Ice Maiden

by Dale Mayer

  Jerry snorted. “Pull a bloody tarot card and see what you get,” he said. “It seems like you’ve been stupidly accurate with them so far.” And, with that, he turned to the back of the store, walking unevenly.

  She frowned as she watched his progress.

  “You’re right,” Damon said. “He doesn’t look that healthy. Anything specific you know of?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Of course he’s old. When I first hired on, I was afraid he wouldn’t make it through the winter.”

  “Well, I’m not sure I would argue with that,” he said. “He’s an interesting character though.”

  “He is, but he’s basically good-hearted, and he gave me this job, so I am grateful for that,” she said.

  “Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll get to keep it too,” he said.

  She smiled, feeling a little bit of relief. “I hope so,” she said. “As we head into summer, we have lots of tourists. I really think we should be getting more tourist-type books in.”

  “Maybe you could suggest that,” he said.

  “He doesn’t like my suggestions too much. I’m the one who suggested the tarot cards, and look at what happened from that.”

  “And you had no clue where that information came from, for those readings? You just made it up?”

  “The information came to me when I was staring at the cards,” she said. “I didn’t expect that one lady’s husband to die.”

  “And did you say anything about methodology or give any details?”

  She shook her head again. “No, I didn’t have too many details. I just said that somebody close to her would die soon and that she needed to remember that every day was a gift and that she should make the most of it.”

  “Which is fairly inane,” he said, “and anybody could have made a comment like that.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “I wasn’t trying to cause trouble. I was trying to give a reading based on the cards.”

  “So, you really were attempting to read the tarot cards?”

  “Sure, but I didn’t have any training. It’s not like I know what I’m doing or anything.”

  “Some people do believe in them,” he said, studying the unopened packs around her. “You do sell them.”

  “Again,” she said, “they’re a tourist thing. And it’s hard not to sell them if it’ll bring in some money.”

  “Kind of like these books,” he said, as he held it up in his hand.

  “Exactly like that,” she said.

  “Well,” he said, “let me take my book away and see what I can find out for information.”

  “I hope you enjoy it,” she said with a bright smile.

  He nodded. “What time do you get off?” he asked.

  “Five o’clock,” she said, “so I’ll be closing the store.”

  He nodded. “I’ll come by then.” With that, he left.

  She didn’t know why he would come back by, whether to check up on her or not, but it was nice. She didn’t know the last time anybody had come to check up on her in person. It seemed like she spent her life checking up on others. And, with that thought, her mind immediately went to Wendy, and Gabby winced. She sent a text to her friend. How are you doing?

  When Gabby got no answer, she shrugged, because, of course, Wendy was still mad at her. And that was too bad. She was the only friend she’d had. Gabby had felt like a redheaded stepchild all her life, even though Bernadette and her husband had taken Gabby in permanently, or at least until she was eighteen. That relationship hadn’t been easy, and Gabby had felt like a second thought in the background of her adoptive parents’ lives, which made Gabby’s life a little bit more difficult.

  Gabby had grown up knowing that Bernadette and her husband had taken Gabby in, keeping her out of the foster system, and Gabby was grateful. But she didn’t feel like she could stay past her public-school years, like her adoptive parents had done their duty, and now was time for Gabby to move on. Actually Bernadette had made that pretty clear. So, when Gabby had any kind of trouble, whether a child or an adult, she didn’t feel like she could call and ask for help either.

  Whereas Wendy had a loving, supporting family, full of siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Wendy leaned on others a little more, and Gabby knew she couldn’t lean on others because she had no other family. She was desperate for this job. She really needed it, and she’d do a whole lot to keep it. But, at the same time, she already knew that she should probably be looking around to see if something else was out there that she should be doing instead—something that she could get a little further with. But to even think about leaving the bookstore sent a dagger through her heart. She looked around at the old building and sighed. “I really love this place,” she said.

  Her boss commented from behind her, “Well, you’re probably the only person in town who does.”

  She smiled up at him. “I really do. I love the atmosphere. I love the history behind it. Just so much of it seeps into your soul here.”

  He chuckled. “I forgot what a romantic you are,” he said.

  She looked at him in surprise.

  “That’s how romantics talk all about the good things. They forget about the broken plumbing and the electrical that needs to be updated and the heater that doesn’t work. Romantics never see those kinds of things.”

  “I admit I hadn’t considered them,” she said cheerfully.

  He smiled and nodded.

  She asked, “You’ve been here in this bookstore for a long time, haven’t you?”

  “Over thirty years by now,” he said, quietly staring at the window to the snowy street outside. “Lived in the apartment above for almost as long.”

  “When I had to move out of my apartment,” she said, “I wondered for a fraction of a second if that room up at the top of the stairs was even available.”

  “I’d forgotten you had to get out,” he said. “What did you end up with?”

  “I found an apartment over a garage, just a little studio, where I could stay temporarily,” she said. “But I’ll need to find new housing anyway.”

  “Can’t you get back into your apartment?”

  “I’m not sure that’ll work,” she said. “Five of us were paying the rent before, and now we’ll be short two. Regardless I can only imagine how hard it would be to get anybody else to join us to live at a murder site.”

  “Sure,” he said, “they could worry they would be next on the murder list.”

  She winced at that. “God, I hope not,” she said, “but, either way, I can’t pay that kind of rent on my own.”

  “Can you stay where you are?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s only out of the generosity of the owner that I get to stay for now.”

  “Huh,” he said, muttering to himself. “I don’t know about the spare room.” He looked up in that direction. “The room above the stairs has a bathroom right there, but it’s hardly safe and secure. And it’s all attached to the bookstore.”

  “Which is why I thought you wouldn’t go for it,” she said.

  “I’m not sure I would go for it,” he said. “Let me think about it.”

  Brightened by that idea, she smiled up at him. “Thank you,” she said. “Even that is more than I had hoped for.”

  “Not everybody is after the bottom dollar,” he said.

  She replied, “Maybe not, but we also know that the bookstore doesn’t make a lot of money and that you need to bring in more business.”

  “And that works both ways,” he said, “because new business also means bringing in more money. And, if you’ll pay money for rent, then …”

  “Right,” she said with a smile. “Anyway, think about it.” She gave a one-arm shrug. “I’d love to stay here.”

  And she would. She honestly would. Noting what time it was, she quickly went through the lock-up process with Jerry and then headed outside. As she stepped out, she heard someone calling her. She turned, and there Damon was.

  She smiled up at him. “S
o, what’s this?” she asked. “Are you afraid I won’t make it back to your place and might freeze on the road? Or are you afraid somebody’s coming after me?”

  “Well, not the first one,” he said, “because that doesn’t make any sense. But the second one? … Maybe.”

  Her smile fell away. “Do you really?”

  “I’m not sure you are a target, but we have had two deaths, both roommates of yours. We can’t ignore that pattern,” he said. “I don’t want to err on the wrong side and have a third person of a group of five dead in the morgue.”

  She took a long slow deep breath and said, “Reality sucks.”

  “Sometimes,” he said, “sometimes it sure does.”

  *

  Damon helped Gabby into his car and then drove her back to his aunt’s house. He still thought of it as his aunt’s house, even though it was now officially his. He couldn’t really wrap his mind around the idea of owning it because it was a big beautiful fancy house—not exactly his style, he thought. He hadn’t moved in fully because he was contemplating selling it. An awful lot of money was tied up in it that he could convert to cash if he sold it. Compared to just sitting here tied up in his aunt’s place, the ready cash seemed better.

  Yet something was so cozy and homey about his aunt’s home, and Damon had so many good memories from here that he wasn’t sure he wanted to get rid of it. And he’d also had a long hard fight with family members and had bought out several of them to make this his. So why did he go through all that agony and expense and then not plan to keep it, to enjoy it? But the mind was a wondrous thing, and he seemed to do things for different reasons that a lot of people didn’t understand, including himself sometimes.

  As they walked up to the garage apartment, Gabby noted a bag in his arm. “What’s that?”

  “More groceries.”

  She stared at him in surprise. “You don’t have to feed me and give me a room too. I should at least buy my own food.”

  “So, if I didn’t bring food tonight,” he said, “what would you eat for dinner?”

  She stopped, stared, and said, “You know what? I didn’t even think about it. I was so on edge—after Jerry telling me not to go in this morning and that he would lay me off—that I did everything I could to be perfect and to make sure he didn’t follow through.”

  “Did he say anything after I left?”

  She shook her head. “No, not about that, but I did mention the room above the store at the top of the stairs. It’s got a lock, but it’s connected to the store, so I’m not sure he would be comfortable with me staying there.”

  “Is it just a room?”

  “A bathroom’s next door,” she said, “but, yes, it’s just the room.”

  “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with you staying there,” he said.

  “Well, it’s not like I have a whole lot of choices,” she said. “The price of rent here in Aspen means multiple people need to stay together to make anything affordable.”

  “And you don’t have another group of friends to live with?”

  “Not only do I not have another group of friends but I highly doubt that I’d find anybody wanting to share an apartment with me after what happened.”

  “Do you have to tell them?”

  “No,” she said slowly, “but won’t they already know with the news? Even if they don’t, if they ask, what am I supposed to say?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “It’s definitely something I can see as a problem.”

  “Well, if you found one person who was now looking for new roommates after two had already been murdered, what would you think?”

  “Nothing good,” he said cheerfully.

  “Exactly,” she said. “So, what am I supposed to do?”

  “Tread carefully,” he said, “because you also don’t know if the murderer is somebody looking to rent an apartment either and might know you have a need for a roommate.”

  With that thought, she grimaced, while Damon opened up the garage apartment and let her inside.

  “It’s so beautiful here,” she said quietly. “Thank you so much for being generous enough to let me stay here.”

  “Well, it surprised me too,” he said, “but seriously, it’s empty, so why wouldn’t I? Almost any human being would.”

  She gave him a sideways glance and shook her head. “That’s not my experience,” she admitted. “They might let me have it but at an outrageous rate I couldn’t afford.”

  “Well, that’s one of the reasons why I wondered if you had friends who you could rent it with.”

  “Only if I have Wendy plus a couple more,” she said, “and Wendy is not answering my calls.”

  “Wendy is dealing with her own losses and her relationship with Meghan,” he said.

  She looked at him hopefully. “Did you talk to her?”

  “I saw her earlier,” he said.

  “Is she okay?”

  Gabby asked in such a hopeful voice that he looked at her and shrugged. “She is, at the moment, yes. Obviously she and Meghan are working on their issues, and that has some pluses and minuses as well. On top of those domestic issues, lack of money is one of Wendy’s problems, plus her lack of plans and her lack of a job.”

  “I do worry about her,” she said.

  “I know that,” he said. “I saw it today. But you can’t help her if she doesn’t want to help herself. And yet she’s still talking about leaving Aspen, and I got the impression that she felt she had to leave. Otherwise I don’t know.”

  “What otherwise?” she asked helplessly.

  “She’s not in any danger. At least she didn’t look to be,” he said. “Do you understand the history of what happened?”

  She looked at him and nodded. “It was pretty ugly,” she said. “Wendy was absolutely devastated, but somehow she went back. And I didn’t understand that, and I probably wasn’t the nicest about it.”

  “It’s easy to judge,” he said, “and much harder to understand the pattern that happens when people get into these abusive relationships,” he said.

  “Well, it was definitely that kind of a relationship.”

  “But the fact is, Wendy went back, and she also hid the fact from you that she was seeing Meghan again.”

  Chapter Nine

  “That’s not something I want to really look at,” Gabby said softly. “Maybe I’m better off leaving now too.” She looked around the studio and shook her head. “Nothing to stop me. Jerry doesn’t really want me to work at the bookstore. I don’t have a permanent place to live, so why am I fighting it?” she said, in a sudden awakening to her plight. “I can’t even snowboard, now that mine is wrecked.”

  “I’m sure you could get another board, if you wanted to,” he said gently. “Don’t make too many decisions right now, when dealing with this fresh trauma. Besides, we have an ongoing investigation, and I need you to stay in town.”

  She raised her gaze and stared at him in shock. “Seriously? So I can’t leave, even if I chose to?”

  “No,” he said, “you can’t. Neither can Wendy.”

  Gabby sagged into the chair and stared out the window. “I don’t know what to do,” she said softly. “To think that two of my friends are dead is just beyond belief.”

  “And that’s why we must get to the bottom of what happened,” he said.

  “That’s your job,” she said. “I don’t know how to solve this.”

  “Did you give us that list?”

  “You mean, people who know us?” She shrugged. “Half the damn town,” she said. “There’s five of us, and two of the women worked at bars part-time, and four were always in bars. I have no idea who could possibly know or not know anything about us. How am I to know about other people who may know me but who I have no knowledge of knowing them?”

  “That’s the problem,” he said, actually following along this time with the Gabby logic. “Why don’t you borrow a board and go up the mountain?” he said.

  “You mean when I have a
day off? Or when my boss decides to fire me?” Frustrated and upset, she scrubbed her face. “It’s just such an odd state of life.”

  “Do you have anybody to call? Any support system?”

  She looked up at him, frowned, and said, “No, I do not.”

  He nodded. “Okay, any idea why something like this would be happening in your life?”

  She stared at him in shock and started to laugh, an almost hysterical edge to it. “What do you mean when you say something like that? Are you talking about a ghostly thing or about somebody trying to murder my friends?”

  He looked at her, his head tilted. “So do you think somebody is after your friends?”

  She blinked. “Is that what you’re saying? Do you want to go for a walk?” she asked suddenly.

  He turned to look at her. “Are you trying to change the conversation?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m frustrated, angry, and upset. Even the thought that somebody is killing my friends puts all the guilt back on my shoulders.”

  “The guilt is not on your shoulders,” he said quietly. “You can’t take that on.”

  “How can I not, if they died because they know me? How is that anything other than making me feel guilty?”

  “If you didn’t do anything,” he said, “then that makes no sense.”

  She wouldn’t argue with him. “Is that a yes or no on the walk?”

  “I have to get back to work,” he admitted.

  “Good,” she said. “I’ll go for a walk then.” He hesitated, so she looked at him and asked, “Is there any reason I can’t walk outside alone?”

  “Not that I know of,” he said.

  “Good,” she snapped. “In that case, I need to get out for a bit.”

  “You just came home from work.”

  “Sure, work, where he’s considering taking away my job almost every moment of the day,” she said. “So there I was, on absolutely perfect behavior all day, to make sure I had a job to go to tomorrow. Today will be over soon enough, and then I’ll be back in the same stressful environment tomorrow.”

  “Keep remembering,” he said, “you do have today. And a tomorrow to wake up to.”

  She winced. “Right, but that’s not exactly helping me right at the moment.”