The Alpine Decoy

by Mary Daheim

  In the background, I could hear Vida’s canary, Cupcake, chirping up a storm. “There sure are a lot of guns around here,” I remarked. “You don’t have one, do you, Vida?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” Vida replied blithely. “Ernest’s old .45, from World War II. He enlisted on his eighteenth birthday in 1944. There’s a shotgun and a .22 around here someplace, too. My husband used to hunt.”

  I sighed. “I must be the only unarmed resident of Alpine.”

  “Possibly.” Vida seemed unperturbed by the idea. “I must run, Emma. I forgot to cover Cupcake before I left, and he’s getting fractious. I’ll see you in the morning. Oh—don’t let Milo kiss you again, at least not in public. It’s not good for either of your reputations, and Tommy wouldn’t like it.” She hung up.

  Ginny Burmeister had a new hairdo. The thick auburn mane had been cut close to her head, with natural, artful curls clinging to her temples. Her fair skin was free of makeup, but there was a hint of brown eye shadow on her lids, mascara had been applied, and her lips were outlined in a subtle, but becoming shade of bronze. Overnight, Ginny had been transformed from a plain young woman into almost pretty.

  I complimented her, and predictably, she blushed, which added to her new attractions. “Rick and I are going to Seattle tonight with Carla and Peyts. Carla talked me into getting a new do. I’m not sure about it—my head feels bare.”

  “It’s not,” I said with an admiring smile. “You look wonderful.”

  “That’s what Rick said.” Ginny blushed some more. “He’s thinking of changing his hair back to its natural color.”

  “Well.” I wasn’t quite sure how to react. “Maybe he wants to move up in the banking business.”

  Ginny turned skeptical, then slapped a hand against her cheek. “Oh! I forgot to tell you! Rick says he heard Washington Mutual is going to open up a branch here in the fall. You might want to check that out.”

  Naturally, I would. The First—and only—Bank of Alpine had no competition within a thirty-mile radius. Another financial institution would hit the Bank of Alpine hard. Nor did the timing seem right, with so many people in the timber industry out of work. I made a note to call Washington Mutual’s corporate headquarters in Seattle.

  The mail had not yet arrived, so girding myself, I decided to amble down the street to the sheriff’s office. Maybe I imagined it, but I could have sworn that Milo’s deputies leered at me when I came through the door. Milo, however, seemed preoccupied.

  “It’s a good thing you didn’t try to call,” he muttered into his mug of coffee. “I’m not talking to anybody this morning. Every crank in Skykomish County wants to know why the morgue is filling up with black guys from Seattle.”

  “Wesley Charles was on his way to Monroe,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, right, you know what I mean.” Milo set his mug down on the desk and gave me a sheepish look. “Damn, Emma, I don’t know what got into me last night. I’m stressed. Honoria’s talking about going back to California. She misses her family.”

  Jarred, I rested my elbow on the desk and held my head. How had I become a sub off the bench for Honoria Whitman? “Well …” I began, trying to be tactful and actually wanting to punch Milo in the chops, “I gather you two aren’t all that serious?”

  Milo’s long face seemed to droop onto his chest. “I don’t know. Sometimes I thought we had a future, but when I remember what it was like being married to Old Mulehide, I don’t think marriage is a good idea.”

  “Honoria isn’t Old Mulehide,” I noted, referring to the unfortunate nickname Milo had given his ex-wife. “And you aren’t like her first husband who made her a cripple. There are lots of happy second marriages. And they wouldn’t be second marriages if the first ones hadn’t gone sour.”

  Milo’s hazel eyes were fastened on the ceiling. “After six years of being single, I’m used to it. I’m married to the job, I guess. It wouldn’t be fair to Honoria, especially with her … problems.”

  It seemed to me that problems or not, Honoria coped very well from her wheelchair. She lived alone in a quaint little house near Startup, she drove a specially rigged car, and she was busily involved with her pottery. I said as much to Milo.

  He lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. “It’s up to her. I can’t move to California.”

  I wondered if Honoria was giving Milo a shove by threatening to return home. They had been going together for almost a year. Knowing Milo, it was possible that he and Honoria had never discussed a future together. But this time, I kept my mouth shut.

  “She hasn’t left yet,” I pointed out.

  “Mmmm.” Milo gave a slight nod, then gazed directly at me. “You’re not mad about last night?”

  I was more amused than mad. I supposed that wasn’t the thing to say, either. “Forget it, Milo. Given the circumstances, we’ll chalk it up as comic relief.”

  It was Milo’s turn to look hurt. “Jeez, Emma, you make it sound like we’re a couple of clowns.”

  “We are. We all are. Now skip it, and let’s talk about the murder investigations.”

  We did, and as it turned out, I had more news for him than he had for me. Perhaps Milo was doing penance for kissing me, but he actually seemed interested in my background on Wesley Charles, in Shane Campbell’s work relationship with Kelvin Greene, in the account of the arsenal that was kept by everyone in the Campbell family as well as Marilynn Lewis.

  “Wesley Charles was shot with a .45 caliber,” Milo said, digging a roll of mints out of his pocket and following up with a couple of sniffs on his inhaler. “Fairly close range, no cartridge found, so it probably wasn’t a revolver.”

  I was frowning. “Two killers?”

  Milo shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Nobody saw anything?”

  “Nope. Who would? The houses on Fir Street don’t look into the cul-de-sac. Coach Ridley had his kids working out on the other side of Fifth at the field, but they didn’t see anything. Or hear it, either.”

  I felt my shoulders slump. “The damned starter gun again,” I murmured.

  “Probably. Your next-door neighbors are the closest, but they weren’t home.”

  My neighbors to the east were from Alaska, and not overly friendly. They had a couple of kids, around ten and thirteen. The kids weren’t friendly, either, at least not since I’d scolded them for using my front yard as part of their touch-football field.

  I was fingering my chin and diving deep into speculation. “Why did Wesley come here, I wonder?”

  Milo was shaking his inhaler. I gathered it was almost empty. “You’d think he’d head back to the city. But the truth is, he could only go east. There was a roadblock at Monroe and another one at Sultan. He must have gotten through before the second one could be set up.”

  It was my turn to borrow a map. Unlike the one in my office, Milo’s was full of red, blue, and green pins. “There’s a back road into Sultan out of Monroe. Have you traced the stolen car?”

  Milo nodded. “It belongs to some kid from Maltby. He left it parked—with the keys in it—at Dan’s Mainstreet Grill across from the high school in Monroe. The only problem is, he did that three days ago.”

  I gaped at Milo. “So where did the kid go?”

  “Back to Maltby with some buddies. Dan’s discourages high school kids from turning the restaurant into a hangout. The kid had to leave in a hurry. He was going to collect the car over the weekend.”

  “So why didn’t Dan’s have the car towed?”

  Milo bestowed a half smile of approval. “Good point. Maybe that’s because it got stolen by somebody else before they could get hold of a tow truck.”

  I tried to picture the scene. An escaped convict flees from a prison bus on a major highway, hobbles off right past the reformatory in full daylight, goes to a busy restaurant on one of Monroe’s main drags, and drives off in an abandoned beater that just happens to have the keys in the ignition.

  “This is making no sense,” I said flatly.
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br />   “It sure isn’t,” Milo agreed. “That’s why I’m guessing somebody else swiped that car first. The people at the restaurant don’t remember seeing it after Tuesday afternoon.”

  “Who took it first?”

  “Who knows? Kids, I suppose. But it means that car could have been anywhere—I figure someplace close to the site of the stalled prison bus.”

  I tapped the map. “Show me exactly where the tie-up took place.”

  Milo pointed to the long, downhill curve of Highway 522 just before the first Monroe exit. “It’s steep, it bends, it’s kind of narrow. People tend to go too fast in there, especially when it’s raining. There’ve been so many accidents that the locals call it The Highway to Heaven. Ever notice all the skid marks between Monroe and the Paradise Lake Road?”

  I hadn’t, of course. I suppose I was usually too busy trying to keep from skidding. “There’s a guardrail in here,” I said, etching the accident site with my thumbnail. “Where could Wesley go? He’s practically on top of the reformatory.” The road into the Twin Rivers Correctional Center was less than a hundred yards from where the tie-up had occurred.

  “According to the people from Shelton, the guards herded the prisoners off the bus and had them stand on the shoulder,” Milo explained in his painstaking style. “The guards were supposed to be watching, but they got distracted by all the commotion from the school bus. Kids yelling and crying—you can imagine. The next thing they knew, Wesley Charles was gone.”

  I was slightly incredulous. “What about the other prisoners? Didn’t they notice him clanking off down the road?”

  “Hey—imagine the scene. You got cars, trucks, that school bus. You got people rear-ending each other and raising hell. In this day and age, it’s more likely that some of the drivers are going to be armed and dangerous than it is that a bunch of shackled convicts will cause trouble.” Milo glowered a bit. “Everybody’s looking out for their own backside—or else they’re worried about those kids. These prisoners weren’t considered high risk. Not even Wesley Charles. They said that he’d been a model con during his stay at Shelton.”

  I put my hands together in a prayerful attitude. Maybe I felt that only divine intervention could help solve this case. “Milo—the key to this whole thing has to be Jerome Cole. Why don’t you get a transcript of the murder trial?”

  I expected Milo to balk, at least a little, but he didn’t. His agreement demonstrated how lost he felt. I wasn’t exactly heartened by his attitude. When I left him a few minutes later, he was dialing his liaison in King County.

  On my way back to the office, I saw Bill Blatt and Sam Heppner going into the bank. It wasn’t yet ten o’clock, so they weren’t on personal business. I paused at the corner by the toy shop and wondered if I should follow them. But I’d find out later from Milo what they were after, I told myself, and headed on to The Advocate.

  The mail had arrived, and with it, a pile of outraged letters about the murders. Not all of them were blatantly racist; most were signed. They would have to be published, since that was my policy. I decided to start my editorial for the coming week. The music censorship issue could wait. I would blast people of prejudice, and let the chips—and another stack of letters—fall where they would.

  “We see people as one dimensional,” I wrote, “and what we see are always the most obvious, if superficial, things about that other person. Is she skinny? Is he a dentist? Does that girl wear glasses? Is this man bald? In a wheelchair? Have a stammer? Where do nicknames like Lefty and Tubby and Rusty come from? Our visual perceptions are swift, and always incomplete. We pigeonhole people, and it’s not fair.”

  I paused, marveling at the quiet that reigned in the office. Vida and Carla had gone up to the high school to do their picture story and a bit of sleuthing. Ginny was in the front office, and Ed was out selling advertising. I kept writing, working up a full head of steam. I recalled what Ben had said over the phone. It wasn’t fair to blame Alpiners for all the ills of the world.

  “There was a time when prejudices were strictly tribal,” I wrote in my moralistic frenzy. “Indeed, there are still places in the world where that remains true. In Saxon England, for example, members of one village didn’t trust—or like—villagers from across the ford. As the years went by, they hated the invading Normans. Still later, they despised the Dutch and the French and the Spaniards. Then came people of a different color and religion. Meanwhile, those villagers had mingled, married, and produced new bloodlines. The Saxons melded with the Normans. The English nobility forged matrimonial alliances with the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, and the Scots; a homosexual king led the Crusades against the so-called infidel; later, another monarch rebelled against the very church he’d sworn to defend and set off centuries of religious persecution. The Western world went to war to fight for freedom, to foil aggression, and to halt anti-Semitism. For two thousand years, the human race has struggled to be worthy of its name: the human race. Not the black or white or brown or yellow race, but a world peopled by people: unique, diverse, good, bad, talented, stupid, kind, grasping, and often, all of it in a single individual.”

  I paused, wondering how much I would have to cut before I jumped off my soapbox. Like most of my editorials, it probably wouldn’t change anybody’s mind. The people who agreed with me would nod in a self-righteous manner, and those who didn’t would snort in disgust. Either way, I’d end up in the bottom of the birdcage.

  The most encouraging attitude I’d heard so far had come from Regis Bartleby at Trinity Episcopal. Harvey Adcock, of Harvey’s Hardware, had told Ed Bronsky that the rector planned on giving a sermon urging members of his congregation to invite minorities to visit Alpine. The concept was noble, but Bartleby had a reputation for speaking far over the heads of his parishioners. I hoped the message wouldn’t be lost in a sea of intellectual theology. The rector’s heart was in the right place, but his delivery was on another planet. At least I knew that he’d applaud my editorial efforts.

  Going out to the news office to get more coffee, I glanced through the window by Vida’s desk. Bill Blatt and Sam Heppner were coming out of the bank. On a whim, I zipped through the door and hailed them as they crossed the street.

  “Coffee?” I offered, brandishing my mug. “Real coffee?” I knew from sad experience what pathetic brew passed for coffee at the sheriff’s office.

  Sam Heppner started to demur, but Bill Blatt was eager. The two deputies followed me inside The Advocate where I played the gracious hostess.

  “This is a bribe,” I declared, handing each man a steaming mug. “I can get a court order and force you to tell me what you found out at the bank, or I could go see Milo and throw a tantrum or,” I added with a flinty look at Bill, “I could send Vida to do the job. But how about taking the easy way?”

  Bill Blatt, who had shown alarm at the reference to his redoubtable aunt, started chattering like a magpie: “The sheriff told us to check out Wendy and Todd Wilson, but I’ll be darned if I can see why. What have they got to do with these shootings?”

  “Maybe they don’t.” I bestowed my most winning smile on the deputies. “But they’re part of the family that’s given shelter to your boss’s favorite suspect. And never mind that your boss may be nuts. What’d you find out at the bank?”

  Sam Heppner uttered a wry chuckle. He was in his midthirties, with slicked-back brown hair, pale blue eyes, and a nose that would have looked more at home on a buzzard. “Not much. The Wilsons don’t have an account there.”

  I stared. “What? But the Bank of Alpine is the only game in town!”

  Sam gave me his dour look. “That’s right, ma’am. But so what? The Wilsons could bank in Sultan or Monroe. It’s not a crime.”

  Vida blew in the door, her straw skimmer askew. “Crime? What crime?” Her gaze fixed on her nephew.

  I started to explain, but Vida waved her hands. She whirled on Bill Blatt. “You went through the accounts at the bank? No Wilsons? That’s ridiculous!” She shot me
a smug look. “Especially under the circumstances.”

  “Which are?” I asked.

  Vida’s expression became owlish. “Odd.” She turned back to Bill. “You actually looked at the bank records?”

  Bill nodded, looking not unlike a new recruit being inspected by his first sergeant. “They had an account up until October of 1992. Then they closed it. At the time, they had about two thousand in savings, another four hundred in checking.”

  “Oooooh!” Vida whipped off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Interesting! Revealing!” She glanced again at me.

  “Uh—where’s Carla?” I asked, suddenly realizing that Vida had returned alone.

  Vida gave a quick shake of her head. “She forgot to drop the roll of film off at Buddy Bayard’s. She’ll be here in a few minutes.” Collaring her nephew—literally—she stood nose-to-nose with Bill Blatt. “Wilson,” she said in a low, coaxing voice. “W-I. What about Marlow Whipp: W-H?”

  Bill Blatt squirmed. “Aunt Vida—we weren’t asked to check into Marlow Whipp’s account.”

  “Nonsense!” snapped Vida. “You must have seen it.” She gave Bill a little shake. “How much?”

  I saw Bill Blatt’s Adam’s apple bob. “Uh … twelve grand and change.”

  With an air of triumph, Vida released her nephew. “Well! If that doesn’t beat all! This is a monkey-and-a-parrot-time if I ever saw it!”

  Bill Blatt and Sam Heppner were both looking mystified. I, however, was beginning to see the light. “So what did you learn at the high school, Vida?”

  My House & Home editor all but simpered. “Very interesting, I assure you.” She progressed to her desk, where she glanced at her mail and turned up her nose. “Wendy Wilson’s colleagues find her popularity with students highly suspect. They think she’s too easy on them. As for the students themselves, it all depends on who you talk to. Grace Grundle’s granddaughter, who is a fine upstanding Presbyterian girl, doesn’t think much of Wendy as a teacher. She says she plays favorites. But some of the others”—Vida leaned on her desk, and her gaze flickered from me to Bill to Sam and back again—“sing her praises to the sky. Their eyes are out of focus and they don’t know Charles Dickens from Slim Pickens. What does that tell you?”