Wild Sign (Alpha & Omega #6)(52)

Anna recognized that book. She couldn’t stop the anticipatory smile.

“Banksy,” Sissy was saying. “One point four million dollars. Girl with Balloon.”

“Right,” agreed Tanya. “The oldest of this kid’s books was copyrighted six years ago. He must have been sixteen—you’ll see what I mean when you meet him.”

She handed Tag the book because he was the one who held a hand out for it. On the cover was an albino stag standing in a dark forest with fog rising from the ground around him, like a scene out of a fairy tale. The title of the book was Bright Things, the photographer listed only as Zander.

Anna had a copy of that book—and the other five, too.

“Zander is here?” Anna asked, feeling breathless.

Tanya grinned and nodded. “I know, right? Sissy had no idea, either.” She patted her wife’s leg. “Yes, he is here—selling snow cones.” She rolled her eyes.

“My dad mentioned Snow Cone, that he came up to visit them last fall, though he didn’t say much about him. But Tanya is the one who thought to stop and talk to the young man selling snow cones.” Sissy shook her head. “If he had been Lady Gaga, it would have been Tanya scratching her head and wondering what the fuss was about.”

“I know who Lady Gaga is,” Tanya said indignantly. “I do live in the real world. Anyway, if you’re looking for an eyewitness who lived up there for a while, Zander might be useful. But he’s shy. If you take my advice, one of you should go talk to him.” She looked at the two men and shook her head. “Anna should go talk to him. It took me five snow cones before he said more than ten words to me. If Sissy comes, too, he still won’t talk to me.”



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*

IN THE END, Anna dropped Charles and Tag off at Happy Camp Mini Storage armed with the number of Carrie Green’s storage unit. Meanwhile, she went to buy a snow cone from the stand, which was within sight of the storage facility.

The coffee shop was one of those miniature house–looking places. It was covered with cedar shake shingles that made it look vaguely hairy, appropriate for a shop called Sasquatch Express-O. It was set up as a drive-through, but the car lane had an A-frame signboard blocking it that read Sasquatch hunting. Back at 4 p.m. so you can be up all night.

There were two metal picnic tables between the coffee shop and the snow cone stand. The stand itself was a ridiculous thing. The functional part, a circular workstation about six feet in diameter, was covered with a cone-shaped plastic top painted a bright rainbow of color.

Anna thought the stand was supposed to look like a snow cone. Or maybe an ice cream cone. Hard to say. A cardboard sign duct-taped to the side listed the prices for small and large cones in wide black Sharpie written in an even and readable hand.

On the top of the picnic table nearest the snow cone stand, a young man sat cross-legged with a guitar in his lap, the case open behind him. He looked like he was about Anna’s age, maybe a year or two younger, but not much. He hadn’t looked up when she parked next to the coffee shop. He didn’t look up while she walked over.

Like his photographs, Zander—assuming this was Zander—was fascinating. Beautiful, too. But more than that. His hair was an odd shade between white and wheat, almost silvery. His eyes were deep blue. For some reason, after Tanya’s description, Anna had expected someone small and slender—but he was the size of a proverbial lumberjack, a lean lumberjack without a beard.

He was singing the Cranberries’ “Zombie.”

He had a very good voice—not as good as Charles’s; he lacked the timbre of her husband’s voice, but he had range. And someone somewhere had taught him how to sing.

The guitar he played was a Gibson that was probably older than either of them. It looked a little battered, and someone who didn’t know as much about music as Anna did might think it was a cheap guitar. But his old Gibson cost at least as much as the Martin rotting in the amphitheater, possibly more, though Anna’s understanding of collectible guitar prices and models was hazy, beginning and ending with “old Gibsons are valuable.”

He didn’t stop singing when she walked up, so she belted out the song with him. He looked up at that and smiled widely. He sang better than he played, but he didn’t play badly. When he was through with “Zombie,” he transitioned into the old folk song “Molly Bawn” without a pause. Though he called it “Polly Vaughn” and had a few other variants to the lyrics she knew. Folk music was like that.

He grinned when she started the first verse with him, as if she’d passed a test of some sort. She followed his version of the old song with little trouble.

When they finished, Anna said, “I’ve always found that song to be pretty unsatisfactory. Man shoots wife. Claims he thought she was a swan. Oops.” She blinked at him, then continued in sickly sweet sympathy, “That poor man, poor, poor man. Everyone feels sorry for him. How could he know it wasn’t a swan he shot? The end.”

“It should end with a hanging, do you think?” he asked, almost seriously. “But what if he really just shot her by mistake? The guilt he must feel.”

“If he can’t tell the difference between his wife and a bird, he needs to be hanged before he shoots someone else,” she said dryly. “And that would put paid to his guilt, too.”