Six
Maybe she wasn’t intrepid enough for sleuthing, Lanie thought, clutching Will’s jacket with hands gone completely numb in the frigid afternoon air. Maybe she needed to update her image of discreetly poking around for clues in a saucy convertible, wearing a bag to match her shoes. No one dressed like that anymore but her grandmother, anyway, whose white leather pocketbook was stored in her closet with her white leather church shoes, right beside the black patent leather set.
As far as she knew, Nancy Drew had never ridden on the back of a snowmobile that resembled a New Age rocket, icicles dripping from her hair and her rear end smarting with each jolt of the contraption over the hard-packed snow. Which was traveling much, much too fast for her taste.
“... there,” Will shouted, only a fragment of his voice carrying over the icy wind as he jerked the snowmobile forward with a groan from the engine.
“What?” she yelled back, hanging on and digging her knees into his hipbones, just to make him uncomfortable.
“We’re almost there!” He took one hand off the steering bar and pointed at the highway, now visible as they cleared a small rise, and Lanie blinked frost from her eyelashes to squint at the faded motel sign sitting dejectedly by the side of the road. The Come On Inn, dented metal letters spelled out. Maybe that was what passed for romance up here in the country.
A minute later, Will steered the snowmobile across the deserted road and slid to a stop in the parking lot, cutting the engine.
“You okay?” He held out a hand as he jumped off, shaking snow dust from his hair.
“My ass has been better,” Lanie grumbled. Her foot shook as she stepped down, and she caught Will’s eye in time to say, “Don’t even think about it,” when she noticed his mouth opening in a retort.
But she let him pull her against him as they made their way through the unplowed snow to the front office. Warmth was warmth, even if it was coming from a kamikaze snowmobile driver.
“What if no one’s here?” she said. The window was grimed with salt from previous snows, and probably a decade’s worth of road dust besides. There were no cars in the parking lot, which stretched the length of the squat white brick building, and no lights visible behind the heavy drapes in the guest rooms’ windows.
“Clarice will be here,” Will said, pushing open the door, and Lanie followed.
He was right. When the bell jingled, a head of wild raven hair jerked out of the doorway behind the counter, and an enormous pink bubble snapped and deflated. “Hey, Will. What’s up?”
“Stayed here again last night, Clarice?” Will said, folding his arms on the counter and leaning over it, sniffing. “Any coffee brewed?”
“I end up staying here every night,” Clarice said. “I told Henry we could get reservations on the Web if he put in a cable modem—I’ve only got dial-up at home. You need a room or what?”
“I need some information.” Bastard, Lanie thought. He was twinkling at the girl. “But even more than that, I really need some caffeine.”
“It’s almost four o’clock, Will. What does this look like, a diner?”
“Come on, Clarice. You mainline coffee and HTML all day.” Twinkle, sparkle.
Lanie rolled her eyes and settled on a cracked black leather chair beside the window. She would just sit and contemplate the effects of frostbite while Romeo flirted them up something hot to drink. At this point, she didn’t care if it was a twenty-year-old package of Swiss Miss.
A minute later, he thrust a steaming cardboard cup into her hand and settled into the chair beside her. Clarice perched on the counter, swinging a pair of electric purple high-tops and snapping her gum. “What do you want, Will? I’m coding stuff for the Web site, and I want it to go live later today.”
“What’s your Web site about?” Lanie asked politely, blowing on her coffee. All the good detectives—at least the ones who didn’t rely on brute force as a rule—always made small talk.
“Farscape fan fiction,” Clarice said, taking her gum out of her mouth and rolling it between two fingers. Her nails were painted bright green. “And the possibility of alien life on earth.”
Lanie swallowed her coffee too fast and coughed. “Oh.”
Will bit back a grin and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Was an older guy, looks just like me, staying here any time recently?”
“Your dad?” Clarice slid off the counter and walked around it, flipping open the guest register. She shrugged when Will frowned at her. “The name kind of gave it away. Here it is, Mike DeMaio, Tuesday the fifth, till this Thursday. Why?”
“Just wondering.” Staring into his coffee cup, his tone was casual when he asked, “Anyone hanging around here with him? Any trouble?”
“This isn’t a baby-sitting service either, Will,” Clarice said with an exasperated huff, but when he turned his blue gaze up to her, she gave in. “I think Chick Statler stopped by once, and what’s his name? Um ... yeah, Petey Petrowski, too, a couple of times.”
“Chick?” Lanie asked, setting her empty cup on the floor and wondering if she should have been taking notes.
“It’s a nickname,” Will explained. “For Jason Statler. If you saw him you’d know it’s kind of like calling Michael Jordan ‘Shorty’, but he doesn’t seem to mind.”
“Is that it?” Clarice interrupted, popping a fresh piece of gum into her mouth. Her dark eyes were bored beneath the coat of thick black eyeliner. “I’ve got two more pages to design.”
“What room was he in?” Will stood up, and Lanie followed, hoping they weren’t headed back to the snowmobile so soon. “If it’s free, can I have it for tonight?”
“If it’s free ...” Clarice snorted, and handed him the key to Room 10. “I think I can squeeze you in.”
“Charming,” Lanie said, fingering the faded blue spread. It felt like early-issue polyester, and there was a questionable stain on one corner. The walls were a grim beige—she suspected they’d once been white and were now just dirty. A nondescript nightstand had been set beside the bed, and a lamp was bolted to its scarred surface.
“No one comes here for the ambience,” Will called from the bathroom. “Personally, I’m a little disappointed there are no Magic Fingers. Find anything?”
“Maybe Clarice cleans up better than you thought,” she called back. “There’s nothing here but a trusty King James and a phonebook.”
“Nothing in here, either. Damn it.” He came out of the bathroom and dropped onto the bed, frowning. “What do we do next, Nancy?”
“I’m not sure, Ned.” She sat down beside him and shrugged off her coat. He’d cranked the thermostat when they came in, and warm, stale air gushed from the clattering unit by the window. “It’s been a while since the whole thing with the old clock and figuring out the password to Larkspur Lane.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, and lay back, throwing an arm across his face. “And I have no idea what to do next.”
“Well, we could interview his old buddies in town,” Lanie said, toeing off her sneakers and scooting backward to cross her legs on the end of the bed. “Figure out who else he saw while he was here. But we could also try to trace his movements, check out your office, and ... what?” She’d glanced back at him and stopped when he removed his arm and looked at her blankly before his eyes warmed with amusement.
“You watch a lot of cop shows, Lanie?”
“No,” she said with an injured huff. “Just CSI once in a while. And Law and Order. Well, and the occasional rerun of NYPD Blue. You know, when it was still worth watching.” She bit back a smile as Will snorted, and added, “Okay, I watch my share. What do you watch?”
“Baseball. Football. Basketball. Hockey.” He grinned when she rolled her eyes, and added, “And this surprises you? Hello, guy here. I wasn’t going to mention the adult movies on Cinemax After Dark, but if you really want to—”
“I don’t, thank you.” She sniffed, and then turned around to face him. “We could just stop, you know. The police are handling it, and they probably wouldn’t like you poking around on your own anyway. The thing is, you could still be in danger, especially if someone really mistook your dad for—”
“Lanie.”
She took in a breath at the sound of his voice, low and gentle, and felt a flutter of excitement when she realized his gaze had darkened to that smoky, heated blue she’d seen last night. The man could make her tingle all over with just a look, and if she stopped to remember what he had made her feel when touching was part of the equation, she’d melt into a messy puddle right here at the foot of the bed.
“Maybe you could just help me talk it out,” he said, but it was really more of a murmur. A persuasive, you’re-too-far-away murmur. “It would be easier if you were up here, though.” He patted the bedspread in invitation.
“Within groping range?” She lifted an eyebrow, but she scooted up next to him, curling into the circle of his arm and against the heat of his body with a satisfied sigh. Go ahead, grope me, she wanted to say. There’s nothing I’d like more.
“Something like that,” he said, but he only reached up to twine his fingers in her hair. She wanted to push against his hand like a cat, urge him to stroke, but they had a murder to figure out, after all. Her body was embarrassingly oblivious to the business at hand.
“So, enemies,” she said idly. “Apparently, you have some. When I found the body, and thought it was you, my first thought was the contractor who confronted you at the bar. What was his name?”
“Vic Landry.” He angled up on his other elbow to look at her. “That doesn’t work, though—from the looks of it, my father was probably dead before we even got back to the cottage, and Vic left the bar before we did. Even if he was somewhere waiting for me, the timing’s all wrong— my dad was shot sometime early in the evening, before there was much snow.”
“Okay, so he’s out. Which is a shame, because he’s got a motive.” Tracing a figure eight on his sweater with one finger, she looked up at him and noticed his raised eyebrows. “Not a good one,” she added, “but still.”
They were silent for a few minutes, each thinking, with the low rumble of the heater in the background. In the comfortable nest of the bed, Will’s body a great big warm temptation beside her, it was hard to believe they were trying to piece together the clues to a murder instead of how quickly they could get undressed.
“I guess that leaves out Jill, too, huh?” Lanie said finally. “I thought maybe she’d gone totally stalker-psycho and followed us back to the house, but if he was dead before we got there ...”
“Yeah.” Will sat up, running his fingers through his hair. “Besides, she may be a little single-minded, but I don’t think she’s homicidal. You know, yet.”
“Maybe if we knew what your dad was doing here, it would lead us to something,” she suggested. “What about the people Clarice mentioned?”
“Well, I can’t think of a reason Chick would want me dead,” Will said doubtfully.
“What’s Chick’s deal? He sounds ... interesting.” Focusing was difficult when she was breathing in the clean, warm scent of him.
“He runs a Harley shop out near Finley, and it’s not strictly aboveboard. He’s not a bad guy, really, but he looks like one, and he uses that to intimidate people.” Will sighed, and his arm tightened around her. “Chick has always been just scummy enough to encourage wanna-bes to fetch and carry for him, you know? Actually, Petey, the other guy Clarice mentioned, used to run errands for him sometimes back in high school. Go out for another case of beer, lock up the shop when Chick had a date, that kind of thing. He always thought it would make him one of the cool guys.”
“How did your father even know Chick?” Lanie asked. “He had to be years older.”
“Not as many as you’d think.” Will’s voice was rueful. “He and my mom were just eighteen when I was conceived in the proverbial backseat of someone’s Chevy, and Chick’s a few years older than me—left back twice, and the kind of guy who likes to be a big fish in a little pond, hanging out with kids just enough younger to look up to him.”
“Sounds like a really upright member of society,” Lanie murmured. “What about Petey ... what was his name?”
“Petrowski. I fired him a month ago, actually—he’s been working for me on and off for years, but I got fed up with his bullshit. He’s lazy and about as intelligent as a bottle cap, and I just stopped feeling sorry for him.”
“But what would your dad want with him?” Lanie asked.
“They were probably commiserating about what a rotten guy I am,” Will said with a bitter laugh. “I wouldn’t give either of them a handout as often as they liked.”
“So that means we’re back where we started,” she added, sitting up in frustration. Outside the slightly parted drapes, the afternoon was completely still, a dark, threatening gray. “Nowhere.”
With that, as if she’d uttered the words to a spell, it was suddenly even darker. With a wheezing gasp, the radiator went off, and then the lights went out.