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new stock when it came in the second week of August. Henry Bardeen had phoned from the ski lodge to tell me they had found a family of raccoons living in thelittle house where they stored their firewood. Did I want a picture?
    I supposed I did. Raccoons always make good pictures. I called Henry to tell him I’d send Carla up in the morning.
    “I’m afraid we can’t wait,” said Henry, sounding unusually testy for a man whose job as resort manager required endless patience and perennial good will. “One of our guests suffers from raccoon-phobia. If we don’t get those animals out of the wood house tonight Matt Tabor says he’ll drive into Seattle and stay at the Four Seasons Olympic.”
    “Oh, for heavens’ sake!” I didn’t know whether to laugh or be annoyed. “Okay, Henry, I’ll be up in ten minutes.”
    While changing into slacks and a blouse, I decided I was definitely annoyed. I didn’t want to bother Vida this late, and Carla needed a good night’s sleep to complete her recovery. Fortunately, I had an extra camera at home. The drive to the ski lodge would take less than five minutes, since my house was on the edge of town. But the idea of the aggressively masculine Matt Tabor being afraid of a bunch of big-eyed bandits with four legs was irksome. I wished that Henry Bardeen had at least cornered a grizzly bear.
    Mama, Papa, and four babies posed graciously for my camera. Then Mama wanted to borrow the camera. I back-pedaled out of the wood house and was grateful for Henry’s assistance. He had brought some cooked hamburger and peeled oranges to lure the raccoon family out of its self-styled lair. A van with open back doors waited a few yards away, to transport the raccoons to the other side of Alpine.
    “Having these Hollywood people here is no picnic,” Henry sighed as the van headed down the road. “Oh, they’re paying a pretty penny, which is always welcome in off-season; but I tell you, Emma, it’s one aggravation after another.” Henry Bardeen shook his head, which was topped by an artfully graying toupee.
    “Like what?” I asked guilelessly.
    “Like diet.” Henry’s thin mouth twisted. He was a slim man of medium height, with an aquiline nose and fine gray eyes. Unlike most professional men in Alpine, who tended to go in for more casual attire, Henry always wore a suit and tie. “They have the strangest eating habits. And schedules. In bed by ten, maybe even nine, then up at the crack of dawn, which means the kitchen help has to come in early. Not only to fix breakfast, but to pack up the hampers for their lunch up on Baldy. I’ve had to hire extra people. Tonight, Dani Marsh wanted some sort of cabbage drink sent up to her room. We had no idea how to make it, and when we finally got through to somebody in Everett, Dani was gone. Now she’s a local, wouldn’t you think she wouldn’t be as queer as the rest of them?”
    “She hasn’t lived here for five years,” I pointed out, wondering if there was a feature story in
The Peculiar Palates of Picture People
. Probably not, I decided. It would annoy most of the locals as much as it irked Henry Bardeen.
    “She’s been gone from the lodge for three hours,” said Henry, looking even more aggravated. “That Hampton fellow is about to call the sheriff.”
    “Good,” I said, hoping Reid Hampton would catch Milo Dodge in the sack with Honoria Whitman. It would serve all of them right.
    “Good?” Henry stared at me. He may have possessed a gracious manner—usually—but he had absolutely no sense of humor. “What’s good about having Reid Hampton roar around the lobby while Matt Tabor is cringing in a corner because some of our furry friends are living outside his window? What’s good about Dani Marsh being gone for several hours? She has a wake-up call scheduled for five A.M.!”
    “As you pointed out,” I said in a soothing voice, “Dani
is
a native. She probably has some old friends here. And her mother, of