The Alpine Christmas (13 page)

“Ready?” Vida stood in my doorway, muffled to the eyebrows. It was two minutes to nine.

Out on Front Street, Oscar Nyquist was furiously shoveling the walk in front of the Marmot. The snow had finally stopped for a while, but during the night another eight inches had fallen on Alpine. Walking carefully over the frozen patches, Vida and I wished him a good morning.

“What’s good about it?” demanded Oscar, a big scowl showing under his stocking cap. He waved the shovel up at the marquee. “See that? More mischief!”

It took some effort not to laugh or even smile. The letters of
It’s A Wonderful Life
had been rearranged to read
Saw One IUD Triffle
. Vida, however, was up for the occasion.

“I like it,” she said. “It might be a science fiction movie about birth control.”

Oscar looked mystified. “What’s a triffle? What’s IUD? Is it like Averill Fairbanks and his goddamned UFOs?”

It was now Vida’s turn to hold back a smirk. “Well—not exactly.” She gave me a puckish glance. “Let’s say that it certainly beats rhythm, which is the Catholic version of science-fiction birth control. Speaking of which,” Vida went on as I raised my eyebrows, “was that what Arnie found at the bowling alley site? Birth-control devices?”

Oscar Nyquist looked shocked. He was of a generation and a disposition that did not discuss such matters, especially between the sexes. Vida’s frankness embarrassed him.

“Nyaaah,” he replied, shaking out rock salt in an almost frantic manner. “It was clothes, women’s clothes. A sweater. Slacks. Shoes. Underwear.” He mentioned the last item as if he shouldn’t know that women wore underwear. “Come inside, see the pictures.”

The exterior was not what I’d call typical Alpine architecture. While less flamboyant and much smaller than many of its urban kin, the Marmot’s turrets and dome were nonetheless more evocative of the Middle East than the Central Cascades. For all the grief it was causing Oscar, the marquee was a handsome affair, running across the front of the theatre and set off with row upon row of lights. The double-deck
Whistling Marmot
sign stood above the marquee proper, with a carved stone marmot at each side, like bookends.

In the lobby, Oscar flipped some switches, flooding the area with light. The concession stand had been modernized, but the Middle Eastern/art deco interior had been left mercifully intact. A wide, green carpeted staircase swept up to the auditorium, giving an illusion of vastness, despite the fact that there were a mere six steps in the ascent. Briskly, Oscar led us into the empty auditorium, down the wide aisles, and past the comparatively modern seats that had been installed in the 1960s and reupholstered two years ago. I glanced back at the balcony and the darkened projection booth. The frieze that ringed the ceiling showed a series of whistling marmots—running, jumping, sitting. On the walls, scatterings of silver specks set off dark green, three-dimensional scallop patterns, giving an impression of trees clustered in the rain. The recessed sounding board in the high arch of ceiling above the stage was dappled with silver stars and snowflakes, buffeted by the west wind at one side, caught by a crescent moon on the other. The chandelier that depended from the ceiling held tiers of petal-shaped lamps. Metallic scallops ringed the stage with its heavy midnight blue curtains edged with silver bars. I appreciated the decor anew, realizing that if Lars Nyquist wasn’t blessed with artistic taste, he’d had enough
sense to hire someone who was. And Oscar Nyquist hadn’t been tempted to modernize. The Whistling Marmot was a little gem of a theatre, a reminder of the days when the movies not only had faces, but places in which to show them.

We went out through the exit at the left of the stage, then down a flight of stairs. The air immediately turned damp and musty. Oscar turned on more lights, revealing an awesome hodgepodge of equipment, storage boxes, and just plain junk. The heating system was on our right; the old prop room used in the days of vaudeville lay dead ahead. Dressing rooms, or more precisely a changing area with a divider for males and females, could be entered by edging around a stack of discarded theatre seats, a life-sized pasteboard cutout of a zebra, a bear suit, half a dozen buckets of paint, and a large wooden barrel filled with film cans.

I paused by the barrel. “Are these old movies?” I asked, pointing to the big tins.

Oscar, who was clearing a path for us through the debris, looked over his shoulder. “Nyaaah. When I was a kid, my father would save any extra cans for my mother. She stored cookies in them. At Christmas, she baked so many that she gave them away, wrapped in those tins. Now, we keep little stuff in ’em.” He lifted the top tin out of the barrel and pried up the lid. Nuts, bolts, screws, rubber bands, and paper clips rested inside. “It’s the barrel I like best. In the old days, my father kept it outside the social hall, where he first showed the movies. It’d fill up with rain water. Sometimes the fellas would come by after they’d been fishing and throw their trout in there to keep while they went to the movies. ’Course, during the winter, the water would freeze. One year, after the thaw, we found a ten-inch rainbow in there. It was still alive, swimming like crazy.”

Vida apparently had heard the story before, but I exclaimed and laughed. Oscar, however, didn’t seem to find the anecdote all that remarkable. It was merely part of Alpine’s lore, neither unusual nor amusing.

Inside what was the real storage room, we were confronted with stacks of boxes, trunks, and grocery bags as well as shelves piled high with notebooks, ledgers, and files. Oscar scanned the boxes, finally choosing a battered cardboard container that had once held Crisco. A smiling half-moon and stars looked vaguely familiar, a logo I had seen in my childhood or perhaps in old magazines.

“Here,” he said, opening the top, which was secured with ancient tape that had lost its glue. “You’ll find the pictures of the old social hall in there, then the ones while the theatre was a-building. Opening night, too, with Carl and Mrs. Clemans and a bunch of other old-timers who were the guests of honor.”

Vida, who knew
The Advocate
’s morgue far better than I did, took over. The pictures were all in albums, black imitation leather with tasseled cords. But like the tape that had held the box together, the hinges had come unglued, causing many of the photos to fall out of place. Flipping through them quickly, Vida selected five.

“I’ve never seen these,” she said, holding up an eight-by-ten sepia print documenting the early stages of the Marmot’s construction. In the background, I could see the original Methodist Church, so new that its wooden spire was still surrounded by scaffolding. At the edge of the photo, another structure was just getting underway. It was the Clemans Building, I realized, which stood directly across the street from
The Advocate
.

“What was on the site of the newspaper office then?” Oddly enough, I’d never asked Vida—or anyone else—that question.

Oscar’s endless forehead furrowed. “The Dawsons’ house. Mr. Dawson worked in the mill. He liked to act. Sometimes the townspeople put on plays, first in the social hall, then here. Mr. Dawson especially liked to play bums. His brother-in-law, Mr. Murphy, was a wonderful singer. One of them Irish tenor fellas.”

I nodded, gazing at the photo, thinking about Alpine’s early residents with their propensity for hard work and their proclivity for home-grown entertainment. Except for Lars Nyquist and his movies, what else was there to do, particularly during those long winters? There were no radios, no TV, no electric lights in that first decade of Alpine’s existence. If Alpiners wanted to be amused, they had to amuse themselves. Obviously, they did.

We left Oscar to fix his marquee. But Vida wasn’t inclined to return to the office. Rather, she stood at the curb, her attitude alert.

“Travis,” she said, nodding her padre’s hat in the direction of the Venison Inn. “That’s him at a window table with Rick Erlandson. You know, Rick, with the orange sideburns, at the bank? Travis and Rick went to high school together.”

“So?” I replied, trying to match Vida’s long strides across the sanded street. “Is Rick a lurker?”

“Of course not,” huffed Vida. “He’s a most respectable young man, even if he does have comical hair. Especially for a loan officer. The point is, Travis is over there, and not at home. Let’s go see Bridget.” She pounced on my car. “Come on, come on. What are you waiting for?”

It took less than five minutes to drive from
The Advocate
to The Pines, otherwise known as Stump Hill. The gracious homes that nestled among the evergreens were situated between the mall and the ski lodge, with Burl Creek running through the west end of the property. Colonial, Tudor, Spanish, and Cape Cod architecture, all with a Pacific Northwest twist, somehow managed to avoid aesthetic conflict. Maybe it was the half-acre on which each house stood; maybe it was the buffer of tall trees; maybe it was the hilly ground that permitted the homes to sit on different levels. Whatever it was, it worked—and Arnie Nyquist had been responsible. It occurred to me that Tinker Toy wasn’t a complete dunce.

We didn’t attempt to get up the steep drive, but parked behind a PUD truck across the street coyly known as Whispering
Pines Drive. Even with the chains, I’d had a bit of trouble negotiating the narrow road through the development. Residents of The Pines neither sanded nor shoveled. Maybe it meant they all had four-wheel drive. Or that they didn’t have to worry about getting to work. They were too well-heeled to care.

Travis and Bridget’s Cape Cod looked picture-perfect in the snowy landscape. The firs that had been left standing formed a semicircle around the house, as if cradling it in their snow-covered branches. Off to one side of the sloping front lawn, a single old cottonwood lifted angular limbs up to the sky. Lower down, someone had hung out suet for the birds. A huge silver wreath with a bright red bow clung to the front door, while a matching garland wound its way up the mailbox post. The two front windows, presumably in the living room, sported smaller versions of the front door wreath. The younger Nyquists’ home could have posed for a Christmas card.

And Bridget could have posed for
Playboy
, I thought nastily, as she warily opened the front door and revealed just about everything in a skintight plum-colored leotard.

“I’m exercising,” she said, somehow managing to beat Vida to the verbal punch. “Excuse me.” She started to close the door.

Vida was not to be bested. Sticking her galosh inside the door, she managed to kick it open. “Now, Bridget, you don’t want us to go away mad, do you?”

Bridget pouted. “I just want you to go away. I’ve got a video running.”

Vida barged right in. “We’ll wait.”

Bridget glared at both of us. “You’re trespassing. I’ll call the sheriff.”

“Fine,” Vida replied, taking in the handsomely appointed living room with its French country accents. Pickled pine finishes, woven rush chairs, delicately painted wood, and wrought iron proved that money could buy class. I wondered
who had chosen the furnishings. Not Bridget, I fancied. Maybe she and Travis had hired a decorator.

The TV, which was encased in a beautiful armoire, did indeed show a vigorous young woman leading an equally vigorous group of enthusiasts in an exercise routine. Such displays make me queasy.

“Well?” demanded Vida, looking over the rims of her glasses at Bridget. “Are you going to call Milo or just stand there and perspire?”

Bridget shot Vida a rebellious look, but marched over to the TV and shut the set off. “What do you want? I told you, I’d rather not be written up in your paper.”

“We don’t intend to,” Vida responded, admiring the painted faux marble walls. “We’re doing a big piece on the Marmot. And we’re curious how it has affected your life as a Nyquist.” Vida never took notes; her memory was prodigious.

“The Marmot?” Bridget wore a baffled expression. “What do you mean,
affected
my life? l’ve seen some movies there. So what?”

“So it’s the original family business,” Vida said, tilting her head to one side. “The theatre, along with your father-in-law’s construction business, has helped pay for all this.” Vida waved a hand, taking in the living room, and presumably the entire house.

“No, it didn’t.” Bridget had turned smug. “Travis paid for all this. He made a fortune in the stock market.”

I wasn’t sure why Vida had been so insistent about calling on Bridget Nyquist. It was too soon to ask Bridget about Carol Neal. There was no point until the dead woman was identified—or Carol turned up missing. This particular line of inquiry on Vida’s part baffled me. So did Bridget’s attitude. Her initial hostility had dwindled into inertia.

“How did he do that?” Vida inquired, now moving to the mantel, where half a dozen gilded cherubs dangled from a golden holly garland.

Bridget blinked, then looked vague. “Stocks. Bonds. You know—investments.” She shrugged, muscles and curves rippling under her leotard.

“My, my.” Vida chucked one of the cherubs under the chin. “How clever. Did all his clients get rich, too?”

“Of course.” Bridget’s jaw was thrust out.

So was Vida’s bust under the tweed coat. She had deftly moved across the living room’s flagstone floor to stand directly in front of Bridget. “And his partners? Which brokerage house was it, Bridget? My nephew works in one of them. Piper something-or-other, I think.”

I’d never heard of Vida’s nephew the Stockbroker, but that didn’t mean he didn’t exist. Given her extended family, Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith might all be related to the Runkels or the Blatts.

Bridget fingered an arrangement of pine and cedar boughs in a terra-cotta container. “Sampson. Or Frampton. I forget. Travis had already quit when we got engaged.” Bridget didn’t look at either one of us.

The names meant nothing to me. But I hadn’t lived in Seattle for years. And even if Bridget was referring to a national firm, I’d never been in a position to get cozy with brokers. If they didn’t advertise on network TV, I probably wouldn’t have heard of them.

Vida pushed her glasses back up on her nose. “Cramden’s?” she offered. “Very reputable, old-line Seattle.”