Alpine Icon

by Mary Daheim

  “Indeed,” Vida acquiesced. “What struck you as most different?”

  “Ahhh …” Warren stroked his short chin. “Well … the community-college site. The new bowling alley. Those condos across from The Pines. The places that have gone out of business. Oh, plenty of things! The mall wasn't built when I lived here. There was no Safeway or Starbucks or Videos-To-Go. Yes, Alpine's really changed.” Warren nodded again, though more to himself than to us.

  Vida was now on her feet. “When you put the changes into the context of a long absence, perhaps the town isn't as moribund as some suggest. How did Ursula feel about what had happened while she was away? I didn't ask that question during our interview.”

  The relief that had crept into Warren's face when he saw that we were on the verge of departure now faded. “Ursula? Oh … She thought it was all … quaint. Yes, that was the word she used—quaint”

  “Really.” Vida's tone was arch. “My, my.” Then, to my surprise, and Warren's shock, she enveloped the bereaved man in a bear hug. “Poor Warren!” she exclaimed, looking out at me from under the sailor hat's brim. “I do hope you parted from Ursula on good terms! Ernest and I quarreled bitterly before his accident. I've never forgiven myself.”

  I'd never heard my House & Home editor say any such thing. I was still gaping at her when Warren answered in a voice muffled by Vida's shoulder. “We were happy. Very happy.” He seemed to have stiffened in the embrace, and when Vida let go, Warren swayed slightly.

  “That's wonderful,” she asserted. “Most reassuring. Otherwise you're racked with self-reproach for the rest of your days.” Lifting her chin in a brave gesture, Vida joined me on the threshold to the entry hall. “If you need to talk to anyone, just call me, Warren. Wasn't I always there for you when I baby-sat?”

  Warren had relaxed a bit, but his face was puzzled. “Well… Yes, yes you were. Thanks, Vida.”

  After we got into the Buick, I gave Vida a suspicious look. “You were Warren's baby-sitter?”

  “Once,” Vida replied. “I filled in for Eleanor Pierce. You know, Nell Blatt, my sister-in-law. She had three-day measles.” Steering the car down the winding road, Vida glanced in the rearview mirror. “Warren won't remember whether I sat once or fifty times. Men are so poor at details.”

  I didn't comment, though I felt that Vida's offer of consolation probably would be ignored. “Do you believe he was out driving around town last night?”

  Vida snorted. “Ridiculous! Such a foolish lie. It gets dark before eight-thirty this time of year. Why would he be sightseeing for two and a half hours after the sun goes down?”

  “So where was he? Hiding out someplace until the sheriff's deputies came by to tell him Ursula was dead?”

  “Perhaps.” Vida seemed indifferent to my suggestion.

  “More likely he was in a bar. Didn't you notice how he reeked of liquor?”

  “I didn't hug him,” I replied. “Did he?”

  “Certainly. I suspect that even now, he's behind that elaborate bar, guzzling alcoholic beverages. My, my!” Vida shook her head.

  Vida's attitude toward liquor was staunchly Presbyterian. “I can't blame the guy for taking a couple of drinks,” I said as we left The Pines behind us. “He's just lost the woman he loves.”

  I could barely see Vida's eyes under the sailor hat's brim. But there was no mistaking her ironic tone of voice as she glanced in my direction. “Has he? I wonder.”

  Chapter Seven

  VIDA DIDN'T ANNOUNCE our destination until we had pulled up in front of Jake and Betsy O'Toole's large but unpretentious old home on Cedar Street near John Engstrom Park. The well-tended front yard dipped down, with stone steps leading to the wide front porch. Vida both rang the bell and shouted through the screen door.

  “Yoo-hoo! Betsy! Jake! Yoo-hoo!”

  The O'Tooles arrived from different directions. Jake came around the corner of the house, carrying a pair of clippers; Betsy greeted us at the door, holding the telephone to her ear.

  “Long-distance,” she mouthed, opening the screen with her free hand.

  I went inside, but Vida stayed on the porch, offering Jake condolences on the loss of his sister. On this occasion, she sounded sincere. As I sat down on a green-and-white-striped sofa, Betsy rang off.

  “This is the pits,” she declared in her fast-paced contralto. “We're getting all sorts of calls from Ursula's friends. What can we tell them about how she died? Nobody knows anything until word comes down from Everett. We're on hold, just like everybody else. Why don't they call that moron she was engaged to?”

  “Moron?” Vida repeated as she and Jake entered the comfortable living room. “Now, who would that be?”

  “Warren,” Betsy retorted with a mutinous glare for her husband. “Who else? Don't start defending that guy— your sister had her faults, but he's an opportunist. Don't think I don't know how he treated his first two wives.”

  Jake, whose chiseled features seemed to have lost some of their sharpness, gave Vida and me a helpless look. “My bride hadn't seen Warren in twenty years, but she knows all about him. It's too bad she cracked her crystal ball.”

  Off the podium, Jake didn't try to use big words. But his sarcasm wasn't lost on Betsy. “Stick it,” snapped his wife. “If nothing else, it's midlife crisis. He's driving around in a hot little red sports car, which is a sure sign of male menopause. Furthermore, I'll bet Ursula bought it for him. Since when has Warren Wells had more than two dimes to rub together?” She lifted her chin in defiance.

  “It's a wedding present from Ursula,” Jake said in a fairly reasonable tone. “I'll admit it—a BMW Z3 isn't cheap. So what? Maybe he bought her something nice, too. Like jewelry.”

  Betsy sneered. “I'll bet Ursula bought her own engagement ring. Warren couldn't afford a ring out of a Cracker Jack box.”

  Vida seemed accustomed to the acrimonious exchanges between the O'Tooles. It was their way when out of the public eye. Like Jake's pretentious vocabulary, the connubial bliss they displayed at the Grocery Basket was something of a front.

  “So what do you hear?” Vida inquired, settling into an armchair that matched the sofa.

  Betsy's full mouth pouted a bit. At forty-five she retained a youthful manner to complement her flawless complexion and naturally curly auburn hair. “I told you, I've been having my ear chewed off all morning by Ursula's friends. Some of them didn't think much of Warren Wells. For one thing, they felt he talked her into moving back to Alpine.”

  “Big-city types,” Jake grumbled. “They always figure that if you don't live someplace with a trillion people, you might as well go drown yourself.” His sunburned face paled and he clasped both hands to his cheeks. “God! What am I saying! My poor sister!”

  Somewhat to my surprise, Betsy's piquant features expressed compassion for her husband. “Never mind, Jake. We know what you mean. Or didn't mean.” A trifle grimly, she turned to us. “It's lunchtime—how about some chicken-salad sandwiches? I've got enough for an army out in the kitchen. I thought the kids might be here, but instead of mourning their aunt, they're off and running. Of course they didn't know her very well,” she added on a note of maternal protectiveness.

  I started to decline, but as usual, Vida was ahead of me: “If it's not too much trouble, Betsy. I'll help.” She immediately rose, and Betsy could do nothing but follow suit. I was left alone with Jake.

  “What do you think happened?” I asked, hoping that my manner conveyed the sympathy as well as the puzzlement I felt.

  Jake was rubbing the back of his neck. “I'll be damned if I know,” he answered in a quiet voice. “We didn't see much of Ursula after she moved to Seattle. Once every two, three years Betsy and I'd stop in on her and Wheaton when we were on our way somewhere. But she never came up here. Our folks retired to Arizona, you know. I talked to them this morning, and they're really knocked for a loop. My dad had bypass surgery last May, and I'm worried about him. I wish they wouldn't come up for the funeral. It's going to be a bi
g deal, I gather, probably at the cathedral, with the archbishop and everybody but the pope. No, it'll just be too hard on my folks.”

  The faraway look in Jake's blue eyes indicated that he was now talking more to himself than to me. I waited a moment, but the silence grew awkward. Finally I asked if he'd seen Warren since hearing of Ursula's death.

  “No,” he replied ruefully. “He called us last night after midnight. We'd just gotten to sleep. We offered to come over then, but he said to wait. When I phoned this morning, a whole bunch of people were coming by, so he asked us to wait some more. I'll try again after lunch.”

  I decided not to admit that Vida and I were among the “whole bunch” who had showed up on the doorstep of the house in The Pines. “Warren was living there, wasn't he?” I asked.

  “No, he wasn't,” Jake replied. “He was staying up at the ski lodge. Henry Bardeen gave him a special rate. It's off-season anyway.”

  I didn't try to conceal my surprise. “Will he stay at the house now?”

  Jake shrugged. “Maybe. I don't know. It depends on whether or not it bothers him too much. Ursula really put her personality on that place.”

  Jake and I were summoned to lunch in the dinette. Betsy had added potato chips, fresh peaches, and orangeade to the menu. “I was just telling Vida how I'd kind of looked forward to getting to know Ursula,” our hostess said, passing around the peaches. “My family didn't move to Alpine until I was fourteen. Ursula was almost out of high school by then, and I guess she left town not too long after that. Right, Jake?” Not waiting for her husband's nod of confirmation, Betsy continued in her usual rapid-fire delivery. “So it sounded kind of fun to have a new sister-in-law around. Laura's such a drip.”

  “Now, don't start in on Laura,” Jake cautioned with an air of resignation.

  “Look,” Betsy said, waving her knife, “I've done my best to help Laura in a lot of ways. Clothes for her and the kids, stuff we'd otherwise throw out at the store or give to the food bank, advice she never takes. And what have they got to show for everything you and I have done? A hovel of a house, a beat-up van, a crummy old Chev, and a bunch of car parts lying around that look like something Cal Vickers forgot!”

  “It's not a Chev, it's a Plymouth Fury,” Jake murmured.

  “Whatever.” Betsy made a slashing motion with the knife. “All cars look alike to me. And those pieces and parts look like junk”

  “Buzzy uses them to keep his own cars running,” Jake pointed out.

  “Buzzy!” Betsy spat out the name as if it were a household pest that had crawled into her sandwich. “Maybe Buzzy and Laura are the reasons I looked forward to Ursula. At least she didn't strike me as a washout. If I catch your lame, lazy brother in this house with his hand in your pocket one more time, I'll chase him out of here with a two-by-four! Isn't it enough that you've given that loser a job?”

  “Come on, Betsy,” Jake growled. “Buzzy's had a lot of tough luck, that's all. It's not his fault that the economy around here stinks.”

  “Hey, big shot—we weathered the Safeway invasion, didn't we?” Betsy countered. “And how did we do it? By working our butts off, that's how. We changed the floor plan, we dropped slow-selling items, we kept up with trends to make the yuppies happy. We even changed our advertising.” She glanced at me. “Of course, we had to twist both of Ed Bronsky's arms behind his fat back to do it, but after you hired Leo, we got some really good input from him. Heck, we just hunkered down and did it. Meanwhile Buzzy let Cal Vickers and his Texaco station put him out of business. Even Icicle Creek Gas 'N Go has managed to hold out, and that place is a dump. I was in there last night, and only one pump was working. But Buzzy, even with BP behind him, couldn't make it. His idea of TBA wasn't Tires, Batteries, and Accessories— it was Total Bad Attitude, spelled L-A-Z-Y.” Betsy viciously stabbed a peach slice with her fork.

  “You're not being fair,” Jake said in a relatively mild voice. “He was sick a lot the past few years. His back went out on him, he had pneumonia twice, and then he got shingles. And don't forget, their kids haven't been as easy to raise as ours.”

  “Ours are easy? Give me a break!” Betsy made as if to fall out of her chair. “Ryan's had two speeding tickets this summer, Tim got caught smoking pot under the bleachers at high-school graduation, and Melissa lost her red-and-white polka-dot underwear during Senior Sneak. I swear, I'm going to put that girl on the Pill before she starts college.”

  While Vida seemed unfazed by the discord between the O'Tooles, I was suffering from mild embarrassment. Gulping down the last potato chip on my plate, I offered my hosts a feeble smile.

  “I think Vida and I should be going. We have to check with Sheriff Dodge to see if he's heard anything.”

  Betsy acknowledged my announcement with a faint nod, then turned back to her husband. “You check with that dink, Warren. If he needs us, we'll come. Otherwise I'm going over to the store to work on the books for a couple of hours.”

  Somehow we got out of the O'Toole house without any further verbal sparring. “I catch a little bit of that confrontational stuff at coffee and doughnuts,” I said as Vida pointed the car in what I feared was the other O'Toole house, “but that was almost vicious.”

  “No, it wasn't,” Vida replied calmly. “They were just being Jake and Betsy. It's like a show. They're devoted, really. Couples who are secure in their mutual affection can spar and spat without bitterness. The truth is, Betsy and Jake would do anything for each other.”

  Maybe Vida was right. She usually was. But later I'd wonder about her assertion. If pushed, how far would the O'Tooles really go?

  The contrast between the O'Toole families was marked. Instead of neat beds of dahlias, glads, and rosebushes, Buzzy and Laura's patchy front yard featured rusting car bodies. Two mongrel dogs lay under a scraggly mountain ash. Neither bothered to get up when we pushed our way between discarded mufflers, bicycle wheels, old tires, and a hot-water tank. Only the big TV satellite dish that loomed over the stripped-down chassis of a Dodge Dart looked fairly new.

  The small house that stood not far from the railroad tracks wore a weary, untended air. The brown paint was peeling, shingles were missing from the roof, one front window was held together with duct tape, and the porch floorboards creaked ominously. There was a weathered sign above the doorbell that read BROKE—KNOCK HARD.

  “Broke in more ways than one,” Vida murmured, slamming her fist against the doorjamb. “Tsk, tsk.”

  Laura O'Toole took her time greeting us. Stringy was the word that leaped to mind. Maybe it was the wrinkled shorts and top that revealed her skinny arms and legs, or the limp, mousy hair and the untied sneakers. She ushered us inside in an offhand manner, as if she neither knew nor cared why we had come.

  “Buzzy's not here,” she said vaguely. “Is something wrong?” Her flat tone indicated that something always was.

  The living room was also poles apart from the comfortable ambience of the Jake O'Toole residence. The TV was tuned to a golf tournament, though the volume was turned off and the picture was out of focus. Tabloids littered the floor, along with empty microwave entree containers. The furniture was old and had never been of quality. Vida positioned herself on a plastic lawn chair, but I chose to remain standing.

  “We wanted to tell Buzzy how sorry we were about his sister,” Vida said, though her usual gliibness seemed to stick in her throat. “How is he holding up?”

  Laura's big gray eyes regarded Vida with what might have been skepticism—or perhaps stupidity. “Buzzy? He's okay.” She deposited her scrawny figure on a pile of laundry that had been left on the sagging orange couch. The tattered shades were pulled down, and as far as I could tell, the windows were closed. The house felt very warm.

  Vida plunged forward. “Was he surprised?”

  Laura's angular face definitely looked puzzled. “By what?”

  “By his sister's death.” I couldn't hear Vida gnash her teeth, but I suspected she was fighting the urge. “It must have been
a shock,” my House & Home editor added in hushed tones.

  “Well …” Laura tilted her head to one side, as if she hadn't really considered the matter until now. “Yeah, kind of.”

  “So close,” Vida said after a long pause in apparent expectation that Laura was going to amplify her response. “Richie Magruder found the body so close to your house.”

  “Oh? I guess.” Laura shifted on the pile of laundry. “She was pretty, wasn't she?”

  I could tell from the jerk of one foot that Vida was startled by the comment. “Ursula? Yes, in her way.”

  Laura nodded sagely. “When you're rich, you can afford to look nice. Do you know who gets all her money?”

  The guileless question threw me more than it did Vida. “I've no idea,” she said.

  “There were no children by her first two husbands,” I put in, just so that Laura would remember I was also present.

  “I'd like to know,” Laura said, for the first time showing some animation in her face. “I'd like to know real soon.”

  “Why is that?” Vida inquired as a door banged somewhere in the house.

  Laura's lean features grew cagey. “I just would, that's all.”

  I nodded toward the sound of the door. “Is that Buzzy?”

  Laura shook her head, the almost brown hair hanging limp at her neck. “No. That's one of the kids. Mike, I think. He was over at the playfield.”

  Having finally seen Laura O'Toole up close, I couldn't resist a question. “Why did you decide to run for the parochial-school board?”

  Wiping at the perspiration on her forehead, Laura gazed at me with empty gray eyes. “Luce asked me.”

  Vida leaned forward on the chair. “Nunzio Lucci?”