Last Resort of Murder (A Lacy Steele Mystery Book 9) (6 page)

“It’s Jill.”

“Who is Jill?”

“The mean trainer. Do you think
she’s asleep?” Lacy went toward her, hand outstretched.

“Stop,” Jason called.

Lacy froze, her arm reaching toward
Jill who was obviously dead. “She’s smiling.”
At least she died happy,
Lacy thought. She was also bright red. It
looked like she had died laughing.

“That’s not a smile,” Jason said.
“Do you smell that?”

Lacy surreptitiously sniffed one of
her armpits. Had the salt failed so quickly?

“Almonds,” Jason supplied. “Do you
smell almonds?”

“Sort of,” Lacy said, although her
nostrils were still filled with the scent of Lucy and all the untimely hopes
and dreams of motherhood.

“I think she was poisoned. Do you
want to stay with the body or do you want to go for help?”

“Go for help,” Lacy said. There was
no way she wanted to remain with the grimacing corpse of Jill any longer than
she had to. She shuddered thinking about it.

She jogged to the front desk,
trying to push the image of Jill’s grinning red visage from her mind. Though she
hadn’t smelled any almonds, she knew the scent indicated poisoning.

When she rounded the corner, she
came face to face with the employee who had found her in the bathroom the night
before. Flustered, she blurted the first thing that came to mind.

“There’s a woman on the floor.”

His well-manicured eyebrows arched.
“There’s a woman on the floor,” he repeated, although his words were slower and
more defined. It was clear to Lacy that he thought she was playing some sort of
game wherein she relived their meeting from the night before.

Yes,
come see! She’s in the bathroom with her fanny in the air. Remember how we did
it last night? So fun! Let’s recreate the magic, only this time bring a camera.
She forced herself to take a steadying breath and begin again.

“Jill, the trainer, has expired in
the storage closet. She’s bright red and smiling.”

If possible, the brows rose even
higher.

“Jill is bright red and smiling,”
he said.

“Stop repeating the things I say.
I’m trying to tell you a woman is dead.”

“I see,” he said. His hand slid
stealthily toward what Lacy assumed was a panic button.

“You don’t have to push that. Come
with me, and I’ll show you,” she said.

“I’m going to stay right here,” he
said, enunciating each word for the benefit of what he assumed was her deranged
mind. “Will you stay right here with me for just a minute? That’s a good girl.”

Lacy leaned against the counter,
suddenly weary. She would say that the men in white jackets were coming for
her, but here everyone wore white. She gave up trying to explain to the desk
clerk and waited instead for his backup. A minute later two bulky men in white
t-shirts showed up.

“What seems to be the problem,
ma’am?” one of them said. He kept a safe distance and one hand on his hip.
There was no gun, Lacy noted with relief, but she glimpsed a spray can she
assumed contained pepper or mace.

“Jill, the trainer, is dead.”

The men looked at her, then at each
other, then the guy behind the counter who, Lacy had finally learned, was named
Derek. Derek shrugged and tilted his head at her, the fancy resort way of
winding one’s finger around one’s ear.

“My boyfriend is waiting with her,”
Lacy said.

“Your boyfriend,” Derek said,
making sure she knew there should be air quotes around the word “boyfriend.”

“Please, if you’ll come with me
this will all be cleared up. What do you have to lose by following me?” she
said.

“We’ll follow you,” one of the men
said, his tone irritatingly placating.

Lacy stalked in front of them,
leading the way. Pettiness was coming at a terrible time, a woman was dead
after all, but she couldn’t wait to show them what for and prove she wasn’t
crazy.

They reached the storage closet.
She paused dramatically, reached for the handle, and threw open the door,
barely resisting the urge to say, “So there!”

She was turned to face the men, so
it took her a minute to process their non-reaction. Finally she spun toward the
room and saw an ordinary, if somewhat dusty, supply closet. A bucket was in the
middle of the room, the mop lying perpendicular across the floor.

“That’s a mop, ma’am,” one of the
men said.

“I know that’s a mop,” Lacy
snapped. “I’m not insane.” Although it this point sanity was looking like a dim
memory. She took a step back and mentally retraced her steps. “Wait a minute, I
think I took a wrong turn. It’s down that hallway. I have a terrible sense of
direction.”

“Sure, that’s what’s wrong here,”
one of the men couldn’t resist saying.

Lacy suppressed a sigh, retraced
her steps, and tried another hallway. This time she found the right room. When
she opened the door, Jason stood against the wall writing something on a small
piece of paper.

“Whoa, geez,” one of the men said.
Though there was clearly no point to it, he knelt beside Jill and pressed his
fingers to her neck. He would have done more, but Jason held him back.

“Don’t touch anything else. Did you
call the police?”

“No, we thought, uh…” He broke off,
glancing at Lacy.

“He thought I was crazy,” Lacy
couldn’t help volunteering. Since the resort had a strict no cell phone policy,
they had to wait while one of the men radioed the front desk and asked Derek to
call the police.

“Is she giving you that much
trouble?” Derek’s voice sliced through the stillness.

The man turned away to answer, but
Lacy could still hear him. “No, there really is a dead body. Just call the
police, Derek, and then call the manager on duty.”

After finally being summoned, the
police arrived quickly. Jason and Lacy stood aside to give statements, both
verbal and written.

“Why did you open the door to the
supply closet?” one of the officers asked.

“A self-guided tour of the
facility,” Jason said.

The officer nodded as if this made
perfect sense and wasn’t suspicious at all. Now that Jason was doing the
talking, people were treating them with respect. She knew for certain that if
she had given the same answer, she would have been scrutinized and probably
laughed at. Was it because she was a woman? Or did she give off an air of
instability? She chose to believe the former.

At last they were released to eat
breakfast. The rush was on now, and they had to wait for a table. Just as they
were seated, Sven rushed up to them, arm outstretched.

“There you are, Joan. I’ve been
looking for you.” He turned to Jason, obviously waiting for an introduction.

“Sven, this is my boyfriend, Rick,”
Lacy said. Jason blinked at her in surprise.
Wait for it,
she tried to tell him with her expression.

“Nithe to meet you. You know the
old thaying: any friend of Joan’th ith a friend of mine.”

Jason nodded as he shook Sven’s
hand, and Lacy knew the nod was for her benefit.

“I don’t know if I want to drink
this,” Lacy said. She stared at the concoction still in Sven’s hand. “Last
night I felt a little bit unwell.” And
Gigli
was a little bit of a bad movie.

“Thith ith thomething different. Bethideth,
what did I thay? You’re thuppothed to trutht me, no quethtionth.”

Lacy took the drink and downed it.
It tasted like chalk. Her gaze fell longingly on the menu. “What am I allowed
to eat this morning?”

“You jutht ate it,” Sven said. “If
you’ll exthcuthe me, I have to go find Jill for our morning meeting.”

“Uh, Sven,” Lacy called before he
could go too far. He paused. What did she say now? They hadn’t seemed close,
but it couldn’t be easy to learn your coworker was dead, especially when she
had been murdered.

“Yeth?”

“I don’t know how to say this, but
Jill is gone.”

“Gone where?”

Lacy licked her lips and glanced at
Jason, willing him to jump in anytime. He was busy staring intently as Sven,
though. He was wearing his cop face, and that was when Lacy realized he viewed
Sven as a suspect. Sweet Sven who was like a giant, blond, lisping teddy bear.
Surely Jason didn’t suspect him.

“Jill died,” Lacy said.

Sven gripped the edge of the table.
“What? How?”

“The police are looking into it,”
Jason said. “What time did you get off last night?”

Lacy wanted to kick his shin for
the abrupt question, but Sven didn’t seem to notice.

“Right after I finithed with Joan,”
Sven said. He sounded distracted. “I can’t believe thith. Jill wath tho young
and had tho much to live for.”

“Can you think of anyone who might
have had reason to harm her?” Jason asked.

“What? No. Thee wath a wonderful
perthon,” Sven said. “Exthcuthe me, I need a minute.”

He walked away from the table and Lacy
turned to Jason. “What was that about? Have you been drafted onto this police
department?”

“Habit, I guess,” Jason said. “Or
maybe morbid curiosity. Did you believe him?”

“His grief and shock seemed
genuine.”

“Those can be easily faked. What
about what he said about Jill? Did that ring true? You said you had a run in
with her yesterday.”

“That part was weird. Jill didn’t
seem like a good person, and the list of people who might want to kill her
could be endless,” Lacy said. “I wonder why Sven would say such wonderful
things about her?”

“Two possibilities: Either he’s one
of those people who can’t bring himself to say anything negative about the
deceased or he killed her and is trying to cover by pretending to like her.”

“I can’t see him killing anyone. He’s
like a big, blond teddy bear.”

“That’s right, he’s big, and I
don’t think he got that way from exercise alone. Maybe he had ‘roid rage.”

“It doesn’t seem like ‘roid rage
would end in poison, though, do you think? That seems more calculated than
bashing someone’s head in because you’re broiling with a Hulk-sized dose of
testosterone,” Lacy said.

“Here’s what’s bothering me: I
can’t claim to be an expert in poisons, but I have done some rudimentary
studies. Cyanide causes the red complexion and almond smell, but the grin is
more associated with strychnine. Why would someone use both poisons?”

“To make sure they took?” Lacy
said.

“That seems like overkill, no pun
intended.” While they talked, he finished his food. Lacy tried not to stare
longingly at his plate. She was half relieved and half remorseful that he
didn’t try to make her eat something. As far as her diet went, he had moved
from disapproval to denial. “Are you still up for skiing?”

“Do you think it’s okay? I don’t
want to be callous,” Lacy said.

“It’s not like we knew the woman.
Plus, it will help take our minds off it.”

“Okay, let’s ski,” she said. Which
one of them was more surprised over the genuine enthusiasm and excitement in
her tone? She couldn’t tell.

“What are you wearing?” Riley
asked. She was feeding baby Lucy, the second feeding since Lacy returned her
earlier that morning. Lacy still hadn’t gotten over her shock that Riley was
doing anything with her bust besides shoving it into an overpriced push-up bra.
A year ago if someone had told her that her little sister would jump into
round-the-clock nursing with both feet, she would have had laughed herself
hoarse.

“A snow suit,” Lacy said.

“Why?” Riley asked in the same tone
one might use to ask why a person had covered himself in blood and jumped in a
shark tank at feeding time.

“Because I’m going skiing, and it’s
cold,” Lacy said. She had no idea what Riley was getting at.

“Are you going skiing in 1974?”

“What’s wrong with wearing a
snowsuit?” Lacy asked. She looked down to survey herself. She was well
insulated from the cold, as well as the inevitable spills she would take
throughout the day.

Her mother emerged from the
bathroom. “Honey, where did you get that?”

“In Grandma’s closet,” Lacy said.

“I think it was your dad’s from
high school,” Frannie said.

Riley snorted a laugh.

“I don’t understand the problem.
What do people wear to ski if not snow suits?” Lacy asked.

“They wear ski clothes,” Riley
said.

“They sell clothes just for
skiing?” Lacy said.

“Duh, Lacy. They sell clothes for
everything. Didn’t the bright yellow hue of that hideous getup tip you off? You
look like
The Magic School Bus
in
human form. Any minute I’m expecting Mrs. Frizzle to pop out of your hair and
talk about taking a field trip. Why didn’t you borrow my ski clothes?”

“I didn’t know you had them,” Lacy
said. She still wasn’t convinced that her snowsuit was so bad. At least it was
warm.

Riley put up her hand and turned
away. “I can’t look at it anymore. It’s like trying to stare directly at the
sun. My retinas are burning. At least tell me you brought ski goggles.”

“I’m not a total idiot. I know the
sun is glaring on the snow. Only of course I didn’t have ski goggles, so I
brought regular sunglasses.” She put them on in time for Riley to glance at her
and groan.

“How are we sisters?” Riley asked.
“I mean, seriously, you go out there like that and someone is going to trap you
with a giant net and haul you away.”

“Exaggerate much?” Lacy said.

“No, and in your case never,” Riley
said. “Seriously, you cannot go out there like that. If not for your sake,
think of Jason. He doesn’t want to be seen with a giant stick of butter
cruising down a snow hill.”

“Jason and I are not going to be
together. He and the rest of the guys are going on the diamondback trails or
whatever the ones for experienced skiers are called. I’m going to stay on the
bunny hill where I belong. We’re going to walk out together, and that’s it.”

“You mean ‘that’s it’ like the end
of your relationship, right, because once he sees you in that, he’s only ever
going to be able to picture a corn cob when he tries to touch you,” Riley said.
“Go to the boutique right now and buy a ski outfit. Tosh’s treat.”

Lacy rolled her eyes. “I am not
buying a crazy expensive outfit for one afternoon of my life, regardless of who
pays for it. This suits me fine. I’m warm and well-padded.”

“It bodes well for you that you
like things well-padded. Remember that when you get to the asylum,” Riley said.

“Girls,” their mother said
distractedly as she rifled through her suitcase and then added, “although
Riley’s right, Lacy. You look like a banana.”

“Gee, thanks, family. I can always
count on you for a boost of self-esteem,” Lacy said. She grabbed a key and
hurried out of the room where she met the men in the hallway. Their
conversation came to a halt as they stared at her.

“What?” Lacy snapped, daring one of
them to say something. Her eyes landed on Michael as the most likely to offer
an insult.

Her father cleared his throat.
“Wow, that’s a blast from the past. I think I wore that the first time I ever
went skiing.”

Tosh snickered and tried to pretend
it was a cough.

“I like things that are retro,”
Lacy declared. Her nose was in the air, daring one of them to say anything
else. Jason remained wisely silent. Michael pressed his lips together. He
looked like he was about to explode, either with laughter or sarcasm.

“Something you wanted to say?” Lacy
asked him.

“Yes, I was going to say that you
look great. Have you lost weight?”

She blinked in surprise. “Yes.” As
of her weigh-in that morning, she had lost four pounds, no doubt due to her
ill-fated bathroom trip the night before.

“You’re pencil thin,” Michael added
and the other guys lost it.

“Ha-ha, yes, pencils are yellow,
and so am I. Good one,” Lacy said.

Jason put his arm around her
shoulders. “All right, that’s enough teasing of my girl. She’s already upset
because she lost Curious George.”

Lacy elbowed him and pulled away.

“Don’t make her cry, you guys,”
Tosh added. “She might curl up in a ball and be mistaken for a lemon.”

“I hate all of you,” Lacy said.

They passed Kimber who was heading
to the salon with Tosh’s sisters. “Oh, girl,” Kimber said, shaking her head in
dismay.

“I think it’s cute,” one of Tosh’s sisters
said. “She looks like a baby duck.”

The guys cracked up again. By the
time they reached the outside, Lacy’s cheeks were as red as her hair. Jason
leaned in to kiss her. She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned away. He
ignored her and kissed her cheek. “We’re teasing you. You’re cute.”

She wasn’t cute, though. She could
see now what Riley meant. All around her people were dressed to the nines in
expensive skiwear and goggles. They looked cool and sporty. Lacy, with her
fluorescent yellow snowsuit, sunglasses, and purple toboggan—the only one
she had been able to find in her grandmother’s odd assortment of winter
paraphernalia—looked out of place. Not just out of place—she looked
mentally ill, as if the resort had decided to let a homeless person ski for the
day as some sort of community service.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to
stay with you?” Jason said.

“I’m sure,” Lacy said. Not only did
she not want to hold him back from a fun day of skiing, she didn’t want people
to think he was her keeper, the person assigned to keep her from harming
herself or others. “I’ll be fine. Believe me, I have extremely low
expectations. All I want to do is ski down the bunny hill a few times and call
it a day.” She glanced at the hill. It was shallow, barely registering as a
rise. What looked to be a five-year-old little boy was swooshing down it like a
pro.

Jason still seemed reluctant.
Either he felt bad about teasing her or he was genuinely worried. She stood on
her toes and pressed a reassuring peck against his lips. “Really, go. You’re
free.”

“You say that like freedom is a
good thing. I’ll meet up with you later. Don’t break anything important.”

She didn’t ask him what he deemed
“important,” but she doubted it had anything to do with her arms or legs.

Once he was out of sight, she
turned bracingly toward the bunny hill. Since they agreed to the weekend, Jason
had started showing her the basics of skiing. She knew how to plant her feet to
slow herself and how to make the skis parallel to go forward. At least in
theory she knew those things. In reality the skis were longer and less
maneuverable than she had imagined. She laid them on the ground and stepped
into them, trying to snap her boots in place as Jason had showed her.

Almost immediately she lost her balance
and fell over. She wasn’t in the skis yet, so standing up was no problem. She
got to her feet and tried again. The second time she snapped into one ski
before falling over, which made getting up again trickier but not impossible.
She hobbled in a circle, the ski-trapped foot lying listlessly on its side
while the booted foot attempted to vault her to a standing position.

After two more tries, she was
successfully snapped into the skis. She looked up, beaming, hoping for someone
to share in her triumph. But all around her everyone was already locked in
their skis, and it probably hadn’t taken them four tries.

There was a line now at the
towrope. Lacy breathed a sigh of relief that the bunny hill didn’t require her
to ride the ski lift. Her courage would have failed her, probably at the exact
moment it was her turn to get off. Now all she had to do was grab a rope and be
hauled to the top. It was like an escalator for the snowbound.

Her turn came at last. She grabbed
the rope with both hands and immediately face planted into the snow. She
couldn’t get up, and there were people behind her. Panicked, she rolled to the
side and slid back to the end of the line.

After much struggle, she finally
got to her feet again. What had gone wrong? She analyzed her first attempt and
realized that the rope went faster than she realized it would. Her feet hadn’t
been prepared for the sudden movement. Caught unaware, the top half of her
jerked forward while the bottom half remained stationery. Next time she would
have her feet ready to go the moment her hands touched the rope.

It was her turn again. Her hands
touched the rope, jerking her forward. She willed her feet to move. They did,
only not in the right direction. Each leg decided to go a separate way so that
she was almost doing the splits by the time she let go of the rope and fell
over. Once again she rolled to the side and slid back down the hill. At least
she was becoming a pro at rolling with skis on.

She maneuvered herself back up,
determined to master the towrope. But her next three attempts ended in
disaster. Every time she touched the rope, her hands went faster than her feet.
The problem was that she couldn’t seem to brace her feet well enough to prepare
them to move. After regrouping and giving the problem some serious
consideration, she realized what needed to be done: she needed to straddle the
rope. It was the perfect solution, so perfect that she couldn’t believe no one
else was doing it.

When it was her turn again, she
hoisted one leg over the rope, took a breath, and grabbed on. At first
everything went according to plan. She congratulated herself on making it
halfway up the hill when disaster struck. Later, as she replayed things in her
mind, she still couldn’t pinpoint how things went so wrong, but all of a sudden
one leg was wound in the rope. For one horrible second her leg was tangled. The
rope paused; the man behind her bumped her back. And then the rope unwound with
a curious amount of energy.

Lacy was flung high in the air. She
landed on her back upside down with her head facing the bottom of the hill.
Worse, her skis were anchored deep in the snow. Now she was blocking traffic
and she couldn’t roll away. The rope stopped. The worker at the top yelled and
motioned for her to get out of the way, but he made no move to help her. She
reached for her skis, trying to dislodge them, but gravity—and her
complete lack of abdominal muscles—worked against her. She couldn’t sit
up, couldn’t reach her feet. She was as helpless as an overturned turtle. Not that
it stopped her from trying. She grunted as she struggled, desperate to reach
her feet and pull them from the snow.

Why hadn’t she done more Pilates in
preparation for this moment?

Behind her, the line was growing
longer. People were beginning to complain. But no one moved to help her.

“C’mon, lady, move. Move, we’re
waiting.”

She was fourteen again with spinach
stuck in her braces.

Panic began to edge in. She was
thoroughly stuck. How was she supposed to get out of the snow when she couldn’t
remove her skis? She glanced hopefully at the teenage towrope operator.

He stood and yelled. “Lady, move
out of the way.” As if to illustrate what he wanted of her, he waved his arm.

“I can’t,” Lacy said weakly. The
blood was rushing to her head, whether from humiliation or because she was
upside down, she didn’t know.

Finally an angel of mercy arrived
to help her. A woman skied beside her and began trying to lift her out of the
snow.

“Thank you so much,” Lacy said. She
was so glad for the help that there were tears in her eyes.

The woman replied in Japanese. She
pulled on Lacy’s arms, but only gained a few inches of leverage before dropping
Lacy resignedly onto her back again. Muttering to herself in Japanese, she slid
behind Lacy and started to push her up. That didn’t work, either, and Lacy
plopped onto her back with a thump.

Behind her, people were getting
angrier. Now her would-be savior was feeling the pressure. She raised her hand
to the top of the hill, made a motion, and yelled something in Japanese.

A minute later a man arrived,
presumably the woman’s husband. He had their two children with him, small
children who’d had no trouble ascending the hill with the towrope. The couple
spoke while the man studied Lacy appraisingly. He had a plan; Lacy could see
it.

After mounting a strategy, he began
issuing orders to his family. At first they stood helpfully aside while he
confidently reached for Lacy’s arms and gave them a tug. She didn’t budge.
Frustrated, he stood back to reappraise the situation and then gave directions
to his wife and children.

They only spoke Japanese, but
apparently he was going to pull on Lacy’s arms while the wife and kids got
behind her and pushed.

He pulled.

They pushed.

There was much grunting from
everyone involved, but still Lacy didn’t budge. The man of the family took her
resistance as a challenge, pulling harder and apparently directing his family
to put their backs into it. The new burst of strength might have worked except
that his wife got a case of the giggles. She snorted a laugh, tried to cover
it, and couldn’t.