The Body in the Snowdrift (10 page)

“Sure, Roy,” she answered.

The back door was opening slowly. The fluorescent light over the sink that they left on as a night-light was enough to pick up the motion. Instinctively, Faith ducked behind the counter, clutching the glass of orange juice she'd come down to get—sleepless even at 1:30
A.M.,
jazzed from the night's work, jazzed by a whole lot of things.

She wasn't afraid—yet. All she had to do was scream and the three adults upstairs would be alerted. No, she wasn't afraid, just curious.

The frigid night air swept into the room as the door opened wider. It must be windy outside, she thought. Not a night fit for man nor beast. Nor burglar. But it was absurd to think it was a burglar. There was nothing in the condo worth taking—no plasma TV, no high-tech computer equipment. The cutlery was Betty
Crocker box tops stainless and the plates yard-sale mismatches. Any major jewelry was firmly on the owners' fingers. Besides, it was Vermont, a place where the bovine population had exceeded the human population in number until recently. The most rural state in the Union—with a minuscule crime rate.

A low voice asked, “Everything okay?”

There was no reply. The other person must have gestured. She heard the door shut. Soft footsteps were stealthily creeping toward the kitchen area. She moved farther back into the corner where the counter met the stove, crouching down even lower. She had a pretty good idea who it was now, and she wasn't sure she wanted to be seen. The figure passed by and headed straight for the bedroom down the hall.

She was right! It was Scott.

As soon as she heard him close the door, Faith raced to the window at the rear of the condo—her slippered feet gliding noiselessly over the carpet—and looked out. She was just in time to see a figure walking slowly away. When it reached the spotlight outside the last unit, Faith saw it was Ophelia—hatless, seemingly oblivious to the cold, that unmistakable purple streak of hair blowing straight back in the wind, a pennant.

“Damn,” Faith said softly. This was more information than she wanted to have. What was she supposed to do? Sneaking out and then back in like this was a rite of passage for kids Scott's age, but what was he up to with Ophelia? If Faith told Betsey, she'd ground him for life, and certainly the family vacation would be ruined. If Faith didn't tell Betsey and Betsey found out that Faith hadn't told her, Faith would be grounded for
life, and the family vacation ruined. What about confronting Scott? She didn't feel comfortable about doing that, either.
She
wasn't his mother. What would she say to him?

As the disquieting thoughts made an untidy pile in her mind, she continued to watch Ophelia. Where was the girl going? There weren't any houses or condos in that direction—only woods. She couldn't be camping out in this kind of weather, although Faith knew there were plenty of diehards who did. But why would Ophelia pitch a tent, with a warm bed nearby? When Fred's parents retired, the younger Staffords had taken over the house Fred had grown up in. It was a small stone Arts and Crafts–style lodge built near the main lodge, but far enough away for privacy. The original owner of the resort's 260-plus acres had built it some time in the twenties as a retreat from his mansion overlooking Lake Champlain.

Wherever Ophelia was heading, it wasn't home.

Faith felt sorry for the girl. She'd had multiple disruptions in her short life, starting with her parents' divorce. Faith remembered something a divorced friend of hers had said some years ago when Faith had naïvely commented that the kids must be happier without all the tension in the house. “Your husband—or wife—could be an ax murderer, or, more commonly, the two of you could be having knock-down-drag-out fights every night, and your kids would still want you to stay together. And what's more, they always will. Yes, you may be doing it for them and it may be the right and only thing to do, but there's always a place in every kids' minds where they're praying that mom and
dad will get back together—and I'm talking about six-year-olds and sixty-year-olds. Hope never dies.”

This would explain Ophelia's attitude toward Fred, and, by extension, the rest of the Staffords. Her father's remarriage, move, and subsequent abandonment of her—if Scott was to be believed—had only made things worse. Taking her away from her friends must have been the last straw. Pine Slopes was the booniest of the boonies. You couldn't even get cell phone reception here, an adolescent girl's lifeline. Maybe that's when Joanie became Ophelia—and maybe a whole lot of other things, too.

The girl had disappeared into the woods, and Faith realized she was still holding her orange juice. She drank it and considered whether to get something to eat. The restaurant had been packed, and although she'd left before the cleanup, she'd worked straight through from 5:00
P.M.
—they ate at ungodly hours in New England, she'd discovered as a new bride—until 11:00, when a group she assumed to be New Yorkers stopped ordering more desserts. She'd been too busy to eat, then, back at the condo, too tired. Everyone had gone to bed, exhausted by the day's activity. Faith had been relieved. She had no wish to see Betsey. She knew at some point she'd have to say something to her sister-in-law and smooth things over, but not yet.

Tom had stayed up, reading in bed, waiting for her.

After a very satisfactory greeting, he'd told her that the Staffords had a lead on a chef. Faith was pretty skeptical that they could find someone so soon at the height of the season and was sure she'd be on call for
a few days. Maybe they could trace John and hire whomever he'd bumped.

She'd started to tell Tom about Betsey's over-the top reaction to the boys going to Stowe for lunch, but he'd started talking about Boyd Harrison's will, and she'd shelved Betsey for another time.

“He wasn't married, was an only child, and his parents had been dead for quite some time. But he did have a major beneficiary. The problem for the Staffords is that they owed Boyd quite a lot of money. He'd put some capital into the resort outright, but some was as a loan. And now it has to be paid back to the estate. Apparently, this isn't someone with an interest in the resort or working out some sort of repayment plan. I'm surprised the Staffords didn't foresee this possibility, especially given Boyd's health.”

Faith had been, too. “Or Simon, he's a sharp cookie, and he must have known about the arrangement. He keeps the books. Maybe they all assumed Boyd had forgiven the debt in the will.”

Tom had agreed. “Maybe he planned to, but nothing was specified. He was a lawyer, you know. It sounds a little like the old saw about shoemakers' wives going barefoot…. At least he had a will.

“The other problem,” Tom had continued, “is that the Staffords and Boyd were still just at the talking stage about some new snowmaking equipment—essential if a resort is going to survive. Global warming makes golf resorts, not ski resorts, happy. Nothing was on paper, just a verbal agreement that he'd put up half the money. Fred was hoping to get a deal at the end of the season from one of the manufacturers.”

“No wonder they're frantic about losing their famous chef; they can't afford any losses,” Faith had said. “How did you find out about all this anyway?”

Tom, unlike his wife, did not make it his business to ferret out information, especially this kind of information. Presumably, his mind was on higher things.

“Craig. You know how close he is to Freddy. It's not a brother or father thing. Hard to explain. Soul mates, maybe. I think the happiest times of my brother's life have been here at Pine Slopes. Both of these guys could have made the Olympic team. Fred couldn't afford to; Craig…well, you know Craig.”

Faith did. Her brother-in-law, much as she loved him, lacked the self-discipline—and willingness to accede to the authority of a coach—required for this ultimate challenge.

Tom had continued. “I'm worried about how hard Craig is taking Boyd's death. It's almost as if he feels Boyd did it on purpose, which is nuts. But he keeps talking about how Pine Slopes could go under and what a disaster that would be. Thinks that Boyd should have left everything to Freddy and Naomi, or Mary and Harold. He's very angry.” These last words, although dramatic, had been said with a yawn, and they had turned out the bedside lights. Besides not telling Tom about the eruption of Mount Betsey, Faith had also figured it wasn't the time to tell him about Craig's wife, Glenda, and her Nordic god of a ski instructor.

Her thoughts returning to the present, Faith decided against warming up the lone piece of spanakopita—the layered combination of feta cheese, spinach, and flaky phyllo dough had obviously been a success
. She put her empty glass in the sink and went back upstairs for what she fervently hoped would be some kind of night's sleep.

 

The woman's body was facedown in the pool, arms and legs splayed out. The water, as still as the figure, was stained red, uneven rivulets of color against the blue tile. Her long blond hair floated at the surface in gory squidlike tendrils.

Sally Sloane screamed and raced to the phone, first dialing 911, then Simon at the lodge.

“Don't go in there!” She dropped the phone and tried to block the families emerging from the locker rooms and rapidly approaching the pool.

The vacation week had started in earnest, and the resort was packed—particularly the Sports Center on this overcast morning, as people awaited the meteorologist's prediction of a clear, sunny afternoon to hit the slopes.

“What's going on?” Josh asked. He'd been checking people in at the front counter and handing out towels, keeping a close tally to shove in Simon's face when they met later to talk about the facility. Every piece of equipment was in use; there was even a waiting list for the treadmills. If anything, they needed to expand the exercise facility. Josh was a fair telemark skier himself, but he wished the Nordic Center had stayed in the quaint little cabin by the trails and kept out of his place.

His place! He looked at Sally. She had shut the door to the pool and was blocking the entrance with her body, all one hundred pounds of it. What the hell was she doing?

It was pandemonium. Parents were rushing their kids back to the locker rooms. They couldn't go outside in their bathing suits, and outside was where everybody wanted to be.

“Josh! Thank God!” Sally cried. “There's a body in the pool. Someone must have come in early, one of the lap swimmers. And she's…” She started to sob. “Dead!”

Josh made his way over to her and put his arms around her. “Have you called the police?”

Sally nodded. “And Simon. He should be here any minute.”

“You should have called Fred.” He dropped his arms.

A line of large plants obscured the view of the pool from the rest of the Sports Center, but there was nothing in front of the door.

“Move out of the way, Sally,” Josh said.

“You're not supposed to disturb a crime scene until the police get here.” She'd stopped crying.

“Move over, you idiot! Now!” Josh pushed her to one side and opened the door. Watching him go close to the pool, Sally turned her head away. She didn't want to see that ghastly figure again.

Josh was back in a few seconds.

“Everyone, please listen,” he said loudly. “I'm afraid our Nordic director has made a mistake—a very natural mistake. What she saw in the pool is a stupid prank. The body is one of those inflatable ones—the kind I don't really want to talk about in front of children. It's not real. There is no one in the pool, alive or dead.” He glared at Sally.

“I think I'm going to be sick,” she said, and bolted from the room.

Josh repeated his statement. There were a few guffaws and some people wanted to go look, but Josh locked the door. Whatever it was, it still looked very real—and it was going to be a bitch to clean up.

“Please stay and use the rest of the Sports Center. In the bar, I'll be offering food and drinks on the house.”

He saw Simon come in with the woman who had been in the pool with her little girl yesterday. They seemed to be together. He deliberately turned his back on them and called the police. Maybe he'd be able to stop them before they came charging up the mountain road, sirens blaring. The way his life was going lately, though, he doubted it.

 

Faith had awakened tired and determined the best cure would be to get some exercise. Tom took the kids to ski school and Faith agreed to meet him for a morning of skiing together after she checked in with the kitchen. She had planned to call Niki this morning to tell her what a success the cake had been and to check on a recipe for mushroom soup. This one was a delectable combination of fresh and dried mushrooms in a rich broth. She wanted to serve it as one of the specials, but the call could wait.

No sooner had she arrived in the kitchen than the phone rang. Juana answered it and immediately began shrieking. The rest of the help clustered around her, and after a sea of Spanish, one of them said to Faith, “A dead body—all chopped to pieces—in the pool!”

Faith promptly turned around and went back out the
door. Word had apparently not spread yet; outside, everything looked normal. Running, she almost collided with Simon at the top of the stairs that led from the lift ticket booths to the road down to the Sports Center.

“You heard?” he said.

She nodded, and he matched his pace to hers.

On the way, they encountered a stream of people and a torrent of confusion. One woman grabbed Simon. “Mr. Tanner! What's going on? Is the woman in the pool dead or not?”

A teenager ran by, laughing. “A sex toy! This is some cool place!”

What on earth could he mean? Not stopping to find out, Faith kept going.

Inside the Sports Center, they could see Josh on the phone, and the place was relatively calm. But the people who were left were expressing a full range of emotions.