Free The Alpine Nemesis by Mary Daheim Page A

lunch, so I haven't had a chance to speak with him. I think he's at the Venison Inn.”
    There was a scant second of dead air, apparently while Spence considered his options. “Then that's where KSKY is headed. Thank you, Nurse Murchison. Now for a word from one of our fine sponsors.”
    I called Milo. “What did Doc say about the autopsy?” I asked. “I hear he's all done.”
    “I've got it right here,” Milo replied. “Doc dropped it off on his way to lunch. There's not much of interest, all the usual gobbledygook. Conley probably died about three hours after his last meal, so he wasn't up on the ridge for very long before he met somebody with a knife.”
    “The stab wound was the cause of death?” I asked.
    “Right,” Milo said. “Two stab wounds, in fact. The body was probably hidden someplace, in a cave, maybe. There were bits of evergreen needles and dirt and other debris you'd find in a sheltered place. I'm guessing that he wasn't up that far on the mountain. Of course, snow-boarders don't go up too high as a rule.”
    “But high enough that he got frozen in later, right?”
    “Right. We had that big storm in March, remember?”
    I did remember. Alpine had gotten over a foot of snow, and I was sure that all my bulbs were dead before they could even peek out of the ground. “What about the snowboard itself?” I inquired.
    “No sign of it,” Milo replied. “No sign of a tussle, either. Conley must have been taken by surprise.”
    “Are you suggesting he knew his killer?” I asked.
    “No,” Milo responded. “Just that he didn't expect to be attacked. He was stabbed in the back, remember? There could be two scenarios: He was talking to somebody, turned around, and the killer struck. Or it's possible that he never saw his murderer. Somebody could have sneaked up behind him. Conley was wearing ear-muffs, so he might not have heard someone approach. Either way, there wasn't a struggle.”
    “Poor guy.” I sighed. “Out for a nice day in the mountains—it was fairly nice that weekend, as I recall— and he ends up dead.”
    “I know.” Milo sounded solemn. “I wish I knew why.”
    “And who,” I noted.
    “Definitely who,” Milo said, suddenly sounding tired. “It's a tough one. By the way, Doc's sending the body over to Driggers Funeral Home. Al came down with the flu this morning, but his assistant Dan Peebles is in charge for now.”
    I couldn't resist asking, “And how is Dan's mother?”
    “Tara?” Milo's tone lightened. “Good. We're thinking of driving over to Lake Chelan weekend after next.”
    “That sounds like a good idea,” I said. “You should have good weather over there.” June could be wet and chilly on the western slope of the Cascades, but sun and warm weather were almost guaranteed on the other side of the pass. And I meant what I said to Milo—I wished him nothing but the best with Tara Peebles. She seemed like a nice, sensible woman, a widow who had been left to raise two sons, Dan and Don. Last winter they'd moved to Alpine from Seattle, fed up with traffic and soaring real estate prices. Dan was the elder of the two boys; Don was in the navy, fortuitously posted to the naval station in Everett. Tara had found part-time workat Mountain View Gardens, the local nursery. Milo said she had a green thumb.
    After hanging up, I mused briefly on the renewed friendship between Milo and me. It had been a tough two years, first with Milo angry and hurt by our breakup, then with my resentment of his romance with Jeannie Clay, who was young enough to be his daughter. Now Milo had Tara, and I had Tom. If I wanted him.
    Which I did, I always had. I was still attending the University of Washington when I met Tom. He was an editor on the city desk at the
Seattle Times,
and I was an intern. We had fallen hopelessly in love, and I had gotten pregnant with Adam. But there was an obstacle—Tom's emotionally fragile wife, who was also expecting a child. My lover's decision to stay