The Alpine Decoy Read online

  Milo stuffed the handkerchief back in the pocket of his tan pants. “The deceased wasn’t a local,” he said in his laconic voice. “According to Marlow Whipp, he came into the grocery store just before closing, about five to seven. He tried to say something, and then collapsed.” Never a fast talker, Milo slowed to a snails pace. The little cluster of neighbors drew closer. “His name is Kelvin Greene, from Seattle. He was twenty-seven years old and lived somewhere out in the Rainier Valley area. It looks as if he’d been shot in the head.” Milo’s long face wore a disgusted look. “Marlow called us. Marlow swears he didn’t shoot him, though he keeps a gun under the counter. Kelvin died before the ambulance could get here. He was black. Any more questions, or can I get the hell out of here and do my job?”

  By Mary Daheim

  Published by Ballantine Books:

  THE ALPINE ADVOCATE

  THE ALPINE BETRAYAL

  THE ALPINE CHRISTMAS

  THE ALPINE DECOY

  THE ALPINE ESCAPE

  THE ALPINE FURY

  THE ALPINE GAMBLE

  THE ALPINE HERO

  THE ALPINE ICON

  THE ALPINE JOURNEY

  THE ALPINE KINDRED

  THE ALPINE LEGACY

  THE ALPINE MENACE

  THE ALPINE NEMESIS

  THE ALPINE OBITUARY

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  THERE’S NO FOOL like an old fool, unless it’s a middle-aged fool. Like me.

  The letter from the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association was very businesslike; the invitation to the seminar on advertising revenue was suitably formal. So why was my heart racing like an out-of-control dishwasher?

  The answer was simple, and so was I. According to the program schedule, the panelists included Tom Cavanaugh of San Francisco, former reporter and editor, currently owner of seventeen weeklies and four small dailies throughout the western United States and Canada. According to my pudding-like head, Tom Cavanaugh was my former lover and permanent father of my only son, Adam. I hadn’t seen Tom in almost two years. The prospect both thrilled and terrified me.

  “Your sleeve’s on fire,” said Vida Runkel, my House & Home editor. “Be careful, you’re going to burn your arm.”

  I jumped, slapping at my beige linen jacket. Sure enough, I’d scorched the fabric on the coffeemaker in The Alpine Advocate’s editorial office.

  “Damn!” I exclaimed, wincing at the heat that seared my fingers. “I don’t exactly have a lavish spring wardrobe.”

  Vida was sitting at her desk, peering at me over the rims of her tortoiseshell glasses. “Trim the sleeves, then roll them back. That look came in a few years ago and it’s still around. I ought to know—I get all the fashion handouts.” She returned to her typing, a wonder of two-fingered wizardry on a machine almost as old as she was.

  Removing my singed jacket and pouring a cup of coffee, I studied the WNPA letter more closely. “I should send Ed Bronsky to this. They’re holding the summer meeting at Lake Chelan.”

  “You should hold Ed under water at Lake Chelan. I don’t know why you put up with him. He’s the worst ad manager I’ve ever met.” Vida didn’t pause in her typing.

  It wasn’t the first time that Vida and I had argued over Ed Bronsky’s ineptitude. Indeed, Ed wasn’t inept so much as he was negative. In a town like Alpine, Washington, with four thousand souls held hostage by semi-isolation on Stevens Pass, Ed couldn’t see any reason why local retailers needed to advertise in the first place. There was one furniture emporium, one pharmacy, one sporting goods store, one bakery—and, until the past year, one source of food. A few months back Safeway had opened to give the Grocery Basket a run for everybody’s money.

  “Maybe the seminar would motivate Ed,” I said, but sounded dubious to my own ears.

  “Dynamite wouldn’t motivate Ed,” Vida replied, and this time she did stop typing, not to concentrate on our conversation or her latest story, but because she was finished. She whipped the paper out of the ancient upright and gave me her gimlet eye. “Why don’t you go, Emma? Chelan is a short drive from here. Why, you wouldn’t even have to spend the night if you didn’t want to.”

  Her innocent look didn’t fool me, and though I hate to admit it, I blushed. The mail had just arrived. Vida couldn’t possibly have seen the WNPA invitation. It was addressed to me: Emma Lord, Editor and Publisher. I had opened it a mere five minutes ago with my own two hands. But somehow Vida knew. She always knew. It was her way.

  “I shouldn’t take the time,” I mumbled. “It’s in mid-June, and I was away for almost a week at Easter. That was just a month ago.”

  “So? It’s another month until mid-June.” Vida shook her broad shoulders, making her lime, magenta, and white striped blouse ripple in various directions across her impressive bosom. “You know it’s worthless to send Ed. He’ll pooh-pooh any innovations. But if you go, you can collect all sorts of new ideas and insist that he knuckle down. Really, Emma, it gets my goat how you turn a blind eye to his laziness and indifference. Just because your predecessor hired Ed, doesn’t mean you have to keep him.”

  My predecessor, Marius Vandeventer, had founded The Alpine Advocate back in the Thirties and sold it to me at the start of the Nineties. I’d inherited Vida and Ed from Marius, but had hired my sole reporter, Carla Steinmetz, and our office manager, Ginny Burmeister, on my own. Carla was eager, but dizzy; Ginny was methodical, but diligent. I felt I was batting about five hundred, which wasn’t bad. The thought put me on the defensive.

  “Ed has a wife and children,” I said, resorting to my usual weary defense. “With the logging business gone to hell, there are enough people out of work in Alpine without adding Ed to the list. Besides, he’s improved. Really, he has.”

  With a toss of her unruly gray curls, Vida snorted. “That’s only because you watch him like a hawk and Ginny helps so much.”

  Even though Vida was right, I would have argued further if Carla Steinmetz hadn’t burst into the office, carrying a white paper sack from the Upper Crust Bakery.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said, waving the sack at Vida and me. “Here, it’s glazed twisters. You’d better eat them before Ed gets back from the Rotary Club breakfast meeting.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was almost ten. Ed should have returned by now. And Carla was definitely tardy.

  “Where were you?” I asked, hoping against hope she’d been out getting a hot story.

  Carla passed the bakery bag first to Vida, then to me. “At the doctor’s. You know I’ve had an earache for three days. Libby, my new roommate, said I couldn’t go on like this.”

  In all probability, neither could Libby. Carla had hardly talked of anything else since coming in Monday morning, holding her head. I could imagine how she’d complained at home. Libby—Liberty, actually—Boyd was a brash young woman who drove a Ford pickup truck, lifted weights, and had recently been posted to the ranger station at Icicle Creek. She and Carla had moved in together May first. I wondered how long the wholesome, athletic, down-to-earth Libby would survive in the company of my flighty, ebullient, comfort-loving reporter. I’d met Libby only once. She struck me as long on valor, but short on patience.

  Carla had swept her lon
g black hair back and leaned forward just enough to show off the wad of cotton stuffed in her left ear. “See? Dr. Flake put drops in it. I think they’ve helped already.”

  “Good,” I said, not without sympathy. “Earaches can be nasty.”

  Carla and I munched on our twisters. Vida, however, let hers sit on the desk, untouched. It wasn’t like her. She was gazing at Carla, expectancy written all over her majestic figure.

  “Well?”

  Carla was getting herself a mug of coffee. “Well, what?”

  Vida made a face. “Well, what about the new nurse?”

  With another flip of her long locks, Carla hopped into the chair behind her desk. “The new nurse?” Her black eyes were very round. “Why, Vida, you must know all about her. Your niece is the receptionist, after all.”

  Vida’s nieces, nephews, and other relations, by family and by marriage, were everywhere. The tribal network of Runkels on her late husband’s side and Blatts by blood formed the basis of her limitless knowledge of Alpine. She narrowed her eyes at Carla.

  “Marje has been on vacation for two weeks, and you know it. She went to Mexico to get sick.”

  At first Carla looked surprised, then she turned smug. “That’s right, I didn’t see her this morning. Doc Dewey’s wife was working the desk.” Carla took a big bite of her twister. “What do you want to know, Vida?”

  Vida’s right hand closed over the twister that lay on her desk in a gesture that suggested it might have legs and try to escape. Or, perhaps, that she would like to do the same to Carla’s neck. “I’m curious, of course,” she replied with dignity. “Marilynn Lewis is the first black person we’ve ever had living in Alpine. I think she’s either very brave or very foolish.”

  Carla was still looking smug, even superior. “You’re supposed to say African-American,” she declared. “I think Dr. Dewey and Dr. Flake were very brave to hire her. I gather it was Dr. Flake’s idea, since he’s more progressive than Doc Dewey.”

  There was almost twenty years’ age difference between Alpine’s two physicians, but the town’s perception was based on more than the generation gap. Peyton Flake was a recent arrival and new to private practice. Gerald Dewey was a local, the son of Alpine’s late and much-beloved Cecil Dewey, who had attended three generations of Skykomish County residents. During the years that the father and son had practiced together, they were known as Young Doc and Old Doc. Gerald Dewey was still called Young Doc by most Alpiners, and it appeared that for good or for ill, his indigenous roots were perceived as making him far more hidebound—and thus more reliable—than the upstart newcomer. But the senior Dewey hadn’t felt a need to build his practice; his son relied on the clinic’s virtual monopoly. Peyton Flake was much more aggressive: He foresaw potential patients defecting along the Stevens Pass corridor, driving to doctors in Sultan, Monroe, Snohomish, and even as far away as Everett. Flake worked actively to keep current patients and recruit new ones. Consequently, the active chart file was growing, and with it, the need for a new nurse.

  “I just happened to see Marilynn Lewis leaving work the other night,” Vida remarked. “The clinic is right on my way home.” The explanation may or may not have been an excuse for satisfying Vida’s rampant curiosity.

  Having devoured her twister, Carla settled down to deliver serious information. “She’s young, maybe my age or a little older, pretty, seems sharp, and very nice. I heard she’s rooming with the Campbells, at least until she finds a place of her own.”

  Swiftly, Vida digested Carla’s account. “Yes, Jean and Lloyd Campbell have taken her in.” She made it sound as if they’d acquired a stray cat, but I knew better. While Alpine abounded in prejudiced people, Vida wasn’t one of them. “I’m not sure how they’re all managing, with Cyndi living at home and Shane back from Seattle.”

  I racked my brain as I often did when Vida started rattling off families and their histories. One of the hazards of moving to a small town is learning who’s who. It’s bad enough for the average newcomer, but for somebody like me with a job where names are not only news, but the primary source of income, it’s overwhelming. After three years in Alpine, Vida and the other natives can still stump me. Small-town dwellers throw out unfamiliar names like a challenge. Recent arrivals drown in a sea of first, last, maiden, and married names. As well as nicknames. Meanwhile, the true-born smirk, reminding the newcomers of their outsider status.

  At least I’d been around long enough to know that Lloyd Campbell owned Alpine Appliance and was close to sixty. His wife, Jean, worked part-time at the Presbyterian church, which numbered Vida among its members. Cyndi was their daughter, also around Carla’s age, and the receptionist at the Public Utilities District office. Shane, I assumed, was their son, but I knew nothing about him.

  Vida guessed as much. “Shane is the middle Campbell child,” she informed me, licking twister glaze off her fingers. “He’s been living and working in Seattle for the past two or three years. I think he was with Fred Meyer. I heard he moved back here because the chain planned to open a store at the Alpine Mall.”

  “They keep putting it off,” I noted. “I had Ed call their Oregon headquarters just last week.” As a former Portland resident and employee of The Oregonian, I was well acquainted with the Fred Meyer stores; they featured everything from apparel to groceries to electronics to jewelry. While I would welcome their convenience as well as their advertising, I realized that they might be hesitant about a new venture in a town as economically depressed as Alpine. I also realized that our local merchants would be upset. The small specialty stores featuring books, CDs, china, jewelry, stereos, and shoes wouldn’t welcome the competition.

  Carla was going through her in-basket. She stopped and called to me just as I was heading back into my small, cluttered office. “Emma—should we do a story on Marilynn Lewis? I mean, it is news that she’s here—and that she’s African-American.”

  I considered the idea. “No, not yet. She’s been here—what? A couple of weeks? Let’s give her a chance to get settled in. I don’t want to draw attention to her and make her a target of any bigots. Let’s face it, the news isn’t that she’s here; it’s that she’s African-American. I’m not sure Marilynn would regard that as a positive story angle. If you want to do a newcomer feature, interview Libby Boyd. Isn’t she the first female forest ranger to be posted up here?”

  Vida confirmed that she was. Carla, however, gave an in-different shrug. “Women doing what used to be men’s work isn’t news anymore. Besides, she hasn’t been in the job long enough to know how it feels. She had an office assignment in Seattle.”

  Carla, however, didn’t press the Marilynn Lewis story, and Vida didn’t comment. I took the scorched jacket into my office along with my coffee and went back to work. Briefly, I thought about Marilynn Lewis. She was very brave, perhaps a trifle foolish. I wondered why she’d exchanged the relative anonymity of the Big City for the scrutiny of a small town. But I didn’t think about it too long. I had problems of my own, and at the moment, they were all named Tom Cavanaugh.

  “Those Anasazi Indians have got ruins older than you are, Mom,” said my son over the phone. “Uncle Ben thinks he can get me on a dig. Aren’t you hyped?”

  “Sure, I think it’s great.” I reached for my take-out burger. I gathered that Ben thought it was great, too. My brother had seemed enthused that his nephew was going to join him for the summer in Tuba City, Arizona. Naturally, I would have preferred that Adam spend at least some of his time helping Ben out at the mission church on the Navajo reservation, but it seemed that my only child’s interests were centered on the artifacts in the ancient tribal villages. At least, I chided myself, he had an interest. There were times when I felt Adam was drifting, from one university to another, from one girlfriend to the next, from one professed major to the latest career of the week….

  But Adam had maintained his enthusiasm for Native-American culture ever since Ben’s visit to Alpine in December. My son had been determined to join
my brother in Tuba City, and would fly from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks directly into Phoenix in June. He would then take a bus to Flagstaff where Ben would meet him. Adam would come to Alpine at the beginning of August, about the same time the temperature hit a hundred and twenty in northern Arizona. With any luck, Ben might get away for a week or so then, too. But as the only Catholic priest in the vicinity, it was possible that he’d be stuck until his regular vacation came due at the end of the year.

  While Adam waxed on about digging in the digs, I contemplated telling him about his father’s scheduled appearance at the WNPA conference. But Adam had seen Tom since I had. After twenty years of estrangement, they had finally met in San Francisco last November. The meeting had gone well. If Adam had resented his father’s absence from the scene, it hadn’t showed. Maybe my son—our son—understood that Tom’s defection hadn’t been voluntary. Twenty-two years ago, when I discovered I was pregnant by a married man, I’d told Tom to get lost. Reluctantly, he’d complied. After all, he had a family of his own. It wasn’t his fault that his wife was crazier than a loon. At the time, I wasn’t feeling entirely stable myself.

  But Tom had stayed married. His wife, Sandra, had stayed crazy. And Adam and I had created our own little world. It was only by coincidence that Tom had showed up in Alpine a year ago last autumn. At least it seemed a coincidence at the time. He had given me invaluable advice about running a weekly newspaper, and I had given him my pardon for a crime he never committed. But I still wasn’t willing to give him Adam. That had only happened after much soul-searching and many letters from Tom, asking to see his illegitimate son.

  “You know,” said Adam, as if reading my mind, “I’ve got enough money to fly into Seattle and come up to Alpine before I go to Arizona.”

  The money had come from Tom, providing airfare for Adam to visit me and Ben and the pope, if he wanted to. Tom had been very generous, trying to make up in one year for two decades of paternal absenteeism.