Snow Angel

by Melanie Jackson

  “I’ve noticed that about him,” I said when it was obvious that I was supposed to comment. “He was nice about showing me the train though.”

  “He’ll sometimes talk about trains,” Della conceded, getting carefully to her feet and examining her latest angel. “My mom doesn’t usually stealth.”

  “But sometimes?”

  “Sure, at night. Like when she checks if I’m sleeping. I don’t sleep very much at night and she looks in on me.”

  “Really? Neither do my cats—sleep much,” I said, feeling this was the appropriate response. Her explanation made me feel a little better about Minnie maybe having some maternal instincts. Momentarily.

  “And the rest of the time I think she is checking on Uncle Patrick and Uncle Andrew. They don’t sleep much either and often wander around the hotel making sure nothing is wrong.”

  Checking on them? Or making sure of their whereabouts before she began fiddling with washers and fuses? Was she aware of a saboteur at the hotel and looking for him, or was she the bad guy? It didn’t seem like the kind of thing she would do, but I have learned that criminals don’t come in any particular shape and sometimes have manicures.

  Blue barked, reminding me that it was getting late and I had promised her a snack if she followed me into the cold.

  Since she had already eaten, Della declined to walk back with me. I thought about leaving Blue with her, but my dog had had a big day physically and probably needed to get warm. Also, she likes French toast more than making snow angels.

  “Blue is saying she needs breakfast, and I think I need some hot chocolate,” I said.

  “Okay. Maybe we can go ice-skating later.”

  “I’d like that. Blue’s never tried, but she might think it was fun.”

  Della beamed.

  “I wish I had a dog,” she said.

  “I wish you had one too. Dogs are the best,” I agreed, though I know that is not the kind of thing you should ever say to a child.

  Chapter 3

  “What mountain did you fall off of?” Alex asked with wide eyes as I walked into our room. He was toweling his hair and looked wonderful and warm.

  I stared back.

  “How did you know?” I asked and then lifted a hand to my own hair which seemed to have grown in volume and acquired a few pine needles. Then I noticed that I was also leaking down onto the carpet. I slipped off my coat and rolled it so it wouldn’t keep losing feathers. I had a small sewing kit and would mend it later. I hoped I hadn’t left too large a feather trail through the hotel. “Oh, this is nothing. That’s Blue’s doing. She saved my life.”

  “Blue saved you? No, don’t bother with the hair,” Alex said impatiently as I tried again to fix it. “Nothing but shampoo and a dryer will help. Just tell me what happened.”

  So I did. I also mentioned that Minnie’s green coat with the snowflake zipper pull and Patrick’s buffalo plaid jacket, both hung by the door, had also been wet, suggesting they had been out that morning. I didn’t mention that I was hurting a little in the back and shoulders.

  Alex wasn’t inclined to believe my accident theory, but he realized just as I had, that even assuming the act was deliberate, there was no way to know who had done it. Hillary had pointed me to the path when I asked about a shortcut, but I might just as easily have followed the road back down the mountain. In fact, the road would have been a lot easier to follow.

  That didn’t mean that I was forgetting what had happened. It just meant that for now I had to put a question mark beside the incident and file it in its proper place later when I had more data.

  I didn’t feel like taking time to shower before eating, so I brushed out the worst of the detritus and we went down to breakfast with my hair in a bushy ponytail.

  The chef, Mike Briggs, wasn’t doing the full menu that morning but we found plenty we liked and ate too much.

  Normally a large meal makes me sleepy, but I still had a lot of questions and adrenaline moving around in my head, so after I sewed up my coat, Blue and I decided to go visit the stable while Alex interviewed the maids, two sisters, Maddie and Cleo Watts from Boulder. I was sure he would be subtle. Alex is good with young women. Better than I am, though I am often more intuitive. We are sometimes a good team. I know who to ask and Alex knows how to ask them.

  Frankly, my intuition wasn’t worried about the girls. I’d seen them. Maddie and Cleo were not built to be villains. They were too average. Too well adjusted. Honestly, too unambitious and giggly. They were chockfull of traits that would make them good at their jobs though. They were happy and attractive enough to appeal to people without being so striking that they would draw the attention of jealous guests who might have spouses with wandering eyes. They also seemed to be good at being unobtrusive. Patrick had chosen his staff for their efficiency in this regard.

  A pity that he hadn’t known how to check their moral codes. There was a good chance that one or more of them were indulging in sabotage. It was impossible to imagine that some outsider was sneaking into this closed community to do harm. The devil was among us.

  Blue and I stopped by the kitchen, Blue staying on the correct side of the doorway since health regulations are important to observe, and I complimented the chef on breakfast. It struck me that Mike Briggs looked a lot like Patrick and Andrew, at least in general outlines.

  “Do you think it would be okay to take an apple for the horse? Or horses?” I asked.

  “Two horses. And you can have an apple and a carrot since Buff likes fruit and Beauty likes carrots.” Mike had a pleasantly deep voice with just a trace of Texas in it. “Come back later and I might have a soup bone for your friend there.”

  “Thank you,” I said, slipping the vegetation into my pockets. I didn’t usually give Blue bones, but we would accept the gift in the interest of promoting good relations with the staff. My dog really is my secret weapon sometimes.

  We exited from the rear of the hotel, after I checked coats for dampness, which was getting to be a habit. As we headed north, we got a look at the resort’s main draw. Andrew was kneeling at what I thought was a fuse box beside a small booth. The ski lift lurched to life as we watched. It was new. There had been an old-fashioned towrope back in the 40s, but Patrick’s business planner had recommended he replace it with a lift. His reasoning was that it would reassure guests that they were getting what they had paid a premium for. That meant everything had to be the latest and greatest out on the slopes.

  Andrew saw us and raised a hand in greeting. I felt ridiculously pleased. We were becoming buddies. I just hoped that he wasn’t the one sabotaging his brother’s hotel.

  Not wanting to be a nuisance while he was busy, I gave him a thumb’s up and then Blue and I continued on to the stable.

  The horse barn was long, lofty, and seemingly deserted of human life. I fed the horses and left Blue happily sniffing noses with the two curious equines while I wandered around, snooping in tack rooms and hayloft.

  The stable was built as a T and I found that the back end of the shed was being used for more than a garage. It was also a hanger for a triplane, which seemed in good repair for being so ancient. I was pretty sure it was a warplane called a Fokker, and it made me think of movies about daring young men in their flying machines, with goggles and leather caps and long white silk scarves. But surely there had been none of that going on this high in the mountains. Hadn’t the Rockies been a barrier in early flight?

  “Where in heck would you land an airplane around here?” I asked Blue, who had torn herself away from the now napping horses to rejoin me. “Why the heck would you land an airplane around here?” Blue panted but offered no suggestions. She knows about horses, not airplanes. “It can’t be an attraction. The insurance company would scream if you tried to fly the thing with guests in it.”

  “You are correct. It was flown in by one Friedrich Rudorfer, who claimed to be the Baron von Steuben, and hasn’t left since,” Patrick said, dusting hay from his sleeves and then but
toning his cuffs. I was surprised to see him dressed so casually during the day. By daylight he seemed more the kind for a three piece suit and power tie. “Rudorfer arrived late one afternoon in July of 1928. He was terribly off course and out of fuel. It was a miracle that he was able to land the plane at all, and taking off again was out of the question, so she’s been here ever since. Andrew starts her up from time to time. Apparently she can’t take modern fuels and has to be run on alcohol. Andrew conducted some experiments and says she likes Stoli best. It’s a bit expensive, though I suppose I should be happy she doesn’t need Grey Goose.”

  Not sure why, I found myself laughing.

  “Do you tell this story to guests?”

  “Maybe I will,” Patrick said. “She could be a kind of a historic attraction—especially if we expand and put in family cabins next year. But I wouldn’t want to talk about what happened after. That kind of publicity would attract the wrong people to the hotel, and it will be tricky enough getting this venture off the ground.”

  I stopped smiling.

  “What did happen after?”

  “The supposed Baron von Steuben was, like the first baron to visit the then American colonies, eventually discovered to be a fraud. In this country we don’t execute or imprison people for stuff like that because we like our eccentrics and can’t see something like that as being a crime. But a lot of people in Europe, mainly the real Baron von Steuben—a genuine flying ace, I should add—did not care for the masquerade. Rudorfer—if that was his real name—never said what happened, but he arrived injured, and the hotel had to call a doctor up from town to extract a bullet from his chest. He claimed the wound was from an affair of honor and he wouldn’t mention the lady’s name. But it was suspicious that a man in Black Spring was shot during a bank robbery only hours before the ‘baron’ arrived. There was a stretch of road just long enough to use as a runway. Though injured and bleeding, the thief disappeared at the edge of town and the bloodhounds couldn’t track him once he reached the main road, and a plane was heard on the far side of town where the woods are thickest.”

  “He flew away from the scene of the crime with a bullet lodged in him?” I was impressed. “That’s bold.”

  “No proof, but that is the belief. It makes a good story—if you stop there.”

  “Daring—I kind of like it. But the story doesn’t stop there?”

  Patrick smiled a little.

  “No. The doctor did what he could to patch the pilot up. In those days it wasn’t much to do when there was no hospital or surgeon. Which there wasn’t, Bethlehem being too small for one, then and now. Anyhow, though injured and instructed by the doctor to remain in bed, he somehow ended up down in the hot baths in the basement, and he drowned there after his wound reopened and he lost enough blood to slip into unconsciousness.”

  “No one saw him go downstairs?”

  “No one admitted to it.”

  “Was it murder?” I asked, knowing that the chance of a thorough police investigation back then was slim.

  “No one knows. But he was the first of three people to die in the baths under peculiar circumstances, and after the last death—all of them at night—it was decided to close up the spa.”

  “Yeah, I can see why.” I looked back at the Fokker. “Cool plane though. I would want to show her off.”

  Patrick smiled wryly and pet Blue’s ears. Her tongue lolled out. Blue is a sucker for ear rubs.

  “Andrew wants to display her too. I guess we’ll do it and see how it goes.”

  “The bank’s money wasn’t in the plane, was it?” I asked.

  “No—at least the manager, who was the first person to arrive on the scene, said there was nothing in it, not even luggage.” I snorted and Patrick nodded. “And the manager left the hotel a day later, never to be heard from again, so no one from the bank or police ever got to question him.”

  I nodded, thinking that maybe the old manager had had a good reason for making sure that the fake baron took a midnight swim. One couldn’t fully enjoy one’s ill-gotten gains if one was constantly looking over one’s shoulder for the previous owner.

  “So, would you like to go for a sleigh ride? Hillary could still use a little practice with the horses. His specialty was stagecoaches, not sleighs.”

  I looked at Blue.

  “Okay. But I want to go get the camera. And Alex. He needs to get over his fear of fresh air,” I said.

  Patrick threw back his head and laughed.

  “It’s good to know that some things never change.”

  Chapter 4

  Alex and I didn’t talk about the investigation while we toured the property slowly in the one-horse open sleigh, but once we got back to our room we compared notes on what we had learned from our enquiries. Which was nothing. At least nothing that concerned the hotel. Alex was fascinated with the airplane’s story and I was pretty sure that he was going to investigate the robbery later on. Alex likes solving historic crimes. Death and violence is less terrible to look at when removed by several decades, and I knew that he was also interested in this fake baron who might also have been a daring bank robber.

  We followed Hillary into the barn and I noticed the firewood pile had grown a bit and that the tarp at the far end hadn’t been tied down properly. I thought about fixing it, but there was no chance of snow getting to the wood and I was pretty chilled, and knew Blue would be wanting her dinner. She dines unfashionably early.

  We had a family dinner that night. Mike Briggs was showing off his five-star rating with a traditional roast goose, Waldorf salad, baked parsnips, and pecan toast. For dessert we had a kind of fig roll-up that I guess was his nod to fig pudding. I sent compliments to the chef.

  Blue would have enjoyed it, but she had already dined on Spot’s Stew and was napping in our suite. I’d fetch her down after dinner if she was through napping. It had been a busy day.

  As we sat around the table, talking about the weather again, my eyes went from face to face, assessing. I looked at the waiter too. Jonathon Holmes looked a bit like a prizefighter that had left retirement a little too late. I wondered if he was a victim or someone who sought out violence from the very beginning. He had the look of someone who relied on the cruelty of strangers to justify his constant, sullen anger. I did not want to add to the weight of the lines on his face, but I found I couldn’t entirely trust him. Anger and resentment can make people do strange things. When Alex went into town the next morning to use his portable computer, he would need to do some looking in that direction.

  The assistant chef came in once too. Kevin Dunlop was a redhead and far from outgoing. In fact, with his ducked head and mumbled replies to our compliments on the meal, he made Andrew seem positively gregarious.

  I tried not to sigh or feel depressed. The Christmas tree in the corner and its decorations were new and lovely. The hotel was a new setting with new employees and a chance to begin with a positive dynamic. But the family had brought old memories with them. Some were probably golden with love and gilded with sweet nostalgia, and some probably tarnished by corrosive spite. It is that way in almost all families, but I sensed a stronger than average concentration of negative emotion sitting at that cherrywood table.

  My thoughts were not full of holiday cheer and probably wouldn’t be until we were back home. Cheer, for me, requires a blank mind. The thing about being the way I am means that a part of me is always on call, night or day, even on Christmas. This vigilance isn’t an act of duty and it isn’t choice. It’s just the way I’m built.

  Theoretically, this case belonged to Alex. It was his friend who invited us and since the malicious acts were aimed at the hotel and not at the owner, this was the kind of case Alex often took and was good at solving. Alex likes monetary crimes. He likes things to be tidy and elegant and bloodless. And I get that. Unfortunately, my cases rarely have elegant solutions. I get called in when violence has been done. Unlike financial crime where restitution can often be made, there really isn’t any
one left to make emotional reparation to—especially when the victim is dead.

  This had started out as an Alex kind of case, but I had a bad feeling that it would end as one of mine. The thought was depressing.

  “What do you think, Chloe?” I heard Alex ask and blinked a couple of times, pulling my brain back to the conversation. “Can we take Andrew and Patrick at Dictionary?”

  I went blank for a minute and then recalled that one of Alex’s favorite party games was Dictionary. It’s a good one because all you need is a dictionary, paper, and some pens or pencils.

  “Of course,” I said confidently and smiled at the two brothers. “You guys are toast.”

  Della hooted at this challenge, making Minnie frown at the uncouth sound. Patrick smiled broadly. Andrew smiled only a little, but I had a feeling that I was in for a fight. The quiet brother apparently liked something besides trains.

  The book that Patrick pulled from the shelves for our game was the Consolidated Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary (A Library of Essential Knowledge), circa 1958. It’s one of my favorites, having both maps and color illustrations. We settled in by the fire and Patrick passed the book to Andrew.

  “It’s tradition,” he explained as Della solemnly tore up paper from the office printer into fourths and handed out scraps and pens. “As kids, we always went alphabetically and Andrew came first.”

  Andrew opened the match with diligence [F]. He would have had me stumped, but as it happens I took a whirl at writing a Historical romance and recalled from research that the French diligence was a kind of stagecoach. I figured that Andrew meant this over the Latin diligence which meant to be attentive to one’s task. After all, he did love vehicles of all sorts, especially antique ones.

  Scoring at Dictionary is tricky and Della was concentrating with all her might as she added up our points. Patrick and I got five points each for guessing the correct definition. Alex got one point because Patrick laughed at his definition, “acting like a dog with a bone.” Andrew got two points because Minnie and Della guessed wrong (like Alex) but no one laughed at their textbook definitions, though I thought Della should score for knowing the word assiduous.