Kat Wolfe on Thin Ice

by Lauren St. John

  The girls were overwhelmed.

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” said Kat.

  “Don’t mention it. One good turn deserves another.”

  ICE IS NICE

  “Harper, are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to go ice-skating at Rockefeller Center or tobogganing in Central Park?” asked Professor Lamb. “It’d be no trouble. I know how much you love hurtling down a slope of new-fallen snow.”

  “Not today, thanks, Dad,” said Harper with a shudder. “Maybe not ever.”

  “Not ever! I thought—”

  “What Harper means,” Kat cut in hastily, “is that as fun as it’s been to enjoy the great outdoors, we’re keen to see the other side of New York. The indoor side.”

  “That’s understandable,” sympathized her mum. “You’ve experienced enough snow to last a lifetime. But if it’s an indoor attraction you’re in the mood for, we could visit the iconic Metropolitan Museum, the Empire State Building, the Top of the Rock Observation Deck, or even take in a show on Broadway. Why were you both so insistent that we come here, to the scene of a diamond heist?”

  “The same question crossed my mind,” said Theo Lamb as they climbed out of the limousine. A bellman in a black frock coat with gold buttons and snazzy red trim rushed to usher them into the Royal Manhattan. “And why are you being so mysterious about it? What’s the big secret?”

  A relay of suited and booted staff directed them to the grand salon via a maze of corridors adorned with royal-blue carpets and gilt-edged oil paintings of smug aristocrats.

  “Kat says we have to be patient,” Ellen Wolfe told the professor. “All will be revealed after we’ve had tea. I’ve been laughing ever since she said it. It put me in mind of Hercule Poirot asking guests to assemble in the dining car of the train before he unveiled the killer. Or were there several killers? It’s so long since I’ve read Murder on the Orient Express.”

  “Mum!” Kat was embarrassed.

  An amused and slightly bored waiter escorted them to their table.

  “Our daughters are obsessed with the heist that happened here,” Dr. Wolfe told him as he filled their water glasses and shook out the starched napkins with a professional flick.

  “Your daughters and hundreds of others.” The waiter smiled. “Thanks to Hollywood, I guess there is a dark glamour to the theft of millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds. The necklace has never been recovered, you know. I think some people come here secretly hoping to find it. The grand salon is booked solid for months.”

  “Is it?” Dr. Wolfe looked quizzically at Kat. “But Wainwright Matthews contacted us just yesterday to kindly offer us tea. I wonder how he got a reservation.”

  The waiter cocked an ear. “The chairman of Daylesford Bank? We host all of his bank’s conferences and special events. Mr. Matthews can get a table any day of the year. As you may have heard, his daughter witnessed the stealing of the diamonds.”

  He smiled. “Ma’am, name’s Remy. I’d be glad to show the girls the ballroom where the heist took place—if that’s all right with you.”

  “We’d love that!” answered Harper.

  “Not before we’ve ordered our tea,” instructed her father.

  Remy listed the day’s specials and promised to return shortly for their order.

  Dr. Wolfe gave Kat a considering glance. “Who could have predicted that the cat photo you gave a lonely girl on our first day in the Adirondacks might help save her life? It shows the importance of kindness to strangers. Even so, it’s extremely generous of Riley’s father to thank you by sending his limousine all the way to the Adirondacks to drive us in for afternoon tea at the Royal Manhattan. What a treat.”

  “What I’d like to know is how Mr. Wainwright tracked us down when Kat never gave Riley her details,” remarked the professor.

  “Dad, nowadays it’s possible to find almost anyone, anywhere, with a few taps of a keyboard,” said his daughter without thinking, prompting a row about the dangers of the internet.

  Thankfully, the waiter reappeared before Professor Lamb could get into his stride.

  “Remy, would now be convenient for you to show us the ballroom?” Harper asked sweetly.

  * * *

  In Kat’s imagination, the ballroom scene had always been suspended in time. She half expected it to be that way in real life too.

  When Remy pushed open the double doors, it wouldn’t have surprised her if a jazz band was playing as it had on the night of the launch of the east wing. Politicians and celebrities would be clinking champagne glasses and nibbling canapés from silver trays as they moved between glittering ice sculptures and fiberglass icebergs.

  Today, the empty, stale-smelling ballroom was being readied for a less glamorous audience. A crooked sign welcomed the American Association of Wellness Regulators.

  “That’s all there is to see,” said Remy, ready to leave. “Nothing exciting.”

  Harper stayed where she was. “What’s puzzling is how the supposed thief, Gerry Meeks, got an invitation to the event. He wasn’t rich or famous.”

  Remy grimaced. “My girlfriend almost lost her job over that. She was one of the meet-and-greeters that evening. She spotted Mr. Meeks wandering about like a stray lamb and asked for his name so she could assist him to his table. It wasn’t on the guest list, but he was in a tuxedo, looking as if he was meant to be there. She assumed there’d been a mistake. He was so wobbly she was also a bit worried he might collapse. She helped him to a spare seat at the table behind Cynthia Hollinghurst and her friends. The rest is history.”

  “We heard it was an arctic-themed event,” said Kat. “Was there a lot of ice?”

  “Was there ever. We could have donated it to the Bronx Zoo and made a playground for ten thousand penguins. The ice truck came and went on the hour. The back-room staff nearly got frostbite dealing with it. We had crushed ice, sliced ice, ice cubes, dry ice, and iced polar bears. Cryogenic chocolate honeycomb ice cream too. We were having to get creative about where to keep it all.”

  “What happened to it at the end of the night?”

  He laughed. “It melted and went down the drain. What do you think happened? There are strict rules around the storage of ice. Health and safety and so on. Our ice storage bins are emptied and refilled every time the iceman comes.”

  “That’s annoying,” said Harper, as crushed as the ice that had slipped down the drain.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said, that must be boring. All the emptying and refilling. Waste of water too.” Harper forced a smile. She and Kat had come up with an elaborate theory about the fate of the missing diamond necklace while hiking through the melting snow and ice left by Storm Mindy. They’d been dying to test it out. Once again, they were too late.

  Remy’s phone buzzed in his pocket. “Gotta run. Can you girls find your way back to the grand salon on your own?”

  Kat and Harper bit their tongues. If they could survive bear attacks and navigate three frozen rivers with six huskies, they were fairly sure they could make it along two carpeted corridors.

  “We’ll manage,” Harper assured him.

  After he’d gone, she said despondently, “That’s the problem with solving mysteries on paper. It doesn’t always work in real life. I’m clean out of ideas. How about you?”

  Kat didn’t answer. She walked into the center of the ballroom, trying to picture the scene. “Let’s go over it one last time. Riley says the reason she noticed Gerry is because he tripped and jostled Cynthia’s friend, who then bumped into Cynthia. Doesn’t matter if it was an accident or if he did it deliberately while trying to steal the necklace. What matters is that while Cynthia recovered and started posing for photos, Riley saw him stuff the diamonds in his pocket.”

  Harper joined her on the ballroom floor. “According to Riley, when Gerry realized he’d been caught red-handed—by a twelve-year-old—he was shame-faced. In pretty much the same moment, Cynthia discovers her necklace has gone and starts screaming the place dow
n. In the chaos, Riley loses sight of Gerry. If you were him, what would you do next?”

  “I’d get rid of the diamonds,” said Kat. “Pretend I’d never wanted to steal them in the first place.”

  “How?”

  “He could have given them back to Cynthia, made out he’d found them on the floor?”

  “That was the easy solution,” said Harper, “but it may not have been possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “Gerry’s ninety-one and unsteady on his feet. Our theory was that the diamonds were either knocked from his grasp as people crowded around Cynthia or he flung them away in a panic. If they’d landed on the floor, there’s a good chance they’d have been given back to Cynthia. If they landed on the tray of canapés on ice that was going by in the photo we saw, they would have been invisible among the crushed ice. Cynthia’s diamonds would have ended their lives hanging out with the rats and potato peelings in a sewer somewhere.”

  “I really hoped that the necklace had landed in that cart going past to refill the ice machine,” said Harper, “but Remy’s blown that theory to bits.”

  “Excuse me,” called a waitress from the door. “Are you Kat and Harper? Your parents asked me to let you know that tea has been served.”

  Crestfallen, they followed her back to the grand salon. They’d been so certain they were right that failure had never been an option.

  As they walked into the grand salon, Kat heard a faint hum coming from behind a screen. Harper picked up on it too.

  “What’s behind there?” she asked the waitress.

  “Oh, that. Some wallpaper was damaged by a clumsy staff member on the night the east wing was opened. It’s hand-painted and we’ve been waiting for the artist to repair it for weeks.”

  “No, I mean, what’s that humming sound?”

  “A spare ice machine,” said the waitress. “It’s out of order because we haven’t had a chance to empty it.”

  “I’ll catch up,” said Harper. “I just have to tie my shoelaces.”

  Twenty seconds later, she was sliding into her chair at the table.

  “What now?” whispered Kat when she had a chance.

  “Now we wait.”

  * * *

  Between courses, Kat added extra ice to her pink lemonade.

  “Are you ill, Kat?” asked her mother. “You’ve always loathed ice in your drinks.”

  “I’ve changed my mind. Ice is nice.”

  Their attention was diverted by a Pomeranian at the next table. It had a velvet collar.

  “I really hope that its owner is not going to feed it a cream puff,” said her mum. “Oh, I spoke too soon. She’s just fed it a cream puff.”

  The dog reminded Kat of the huskies. In the limousine that morning, she and Harper had heard a radio interview with Torvill Andersen, the widow who owned the dogs. She’d been rushed to the hospital with a suspected burst appendix on the same afternoon that the girls had arrived in the Adirondacks.

  Torvill lived alone, and it was days before anyone knew that she’d never made it back to the cabin. Nobody knew that the huskies had been left alone.

  “As long as I live, I’ll never forget the sight that greeted me when I returned to the cabin five and a half days later,” a tearful Torvill told the reporter. “I feared that they’d have perished from hunger, thirst, and cold. Instead, they were in the best shape of their lives. Shiny, healthy, and content. My pet raccoon was missing, but then he always did have a mind of his own. The real shock, though, was the cabin.”

  “How so?”

  “It was immaculate, even by my exacting standards, yet a great many things had been replaced. There were different cushions, new mugs and plates. My husky cookie jar had been replaced by one with a meerkat! A Raspberry Pi kit computer left sealed in a box had been professionally assembled. The morning I left, I made a three-bean chili and left it in the refrigerator—not knowing that it would be nearly a week before I returned. I thought I’d find it moldy. Instead, it had been replaced with a delicious fresh lasagna.”

  The reporter chuckled. “It’s almost as if the three bears from the fairy tale moved into your cabin, ate your chili, slept in your bed, and exercised your huskies.”

  Torvill laughed too. “If those three bears are listening, I’d like to say you’re welcome to stay anytime. Thank you, thank you, thank you for taking care of my babies.”

  “The Wrong Writers must have done a spectacular job of cleaning, cooking, and decorating the cabin,” Kat whispered to Harper when her mum and the professor were distracted talking to the driver.

  Harper giggled. “Would you expect anything less?”

  The other interesting snippet of news on the five-hour journey to New York City was that the rogue state trooper who’d terrorized Harper had been charged with impersonating a park ranger and ambushing Riley’s bodyguards’ vehicle. It turned out that he owed a lot of money to some bad people. After eavesdropping on a police station conversation that revealed both Riley’s identity and the location of the safe house, he became convinced that kidnapping her would solve his problems. Either she’d tell him where the diamond necklace was stashed, or he could pretend to rescue her and claim the ransom money that was offered by her banker father.

  Kat suddenly became aware that her mum was speaking to her.

  “Would you like me to invite Riley and her dad to stay with us in Bluebell Bay next spring or summer? On TV this morning, he said that coming so close to losing Riley had helped remind him that love means more than money.”

  Kat had gotten the same impression. “I’m not a nature person like Riley,” Wainwright Matthews had said. “I’m a city person through and through. But my daughter has promised to teach me some wilderness stuff. She built a snow shelter to survive, you know. We’re going to try camping. And before you ask, yes, we’re getting a kitten.”

  Before Kat could answer her mum, a commotion erupted near the Japanese silk screen. A manager in a designer suit was pointing a polished red fingernail at a puddle and lecturing a waiter with increasing volume.

  “Eddie … idiotic … Guests could SLIP … Break an arm! Do you have any idea what a DISASTER … No excuses … RECORD-BREAKING LAWSUIT!”

  Harper stood up. “Ma’am, Eddie didn’t unplug the ice machine. I did.”

  Kat stood too. “I helped.”

  Dr. Wolfe let out a little shriek. “Kat! Harper! Why would you do such a terrible thing?”

  Professor Lamb’s chair overturned with a crash. “Ma’am, I’m so sorry. My daughter isn’t usually so discourteous or thoughtless. I don’t know what’s come over her.”

  The manager forced an ingratiating smile. “You heard the gentleman, folks,” she told the intrigued and gawking tearoom guests. “A minor misunderstanding. Kids will be kids. Please accept my sincere apologies. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon.”

  She strode across to the Wolfes and Lambs’ table on no-nonsense heels. “Thanks for your honesty, girls. However, I must ask you all to leave. Our guests expect peace and luxury when they come to the Royal Manhattan.”

  “We’re guests of Wainwright Matthews, whose daughter, Riley, witnessed the theft of the diamonds,” said Harper, ignoring her father’s warning hand on her arm. “Aren’t you going to ask us why we did what we did?”

  The manager’s stare was colder than a polar bear’s toes. “You did something silly. No biggie. Wainwright Matthews is a valued customer of ours, and we’ll say no more about it. We’ll waive the check. Now I’d appreciate it if you’ll leave quickly and quietly before I call security.”

  “What we did wasn’t silly,” Harper burst out, jumping to her feet. “We did it for the most important reason of all. To prove that the man accused of stealing the diamond necklace is innocent.”

  “Innocent?” cried a woman at a nearby table.

  “This is ridiculous,” said the manager. “You’re ruining people’s tea. Of course Mr. Meeks is not innocent. There was a witness. It was captured on CCTV.” />
  “Yes, but the diamond necklace is still missing,” said Kat, standing beside Harper and ignoring her mum’s attempts to tug her down. “What if we could prove that the necklace never left the hotel in the first place? What if this is all a terrible ‘misunderstanding,’ as you call it?”

  “This is better than Miss Marple,” said a man at the next table, beaming. “If these diamonds never left the hotel, where are they now?”

  “In the ice machine behind the screen,” said Harper.

  The crowd gasped. Nobody cared about tranquil teas now.

  “If what we’re saying really is ridiculous, then you have nothing to lose by letting us have a look,” said Harper. “The worst that can happen is that the diamonds are not there and Kat and I look like fools. The best that can happen is that you get promoted because the Royal Manhattan is saved from paying out millions to Mr. Hollinghurst.”

  “Fine, let’s get it over with,” snapped the manager. “But if you’re wrong, I’m calling down the general manager. Somebody is going to have to compensate the other guests for their destroyed afternoon tea.”

  She barked at their waiter, “Remy, you seem to be at loose ends. You go fishing in the ice machine.”

  The screen was moved aside without ceremony. Remy rolled up his sleeves and leaned over the ice machine. He swished around in the chilly soup of melting cubes. Then he swished some more.

  An agitated hum broke out across the grand salon. Some people were shouting for him to try harder, while others were demanding their money back.

  Remy straightened up. A hush fell across the room. As he faced the manager, he opened his fist. Across his palm, dripping, sparkling, and the cause of so much trouble, lay Cynthia Hollinghurst’s diamond necklace.

  WISHFUL THINKING

  “I can’t believe we’re flying home tonight,” said Kat, bouncing on the extravagantly comfy mattress of the Royal Manhattan’s junior suite.

  Following the discovery of the diamond necklace, the hotel manager had insisted on giving them a free night in the hotel’s finest accommodation. Dr. Wolfe and Theo Lamb each had suites fit for a king and queen, and the girls were sharing.