Murder at Icicle Lodge

For a moment she thought she was hallucinating—the circumstances and the snow and her own adrenalin pumping furiously through her veins had finally gotten the better of her. She couldn’t possibly be looking at her friend, sitting on the floor with his hands tied behind his back and his ankles stretched out in front of him bound together by thick, black electrical wire. There couldn’t possibly be a white piece of cloth shoved into his mouth and tied around his head. And she couldn’t possibly see a barrier of flames separating the two of them. It couldn’t be and yet it was.

“Vinny!”

At the sound of Alberta’s voice, Vinny shook his body wildly and bounced up and down on the concrete floor. His eyes stared at his friend with a combination of fear and relief. He was grateful that he had been found but knew it would be difficult for him to be rescued.

“He must’ve been kept behind that door,” Tambra said, over the crackling of the fire and the howling of the wind.

“What door?” Jinx asked, not seeing anything but the back wall to the shed.

“The one over there lying on the floor,” Tambra clarified.

They all looked in the direction Tambra was pointing and saw a door lying on its side up against the side wall.

“Vinny must have kicked it open and ripped it right off its hinges,” Joyce surmised.

“I can’t believe he’s been in there this entire time,” Jinx said.

“If we don’t figure out a way to get him out, he’s going to stay in there,” Charlie said.

Alberta understood how Vinny could have gone unnoticed since the Zamboni had been housed in the shed and blocked the door from view. What she couldn’t understand was how the fire had started. It couldn’t have spontaneously combusted on its own so there had to be a rational explanation. Luckily, Tambra had one.

“It looks like Vinny knocked over that gasoline can when he kicked the door open and some gas leaked out,” Tambra informed. “And that wire must’ve gotten loose during the storm and fell into the spillage, starting the fire.”

Thanks to his own determination to free himself, Vinny may have secured his own death. Or proven that he had friends who would risk their own lives to save his.

“Freddy, are you afraid of heights?” Tambra asked.

“No sir, I mean, no ma’am,” he replied. “But shouldn’t you be asking if I’m afraid of fire?”

Shaking her head, Tambra replied, “No, that’s a given, everyone’s afraid of fire, it’ll kill you.”

“That’s certainly reassuring,” Jinx deadpanned.

Tambra grabbed a ladder leaning against the wall and shoved it into Freddy’s hands. “Take this ladder outside and use it to climb up to that window.”

This time she was pointing at a small window on the wall above where Vinny was sitting.

“And just in case the window won’t open, take this hammer,” Tambra added.

“Will do,” Freddy replied. “Charlie, make yourself useful for once and come with me.”

“Don’t you give me orders!” Charlie protested.

“Dude! Shut up and come with me to make sure the ladder doesn’t fall!”

“Be careful!” Jinx shouted as Freddy and Charlie ran out of the shed, each carrying an end of the ladder.

“Always, dude!” Freddy shouted.

“Stop calling me dude!” Jinx shouted back.

Alberta looked at the window and how high it was off the ground and wondered how Vinny was going to be able to climb up to it. Tambra had that covered too.

“I have industrial length cord that we use sometimes instead of handcuffs,” Tambra confided. “I’ll throw that up to Freddy and he can tie it against the pole that runs down the side of the building.”

“How do you know there’s a pole running down the side of the building?” Alberta asked incredulously.

“I’m a cop,” Tambra said. “It’s my job to notice things.”

And take calculated risks.

“What are you doing now?” Jinx asked as Tambra took a large gray blanket that was tucked between several boxes and wrapped it around her shoulders.

“Somebody’s got to get the rope to my boss.”

Before Alberta and Jinx could stop her, Tambra ran straight into the flames, almost her entire body covered by the blanket, and dove into a side roll so she landed on the other side of the flames, falling on the ground on her shoulder and rolling several times before stopping right in front of the back wall. Grandmother and granddaughter shrieked as they watched Tambra fling the blanket off her body and stomp out the few flames that had ignited on the cloth. They were amazed at the woman’s bravery, and while they understood that she was doing her job, Alberta and Jinx both knew that she had risked her life because of her admiration and love for her boss. Vinny truly was a lucky man.

Immediately, Tambra ripped the cloth out of Vinny’s mouth.

“It’s about time!” he shouted. “I didn’t think you’d ever show up.”

“Ye of little faith,” Tambra joked. “You know how I like to make a dramatic entrance.”

“You better untie me quick so we can still make an exit,” Vinny said. “Otherwise your heroism won’t be worth anything.”

Tambra quickly untied Vinny’s hands and then they both untied his ankles. She helped him to his feet and although Vinny was wobbly after being held captive, he was so elated at being rescued that his body was overcompensating and his desire to survive was far outweighing his need for rest.

“Alfie!” Vinny shouted. “Are you alright?”

“Ah, Madon!” Alberta cried, raising her hands up to the heavens. “Don’t worry about me! Worry about how you’re going to get out of there.”

“And p.s., I’m fine, too, Vinny!” Jinx screamed.

“Of course you are,” Vinny shouted back. “You’re with your grandmother.”

“Don’t waste time trying to flatter me,” Alberta said. “Focus on staying alive!”

“I’m sure Tambra’s got a plan. She always does,” Vinny said and then turned to his detective. “You do have a plan, don’t you?”

“Of course I do, chief,” Tambra assured. “But first, duck.”

“Duck? Why?”

“Just do it!”

Tambra wrapped her arms around Vinny’s shoulders and made him squat down on the floor as shards of glass sprayed over them. When the downpour stopped, they stood up and saw Freddy looking through the window waving a hammer.

“Dude! You were so right. The window was slammed shut!” Freddy cried.

Vinny looked up and down the length of the wall that led from the floor to the window and turned to face Tambra. When he smiled devilishly at her, Alberta could see him through the flickering flames and was reminded of how he looked when he was a teenager. She was once again amazed that as much as time changed, it stood still.

“You want us to climb up to the window, don’t you?” Vinny asked.

“That’s my plan,” Tambra replied. She looked up at Freddy and shouted, “Dude! Catch!”

She unfurled the electrical cord and threw it up to Freddy, who caught it with one try.

“Tie it securely to the pole outside,” Tambra instructed. “And I mean securely! Vinny and I are going to climb up and if it isn’t tight enough we’ll fall to our deaths. Okay?”

“Sure, no sweat!” Freddy cried.

“That’s easy for him to say,” Vinny murmured. “Don’t you think it would be easier if we just ran through the flames?”

“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, chief, but your legs are doused in gasoline,” Tambra reminded him. “I don’t think it’s a wise idea to jump through a wall of fire.”

“You were always such a smarty-pants.”

“Just trying to keep you alive, sir,” Tambra replied. “Plus, that fire’s starting to get out of control.” Looking up at Freddy, Tambra cried, “Is it all tied up and secure?”

“Roger that!” Freddy cried.

“So, chief, be honest with me,” Tambra said. “Are you up for this?”

Vinny looked up at the window and then at the flames and took a deep breath. “Not really, but it doesn’t look like I have a choice.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“After you, detective.”

“Don’t even think about it,” Tambra replied, a conviction in her voice that Vinny knew could not be challenged. “You first and I’ll follow in case you fall on your ass and I have to drag you up myself.”

Respect and admiration poured out of Vinny’s eyes. He smiled and grabbed Tambra’s shoulder before taking hold of the rope and starting to shimmy himself up the side of the wall. Halfway up he stopped to catch his breath and the flames exploded and doubled in intensity.

“I know you’re tired, chief, but this is no time to rest!”

Vinny looked over at the flames and he didn’t need Tambra to repeat her command. With renewed energy and determination, he reached up, pressed one foot into the side of the wall, and hoisted himself up. Above him Freddy was pulling the rope to help quicken the pace, and below him Tambra had grabbed on the rope and started climbing as well. The flames were growing and there was no time to waste to get out of there.

Alberta and Jinx watched them and prayed for the fire to lessen or at least remain the same until they were safely outside. But their prayers were interrupted when they heard the sound of a motor.

“What’s that?” Jinx asked, turning around to inspect the parking lot.

“I don’t know,” Alberta replied. “It sounds like another car.”

“Maybe they hijacked Tambra’s truck!” Jinx shouted, running outside.

When they saw the vehicle speed away toward Lake Ariel, they knew the truck wasn’t stolen, but something much more conducive to traveling in the mountains. Max and Stephanie were on a snowmobile and driving full speed away from the lodge.

“They can’t get away!” Jinx cried. “Not after everything they’ve done.”

“And they’re not going to,” Alberta assured. “C’mon.”

Before Jinx could contemplate what was happening, she saw Alberta running over to another snowmobile slightly hidden underneath the snowfall and some bushes. Alberta brushed off as much snow as she could, hopped on, and started the engine. Jinx was amazed at her grandmother’s moxie, but decided she was going to go along for the ride. She and Alberta were a team after all.

Jumping on the snowmobile, Jinx wrapped her arms around Alberta’s waist and shouted, “Go get ’em, Gram!”

“That’s exactly what I intend to do, lovey!”

Prior to this encounter with this kind of vehicle, Alberta had never ridden, let alone driven a snowmobile. But that wasn’t going to prevent her from pursuing two murderers.

Alberta raced through the snow-covered terrain in pursuit of Max and Stephanie, who were about five hundred feet in front of them. All she thought about was bringing the two murderers to justice and, to a lesser degree, how wonderfully free she felt cavorting into the wilderness on a snowmobile with her granddaughter hugging her tightly. What more could a sixty-five-year-old broad ask for?

For the first two hundred feet or so, the road was easy to manage primarily because Max had kept to one of the main trails on the lodge’s property. Even though there was heavy snowfall, the ground was still rather level so the ride was even and not terribly bumpy. But once he made a right turn around Lake Ariel and into the nearby woods, the road disappeared and the landscape was no longer snowmobile friendly.

“Hold on, lovey!” Alberta screamed as they plunged down about a foot from the trail onto a more natural path.

Swerving from one side to the other, Alberta had to keep one eye on the trees in front of her that seemed to sprout up out of nowhere and the other eye on Max and Stephanie’s snowmobile so she could follow in their snow path. Luckily their vehicle was bright orange so it stood out among the white and brown all around them and was easy to see. If only the snowmobile was as easy to control.

Every once in a while the snowmobile lurched in the opposite direction Alberta was trying to steer it to, either because she didn’t have the strength to maneuver the handlebars as quickly as she’d like or because it had a mind of its own. Alberta was betting on the latter.

“Gram, you have to go faster, they’re getting away!”

“I’m trying, but if I go too fast I’m going to lose control.”

Max didn’t seem to be following Alberta’s logic, and just as Alberta was thinking she didn’t have the skills to maintain a chase in such a densely wooded area, she saw Max’s snowmobile take a hard left. The right side of the snowmobile lifted up and Max and Stephanie were almost horizontal as they made the turn at full speed. A huge spray of snow cascaded like a fan after they sped off, and only when the snow fell to the ground did Alberta see why Max had made such a daring turn. He wasn’t trying to outwit Alberta, he was trying to avoid a huge boulder.

Thankfully, Alberta had more time to prepare for making the turn than Max did, otherwise she would’ve crashed right into the huge rock.

“Don’t let go of me, Jinx!” Alberta cried as she turned the handlebars to the left and held on as tight as possible.

Once she leveled out she gunned the gas to take advantage of the fact that Max had to slow down after nearly crashing. From her vantage point, Alberta could see that Max was still having trouble keeping the snowmobile moving in somewhat of a straight line, and she figured he’d damaged the vehicle in some way when he made such a hairpin turn. As much as she heard him gun his engine, he didn’t seem to move any faster.

Leaning forward into the windshield, Alberta hunched over and felt a sense of irrational calm take over her body. It was as if she allowed the snowmobile to react to the ground, the bumps, the curves, the icy patches all on its own, and Alberta was simply a passenger, like Jinx, with no control over their destination. It wasn’t true, of course, but it’s how it felt to Alberta, and she loved every freewheeling, dangerous second of it mainly because it was so unlike her and so unlike most everything she had ever done in her entire life. It wasn’t cautious, it wasn’t planned, it wasn’t expected. It was, however, filled with purpose and necessity, and it made Alberta feel alive.

Sitting behind her, Jinx felt the same way. Although her life had hardly been as regimented, narrow, and confined as Alberta’s had been, Jinx, too, was not known to take extraordinary risks other than defying her mother and moving back to New Jersey after college. But as she held on to her grandmother, she realized that all the other aspects of her life were rather traditional—she had a good job, a wonderful boyfriend, and a nice apartment. The radical element of her life consisted of her relationship with her grandmother and her two aunts. She howled into the oncoming wind thinking that she had to join forces with three women, all over the age of sixty, to understand how it felt to be alive.

As Alberta leaned to the right and navigated the snowmobile onto a smoother path barely missing the side of a huge tree trunk, Jinx said a quick prayer asking God not to let her die just yet. She was hoping to make it past sixty as well.

Max had to take another quick turn to the right and spun out in a complete 360-degree turn that gave Alberta enough time to make a wide left and wind up side by side with the criminals on the lam. But she was almost out of time. She looked down at the controls and saw that a capital letter E was blinking red indicating that the snowmobile would soon be out of gas. If Alberta was going to stop Max and Stephanie from escaping into the woods, she was going to have to act soon.

“There’s nowhere for you to go, Max!” Alberta yelled loudly so she could be heard over the engines and the roaring wind. “It’s time to give yourself up!”

Max turned to face Alberta, but her snowmobile started to slow down due to its empty gas tank. The negative was quickly turned into a positive when Max turned to look over his shoulder to find out where Alberta was going and why she was slowing down.

“Max, watch!” Stephanie cried.

By the time he turned back to look straight ahead and see what Stephanie was warning him about it was too late and the snowmobile drove up the side of a tree stump, rose about seven feet in the air, and landed on its side.

Max was pinned underneath the snowmobile and Stephanie was thrown into a snowbank several yards away. Neither of them was moving.

Alberta drove her snowmobile next to Max’s and she and Jinx jumped off and immediately began trying to tilt his snowmobile back on its skis to free Max. They weren’t worried that he would run away, they were only worried that he would suffer permanent damage if they didn’t get him out from underneath all that metal.

“Gram, this is heavy!” Jinx cried as she tried to push against the seat to lift up the snowmobile.

“Keep pushing, Jinx, I feel it starting to move,” Alberta commanded.

Alberta pushed as hard as she could against the side of the windshield as Jinx pushed against the seat, letting the snowmobile fall back into the palms of their hands, before they pushed back even harder. On the fourth try the vehicle tilted all the way to the right and wound up standing upright long enough for them to each grab one of Max’s hands and pull him far enough away and onto flatter ground.

“Are you alright, Max?” Alberta asked, kneeling down by his side.

The only response was a groan and some slight movement of his head, but at least they knew that he was alive. They looked over at Stephanie to make sure she was okay and not only was she alive, but she was running off into the woods.

“Sorry, Jinx, you’re on your own,” Alberta said. “I feel about as bad as Max looks.”

“Don’t worry, Gram, I got this.”

Jinx sprinted after Stephanie and after a few strides she wasn’t as confident as she had proclaimed. Now that she had stood still for a few minutes, her adrenalin wasn’t flying on all cylinders and she felt the chill all around her. Her legs felt like cement logs and her lungs felt like they were filled with blocks of ice. Every time she took a breath she felt cold air strangle her throat. She figured the only reason Stephanie was still moving with any speed whatsoever was because she was desperate to escape.

Not wanting to disappoint her grandmother or let Stephanie get away, she slammed her fists into her thighs and with a roar ran up the hill after Pamela’s killer. At the same time she heard another roar, but this one was coming from Tambra’s truck.

She and Vinny must’ve driven around the other side since they were coming in the opposite direction that she was running. It didn’t matter, the sudden arrival of the truck shocked Stephanie so much that she tripped and had to scramble to her feet just in time for the truck to swerve in front of her and make her twist her body to the right to get out of its way. When she did, she fell into a snow-covered bush and Jinx was able to leap over a fallen tree and right onto Stephanie’s back.

“I told you, you weren’t going to get away with murder!” Jinx cried victoriously.

* * *

A half hour later they were back in the main room of Icicle Lodge thawing out in front of a blazing fireplace. Stephanie and Max were sitting back-to-back, handcuffs holding them together making it difficult for either of them to move. Spread throughout the room were the rest of the guests, all of whom were ready to get back to their lives and away from the past week’s adventure.

“I can’t believe you and your grandma literally saved the day single-handedly,” Freddy exclaimed.

“Technically if we did it together it couldn’t be a single-handed victory,” Jinx corrected.

“Dude! Don’t contradict me!” Freddy yelled in mock outrage. “I’m giving my girl a compliment so just take it.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll take it,” Jinx said, hugging Freddy tight against her still-cold body.

“Thank you, Alberta,” Cathy said. “I don’t think I can ever repay you for what you’ve done.”

Patrick smiled up at Alberta from the couch. He was conscious, but definitely needed medical attention. For the moment, all he wanted to do was express his gratitude.

“Same goes for me,” Patrick added. “I heard every word you said when you were by my bedside.”

Smiling and blushing at the same time, Alberta took both Cathy’s and Patrick’s hands and replied, “Just promise me that you’ll work hard and make this place a success. You deserve it.”

“We’re definitely going to try,” Patrick said.

“So Vinny, was Max the one who tied you up?” Charlie asked.

“Sure was, he came up behind me and just as I could tell it was him, I saw the crowbar come down on my head,” Vinny explained.

“Ouch!” Joyce yelled. “Berta, I thought you said Max wasn’t a violent man?”

“I can’t be right about everything, can I?” Alberta asked.

“What about the note I found in our room, Vinny?” Father Sal asked. “Did Max write that?”

“He must have. I didn’t,” Vinny explained.

“Which makes sense because Alfie was spelled wrong,” Alberta said. “That was the first clue that you were in danger. The second was your text that said ‘Help, br.’ ”

“Would you finally solve that mystery, Vinny?” Sloan asked. “What does the ‘br’ stand for?”

“Bronze.”

“What?”

“Once I realized that Cathy and Patrick were the O’Dells, the figure-skating pairs team, I realized that the bronze medal we found was theirs because they won bronze at the U.S. National Championships right before the Olympics,” Vinny explained.

It took Alberta a few seconds to pick her jaw up from the floor.

“For crise sake, Vin, that was your clue?” she shrieked. “You’re the chief of police! If we only had that to go on, you’d still be locked up in the Zamboni house.”

“I thought it was clever,” Vinny said. “Not too obvious so the wrong people could figure it out, but enough for you to deduce it.”

“Let me tell ya something, Vinny,” Alberta said. “From now on leave the detective work to us, we get much better results.”

“Speaking of results, chief, two more squad cars are on their way,” Tambra announced.

“Thank you,” Vinny said. “We’ll get you all home in just a little bit.”

“Not all of us, I assume,” Cathy said.

“You’re not going to put them in jail, are you, Vinny?” Alberta asked.

“We did protect a murderer, after all,” Cathy said.

“This is technically out of my jurisdiction, but I have friends here and can put in a good word,” Vinny admitted. “For now, the Pennsylvania authorities need to question you both and get your statements.”

“Before any of that happens, Alberta, I really do need to speak with you,” Cathy confided. “It’s important.”

“I know you’ve been trying to talk to me privately ever since I got here,” Alberta admitted. “I guess this is as good a time as any.”

“It’s like something my husband Mike always said, Una storia finisce, un’altra parte,” Cathy said. “One story ends, another begins. And since you helped solve the mystery of who killed Pamela, it’s only fitting that I help solve another mystery, this one involving you.”

“A mystery involving me?” Alberta asked.

“It isn’t about you necessarily,” Cathy corrected. “But you do play a major role in it.”

“Sorry, Cathy, I’m very confused,” Alberta confessed. “What mystery are you talking about?”

“The one involving your Aunt Carmela.”