by Mary Daheim
Gene came to the rescue. “We thought the yelling came from
outside,” Margo said. “What’s wrong?”
“Outside?” Judith blinked at Margo. “No, it was us.”
Their captors didn’t argue when Judith and Renie asked
to be locked up in their own room. They needed access to a
bathroom and also wouldn’t mind if someone brought them
a couple of sandwiches. After escorting the cousins upstairs,
Margo and Gene promised to deliver food.
“You didn’t tell them the phone worked,” Renie said after
the cousins were alone. “How come?”
“Because,” Judith explained, scurrying into the bath- 240 / Mary Daheim
room, “I wanted to stall for time. Obviously, the OTIOSE
gang was in the dining room when the phone rang and they
didn’t hear the kitchen extension.”
“So what good does it do us?” asked Renie. “Now we’re
shut up in here.”
“With a much simpler lock,” Judith called out over the
flushing of the toilet. “The only problem is, we don’t have
access to a phone on this floor. I forgot about that.”
“Crazy,” Renie muttered. “What did you mean when you
said ‘bathroom’?”
Judith was washing her hands. “What? I can’t hear you.”
“Never mind.” Renie collapsed onto the bed and lit a cigarette. “I’m sure I’ll find out.”
Judith entered the bedroom. “I’m glad Mother is okay. It
sounds as if I’ll lose some money with the cancellations, but
I can’t do anything about that. And, as usual, Arlene is
coping very well.”
“It’s a good thing this is a three-day weekend,” Renie
pointed out. “Bill doesn’t have to teach and nobody has to
work. Maybe by Tuesday, things will get back to normal.”
A knock sounded at the door. Ava and Max had arrived
with chicken salad sandwiches, chips, and the carrot and
celery sticks Judith had cut up early Friday morning. Only
two days had passed since then, but to Judith, it felt like
much more.
The cousins thanked Max and Ava, who both seemed extremely subdued. “How’s everyone doing?” Judith asked, her
usual compassion surfacing.
“Lousy,” Max retorted. “Honest to God, we have this sense
of impending doom.”
“But Max,” Ava said, giving his sleeve a little tug, “it is
melting. By tomorrow morning, I’ll bet we can get out of
here.”
“Tomorrow’s a long way off,” Max replied in a grim voice.
“I won’t go to my room tonight. I’ll stay up, and insist that
everybody else does, too. We can take turns
SNOW PLACE TO DIE / 241
sleeping on those sofas in the lobby. Three on guard duty,
three catching some Z’s. The buddy system was a bust.”
“That’s because we’re not used to doing things in pairs,”
Ava pointed out, then turned to the cousins. “I mean, we’re
executives, we’re used to being independent and going our
separate ways.”
“No teamwork, huh?” said Renie. “Every man—sorry, every
person—for him or herself.”
“Well,” Ava said lamely, “we do tend to think mostly in
terms of our own departments. You have to. Otherwise,
you’d get shortchanged on personnel, budget, even floor
space and office equipment.”
“Don’t I know it?” Max muttered, starting back into the
corridor. “As Frank would say, you have to chart your own
course.”
“But he also says we have to row together,” Ava countered,
following Max down the hall. “When you’re at the top, like
Frank is, you can see the big…”
Renie closed the door. “I can’t stand another word of that
crap,” she declared. “They’ve got dead bodies all over the
place, the company may be in ruins, they’re all scared out
of their wits—and they still talk the corporate line. It’s sickening.”
Judith wasn’t really listening to Renie. After taking a couple
of bites of her sandwich, she asked her cousin to make sure
the coast was clear in the corridor.
Renie opened the door again. “They’re gone. So what?”
Judith gave Renie a baleful look. “They didn’t lock the
door. Either Max and Ava don’t think we’re dangerous, or
they know we’re not. Let’s go.”
“Go where?” Renie was looking blank.
“The bathroom, remember?” Judith breezed past her
cousin.
“What bathroom? I thought you—oh, never mind.” Renie
trotted behind Judith as they covered the length of the corridor until they reached Leon’s room.
In the struggle to get Killegrew and Russell out of the
242 / Mary Daheim
room and away from Nadia’s corpse, no one had thought
to lock Leon’s door, either. Judith marched right inside,
though Renie lingered briefly on the threshold.
“How many times do we have to view the body?” Renie
asked.
“Avert your eyes,” Judith called over her shoulder as she
went into the bathroom. “At least they already moved Andrea
upstairs.”
With a sigh of resignation, Renie followed. Judith was
pushing back the nylon shower curtain.
“Don’t tell me…” Renie began with a gasp.
Judith shook her head. “No body. Just…the files.”
Several folders covered the empty tub. Judith picked them
up, handing the first batch to Renie. “They had to be somewhere,” Judith said. “It dawned on me that along with Andrea, Nadia knew Barry Newcombe fairly well. Let’s say that
Barry was privy to some of the items in Andrea’s private
files. He worked for her, didn’t he?”
Renie nodded. “Barry might have snooped. Clerks often
do.”
“Okay. So Barry might have passed something juicy on to
someone else. Why not Nadia? Since he was in the business
of bartering gossip, she’d be a likely client because she’d
know what was happening on the executive floor. Let’s say
Nadia got an inkling that more was to come—except Barry
never got the chance to pass the rest of it on. In the normal
course of events at work, Nadia couldn’t get at Andrea’s
private files. But once Andrea was dead, Nadia seized an
opportunity. That must be who Max saw in the corridor
Friday night. Nadia must have beaten him to the punch by
just a few minutes.”
Renie was looking skeptical. “How did Nadia know Andrea
had those files with her?”
Judith waved a hand. “Andrea was dropping hints, especially about the hooker files. I suspect she was passing tidbits
on to the others as well. Gene and Russell and even
SNOW PLACE TO DIE / 243
Nadia were being clobbered with some of that data. It had
to come from somewhere.”
The files were somewhat damp, but otherwise appeared
to be intact. The cousins gathered up the folders and hurried
back to their own room, and this time, they locked the door
from the inside.
“The hooker file!” Renie cried. “It’s right on top!”
“Good,” Judith responded, fingering the tabs on th
e other
folders. “There are files for each of the conferees, including
Andrea. Does that strike you as odd?”
Renie, however, shook her head. “I’ll bet it’s full of stuff
she heard people say about her. Not true necessarily, but
potentially damaging.”
“Corporate paranoia and skullduggery never cease to amaze
me,” Judith marveled. “Shall we start with Ward? He’s first.”
On a gray, wet January afternoon, what little light there
was began to die away shortly after three o’clock. The cousins
had to turn on the bedside lamps before they completed the
dossiers on Ward, Gene, Nadia, Russell, Max, Margo, Leon,
Ava, and Andrea’s own much slimmer folder. Judith and
Renie had learned very little that they hadn’t already heard.
“So what if Ava had had a youthful, unhappy marriage
before she left Samoa?” Renie shrugged. “Russell collects
dead bugs. Big deal. Margo supposedly slept with everybody.
Naturally, Andrea would want to believe that. Ward’s wife
was an albatross. Andrea had fingered Max for running the
hooker ring. No surprise there, either. I’m getting bored.”
“Leon was devoted to his mother,” Judith said, flipping
through the chief financial officer’s file. “He was very secretive
about his personal and his professional life. Obviously, the
latter was a sore point with Andrea. She’s written a note on
this one page that says, ‘Why can’t he tell me?’ ‘Me’ is underlined three times.”
“They were sleeping together,” Renie said. “Like most
244 / Mary Daheim
women, she probably felt they shouldn’t have secrets from
each other. Like most men, Leon may not have agreed.”
Judith looked up from the file. “There’s a page missing.”
“How can you tell?” Renie inquired. “Most of the entries
are fragmentary.”
“Not all of them.” Judith tapped what appeared to be the
last page in the folder. “Andrea has written what must have
been the equivalent of a teenaged girl’s diary. She goes on
at length about some staff meeting and an independent audit
and how Leon stood up to Frank and refused to be badgered
and acted like—I quote—‘ a real man.’ Then she writes that
Frank brought up the audit later…and that’s it. The sentence
stops, and the last page starts in mid-sentence about how
much Leon liked the annual report cover with the photo of
the sun setting behind the microwave tower.”
“It was a cliché shot, though,” Renie said. “I did some of
the interior graphics for that report and…Whoa! That’s the
end of Leon’s file?”
Judith nodded. “That’s it. Why?”
“Because that was last year’s annual report.” Renie
frowned, then started looking through some of the other
files. “Coz, this is weird. Check the last pages of the other
folders. See if you can tell when the final entries were made.”
Surprisingly, Andrea had been haphazard about dating
her material. Still, Judith could find nothing more recent than
the previous January.
“That’s very strange,” Judith remarked. “Why would she
stop keeping her personal files a year ago?”
Renie had no explanation. “We haven’t gone through
Frank’s,” she pointed out. “Let’s see if his file ends abruptly,
too.”
Frank Killegrew’s file was thicker than the others. He’d
been born in Molt, Montana, served as a U.S. Army Ranger
in Korea, attended Montana School of Mines in Butte, and
SNOW PLACE TO DIE / 245
gone to work for Mountain States Telephone Company in
Helena. His mother’s name was given as Kate Killegrew; no
father was listed. Instead, there was a picture of a cat sitting
on the roof of a house, and a notation that read, “Ha Ha!”
“What does that mean?” Renie demanded.
Judith smirked. “What it shows.” Her dark eyes glittered.
“Frank was born in a cat house. No wonder he’s ashamed
of his origins.”
“Woo-woo,” Renie said under her breath. “That’s funny.”
“No, it’s not.” Judith, who had flipped through the rest of
the pages, suddenly turned serious. “Well, maybe it is, but
the unfunny part is that Frank’s file stops long before last
year. There’s nothing after his years with the Bell System.”
Renie grabbed the folder out of Judith’s lap. “You’re right,”
she said in wonder. “There’s no mention of OTIOSE.”
Rubbing at her temples, Judith got up from the bed and
looked out the window. The rain continued to come down,
a steady sheet with no hint of wind to shift the dark clouds.
“The snow’s still melting…”
Judith screamed. Renie ran to join her cousin.
There was a man at the window, and he was holding a
high-powered rifle.
EIGHTEEN
JUDITH AND RENIE flattened themselves against the wall,
hopefully out of the line of fire. “What do you want?” Judith
cried, finally finding both her courage and her voice.
In answer, the man slammed the butt of the rifle into one
of the smaller panes. Glass shattered onto the floor. Judith
and Renie held onto each other, both shaking like leaves.
The man, who was on the top rung of a tall aluminum extension ladder, reached through the broken pane and tried to
unlatch the window. Judith looked around for something to
hit at his fumbling fingers, but there was nothing within
reach. The window opened, and the man scrambled into the
room. Raindrops and wet snow flew in every direction.
“What’s going on?” he demanded in a rough voice.
Judith blinked several times. The man wore a heavy parka
over ski pants, and rested the rifle butt on the floor next to
his all-weather boots. He had a gray beard and a weathered
face, but wasn’t much taller than Judith.
“Who are you?” Judith asked in a faint voice.
The intruder’s initial reaction was hostile, then he frowned
at the cousins. “Mannheimer, who else?”
“Mannheimer?” Judith echoed the name. “Do we know
you?”
246
SNOW PLACE TO DIE / 247
“Hell, no.” Mannheimer shook off the moisture that had
accumulated on his person. “Rudy Mannheimer, Mountain
Goat Lodge caretaker. Who the hell are you?”
“The caterers,” Judith replied, stretching the truth a bit.
“We got marooned. Where have you been?”
Mannheimer gestured with his head, causing the hood of
his parka to slip down and reveal overlong gray hair. “Back
at my place. Where else?”
“Um…Nowhere,” Judith said. “That is, the weather’s been
terrible. Ah…Why are you here now? I thought you had
orders to stay away.”
Mannheimer lowered his head, as if to charge the cousins.
Instead, he answered the question in his ragged, jerky voice.
“It’s my job, dammit. Orders can change. Like when a blizzard hits. Guests are still my responsibility. Safety first.
Couldn’t get through s
ince Friday. The first floor’s still
snowed in. I saw a light up here. I thought I’d give it a try.”
“You might have asked first,” said Renie, her usual spunk
returning. “You didn’t have to break the blasted window.”
Mannheimer snorted. “You’re not real friendly. So tell me.
Is everything okay?”
“Oh, brother!” Renie twirled around, holding her head.
“Actually, it’s not,” Judith said with regret. “There’s been
some…trouble.”
“Trouble?” Mannheimer’s close-set blue eyes bulged. “What
kind of trouble? Frank doesn’t like trouble.”
“You know Mr. Killegrew?” Judith asked in surprise.
Mannheimer flipped the rifle from one hand to the other.
“Sure. We go way back. To Korea. Same platoon. So what’s
up?” Mannheimer glowered at the cousins.
“I think,” Judith said in an unusually high voice, “you ought
to talk to Frank. He’ll tell you.”
“So where is he?” Mannheimer’s head swiveled, as if he
expected Killegrew to pop out from behind the bathroom
door.
248 / Mary Daheim
“Downstairs,” Judith answered promptly. “Go ahead, we’ll
stay here.” She gave Mannheimer a phony smile.
“Okay.” The caretaker headed for the door, the rifle now
cradled in his arms. He paused on the threshold, unlocking
the door the cousins had secured behind them. “Don’t worry.
I’ll fix that window. It’s my job.” Mannheimer left.
Renie sat back down on the bed. “I wouldn’t mind hearing
what happens when Frank tells Mannheimer what’s been
going on.”
“And so you shall,” Judith said, moving to the door. “Give
him a minute to get downstairs.”
The cousins used the back stairs. They tiptoed through the
kitchen, down the hall, and edged toward the lobby. Judging
from the sound of Frank Killegrew’s voice, the OTIOSE
contingent had regrouped in the game room.
“…real brave of you, Rudy,” Judith heard Killegrew say to
the caretaker. “What are our chances of getting out of here?”
Mannheimer must have been standing further away. His
response was muffled. “Melting…trouble…what…?”
Killegrew’s laugh was forced. “You might say we’ve had
some nasty accidents. The blizzard, the heavy rains, the
avalanche warnings.” He laughed again. “Then you get into
stress and tensions and all sorts of heavy seas that can rock