Murder at Icicle Lodge

At times, life is simply unfair. That’s exactly what the women thought when they finally picked the lock to Pamela’s room. Yes, the former celebrated athlete was dead, but boy, were her last days spent in the lap of luxury.

Made up of three separate rooms, the suite was more than double the size of their individual accommodations. And unlike the rest of Icicle Lodge that was decorated in a traditional rustic mountain resort palette, this Winter Wonderland was decidedly more urbane pioneer than country bumpkin.

The first room was a sitting area complete with a camelback sofa in a black and beige tartan plaid with a mahogany frame, two wing chairs in black flannel upholstery, one of them accented with a gray lamb’s wool pillow, and an end table and cocktail table both lathered in black lacquer paint. The lamp to the right of the sofa was a six-foot-tall arcing floor lamp with an Edison bulb trapped in a large silver mesh shade.

Above the couch was an abstract painting, large and rectangular, that was a depiction of the Olympic rings, distorted in shape, but floating on a black and gray canvas and set aglow by the red flames of the Olympic torch that seemed to rise up from the lower right-hand corner. The painting was obviously put there in honor of its medal-winning guest, but now that she had met her untimely end, the painting gave the room an eerie quality of dark foreshadowing. A flat-screen TV mounted on the wall opposite the couch hung above a mirror-topped credenza adorned with some metal knickknacks, which balanced out the room.

To the left of the sitting area was an en suite bathroom consisting of a walk-in shower, double vanity, and separate water closet with its own door. The bathroom walls were made of distressed white shiplap that rose a quarter of the way up the room and was then taken over by wallpaper depicting columns of white birch trees against a black void. The decor reminded the women of bathrooms they had seen in the reveal of their favorite HGTV show, Fixer Upper.

“It’s a bit too cupo for my taste,” Alberta remarked. “But I have to admit it’s beautiful.”

“It isn’t gloomy, Berta,” Helen contradicted. “The white paneling brightens it up.”

Shaking her head and dismissing her sister’s comment, Alberta replied, “But that Sanitas, Madon!”

“Sanitas?” Jinx asked. “What’s that, Gram? I never heard of that word.”

“It’s like wallpaper,” Alberta explained.

“Very easy to clean, Sanitas is,” Helen added.

“Remember the Sanitas in your mother’s kitchen?” Joyce asked. “All different kinds of yellow flowers. It was all so happy and cheery.”

“I loved Mama’s kitchen!” Alberta exclaimed. “But this, it’s like we’re lost in some wicked forest and the evil queen is about to rip our heads off.”

“Which is probably what the evil ice queen would do to us for invading her personal space right now, you know, if she were still among the living,” Joyce added.

“You might want to come over here and check out the boudoir,” Jinx shouted from the bedroom. “It really is fit for an ice queen, evil or otherwise.”

Alberta, Helen, and Joyce retreated into the back room to join Jinx and were even more shocked to see how elegantly decorated it was. Although the bedroom was only slightly larger than the sitting room and its walls were painted a glossy jet black, the room appeared immense thanks to two tried and true tricks of the decorator trade. The crown molding was thick and had an intricate multilayered silhouette, but was painted the same milk white as the baseboard and corner moldings that framed the room. The result was that the white architectural accents made the black walls appear like floating masses that cradled the room instead of suffocating it. But what really supersized the bedroom was the panel of floor-to-ceiling windows that ran the entire length of the back wall.

Pamela’s suite was above and to the left of the main room on the first floor of the lodge, which meant it had the same spectacular view of Lake Ariel and the surrounding mountain region. Even though it was snowing and the cloudy skies cast a grayish-blue glow on the landscape, the room was still filled with natural light that bounced off every piece of furniture in the room. The occupant might be dead, but the room was filled with life.

The white upholstered headboard appeared to glow against the darkness of the wall, and the rest of the furniture, all in shades of creamy white, mimicked the snowdrifts outside. Each piece seemed to sprout up from the wooden-paneled floor so the texture and organic design of the room could shine through instead of sitting heavily on its foundation.

Jinx plopped on the bed and spread her fingers through the pearl gray throw that was folded in half and lying at the foot of the bed. It felt as soft as the powdery snow outside.

“Geez Louise, this suite is gorgeous!” Jinx exclaimed. “I mean, I thought our room was nice, but compared to this it’s like we’re living in a shack.”

“I don’t know, lovey,” Alberta said. “I think our room is much cozier.”

“And the furniture’s sturdier,” Helen added. “The things in here are nice, don’t get me wrong, but they’re kind of flimsy.”

“Como Dio comanda,” Joyce murmured.

“What did you say, Aunt Joyce?”

“It means ‘like God commands.’ ” Helen translated.

“Which in English means ‘it’s the way things are supposed to be,’” Joyce elaborated. “Pamela was meant to live a glamorous lifestyle. We were meant to live with each other.”

“That’s a beautiful sentiment, Joyce,” Alberta gushed.

“Also too, there isn’t much closet space in here,” Joyce said. “Look at this. I would need at least five of these to hold my wardrobe.”

“That’s because you’re too vain and have too many clothes for a woman your age,” Helen chaffed.

“If God is okay with my love for fashion, Helen, you should be too,” Joyce chided. “But seriously, look how small this closet is.”

The women stood behind Joyce who had opened the door to the small closet opposite the bed. Still hanging from the bar were Pamela’s coats and a long black gown that she presumably was going to wear to the grand reopening party that now had been postponed. On the floor was a mound of shoes and sneakers and an odd-shaped black duffel bag.

“Aunt Joyce, look at this!”

Jinx pulled out the bag from underneath the pile of shoes and held it up for display.

“What’s so special about that, honey?” Alberta asked.

“This is Pamela’s skating bag!”

Excitedly, Jinx placed the black bag on the bed and laid it flat so it spread out to its full size and looked like a simplistic drawing of London Bridge, high on the ends with a dip in the center. A zipper traveled the length of the bag’s straight end, and after Jinx unzipped it she reached in and revealed two white ice skates.

“Dio mio!” Alberta cried. “You’re right, those are her skates.”

“I’m guessing they were her backup skates,” Joyce clarified.

“Why would you say that?” Helen asked.

“The leather is scuffed up and the laces are dirty,” Joyce explained. “A diva like Pamela wouldn’t be caught dead on the ice in a pair of skates like that.”

“You’re right, Aunt Joyce, the skates she was caught dead in were brand new, like she was still breaking them in.”

Jinx picked up one of the skates and held it perpendicular to the floor, holding the neck of the skate with one hand and with the other grabbing hold of the long rectangular piece of black plastic that was clamped to the blade.

“What are those things?” Alberta asked.

“Those are the blade guards,” Jinx replied. “Skaters put them onto their blades when they come off the ice so they don’t get dull and damaged by walking on a regular surface. They just clip on and off.”

Jinx turned the skate upside down and peeled back the plastic guard to reveal the sharp blade underneath. Her movement revealed a bit more as well.

“Something fell out of the skate,” Alberta said. She bent down to pick up the piece of paper that had fallen to the floor and opened it up. “Ah, Madon! It’s a note.”

“A suicide note?” Helen gasped.

“I’m not sure.”

“Read it, Gram! What does it say?”

“ ‘I’m so sorry for everything I’ve done. I had no idea the pain I caused you,’ ” Alberta said. “It’s signed ‘Pam.’ ”

Silence crept into the room as loud as the wind that occasionally roared against the windowpanes. Could Pamela really have left a suicide note? Could she actually have taken her own life? The women weren’t sure the note was proof of that, but they were certain the note was proof of one thing.

“I don’t know what this note means, but Pamela was definitely not writing a farewell note to the world,” Alberta said. “She was writing to someone specific. She says, ‘I had no idea the pain I caused you.’ ”

“Not only that, Gram, she wrote it to someone here at the lodge.”

“How do you know that, Jinxie?” Helen asked. “She could’ve written the note a long time ago, shoved it in her skate, and forgot about it.”

“No, she wrote it after she got here,” Jinx said. “Look at the logo on the back of her note, it’s the logo for the lodge.”

Alberta turned the note around and they all saw Icicle Lodge’s logo. The name of the lodge was in ice blue lettering and underneath, as if it were the words’ shadow, was a row of icicles, each a slightly different size and thickness. Pamela had written her note on the back of the paper at some point after she arrived.

“So who was she apologizing to?” Joyce asked.

“It has to be someone here,” Jinx answered. “Cathy, Patrick, or Max.”

“Or Charlie,” Helen added. “You can’t forget him.”

“But if Pamela did kill herself, which I still don’t believe,” Alberta said, “why would she come all the way here to do it?”

“Publicity.” The women wished they could appear shocked by Helen’s comment, but they realized she was more than likely right. Pamela had been a celebrity all her life so like most celebrities she craved attention. It was a macabre thought, but not a farfetched one to think that she would have staged her suicide under the public eye. What better way to guarantee attention and, by extension, adoration, than by committing suicide at the moment of her return to the limelight?

“If that’s true, shouldn’t she have waited for the day of the reopening to kill herself for maximum publicity?” Jinx asked.

“Maybe something pushed her over the edge a few days early?” Helen suggested.

“Or someone,” Alberta added. “I just don’t buy the suicide scenario. Pamela wasn’t very nice, but she was passionate, and passionate people don’t typically take their own lives.”

“Sadly there are a lot of reasons why people take their own lives,” Helen remarked. “But regardless of how she died, the fact remains that she did leave behind a note written to someone here at the lodge. Who do you think that is?”

Jinx and Joyce shrugged their shoulders, but Alberta replied with only one name. “Cathy.”

“Really, Gram? Why do you think Pamela was apologizing to Cathy?”

Alberta placed the skate back on the bed next to its partner and replied, “Remember that Cathy’s late husband, Mike, grew up in this area so there’s a very good chance that he knew Pamela. Plus, Pamela moved to California, where Cathy grew up. Now I know it’s a long shot that the two of them knew each other, but maybe it isn’t such a random connection after all.”

Jinx was impressed with how Alberta was starting to think like a real detective, and was even more impressed with her own investigative skills that were becoming more fine-tuned as well.

“What we really need to do is get inside of Pamela’s head,” Jinx instructed. “First and foremost she was a figure skater. She lived and literally died on the ice. So where do figure skaters go when they put themselves on display? When they’re at their most vulnerable and can’t hide? The kiss and cry.”

“The kiss and what?” Alberta asked.

“The kiss and cry,” Jinx repeated. “It’s the section of the rink where skaters go to while they’re waiting for the judges’ scores.”

“But why is it called a kiss and cry?” Alberta asked.

“Because if you do well you get a kiss from your coach, and if you suck you cry on his shoulder,” Jinx explained.

“That sounds like a confessional to me,” Helen commented.

“I have a hunch!” Alberta said. “Follow me.”

“Oh God,” Helen muttered.

“What’s wrong?” Alberta asked.

“I hate your hunches,” Helen said.

“Why?” Alberta asked. “Because they’re always right?”

“No, because they always put us in danger.”

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, the women were trudging through the snow and cursing the fact that they only put on boots and threw on jackets before heading outside. They were so eager to act on the clue they had found they forgot that accessories like a hat, gloves, and scarf were rather necessary when forging into the mouth of a snowstorm. Shivering, they finally made it to the small kiss-and-cry area next to the ice rink. It was a smaller version of the ones seen on television or at skating competitions and consisted of a small bench with a curved clamshell wall behind it. The bench seat was heavy-duty plastic in a bright blue, and the bench’s base was covered by a white curtain made out of a fiberglass material like the kind industrial-strength shopping bags are made out of.

A burst of wind erupted with such vigor it flipped up the back of the curtain so it fell over the top of the bench. When Alberta saw what was underneath the bench, she almost fell over herself.

“Dio mio!” Alberta cried, clutching her chest and pressing her hand into the gold crucifix underneath her jacket. “We found the murder weapon!”