Fade to White (24 page)

She pulled her hair back and looped it loosely over itself, then stood alongside the coffeemaker, waiting. “You bet I’m interested.”

“Heart attack,” he said.

“Heart attack,” she repeated, a little crestfallen. “So it wasn’t drugs.”

Guy took his flat-brimmed hat down from its peg. “Nope, it wasn’t drugs.” He held the hat in his hand and permitted himself a little smile. “Not unless you count the cocaine that brought on the heart attack.”

She jumped, grinning. “What’d I tell you, Guy?”

“I know, I know. Good call.”

“So, are the troopers going to talk to Buddy Frommer? Are
you
going to talk to Buddy Frommer? Is
somebody
going to talk to Buddy Frommer? Huh?”

“Somebody is, no question about it.”

“Good.”

“Somebody’s going to talk pretty seriously with him.”

“Good.”

“I don’t want to tell tales out of school,” he said, “but it turns out that people have had their eye on Buddy for a while now.”

“I thought maybe.”

“I’m thinking this Harper Stone deal might shake a few things loose.”

“You think it might?”

“I think it
should.
”

“Me, too.”

“I think it will.”

“I hope so.”

He settled his hat on his head and put one hand on the doorknob. “Thing is, Buddy’s still kind of incidental if you look at the whole picture. See: Let’s say you’re right, and Stone bought some coke from him.”

“Of course I’m right. It’s not like, ‘Let’s say maybe I’m right.’ I
am
right.”

“Fine. So Stone bought coke from him. Take that as a given. We’ve still got to explain how the guy ended up three-quarters of a mile away from that nice warm house he’d rented, out there on the undeveloped side of the mountain, in the middle of a blizzard.”

“Right.”

“Stoned to the gills.”

“Roger. And in the middle of the night.”

“Now, we don’t know that. We don’t know when it happened, exactly.”

“Oh, right. Of course.”

“He could have ended up out there any time during the day of the blizzard, or even the night before or the night after. As low as the temperatures have been, the medical examiner’s office is keeping the timing pretty loose right now. Plus the snow over him was well enough drifted that it’s no help at all. The poor guy’s clothing was frozen solid, like he’d been wrapped in wet sheets and put in the freezer, on account of what was probably hyperthermia caused either by the effort of getting out there or by the cocaine or both. He had a workout before he went down, one way or another.”

“Somebody asked me if he’d had snowshoes or whatever, but I couldn’t remember.”

“There’s a pair missing from the house, but they haven’t turned up.” He turned a little and tightened his grip on the doorknob. “Did the state boys ever get your skis back to you?”

“No.”

“I’ll ask if you want me to. But don’t hold your breath.”

“That’d be good. I’d appreciate it.”

“No problem.”

While Guy was offering information, she thought she’d ask: “Other than the snowshoes, anything else in the house?”

“Nothing useful, except … well. You know.”

“I know.”

“It’s pretty well trashed, but the guy was probably a slob. Overgrown frat boy.”

“He had people to clean up after him.”

“My thinking exactly.” He turned the knob and cold air began to sneak in through the front door. Stacey put her arms around herself. “Of course the place is wall to wall fingerprints,” he said, “but it’s a rental. If the guy had visitors, so did lots of other people.”

*   *   *

Stacey had a question for Buddy Frommer. It was a little personal, but then again Buddy seemed to take everything personally, so she figured there wasn’t much difference between asking him where he got that tattoo and asking him to sell her a pair of mittens or whatever. It was all an intrusion into the wonderful private world of Buddy Frommer, and it was all a pain in his butt. She’d have to risk it and take the consequences.

First, though, she had to wait for the store to empty. When she pulled up the lot was half full of people who clearly didn’t know any better, out-of-towners after a pair of glove liners or a gaitor, flatlanders who’d left their skis here last week for a tune and now wanted to get out on them pronto. One thing you had to give Buddy Frommer: By putting up this building on the main route in from Connecticut, he’d guaranteed himself a constant supply of fresh victims. She pictured him plotting the whole thing out, setting himself up like one of those anglerfish you saw on Animal Planet.

She pulled into a parking slot and kept the engine going rather than give the windows a chance to fog over. People came and went, entering the Slope prepped for a great day on the mountain and leaving with a hundred different varieties of disgust on their faces. She watched them come and go, and she switched back and forth between the only two radio stations you could get around here. It was always either Vermont Public Radio or the world’s worst classic rock. Morning Edition or some hair band from the eighties. Garrison Keillor or Foghat.

It pained her to wait, but she kept her attention on all of the little kids bouncing in the cars and consoled herself that their parents had to get every one of them into Ski School, or at least into their snowsuits and helmets and rented equipment before any of them got out on the hill. That helped a little, and it made the wait a bit less aggravating. Finally, once the crowds thinned out, she switched off the engine and got out.

Inside the Slippery Slope, Buddy was ensconced behind the elevated counter as usual. He stood facing the door but he didn’t seem to see her come in. A least he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to register her presence. His head was tilted back and his reading glasses were down at the tip of his nose. He was studying a long loop of register tape that he ratcheted inch by inch through his fingers. Written upon his face was a rare smile.

It vanished when Stacey said hello.

In any other ski shop in the known universe, Stacey would have been greeted with a smile and a genuinely curious look and an inquiry as to how those new Heads were working out for her. A great number of the people who worked in ski shops were skiers themselves, and skiers wanted to know what was up with the latest gear. Part of it was the plain fact of being an avid and helpless aficionado—the kind of person who simply had to file away every bit of sport-related info he could—and part of it was just job-related research. One person could only demo so many different kinds of equipment every season, and you were always limited—in terms of physique and gender and ability level—to a certain cross-section of available stuff. So a big meaty guy like Buddy Frommer wouldn’t know anything firsthand about the performance of a pair of skis that suited a small woman like Stacey Curtis. He’d have only three ways of knowing: the ski magazines, which you couldn’t trust; the manufacturer’s reps, whom you couldn’t trust either; and customer experience, which was untrustworthy, too, given how unsophisticated most customers were, and the way that 90 percent of them overestimated their ability anyhow. Yet an alert and engaged ski shop employee would have known Stacey for one of the good ones. A person who skied a ton and knew what she wanted in the way of performance.

Buddy, on the other hand, could not have cared less. He didn’t even remember that she’d bought skis from him a week or so back, except in a kind of general way. The way a person could still recall a painful rash he’d had last summer.

Stacey forged ahead anyhow, just as if he’d asked. “Those Heads I got last week?” she said. “I never got out on them much, but it was fun while it lasted.”

“That’s nice.” He didn’t even look away from the register tape.

“It wasn’t like the snow was exactly perfect for them anyhow,” she sighed, “once all that fresh powder got groomed down.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Sure you would. They’re too fat.”

“Whatever.”

She pulled her wallet out of her jacket pocket and thumped it down on the counter, the change purse on the face of it jingling, with a vague hope that the sound of money might get his attention. It didn’t. So she tried something different. “Anyway,” she said, “now that the state police impounded the skis as evidence in the Harper Stone case, I don’t guess I’ll ever get them back.”

She was expecting at least a
“What?”
Or maybe an adjustment of the reading glasses on his nose. At the bare minimum a reflexive impulse to set aside the paper tape for half a second, but Buddy was Buddy, and he didn’t give an inch.

“Not like they thought they’re a murder weapon or anything.”

Nothing from Buddy.

“But they
were
kind of instrumental in finding his body. Rolling right over him like that.”

Buddy put down the tape at last. “You got problems with your skis, you’ve come to the wrong place. I don’t do refunds and I don’t do replacements. Take it up with your homeowner’s insurance.”

“No, no,” said Stacey. “I don’t want a refund.”

“Then you want to buy something, or what? I’m kind of busy.”

“Yeah,” she said, reaching into the basket alongside the register. “A ChapStick, is all.”

He growled.

“Maybe a couple.” She grabbed two and put them down on the counter. “Here.”

Buddy reached over to pick up one of them, and his sleeve rode up on his arm just enough that Stacey could point to the heart and anchor.

“Where’d you get that?” she said.

“No place around here.”

“I’ll bet. But really, where’d you get it?”

“That kind of information,” he said as the register beeped once, “would cost a whole lot more than a couple of damn ChapSticks.”

“Hey, those Heads you sold me weren’t cheap. And I only had the use of them for a day.”

“That’s no fault of mine.” He passed the bar code under the scanner a second time and the register beeped again.

“Come on,” she said. “My dad has a tattoo just like that one.” She was surprised how easily the lie had popped out. It had taken no effort at all.

“Ask
him,
then, why don’t you?”

“I did,” she said. “He told me Singapore.” She was thinking of what Chip had said, when they were sitting in the car in Woodstock after the movie. Who ever thought of Singapore?

“Wrong,” said Buddy, slapping the ChapStick down onto the counter. “It wasn’t Singapore. It was Copenhagen.”

“Copenhagen? Really?”

“Really.” He showed her his empty palm. “That’s four and a quarter. You don’t need a bag, do you?”

“No. No, thanks.” She dug in her wallet. While she had him engaged, she went for it. “Did your friend get his there, too?”

“What friend?”

“You know.” She slid change onto the counter little by little, keeping him interested. “Stone.”

“Stone who?”

“Harper Stone.”

“Never met him. All I can think of is maybe he was in the Merchant Marine, too.” Buddy scooped up the change and slid it into the drawer. “Anything else you need, or can I get back to work?” He slammed the cash drawer shut with his belly, and that was clearly the end of that.

THIRTY-FIVE

She didn’t even go to the mountain. She went to the township building instead, where Mildred Furlong held sway over access to the sheriff’s office. There was a line, half a dozen people sitting in plastic chairs out along a partition in the assembly hall, but all of them weren’t there to see Guy. That didn’t make any difference to Mildred, though. She could only concentrate on one thing at a time. She was adamant about that. A couple of the people wanted to file complaints about a recent property assessment, somebody else was hoping to get information about flu shots, and the rest needed to have some kind of paperwork notarized. The property complaint people looked furious, their faces set in stone. The woman about the flu shots looked confused—as well she might have been, given that flu season was already at least half over—and she kept nervously tap-tap-tapping a yellow pamphlet on her leg. The people who’d come about getting something notarized just looked fed up. Mildred, however, was in her glory, especially with the notary business. It was her favorite part of the job—particularly using the embosser to make that all-important official imprint—and the joy of it was written large on her face.

“Excuse me,” said Stacey, approaching the desk.

Mildred put down the papers she was working on, took the glasses from her nose, and dropped them to let them dangle from the chain around her neck. Slowly, she looked up at Stacey. “You’ll have to wait your turn, my dear.” She said it so politely and patiently that anyone would have thought she had a good reason.

“I’m just here to see the sheriff.”

“Unless it’s an emergency, dear, you’re just going to have to wait your turn like everyone else.” Mildred slowly picked up her dangling glasses and positioned them carefully on her nose again. Through them she could focus only on the paperwork that lay on the desk, not on Stacey. She was very clear about that. “As you can see,” she said, “I’m quite occupied.”

“But…” Through the records room behind Mildred’s desk and out the other side, Stacey could see a brightly lit hallway and about three-quarters of a door with an engraved plaque that read
SHERIFF GUY RAMSEY
. Judging by the angle she was pretty sure that the door was open a few inches, which meant he probably was in there alone—or at least not up to something top secret. Was Guy ever up to something top secret? Maybe. Probably. Not now, she didn’t think. “But,” she said, “I…”

“If I make a mistake on these documents,” Mildred said, “they’ll take away my commission. And then where would the township be, hmm? We’d be without a notary, that’s where.” She reached into her drawer, drew out the embossing stamp, and lined it up over the corner of the paper she was working on.

Before she could get it squared to her liking, Guy Ramsey’s door creaked open the rest of the way and he emerged, coffee cup in hand, heading for the kitchen. Stacey didn’t know what to call him here at his place of business—Guy or Sheriff or what—so she just said, “Hey!” That was enough. He turned his head at the sound of her voice, smiled, and raised his coffee mug, then motioned to her to come on back.