Iced

by Carol Higgins Clark

Genres: Female Sleuths

Synopsis

A P.I.’s work is never done—especially when her ski vacation is interrupted by a high-end art heist in this brisk and breezy holiday mystery. It's Christmas in Aspen and P.I. Regan Reilly is vacationing with her parents. And hoping to meet an unmarried man. Soon, however, all thoughts of romance turn to sleuthing when million-dollar paintings start disappearing, along with an old friend of Regan's—who happens to be an ex-con. Regan is sure he’s innocent, but proving it is going to be an uphill battle. The snow is falling, the plot is thickening, and the danger is closing in on Regan. With all the assorted hijinks, adventures, false alarms, and—yes—plain old silliness, can she get this case tied up in a nice, neat bow in time to enjoy the rest of her holiday?

Release date: May 1, 2008

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 272

Sample

Friday, December 23

WE’RE ALMOST THERE,” Judd said quietly to Willeen, his partner in crime and in love, as he turned from the main road onto the private lane that led to the Bonnell home. It was five minutes before three in the afternoon, and the clouds over the surrounding mountains promised another snowfall for the holiday skiers at Vail. Judd’s eyes darted about. Just before the moment of breaking the law, every nerve in him vibrated. But this job had been elaborately planned and should be foolproof.

He had contacted Monsieur Bonnell using the name of a reputable art dealer with impeccable connections. Monsieur Bonnell was only too happy to invite him to inspect at close range the Beasley painting that was being offered for two million dollars.

“Now remember,” Judd said to Willeen as he drove up to the sprawling two-story stucco house, “we know that the housekeeper left at one o’clock, but in case there’s anyone else there, you have your Mace ready.”

“It’s ready.”

On the off chance Monsieur Bonnell was looking out the window, they were wearing salt-and-pepper wigs made out of the finest human hair and had taped on fake gray eyebrows. Willeen had on a pair of bottleneck glasses that disguised her considerable sex appeal and Judd was sporting tinted sunglasses.

They parked in the driveway, positioning the dark gray sedan for a quick getaway, walked briskly up the steps to the front porch and rang the bell.

There was no answer.

A biting wind made Willeen shift from one foot to the other. “Did Claude get things screwed up?” she asked impatiently.

“Claude never gets things screwed up,” Judd growled, his tone low and annoyed. “You heard me talk to Bonnell an hour ago. He confirmed the appointment.”

Judd studied the knob expectantly, then noticed that the door was not flush with the frame. Cautiously, he put his hand on the knob. It turned easily and he pushed open the door. Instantly he grabbed his own can of Mace from his pocket.

He nodded to Willeen. “Let’s go,” he whispered.

As they stepped over the threshold, Willeen touched his arm and pointed to the security panel by the front door. The green light was on, indicating it was not armed.

They started down the hall.

“Do you think you should call out to him?” Willeen asked. Then she gasped as a muffled groan came from the closet on the right wall. The muffled sound was followed by loud thumping against the door in what could only be termed desperation.

A dreadful suspicion attacked every fiber of Judd’s finely tuned criminal makeup. The map Claude had prepared for him showed that the painting was over the mantel in the living room to the right of the entrance hall.

“Ohhhh pleassssse, nooooo,” he cried. With Willeen at his heels, he raced from the foyer, through the archway, circled around a couch, avoided a cocktail table and screeched to a halt in front of the raised hearth.

He looked up and stared. Big baby tears welled in his eyes, clouding the blue contact lenses he had affected as part of his now unnecessary disguise.

The ornate gold frame was still in place, hanging uselessly, deprived of its function to enhance an artistic masterpiece. Instead of surrounding the Beasley painting of the railroad station in nineteenth-century Vail, it now framed the rough gray stones of the massive chimney.

“It’s happened again,” Judd wailed. “That friggin’ Coyote beat us to it!”

Saturday, December 24

EBEN BEAN LOVED to ski. The magic, the joy, the excitement of it thrilled him. It made him feel free. And that was very important to someone who’d spent five years in the slammer. The ski slopes of Aspen Mountain, with their sweeping views of the surrounding Rocky Mountains, the very essence of nature in all its glory and splendor did his soul good. It was also a lot better for his nervous system than the claustrophobic view he had had from the bottom bunk in his tiny cell. He’d never gone to sleep without the nagging worry in the back of his mind that his hulk of a cellmate would strain the bed frame, which had supported the weight of scores of outlaws, to its breaking point.

“Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I get squashed before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take”

he had prayed nightly for those five of his fifty-six years.

Since his confinement, Eben had developed a total love for the outdoors in all seasons. Neither rain nor sleet nor dark of night wiped the smile off his face, just as long as he wasn’t surrounded by a chain-link fence. Even taking out the garbage had become a treat.

Of course, just because Eben loved to ski didn’t mean he was very good at it. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t very good at all. Just last week he had lost control and careened into the path of a fellow skier. She had desperately tried to avoid him but ended up taking a nasty spill, resulting in a very painful broken leg. Broken in two places as a matter of fact. Eben had watched as the ski patrol carefully strapped her into a sled, trying to ignore the slurs that the victim was spewing about his character. Oh well, Eben thought to himself. Sometimes it’s a healthy thing to let yourself vent your anger.

He tried to make it up to her. But he heard that the poinsettia he’d spent at least fifteen minutes picking out and delivered to the hospital himself was ordered out of her sight the minute she read the card. Not that he didn’t understand. Being in traction for six weeks didn’t sound like much fun.

And this was going to be a fun week, Eben decided, as he completed his first run of the afternoon at Aspen Mountain. It had taken a little longer than usual to get down. He’d stopped for a late bite at Bonnie’s, the bustling cafeteria-like restaurant on the slopes, which was crowded with skiers eager to refuel their bodies after a hard workout. It was one of a very few places on the planet where celebrities slogged through a lunch line carrying their own trays. Eben had hung around the picnic tables on the deck outside, where skiers clad in designer skisuits and sunglasses congregated to see or be seen as they nibbled their chosen edibles.

Sitting alone, Eben had felt a little unappreciated by mankind in general. But tonight, he thought, I’ll be the center of attention. They’ll all be looking at me at the big party. Okay, he thought, so I’ll be in a Santa suit. In a way, it was very freeing. He could act like a dope and everyone would think it was cute. He liked to dance around swinging his sack, ho-ho-ho-ing his way through the crowd.

It was Christmas Eve, and almost everyone was in a good mood. People were actually nice to each other the world over. Christmas was a great time to call a truce, no matter what religion you were. Hmmm, he wondered. I wonder if the lady with the broken leg would accept a holly wreath from me. Probably not, he decided as he dug his ski poles into the ground and awkwardly propelled himself in the general direction of the gondola. “Mush,” he mumbled. “Mush.”

Eben popped his feet out of his skis and hoisted them over his shoulder as he took his place in line. It was more than a fifteen-minute ride up to the top. This was the only lift where you had to take your skis off. The gondola was enclosed and you sat with anywhere from one to five other people, sometimes conversing, sometimes eavesdropping, sometimes lost in your own thoughts as you took in the unbelievable beauty of the mountains.

As Eben waited for the next free gondola to swing around, he realized that he would have it all to himself. There was no one behind him. It was getting late. People were heading back for their après-ski drinks, their Jacuzzis, and their preparations for the evening’s activities. Many of them would be at the ritzy party tonight, just waiting for his big entrance.

Nervously, Eben dropped his skis in the side pocket of the gondola and awkwardly clumped into his seat. He was always afraid that he’d be half in when it surged forward, or he’d fall and they’d have to shut it off as he hoisted himself up from the ground. That had happened more times than he’d care to remember on the lifts where you have to push yourself hurriedly off the chair and down the hill when it was time to disembark. It was usually a steep incline and more than once Eben had taken a belly flop. One of the lift operators had suggested that Eben try skiing at Tiehack, the mountain for beginners, which was just down the road. “It’s a lot easier, Eben,” he had said. Yeah, well, it’s a free country, Eben had thought as he skied off. Besides, he liked to have his lunch at Bonnie’s.

Eben settled himself in and stretched out sideways in the gondola. This way he had a view of the skiers swishing down the steep slopes above and at the same time could admire the charm offered by the village of Aspen below, a landscape dotted with snow-covered brick and wood buildings, ensconced between the protective surrounding mountains. When you were packed in with a bunch of other people, you either had to sit facing front or back.

This isn’t such a bad life, Eben thought as he listened to the creak of the lift and the gentle blowing of the wind. He never thought he’d enjoy life without crime, but after he was hatched from prison five years ago, he decided that that was it. A master of separating jewelry from the bejeweled, he had enjoyed considerable success until the unfortunate evening when he unknowingly targeted the wife of the police commissioner of New York. The occasion had been a dinner at the Plaza Hotel. Employed by the waiters’ union thanks to fake identification, Eben had gone around collecting dirty dishes while plying his true trade. Until that moment it had been a very successful night. A Rolex watch and a ruby pendant were concealed in the floating remains of a Banana Surprise.

As it turned out, the police commissioner’s photographic memory had already identified Eben and he had been watching him. An on-the-spot arrest was made, much to the oohs and aahs of everyone at the surrounding tables and the disappointment of the dinner speaker, who had just reached page eight of his address. In the confusion that followed, many of the guests who’d fallen into an involuntary trance sensed the opportunity to put themselves out of their misery and seized on it immediately. Jolted awake, they jumped from their seats and scurried to the coatroom with a grateful nod to the handcuffed Eben.

In the five years he’d spent up the river, Eben had mused that he’d been stealing jewelry since he was sixteen. He comforted himself with the thought that thirty-odd harmonious and profitable years were enjoyed by almost no one else in his profession.

However, five years as a guest of New York State had permanently soured Eben on the prospect of a return visit to the penitentiary. When he was given a measly check, an ill-fitting suit and the address of his parole officer, he had one fleeting moment of regret for the friends he’d made behind bars. They’d even put together a party of sorts in the TV room the night before he was sprung. One friend’s wife had baked a seven-layer cake and as a tribute to his particular skills had filled the layers with plastic toy watches. Swallowing over a lump in his throat as the whole room burst into “Auld Lang Syne,” followed by “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” Eben had said to them, “You’re the only family I’ve ever known. But I still don’t want to come back.”

In his days as a thief, Eben had come to enjoy a bit of gracious living. He was particularly fond of renting nice houses. Post-prison, he realized that he would never be able to afford such luxury from the fruits of honest labor. While flipping through a copy of Architectural Digest, he started to get depressed but then happened upon an ideal solution. It occurred to him that every one of the estates he was looking at probably had a caretaker. Kidney-shaped pools with their very own waterfalls needed to be maintained, velvety lawns needed to be raked, long winding driveways needed to be blown clear of snow to make way for luxury vehicles.

Many a time Eben had made his leisurely way through an estate house after disconnecting the alarm, while the caretaker sat in his apartment over the garage drinking beer and watching mud-wrestling on television. Eben had decided that the only way he was going to come even close to living the good life again was to be a caretaker. Of course the old-fashioned way was to marry into it, but so far Eben had found no prospects.

To be totally insignificant-looking had been a great advantage when he was pursuing his life outside the law. Medium height, mousy hair, brown eyes and average features constituted a nightmare for police sketch artists. Horn-rimmed or frameless glasses, colored contact lenses, various hues of hair rinse contributed to his makeovers, enabling him to elude police for so long. Now he had put on a little extra weight that he wasn’t proud of, but at least he didn’t have to worry about disguising it.

He’d won the drama medal in the eighth grade after starting out playing the third wise man in the school Christmas pageant and then had gone on to star, ironically enough, as the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist. The zealous director should never have called in the magician named Slippery Fingers to teach me all those tricks, he often thought. It became too easy to relieve people of their gems. After his arrest, the only chance Eben had to exercise his acting skills was when he played Santa Claus for the children of inmates at the annual family Christmas party.

Which leads me to where I am today, Eben thought as he looked down from his perch. The slopes that a short time ago had been dotted with skiers were now virtually empty. The clouds that had blown in only a few minutes ago opened up and it began to snow. The thick soft powder immediately began to obscure the mountain peaks on the horizon.

Eben began to hum “Frosty the Snowman.” This was perfect. He’d have one more run down the mountain, then go home and get ready for his big night. He quickly switched his humming to “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.”

At the top of the mountain Eben disembarked, grabbed his skis and clumped over to the area where people threw their skis on the ground and got ready for their run. Eben pulled on his goggles to protect his eyes from the blowing snow. Someday I’ll be a great skier, he thought. But right now I’m glad that there aren’t many people around and I have more room to myself.

He started down the hill, ambling from side to side, practicing the snowplow, which so far was the safest way for him to navigate the slopes, all the while repeating the commandments he’d learned on his Even You Can Ski video. He’d watched the tape over and over in the privacy of the guest suite of the Wood home, where he was the caretaker in residence. He’d been so lucky to get the job.

He liked working for important people like Sam and Kendra Wood. They owned a home in Aspen but weren’t there very much. Eben was in charge of keeping the place in shape. The Wood family was flying in tomorrow for the Christmas vacation. Their houseguests, the mystery writer Nora Reilly and her husband Luke, would be arriving with them. Eben had been busy getting everything ready. He still had to clear his stuff out of the guest suite, which he secretly used when he was alone. No one was the wiser for it, and Eben enjoyed living like a king. His quarters were perfectly adequate, but the little garage apartment could get drafty at times and it didn’t have a big screen TV or plush carpeting or a Jacuzzi in the bathroom. Eben was always careful about leaving everything spotless when it was time to clear out, a bittersweet task at best. He loved it when the Wood family came into town and he was always truly glad to see them but he also had a great love for the big comfy bed and heated towel racks that he wouldn’t get to enjoy again until they packed their bags and winged their way back to New York. Give and take, that’s what life is all about, Eben thought.

He was so proud of the place that he’d even gotten a little daring about showing it off after he’d had a few drinks. I probably shouldn’t have brought them back last night, Eben thought as he slipped and fell. Who would have thought, when he went into town last night for a beer and a burger at the Red Onion, Eben’s favorite, a famous old mining-day saloon where he felt comfortable relaxing around the historic wooden bar and under the old historical photographs, that he would run into Judd Schnulte? What a surprise that had been. And it could have been a terrible problem. No one in Aspen except his friend Louis knew that Eben had been a jailbird, and he wanted to keep it that way.

He needn’t have worried. When Judd saw Eben, it was hard to tell from both their horrified expressions who had more use for a panic button.

“My girlfriend’s in the can,” Judd had said nervously.

“How long will she be in?” Eben asked sympathetically.

“You never know with women. She’s always complaining about the long lines in ladies’ rooms.”

“I thought you meant our kind of can,” Eben responded with a laugh, and then lowered his voice. “You know, a house of correction.” He patted Judd on the shoulder. “We always did call you Mr. Smoothie.”

“Yeah, well, whatever you want to call it, she doesn’t know about my life in the cage. And I’d really like to keep it that way,” Judd said, with almost a warning tone that slightly annoyed Eben.

“It’s our little secret,” Eben assured him. “I’m trying to make an honest living too. I’ve got a dream job, but I wouldn’t have it if they didn’t think they could trust me.” As he talked, Eben wondered if all the members of the five million support groups that had sprung up for every conceivable problem felt the same queasiness when they ran into each other in public. Life was so much simpler when the one club everyone had in common was the T.G.I.F. group. Thank God it’s Friday. Of course, being inmates together wasn’t quite the same as being in group therapy, but it was a secret that the rest of the world didn’t need to know.

Eben could see that a new girlfriend might not look kindly on a previously unmentioned incarceration period. What was it that Judd had been locked up for anyway? Eben racked his brains. I’ve got it! he thought as Judd’s girlfriend joined them. He was an art thief.

Judd put down his beer. “This is Willeen. Willeen, say hello to Eben here. We know each other from way back.”

She’s a cute-looking gal, Eben thought. He extended his hand. “How do you do.”

“My pleasure.” Willeen smiled as she squeezed Eben’s hand and held it just a little bit too long. She had blond hair, freckles and a pouty mouth. Eben figured she was probably about forty. Judd still looked the same to him: a good-looking Mr. Smoothie with brown hair and brown eyes, about the same height as Eben, late forties. Eben remembered him as being sharp-tongued but funny. They make an attractive couple, Eben thought, even though Judd is not practicing the honesty-is-the-best-policy theory of r. . .