Alpine Hero Page 8

  Trevor offered his sister a feeble smile. “Your chair cost almost as much as a car, sis.”

  “Being handicapped is expensive,” Honoria allowed.

  “It saves on shoes.” Trevor’s attempt at a joke was met by an awkward silence. Honoria usually could find humor in her situation, but apparently not under the present tragic circumstances. Fortunately, Mrs. Smith reentered the room, bearing a tray with four mugs, sugar, cream, and a carafe of coffee. All the blue earthenware vessels looked handmade.

  “So much rain!” Mrs. Smith exclaimed in her small, light voice, which was very different from her daughter’s husky tones. “And the snow, of course, though we haven’t had much here. But everything is so gray. Don’t you find it depressing?”

  The question was intended for both Vida and me. “We’re used to it,” Vida replied in a manner that dismissed the weather as unimportant.

  “I like it,” I chimed in. It was true. I’d grown up in Seattle’s grayness, where rain is frequent, but falls almost unobtrusively, like a soft caress. As a child, I thought of rain as a shelter, protecting me from a grownup world I often feared and didn’t understand. Later I realized it was more like a barricade. I could withdraw behind that curtain of water, shielding my emotions and guarding my heart. The rain’s patter was a comfort, an old song that told me I was safe under my roof, safe in my own house, safe from the intrusion of others in the private inglenook of my soul.

  But Ida Smith hated the rain. “It’s not that we don’t have rain in California,” she declared, passing out steaming mugs of coffee, “but I enjoy sunshine. It makes everything look better, brighter. Cream? Sugar?”

  I took sugar; Vida requested both. Usually, she wasn’t much of a coffee drinker, preferring tea or hot water. In Honoria’s home, she was being polite, even as she tried to nudge Dodger away from her feet.

  “When are you returning to California?” Vida asked, still wearing her sympathetic expression.

  Honoria, who was encased in a flowing pants costume that matched her ash-blonde hair, glanced at her brother. “If possible, Trevor is flying back with the body tomorrow night. He can ride with the hearse from Everett to the airport at Sea-Tac. Then Friday, Mother and I will leave in Trevor’s van. I’ll fly back after the services.”

  “Very sensible,” Vida said while I perused the house itself. I’d never been farther than Honoria’s living room, but I knew she had a guest room in addition to her bedroom. That was probably where Trevor and Kay had stayed. Ida must have been forced to bunk with her daughter.

  “… parted with her less than half an hour,” Vida was saying. In my musings about Honoria’s hospitality, I’d missed part of what Vida had said. “The news of Kay’s death must have been a terrible shock.”

  “Terrible,” Trevor repeated, hanging his head. “That’s the word.” He looked up just enough to gaze at his sister.

  “We didn’t believe it when the sheriff told us.”

  Honoria nodded slowly. “It wasn’t real. As ridiculous as it sounds, I thought it was a trick so that Milo could show off his new equipment. You know, like a fire drill.” Apparently racked by the memory, she pulled at her short, wavy hair. “It simply didn’t sink in.”

  Mrs. Smith was placing the coffee tray on a table with a twisted-vine stand. The telephone and a petal-shaped lamp also sat on the table. The phone rang just as Mrs. Smith put the tray down.

  Her face brightened as she held the receiver to her ear. “It’s for you, honey,” Mrs. Smith said, pointing the phone at Honoria. “It’s your … friend.”

  Honoria stiffened in her wheelchair. “I’ll call back.” She snapped off the words.

  In honeyed apology, Mrs. Smith relayed the message. Honoria continued speaking: “I don’t believe in guilt when you’re truly not to blame. But I can’t help it—the same questions keep plaguing me. What if I hadn’t let Kay take my appointment at Stella’s?”

  Instead of commiserating, Vida leaned forward on the black leather couch. “Indeed. What if you hadn’t?”

  Honoria’s gray eyes widened. “Why—she might still be alive. Is that what you mean?”

  “No.” Vida now sat up very straight, unconsciously displaying her majestic bosom. “Surely another possibility has occurred to you.” She paused, waiting for enlightenment to dawn.

  Instead of crying out in protest or looking bewildered, Honoria tipped her head to one side. “You mean that I should be dead rather than Kay? Yes, of course. That’s why I’m so distressed. There was no more reason to kill Kay than to kill me. It was a random, wanton act. At least that’s the only way I can view it. Kay had no enemies, certainly not around here. As far as I know, neither do I.” In an uncharacteristic nervous gesture, Honoria again fidgeted with the serape.

  The phone rang again. This time Trevor picked it up, frowned, and buried his face in the receiver. The rest of us kept quiet so that he could hear. But a moment later he looked at his sister, and then his mother.

  “It’s Cassie,” he said, sounding as if he were asking for help.

  Mrs. Smith got up from the cane-backed chair where she’d just sat down. “I’ll take it in Honoria’s room,” she said with a tight smile. “Poor Cassie. She must be fretting so.”

  Trevor spoke again into the phone. “Mother’s coming. She’ll explain. Hold on.” He waited until Mrs. Smith had picked up the extension, then replaced the receiver. “Our sister,” he explained. “Cassandra. She lives in Castro Valley.”

  “She married a lawyer who has his practice there,” Honoria put in, carefully folding her hands and placing them in her lap. “They’ve been there for fifteen years. It’s a good location, away from many of the big-city problems, but still close enough to the Bay Area to drive in for cultural events.”

  “Very nice,” Vida murmured, then turned back to Honoria. “You must have been very fond of your sister-in-law. Not every woman would give up a facial to someone else. I can’t say that I would.”

  To my knowledge, Vida had never had a facial in her life. I watched the exchange with interest.

  A slight hint of color rose in Honoria’s usually porcelain skin. “I rarely have one myself. But it was something new, and I felt … well, it would be an opportunity for Kay to see Alpine. We’d run most of our errands in Sultan and Monroe. Then Kay said how much she’d enjoy a facial, and since she was my guest, I couldn’t help but give her my appointment. I didn’t expect that the salon would have any other openings on such short notice.” Suddenly Honoria was speaking at a much faster clip than her usual leisurely pace.

  “Probably not,” Vida agreed, stepping on Dodger’s paw. The cat arched his back, hissed, and finally slunk back to the braided rug. Vaguely, I recalled that in more amiable, intimate days, the animal had been named for Milo Dodge. “Such a cosmetic novelty in Alpine, since Becca returned to town,” Vida enthused. “Did you know her, by any chance?”

  Honoria looked blank. “Who?”

  “Rebecca Wolfe,” Vida replied, doing her best to appear ingenuous. “The skin-care specialist. I believe she got married, but unfortunately, it didn’t last. I don’t know her ex-husband’s name. She went back to using her maiden name. As you have done, Honoria.” The statement held the hint of a challenge.

  “Oh—yes, I did. No,” Honoria continued, in some confusion, “I didn’t actually know the name of the person who gives the facials. Not then. I think she was the one who came to the sheriff’s office to tell them about Kay.”

  I confirmed Honoria’s guess. Vida had gotten to her feet, and was looking rather abject.

  “Dear me,” she said, “this is a bother, but might I use your bathroom? It’s such a long drive back to Alpine, and all this coffee …” Her hand trailed in the direction of her unfinished mug.

  “Of course,” Honoria said, pointing to the open door through which her mother had exited a few minutes earlier. “It’s between the bedrooms.”

  Vida tromped off, leaving the burden of interrogation on me. “You mentioned tha
t Kay’s murder was a wanton act,” I stated. “ ‘Random,’ I believe you said. You don’t think that robbery was a motive?”

  Honoria glanced at her brother. “Trevor says that Kay didn’t have much cash in her purse—forty, fifty dollars. They’d brought traveler’s checks and used credit cards. Robbery doesn’t strike me as a serious motive, but of course anything is possible.”

  “Drugs,” Trevor said. “You never know with these crackheads. Trust me, I’ve seen men knifed for less than fifty bucks.”

  The gaze that Honoria gave her brother would have put frost on the Sahara Desert. “We read all about such senseless crimes every day in the newspaper,” she declared through lips that barely moved. “It doesn’t do any good to speculate. We aren’t the type of people who can get inside the ruined minds of drug addicts.”

  Mrs. Smith returned to the living room. “My! Cassie is so worried about us! I’m so glad she called. I tried to put her mind at ease.”

  “How are the children today?” Honoria inquired in a strained voice.

  “They’re fine,” Mrs. Smith answered blithely, then hesitated. “Well, they were upset, too. But youngsters at that age—” She turned to bestow a grandmotherly smile on me. “Early teens, you see. They haven’t yet gotten outside of themselves. Which is good, really. Children should be protected when they’re growing up. They find out all too soon that the real world is so very hard.” The corners of her mouth drooped, and she suddenly seemed absorbed by the beringed fingers that were clasped in her lap.

  I didn’t have a chance to respond. Vida was back in the room. It was clear that she didn’t intend to sit down again. Her brow rose clear and high under the hunter-green turban.

  “Mr. Whitman, I must again extend my deepest sympathy to you,” Vida said. “I lost my husband in a tragic accident almost twenty years ago. No doubt he wasn’t much older than your wife. My Ernest was a paragon of a man. It seems that Kay was a wonderful woman. I assure you, I know how you feel.”

  Trevor bobbed his head, the slack flesh jiggling under his jawline. “Kay was a really outstanding person. I couldn’t have asked for more in a wife.”

  “A treasure,” Mrs. Smith added firmly. “She was just like a real daughter to me.”

  “We were all very fond of Kay,” Honoria declared. “That’s why Cassie and her family are so upset, too. We’ll be glad when all this …” She made a helpless gesture with one hand, the folds of her flowing tunic drifting around her arm. “You know what I mean, I’m sure.” She bowed her head.

  We trudged through the rain to Vida’s car. Once the doors were shut and we saw the Whitmans disappear inside the cozy cottage, I uttered a cross between a laugh and a snort.

  “Well? What did you overhear in the bathroom?”

  “Nothing,” Vida snapped. “Honoria must have had those walls reinforced with concrete.”

  I laughed. “What did you expect to hear?”

  “The truth.” Vida was waiting to reenter the highway. Traffic was fairly heavy this Wednesday afternoon on the cross-state route. “I never heard such piffle in my life. Cassie, or Cassandra, all in a stew. Shock and confusion and guilt on Honoria’s part. They laid it on with a trowel, especially when we got to Kay. Why, you’d think she was perfect!”

  “People often talk that way about the recently deceased,” I pointed out as Vida finally pulled onto Highway 2. “You called your late husband a paragon.” Vida had called him a number of less flattering things over the years, including a big fool. But that was usually in reference to his fatal attempt to go over Deception Falls in a barrel.

  Vida still insisted that the Whitmans were trying to hoodwink us. “Honoria kept steering the conversation away from the incident itself. She was as bad as Jane Marshall, preventing anyone else from getting in more than a few worthless words. I think Honoria knows something about Kay that we don’t.”

  “Undoubtedly,” I agreed. “The woman was her sister-in-law for sixteen years.”

  “I don’t mean just that,” Vida said, dismissing my logic with a shake of her head. “I think she knows why Kay was killed.”

  Jarred, I stared at the wet ribbon of road. Outside of Gold Bar, we had passed the first of the chain-up areas. The sign indicated that the road was clear, at least until we reached the higher elevations.

  “But who?” I asked in a perplexed voice. “That would mean that Trevor or Mrs. Smith killed her. Honoria couldn’t have done it. She’s an invalid. Kay had no connection to Alpine. As far as we know, she’d never been here before.”

  Vida was looking grim. “Precisely. We don’t know. The other day, you mentioned how everything we know about Honoria and her background is strictly on her say-so. What if it’s not true? Some of it, all of it, even a small part of it. What we don’t know could be the key to Kay’s murder.”

  The raindrops were growing heavier as we climbed among the Cascade foothills. Through the trees, we could glimpse the Skykomish River, a tumbling gash of gray and white, surging dangerously close to its banks. There could be flooding, if we had a sudden thaw coupled with more rain.

  I mulled over Vida’s words. It was true that I felt Honoria might not have told us the whole truth about her life. Certainly she had revealed only the barest facts. The suggestion that Kay’s death was somehow linked to Alpine wasn’t completely implausible. Jane and Laurie Marshall came to mind. Jane, at least, had behaved strangely. Becca Wolfe had seemed straightforward enough. But Becca had been gone for several years. And who was the friend who had called Honoria during our visit?

  “How should I know?” Vida replied when I posed the question. We were stuck in a long line of traffic, perhaps behind an eighteen-wheeler that found the increasing grade a difficult pull. “I’ll tell you one thing,” Vida said, resigning herself to the snail’s pace. “As I’d hoped, the linen closet was in the bathroom. Honoria doesn’t own any white towels.”

  A quarter mile west of Index, we came to a complete stop. Vida got out of the car, taking her camera with her. “There must have been an accident. I’ll hike up a ways to see if I can get a picture.”

  “Vida, wait.” I didn’t want my House & Home editor trudging along a cross-state highway in mixed snow and rain. But Vida was already at the bend in the road. I didn’t catch up with her until she was standing on the verge, taking pictures of a blue sports car. Two other vehicles had pulled off to the side, and a half-dozen people were milling around in confusion.

  I got the name of the sports-car driver, who turned out to be a seemingly unharmed but dazed young man from Everett. He’d been going too fast to take the curve, he mumbled. He’d skidded and gone into the ditch. After we determined that someone with a car phone had already called the state patrol, Vida and I returned to the Buick.

  “We’re stuck for a while,” she said, wiping moisture from her face. Turning this way and that, she broke into a smile. “Where did Cal Vickers say that new house was being built?”

  “Right above the spot where the North Fork of the Sky joins the South Fork,” I said.

  Vida opened her window, making peculiar motions at the car in back of us. The next thing I knew, she had angled the Buick onto the shoulder of the road and was backing up.

  “With any luck, we can reverse until we get to that gravel road that goes up to Sunset Falls. I’ll bet anything that’s where the new construction is located. The North Fork comes in on the other side of the highway by the last bridge.”

  “That gravel road is on the other side of the bridge,” I pointed out. “How are we going to back across that with all these cars?”

  “We’ll walk.” Vida inched along; the bridge came into view through the rear window. She stopped the car and got out again. I had no choice but to follow her.

  I’d never been on the road to Sunset Falls before. While it was indeed made of gravel, it appeared to have been recently improved and widened. A network of vine maples grew over the road, and tall evergreens flanked both sides. The air smelled damp and fresh, but th
e peaceful setting was disturbed by a loud, harsh noise.

  In another fifty yards, we found the source of the noise: a cement truck was spewing its contents into a large wooden platform. Farther off, by the river, we could see an already-laid foundation that was even bigger. Vida waved at one of the workmen.

  “Yoo-hoo! Press!” She trudged through the muddy ground, sinking almost to the top of her ankle boots.

  The workman pointed to another man who was standing off to one side, studying a blueprint. Vida changed her path, and I dutifully followed. The man couldn’t hear us coming over the noise. He didn’t look up until we were within four feet of him.

  “Press!” Vida shouted again. “Alpine Advocate!”

  “What?” The man cupped his ear. He was wearing a hunting cap, a heavy brown jacket, and dark work pants. I assumed he was the foreman.

  Vida motioned for the man to move away from the cement truck. He didn’t seem pleased by the suggestion, but complied. Just as we reached another truck that bore the Nyquist Construction logo, the cement pouring stopped.

  “We’re from The Advocate,” Vida said, offering the man her warmest smile. She also gave him our names, which seemed to cause some alarm. The man drew back a couple of steps, colliding with the truck.

  “I don’t talk to the media,” he said. “Please leave.”

  Vida was dumbfounded, or as close as she ever got. “Now, see here, young man—” she began.

  For once, I interposed myself between Vida and her would-be victim. “This is quite a project,” I said pleasantly. “I see Nyquist Construction has been hired. They’re an Alpine firm, and one of our advertisers. I’m surprised they haven’t mentioned this job to us.”

  The man frowned at me. “I asked them not to. I don’t do interviews.”