Swift Edge

by Laura Disilverio

  He grabbed my shoulders to steady me, and the warmth of his hands tingled clear down to my toes. He smiled down at me. “I’ve fantasized about you running into my arms, Charlie,” he said, “but I didn’t think it would be in a hospital.”

  “I don’t want to hear about your fantasies,” I lied.

  “You’re right. So much more satisfying to act them out, don’t you think?” The glint in his eyes made me catch my breath. My pulse thrummed in my fingertips.

  Vaguely aware that I should move away from him, I found myself trapped by his gaze. He had such warm brown eyes. Caring, seductive. I licked my lips, and his eyes darkened. For a moment, I thought he was going to pull me into the nearest empty room, but the elevator dinged open behind me and a clutch of red-hatted women got off, holding bouquets of balloons and cookies.

  “Is this maternity?” one woman asked, peering around. “We’re looking for Marjorie’s grandbaby.”

  I took a couple of steps away from Montgomery and worked on slowing my heartbeat as he directed the women to the correct floor.

  “Bobrova’s still unconscious,” he said, returning to my side. He nodded to a room where a still figure lay surrounded by machines with tiny lights blinking green, yellow, or red. A nurse hovered over her, squeezing the bag hanging from an IV pole. “The docs aren’t sure if she’ll make it. Skull fracture, hematoma, shock, a couple cracked vertebrae, surgery to relieve pressure on the brain, and I don’t remember what else. Even if she lives they’re not sure what she’ll remember. Hell, she may not remember her name or what an ice skate is.”

  I took in the sadness of that in silence. How much memory did you have to lose before you weren’t you anymore? Would I still be me if I forgot the parents who serially abandoned me with various relatives so they could missionary around the globe? What about if I forgot my first kiss with what’s-his-name, or my air force commissioning ceremony, or the thrill of skiing Mary Jane with the rising sun rinsing the snow with pink? I shook my head to dislodge the melancholia. “Bummer. I guess that means she wasn’t any help with ID’ing her attacker.”

  “Nope.”

  “Have you got any leads?”

  Without answering, he cocked his head and studied me. “We got a call from Sally Peterson. Says her daughter Dara’s missing. Know anything about it?”

  “Not really.” I filled him in on my conversations with Dara and my own unease when I couldn’t reach her that morning. “It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours—why are you on it?”

  “Given the circumstances, Captain Kean decided to issue a BOLO. He’s concerned there’s a connection between the attack on Bobrova and Peterson’s disappearance.”

  Something in his voice alerted me. “You think Dara’s a suspect?” I moderated my volume when a nurse behind a semicircular desk shot us a “shut up already” look. “Why would she try to kill her coach?”

  “Too many laps? Coach Grimsler used to make us run laps when—”

  “This is ice-skating, not football.”

  “Boy, your sense of humor really suffers when you get up early. How’d you make it in the air force? Isn’t their motto ‘We do more before nine than most people do all day’?” One side of his mouth slanted up.

  “That’s the army, and quit trying to change the subject. If you think Dara attacked Bobrova, do you think she had anything to do with Fane’s disappearance?”

  Montgomery sobered. “Maybe.” He drew the word out, and I could see him considering it. “I don’t know why she’d’ve hired you, though, if she offed him or made him disappear.”

  “She’s a nineteen-year-old kid,” I said, exasperated. “Quit talking like she’s some Mafia kingpin who can have people ‘offed’ or ‘disappeared.’”

  “I’m not saying she’s guilty of anything,” Montgomery said, “but I’d like to have a conversation with her.” His expression grew serious. “Besides, if she’s not the perp, she might be in danger. You will have her call me if you run across her.” He made it a statement.

  “I’ll let her know you’d like to chat,” I said, determined to wring every ounce of information from Dara Peterson before passing on Montgomery’s message, “and you’ll let me know if anything changes with Bobrova, right?” I snugged my purse under my arm and turned to go. Trying to talk with the injured woman was clearly pointless, even if I’d been allowed into her room.

  “Where are you off to?” He beat me to the elevator and held the door for me when it dinged open.

  “The mountains.” As the doors shushed closed, I felt a tingle at being alone with Montgomery in such a small space. He stood close enough for our arms to brush, and the fine hairs on my forearms stood up at the brief contact.

  “Skiing?”

  He half-turned as he spoke, and I found myself pressed into the corner of the elevator, a stainless steel rail digging into my back at waist height. I looked up, and my explanation died on my lips at the expression in his eyes. I gripped the rail with both hands to keep from flinging my arms around his neck.

  “I could go with you,” he said in a low voice, bending so his lips almost touched my ear. “Skiing, a soak in the hot tub, a glass of brandy in front of a crackling fire … sounds like fun.” His lips grazed my ear, then whispered across my cheek to the corner of my mouth.

  My mind ran with the scene he sketched, adding a sheepskin rug and subtracting unnecessary distractions like clothes. My whole body buzzed and I felt light-headed. My lips parted. If I turned my head slightly …

  The elevator thudded to a halt, and Montgomery put a quick body’s width between us as the doors opened to admit two orderlies wheeling a gurney.

  “We’ll have you down to X-ray in a jiff, sir,” the black orderly said, tucking a blanket more securely around the old man on the gurney. Age spots speckled the man’s rubbery scalp, and a nose like an ax blade dominated his thin face. Sharp eyes shifted from me to Montgomery, and he sniffed deeply, nostrils flaring. Apparently, he picked up the scent of pheromones and desire, because he cackled and shook a bony finger at me. “Not in an elevator, you shouldn’t,” he said. “In my day, ladies didn’t—”

  To my fury, I felt myself blushing. I darted out of the elevator as the doors began to close, tossing a quick “Later” over my shoulder to Montgomery. Listening to the old man’s litany of what ladies didn’t do back in his day wasn’t on my agenda. Besides, I’d bet they did, although maybe not with him—and I wasn’t going to with Montgomery, I told myself, taking the stairs two at a time. He was younger than I was. He lived for the adrenaline rush of danger, like my fighter pilot husband had. He was hotter than an erupting volcano, my undisciplined side pointed out. Yeah, well, I didn’t want to get burned.

  Pushing through the lobby doors, I welcomed the cold that knifed through me. By the time I reached my Subaru, I’d compelled my mind to shove my id back into its cave and concentrate on the case.

  14

  I reached the outskirts of Estes Park three hours later, as dusk edged into night and snow began to fall. I’d hit rush hour in Denver and been enmeshed in traffic heading west for a weekend’s skiing. Lucky bums. Now, tired and stiff, I wanted a room, a good meal, and a single-malt Scotch, not necessarily in that order. My cogitations about the case on the drive up had left me with a slight headache and no answers. I had a handful of facts but couldn’t line them up with supportable conclusions. Fact one: Dmitri Fane was missing, either willingly or un. Fact two: Someone had attempted to kill Yuliya Bobrova, Dmitri’s coach. Fact three: Dara Peterson, Dmitri’s pair partner, had also dropped out of sight. Fact four: The Olympic trials started next week, and if Peterson and Fane didn’t compete, Trevor Anthony and his partner were likely to win trips to the Olympics. The only common denominator I could see was Dmitri Fane, but I was darned if I could pinpoint a motive for his disappearance.

  If Trevor Anthony (or anyone else) wanted to stop Dmitri skating, he (or she) could accomplish that by getting rid of Dmitri. There was no need for the attack on Bobrova or D
ara’s disappearance. If Dmitri was into something hinky—say, dealing drugs—and disappeared himself, why come back to beat up Bobrova? How did Dara’s disappearance fit into that scenario? Gaagh. I hit the steering wheel. I wasn’t going to think about it any more tonight. Motel. Food. Scotch.

  I turned into the parking lot of the first motel I came to, across Route 36 from Lake Estes, and secured a room by the ice and vending machines. Pausing in the room only long enough to dump my overnight bag and brush my teeth, I sallied forth in search of sustenance. Unlike the ski resorts, Estes Park is more of a summer town than a winter town, with its main attraction being Rocky Mountain National Park a couple of miles north. Consequently, the sidewalks weren’t crowded as I hiked a few blocks from my motel to find a restaurant. I enjoyed an elk steak and a Glenmorangie in a restaurant decorated in the rustic lodge mode favored in the mountains: exposed log walls, upholstery patterned with deer or bears, a taxidermied moose head reproaching diners with its glassy eyes, and a roaring fire. I enjoyed a second Scotch by the fire, tipped my server generously, and headed back to the motel to find a note tacked to my door. The gist of it was “No hot water until midday Saturday.” I glanced down the hall to see similar notes on all the doors. Damn. A freezing cold shower had about as much appeal as rolling naked in the snow.

  An idea hit. Why not check out Bobrova’s cabin now and hit the road for home? The traffic would be lighter heading south, and I could be basking in my hot tub by eleven thirty or midnight. The Glenmorangie made the idea seem like a good one, and I quickly retrieved my bag and checked out. Memorizing my MapQuested directions to the cabin by the dome light in my car, I hit the road again, turning south on Route 7. Almost immediately, I slipped the Subaru into low gear as the road headed uphill at a steep angle, slicked by the still-falling snow. Lights glowed from houses clustered on my left, while a dark area on the right was probably a meadow. My headlights skittered off red eyes on the shoulder, and I hit my brakes, fishtailing slightly, as six elk sauntered across the road in front of me, unfazed by my presence. My heart beat faster at the near miss—no one wins in a car-elk collision—and I pressed the gas gently as the last elk’s white butt bounded out of sight.

  I passed mile marker seven and the dude ranch that were my landmarks and looked for the driveway that should lead to the cabin. I missed it the first time and flipped a U-ey, cursing the snow that was making it tough to read the house numbers nailed to trees. I found the number on my second pass and urged the Subaru into the slight gap between the trees that appeared to be a driveway. The grade was steep and the road unpaved. The car lurched over a small boulder and nosed into a shallow ditch to the left of the driveway, wheels spinning uselessly. Damn, damn, double damn. I threw it into reverse, and the car rocked back onto the driveway. Thank God. I might have to walk to the cabin from here, but at least I wasn’t stuck for the night. Grabbing a flashlight from my glove box and my ski parka from the backseat, I abandoned the Subaru and headed uphill on foot.

  The cone of light from my flashlight showed only a short length of driveway. When I scanned it to either side, it glanced off the trunks of lodgepole pines and scrub oaks that merged into an impenetrable wall of darkness a few feet off the driveway. I shivered and slipped my arms into my parka, zipping it to my chin. I trudged uphill. A tenth of a mile later, my feet were cold, the hems of my jeans heavy with snow, and I was contemplating suing the hot-waterless motel for breach of contract resulting in RSD … really stupid decision-making. Just then, a glimmer of light on my right told me I’d arrived. I studied the clearing. I could make out the bulk of the cabin as a darker rectangle against the snowy background of trees. A faint light seeped from beneath a door and illuminated a step. A stair with a boot print captured in the inch of snow coating it, I discovered as I crept closer. Someone had been here since it started snowing. Someone with boots several sizes larger than mine. I held my breath and listened. I heard nothing from inside. Should I aim for surprise and burst through the door unannounced (assuming it was unlocked), or try the socially acceptable route?

  I knocked. “Dmitri?” My voice sounded small, deadened by snow and wilderness and darkness. “Hello?”

  Nothing. I tried the knob. It turned. Avoiding the boot print, I stepped across the threshold and found myself in a windowless laundry room crowded with a washer, dryer, utility sink, and small rowboat propped against the wall. The light came from a Nemo night-light plugged into a socket six inches above the floor. Something smelled off, maybe mildewy clothes left in the washer. I left the door open to air out the space. Cautiously, I inched into the room, my boots skidding on tired linoleum. My hip clanged into the dryer. Shit! I stilled, but heard no response from inside. Impatient now, and sensing nothing but emptiness, I pushed open the interior door, groping for a light switch along the wall. I flicked it. Nothing.

  I swept the beam of the flashlight in front of me. For a moment, I thought someone had left the windows open and snow had drifted into the room. A second glance, however, showed me that the drifts were stuffing from inside the sofa and easy chairs. Someone had searched this room much more thoroughly—and viciously—than Dmitri’s apartment. I scuffed forward through the debris of confettied paper from an overturned shredder—a strange item for a mountain retreat—and feathers from eviscerated pillows. Glass shards from a shattered TV and computer monitor glinted when the light flashed over them. The beam glanced off an old rotary phone, an antler chandelier, a Coors can lodged against a space heater, and the stainless steel of appliances in the kitchen, a continuation of the living room/dining room delineated by parquet flooring rather than the great room’s low-pile carpet. My steps slowed as I neared the kitchen and saw a dark, asymmetric puddle staining the floor. I trained the flashlight on it and bent over to confirm my suspicions. I sniffed. Blood. A lot of blood. Not totally hardened, by the look of it, so fairly recent blood. Maybe Dmitri—or whoever had been staying here—had shot himself an elk and dressed it on the kitchen floor, but somehow I didn’t think so. I backed up a step, reaching for my cell phone to dial 911.

  The same smell from the laundry room was much stronger in here, and I finally identified it as my finger paused over the nine on my cell phone: gas. I needed to get out. Breathing shallowly now, my head beginning to thump, I sprinted toward the laundry room, tripping over a bolster by the couch. I skidded several feet on my knees, regained my feet, and reached the laundry room as a phone began to ring behind me. Two more steps— Whump! The force of the cabin exploding lifted me from the threshold and slammed me into a drift at the base of a tree. My head thudded against the trunk and I blacked out.

  15

  Gigi Goldman shifted from one cheek to the other in the driver’s seat of the Hummer, trying not to rock the parabolic microphone she had aimed at the window of Tattoo4U. Who knew your rear end could fall asleep? After two hours of sitting in the small lot across the street from the shop, with the temperature steadily dropping, her whole body felt as tight as Joan Rivers’s face. She hadn’t been able to figure out how to hook the recorder up to the microphone, so she was having to take notes on the conversations from inside the shop, most of which had to do, not surprisingly, with the choosing and application of tattoos.

  There hadn’t been a lot of activity in or around the shop. Pedestrian traffic had been light, with the bulk of it ducking into the liquor store two doors down from Tattoo4U and emerging minutes later with brown bags or a six-pack. One old bum, drunk maybe, stayed slumped beside the liquor store door, the bottle in his hand traveling to his mouth at regular intervals. He wore a shapeless coat and wiped his mouth with the scarf wound around his neck. The convenience store with the Asian signs had seen steady traffic, too, and Gigi was wondering if she could dash over there to use the bathroom when a slim male figure emerged from the door of Tattoo4U. Gigi updated her notes.

  Next to “White male, 20s, black Megadeth sweatshirt, arr 4:13pm,” she wrote “Dep 5:02pm.” Nothing of interest had transpired during his time
in the shop, and Gigi looked at her sparse notes with despair. She wasn’t one step closer to finding Kungfu than when she arrived. It had taken her close to half an hour and two changes of location to figure out how to set up and aim the mike to pick up the conversations inside the shop, and it worked a treat, but no one was saying anything worth listening to. She didn’t care if the man who’d left got the barbed wire tattooed around his left bicep or his right.

  A movement at the door caught her eye. It was Graham, flipping over a CLOSED sign. He didn’t emerge, so Gigi supposed he must exit by a back door. Should she follow him? She reached for the ignition as the sound of a door opening skritched over the microphone. Must be the back door, Gigi realized, since the front entrance remained deserted.

  “You! I was expecting—” The voice was Graham’s, tenser and more clipped than Gigi had heard him earlier, his Australian accent pronounced.

  “He’s not happy.” The newcomer had a flat, almost monotone voice that was unsettling in its blandness, Gigi thought. Sinister. She reached for the notebook.

  “Look, mate, I promise—”

  “Not good enough. The kid—”

  Gigi’s brows drew together. Kid? Were they talking about Kungfu? She leaned forward, as if being closer to the dashboard would help her hear better. She missed a few words as papers rustled.

  “—fix him,” the stranger was saying. Then, “You do good work. When?”

  A thudding sound drowned Graham’s response.

  Sweat beaded in the valley between Gigi’s breasts as she struggled to take down the conversation word for word. It didn’t sound like they were talking about tattoos. Could she be listening to a drug deal, as Charlie had suspected?

  A movement to Gigi’s left caught her eye. The bum near the liquor store had pushed to his feet, leaving his bottle behind. Moving with swift strides that suggested he was neither drunk nor old, he slipped into the dark gap between Tattoo4U and the dry-cleaning store. Gigi could barely make him out in the darkness, but he seemed to have climbed onto something—a Dumpster?—and to be peering into the small window on the side of Tattoo4U. He didn’t look remotely drunk. As she watched, he pried at the bottom of the window frame with his fingertips.