The Alpine Decoy (29 page)

Wendy had a right to be upset. Vida wasn’t always the soul of tact, and Carla could be downright heedless. Now that we had discovered the secret at Marlow Whipp’s grocery store, I felt embarrassed at our over-zealous snooping. On the other hand, it
was
a story. If Milo carried through, he might find grounds for criminal prosecution. My understanding was that a judge would have to rule on whether or not the lyrics were obscene. I guessed it also would depend on how the recordings were obtained and what Marlow was charging for them. But the truth was, I didn’t want charges brought. It was the self-styled censors who were wrong, not the Wilsons and Marlow Whipp.

I decided to be honest. Without mentioning our earlier suspicions of drug dealing, I told Todd what we believed was going on across from the high school. His dismay couldn’t be concealed. He immediately went on the defensive.

“What’s the difference if those kids buy the music in Sultan or Alpine? There’s a market, and we fill it. Should
Marlow have advertised? Hell, no, he’d have been boycotted by all those stiff-necked church people and the rest of the Nazis around here. Are we corrupting young minds? What do you think?” Todd had grown very red, his freckles seeming to spread all over his face.

I wasn’t about to get into a philosophical debate with Todd Wilson. In fact, I didn’t know whether or not teenagers could be influenced by rap or rock or any other music. If everybody who’d ever heard “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” was inspired to march out the door in search of Truth, I might believe that Art could shape Life. But there was a big difference between being moved and being made to move. One song doesn’t create an attitude.

“Look, Todd,” I said quietly, “I’ve been planning to do an editorial on this issue for some time, but I haven’t gotten around to it. The problem needs more than a column on page two, with me extolling the virtues of the First Amendment. We could do several pieces, maybe a series. We need input from parents and teachers. I know Wendy has some real concerns about illiteracy. Is this her way of striking back at complacency? Is she trying to tell people that ignorance and repression are wrong? We could give her a forum. I don’t intend to crucify her.”

Todd’s expression was skeptical. “Teaching jobs are hard to come by these days. How long do you think she’d last at the high school if this got out in the paper?”

“Why,” I responded, “would she think it wouldn’t get out? If not in
The Advocate
, then via the grapevine? Good grief, Todd, I can’t believe it’s been a secret this long!”

Todd shifted uncomfortably in the chair. He drummed his fingers on the arms, tapped one foot, then ran a jittery hand through his wavy brown hair. “It’s been about four months, I guess. Oh, there’re students who don’t approve, but peer-group pressure gets to them. But it wasn’t Wendy’s idea. All she did was make sure the kids knew where to get the recordings. I don’t suppose she had to tell more than one. Word got out—the kids thought it was real cool that a teacher would side with them when it came to banned music.”

Cool teacher, cool subjects, cool classes. The students might learn something. Maybe that was the way Wendy’s
mind had run. I wanted to credit her with good motives, not greed.

“If it wasn’t Wendy’s idea, whose was it?” I thought I already knew.

Todd frowned. “Her brother’s. It started when Shane was still working at Fred Meyer in Seattle. They got a shipment that was flawed. There was a hassle with the recording company, then they replaced it, but never collected the first batch. It was tapes. There was nothing wrong with them, only the plastic boxes they were stored in. Shane brought them home at Christmas and gave away some of the really good ones as presents. We kidded him and said he ought to sell the rest on the street corner and pick up an extra buck. He told his dad to sell them at Alpine Appliance. But Lloyd had tried that once, back in the ’70s, and said he’d been robbed blind. Too much shoplifting with kids. He didn’t want kids in his store anyway because they screw around with the TVs and VCRs and stuff.”

“So you came up with Marlow Whipp?” I remarked.

“Sure. It was a natural. Right by the high school, with kids hanging around all the time. But we didn’t really start until a month or two later, when the busybodies began raising a ruckus over the explicit lyrics and what was being sold at Platters on the Sky. Shane made contact with the distributors in Seattle. They couldn’t get their stuff in up here and were afraid maybe the whole Stevens Pass corridor would chicken out, from Monroe to Leavenworth. It was all on the up-and-up.”

“So it’s a four-way split,” I mused. “Is there really big money involved?”

Todd looked offended. “Big money? What’s big money? The most Wendy and I’ve cleared in a week is around seven hundred dollars. The same for Shane. Marlow makes his profit just as he would on any other item he sells in the store. It’s nice extra income, but we’re not getting rich. And,” he added on an unhappy note, “it won’t last. But then we never thought it would.”

Still, the Wilsons had enjoyed a good ride. So had Marlow Whipp. And Shane. “What’s your brother-in-law doing with his share? Shane seems to keep a low profile.”

For the first time, the hint of a smile played on Todd
Wilson’s wide mouth. “Shane’s like his dad. A typical Scot. He salts it away. Cheap, cheap.”

I gave a faint nod of agreement. Scots were tight, Gypsies stole, Germans were stubborn, Italians had mob connections, Scandinavians were rawboned, Japanese excelled at self-discipline, African-Americans got mixed up with street gangs. It wasn’t a matter of being politically correct, because in a democracy, no one is right or wrong, and taboo word games only muzzle the English language. It was the stereotyping that bothered me—the old, stale, tired labels that we were too lazy to discard. When would those clichés end? In the past two weeks, I’d heard them all, even from my own mouth.

Todd had lost his smile; he was looking very earnest. “You see the problem, Ms. Lord. Wendy and I are doing fine right now. But this music thing will blow away when Platters on the Sky gets enough guts to stand up to the fascists. If Wendy is canned at the high school, what do we do? Move away to a new school district? I can’t quit the PUD. I’ve got ten years in there.”

I ventured a guess. “You’ve got Principal Freeman on your side, don’t you? Coach Ridley, Donna Wickstrom—several members of the faculty. Who are you afraid of on the school board? Isn’t Lloyd Campbell a member?”

“He’s only one out of five,” Todd replied, still looking downcast. “Pastor Phelps from the Methodist Church is on it, too, and he’s dead set against music he thinks will corrupt kids. Then there’s Richie Magruder, Doc Dewey, and Grace Grundle. Mrs. Grundle is a retired teacher. What could be worse?”

Doc wouldn’t be narrow-minded. Richie Magruder would be the tool of his wife, Stella. And Vida had Grace Grundle in her pocket. I liked Wendy’s chances. I said so, but Todd wasn’t cheered.

“Everything’s happening at once,” he lamented. “If it’s not Wendy, it’s Cyndi. Have you heard what people are saying about her?”

As a journalist, it seemed I was always the last to know. “What?” I asked in a hollow voice.

“That she knew this Kelvin guy. Sure,” Todd went on, waving his hands, “maybe she’d met him in Seattle. Shane
gave parties, he went to parties. Cyndi liked visiting him and having a good time. Big deal. Shane knew plenty of people. That’s the city. But it wasn’t some kind of romance. Kelvin had a girl. She was Marilynn’s roommate. Hell, Cyndi wouldn’t date some black dude! She’s got pride in being white.”

“Really.” Todd’s remark bounced off of me, like so much bird doo. My mind was elsewhere, sorting through the intricacies of the Campbell ménage: Marilynn Lewis, Jerome Cole, Kelvin Greene, and Wesley Charles … “Todd, has your family been questioned about the murders?”

Todd practically reeled in the armchair. “Hell, no! I mean, Cyndi was asked about talking to Kelvin Greene at the Icicle Creek Tavern. But that was it. Why should we? Oh, Milo Dodge gave Marilynn Lewis a bad time, but that doesn’t count. She’s not family.”

Family. What was family? Todd probably felt closer to Marlow Whipp than he did to Marilynn Lewis. He was in business with Marlow; Marlow was a native of Alpine; Marlow was white.

“The fact remains,” I said, sounding stern, “Shane and Cyndi knew Kelvin Greene. Nobody else in Alpine did, except Marilynn Lewis. Come on, Todd—for all I know, Kelvin was in on the music deal. He worked for Fred Meyer, too.”

Todd’s surprise seemed genuine. “He did? I never met the guy. I thought he was just some dude Cyndi ran into at a party. You know, a friend of Marilynn’s. I figured Kelvin got hold of Cyndi because he didn’t know how to get in touch with Marilynn.”

My guest was getting up from his chair, obviously about to leave. I jumped off the sofa. “What do you mean? ’Got hold of? You mean Kelvin contacted Cyndi?”

The telltale flush began to creep over Todd’s face again. “Right, yeah. He came to the PUD office that afternoon. That’s when he and Cyndi went out for a beer.”

While Todd backpedaled toward the front door, I pursued him. My index finger waggled in the direction of his chest. “You knew that? You knew your sister-in-law had gone off with Kelvin Greene?”

“No!” Todd burst out at me. “No, I didn’t know it! I was
out hacking down trees at the fish hatchery. She told me later. After dinner, in fact, when you and Vida had gone home. Cyndi wondered … you know, if the guy who got killed might be Kelvin. She thought it was funny that Vida said it wasn’t anybody we’d know. This is Alpine—everybody knows everybody.”

Todd’s rationale made sense. Still, it raised some questions. After a few more reassurances that I wasn’t about to launch an exposé of his wife, he left. Todd Wilson wasn’t happy, he didn’t believe me completely, he was as worried as when he’d arrived—but I’d done all I could. I returned to the sofa and got caught up on the sports news.

The Mariners were losing; the Sonics were winning. I expected that before May was over, the tide might be running the other way in both cases. I hadn’t been to a baseball or basketball game in four years. It was too late in the NBA season to catch the Sonics, but maybe I could go into Seattle and see the Mariners. I had a schedule in my handbag. Texas was coming in the third weekend of June. But I would be at Lake Chelan. With Tom Cavanaugh. I corrected myself: Tom and I would be at Lake Chelan. We wouldn’t necessarily be together. I’d wait for Toronto in August. Why not? I’d waited for Tom for over twenty years.

The sound of sirens tore me from the comic section. Sure enough, the ambulance was speeding past my house. A sheriff’s car came next, but from my window, I couldn’t tell who was in it. I rushed outside to the street. To my astonishment, the emergency vehicles were once again pulling into the cul-de-sac.

Bill Blatt and Jack Mullins were standing beside the squad car when I arrived on foot. A young couple I vaguely recognized were making excited gestures and talking at the same time. She was, I thought, Dot and Durwood Parker’s granddaughter, he was the Rafferty who tended bar at the Icicle Creek Tavern.

Jack Mullins spotted me and waved. “Hey, it’s the press! Calm down, guys, we’re not doing anything until Sheriff Dodge gets here. I’ve got a squeamish stomach.” Jack was all smiles, though his eyes were wary. “Hi, Ms. Lord. Where’d you come from?”

“My house,” I replied, gazing around and seeing nothing out of the ordinary. If Milo had put up any crime-scene tape after Wesley Charles was killed, it was now gone. “What’s happening?”

The Parker granddaughter—who was not a Parker as it turned out, but an Eriks, since her mother had been the Parker—began to babble incoherently. She was joined by young Mr. Rafferty, whose first name I later learned was Tim, and who was working his way through spasmodic quarters at Western Washington University in Bellingham, and who made as little sense as Tiffany Eriks. Bill Blatt took pity on me. Or perhaps he feared repercussions from his aunt Vida.

“Tiffany and Tim went for a hike,” Bill explained, his earnest young face showing the strain of the past few days. “They started out up on Second Hill and took the trail that winds back into town.” Bill paused, swallowing hard. “Just before they reached the cul-de-sac, they found a body. It looks like we’ve got another murder on our hands.”

I
T SEEMED TO
me that things were getting out of control in Alpine. On a per capita basis, it appeared that we must have the highest homicide rate in the state for the month of May. Maybe that statistic would keep the dreaded Californians out. Except that in this season of clear-cut bans, we could use some new blood, even from L.A. and other such sun-drenched, overcrowded environs.

“… just lying there!” Tiffany Eriks cried, leaning on Tim Rafferty and threatening to stifle him. “A logger, I’ll bet!”

“Right, right,” Tim agreed. “Maybe he’s been there for a long time. An accident in the woods. We didn’t want to get too close. You know, dead bodies smell bad.”

“No!” Tiffany shrieked. “Not an accident! An environmentalist! Somebody who probably thought this guy was cutting down an owl’s nest! Those people go crazy! They don’t care about human life, just a bunch of birds! Oh, my God, it could have been Uncle Deekey!”

Not having the faintest idea who Uncle Deekey might be, I felt a surge of relief when Milo’s Cherokee Chief pulled into the cul-de-sac. He emerged looking both weary and grim. Nor did he seemed pleased to see me, though I couldn’t tell whether it was because of the situation or the memory of our last, quasi-passionate encounter under similar circumstances.

“Is he black?” was Milo’s first question.

He wasn’t, Tim and Tiffany chorused. At least they didn’t think so. He looked like a logger, Tiffany asserted. Why? Milo asked. Because he was wearing a plaid shirt and work pants, Tim responded. Big, too. And wearing a hat, which made it impossible to see his face. Not that they
wanted to, Tiffany put in hastily, because maybe the birds had eaten it. She wouldn’t put it past a bunch of spotted owls.