Last Resort of Murder (A Lacy Steele Mystery Book 9)

by Vanessa Gray Bartal

“Alone she has a serious mental illness.”

  “She’s not mentally ill. She’s untraditional,” Lacy said.

  “Sweetheart, gaucho pants are untraditional. Suze is a nut job.” His eyes slid to the door. “Tell her, Jason.”

  Lacy turned to see him skulking in the doorway. She wondered how long he had been there. Smiling, she beckoned him forward with a wave.

  “I’ve stopped beating that particular drum,” Jason said. He went forward and slipped his arm around her waist, a bit possessively, Lacy thought. Michael eyed them with a knowing smile and small shake of his head.

  “Good to see you, man,” Jason added.

  “You too,” Michael said. “I see everything here is exactly as I left it.” He motioned to his store, although Lacy thought that wasn’t what he was talking about. He found Jason’s struggle with jealousy amusing. She didn’t. It annoyed her that Jason didn’t trust her when she said nothing was between her and Michael. But since he didn’t voice his feelings, she pushed her annoyance away. He was working on it. That was the most she could ask of him.

  “Same town, different day,” Jason said. He glanced at the clock on Michael’s wall. “I need to get back to work. Care to walk with me to my car?”

  “Definitely,” Lacy said. To Michael she added, “I want to hear all about your trip.”

  “We’ll have plenty of time to catch up on the ski weekend,” Michael said.

  “I don’t know about that. I’m going to be a skiing maniac,” Lacy said.

  “You ski?” Michael asked.

  “No, but I have high hopes. How hard could it be?” Lacy said.

  She wasn’t oblivious to the fact that Michael and Jason made eye contact over her head. “Come on, you guys. I know I’ve had some mishaps with sports before, but skiing is basically an organized way to fall down a hill. No one falls as well as I do,” she said.

  “We’ll give you that,” Michael said.

  “I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Jason said.

  “Aw, I missed the adorably pathetic way you suck up to her,” Michael said.

  “And I missed…Wait, I’ll think of something in a minute,” Jason said.

  After saying goodbye to Michael, they walked hand in hand outside. Jason led her to his car and kissed her.

  “That was nice, but a tad public,” Lacy said when the kiss was over. A few feet away, her grandmother’s friend, Rose, observed them from the sidewalk.

  “Good morning,” Lacy said, nodding. She could feel her cheeks turning pink.

  “Get a room,” Rose, who was a bit deaf, boomed before moving along.

  “I’m worried about you,” Jason said, ignoring Rose. He had to ignore a lot of troublesome people in her life, she realized.

  “Why?” Lacy said.

  “Why? Lacy, you haven’t spoken a word about your parents’ separation since it happened. When you said you didn’t want to talk about it, I didn’t know you meant forever.”

  “What’s the point of talking about it? It won’t change anything,” she said.

  “Since when don’t you want to fix things for the people in your life?” he asked.

  “My parents’ relationship is beyond my level of expertise,” she said. He looked worried about her. She gave him a reassuring smile and pressed her palm to his stubbled cheek. “Jason, you’re sweet, but you’re worrying for nothing. I’m really okay.” The alarm on her phone beeped. “I have to go. It’s time for my snack.”

  “What snack?” he asked.

  “A teaspoon of chia seeds in a half tablespoon of almond butter,” she said.

  “That’s horrifying. Please don’t say you’re planning to measure all of your food for the duration of this diet.”

  “How else will I know how much I’m eating?” she said.

  “When your body tells you you’re full,” he said.

  “Oh, I smothered that mechanism years ago. All my body says now is, ‘Feed me, Seymour.’” She stood on her toes to give him a light peck on the lips as Rose made her return trip on the sidewalk nearby.

  “Did you kids have oysters for breakfast this morning?” Rose yelled, causing several other passersby to pause and gawk at them.

  “Oysters sound so good right now,” Lacy said.

  Jason put his hands on her shoulders. “Lacy, go eat a real portion of real food.”

  She shook her head. “I need to lose some weight.”

  “That’s your mother talking. Listen to your boyfriend—you’re perfect and beautiful and I love you.”

  She laughed and wriggled free of his grasp. She couldn’t trust his biased opinion anymore than she could trust her mother’s. “I have to go, crazy man. Talk to you later.”

  “Chia seeds belong on novelty pottery, not in your stomach,” he called. She gave him a little wave and disappeared inside the Stakely building. The walk up several flights of stairs to her office had never felt so long and daunting before. Worse, there was no reward waiting for her at the top, only a few seeds and some nut butter. She choked them down as best she could, trying hard not to think of gummy bears and chocolate chip cookies.

  She needed this diet to work, needed to lose the weight, needed to get things back in control. The last few weeks since Riley’s baby was born, everything felt like it was spiraling to chaos. It had nothing to do with her parents’ separation, though. She was sure of it.

  Chapter 3

  Jason had no idea they were carpooling. He picked Lacy up, thinking of nothing but all the alone time they would have over the weekend.

  “I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to this,” he said. He leaned over the console and kissed her, an act that came to an abrupt halt when her father opened the back door and slid inside.

  “Jason,” he said, nodding.

  “Sir,” Jason said. He wasn’t terrified of her father the way he was of her grandfather, but it was never comfortable to be caught kissing your girlfriend by her dad.

  “Call me Clint,” he said. “How’s life treating you?”

  “Well,” Jason said, and the conversation fell flat. He couldn’t return the question because he knew how life was treating him. He and his wife were separated. They had been together since high school. Even Jason could see the air of sadness hanging around the older man. Maybe this weekend was exactly what everyone needed.

  He backed out of the driveway. Lacy rested her hand on his thigh. He almost drove into a mailbox.

  “We’re picking up Michael,” she said, all innocent sweetness. She had no idea the power she had over him. Heaven help him if she ever figured it out.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Michael, we’re picking up Michael.” She gave his thigh a squeeze and let it go. He blinked a few times, trying to get his brain back in order. What had she said? Something about Michael. They were picking him up.

  “Mom and Kimber are riding with Riley and Tosh,” Lacy said.

  “We’re only taking two cars?” Jason said.

  “It seemed more expedient,” Lacy said.

  Cozy, Jason thought. He didn’t really mind the extra passengers, except it destroyed the illusion of alone time with Lacy he had built. They were always so busy. It seemed there was never enough time to simply be. He was sure they would get some time once they arrived at the resort, however. They picked up Michael who tossed his duffle in the trunk and held out his hand for Lacy’s father to shake.

  Clint Steele was friendly and easygoing, basically everything his wife wasn’t. Jason had no trouble getting along with Lacy’s dad. He wished he could say the same about her mom. The arrival of baby Lucy had helped immensely. Frannie had thrown herself into being a grandmother and spent all her free time with the baby lately, much to Tosh’s chagrin.

  That’s his problem, Jason thought and immediately followed with, Someday it could be yours. He wouldn’t let himself dwell on that, though.

  Michael and Clint hit it off as well as two easygoing men can. Soon they were discussing sports and Ireland. Jason
listened with half an ear. He was keen on the sports talk and occasionally offered his own two cents. To his right, Lacy stared silently out the window. Occasionally she put her hand in her pocket and stuffed something into her mouth. There was nothing unusual about that—she kept M&M’s in all her coat pockets for emergencies—but then he remembered she was on a diet.

  “What are you eating?” he asked.

  “Seaweed blobs,” she said.

  “What?”

  She held out her hand and showed him a dark green ball of something. “Seaweed blobs. That’s not their actual name; that’s just what I call them.”

  “What are they?”

  “Wads of dried seaweed. Seaweed is loaded with iodine; it’s good for the thyroid and helps detox the liver,” she said. Her tone was flat and dismal and totally unlike the woman who had once spent ninety minutes detailing for him all her favorite ways to combine peanut butter with chocolate. He had promised to be supportive, however, and nagging her over the diet wouldn’t help. Her mother already did that, and he saw the effect it had on her.

  “Can I try one?” he asked.

  She placed a ball of seaweed between his lips.

  “Briny,” he said after he finally swallowed the abysmal snack. He liked health food more than most people, and even he thought the seaweed blobs were horrible. They tasted exactly as good as they sounded.

  “What if you ate the fruits and vegetables you like instead all this crazy food you hate?” he asked.

  “No, it has to be this way,” she said.

  She was punishing herself, and he didn’t know why. She had an unhealthy relationship with food. He knew and accepted it about her. But usually it tended the other way so that she ended up talking about baked goods like they were living members of her family. Sometimes that worried him, but now he would have given anything to have it back. Now she was colorless. The vivacity had been sucked out of her, along with the sugar. He didn’t want to enable her bad eating habits, but neither did he want to encourage the crazy dieting. Did other people have these problems? Relationships were hard work. He wanted to help her, but he had no idea how. The only thing he could think was to do the opposite of everything her mother did.

  “You know what’s best for you,” he said. She blinked at him in surprise. She had been expecting an argument over her diet. “By the way, I like you.”

  She smiled a little and stuffed the seaweed wad back in her pocket. When he could take his eyes off the road, he studied her again. She was winking at him. Or at least he thought she was winking at him. Her eye was blinking strangely, but she was staring straight ahead.

  “What?” he said.

  “What what?” she asked. She faced him full on, her eye twitching at warp speed.

  “Are you trying to signal me?” he asked.

  “No, why?”

  “Your eye, it’s winking,” he said. She put her hand to her eye and covered it as if ready to take a vision test.

  “I didn’t notice,” she said.

  “How could you not notice? Doesn’t it bother you?”

  “No. Is it still doing it?” She dropped her hand. The eye twitched erratically, pausing to narrow at him as he made his inspection.

  “Yes. Lacy, how can that not bother you?”

  “I don’t know. It just doesn’t,” she said. Facing forward again, she reached in her pocket for a seaweed wad and stuffed one in her mouth.

  “Put on some music. Maybe it will twitch to the beat,” Michael suggested.

  Normally Jason hated to listen to music in the car. He preferred to use the time for thinking and mental organization, but maybe Michael was right. Maybe some music would soothe Lacy’s nervous twitch.

  “Find something,” Jason told her.

  She turned on the radio and a seventies rock station came on.

  “Perfect,” Michael said.

  “This is music from my generation. They don’t make it like this anymore,” Clint agreed.

  “That’s because they’re all dead, Dad,” Lacy said.

  Clint shook her seat. “Hey, no making fun of the geriatric.”

  “Lacy, why are you on a diet?” Michael asked.

  “To lose weight, obviously,” Lacy said.

  “Why obviously? Better to be a cello than a flute,” Michael replied.

  “This is Frannie’s doing,” Clint said with uncharacteristic enmity.

  “No, Dad, this is my decision,” Lacy said.

  “You might think it’s your decision, but you wouldn’t have these thoughts in your head about your weight if she hadn’t been pressuring you all these years.”

  “It’s not Mom’s fault.”

  Jason agreed with Clint, but Lacy sounded near tears. She put her hand in her pocket and stuffed two seaweed blobs in her mouth.

  “Clint, you played basketball in high school, right?” he asked.

  “And in college,” Clint said, somewhat sullenly.

  “Did you play?” Jason asked Michael.

  “No, but I sold pot to our high school’s point guard once,” Michael said.

  “But you can play, right?” Jason pressed.

  “I enjoy a good game now and then,” Michael said.

  “I think they have an outdoor court here. Maybe we could get a game of two on two with Tosh.”

  “That seems like a stacked deck, considering my advanced age and all,” Clint said.

  “No, Tosh is terrible at basketball,” Lacy said.

  “With height like that? He should have been a forward,” Clint said.

  “He can’t dribble,” Lacy said.

  “I’ll be sure and use that against him,” her father said, and the remainder of the ride was filled with happy conversation and pleasant banter.

  At last they arrived. Lacy gasped.

  “Wow,” Jason said.

  “Are we sure Tosh is paying for this?” Clint asked.

  “If not, we’d better scope out the exits for a quick getaway because there is no way we regular folk could afford this place,” Michael said. “Well, except you, my millionaire friend, Lacy.”

  She turned to wrinkle her nose at him while Jason took in the fancy resort. Set halfway up a small mountain, it looked like the kind of place he would see in the background of an Olympic ski competition. It was massive, a giant wood and stone structure with glass windows on every side.

  “It’s a Tyrolean fantasy land,” Lacy said.

  “Honey, could you translate that for the non-English lit majors in the car?” her dad said.

  “Alpine, Bavarian,” Lacy said distractedly. “Look, there’s the ski lift. Is it scary to ride a lift?”

  “Only if you’re afraid of heights,” Jason said.

  “Or falling from them,” Michael added.

  “Don’t worry. Beginners usually start with a tow rope,” Jason reassured her.

  “Good, that’s good,” Lacy said.

  “You don’t have to ski,” Jason reminded her.

  “I will ski this weekend or die trying,” Lacy said. The men in the car looked at each other in silent agreement: that’s what they were afraid of.

  Chapter 4

  “Welcome to Torsten Resort.”

  Lacy expected the man who greeted them to have a German accent, like the storeowner from Frozen. Woo-hoo, big summer blowout. He didn’t, though. Despite his blond hair, blue eyes, and obviously Nordic features, he spoke softly and distinctly, as if to convey the image of wealthy refinement.

  “We have a reservation under the name…”

  “Lacy? Lacy Steele?”

  Lacy turned toward the sound of her name and saw a man heading toward her, arms outstretched for a hug. She took a step back and bumped into Jason, and then recognition hit. “Snaps? Is that you?”

  “It’s me,” he said. He reached her and enveloped her in a bear hug, which she returned.

  “I can’t believe this. What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here to lose the paunch,” he said, patting his slightly pro
truding belly. “What about you? And don’t tell me it’s to lose weight because I won’t believe it.”

  “Okay, I won’t tell you,” she said.

  “Is this your husband?” His eyes flicked to Jason.

  “Boyfriend. Jason Cantor, this is Snaps McKenzie.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Snaps said. He and Jason shook hands before he turned his attention back to Lacy. “I can’t believe this, running into Lacy Steele after all this time. I have to go—I have a scheduled appointment to keep. But I would love to get together with you later and catch up. Maybe we could perform some of the old numbers.”

  “That sounds fun,” Lacy agreed. She gave him a little wave as he walked away.

  “Who was that?” Jason asked.

  “That was Snaps,” Michael said. “Obviously.”

  “He was a friend from show choir. I saw him at every event for years and then our senior year we ended up on the district team together and became friends,” Lacy said.

  “Is he good at snapping?” Jason asked.

  “I have no idea,” Lacy said. “Why?”

  “I’m undoubtedly going to regret continuing this line of questioning, but why is he called ‘Snaps’?”

  “He had scoliosis. His back brace made a snapping noise whenever he walked,” Lacy said.

  “What an emotionally crippling nickname,” Michael said.

  “High school was full of them,” Lacy said. She turned back to the reservation counter. “We have a reservation. The name is…”

  “Forget it,” Riley interrupted. She ambled up to them, baby Lucy tucked into the cloth carrier on her front. “It turns out that Tosh’s psychotic sisters decided to take their revenge on me by booking us all into two rooms.”

  “Two rooms?” Lacy repeated.

  “That’s right. We four women in one, the four men in the other. Apparently they’re so possessive of Tosh that they wanted to make sure I couldn’t be in the same room with him for a couple of days, despite the fact that we have a new baby and DESPITE THE FACT THAT HE’S MY HUSBAND!” She turned to yell over her shoulder to no one in particular. The only people Lacy saw were employees of the resort who looked panicked, as if they had never heard a woman raise her voice above a genteel whisper before.