Heppner went off to get the kit. Milo headed for his office and closed the door behind him. Pootsie was studying the Wanted posters. “That one looks like our gardener,” she said to her husband. “I told you I didn’t trust him.”

  “Not our guy,” Clint muttered. “Ears are too big. Dang, but I’m hungry. I could wrestle down a steer.”

  I went inside the counter to pick up the phone on Lori’s desk. Blanking on Alison’s home phone number, I figured her roommate would have it on speed-dial. Lori did. Alison answered on the second ring. I asked her what Ronnie Davis had wanted.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “He didn’t show up, but he sounded out of breath. I guess I should be flattered that he remembered my name. Too bad he’s such a total dweeb.”

  I lowered my voice. “Why do you care? You’re going out with L.J.”

  Alison giggled. “So I am. Mmm-mmm!”

  I disconnected, but the phone rang in my hand. Sam literally had his hands full with the fingerprint kit, so I answered in my best imitation of Lori’s “Skykomish sheriff’s office.”

  The voice on the other end sounded startled. “This is…Emma?”

  “Leo?” I said. “I’m filling in. Don’t ask why. What’s wrong?”

  “Liza and I have an unexpected guest here at Pines Villa,” my ad manager replied just above a whisper. “The pollster, Ronnie Davis. He says somebody tried to run him down. He came inside just ahead of us when we were coming back from getting takeout at the Chinese place in the mall. Alison buzzed him in, but he glommed on to us instead of going upstairs to her unit. He’s kind of a wreck.”

  “Damn. I think Doe Jamison’s on patrol. I’ll pass this on to Milo, okay? Don’t let Ronnie eat all your beef chow yuk.”

  Sam had finished fingerprinting the Dodges. As I got up to alert the sheriff, Pootsie was whining that the procedure had ruined her manicure.

  “Hey, Poots,” Clint was saying, “you can probably get yourself a mani and a pedi here tomorrow. Maybe we can stay over one more…”

  I didn’t need to hear the rest. When I opened the sheriff’s door he looked at me as if I were contagious. “What?” he barked.

  “Leo’s harboring Blackwell’s pollster, who claims he’s being menaced. Pick up line one.” I slammed the door and backpedaled away.

  The other Dodges had disappeared. “Where did they go?” I asked.

  “To wash up,” Sam said with a rare droll expression. “Who called?”

  Before I could answer, Milo erupted out of his office. “You’re on, Heppner. Check out a possible stalking vic at Pines Villa, Leo Walsh’s apartment. I’ll cover for you here.”

  “Got it.” Sam grabbed his regulation hat and made his exit.

  “Crap,” the sheriff said under his breath as he sank into the chair his deputy had just vacated. “Where’d they go? Somewhere else, I hope.”

  “They’re cleaning off the gunk,” I told him as I sat down again at Lori’s desk. “Do you have a plan?”

  “You mean for—” Milo shut up as Clint and Pootsie returned. “Hey,” he said to them, “you might as well go over to the Burger Barn and get something to eat. Or the Venison Inn by Emma’s office. I’m stuck here.”

  Clint scowled; Pootsie looked as if she’d swallowed a furball. “Ick,” she said, heightening the illusion. “We want a real meal.”

  Milo shrugged. “Then call Henry Barden and have him send his courtesy car to pick you up. You can eat there or collect the Star and go…wherever.”

  Pootsie looked at Clint. “We could head on back to the French place. That was okay.”

  “Oh…,” Clint sighed. “Guess we don’t have much choice. You coming, Emmy?”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I have to cover the story.”

  “What story?” Pootsie asked.

  But a disgruntled Clint saved me from answering. “Skip it, Poots. I’ll call Bardeen. It seems we hit my old hometown in the middle of a crime wave.” He reached over to pick up the phone on Lori’s desk. After he’d made his request for a ride and hung up, both lines rang almost immediately. Clint grabbed Pootsie’s arm. “Let’s wait outside,” he said with a miffed glance at Milo. “My kid brother and his little woman seem busy.”

  My call was from a tourist who wanted directions to the ferry dock. I asked him where he was going. To Lake Chelan, he told me. I told him he had to drive there. He swore—and hung up. Milo was dealing with an accident by the fish hatchery. He passed that on to Doe Jamison.

  “I feel like a jerk,” my husband declared. “I actually wouldn’t mind seeing Clint and Pootsie if they’d mellowed over the years. But dammit, they drive me nuts.”

  “You’ve got company on that ride,” I assured him.

  He reached over to touch my hand. “What would I do without you?”

  I smiled. “You’ll never find out. You’re stuck with Emmy.” I looked outside. The ski lodge’s Town Car had arrived. “There they go.”

  “It’s a good thing Pa never lived long enough to see how Clint turned out. He’d have kicked Clint’s ass all the way to Tacoma. Ma wouldn’t have stood for it, either.”

  “I wish I’d known your parents,” I said. “They were dead when I moved here, right?”

  Milo nodded. “A couple of years before you showed up. Pa had a massive fatal heart attack. Ma lasted less than a year after he died. She just sort of slipped away. They weren’t that old—late sixties. They’d dated for a couple of years, then Pa joined the merchant marine instead of waiting to be drafted. They got married as soon as he got back from the war. Clint was born before their first anniversary.”

  “She must’ve missed him terribly. Your sister had already died of cancer, right?”

  My husband grimaced. “Emily was so damned young. That really crushed Pa and Ma. They took my divorce hard, too, especially since Mulehide wasn’t very good about bringing the kids up here to see them after she ran off to Bellevue with Jake the Snake.”

  The phone rang once more, and Milo answered it. Whoever it was went on and on. He leaned his head on the hand that wasn’t holding the receiver. Finally he spoke.

  “If the prowler’s gone, Ms. Grundle, there’s nothing we can do. Are you sure it was a person and not a possum?…Isn’t it too warm for anyone to wear a fur coat?…But you reported a possum last…I know, they aren’t really dead. That’s why people say ‘playing.’ ” Milo sighed and put down the receiver. “Grace Grundle again. She hung up on me. At least she didn’t get around to reminding me I never raised my hand to answer a question in school. I’m glad she doesn’t know Clint’s in town. She thought he was brilliant. I figure he was a suck-up.”

  “You told me he was a good student,” I reminded my husband.

  “Yeah, he was, but Clint knew how to play the game with—” Milo broke off. “Here’s Heppner. Maybe we can get out of here. Well?” he said as his deputy came inside.

  Sam yanked off his hat. “This Davis claims a pickup tried to run him down when he was crossing Alpine Way to get to the Lumberjack Motel. The dumb bastard can’t describe the vehicle except to say it was blue or black or charcoal. I took him to the motel and told him to look both ways before he crossed the damned street.”

  Milo had gotten out of Sam’s chair. “Did you ask him why he was in town to take a poll for Blackwell?”

  The deputy’s angular face looked mystified. “No. Who said he was?”

  Milo pointed to me. “That one. Davis told Walsh the same thing. Didn’t Leo mention it to you?”

  “Walsh was on the phone when I got there and Mrs. Walsh must’ve been somewhere else. It looks like they just moved in, right?”

  “Right,” Milo agreed, and sighed. “Never mind. It sounds as if the guy probably wasn’t watching where he was going. We’re out of here, Sam. You’re back in charge. Mrs. Dodge is about to take a bite out of my arm. She gets ornery when she’s hungry.”

  Sam didn’t offer any commentary, but merely said good night. Despite knowing that my mate was probably hungrier than I was, I asked him to go out of our way and drive by the Advocate. I wanted to see if Dick Bourgette had followed through.

  He had. The front of our office was covered in plywood. That was good enough for me. Milo turned up Fifth Street to head home.

  “Satisfied?” he inquired.

  “Yes. Dick’s reliable. I hope the permanent work can get started by the weekend. I wonder if the insurance would pay for overtime.”

  “That isn’t how it works,” Milo said. “You should know that.”

  I made a face at him. “How? Nobody’s ever blown up the place before. And by the way, how’s the investigation going?”

  “Don’t ask me. I haven’t heard back from SnoCo’s lab wizards.”

  It was just after seven-thirty when we got home. Somehow, it seemed as if it should be much later. We took the easy way out and ate on the sofa, staring like zombies as the Mariners played an away game at Oakland. Along about the fourth inning, we both nodded off. Later we discovered we’d been watching an afternoon game that was being repeated for evening viewers. We figured that out because even in California the September sun doesn’t shine at almost ten o’clock. But we should have slept until the game was over. The A’s scored three runs in the bottom of the ninth to win 8–7. It hadn’t been a good day for the Mariners, either.

  Chapter 12

  Thursday morning Alison greeted me with a dazzling smile. “I’m going to Francine’s Fine Apparel on my lunch hour. I need something totally awesome to wear tomorrow night. What did you wear on your first date with Milo?”

  Not yet being completely awake, I had to think about it. “A white blouse and a black skirt. He thought I looked like a nun, so he figured maybe I was some kind of crazy Catholic who’d been kicked out of the convent. Trust me, there was zero action.”

  “Bummer,” Alison said, but her eyes still danced. “What happened to the pollster?”

  I related Ronnie Davis’s adventure. “In case L.J. turns out to be a dud, Ronnie’s staying at the Lumberjack Motel.”

  Alison made a face. “Ewww. No thanks.”

  Her phone rang, so I headed into the newsroom, where Vida immediately confronted me. “Well? Who blew us up?”

  I explained to her and to Mitch, who was pouring himself some coffee, that Milo was waiting for the lab reports to come from SnoCo.

  “Twaddle!” Vida snapped. “They take forever over in Everett. That town has grown too big for its britches. They simply can’t handle the extra work we require. I don’t care about Blackwell’s silly quibbles. The final election results will no doubt stand, which means the county commissioners and Fuzzy Baugh are out.”

  “We still have to go through the motions,” I reminded her.

  Mitch was now armed with coffee and a fat cinnamon roll. “I went to the Grocery Basket last night because we ran out of eggs. Jake O’Toole told me there’s a rumor that Blackwell is going to name himself county manager before the vote is officially validated. I guess he can do that if the two old guys don’t object.”

  “No!” Vida shrieked, holding on to her beige pillbox as if she thought the peacock feathers on it might take wing. “That can’t be legal!”

  Mitch looked bemused. “Tell that to Blackwell. Did you think he’d go quietly?”

  “No,” I said. “But I can’t see how he could appoint himself to a new job without input from some kind of citizens’ advisory board. I didn’t run the statement Jack left here because it was blatant self-promotion.”

  Vida’s gray eyes snapped. “Of course it was! You must write an editorial insisting on citizen involvement. Fuzzy Baugh may be an old fool in many ways, but he’s leery of Blackwell. Fuzzy grew up amidst some very shady machinations in Louisiana. Such a history. Huey Long, Jim Crow, and Hurricane Katrina. My, my! How can people live in such places?”

  “There are upsides,” Mitch said. “When I was in college, one spring break a bunch of us went down to New Orleans to listen to—” His phone rang. “Later,” he mumbled, hurrying to his desk.

  Vida followed him with a gimlet eye. “Fiddlesticks. I can imagine what a group of college boys would do in a place like that. Utter depravity.” She stalked off to her card table.

  I went into my office. Despite the temporary plywood facade, a sense of normality was creeping over me. The last week had taken its toll, disrupting my thought processes along with the daily work routine. Letting Alison do a bit of sleuthing might not produce results, but at least it would keep her spirits up.

  Meanwhile, it was time for me to assume my investigative reporter role. Mitch would handle most of the actual coverage, but it was my job to do some digging behind a big story. The problem was where to start.

  The sheriff’s department was on my reporter’s beat. If—a big if—Milo revealed anything after hours, that was gravy. The murder victim’s brother was a primary contact. Tomorrow Alison was going to dinner with him. Blackwell was an obvious, if touchy, source who might cooperate with Mitch. So far, their history was reasonably noncombative. That left me with peripheral witnesses. While most people’s powers of observation are limited, there was always a chance of finding a nugget among the dross. That had happened during previous homicide investigations, and often only in retrospect had a casual comment proved crucial. I began jotting down names of those I’d seen by the podium right after the shot had been fired:

  Fuzzy Baugh

  L. J. Jennings

  Bob Sigurdson

  Mickey O’Neill

  Ed Bronsky

  Ed. Had I sunk so low? Yet he’d be tickled pink to relate what he saw—and even what he didn’t see. I hoped I could tell the difference.

  I’d met Bob Sigurdson, Blackwell’s timber manager, but he’d take the party line. I’d seen Mickey O’Neill around town, but I’d never met him. My most vivid memory was of him as a young man barely out of his teens. He’d given the eulogy for his father, who had been killed in one of Alpine’s infamous family feuds.

  That left Fuzzy. Despite his age and failing health, he had a certain amount of acumen about people. Best of all from my perspective, he didn’t like Blackwell.

  I headed off to the courthouse under clouds so low that they covered part of the building’s dome. There was no hint of rain. By noon, the sky would begin to clear and we might have sun in the midafternoon. Alpine is at the three-thousand-foot level, and its weather can change from hour to hour, especially with summer on the wane.

  Bobbi Olsen, the mayor’s secretary, greeted me with a toothy smile. “His Honor is in,” she assured me. “He seems improved. I think the excitement at the picnic revitalized him.”

  “Were you there?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Only for about an hour. Jim and I had been invited to dinner at his brother’s in Snohomish. We missed all the excitement. Go on in. The mayor’s always glad to see you.”

  Fuzzy did look pleased, but he didn’t look well. His pale, wrinkled face was drawn and the dyed auburn hair seemed wilted. Nor did he make the effort to rise from his chair.

  “Emma, darlin’,” he said with a hint of his Louisiana drawl. “Do sit. I was greatly disturbed by the explosion at your office. We live in perilous times. Has your intrepid mate discovered the perpetrator?”

  “Not yet,” I admitted, then added in a burst of wifely loyalty, “I’m sure he will. I’m here because of the shooting at the picnic. I believe you were very close to it.”

  Fuzzy nodded slowly. “Indeed I was. Irene had gone off to fetch me some lemonade. My throat was parched and I’d planned to make a brief speech countering Blackwell’s self-promoting county manager propaganda. Of course the shooting prevented any of that from taking place. But the poor young man!” The mayor sadly shook his head. “His sister meets a terrible end and then he gets shot. I understand they were visiting.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “The brother’s now out of the hospital. What puzzles me is why he lunged into the bullet’s path. Had he seen the shooter? Was he hired as Jack’s bodyguard?”

  Looking grave, Fuzzy leaned forward. “Oh, no! I was only a few feet away from…Jennings, is it?” He saw me nod. “The young man was looking at Jack. He didn’t lunge, he stumbled because someone pushed him.”

  I stared at the mayor. “Who?”

  “Alas, I couldn’t see who was next to him. Two rather stout women were blocking my view. And then…” He held up his liver-spotted hands. “Pandemonium broke loose.”

  “Whoever pushed him may not have done it deliberately. Nobody knew that a shot was going to be fired. There were also quite a few people who’d downed several beers and weren’t steady on their feet.”

  “Alas, too true,” Fuzzy allowed. “The Labor Day picnic has always been an occasion for some of our fine citizens to celebrate with excess.”

  That much was true. The mayor’s lemonade had probably contained a dose of Southern Comfort. I confessed that Milo and I hadn’t had a good view of what was going on. “What’s your reaction to Jack’s protest of the election results?”

  “An exercise in futility,” he replied with a wry smile. “I’m surprised he didn’t have some of our dearly departed cast their votes from the cemetery.” He winked.

  I stood up. “Maybe that’s why Jack challenged the election. Either way, he could still end up as county manager.”

  “He won’t.” Fuzzy’s hands tightened on the arms of his chair. “Mark my words, sweet Emma, that will never happen.”

  I wondered what the mayor meant. But before I could ask, his phone rang. “Ah,” he said with a smile, “my dear wife, Irene, the mayor’s mayor.”

  I took my cue and left. Going down the courthouse stairs, I looked over to the sheriff’s office, where the Yukon was in its usual place. I crossed the street, passing by the U.S. Forest Service, where Tanya was employed. I smiled, thinking that she couldn’t have gotten much closer to Bill Blatt’s workplace unless she’d tunneled her way into headquarters.

  Lori was on the phone, looking a bit peaked. Jack Mullins glanced up from his monitor. “Don’t you see enough of the big guy at home?” he asked with his puckish grin.