CHAPTER 3
Bella in vista, dentro è trista.
After much deliberation while devouring an entire box of Entenmann’s banana iced cake and drinking a bottle of banana-flavored vodka, the ladies decided that they should drive up to Icicle Lodge in Helen’s Buick LaCrosse. Jinx’s Chevy Cruze was deemed too small for the two-hour road trip that would carry the ladies and their luggage, and Alberta’s Mercedes and Joyce’s BMW were what Helen described as “fancy cars” that wouldn’t survive the trip or make driving on the rigorous mountain terrain comfortable.
“We’ll wind up with flat tires or a broken axle and be stranded on the side of the road at the mercy of wild beasts and wayward men,” Helen had said.
“She does realize we’re not filming a spaghetti Western, doesn’t she?” Joyce had whispered to Alberta.
“I love my sister, but I’ve never understood how her mind works.”
Neither woman argued with Helen as they were happy for her to take the wheel, nor did Jinx inform Helen that the bulk of the drive to the lodge would be on a series of main throughways and paved roads. There would be a last stretch for a few miles where they’d need to drive on roads carved into the side of a mountain, but they were going to eastern Pennsylvania and not Peru so the GPS on their phones would work if they got lost. The unspoken truth was that they all knew it made Helen feel needed to be the chauffeur so they remained silent.
“Now, isn’t this nicer than being cramped into one of your cars?” Helen asked as she merged onto I-80. “It might not be an overpriced luxury car, but this Buick’s got room to breathe and the peace of mind that only all-wheel drive can offer. Being practical, not fancy, is what keeps you safe and content.”
“That sounds like one of Father Sal’s sermons,” Jinx said sitting in the back seat behind Helen while looking over her notebook filled with information she had found online about Pamela Gregory’s personal and professional life before, during, and after her historic Olympic win. She was so engrossed in her reading that she didn’t notice Alberta, who was sitting next to her, raise an eyebrow at the mention of the priest’s name. Alberta was so surprised by Jinx’s comment that she automatically squeezed Lola even tighter, making her cat squeal and jump to her freedom.
“I won’t be sorry to miss hearing his blubbering for a week,” Helen said.
“You won’t have to, Aunt Helen,” Jinx advised. “He’s joining us.”
If Helen weren’t in the middle lane of the highway, she would’ve slammed on the brakes. Instead she screamed at the top of her lungs. “What?”
“Ma, che sei grullo?” Alberta asked Jinx, although she already knew the only reason Jinx would have made such a comment is because she had lost her mind.
Lifting her head from the papers in her lap, Jinx saw her grandmother’s steely gaze to her right, her Aunt Joyce leaning over from the front passenger seat looking at her in shock, and her Aunt Helen’s eyes framed in the rearview mirror, and she realized this is what Rosemary Woodhouse must have seen when she checked in on her demon baby every morning.
“I’m sorry,” Jinx said meekly.
“What do you mean, Sal is joining us?” Helen barked.
“Didn’t you get the memo, Aunt Helen?” Jinx replied, trying to brush off the five-alarm fire with a one-note joke.
“No, I most certainly did not get the memo!” Helen shouted. “Or an e-mail, a phone call, or even a text!”
Before Helen took the first exit or tried to make a U-turn on the highway, Alberta did what all little sisters have done since the beginning of time; lied to their big sister.
“After Vinny invited Freddy and Sloan to share his rooms with him he felt bad that he left out Sal, who even you have to admit has been very helpful lately.”
“If you call telling Eve where she could find the apple cart in the Garden of Eden’s ShopRite helpful, then yes.”
“Well, okay then,” Alberta stuttered. “And so Vinny mentioned the trip to Sal and he thought it would be nice to get away with all of us since he really doesn’t have any friends.”
“Because he’s a priest!” Helen shouted, gripping the steering wheel tighter. “Priests don’t have friends, they have congregations!”
“Come on, Helen,” Joyce said, deliberately speaking softer in contrast to Helen’s yelling. “You may not want to admit it, but you and Sal have gotten closer lately. He may not be your friend, but also too, you don’t despise him as much as you used to.”
Helen stared straight ahead as if she was trying to memorize the license plate of the car in front of her. She pursed her lips together and shrugged her shoulders slightly and said, “There might be a certain truth to that statement.”
“So maybe this is God’s way of helping you get to know Father Sal a little better,” Joyce suggested.
“I know everything I need to know about Sal, thank you very much,” Helen said tersely. “But what’s done is done.”
“It’s a big lodge, Aunt Helen, you probably won’t even run into him all week.”
“Magari,” Helen replied. “Because I’m looking forward to a relaxing week with the girls.”
There was nothing relaxing about the frantic beeping from the car behind them. Everyone looked around to see what the issue was since Helen was driving at a reasonable 65 mph in the middle lane and there weren’t any cars on either side of her. The impatient car could easily pass her on the left if she was driving too slow for their taste. However, it wasn’t the car’s speed or lack thereof that had caused a reaction, it was the car’s passengers.
Turning around, Jinx cried, “It’s the boys!”
Swiftly the car merged into the left lane, and, in unison, the women turned to the left and saw Vinny’s white Ford Explorer emblazoned with TRANQUILITY POLICE on the side in patriotic red, white, and blue. The four passengers were smiling and waving wildly like they were schoolkids who were playing hooky to take an unsanctioned field trip.
Sloan and Freddy were sitting in the back seat grinning broadly at the sight of Alberta and Jinx in the back seat of Helen’s Buick, it was perfect symmetry as the boyfriends were sitting in the same spots as their girlfriends.
In the front, things weren’t as serendipitous as Vinny was, of course, driving, which meant Father Sal was in the passenger seat, and since Vinny had now matched the Buick’s speed, Sal was only a few feet away from Helen.
Holding the wheel tightly, Helen glowered at the SUV, and the only reason she knew it was Sal was because he was wearing his white collar. His regular eyeglasses with the thick retro black frames had been substituted for a pair of oversized white plastic sunglasses and his thick mane of black hair was covered in a white baseball cap with the initials TPD, which stood for Tranquility Police Department, embroidered onto the front in red lettering. In Helen’s mind, however, the initials stood for This Priest Disappoints.
Rolling down the window, Father Sal screamed something to Helen that was indecipherable since her window was up and on the radio Doris Day was singing, ironically as it turned out, about a sentimental journey.
“Roll your window down, Aunt Helen,” Jinx said. “Father Sal is trying to tell you something.”
“Two hands on the wheel, Jinx,” Helen snapped. “That’s my motto and I’m not breaking it to hear what that idiota has to say.”
But Father Sal would not be ignored, and he kept screaming and waving at Helen to get her attention.
“It looks like it might be important, Hel,” Joyce said. “I can lower your window from the controls on the console.”
“You touch a button, Joyce, I’ll turn this car right around and no one will get to see the fancy roller skater.”
“Ice skater,” Jinx corrected.
“Do not contradict me!”
“Basta!” Alberta cried throwing her hand up in the air and slapping the roof of the car. “Enough! Jinx, take hold of Lola so she doesn’t get any funny ideas.”
Jinx wasn’t sure what her grandmother was talking about, but as always she did what she was told and scooped Lola up from the spot in between them where she was curled up in a ball minding her own business. Only when Jinx had her securely in her lap resting comfortably on top of her notebook did she realize what Alberta was going to do. If Mount Helen wasn’t going to go to Father Muhammad, Alberta was going to move the mountain herself.
Alberta leaned forward, grabbed hold of Helen’s headrest with her left hand, and with her right reached across Helen’s chest to find the button that would lower the window.
“Stop it, Berta, you’re gonna make me crash!” Helen yelled.
“Shut up and look at the road,” Alberta replied.
Now that the window was rolled down, Father Sal’s words could finally be heard. “Hi, Helen!”
With her eyes glaring straight ahead, Helen replied so only those within the Buick could hear, “Tell Sal not to distract me from driving.”
“Helen says hi back, Sal, but she can’t talk now, she’s busy driving,” Alberta yelled out the window. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes!” Father Sal yelled back, holding onto his hat as it started to billow in the wind. “Tell Helen this reminds me of when we would go on our retreats with St. Ann’s Church when we were kids.”
“I will!” Alberta cried back. “Now roll up your window and tell Vinny to drive safe. We’ll see you all in a few hours at the lodge.”
“Okay!” Sal shouted. “This is gonna be fun!”
When Alberta’s window was closed she addressed her sister. “Father Sal said—”
“I heard him,” Helen snapped. “And ladies, if this trip is like any of those St. Ann’s retreats, get ready for the vacation from hell.”
* * *
Two hours later when they pulled up the steep driveway to the parking lot of Icicle Lodge, thoughts of the fiery pits of hell were forgotten and the women felt as if they had entered the gates of paradise.
“Che bello,” Alberta gasped.
And it was beautiful. Ever since moving to Tranquility and into her house on Memory Lake, Alberta didn’t think she would ever see a more picturesque setting, but the view she took in now rivaled the one she saw outside her kitchen window every morning. Granted, this landscape was larger and set in a mountain region and not on the banks of a lake so it wasn’t a direct comparison, but it was, as Sloan had recently remarked about Alberta’s appearance when they went to dinner at Giovanni’s, the new Italian restaurant in town, a knockout.
Icicle Lodge was actually comprised of three log cabins nestled into the base of Mount Ariel, a cluster of mountains that provided all sorts of winter sports activities from downhill and cross-country skiing to snowboarding, snow tubing, and snowmobiling. The largest cabin was the main house where the staff and most of the guests stayed, and where the restaurant was located. One of the smaller cabins was used for surplus guests during the busy season, and the other housed storage and a generator, and was the electrical hub of the entire operation.
Behind the main cabin and in partial view from the parking lot was the Olympic-sized ice-skating rink that offered yet another kind of outdoor winter activity and would be the stage for Pamela Gregory’s comeback. There was a medium-sized shed near the rink where the Zamboni was kept along with a second, smaller generator and all the rest of the tools and materials needed for the rink’s upkeep. In front of the rink and alongside the main cabin was a large outdoor hot tub built into the ground with a stone veneer. When it was in use during cold winter nights, steam would rise up into the air, giving it the appearance of being more of a natural hot spring that sprouted up from the earth instead of a manufactured item put there by man.
There was more to the idyllic setting though, which became apparent the closer the women got to the front of the main building. The parking lot was on a lower plane than the lodge so the immediate view was majestic and overpowering, it gave visitors the feeling that they were entering a kingdom. But as the women got closer to the front door of the main building, the ground leveled and they could see what lay just behind the largest cabin and what gave the area its name—Lake Ariel.
The scent of fresh water mixed with pine and spruce wafted over the landscape like a cleansing breath. The surface of the lake was silver-blue, not frozen, but already taking on a hardened sheen as if protecting its occupants from the oncoming harsh weather. Although Lake Ariel was larger than Memory Lake, it looked like it might be smaller because of its location at the base of such grandiose mountains. Where Memory Lake was surrounded by houses and foliage, giving it a wider appearance, Lake Ariel was dwarfed by the skyscraper-tall mountain range and trees that were its natural neighbors. And while Alberta appreciated this beautiful piece of nature, she preferred her lake over this one. It was a silly thought—she was hardly the owner of Memory Lake, she had just gotten lucky enough to live there—but the feeling made her happy because it meant she truly was content with her living situation for the first time in her entire life.
Cradling Lola in her arms and holding her close to her to keep her warm, Alberta didn’t have to lie when she said, “Jinx, this place is bellissima!” She simply didn’t feel the need to add, “Just not as bellissima as home.”
“Isn’t it, Gram! The lake, the snow-capped mountains, the sky! I never knew Pennsylvania was so big, it’s like we’re out in the Wild Wild West.”
Clutching her pocketbook in one hand and her suitcase in the other, even Helen seemed impressed. “Not bad, Jinxie, not bad.”
“Thanks, Aunt Helen,” Jinx beamed. “I’m glad you like it. It’s so much different than back home.”
“Also too,” Joyce started, “the temperature here is about thirty degrees colder.”
“You’re right about that, Aunt Joyce, let’s get inside.”
The women walked around the side of the main lodge and scurried up the front steps. Jinx opened the huge wooden door and they ran inside, stopping in the large entranceway and going into sensory overload. There was another flight of stairs that descended into the main room so from their higher vantage point they were able to look down and oversee the internal landscape like skiers about to race downhill. Rustic furniture, blazing fireplaces, the heady smell of balsam and cedar, not to mention the shrill, bickering voices from an unseen couple. The beauty of the backdrop outside had given way to some kind of turmoil inside.
“I told you this wouldn’t work out!” screamed a man they couldn’t see.
“It has to!” was the woman’s reply. “It’s been long enough!”
If the unseen man had a rebuttal, it wasn’t heard as the next portion of the conversation was interrupted when the rest of their party entered. The women turned around and greeted Vinny, Sloan, Freddy, and Father Sal, all dressed in different types of plaid jackets and corduroy pants, hunting caps, weatherproof boots, and sporting gloves like they had stepped out of an ad for L.L.Bean, except for Father Sal, who was still sporting his white sunglasses and white TPD baseball cap. Alberta chuckled to herself at the sight and realized that boys liked to play dress-up just as much as girls did.
While the two groups were exchanging their hellos and commenting on the long and precarious drive up the winding hill that led to the lodge from the main road, the argument from the unseen couple started back up again.
“Hell would have to freeze over for it to be long enough, and then the flames would have to start to flicker again and guess what? It still wouldn’t be long enough!”
When the man was finally done screaming, it was the woman’s turn. “I told you before that we need this whether you want to admit it or not so stop arguing with me and do not screw things up!”
Before anyone could comment, one of the offstage screamers finally made her entrance. Her expression gave no indication that she had just had a rip-roaring argument.
“Hi! I’m Cathy Lombardo, the owner of Icicle Lodge,” Cathy said with a thick smile. “And you must be the folks from Tranquility. Please come in and make yourself at home.”
The group made its way downstairs craning their necks to take in more of the lodge’s surroundings. Alberta was the first to greet Cathy on equal footing and shook hands with her host.
“Did the cat give us away?” Alberta asked.
“No, we only have a small guest list for the reopening, mainly press and invited guests, before things really get underway next week,” Cathy explained. “Plus, I recognized Vinny from my husband’s old photos.”
Vinny stepped forward from the back of the group and grabbed Cathy’s hand with both of his.
“I still can’t believe he’s gone,” Vinny said, his voice filled with emotion.
Cathy smiled a bit more wistfully. “Neither can I. But Mike always spoke so highly of you, Vinny, that when I found out you were the chief of police as well as an old friend, I knew he’d want you to be here.”
“Thank you, Cathy,” Vinny said. “That means a lot.”
“And thank you, Jinx, for what I’m sure will be a wonderful article about the lodge and all the improvements we’ve made,” Cathy said. “I’m so glad Wyck wanted to cover it.”
“He insisted,” Jinx replied, deliberately avoiding any mention of the real reason why he wanted Jinx to cover the event. “And now that I’m here I can understand why, it’s postcard-perfect.”
“We think so,” Cathy agreed. “I’m delighted that you could make it, too, Alberta.”
“Me? I’m just the grandmother,” Alberta said. “Why would you be delighted that I’m here?”
For a second, Cathy stared at Alberta with eyes that brimmed with fear. The awkwardness threatened to take over her body like the snow that was devouring the ground outside, but she finally found her voice.
“Don’t be so modest, Vinny’s told me you’re an honorary member of the Tranquility Police Department.”
“All four ladies are,” Vinny added. “They’ve made my job . . . and my life a bit easier lately. They’ve also made other parts of my life more difficult, but you can’t have everything.”
“Before Vinny found out that you already had rooms through the Herald he told me that he was going to give his rooms to you and why you deserved such special treatment,” Cathy explained. “You have quite an impressive history and I look forward to getting to know you even better than I already think I do.”
Alberta remained silent and smiled at Cathy. It wasn’t because she was caught off guard by the praise, although it was something that she wasn’t used to, it was more about the delivery of the flattery. There was something a bit too enthusiastic and rehearsed about Cathy’s speech that ignited Alberta’s suspicion. It was as if Cathy knew exactly what she was going to say before Alberta arrived and was determined to make sure that she had her say. Maybe it was because Alberta had heard Cathy arguing with someone seconds before they arrived and was now chipper and cheery that caused her not to believe a word that Cathy said. Before Alberta could think too long on the subject, Vinny broke the mood.
“Cathy, you must be so honored and thrilled to have Pamela Gregory as your guest. I mean, as far as figure skaters go, there’s no one better!” Vinny fawned. “Which leads me to the most important question of all. When does she get here?”
Everyone smiled as Vinny beamed like a teenager, finding it endearing. Everyone except Cathy.
Her smile hardened almost imperceptibly and for only the briefest of moments, but it was there as concrete as the lodge’s foundation. Something was lurking behind her smile that made it clear she was not nearly as big a fan of Pamela’s as Vinny was.
“Pamela isn’t due until later tonight,” Cathy said curtly. “Right now, why don’t we get you all settled into your rooms?”
Cathy immediately went into hotel manager mode and instructed everyone on where they could find their rooms, the restaurant menu, where they could do some hiking, the hot tub hours, and other essential pieces of information they would need to know while they were visiting.
Across the room, Helen gazed out of a window that had a spectacular view of the mountains and muttered, “Bella in vista, dentro è trista.”
Alberta recognized the phrase—a fair face and a foul heart.
“Are you talking about Cathy or Icicle Lodge?” Alberta asked.
“Both.”