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add those new board members, you can bet they'll be pagan yuppies, too.”
    I frowned at Luce. “Are you saying that's the whole point of this proposal? To weigh the board in favor of the non-Catholics?”
    “You got it.” Luce drummed his thick fingers on the Formica tabletop. “Even if Bayard and Daley keep the faith, the rest of 'em won't. Then where'11 we be?”
    “We've got Veronica Wenzler-Greene as principal,” I pointed out. “She seems like a responsible sort.”
    Luce uttered a contemptuous snort, “Ronnie Wenzler-Greene's no Sister Mary Rose,” he declared, referring to the nun with the iron fist in the iron glove who had run the school for twenty-odd years before her retirement shortly after my arrival in Alpine. “For one thing, Ronnie's divorced. Now, that's not like it used to be with Catholics, but besides that, she strikes me as the kind who likes … what do they call them? Innovations.”
    I had to admit I didn't know Ronnie Wenzler-Greene very well. I didn't really know that much about the school, never having had a child enrolled there. I was beginning to think I didn't know much about my own parish.
    “Okay, Luce,” I said between french-fry nibbles. “If the vote this weekend favors expanding the school board, we'll run that in the paper, along with the candidates who've declared themselves. What's the deadline for getting on the ballot?”
    Luce didn't know. If it had come up at last night'smeeting, I'd been wool-gathering. I'd have to call Father Den or Principal Ronnie.
    Luce had now shifted gears, and was grousing about the environmentalists. Naturally Greer Fairfax's name came up again. So did that of her husband, Grant. But Luce refused to call them by their last name. Instead he favored designating them as “Tree-hugging SOBs.”
    I finished lunch before Luce did, so I left him with promises to watch the developing church story more closely. Since the papers were only now being delivered to individual homes, I had some spare time before the usual irate phone calls started coming in. Now that we had the back shop up and running, I needed to check our insurance. When I called Brendan Shaw earlier in the day, he'd assured me that I could drop in at the Sigurdson-Shaw agency any time between twelve and one. Brendan had brought his lunch.
    Over sixty years ago a bucker named Harry Sigurdson had been seriously injured in the woods. Rather than leave Alpine to find work in a larger town, he had hit upon the scheme of selling a form of workers' compensation to his former fellow loggers. Eventually he sold life and home owner's and car insurance. When he finally died three years ago at the age of ninety-six, he had still not officially retired. But his son-in-law, Cornelius Shaw, had been allowed into the business upon his marriage to Helen Jane Sigurdson shortly after World War II. According to Vida, neither the marital nor the business merger had been entered into without conflict. Cornelius Shaw was a Catholic, Harry Sigurdson was a Lutheran, and fifty years ago such a so-called mixed marriage between members of different faiths wasn't looked upon with favor. But Harry had no sons, and eventually he relented. Vida, however, intimated that the main reason Harry continued working into his dotage was because he never quite trusted his son-in-law. The Irish, the old man insisted, were lazy and inclined to dissipation.
    But Cornelius had been diligent, and now was in semi-retirement, spending almost half the year with Helen Jane in Palm Desert. Their son, Brendan, who is in his late forties, now runs the business. He is a man of medium size, medium coloring, and startling blue eyes. His handshake is a shade too firm, his laughter a trifle too hearty. Brendan makes much of how hard he works, as if still feeling a need to give the lie to his grandfather's allegations about the Irish.
    Sigurdson-Shaw Insurance is located on the first floor of the Alpine Building, directly across the street