The Alpine Fury Read Free Page A

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. Itwas 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 andthe 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