The Alpine Decoy

by Mary Daheim

  “And you thought I was crazy!” Vida huffed as we climbed up Sixth Street from her house to Marlow Whipp’s store. It was after six, and Marlow had closed at five. “Cartons! Carla! The girl can’t even count properly! She probably saw two! Dog food, I’ll bet!”

  “You’re tall and I’m not. Carta’s shorter than both of us. I would have brought Milo along if he hadn’t gone off with Honoria.” We cut down the alley, a dirt track lined with garbage cans, tricycles, garden implements, and an occasional cat. Blackberry vines grew helter-skelter over sagging fences. Morning glory wound around clothesline poles and trellises. There were nettles, too, and great clumps of weeds that threatened to choke out the ferns. We were a mere block away from Vida’s neat bungalow and only two from the Campbells’ handsome home, yet the neighborhood changed drastically between Tyee and Spruce Streets. It was probably because the houses were not only old but small, and too close to the high school. Parking had long been a problem in the area. If Alpine had a slum, this was it. Fortunately, the blight covered no more than three blocks.

  “And Shane!” Vida’s voice rang out on the quiet May evening. “Are he and Libby getting married? Is that what Wendy and Cyndi have been hinting? How did they meet? Oh, I know—in Seattle. But how? Did she get herself transferred up here to be near him? It must be serious.”

  It was pointless to try to hush Vida. Her voice sounded like a trumpet, and over the fences, I saw at least a couple of heads turn in our direction. But we had almost reached the rear of Marlow’s store, and Vida grew silent.

  The lid of the Dumpster was heavy, but we managed. I marveled that Carla had opened it on her own.

  “We should have brought Roger,” Vida mumbled, holding onto her straw gardening hat as she leaned into the Dumpster. “We could have lifted him in here.”

  And left him there was the evil thought that flashed through my mind. Dismissing such cruel notions, I concentrated on the task at hand. “Well? How many cartons? Two? Or two dozen?”

  Vida harrumphed. “Carla’s right, for once. There are quite a few. You’re right, too. Cigarettes. Wrigley’s gum. More cigarettes.”

  I could see into the Dumpster, but I couldn’t reach as far as Vida. She was bending way over, and I tried not to think about the target her rear end was providing for any of her local detractors. “What’s that?” I asked, motioning at a flat piece of cardboard on her left. “‘Death Something-or-Other.’ It doesn’t sound like groceries to me.”

  “‘Death Row/Interscope,’” Vida replied promptly. “Goodness, how gruesome! It can’t be canned goods. Whatever happened to the Jolly Green Giant? Here, a box marked ‘Tommy Boy.’ ‘Jive.’ Hmmmm …” Vida continued to rummage. “‘Atlantic,’” she called from deeper yet in the Dumpster. “‘Warner Brothers.’ It seems these are recording companies. Since when,” she demanded, straightening up and resettling her hat on her head, “does Marlow Whipp sell records?”

  I felt as mystified as Vida looked. “I didn’t see any records—or tapes or CDs—when I was in the store the other day. Surely he’d have a big display. Especially with that many.” I pointed to the Dumpster that contained the empty cartons. “Can you tell if the boxes held tapes or what?”

  Vida shot me a scathing look. “Oh, good heavens! What’s wrong with a regular record? Long-play or forty-five or seventy-eight? What’s all this nonsense about teeny-weeny discs and tapes that come unwound like so many snakes all over the place? Roger is starting to listen to music, and his room looks like a ticker-tape parade!” Catching herself in a rare criticism of her grandson, Vida looked chagrined. “It’s not his fault, of course. I’m sure the companies make those tapes so that they can’t be reused, and the poor children have to buy more. Roger is the victim of a Madison Avenue marketing ploy.”

  Roger as victim of anything short of a Scud missile struck me as unlikely. This, however, was not the time to argue the point. Indeed, it never was with Vida. “Kids don’t buy records anymore,” I pointed out. “Tapes and CDs—that’s it. But Marlow would have them prominently displayed. Maybe even some promotional material.”

  Foregoing my assistance, Vida closed the Dumpster. “He might be just starting,” she suggested. “Like the espresso machine. Marlow’s such a dunce he probably hasn’t figured out how to sell music, either.”

  A couple of eight year olds came roaring down the alley on small dirt bikes. They paid no attention to us, but we couldn’t count on that kind of indifference from adults. I suggested we leave. Vida concurred. She asked if I’d had dinner. Fearing yet another reprise of the casserole, I lied and said I had.

  “That’s too bad,” she lamented as we trudged back down the alley. “I thought we might drive down to the Venison Inn and have supper together. We could mull.”

  Taken aback, I allowed that I hadn’t eaten much. “I could have something light and keep you company,” I offered, sounding uncommonly meek.

  Vida paused to examine her soiled gardening clothes. “I should change,” she muttered.

  I was still wearing the old clothes I’d had on while doing my Saturday chores. “It’s Alpine. It’s us. Nobody will

  But Vida cared. She would not “go downtown” looking like a slavey, as she put it. “We’ll change, and I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes,” she said, checking her small jeweled watch. “Seven, straight up.”

  I agreed. My car was parked on Tyee Street in front of her house. It needed washing, and I felt guilty. The Jag was my only material pride and joy. I’d neglected it for the sake of my oven, which was low on my list of personal priorities. It served me right that during my absence someone had etched FUCK YOU on the hood.

  “Really,” said Vida, “how can these youngsters be so crude? Though words are words, and if they’d written ‘Par-take in marital relations’ you would be amused, not offended.”

  “I’m not offended,” I said with a grin. “I’ve raised a son. There’s nothing I haven’t heard.”

  “Thank heavens my girls were grown before all this filth became so ordinary. Of course, the shock value is debased by common usage. I’m wearing slacks,” Vida added as she headed through her garden gate.

  “Okay,” I called back. I paused in the act of wiping off the obscenity with a Kleenex. “Vida!” I shouted. She stopped at the steps to her porch. “That’s it! Obscenity! Explicit lyrics! Censorship!”

  At a trot, Vida came down the path. “Emma, are you out of your mind?” She glanced up and down the quiet street. “What will the neighbors think?”

  Making feverish hand gestures, I waved her into silence. “The recordings. Tapes, CDs, whatever. The do-gooders who’ve banned rock and rap music. The kids can’t buy that stuff in Alpine. Except,” I added, on a note of triumph, “from Marlow Whipp.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  IF VIDA WAS surprised when I ordered the steak sandwich with a side of fries and a green salad, she gave no sign. Rather, she was too intrigued with my theory about Marlow Whipp’s grocery store. After giving our order, her first question was what Marlow’s illicit trade had to do with Wendy and Todd Wilson.

  “As before,” I told her. “They provided the stuff, in this case, not drugs, but recordings. Marlow is indeed the middleman, peddling to the high school, maybe junior high and even grade school kids. Alpine Middle School is only a block away from your house. That’s two blocks from Marlow.”

  Vida absorbed the information. “The grade school is across town, though. But,” she added accusingly, as if I should be personally responsible, “your parochial school is much closer, on Fourth and Cascade.” Obviously, Vida felt that Catholic morals were far more likely to be corrupted than those of the public school—Protestant—children.

  I didn’t argue the point. There were Catholics who would be every bit as hidebound as their Protestant brethren. There also would be those inclined to greater liberalism. “It takes all kinds,” I murmured. And we had them at St. Mildred’s, for better or for worse.

  “Where,” Vida asked, after
drinking half her ice water at a gulp, “do the Wilsons get these recordings?”

  I shrugged. “They’ve got a contact someplace. Seattle, maybe. Of course, they have to pay up front. I don’t know what the profit margin would be, but I have a feeling they aren’t as rich as we think they are. I mean, they’ve got extra cash, but X-rated records don’t bring in what drugs would.”

  Vida nodded. “Marlow makes something, too. We’ve been thinking in the thousands. Hundreds would be more likely. Still, it would explain why the Wilsons moved their bank account. They didn’t want anyone around here to notice how much money was coming in and going out.”

  “Coming in, anyway. I bet they deal in cash at the distributor level.” I gave Vida a sheepish look. “I don’t even know if any of this is illegal. The legislature has tried to make it a criminal act to sell offensive music to minors, but the state supreme court is expected to rule otherwise. Fuzzy Baugh and the council haven’t passed any laws. It’s mainly a boycott at this point, and the churches have enough clout to make it work.”

  Vida, who had ordered pot roast, waited until our waitress had delivered the salads before speaking again. “It’s a letdown,” she complained. “If it had been drugs—and, of course, I’m glad it’s not—that would have been dreadful—then we might have had a connection with Kelvin Greene. But there isn’t any. Unless …” She brightened a bit. “Jerome Cole was a musician, wasn’t he?”

  I made a gesture of dismissal. “Jazz. I doubt he had any contacts with the recording business. At least not with distribution.”

  Vida deflated. “We’ve made no progress. I’m ashamed of us.”

  Silently, I agreed. How long had Wendy and Todd Wilson been in the black-market record business? Probably not long, I mused. Perhaps since the start of school; maybe only after the ban had been observed in the past few months. Any previous signs of affluence were no doubt due to the fact that they had no kids. I could understand that. I took a notepad from my handbag and wrote, “Go to bank Mon. A.M. M.O. $200.” Yes, I, too, could take a long trip if I weren’t shelling out big chunks of my income for Adam every month.

  My steak sandwich arrived along with Vida’s pot roast. We were both unnaturally quiet. The Venison Inn, however, was busy as usual with Saturday night diners. The dentist, Dr. Bob Starr, and his wife were in the opposite booth, no doubt girding for their daughter’s wedding, which was coming up over the Memorial Day weekend. On our way in, we had seen Stella and Richie Magruder. Stella had stopped me, advising that I hadn’t quite gotten the knack of the new haircut yet. I told her I’d been cleaning my oven. Vida, of course, had known just about everybody present, including one of her nephews, Ross Blatt, and his wife, Lynnette.

  “The carrots aren’t done,” Vida remarked, eating them anyway.

  “I don’t have carrots.” Neither of us sounded very interested in our food.

  “Is there any point in telling Milo about Marlow’s sideline?” Vida wondered aloud. “All it would do is raise a hue and cry with the antismut people.”

  I forked up some rare steak and soggy toast. “We’ve got to let him know, just to keep him filled in. Vida, how do the Presbyterians feel about this issue?”

  Vida pursed her lips. “It’s come up.”

  “And?”

  Stirring gravy into her mashed potatoes, Vida threw me an icy look. “We’re divided. You’d be surprised how divided Presbyterians can get. It didn’t used to be that way.”

  I suppressed a smile. “Really? Like how?”

  “Well,” Vida began, knife and fork poised, “there are traditionalists and there are … ah … modernists. As a rule, I adhere to tradition. It’s always so much more sensible. But on this music to-do, I felt bound to support free speech. Being a journalist, and all.” Vida gave me an appealing look. “At the last Women’s Institute meeting—the first Tuesday of May—we had quite an argument. I didn’t tell you about it because …” She actually blushed. “I didn’t want it to get into the paper. It made us sound foolish.”

  “Vida!” I didn’t know whether to laugh or scold.

  “If it were your Wild Eyes or whatever you Catholics call it, you’d do the same,” Vida asserted.

  “I don’t belong to the YLIs,” I said, not even sure if the Young Ladies Institute existed in the post-Vatican II Church. If it did, it was probably called something like Single-Again Christians. SACs. It figured.

  “The discussion got quite heated,” Vida continued. “Jean Campbell called for a vote on whether or not to join the boycott. We tied, eleven to eleven. Grace Grundle—she chairs—was asked to cast the deciding ballot. Grace abstained. We’re going to reconsider when we meet the first Tuesday in June.”

  My distress over Vida’s own form of censorship was diverted by her mention of Jean Campbell’s role. “Was Jean for or against the boycott?”

  “Oh, all for it. She can be a terrible bluenose.” Vida smirked. “It’s funny, isn’t it? Her own daughter smuggling ribald recordings into town! Oh, dear—I mustn’t gloat!”

  I swallowed my last french fry and put down my fork. “Not her daughter,” I said abruptly. “Her son.”

  Vida stared. “What?”

  “Shane.” I waited to see if Vida had joined my wavelength. She hadn’t, but it wasn’t her fault. Vida hadn’t shopped as much in the city as I had. “Fred Meyer sells recordings, tapes, the lot, in all their stores. That’s the connection. I’ll bet Shane Campbell was getting those shipments through his former contacts in Seattle.”

  Vida’s eyes made a circuit of the restaurant, floor to ceiling. “Well now. And Wendy was the marketing device, spurring on the students. My, my.” She savored the deduction, then frowned. “It still doesn’t help us find our killer.”

  “No.” But my voice didn’t carry conviction. It seemed to me that our discovery should lead us closer to the murderer. I just couldn’t see how. Then.

  Sunday’s priest was from Wenatchee. He was tall, thin, and dry. It had started to rain again while Vida and I had eaten dinner, with the clouds gathering in over the mountains shortly after six o’clock. However, the church seemed stuffy that morning, and the congregation grew restless.

  “At least,” Francine Wells asserted in the vestibule after Mass, “we haven’t had to put up with any Jesuits. They’re so damned patronizing. They think they’re such hot stuff, and they look down their noses at everybody else.”

  Never having met a Jesuit I didn’t like, I kept quiet. Betsy O’Toole, who, with her husband, Jake, owned the Grocery Basket, sidled up to Francine.

  “Relax, Frannie. My cousin’s daughter works at the Chancery office in Seattle. She saw the tentative new assignment list. We’re getting Father Dennis Kelly. Incredible as it seems, he’s young, he’s smart, he’s a great guy. I hear he’s good-looking, too.”

  Instead of cheering, Francine groaned. “Father What-A-Waste! I know we’re short of priests, but we’re also short of men! Why can’t the ugly ones have the vocations?”

  Roseanna Bayard patted Francine’s chic shoulder. “They do, Francine. When was the last time you saw a handsome priest under fifty?” Roseanna glanced at me and looked sheepish. “Except your brother, Emma. He’s cute. But he wasn’t here very long.”

  “Ben was on vacation,” I responded. “Where is this marvel of a Father Kelly coming from? I can’t believe we’re getting a real pastor.”

  Again, it was Betsy who was in the know. “He’s been teaching at a seminary in California. I guess they had to close it down, and he was surplussed. He’s originally from Tacoma, so he asked to be assigned to a Pacific Northwest parish. We got lucky. If we didn’t have the school, we’d probably be stuck with visitors and lay people.”

  As usual, the post-liturgy crowd was growing. In Father Fitz’s time, we’d always had coffee and doughnuts after Mass in the school hall. But without a pastor to guide us, we were relegated to social gatherings in the vestibule. Ed and Shirley Bronsky were standing next to me. Shirley wore a red-and-white check
ered sundress that revealed a lot of flesh. But Shirley had a lot of flesh, and it would have been pretty hard to hide. Ed wore a Budweiser T-shirt with tan shorts. He was not a pretty sight. But he also wore an air of enthusiasm.

  “Betsy! Francine! Roseanna! You’re just the people I want to see! We’ve got to set up appointments for the school special.” He shot me a quick look, probably to make sure I was paying attention. Next to him, Shirley beamed with pride. “Groceries for graduation parties, clothes for Mom and the grad, photographs of the happy occasion. You’re all going to make a mint off of this, but you’ve got to advertise!”

  The three female merchants looked as astonished as I felt. Obviously, they weren’t acquainted with the new Ed Bronsky.

  “Ed,” Francine said in a soft voice, taking him by the short sleeve of his T-shirt. “It’s Sunday.”

  “Hey,” Ed replied, still full of enthusiasm, “no rest for the wicked. I’m just getting my second wind in this wild and crazy world of advertising! It’s sell, sell, sell! Ask Emma. She’ll tell you how I’m single-handedly picking up the beat for Alpine’s economy.”

  Smiling weakly, I acknowledged Ed’s assertion. “He’s been a real go-getter lately. New accounts, bigger, better-looking ads—he even chased Lloyd Campbell up a dead end the other day. Ed just won’t quit.”

  Betsy O’Toole was laughing in her deep, rich style. “Oh, good grief! The Grocery Basket may have to go to color inserts—like Safeway! What will Jake think?”

  Briefly, Ed lost some of his bloom. But he remained game. “Inserts, special editions, color—we can handle it, Betsy.”

  Betsy looked as if she were seriously considering the idea. The advent of Safeway the previous year had definitely provided real competition for the O’Tooles. “We’ve been thinking about staying open twenty-four hours,” she said thoughtfully. “I’d hate to do it—so would Jake—but it seems to be the trend. Good grief, Lloyd Campbell’s working Saturdays now. I saw his van last weekend parked up by First Hill, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock in the morning.”