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

by Vanessa Gray Bartal

  “Then I’ll help you up. It’s not like in some cartoon where we’ll be perched on the edge of a precipice and begin immediately sliding downhill. In fact, we’ll be going parallel for a while, not downhill at all. Try not to worry.”

  Lacy nodded. She was making too big a deal of things, a fact which became apparent as soon as it was time to get off. The lift deposited them gently on the snow, as Snaps had said. She did overbalance and fall over, but Snaps helped her back up. And the “mountain,” if the a slope could be described as such, was barely more of an incline than the bunny hill.

  “This isn’t so bad,” she admitted. “I think I could ski this.”

  “Maybe later. For now we have an owl to watch. Follow me.”

  He dug in his poles and headed off. Lacy attempted to mimic his movements and found that cross-country skiing was no less challenging than downhill. Sure, she wasn’t losing her balance and sliding away, but the muscles it took were ones she hadn’t used in a while, and they were still sore from her brutal massage. Snaps raced ahead of her, looked back, then paused for her to catch up.

  “I’m sorry I’m slowing you down,” she called.

  “You’re fine,” he replied. “I don’t mind.” He sounded sincere. Maybe he liked to have company on these birding adventures. Did he usually go alone? She didn’t know. In fact, she didn’t know much about him, outside the fact that they had been friends in high school and he developed software for a living. Did he have friends? Did he date? He didn’t seem lonely, but maybe he was good at putting up a front.

  “Here we are,” he announced after what felt like a hundred miles but in reality was probably only about one.

  Lacy hadn’t realized how wobbly her arms and legs felt until she stopped. And she was sweating profusely under her puffy yellow snowsuit. She wished there were a way to take it off, but unless she undid the skis and boots, she was stuck.

  Snaps had come prepared for seemingly everything, though. He reached into the pocket of his fancy ski jacket and pulled out an emergency foil blanket. Unfolding it, he spread it on the ground and motioned to Lacy to sit. She tried, but things didn’t go well. The skis made every task more awkward and difficult. First she tried putting them parallel and sinking toward the ground. When that didn’t work, she tried to stick them perpendicular into the ground and plop down. Finally Snaps noticed her dilemma and used his poles to unsnap her skis.

  “Thank you,” she said. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought to ask him for help, except that getting the skis on and off seemed like such an ordeal to her that she hadn’t wanted to bother him with it.

  He snapped off his skis and sat beside her on the blanket.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” she asked.

  “Movement.”

  He was looking through a monocular device that was much smaller and lighter than binoculars.

  “Aren’t owls nocturnal?” she asked.

  “Snowy owls hunt during the day. They’re native to the arctic tundra. They have to make hay while the sun shines or, in their case, hunt rodents while they’re still awake.”

  “How did you learn so much about birds?”

  “I spent a ton of time birding when I was a kid. It’s a good hobby for the lonely and disenfranchised. If you’re walking around in the woods alone, you look like a weirdo. But if you’re walking around looking for birds, you look intelligent and interested in nature.”

  “I should have taken it up much earlier, then,” Lacy said. If she was annoying him with her conversation, he didn’t let on. “Do you go birding a lot?”

  “When I can. My work keeps me busy. I don’t keep regular hours. I work on a project until it’s finished and then take some time off.”

  “So you’re between projects right now.”

  He set the monocular down with a frown. “Sort of. I’ve been working on something, but it’s taken a frustrating turn. Do you want to take a look through the scope?”

  She was interested in his job; he was the first software developer she’d met. She took the scope and held it up to her eye, but she saw nothing but trees. “How so?”

  “I developed this new app and it showed a ton of potential, but the prototype had a ton of kinks. Someone was testing it for me, but it didn’t go well.”

  Lacy blinked her un-monocled eye. Had they had this conversation before and her tired brain didn’t remember? There was something familiar about it. “A prototype?” Where had she heard that word before?

  “Yeah, you know, like the test project you use to refine your final product. But it had a lot of kinks. I’m sure I can get them worked out, but it’s going to take some time.”

  It had a lot of kinks. She was sure she had heard that phrase recently, but where? “That’s funny. I feel like I was just talking to someone else who said that same thing.”

  His head whipped in her direction. “Really? Who?”

  “I can’t remember. It’s ringing around in my head, though—a prototype with lots of kinks. Weird. I must know more than one inventor.” She smiled and handed him the scope. His smile looked a bit strained. Lacy wondered why. What could she have said to offend him?

  “Small world,” he said and peered through the scope again.

  “Derek,” she announced, and Snaps dropped the scope.

  “What?”

  “It was Derek who said the thing about a prototype with kinks, but I can’t remember what he was talking about.” She yawned. Her brain felt mushy from the lack of sleep the past couple of days. Or maybe it was from the lack of substantial food.

  “Hmm,” Snaps said.

  “Surely he’s not an inventor. I mean, he works as a desk clerk. Not that desk clerks can’t be inventors, but you know what I mean. He doesn’t strike me as the overly ambitious type.”

  “I bet you can’t wait to leave here,” Snaps said, abruptly changing the topic.

  “It’s been nice to be with my family,” Lacy said.

  “Yeah, but with all the hubbub and the police interference, it can’t have been relaxing,” he said.

  “It was okay.”

  “Now you can go back to real life and stop thinking about murder,” Snaps said.

  “You’d be surprised how often that comes up in my real life,” Lacy said.

  “I admire what you’ve been doing for Sven. You tried your best for him. You can go home with a clear conscience,” he said.

  She frowned. “I can’t leave him hanging after I promised to help. I earnestly believe he didn’t do it. I can’t set him adrift because I’m going home. I would never be able to live with myself if an innocent man went to jail for something he didn’t do.”

  His shoulders sagged. He stuffed the scope back in his pocket. “I think we’re done here.”

  “That was fast. I had the idea birding took a long time.”

  “Sometimes you get a sense that nothing is going to happen,” Snaps said. “If there was a snowy owl here, it’s long gone.”

  “I’m sorry. I was really hoping to see one today,” Lacy said.

  “I was hoping things would turn out differently, too,” he said. He held her hand to pull her up and helped her snap into her skis.

  “So, do we go back the way we came and ski down the hill?” She asked. She peered into the distance toward the gentle slope they had come from. The side of the mountain they were on now was steeper and filled with pine trees.

  “No.” There was a hard blow to her back and then she was sliding down the mountain.

  “Wha…?” she gasped, but there was no time to wonder over what happened. Her arms windmilled wildly, trying to keep her balance. Poles, where were her poles? Not in her hands, that was for sure. The trail was bumpy with sticks, brush, branches, and stumps, but those were the least of her problems. Up ahead loomed the greatest danger—a thick grove of pine trees. There was no way to avoid them, and she was gaining speed. She would hit one and be killed. This was how celebrities died, not her. It wasn’t fair; she wasn’t a thrill
seeker. She was supposed to be the sort of woman who went out to retrieve the mail in her pajamas in winter, got locked out, and died from exposure. Or maybe one day she would trip on her cat and choke on a doughnut, but not this, not speeding down a mountain.

  One thing she knew for certain—she had to stop before she hit a tree. And the only way to stop was to force herself to fall now, but falling while going downhill at a high rate of speed went against nature. Her instincts were warning her to stay aloft. It was only by the greatest discipline that her mind overrode her instincts. If she had any chance of staying alive, she would have to fall now. But for the first time in her life, falling seemed easier said than done. She was doing it—she was actually skiing downhill. How was it possible that she hadn’t been able to make it up the bunny hill but now she was hitting bumps and brush at a high rate of speed and unable to fall down? How did one stop without poles? She was supposed to do something with her feet, but getting them to do anything other than slide downhill seemed impossible. What if she just plopped down?

  She tried to crouch, but that made her go faster, so she stood up straight. She leaned forward, hoping to overbalance and topple over, but that made her go faster, too. It was indicative of her life that the one time she desperately needed to fall, she couldn’t. A sapling was coming up. She leaned for it, grasped it, and pulled it from the ground.

  She stared at the thing, amazed. How had she uprooted a tree with her bare hands? Did I get bitten by a radioactive spider? Or was she going that fast?

  The pine trees were coming up quickly. In a few seconds, she would be there. In a final act of desperation, she threw her arms over her head and lurched to the side. At last her body responded. She toppled hard to the ground—face first—and spun wildly out of control. The rough terrain tumbled her over and over until eventually she wound up on her back.

  She knew enough about falling to try and draw her body into the fetal position, but it wouldn’t cooperate. Her arms and legs were flying in all directions and she screamed hysterically. To the outside observer, she probably looked like SpongeBob Squarepants careening down a mountain, but the giant yellow snowsuit saved her a lot of pain. Things were hitting her, to be sure, but the impact was absorbed by several inches of cheerful golden polyester.

  After what seemed like forever—but was probably only a few seconds—it was over. Her body stopped sliding. She lay still, panting, trying to regain her orientation. Was anything broken or bleeding? She didn’t think so, but she couldn’t be sure. Her body felt numb, whether from cold, shock, or multiple contusions, she didn’t know. Could she get up? She didn’t know. But even if she did, what then? How would she get back? She had no idea where she was.

  A gentle swooshing sound grew louder and closer. Lacy looked up and saw Snaps heading toward her. Unlike her pell-mell descent down the hill, Snaps was picking his way carefully around each obstacle. Should she call out for help or try to hide? Her brain felt like it was on the spin cycle. She had no cause to be afraid of Snaps, did she? But if not, why had that pain in her back felt like a hard shove down the mountain?

  Her inner turmoil didn’t amount to anything because she was once again stuck on her back like an overturned turtle. Snaps skied up to her and stared down, an undreadably serious expression on his face. Lacy’s first clue about his intentions should have been the fact that he didn’t ask how she was doing.

  “Well, this is a pickle,” he said.

  “Help me up?” Lacy tried.

  “That wouldn’t be much help to me,” he said. He picked up his pole and placed the tip gently on her windpipe.

  “Are you seriously going to impale me with your pole?”

  “It wasn’t my first choice, believe me. I was fairly certain you’d break your neck or bash your head on a tree,” he said.

  “Why do I feel like you’re waiting for me to apologize that I didn’t die?” Lacy said.

  “It would certainly have made my life easier. I want you to know I’m not going to enjoy this,” he said.

  “Then why do it?” she said. She was attempting to ease her hand to her throat to be able to push the pole away, but she didn’t want him to see and rush the process.

  “Because I’ve worked too hard and too long to have everything messed up.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “I know you figured out that I killed Jill,” he said.

  “No I didn’t! I had no idea. Just because I’m a geek doesn’t mean I’m smart. I’m actually quite obtuse, almost detrimentally so.”

  “Oh. Well, now you know, so it’s kind of the same thing.”

  The pole pressed harder into her windpipe. Stall, stall, stall. “Why did you kill Jill?”

  “Because she threatened to claim my invention. She wanted fifty percent. Can you believe that? She said it was her idea to begin with, but it wasn’t. And then she said I couldn’t make it work unless she was the public face of the company because, ‘Who would want to buy a fitness app from a little tub of lard like you?’ Do you know she actually had the nerve to suck up to me? She, Jill, was nice to me. The first woman in my life who paid me any attention, who said my invention was brilliant, who called me a genius, then turned around and made fun of me. Just like everyone else. So I poisoned her, and right before she died, I told her that I would get a real trainer, someone famous with a better body and nice personality. She didn’t like that.” His grin was evil and so unlike Snaps that Lacy shuddered.

  “Snaps, we were friends. No matter what you’ve done or how far you’ve come, I find it hard to believe you’re actually going to drive a ski pole through my windpipe.”

  He hesitated. Biting his lip, he retracted the pole. “You’re right. I could never do that. I’ll just bash your head in instead.” The pole rose over his head. Lacy flinched and tried to run away but her skis were stuck in the snow and pinned her in place.

  She became aware of a swooshing sound again. As soon as she realized it wasn’t the blood pounding in her ears, she opened her eyes in time to see Jason gliding quickly down the hill. She didn’t know much about skiing, but she could see he was much better at it than Snaps. He, too, was picking his way around the obstacles, only he did it at full speed. He raised his pole and landed a blow on the back of Snaps’ calves. Snaps toppled backwards with a howl of pain.

  “Are you okay?” Jason asked.

  “No, that really hurt,” Snaps said.

  “I was talking to Lacy,” Jason said. “And stay down.” He gave Snaps a violent jab with his pole and made sure he toppled over again.

  “I think I’m good, but I’m stuck,” Lacy said.

  Jason snapped her out of her skis as easily as Snaps had. “I have got to learn how to do that,” Lacy said. He helped her up and surveyed her from head to toe.

  “You’re not bleeding,” he said. He sounded relieved.

  “It’s probably all internal,” Lacy said then, noting his concerned expression, hastened to add, “Kidding. I’m fine, just feeling like I’ve been run through a salad spinner. How do we get back? Please don’t say we have to ski.”

  “No, I think we’ll be riding in style,” he said, and then she heard it, the loud purr of a motor.

  Chapter 20

  Two snowmobiles arrived carrying Detective Green and two of the resort’s security guards. They skipped over Lacy and addressed Jason.

  “Is this the guy?” Detective Green asked.

  “This is him. He pushed Lacy down the mountain,” Jason said.

  The detective now turned his full attention on Lacy, but it was a speculative look that seemed to say, And you’re still alive? She wondered if she should apologize for not dying again.

  “Did he make you wear that?” one of the guards asked, pointing to her blindingly yellow snowsuit.

  “No, this is my snowsuit,” Lacy said.

  “Oh,” the guy said and turned to give his partner a look.

  “Snaps told me he killed Jill,” she said.

 
“Well, that’s that then,” the detective said. He pulled out his handcuffs and officially arrested Snaps before handing him off to one of the security guards. The guards walked away with Snaps being frog marched between them.

  “They’re going to walk all the way back?” Lacy said.

  “It’s not as far as it seems. The lift is only about ten feet on the other side of this hill,” the detective said. “And get this—the resort had his ID on file. Guess what his real name is.”

  “What?” Lacy asked. She had always wondered.

  “Toodles.”

  “Toodles?” she and Jason repeated.

  “I had my dispatch run it twice to make sure. His full name is Toodles Joyce McKenzie.”

  “Who would have guessed that Snaps would be a step up as a nickname?” Jason mused.

  Lacy thought back to Snaps as he had been in high school—chubby, prone to tears, insecure, and covered in a near full-body back brace. And all that time his name had been Toodles Joyce. He must have been thrilled when kids started calling him Snaps. Or maybe he started the nickname himself, thinking it sounded cool. “When you review his life, it’s sort of a wonder that he hasn’t killed anyone before now,” she said.

  “That’s not the first time you’ve said something like that. It worries me a little that you believe repressed high school nerds have so much pent up rage,” Jason said.

  “Does it ever make you wonder if you’re on someone’s revenge list?” Lacy asked.

  “It does now,” Jason said.

  Detective Green cleared his throat and stuck out his hand. “Thanks for the help, Cantor. My offer from earlier still stands. If you want to move to our department, we’ll make it worth your while.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll stick where I am for now,” Jason said.

  The detective nodded. “I’ll see you back at the resort. I’ve got to call in a transport for Toodles and start on a mound of paperwork.” He tossed a set of keys to Jason and took off on a snowmobile, leaving the other one for Jason and Lacy.

  Lacy had never ridden a snowmobile before, but she loved it. It reminded her of being on her scooter. She was disappointed when it was over all too soon.