The Alpine Betrayal Read Free

Avenue and the Skykomish River. Jack Blackwell also owned some big parcels of land—on Mount Baldy, Beckler Peak, and along the east fork of the Foss River. It struck me as odd that I hadn’t met Blackwell until today.
    “Does Blackwell live here?” I asked.
    “Part of the time. He’s got operations in Oregon and Idaho. Timbuktu, for all I know.” Vida spoke impatiently, going through the rest of her story. Jack Blackwell was obviously a side issue. “So Dani and Cody got married when they didn’t have enough sense to skin a cat, and they had a baby—a full nine-month one, I might note—but the poor little thing died at about six weeks. Crib death, very sad. Then about two months later, the marriage blew up and Dani flew south. Five years later, with some big-shot director’s backing, she’s a star.” Vida gave an eloquent shrug. “How much of that do you want me to put in?”
    I accepted defeat gracefully. “I was hoping she’d starred in the senior play or something. How did the press kit cover her background?”
    Vida waved a hand. “Oh, some tripe about how she came from a quaint Pacific Northwest logging town up in the mountains with snow on the ground half the year and deer sleeping at the foot of her trundle bed. You know—the sort of nonsense that makes us look like we’ve got moss growing around our ears and we’re still wearing loincloths.”
    I inclined my head. Having spent all of my life in Seattle, Portland, and Alpine, I was accustomed to the attitudes of outsiders. Let them think we ate raw fish for dinner andheld a potlatch instead of hosting cocktail parties. Maybe it would keep them away. I allowed Vida to put her story in the copyediting basket.
    “What’s the name of this picture Dani’s doing?” I asked, feeling a bit passé. The life of a single mother running her own business didn’t leave me with a lot of leisure time for moviegoing.
    Vida, another single working mother, albeit with children out of the nest, had to look down at the press release on her desk. “Let me see … here it is. ‘A film by Reid Hampton, starring Dani Marsh and Matt Tabor.
Blood Along the River
.’ Ugh, what a stupid title.”
    I had to agree. Maybe they’d change it. It never occurred to me that it might be not only stupid, but prophetic.

Cha p ter Two
    D URWOOD P ARKER WAS under arrest. Again. Durwood, who had once been Alpine’s pharmacist, was probably the worst driver I’d ever had the opportunity to avoid. Drunk or sober, Durwood could nail any mailbox, hit any phone pole, or careen down the sidewalk of any street in town. Since not all the streets in Alpine have sidewalks, Durwood often tore up flower beds instead. His latest act of motoring menace had been the demolition of Francine Wells’ display window at Francine’s Fine Apparel on Front Street. Francine was in a red-hot rage, but Durwood was stone-cold sober. For his own protection, Sheriff Milo Dodge had locked Durwood up overnight.
    “We have to run it,” Carla Steinmetz announced the following morning as she went over the blessedly short list of criminal activity for the past twenty-four hours. “It’s a rule, isn’t it? Any name on the blotter is a matter of public record, right?”
    I sighed. “I’m afraid so. Poor Durwood. Poor Dot. His wife must be a saint.”
    “She’s got her own car,” put in Vida. “She’d be crazy to go anywhere with Durwood. Did you know he drove an ambulance in World War II?”
    “Who for?” I asked. “The Nazis?”
    Vida’s response was stifled by Kip MacDuff, our part-time handyman and full-time driver. Kip was about twenty, with carrot red hair and cheerful blue eyes. He was, he asserted, working his way through college. Since I had neverknown him to leave the city limits of Alpine, I assumed he was enrolled in a correspondence school.
    “Hey, get this!” Kip exclaimed. “Dani’s coming in by helicopter! She’s going to land on top of the mall! The high school band is coming