“We haven’t seen her. Did you stop at the spa?” Hal nodded and Grace frowned slightly. “Don’t worry, Hal. Maybe she went out for a tramp in the snow.”

“A tramp in the snow!” Laureen burst into laughter. “Sorry, Hal. Do you want us to help you find her?”

Hal looked concerned. “It’s just that she always wears those ridiculous high-heeled boots, and she could have slipped or something.”

“If you will all excuse me, I will get my parka.” Paul stood up and bowed. “A brisk walk will stimulate the appetite.”

As the other men got to their feet, Hal looked doubly concerned. “But the pizzas will get cold.”

“Don’t be an as . . . idiot!” Moira patted his shoulder. “Laureen knows how to reheat pizza.”

Laureen nodded. “Of course I do. You guys go look for Vanessa and we’ll take the pizzas to my place. They’ll be even tastier if I heat them on bricks. It’s the only way to get the crusts properly crisp.”

It didn’t take long to cart the pizzas to Laureen’s kitchen, where she stuck them in her huge, restaurant-size oven. Ellen had brought down her thirty-cup coffeepot and the five women sat around Laureen’s butcher-block work island on bar stools. A full array of copper pans and kitchen utensils hung above their heads, suspended by hooks on a revolving frame, and Ellen pointed up at a big slotted spoon with prongs around the circumference of the bowl. “What’s that?”

“A spaghetti separator,” Laureen informed her. “I have two. One here and one in the bedroom.”

Jayne giggled. “Some days you step in it, other days you don’t, but I have to ask anyway. Why do you have a spaghetti separator in the bedroom?”

“Because Alan uses it for a back scratcher. He says it’s a lot better than those little plastic ones you buy in the store.”

“I wonder if they found Vanessa yet.” Grace looked worried.

“Oh, who cares?” Laureen sighed deeply. “Remember how much nicer it was before Hal married her? Personally, I wish she’d take a hike for good. We’d all be a lot better off.”

“True enough.” Grace admitted, pouring herself a cup of coffee before it was quite through perking. “But not tonight. I saw a pack of wolves right next to the building and I know they don’t attack humans unless they’re starving, but the avalanche may have cut off their food supply and my dad told me stories of how hungry wolves band together and if they see any kind of prey they . . . okay, Moira, I won’t go into details.”

Laureen said snidely, “Wolves wouldn’t bother Vanessa. She’d just invite them up to her bedroom for a drink.”

“Come on, Laureen, honey.” Jayne reached out to take her arm. “You’d be a lot better off if you could just put that whole mess behind you.”

Laureen gave a bitter laugh. “I still wish she’d rot in hell! And I don’t think you’d be quite so charitable if she’d taken off after Paul.”

“Well . . . maybe that’s true.” Jayne smiled slightly. “That’s the only good thing about our fight. It took Paul out of the lineup.”

“So how may scalps did she actually get?” Moira wanted to know.

Laureen counted them off on her fingers. “Marc, and Clayton, and Alan, for sure. I’m not sure about Johnny or Jack.”

Ellen winced at the mention of Johnny’s name, but this wasn’t the time for confidences. “I know that Jack managed to keep his distance.”

“How about Walker?” Jayne changed the subject before anyone could notice that Ellen hadn’t mentioned Johnny.

“Oh, she counted Walker out from the beginning.”

“She did?” Moira was amazed. “But Walker’s a handsome man, and single.”

“Vanessa’s a Southern girl. She might not have many scruples, but black is one of them.”

“Well, she’s got a fu . . . screwed-up sense of priorities, that’s all I have to say. I can’t believe she left Walker alone and tried to pick up on me.”

“She tried to seduce you?” Jayne was clearly shocked.

“You don’t have to look so surprised, Jayne. For an aging broad, I’m not so bad.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.” Jayne’s face turned red. “I just didn’t realize that Vanessa swung both ways.”

“I doubt she did. She just ran out of men, and it was desperation time. If she’d had any brains at all, she’d have known that I’d never look at anyone except Grace.”

Grace reached out to squeeze Moira’s hand under the table, feeling pleasurably foolish and insanely relieved. Moira had known exactly what was going on.

“Well, I’m going to make another pizza.” Laureen reached for the last can of pizza dough. “If I recommend this stuff, I have to test it myself, and nobody made a pizza with anchovies.”

Jayne laughed. “That’s because nobody but you goes to the gourmet shelf in the grocery store. How about anchovies and Cheese Whiz? I’ve got a couple of jars you can borrow.”

“No, thanks.” Laureen laughed. “That sounds almost as bad as your husband’s sardines and cream cheese. And I don’t buy my anchovies in cans at the grocery store. I get them flash-frozen direct from the distributor.”

“I just love anchovies, but Moira hates them so we always have to make our pizzas half-and-half, and if one little piece of my anchovy gets over on Moira’s side, she threatens me with . . . okay, I’ll stop.” Grace grinned at Moira. “Tell me where you keep your anchovies, Laureen.”

“In the walk-in freezer, right side, second shelf. I can get them, Grace.”

“Stay there and make the pizza. I have to get more coffee, anyway.”

Jayne whistled as Laureen threw the dough in the air to shape it. “Lordy! Look at that!”

“All it takes is a flick of the wrist, hours of practice, and someone to clean up the kitchen if you miss.” Laureen laughed. “I spent the whole day at Papa Luigi’s before I did my gourmet pizza show.”

“Well, you won’t catch me trying it. I went to flip a flapjack once and it ended up sticking to the ceiling. Poor Paul had to climb up on a ladder and . . . what’s the matter, Grace?”

Grace stood motionless before the open door to Laureen’s huge freezer. When she turned to face them, no words came out, only a terrible scream.

They all rushed over to see. Vanessa was crumpled on the floor of the freezer, her eyes staring up at the ceiling. For a moment they just stood there in shock, but then Ellen moved Grace aside. “Let me through.”

Ellen knelt down next to Vanessa and took her wrist. After a moment she looked up and shook her head. “She’s dead. I think she must have hit her head on something.”

“Go for the men, Grace.” Moira took Grace’s shoulders and turned her around. “The fresh air’ll do you good.”

When Grace had left, Moira pointed to the metal table in the center of the freezer. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Grace, she’s always been squeamish, but there’s a lot of blood down there. Vanessa must have hit her head on that table. But what was she doing in Laureen’s freezer ? And why was the door closed?”

It took Laureen a moment, but then she caught the unspoken accusation. “You don’t think I shut her up in there, do you? Just because I said I wished she’d rot in hell . . .”

“Hush up, Moira,” Jayne scolded, putting her arm around Laureen. “You’re going to make this poor girl feel like a treed ’possum. We all know Laureen didn’t mean it, isn’t that right, Laureen, honey?”

“No, I meant every word,” Laureen admitted with difficulty. “But I didn’t trap her in my freezer. And I certainly didn’t shove her against that table. Think about it for a minute. I hated Vanessa enough to kill her, but do you actually think I’d let her bleed all over those wonderful lobster tails I just got in from Maine?”

FOURTEEN

An hour later, they were gathered in Grace and Moira’s living room again. They’d decided to hold the body in Laureen’s freezer until the police could be notified. Naturally, Laureen had put up some resistance. She’d waited years for her walk-in freezer and there was no way she wanted it turned into a morgue! It had taken some persuading, but she’d finally yielded.