The Alpine Decoy

by Mary Daheim

  “Gee,” said the friendly voice at the other end of the line, “I don’t know who fixes those things around here. There used to be a bunch of hippies at Happy Valley who worked on foreign cars. Good mechanics, too.”

  “It might be something simple,” I said, sensing the onslaught of a panic attack. “The Jag’s green. My name is Emma Lord. How about taking me to a Chevron or a BP station here in Sequim?” I had plastic for the two oil companies. My budget for the three-day trip was two hundred and fifty dollars. If the repair was over fifty bucks—and when was it ever under?—I’d have to charge it.

  “We’d better haul you into Port Angeles,” said the man at the other end. “You’ll have better luck there with that Jag. See you around two. More or less.”

  Back outside, I prowled the sands, feeling a cool breeze on my face and hearing the tide slap against the shore. Dungeness Spit snakes five miles out into the strait, with one of the last two manually operated lighthouses in the continental United States. Recently, I’d heard it was scheduled for conversion to a computerized operation. So much for romance. But I, too, was trying to convert. Outmoded romantic notions were impeding my personal progress as well.

  Some seventeen miles across the strait, I could make out the cluster of buildings that was Victoria, British Columbia. I hadn’t been to Victoria in twenty years. Indeed, I hadn’t been on the Olympic Peninsula since then, either. My plan to drive around the loop was hitting a snag. Trying to avoid added pressure on myself, I’d resolved not to make reservations. I dealt with deadlines every day on the job in Alpine. But the ferry from Edmonds to Kingston had been full; traffic heading across the Hood Canal Floating Bridge had been heavy. Maybe I should go back to the restaurant and call ahead to book a motel room. If nothing else, it would help kill time while I waited for the tow truck.

  With my short brown hair tousled by the wind—and sand in my open-toed shoes—I trudged the long, narrow spit, my eyes straying to the rugged bulk of the Olympic Mountains that seemed to rise almost directly above the highway. I was accustomed to mountains. In Alpine, I live among them, eight miles west of the Cascade summit, in a town built into the rocky face of Tonga Ridge. Fleetingly, I thought of my little log house. Already I missed it. But, as my House and Home editor, Vida Runkel, had advised, I needed to get away. Alone. I went back into the restaurant which was still busy. Judging from the license plates in the parking lot, most of the lunch crowd were tourists like me.

  The motels were also doing a brisk business. They were all booked, except for the ones that were out of my price range. The bed and breakfast establishments were full, too. Discouraged, I went into the bar and ordered a Pepsi, then felt my mouth twist with irony. Here I was, Emma Lord, forty-two years old, mother of a twenty-one-year-old son, never married, university graduate, newspaper owner, fairly bright, reasonably attractive, and sitting alone at a bar on a Tuesday afternoon drinking soda pop. No wonder I needed time to reflect. I felt like a real loser.

  The woman tending bar was younger than I, but not by much. She was pretty, her makeup carefully if generously applied to hide a sallow complexion. At the moment, I was her only customer.

  “Where you from?” she asked after giving me my Pepsi.

  I told her. She looked vague. “Idaho?”

  “No.” I explained where Alpine was located. It didn’t surprise me that she hadn’t heard of my hometown. With only four thousand residents living in relative isolation off Stevens Pass, Alpine isn’t exactly a Washington State hub.

  “Traveling alone?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

  I nodded.

  She looked vaguely shocked. “That takes guts these days. Too many creeps out there.” Using her white ceramic coffee mug, she gestured in the general direction of the entrance. “You’re not camping, I hope?”

  It was my turn to look shocked. “Oh, no!” I’ve always felt that if I had a sudden urge to sleep outdoors, I’d join the army and get paid for it. On the off chance that the bartender might have a brother or a friend in the hostelry business, I told her of my dilemma.

  The best she could do was suggest places I’d already called. Frowning into her coffee mug, she shook her head. “You don’t know anybody around here?” Apparently, it seemed inconceivable that a stranger should have no local connections. As a small-town dweller, I understood her thinking. Everyone knows everyone else, and half of them are somehow related. It was no different in Clallam County than it was in Skykomish County.

  The bartender’s question jolted my memory. “As a matter of fact, I do. Sort of,” I added lamely. Before buying The Advocate and moving to Alpine, I had toiled for seventeen years on The Oregonian in Portland. My best friend on the paper was Mavis Marley Fulkerston, now retired and living in Tigard, Oregon. But Mavis’s daughter, Jackie, had gotten married on St. Valentine’s Day and moved to Port Angeles. I hadn’t attended the wedding, but I’d received an invitation. I racked my brain trying to remember her husband’s name. With a dawning sense of doom, I decided that I could hardly barge in on someone whose last name I didn’t know. On the other hand, I’d sent Jackie and her groom a toaster oven.

  The tow truck arrived just as I was finishing my drink. Overtipping the sympathetic bartender, I hurried outside. After checking the battery and finding it wasn’t the cause of my trouble, we hit the road to Port Angeles. My gloomy mood persisted all the way past Morse Creek and into town. Things weren’t looking up half an hour later when the mechanic at the Chevron station announced that he couldn’t find the trouble. Could I wait for Jake? He knew a little something about foreign cars.

  I didn’t have any choice, but since Jake and his knowledge were off somewhere in the mysterious West End, I resumed cudgeling my brain for Jackie Fulkerston’s married name. I went halfway through the alphabet in my mind, and stopped at M. With my eyes locked on the Jag which was up on the hoist, I snapped my fingers. One of the mechanics darted me a curious look.

  “Melcher,” I said firmly. “Do you know a young couple named Melcher? They moved here late last winter.”

  The mechanic, who was young and needed a shave, closed one eye and wrinkled his thin nose. “Melcher. ’Ninety-two Wrangler. ’Eighty-nine Honda Accord. Yeah, they come in here. She had a lube job on the Honda last week.”

  Figuring that the newlywed Melchers wouldn’t have made it into the current Port Angeles phone book, I trotted over to the corner booth and dialed Directory Assistance. Jackie’s husband was named Paul. Their phone was answered on the second ring.

  “Emma!” shrieked Jackie Fulkerston Melcher. “How funny!” To my dismay, she began to sob.

  “Jackie, what’s wrong?” I asked, alarmed.

  Two gulps later, she replied: “I’m pregnant! Isn’t it wonderful?” She sobbed some more.

  “Well … it sure is.” I frowned into the stainless steel pay phone panel. “I … uh … just thought I’d call and say hi since I’m passing through.”

  Jackie sniffed loudly before speaking again. “You’ve got to stop in and have a drink or something. Where are you?”

  I told her, then added that my car was temporarily out of commission. I was beginning to feel embarrassed.

  Jackie, however, was a font of sympathy. “Oh, how awful when you’re on a trip! I hate it when that happens! Remember the time Mom had to drive down to Coos Bay and her wheels fell off?”

  I did, but my version wasn’t quite the same. Mavis had hit a deep rut while trying to turn around off the highway and had jarred her axle. I’d forgotten that Jackie was inclined to dramatic exaggeration.

  “Cars are such a pain,” Jackie was saying, and I could envision her wide mouth turning down at the corners and her gray eyes rolling heavenward. “Listen, I’ll be down to get you in five minutes. We’re right up here on Lincoln Hill. Oh, I’m so glad you called! It’s like the answer to a prayer!”

  I was properly surprised. “It is?” Not having seen Jackie since her mother’s retirement party two years ago, I couldn’t imagine wh
y she’d been invoking divine intervention to hear my voice.

  “Yes! It’s incredible, the next best thing to having Mom show up. Paul and I need an inquiring mind.”

  I was beginning to think Jackie could use any kind of mind that operated on a more even keel than her own. “Oh? How come?” My tone was neutral.

  Jackie lowered her voice, and instead of a tearful vibrato, she giggled. “It’s so weird, Emma. You won’t believe this!” She tittered, she gasped, she let out an odd howling sound. “We found a body! In our basement! Isn’t that great!” Jackie burst into fresh sobs.

  There was a bit of comfort in finding someone whose mental state was more unstable than my own. Or so I mused, as I leaned against a lamp post at the corner of Ninth and Lincoln, waiting for Jackie Melcher to pick me up.

  I wasn’t alarmed. The alleged body could be anything, including a dog, a squirrel, or a gopher. Jackie’s sense of high drama was probably exacerbated by pregnancy. She’d always been a volatile girl, full of energy one minute, given to morose moodiness the next. She would often exasperate her mother but never her father who doted on his daughter.

  Fortunately for the Fulkerstons, their two sons were rock-solid specimens. One was an oceanographer in California; the other produced films for the City of Portland. Jackie, as I recalled, had majored in French at my alma matter, the University of Oregon.

  But, I reminded myself, while Jackie was young and pregnant, I had no such excuses for capricious behavior. After twenty-two years of waiting for the father of my son to get up the nerve to leave his wife, I’d come to the realization that while Tom Cavanaugh might care for me as much as I cared for him, he put duty above love. Of course he’d call it honor, as men often do, but it boiled down to the same thing. Sandra Cavanaugh was the mother of his other two children, and when it came to mental instability, I couldn’t hold a candle to her. But then neither could Napoleon. Sandra suffered from a variety of emotional problems, all no doubt caused by the fact that she was born rich. Or so I’d always told myself.

  Tom and I had met when I interned on The Seattle Times. Sandra’s mental disorders were only beginning to surface, but living with her had become sufficiently difficult that Tom had sought comfort in my arms. He’d also apparently sought something in Sandra’s because we both got pregnant about the same time. Not without regret, Tom had chosen to stay with his wife. I chose to leave Seattle and have my baby in Mississippi where my brother, Ben, was serving as a priest in the home missions. I also chose—fiercely and proudly—to raise Adam alone. If Tom wouldn’t give me his name, he wasn’t going to give me any help, by God. For almost twenty years, I shut him out of my life. And out of Adam’s, which wasn’t entirely fair to either of them.

  In the past two years, I’d relented. Tom had shown up in Alpine, and I’d succumbed to his entreaties to let him meet Adam. Father and son had gotten along very well.

  Father and Mother had, too, so much so that when I’d attended a weekly newspaper conference at Lake Chelan in June, Tom and I had ended up in bed.

  For three days and three nights, we pretended it was forever. We knew better, though. Tom no longer needed Sandra’s fortune as a base for his newspaper ventures, but Sandra needed Tom. He wouldn’t forsake her, and I would have loved him less if he had. Tom neither loved nor lived lightly, which I suppose is why I could never quite let go. We are too much alike.

  But there was no future in it. If I wanted to marry, maybe even have another child, I had to put the past aside. “Keep your options open,” Vida Runkel had counseled. “You’ve put up a barrier to everyone but Tommy.”

  Only Vida could get away with calling Tom Tommy. And only Vida could speak so frankly to me. Even my brother, in his kind but indecisive manner, wouldn’t take such a resolute stand. Ben not only sees both sides of every issue, he considers all the angles and contours. I am prone to do the same. Ben vacillates; I’m objective. Either way, the result is that it’s very hard for both of us to make crucial decisions.

  Thus Vida was right. I needed a shove in order to get going. Over the years, there had been a few other men in my life, but never one I really loved. I wouldn’t let myself love them, asserted Vida. I had built a dream house on sand, and the tide was coming in fast.

  Watching traffic pass by, half of which bore out-of-county license plates, I thought of Sheriff Milo Dodge. Like me, Milo was afraid of letting go. Divorced for the past six years, Milo refused to commit himself to his current ladylove, Honoria Whitman. Honoria was getting impatient. I didn’t blame her. But I didn’t blame Milo, either. Like me, he was afraid. Sometimes I wondered if Milo and I were afraid of each other. We spent quite a bit of time together but had only kissed once, which was sort of an accident. Or so I had thought in the heat of the moment.

  A white Honda Accord pulled up at the curb. Behind the wheel, Jackie Melcher waved frantically, her heart-shaped face wreathed in smiles. I jumped in and we shot across the intersection before I could fasten my seat belt.

  “Emma, you look great! You got your hair cut!”

  I laughed, patting the gamine style I’d acquired not long before going off to Chelan. “It’s nice and cool for summer,” I said noncommittally.

  Jackie was heading through the main part of town, past the handsome old red brick courthouse I remembered from my last visit. A large new modern building stood next door. Apparently it now housed the county offices.

  “The old courthouse is a museum,” Jackie said, following my gaze as she stopped at a traffic light.

  “How do you like Port Angeles?” I inquired, having decided to hold off asking Jackie about her alleged body in the basement. It was the sort of question best discussed over strong coffee or a weak drink.

  Jackie wrinkled her button nose. “It’s okay. The setting’s great. But I miss Portland.”

  “Me, too,” I replied. After four years in Alpine, I still missed the vitality and the variety of the city. My plans to spend as many weekends as possible in my native Seattle had never quite worked out. I was lucky to get into the city once every couple of months.

  But Jackie was right about her surroundings. Port Angeles was nestled at the base of Mount Angeles which seemed to glower over the town like a sullen guardian angel. The outskirts were dense with evergreens, signaling the start of the vast Olympic National Park. While new businesses seemed to abound on the long stretch of highway that led into the heart of Port Angeles, the mountains to the south and the strait on the north were a reminder that residents lived close to Nature.

  We turned on First Street, which is also Highway 101. The houses were sturdy and old, though none reached quite as far back as the Victorian era. Like Alpine, Port Angeles was built into the foothills of the mountains. Unlike Alpine, the ascent was more gradual, starting at sea level.

  Jackie pulled into a paved driveway that led to a detached garage that couldn’t have held more than one modern car. I stared. The house that was set back among the Douglas firs was huge. The style suggested a Spanish mission reinterpreted by a late Victorian mentality. A giant monkey tree stood in the middle of the front lawn, with a smaller, less imposing oak near the corner of the house. A concrete retaining wall separated the newlyweds’ house from a two-story ramshackle edifice that looked deserted. Jackie followed my gaze and emitted a little snort of disgust.

  “That was the old livery stable that served the whole neighborhood. It’s a wreck. I don’t know why it doesn’t fall down in a strong wind.” She led me back onto the sidewalk so that I could get a better view of the house from the front.

  Several of the camelia bushes appeared to be at death’s door. The magnolias didn’t look much better, and even the peonies seemed lifeless. Three stories of faded amber paint, a wraparound porch with peeling Moorish arches, a big lawn choked by weeds, a scarred river rock foundation, and a roof with missing shingles all combined to validate Jackie’s description.

  “You must have gotten a real deal on this place,” I said.

  Jackie
laughed immoderately. “We sure did. It was free.” She started back toward the driveway. “Paul inherited it from his uncle,” she explained, leading the way to the back door. “Uncle Arthur lived here until about fifteen years ago when he got Alzheimer’s and had to go into a nursing home. Uncle Arthur died last year. Aunt Wilma bought a condo in Sequim, but she died before he did. We decided to move here and fix the place up. That’s how we found the body.”

  The interior of the house appeared to be in much better shape than the exterior. We were in the kitchen, which had been renovated and enlarged. I guessed that Jackie and her groom had enclosed the back porch. Gleaming black appliances were set off by red and white accents. A white tiled island stood in the middle, with a rack of stainless steel cookware suspended overhead. The basic design was orderly, but the counters were cluttered with pizza boxes, old newspapers, grocery bags, and empty bottled water containers. Jackie headed straight for the refrigerator and pulled out a jug of white wine.

  “I can’t drink but you can,” she said, waving the bottle at me. “I’ll have some mineral water.”

  I didn’t question her abstinence, though I recalled downing reasonable quantities of Canadian whiskey with Ben while I awaited the birth of Adam. Neither Ben nor I ever got seriously drunk, and my son seemed sober enough when he finally arrived. But this was over twenty years later, and perhaps medical knowledge had made progress. Then again, doctors were still practicing. They probably never would get it perfect.

  Carrying a delicate long-stemmed glass, I followed Jackie into what she called the den, but what I suspected had once been a library. This space was also littered, with magazines, videocassettes, tapes, CDs, and more newspapers. It appeared that Jackie didn’t spend her spare time cleaning house.

  The room was freshly painted in a soft shade of green. A tiled fireplace was flanked by glass-fronted bookcases that contained mostly paperbacks. Along the middle molding were the brass heads of monks, at least a dozen of them, their expressions ranging from puckish to surly. The furnishings were sparse, befitting a monk’s cell. The absence of more than a small sofa, a huge cushiony footstool, and a TV set didn’t bespeak a disdain for worldly goods, but rather a credit limit on a charge card.