The Alpine Christmas (24 page)

Bridget and Travis were both at home. Neither was pleased to see us. “I just talked to you,” said Travis, as if once a day with Emma Lord was quite enough.

“You didn’t talk to
me
,” Vida asserted, breezing past our
host. “The truth is, you might want to make yourself small, Travis. We’ve come to call on your wife.”

If Vida had used a lasso, she couldn’t have come up with a better way of ensuring Travis Nyquist’s presence. He still wore the walking cast, and though he limped, I saw no sign of a cane. Reluctantly, Travis offered us seats in the living room, where a graceful blue spruce had been added since our last visit. Its gold, silver, and red decorations harmonized with the rest of the holiday accents. I marveled anew at the Nyquist family’s good taste.

Bridget perched on the arm of a chair, as if she weren’t quite sure if she intended to stick around. “I told you, Mrs. Runkel, I don’t know anything about this Evan Singer. From what I hear, he’s totally strange.” Bridget’s voice had grown very wispy.

Unwinding her muffler, Vida made a clucking sound. “Strange or not, Evan says he knows you.” Her gray eyes darted in Travis’s direction. “
Both
of you, from way back.”

Travis threw back his handsome head and laughed. “Poor guy! He’s probably in shock. My dad said Singer’s cabin burned and he had to spend the night at the Marmot.”

That was a different twist to Oscar’s version, and not necessarily an incredible one. But while Travis looked more amused than concerned, Bridget was wriggling nervously on her perch.

It was my turn to play interrogator. “Bridget, where did you work before you were married?”

I caught the swift exchange of glances between Bridget and Travis. Still, the answer came promptly enough. “I was a temp. I met Travis when I was working as a receptionist for Bartlett & Crocker.”

I noted that Bridget seemed oblivious to having contradicted herself about Travis’s place of work. There was no point in chiding her; obviously she had been protecting her husband from a possible scandal.

“Could Evan have met you there, too?” I asked.

“No.” Bridget shook her head emphatically.

Travis, however, fingered his square chin and tugged at one ear. I was reminded of a third-base coach giving signals. Was Bridget on first? “You know,” Travis said amiably, “Evan might have come through the office while you were there, honey. He was never a client of mine, but he could have consulted someone else. Didn’t you have a nameplate on your desk?”

Bridget’s eyes grew wide. “Did I? Maybe so, I don’t remember.” She grew more flustered. “I worked at a whole bunch of places.”

I saw Vida draw herself up to imperial proportions. The moment had come. I braced myself for her next query: “Bridget—what about Carol Neal? When was the last time you saw her?”

The color drained from Bridget’s face. Travis merely looked puzzled. “Who?” he asked.

Vida’s lips were clamped shut. With a mighty effort, Bridget regained some of her poise but none of her color. “Carol Neal!” she echoed in wonderment. “Now there’s a name from out of the past.”

“Yes,” agreed Vida, her fingers playing over the surface of the twining vines that adorned the armchair. She didn’t speak again, allowing the sudden silence to fill the living room like the aftermath of a death toll. I was tempted to prod Bridget, but I understood Vida’s tactics.

“At commencement, I suppose,” Bridget finally said in a small voice. “The cruise, I mean, afterwards. It’s been a while.”

Vida nodded once, her buckled boots planted firmly on the tiled floor. “You didn’t see her last week before she died?”

Bridget’s mouth opened; Travis let out a short exclamation. Their surprise seemed genuine.

“Carol Neal
died
?” Bridget slipped off the arm of the
chair and fell onto the upholstered seat. “How? A car accident?”

“Why do you ask that?” Vida inquired, sounding bemused.

Bridget’s hands fluttered. “Why—a lot of people do. Young people. What was it?” Her voice had taken on an edge.

Having failed to elicit more than shock, Vida grew impatient. “She was murdered. So, I fear, was Kathleen Francich. You can read all about it when
The Advocate
comes out today.” She stood up, seemingly oblivious to the horror on Bridget’s face. I couldn’t see Travis’s reaction; Vida was standing in my way. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Kathleen for years, either?”

“Kathy! Oh, no!” Bridget reeled. Travis rushed to her side.

“Please leave,” he said, very low, very tense. “Why did you come?”

“We’re going,” Vida replied blithely.

We didn’t need to be shown out, but when Vida turned the brass doorknob, Bridget called after us: “Wait!” She was pushing at Travis, scrambling to get out of the chair. “It must be him! Tell the sheriff! I need protection!”

Vida and I had turned around in the foyer. Bridget stood under the archway that led into the living room, trembling and distraught. Travis had moved toward her, but stopped short, favoring his bad leg. He, too, looked stunned, but another emotion played across his handsome features. Fear? Anger? I couldn’t be sure.

“It must be who?” asked Vida, her voice more kindly. “Protection from what?”

Bridget was making short, chopping motions with her right hand. “From whoever killed Carol and Kathy. He must be going to kill me, too.” She was starting to cry, her pretty face crumpled like a mangled Christmas ornament.

“Who?” repeated Vida.

Limping, Travis stepped up to Bridget, putting a firm arm around her shaking shoulders. “Calm down, honey. You don’t know anything of the sort. Terrible things happen in the city. You know it. You were raised there.”

Slowly, Bridget turned to look up into her husband’s face. “In the … Oh!” She gulped and pressed her face against Travis’s chest. He looked at us over her head. His curt nod indicated that we should be gone. I half expected Vida to linger, to ask more questions, to raise more cain. But she didn’t.

“I’m a monster,” she muttered, trooping down the walk to the drive where we’d left the car. I noticed that the PUD truck was gone. “Think of it, Emma—Bridget could be innocent!”

I stared at Vida through a fitful fall of snow. “You don’t seriously believe she might have killed Carol and Kathleen?”

Vida had to jiggle the handle on the car door to open it. “No, I doubt that very much. Of course, all things are possible. Certainly we learned that Bridget and Kathleen knew each other, even if they did go to different high schools. But didn’t you notice Travis’s coaching? About
the city
?”

I broke my stare only long enough to get in on my side of the car. “He assumed Carol and Kathleen were killed in Seattle. He couldn’t know—yet—that their bodies were found so close to home.”

Vida gunned the engine, craning her neck to reverse down the drive. “No, no,” she said impatiently. “Just because
The Advocate
isn’t in the mailboxes doesn’t mean the whole town doesn’t know. You realize what gossips these people are. I mean that Travis wanted us to think he and Bridget didn’t know anything about Carol and Kathleen. Now why, I ask you, is that?”

My guess came promptly. “Because Bridget knew they were in town? But even if Bridget had heard from one or both girls, that doesn’t mean she did them in.”

“True. But she’s got something to hide, and that’s what I
mean about her innocence, or lack thereof.” Vida cornered in front of a greenery-topped mailbox on a red-and-white peppermint stick stand. “Vice, its various forms such as prostitution and drugs. Or whatever Travis was mixed up in. Gross misconduct, in Standish Crocker’s case. What does it mean?”

I didn’t know. “My guess is that it’s financial misdeeds. You know, inside trading or embezzling clients’ funds. Why are you suggesting something more seamy?”

Vida was keeping her eyes on the road, which was a mercy, since the chains on her car didn’t seem to have too firm a grip in the snow. “How long did Travis actually work? Four years? Five, at the most. Now how many brokers or investment advisors or what have you make enough money in that span of time to retire? And why retire at all when you’re only thirty? You don’t think there’s something fishy about it?”

I had to admit that I hadn’t thought much at all about Travis’s life decisions. “Maybe he wants to take over The Marmot when Oscar pops off,” I suggested. “Or go in to the construction business with his father. It’s possible that he burned out early in the financial world.”

“Oh, yes, anything’s possible,” Vida conceded as she pulled onto Alpine Way. “But I’m definitely dubious.”

Vida had a point. Certainly there was something suspicious about Bartlett & Crocker; ergo, there was something suspicious about the firm’s former employee. Milo must know who had been keeping an eye on Travis Nyquist’s house. But I doubted that he’d tell Vida and me who or why. Yet. I wouldn’t underestimate Vida’s powers of persuasion over Milo or his deputy, Billy Blatt.

Front Street was freshly plowed and sanded. “Vida, you’ve never told me what Evan actually said to you about Bridget.”

Vida inclined her head. We were passing City Hall, a refurbished red brick building of two stories with swooping strands of gold Christmas lights draped across the facade. “It didn’t make a lot of sense,” she admitted. “He called
Bridget and Travis a pair of selfish philistines with no sense of loyalty. Bridget was a parasite, an interloper. Evan had some harsh words for Arnie Nyquist, too. He called him a despoiler of the earth. He said the Nyquists in general had betrayed their trust. The line was diluted. Or was it deluded?” She glanced in the rearview mirror, preparatory to backing into her usual parking place. “Really, he did go on.”

I didn’t doubt it. But I still couldn’t see any connection between Evan Singer and the Nyquists. Why pick on them? Until Oscar had ejected Evan from the Marmot, there had been no encounters between the family and the newcomer.

Ben was waiting for us in the office. In truth, he wasn’t exactly waiting, but in the process of writing a note to me.

“Aha!” he exclaimed as Vida and I trudged inside and stamped snow off our boots. “I’m taking in the homeless. Evan Singer is going to stay up at the rectory.”

I shook out my car coat, which had accumulated a few snowflakes in the walk from Vida’s car. “How does Mrs. McHale feel about that?”

Ben shrugged. “I didn’t ask, I told her he was coming. There’s plenty of room with Father Fitz gone. The place was built for at least two priests. What’s the problem?”

I heard Vida sniff loudly, and knew that her thoughts were running parallel to mine. Occasionally, my brother’s priestly naïveté gets the better of him. “Teresa McHale doesn’t strike me as the Hospitality Queen of Alpine,” I said. “I don’t see her opening the rectory door to anybody, let alone a non-Catholic.”

Ben tipped his head to one side and ruffled his dark hair. “Well, well. Then I guess I won’t tell her that Evan was raised in the Jewish faith. Not that he follows it, being a freethinker and a world-class loony. For Teresa’s sake, we’ll pretend that Evan is something more ordinary.” Ben glanced at Vida. “A Presbyterian, maybe.”

Vida groaned. “He could never be one of my brethren. We only have
sensible
people in our congregation.”

I was about to remind Vida of some of the less sensible—and more insane—members of her church when Evan Singer ambled into the office. He was unshaven and hollow-eyed, but the leather jacket he wore looked expensive, as did the calf-high snakeskin boots.

“How,” Evan Singer demanded of Ed Bronsky’s empty chair, “do you place a value on art? Insurance people are number-crunchers. They just don’t understand.”

I gathered, rightly, that Evan had been with the State Farm people in the Alpine Building. As it turned out, he had no insurance of his own, but was expecting his landlord to cover his losses. I wished him well, but had the feeling that Elmer Tuck, retired, wasn’t about to reimburse him for the loss of his paintings.

Bill Blatt, however, wanted to be helpful. His eager face appeared in the doorway, greeting his Aunt Vida, nodding at Ben and me, swinging a plastic Grocery Basket sack at Evan Singer.

“We may not have saved your picture,” said Bill, his cheeks pink with cold, “but we got the frame. Maybe you can clean it up. It looks like real silver.”

Evan Singer, along with the rest of us, stared first at Bill, then at the charred object he was taking out of the sack. It was indeed a picture frame, eight-by-ten size, the glass blackened by fire and the silver melted around the edges.

Evan glared at Bill. “That’s not the picture I meant! This is commercial trash! You savage! I was talking about my paintings! My artwork! My life! Up in smoke! Gone! Destroyed by the gods who envy mortal talent! A pox on them all! I’m going to a higher authority!” He yanked the frame out of Bill Blatt’s hand, stared at it malevolently, then dashed it to the floor. The glass shattered into tiny shards. Evan Singer ran out through the open door.

“Well, there goes your houseguest,” I said to Ben. “Now where did we put the office broom?”

Ben, however, was undismayed. “He’ll show up.” He
saw my skeptical look and gave a short nod. “He has nowhere else to go.”

“The lodge? A motel?” I was at the little closet in the corner, getting out the broom and a dustpan. Vida had come around from behind her desk and was inspecting the charred silver frame.

“Now where did he get that?” she murmured. Carefully, she picked up the frame, shook off a few bits of glass, and began to rub at it with her handkerchief. “That’s a Buddy Bayard frame,” she announced. “They cost at least a hundred and fifty dollars. Two years ago I bet Buddy he wouldn’t sell more than one. Why do I think he didn’t peddle this to Evan Singer?”

“Why shouldn’t he?” I asked, whisking up glass.

Vida took the dustpan from Ben, who was trying to be helpful, but managing mostly to get in the way. “Did you see that picture frame in Evan’s cabin?”

“No,” I admitted, “but I might have missed …”

“No, no, no,” Vida interrupted, dumping the dustpan’s contents into Ed’s wastebasket. “It was one room. You said you saw all those peculiar things stuck around. You’d have noticed something prosaic—like that frame. What would be in it? His parents? If so, wouldn’t that have struck a normal note among the discord?”