The Alpine Quilt Read online

  Carrie now became the resident giggler, though the sound suited her much better than it did Annie Jeanne. “Ms. Dupré’s a funny old thing,” Carrie said. “Every time she comes in, I have to try not to laugh.”

  “Actually,” I said, “she’s not all that old.” Having reached the midcentury mark, I no longer considered anybody under eighty as old. “I figure Annie Jeanne is in her mid-sixties.”

  Carrie’s expression indicated that she didn’t understand my logic. But she merely smiled self-consciously. “What can I do for you today, Ms. Lord?”

  “I’d like a loaf of your country white, sliced,” I replied, “and, if I may, a word with either Vicki or Gordon.”

  “Oh. Sure,” she responded, glancing at the open door that led into the bakery itself. “I’ll get one of them before I take care of your bread.”

  Vicki Crowe was around forty, with shoulder-length curly black hair and a businesslike manner that didn’t mesh with her pert good looks.

  “Ms. Lord,” she said with a smile as tight as her curls. “What can I do for you?”

  “Accept my apologies for the mistake in this week’s edition,” I said. “Don’t blame Leo. I’m the one who has the final look at the paper. And please call me Emma.”

  To my surprise, Vicki shrugged. “It’s no big deal, Emma. We’ll stay open until six on Sunday. We can use the time to get ready for Monday. But how about this?” She leaned toward me and lowered her voice as a young mother entered, pushing a sleeping infant in a stroller. “I talked it over with Gord after Leo left,” Vicki went on. “We decided we could get some free promotional inches by asking you to run a brief item stating our Sunday hours and emphasizing that we’ll probably change back to six days a week after New Year’s. Frankly, I don’t think we can keep up the pace in the long term. We didn’t move to Alpine to kill ourselves.”

  The proposal sounded fair to me. “We’ll place the story near your ad on the House and Home page,” I agreed.

  “Good.” Vicki greeted the newcomer, but headed back into the bakery section.

  Carrie had my bread ready. I paid for it and started on my way. I was almost to the door when I had an idea. The young mother was hemming and hawing over bear claws. She finally decided on the ones with apple filling. After she left, I informed Carrie that I wanted a dozen doughnuts, three each of cinnamon, frosted, plain, and glazed. The Crowes made doughnuts to die for.

  The Upper Crust was right across the street from the sheriff’s office. Alpine may not have bumper-to-bumper traffic on the main drag, but it’s not wise—or legal—to jaywalk. I went to the corner and crossed at the new stoplight at Front and Third.

  “Doughnut Lady,” I announced, entering the reception area, where Milo stood behind the curving desk, jawing with deputies Jack Mullins and Dustin Fong. Toni Andreas was answering phones, but glanced up with an expression of expectancy.

  “Gimme, gimme,” Jack urged, his hands outstretched. “Nina says if I eat more than two a day, she’s sending me to a fat farm.”

  Jack was, in fact, putting on some weight as he entered middle age. Milo, too, had added a few pounds in recent years, but on his six-foot-five-inch frame, it wasn’t noticeable unless he took his clothes off. Not wanting to think about that, I opened the pink bakery bag and let the quartet dig in.

  “So,” I remarked, after everyone had a doughnut in hand, “tell me about the break-ins.”

  The sheriff had chosen a glazed doughnut. Toni was off the phone. Before answering my question, Milo asked her to get us all a cup of coffee.

  “Fresh brew,” he said.

  Fresh or stale, it wouldn’t matter. The sheriff’s coffee was always awful—too weak or too strong, and sometimes tasting as if the inside of the coffeemaker had been scorched by a flash fire. “Break-ins?” I prompted.

  “All two of them?” Milo retorted with an ironic expression on his long face. “What about them?”

  I accepted a steaming mug from Toni. “Same MO in both incidents?” I asked.

  “Right.” Milo peered at me over the rim of a mug that had CRIMEBUSTER stamped on its side. “I told Scott as much.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, and dared to take a sip of coffee. It tasted like asphalt. “Kids?” Trying not to grimace, I bit into a plain doughnut.

  Milo shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Come on, Milo,” I said in an impatient tone, “don’t be coy. You can tell a pro from an amateur.”

  “Yep.” He sipped his coffee and bit off another chunk of doughnut.

  Obviously, the sheriff wasn’t going to cooperate, which made me all the more curious. But I knew from frustrating experience that the more I asked, the less he’d be inclined to answer.

  “I’m taking my doughnuts and going home,” I declared. Snatching the bag off the counter, I started for the door.

  “Hey!” Jack cried. “Come back, sweet Emma! I didn’t get a cinnamon!”

  I relented. “Here,” I said, but handed the bag to Dustin Fong, who was looking equally crestfallen. “I’m keeping one for myself,” I added, removing a cinnamon doughnut for myself.

  Dustin, Jack, and Toni all thanked me. Milo said, “You didn’t finish your coffee.”

  With the acrid taste still on my tongue, I shot him a sharp look. “I am finished with your coffee.”

  I ate my confiscated doughnut as I walked the two blocks to the Advocate. In the front office, Ginny looked up from her computer. “You have sugar on your face. Hank Sails died this morning.” She made both pronouncements in the same tone of voice. Despite the flaming red hair that often signaled a volatile temperament, Ginny usually kept herself on an even keel.

  Brushing off the sugar, I stared at Ginny. Hank Sails’s death wasn’t really a shock. He was in his late eighties and had lived a long and satisfying life. The owner of six weekly newspapers until he’d sold out five years ago, Hank had been one of the people who’d advised me on buying the Advocate. He’d been a kind man, generous with his time and his knowledge. Hank had been a true independent, never following party lines or popular thinking. His peers as well as his readers regarded him as an icon in the newspaper business.

  “When’s the funeral?” I inquired.

  Ginny shook her head. “I don’t know. The story just came across the wire ten minutes ago. More to come, as they say.”

  The phone rang. Ginny answered, then called to me just as I started into the newsroom. “It’s Vida,” Ginny said. “Do you want to take it in your office?”

  “Sure.”

  I hurried past Scott, who was listening to his tape recorder while typing on his computer keyboard.

  “Vida,” I said eagerly, “how are you? How’s Beth?”

  “About the same,” Vida replied in a noncommittal tone. “I have a favor to ask. Would you please call Buck late this afternoon and remind him to take care of Cupcake? He sometimes can be absentminded.”

  I assumed she referred to Buck, not to Cupcake. Buck was Buck Bardeen, Vida’s longtime companion; Cupcake was Vida’s canary, who had been around longer than Buck. “Sure,” I replied, jotting down a reminder note. “What’s wrong with Beth?”

  “Ooooh . . .” Vida paused, and I could picture her familiar—and disturbing—habit of whipping off her glasses and rubbing her eyes so hard that I wondered how they stayed in their sockets. “You know these doctors nowadays. They hem and haw.”

  “It’s nothing serious, I hope?”

  Vida sighed. “We hope not.”

  Her reticence was driving me nuts. Vida might be closemouthed when it came to intimate details of her private life, but it seemed to me that she was going too far this time. The least I expected was a string of complaints about the medical profession, the effort she was expending, and being forced to stay in a city the size of Tacoma.

  “When do you think you’ll come home?” I asked.

  “I can’t say just yet.”

  I realized I was grinding my teeth, so I surrendered. “Well, we certainly miss you. Do take care of y
ourself, as well as Beth. By the way, I put a couple of items in your in-basket. One’s about a trip that the Pikes are taking to Orlando next week, and the other is about the Burl Creek Thimble Club’s welcome-back party Sunday for Genevieve Bayard.”

  I thought I heard Vida’s sudden intake of breath. But she didn’t respond, and I wondered if we’d been disconnected. I was about to say something when she finally spoke in a husky, unfamiliar voice:

  “Excuse me, I have to go at once.”

  Vida hung up.

  THREE

  My curiosity got the better of me. I decided to call Amy Hibbert in The Pines. Maybe Vida’s eldest daughter could explain her mother’s behavior, or at least tell me what was wrong with Beth.

  Before I could pick up the receiver, the phone rang.

  “Where the hell were you this morning?” Ben demanded. “You lose your calendar along with your soul?”

  “Oh, shoot!” It was November 2, All Souls’ Day, and while not a holy day of obligation, I sometimes went to Mass to pray for the souls of our parents. “I blew it.”

  “Your penance is taking me to dinner at Le Gourmand out on the highway,” Ben stated. “I hear they have food that’s actually edible, not to mention more variety than the ski lodge’s version of Scandinavian haute cuisine. I can only eat so much pickled herring at one sitting.”

  “The dining room at the lodge serves a lot more than herring,” I asserted. “They have valet parking now. I’m sure they’d feel honored to drive your beat-up Jeep. Besides, I like pickled herring.”

  “Another black mark against you,” Ben replied. “How about tomorrow night?”

  I grimaced. “If I can snag a reservation,” I said. “They get busy on weekends. Some people drive all the way from Seattle to eat there.”

  “Use your clout,” Ben commanded. He hung up on me, too. I had no opportunity to tell him I had no clout.

  Amy Hibbert answered on the second ring. It always amazed me that although Vida’s daughters resembled her physically, none of them shared her personality traits. All three were somewhat timid and very careful not to offend. I assumed that while they might look like their mother, they had acquired Ernest Runkel’s character. Given Vida’s forceful qualities, they probably didn’t have much choice. It had occurred to me that the only form of rebellion the daughters had ever shown was when Beth had settled in Tacoma and Meg moved to Bellingham. Though Vida never said as much, I was certain that their defection rankled.

  I told Amy that I’d just finished speaking with her mother. “I’m worried, Amy,” I admitted. “She doesn’t sound like herself and she won’t say what’s wrong with your sister. I know I sound like a snoop, but I’m very concerned.”

  “Oh, dear,” Amy said in a fretful voice, “I’m sorry you’re upset. I spoke with Mother last night, and she told me Beth was doing fairly well. All things considered.”

  My shoulders slumped. Was I going to get the runaround from Beth, too? “Such as?”

  “Such as what?”

  “The things,” I said. “All the things.”

  “Oh!” Amy uttered a lame little laugh. “I mean, recovering from surgery is never easy.”

  Dare I ask?

  I dared. “What kind of surgery?”

  “For hammertoes,” Amy replied. “The doctors aren’t sure how soon Beth can walk. And when she does, she has to wear funny-looking shoes.”

  “Oh!” I said in relief. “I was afraid it was something serious.”

  “It is serious for Beth,” Amy asserted. “She has kind of big feet—well, we all do—and she’s very self-conscious about having to wear those ugly shoes that’ll make her feet look even bigger.”

  The image brought Vida to mind as I envisioned her tromping through the newsroom in her splayfooted manner. “Yes, I can see how that would bother Beth,” I remarked. “Excuse me, but I have a rather odd question for you, Amy. I wouldn’t ask, but it may be affecting a couple of assignments I have for your mother. Is she feuding with Ethel Pike?”

  “Ethel?” Amy evinced surprise. “Not that I know of. I haven’t heard her mention Ethel lately, but when she has, it’s just . . . the usual kind of comment.”

  In other words, Vida thought Ethel was a ninny. But Vida thought most people were ninnies. “Do you recall her ever mentioning Genevieve Bayard?”

  “Genevieve Bayard?” Amy sounded stumped. “Goodness, I haven’t heard that name in years. Isn’t she Buddy’s mother?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “She’s coming to town for a visit.”

  “That’s nice for Buddy,” Amy said. “Usually, he and Roseanna have to visit her over in Spokane. That’s quite a long, tiring drive. I mean,” she added hastily, lest she offend the half of the state east of the Cascades, “it’s pretty if you like all that farmland and rolling brown countryside.”

  “The two sides of Washington couldn’t be much more different,” I noted, distracted by what seemed to be Vida’s overreaction to Beth’s dilemma. “Forest on the west, prairie on the east.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Amy agreed. “Eastern Washington is like the Midwest in terms of weather.”

  The weather wasn’t why I’d called. “Do you have any idea when your mother will be home? She was very vague with me.”

  “I suppose she’ll come back when Beth can get around on her own,” Amy said in an uncertain voice. “Really, I don’t think it should be too long. You know how she hates to be away from Alpine.”

  I did know. That was the problem: For once, Vida didn’t seem anxious to come home.

  Over the weekend, I tried to put the conundrum that was Vida out of my mind. Distractions, however, saved me from becoming obsessed with her behavior. Adam called from Alaska Saturday morning. As usual, the connection between Alpine and St. Mary’s was transmitted via radio, which meant there was always a delay after each of us spoke.

  “Guess what?” he said over a couple of crackles along the line. “I’ll be home for Christmas!”

  “Hooray!” I shouted. “This will be the first time in I don’t know how many years! How did you manage it?”

  Pause. “I got a sub,” Adam finally replied. “The priest I replaced wants to visit his old flock. I’ll get in at Sea-Tac around noon on the twenty-third. I have to be back here the twenty-ninth.”

  Airport holiday zoo. Curbside pickup, if there was room to park. Cars, cabs, limos, buses, shuttles clogging the lanes in front of the entrance. I didn’t mind. I was too excited to see my son for the first time in almost two years.

  “I’m so happy, I could cry,” I said.

  Pause. “You don’t cry much. Don’t do it on my account. You always end up with a really ugly sneezing and coughing fit. How’s Uncle Ben There, Done That? If he e-mails me any more advice, I’m going to kill him.”

  “He’s only trying to be helpful, and you know it,” I responded. “He’s fine. We’re going to dinner tonight at Le Gourmand.”

  Pause. “Do they serve whale blubber? I can’t remember what normal food tastes like.”

  “You’re exaggerating. I sent you Omaha steaks last month.”

  Pause. “A walrus ate them. Then I ate the walrus. Got to go. I’ll e-mail you the details, okay?”

  It was more than okay, it was a minor miracle. I told him how excited I was and how much I loved him and to be careful, especially during the whiteouts where he literally couldn’t see his hand in front of his face and had to follow a rope to move around outdoors. During one of those blinding snowstorms the previous winter, a local man had let go of the rope and disappeared. His frozen corpse was found in the spring, three miles from the tiny town.

  Ben was also thrilled when I told him about Adam’s plans. They would, my brother announced, concelebrate Midnight Mass and the Christmas Day liturgy. At that point, I almost did cry. I knew how proud Tom would have been to see his son on the altar.

  The dinner at Le Gourmand was excellent as usual. We couldn’t get a reservation until nine, but that was fine since Ben coul
dn’t leave until after Saturday evening Mass. I drove. I didn’t trust him on Highway 2 at night, especially since it had started raining.

  When I got home from church Sunday I started planning for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I already had my Turkey Day guest list made out, including Ben, of course, along with Milo, Vida, and Buck. Amy and her husband were going to Hawaii for the long weekend. I assumed—and prayed—that they’d take Roger with them. I tried to obliterate an unbidden image of Roger being roasted over a spit at a Thanksgiving luau.

  Since I had the spare time, I started to reorganize Adam’s old bedroom, which I’d used for storage since he’d moved away. It was a daunting task, and I ended up throwing out a bunch of junk I didn’t know why I’d kept in the first place. My holiday decorations were in his closet, so I removed the Thanksgiving box and began putting the items around the living room. Figures of Pilgrims and Indians, various sizes of turkeys, a cornucopia, assorted pumpkins, squash, and corncobs made me feel downright festive.

  That night I went to bed tired but feeling I’d accomplished something. I slept like a log.

  Ben was already here. Adam was coming home. I had a family again.

  But my mood soured a bit when I learned that Vida would miss another day of work.

  “She called early,” Ginny reported. “In fact, I was just coming through the door when the phone rang. She said she wasn’t able to leave Beth yet. What’s wrong with her?”

  I informed Ginny of the hammertoes surgery. She looked relieved but also puzzled. “Isn’t that when your toes curl up?” she inquired.

  “I guess so,” I replied, trying not to sound unsympathetic. “I’ve never had that problem. I suppose it’s something to look forward to.”

  “Oh,” Ginny said, just before I went into the newsroom, “Hank Sails’s funeral is Thursday. It’s private, but that evening there’s a memorial reception for him at the Columbia Tower in Seattle.”

  I smiled. Even beyond the grave, Hank seemed to be thinking of his fellow newspaper owners. After Wednesdays, which was usually publication day for most weeklies, Thursdays were always a little slow, a time to catch your breath.