Mary Daheim - Snow Place to Die - A Bed-and-breakfast Mystery

before I can collect ten cents from OTIOSE!”

Judith, however, barely heard her cousin’s lamentations.

Her eyes were fixed on the far bank which now revealed a

gaping hole above the creek. Broken branches protruded

from each side, like long wooden fangs. Hazily, Judith

thought of the ice caves she and Renie had explored in their

youth a few miles from the family cabin. But this opening

wasn’t quite the same. It was much smaller, no bigger than

a hall closet, and not quite as high.

What made it remarkable was the body inside.

36 / Mary Daheim

Judith tried not to scream. She succeeded, and just stood

there while Renie collapsed against her shoulder. “Do you

have any spare underwear?” Renie murmured through chattering teeth.

Judith didn’t respond. She was transfixed. “Coz,” she finally

gulped, “I hate to mention this, but…” Gently, she held Renie

by the shoulders and turned her around. “Look.”

“Good God.” Renie sagged against Judith. “I don’t believe

it.”

The cousins stood together in silence for what seemed like

a very long time. The sun was setting, the clouds were rolling

in, and it was beginning to grow dark. At last, Judith and

Renie moved.

“I might as well get wet, too,” Judith sighed. She waded

into the creek and crossed the four-foot gap to the other side.

“Dare I ask what you’re doing?” Renie inquired in a bleak

voice.

“Ohhh,” Judith replied, sounding weary and haggard, “just

the usual cursory check. Whoever these poor bones belonged

to still possesses remnants of clothing.”

“Don’t touch anything!” Renie shouted. “Come on, get

back here! I’m turning blue!”

But Judith’s curiosity overwhelmed caution and consideration. “We can’t just run away. Besides, I wondered if…ah!”

She held up a wallet. “There’s more, scattered around the

ground.” Despite her aversion to being in such close quarters

with skeletal remains, Judith dug around in the snow and

ice. She found a keychain, a watch, a coin purse, and a soggy

notebook. Unable to convey so many small items in her big

gloves, she tossed each in turn to Renie, who stuffed them

into the pocket of her all-weather jacket.

Judith had kept the wallet in her own coat. After she was

satisfied that there was nothing else in the little cave except

SNOW PLACE TO DIE / 37

the body, she recrossed the creek and stood next to Renie,

shivering and shaking with cold.

“Let’s not dawdle,” Judith said. “I feel like a freaking

popsicle.”

“I’m already dead,” Renie replied through stiff lips. “Can

we make it back to the lodge?”

The lodge, in fact, was less than a hundred yards away.

Still, it took the cousins over five minutes to get there. They

arrived in a numb, half-frozen state.

The fair-haired man with the round head that Judith had

noticed before lunch now stood in front of the stone fireplace

which he’d apparently just lighted. He turned jerkily when

the cousins entered the lobby.

“Sorry,” he said, waving both hands as if to shoo Judith

and Renie away. “This is a private gathering.”

“It’s me, Russell,” Renie said in a feeble voice. “Serena

Jones, remember?”

Russell whipped off his rimless glasses and peered at the

cousins. He was still wearing the glen plaid suit he’d had on

earlier in the day. Vaguely, Judith noticed that the suit was

blemished with grease spots. “Oh! Ms. Jones!” Russell exclaimed in astonishment. “Why are you so wet?”

“It’s a long story,” Renie said with an inquiring glance at

Judith. “We were…”

Judith’s response was to shove Renie toward the dining

room and kitchen. “First things first,” she muttered. “I can

barely walk or talk.”

There was a washer and dryer in an alcove off the kitchen.

The cousins undressed, rubbed themselves down with big

towels, and proceeded to do their laundry.

“I didn’t bring any extra clothes,” Judith said, the feeling

in her feet starting to return. The cousins were sitting in the

kitchen, each wrapped in the biggest towels they could find

in the supply room.

“I’ve got my good suit, but that’s it.” Renie fluffed up her

short, straight chestnut hair. “We can’t leave until our clothes

are dry.”

38 / Mary Daheim

“We can’t leave anyway until I get the food out,” Judith

said in frustration. “How am I going to do that wearing a

towel?”

“Nobody’s around. I’ll help. My stint’s over, and they

won’t see me. We could do it in the nude.”

“Yeah, right, and scare the OTIOSE executives half to

death.” Judith grimaced. Only now that her teeth had stopped

chattering and her limbs were responding was she able to

face up to their awful discovery. “None of the above are the

biggest problem, though.”

Renie sighed. “I know. I’ve been trying to forget about it.

Maybe we were hallucinating.”

“We weren’t.” Judith’s eyes wandered over to a telephone

that was set against the far wall. “We’ll have to notify the

authorities.”

“We could do that now,” Renie said, clumsily lighting a

cigarette. The raw redness in her skin was beginning to fade

and she had almost stopped shivering.

Given the circumstances, Judith refrained from criticizing

Renie’s newly acquired habit. Indeed, she could have used

a cigarette herself, not to mention a stiff drink. “Hang on for

a minute,” she said, gathering the towel around her and

walking over to the counter where she’d put the items she’d

collected from the little cave. “Maybe we can read some of

this stuff.”

The plain leather wallet was soaked, but Judith pried it

open and saw that most of its contents were either plastic or

encased in plasticene. “Here’s a driver’s license,” she said,

holding the laminated item under an overhead light above

the counter. “It’s in pretty good shape.”

“Better shape than its owner,” Renie remarked, rubbing at

her feet.

“I’m afraid so…Ohmigod!” With a stricken expression on

her oval face, Judith turned to Renie. “This belongs to Barry

Albert Newcombe!”

Renie slid off the tall stool where she’d been perched.

“Barry! The disappearing caterer! Holy Mother!”

SNOW PLACE TO DIE / 39

With shaking fingers, Judith rifled through credit cards

and other personal pieces of ID. “It’s him, all right. Some of

this stuff is paper, and it’s unreadable, but here are his

OTIOSE employee card, credit cards, gas cards, medical

enrollment card—the whole lot.” Still clutching the wallet

and the towel, Judith leaned against the counter.

“I guess,” Renie said in a subdued voice, “Barry’s not

missing anymore.”

Judith gave a single nod. “Are you going to call the cops

or shall I?”

“Why call the cops?” Renie objected, puffing frantically at

her cigarette. “We need an undertaker. Barry must have

gotten caught in the middle of a snowstorm and froze to

death.”

“We need a cop because he was a missing person,” Judith

persisted. “Besides,” she began, then made a face, “we need

a cop, because that’s what you do when you find a body.”

Renie winced. “I wonder if we should tell the rest of them

about Barry first. I mean, he belonged to them, not us.”