Read Online The Alpine Obituary by Mary Daheim - Free Book Online Page B

help at the clinic in the form of Elvis Sung, a young physician originally from Hawaii. But Dr. Sung’s skin wasn’t a pure white shade, and he’d been in Alpine for less than two years. Naturally, the locals still preferred Doc Dewey.
    Doc shrugged into his jacket and eyed me closely. “When was the last time you paid me a visit, Emma?”
    “Umm . . . a year ago?” I’d been in the hospital for almost two days after Tom was killed. I’d checked in with Doc a week after the funeral, then had seen him once more, in early August. There wasn’t much he could do for a broken heart.
    “You look peaky to me,” he said. “Make an appointment for next week. Promise?”
    “Okay.” If nothing else, it might make Doc feel better.
    His stalwart figure moved out of the kitchen, though he stopped for a word with Max Froland.
    I turned to Vida. “As you were saying?”
    “You know the rest. Al drove her here in the funeral home car. Max and Pastor Nielsen rode with them, and I gather that June was incoherent for the entire trip. Of course it’s only five blocks.” Vida eyed the teakettle next to the sink. “I really could use a cup of tea.”
    The kitchen was small, with outdated appliances and worn linoleum flooring. It was not very tidy, but I couldn’t fault June Froland’s housekeeping. As I well knew, death has a way of disrupting routine. There was no sign of preparations for a post-viewing get-together. Maybe June and Max had planned to wing it.
    I cleared off an aluminum-backed chair and sat down. “I assume June’s accusation was unfounded. Did she say who’d murdered Jack?”
    Vida shook her head. In her black swing coat and a bonnet with its ribbons streaming over her shoulders, she looked like something out of Dickens. “June kept repeating—between screeches—that Jack had been killed.” Vida sat down across from me, waiting for the water to boil.
    “That’s it?” I said. “She made no accusations or mentioned how Jack might have been killed?”
    “Not that I heard,” Vida replied. “Of course I was on the phone to Doc for a short time.”
    “Weird.” I stared at the soiled cotton cloth on the small kitchen table. “June was aware that Jack’s condition was terminal, I assume.”
    “I’m sure she was,” Vida replied. “She always went to the doctor with him. Or so my niece Marje Blatt told me.”
    Marje, the receptionist at the clinic, was one of Vida’s many sources who were also related to her. I sometimes thought her news network rivaled CNN.
    “June’s in denial,” I remarked as Max Froland rather diffidently came to stand in the kitchen doorway.
    “May I?” he asked.
    “Goodness, yes!” Vida cried, the black ribbons swinging at her shoulders. “This is your home, isn’t it? Would you care for some tea?”
    “Yes, thanks.” Max looked wistful. “My parents didn’t drink alcohol. Frankly, I’d prefer a stiff vodka martini.”
    I was about to agree with Max, but Vida intervened. “Your mother is an abstemious woman. In my opinion, that’s a virtue.”
    “Pa wasn’t so virtuous,” Max said with a droll expression. “But Ma wouldn’t let him keep liquor in the house. That’s why he spent so much time at Mugs Ahoy.”
    I remembered the line from the obit that mentioned Jack Froland’s drinking partners at the local tavern. “It doesn’t seem that drink killed your father,” I noted.
    “No.” Max shook his head sadly. “I think it kept him going. In fact, I came up here to visit two weeks ago. He seemed better than he had in months.”
    “Perhaps he’d gone into remission,” Vida said, finding some mismatched cups and saucers in a cupboard. “Cream or sugar?”
    “Neither,” Max replied, leaning against the counter by the stove. There were only two chairs in the kitchen. There was no dining room, and I wondered where the Frolands entertained. Maybe they didn’t.
    “I don’t know about remission,” Max said after Vida had handed him his tea. “My