Page 20 of No Business Like Snow Business

We walked to the car without speaking, listening to the sounds of Caspar and Bob playing in the backyard, joyous barks punctuated by bouts of squeaking from the gingerbread toy. As soon as we were on our way, I started talking. But I could tell I was trying too hard to get back the vibe from earlier, the sense that this whole investigation was silly and probably futile but, surprisingly,fun. Something had shifted. And I seemed to be the only one who didn’t know what.

“I mean, that was weird, right?” I rambled. The way they just stopped talking about Gabriel? And then acted like they couldn’t tell whether that was Gabriel in the picture? I know it’s a long shot, thinking Freddy and Gabriel could be the same person, but if Freddy really didn’t want to be found, if he wanted to start fresh, who’s to say he wouldn’t use a different name?”

“Could be,” Harvey said.

“Why are you being weird?” I demanded, aware that wasn’t at all the right way to say it. We didn’t have that level of familiarity yet, did we? Where I knew him well enough to sense his shifting moods, and to ask about them?

Harvey didn’t look over at me as we drove down the long, quiet road fringed with melting snow. Dread was starting to form a knot somewhere deep in me, an echo of what I’d felt on Bob’s sofa. The sense that it might be better not to know if Freddy and Gabriel were the same person. If a ‘friendship’ had ended in two broken hearts. Maybe, I thought suddenly, the falling out wasn’t about feelings that were supposed to remain unspoken, but about the fact that Freddy had lied, pretended to be someone he wasn’t. And Travis had found out.

I was so caught up in the story I’d been inventing, I was surprised when Harvey spoke.

“I’m not the one acting weird.” He slowed to a stop at the intersection, then turned back onto the road into town. “You are.”

“Iam?”

“When they were telling us about Gabriel,” Harvey said. “You tensed up. Everyone noticed.”

“Bob was weird about it first,” I insisted. “When he said Gabriel’s name, his tone shifted. He didn’t like him, you could tell.”

“Yeah, but it’s not a crime to not like someone,” Harvey said softly. “Especially if we don’t know the reason. And I think, just because I have a feeling this is where your brain went, that you should know that Bob might be an old guy from a small town, but that doesn’t mean he’s a homophobe.”

I gave a guilty jolt.

“Because I think that’s what you were thinking, right?”

“I don’t know.” It had certainly crossed my mind.

“If Bob didn’t like Gabriel, maybe he has a reason for that,” Harvey told me. “Because people here, they’re better than you’re expecting, I think, and that makes me sad—not that we’re better, but because your expectations are so low.”

I hated that Harvey saw through me so easily.

“And your story,” he continued softly, “is not the same as Freddy’s story, except for one thing.”

“What’s that?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from rasping.

Harvey flashed me a quick, sympathetic smile. “You both deserve to live happily ever after.”

I looked away sharply, my eyes stinging, and stared out the window as we continued back toward downtown.

six

HARVEY

We went to the Snowflake Shack for lunch. Christmas Falls didn’t really do fancy, at least the level of fancy that I suspected Sterling was accustomed to—The White Elephant was probably more his style. I liked The White Elephant a lot; it was just that The Shack, with its burgers, fries, and shakes, was much more friendly to a guy on my budget.

The Shack was on Blitzen Street. Last year, like much of the town, it had gotten an unauthorized facelift courtesy of Christmas Falls’ resident graffiti artist. The whole holiday graffiti campaign had caused some consternation in town, but then it turned out the tourists loved it. The Shack now had a bunch of kids building snowmen painted on the front of it, gifts and ornaments floating down around them like snowfall. Like everything else in town, it was beautifully festive.

Sterling and I snagged a booth in the back and ordered.

“I hope we can find out more about Gabriel Baum,” I said when our food came, dragging a fry through my side of ranch dressing. “Do we really think he and Freddy are the same person?”

Sterling shrugged. “I don’t know. Bob said he didn’t think it was Gabriel in the photo, but he seemed like he wasn’t being totally open with us.”

When I’d agreed to help Sterling track down Freddy, I’d thought it would be fun investigating a real-life mystery in Christmas Falls. But the thing with real-life mysteries was they came wrapped in real-life secrets, and I didn’t necessarily like the idea of uncovering those. It was stupid that I’d never thought of it before, but until I’d seen the way Bob and Linda had looked at each other, having a whole unspoken conversation between them, I hadn’t considered there might be some things about Christmas Falls and its residents that wouldn’t be fun to find out. I wasn’t expecting to discover Bob was D.B. Cooper or anything exciting like that, but it was clear when we’d brought up Gabriel Baum that we’d touched on a subject Bob and Linda weren’t comfortable discussing, and I didn’t like that I’d made them feel that way. They were good people. At least, Ithoughtthey were, and I didn’t want to discover anything to make me change my mind. About them, and everyone else in town. I wasn’t cut out for this amateur detective stuff at all, was I?

“I think if I was going to be a reporter, I probably wouldn’t be the sort who wins a Pulitzer by going undercover to investigate drug cartels and human trafficking,” I said. “I think I’d be the sort who does the stories about dogs that ride surfboards, or troublesome geese.”

Sterling didn’t roll his eyes at my apparent non sequitur the way Steven would have. He smiled instead, the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkling warmly. “Do you get many troublesome geese in Christmas Falls?”

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