Icy Clutches

'That, and because I thought we could use a little vacation. From our vacation.” He was glad he'd asked her to come, glad to be off alone with her. He watched her sip her drink, watched her small, square, competent, sexy hands embrace the glass, looked at the moisture glistening on her lips.

'Uh-oh,” Julie said.

'What?'

'I recognize that look,'

'What look?” But of course she was right. “That's love,” he told her.

'That is not love. I know love, and that isn't it.'

'Sure it is. Well, partly, it is.” He leaned closer. “Uh, I don't suppose I could interest you in some spousal activities before dinner?'

'Actually I was thinking of taking a shower before dinner.'

'Gee, me too.'

'I suppose,” she said, “if we took one together it would save time.'

'And water,” Gideon pointed out.

'Oh, well,” Julie said, pushing back her chair, “in that case...'

* * * *

'I don't know how much time we saved,” Julie said from the bathroom. She was still tinkering with her hair, which seemed somehow to have gotten wet under the shower spray.

'I know we sure didn't save any soap,” Gideon said from the bedroom. “Or water, not that Juneau seems to have much of a water problem.'

'Is it still raining?'

'I don't think so.” He walked to the window. “Nope, it stopped. Wow, look at this.'

She came to join him. “Wow,” she agreed.

Their eighth-floor room looked out over the town and across Gastineau Channel. An enormous, midnight-blue cruise ship had just anchored; a sleek, stately five-decker with big, square, house-style windows instead of portholes. Four small launches were chugging steadily back and forth between ship and shore, depositing passengers onto the pier at the foot of Franklin Street.

And Juneau was springing to life to greet them, like a mechanical toy that someone had just plugged in. They could almost hear the gears creaking into action. Franklin Street was going into motion as the advance troops from the ship made their way up it, tentatively and somewhat suspiciously. (Were they arriving on empty stomachs?) Lights were blinking on in the shops ('Gold Nugget Jewelry,” “Arctic Circle Gifts,” “Alaska Trading Post'), sidewalk tables were being set up outside of restaurants, and all of downtown suddenly seemed to be crackling with noise and life.

Hokey, maybe, but cheerful and welcoming too. Even the mountain was starting to look friendly. They abandoned their plan to eat in the Baranof's sedate and elegant Gold Room and went back out into the now- bustling 1890s in search of typical Alaskan fare.

* * * *

They wound up at the Armadillo Tex-Mex Cafe on South Franklin, a steamy, funky, homey place with plastic red-and-white tablecloths, waitresses in jeans and aprons, and a stuffed, seven-foot-high saguaro cactus near the door. John would have loved it, they agreed.

Over surprisingly good fajitas and beans (the owner turned out to be from Austin), they found themselves back on the same old subject without knowing how they got there.

'I don't think we should completely forget about Tremaine,” Julie said. “Just because he got killed himself later on hardly proves he didn't do it.'

'So John pointed out. But why would he want to murder Pratt or Fisk?'

'Pratt, I don't know. But didn't you say he was stealing Fisk's ideas? Maybe he thought if Steve was dead he could get away with it better.'

'Except that I don't see him planning to do something like that out on the glacier, with the other two around. No, this had to be a spur-of-the-moment thing.'

'Well, maybe it was. Maybe Tremaine did it after the avalanche. Maybe the other two were killed in it, and Steven was hurt, and Tremaine saw his chance and sort of nudged him along.'

'Into the great beyond,” Gideon said. “Uh-uh. According to the newspaper, both of Tremaine's arms were broken. Plus a fractured skull and a broken leg and a few other little nuisances. He didn't hit anybody with an ice ax. Not after the avalanche.'

'Rats,” Julie said.

Rats was right. The pieces just wouldn't go together to make a coherent picture. He no longer believed that Tremaine had been the murderer, as satisfying as that idea had been. Maybe he'd been an accomplice. Very likely a witness. Surely he'd known something about it, and he'd been killed on account of it. The Law of Interconnected Monkey Business so decreed. Or if not decreed, strongly suggested. So far so good, but right there was where things came unraveled. If not Tremaine, the killer had to have been one of the other people on the glacier. But they had all died. So who cared enough to kill him over it almost thirty years later? Who besides him could even know what had happened?

Back to Judd? Judd, with his faked mosquito bite, lumbering after them over the glacier? Anna? Had Anna not spent the day on her frequency distributions after all, but hired her own plane, followed them out there...He shook his head. Every possibility was sillier than the one before. And more full of holes.

'I wish,” he said with a sigh, “that we could Figure out who that skull fragment belongs to. It makes it just a