Icing Allison

by Pamela Burford

  “Nick!”

  It was Skye who’d entered the house, not Nick. Obviously the grieving widower had given his baby mama a key to his late wife’s house.

  The closet was tiny, a wedge of space with a sloping ceiling, impossible to stand up in even if it weren’t half-filled with tennis rackets, balls, and other sports equipment, as I soon learned by groping around, trying to find a position in which to lie still and quiet. Martin was doing his share of groping too, and not the good kind, although we were pressed so close together that some of it ended up being the good kind just by accident.

  The musty smell of the closet and its contents competed with the inviting scent of Martin’s skin as I lay with my cheek nestled against his throat, trying to ignore the croquet mallet jabbing my ribs. Our limbs remained tangled from our fall—we didn’t dare move. I felt the rise and fall of his chest, felt the steady beat of his heart right through his clothing and coat. Never before had we found ourselves in such intimate proximity, an intimacy enhanced by the impenetrable darkness, not to mention the all-too-likely danger of getting caught.

  I jumped when Skye screeched, “Nick!” right next to my ear. At least that’s what it felt like. Belatedly I realized she must be standing at the foot of the stairs, calling up to the second floor. Martin pulled me tighter against him, if that was possible. I recognized it for the self-protective gesture it was. He didn’t want me moving around, making noise, landing us both in the hoosegow. But I won’t lie, it felt good.

  Percussive blows shook the closet as Skye began to stomp up the stairs in search of Nick. I felt Martin tense and deduced he was preparing to vamoose as soon as she was safely out of earshot. I, too, got ready to bolt. Unfortunately, she halted halfway up the stairs. I heard some ripe cussing, directed at “that stupid SOB” Nick, as she banged back down the steps. Martin’s frustrated sigh wafted over me.

  She began moving through the living room, pausing here and there. An occasional clanking sound reached my ears, sometimes a dull thud, making me think of smallish items colliding. Her footfalls grew fainter and I pictured her entering the office and the other rooms off the hallway. Which didn’t help us. As long as she remained on the first floor, we couldn’t hope to sneak out of the house undetected.

  Martin whispered in my ear, very very quietly, “Do you have Skye’s phone number?”

  I shook my head and felt him deflate. “Why?”

  “I was going to text her,” he said. “Something like ‘This is Nick, I’m waiting for you upstairs, bunny. Good news about the prenup!’”

  “But it wouldn’t be coming from his phone,” I said.

  “‘Lost my phone, bunny, this is a loaner.’”

  Too bad. It probably would have worked. Clever Martin. Talk of phones made me realize something. I felt around for my purse and quietly withdrew my phone from it. I showed him what I was doing as the screen lit up and I silenced both ringer and vibration. His grunt was eloquent: Good idea. He did the same with both of his phones, muttering a curse when he saw how much time had elapsed.

  Eventually Skye passed through the living room again, this time on her way to the dining room, by the sound of it.

  “What could she be doing?” I whispered.

  Martin replied with a shrug.

  “Maybe she’s collecting stuff she left here.” I yawned.

  “Maybe she’s collecting stuff, period.”

  “What, you mean stealing?” I said. “From Nick?”

  “From Allison’s parents,” he said. “They inherited the bulk of her assets.”

  I said, “Which probably includes all her physical belongings.” The closet was unheated, which was just as well since we both still wore our coats, plus our combined body heat acted like a radiator in the small space. It was almost cozy. I yawned again.

  The next thing I knew, Martin was gently shaking my shoulder. I woke up disoriented in the velvet blackness, demanding “What?” in a nice loud voice and trying to sit up.

  The padre clamped a gloved hand over my mouth and pulled me tight against him, murmuring, “Shh...” into my ear. I struggled for a moment until my sleep-numbed brain caught on that this was not the best time and place to be creating a racket.

  He withdrew his hand as I settled back down, still tucked against him like a lover. I heard muted activity from a nearby room. “Where is she?” I whispered.

  “Butler’s pantry would be my guess.”

  Where the crystal and china was stored, not to mention plenty of sterling silver flatware and serving pieces. I’d admired them during the funeral reception. Martin was probably right. She was swiping all the small valuables she could carry.

  My jaw was damp. So was the shoulder of Martin’s coat, where the jaw in question had recently rested. “Please tell me I wasn’t drooling in my sleep,” I said.

  “I didn’t mind until you started snoring like a wood chipper,” the padre said. “I had to wake you then or we’d have been busted.”

  Jane Delaney, paragon of grace and refinement. Oh, and here’s another fun fact. I’d fallen asleep with my face pressed to his right shoulder, the shoulder that, though I couldn’t see it in the dark, I knew to be adorned with ground-in crow feces. I tried to shift away from the spot, but there wasn’t all that much room to shift.

  “Look at it this way,” he whispered, far too cheerfully. “From now on I can tell everyone that you slept with me.”

  Did I say he was gallant? I take it back.

  “What time is it?” I whispered.

  The glowing screen of a phone illuminated his face for a second or two. “Five twenty-two.”

  “Uh-oh,” I said. Nick had headed out to Sten’s office at 4:13. He could be back any—

  “Skye?” Nick called from the vicinity of the kitchen. “I saw your car out front. Where are you, bunny?”

  This was followed by his girlfriend’s rapid footfalls hightailing it from the butler’s pantry into the dining room. He took off after her, catching up with her in the living room before she could make it out the front door.

  “Hey, where are you going?” he said.

  “Nowhere.” She sounded out of breath. “I mean, I have to be somewhere.”

  Their voices came through loud and clear. They had to be standing right next to our hiding place.

  “Listen,” Nick said, “I’m sorry I wasn’t home when you got here, but I got this call from, like, someone at that lawyer Jakobsen’s office, only when I got there they had no idea—”

  “I have to go,” Skye insisted. “Like I said. Let go of my arm.”

  “What are you doing lugging around something this size? Wow, it’s heavy.”

  “Give me that!” she cried.

  “What do you have in here?” I heard loud clanking as he set her tote bag, or pillow case, or whatever it was on the rug. “You shouldn’t be lifting heavy stuff in your condition.”

  “That’s mine!” Skye yelled. “Give it back!”

  An ominous silence ensued, several long seconds during which I pictured Nick taking in the contents of Skye’s bag.

  “What the hell?” he said.

  “I earned it!” she screamed.

  “This stuff doesn’t belong to you.” It was the first time I’d heard him raise his voice to his girlfriend.

  “It does now,” she said. “I’m not walking away from this with nothing to show—”

  “What are you talking about?” he said. “Walking away from what? We’re in this for the long haul, you and me. We have a baby on the way.”

  “Oh my God, there is no baby!” she screamed.

  Nick was suddenly grave. “Oh, bunny, did something happen?”

  “How dense are you?” she said. “There never was any baby.”

  The padre breathed a nearly inaudible “Whoa.”

  “What, you mean...” Nick sounded wounded. “You lied to me? About the baby? Why would you do something like that?”

  “It was my turn!” she said. “She had everything. This place,
all this stuff, all that money. What did I have? What did I ever have? It was my turn!”

  “I don’t see how that gives you the right to trick me.” He sounded really steamed now. “To lie to me. Not about something like this.”

  “I knew you wanted a kid.”

  When he spoke a moment later, he sounded guarded. “I never told you I wanted one with you.”

  “Yeah, well, she sure as hell didn’t want one with you. You bitched about it all the time.” Skye did an insulting imitation of said bitching. “‘Allison wanted Mitchell’s baby but not mine, boo-hoo.’ Face it, she was never going to have your baby. The last thing she wanted was to bring a brat of yours into the world.”

  “So you thought, what, I’ll just lie to him? Make him think he’s going to be a daddy?”

  “Big deal,” she said, “I would’ve gotten knocked up soon enough. But it didn’t matter, did it? Even when you thought we had a baby on the way, you were never going to do anything about Allison.”

  After a moment, he said, “You don’t know that.”

  Her response was a snort of derision. “Just my luck to rely on a couple of gullible nitwits. I sure can pick ’em.”

  A couple of nitwits? She must mean Nick and Allison. No question Nick was a gullible nitwit, but his late wife? Then I realized that from Skye’s perspective, it probably made sense. Allison had, after all, allowed Skye not only to get close to her, but to sneak around with her husband. Far more comfortable to blame the victim for her gullibility than to accept that you’re a coldblooded, money-grubbing user.

  “Is that why you pretended to be pregnant?” he asked. “To get me to leave her?”

  “If so,” she said sneeringly, “it worked like a charm, huh?”

  “I would’ve had nothing if I left Allison. I mean, we weren’t married that long. Four months. No way was I getting alimony or a settlement or whatever, even without that prenup.”

  “You only wanted to put a baby in her so she’d keep you around,” Skye said, “keep you on easy street. It had nothing to do with wanting to be a daddy. Admit it.”

  Nick sighed. “It’s not that simple. Sure, I’d like a kid. Why not?”

  “But with her, not me. That way you would’ve had the kid and the money, am I right?”

  “We were going to have the kid and the money, you and me,” he said, “until Jakobsen threw that damn prenup in my face. That’s why I hired this new lawyer, to get that thing overturned so the two of us... well, I thought it would be the three of us. You, me, and the baby.”

  “Yeah, and how’s that going?” Her tone oozed disdain. “With the lawyer?”

  “Not so good. He says he can’t do anything until I cough up the eighteen grand for dispensations.”

  “Disbursements, you moron, and it’s up to eighteen now? Last week he said fifteen. The guy’s a rip-off artist. Whatever, I’m out of here.”

  I heard more clanking—the sack of loot being lifted, I assumed.

  Nick said, “You’re not taking that.”

  “I earned it, like I said.”

  “For services rendered?” There was a mean edge to his voice I’d never heard before, followed by a startled squawk from Skye and a violent clatter. I pictured Nick yanking the bag out of her grasp, pictured the contents scattering across the rug.

  Martin half rose onto an elbow. I sensed his readiness to intervene if Nick decided that what his duplicitous girlfriend had actually earned was a black eye. If so, I imagined the mere sight of an avenging priest leaping out of the under-stairs closet would be enough to make him reconsider.

  What we heard, however, was Nick yelping in pain as Skye screamed, “You’re calling me a whore now? Huh? Is that what I am, you sorry-ass loser?”

  “Stop it!” he bleated. “Skye, stop! Jeez, I’m sorry, all right?”

  “Go to hell!” The whole house shook as the front door slammed.

  11

  So, Marty, When Do You Get Off?

  “...SO THIS TIME tomorrow I’ll be on my way to Canberra,” Allison said from my computer screen. She was happy and excited, looking forward to her upcoming trek on horseback through the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales, Australia—or the Snowies, as she called them.

  There was just one video on the flash drive I’d found in her office. It had been made at 10:32 p.m. on December 25, Christmas night. I was watching it with Jim, having invited him to my house for that purpose. It seemed strange sharing Allison’s most private thoughts with another person. I had to remind myself that not only had he watched the other twenty-seven videos but that she’d addressed them to him.

  I sat at my little antique desk in the maid’s room. He stood behind me. It was shortly after eight p.m. Martin and I hadn’t had long to wait after Skye stormed out of Allison’s house three hours earlier. Nick had immediately retreated upstairs, leaving an opening for the padre and me to skedaddle, and skedaddle we had. If Nick had happened to be looking out one of the upstairs windows at the back of the house, he would have seen us sprinting across the backyard. Since I’d heard from neither him nor the cops, I assumed our hasty exit had gone unobserved.

  In the video, Allison had discussed Christmas at her folks’ and how she’d tried to take some of the burden off her mother by doing more of the cooking and cleanup, but Joleen wouldn’t hear of it. They’d given her some gear for her trip—toiletry kit, folding toothbrush, that sort of thing. She’d given them a much-needed new roof. Her parents didn’t have much, but they were proud. Apparently the only time they’d accept anything of value from her was at Christmas. Last year she’d given them a furnace and new siding.

  Of course, the Gleasons were now multimillionaires and could purchase a spectacular new home. I knew they’d far prefer to have their daughter back.

  Allison mentioned her argument with Nick over the loss of his job at Vargas Sporting Goods, but spent most of the video talking about her trip to the Snowies. Apparently she was an accomplished horsewoman, which came as no surprise considering her love of outdoor sports.

  Allison sat curled in the armchair in her office, as usual, wearing a pretty red sweater and looking straight into the camera lens. “The flight’s twenty-six hours with two stops,” she said. “You know how I hate long flights, Jim, but it’ll be worth it once I get there. I mean, for the balmy weather alone. It’s in the eighties there this week. Plus I can definitely use the break, considering everything that’s going on here.”

  She kept talking while she rose from the chair and walked out of the frame. “And think of the amazing shots I’ll get.” She sat back down and displayed two cameras in turn, a compact one that looked like something even I could handle and a larger, professional-looking one with a wide neck strap. I recognized that one from the snapshot I’d seen in her office, the one taken in Times Square. “I’ll have both these babies with me, the little Fuji point-and-shoot and, of course, my Nikon DSLR with a few lenses.”

  Jim had one hand on the back of my chair, and I felt the tension in his body. He had to be thinking the same thing I was: That flight to Australia had taken off without Allison, and no one even knew she was dead for twelve days.

  “But I am getting in one last dose of winter,” she said with a smile. “We’re going for a walk in the woods tomorrow morning, before my flight. And it wasn’t even my idea, if you can believe that.”

  I heard my own gasp, felt Jim’s grip on the chairback tighten.

  Allison hadn’t been alone in the woods the day she died?

  I sat dazed as she continued. “It’s supposed to be our private time together, like it would spoil the magic or something if I told anyone else about it, so don’t spill the beans, okay?” She put her finger to her lips, chuckling at the insistence on secrecy. “Maybe this means we’ll be able to clear the air and move on. Then all this drama will be over and I can relax and enjoy the Snowies. I’ll give you a full report when I return, Jim.” She blew him a kiss and turned off the camera.

  “Back it up,” he said.
“Play that last part again.”

  I did. We listened again as Allison said we’re going for a walk. It wasn’t her idea. They’d clear the air and move on. She and... who?

  Neither of us spoke. Jim paced to the other side of the small room and back. Meanwhile Allison’s words replayed themselves in my mind in a relentless loop.

  We’re going for a walk... it wasn’t my idea... this drama will be over...

  I’d told Martin my purpose in looking for a second flash drive was to put Jim’s mind at rest, to help him accept that Allison’s death had been an accident. I realized now what the padre had known yesterday, that I was doing it for myself. I’d wanted to believe the official version of events, but it had never felt right, not since the moment I’d found her lying under the ice, had gazed at her still, pale face. It was as if she’d been staring back at me, silently pleading for justice.

  I stood, feeling shaky. “Have you had dinner?”

  “What?” He probably thought he’d heard me wrong. How could I be thinking about food now?

  Numbly I walked down the hall to the kitchen, where I dug out my bottle of añejo tequila and two snifters. I poured generous shots as Sexy Beast roused himself from his bucket bed, executed a luxurious stretch, sniffed the air, and grumbled something in Poodle that I was just as happy I couldn’t interpret. I placated him with a doggie biscuit from a canister on the counter.

  Jim joined me and nodded at the snifters. “What’s this?”

  “Dinner.” I lifted my glass and took a healthy swig. The silky burn helped clear my head.

  He examined the pretty bottle. I watched those peaked eyebrows rise. Clearly he was a stranger to fine sipping tequila.

  “Try it,” I said.

  He did. He approved.

  Getting to the family room a few steps away suddenly seemed a daunting hike. The living room beyond might have been in, well, Australia. I circled the granite kitchen island and collapsed into a seat at the round breakfast table. Jim did likewise. I could almost hear the gears turning in his head as he reached down to give SB the obligatory scritches.