Fade to White (25 page)

“That’s the records room,” said Mildred, hammering the embosser with her fist as Stacey slid past the desk. “Don’t touch anything.”

*   *   *

“You didn’t tell me that Buddy Frommer was in the Merchant Marine,” she said when she sat down across from his desk with a mug of her own.

“Jeez,” Guy said, looking amazed. “He
was,
come to think of it.”

“So he says.”

“I’d forgotten. I was thinking he’d gone straight to college. My brother went off to UVM and I had this picture of Buddy going at the same time. I was little, remember.”

“So why would the rich kid go into the Merchant Marine, instead of heading straight to school?”

“I’m thinking it had something to do with his father.” He sipped his coffee and squinted at the wall behind Stacey, remembering. “He was a tough one. A veteran of World War II, like the rest of our dads, even though he was a good bit older. Maybe he was one of those guys who never got over being in the army. It could be that he thought some kind of service would do Buddy good.”

“He thought it would build character.”

“Right,” said Guy, laughing. “Although I’ve never imagined I’d hear the words ‘Buddy Frommer’ and ‘building character’ in the same sentence.”

“Anything’s possible.”

“Not really. But you can’t blame the old man for trying.”

“Old,” said Stacey, “might be the word for it. You said Buddy’s father was older than the rest of your dads.”

“Right. Yeah.”

“Old enough to make Buddy as old as Harper Stone?”

Guy nearly spat out a mouthful of coffee. “Come on, Stacey,” he said. “I know you’re young, but jeez, give me a break. Stone must be my own dad’s age, or thereabouts.”

Stacey nodded.

“I mean, other than being dead and everything.”

“Right,” she said. “Other than that.”

“It’s enough that you’ve got Buddy selling dope to Stone. They don’t have to be … I don’t know, they don’t have to be, like, college roommates or something.”

“Not now, I guess they don’t. Not if they’re that many years apart.”

Guy shook his head, still a little blindsided. “Wow. You must think I’m about a hundred.”

“No.” Stacey sat and chewed at her lip for a second and looked at nothing. “I
thought
there was too big a gap. That’s why I was asking.”

He leaned forward just a little. “Too big a gap for what?”

“For—” She shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s probably stupid.”

“Nothing’s stupid,” Guy said. “Well, I take that back. Lots of things are stupid. Nonetheless…”

Stacey put both hands around her coffee cup and squared it on the desk in front of her. She looked like she was testifying. “They both have the same tattoo. I saw it first on Stone, down in the basement; then later on I saw it on Buddy. Twice. They looked exactly the same. Same age and everything. Pretty well faded. Kind of smeary.”

“Hmm,” said Guy. “That would be interesting, if it weren’t just a coincidence.”

“Pretty big coincidence.”

“What’d it look like, anyhow? I mean, what was it a picture of?”

“A heart and an anchor. With chains around it.”

“That’s a pretty ordinary design, don’t you think? Pretty common?”

“Sure, but—”

“And anyhow, those guys are fifteen years apart. No way they could have gotten tattooed at the same time.”

“I know.”

“Probably Stone was in the Merchant Marine, too. I mean, that’s possible. And they got the same tattoo fifteen years apart. We could Google him and find out.”

“Or you could ask his old friend, Manny What’s-His-Name.”

Guy leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. “I could,” he said, brightening. “I will.”

“Do it.”

“So how come you’re thinking like law enforcement now?” he asked. “One murder solved and you’ve got a new career?”

She picked up her coffee and drained what was left of it. “The better question is how come you’re thinking like a high school kid, with your Google and everything.”

THIRTY-SIX

Chip was in the Patrol shack near the base lodge when Stacey finally made it to the mountain. She stuck her head in the door just to see, her boot bag still slung over her shoulders, and there he was, shivering a little and stirring the fire with a poker. “You just come in?” she said, getting his attention.

“Yeah, yeah. Just now.” He left off with the fire, leaned the poker up against the bricks, and sat down on a bench. “Twenty minutes till I’ve got to be back out there. I’ve got a PB and J in my locker. What’re you doing for lunch?”

It was early, even earlier than usual, but it was either eat now with him or eat later without him. No choice, really. “The usual,” she said, stepping inside and pulling the door tight behind her. On a shelf above Chip’s head there was a battered old copper teapot on a hotplate, switched on since sometime back in the sixties and usually boiled dry. She put some fresh water into it and dug in her backpack for energy bars and a tea bag. Chip leaned over and stretched out his arm to grab a couple of foam cups from a stack on the table.

“I hate using those.”

“I know, but consider the alternative.” He nodded toward a jumble of filthy mugs in the sink. “No amount of scrubbing is going to decontaminate one of them.”

“I guess,” said Stacey. She looked at the teapot and decided that the old saying about a watched pot was probably right. “So,” she said after a minute, “you never told me how Rail Jam Night went. You going back this weekend?”

“No way.”

She lifted her eyebrows.

“It’s just not worth it. Somebody’s going to get killed there one of these days, and I don’t want it on my head.”

“Smart man.”

“Plus … I don’t know. It’s just that the whole thing’s so completely annoying and juvenile. I guess there was a time I would have thought it was pretty cool—you know, the beer and the tricks and everything—but that time’s long gone.”

She just nodded slowly, listening and waiting for the water to boil.

“I thought it would be an easy fifty bucks, but I was wrong. It’d take a lot more than fifty bucks to make me want to spend another evening around that crowd.”

“Really obnoxious, eh?”

“Like the worst of the dopey college kids I have to holler at from the lift, the ones that make me embarrassed that I’m only a few years older than they are. Like them, plus beer.” He went on to describe Anthony-without-an-H from Long Island, the unruly king of them all, who’d gotten himself lost out of bounds and was welcomed back like some kind of hero on account of it. About how Anthony was lucky he hadn’t killed himself. About how much trouble it would have been had the Patrol learned of Anthony’s Adventure and been called on to go rescue him from the clutches of his own bad judgment. “And you know what would have happened if we’d spent the whole day risking our necks for him? It wouldn’t have cost him a dime and he’d have been ungracious about it, and at the end of the day he would still have shown up at Doc’s Rail Jam like Rocky Balboa or something.”

The teakettle shrieked and Chip jumped.

“So how did he find his way home?” Stacey asked as he poured hot water into the two foam cups.

“Remember that guy at the cabin on the backside?”

“I do. He showed up there? Anthony-without-an-H?”

“Funny,” said Chip. “I remember that guy bellyaching about how lost skiers were knocking on his door all the time, but I don’t think I ever heard about one until now.”

“I guess you wouldn’t, necessarily.”

“I guess not. That Anthony sure got lucky, though. I mean he got lucky that the guy was even home in the afternoon. He said he drove him back to town on a snowmobile.”

“Why not take the truck?”

“I don’t know. What of it?”

“Maybe the truck wasn’t there,” Stacey said. “It being the afternoon and all.”

Chip ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t get it. If he was home, the truck was there.”

“What if he wasn’t?”

“But he was, simple as that. Anthony said the TV was on loud and this old guy came to the door and they rode down the mountain on a snowmobile.”

“He called him an
old guy.
”

“Yeah. Why not?”

“Not a
tall guy.
”

“No.”

“How big was Anthony from Long Island?”

“Not big. Not very.” He put down his cup and stood up and lifted his hand to about eye level. “About like that.”

“Never mind,” said Stacey, and she paused to tear open an energy bar with her teeth. “It’s probably nothing.”

“Probably. You know how it is. To a kid like that, everybody’s an old guy. Even me.”

They sat for a while, sipping their tea. Chip’s sandwich was squashed flat and looked horrible, with the jelly soaking through on one side and smearing on the wax paper. By comparison, Stacey’s energy bar was Thanksgiving dinner. She offered to trade halves but he said no. He just kept looking at the clock on the wall, watching his break time run out.

“Hey,” he said after a while, his voice sticky with peanut butter. “Did I tell you Amazon’s got
Lights Out
now? I got a copy for my dad.”

“Things are looking up for Harper Stone, don’t you think?”

“You know it. Dying was one smart career move. It’s this really cool commemorative version and all. Remastered, I guess you’d call it.”

“Do they remaster movies, or is that just records?”

“I don’t know.” He crumpled the wax paper and threw it into the fire. “Nice packaging, too. A little souvenir booklet and everything. All embossed and all.”

“And you’ve got it? I mean you’ve got it at home?”

“Oh, yeah. It came yesterday. His birthday’s not until March.” He rose slowly to his feet and stretched, making the most of his last minute or two in front of the fire.

“Then how about we watch it tonight?” she asked. “I’m off.”

“You mean like a date?”

“Sure,” Stacey said. “Like a date. I’ll even bring a bottle of wine.”

“You sure you want to see it again? I mean, we just saw it.”

“No. I want to see it again.”

“I could get us something else at the VideoDrome. You like Monty Python?”

“No, thanks. Really, I’d like to see
Lights Out
one more time.”

“How about Mexican food?” he asked. “You like Mexican food?” He was nervous all of a sudden, and she thought that that was kind of nice. “If you do, I could stop at Cinco de Taco and pick us up something.”

She said that would be good, that she liked Mexican just fine, and that she’d be over around seven or seven thirty.

*   *   *

She didn’t really have the night off, which made that the second lie that had spilled effortlessly out of her in the last twelve hours. Now she was looking at a third. She needed to call the Binding and tell Jack or Pete or whoever answered the phone that she wasn’t feeling all that great and couldn’t make it in. So she sat in her car at the one light in town, turning her cell phone on while she still had service. This lie was going to be a million times harder than the others, probably because she was thinking about it. She dialed and the phone began to ring at the other end, and she wondered if she should cough or sniff audibly or something, but she decided against it. A stomach bug would be better. Just a twenty-four-hour thing that would be done tomorrow, no questions asked.

“Think it was something you ate?” Jack said when she got him. “If it was the buffalo wings, you wouldn’t be the first.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” she said.

“I would. I’ve been around a lot longer than you. I’ve seen those wings take a lot of good men down.”

“Well, either way, I’m sure I’ll be in tomorrow night.”

Jack wasn’t giving up. “Maybe you ought to start taking better care of yourself. You know you can get anything you want off the menu, half price. Go with the broiled fish. Squeeze a little lemon on it. That’s nice and light. Easy on the digestion.”

Stacey swallowed. “Please, can we talk about this some other time?”

“Right. Sure. Sorry.”

“That’s OK.”

“I wasn’t thinking.”

“That’s fine.”

“I mean I was only thinking of you.”

“Thanks, Jack,” she said. “But hey, I’ve got to go.” She tried her best to make herself sound desperate, but she wasn’t sure she did.

*   *   *

She was on the porch at Chip’s place, one finger on the doorbell by a strip of adhesive tape with his apartment number scrawled onto it, when his Wrangler came careening into the driveway. The gravel was ankle-deep in slush and his wheels spun in it, sending up a shower of spray that doused the snowdrifts. By the gleam of the streetlamp it looked kind of pretty, although once daylight came it would be nothing but a speckling of grit and frozen mud. Things had a way of changing, the more closely you looked at them.

Which is exactly what Stacey had in mind relative to
Lights Out.

She put down the wine bottle and left the porch and met Chip at the car. He had the back of it stuffed—
stuffed
—with Mexican food. Sack after sack of it, arranged in cardboard trays. Tonight must have been Cinco de Taco’s biggest night in a month. The spectacle of it was overwhelming and a bit ridiculous, but Stacey had to admit that the aroma rising from the open back of the Wrangler was beyond fantastic. Her mouth began to water. “Are we expecting Pancho Villa’s army, or what?” she said as she picked up the nearest tray, and Chip laughed. “Because there’s not going to be enough once I get through.”

“I didn’t know what you liked best,” Chip said, “so I got a little of everything.”

“You call this
a little?
”

Ten minutes later they had all of it in the apartment, spread out over the kitchen table, the countertops, the coffee table, and anything else that was more or less horizontal. Stacey thought the apartment was pretty nice. There was nothing of the dorm room or bachelor pad about it whatsoever, which meant either that Chip had cleaned up on her behalf or that he was by nature pretty neat. She figured the latter. She thanked God that the place was clean, since there was now Mexican food arrayed on almost every surface. Chip got some plates and opened the wine, then took a roll of paper towels off the hanger on the wall to use by way of napkins, and they made their first pass through the food.