Murder on Ice

by B. T. Lord

  Five am.

  She flipped open the phone.

  “Sheriff Farnsworth here.”

  “Hey Cammie, it’s Rick. Hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “No, I’m usually up dancing like a wild woman at five am. By the way, what are you doing up at this hour? Or did you never get to bed? Never mind, I don’t want to know.”

  “Right on door number two. On my way home, I decided to drop in at the office and see if the phone you found in the parking lot was charged up.”

  Cammie instantly came awake. “And?”

  “You were right. It was Lehane Tyler’s. And you’re never going to believe who his last phone call was to.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  It was six-thirty in the morning by the time Cammie left Doc’s place. She looked up and saw the sky just beginning to lighten on the horizon, the air still and quiet. A storm was gathering itself, allowing this lull before it hit in all its ferocity. Not only in the atmosphere, but in Cammie’s soul as well.

  Climbing into the Explorer, she went over the conversation she’d had with Rick, followed by the one she’d had with Emmy. Instead of feeling triumphant that she’d finally figured out the mystery of Eli’s death, it left her with a sense of disappointment. Not at the recent events, but at herself.

  Dear God, it’s been staring at me the whole time. The whole damned time! How could I have been so blind?

  With a sense of unease of what this day would bring, she put the Explorer into drive and slowly pulled out of the darkened driveway.

  Cammie couldn’t believe her luck. There it was, parked as inconspicuously as possible. Scrambling out of the Explorer, she peeked inside its windows. When she tried the driver’s door, she found it unlocked.

  What do you know? This is one door you didn’t lock.

  She slid inside and poked around, checking the compartments and door pockets. With her gut screaming at her to check between the seats, she reached down with her long fingers, carefully prodding along the nooks and crannies in the underworld of the passenger seat. Just as she was beginning to wonder if her instincts had failed her, she felt something cold and metallic brush against her knuckles. It took a few moments of maneuvering, but she finally brought her hand up, the cold chain wrapped in her palm.

  “Jesus,” she whispered under her breath as she looked down at the pendant and chain hanging from her hand.

  It was Jace’s necklace.

  She placed the necklace around her neck. Bending over she was about to look back under the passenger seat when the driver’s door suddenly swung open. She looked up in time to see a revolver shoved into her face.

  “Get out slowly. You make any sudden moves, it’s over.”

  Quickly sizing up the situation, Cammie had no choice but to do as she was told. “You eluded me for a quite a while,” she replied, trying to stall for time.

  “Well, the chase is finally over and you lose. Now open the trunk.”

  “There’s no point to this,” she replied calmly as she walked to the back of the vehicle.

  “Oh I think there is. Now open it before I end up doing something I really don’t want to do,” came the response.

  The trunk was partway open when she felt a sudden shock of pain in the back of her head. Just before she lost consciousness, she heard words that chilled her to the bone. “Not yet anyway.”

  Then everything went black.

  The snow was beginning to filter down, the light, fluffy snowflakes starting their tumble downwards. The delicacy of the flurries was deceiving. Before long, these flakes would turn deadly, obliterating everything and everyone that dared stand in its path.

  Cammie slowly opened her eyes, then quickly shut them as a tremendous wall of pain hit her head. Bile rose up in her throat. She took deep gulping breaths and the nausea gradually subsided, but her headache still ravaged against her temples. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was. Then she realized she was lying down in the back of a moving vehicle. When she tried to move, she realized her hands were tied behind her back.

  She opened her eyes and blinked against the light of day before glancing at the driver.

  “Did you really have to hit me so hard?” she asked testily.

  Blue eyes looked back at her through the rear view mirror. “Had to make sure you were out. You’ve got one hard head, Sheriff.”

  “So I’ve been told,” Cammie muttered. She laid her head against the rough thin carpeting and once again took deep breaths as another wave of nausea hit her. When it passed, she turned back towards the driver.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Nothing worse than a backseat driver. Don’t worry. Another couple of minutes and we’ll be there.”

  “You’re not going to get away with this, Audella.”

  Audella laughed. “Oh, really? I’ve already gotten away with two murders. One more won’t matter.”

  Her voice had changed. The timber was lower. She was no longer the dumb blonde with the high pitched, New York accent. In her place was a cold-hearted, calculated killer.

  “My deputy knows where I was going,” Cammie responded.

  “Yeah, but we’re not there now, are we?” Audella shrugged. “Just one more reason to disappear once I get rid of you. Just when I was liking this town. Not.” She chuckled.

  “How? You’re broke, remember?”

  “Ah, so that’s how you figured things out. I thought I’d covered my tracks pretty well.” She clicked her tongue in mock disgust. “Timing is everything, isn’t it Sheriff? If you’d arrived just a wee bit later, I would have been out of here. By the time that ham actor realized I’d stiffed him on the bill, I could have been in New Hampshire. Or Canada. Anywhere but this godforsaken ice cube of a place. But noooooo. You have to be a fucking early riser and arrive just as I’m leaving. Oh well. C’est la vie.” She chuckled. “Indulge me, Sheriff. How did you figure out it was me? There has to be more than the fact Lehane and I are bankrupt to lead back to me.”

  “Untie me and I’ll tell you.”

  Audella guffawed. “Yeah. Right. Tell you what. I have something you want and you have something I want. Let’s do a trade. You spill the beans on how you realized I was your murderer and I’ll spill the beans on my motive. There always is a motive, isn’t there?”

  Audella was enjoying this. Cammie wasn’t. But keeping silent wasn’t going to help her. By keeping Audella talking, there was always a chance she could find out something that would get her out of her predicament. Infinitesimal chance. But worth taking.

  “I found out Eli was your husband’s last remaining client,” she replied, making sure not to mention she’d gotten this information from Emmy’s prodigious talent with a computer. “Then I found out you guys are broke. You’ve got bills up the wazoo; all your properties mortgaged up to the hilt. It was the Chevrolet Equinox you were driving, however, that clinched it.”

  “It’s a cute car.”

  “I’m sure it is. But a couple who were so hung up on appearances would be driving a much flashier car. I saw Eli’s Navigator with all the bells and whistles. Bet you had one just like it.”

  “An Escalade, actually.”

  “It must have killed you showing up at Eli’s funeral, dressed to the nines and flashing all those diamonds, knowing that instead of a Mercedes or an Escalade, you were driving a Chevy.”

  Preoccupied with Eli’s funeral and with interrogating Carolyn, Cammie hadn’t made the connection of seeing Lehane and Audella drive away from the funeral in an Equinox until her early morning phone calls with Rick and Emmy. She’d lain in bed, stunned to see the pieces of the puzzle finally fall into place.

  “Appearances are everything,” Audella replied drily.

  “Apparently. I’ll bet those diamonds you wore are fake too. The ads are right. Zirconium really looks like the real deal.”

  “Especially to a bunch of backwood hicks like those women at the funeral,” Audella laughed scornfully. “I could have worn diamonds from
a Cracker Jack box and they still would have been impressed.”

  Cammie ignored her insults. Instead, she said, “You screwed up on the northern lights.”

  “What do you mean?” Audella answered indignantly.

  “At the funeral, I heard someone mention the northern lights being an omen of evil. Then you said you thought they were nice. At first I thought you were talking about your Jimmy Choos. But when everything came together in my head, I realized you were talking about the northern lights.”

  “So what? They are nice.”

  “How often do you think we get the northern lights up here?”

  “How the fuck should I know?”

  “For someone as careful as you, I’m surprised you didn’t take that into account. You see, we don’t get them that often. The night they appeared was the same night Eli died. Not the next day, when you and Lehane claimed you arrived in Twin Ponds.”

  Audella thought about it for a moment, then lifted her shoulders. “Faux pas. My bad.”

  “What really clinched it for me was Lehane’s death. You know, if you hadn’t killed him, I never would have put two and two together. But you had to get rid of him.”

  “How do you know that?” she asked despite herself.

  “The stroke of luck that allowed you to set up a drunk and unconscious Jace also allowed you to take advantage of the sudden appearance of Eddie Paltrow. We recovered Lehane’s phone. We know he was in the process of dialing my cell. But he never got to complete it. Instead of you inciting an argument that you knew would stress him out to the point where he’d have to take his pills, Eddie did it for you. You knew Lehane’s history with Eddie. So you hid the pills, hoping we would believe it was Eddie who took them. When Lehane came back to your room, you withheld the pills from him. You watched him die. You then messed up the room to make it look like you’d been frantically searching for his medication.”

  “Shit happens.”

  “That’s why he was such a mess at the funeral. He was more than grieving, wasn’t he? He was racked with guilt. And just when he couldn’t take it anymore and was about to cave in, you decided to take matters into your own hands. ”

  “For a sports agent, you’d think he’d have learned to handle stress better. Tsk tsk. As for Eddie, what can I say? The schmuck is always getting into situations that are way over his head.”

  “You’re giving him too much credit. The fact is, you messed up on one little detail.”

  “Oh?”

  “Tudor said Lehane and Eddie’s argument could be heard throughout the inn. He heard it halfway across the lobby through a closed door. Your room overlooks the spot where they fought. Now if you had told me you’d heard the argument,that would have made more sense. But you denied hearing the argument. You denied knowing why Lehane was upset.”

  “Mmmmm. Guess I’ll have to pay more attention to details next time.”

  “You didn’t take the sedatives Doc gave you, did you?”

  “Who has time to be laid up in bed? I’ve got things to do, places to go, people to meet.” She looked pointedly into the rear view mirror at Cammie. “Pain in the ass sheriffs to dispose of.”

  “Okay, so I told you how I figured out it was you. Now it’s your turn. What made you shoot Eli? Was he turning off the money faucet? Was that why you shot an already dying man?”

  “Never let it be said that Audella Tyler didn’t honor a deal.” She paused, gathering her thoughts. “You, dear Sheriff, would know better than anyone the kind of damage Eli could inflict on a person’s life.” She took a right turn and the tires skidded. She turned the wheel a few times and managed to get the vehicle back on the road. Cammie noticed the immediate change in terrain. The car was bouncing up and down, taking her body and aching head with it. “Christ, I can’t wait to get away from this fucking weather and this endless wilderness. Why would you ever want to stay here? With your looks and experience, you could live anywhere. Now where were we? Oh yes, you wanted to know why I shot a dying man. I shot him because he deserved it. It’s that simple.” She started to laugh.

  “That’s pretty cold, you know,” Cammie responded.

  “Not really. You see, when I first met Lehane, he was loaded. Anything I wanted, I got. Jewels, furs, cars, vacations, fancy homes. We even owned our own private jet. Not bad for an Italian girl from Brooklyn. It was the only reason to marry a man almost twenty years older than I was.”

  “I didn’t give a shit about the women. I knew about them, of course, but as long as the money kept pouring in, he could screw as many as he wanted. Unfortunately, it was when Eli got him involved in drugs that everything went down the toilet. Mr. Big Shot Hockey Player could handle all that. That idiot husband of mine couldn’t. All our money went up Lehane’s nose. One by one his clients left him until there was only Kelley left. Then the asshole has to go and get cancer. Which, by the way, I wasn’t the least sorry about. It’s karma, if you ask me. If he hadn’t dragged Lehane with him into all his debauchery, we would have been golden. Do you have any idea what it’s like to watch everything fall apart? We lost the houses, the cars, the jet. Eli owed us. If it wasn’t for him, Lehane never would have gotten involved in all that. I tried to get Lehane to talk to Eli. Tell him about our situation. He wouldn’t do it. Too much pride. So I did. And what do you know? Turns out Kelley had a conscience after all.”

  “So you set up Helios Inc. to facilitate Eli’s payments?”

  Audella looked in the rearview mirror and blinked in surprise. “My, my, you are good. Yes, I did. I used to work for a high powered tax lawyer. I know how these things work. No taxes and best of all, Lehane could keep his pride. He actually thought we were making money on some family investments.” She guffawed. “Eli kept paying and we were great for a few years. Then out of the blue Eli calls and tells Lehane he’s going to end it. Had some issue with the way his mother died. He didn’t want to go out the same way.

  “Lehane begged him not to do anything until we got there. Kelley promised he’d do that. While Lehane made our plane reservations I called Kelley back. I had to know if he’d made any financial arrangements for us. He told me to draw up some paperwork and he’d sign it. But of course by the time we got there, he was too far gone. The son of a bitch lied to me.”

  Cammie remembered something Eli had said the day he died. “People stop caring about you. All they care about is the money. You try to help them out, but they don’t quit. They don’t get up on their own two feet. They keep coming back and coming back and asking for more and more.”

  She hadn’t understood what he’d meant at the time. Now she did.

  “I was so pissed that he’d left us high and dry that I completely lost it. I grabbed my gun out of my bag and shot him.” She shook her head mournfully. “That damned Italian temper of mine did me in again. I’m really going to have to do something about it. When I found out he left you half a million, I almost went after you.” She laughed. “But if I had, we wouldn’t be having this lovely conversation now, would we?”

  “Did you throw Eli’s oxycodone bottle out into the snow?”

  Audella nodded. “Part of that temper I was telling you about. It was either throw the bottle into the snow or tear the place apart in a snit to relieve my anger. The bottle was lighter and easier.”

  “How were you able to get to Maine so quickly?”

  “Because we weren’t in Chicago, silly. We were in Boston. Lehane was determined to sign a new phenom from Boston College. Unfortunately, another agent got there first. The poor bastard just couldn’t catch a break, you know.”

  “How does Jace figure into all this?”

  “Now that is what I call divine timing. After I shot Eli and while Lehane was having his meltdown, I heard a car pull into the driveway. I peeked out the window and saw your boyfriend slumped over the steering wheel. I watched him for five minutes; he didn’t move at all. I went out there and saw that he was completely passed out. I practically had to threaten Lehane I’d shoot him to
o if he didn’t help me. I had him drag your boyfriend inside, take off his shirt, smear it in Eli’s blood and put it back on. Must be some pretty powerful drinks that Santa Claus fellow makes because through it all, your boy toy never came to once. Just mumbled a lot. By the way, I gotta tell you, that is one hunky piece of male meat. And he’s got it bad for you. Kept repeating your name over and over again. ”

  “You put the gun in Jace’s hand and pulled the trigger yourself, didn’t you?”

  “I watch those forensics shows on TV. I knew the techs would check for gunshot residue. I couldn’t very well go through all the trouble to set your boyfriend up, only to have it come out that he hadn’t shot the gun.”

  “How did you get the 38 on the plane from Chicago to Boston?”

  “I didn’t. Let’s just say I have friends in the oddest places.” She chuckled. “Since we’re playing confessions here, I have to admit, I brought the gun in case Eli needed some persuading.”

  It was Cammie’s turn to chuckle. “Eli wouldn’t have given a shit about you shooting him. He was committing suicide, remember?”

  “Now you’re being obtuse, Sheriff. It doesn’t suit you.” She sighed. “Guess I have to spell it out for you. I know Eli wouldn’t have cared if I shot him. However, he would have cared if I shot Lehane.”

  Despite herself, Cammie’s eyes widened in surprise. “God, you are beyond cold.”

  “A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. Especially where my financial future is concerned.” She paused as she took another turn, this time slower to avoid skidding. “It worked to my advantage when that moron Paltrow showed up. I knew how much he hated Eli. Can’t blame him. His wife is gorgeous – the bitch.” She laughed. “And that other woman Eli was involved with? The insurance agent? No wonder it took you so long to figure out it was me. However, I have to say I’m impressed that you finally did.”

  “If I was that good, I would have realized it was you all along.”