Fade to White (27 page)

He flipped it open. “No signal.”

“Walk down till you get one.
Ten minutes.
”

“This doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

She hoisted the skis over her shoulder and fixed him with a hard look. “Go.”

Chip started uphill but she grabbed him by the shoulder and said no, she was going that way and kind of needed to be alone, and he turned around and started back down, his face lit just the slightest by the phone’s screen. She hissed at him to keep that little bit of light pointed downhill and he did.

She hurried up the hill and was winded when she reached the cabin, which was fine. The whole idea was that she’d been slogging through the woods half the night. She tromped trough some loose snow to get plenty of the white stuff on Chip’s boots, just in case anybody looked down and chanced to see how oversized they were. As if anybody would notice. As if anybody would care. She didn’t have proper pants on, but the kind of person who’d get lost on the backside of Spruce Peak might wear anything. So be it.

The cabin made its own bright spot in the woods, its windows glowing yellow and lighting the underside of the trees and painting the snowdrifts like some kind of supernatural thing. She squinted as she looked at it from the cover of a snowdrift. Then she adjusted the skis on her shoulder, walked on past the cabin, and ducked into the drifts separating it from the shed behind. The snow was cold on her legs and she pushed through it and out the other side, onto a shoveled path between the cabin and the shed. She stamped her feet a little to shake the snow from her jeans without making any appreciable noise. There was light back here, too, but not as much as in front. The only windows were a small dark one that she took for a bathroom, a single broad pane with curtains behind it that was probably the kitchen, and a pair side by side that must have been the bedroom. She crouched down and moved closer to the house. In the bedroom a television was going, and there was a dim lamp switched on at the head of the bed. The television was showing the Food Network, a bunch of people baking cakes that looked like Muppets or something. The tall man was sitting on the bed with his back to her, beneath the light of the lamp, bent over, taking off his shoes. The bedroom door was shut.

She backed away and moved toward the kitchen, which was lit only by a single bulb over the sink. The walls danced with other light, though, light and color and movement reflected from what was apparently a bigger television in the front room. She tried to see it through the door but the angle was wrong. She kept low and moved around the backside of the cabin to another set of windows, these shielded by a couple of big arbor vitae that spilled snow all over her, and tried again. Just as she imagined. A movie was showing on the big TV. Some outer space thing. Any money said it was
Mission to Antares.

There was a silver head watching the space movie. All she could see was the very top of it above the back of the recliner. She told herself it still could be the woman, the farm wife she’d imagined silhouetted in the front window when she and Chip had been up here on the night they’d found Harper Stone’s body. While her face was still flecked with snow from the arbor vitae, Stacey plunged through the drifts to the front of the cabin and stepped up onto the porch to find out for herself. Once and for all.

THIRTY-NINE

She had been greeted more warmly at other times in her life, that was for sure.

Her innocent knock at the cabin door produced a torrent of profanity and recrimination and bile from one of the two individuals inside, some of it directed at whoever dared to knock at this time of night and the remainder directed at the other individual, who was apparently refusing to
answer the goddamned door for a change why don’t you and tell ’em to get lost.

A second voice arose, this one belonging no more to the farm wife than the first one did. This one was lower than the first, more measured, verging on musical.
Mellifluous
is the word Stacey would have used, if she hadn’t been standing all by herself in the middle of a snowy woods with Chip gone gone gone, wondering if her idea as to who was behind the door was correct, asking herself if ten minutes had passed and Sheriff Guy Ramsey might be on his way by now, provided Chip had found cell service at all.

Mellifluous, that was it.

Like the highly trained speaking voice of an old-time movie actor.

Like the familiar and well-known voice of Harper Stone, whose face appeared now in the opened door. She was sure of it. When something behind his eyes responded reflexively to the sight of Stacey’s face—as if he’d seen her before and recognized her, as if he desired nothing more, right then, than to engage with her in long and intimate conversation, and above all as if he had been deprived of all proper feminine companionship for a week or more—she knew it all the more completely.

“By golly,” she said to him, falling somehow into a vernacular that an old-timer like him could understand, “you must be Harper Stone’s double!”

Delight burst across the old man’s craggy face, and he invited her in.

FORTY

“I
am,
you see,” is what he said. “I
am
Harper Stone’s double.”

“What’re the odds of that?” said Stacey, hugging herself, stepping inside, hoping that Chip had found some cell service.

The old silver-haired man went on. “I worked for that troublemaker ever since
The Ne’er-Do-Wells.
That scene where I charged the foxhole? Where
he
charged the foxhole?”

Stacey was clueless but she nodded vaguely, shivering.

“Jeez,” he said, “everybody remembers that scene. But it wasn’t Stone. It was me. Yours truly. From that moment on.”

“Honest?”

“Honest. Old Harper Stone was a sissy. A pretty boy, always afraid of messing his hair. I did all the heavy lifting.” He pushed back his sleeve and made a muscle. At his age it wasn’t pretty, but it actually wasn’t terrible, either. For Stacey, though, the main thing wasn’t what it revealed about his fitness, but what it revealed about his utter lack of any kind of heart-and-anchor tattoo. The man standing before her had the face—and the forearm—she’d just frozen in time on Chip’s television. It was Harper Stone in the flesh.

As for who the body in the Rutland hospital morgue belonged to, she thought she knew how to find out.

“So what’s your name, anyhow?” she asked.

He stuck out his hand. “Enzo DiNapoli, at your service.”

*   *   *

Chip was almost back to the highway before he got a signal. How much time had passed, he couldn’t say. At least ten minutes, right? More like fifteen. Maybe more. However long it had been, as soon as the bars lit up he called Guy’s number.

“Stacey?” It was Megan’s voice on the other end, sounding sleepy.

“Uh, no. Sorry. It’s Chip. Chip Walsh? I’m using her phone.”

“Ah.” There was a little bit of suspicion in her voice, though, and a little worry. “So what’s up? Is Stacey all right?”

“Oh, she’s fine,” said Chip, not entirely sure that he meant it. “But can I talk with Guy? Please? It’s kind of—” Before he could get it out, Megan had handed over the phone.

*   *   *

There were some glasses and a bottle of brandy on the table against the wall—not a table, really, but an industrial spool that served as one—and Harper Stone was fixing to pour a couple of drinks when the tall guy threw open the bedroom door and came charging out. He slid on his stocking feet, zipping up his trousers as he came, giving Stacey a look that would have killed somebody less determined. He paused, checked his fly, and then gave Stone a look that was at least twice as lethal. Although he gave the impression of not knowing which of them to assail first, in the end he settled on Stacey.

“What is it with you people?” he said. “This ain’t a ranger station. It ain’t some goddamn rescue mission. I’m trying to live a peaceful life, and every time the snow falls around here my front porch turns into Grand Central.” He cocked an eye at her that made Stacey think he might actually have recognized her from the night they’d skied the power-line right-of-way, but she shook it off.

“Sorry,” she said, half pleading and half apologizing. “If there’d been any other place to go, I’d have—”

The truth, however, was that he’d lost interest in Stacey already. “And
you,
” he said, turning his attention to Harper Stone. “I thought you wanted a little peace and quiet, too. You don’t get peace and quiet by playing St. Bernard the minute somebody knocks on the door.”

Stone kept at his work, pouring two small glasses of brandy, imperturbable. “In case you can’t tell,” he said to the tall guy, cocking his head in Stacey’s direction, “this lovely young lady is not just
anybody.
And besides, my dear sainted mother
, may she rest in peace,
would spin in her grave if I failed to do right by a poor frozen creature like her.” He put down the bottle and handed one glass to Stacey and raised the other in a toast. “To my late mother,” he said to the tall guy, with a barely concealed conspiratorial look. “To Isabella DiNapoli!”

Stacey raised her glass and drank a little. “How about Isabella
Stone?
” she said, fixing him like a bug on a board.

He wasn’t through trying to wriggle free, though; wasn’t through playing the part of the late Enzo DiNapoli for the benefit of anybody who’d listen, himself included. He tossed off his brandy in one swallow and showed her his pearly white teeth. “Stone this, Stone that,” he said. “See what I get for playing second fiddle my whole life long? Even my own mother can’t receive her due.” He did everything but hold the back of his hand to his forehead in distress. No question. The guy was a thespian, all right.

Stacey smiled softly at him, just to let him know that she was in on the joke. “Are you sure we’re not talking about Mrs. Stone?”

“Mrs. Stone? I don’t think so. To begin with, the guy’s real name was Schwartzmann.” He substituted a V for the W, pronouncing his old surname with the derision and disdain of a Nazi underling in some low-budget melodrama.

“Really?” She’d decided that the guy was harmless, kind of amusing.

“Really!” he said. “Schwartzmann!”

“That’s funny,” said Stacey. “To me, you look more like a Schwartzmann than a DiNapoli.”

The tall guy was finally beginning to see that Stacey had figured things out, and he shot Stone a look meant to indicate that he could produce a chain saw and a rope on short notice. It just looked silly to Stone, who was accustomed to dealing with acting of a much more professional caliber.

“I’ll prove it to you,” Stone said. He put down his glass, moved to the coffee table, and picked up the remote. He pointed it and froze for just a second as he caught up with the image showing on the television screen—himself, bloodied but not beaten, staggering through the jungle, handsome as ever—and skipped ahead to the final reel. Rousing music accompanied the rolling of the credits across a black screen. He pressed fast-forward and squinted as the names rolled past and froze it just in time to catch
MR. STONE
’
S STUNT DOUBLE AND PERSONAL ASSISTANT: ENZO DINAPOLI.

“See?” he said. “See that? There I am!” He poked at the big flat screen with his finger. “Mama DiNapoli’s baby boy, in his recurring role.”

“Wowee,” Stacey said. “ ‘Stunt Double and Personal Assistant.’
Personal.
You weren’t kidding. I’ll bet you went everywhere with him.”

“I did, for a great many years.” He gave her his cracked smile, which was kind of like the one that Stacey had seen in the basement of the Slippery Slope but not entirely. This was the genuine article. Pure Harper Stone. “I have been, as they say, around the block a few times.” He probably didn’t mean it the way it sounded.

“I’ll bet you have been.”

“To the finest of places. In the best of company.”

“I’m sure.”

“We were inseparable.”

“So you were up here with him for that commercial, huh?” She moved toward the couch and slowly lowered herself onto the cushions.

“I was.” He set down the remote.

“Until.”

Stone pulled his mouth down into a pathetic little moue, and sat down alongside her. “Yes,” he said. “Until.”

She was pretty certain that he was on the verge of producing tears, whether by secretly yanking out a nose hair or by contemplating his own death, but the arrival of headlights outside threw a monkey wrench into his act.

FORTY-ONE

The tall guy who owned the place, Schmidt, ducked back into the hallway toward the bathroom and flattened himself against the wall as if he were the one with something to hide. For his part, Stone just sat there looking petrified.

“My boyfriend,” Stacey said, wondering whether that was today’s fourth lie or whether she meant it after all. Even a little.

Stone sat back, stunned. “There’s a
boyfriend
?”

“I called his house when I saw the cabin and left a message, but I had such a bad connection that I didn’t think it recorded.”

Stone wasn’t interested. “There’s a
boyfriend
?”

“Well,” she said, “we’re kind of—”

Before she figured out what to say—or how much Stone needed to know, if he was entitled to know anything, since the whole business had become a creepy pickup scene between her and this sixty- or seventy-something relic, a moment whose ugly weirdness she had a natural impulse to squelch as quickly as possible now that she was inside the cabin and pretty much had the goods on him—everything changed. Thanks to a single earsplitting whoop from a siren about twenty feet from the door. That and a sudden assault of colored lights through the curtains, red and yellow and blue beams spearing everything in sight. It was a barrage, like close-up fireworks, and it made everybody in the cabin wince.

“Great,” said the tall man, trying to merge more tightly with the wall. “Her boyfriend’s a cop.”

Stone, though, recovered his composure in about a second and leapt to approach the door. The tall man watched him go, marveling at the reversal of Stone’s attitude now that he’d decided he could masquerade as his own double.