Snow Place to Die

by Mary Daheim

  “It’d been a long day,” Gene allowed. “I headed straight for the tub.”

  “I read for a few minutes,” Ava said, pulling up the high collar of her flannel nightgown. “Then I watched the storm through the window.”

  “I went over my notes for tomorrow’s session,” Killegrew recalled. “We start at nine, with breakfast at eight.”

  To Judith’s surprise, no one protested the announcement. Nadia, however, sagged in her place on the sofa. “I haven’t checked the food supplies,” she said in apology. “I’m not sure what…”

  “We’ll do the meals,” Judith volunteered. “We might as well make ourselves useful.”

  “Thank you!” Nadia’s slim shoulders slumped in relief. “Ordinarily, it would be no problem, but so much has happened, and it’s getting so late, and I…”

  “Now, now,” Killegrew said, “don’t be so hard on yourself. Even I can put a piece of toast in the breader. I mean, bread in the toaster. Ha-ha!”

  The few responding laughs were feeble. As before, Killegrew led the first elevator flight, with Ward, Gene, and this time, Margo. Ava had held back, taking Nadia by the arm. The two women spoke briefly, then Nadia joined the others by the elevator.

  “She’s worn out,” Ava said in a low voice. “I told her I’d clean this stuff up. I’m kind of wired anyway.”

  “I thought you were tired,” Renie said.

  Ava watched Russell, Nadia, Andrea, and Max get into the elevator. “I am, but I don’t think I could sleep. It just didn’t seem to me that we were getting anywhere. Gene’s first idea was better. What’s the point in asking all these questions? This isn’t a game of Clue, it’s real life.”

  “You’re right,” Judith noted as the three women began collecting the dirty glasses. “Nobody has a real alibi. But of course they didn’t mention what happened a year ago. Do you remember much about it?”

  Ava used her shoulder to open the dining room door. “You mean that Friday afternoon when we presume Barry must have been killed? I’ve certainly been thinking about it. The problem is, it didn’t seem important at the time. It’s all kind of fuzzy now.”

  Entering the kitchen, Ava stopped on the threshold. Her face tightened, the strong, handsome features locked in what might have been grief or horror or both.

  “Damn!” she breathed. “You say you found Leon slumped against that counter?”

  “That’s right.” Judith gestured at the dessert plate where angel food cake crumbs lay scattered on the cold marble counter.

  “Horrible.” Ava took a couple of slow, deliberate steps into the kitchen. “How ruthless—and reckless—can a killer get? It’s absolutely terrifying.” Her smooth, nut-brown skin took on a sallow tinge as she clutched at her throat. “Sometimes I wonder why I ever went to work for OTIOSE.”

  “Where were you before this?” Judith inquired, wondering if she dared sweep up the cake crumbs.

  “WaCom,” Ava replied, making an obvious effort to calm herself. “I’d been there since it was founded back in the mid-’80s by Jim Clevenger, one of the computer boy wonders. Four years ago Frank Killegrew made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.” Ava’s expression was cynical. “If I’d stayed at WaCom, I’d probably be president now. As you may know, Jim died in a skiing accident last winter.”

  Judith vaguely recalled the news story, which had made page one of the local papers. Renie, however, was more aware of what went on in the world of commerce. She tipped her head to one side and looked rueful.

  “Clevenger was really sharp,” she said. “I’m surprised you left him to work for OTIOSE.”

  “Jim Clevenger was also a jerk,” Ava declared. “He was extremely hard to work for, not just demanding, but unreasonable and erratic. It was a relief to come to OTIOSE. And the money was better. At the time.”

  Judith made up her mind. She and Renie couldn’t work on a counter that was covered with cake crumbs. It wasn’t like blood splatter or gunpowder tattooing. As long as the body had been moved, there was no evidence to preserve. She rinsed off the glass plate, brushed the bigger pieces of cake into a garbage bag, and wiped the counter clean. If there’d been fingerprints, more were to come. People, even corporate executives, tended to congregate in the kitchen. The crime scene was bound to be disturbed. This was a working kitchen, and Judith had mouths to feed.

  “…So much competition in the industry these days,” she overheard Renie say to Ava. “Which reminds me, what’s going on with the Alien Tel lawsuit? I did a project for them last October, and I heard their suits were going up against your suits in court.”

  Ava shook her head, a despairing gesture that sent her long, dark hair rippling around her shoulders. “I’m keeping my mouth shut on that one. But you’re right. It’s a matter of record. The case comes up in superior court next month.”

  “It sounded kind of cut-and-dried,” Renie remarked, loading dirty cocktail glasses into the dishwasher. “Alien Tel likes to call itself ‘An Out of This World Telecommunications Company,’ but they got caught poaching off of some of OTIOSE’s microwave towers. Maybe they should have launched a space satellite instead.”

  “They’re small, they’re new, they thought they could get away with it.” Ava shrugged.

  “I heard from one of their p.r. types,” Renie continued, unwilling to let the topic rest, “that Alien Tel agreed to pay for usage along with any fines or penalties. But OTIOSE wants to make a public example of Alien Tel.”

  “That’s possible.” Ava had turned her back on Renie and was putting a couple of empty liquor bottles into the recycling bin.

  “I never heard of Alien Tel,” Judith said, feeling left out of the conversation. “Are they located around here?”

  “Their customer base is mostly east of the mountains,” Renie replied. “That’s where they butted heads with OTIOSE. As I recall, one of the towers was up here near the summit.”

  Ava didn’t respond directly. “I think we’ve got everything cleared away,” she said, dusting off her hands. “I’ll make one last check of the lobby, then I’m heading for bed. Good night.”

  The cousins watched her leave. “Touchy, touchy,” murmured Renie.

  “I didn’t think so,” Judith said. “You can’t blame her for not tattling about a big lawsuit.”

  Renie opened the refrigerator door and took out two carrot sticks and a radish. “It’s no secret, coz. It’s been in the paper. You know, the business section, which you only use to line the bird cage. Except you don’t have a bird cage because you don’t have a bird.”

  “I think I call it my mother’s apartment,” Judith remarked absently.

  “Anyway, the whole thing should have been settled out of court months ago,” Renie went on, popping the radish in her mouth. “But OTIOSE refused to deal. The Alien folks told me it was a personal vendetta.”

  Judith, who hadn’t been terribly interested in the court case, now focused her full attention on Renie. “You mean Frank Killegrew?”

  Renie shook her head. “I mean Gene Jarman. His ex-wife, Sabine Bristow-Jarman, is the attorney for Alien Tel. He’s out to get her, and damn the expense. Gene’s not really a trial attorney, but he’s had some experience and intends to try the case himself.”

  “Killegrew must support the suit,” Judith said, taking one last look around the kitchen.

  “Publicly, yes,” Renie replied, following Judith through the laundry room to the back stairs. “Now I want to know why Ava wouldn’t talk.”

  “Are you referring to motive?” Judith asked over her shoulder.

  “There’s got to be one, right?” Renie said as they ascended the stairs. “You got any better ideas?”

  Judith made a frustrated gesture with her hands. “That’s where I feel at a loss. I don’t know these people, and I certainly don’t know anything about the business world.”

  The cousins stopped talking as they proceeded down the hall. It seemed to Judith that an unnatural calm had settled over the lodge. Not only had the wind
died down, but there were no noises coming from any of the guest rooms. Yet Judith had a feeling that behind the closed doors, none of the guests were sleeping soundly.

  “You forgot your snack,” Renie said after they got to their own room.

  “I lost my appetite,” Judith admitted. “Finding a dead body on the kitchen counter will do that.”

  Judith and Renie decided to sleep in the bathrobes provided by the lodge. They rinsed out their underwear, then realized that the garments probably wouldn’t dry in the chilly room. Renie suggested that they take their things down to the laundry room and put them in the dryer; Judith told her she wasn’t going back downstairs for a million bucks.

  “There’s no telling what—or who—we’d find this time,” she said, piling kindling and logs into the fireplace. “Let’s hang the stuff next to the hearth and hope for the best.”

  “I’m game,” said Renie, flopping down on one of the twin beds and lighting a cigarette. “Gamy, too, if we have to stay here very long.”

  “We can wear the robes and do another load of laundry tomorrow,” Judith said, wishing Renie hadn’t decided to smoke just before they retired for the night. “But we only do it when other people are around.”

  “Good thinking.” Renie, who had unearthed a glass ashtray bearing the imprint of the old Milwaukee Road railway company, tapped her cigarette. “Bad thinking,” she added.

  “About what?” Judith had slipped under the covers and already had her eyes closed. “I really wish you wouldn’t smoke in bed.”

  “Motive. If Gene’s on the spot, he should have been one of the victims,” Renie reasoned. “Why kill a lowly staff assistant like Barry?”

  “You are watching that cigarette, aren’t you?” Judith opened one eye.

  “Leon Mooney I could understand,” Renie continued. “He controls the budget. If he went to Gene—or Frank Killegrew—and said ‘The window is closed on wasteful litigation’, then Gene might want him out of the way. But that would only be a temporary stop-gap. Someone would be promoted almost immediately, and the funds would still be cut off.”

  “Once when Dan was smoking in bed, he melted his Ding-Dong.” Judith rolled over, her back to Renie.

  “Promotions!” Renie exclaimed. “Who’ll get Leon’s job? Nobody here. It’ll be some assistant vice president from treasury or accounting.”

  “Coz…” Judith’s voice was pleading. “Will you shut up, put your cigarette out, and turn off the damned light?”

  “Okay, okay,” Renie sighed. “It’s not like you to avoid a guessing game involving murder.”

  “It is at one o’clock in the morning when I’m exhausted. Good night.”

  Renie not only put her cigarette out, she threw it into the grate, checked the lingerie hanging from the fireplace tools, took one last look at the falling snow, and clicked off the bedside lamp.

  “Good night,” she said to Judith.

  Judith was already asleep.

  Seven A.M. came far too early. Neither Judith nor Renie felt fully rested. Indeed, the vigor Renie had shown the previous night had degenerated into grouchiness.

  “Don’t talk to me, and you’ll be okay,” she snarled when Judith came out of the bathroom.

  Judith opened her mouth to express agreement, saw the black look on Renie’s face, and clamped her lips shut. The cousins dressed in silence, though Judith had to fight down an urge to complain when Renie lighted her first cigarette of the day.

  The sun was almost up, but it was hidden behind heavy gray clouds. The snow was still falling, though not as heavily, and the wind had died down. That was not necessarily good news as far as Judith was concerned. If the wind changed, perhaps coming in from the west, the snow clouds might blow away.

  It was Renie who finally spoke, just as they were about to go downstairs. “Don’t forget to give Frank or Nadia those items that belong to Barry,” she said.

  “Right.” Judith opened her big shoulder bag while Renie unlocked the door and stepped into the corridor.

  “Well?” said Renie, fists on hips. “Let’s hit it.”

  Judith turned a hapless face to her cousin. “They’re gone.”

  “What’s gone?” Renie had virtually shouted. She gave a quick look down the hall, then lowered her voice. “What are you talking about? Barry’s ID?”

  “All of it,” Judith whispered. “Credit cards, notebook, the whole bit.”

  “Jeez.” Renie reeled around the corridor, then shoved Judith back up against the door. “Did you lock up when we left last night to go downstairs?” she asked under her breath.

  “No. Did you?”

  “No.” Renie grimaced. “I didn’t think about it.”

  “Who knew I had the stuff in my purse?”

  Renie appeared to concentrate. “Everybody. You mentioned it in the lobby while Gene Jarman was questioning you.”

  “So I did.” Judith slumped against the door. “What’s the point?”

  Renie grabbed her by the arm. “Who knows? But we can’t stand out in the hall and talk about it. Let’s go.”

  The kitchen looked exactly as they had left it the previous night. Judith had planned a simple self-serve breakfast of cereal, toast, fruit, juice, and coffee. But there were eggs in the refrigerator and bacon in the freezer. She decided she might as well improvise.

  “It had to be the notebook,” Judith said, filling the big coffee urn. “The rest was all the usual plastic.”

  “But there was nothing in the notebook,” Renie noted, apparently jolted out of her early morning mood by the theft. “The pages had been ruined.”

  “Whoever took it didn’t know that,” Judith said, measuring coffee into the urn’s big metal basket. “I don’t think I mentioned how the damp had ruined the notebook.”

  “You didn’t.” Renie put two pounds of bacon into the microwave and hit the defroster button.

  Judith carried the urn into the dining room. “Tell me everything you know about these people,” she said when she got back to the kitchen.

  “You didn’t want to hear it last night,” Renie said in a contrary tone.

  “That’s because my brain had died of exhaustion. Give, coz.”

  Renie removed the bacon from the microwave and began laying strips in a big skillet. “I don’t know that much. You’ve already heard about Frank Killegrew—he was a former Bell System vice president who decided to start up his own company. While he claims to be from Billings, Montana, he was actually born and raised in some itty-bitty town about thirty miles away. His background was hard-scrabble, a fact he likes to hide. To his credit, Frank went to college, in Butte, I think, then straight to the phone company after he graduated with an engineering degree. His rise wasn’t exactly meteoric, but it was steady. He and his wife—I think her name is Patrice—have two grown children. Patrice is a typical corporate wife—pampered and spoiled. More so than most, because I think her family had money. Frank golfs, skis, and has a big cruiser. They live in one of those plush neighborhoods on the lake and have a summer home on another lake in Montana.”

  “Good work,” Judith said approvingly. “You seem to know Mr. Killegrew quite well.”

  “Not really.” Renie was opening cereal boxes. “I’ve designed some brochures that featured his bio. Some of the other, more personal stuff I’ve picked up from the downtown grapevine.”

  “How about Ward Haugland?” Judith asked as she began to cut up a big Crenshaw melon.

  “A native Texan, another engineering degree, another guy who rose through the Bell System ranks,” Renie said. “He served as an assistant vice president under Frank, then left with him to form the new company. He also golfs, skis, and has a boat.”

  “Is that required at the executive level?” Judith asked with a little smile.

  “In a way,” Renie replied, quite serious. “It’s part of the old boy network. If, for example, you play golf with the boss, you’re more inclined to get the next promotion. If you golf, ski, and have a boat, you’re a sh
oo-in. Or so the passed-over, non-sports enthusiasts would have you believe.”

  “Is Ward married?” Judith inquired, tackling a cantaloupe.

  “Definitely, to a world-class hypochondriac. Helen Haugland has suffered more diseases than the AMA allows.”

  “Is she also spoiled and pampered?”

  “Not to mention coddled and overprotected. I’ve never met her—she never goes anywhere except to the doctor—though come to think of it, I did meet Patrice Killegrew once,” Renie said as she turned the heat on under the bacon. “It was a couple of years ago, at some graphic design awards banquet. She was a stuck-up pill.”

  “Somebody said Leon had lived with his mother,” Judith remarked. “What else?”

  Renie shook her head. “Nothing. I think she died not long ago. Leon kept himself to himself, as they say.”

  “Except when he was keeping company with Andrea Piccoloni-Roth,” Judith pointed out.

  “So it seems. The odd couple.” Renie paused, apparently conjecturing about the unlikely pair. “Andrea and—what’s his name? Alan Roth—have a couple of teenaged boys. Roth stays home on the pretext of being a house-husband, as well as the aforementioned computer genius. I saw his picture on her desk once. He’s rather good looking, in a lean, pedantic kind of way.”

  “More of a hunk than Leon Mooney?” Judith started to smile, glanced at the counter where she’d last seen Leon, and immediately regretted the impulsive remark.

  “Not a hunk,” Renie replied. “Just…more attractive.”

  “How about Gene Jarman? I know he’s divorced and his ex-wife works for Alien Tel.”

  “That’s about all I know, too,” Renie said. “Gene strikes me as one of those black guys who doesn’t want to admit he is black. He’s very careful about his background, which I gather was an Oakland ghetto.”

  “That doesn’t sound much different than Frank Killegrew hiding the fact that he grew up in Destitute, Montana, or whatever podunk name the town is called.”

  “No, you’re right. As usual, people are people. Maybe Gene seems touchier, because he’s an attorney instead of an engineer.”