The Iced Princess

by Christine Husom

  “I’ll have to think about that some more,” Erin said.

  Pinky shifted. “Cami, tell Erin about the outfit, what you told me earlier.”

  “It was the same one I was wearing when Ramona found Peter and me together.”

  “Oh my gosh. No wonder she flipped.”

  “I know. And I can see how if someone didn’t know Molly or me very well, or was looking at us from the back, they might mistake us. I’ve certainly gotten people confused before.” I let that sink in a second. “Back to the other thing that happened yesterday; there was that guy in here asking about the blonde that worked in Curio Finds, and I don’t think he was looking for snow globes.”

  “That’s right. He only said he was looking for the blonde,” Pinky said.

  “And then early this morning Ramona Zimmer snuck in via the coffee shop and was blown away when she saw me. That’s when I put two and two together.”

  “You need to tell the police about your suspicions,” Erin said.

  “They have the envelope and are going to have it tested. We’ll see what the results are first. Besides, they’re really focused on finding Emmy right now. She seems to be their prime suspect.”

  “But you’re looking at the Zimmers and you don’t think Emmy is the guilty one?” Erin said.

  I shrugged. “I would have said positively no yesterday, but I have to admit, her past has got me wondering.”

  “For sure. What surprised me about Emmy was the other side of her that Molly brought out. The catty side.” Pinky lifted her hands, formed claws, and said, “Grrr.”

  “Catty is a good word. When Emmy was picking on Molly about little things—okay, annoying things—if Molly had stood up for herself and told Emmy to stop it, we may have had a catfight. I was planning on having a talk with Emmy about it to ask her to be nicer to Molly.”

  “I was thinking I should do the same,” Pinky said.

  “Are you planning to hire someone else?” Erin said.

  Pinky and I stared at each other, trying to read the other’s thoughts. I shrugged, then Pinky shrugged.

  Erin put her elbow on the counter and rested her head on her hand. “Hey, I want to throw it out there that I’m available to help you on the weekends, even after school. Not every day and every weekend, but maybe a Saturday one week and a Sunday the next.”

  “Erin, that’s more than generous, but we wouldn’t want to burn you out. Plus you’ve got parent-teacher conferences coming up soon,” I said.

  Erin lifted her shoulders in a small shrug. “I’m nearly done with the students’ reports. And the conferences are two of the evenings I couldn’t work here.”

  “You do know a lot about both our shops.” Pinky touched my shoulder. “Cami, we know Erin’s really smart. And fast. She’s helped me whip up my coffee delights before when I’ve been swamped. We wouldn’t have to get all stressed out teaching her the basics.”

  I reached out and grabbed Pinky’s hand on one side and Erin’s hand on the other. “I think it’s a great idea. And Mom said my dad can help in a pinch, too. But I don’t want to count on that yet. Erin, how about we give you our master calendar and you can write down the dates and times you’re available? That will give us an idea of whether or not we’ll need to look for another part-timer.” We gave our hands a final squeeze then released them.

  Pinky swung around on her stool and stood up. “I’ll get the calendar.”

  She went into her back room, and Erin leaned closer to me. “Cami, I know you too well. Don’t put yourself in danger like last time, when you tried to find out who’d killed Jerrell Powers.”

  “I was not in danger, contrary to the popular belief held by you and Pinky. And a few others.” Like Clint and Mark and my parents and . . . well, the list was fairly long. “And that is all water over the dam, or under the bridge, or whichever way it happens to flow.”

  Pinky returned with the calendar and handed it to Erin, who pulled out her phone and came up with some dates she’d be available. A day here and there would help ease our stress and give our customers better service.

  While Erin worked on her project of finding dates she could help out, Pinky waited on new customers, and I went back into Curio Finds to sort through the rest of the merchandise my parents had delivered a few days before. They had ordered some new merchandise, but most of the stock—outside of the extensive and ever-changing snow globes from around the world—were unique items they found at auctions, estate and garage sales, and the want ads. Their scouting and scavenging had slowed during Mom’s illness and treatment, but Dad got out on his own occasionally, as long as he didn’t have to leave Mom alone for long.

  I had started paying more attention to special finds myself, looking for things that would strike the fancy of our customers. People called the shop to tell us they had spotted things we might be in the market for at flea markets or other sales. Although I had never aspired to manage Curio Finds, it was the best place for me to be for the time being, and I had grown to appreciate working in the shop among the valuable and rare items, as well as the fun ones. But the best part was being near my family and forever friends again.

  I walked over to the spot where the snow globe depicting Marilyn Monroe in her long silk dress had sat for several weeks. I’d strongly considered buying it because I’d gone to a number of costume parties dressed as the actress. I was amazed at how I could be transformed by the right clothes, makeup, and hairstyle. If Marilyn had been wearing the same outfit in the snow globe that I used for my costume—the white dress from The Seven Year Itch—I would surely have bought it. After Pinky and I had hosted a snow globe–making class the previous month when we’d hired a teacher and actually learned to make them, I thought about using my newfound skills to create another globe for Marilyn Monroe to pose in.

  Ramona Zimmer had been holding the Marilyn Monroe snow globe and looking at Molly Dalton when she dropped it. There were two questions that kept churning around in my brain. One, did Ramona think it was me standing there helping a customer? Molly had her back to Ramona, and Ramona did act surprised when I said I had seen her in the shop. And two, had she deliberately smashed the snow globe out of uncontrolled anger, or was it just because she was clumsy?

  She’d seen me in the Marilyn costume at least twice, maybe three times, over the years, and maybe the snow globe reminded her of that and had set her off. I’d seen her lose her temper with staffers before, and each time I’d thought she’d overreacted. She was under stress much of the time and didn’t always manage it very well.

  Ramona may have thought she’d found a way to get rid of me for good, but then the plan had failed when the wrong woman died. So she returned with a deadly poison in an envelope addressed to me. She may have thought I’d blindly open the envelope and become incapacitated and die on the spot. I wouldn’t be able to name or identify her if I was dead. All she’d have to do was to sneak out Brew Ha-Ha’s door without being seen or recognized.

  Would she be so bold? Considering the possibility she could be that calculating and cold made me tremble.

  7

  Peter and Ramona Zimmer lived in Orten, a town twenty miles southeast of Brooks Landing. I had driven by the road leading to the mostly bedroom community more than a hundred times in my life because it was on the main route to Minneapolis. I’d also given the senator a ride home from the airport when we’d taken the same flight from Washington to Minneapolis the past Christmas.

  As I drove down Highway 44, I wondered why I felt compelled to pass their house. I don’t know what I was looking for and what I’d do if anything seemed suspicious. If their garage door was open and I saw a container labeled “Poison” on their shelves, maybe I’d snap some pictures.

  If I was really lucky, Ramona would be out in the yard, standing over a large iron kettle set on a roaring wood fire. Ha. I imagined her as one of the witches in Shakespeare’s Mac
beth, adding deadly ingredients and stirring them in. We’d read the tragedy in English class my senior year in high school, and I’d memorized the first witch’s lines. “Round about the cauldron go; / In the poisoned entrails throw. / Toad, that under cold stone / Days and nights has thirty-one / Sweltered venom sleeping got, / Boil thou first in the charmèd pot.” And then the other two witches joined the first in the familiar chorus, “Double, double toil and trouble; / Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”

  Even though I knew the story was a product of William Shakespeare’s imagination, envisioning those witches attending to their nasty deeds, uttering those ominous words, had scared me twenty years ago, and still had the power to send a chill through me now. In my wildest teenaged dreams I could never have imagined that a real-life incident would someday trigger memories of Macbeth’s evil-minded witches.

  The moon and stars were hidden by clouds, and the sky was darker than dark that November night. It added to my unsettled feelings about the Zimmers’ possible connection to Molly’s death. Had the poison that killed her come from them and been meant for me after all?

  I’d bought my Subaru after I moved back to Brooks Landing, and I felt fairly anonymous in it, knowing Ramona and Peter would not recognize the vehicle if they saw me drive by. When I got to their neighborhood, I made one slow pass by their house then drove around the block for another look. The first time by it was difficult to tell if anyone was home. As I approached the house for the second time, I met a car. My heart almost stopped when the Zimmers’ garage door went up and the car turned into their driveway and drove into the attached garage. I pulled into the driveway of the house across the street and turned off the ignition.

  I was directly across from the Zimmers’ and swiveled around in my seat for a good view of what was stored in their garage. From what I could see, it was bare of shelves. No obvious containers marked “Cyanide” or “Anthrax” or “Ricin.” Of course there weren’t. Ramona and Peter Zimmer were very daring people in different ways, but neither one of them was stupid. The car’s trunk popped open, and my heart pounded in anticipation of what was in there and was about to be removed.

  I had to blink twice when Senator Ramona Zimmer got out of the car on the driver’s side and a strange man who was not her husband got out of the passenger side. Jiminy Cricket. Ramona’s was the only car in the garage. Where was Peter, and who was Ramona bringing into their home when her husband was not there?

  Ramona and the man met at the trunk of the car. He reached in and pulled out a suitcase. A suitcase. Peter was gone, and Ramona came home with a man and a suitcase. Unbelievable. They headed to the door that led to her house, and Ramona reached up and pushed a button that closed the garage door and ended my snooping.

  My cell phone rang, startling me. I fumbled with the phone until I finally pushed the right button. “Hello.”

  Erin didn’t bother saying hello back. “Cami, where are you?”

  There was no good reason to tell her the truth and upset her over the phone. Call it self-preservation. “Just out for a drive.”

  “You don’t go for a drive for no good reason.”

  “You are right; as if I could fool you. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you.”

  “Pinky and I are at your house, and since you didn’t say you had plans tonight we got worried. Very worried, after all the things you told us about the Zimmers this afternoon. Promise us you’re safe.”

  “I promise. And I’ll be home in about twenty minutes. Are you inside or outside my house?”

  “Out.”

  “If you want to wait for me, go on in and make yourselves at home.” They knew where I kept the spare key.

  I heard Erin ask Pinky what she wanted to do, then she said, “Okay, we’ll be here when you get home.”

  “See you then.”

  I backed out of the driveway then took a last look at Ramona’s house and shook my head. Who was that man she’d come home with? It was no one I recognized from my time working in her office; that I was certain of. On the drive home, I went over everything that had happened since yesterday morning.

  What if the Zimmers were not the ones responsible for the poison after all? What if some demented person had chosen Curio Finds or Brew Ha-Ha to randomly carry out his dastardly deeds? If that were the case, even our customers would be in danger and we’d be forced to shut down. That possibility was not in the probable realm, however. I also knew going forward I would do a smell test on every beverage I served, checking for that unique almond aroma.

  And I worried that Molly’s husband would file a lawsuit against the shops. My parents and Pinky would lose their businesses, and probably their life savings. In Pinky’s case, that wasn’t much, but it was still money she had worked hard to put away for her retirement.

  —

  Erin and Pinky were sitting at my kitchen table, drinking water and munching on pretzels when I walked in. They both got up and gave me a hug. “Don’t go disappearing on us like that,” Pinky said.

  “We thought maybe somebody had nabbed you,” Erin said.

  I wasn’t the only one having wild thoughts. “Nabbed me?”

  Erin gave me a light push. “Kidnapped, abducted, stolen away, whatever you want to call it. Cami, you never know how dangerous some people can be.”

  That brought me back to my fears about the Zimmers. “I do know that. What I don’t know how is I’ll make it up to Molly’s family if it turns out the poison was meant for me.”

  Pinky guided me over to a kitchen chair and sat me down. “That is nonsense talk. You are in no way, shape, or form responsible for what someone else did.”

  Erin sat down next to me. “But if Emmy is the guilty one, then you and Pinky will have to work through your feelings on that.”

  “Thanks a lot, Erin,” Pinky said, and she plopped onto a chair on my other side.

  Erin lifted a hand chest high and waved it back and forth. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  Emmy was a concern, but what Ramona Zimmer was up to was more immediate. “Girls, you are not going to believe what you are about to hear.”

  When I told them where I’d been, Erin gave my arm a nudge. “Cami Brooks, what on earth were you thinking driving down there? Ramona Zimmer may be getting charged with a crime against you at any time, just as soon as the police are done testing that envelope she left.”

  “So?”

  “So, I don’t know. But if the police heard you were scouting out her house, you might be in some kind of trouble.”

  “I’m already in some kind of trouble.”

  “Then I don’t think you should be asking for more.”

  Pinky leaned forward. “Erin’s right. But go on with your story. I want to hear what you saw.” Juicy news was a daily staple of Pinky’s diet, and she always looked forward to a bit of gossip from one of her many sources.

  I picked up where I’d left off, and when I got to the part about Ramona and the man and the suitcase, Erin and Pinky both gasped.

  “You always said she was faithful, almost to a fault,” Erin said.

  “That is so wrong. Tell me more. What does he look like?” Pinky said.

  “Tall. The senator is five-eight, and he was this much taller than her . . .” I lifted my hand about five inches from the table. “What does that make him?”

  “Five inches would make him six-one.” Erin was the fastest math calculator among us.

  “What else?” Pinky said.

  “I wasn’t close enough to pick up details, like his eye color or anything. And the lighting in the garage wasn’t very bright, but I’d describe him as nice looking. Very short hair, like military-cut short. His face was cleanly shaven and on the rounder side. The thing that struck me was his sober expression. I mean very somber, like he was on his way to prison or a funeral or something.”

  “Or into Ramona Zimm
er’s house,” Erin said with a grin that made me smile, too.

  Pinky’s eyes opened wide. “Holy moly, Cami. That’s the way I would have described the guy who was looking for you yesterday; you know, the one that asked for the blonde. But I didn’t see his hair with his stocking cap on.”

  I grabbed her arm. “The man with the senator looks like the guy who asked for me, the one who might have poisoned Molly?”

  Pinky started nervously flapping her hands then pushed her chair back and jumped up. “I don’t know. I can’t be sure.”

  Erin and I got up, too. And when Pinky started walking around the table, Erin and I joined her. If someone saw us, they’d think we were playing musical chairs. We made a few laps, then Pinky stopped without warning. I piled into her, and Erin piled into me.

  “Jeepers creepers, Pink,” I said.

  “We need to calm down and think about what to do next,” Erin said.

  Pinky put her hands on the back of a chair and leaned into it. “Got any good ideas?”

  Erin nodded. “I have one. Pinky, you saw that man up close when he asked you about Cami. I think you should talk to Mark, or maybe Clint would be better, and see if he can get you in with the Buffalo County sketch artist to come up with a drawing. Then Cami can look at it and see if it’s the same guy she saw tonight.”

  Pinky gave her head a shake, which caused her curls to dance for a second. “I’ve never done anything like that before, so I’m not sure how it would work.”

  “It’s worth a try,” Erin said.

  “The biggest hurdle would be convincing Mark, and especially Clint, why they should do it in the first place,” I said.

  “After you tell them everything you’ve told us, Cami, why wouldn’t they?”

  Why wouldn’t they? Well, we’d find out the answer to that question before long.