Page 3 of No Business Like Snow Business

But it was fine. I’d get my room, dump my suitcase there, and then walk downtown to see if I could find the museum the town’s website had told me about, since that seemed like the best place to start asking questions.

I drew a deep breath as I stepped inside the tinsel-filled space that was the hotel’s reception.

Welcome to Christmas Falls.

It didn’t take long to check in; there was no queue, and the woman behind the counter didn’t seem overly interested in startinga conversation apart from mentioning twice that I’d been lucky someone else had canceled so I’d been able to snag a room. Within ten minutes I had a key to my room—Number 11—and directions to find it down the end and on the right.

I wheeled my suitcase down the hallway and around the corner, and realized that there were no numbers on the doors. There were pictures instead. Birds, and more birds, and...rings. Five golden rings.

This was ridiculous.

I ran through what I could remember of the Twelve Days of Christmas, but my memory let me down. My key wouldn’t turn in the first door I picked, and it wasn’t until I counted the figures dancing that I realized there were only ten of them. The one with eleven guys—silver silhouettes on the green door—was next door.

Eleven pipers piping, I remembered as I finally got the key to turn, letting me into my room.

This hotel took the whole Christmas theme way too seriously.

And so, I realized twenty minutes later as I was heading downtown and had to stop for a reindeer when I was crossing the road, did this whole crazy town.

A reindeer! An actual fucking reindeer, pulling a sleigh. I snapped a picture with my phone before I realized I had nobody to share it with whose immediate response wouldn’t be, “Where the hell are you, Sterling?”I saved it as my phone’s wallpaper instead, pretending for a moment that I was the kind of guy who would have a Christmas-themed lockscreen.

Downtown Christmas Falls was picture-perfect. It had the main street charm of older towns—the sort that were built before strip malls were a thing—wrapped up in an even heavier layer of Christmas charm. The streetlights were garlanded, the shop windows twinkled with lights, and baubles and tinsel glittered in the sunlight. The air itself smelled of gingerbread and warm spices—although that might have been the bakery—aptly called Ginger’s Breads—that I found myself passing. I sidestepped a family with small children then crossed the street to the small cinema. On the other side of the street was the Jolly Java, and I made a note to get a coffee for the cold walk back to the hotel. Beside the coffee place was a bookstore called Season’s Readings. I wasn’t here on vacation, but, just like a part of me wanted to pretend I was the sort of guy who had a reindeer sleigh on his lockscreen, for a moment I allowed myself the fantasyof pretending I could buy a book along with that coffee, find a fireplace to sit by, and enjoy the both of them while the day slipped slowly away. Which was stupid, because I didn’t have time for that, and it wasn’t why I was here.

I slipped a gloved hand into the pocket of my coat, and the leather brushed the worn-down edges of the cardboard card I’d been carrying around for days now. I didn’t take it out to look at. I didn’t have to. I knew every detail of it by now.

The card was just some generic Christmas card with a snowman on the front. A basic, cheap card. The sort you got in packs of ten or twenty from a discount store. Inside it was written ‘To Mom and Dad. Merry Christmas, love, Freddy.”

It was the photograph I’d found inside the card that had brought me here. Two guys, both young, arms around each other’s shoulders. One dark-haired, and one blond. The dark-haired guy was wearing a red woolen cap with a brim and ear flaps—the sort you saw grizzled old backwoods people wear in movies—and looking down, most of his face obscured except for the curve of his grin. The blond, Freddy, was smiling at the camera, holding up a huge pretzel with his free hand. He was wearing a scarf and a knitted woolen hat. And behind them was a truck of some sort, or maybe the chassis of a tractor, and the sign painted on the side in cursive lettering said, “Christmas Falls Festival, 1989.”

Which was the part that made no sense at all, because I’d always been told my Uncle Freddy vanished in 1987 and had never been heard from again.

At least, it had made no sense for all of about ten seconds, until I’d taken another look at the way those guys had their arms around each other.

And then it made perfect sense.

Why he’d gone, and why he’d never come back. Why nobody talked about him and why, apparently, nobody had looked toohard. Until now, at least. In 1989 Freddy Van Ruyven had been in Christmas Falls and maybe, just maybe, someone here would remember him or the boy he’d been with. And there was one obvious place in town to start.

I checked the maps on my phone, and discovered I was just around the corner from my destination: the Christmas Falls Festival Museum.

This was crazy, probably. But I had to try. I didn’t think I’d like the man I’d be if I didn’t at least try.

I drew a deep breath and headed toward the museum.

two

HARVEY

“Harvey,” said my best friend Chloe when we met in the line at Jolly Java, “have you been spending big at Season’s Readings again?”

I shifted my bags to my other hand, as though that would hide them from her, and then shrugged. “Yes. I mean, always.”

Chloe snorted and loosened her scarf. The day was freezing out on the street, but it was toasty warm inside Jolly Java. Her cheeks were pink from being freshly outside, and her eyes shone. Her auburn hair stuck out from either side of her knit beanie in two uneven braids, like Pippi Longstocking. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

From anyone else it might have been an admonishment, but Chloe knew exactly why I was dodging the Christmas Falls Festival Museum.

“I’ve left Martha in charge,” I said. “If anyone desperately wants to see the 1993 mechanical Santa on its original float, they’ll still be able to.”

The 1993 mechanical Santa was a nightmarish horror in my opinion, but it was one of the museum’s most popular attractions—probably because of that. And “most popular” was relative. Even in the middle of the festival season, the museumdidn’t get many visitors. Most people who came through the museum doors were tourists doing the circuit of Christmas-themed stores downtown and only stayed in the museum twenty minutes at most, especially those with kids. There was really nothing in the museum that was interesting for kids, not when everything else downtown was so sparkling and enticing.

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