The Alpine Recluse Part 16

"Toni!" I called to her. "I've been trying to reach you."

Toni blinked several times. "You have? Why?"

"Did you get Adam's e-mail about moving to Alaska?" I didn't wait for an answer. "He asked me to talk to you about it."

"I-" She stopped, lowering her gaze. "I have to go outside. I can't breathe in here."

The foyer hadn't yet grown stuffy from the morning heat, but I pretended to agree with her. "I don't blame you. I can't stand listening to those Wailers."

I helped Toni push the heavy door open. She seemed not only agitated, but weak. Maybe she really was sick.

"It was nice of you to come to Tim's service even though you've been ill," I remarked as we stepped outside. "I didn't realize you were close to the family."

Toni stared across the parking lot to the nursing home where Mrs. Rafferty now resided. Her long curly black hair made her look even more waiflike. "I knew Tim," she said softly.

"Oh?"

"I used to talk to him at the Venison Inn." Toni continued to stare.

"He must have been a good listener," I remarked.

"Yes."

"How are you feeling?"

"Okay." She finally turned slightly but didn't look at me. "Better."

"Flu? Or just this awful heat? It can make people sick, you know."

"Yes. It must be the heat."

"Why don't we go over to that bench? We can sit under the shade of the horse chestnut tree."

Toni didn't move. "I really should go."

"Why? You just got here, didn't you?"

"Well . . ." Toni looked in every direction, her movements jerky. "I really don't like funerals."

"n.o.body does," I said, "except people like the Wailers." And Vida, who considered such occasions as sources of unfettered gossip. People, she once said, let their defenses down when they were mourning.

"I should go," Toni muttered, glancing anxiously at the front entrance. "The service must be almost over."

"They'll be going to the reception in the church hall," I said.

Toni s.h.i.+fted from one foot to the other. "Not everybody will stay."

The sun was getting in my eyes. "Is there someone you don't want to see?"

"I'm going now." Toni turned her back on me and started walking toward the street. I followed.

Toni crossed Cedar, moving toward John Engstrom Park. I saw an older dark blue Nissan parked in the middle of the block. I'd seen it often outside of the sheriff's headquarters, and figured it was her car. Sure enough, she jaywalked to the driver's side. I did the same, reaching her just as she slid behind the wheel.

The window was halfway down. I leaned against the door. "Come on, Toni. Don't act like a goose. Adam asked me to help you with your move to Alaska. What's wrong with you?"

Maybe it was the hint of maternal concern in my voice-something that I thought might be missing from Toni's life in recent years. G.o.d knows it's hard to keep a long-distance relations.h.i.+p going, even when you try. I wasn't sure how hard the ex-Mrs. Andreas was trying. Second marriages can create problems with children of all ages.

"Why do we have to talk now?" Toni asked in a petulant voice.

I noticed that her eyes were bright with unshed tears. "Because you're not working at the moment and I'm taking a break. Let's go get a cup of coffee somewhere."

"No." She shook her head defiantly.

"Then," I said, "let's sit in the park. It's cool with all those trees."

Toni stared straight ahead through the winds.h.i.+eld. A minute pa.s.sed. I heard voices in the distance. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw a half-dozen people coming out of the Lutheran church. Apparently, Toni had spotted them in the rearview mirror. She looked in the direction of the park with its statue of John Engstrom, one of the Alpine Timber Company's early and much loved superintendents.

"Okay." She seemed defeated, as if her will had been sliced in two by a buzz saw.

She got out of the car on the pa.s.senger side, scurrying into the park like a hunted animal. I followed at a more leisurely pace. The mourners who were leaving had gone straight to the parking lot. As far as I could tell, they weren't paying any attention to us.

Two curving benches flanked the life-size statue. We sat under a big maple tree. Its leaves didn't stir in the still, warm air. Only the sound of water rippling over rocks into a small pond offered any sense of coolness. But the gra.s.s was green and lush, watered regularly by Fuzzy Baugh's command.

"Let's talk about Alaska," I said. "It's huge, you know, and very different from Alpine."

"We have snow," Toni replied. "We have rain. I don't mind bad weather."

"Do you want to live in a city?"

"I think so. Fairbanks, maybe. Or Anchorage."

"Anchorage has about a quarter of a million people," I said. "Do you want to live in a city that large? Fairbanks is much smaller, maybe twice the size of Monroe." I was guessing about the comparison, but figured I was close enough to show Toni the difference.

She surprised me. "I looked up Anchorage on the Internet. They have over three thousand more men than women."

That, I gathered, was Toni's main interest. "You're a.s.suming that all three thousand of them aren't losers?"

"There's bound to be some good ones," Toni replied. "They can't all be like the men around here."

"How's that?"

For the first time, she looked me right in the eye. There was no sign of tears now. "You've never gotten married. How come?"

"I was engaged. You know what happened." I couldn't keep the bitter note out of my voice.

"But the guy was married," Toni said. "I mean, he was married for a long time. Adam's dad, right?"

"Yes. Tom couldn't leave his wife. She wasn't well."

"I'll bet he told you he'd leave her."

I sighed. "Sometimes he did. But I knew he never would. He felt a great responsibility toward . . . his wife." I still found it hard to say Sandra's name out loud.

"They're all like that, I guess." Toni s.h.i.+fted around on the bench, gazing at a bed of petunias, pansies, and lobelias. "Maybe they're different in Alaska. It's a different kind of place."

"It is at that," I agreed, angry at her, angry at myself for letting the conversation turn to Tom. "You sound as if you've been burned."

It was an unfortunate choice of words. Toni's body convulsed, as if I'd hit her in the stomach. "How can you say that?" she cried, covering her eyes with her hands. "Oh, my G.o.d!"

I was tired of playing games with Toni. "It's Tim, right? You were in love with him."

She was sobbing, shoulders shaking, hands curled into fists against her eyes.

"Toni," I said, more softly, "I understand. You just said so yourself. I lost my lover to an early death. Please, talk to me."

She kept crying. I was afraid she was about to have hysterics. Firmly, I grabbed her by the shoulders. "You're making yourself sick. I understand. Truly. I had to be hospitalized after Tom was killed. I felt like I'd died, too. I wished I had. Come on, Toni. Be brave. Show some courage."

It seemed to take forever, but finally Toni began to compose herself. I'd used up almost an entire packet of Kleenex on her tears, sniffles, and coughs. Depleted, she leaned against the back of the wooden bench and closed her eyes.

"I really loved him," she whispered.

"I'm sure you did." A pair of boys went by the park on skateboards. I waited until they were out of hearing range. "Did Tim tell you he wanted to leave Tiffany?"

Toni sniffed several times. "He never wanted to marry her in the first place. But she got pregnant. I mean, she told Tim she was pregnant. She must have lost the first baby. Or she lied. They would have been married a year by the time this one comes."

"Were you seeing Tim before he got married?"

She shook her head. "Only to talk to, at the Venison Inn. He was always so nice. Tim was the most sympathetic person I ever met."

That might be true as far as Toni was concerned. Apparently, he was a good listener in his bartending guise. My own perception of him was that he was shallow and self-absorbed. Maybe he came off differently to someone like Toni, a member of his peer group, holding similar values, and speaking the same glib, cliche-ridden language.

"I take it Tim wasn't happily married."

"He was miserable." Toni shook her head sadly. "All Tiff could do was think about the baby. It was as if Tim didn't exist. He was just a paycheck to pay for baby things. Poor Tim felt like he was worthless. It seemed to him that all Tiff had ever wanted was to have a baby. She used him for that. He had no self-esteem. It was really tragic. He said he might have killed himself if I hadn't been there for him."

"He told you that?" I tried not to sound incredulous.

Toni nodded solemnly. "Often. I was like his . . . his safe harbor, he called it."

"Did Tiffany know about the two of you?"

Toni shrugged. "I'm not sure. If she did, she didn't care. All she could think of was the baby, the baby, the baby. Unless," she added with sudden bite in her voice, "Tiffany did care."

My patience was wearing thin. "Well? Do you think she did?"

"If she did," Toni said, looking me right in the eyes, "then she killed him."

TWELVE.

MY FIRST REACTION was that Toni wasn't serious. Surely she didn't believe that Tiffany had killed Tim and then set their house on fire. But Toni wasn't a kidder. Indeed, she had virtually no sense of humor, which was another reason Adam had stopped dating her.

Yet Toni's opinion was just that. She saw Tiffany as the enemy. Toni had ranged all over the map in responding to my questions. Most people, including me, considered her as simpleminded. But that didn't mean that Toni couldn't also be single-minded. She seemed to have finally come to the conclusion that Tiffany was to blame for whatever reason Tim hadn't been free-or alive.

The church bells chimed eleven. Coincidentally, the sprinkler system turned on in the park. The lazy spray from the nozzle nearest to us was coming in our direction.

"We'd better go," I said to Toni as I stood up. "I don't know why they don't water in the middle of the night. The rest of us are told we can't water at all until it rains."

"Oh?" Toni looked disinterested, but she rose, too. "What about Alaska?"

Toni's allegation about Tiffany had driven the entire state out of my mind. "I have resources and contacts through the newspaper office that you might not be able to find," I said, keeping one step ahead of the sprinkler. "Do your own Internet research as Adam suggested, and we'll take it from there. I think the crab season may be coming up. You might want to try something temporary to see how you like it up there."

We had almost reached her car. "Do you think I'm stupid?" she asked suddenly.

More people were coming out of the church. I'd been caught off guard by Toni's earnest question. "Why do you ask me that?"

"Because you're not taking me seriously. I mean it about Tiffany. Who else would want to kill Tim?"

She had a point. Old Nick was the best suspect anyone had come up with so far, and I wasn't buying it. "I think you're naive," I said in what I hoped was a kindly voice. "But Tiffany was at work that night."

"Not the whole time," Toni replied. "She had a dinner break. I know that, because Tim always had to leave my place in case Tiff went home to eat. She didn't eat, actually, at least not when she first got pregnant. She couldn't. She'd throw up. So she'd just lie down for a while."

I didn't know if Milo had checked Tiffany's alibi. For a moment, I just stood there on the sidewalk, staring at Toni. She looked belligerent. During our fifteen-minute conversation, she'd run a gamut of emotions. Had she only convinced herself in the last quarter of an hour that Tiffany had murdered Tim? I wasn't sure how to deal with her. It was like trying to catch a b.u.t.terfly without a net.

"You and Tim planned to go to Hawaii together, didn't you?"

Toni's eyes narrowed. "How did you know that? Never mind." She whirled away from me and stepped out into the street. "That blabbermouth Janet Driggers! I've never liked her! She has a nasty mind!"

Before I could stop her, Toni got into the Nissan and slammed the door.

I walked back to my car, which was parked down the street about a block away. Dwight Gould was going into the parking lot. I hailed him before he got to his car.

"I want to check on something," I said, jaywalking across Cascade Street and hoping the curmudgeonly Dwight wouldn't arrest me.

"Is this business?" he inquired, looking wary.

"Yes," I said, making sure no one was around to hear us. "Has Milo verified Tiffany's whereabouts the night of the murder?"

"Christ." Dwight looked even more cantankerous than he usually does. "Ask him. And this is a h.e.l.l of a time to ask me anyway."

"I'm sorry," I apologized without much conviction. "I know you're an old friend of Dot and Durwood's. I didn't realize you were close to Tim and Tiffany."