The Alpine Pursuit Read Free Page B

spoiled grandson had been a thorn in my side ever since I arrived in Alpine. Now he was a teenager, a high school junior, and—in my mind—licensed to kill since he’d passed his driver’s test.
    “Wait a minute,” I said, unable to hide my shock. “Roger’s not listed among the cast members. Did they add a part?”
Like Spawn of Satan?
    “Of course not,” Vida replied. “Davin Rhodes was supposed to play the role of the runaway youth. Davin hurt himself yesterday. According to my niece, Marje Blatt at the clinic, he sprained an ankle, tripping over his own feet. Roger is taking his place.”
    Sunny Rhodes hadn’t been entirely truthful in her report to me. Maybe she and her husband, Oren, were hoping they could sue the
Advocate
.
    “How can Roger learn the part so fast?” I inquired, putting aside the evil thought that I didn’t think the kid had learned to read yet.
    Vida was removing her hat, a gift I’d brought back from Rome. It was a replica of the headgear previously worn by the Italian
carabinieri
. The shape was reminiscent of an eighteenth-century tricorn, complete with the police force’s official red-and-white flame-shaped badge. I couldn’t decide if Vida looked like a Revolutionary War general or a Stealth bomber. But she adored the hat and patted it fondly before placing it on the windowsill above her desk. “The part of Jamie Jejune,” she explained, “doesn’t have a great many lines, though he’s onstage quite a bit. Roger will have no trouble. He’s been thinking about becoming an actor, you know.”
    Leo cocked his head to one side. “Really.”
    “Is that sarcasm I hear?” Vida demanded.
    Leo had assumed his innocent expression. “No. I think it’d be great for him to become a good actor.”
    As opposed to a bad actor,
I thought, and was certain that Leo had implied the same.
    Vida, however, couldn’t lose her euphoria. “Roger has always enjoyed playing parts. His imitations of movie and TV actors absolutely astonish me. Of course I don’t know all the characters he mimics, but there’s one named AJ from a show called
The Sopranos
that’s just hilarious. I can’t wait for him to start singing some of the music. He has quite a good voice, you know.”
    Scott shot me a look that indicated he felt it was a good thing that Vida had never watched
The Sopranos
. “It’s cool when teenagers have some idea of what they’d like to do with their lives,” he said, keeping his back to Vida as he went over to the coffeemaker for a refill. “Most kids don’t. I knew in high school that I wanted to be a journalist. One of these days I’m going to try to freelance as a photojournalist.”
    “Don’t rush,” I urged. Scott was, in fact, a better photographer than he was a writer. At least his copy wasn’t prone to the typos that his predecessor had come up with on an almost weekly basis. Carla Steinmetz Talliaferro had written some pips, including her final issue, in which she referred to Grace Grundle as Grace Griddle, mentioned Justine Cardenas’s energy-efficient fishwasher, and reported that there was “. . . a new crook at the Venison Inn.” Fortunately, I had caught the mistakes when I proofread her copy.
    The morning passed quickly, though the creaking of the tin roof over my office seemed to have gone up a decibel or two. Our production wizard, Kip MacDuff, had promised to remove the accumulation of snow from the building before it collapsed. But Kip, who is usually extremely competent, was recently married and seemed to have other things on his mind.
    So did I. Scott’s hint of future departure wasn’t the first time I’d heard such an idea from one of my staffers. Every so often, Kip remarked that he’d like to find some greener pastures for his computer skills. I couldn’t blame either of them. They were both young, and their jobs on the
Advocate
were dead ends. As was my own. I wasn’t so young, but increasingly I felt the need for change. Maybe it was