The Alpine Escape (10 page)

I was munching on the last of my meager sandwich when Dr. Carlisle came into the kitchen. To my relief, he was smiling. “Jackie tells me you’re an old family friend,” he said, eyeing the empty coffeemaker a bit wistfully. “Have you got any clout with the little mother?”

Briefly, I explained my tenuous relationship to Jackie. “I can call Mavis and ask her to do the meddling. What’s the problem?”

Leaning against the kitchen counter, Dr. Carlisle sighed. “We caution pregnant women about alcohol, smoking, drugs, even over-the-counter remedies, but we can’t seem to get nutrition into their heads. It’s the cravings and the morning sickness and all the hormonal changes, of course, but that’s where most of them go off the deep end. In Jackie’s case it’s all that blasted pizza. The tomato sauce, of course. It’s highly acidic. She’s got heartburn.”

I slumped a bit on the kitchen stool. “I should have known. In fact, I wondered. But she seemed to be in such agony.”

Dr. Carlisle shrugged. “She’s healthy as a horse. I don’t imagine she’s ever had heartburn before. It scared her. Try to steer her away from that pizza. I’ll talk to Paul about it, too.”

“Good,” I said, then, in a burst of gratitude, offered to make a pot of coffee. To my surprise, Dr. Carlisle accepted. My appreciation for his concern spilled over. House calls in Alpine were not unheard of, but Drs. Gerald Dewey and Peyton Flake never had far to go. Port Angeles was five times the size, in population and area.

Dr. Carlisle chuckled at my effusiveness. “No big deal.” He settled his bulk onto one of the stools. “Every other week I take Wednesday afternoons off. I was going to go fishing off the Hook, but those killer whales have been through here this morning. The folks coming across on the Victoria ferry think they’re great, but for us fishermen it means there aren’t any salmon. I guess I’ll have to kill weeds instead.”

Pouring out the first cup of coffee, I commiserated. In Alpine it was the dearth of trout and steelhead. The rivers hadn’t been planted, they were off-color, they
were too high, they were too low, it was too warm, it was too cold, it had rained too much, it hadn’t rained enough. Whatever the reason, the fishing was lousy. I hadn’t heard from a happy fisherman since I’d read Hemingway’s
The Old Man and the Sea
. And if
he
could be called happy, that shows what a bunch of whiners the rest of them are.

Dr. Carlisle sipped his coffee, then rubbed at his graying crew cut. “Say, Jackie was telling me about that skeleton she and Paul have down in the basement. I think she was hinting I might want to take a look. Can you lead the way?”

I could, but I didn’t have to. Jackie appeared just then, looking a trifle wan. Or perhaps merely foolish.

“I feel better,” she announced, propping herself up against the door frame. “Do you really think it’s all right for me to take Tums?”

Dr. Carlisle nodded. “Loaded with calcium. The important thing is for you to lay off the pizza.” He downed the rest of his coffee. “Speaking of bones—in a way, of course—why don’t you show me your skeleton? Interesting, that. I’ve been here almost twenty years and I’ve never heard of such a thing before. Not a complete set of bones, anyway.”

Having finished my sandwich, I trudged along after Jackie and the doctor. The unfinished basement still smelled damp. The flashlight wavered in the darkened area, and the pitiful skeleton was now resting on an old army blanket.

“You know,” Dr. Carlisle began after making his careful way down the stepladder apparently left by Paul, “I began my practice in eastern Oregon. I’m from Pendleton originally. Anyway, I was the only doctor for miles around in Wallowa County, so I had to be the coroner, too. Tough duty for a young practitioner, especially a guy whose specialty is ob-gyn work. Fortunately, I
didn’t have to do a lot of autopsies, but …” He paused, carefully removing the drop cloth and examining the skeleton. “Female, I’d say. Youngish.” He paused again. “Cracks in the right tibia and left fibula. Ankle bones to you. Never mended. Hmmmm.”

I glanced at Jackie, who was staring at the doctor with rapt attention. Gently, she burped. “What does that mean, Dr. Carlisle?” Jackie asked, either out of genuine curiosity or to cover her embarrassment.

The doctor didn’t look up. He seemed fascinated by the skeleton. “Remarkably well preserved, considering the damp down here. The house is well insulated, I imagine.” Abruptly he turned, craning his neck to gaze up at us. “What was that? The ankle bones? Hard to say, really. The poor thing may have fallen.” He made a sweeping gesture with one hand, from the edge of the basement floor to the dirt-covered cavern, where he stood. “A ten-, fifteen-foot drop? That would do it.”

I frowned. “You mean she fell off the … Wait, I don’t get it.”

Dr. Carlisle was now examining the skull. I held my breath; Jackie didn’t blink. The basement had suddenly become too warm. Fleetingly, I wondered if summer had finally arrived or if we were feeling a sense of oppression.

“Well.” Dr. Carlisle rearranged the drop cloth, covering the skeleton as gently as if it had been a sleeping baby. He dusted off his hands and climbed up the stepladder. Rubbing one eye, he shook his head. “That’s odd. More than odd. The skull has been badly damaged. It looks to me as if there’d been a blow to the head. But then it’s been a long time since I was a coroner. I’ll stick to babies. They’re much nicer.”

D
R
. C
ARLISLE WAS
right. Murder wasn’t nice, and it seemed that was how the Melchers’ skeleton had met her end. It could have been an accident, the doctor had pointed out, a fall from the finished ledge of the basement floor. Perhaps the poor woman had hit her head on the way down. But why hadn’t she been found? According to everything Jackie and I had learned so far, the Rowley house had been a hub of activity in the first decade of the twentieth century. A missing woman, especially a family member, would certainly have caused a stir. I was convinced that the body had never been found because somebody had wanted it that way. And that somebody had probably been the killer. A practical man, Dr. Carlisle didn’t try to dissuade me.

Jackie took to her bed. The doctor’s revelation hadn’t upset her as much as it had me. She exhibited natural curiosity but was more concerned with her recovery from the overdose of pizza. I resisted the temptation to call Dusty’s Foreign Auto Repair and wondered how to fill the early-afternoon void.

I started by going back to the third floor to see if we’d missed any items of interest. There were more picture albums, but all of relatively recent vintage. There were also two scrapbooks, though one contained souvenirs from the Thirties and Forties and the other was devoted solely to movie stars of the silent-film era.
Buster Keaton and Theda Bara seemed unlikely to throw any light on the Melchers’ mystery.

At last I poked inside a sturdy cardboard tube. The contents revealed the floor plan of the Melcher house. At a glance it seemed to be the same rendering Jackie and I had seen in the library archives. The precise draftsman’s lines revealed nothing new.

I searched the nooks and crannies. But there were no scented letters tied with ribbon, no locked diaries, no postcards from traveling friends or relations. Discouraged, I knelt by the dormer window that looked out toward Pine Hill.

Jackie might be right. What was the point of trying to solve a mystery that was over eighty years old? It wouldn’t help Carrie Rowley Malone—or whoever she was. If she had met a violent end, her killer was also dead by now. Why rake up an old scandal?

Why ever search for truth? Because it’s there, somewhere, obscured by human frailty, delusion, intention, deception, rationalization—and time. I liked to ennoble my profession by calling myself a seeker of truth. But when
I
am being truthful, I admit that most journalists are part-snoop, party-voyeur. We are eternal observers, distancing ourselves from events, sparing ourselves from direct involvement.

The gray clouds were moving slowly across Pine Hill. It was a typical day of this strange summer, with cool temperatures, morning drizzle, and the sky not clearing until late afternoon. Only a native Pacific Northwesterner like me could love the cloudy weather.

And as I searched my soul, I knew that I was allowing myself to get deeper into the Melcher mystery because it diverted me from my own problems. It was easier to try to solve the riddle of a turn-of-the-century skeleton than it was to concentrate on Emma Lord’s contemporary problems. I could face up to the murder
of a young woman some eighty-plus years ago, but I didn’t want to look in the mirror. The truth stops at my own doorstep.

Taking the floor plan with me, I headed back downstairs just as the phone rang. With mixed emotions I wondered if it was Dusty’s, telling me my Jag was ready.

It wasn’t. Tessie Roo’s husky, cheerful voice was on the line.

“You got me intrigued,” she said, sounding pleased with herself. “I’ve researched the Rowleys and the Melchers before, of course, but with that skeleton there’s much more to it than just documenting the lineage of Port Angeles’s early residents. Right after you left I called one of my fellow genealogists in Seattle to check on Carrie Rowley Malone and her husband, Jimmy. I heard back just now.”

I smiled into the phone. Tessie’s enthusiasm warmed me. “And?”

“Interesting,” she said as a preface. “Jimmy Malone died in 1953. His survivors included six children, nine grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and his wife, Minnie.” Tessie paused for effect.

“Minnie?
Maybe,” I added quickly, “it’s a misprint.”

“No,” Tessie replied with conviction. “Minnie died two years later, in 1955. She was born a Burke in Ireland, from Londonderry.”

I made a murmuring sound. “A second marriage. But nothing on Carrie?”

“Nothing.” Tessie’s voice conveyed excitement rather than dismay. “Oh, the obituary may be there somewhere, especially if she died much earlier on. But I tried to give my colleague some parameters, figuring Jimmy Malone lived a normal life span. I had her concentrate on 1940 to 1955. He died at eighty-one; Minnie was seventy-two. But the fascinating part is that my source
also found a piece about the Malones’ golden wedding anniversary. They celebrated it in 1953, four months before Jimmy Malone died.”

My mind tripped over the impossibility. “That’s wrong,” I declared. “Jimmy Malone married Carrie Rowley in 1903. The newspaper must have made a mistake.” It could happen, as I knew only too well.

“No, they couldn’t,” Tessie replied with equal fervor. “People have to submit this sort of thing. It would be the couple who made the mistake, not the paper. And I doubt very much that Mr. and Mrs. Malone forgot the year they were married. Well, Mr. Malone, perhaps. But not his wife. Women don’t do that sort of thing, eh?”

“Maybe Minnie was senile by then,” I muttered, unwilling to own up to the fact that I should know more about newsgathering than even the estimable Tessie Roo.

“Yes, certainly, I understand your point of view,” Tessie said in her amiable manner. “And it might have happened that way. It’s harrowing, all these discrepancies we come across, just because somebody got mixed up about Grandma’s birthplace or Cousin Fiona’s first marriage. But we must stay with the
facts
. We
know
Jimmy Malone married Carrie Rowley in 1903. Either he was a bigamist or the golden wedding anniversary story is in error.”

Tessie was right. “Did the anniversary article say where Jimmy and Minnie were married?”

“Seattle,” Tessie replied promptly. “So it
is
possible he married both of them in the same year. But next we must account for the children. Three of the six seem to be the ones he had by Carrie—Julia, Walter, and Claudia. Daniel, Joseph, and Mary Ann must have belonged to Minnie.”

I was lost in a sea of progeny. “Prolific,” I murmured. “I wonder if any of them are still around.”

“Shall I check?” Tessie sounded eager.

“Sure, why not?”

“I’ll call Seattle back. We have an eight hundred number,” Tessie added ingenuously.

I put the phone down just as Jackie came into the kitchen. “I couldn’t sleep,” she announced with a yawn. “I’m hungry. What should I eat?”

Having assessed the contents—or lack of them—in the Melcher refrigerator, I suggested a trip to the grocery store. But Jackie didn’t feel up to it.

“Every time I go there, I run into all these women who want to tell me their war stories about having babies. Nineteen hours of labor, a last-minute C-section, breech births, postpartum depression, the dog got jealous—I’m sick of them! What do you suppose happened to Mr. Walsh?”

I was taken aback. “Mr. Walsh? I’ve been concentrating on Mr. Malone.”

Jackie shook her head. “No. His name was Walsh. Do you suppose he’s in jail?”

“Oh!” I’d already forgotten about the drunk from Culver City. “It depends on how tough the local police are when it comes to DIPs.”

It was Jackie’s turn to look puzzled. “DIPs?”

“Drunk in public.” Port Angeles must have a bigger jail than Alpine. Sheriff Milo Dodge was inclined to hold drunks only until they sobered up. Skykomish County’s facilities were lamentably limited.

“I don’t know much about the jail here,” Jackie admitted. “We haven’t lived in Port Angeles very long. They’re sure tough on parking-meter infractions.” Her heart-shaped face grew sad. “I kept thinking about Mr. Walsh the whole time I was trying to nap. Why is he so far from home? Why is he alone? Why is he
drunk
? And in the morning! His life must be full of unbearable tragedy. A wife dying young, teenage children lost to
drugs, aged parents helplessly crippled, fired from his job, evicted from his house, hounded by creditors—”

“Stop!” I held up a hand though I couldn’t refrain from laughing. “He’s probably a carefree sightseer who partied too much last night. Let’s concentrate on feeding you. I’ll go to the store alone, if you don’t mind me driving your Honda.”

Jackie had no objections, but before I could get out of the house, Mike Randall showed up. His last class had been at one o’clock, and he didn’t keep office hours on Wednesdays.