Last Resort of Murder (A Lacy Steele Mystery Book 9) (2 page)

Lacy stood at the entrance to
Michael’s store and watched him frown at his cash register. She couldn’t say
why it was so good to see him again. It just was. He had become a close friend
in a relatively short amount of time, to both her and Jason. While he was away,
something had felt like it was missing. Now that he was back, life felt a
little more complete.

“If you’re wondering why it’s
empty, it might be because you weren’t here to sell things,” she said.

He looked up with a beaming smile.
“Lacy!”

“He remembers my name,” she said.

“You’re speaking in the third
person. What are you, Gollum now?” he said.

“What’s in its pocketses? Filthy
hobittses,” she said.

“I wasn’t sure you were here today.
The ice cream parlor still has all its cones,” he said.

“I’m on a diet,” she said.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“My parents split up.” She hadn’t
said it out loud to anyone else. Why she blurted it to him was a mystery.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She shrugged and came farther into
the store. “How was Ireland?”

“Green. How was home?”

“The same except I bought a
scooter. It’s sitting beside your motorcycle in Jason’s garage, waiting for
some warmer weather.”

“How did Jason take that?” Michael
asked.

“About as well as you’d expect. He
made me buy some black leather gear to prevent road rash in the likely event
that I skid out,” she said.

“That sounds kind of hot,” he said.

“Not really. I made the mistake of
getting a purple helmet. I look like Miss Piggy in
The Great Muppet Caper,
” she said.

He laughed hard and wiped his eyes.
“I missed you, you weird, wonderful person.”

“Are you going skiing with us?” she
asked.

“Is that a problem?” he asked.

“Riley’s trying to fix you up with
Kimber. You know how I feel about that,” she said. “Kimber’s still vulnerable
after the Andy debacle.”

“Kimber and I talked about it and
decided we could stomach Riley doing her best
Fiddler on the Roof
act as matchmaker, if it meant we scored a free
ski weekend. Kimber’s a big girl, you know. If something developed between us,
it would be on her head, not yours.”

“I feel personally responsible for
the happiness of my friends and family,” she said.

“I know you do,” he said.

“Which is why I think you should
give Suze another chance.”

He groaned.

“She likes you.”

“Really? I couldn’t tell from the four
hundred sixty seven texts she sent me while I was in Ireland. Or the family of
possums she stuffed and dressed like Cupid and left on my porch as a welcome
home present.”

“She did?” Lacy had a sinking
feeling. She had tried to counsel Suze to take a step back and let Michael make
the next move. It looked as though her advice hadn’t worked.

“Each one was holding a sign with a
single letter on it. Together I think they were supposed to spell ‘LOVE,’ only
she put them in the wrong order and spelled ‘VOLE.’”

“Those could have been left by
anyone,” Lacy said.

“Of all the stalkers I’ve ever had,
she’s the only taxidermist,” he said.

“That makes her special,” Lacy
said.

“Give it up,” Michael said. “Why do
you want me with her so badly?”

“She’s sad. She likes you.”

“What a ringing endorsement.
Besides, if I dated every sad woman who liked me, I wouldn’t have much free
time for anything else,” Michael said.

“It’s more than that. Underneath it
all, I think she has a good heart, a great heart. She’s a hidden treasure.
Together you two have potential.”

“Alone she has a serious mental
illness.”

“She’s not mentally ill. She’s
untraditional,” Lacy said.

“Sweetheart, gaucho pants are
untraditional. Suze is a nut job.” His eyes slid to the door. “Tell her,
Jason.”

Lacy turned to see him skulking in
the doorway. She wondered how long he had been there. Smiling, she beckoned him
forward with a wave.

“I’ve stopped beating that
particular drum,” Jason said. He went forward and slipped his arm around her
waist, a bit possessively, Lacy thought. Michael eyed them with a knowing smile
and small shake of his head.

“Good to see you, man,” Jason
added.

“You too,” Michael said. “I see
everything here is exactly as I left it.” He motioned to his store, although
Lacy thought that wasn’t what he was talking about. He found Jason’s struggle
with jealousy amusing. She didn’t. It annoyed her that Jason didn’t trust her
when she said nothing was between her and Michael. But since he didn’t voice
his feelings, she pushed her annoyance away. He was working on it. That was the
most she could ask of him.

“Same town, different day,” Jason
said. He glanced at the clock on Michael’s wall. “I need to get back to work.
Care to walk with me to my car?”

“Definitely,” Lacy said. To Michael
she added, “I want to hear all about your trip.”

“We’ll have plenty of time to catch
up on the ski weekend,” Michael said.

“I don’t know about that. I’m going
to be a skiing maniac,” Lacy said.

“You ski?” Michael asked.

“No, but I have high hopes. How
hard could it be?” Lacy said.

She wasn’t oblivious to the fact
that Michael and Jason made eye contact over her head. “Come on, you guys. I
know I’ve had some mishaps with sports before, but skiing is basically an
organized way to fall down a hill. No one falls as well as I do,” she said.

“We’ll give you that,” Michael
said.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Jason
said.

“Aw, I missed the adorably pathetic
way you suck up to her,” Michael said.

“And I missed…Wait, I’ll think of
something in a minute,” Jason said.

After saying goodbye to Michael,
they walked hand in hand outside. Jason led her to his car and kissed her.

“That was nice, but a tad public,”
Lacy said when the kiss was over. A few feet away, her grandmother’s friend,
Rose, observed them from the sidewalk.

“Good morning,” Lacy said, nodding.
She could feel her cheeks turning pink.

“Get a room,” Rose, who was a bit
deaf, boomed before moving along.

“I’m worried about you,” Jason
said, ignoring Rose. He had to ignore a lot of troublesome people in her life,
she realized.

“Why?” Lacy said.

“Why? Lacy, you haven’t spoken a
word about your parents’ separation since it happened. When you said you didn’t
want to talk about it, I didn’t know you meant forever.”

“What’s the point of talking about it?
It won’t change anything,” she said.

“Since when don’t you want to fix
things for the people in your life?” he asked.

“My parents’ relationship is beyond
my level of expertise,” she said. He looked worried about her. She gave him a
reassuring smile and pressed her palm to his stubbled cheek.
 
“Jason, you’re sweet, but you’re
worrying for nothing. I’m really okay.” The alarm on her phone beeped. “I have
to go. It’s time for my snack.”

“What snack?” he asked.

“A teaspoon of chia seeds in a half
tablespoon of almond butter,” she said.

“That’s horrifying. Please don’t
say you’re planning to measure all of your food for the duration of this diet.”

“How else will I know how much I’m
eating?” she said.

“When your body tells you you’re
full,” he said.

“Oh, I smothered that mechanism
years ago. All my body says now is, ‘Feed me, Seymour.’” She stood on her toes
to give him a light peck on the lips as Rose made her return trip on the
sidewalk nearby.

“Did you kids have oysters for
breakfast this morning?” Rose yelled, causing several other passersby to pause
and gawk at them.

“Oysters sound so good right now,”
Lacy said.

Jason put his hands on her
shoulders. “Lacy, go eat a real portion of real food.”
 

She shook her head. “I need to lose
some weight.”

“That’s your mother talking. Listen
to your boyfriend—you’re perfect and beautiful and I love you.”

She laughed and wriggled free of
his grasp. She couldn’t trust his biased opinion anymore than she could trust
her mother’s. “I have to go, crazy man. Talk to you later.”

“Chia seeds belong on novelty
pottery, not in your stomach,” he called. She gave him a little wave and
disappeared inside the Stakely building. The walk up several flights of stairs
to her office had never felt so long and daunting before. Worse, there was no
reward waiting for her at the top, only a few seeds and some nut butter. She
choked them down as best she could, trying hard not to think of gummy bears and
chocolate chip cookies.

She needed this diet to work,
needed to lose the weight, needed to get things back in control. The last few
weeks since Riley’s baby was born, everything felt like it was spiraling to
chaos. It had nothing to do with her parents’ separation, though. She was sure
of it.

Jason had no idea they were
carpooling. He picked Lacy up, thinking of nothing but all the alone time they
would have over the weekend.

“I can’t tell you how much I’m
looking forward to this,” he said. He leaned over the console and kissed her,
an act that came to an abrupt halt when her father opened the back door and
slid inside.

“Jason,” he said, nodding.

“Sir,” Jason said. He wasn’t
terrified of her father the way he was of her grandfather, but it was never
comfortable to be caught kissing your girlfriend by her dad.

“Call me Clint,” he said. “How’s
life treating you?”

“Well,” Jason said, and the
conversation fell flat. He couldn’t return the question because he knew how
life was treating him. He and his wife were separated. They had been together
since high school. Even Jason could see the air of sadness hanging around the
older man. Maybe this weekend was exactly what everyone needed.

He backed out of the driveway. Lacy
rested her hand on his thigh. He almost drove into a mailbox.

“We’re picking up Michael,” she said,
all innocent sweetness. She had no idea the power she had over him. Heaven help
him if she ever figured it out.

“What?” he asked.

“Michael, we’re picking up
Michael.” She gave his thigh a squeeze and let it go. He blinked a few times,
trying to get his brain back in order. What had she said? Something about
Michael. They were picking him up.

“Mom and Kimber are riding with
Riley and Tosh,” Lacy said.

“We’re only taking two cars?” Jason
said.

“It seemed more expedient,” Lacy
said.

Cozy,
Jason thought. He didn’t really mind the extra passengers, except it
destroyed the illusion of alone time with Lacy he had built. They were always
so busy. It seemed there was never enough time to simply
be.
He was sure they would get some time once they arrived at the
resort, however. They picked up Michael who tossed his duffle in the trunk and
held out his hand for Lacy’s father to shake.

Clint Steele was friendly and
easygoing, basically everything his wife wasn’t. Jason had no trouble getting
along with Lacy’s dad. He wished he could say the same about her mom. The
arrival of baby Lucy had helped immensely. Frannie had thrown herself into
being a grandmother and spent all her free time with the baby lately, much to
Tosh’s chagrin.

That’s
his problem,
Jason thought and immediately followed with,
Someday it could be yours.
He wouldn’t
let himself dwell on that, though.

Michael and Clint hit it off as
well as two easygoing men can. Soon they were discussing sports and Ireland.
Jason listened with half an ear. He was keen on the sports talk and
occasionally offered his own two cents. To his right, Lacy stared silently out
the window. Occasionally she put her hand in her pocket and stuffed something
into her mouth. There was nothing unusual about that—she kept M&M’s
in all her coat pockets for emergencies—but then he remembered she was on
a diet.

“What are you eating?” he asked.

“Seaweed blobs,” she said.

“What?”

She held out her hand and showed
him a dark green ball of something. “Seaweed blobs. That’s not their actual name;
that’s just what I call them.”

“What are they?”

“Wads of dried seaweed. Seaweed is
loaded with iodine; it’s good for the thyroid and helps detox the liver,” she
said. Her tone was flat and dismal and totally unlike the woman who had once
spent ninety minutes detailing for him all her favorite ways to combine peanut
butter with chocolate. He had promised to be supportive, however, and nagging
her over the diet wouldn’t help. Her mother already did that, and he saw the
effect it had on her.

“Can I try one?” he asked.

She placed a ball of seaweed
between his lips.

“Briny,” he said after he finally
swallowed the abysmal snack. He liked health food more than most people, and
even he thought the seaweed blobs were horrible. They tasted exactly as good as
they sounded.

“What if you ate the fruits and
vegetables you like instead all this crazy food you hate?” he asked.

“No, it has to be this way,” she
said.

She was punishing herself, and he
didn’t know why. She had an unhealthy relationship with food. He knew and
accepted it about her. But usually it tended the other way so that she ended up
talking about baked goods like they were living members of her family.
Sometimes that worried him, but now he would have given anything to have it
back. Now she was colorless. The vivacity had been sucked out of her, along
with the sugar. He didn’t want to enable her bad eating habits, but neither did
he want to encourage the crazy dieting. Did other people have these problems?
Relationships were hard work. He wanted to help her, but he had no idea how.
The only thing he could think was to do the opposite of everything her mother
did.

“You know what’s best for you,” he
said. She blinked at him in surprise. She had been expecting an argument over
her diet. “By the way, I like you.”

She smiled a little and stuffed the
seaweed wad back in her pocket. When he could take his eyes off the road, he
studied her again. She was winking at him. Or at least he thought she was
winking at him. Her eye was blinking strangely, but she was staring straight
ahead.

“What?” he said.

“What what?” she asked. She faced
him full on, her eye twitching at warp speed.

“Are you trying to signal me?” he
asked.

“No, why?”

“Your eye, it’s winking,” he said. She
put her hand to her eye and covered it as if ready to take a vision test.

“I didn’t notice,” she said.

“How could you not notice? Doesn’t
it bother you?”

“No. Is it still doing it?” She
dropped her hand. The eye twitched erratically, pausing to narrow at him as he
made his inspection.

“Yes. Lacy, how can that not bother
you?”

“I don’t know. It just doesn’t,”
she said. Facing forward again, she reached in her pocket for a seaweed wad and
stuffed one in her mouth.

“Put on some music. Maybe it will
twitch to the beat,” Michael suggested.

Normally Jason hated to listen to
music in the car. He preferred to use the time for thinking and mental
organization, but maybe Michael was right. Maybe some music would soothe Lacy’s
nervous twitch.

“Find something,” Jason told her.

She turned on the radio and a
seventies rock station came on.

“Perfect,” Michael said.

“This is music from my generation.
They don’t make it like this anymore,” Clint agreed.

“That’s because they’re all dead,
Dad,” Lacy said.

Clint shook her seat. “Hey, no
making fun of the geriatric.”

“Lacy, why are you on a diet?”
Michael asked.

“To lose weight, obviously,” Lacy
said.

“Why obviously? Better to be a
cello than a flute,” Michael replied.

“This is Frannie’s doing,” Clint
said with uncharacteristic enmity.

“No, Dad, this is my decision,”
Lacy said.

“You might think it’s your
decision, but you wouldn’t have these thoughts in your head about your weight
if she hadn’t been pressuring you all these years.”

“It’s not Mom’s fault.”

Jason agreed with Clint, but Lacy
sounded near tears. She put her hand in her pocket and stuffed two seaweed
blobs in her mouth.

“Clint, you played basketball in
high school, right?” he asked.

“And in college,” Clint said,
somewhat sullenly.

“Did you play?” Jason asked
Michael.

“No, but I sold pot to our high
school’s point guard once,” Michael said.

“But you
can
play, right?” Jason pressed.

“I enjoy a good game now and then,”
Michael said.

“I think they have an outdoor court
here. Maybe we could get a game of two on two with Tosh.”

“That seems like a stacked deck,
considering my advanced age and all,” Clint said.

“No, Tosh is terrible at
basketball,” Lacy said.

“With height like that? He should
have been a forward,” Clint said.

“He can’t dribble,” Lacy said.

“I’ll be sure and use that against
him,” her father said, and the remainder of the ride was filled with happy
conversation and pleasant banter.

At last they arrived. Lacy gasped.

“Wow,” Jason said.

“Are we sure Tosh is paying for
this?” Clint asked.

“If not, we’d better scope out the
exits for a quick getaway because there is no way we regular folk could afford
this place,” Michael said. “Well, except you, my millionaire friend, Lacy.”

She turned to wrinkle her nose at
him while Jason took in the fancy resort. Set halfway up a small mountain, it
looked like the kind of place he would see in the background of an Olympic ski
competition. It was massive, a giant wood and stone structure with glass
windows on every side.

“It’s a Tyrolean fantasy land,”
Lacy said.

“Honey, could you translate that
for the non-English lit majors in the car?” her dad said.

“Alpine, Bavarian,” Lacy said
distractedly. “Look, there’s the ski lift. Is it scary to ride a lift?”

“Only if you’re afraid of heights,”
Jason said.

“Or falling from them,” Michael
added.

“Don’t worry. Beginners usually
start with a tow rope,” Jason reassured her.

“Good, that’s good,” Lacy said.

“You don’t have to ski,” Jason
reminded her.

“I will ski this weekend or die
trying,” Lacy said. The men in the car looked at each other in silent
agreement: that’s what they were afraid of.