Fade to White (8 page)

Either way, she didn’t bite. All she said was, “When are you going home, anyway?” She was leaning against the back bar with her elbows behind her.

Brian was quick, however, she had to give him that. He turned the question right back on her, making it into an invitation. “When are
you
coming home?” he asked, with that soulful look he could pull out of his back pocket on a moment’s notice. She hated
that
look, too.

“I moved out of my folks’ place a long time ago,” she said. “This is home right now.”

“Just you and the spinster.”

“More like just me and the sheriff.”

“The sheriff?” That kind of changed everything. What about Chip? What about
him?

“Yeah, the sheriff. The sheriff and his wife and kids. That’s where I rent. They’ve got this spare room.”

“Sheriff Ramsey?”

“That’s right.” She took note of a couple of snowmobile guys in those big yellow snowsuits, trying to get her attention from a table in the back. She gave them a sign to suggest that she’d be right there, and one of them upended his empty glass to show that she didn’t need to come all the way over to find out what it was they wanted. Just another round of that Long Trail whenever she got around to it. “You met Guy? What was it, another speeding ticket?”

“No. He came by the condo when we couldn’t find Harper Stone.”

“I guess he still hasn’t turned up, huh?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Think he will?” Stepping forward to the tap and pulling a couple of Long Trails.

“I don’t know why not,” he said.

“So, what did Guy think it’s all about? He give you any indication?”

“I don’t know. He was more interested in finding out what
I
thought it was all about.”

“And?”

“Who knows?” He shrugged, wanting another beer but not wanting to ask her for it. If he’d been in their old apartment back in Boston, sitting with his feet up watching football or surfing the Web, he’d have had no trouble asking her to bring him something. He wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but now that there was a commercial relationship involved, it just felt weird. Or it felt as if she might think it felt weird. Which was kind of the same thing, wasn’t it? He could do without that beer, no problem. He’d have to.

She made a note on her pad and brought the two glasses over to the snowmobile guys. Then she took a stroll around the room to make sure that her tables were happy before returning to her spot behind the bar.

“When do you get off?”

That Brian. He never gave up.

“Past your bedtime.”

“You’d know.”

“I guess I would,” she said. “Lucky me.”

“You off this weekend?”

“I ski during the day, and I’m here nights. The weekends are the busiest.”

“Right.” He stood for a minute thinking, looking down at the bar, and then he looked up. “I thought I might stick around for a few more days,” he said. “Since you and I have a few things we never exactly finished talking about.”

“I finished,” she said. “But suit yourself.”

*   *   *

Guy was still awake when she got home. That was unusual. It was probably the first time ever, come to think of it.

The house was off the main road on its own private lane, past a green street sign that read
RAMSEY ROAD, PVT
. That was the way things were around here. Half the roads were private, which didn’t mean that there was anything special about them. All it meant was that it was up to you to keep them plowed in the winter, to cope with the ruts and gullies that would turn them into treacherous swamps come spring, as well as to fill those ruts and gullies with gravel and fresh dirt come summer. Stacey located the turnoff by means of a pair of red reflectors that Guy had put out there a long time ago, nailed five or six feet up on the trunks of birch trees on either side. In the summer they’d be ridiculously high in the air, but in the winter—on account of the snow that the plows threw in all directions—they were just right.

The woods were thick here, dark and deep, and Ramsey Road had a couple of bends in it that hid the house from the road even though it wasn’t actually set too far back—no more than fifty yards, as the crow files. However, this was the first time Stacey could remember seeing a light between the trees as she turned in. Sure enough, the floor lamp in the living room was switched on, and she could see it through the blinds as she rounded the last turn and pulled up alongside the house and parked. The blinds were down and tilted shut, even though there was nobody for miles around, and the light leaked out in thin stripes. She went in through the back porch to the kitchen, left her boots in the boot tray, dropped her things in her bedroom back there—it was in a little square extension, a mother-in-law suite almost, wrapped in raw Tyvek that fluttered in the wind and kept her awake at night—and padded out to the living room to see what was up.

Guy sat in his recliner, wearing striped flannel pajamas underneath his white terry cloth bathrobe, an empty milk glass in one hand and the remote in the other. He wasn’t using either one of them, though. He was looking hard at the television, sighting across the room between his stocking feet as if along the barrel of a gun. The television was showing some educational travelogue of what looked like Italy or Greece, but Stacey could see right off that he wasn’t watching it. He had the sound turned all the way down and was chewing on his lower lip. The muscles in his jaw were working in the reflected multicolored light of some Mediterranean holiday scene.

He’d hardly heard her come in, but when she said his name he shook off his concentration and turned toward her. “Hey, Stacey.”

“You’re up late.”

“I guess I am.” He lifted his left hand to look at his watch and discovered that he wasn’t wearing it. He’d probably left it on the nightstand up in the bedroom, where Megan had gone to sleep a long while past. “What time is it, anyhow?”

“Two thirty.”

“Wow. I had no idea.” He squeezed his eyelids shut and gave his head a little shake as if to clear it.

“Something on your mind?”

“That guy who disappeared. I assume it was the talk of the Broken Binding.”

“Yes and no.”

“Him being a movie star and all.”

Stacey sat down on the couch opposite him. “A movie star?” she said. “Maybe you’d better define your terms.”

He poked at the remote without looking at it, and instead of going dark the television switched over to a movie. He’d have known it anywhere, inside of two seconds.
Shane,
with that Alan Ladd. Stacey probably didn’t consider Alan Ladd a movie star either. Then again he’d been dead since what, sometime in the sixties. That would be before she was born. At least Harper Stone’s career was a little more recent than that, however little there might be left of it these days. “I mean,” he said, “the guy
did
make some movies. A couple of pretty good ones, to tell the truth.”

“I’d hope so. Given his attitude.”

“You met him?”

“I guess you could put it that way.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was kind of detached, is all.”

“Detached.” He studied the film of milk in his glass.

“It was probably just the whole movie-star thing. Ego.”

“Maybe.” He tilted his glass and watched a single drop of milk slide around the bottom of it, circling and thinning itself out. “Still,” he said, “tell me more.”

“Starstruck, are we?”

“Professionally curious.” He clicked the remote again, killing the television this time.

“Right.” So she told him the whole thing. Pretty much, anyhow. She told him how she’d run into Stone in the service department at the Slippery Slope, and how when she’d seen him again later on—not more than an hour or so later, really—he’d acted like they’d never set eyes on each other. How he’d smoothed it over as a result of his meeting so many good-looking women in his life, which was both unctuous and egotistical. Real Stacey bait, ha ha ha. It hadn’t worked, as Guy could tell.

But Guy wasn’t terribly interested in that part of the story. When she finished telling him everything, he went right back to the part about the basement of the Slippery Slope, to the workbench where she’d seen Stone huddled in conversation with Buddy Frommer. “You sure he saw you there in the first place?”

“Absolutely. I looked him right in the eye.”

“That’s weird.”

“I know.”

“What’d he say?”

“Nothing. Not that I remember.”

“Buddy did all the talking?”

“He didn’t exactly say a whole lot. He kind of hustled me out of there.”

“That’s Buddy. That’s Buddy Frommer.”

“Does he always act like that?”

“Like what?” He put his milk glass down on the end table and brought the recliner forward.

“Like he does.”

“How’s that?”

“Come on. You know how he is.”

Guy clearly didn’t want to put words in her mouth, but this was getting ridiculous. “Irritable, you mean? Or do you mean secretive? Because—”

She tilted her head. “I hadn’t thought about
secretive,
but yeah. That’s it. Secretive.
And
irritable. Secretive and irritable both. That would pretty much cover the Buddy Frommer Experience.”

“No kidding,” said Guy, sitting and shaking his head. “My older brother went all the way through school with Buddy, and he hasn’t changed since the first grade.”

“How does he stay in business?” Thinking that maybe Guy would mention the rumor Chip had suggested, how Buddy might have been selling drugs out of the Slippery Slope. She didn’t want to leap to any conclusions, but it sure did make sense, what with that transaction over the workbench and all.

But Guy kept his own counsel on that issue. “He comes from money,” is what he said. “His parents bought him a brand-new Camaro when he and my brother were juniors in high school. Regular kids were driving around in third-hand VW Beetles and rusty Ford Falcons and God knows what else. Anything with wheels. Anything that moved. And Buddy got a Camaro for his birthday. I was maybe eight or ten years old, but I still remember it. You can bet my brother never forgave him.”

Stacey could see that it still stung.

Guy sat staring off into space, remembering. “It was red. Cherry red.”

“Wow,” said Stacey.

“Anyway,” said Guy, shaking loose that sour old memory and getting back to business, “the bottom line is Stone didn’t talk to you.”

“No.”

“So maybe he didn’t see you at all.”

“Oh, he did. He saw me. He kind of acknowledged me a little as I was leaving.” She touched her brow and moved her hand away slowly. “You know, like that.”

“Right. But later on it was as if he hadn’t seen you before in his life.”

“It’s probably nothing. Just his way of making himself feel like a big shot.”

“Sure.” Guy ran the back of his fingers over the stubble on his chin. “That’s probably what it was.”

“I wouldn’t make anything of it, Guy. Really.”

He shifted forward in his chair, either ready to call it a night or just getting started, she couldn’t decide. “Tell me,” he said. “Did you get a real good look at him? I mean later on, not in the shop. When you were on the mountain.”

“It depends on what you mean by ‘a real good look.’ ”

“I mean was there anything…” He shrugged his shoulders.

“Do you mean was he…”

No clarification from the sheriff. No clarification at all.

“Do you mean was he high or something?”

“You tell me.” Folding his hands.

“He didn’t act it.”

“And you’d know.”

Stacey stood up. “Come on, Guy,” she said, at a volume that was tilting toward sufficient to wake Megan and the kids upstairs.

He smiled. “No. Sorry. Didn’t mean to sound like I was interrogating you.”

“Hmph.”

“Really. I mean, we’re trained to notice things. Behavioral stuff. Physical stuff. I was just thinking out loud. I’m really sorry.”

“That’s all right.”

“No offense. I didn’t mean to suggest that you had some kind of experience in that area.”

“I know.”

Guy got out of the chair and scuffed in his slippers toward the kitchen, and she followed behind him. He turned on the tap and stood rinsing out his glass and she went on past, toward her room.

“Anyhow,” she said, “I don’t see how a person would be high at nine o’clock in the morning.”

“Then you haven’t seen as much of the world as I have,” Guy said.

THIRTEEN

Guy shared a secretary with the town clerk, a little Scotsman named Archie MacGregor. The plain truth was that MacGregor, who was long retired from his maple sugar business but spent most of his time working at it anyhow, got the better end of the deal. His secretary was supposed to devote two hours a day to the sheriff’s paperwork, but she usually fell short because Archie wasn’t around to look after his own business more than a couple of mornings a week and she ended up doing it for him. The secretary was his sister-in-law, Mildred Furlong. This morning she was in early, stoked on black coffee and ready to go when Guy showed up.

“I’ve looked everywhere,” she said before he could even get his coat off, “but I can’t find the forms you’ll need.”

“The forms I’ll need for what?”

“To file a report on a missing person.”

He hung his coat on the hall tree in the lobby and walked through, past her desk and into the records room, toward the hallway that led to the kitchen and his little office. “What happened?” he said over his shoulder. “You lose somebody?”

Mildred clutched her sweater around her neck. It was a cardigan and she had it pinned with one of those little chains that nobody but deeply unfashionable women of a certain age even remembered wearing, much less still wore. “Why,” she said, “I’m referring to
Mister Stone.”

In the kitchen, Guy rinsed out his mug, poured coffee into it, and shook in some sugar. He stirred it with the common spoon and called back to Mildred, “We’ve got a little ways to go before anybody declares Harper Stone missing.”

“I went ahead and called his rental house again this morning,” she said. “There wasn’t any answer.”