The Alpine Escape Read online

  “Wow!” Jackie scrambled to her feet. “This is really getting interesting!” She made a shooing gesture at the men. “Go on, dig. Emma and I will go upstairs and get the family albums.”

  A battered steamer trunk in one of the third-floor bedrooms held a fair share of the Rowley-Melcher memorabilia. Judging from the stacks of albums, photograph folders, and old candy boxes filled with snapshots, several generations were represented. I wasn’t surprised to see Paul Melcher’s high school graduation picture on top. It was over a decade old and showed his face as rounder, his hair more plentiful, and with no hint of a mustache.

  “I’ve been meaning to go through this stuff,” Jackie said as she tried to determine if there was any order to the piles of pictorial history. “It’s the kind of thing I can do just before the baby comes. You know, when I can’t do much else.”

  There were high school and college yearbooks, engagement and wedding announcements, birth and death notices, newspaper clippings, and report cards. Jackie dug down to the bottom, finally pulling out a half-dozen albums bound with silk and cotton ribbons.

  “Let’s start with these,” she said, handing me three and keeping the rest for herself.

  We returned to the empty den. Obviously, Paul and Mike were still looking for what Jackie hopefully referred to as clues. I was now seated in a folding chair Jackie had brought out from a storage closet. With a brown imitation-leather album on my lap, I tried to work up some enthusiasm for my task. A brief perusal showed me wallet-sized photographs of grim-faced men and overweight women in 1880s’ finery. There was no identification of the subjects. However, a Saginaw, Michigan, portrait studio’s name was printed in elegant script on virtually every photo.

  “This must be Cornelius Rowley’s family,” I noted. “There’re quite a few pictures of little kids. Who would they be?”

  Jackie checked her family tree. “What year?”

  I studied the styles in a family grouping: mother, father, a boy about ten, and a girl who wasn’t much more than a toddler. They all looked overdressed and under-happy. “Bustles. Deerstalkers. Post–Civil War, but before the so-called Gay Nineties.”

  Jackie was scowling at her bright pink printing. “That’s the trouble, Paul didn’t give me any dates. Maybe it’s Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Rowley and their two kids.” She leaned over on the footstool to look at the photo. “Yes, that would figure. Eddie, Paul’s great-grandfather, and Great-Aunt Carrie, wasn’t it?”

  I shook my head. “No, they’d be steprelatives, remember? Paul’s not related on the Rowley side. Carrie married Malone, the Irish logger. For the time being, we’ll call this foursome the Rowleys.”

  Jackie flipped through another album, from the same period but with posed photographs that had been taken in several different cities: Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver, and San Francisco. Suddenly, she let out a little shriek.

  “It’s her! Hatchet Face! Look!”

  The woman who peered out at me from the sepiatinted photograph did indeed possess a severe mien. Her features were even, her mouth finely molded, and if she hadn’t had her hair pulled back so tightly that it looked as if her eyes might pop, she could have been handsome. The tailored shirtwaist’s stiff collar reached to her chin; Lena’s only adornment was a simple cross on a chain and small dark buttons that began at the base of her throat. I tried to picture her with flowing locks, a smile, and a relaxed expression.

  “Makeover City,” murmured Jackie. “Think what they could do with her at the Estée Lauder counter!”

  “Lena Stillman Melcher Rowley?” I saw Jackie nod solemnly. “Where’s her second husband, Eddie, grown up? Maybe Lena was good in bed.”

  Jackie was aghast. “Did people in those days even care? About sex, I mean. You know what Mike said about those priggish Victorians. Didn’t they just … do it to have kids?”

  I couldn’t help grinning. “I kind of think they had a good time, too. People are people, after all.”

  Jackie scrutinized Lena’s portrait again. “Except they didn’t. Have kids, I mean—her and Eddie. I’ll bet they had separate bedrooms. They could, you know. This house is so big.”

  For the first time I began to sense the presence of the people who had posed so stiffly for these photographs. Lena Stillman Melcher Rowley had lived in this house. She had sat in this very room, probably writing her suffragette tracts and planning political strategy. Edmund Rowley had lived here, too, and his father, Cornelius, had built the place. The senior Rowley had chosen the river-rock foundation and the tiled fireplace and the wrought-iron chandelier in the entry hall. Carrie Rowley Malone had been married out of this house, no doubt sweeping down the main staircase in her wedding dress.

  The century-old faces took on a spark of life. In the next album I spotted Carrie Rowley in sprigged gingham and her brother, Eddie, in a straw boater. He carried a cane and was actually smiling. Cornelius grew broader, his aspect more expansive with age and wealth. His wife seemed relegated to the background, literally. Mrs. Rowley stood in the shadows behind her husband. In the only family grouping she bowed her head, a wide-brimmed felt hat covering her face. I saw her as a downtrodden figure, a nineteenth-century wife and mother held back by social custom and an overbearing mate.

  “A Bible,” I said. “There must be a family Bible that would give us birth, death, and marriage dates.”

  Jackie was already on her feet, manning the light switches. The sun had set out over the strait. It was after eight-thirty, and the skies had finally cleared just before dusk. The weather was typical of this Northwest summer, with clouds hovering until late in the day, and then clearing as evening set in. I didn’t mind; I preferred it to the previous hot, dry years of drought that had made the forests a tinderbox and soured my mood.

  Jackie had removed a black Bible from the bookcase. “Here,” she said excitedly. “This belonged to the family. Paul showed it to me a while ago, but I went to sleep.”

  Jackie and I ended up on the sofa. It was easier to go through the albums and other memorabilia while sitting side by side. When the men returned, they could fend for themselves.

  “The men,” I said in sudden wonder. “They’ve been gone for almost an hour. What do you suppose they’re doing?”

  Jackie shrugged. “Finding clues, I suppose. Look.” She tapped a page with handwritten entries.

  Cornelius Rowley had been born in 1840; he had died in 1908. The birth and death dates for his wife, Olive, were 1847 to 1898. He had remarried four years later, but there were no vital statistics for his second wife, Simone. Edmund, or Eddie, Rowley was born in 1870, died in 1930. Caroline—or Carrie—entered this world in 1877, but her date of death wasn’t recorded. She had married James Malone in 1903, with their children following in rapid succession: Julia, 1904; Walter, 1906; Claudia, 1907. The only other entry was for Eddie’s marriage in 1901 to Lena Stillman Melcher.

  “It looks as if nobody bothered to keep this up after Cornelius Rowley died,” I said, skimming through the rest of the thick Bible to see if we’d missed anything.

  Jackie pursed her lips. “That’s odd, isn’t it? I mean, old Lena seems like the type who would have been very meticulous about record-keeping.”

  “But it wasn’t her family,” I pointed out. “Maybe she had a different Bible for the Melchers.”

  “If she did, it’s not here.” Jackie opened another photo album. “Whoa! Look at this one! She’s a real babe!”

  “She” took up a full page at the beginning of the third album. The eight-by-ten photograph showed a dazzlingly beautiful woman by the standards of any era. Dark hair, luminous eyes, a full, faintly pouty mouth, and a sensational if tightly corseted figure were set off against a backdrop of weeping-willow branches. The woman’s gown was probably silk, her parasol ruffled, the big hat adorned with ostrich feathers. She didn’t look as if she belonged in Port Angeles—not at the turn of the century, not even today.

  Jackie slipped the photograph out of the triangular h
olders that secured it to the album page. “No name,” she said with a sigh, turning the picture over. “It’s not Carrie—she was blonde. So was Grandma Rose, Grandpa Sanford’s wife. I know, I’ve seen pictures of them. There was a big one in the music parlor before we painted it.”

  I glanced over at the steno pad, which was lying on the footstool. “Simone, Cornelius’s second wife?”

  Jackie beamed at me. “Sure! She’s definitely French!” She gazed anew at the portrait. “I’d swear to it. I majored in French, you know. She has the style, the élan.”

  She did, indeed. It wasn’t hard to see why a middle-aged widower like Cornelius Rowley had fallen for La Belle Simone. It was just as easy to conclude that she had married him for his money.

  “I wonder what happened to her?” I mused, turning more pages and finding Simone in satin, in dimity, in gauzy chiffon. “I take it she was vain.”

  “Well, why not? She was gorgeous.” Jackie tore her admiring gaze away as Paul and Mike finally reappeared, dirty and disheveled. Patches of sweat could be seen under the arms of both men.

  “You win,” Paul said in a weary voice. He presented Jackie with a chipped enamel vegetable dish.

  Jackie looked at the contents and screamed.

  The only thing that would preserve Jackie Melcher’s sanity was another pizza. Despite Paul’s efforts to soothe her with words and gestures, his pregnant wife insisted that we all hop into the Wrangler and head for Gordy’s on East First Street.

  “Domino’s is great, but I need a change,” Jackie informed us as we trudged out to the driveway, where Paul had parked his vehicle behind his wife’s Honda. As we pulled into the street, I noticed a black Corvette parked at the curb. I hadn’t seen it when Jackie and I arrived. I wondered if Mike Randall was in his second childhood and how he could afford to indulge himself on a college instructor’s salary. But of course if Mike saw my Jag, he’d wonder the same thing about me.

  Paul volunteered to detour three blocks east to D Street in order to show me the statue of Lena Stillman Melcher Rowley in the D.A.R. Park. “Lena probably was an actual Daughter of the American Revolution,” he informed us as we drove along Sixth Street with its old homes and tall trees. “Now that I start thinking about it, I recall that her family came from Massachusetts.”

  He slowed at the comer where a parcel of land no bigger than a double lot was neatly landscaped. A streetlight illuminated the little park. We all got out of the Wrangler, though Jackie showed reluctance.

  “I’ve seen Lena’s statue a zillion times.” She sighed. “Maybe she’ll look better in the dark.”

  The grassy area was ringed by hemlock and Douglas fir trees. A granite rockery set off rhododendrons, azaleas, Oregon grape, and mountain laurel. At the center of the semicircle Lena was immortalized in bronze, life-size, with a plaque at her feet. I took a small emergency flashlight out of my handbag. The inscription read: LENA STILLMAN MELCHER ROWLEY. 1860–1944. A DEDICATED CRUSADER FOR JUSTICE, TEMPERANCE, AND EQUALITY. FINIS CORONAT OPUS.

  “What’s that?” Jackie inquired, wrinkling her button nose. “Latin?”

  “Right.” By the time I got to Blanchet High School in the Sixties, Latin was no longer a requirement for Catholic students. “I wonder what it means?”

  Paul and Mike didn’t know, either. Jackie was meandering back to the Wrangler. Paul was studying the streetlight. Mike was examining some of the rockery plants. I gazed up at Lena on her pedestal, taking in the sharp features, the severely cut suit of the post-World War I era, and the dead eyes that forever looked out in the direction of the setting sun. The sailor hat was not tipped at a rakish angle but sat squarely on the upswept hair. She wore no jewelry, though I supposed that in life there had been a wedding ring under the gloved hands. The sepia tones of the photograph I’d seen earlier had given the suggestion of a handsome woman. Bronze didn’t suit her. The jutting chin, the determined set of the mouth, and the hawkish nose made me feel as if I wouldn’t have wanted to do lunch with Lena. On the other hand, she certainly looked like a woman who could get things done.

  Back in the Wrangler, Mike Randall gave his assessment of Lena Rowley: “A true American heroine. Difficult, perhaps, because she was a perfectionist and single-minded. I’d guess that she never expected more of others than she did of herself. But of course that was a great deal. You ought to be proud to have her on your family tree, Paul.”

  Paul inclined his head. “Yeah, I guess. I’ll bet she wasn’t easy to live with. My dad called her the Grim Reaper.”

  Gordy’s was located on the commercial strip that formed Highway 101’s eastbound route through town. The restaurant featured not only pizza but pasta, and a lively crowd of Tuesday-night diners, most of whom I judged to be college students. Mike exchanged cordial greetings with several customers as a ponytailed waitress led us to a rear booth.

  “Anchovies,” Jackie declared without so much as picking up a menu. “And tons of onions.”

  The rest of us declined food, though Paul and Mike ordered a pitcher of beer. I decided to switch to Pepsi. Then I weakened and asked for some garlic bread. If Jackie intended to be miserable, maybe she’d like some company.

  “Those old relics are just too weird,” Jackie said, sighing, after our order had been taken. “Stuff like that makes me shiver.”

  I gave a faint nod. The contents of the enamel dish had upset me, too: a garnet earring, the sole and heel of a woman’s shoe, a strip of leather that might have been a belt, a silver bracelet engraved with tiny elephants, and a small gold cross. Those bits and pieces had evoked a real person, someone long dead, yet who had once worn stylish clothes and jewelry and shoes. All that remained was a pitiful skeleton, left to molder in the damp earth of an unfinished basement.

  “The garnet’s real,” Paul noted, perhaps hoping to divert his wife with solid facts. “The silver bracelet may have come from India. There used to be an umbrella stand in the entry hall that somebody brought from there way back.”

  I hated to bring up the subject, but it had to be done and pre-anchovies seemed like the best time. “We shouldn’t jump to conclusions. We have no proof that the jewelry and the piece of shoe belonged to the … skeleton.” I grimaced in apology.

  Jackie, however, gave me a wide-eyed look. “Wow, Emma, you sound like a real detective. Or a lawyer or something. Mom never covered crime. She was Special Editions.”

  “I know.” I smiled at Jackie, and at the memory of Mavis, always a sea of calm in a whirlwind of activity. “I often contributed articles to whichever special she was putting out. But never on crime. That was always strictly news stuff.”

  Mike was fingering his chin and looking pensive. “You’re right about proof, Emma. But the shoe would fit the foot bones. I’ll admit, it’s hard to tell because of the high heel and raised arch. Still, it’s a very small size, and the skeleton has very small feet.”

  Jackie all but jumped out of the wooden booth. “I know!” she cried, waving her arms. “We can go through the picture albums! Maybe we can find one of the women wearing the earring or the cross. Or even the bracelet.”

  The ponytailed waitress brought our beverages, which included an iced tea for Jackie. Paul waited until we were alone again before he spoke. “This is really kind of weird.” He gave a self-deprecating laugh. “When those workmen found the bones yesterday, I was surprised, of course. But I figured it was just some kind of freaky thing, an accident of some sort. I didn’t identify with it at all. But now, when we’re talking about somebody whose picture might be in the family albums—maybe a relative, for God’s sake—it’s strange.” He took one of Jackie’s hands in both of his and sighed. “You’re right, Sweets—this isn’t good for you and the baby. Let’s call it quits right now before we all get the creeps.”

  Jackie was gazing earnestly at Paul. “I don’t think we can. Not now.” Her voice was hushed. “That skeleton is in our house. We’re starting our life together, beginning a family. We’ve got to do right by … whoeve
r it was. What if it is somebody who’s related to you? Don’t we have to find out who and give her a decent burial? If we don’t do what’s right, we may be cursed or something.”

  Paul studied his bride’s concerned face. Out of the corner of my eye, I tried to gauge Mike Randall’s reaction. In my undergraduate days at the University of Washington, we had divided people into two separate categories: the humanities majors and the science majors. History, English, foreign languages, communications—all were taught on what was known as Upper Campus. Biology, botany, oceanography, engineering, medicine et al. were Lower Campus offerings. They were two separate worlds as far as most of us were concerned. The men I now observed—a science teacher and an engineer—belonged to the Lower Campus group. They didn’t think like the rest of us. Their minds were orderly and unimaginative. They were given to cold, hard facts. When they ventured into the abstract, they spoke of theories. There was no room in their logical thinking processes for fancy or superstition. I waited anxiously, if sanguinely, for their response.

  “You’re right,” Paul declared, kissing Jackie’s fingertips. “It would be terrible to ship my ancestor’s remains off to somebody in Bremerton. For all we know, they’d go into a Dumpster. That’d be real disturbing.”

  Mike was nodding in sympathy. “You’ve got to at least give it a try. Identifying the poor creature, I mean. Besides, it’s curious. How did she get there? A history lesson in human behavior, as it were.”

  History lesson notwithstanding, it was more than curious to me. If I’d been asked, I’d have said it was just plain fascinating. Still, the men of science had surprised me. I wouldn’t have expected them to show the spirit and verve of Vida Runkel in tackling the antique mystery, but they certainly hadn’t pooh-poohed the concept.

  Jackie’s pizza and my garlic bread arrived. I found myself sharing the hot slices of fresh Italian bread with Mike Randall. Paul helped Jackie eat her pizza.