The Alpine Christmas by Mary Daheim Page A

attendance office or the rest of the faculty and staff.
    “Neal,” she said. “Let me think … Carol Neal … Her parents weren’t as well-off as some.” Which, I assumed, meant that they were often behind in their tuition payments.“St. John’s? Or St. Catherine’s? I can never remember home parishes. North end, though—she took the bus. That is, until she got a car in her junior year.” The sound of more pages being riffled came over the line. “Winters, but that’s Carolyn.” Mrs. Hoffman paused, presumably finishing up the alphabetical listings. “That’s it, Emma. Do you think you’re looking for Carol Neal or Carol Addams?”
    “Neal,” I replied. “Addams doesn’t live around here, right? By the way, was that the same year Bridget Dunne graduated?”
    “Bridget!” Mrs. Hoffman’s voice took on an edge. “Now there was a piece of work! I could never figure that kid out. Say, didn’t she marry somebody from up your way?”
    “She did. A local named Travis Nyquist.” Ben was watching me closely through a cloud of cigar smoke. Ginny and Carla were putting cheap plastic ornaments on the aluminum-foil tree. Vida had given up all pretense of typing and was standing in the doorway of my office.
    “Funny girl,” mused Mrs. Hoffman. “You never knew where you were with her. One minute, she’d be sweet as candy; the next, she’d be a real little snip. Of course she lost her father when she was a sophomore. And I heard Mrs. Dunne committed suicide. I guess I’d better go dig into my bag of Christian charity and spare a bit for Bridget.”
    “Do you remember if Bridget and Carol Neal were friends?” I asked innocently.
    Mrs. Hoffman hesitated. “That whole class was even more cliquish than some of the others. I’m not sure. They may have been. But it seems to me that Bridget in particular palled around with girls from other private schools. Holy Names. Forest Ridge. Even some of the non-Catholic ones. I told you: she was odd.”
    I didn’t know if Mrs. Hoffman’s judgment of Bridget was based on the girl’s unpredictable personality or her choice of companions. It didn’t matter. I had a link between BridgetDunne Nyquist and Carol Neal. If, of course, that was Carol Neal’s body lying in Al Driggers’s mortuary.
    “Have you got a mailing address for Carol Neal?” I asked, giving Vida and Ben a high sign.
    “The alum office would have it. Should I transfer you?”
    Briefly, Mrs. Hoffman exchanged pleasantries about our reunion via telephone. Just before she rang off, she wished me luck in finding Carol Neal. I mumbled my thanks.
    I didn’t recognize the female voice that answered for the alumni association. She sounded young, eager, and efficient. Maybe she thought I wanted to give money. But she met my request with a buoyant spirit. As I waited for her to look up Carol Neal’s address, my gaze shifted from Ben to Vida and back again. Vida was waving both hands, not at me, but in an attempt to disperse Ben’s cigar smoke.
    “Filthy,” she muttered. “What kind of vices do you priests have?”
    The lively voice came back on the line. “We have an address for Carol Neal in the University District, on Fifteenth Northeast. But that was four years ago. She moved after that and apparently left no forwarding address. We have her listed as inactive.”
    That, I thought, was an understatement.

Cha p ter Seven
    The aluminum-foil tree with its plastic ornaments, the ragged red and green paper streamers, and the Styrofoam snowman with his missing nose and mangled top hat didn’t do much to cheer up the editorial office. I flinched when I remembered what Ginny had to work with in the reception area: three cardboard Magi, a Star of Bethlehem that had lost half of its pasted-on gold glitter, and a Holy Family fashioned from bread dough. The array was depressing.
    “Nice decorations,” Ed Bronsky commented as he lumbered through the office. “I really like the tree. It’s like the one