The Alpine Fury (2 page)

“Sorry, Ms. Lord,” said Mike. “No news here. We can’t work this morning because of the ice.”

“That’s great,” I said, then hastened to explain. “I mean, that’s news. ‘Weather delays highway project.’ You see?”

“What?” Big Mike’s deep voice went with his muscular build and imposing height. “Oh, yeah, sure, I guess.”

I needed another three inches of copy. A photo of the idle road machinery would help. “What does the crew do when this sort of thing happens?” I inquired, delving for information to pad the story.

Mike snorted. “They stay home. Like I’m doing. You called me in Monroe.”

“Oh.” I was disappointed. For some reason, I’d thought that Brockelman and company were holed up in the Lumberjack Motel. Briefly I’d envisioned two pictures—one of the immobilized equipment, the other showing the six-man crew playing pinochle. “How soon before you’ll be able to resume work?”

“Can’t say. The stretch we’re working on is just past the Petersen farm. Lots of big evergreens, no sun even if the clouds lift. Tomorrow, maybe. If it doesn’t snow.” Mike sounded as gloomy as the weather.

I asked a few more questions, the kind that people find stupid, because there are no real answers. Completion date, additional costs, possibility of further postponement—I knew Mike couldn’t do anything except
guess, but even ambiguity fills the front page. By the time I finished my interview, Mike was testy and his wife was yelling at him from somewhere in their Monroe-area home.

Twenty minutes later, I had finished my lead story. Carla, however, demurred at taking a picture.

“It’s too dangerous,” she pouted over a sugar doughnut she’d fetched from the Upper Crust Bakery. “My car may be old, but it’s new to me, and I’m not risking it by driving up 187. Can’t we use stock?”

We could, since she’d taken several shots of the road equipment when it had arrived two weeks earlier. We’d featured the six-man crew in the previous story; this time I’d run Big Mike, leaning on his steamroller. This was one of those weeks when there wouldn’t be much drama on the front page. In a small town, that was often the case. There had, however, been a few issues in the past when I had wished for tamer topics. I shivered a little as I recalled the murders we’d had in Alpine. Some victims had been familiar; others were strangers. Either way, we didn’t need news like that to liven up the paper. Vida could create readership with Francine Wells’s new boots.

“Ha!” Vida had sprung out of her chair after rubbernecking through the window again. “Now, that’s an item!” She plastered herself against the wall and peered out as if she could see around corners. She probably could. “Little Bobby Lambrecht,” she whispered, as if whoever he was could hear through walls. “He’s heading into the Bank of Alpine. My, my!”

“Who cares?” The small, desolate voice belonged to Carla, eating her third doughnut. “I’ve never heard of Little Bobby Lambrecht.”

Vida had resumed her seat. “Of course you haven’t. You’re new in town.” The gray eyes darted in my direction.
“And you, Emma. You wouldn’t know Bobby, either.”

By Vida’s standards, Carla and I were both babes in the woods when it came to Alpine background knowledge. I’d hired Carla four months after I bought the paper from the original owner, Marius Vandeventer. Having arrived as adults, fully formed by forces outside of Alpine, we could never truly belong. As usual, we endured Vida’s smug, insider’s expression.

“So?” I asked, feeling prickly. “Who’s Little Bobby Lambrecht?”

Vida squared her shoulders, which caused the black polyester vest to quiver over the black-and-white print blouse with the pussycat bow. “Robert Lambrecht is Faith Steiner Lambrecht’s son. The Steiners were great friends of my parents, Earl Ennis and Muriel May Woolrich Blatt. My father and Edward Steiner were among the first elders of the Presbyterian church in Alpine.” Pride rang in Vida’s voice. “Faith married a minister from our church. Years later, he was posted to Wenatchee. The family moved there when Bobby was a junior in high school. Bobby and Milo Dodge went through school together. I still hear from Faith—she’s widowed and lives in Spokane—and Bobby is quite the bigwig with the Bank of Washington in Seattle. Now, why is he in Alpine?” Vida peered first at me, then at Carla. I flinched; Carla ate another doughnut.

“What difference does it make?” Carla was defensive. I thought she was talking about Little Bobby Lambrecht. She meant the doughnuts. “So I get fat and ugly and old? Who’ll care? This town is a dead end. I’m going to die without ever having lived.”

“Did you get glazed?” Vida was looking severe. “The Upper Crust does glazed only on Monday and Thursday.”

I felt like snatching the white bakery bag from Carla’s hands. Before I could move, Ginny opened the door and edged into the office. Leo Walsh was leaning on her. He looked sheepish.

“No ballroom dancing for a while,” he said, hopping to his desk. “Sorry, Emma. I didn’t realize the sidewalk was so slippery. Hell, up the hill by your house, you don’t even
have
sidewalks.”

It was true. At least one third of Alpine didn’t have sidewalks. My street was paved, but it was lined with a thin trail of dirt. Or mud or slush or snow, depending upon the season. All my editorial efforts at putting a Local Improvement District bond issue on the ballot had been in vain.

“Black ice is hard to see,” I conceded, pulling out Leo’s chair. “How do you feel?”

If Leo truly had been drunk this morning, he was sober now. His face reminded me of tree bark—rough, seamed, weathered, indifferent to the elements but vulnerable to time. His graying auburn hair wasn’t combed as carefully as usual, and his sharply pressed flannel slacks were rumpled.

“It’s not serious,” Leo announced, aware that all eyes were upon him. “Two, three days. That’s it. Ace bandage, painkillers, crutches. No biggie.”

Carla’s sigh was elongated, trenchant. “You’re lucky. Physical wounds heal. I’m emotionally scarred forever.”

Having worked with Carla for three months, Leo wasn’t disturbed by the remark. He ignored her, which, I realized, was his custom. I suspected that Carla reminded Leo of his grown children in California. I was aware that they were not a pleasant memory.

“Okay,” I said in my most businesslike voice, “time marches on. We’ve got a paper to get out. Let’s hit it.”

Vida did, by putting on her coat and a wool pillbox
with earflaps. Without another word, she left the four of us staring at each other.

The silence was broken by Ginny Burmeister. At twenty-three, Ginny seems older and wiser. Certainly she’s competent, not only running the office, but helping with the advertising. Ginny is one of those redheads whose sole claim to beauty is her hair. Still, Carla’s recent attempts at a makeover had improved Ginny’s appearance. Under certain circumstances, Ginny is almost pretty. On this November morning, she was plain as a post.

“The mail will be late,” Ginny announced in a flat tone. “Marje Blatt says the post office doesn’t want to chain up, except for the rural routes. If they hit a bare spot in town, the chains break and it costs the taxpayers money.”

Leo emitted a growl. “What doesn’t?” He busied himself with a layout for Stuart’s Stereo. “I should get chains, I suppose. I never had them in L.A.”

Ginny stared. It was obvious she couldn’t imagine a Southern California winter. Judging from her expression, it was also obvious that she wouldn’t want to live in a place where November through April didn’t bring snow. Ginny left the news office on a trail of disapproval.

I had edged over to the window. The skies had lifted slightly, and pedestrians on Front Street were walking without undue care. They included Vida, who had just gone into the Bank of Alpine. No doubt she would return in half an hour with Little Bobby Lambrecht’s life story encapsulated.

Vida was back in less than ten minutes. I was pruning my annual editorial on Halloween vandalism when she stomped into my little office and closed the door. “Bobby’s in a meeting with Marv Petersen,” she announced,
undoing the ties that held the woolen hat under her chin. “I wonder why.”

In the spring, there had been a rumor that Washington Mutual Savings Bank planned to open a branch in Alpine. There had also been rumors that Fred Meyer and Starbucks were coming to town. Fred Meyer had gone elsewhere. Starbucks had made its local debut in early September. Washington Mutual apparently had changed its mind. But perhaps their interest had piqued that of other financial institutions, such as the Bank of Washington.

I gave Vida a curious look. “A buyout?”

Vida was horrified. “Of the Bank of Alpine? Good grief, what next? Annexation to Everett?”

My remark hadn’t been intended to upset Vida. I’d spent my first twenty years in Seattle and most of my second in Portland, where big-city mergers and acquisitions were common. I should have known better when it came to Alpine. The bank belonged to the town, in the same way that residents claimed Mount Baldy, Tonga Ridge, and the upper Skykomish River.

“The Petersens would never sell the bank.” Vida was scornful. She was also still wearing the hat, the ties drooping on her brown tweed coat, the pillbox crown atilt, and the protruding earflaps giving her the look of a bespectacled bloodhound. “Why, the family’s been in the business since the beginning, back in 1930, when Carl Clemans decided to keep his hand in after he’d closed the mill in ’twenty-nine. Originally, the bank was the company store.”

Vaguely I recalled hearing how the Bank of Alpine had been created. Carl Clemans had shut down the original mill that had sustained Alpine for almost twenty years. He’d moved back to Snohomish, but lent his name and some of his money to the fledgling bank. It
was a sign of faith by Alpine’s founding father. The town would go on without him and his mill.

“For years, no money was exchanged in Alpine,” Vida was saying in a huffy voice. “The millworkers were paid in scrip, which they used at the company store. If there was anything left when the season ended, Mr. Clemans paid off the difference in cash. Of course, he gave credit, too. It was paternalistic, but fair. People could be trusted.”

Maybe. People were people. Still, it wouldn’t do to say so. Vida was a realist, but when she got launched on the subject of Alpine’s history, her judgment was sometimes clouded.

“So what’s Bob Lambrecht doing here?” I asked in a mild tone.

Vida evaded my gaze. “Fishing. With Milo.”

“At the bank?” My expression was droll. “Well, why not? Milo’s always complaining that there aren’t any fish in the river.”

“It must be a courtesy call.” Vida was frowning, speaking more to herself than to me. Abruptly her arm shot out in the direction of the news office and she threw me a challenging look. “Larry Petersen wants to talk to you. It’s about Leo.”

I blinked. “Leo? What now?”

Vida turned secretive. “I couldn’t say. Do you think anyone at the bank would breach customer confidentiality?”

Of course they would if Vida asked them. Especially if one of her kinfolk worked there. Off the top of my head, I couldn’t recall a connection.

“I’ll go see Larry before lunch,” I said. “I need to cash my check anyway.” It was the first of the month, payday, and Ginny would distribute our checks as soon as she and I signed them. We were paid on the first and
the fifteenth of each month, a tradition started by Marius Vandeventer. In almost four years, I’d given three raises to Vida, two to Ginny, and one—not entirely deserved—to Carla. Maybe it was time to give one to me. I’d already screwed myself once by paying too much for
The Advocate
. No doubt I’d done the same with the secondhand Jaguar I’d bought before moving from Portland to Alpine. The monies had come from an unexpected inheritance that had been nowhere in the same class as Ed Bronsky’s windfall. However, the newspaper and the Jaguar had both brought me great joy as well as various headaches.

It was ten minutes before noon when I entered the Bank of Alpine. Back in the 1950s, Frank Petersen, the original president and chief financial officer, had been considered an old fuddy-duddy for refusing to cave in to modernization of the lobby. Time had proved him right. Though small, the bank’s interior was replete with Grecian columns, gilded grillwork, and a marble floor. Pilasters ran halfway up the walls, and next to each pair were medallions depicting the profiles of the bank’s founders. The three teller cages featured the original brass bars and were faced in polished mahogany. Fir would have been cheaper and more plentiful, but Carl Clemans and Company wanted the best. In the depths of the depression, it must have been difficult not only to raise the capital, but to build such a handsome bank.

Larry Petersen represented the third generation of his family to work for the Bank of Alpine. Grandpa Frank had been dead for almost twenty years, and Larry’s father, Marvin, had been president since 1960. Larry’s official title was treasurer, but everyone in town recognized him as his father’s heir apparent.

“Emma!” Larry exclaimed, swiveling in his old-fashioned chair behind his old-fashioned desk. He was
about my age, a tall, balding man with a wide jaw and slightly sunken blue eyes. “Payday, right?” He got to his feet and came over to where I was standing at the mahogany rail that separated the executives from the customers.

I shook Larry’s hand. “Right,” I agreed, inwardly wincing at his enthusiastic grip. “Vida said you wanted to see me.”

Larry grimaced, then opened the grilled gate that led inside the office area. “Yes, about Leo.” Larry was seated again, his hands circumspectly folded on the desk. “Well. Leo’s a fine fellow, I’m sure of that.”

Bankers, like brokers and bookies, put me on guard. I always sense that they want my money for the sole purpose of enriching themselves. Unlike plumbers and electricians and retailers, they pretend to have my best interests at heart. I suspect otherwise, and I’m always wary.

“Leo has increased advertising revenue by twenty-two percent,” I said, which accounted for my on-the-spot decision to give the entire staff a raise after the first of January. I’d get one, too. But the newspaper’s financial status was another source of resentment toward the Bank of Alpine. When it came to money, I had no secrets from Larry Petersen or anyone else who worked for the bank. “I’m Leo’s employer,” I went on when Larry said nothing but merely inclined his head in what I assumed was approval. “What he does in his private life is none of my business.”