Alpine Hero

by Mary Daheim

  California had become a dirty word to a lot of Washingtonians, but I didn’t number myself among them. I’d hired a Californian in the form of Leo Walsh. The father of my son lived in California. I’d always enjoyed Disneyland, and it was in California. I rolled my eyes at Vida as Stella informed Oren that she wasn’t sure where Ms. Whitman was from, but could he please hustle his butt and get her a double martini?

  Oren complied. I’d ordered a bourbon and water; Vida primly asked for a glass of shooting sherry. The other customers in the dimly lit and unatmospheric bar were again absorbed in their drinks, their conversations, and themselves.

  “You understand,” Vida began in a serious voice, “that we have a deadline of tomorrow afternoon.” Stella nodded. She knew about deadlines because of the weekly ad she ran in The Advocate. “Milo may not release details until it’s too late for us to print them. I—Emma and I—would like to hear your version before we get something distorted or not at all.”

  Stella fingered her unnaturally golden curls. “Okay, like what?”

  Vida rested her cheek on one hand. “Well … like, as you put it, the basic facts. When did Honoria call to make her appointment?”

  “Saturday.” Stella’s answer was prompt. “Late morning. I took the call myself, in between Shirley Bronsky and Darla Puckett. I was surprised, because this is only about the second time—Honoria, is it? That’s a weird name, if you ask me—that Honoria’s come to us. She said she wanted to try the facial. I wasn’t even sure who she was until she gave me her phone number and I realized the prefix was in Startup.”

  Vida never took notes. Her memory was as comprehensive as it was infallible. “Did she mention her guests?” Vida asked.

  Our drinks arrived. Oren tried to linger, but the silence enforced by Vida sent him back to the bar.

  “Her guests?” Stella repeated the question after taking a deep sip of her martini. “No. She didn’t say anything except that she wanted a facial. She’d heard it was something new that we offered. She sounded like a very fussy person, the kind of client who asks a million questions. Product ingredients, deep-cleansing methods, how much of this is used, how long does that take, is this person you’ve hired trained, are you sure your cosmetics don’t contain animal fats or the fur off some monkey’s behind? People are getting too damned wrapped up in all this environmental stuff. Look what it’s done to this town.” Stella took another big gulp.

  “But Honoria changed the appointment later.” Vida daintily quaffed a drop of sherry.

  “This afternoon. Well,” Stella amended, “just before noon, actually. Laurie took that call. Honoria asked if it was all right if her sister-in-law came instead of her. I guess Honoria had changed her mind. Laurie said yes.”

  The tone of Stella’s voice indicated that Laurie probably said yes to everything, including war, pillage, and pestilence. The double martini was half-gone. Stella turned toward the bar and jerked her head at Oren. I hoped he didn’t assume we all wanted a second round. I was trying to concentrate. Unlike Vida’s, my memory isn’t perfect.

  “Now, that’s very odd,” Vida was saying as she tipped her rumpled derby off her forehead. “You either want to have a facial or you don’t. Why would Honoria substitute her sister-in-law?”

  Stella uttered a little laugh. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter to me as long as it’s not a cancellation. Honoria, Kay, Queen Elizabeth—it’s still twenty-five bucks.”

  Vida was looking thoughtful. “Did Becca know the difference? Between Honoria and Kay, that is to say.”

  Oren had appeared with Stella’s second drink. She asked if he was running a tab. He said he was. Vida and I both protested, but Stella waved her perfectly manicured hand.

  “My treat. Or bribe.” She turned to me. “You still need a haircut, Emma.” Then she looked back at Vida. “Becca didn’t know either of them. Hey, Vida, what happened to your hat?” Stella giggled. The first double was taking effect.

  “Never mind,” Vida snapped. “Tell me this, Stella—did you have any calls or did anyone come in to inquire about either of the Whitman women’s appointment?”

  Stella started to giggle again, apparently thought better of it, and suddenly sobered. “You know, that’s a strange question. Milo asked me the same thing. Laurie said somebody did call while I was out to lunch. Around one, maybe. I forgot about that because I wasn’t there.”

  Vida had stiffened in her chair. I felt myself tense, too, as I found my voice before Vida did. “What did this caller want?” I asked.

  Stella had set aside the empty glass and was drinking from the fresh martini. “I’m not sure,” she replied after taking a swallow. “You know Laurie—she’s kind of spacey. I guess he just wanted to make sure that Ms. Whitman had an appointment.”

  “ ‘He’?” Vida pounced on the pronoun.

  Even in her alcohol-induced haze, Stella seemed to understand the significance of the question. “That’s right, it was a man. As I said, I didn’t think much about it at the time. I suppose it was because I figured he was picking her up or something.”

  “Picking up who?” Vida was leaning into the table, her bust brushing the sherry glass.

  Stella shot Vida a hostile look. “Who? What do you mean ‘who’? The Whitman facial, who else? Oh!” Suddenly Stella looked chagrined. “You mean which Whitman! My God, I never … Damn!” She stared at the olive floating in her drink.

  “Did Laurie recognize the man’s voice?” I asked, hoping to divert Stella from her self-reproach.

  But the hairdresser shook her head, slowly, sadly. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Laurie.”

  That sounded like an impossible task. But I could tell from the set of Vida’s jaw that she was up to it. It looked as if it was going to be a long Monday night.

  Chapter Three

  LAURIE MARSHALL STILL lived with her parents. I found it embarrassing to discover that I knew so little about the young woman I’d seen at Stella’s for the past five years. Vida, of course, had the knowledge tucked inside her omniscient brain. Laurie was approximately twenty-five, had attended beauty school in Everett, and had been engaged twice, but never married. Her parents lived on Cascade Street across from the middle school. Her father, Martin Marshall, owned Tonga Sales and Rental, a heavy-equipment company located on River Street. Her mother, Jane, wrote god-awful poetry that she occasionally submitted to Vida for the House & Home section. Both senior Marshalls were familiar to me, yet I had never connected them with Laurie. On the way to their house, I admitted as much to Vida.

  “It’s not entirely your fault,” Vida said magnanimously from behind the wheel of her big white Buick. “Laurie is such a cipher. She simply doesn’t register as a real person. You probably won’t believe that her half brother goes to Princeton on scholarship. Obviously, he got all the brains. But that was before your time in Alpine.”

  Over the years I’d learned that ignorance was forgivable as long as it pertained to events that occurred before my arrival. Taking comfort in the knowledge, I got out of the car and gingerly walked through the new inch of snow that covered Cascade Street. The Marshall residence was a reasonably handsome conversion of what had probably been one of the original company houses. The one-story cabin had been expanded to two floors, with a deck, picture windows, and a shake exterior that blended nicely with its woodsy surroundings.

  Jane Marshall came to the door with a wooden spatula in one hand. I’d never dealt directly with her at the paper, so this was my first close viewing. She wasn’t much older than I was, late forties at most, though there were fine lines around her eyes and mouth. Perhaps she had once been as pretty as her daughter, but unlike Laurie, Jane disdained cosmetics. She apparently also rejected Laurie’s scissors, for Jane’s light brown hair hung long and loose around her shoulders. Her thin, angular body moved awkwardly, as if all the parts were loosely connected.

  “Ms. Runkel! What a surprise!” Jane let us in, though her manner was tentative.

  Vida for
mally introduced me. Jane’s hazel eyes grew wary as it dawned on her that this wasn’t a social call. Her husband, who entered the paneled entryway carrying the TV remote, guessed at once why Vida and I had come calling.

  “Oh, hell,” he said, more in exasperation than in anger. “We’re not going to be in the damned paper about this killing, are we?”

  Cocking an eye at Martin Marshall, Vida accepted the challenge. “Should you be? Emma and I merely wanted a few words with Laurie. Is she at home?”

  “Yes,” Martin said.

  “No,” Jane said, almost at the same time.

  The Marshalls exchanged swift glances. Martin seemed puzzled, then shrugged. “I thought I heard her upstairs. Oh, well.” He nodded his curly gray head at us and returned to wherever he could exercise the remote control.

  Jane gave us a silly smile. “Men! They never pay attention to what’s going on. I’m sorry you missed Laurie. If you’ll excuse me, I’m just about to serve—”

  At that moment Laurie appeared from around a corner, presumably where the staircase was located. She stopped and stared. Her mother blanched, then spoke in an unconvincing voice:

  “Why, Laurie! I didn’t realize you’d come back!”

  Laurie blinked. “Where was I?”

  Jane made a helpless gesture with the spatula, accidentally smacking it against the paneled wall. “Why, I didn’t know. I was sure I heard you go out again.” The spurt of color in Jane’s cheeks definitely improved her looks, if not her demeanor. “Honestly, I never know who’s coming and going around here! When Josh is home from college, it’s a regular madhouse!” Calming herself, she put a hand on Laurie’s arm. “Why don’t we all go into the kitchen to visit while I get dinner ready?”

  “We won’t take up much of your time,” Vida said, following Jane and Laurie down the hallway.

  The kitchen smelled of garlic. It was small, but had been recently updated, with a skylight and white oak cabinetry. Jane immediately pulled a saucepan off the burner and began stirring its contents with the spatula.

  “Ms. Runkel and Ms. Lord have just a couple of quick questions,” Jane said, no doubt intending the cue for us as much as for Laurie.

  Vida had positioned herself next to a refrigerator that was finished in the same wood as the cabinets. “We’re doing background for our newspaper story,” she explained, speaking more slowly than usual. “We need all the available facts about the homicide so that we can inform our readers accurately and fully.”

  Laurie said nothing. She was wearing jeans and a big sweatshirt, but it looked as if she had recently applied makeup. I suspected that Laurie spent much of her leisure time in front of a mirror. Her reflection might be the only thing she really understood.

  “You took a phone call this afternoon around one,” Vida said in an uncustomary soothing voice. “Or so Stella told us. It was a man, who was asking about the two o’clock facial appointment for Ms. Whitman. Can you tell us what he said?”

  Half sitting on a kitchen stool, Laurie gave her imitation of thinking, which was indicated by shielding her eyes with her hand. “He asked what time Ms. Whitman’s appointment was and when she’d be finished. I said it was at two. But she’d come a few minutes early, so she’d probably be done before three.” Laurie tilted her head to one side and looked pleased with herself.

  Vida nodded approval. “Excellent, Laurie. What did he say when you told him that?”

  “Ah … I think he said fine, and hung up.”

  Still at the stove, Jane smiled at her daughter. “You have such a wonderful memory for details, Laurie. That’s what inspired my poem ‘Picayune.’ ” She turned to Vida. “You remember it, I’m sure, even if you didn’t have space to run it.”

  “I remember,” Vida murmured, trying to conceal the fact that she probably wanted to forget. “Lovely. So … detailed.” She regarded Laurie with an almost sincere smile. “Did you recognize the man’s voice?”

  Laurie shook her head, in wide, languorous sweeps. “No. The sheriff asked me that already. It was a funny sort of voice, kind of croaking.” Leaning down, she adjusted the cuff of her thick wool sock. “We don’t do men. They go to Herb’s.”

  Herb Amundson owned the barbershop in the Alpine Building directly across the street from The Advocate. At almost seventy, he refused to retire, and had been giving Alpine men the same U.S. Army–issue haircut for almost fifty years. If they wanted something different, they had to come when his son, Bo, filled in for his father, or go to Sultan.

  I wasn’t sure if Laurie could recognize anyone out of context, but I gave it a try. “Was the man who called someone you might know in Alpine? His voice, I mean.”

  Laurie’s forehead wrinkled under her perfectly spaced bangs. It appeared that Milo hadn’t asked this question. “You mean like somebody who lives here?” She didn’t look at me, but instead gazed off in the direction of the far wall, where a big corkboard displayed messages, snapshots, and what appeared to be some of Jane’s latest poetical jottings.

  “Yes, a local.” My smile was probably phonier than Vida’s.

  “Good heavens!” Jane cried, staring into her saucepan. “This is going to curdle! I really should get dinner on now.” She gave Vida and me an apologetic look. “I’d love to ask you to stay, but I really didn’t fix enough. Maybe some night when I do Mexican. Do you remember my poem ‘Taco Madness’?”

  “Yes,” Vida replied grimly. “I’d never heard anyone try to rhyme taco and Waco before.”

  Even as she led us out of the kitchen, Jane nodded solemnly. “It was after that terrible tragedy with the Branch Davidians. The poem was my attempt to make sense of it all.”

  “Yes,” Vida responded, still grim. At the door, she made one last effort with Laurie. “You’re certain that you don’t know who called about Ms. Whitman?”

  Laurie looked blank, which wasn’t unusual. “I don’t think so.”

  “I’ve written a new poem, about the baseball strike,” Jane put in, now sounding faintly frantic. “I’ve tied the owners into the cosmos.”

  “A good place for them,” Vida retorted, without looking at Jane. “Tell me one more thing, Laurie—did this man who called on the telephone ask for Honoria or Kay Whitman?”

  The question seemed to send Laurie’s brain into a paroxysm of labor. “Oh … I … Sheriff Dodge asked me … but I don’t think he said … the man who called on the phone …”

  “It begins, ‘O thou sky so infinite, weep not for the parasite; the universe counts not the winner, nor cares a fig for George Steinbrenner.’ What do you think, Ms. Runkel?”

  Reluctantly, Vida turned to Jane. “I think that’s … apt.” She looked again at Laurie, still trying to coax the words out of her. “Did he actually give the first name?” Vida coached.

  Laurie’s shoulders slumped. “No,” she admitted in defeat. The failure caused her to avoid Vida’s gaze. “He just asked for Ms. Whitman.”

  “Ms.? Not Miss or Mrs.?” Vida never gave up.

  It was too much for Laurie. She simply didn’t know, or couldn’t remember, or think for another second. Her mother shielded her daughter with one arm, and though Jane’s smile was bright, her eyes were hard.

  “So good to see you. Drop by another time when we’re not in such a muddle. Good night.” Jane Marshall waved us off. Or brushed us off, depending upon the interpretation.

  “Rats,” Vida muttered, tramping through the snow to her Buick. “That girl is impossible!”

  “We didn’t find out much more than Stella already told us,” I said, getting into the passenger side of the car.

  Vida gathered her tweed coat closer and squeezed behind the wheel. “Yes, we did,” she said with fervor. Before turning on the ignition, she gazed at me through her glasses. “We found out that Jane Marshall isn’t merely protective of her daughter. Laurie’s mother is also scared to death for her. Or perhaps of her. Which do you think it is?”

  Vida’s remark had distracted me just enough that at first I didn
’t realize we weren’t headed back to The Advocate so that I could collect my aging Jaguar. “Obviously, Jane’s frightened for Laurie,” I agreed. “But how could that poor girl scare anybody? She’s not only dim, but exceedingly meek.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” Vida replied as a few flakes of new snow dusted the windshield. “I got the impression that Jane was afraid of what Laurie might reveal. Why else was she so determined not to let her daughter see us?”

  “We can see Laurie anytime we want at Stella’s,” I pointed out. “Frankly, I got the impression that Laurie isn’t just dim, but a little evasive.”

  “She’s not clever enough to be evasive,” Vida retorted, then, after a pause, murmured, “Perhaps.”

  “Perhaps what?” I inquired.

  But Vida merely shook her head. We had continued driving along Cascade, passing St. Mildred’s Catholic Church on the right and now, Holy Trinity Episcopal Church on the left. Vida began to slow down by Sky Robics. The building next door had been through several guises in the past eighty-odd years. Originally a bunkhouse, it was Holy Trinity’s first site of worship, later a pool hall and allegedly a brothel, that—for no apparent reason, though Vida hints otherwise—became the Elks Club. Thirty years ago it assumed its current incarnation as an apartment complex with some eight units crammed into its two stories.

  Vida maneuvered the Buick into a parking place near the covered entrance of what is called Orr House. The name isn’t derived from the rumored brothel of yore, but in honor of an early Alpiner who managed the first pool hall. While Orr House’s history may be complicated, our reason for climbing the wooden stairs to the second floor was not: Rebecca Wolfe lived in Apartment 6.

  Stella’s skin-care expert took her time opening the door. As is often the case, Becca recognized Vida at once, but seemed to have some trouble placing me. I was used to that, and introduced myself.