway, when Art disappeared two days later, I was stunned.” For the first time, emotion showed in Donna’s hazel eyes.

  “Where did you think he’d gone?” Vida asked, giving Donna a chance to collect herself.

  “He was on the night shift, five to midnight. It was just this time of year, and at first I figured he’d arrested some tourist or picked up a drunk driver. But about two in the morning, Jack Mullins called and asked if Art had come home instead of checking in at the sheriff’s office. Of course he hadn’t. That was when Jack and Milo and Sam Heppner went looking for him.” She turned away, not toward the dining room this time, but to the front door, as if she still expected Art Fremstad to come home.

  Vida, who was sitting next to Donna on the sectional sofa, placed a hand on the younger woman’s arm. “They found him in the late morning, down past the falls. I remember that very well. His patrol car was parked off the highway on a dead-end logging road, about a hundred yards from the river.” Vida glanced over at me. “We were all sure it was an accident. Especially Milo.”

  Donna’s head jerked up. “And me. There was no way I would ever have thought Art would kill himself. I still wouldn’t believe it if he hadn’t left that note.” In her fervor, she had raised her voice. Donna turned swiftly to see if the children were listening. They weren’t. Toys were sailing in various directions, and several squeals erupted from small lungs.

  I decided it was my turn to ask a question: “What did the note say, Donna?”

  But Donna was on her feet, moving swiftly to intervene with the squabbling youngsters. Gently but firmly, she set matters straight and returned to the living room. “It said … She paused to swallow hard.” ‘Life is too tough. I hate being a deputy and arresting people. I can’t go on.’ Then he signed his name—‘Art.’ That was it.” She raised a limp hand, as if her late husband’s last words had not only summed up his suicide, but a lifetime of events that had led up to it.

  We were silent for a moment, as if acting out our own commemoration. Then Vida tapped Donna’s wrist. “Wait a minute—he signed his name? I never heard that part. Do you mean he typed the note itself?”

  Donna nodded. “We had an electric typewriter then. Steve and I have a word processor now—he uses it for sch
ool.”

  Under her floppy pink hat, Vida was frowning. “Art typed a note that ran about four lines? Donna, does that make sense to you?”

  “He must have been under a lot of stress. People behave strangely.” Donna smoothed the wrinkles in her olive walking shorts.

  “Was he under stress? Did he seem depressed?” Vida wasn’t giving up.

  “No, not really. I told you, he was upset by that Graff baby’s death.” Donna ran a hand through her short brown hair. “Art didn’t talk a lot about his feelings. I wish he had. You know how most men are. They keep their emotions bottled up.”

  I looked at Vida. “Did Art talk to Milo?”

  Vida was chewing her lower lip. “No. Not that I know of.” She turned back to Donna. “Where did you find the note?”

  “Under the telephone. I’d invited everyone back here after the funeral, and I noticed this piece of paper sticking out when I went to call Delphine Corson and ask who sent the big basket of begonias while we were gone. There wasn’t any card. Then I read the note …” She stopped, her shoulders slumping. “I showed it to Sheriff Dodge. He couldn’t believe it, either. But of course we had to. It was a terrible shock.”

  Again we were silent, the little ones providing a background of innocent vigor. Vida’s next question surprised me as well as Donna.

  “Who did send the begonias?”

  Donna stared at Vida. “Why—I don’t know. I was so stunned by the note that I never called Delphine.” She shook herself. “Isn’t that awful of me—somebody didn’t get a thank-you note.”

  I looked at Vida. Judging from the flash of her eyes, she was thinking about something far more dreadful than a lapse of etiquette. But she didn’t say so to Donna. Maybe that was just as well.

  There was a story in the dispute over the movie company’s alleged unauthorized cutting of Jack Blackwell’s trees. It wasn’t the kind of article I usually ran before formal charges or lawsuits were filed, but it gave me an excuse to talk to Blackwell. After taking care of the most urgent messages that had accumulated on my desk, I returned to the timber company. Filming was underway in the vicinity of the Lumberjack Motel. The bright lights seemed blinding in the middle of the afternoon. Even from a distance, they looked hot. As for The Advocate, its bright new coat of yellow paint was drying quickly in the August sun.