Icing Allison

by Pamela Burford

  The only sounds were the soft crunch of my boots through the snow and my own huffing breaths as I made my way toward the lake. I was mentally exhausted, having lain awake for hours thinking about Allison, and her camera, and the final moments of her life.

  What, I’d asked myself in the dead of night, would Allison have done that morning in these woods? If someone else had indeed been with her—by no means a certainty—and if that someone else had turned on her, how would she have responded? It really depended on who the mystery person was, and what he or she had said or done or tried to do. Multiple scenarios had presented themselves as I lay in bed trying to work it out. I was no closer to figuring out the first part, but I thought I now knew Allison well enough to deduce what she might have done if she’d found herself in danger.

  I’d come here this morning to get a sense of the place where she’d spent her last minutes, where she’d made her crucial final decisions, to see if my suppositions felt right.

  The frozen lake came into view, along with something new, a yellow and black sign on a post, installed by the Department of Better Late Than Never: DANGER, THIN ICE. I squinted against the early-morning sunlight reflecting off the surface of the lake. Unlike my previous visit, when the ice had stretched before me like a sheet of clear blue glass, a seductive invitation to skate, the entire lake was now blanketed with a thick layer of untrammeled snow, coaxed by the wind into wavelike drifts.

  And unlike my previous visit, when I’d been thinking about Martin and the hot chocolate in his backpack and his stupid chainsaw and Sexy Beast’s delicate little feet, this morning as I strolled along the edge of the lake, I thought only of Allison.

  Let’s say she’s out here with someone she knows and presumably trusts, only to find her trust is misplaced. Does the person have a weapon? My gut tells me yes. He or she would have needed it to control her. Allison was in excellent shape. The same could not necessarily be said of her hiking companion, whoever that might have been. I was trying to keep an open mind on that score, but that mind kept closing around one individual in particular.

  Okay, I’ll just say it. No way could Skye overpower her taller, stronger friend. So we’re talking some sort of weapon. I’m thinking a gun. A knife requires you to get up close and personal with your victim. Allison could simply run from a knife, confident that Skye would be unable to catch her. I was thinking of those triathlons she’d competed in.

  I can hear you thinking, What about Nick? Maybe Skye couldn’t outrun Allison, but he could, right? I wouldn’t be so sure. Yeah, he lifted enough heavy things in the gym to maintain a pleasing physique, but his cardio workout was probably limited to sexing up Skye in the hot tub. Throw poor nutrition and a fondness for intoxicating libations into the mix, and I couldn’t see him catching up to his athletic wife if she was determined to evade him.

  But according to the cops, Allison hadn’t been shot, or stabbed, or undergone any trauma aside from drowning.

  You see how this whole thing gets twisted up in contradictory details? Now you know why I was awake most of the night, obsessing about it.

  So anyway, Allison finds herself in danger. What would she do? She’d run. I’m thinking she’d run even if the person was holding a gun on her, assuming her assailant wasn’t a practiced marksman. Allison was fast and there were plenty of trees for cover.

  But what might she do first, before taking off? Think about it. She’s got a camera hanging around her neck. Snapping pictures comes as naturally to her as breathing. Maybe she’s thinking she might not make it out of these woods alive. Maybe she’s thinking that if the worst happens, she has the means to tell the police whodunit, from beyond the grave.

  This woman is levelheaded, remember, analytical. The kind of woman who quietly plans out a divorce before springing it on her cheating spouse. A chess player, according to Poppy.

  I imagine Allison quickly lifting her camera and snapping a picture of her gun-wielding companion before turning and running for her life. This is an unforeseen complication for the attacker, who, in addition to whatever nefarious plans he or she has for Allison, must now get ahold of her camera and destroy the incriminating image.

  Which would explain why the camera wasn’t found on her body: Her assailant took it from her before chasing her onto the half-frozen lake. Maybe she never got a chance to run. Maybe her assailant forced her at gunpoint to relinquish the camera, then made her walk out onto the dangerously thin ice. The result? A clear case of accidental death, with no messy knife or bullet wounds to make the authorities commence an inconvenient investigation.

  At face value, this explanation made sense, but it didn’t sit right with me. I couldn’t see Allison Zaleski, the rational, resourceful woman I’d come to know vicariously through her videos, meekly cooperating with her killer. Giving in without a fight.

  As I made my way around the snow-shrouded lake, the exercise and fresh air recharged my exhausted brain. Coming here had been the right call, I decided. I was glad I’d resisted the impulse to turn over in my warm bed and catch up on my sleep.

  What would I have done if I’d been Allison and my hiking companion had pulled a gun? Take a picture? Yep. Run like the devil, perhaps veering around trees to make myself, and my bright red jacket, a more challenging target? You bet.

  Hide the camera once I was out of my attacker’s line of sight?

  I stopped in my tracks. The thought had arrived unbidden and fully formed, as if hurled there by my impatient subconscious. Here! Do something with this already, will ya? I batted the idea around, let my conscious mind take charge of it, turn it this way and that, examine it from all sides.

  I pictured Allison pausing in her flight just long enough to shove the camera out of sight—under a rock, perhaps, or inside a hollow log—while gunshots rang out closer and closer. She’d have recognized it as her best chance to ensure that the incriminating image would outlive her, in case one of her pursuer’s bullets hit its mark.

  I stood there chewing this over for a minute, then blinked and refocused on my surroundings. I was on the side of the lake nearest to where Allison had been found. Shading my eyes against the dazzling glare, I thought I recognized the spot where they’d cut her out of the ice, some twenty or thirty yards from where I now stood. It was obscured by drifting snow, but I detected a telltale rectangular dip, like a slightly sunken grave.

  My gaze traced an invisible line from the place where she’d plunged through the ice back into the trees, their bare limbs now laden with snow. In my mind’s eye I saw Allison darting around those trees toward the lake, desperate to escape her pursuer. She would have known not to trust the ice to support her weight. Whoever was chasing her might have known it, too.

  Without consciously planning to, I followed that invisible trail some distance into the dense woods. It was as if I were channeling Allison, wanting—needing—to be where she’d been that day, to see what she’d seen. At some point, provided my theory was more than the bizarre ramblings of a sleep-deprived imagination, she’d stopped long enough to hide her camera.

  See, this is why I didn’t mention any of this to Howie or Cookie. Bizarre ramblings kinda sums it up, don’t you think? I respected my detective pals and wanted them to continue to respect me. I shuddered to think what would happen to that respect if I shared my untested hunches prematurely.

  On the other hand, spring was a few short weeks away, and before long these woods would host an endless stream of hikers, nature lovers, and curious youngsters turning over rocks and exploring hollow logs. If the camera was indeed here, it wouldn’t be for long. Would the person who found it make the connection to the woman who’d drowned in the lake the previous winter? And if so, would the images it held still be identifiable after months of exposure to the elements? I wasn’t tech-savvy enough to even make an educated guess on that last point.

  Gingerly I picked my way through the thick snow, conscious of hidden obstacles under my boots, imagining every unseen rock and dead branch to b
e Allison’s Nikon. Finally I stopped and simply looked around, taking in my pristine surroundings. I was beginning to comprehend what had drawn Allison to places like this, what had driven her to photograph things the rest of us took for granted. I smiled, thinking of her beloved mushrooms.

  I stood rooted in place for several minutes, thinking about her, thinking about my suspicions, wondering what, if anything, I should do about them. I closed my eyes, breathed deeply of the clean, cold air, listened to the woods breathe, registered the occasional snap of a twig under its burden of snow.

  I’d like to say the answer came to me then, that I experienced some sort of Zen-like epiphany, but I’m not really a Zen kind of gal and my lack of movement was sapping my body heat. I took one last look around, and that’s when I noticed something that seemed out of place: a patch of disturbed snow through the trees off to my right.

  The snowfall had ended in the middle of the night, and I had to be the only human being enjoying an early-morning trek through this winter wonderland. My best guess at what had pawed through the snow was a deer or coyote. I hadn’t spied any deer, although I knew they inhabited the preserve. I’d been told coyotes had taken up residence here, too, but they were shy creatures and unlikely to show themselves during the day.

  I turned to go but was halted by an abrupt sound some distance away beyond the churned snow. I stood stock-still and listened. The noise came again. Something was moving over there. Something bigger than a deer or coyote.

  I knew there were black bears on Long Island. Had some of them decided to make these woods their home? And what about those rumors of mountain lions?

  Then a more worrisome thought came to me. Yeah, that’s right, more worrisome than lions and bears. All that stuff I’d told Nick last night. About Allison’s missing camera. About someone being with her in these woods the morning she died—Nick himself perhaps. If that was the case, he might very well have decided to rush over here at first light and try to locate the camera with the incriminating images before someone else stumbled over it.

  And if he hadn’t been here with Allison that fateful morning? Who would be the first person he’d think of once he learned she hadn’t been alone?

  Yeah, that’s what I figured, too. He was still hung up on his onetime mistress, for some reason I will never be able to fathom. I could almost hear him thinking, Skye must love me, after all. She killed to have me! Yeah, to have him and eight million bucks, the amount the two of them had assumed he’d inherit if his wife died.

  Skye’s initial scheme—exploiting the slayer rule to convict Allison of murder and cause her to be disinherited—had been a spectacular failure, so it was on to Plan B: Snag the boy-toy husband and make sure he ends up a very wealthy man.

  Skye had accomplished the snagging part, with the help of a fake pregnancy. As for making Nick a multimillionaire, they both knew it wouldn’t happen through divorce. Which left Skye two options: manipulate Nick into killing Allison or do the deed herself. I could see her putting option one into action and finding her handsome boy toy too dim or too weak to get the job done. Which would leave her no choice (in her warped mind) but to fall back on option two.

  It’s my turn now!

  After Nick and I parted ways last night, did he phone Skye and warn her about the camera? Was that her tramping noisily through the woods toward me? Or perhaps it was both Nick and Skye. Wouldn’t he help her find the camera? What better way to earn the love of a reluctant lady than to save her from being arrested for murder?

  I hadn’t seen another car when I’d arrived, but there was more than one entrance to the preserve, so that didn’t mean I was alone here.

  A flash of movement through the trees galvanized me. I slipped behind the nearest thick tree trunk and tried to make myself very, very small. My breaths sounded like a locomotive to my own ears. I concentrated on breathing as slowly and silently as I could.

  The person now sounded very close, and getting closer. I say person because there was no mistaking the sound of two, not four, human feet shuffling unhurriedly through the snow, pausing frequently. During those pauses I heard a different noise, a repetitive one that sounded like something being thrust into the snow and scraped against the ground.

  The individual approached the very tree I stood cowering behind. I heard more of that percussive stabbing and scratching in the vicinity of the roots. And yeah, I know what you’re thinking because I was thinking the same thing. Someone was looking for an object hidden beneath the snow.

  Then sudden silence, broken only by the sound of a sharply indrawn breath.

  I looked down and saw my own boot prints in the snow, leading right to my hiding place. Well, wasn’t that perfect. Jane Delaney, master of concealment, invisible as a wraith. I held my breath as the person began circling the tree trunk toward me.

  I was debating my next move when a clump of snow fell into my hair. I looked up to see a long stick reaching up to nudge a dark object dangling from an overhead limb.

  I hollered as Allison Zaleski’s Nikon bounced off my noggin. Automatically I caught it.

  Brenda Yates hollered, too, in surprise. Clearly she hadn’t noticed me, or even my boot prints, until that instant, so intent had she been on snagging the camera out of its high perch in the tree. I could only assume Allison had tossed it up there during her flight from her pursuer.

  From Brenda.

  We stood gaping at each other, separated by no more than a couple of feet. I saw Brenda’s options chase one another across her features, recognizing the moment when she realized she wouldn’t be able to lie her way out of this one.

  She held out her hand. “Give me the camera, Jane.”

  In response, I slipped the strap around my neck. Yeah, I know, but it wasn’t really me doing it, not entirely. It felt as if Allison were reaching out from the other side to lend me courage.

  That courage nearly deserted me when Brenda tossed the stick aside and pulled a small revolver from the pocket of her pale blue coat. She pointed the gun at me. “I said give me the camera.”

  At this close range, an attempt to flee would earn me nothing but a bullet in the back. “And then what?” I asked. “What happens to me once you have it?”

  She appeared to give that serious thought. “Tell you what. I’ll make it worth your while to keep quiet about all this. Fifty thousand dollars.”

  My first thought was that Brenda couldn’t afford to make an offer like that. Then I remembered. Allison had generously made her stepdaughter the beneficiary of a million-dollar life-insurance policy. Now Brenda intended to repay that generosity by turning a portion of the insurance proceeds into a bribe to ensure she’d never be held accountable for her benefactor’s death.

  Brenda noticed my disgust but seemed a bit fuzzy on the precise cause of it. “All right, a hundred thousand,” she said.

  You might be thinking, Why all the yakety-yak? What’s Brenda waiting for? All she has to do is shoot me and take the camera. A simple solution, but a messy one. There’s the bloody corpse, for starters. Do you leave it? Do you try to hide it? And even if she somehow managed to make my dead body go bye-bye, there’s the awkward fact that your friendly neighborhood Death Diva has now gone missing. The trail could conceivably lead back to her, depending on how skilled she was at covering her tracks.

  I said, “A measly hundred grand? You were prepared to pay Skye a million.”

  “What? Oh, for that other thing.”

  I nodded. “To testify against Allison, to falsely convict her of killing your father.”

  “I didn’t think it was false at the time,” she said, “and I’m not giving you the whole million. Dream on.”

  “I’m thinking a fifty-fifty split isn’t out of the question.”

  “Seventy-thirty,” Brenda said.

  “Make it sixty-forty and we have a deal.”

  After a long moment she nodded. “An easy four hundred grand for you, just for keeping your mouth shut.”

  “I can
live with that.” The operative word being live. I hope you realize I had zero intention of claiming that hush money. I was just stringing her along, making the negotiation as convincing as possible. As soon as I was out of the woods—and yes, I meant that both literally and figuratively—my new partner would discover our deal had fallen through.

  I nodded toward the gun. “You can put that thing away now.” When she made no move to do so, I added, “Trust me, Brenda, I’m on board. You come through for me, I’ll come through for you.” I mimed locking my lips and throwing away the key. “Allison Zaleski’s death was an accident. End of story. And what good would come of causing trouble for you? Nothing can bring her back, and I’m guessing you didn’t come here that day intending for her to die.”

  Brenda stared at me for long moments, then pocketed the gun. “I just wanted her to admit what she’d done, that’s all. Just to hear her say the words.”

  “But she didn’t admit it,” I said, “because she didn’t do it. She didn’t kill your father. She loved him.”

  Her features tightened. “It infuriated me to hear her keep saying it, even at gunpoint, to keep denying she killed him, when I knew... well, I thought I knew, that she was guilty as hell.” Her malevolent gaze zeroed in on the camera still hanging around my neck. “She shouldn’t have taken my picture.”

  “Is that when she ran?” I asked.

  Brenda nodded, her face now flushed, and not from the cold. “It happened so fast. By the time I realized what she was doing, it was too late. In less than a second she snaps my picture and—” She threw her hands wide, as if Allison had disappeared into thin air. Sadly, I couldn’t hope to emulate Allison’s speed and athleticism.