Page 25 of No Business Like Snow Business

Travis Jones didn’t look much like the guy in the photograph when we met him outside a daycare center on the west side of Christmas Falls, where he was doing something technical with the condenser of a HVAC unit. It looked like he was bashing it with a hammer, but then I was no expert.

The little kids inside the daycare were watching avidly from inside, noses pressed up against the window, as Travis smashed away at the unit.

He was a big guy; husky, but he carried it well. If he was Cap Guy, he’d spent the last thirty-some years packing on the pounds, but it was mostly muscle. He was wearing a red checked flannel shirt, an orange puffer vest, jeans, boots, and a woolen beanie.

“Hey,” he said when he saw us approaching. He set his tools down, wiped his forehead, and crunched across the snowy lawn to meet us on the sidewalk. “Harvey, right? From the museum?”

“Right,” Harvey said, shaking his hand. “And this is Sterling. Thanks for taking the time to see us. I’m sure you’re pretty busy with your job.”

Travis chuckled, looking over his shoulder at the daycare. “Oh, this is off the clock. But the heating goes on the fritz at a daycare, you come right out, doncha?”

At least you did in Christmas Falls, apparently, where the usual rules didn’t seem to apply. Or at least, the usual rules of my world. And my world was looking increasingly less welcoming the longer I spent in Christmas Falls.

Travis held out his hand to me, and I shook it.

“So, Sterling is in town looking for a relative of his,” Harvey said. “We’ve got a photograph, and Bob and Linda Hanks thought it might be you.”

Travis looked at me more closely.

“Not the relative,” Harvey said. “But someone who knew him. His name is Freddy Van Ruyven, but it’s possible he was using the name Gabriel. Gabriel Baum.”

“Well, shit,” Travis said. He rubbed his forehead, shifting his beanie back in the process and letting a couple of mousey brown curls escape. “That’s a name I haven’t heard in years. Gabe was...well, last I heard, and it’d be twenty-five years ago now, Gabe went and got himself killed freighthopping somewhere outside of Chicago. I always told him it was dangerous. Told him he’d get himself arrested, or worse.” He let out a long, regretful sigh. “I guess it was worse.”

The blood pounded behind my ears, as loud as the ocean. Isn’t this what I’d told myself I wanted? To know what had happened to Freddy? To have him removed from the family equation when it came to any claims he might make on my grandfather’s estate? Well, this was certainly removed. Unequivocally. So why did it feel like such a sudden and sharploss, when it had happened decades ago and I didn’t even know the guy?

Because this is about me, too.

I could barely hear Harvey when he spoke.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, that’s really sad. I’m sorry.” I didn’t know if he was talking to me or to Travis, but his next question told me it was Travis. “Were you close?”

“Thick as thieves for a few months, then he hit the road again,” Travis said. “I asked him to stay, but whatever he was running from, it was biting at his heels.”

My heart clenched.

“He was a real funny guy,” Travis said, “once you got him to talk, at least. Then he’d open his mouth, and this slow drawl would come out, like he was a real cowboy or something.”

“Drawl?” I asked, at the exact same time Harvey said, “Cowboy?”

Travis’s brow furrowed. “Yeah. Gabe was Texan.”

“Oh,” Harvey said. “Oh!”

I dug into my pocket for the photograph and thrust it in Travis’s face.

He took it, his blunt fingers closing carefully around the edges. “Hold on,” he said. “That’s not Gabe. I mean, Gabe was blond, but that’s not him.”

“The guy in the cap,” I said. “Isn’t that you?”

He squinted at the photograph. “Nope. That’s not me either.”

Shit.

“Oh, wow,” Harvey said. “Bob and Linda thought it was you and Gabe.”

“Nope.” Travis gave the photograph back. “I mean, I guess you can’t really see the guy in the hat’s face, and maybe I looked kind of similar when I was a kid. But that’s definitely not Gabe. Gabe had a crooked nose from where it was broken once. Said a horse kicked him, but I always thought he was just playing upthe cowboy thing.” He scratched his cheek. “Bob and Linda are both getting on a bit. Maybe their memories are fuzzy, or their eyesight is. And honestly, at that angle I reckon all us Blitzen’s kids would look pretty much the same.”

I stared at the window of the daycare place. Most of the kids had given up watching now that Travis wasn’t bashing things with his hammer, but there was still one little boy in the window, his hands starfished to the glass as he peered out at us. He saw me watching and waved. I waved back.

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