A Wee Dose of Death by Fran Stewart Read Free Book Online

wean could tell ’twas cold.”
    â€œWell, there’s a big difference between just above freezing and five below.”
    He turned back to face the window. “I dinna understand this
five below.
”
    â€œThat means it’s really cold. If you go outside now, you’ll freeze.”
    â€œNae. I willna. I canna feel the cold. I canna feel anything.” His voice faded away.
    I shifted my feet on the bottom stair. “Stay here, Dirk. I’ll just go a little way up one of the trails. Maybe the Perth. It’s an easy one, the bottom part of it. Be back in a jiffy.”
    â€œI will go wi’ ye. Ye said it could be dangerous if one
skeeded
alone.”
    â€œSkied. And only if they’re lost in the mountains, and you can’t get lost on the Perth.”
    He crossed his arms. “I am coming wi’ ye.”
    Stubborn Scot
, I thought. “This snow is too fluffy, and you don’t have skis. How do you know you won’t sink in?”
    â€œWe will discover that soon enow, would ye not say?”
    I threw up my hands. It would serve him right if he fell in and got stuck. “I have to change clothes.”
    â€œI will wait for ye. Dinna take long, for ye wouldna wantto be caught out of doors in the dark.” He turned his obstinate face back to the window.
    No, I
wouldna
want to be skiing after dark, but I also
didna
like him telling me what any halfway intelligent adult would already know. Grrr.
    *   *   *
    It took too much energy to keep calling out. The door of the cabin stood tantalizingly open. It looked like one or two steps up, but he could make that. He’d come this far. At least he could get inside, off this cold ground. Hopefully, whoever was staying here would be back soon and they could get a fire going.
    By the time he hauled himself up the steps—the snow fell so freely in the clearing they were practically buried by now—he was close to exhaustion. The thought that if he didn’t keep going he’d freeze to death kept him motivated. That and the possibility that whoever was using the cabin might not come back for hours, so it was up to him to save himself.
    â€œAnybody home?” That sounded stupid. Of course there wasn’t; they would have heard him long ago. They must have taken snowshoes out to walk around. He inched forward another foot or so, enough to see into the square room.
    The man sprawled on his back beside the cold woodstove wore bright orange-, red-, and yellow-striped socks. The man’s pant legs were stuffed into the socks. Any good skier knew that technique to keep cold air from flowing up inside your pant legs. But this man would never ski again. He was quite obviously dead. Mac had seen enough dead bodies to be sure, even if it hadn’t been for the state of the guy’s skull and the ax beside the body. For a moment, Mac forgot his own situation and tried to pull himself to his feet. The pain swamped him, and he collapsed in agony. It was a long timebefore he managed to shrug out of his backpack and a longer time yet before he could make it across the floor to check the guy’s pockets.
    No wallet, although patting the guy’s pockets wasn’t the easiest task considering the state of Mac’s fingers. No cell phone. No driver’s license tucked into the top of his heavy orange socks, the way some skiers did. The only things Mac found in the guy’s pockets were three empty Tootsie Roll wrappers in his pants and two ballpoint pens in his shirt. Green, no less. Who carried green pens, for God’s sake? Who was this guy? Why did somebody have it in for him?
    A niggling thought crept up the back of his spine, lodged in a primitive part of Mac’s brain stem, and wouldn’t go away. Mac never felt fear. He was big. He was strong. What was there to be afraid of? He was the chief of police. But what would happen if a bear wandered in, following the smell of blood,