up their acceptance of my presentation.”
Judith shot her cousin a baleful glance. “Stop it. You sound
like one of them.”
“I’m not,” Renie asserted. “I’m just a servile jobber who
wants to suck at the teat of corporate excess.”
Twenty minutes later, the cousins had the buffet set up.
The chafing dishes were lighted, the plates and utensils were
stacked, and the makeshift sideboard looked fit for a king.
Or a queen, or maybe even ten spoiled corporate executives.
In the laundry area, they found that their clothes were dry.
Hastily changing, Judith and Renie felt a huge sense of relief
as they put on their own garments.
“Let’s go,” Renie said. “We’ll leave Ava and Nadia’s stuff
on an empty table in the dining room where they can’t miss
it. I’m not sure I want to talk to any of these people again
for a while.”
Judith had found a rear exit off the supply room. Feeling
liberated, the cousins headed through the door and into the
January night.
During the hour or more that they’d spent inside the lodge,
the snow had been falling steadily and heavily. The
wind from the north had now reached a high velocity. The
blinding flakes whirled and swirled around the lodge, obliterating everything except the unsteady hands the cousins
held before their faces to ward off the stinging cold.
“Jeez!” Renie cried. “It’s a damned blizzard! I can’t drive
in this!”
“I can’t either,” Judith admitted in a stunned voice. “What
shall we do?”
Renie stood stock-still, with the wind and snow blowing
straight into her face. “We haven’t got much choice. We’re
stuck, at least until the storm blows over and the roads get
plowed. Let’s go back inside before we end up like Barry.”
“Don’t say that,” Judith cautioned. “The weather didn’t
kill him.” She swallowed hard. “I’ve got a very ugly feeling
that somebody inside that lodge that we are about to reenter
was the person—yes,
“You sure know how to terrify a person,” Renie retorted.
Judith gestured toward the lodge. “These people are risk
takers, right?”
“Right. In one way or another.” Renie kept her head down;
her voice came out muffled.
“It required a big risk to kill Barry with the others around,”
Judith continued. “Whoever did it must have realized a storm
was coming, but did you notice all those branches at the
front of the little cave? I think the killer put them there to
hide the body, just in case. Besides, when the snow
melted—assuming there’s ever a big thaw at this elevation—the branches would still provide some concealment.
