The Alpine Christmas (14 page)

“That’s it.” Bridget nodded energetically.

“Very good.” Vida started for the entry hall. I trailed along, feeling about as useless as Rudolph without his red nose. “You like movies?” She threw the question at Bridget over her shoulder.

“Sure,” Bridget replied, coming along behind me. “Popsy gives us free passes.”

“I should think so,” murmured Vida. “By the way, have you seen that pest lurking around lately?”

Bridget almost ran into me as I stopped next to Vida on
the threshold. “The pest? You mean that guy? No. That is, not this week.”

Vida’s eyes were keen as she peered at Bridget. “What did he look like?”

Bridget shifted from foot to foot. “I’m … not sure. Ordinary, I guess. It was always dark. And snowing,” she added hastily. “He was just a form.”

“Of course he was.” Vida started down the front steps, which had been swept clean of snow. “Thank you, Bridget. Generally speaking, you were courteous.”

We had started down the walk, which had also been cleared. “You should have pulled into the driveway,” Bridget called after us. “The Amundsons across the street have been having trouble getting their car out with that PUD truck parked there.”

I decided it was finally time for me to stop acting as if I were Vida’s mute stooge. “Did you lose power out here the other day?”

Bridget shook her head. “No. We were lucky. G’bye.” She closed the door before we got to the Jag.

“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” muttered Vida as I turned on the ignition.

“What?”

“Bridget.” Vida was resettling her hat. “There’s no such investment house as Cramden’s.”

I gave Vida a sly smile. “Well, well. And there’s no such thing as a PUD truck parked where there isn’t any problem.”

Vida gave a faint nod. “It’s been an interesting visit.”

“So it has.” I steered the Jag carefully down the little hill that led away from The Pines. “But to what purpose?”

Vida made a face. “I wish I knew.”

So did I.

Carol Neal had disappeared. According to Milo, she wasn’t missing; she had merely dropped out of sight.

“There was a forwarding address after she moved out of the apartment on Fifteenth Northeast in the University District,” he explained over the phone. “It was for another apartment just a few blocks away, on Eleventh. But my Seattle source tells me she hasn’t lived there for the past two years.”

“What about a work address?” I asked, looking up at Vida and shaking my head.

But Milo hadn’t dug that deep yet. His theory was that Carol had probably moved in with a roommate, male or female, which might account for the lack of more forwarding addresses. “Let’s say she had another girl living with her on Eleventh, then they moved together but put the new address in the other girl’s name. Maybe Carol was avoiding her creditors. Or escaping from some guy who’d made a pest of himself.”

“What about parents? Relatives? Friends?” I was unwilling to let go of the possibility that the dead girl was Carol Neal.

“We’re checking on it,” replied Milo at his most laconic. “We need someone to ID her, after all.”

I almost suggested that Milo ask Bridget. But that was a ghoulish idea. The victim might turn out to be a stranger. Why put Bridget Nyquist through such an ordeal?

“The thing is,” Milo continued, “if this is Carol and Carol had a roommate, why hasn’t said roommate reported her missing? It’s probable that she’s been dead for almost a week.”

“Maybe she can’t,” I replied with another glance at Vida. “Maybe the roommate is dead, too.”

Evan Singer lived in a cabin two miles out of town off the Burl Creek Road. I decided against maneuvering the Jag up his winding, snow-covered drive and parked in a small turnout some fifty yards down the road. Although it had stopped snowing, the gray clouds hung low, almost touching the tree-tops. The temperature seemed stuck in the mid-twenties.

Cabin
was probably too extravagant a term for Evan’s dwelling. The one-story frame shack might have been a summer retreat at one time, or more likely a hermit’s lair. Tar paper stuck out from under the uneven cedar shakes, the tin chimney was crooked despite being wired to the roof, and several panes of glass in the two front windows were pockmarked with BB pellets and bullets from a .22.

Evan Singer met me at the door, standing on the top step that also made up the entire front porch. He was wearing a loosely woven slate-gray sweater, paint-stained khaki pants, and workmen’s shoes, laced halfway up his calf. A bandanna was tied around his red-gold hair. The reek of marijuana wafted from the cabin.

“This is truly remarkable,” he announced, ushering me inside. “Everyone gets to be famous for ten minutes, right?”

“Something like that,” I replied, taking in the single room that made up the entire cabin. Happily, the interior was an improvement over the exterior. A Franklin stove stood in one corner and a Christmas tree in the other. Several sketches and a movie poster for
Patriot Games
were held up by thumbtacks on the unfinished walls. There were candles everywhere, including on the tree. The shapes were both exotic and erotic, no doubt fashioned by Evan himself. He had
clearly put his stamp on this ramshackle old place, and I marveled at his hardiness. A Murphy bed was folded into the far wall. There was an icebox and a sink but no pipes for running water. Two Coleman lanterns hung from nails, but only one of them was lit. It was extremely cold, and I wondered how Evan kept from freezing to death at night.

“Have a seat,” he urged, pulling out one of the three chairs that circled a small wooden table. “This is amazing. Why me?”

For the first time, I took in Evan himself. He was probably in his late twenties, with an angular face and a few freckles. His nose was slightly hooked, his blue eyes seemed to be in constant motion, and his entire lanky body appeared to be charged with a set of powerful batteries. I couldn’t tell if he was nervous, exhilarated, high or merely wound too tight.

“You’re new in town,” I said, getting out my notebook. Unlike Vida’s, my memory is flawed. “Our subscribers like to read about newcomers. They’re always particularly interested in why anyone would exchange city life for a small town. I suppose they want their own attitudes reinforced.”

Evan, who had been drumming his long, thin fingers on the knotty pine tabletop, stopped. “Is this like
The Visit
? You know, the movie that Anthony Quinn and Ingrid Bergman starred in? Am I going to die?” The question seemed rhetorical, but given recent events in Alpine, I wasn’t about to make false promises. Evan apparently didn’t want any; he didn’t wait for an answer. “You know where I’m from? How?”

“How?” I tried to gauge his expression. Alarm? Pleasure? Curiosity? I hadn’t the foggiest notion. That constant motion of the eyes made it difficult to read Evan Singer. “Somebody told me, I guess. Henry Bardeen?”

“Oh, Henry.” Evan rolled his blue eyes. “Henry’s a case, huh? People like him can never die.”

“Really.” I waited for Evan to explain.

“That’s right. They’ve never lived. So how can they die?” He gave the table a light tap with his fist and grinned at me.

I couldn’t disagree completely with Evan Singer’s assessment of the dour ski resort manager, but I felt a need to defend him all the same. “Henry has given you a job,” I reminded Evan.

“Right! He’s wonderful, he’s caring-sharing-daring—and wearing. But up your nose, if you think he’s got blood in his veins.” Evan was still grinning and wagging a finger at me. The ill-fitting sweater slipped a notch in the sleeve, revealing a Rolex watch. I tried not to stare. “People always give me jobs,” Evan went on blithely. “I can do a lot of things. I’m the stranger in their midst, like Alan Ladd in
Shane
. And if I’ve never done something before, I’m willing to try it. Ever skinned a snake?”

“Alas, no.” It was time to gain control of the interview. “Where did you learn to drive a sleigh?”

Evan sobered and stared straight into my eyes. “Saudi Arabia.” He waited for my startled reaction, got it, and burst out laughing, slapping his knee all the while. “Ha-ha! You almost believed me! Henry Bardeen did!”

I doubted it, but decided to forge ahead. “What do—”

“It’s not driving a sleigh that takes any training,” Evan interrupted, growing more serious. “It’s the horses. I’ve worked at a couple of riding stables outside of Seattle. Tiger Mountain. You know it?”

I did, vaguely. In my youth, the area east of Lake Washington had been a sleepy Seattle suburb. But no more. Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Issaquah, even North Bend were rapidly becoming congested, overdeveloped bedroom communities. For all I knew Tiger Mountain was laced with condominiums and shopping malls.

“You grew up on the Eastside, not Seattle?” I inquired.

Evan stomped on the floor with his workmen’s shoes. “I grew up in the world. We moved a lot. Chicago. Paris. Cairo.
Philadelphia. Toronto. Rome.” He shrugged, then grinned again and leaned across the table. “But not …?”

“Saudi Arabia?” I tried to keep a grip on my patience.

“Right! Never been there. In this lifetime, anyway. I used to be a toad.”

And I used to be a newspaper reporter
, I thought through gritted teeth. This interview was out of hand. Should I humor him? His fancies could make a sprightly feature. As long as he didn’t sue me.

“When did you start to paint?” I held my breath, dreading the answer.

But Evan had turned serious again, his jaw resting on one hand. “I always made pictures. It runs in the family. The visual arts, that is. But it’s not a career with me. You have to please too many other people, especially the ones with lots of money and absolutely no taste. I do what I do for myself.” Jerkily, he pointed to a large sketch of a gnarled tree. An oak, maybe. Its bare branches appeared to shelter mistletoe, its twisted roots hunched into the earth. “You see that? I call it ‘Lost Love.’ Stripped bare, yet still alive. Are you moved?”

“It’s very forceful.” That much was true. More to the point, I could tell what it was. I’m not a fan of abstract art. At least Evan Singer had painted a tree that looked like a tree.

“I make jewelry, candles, some sculpture. I can sing and I can dance. One summer, I was a mime at Lake Tahoe.” He plucked at his upper lip, suddenly acquiring a brooding expression. “It was a bad idea. Those holiday gamblers only care about this”—he made yanking motions with his right hand. “I should have dressed up as a bowl of cherries. You know, like on the slot machines …”

I gave him a faint nod. I was well acquainted with cherries, as well as plums, lemons, watermelons, and Harold-in-a-barrel. There had been a gang of us at
The Oregonian
who had made an annual pilgrimage to Reno or Vegas. It wasn’t
any riskier than listening to advice from the paper’s business editor.

I complimented Evan on being so versatile, trying to bring him around to his educational background. He was vague about high school, dismissing those years as “an abyss.” College was another matter.

“I liked Reed,” he remarked, referring to the somewhat unorthodox private school in Portland. “Stanford was okay, so was USC. And Pepperdine. But give me Baylor or give me death!” He rolled his eyes again.

“Is that where you got your degree?” My head was spinning from his whirlwind of higher education.

“Degree?
What
degree?” He laughed so hard that tears filled his eyes. I waited, not too patiently. Even in my heavy car coat, I felt chilly. If there was a fire going in the stove, I wasn’t benefitting from it. But Evan Singer didn’t seem to be suffering in the least. “A degree … is just a … waste of … paper,” he said between gasps for breath. “What’s … in a … diploma? All it says … is that you have completed the required courses as stated by a specific institution. Now what does that mean?” He had recovered himself and was gazing at me in an imploring fashion.

For me, it had meant a great deal, including my passport onto a daily newspaper. But it was pointless to argue with Evan Singer, who was probably a candidate for Averill Fairbanks’s UFO collection.

I steeled myself for the final, and perhaps most important, question: “Why did you come to Alpine, Mr. Singer?”

His gaze traveled to the sketch of the gnarled oak. The long pause made me wonder if he’d ever considered his own actions. But of course he had. I waited some more, my eyes drifting to the Christmas tree with its eclectic ornaments. I’d noticed only the traditional glass balls and fantastic candles earlier. Now I saw some unusual objects dangling among the fir branches: an ivory skull and crossbones; a tiny, shiny pistol; a dagger with a carved hilt; a small Kewpie doll in a
body cast. I had a fervent desire to get the hell out of Evan Singer’s cabin.

Apparently, Evan wasn’t quite as self-absorbed as he appeared. “You’re admiring my ornaments?” he asked with a big smile. “You find them odd?”

“A bit.” I tried to smile back.

He nodded sympathetically. “Of course. I’m not a Christian, you see. The original trees were a pagan rite. I put together the best of both worlds, though I belong to neither. Intriguing, huh?”

“Very.” My voice was a little faint. “Now about your decision to …”

“Oh, yes.” He sounded wistful. “Can’t you see it?” He inclined his head toward the sketch.

“The tree?” I frowned at the picture. “There aren’t any oak trees around here.”

“That’s not the point!” He seemed positively shattered by my response. Or perhaps he was disappointed in my lack of perception. “Consider that tree, in all its ramifications.”

“I will,” I promised, getting up a bit awkwardly. “I don’t suppose you could give me a hint?”

Evan Singer had also stood up. He threw his hands high above his head. “A hint? It’s all there! Everything! My whole life!”

“Yes,” I agreed, making for the door. “Thank you so much.”

It was just as well that I couldn’t run through the snow. It would have been undignified. But I was ecstatic to reach my car. All but jumping inside, I locked the doors before I started the engine.

A glance in the rearview mirror showed no one in sight. Of course Evan Singer wouldn’t follow me. He was nuttier than a Christmas fruitcake, but probably harmless. Then again …