by Sara Grant
Mackenzie thought for a moment. “She said her plane was delayed, but we only have her word for it. She could have arrived a day or two earlier.”
“Or she could have hired someone to do it too,” I added. As hard as it was for me to believe, people did that.
“What about when Alexia was poisoned?” Mackenzie asked when she’d finished typing our notes in her grid.
I remembered the moments before Alexia was poisoned. “The plate of food that Alexia ate from was originally Katrina’s. Don’t you remember they argued right before Alexia collapsed?”
“Actually Katrina handed her plate to Shauna and Alexia snatched the plate from her.”
“Yeah, yeah, but the point is she had time to sprinkle the fish flakes on the plate. In the commotion she had plenty of time to throw away the vial of fish food.”
“So you are saying she poisoned her own food in the hopes that Alexia would pick a fight and take her plate?”
“When you say it like that it doesn’t make any sense.”
“Do you think Katrina is allergic to shellfish too? It’s a common allergy.”
“Or maybe there was poison in the vial. We haven’t analysed the contents. Maybe someone used the smelly fish flakes to cover up the poison.”
“But Alexia recovered when you gave her that shot.”
“We don’t know what’s happened to her since she left the resort, do we?” My brain was putting the clues together. “Maybe Katrina was the real target.”
“Or the killer,” Mackenzie added.
“We know one thing for sure,” I said. “Katrina is mixed up in this.” I handed Mackenzie her snowsuit and started to slip into mine.
She hugged her snowsuit. “What are you doing? Ariadne said we are not to leave this room. What are you thinking?”
I tugged on my boots. “That Sven is guarding our door so we’ll have to leave by the window.” I yanked it open and the icy air stung my cheeks. Luckily we were on the ground floor.
“We agreed that we would stick together.” She threw her snowsuit at me.
“I know.” I threw it back. “So come on.”
“Sticking together means that you stay here with me.” Mackenzie crossed her arms across her chest as if tying herself in an immovable knot.
“Sticking together means you don’t let me go out there on my own,” I said, and climbed out of the window. I paced in the deep snow making two trenches as I waited for Mackenzie. I made it all the way to the end of the building. I peered around the corner. Two snow-suited figures were heading this way. I ducked back out of sight. I’d been spotted. If that was Grandma or Shauna I would be in the biggest trouble of my life. They’d probably lock me in a broom closet somewhere until this was over. I dashed to our window as Mackenzie was climbing out.
“We knew you two would be up to something.”
I recognized the voice – TnT.
“What are you doing here?” Mackenzie asked.
Then I had a sickening thought. Mackenzie was right. We should have finished our list. It would have definitely included TnT. They were always sneaking around and running off. They attended Ingenium.
“What are you doing?” Toby, or was it Taylor, asked right back. “We heard about what happened to that Blake guy. Whatever you are up to, we’re in!”
I didn’t know if we could trust them. They were our age. Could they really be murderers? I knew age didn’t matter. Teenagers killed all the time. Were they smart enough to have planned one murder and two attempts? I studied them. They’d played those pranks on us. That took planning – and there were two of them. Together I was sure they were capable of a lot.
“We were going to follow Sven,” I lied. Mackenzie narrowed her eyes in confusion but didn’t say anything. “He’s got a criminal record, did you know that?”
“No,” the boys said in unison.
“He’s guarding our door, but we thought maybe we should watch him.”
“Sort of like a stake-out,” one boy said. They bounced with excitement.
“Yeah,” I said. “Can you keep an eye on him and report back?”
They nodded. “What are you going to do?”
“You guys are much better at this kind of stuff,” I said but one hundred per cent did not believe it. “We’ll stay in our room. We aren’t supposed to leave anyway.”
As the boys dashed off, Mackenzie started to climb in the window.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I thought you said—”
“I’m not sure we can trust them. I needed them out of the way.”
“So we are still going to disobey Ariadne and hunt for the killer,” she said with a groan. She thought that by saying it matter-of-factly like that I’d see the crazy of my ways.
Nope.
I said, “Yep!” without hesitation. Because what she forgot about me was that I liked crazy.
We tried Katrina’s room. She wasn’t there or didn’t answer. We searched the lodge floor-by-floor, careful to avoid anyone else who was skulking about. We checked every conference room, stairwell and maintenance closet. We even did a sweep of the perimeter of the lodge. No trace of Katrina. We ended up outside the front doors of the lodge.
“Can we please go to our room now?” Mackenzie whined.
“Maybe she’s hiding at the ice hotel or the maze?” I suggested.
“No way. Not a chance. Don’t even think about it.” Mackenzie backed away from me, shaking her head. “Lucinda’s body is still there frozen like a human ice cube. Last time I went there, you left me and nearly got killed.” She stomped her boots in the snow as if she was planting herself.
“OK,” I mumbled. I hated to give up and this felt like coming in last place in a tricycle race. I opened the front door a crack. The lobby was empty except for Shauna, who stood in the middle of the room surrounded by boxes. She was muttering to herself as she packed away Love Late in Life folders, travel mugs, key rings and brochures. No one was at the reception desk. I gestured my plan to Mackenzie using two walking fingers to represent us. Crawl to desk. Hide under. I mimed. Mackenzie shook her head, but followed me anyway.
“I can see you,” Shauna said when we were only a few feet from the reception desk. We stayed crouched down as if she might forget we were there. “Come out for goodness’ sake,” she said with a sigh.
We walked over. After hours of snooping, it felt strange to walk normally again. “Don’t tell Grandma,” I said.
“What are you girls doing out of your room?” she asked.
I picked up a travel mug and traced the Love Late in Life logo. Shauna had worked so hard to make sure everything was perfect. We’d had endless memos and meetings about how everything would run once the guests arrived. She had left nothing to chance. But she didn’t account for some crazy person running around hurting people. I imagined the killer’s agenda: Midnight: turn former headmistress into an ice cube. Noon: poison annoying mean girl with fish food. 7 a.m.: crush Blake under an ice chandelier. I could have never guessed what would happen when we were stuffing these press kits and filling the travel mugs with snowflake- and heart-shaped chocolate.
“We thought you might need some help?” I said, counting on my truth-adjusting skills.
“Really?” Shauna said, raising one eyebrow.
Mackenzie looked from me to Shauna. “We can’t find Katrina.” She wasn’t a bender of truths.
“Why on earth are you looking for Katrina?” she asked, her voice squeaking a bit higher.
I didn’t know how to answer that question. She’s the main suspect in our murder investigation, wasn’t really the right answer.
“She, uh, I promised her … um…” Mackenzie started.
That was all I needed to form our excuse. “Mackenzie promised she’d give Katrina a behind-the-scenes look at Grandma’s app for her story.”
“I doubt there will be any article about the app now,” Shauna said. “I’ve already started working on another strategy to rename and re
launch the app after all this is over.”
I hadn’t really realized until then that all this was probably killing Grandma’s business and maybe Shauna’s career too. “Let us try to help,” I begged. “Do you have Katrina’s phone number? We could make sure she’s not filing any story that could hurt the app.”
“You need to leave this to the grown-ups,” Shauna’s event-planner perkiness was long gone.
My insides burned at her comment. Grown-ups weren’t the only ones who could do things. My quick thinking had saved Alexia’s and Blake’s lives. If I’d left it to the grown-ups, two more people would be dead.
“I’m worried about her,” I tried again. “Can you at least check in on her?”
Shauna dug around in her messenger bag and found her phone. She hit the home button, which illuminated a picture of two girls about my age on the screen. She hit the button again but nothing happened. “This horrible thing is frozen again.” She tossed the phone in her bag.
“Can I take a look?” Mackenzie said, holding out her hand. “Maybe I can fix it.”
I suppressed a groan. What was Mackenzie doing? This wasn’t going to help our investigation. I glanced at my watch. We really shouldn’t hang out here any longer. Grandma could show up any minute, and we were standing here wilfully disobeying as my dad would say. It was one thing to be caught sneaking around. If she caught us standing here chatting away to Shauna, then it looked like we didn’t care about Grandma’s rules. I cared – I just didn’t want to follow them.
“My phone is probably ruined like everything else,” she said but fished out the phone and handed it to Mackenzie anyway. Mackenzie rebooted the phone.
“That’s a nice picture,” I said when Shauna’s phone lit up again.
Something changed in Shauna’s expression. She swallowed hard. “That’s my best friend when I was in school.”
Before I could ask anything else, Mackenzie swiped the photo away to reveal the keypad. “Can you enter your pass code?” she asked. Shauna tapped in her code. Mackenzie worked her magic, swiping screens and clicking and tapping. “All fixed.”
“Thanks,” Shauna said, punching a few buttons to be sure. I thought she might reward us and call Katrina, but no. She ditched the phone in her bag.
“I’ll call Katrina as soon as I’ve finished packing everything,” she said. “You girls shouldn’t worry.”
I wasn’t going to give up that easily. As I turned to go, I intentionally knocked Shauna’s messenger bag off the box where she’d placed it. The contents of both bag and box went flying across the floor. I might as well use my clumsiness as an asset. “I’m so sorry,” I said, diving to the floor. I spotted her phone first and crawled towards it. “We’ll pick up everything.” I palmed the phone and shoved it into my pocket.
Mackenzie, Shauna and I scrambled on the floor, shuffling the Love Late in Life stuff into the box and everything else into Shauna’s bag. “We better go.” I hooked my arm through Mackenzie’s as we left the lobby. Good thing Shauna wasn’t paying much attention. She never questioned why we went back out the front instead of through the lobby. She didn’t know a criminal was guarding our room and TnT – two potential criminals – were watching him.
“I feel sorry for Shauna,” Mackenzie said once we were outside our window again.
“Yeah, me too,” I said and removed Shauna’s phone from my pocket.
“You didn’t,” Mackenzie said when she saw the phone.
“We can call Katrina ourselves,” I said. “We’ll return the phone when we’re finished.”
“And say what?” Mackenzie was really annoyed with me.
“I’ll think of something,” I told her and swiped the screen. “Argh!” I grunted as the screen changed to the keypad with a message to enter a pass code. How could I have been so stupid? I’d stolen her phone for nothing. I didn’t think my plan through. The phone needed her pass code. If we tried to guess, it would lock.
“Just so you know, I don’t approve.” Mackenzie punched in four numbers. The keypad transitioned into the homepage of Shauna’s phone.
“How did you do that?” I asked in awe of my computer genius friend. “Are you a code breaker?”
Mackenzie shrugged as if she cracked super top-secret codes all the time. “No, I watched Shauna when she typed in her code earlier and remembered the numbers.”
I hugged her. “You don’t want to admit it, but you are as sneaky as I am.”
Mackenzie smiled this huge toothy smile. She didn’t often cut loose like that and I liked it.
I clicked on Shauna’s contacts, found Katrina and dialled. I held the phone between us so we could both listen.
Katrina answered the phone and immediately started yelling. I was surprised by her response. It took me a minute to understand what she was shouting. Something about enough was enough. It was over and she wanted to go home.
“Katrina,” I interrupted her rant. “Katrina, this isn’t Shauna. This is Chase, Ariadne’s granddaughter. We met when you first arrived.”
“Oh,” Katrina said.
“We’ve been looking for you,” I said. “Is everything OK?”
She made some sound that was between a laugh and a grunt. “How can you even ask that with everything that has happened?”
Argh! She was right. I was being stupid again. I looked to Mackenzie for help.
“Could we meet up?” Mackenzie said, taking the straight-forward approach.
“Why?” Katrina asked.
“We are checking in with all the guests,” I said.
The line was silent.
I decided that maybe now was the time for truth. “We think you know something about why this is happening.”
“Meet me in thirty minutes behind the ice maze,” she said and hung up.
I couldn’t believe it worked.
“You were right,” Mackenzie said. “She knows something.”
“Hey! Stop!” The shouting was coming from the courtyard.
What was going on? More shouting. From more than one person. I tucked Shauna’s phone in my pocket. We raced to the courtyard in time to see Sven running for his life with TnT hot on his heels.
I cringed as TnT tackled Sven and tumbled in the snow. That had to hurt. Mackenzie and I raced over as fast as we could in our clunky boots and puffy snowsuits.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I yelled when I reached the pile of boys on the ground.
“We caught the killer,” one twin said.
“Killer?” Sven shouted and squirmed away from TnT. “I am no killer.”
“Then why are you trying to escape?” the other twin asked.
“I want to get away from you,” Sven said as he stood and dusted the snow from his suit.
The twins each grabbed one of Sven’s arms and hung on for dear life. “Not going to happen,” TnT said together as if rehearsed.
“Who are you?” Sven asked.
“I’m Toby.”
I studied him. They were the two most identical, identical twins I’d ever seen, but I couldn’t keep thinking of them as TnT.
“I’m Taylor.”
My focus shifted between the boys until I solved this real-life spot the difference puzzle. Taylor was a tiny bit bigger than Toby. Also there was something about their noses that wasn’t identical. I made a mental note of who was who.
“I went to the toilet in the bath house,” Sven explained. “I noticed someone following me. I tried to get away but these two chased me so I ran.”
“Did you murder Lucinda?” Toby demanded.
“Did you bash Blake?” Taylor accused.
“No.” Sven tried to twist out of the twins’ grasp, but it was no use.
Toby and Taylor were botching my interrogation. I wanted to handle this just right. They were like a gaggle of toddlers in a cotton candy factory. “We know about your past,” I said. I wanted to be vague. I meant his criminal history, but maybe there was other bad stuff about him I didn’t know. I’d seen this t
actic in a crime show once.
“So?” Sven replied.
“Makes you the prime suspect, don’t you think?” I continued.
“You might as well give up,” Toby said.
“Why did you do it?” Taylor asked.
I waved away their questions and stared at Sven.
“I knew that is what everyone would think,” he said. “I lied to my employer about my past. It was long ago. I have changed. You must believe me.”
“You were acting weird at your ice sculpture demonstration,” I recalled. “And that was right before we found the body.” I was convincing myself and the twins too of Sven’s guilt.
“I found the frozen body of Lucinda,” he said after a long pause. “I was scared. I didn’t finish the ice bed so I sneaked back to finish the room. That is when I found her. I need this job. It could change everything for me. If Mr Ashworth fires me, what chance do I have with the other resorts?”
It made sense. I knew something about lying, and my gut told me he was telling the truth.
“What do you know about Ingenium International College?” Mackenzie asked.
“Why are you asking about that?” Toby said.
“In Jenny, um, what?” Sven shook his head. “I don’t know anything. I never went to college.”
Mackenzie and I exchanged the same look: now what?
“Should we lock him up?” Taylor asked.
Sven struggled in their grip.
“Lock him up?” Toby said. “We don’t have an ice prison.”
“Let me go!” Sven shouted and twisted free from the boys. “You cannot keep me here.”
“No one is supposed to leave until the police arrive,” Mackenzie said.
“I cannot wait for police. I cannot be accused.” He tore off in the direction of the lake.
“Do we go after him?” Taylor asked.
I shook my head. “We can’t keep him here.”
“I believe him,” Mackenzie said. “What motive could he possibly have for killing Lucinda and hurting Alexia and Blake?”
“A lot of killers don’t have motives,” Toby interjected.
“Yeah, look at all those serial killers,” Taylor added.