Ice Maiden

by Dale Mayer

  He nodded. “Stay inside, please. I’ll check in with you in the morning.”

  “Fine,” she said, watching as he left. She dropped her large carry-on bag beside the suitcases he’d brought up for her. Absolutely everything she owned sat at her feet. Except for her board, which was getting repaired, but she wasn’t even sure how she was supposed to get the money for that. If it was even worth fixing. She didn’t work tomorrow morning—this morning actually—and that was a good thing.

  On the other hand, it wasn’t good because she really needed the money. She reached up and scrubbed her face, wandering toward the bed and stopping in amazement at the room she found herself in. The cost for a room like this at one of the local hotels would be hundreds and hundreds of dollars, something she surely couldn’t afford.

  Aspen was well-known as an expensive tourist destination, and she had never expected to spend a night in a fancy place like this. The trouble was, she couldn’t enjoy this fully. In light of the murder, none of it mattered. And, even more distressing, she didn’t know which of her roommates was dead, only that one of them was. She used the bathroom and found her nightie in among all the rest of the clothing she’d piled into the one suitcase, changed into it, and curled up in bed.

  Staring at the window with its curtains wide open and the snow falling outside, she wondered how her life had ended up here, with her in this corner. And how utterly alone she suddenly felt. She used to be incredibly good friends with Wendy, but somehow Wendy had been keeping a secret from Gabby and a major one at that. It was distressing in a completely different way. She had no clue what she was supposed to do with that.

  Obviously Wendy could do whatever she wanted to do, but, at the same time, it was tough to wonder how long the relationship with Meghan had been back up and running.

  Gabby hated to say it, but it was almost a betrayal because she and Wendy used to tell each other everything, and yet this had obviously been hidden from Gabby. And the fact that Wendy was afraid of Gabby’s response meant that Gabby had also failed their friendship. She shook her head as she burrowed deeper into the blankets.

  She loved Aspen—like, seriously loved being here—and it would break her heart to leave. Even with the murder, Gabby felt at home here, more so than at any other place she’d ever lived.

  However, apparently Wendy was ready to leave. So how did that work out with her partner, Meghan?

  With so many unknowns rolling around in Gabby’s mind, it seemed her life was so confusing, and she didn’t know what to think. But true sleep was further off. She lay here, dozing in and out, yet never getting into a deep fulfilling sleep for the bulk of the night.

  When she finally woke up, her eyes were gritty with tears—tears stuck in the back of her head. She groaned and rolled over.

  “Imagine if I’d paid for this,” she wondered aloud. “It would be worse to think that a wonderful night in this beautiful place was unappreciated because of a bad night’s sleep.” She sighed heavily. “But now, since I’m off today, what will I do?” she whispered to herself, as she propped up against the headboard.

  She didn’t bring any foodstuffs with her because she had none, but could something be here? Even if old and stale, she’d really appreciate some food and coffee. Heck, a hot cup of tea sitting in bed would be lovely too. She crept out of bed, surprised that it was still fairly warm in here. At her apartment they used to turn the heat down to save those pennies. It was so cold, but they could pile on the blankets, and the first person up would turn the heat back up again.

  She reached the little kitchenette, found a coffeepot, one of those individual-serving things, where you stuck in a pod. But were pods even here too? After a little digging in the kitchen, when she opened a drawer, she crowed in delight to find several of them inside. She wondered if it would be overextending the hospitality that had been given her if she made use of the coffee.

  Then she decided she could simply offer to pay for it, if nothing else. She made herself a single cup and found an unopened package of shortbread cookies. At first she hesitated, then figured she was in for a penny, why not a pound, and grabbed the package and took it to the bed.

  There she crawled under the covers and pushed the pillows up behind her and sat back, looking at the view from her window of the snow swirling outside. It was morning, and the sky was light, but she still felt sad. It was a new day and a new dawn, and, although she was normally an optimist, it was hard to find something really positive to think about today.

  When her phone rang, she knew it would be Wendy.

  “Where are you?” Wendy asked, her voice raised.

  “Why do you care?” she muttered. And then groaned. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair. I’m at a small studio apartment for the night. Where are you?”

  “I’m at Meghan’s,” she said.

  “Good.”

  “Look. I feel like I deserted you last night, and I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, it felt a little like that too,” she said, “but at least you had a place to go. I’m fine though, so don’t worry about me.” It was hard to have this conversation because everything felt odd and unusual between them right now.

  “And, Gabby, I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you about starting the relationship again.”

  “You have your reasons,” she said quietly.

  “I do,” she said. “And I know that you don’t agree with it, and I knew you would be upset with me, so I didn’t tell you.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said.

  “She has promised not to hit me anymore,” Wendy said.

  Gabby pinched the bridge of her nose, wondering how many women had said the same thing about their partners over the years. She didn’t say anything.

  Wendy added, “Anyway, I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “I’ve removed everything of mine from the apartment. I wasn’t allowed to stay there last night,” she said, “and that’s when I realized how little I actually had.”

  “We came with nothing,” she said, “so it’s not like it’s a hardship to move out.”

  “No, but we’re still on the hook for the rent next month, and we still have to hand in our notice.”

  “Do you think everybody is moving out?” Wendy’s voice rose.

  “Well, I never did get any details last night, but I understand the victim was one of the five of us,” she said. “Only I don’t know who. It breaks my heart to think about it.”

  “In which case we’ll find another roommate.”

  “Yeah, and, once the news gets out, do you think we’ll get one? Besides, I don’t know if we can go back. Ever.”

  Wendy gasped. “No,” she said, “I guess not.”

  “Right, so we’ll all be in a similar circumstance right now. Unless you’re moving in with your girlfriend.”

  Wendy hesitated and said, “I don’t know that we’re ready for that.”

  “No, I don’t know that you are either,” she said, “but I’m where I am just for today, and I don’t have any place after this.”

  “So what will you do?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, feeling a crushing fatigue, the complete opposite to the high energy she’d had yesterday. What she wouldn’t give for a dose of that right now. “That’s a problem I’ll face somewhere along the line.”

  “Okay, well, I guess I need to talk to Meghan and just see about our situation,” she said hesitantly.

  “Yep, and, if you find out anything about the murder, let me know. We’ll contact the others as well.”

  “Don’t you think the police did?” Wendy asked.

  “Yes, but we still have the logistics of a month’s rent to pay.”

  “I don’t think anybody’ll want to pay April’s rent.”

  “We still owe it though,” she said quietly. “It doesn’t matter if you want to or not.”

  “Do you think the police will come after us if we don’t?”

  Gabby stared at the phone in her hand. “That doesn’
t sound like you,” Gabby said.

  “I don’t have any money,” Wendy said. “I was struggling to figure out how to pay my share of April’s rent as it is.”

  She frowned at that. “Haven’t you been working?”

  “Just a little bit,” she said.

  At that, Gabby stared at the phone in shock. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.

  “I didn’t know what to tell you,” she burst out. “It’s just been really rough. I lost so many hours at my job, and then it was just basically a case of ‘Don’t bother coming in anymore,’ so I didn’t know what to do.”

  “When did you last work?” Gabby cried out.

  “Last week,” she said. “Not since last week.”

  That was a death knoll in Aspen because a week of lost wages when they were living so tight was unworkable. “Wow,” Gabby said, stumped. “And you didn’t think you could tell me that either?”

  “Well, I did say I wanted to leave.”

  “Were you planning on leaving, like in the middle of the night, before the rent was due, leaving the other women on the hook for our rent too?”

  “Well, I was hoping we could pay the rent, stay until the end of April, and then let them know we were leaving, so they could get somebody else to move in. You know it was around that time frame that we would leave anyway.”

  “Sure,” she said, “but what about Meghan?”

  “Well, that’s another one of those conversations that I need to have,” she said. “I don’t know. I just … I don’t know,” and she started to cry.

  All Gabby could do was sit back and try to sort out all this. She’d never ever heard of Wendy proposing anything like this. She was always a very honest, upright, and fair person. “Wendy, are you in some kind of trouble?” she asked cautiously because it just brought back echoes of the abusive history with her and that same partner.

  “No, no, no,” she said, “well, outside of the fact that I have no money.”

  “Well, that’s a big one. You at least have some family you might call on,” she suggested.

  “My mother told me not to call and ask for help anymore,” she confessed, “and I just didn’t tell you that.”

  “Sounds like you haven’t told me a whole lot of what’s been going on in your life,” she said, hurt beyond belief. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know things were so rough with your family.”

  “I think they blame you,” she said.

  “Me?” Gabby cried out in surprise. “Why? What did I do?”

  “You convinced me to come here for the winter.”

  “But we’ve been planning this since we were kids.”

  “Right,” she said, “and my mother didn’t really understand it, and I walked away from a good job there and didn’t have any money problems at all, and now, of course, I’ve nothing but.”

  “But you also had a savings account that you could rely on, unlike me,” she said. “I mean, I had a little bit of savings, but nothing like you did.”

  “Yes, I know, but I’ve been out of work so much that I’ve had to tap into it.”

  “Well, you’ve been living happily enough,” she said, surprised. “Buying lots of takeout, going out for meals.”

  “Yes, but all those days and months that you thought I was working, I wasn’t,” she confessed. “I was with Meghan.”

  “Oh, my God,” Gabby said, sagging back against the headboard. “So you haven’t hardly worked since we moved here, and you’ve been living off your savings this whole winter?”

  “Yes.”

  Gabby didn’t even know what to say to that. “You know we made plans for this,” she said, “and I thought we understood what we would be doing, moneywise.”

  “Sure, and then I couldn’t get more hours. I couldn’t get more work.”

  “But I don’t understand,” she said. “You were working in the restaurant industry. Aspen always needs people, even if only washing dishes.”

  “Right, but remember I had a problem with the one manager.”

  “Sure, but what’s that got to do with it?”

  “Well, he’d spread some nasty rumors about me, about me stealing money.”

  “And you didn’t tell me that either?”

  “No, because, once again, it sounded like I was a failure and having to confess something I didn’t want to confess.”

  “I’m never ashamed of you,” she said. “But we set it all up with fairly strict rules so that something like this wouldn’t happen. What really distresses me is that you didn’t tell me. Not when you ran into financial difficulties, when I probably could have got you a job somewhere or at least helped you look,” she said quietly. “But then, when you went back with Meghan, you didn’t tell me either.”

  “One lie led to another,” Wendy said sadly.

  “And now?”

  “I don’t know what now is. Everything has shifted.”

  “Well, I guess, in the worst case, you can go home. You can blame me, and your mother will welcome you back with open arms and help you get back on your feet again.”

  “Yes,” Wendy said. “She probably would. But that’s not what I want to do.”

  “Maybe not, but maybe, at this point, it’s what you should do,” she said, wondering if that would separate Wendy from her girlfriend, Meghan. Gabby hated to even try to be an architect of that kind of change, but Wendy had been the one who had wound up in the hospital when they first arrived. “It’s been a very tumultuous trip here,” Gabby said. “I mean, right from the beginning, when you hooked up with Meghan.”

  “Please don’t bring that up,” Wendy said. “I know you’ll never let go of that, but I’m trying to forget it.”

  It was on the tip of Gabby’s tongue to suggest that Wendy walk away, but Gabby knew Wendy wouldn’t, couldn’t do it. “All I can say is that I hope you’ll be happy together,” Gabby said. “But, if you’re planning on staying with her, how is it that you’re looking at going home then?”

  “I don’t know. That’s one of the conversations we must have. She’s been talking about leaving for a long time.”

  “Is that smart?”

  “Again, I don’t know, but she can get a job anywhere. She’s a physical trainer.”

  “That’s true, but I’m sure this is a good place for her too.”

  “I’m not staying,” Wendy said mutely. “At least not under these circumstances.”

  “No, but what if you moved in with her and found yourself in a much better situation, would that help?”

  “It would, but I don’t know that I want to push the relationship to that point.”

  “What did you tell her about last night?”

  “I basically told her that one of the women was dead in the apartment, and the cops made us clear out.”

  “Well, that’s true as far as it went,” she said.

  “I know,” Wendy said, her voice sad. “Oh, she’s up now. I’ve got to go.” And, just like that, Wendy hung up.

  Gabby stared down at the phone, her lips twisting, because that was exactly what Wendy used to do. She always used to run and hide, so that her partner wouldn’t know who Wendy was talking to. Just like Wendy’s mother didn’t like Gabby and blamed her for them moving to Aspen for the winter, Wendy’s girlfriend, Meghan, also didn’t appreciate Gabby’s interference either.

  And that was just too damn bad because anybody who put her friend in the hospital needed to be interfered with. Gabby was just sorry she wasn’t a six-foot-tall three-hundred-pound male who could have pounded Meghan in the ground. Meghan was one of those women who used her physical strength to overpower others. She was a physical trainer, but she was also a bully. And when it came to Wendy—who was obviously somebody who had trouble standing up for herself and standing confidently in her own decisions—that had been a match that Meghan would have thought was made in heaven.

  But, for Gabby, it had been a nightmare. She got up, made herself a second cup of coffee, and polished off another four cookies. By the ti
me those cookies were gone, she felt a little bit better. The snow had picked up outside, and it looked to be a raw blustery day. She knew Damon had said she could stay last night, but could she stay longer? She was even now wondering what she was supposed to do for tonight.

  She knew, besides Jerry’s apartment upstairs, a little guest room was above the bookstore, but she didn’t think her boss would let her stay there. She might be wrong, and being in a position of having no choice but to ask him wouldn’t be fun. Since Jerry had lived upstairs forever, a bathroom must be upstairs as well, but the whole apartment and that one guest room all connected to the bookstore below. She didn’t know just how far his trust would extend.

  As she sat here, contemplating what she was supposed to do now, her phone rang again. She looked down and didn’t recognize the number. “Hello?”

  “Did you get any sleep?”

  She smiled at the detective’s voice. “No, not really,” she confessed. “I kind of drifted in and out. Can I return to the apartment now, live there?” she asked hopefully.

  “No,” he said. “We’ve contacted the landlord too. He’s coming to look at the damage.”

  “What damage?” she asked, her voice rising.

  He hesitated and said, “Just some damage.”

  “And can you now tell us who it is?”

  “It’s Tessa,” he said, as she gasped in shock. “Yes,” he said, “she’s been identified.”

  “By whom?” she asked.

  “Her boyfriend.” Then he mentioned the name, but she didn’t know it.

  “I didn’t know her all that well,” she confessed. “So I’m not terribly surprised she had a boyfriend too. Everybody seems to have partners here.”

  “How about you? Do you have one?”

  “No,” she said, “I don’t.”

  “And you just have Wendy as your alibi for last night, right?”

  “Alibi?” she asked, her voice rising into a squeak.

  “Yes,” he said, “alibi.”

  “You heard it going on over the phone,” she said.

  “I know,” he said, in that soothing voice that she was coming to crave. “But I’ll check everybody’s whereabouts.”

  She quickly explained about her and Wendy being home for the whole evening and going to bed early.