Driving to my office, I considered calling on the Alpine Falls Motel’s Will Pace, but Mitch was touchy about any infringement on his assignments. Besides, I figured Will wouldn’t tell me anything helpful. I only knew the motel owner by sight. He was a stumpy, gnomelike guy of the antisocial variety. I’d always wondered why he’d gotten into a people-oriented business. What little I knew about him was piecemeal, and if memory served, those pieces often didn’t fit together. I decided to leave Pace up to Milo. He had more resources than I did.
Mitch was the only staffer on hand when I went into the newsroom. “Where are we with the homicide?” he asked. “Do you know anything I should know?” There was a hint of reproach in his voice.
“Only that the sheriff got a picture that shows her when she was still alive.” I didn’t go into details about the connection with the Campbell family. “You should probably take a look at it.”
“I will.” The faint reproach became self-righteous. “I’ll do that now.” Mitch grabbed his raincoat and was out the door.
I’d just sat down when Alison came in via the back shop. She didn’t look happy. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Lunch was a bummer,” she announced in a doleful voice. “We’d just been seated when his roommate showed up. Boyd couldn’t tell him to buzz off.”
“Jeffrey?” It was the only thing I could think of to say.
“Jeffrey Nichols.” Alison slid into a visitor’s chair. “He’s trying to find a job here. If he can’t, maybe he’ll move back to Wenatchee.”
“Do you know what Jeffrey does for a living?”
Alison nodded faintly. “He’s a graphic designer. Freelance. What if he can do his job no matter where he lives?”
“He might,” I said, searching for words of comfort. “Jeffrey won’t find much work here, but that means he’d have to travel to meet with clients.”
“So? Wenatchee’s ninety minutes away. He can do that in a day.”
I couldn’t cheer up Alison short of running over Jeffrey with my Honda, but I gave it one last shot. “You and Boyd will be living in the same complex. You’re bound to see each other when you’re both unencumbered. I’m sorry I had to assign the story to Mitch, but you know what he’s like if he feels he’s being shortchanged. Meanwhile, you’re giving up on Boyd before he’s settled in.”
Alison appeared to think over what I’d just said. But then she asked, “What if he has a girlfriend in Wenatchee?”
“Then you’ll have to forget about him.” Seeing the hopeless look on Alison’s face, I felt guilty. “How about the new paramedic? I think Janos Kadar is single.”
Alison frowned. “He’s got a weird name. Not,” she went on, “that it means he’s weird. Maybe I should check him out. How old is he?”
I tried to remember what the official announcement had said. I couldn’t. Maybe his age hadn’t been included. “Why don’t you fall down and sprain an ankle? Then you could see him in person.”
“I could think of something. Was there a photo with the story?”
“No. We only ran a couple of inches. But his name indicates he’s part Hungarian. They’re often good-looking. Slavic, dark, and lean.”
“Interesting,” she murmured as my phone rang. “Oh! I’d better get back to the front desk!” She sprang out of the chair and rushed away.
“Alma?” the male voice said, and I wondered if the caller had misdialed. But when he spoke again, I realized it was Leonard Hollenberg. “Violet told me she never heard of anybody named Danforth around here. My better half is pretty danged good about remembering names.” That was a good thing, since her husband couldn’t.
“It was a long shot,” I admitted. “But thanks for checking with her.”
“Not a problem,” Leonard responded. “Say, when are you running Violet’s story and the pictures of our trip to Leavenworth?”
I’d forgotten all about them, but in a flash, I realized that the former county commissioner had given me an idea for our special edition. “We’re organizing a big section about SkyCo residents’ recent travels and where they’re planning to go this year. You and Violet will fit right in.”
“I’ll be danged! Glad to hear that, Erma. So will Violet. I’ll tell her as soon as I hang up. If you need any more stuff from us, give me a ring.”
I assured him I would, despite already hearing more than enough from Leonard. But having revealed my off-the-cuff idea, I’d actually have to do it. At least it might bring in enough advertising to cover the time and a half I’d paid my staff for working on MLK Jr. Day.
Shortly after four-thirty, I held an impromptu staff meeting to inform them of my idea. “We’ll run a front-page boxed item in this week’s edition asking readers to let us know of future travel plans and to submit photographs from their previous trips.”
Mitch was the first to have a quibble. “Most people take color shots or make tapes. Won’t that mean we have to spend more on reproduction?”
I glanced at Kip. “Will it?”
My production manager shrugged. “It depends on the quality and what they submit. Remember last summer when Arnie and Louise Nyquist went to Norway and sent us a bunch of fjord Polaroids? They looked like big cliffs. No water. We ran only one. Arnie should know better.”
“I suspect Louise took those,” I said. “Arnie was in three of them.”
Leo laughed. “Maybe she tried to drown him. He can be a jackass.”
I wasn’t laughing. “Arnie and Milo have never gotten along. Even when Nyquist Construction remodeled the sheriff’s office, they had words, despite the fact that my husband was satisfied with the job.”
Mitch shrugged. “I can see why. They’re both prickly.” He saw me stiffen and held out his hands in a helpless gesture. “No offense, Emma. But you know how I feel about Dodge after Troy was sent back to the reformatory when he had pneumonia.”
“That was the state’s decision,” I declared. “They outranked Milo.”
It was Liza who intervened, putting a hand on Mitch’s arm. “You and Brenda must be looking forward to Troy coming home. Will he live with you or find a place of his own?”
The gesture and the words seemed to signal a truce. Leo was the first to turn away before Kip, Alison, and I moved on to our respective places. I wanted to hug Liza, but she was still talking to Mitch. It was now five minutes to five. There was no point in dwelling on my editorial, but I made a few notes that might kick-start me in the morning.
I drove home through part rain and part snow, focused on what to make for dinner. Meatballs, maybe. I was in that kind of mood. Almost before I could close the door to the garage, I heard the phone ringing in the living room. Trying not to stumble over my own feet, I rushed through the kitchen, flung myself down on the sofa, and grabbed the receiver.
“Hi, Mom,” Adam greeted me. “Are you finished eating?”
“It’s only ten after five,” I said, panting a bit. “When are you going to remember the time change between here and St. Mary’s Igloo in Alaska?”
“I won’t have to,” he replied. “The Home Missions are sending me to Michigan. I move to Gaylord, up on the Great Lakes, February third.”
Managing to get myself into a more comfortable position, the only thing I could think of to say was “Michigan?”
“Right, way up north on the peninsula.” He chuckled. “After being in this icebox, it’ll seem like Florida.”
“It sounds…remote,” I said, then realized that Adam wasn’t calling via radio relay from the isolated village less than a hundred miles from Asia. Our conversations from there were marred by frustrating delays between our exchanges. “Wait! Where are you? I can hear you just fine.”
“Fairbanks,” he replied. “I’m here for two days, winding up the business stuff. Then I’ll meet my replacement, Joe O’Leary. He’s originally from Boston, but he knows Uncle Ben somehow. How is that rascal? I should call him after I finish talking to you. He’s still on the Delta, right?”
“So far as I know. I haven’t talked to him since the two of you were here for Christmas.”
“I haven’t either.” Adam paused, and I could hear voices in the background. “Got to run. I didn’t charge the call to your VISA this time. Say hi to Dodge for me. I’ll stop over in Alpine on my way to Gaylord. I have to change planes in Seattle anyway. Love you, Mom.” He hung up before I could say goodbye.
Adam. My son. My sole companion in the younger years of my adult life. Since he entered the priesthood, I was lucky to see him more than once a year, and rarely for longer than a few days. I was fighting back tears when the kitchen door banged open. A moment later, my husband thumped into the living room.
“Are we eating out?” he asked in a gruff voice.
“No.” I hauled myself up from the sofa. “Adam just called. Are you going to kiss me or just bellow?”
“Damn.” He tossed his hat onto the peg by the wall and took me in his arms. “Is Adam okay?”
I nodded, locked my arms around his neck, and kissed him. “He’s being transferred to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.”
Milo kept his arms around me. “There’s supposed to be some good fishing up there. Want to go visit him this summer?”
The suggestion surprised me. “There’s good fishing in Alaska, but you never suggested going there.”
“That’s different,” he said, releasing me. “Alaska’s so damned big. I’ve only been up there twice, and the first time it was out of Juneau, in the southeastern part, and then over by Anchorage for the second trip. Neither of those places were anywhere near Adam’s digs.”
“True,” I admitted, turning toward the kitchen. “Are you going to change or have a drink first? My initial impression was that you were…not at your best when you came home.”
“I sure as hell wasn’t,” Milo replied, following me out of the living room. “Blackwell put Patti Marsh in the hospital this afternoon.”
“She was sick…or…?”
“Or,” he said, opening the door to the liquor stash. “He beat the crap out of her. Again.”
“Why?” It was only a semistupid question, since Jack didn’t always need a reason.
“I don’t know.” Milo paused to get out two glasses from the cupboard. “The only reason I found out about Patti is that Dwight Gould was fed up with hanging around the hospital and decided to liberate himself. Just as he was going out, Patti was coming in via ambulance. He could see that she was all banged up, so he asked her what had happened. All she said was ‘Jack’ before Del Amundson and Vic Thorstensen hustled her inside.” He paused to hand me my drink. “If Patti finally has the guts to rat out Blackwell, that puts me in a helluva position. I’d have to bust my own boss since he’s the county manager.”
“You busted him once before,” I reminded my husband.
Milo’s hazel eyes regarded me with irony. “That was before his job was official. Even if two of the three original county commissioners were old as dirt and one of them—George Engebretsen—was already gaga. I suppose Leonard Hollenberg might have had my back, but so what?”
I looked up from peeling potatoes. “Leonard submitted a story today about their annual Christmas trip to Leavenworth. Violet wrote it.”
“Are you going to put it in the paper?”
“I might,” I replied, putting the potatoes on the stove. “Edited, of course. I decided our special edition would be about traveling Alpiners.”
“That sounds like a folk music group from the sixties,” Milo murmured—and headed back to the living room.
He was right. But readers would eat it up. While daily newspapers were fading away like the setting sun in the last scene of an old western movie, small-town weeklies still had a chance for survival. Alpine’s semi-isolation was a plus for the Advocate. It wasn’t quite true that everybody knew everybody else, but they generally knew of their eight thousand fellow SkyCo residents. I picked up my glass and was tempted to raise it in a toast to my fellow Alpiners, but the kettle with the potatoes was about to boil over. I had to yank it off the burner before turning down the heat. So much for my uncharacteristic whimsy. Even in a small mountain town, it didn’t suit a cynical newspaper editor. I’d seen it all and reported most of it.
Except that it would turn out that I hadn’t.