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

by Vanessa Gray Bartal

  “Habit, I guess,” Jason said. “Or maybe morbid curiosity. Did you believe him?”

  “His grief and shock seemed genuine.”

  “Those can be easily faked. What about what he said about Jill? Did that ring true? You said you had a run in with her yesterday.”

  “That part was weird. Jill didn’t seem like a good person, and the list of people who might want to kill her could be endless,” Lacy said. “I wonder why Sven would say such wonderful things about her?”

  “Two possibilities: Either he’s one of those people who can’t bring himself to say anything negative about the deceased or he killed her and is trying to cover by pretending to like her.”

  “I can’t see him killing anyone. He’s like a big, blond teddy bear.”

  “That’s right, he’s big, and I don’t think he got that way from exercise alone. Maybe he had ‘roid rage.”

  “It doesn’t seem like ‘roid rage would end in poison, though, do you think? That seems more calculated than bashing someone’s head in because you’re broiling with a Hulk-sized dose of testosterone,” Lacy said.

  “Here’s what’s bothering me: I can’t claim to be an expert in poisons, but I have done some rudimentary studies. Cyanide causes the red complexion and almond smell, but the grin is more associated with strychnine. Why would someone use both poisons?”

  “To make sure they took?” Lacy said.

  “That seems like overkill, no pun intended.” While they talked, he finished his food. Lacy tried not to stare longingly at his plate. She was half relieved and half remorseful that he didn’t try to make her eat something. As far as her diet went, he had moved from disapproval to denial. “Are you still up for skiing?”

  “Do you think it’s okay? I don’t want to be callous,” Lacy said.

  “It’s not like we knew the woman. Plus, it will help take our minds off it.”

  “Okay, let’s ski,” she said. Which one of them was more surprised over the genuine enthusiasm and excitement in her tone? She couldn’t tell.

  Chapter 8

  “What are you wearing?” Riley asked. She was feeding baby Lucy, the second feeding since Lacy returned her earlier that morning. Lacy still hadn’t gotten over her shock that Riley was doing anything with her bust besides shoving it into an overpriced push-up bra. A year ago if someone had told her that her little sister would jump into round-the-clock nursing with both feet, she would have had laughed herself hoarse.

  “A snow suit,” Lacy said.

  “Why?” Riley asked in the same tone one might use to ask why a person had covered himself in blood and jumped in a shark tank at feeding time.

  “Because I’m going skiing, and it’s cold,” Lacy said. She had no idea what Riley was getting at.

  “Are you going skiing in 1974?”

  “What’s wrong with wearing a snowsuit?” Lacy asked. She looked down to survey herself. She was well insulated from the cold, as well as the inevitable spills she would take throughout the day.

  Her mother emerged from the bathroom. “Honey, where did you get that?”

  “In Grandma’s closet,” Lacy said.

  “I think it was your dad’s from high school,” Frannie said.

  Riley snorted a laugh.

  “I don’t understand the problem. What do people wear to ski if not snow suits?” Lacy asked.

  “They wear ski clothes,” Riley said.

  “They sell clothes just for skiing?” Lacy said.

  “Duh, Lacy. They sell clothes for everything. Didn’t the bright yellow hue of that hideous getup tip you off? You look like The Magic School Bus in human form. Any minute I’m expecting Mrs. Frizzle to pop out of your hair and talk about taking a field trip. Why didn’t you borrow my ski clothes?”

  “I didn’t know you had them,” Lacy said. She still wasn’t convinced that her snowsuit was so bad. At least it was warm.

  Riley put up her hand and turned away. “I can’t look at it anymore. It’s like trying to stare directly at the sun. My retinas are burning. At least tell me you brought ski goggles.”

  “I’m not a total idiot. I know the sun is glaring on the snow. Only of course I didn’t have ski goggles, so I brought regular sunglasses.” She put them on in time for Riley to glance at her and groan.

  “How are we sisters?” Riley asked. “I mean, seriously, you go out there like that and someone is going to trap you with a giant net and haul you away.”

  “Exaggerate much?” Lacy said.

  “No, and in your case never,” Riley said. “Seriously, you cannot go out there like that. If not for your sake, think of Jason. He doesn’t want to be seen with a giant stick of butter cruising down a snow hill.”

  “Jason and I are not going to be together. He and the rest of the guys are going on the diamondback trails or whatever the ones for experienced skiers are called. I’m going to stay on the bunny hill where I belong. We’re going to walk out together, and that’s it.”

  “You mean ‘that’s it’ like the end of your relationship, right, because once he sees you in that, he’s only ever going to be able to picture a corn cob when he tries to touch you,” Riley said. “Go to the boutique right now and buy a ski outfit. Tosh’s treat.”

  Lacy rolled her eyes. “I am not buying a crazy expensive outfit for one afternoon of my life, regardless of who pays for it. This suits me fine. I’m warm and well-padded.”

  “It bodes well for you that you like things well-padded. Remember that when you get to the asylum,” Riley said.

  “Girls,” their mother said distractedly as she rifled through her suitcase and then added, “although Riley’s right, Lacy. You look like a banana.”

  “Gee, thanks, family. I can always count on you for a boost of self-esteem,” Lacy said. She grabbed a key and hurried out of the room where she met the men in the hallway. Their conversation came to a halt as they stared at her.

  “What?” Lacy snapped, daring one of them to say something. Her eyes landed on Michael as the most likely to offer an insult.

  Her father cleared his throat. “Wow, that’s a blast from the past. I think I wore that the first time I ever went skiing.”

  Tosh snickered and tried to pretend it was a cough.

  “I like things that are retro,” Lacy declared. Her nose was in the air, daring one of them to say anything else. Jason remained wisely silent. Michael pressed his lips together. He looked like he was about to explode, either with laughter or sarcasm.

  “Something you wanted to say?” Lacy asked him.

  “Yes, I was going to say that you look great. Have you lost weight?”

  She blinked in surprise. “Yes.” As of her weigh-in that morning, she had lost four pounds, no doubt due to her ill-fated bathroom trip the night before.

  “You’re pencil thin,” Michael added and the other guys lost it.

  “Ha-ha, yes, pencils are yellow, and so am I. Good one,” Lacy said.

  Jason put his arm around her shoulders. “All right, that’s enough teasing of my girl. She’s already upset because she lost Curious George.”

  Lacy elbowed him and pulled away.

  “Don’t make her cry, you guys,” Tosh added. “She might curl up in a ball and be mistaken for a lemon.”

  “I hate all of you,” Lacy said.

  They passed Kimber who was heading to the salon with Tosh’s sisters. “Oh, girl,” Kimber said, shaking her head in dismay.

  “I think it’s cute,” one of Tosh’s sisters said. “She looks like a baby duck.”

  The guys cracked up again. By the time they reached the outside, Lacy’s cheeks were as red as her hair. Jason leaned in to kiss her. She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned away. He ignored her and kissed her cheek. “We’re teasing you. You’re cute.”

  She wasn’t cute, though. She could see now what Riley meant. All around her people were dressed to the nines in expensive skiwear and goggles. They looked cool and sporty. Lacy, with her fluorescent yellow snowsuit, sunglasses, a
nd purple toboggan—the only one she had been able to find in her grandmother’s odd assortment of winter paraphernalia—looked out of place. Not just out of place—she looked mentally ill, as if the resort had decided to let a homeless person ski for the day as some sort of community service.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay with you?” Jason said.

  “I’m sure,” Lacy said. Not only did she not want to hold him back from a fun day of skiing, she didn’t want people to think he was her keeper, the person assigned to keep her from harming herself or others. “I’ll be fine. Believe me, I have extremely low expectations. All I want to do is ski down the bunny hill a few times and call it a day.” She glanced at the hill. It was shallow, barely registering as a rise. What looked to be a five-year-old little boy was swooshing down it like a pro.

  Jason still seemed reluctant. Either he felt bad about teasing her or he was genuinely worried. She stood on her toes and pressed a reassuring peck against his lips. “Really, go. You’re free.”

  “You say that like freedom is a good thing. I’ll meet up with you later. Don’t break anything important.”

  She didn’t ask him what he deemed “important,” but she doubted it had anything to do with her arms or legs.

  Once he was out of sight, she turned bracingly toward the bunny hill. Since they agreed to the weekend, Jason had started showing her the basics of skiing. She knew how to plant her feet to slow herself and how to make the skis parallel to go forward. At least in theory she knew those things. In reality the skis were longer and less maneuverable than she had imagined. She laid them on the ground and stepped into them, trying to snap her boots in place as Jason had showed her.

  Almost immediately she lost her balance and fell over. She wasn’t in the skis yet, so standing up was no problem. She got to her feet and tried again. The second time she snapped into one ski before falling over, which made getting up again trickier but not impossible. She hobbled in a circle, the ski-trapped foot lying listlessly on its side while the booted foot attempted to vault her to a standing position.

  After two more tries, she was successfully snapped into the skis. She looked up, beaming, hoping for someone to share in her triumph. But all around her everyone was already locked in their skis, and it probably hadn’t taken them four tries.

  There was a line now at the towrope. Lacy breathed a sigh of relief that the bunny hill didn’t require her to ride the ski lift. Her courage would have failed her, probably at the exact moment it was her turn to get off. Now all she had to do was grab a rope and be hauled to the top. It was like an escalator for the snowbound.

  Her turn came at last. She grabbed the rope with both hands and immediately face planted into the snow. She couldn’t get up, and there were people behind her. Panicked, she rolled to the side and slid back to the end of the line.

  After much struggle, she finally got to her feet again. What had gone wrong? She analyzed her first attempt and realized that the rope went faster than she realized it would. Her feet hadn’t been prepared for the sudden movement. Caught unaware, the top half of her jerked forward while the bottom half remained stationery. Next time she would have her feet ready to go the moment her hands touched the rope.

  It was her turn again. Her hands touched the rope, jerking her forward. She willed her feet to move. They did, only not in the right direction. Each leg decided to go a separate way so that she was almost doing the splits by the time she let go of the rope and fell over. Once again she rolled to the side and slid back down the hill. At least she was becoming a pro at rolling with skis on.

  She maneuvered herself back up, determined to master the towrope. But her next three attempts ended in disaster. Every time she touched the rope, her hands went faster than her feet. The problem was that she couldn’t seem to brace her feet well enough to prepare them to move. After regrouping and giving the problem some serious consideration, she realized what needed to be done: she needed to straddle the rope. It was the perfect solution, so perfect that she couldn’t believe no one else was doing it.

  When it was her turn again, she hoisted one leg over the rope, took a breath, and grabbed on. At first everything went according to plan. She congratulated herself on making it halfway up the hill when disaster struck. Later, as she replayed things in her mind, she still couldn’t pinpoint how things went so wrong, but all of a sudden one leg was wound in the rope. For one horrible second her leg was tangled. The rope paused; the man behind her bumped her back. And then the rope unwound with a curious amount of energy.

  Lacy was flung high in the air. She landed on her back upside down with her head facing the bottom of the hill. Worse, her skis were anchored deep in the snow. Now she was blocking traffic and she couldn’t roll away. The rope stopped. The worker at the top yelled and motioned for her to get out of the way, but he made no move to help her. She reached for her skis, trying to dislodge them, but gravity—and her complete lack of abdominal muscles—worked against her. She couldn’t sit up, couldn’t reach her feet. She was as helpless as an overturned turtle. Not that it stopped her from trying. She grunted as she struggled, desperate to reach her feet and pull them from the snow.

  Why hadn’t she done more Pilates in preparation for this moment?

  Behind her, the line was growing longer. People were beginning to complain. But no one moved to help her.

  “C’mon, lady, move. Move, we’re waiting.”

  She was fourteen again with spinach stuck in her braces.

  Panic began to edge in. She was thoroughly stuck. How was she supposed to get out of the snow when she couldn’t remove her skis? She glanced hopefully at the teenage towrope operator.

  He stood and yelled. “Lady, move out of the way.” As if to illustrate what he wanted of her, he waved his arm.

  “I can’t,” Lacy said weakly. The blood was rushing to her head, whether from humiliation or because she was upside down, she didn’t know.

  Finally an angel of mercy arrived to help her. A woman skied beside her and began trying to lift her out of the snow.

  “Thank you so much,” Lacy said. She was so glad for the help that there were tears in her eyes.

  The woman replied in Japanese. She pulled on Lacy’s arms, but only gained a few inches of leverage before dropping Lacy resignedly onto her back again. Muttering to herself in Japanese, she slid behind Lacy and started to push her up. That didn’t work, either, and Lacy plopped onto her back with a thump.

  Behind her, people were getting angrier. Now her would-be savior was feeling the pressure. She raised her hand to the top of the hill, made a motion, and yelled something in Japanese.

  A minute later a man arrived, presumably the woman’s husband. He had their two children with him, small children who’d had no trouble ascending the hill with the towrope. The couple spoke while the man studied Lacy appraisingly. He had a plan; Lacy could see it.

  After mounting a strategy, he began issuing orders to his family. At first they stood helpfully aside while he confidently reached for Lacy’s arms and gave them a tug. She didn’t budge. Frustrated, he stood back to reappraise the situation and then gave directions to his wife and children.

  They only spoke Japanese, but apparently he was going to pull on Lacy’s arms while the wife and kids got behind her and pushed.

  He pulled.

  They pushed.

  There was much grunting from everyone involved, but still Lacy didn’t budge. The man of the family took her resistance as a challenge, pulling harder and apparently directing his family to put their backs into it. The new burst of strength might have worked except that his wife got a case of the giggles. She snorted a laugh, tried to cover it, and couldn’t.

  In her peripheral vision, Lacy saw her slip to the side and cover her mouth, trying unsuccessfully to stifle her ill-timed amusement.

  The husband seemed to take offense at her laughter. He spoke sharply, pointing to Lacy as if to tell her to get back to her post. The wife laughed harder, doubli
ng over with loud guffaws. Tears ran down her cheeks. Now the children joined in, echoing their mother’s laughter. They stood together over Lacy, one of them pointing at her as he brayed.

  The husband was furious. He began issuing commands, pointing, stomping his skis, trying to get his family to fall back into line.

  The wife fell over backwards laughing. The children doubled over. People behind them shouted for them to get out of the way. The teenage towrope operator threatened to get security.

  Lacy thought she would finally learn if it were possible to die from humiliation. She closed her eyes, trying to block out the laughter of her rescuers when someone whooshed up beside her. She opened her eyes to see Snaps standing over her.

  “Stuck?” he said.

  “A bit,” she replied.

  He pushed his poles into the boot-release mechanism on her skis. Once freed, she slid down the hill headfirst. Snaps gathered her skis and met her at the bottom.

  “I’m exhausted. Do you want to grab some hot chocolate?” he asked.

  “More than anything in the world,” Lacy said.

  He glanced at her skis. “Are you done with these?”

  “Forever,” Lacy said. She turned her back to the bunny hill, trying to forget the horrors that had passed there.

  Chapter 9

  “Sit. I’ll get the cocoa,” Snaps volunteered. Lacy didn’t fight him. She sank wearily into a chair and tried to figure out when things went so wrong. Her cheeks were still burning and hot tears pricked the backs of her eyes, begging for release. She wouldn’t let them flow, though. She had come too far in her life to cry over this latest humiliation. All she had wanted from this day was to make it down the bunny hill. As it turned out, she couldn’t even make it up the bunny hill.

  “You ski?” Lacy asked when he returned with two cups of steaming cocoa.

  “I do, believe it or not.” He patted his belly. “Low center of gravity. I’m like a Weeble—I wobble, but I never fall down.”