The Alpine Decoy (13 page)

By late Monday, we seemed to have the paper under control. Still, I held off writing the homicide story in case there were any late-breaking developments. I checked in with Milo just before heading home, but he’d already left work. Deputy Sam Heppner informed me that Honoria Whitman was back from Seattle. The sheriff had gone
a-wooing. And, I realized, I’d forgotten to show Milo the letter I’d received from the bigot. If I had time on Tuesday, I’d do it then. But the day before we go to press gets pretty hectic. The bigot could keep. Unfortunately, they always do.

I stopped at the library to return a couple of overdue books and to find something new to read. The Alpine Library shares space with senior services, which, in turn, adjoins the civic center. All are housed in the old high school, a two-story red brick building that dates from the 1920s. The county library system’s budget has been cut, so recent releases are hard to come by. I put in three reserves and checked out a couple of older espionage novels I’d missed along the line.

Edna Mae Dalrymple was on duty. A nervous, efficient sprite of a woman, Edna Mae is the head librarian and one of my fellow bridge players. “Guess who came in to get a library card,” she whispered. Edna Mae always whispers, except at the card table where she is inclined to shriek and squeal as well as fidget and twitch. She also likes to answer her own questions. “The new nurse, that’s who. I’m so thrilled that she’s a reader.”

“Well, why not?” I asked boldly.

Edna Mae’s overbite gripped her lower lip as she frowned and gestured at the nonfiction stacks. I turned, seeing Jean Campbell absorbed in the house and garden section.

“Ms. Lewis has a tremendous responsibility on her shoulders,” Edna Mae confided. “Imagine, coming here on her own and bearing the brunt of an unintegrated town like Alpine! It’s very important for her to step right in, doing all the things Alpiners do. Church works, service clubs, library books, bridge—if she plays. I’d like to recruit her for our ‘Speak Up, Speak Out’ series. Last month we had Coach Ridley.”

The library speaker series had also had me, in my first six months as editor and publisher of
The Advocate
. Four people showed up, two of whom had been deaf as posts. A third, Toots Bergstrom, had eaten her lunch. Noisily. I couldn’t recommend Marilynn’s participation, but I was loath to say so to Edna Mae.

“Well … certainly,” I temporized. Maybe Marilynn could speak on geriatrics nursing.

I was about to leave when I saw Jean Campbell approach the desk with two large gardening books. She smiled a bit tensely when she saw me. 1 waited while Edna Mae checked out Jean’s selections.

“I’m trying some new perennials,” Jean said, as we walked together through the glass double doors. She displayed the books she’d chosen, both of which were devoted to Pacific Northwest gardens. “I’m tired of annuals. They’re just too much trouble. I had some lovely peonies about to bloom, but they got trampled. I suppose it was a dog. People should keep their pets tied up.”

Not owning any animals, I readily agreed. “By the way,” I went on before Jean could head for her Chevy, which was parked three spaces away from my Jag, “tell Marilynn there weren’t any new apartment ads in this week’s classifieds. And Carla doesn’t know of anybody who’s moving out of The Pines Village.”

“Oh.” Jean stared at her shoes, then gave me another tense smile. “Well. I’m sure Marilynn will find something soon. I told her she should strike a bargain with Dolph Terrill and offer to do some of the repairs if he’d lower the rent.”

“And?” My own smile was full of encouragement.

Jean’s forced cheer fled. “Marilynn said it was more work than she could handle. Cracks in the walls, plaster peeling, balky plumbing. Maybe Shane could help. She really should have a place of her own.”

“I suppose it is kind of crowded,” I allowed.

“Well … it’s not that so much as … I think she’d be happier on her own. She’s used to it. Though I believe she had a roommate in Seattle.” Jean moved about a bit awkwardly on the pavement. “And then there’ve been so many phone calls last night and today. We should have thought about giving her a separate line, but that’s such a bother if she’s not going to stay with us.”

“Phone calls?” I strove to look innocent. It’s not an easy guise for a prying journalist.

Jean’s mouth tightened. “I don’t know what it’s all about. I took half-a-dozen calls for her today—and, of course, she
was at work. They were friends, I suppose.” Again, she seemed absorbed in her shoes.

“Not local calls?” In the distance, the courthouse clock chimed the half hour. Traffic on First Street was moving at a brisk pace—at least by Alpine standards.

Jean shook her head. “No. Marilynn hasn’t made many friends yet. She hasn’t had time, really.” Glancing at her watch, she flashed another unconvincing smile. “I’ve got to dash. I’m picking Marilynn up at the clinic.”

All the way home, I wondered about those phone calls. I hadn’t watched the news over the weekend. As a print journalist, I disdain TV newscasts except during the week when I figure I might pick up an item with a local tie-in. Maybe the Seattle stations had carried a story about Kelvin Greene’s murder. Perhaps it had appeared in the Monday morning edition of the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
. If so, had Marilynn’s rash of calls been triggered by Kelvin’s death? I hoped not.

My curiosity had to be put on hold. There was nothing about the murder on the early editions of the three Seattle newscasts. Nor was there anything in the Northwest section of the evening
Times
. I immersed myself in one of my espionage thrillers and tried to forget about Kelvin Greene and Marilynn Lewis.

Yet even in my own mind, their names were linked. That bothered me. What if Milo was right? Shortly before ten, I called Vida.

“Stupid bridal shower,” Vida fulminated. “I just got home. Darla Puckett’s granddaughter, all of seventeen, marrying a high school dropout from Gold Bar. The theme was a zip code. Now how am I going to write about
that?”

I gaped at the receiver. “A zip code?”

“They served tapioca. With maraschino cherries, pronounced by the bride-to-be as
marsh-o-lino
. Where do these nincompoops come from?” Vida was, as she herself would put it, fit to be tied.

“A zip code?” I repeated.

“Yes, yes, and not even from around here. Nine-oh-two-something-or-other. Maybe that’s where they’re going to live. Wherever it is, it’ll be a hovel. They don’t have siccum.”

Enlightenment was dawning. “I think it’s a TV show,” I offered. “It’s called
90210
. Very popular with teenagers.”

“So is unwanted pregnancy,” Vida snapped. “Why can’t they have a
real
theme, with a pansy arch, or play Reach for the Ring? Honestly!”

I waited for Vida’s pique to pass. Then I asked if she’d found out anything from Marje Blatt. For once, she didn’t know any more than I did about Milo’s call on Marilynn Lewis. Marje, however, had reported that Chaz Phipps from the ski lodge had seen an African American in the parking lot around four-thirty. Chaz had thought he was a guest checking in, but he never registered.

“Maybe,” I suggested, “Kelvin really did want directions from Cyndi to the lodge.”

Vida was still prickly. “For what? To pass time?” She was more interested in her nephew’s report. After concluding her conversation with Marje and before going to the bridal shower, Vida had talked to Bill Blatt.

“The information is sketchy,” Vida said, now simmered down. “Kelvin Greene was a small-time crook: three arrests, no convictions, all drug related. We knew that. He’s been living with a woman named Winola Prince, out in Rainier Valley. She moved in with him about a month ago. It appears she’s a decent woman, and is quite upset over Kelvin’s demise. Winola’s a licensed practical nurse. She works at Virginia Mason Hospital, which is where Marilynn Lewis worked before she came to Alpine.” Vida paused, and I could almost see her smirk. “Doesn’t that beat all?”

Milo Dodge’s visit to the Alpine Medical Clinic had not gone unnoticed. By midmorning on Tuesday, I had heard from Mayor Fuzzy Baugh, Henry Bardeen at the ski lodge, Francine Wells of Francine’s Fine Apparel, and Averill Fairbanks of UFO fame. Averill said he thought that black people had been brought to earth by space aliens about the same time that Mount Mazama blew up in Oregon to create Crater Lake. I told Averill he ought to check his theory out with NASA or the NAACP, whichever group’s phone number he could find first through Directory Assistance.

Everyone seemed agog at the possibility that a black man had been shot by a black woman, right here in Alpine. And
just about everyone did think it was possible, even likely. More sightings of Kelvin Greene had been reported, including at the mall, the courthouse, the Icicle Creek campground, and riding one of the Dithers Sisters’ Appaloosas down First Hill Road. Maybe, I’d suggested to the last caller, they’d also seen Zorro. I felt like tearing my hair. I actually gave it a yank when I got the second letter in the morning mail.

“Dear Publicher,” it read, “Rumors are flying. Where will they go? The mall? Downtown? Out into the naiberhoods? Once they get started, there’s no stopping them. They will take us all over, and make us there slaves. Yours truely, A Loyal Reader.”

I snatched up both letters and marched the two blocks to Milo’s office. He expressed mild interest.

“They’re not the same as the ones Marilynn Lewis got,” he said, without a second glance. “It looks like we’re dealing with yet another goofball.” He yawned, sneezed, and sat back in his faux-leather chair.

I should have inquired after Honoria Whitman, but in my perverse way, I refused to ask. Besides, I was angry, not only at the malicious letter writer, but at Milo.

“What’s going on with this Winola Prince?” I demanded. “Does she actually know Marilynn Lewis, or did they merely happen to work in the same hospital?”

Milo blinked at me, his face otherwise impassive. “Gosh, Emma, when are you going to stop treating me as if I were head of the gestapo? Don’t you have a newspaper to put out today?”

“I can’t put it out until I have all the facts in this Kelvin Greene story,” I answered in a waspish voice. “Now give, Dodge. You’re right, I’m up against a deadline. Have you talked to Marilynn about Winola?”

Milo made a fist, crooked his arm, and held out his wrist to display his Timex watch. “See this? It’s eight minutes to eleven. I’ve had a busy morning. I’ll get around to Nurse Lewis after lunch.”

“And scare Doc Dewey and Peyton Flake’s patients to death in the process? Give them a break at the clinic, Dodge. Take Marilynn out for coffee.”

The suggestion obviously startled Milo. My first reaction
was that he felt I was violating law enforcement ethics. Then it dawned on me that maybe he was alarmed at the thought of being seen in public with a black woman. I asked him outright.

“Hell, no!” Milo glowered at me. “It’s just that … How often do I take a suspect out … Shit, it’d look like a date!”

“Are you through spluttering?” I couldn’t keep the amusement off my face.

Milo was actually blushing. I forced myself not to laugh. We were silent for a few moments, and I could tell that he was thinking, hard. “Marilynn Lewis is a damned attractive young woman,” he finally said. “It wouldn’t look right—under the circumstances—for me, as a single man, to take her out for coffee. Be reasonable, Emma. What would people in this town say if I were seen going around with
any
single, good-looking woman?”

That did it. Milo and I have been everywhere together in the past three years, except to bed. I jumped out of my chair, stalked to the door, and slammed it behind me. Yes, it was true that I didn’t understand men. When it comes to interpersonal relationships, the density of their brains absolutely amazes me. They are a race apart, or, as Vida is wont to say:
Men aren’t like other people
. I simply can’t fathom the male mind.

Marching back up Front Street, I knew that Milo was thinking the same thing about women. The difference was that he wasn’t thinking about what I was thinking at all.

The front-page story about Kelvin Greene’s murder was relatively brief. For all of Milo’s bravado about suspecting Marilynn Lewis, I didn’t see that he had a shred of evidence. To protect him, as well as Marilynn, I merely stated that the sheriff was conducting an investigation. Except for mentioning that the victim was a Seattle resident, I couldn’t say much about his background for fear of legal repercussions. I had no list of survivors, other than the grieving Winola Prince. Good taste dictated that I leave out her name.

Vida and 1 have argued over some of the newer wrinkles in obituaries, where live-in lovers, including homosexuals, are listed as a matter of course. Vida has been opposed on
the grounds that only lawful relatives should be included. I gained an edge over her last summer when I pointed out that Cass Pidduck’s obit listed survivors as his sons, Darrell and Conrad; their wives, Mary Jo and Jessica; five grandchildren; six great-grandchildren; numerous nieces and nephews; and his beloved dog, Flyswatter.

Nor could I publicly speculate when and where the shooting had taken place. “Greene apparently died from a head wound shortly after entering the grocery store,” I wrote, having properly kept Marlow Whipp’s role to that of accidental observer. The story took up four inches, and was the second lead, after the planning commission’s latest bungling effort to make Front and Pine streets one-way thoroughfares. I boxed the Bucker Swede item, but buried it on page eight.

By two o’clock, we had the paper well in hand. Ed was bustling around the office, showing more signs of life than I’d seen in him since Roger put a whoopee cushion on his chair the previous April Fool’s Day. Carla was finishing a major feature on the upcoming high school production of
Our Town
. The story wasn’t any great shakes, but she had taken some fine pictures. Vida was struggling to get in all the weddings, showers, and end-of-school-year celebrations that fill the calendar in May and continue through June.

I had just rapped out a last-minute item about the need for strawberry pickers when inspiration hit. Dialing Seattle Directory Assistance, I asked for Winola Prince’s number. There was no listing. I tried for Kelvin Greene and hit pay dirt.