Chilled by Death (36 page)

Royce, as if knowing how the comment had unsettled her, said calmly, “But it’s not likely, is it?”

“You could have had an argument and pushed her. The crack in her head from the fall was worse than Stacy realized. When she never showed up, you knew exactly where to go and find her. Nice and easy.”

Stacy stayed still, waiting to see if anyone else would jump on that bandwagon. She could have said the evidence would say Kathleen had been lying in the cold for a couple of hours, but as she and Royce had been together all day and mostly alone, his theory was plausible.

“Motive,” Royce said, curiosity in his voice, “What could we possibly have fought about?”

“Well, let’s look at this rationally. Honestly, the best people to figure this out is ourselves. We don’t need the police poking into our lives any more than they are already doing,” George said quietly. “We’ll all analytically dissect everyone here and what motive or where they were at the time Kathleen was attacked. We know she was with me until twelve-thirty, and no, I wasn’t alone with her. There were a good half dozen witnesses.”

“Then as you’re already started on Royce and me,” Stacy said, “Let’s finish and move on to each of you.”

The others nodded.

“So motive for me to have attacked Kathleen?” Stacy said, her voice steady, feeling an unreal sensation at what was happening.

“Maybe you were jealous?” Stevie said, shrugging. “Maybe it was an argument over George?”

“Why would there be an argument over George?”

Stevie looked at George and then away. He stayed silent. Stacy contemplated Stevie’s face, then turned to look at her brother. “George, what don’t I know?”

“Nothing much.”

“Much?” She pounced on that word. “But there is something?”

“It’s just that I wanted you to come on this trip and help you move past your grief. She thought I spent too much time and effort on it.”

“But you’ve only been together for what, six, seven months? I’ve been dealing with this for three years. Why would that cause her any jealousy?”

“She felt that because she was related to the winter sport side of my life that you weren’t being accepting of her. We’ve talked marriage, and that was an issue for her. That I felt you still needed me so much and that she felt like you didn’t want anything to do with her.”

“Good Lord.” Stacy sat back in shock. “First, I like Kathleen. Then I also really liked Anna, Sarah, and Jessica.” At that comment, the place erupted in laughter. “If I’m not all over her, it’s more a case of I’m afraid she’ll go by the wayside as all the others have. It’s hard on me too, you know. I make friends with your partners, the partners disappear, and I’m on the receiving end of that loss, too.”

He stared at her, his mouth open. With difficulty, he closed it. “I never thought of that.”

“No, of course not,” she muttered. “And for the record, you don’t need to hover over me, nor do I resent her because she’s associated with winter sports…” She rolled her eyes at that one. “But you and I are close. I expect to be close with your partner – I’d just not like to make and lose a dozen friends before you decide on the right one.”

More laughter broke through the crowd, and even George grinned at her. “But trying out that dozen is so much fun,” he said, laughing.

The humor helped ease the tension in the room.

“Anyone else got any reason why there’d be a problem that would cause me to attack Kathleen and then leave her? Only to turn around, presumably out of remorse, to save her?”

Silence. One by one, they all shook their heads. She sighed with relief. “Well, that’s good to know. I was with Royce all day, so he’s my alibi.”

“Which,” Royce pointed out, “just means we can alibi each other.”

She nodded. “Also problematic.” She smiled. “So let’s analyze Royce next.”

Now the group, feeling a little more at ease, fell into the game. For Royce, all they could determine was a potential prior relationship or an argument where she’d determined to cause problems with him and Stacy.

As nothing made any sense there, they moved on around the circle.

When they fell silent, Stevie said, “That didn’t help.”

“Yes, it did,” Stacy said. “Now we aren’t looking at each other as if we’re going to try and murder each other while we sleep.”

He grinned. “So true. Besides, if you’re going to kill me, it would be at work. There you threaten me all the time.”

“And me,” Mark said, laughing.

She smiled at him. He’d been snowboarding with Stevie all morning, they’d done a few runs on their own on the other mountain, but he’d seen George at lunchtime, too. It appeared if he was telling the truth, and he was off the hook at this point. Then again, they all were.

“One person we aren’t mentioning is Christine.” Royce said. “She’s unaccounted for right now. Has she fallen down a crevasse like Stacy and had no one to help her? Was she attacked and is lying lost for someone to find down the road? Did she find a place to stay and would like to not know us this trip?”

“Wasn’t she good friends with Kathleen?” Stevie asked. “I thought that’s how she came to be here this weekend?” He glanced from one blank face to the other. “If so, what if they had an argument and it was Christine who left Kathleen in there?”

There was a moment of heavy silence, as if the thought of two women fighting could end up in one of them almost dying. Stacy knew it happened all the time.

But no one ever wanted to consider it happening to two women they knew. Kevin had called the police and let them know she hadn’t checked in. They were trying to locate Christine, but they were overwhelmed with the weather causing trouble and hampering their efforts. Given it was one of the members of their group, the police were taking her disappearance seriously.

George said, “Maybe the same person who attacked Kathleen also took out Christine?”

“Why though?” Stacy asked, her heart shuddering at the thought.

“And Christine is probably sitting in someone’s private pool, grateful to have found a spot for the weekend,” Kevin snapped. “She’d really not like us discussing her this way.”

“If something had happened to both women and if they were both in the same location,” Stacy said quietly, “then I’d say the two women either saw something, overheard something, or found something that someone wanted to protect.”

Silence.

*

Royce watched Stacy’s
bomb drop into the vast well of silence. She could be right. But there was one thing no one was bringing up. He would in a moment if no one else did, but he was wondering if it had occurred to anyone else. All of them had been together for a long time. They’d gone on trips various times through the years with various group configurations depending on who could come. They often had people come and go in between as work schedules allowed people to get away. But in three years, there was only one change this time.

Kevin shook his head. “Don’t go there. Christine is fine. Let’s keep her out of this.”

“I think it all centers around Stacy,” Stevie said. “Regardless of what the two women may or may not have seen, she’s the common denominator.”

Stacy stared at her co-worker in shock. “I’m what?”

Royce sat back to listen. This was what he’d been expecting.

“We’ve never had a problem before this trip. We’ve done many similar trips with no problem.” Stevie leaned forward, his hands clasped in front of him, as if trying to straighten out his thoughts. “Now three women have been attacked or have gone missing, Stacy is the fourth and last one standing. We’ve found a missing man who no one knows anything about. And we’ve been drugged.” He looked from one curious face to the other, finally landing on Stacy. “So what’s different this time? Stacy is here.”

Her gaze widened, and Royce could see her mind spinning. “Glad you brought that up,” Royce said. “The question here is really about whether she made this happen or if her presence acted as a catalyst to make this happen.”

“That’s such a fine difference, isn’t it?” George asked, “How are they any different?”

“Did the trouble come
with
me? Or did it happen because I’m actually here?” Stacy leaned back. “That really sucks. Thanks for that, Stevie.”

“Not trying to make you feel bad. I’m just saying that your presence is about the only difference that I can see from all the other trips.”

“Not quite true,” George said. “There is a shortage of women this time, and one of them is in a more committed relationship this time around.”

“So sex being a motive then?” Kevin shrugged. “Women have never been an issue. We’re all well-known for picking up someone for a night or two.”

“And yet we haven’t done that in years,” Stevie pointed out. “In fact, I can’t remember the last time I did.”

Stacy smirked. He caught sight of it and narrowed his gaze at her. “I haven’t since Janice and Francine. I loved them as much as any friend, and losing them changed my attitude.”

Royce felt her gasp of pain. He was already holding her hand but needed more. He reached his arm around her shoulder and tugged her up against him. She came, ever so slightly stiff as if from a blow, but she relaxed into his arms. “It was a tough time back,” she said. “We were all such great friends. Their loss was difficult to get over.”

“I certainly changed.”

“So did I,” Mark said quietly. “It took a long time to not expect them to be around every corner, pranking us at every opportunity.”

Stacy smiled, her eyes overly bright. “They were always so vivacious.”

Geoffrey said, “I understand that you’ve all lost someone important to you, but exactly what does that have to do with the scenario right now?”

“Maybe it doesn’t.” Stevie said, “But we lost two women that week. And now we came here this week, the first time Stacy is actually back with us – and two more women are also taken out.”

“Oh God.” Stacy slid down on the couch and burst into tears.

S
tacy tried to
rally from the emotional blow, but the comparison was stunning and painful.

In the background, she heard George protest. “Surely that’s just a coincidence. Besides, if Christine is missing, then the numbers don’t work. That’s just stupid. There’s no connection to what happened to that trip and this time.”

“Just Stacy,” repeated Stevie in a subdued voice. “God, I’m sorry for bringing it up, Stacy.”

She nodded, but the motion made the nausea rise in the back of her throat. She shifted to drop her head between her knees while she fought to not lose her dinner.

“That’s gross,” Kevin said. “I’m going to be really glad when this trip is over with.”

“Same here,” Stevie said, standing up. He walked to where the open bottle of Scotch stood and filled his glass. “I’m tempted to drive out of here tonight. Except Mother Nature is making sure we can’t do that.”

“Easy Stevie,” Royce said, accidentally picking up Stevie’s old nickname.

“I am taking it easy.” Stevie gave a broken laugh. “What the hell is wrong with me?”

“Nothing,” Stacy said loyally, “Nothing at all.”

He snorted. “Really? Well, you wouldn’t go out with me, so there must be something.” He threw back half the glass of Scotch in his hand and wheezed as the hot liquor burned its way down his throat.

The others waited for him to stop coughing, keeping a careful eye on him. Stacy had forgotten this part. The maudlin side to Stevie’s character that always came out when he got drunk. Something he didn’t do often. Considering the circumstances, she’d love to find oblivion herself.

But she didn’t dare. She stayed quiet, hating that anything of this trip would be connected to her last trip. She’d come to honor her friends and the memories they’d had together and get past it so they’d not hold her back from enjoying the rest of her life. To a certain extent, she’d done that. She’d feel much better if their bodies were found, but at the same time, she could deal with the reality of their grave. To think that someone had somehow connected the two trips in their mind was incredibly unsettling.

If it were true, if her brother and her friends had been worried about her mindset these last years, had they all missed someone else’s deteriorating mindset as well? Someone maybe who’d been alone through tough times. She’d been blessed to have her brother watching over her.