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Alberta Wilmarth

Alberta Wilmarth ("Alby") is the owner of a Utah ranch near Ballard who hires Andrew Howard to force the exhumation of her dead mother, and who dotes on her enormous goose, Nancy.
Type NPC (client)
Aliases Alberta; Alby; Madeline (Bigelow's slip); the client; the goose's owner
Affiliation Owner of Sherman Ranch; landlord of Robert Bigelow
Status Alive (as of Walkers 05); lives off-site
First appearance Walkers 01
Played by Andre

Description

Alberta is a ranch owner who tends the pig pen and wears sunscreen on her nose (Walkers 02). She believes in aliens but not ghosts, and is "on the right side of history" for it, according to Rita's Andrew (Walkers 02). She is blunt and practical: when the team finds a cavern under her land she guesses a natural gas bed and worries about mineral rights and foundations (Walkers 05).

Background

Her mother, Shelly Wilmarth, died of a heart attack in winter 1990, alone with the cattle, and had refused to leave the ranch. Alberta says she has only brothers, so there is no secret twin (Walkers 01). She no longer lives on the property and has rented the big house and barn to the billionaire Robert Bigelow (Walkers 02, Walkers 05).

History

Walkers 01: the client

Alberta visits Andrew's apartment with a box of documents and tapes and says, "I need you to force the Mormon church to exhume my mom." The box holds an obituary, a yearbook photo, a reunion photo and a VHS copy of local news footage of a community-centre protest in which her mother appears. Her ranch tenant, "the space guy," has seen the dead woman walking the edge of the property at night. Her pitch is: "She's not a ghost... She's just alive again." Andrew feeds her leftovers. She leaves dazed after he works doppelgangers back onto his list, and calls the ranch "cursed" (boiled cattle, missing pets, UFO lights, Navy radiation investigators) (Walkers 01). See Alberta's box.

Alberta tells Andrew her mother died "two years ago," but the obituary clipping she hands over dates the death to the winter of 1990; the discrepancy is never addressed (Walkers 01).

Walkers 02: at the ranch

Andrew has stayed in touch with her (Zack jokes, "They're dating"). She offers the "grandma cottage" on the ranch (guest double-wide) and promises to warn security so the team is not shot. At the pig pen she greets "Detective Howard" until he corrects her to "special agent," then settles on "Howard." She is surprised the FBI took her seriously. She asks Walt Murphy to fix fence posts that were pulled up overnight, which she blames on coyotes, and says the ranch always hums at night, perhaps from the substation. She urges the team to look into the exhumation, and Kurt promises they will. She says she will never sell to the town (Walkers 02).

When Nancy the goose charges Kurt, she calls her a "big softie," and Walt's vow to eat the goose draws: "Don't you dare, Walt. She's a beautiful, innocent, pure soul." Bigelow calls her "Madeline" and corrects himself (Walkers 02).

Walkers 03 and 04: offscreen

She does not appear. The team recaps her request, and the exhumation plan continues (Walkers 03); see Exhumation of Shelly Wilmarth. In Walkers 04, Walt notes that the goose's owner loves it, so no one will kill it (Walkers 04).

Walkers 05: the cavern

Around 5 p.m. the team finds Alberta in her pickup bed with the goose calm in her lap. Kurt tells her the exhumation is going through, that the car vanished and reappeared magnetized, and that a coyote on two legs followed him. She replies, "If he's on two legs and following you, that's probably one of the weird ones," and "There's a reason I don't live here anymore." When she moves to set the goose down, the team flees. Later Kurt phones her about the cavern, and she asks them to tell no one until she works out "the play" (Walkers 05); see The cavern.

After this she is mentioned in the arc only as the goose's owner and the exhumation's requester (Walkers 07).

Relationships

  • Andrew Howard: her point of contact; she trusts him (Walkers 02). See Andrew Howard.
  • Nancy the goose: docile only with Alberta (Walkers 02).
  • Robert Bigelow: her tenant at the big house.

Memorable quotes

Quote

"She's not a ghost... She's just alive again." (Walkers 01)

Quote

"There's a reason I don't live here anymore." (Walkers 05)

Trivia

  • Her surname is spelled "Wilmarth" by Andre; Dante heard "Wilmerth" (Walkers 03).

Appearances