The Alpine Menace Read Free

himself, can get people who know a mountain from a molehill.”
    I grimaced. “You aren't making me feel better.”
    Leo's green eyes crinkled at the corners. He was from Southern California, in his mid-fifties, divorced with grown kids, had overcome a problem with the bottle, and found a home at
The Advocate
. In other words, he was a middle-aged cliché, another loser who'd cut his losses.
    “I thought,” Leo said, his expression droll, “being a journalist, you searched for truth. The truth is, Spencer Fleetwood is a pain in the ass as far as we're concerned. Hell, he asked me if we wanted to exchange ads. You know, quid pro quo.”
    “Do we?”
    “Sure, unless you want to start a blood feud.”
    “No. There're enough feuds in Alpine as it is,” I said, watching Leo exhale and wondering how long I could stay off cigarettes this time. “Tuesday, noon, the ski lodge, right?”
    Leo stood up. “Right.”
    So why did I feel it was wrong?
    There were many things wrong with my life, though my car wasn't one of them. But that night, around five-thirty, as I walked out to the two-year-old champagne-colored Lexus parked at the curb, I suffered mixed emotions. The car was a semi-gift from my longtime lover and the father of my only son. Tom Cavanaugh had been in Alpine last December when a crank destroyed mydarling Jaguar with a sledgehammer. Since Tom had been staying with me and his middle name is Guilt, he had offered to replace the Jag. I'd resisted. My finely honed independence wouldn't permit such a gift. I'd told Tom it made me feel like a kept woman. Tom had laughed and agreed to a loan arrangement, the terms of which I set down: I'd pay him fifty bucks a month until he married me. Considering how much even a used Lexus costs and Tom's ability to stall, I figured the car would be paid off about the time I was confined to a nursing home.
    Thus I wasn't entirely happy with our little agreement. I resented Tom's easy extravagance and my not-so-easy acquiescence. On the other hand, the Jag had been wrecked just before Christmas, and I was broke. The meager insurance money had made me feel a little better, because I'd turned the check over to Tom. But while he guided his daughter through the first stages of single motherhood in San Francisco, I fumed in Alpine. Tom had been a widower for over a year, and we had no definite plans for the future.
    The immediate future, however, was another matter and even more vexing. I eased the Lexus along the driveway to my little log house at the edge of the forest and just sat there. In the past few months I'd begun to dread going home. As I drummed my fingers on the pearl-gray steering wheel and watched a pair of crows flap their wings in one of the tall firs that stood behind my house, I found it ironic that I couldn't kill time by listening to the radio. Apparently, I was in some sort of dead zone. The signals from Everett and Seattle got through only on an irregular basis. I was as likely to pick up San Mateo or Spokane as to tune into a regional station. Because of the mountains, reception from out of town was unreliable for most Alpine residents. Which, I had to concede, made an ideal situation for Spencer Fleetwood and KSKY.
    Finally, I got out of the car, gritted my teeth, and went into the house. As usual, the living room was strewn with toys, baby clothes, dirty plastic dishes, and tabloid newspapers. Two Siamese cats batted a dirty disposable diaper between them. Amber Ramsey and her baby, Danny, were nowhere to be seen, but I could hear the TV blaring in my son Adam's old room.
    The cats, Rheims and Rouen, abandoned the diaper and rushed to rub up against my ankles. Then they each let out that eerie cry that is the breed's call to dinner, among other things. No doubt they hadn't been fed all day. Grimly, I marched into the kitchen—another mess— and opened a fresh can of Friskies Mariner's Catch.
    “Poor babies,” I murmured, giving each a passing stroke before they