A Cold Day for Murder Read Online Free Page B

wilderness. With small plane rentals running $185 an hour wet and the customer paying the entire four-hour round-trip if the air taxi had no load going back, generally their only renters were park managers and United States senators and the occasional state governor, and their guests.
    Yes, it was a great park, a spectacular park, a national treasure, everyone agreed, not least those who lived there. You just couldn’t get at it.
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    There were eleven new loaves of bread, five wrapped in foil and stored outside in the cache. Kate put six in her backpack for Abel, since he was the only person she knew who could slay yeast with a single glare. She’d ruined the twelfth loaf when the pot holder slipped and she burned her fingers, and she’d thrown the loaf pan across the cabin in a fit of temper she was glad no one but Mutt was there to see.
    Her temper lasted through the following morning. She stubbed her toe on the loft ladder. The handle of her brush broke off in mid-stroke in a tangle of hair. The wood stove’s damper refused to cooperate when she went to stoke it for her absence, and it took a blasphemous half hour and a burn on her other hand to adjust it. She yanked on her snowsuit, stamped her feet into her shoepacs and wrenched the door to her cabin open, and Mutt took one look at her face and vanished.
    “Thanks,” Kate said, with awful civility. “I needed that.” She slammed the door and a large icicle broke off the eaves of the cabin, narrowly missing her. She stalked out to the garage and checked the oil and gas on her Super Jag. The snow machine was Arctic Cat’s top of the line, the compleat bush transportation, brand new last winter, with a track 156 inches long and 16 inches wide, a springer front end that made the going easier over deep snow, a 440-cc fan-cooled engine and a 108 Comet over-drive clutch. It averaged 120 miles to a tank of gas, had handlebar warmers and a storage box, and in spite of all the extras the dealer had drooled over in the showroom, after six weeks of idleness the engine didn’t want to turn over so much as it wanted to lay down and die. Kate cursed, fluently and loudly. Mutt poked a cautious muzzle around the door and looked at her reproachfully. With an effort Kate restrained herself from hurling a crescent wrench at her beloved roommate.
    “I can’t wake up grumpy like ordinary people?” she demanded.
    You never do, Mutt told her.
    Kate sighed heavily and sat down on the snow machine. “You’re right, Mutt,” she said, holding out her hand. Mutt trotted over to stick her head under it. “But just because I’ve come to a decision and settled on a course of action doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
    Of course not, Mutt said.
    “I need somebody to blame,” Kate said.
    Anybody but me, Mutt said agreeably.
    “How about Jack?”
    Mutt looked doubtful, but the more Kate thought about it, the more likely and attractive a candidate Jack Morgan seemed. He had made it impossible for her to refuse to leave her warm and comfortable and private sanctuary, in the dead of winter, to get him out of a mess he himself had made, in a place she habitually avoided, teeming with too many people she had no wish to see. That she was working again for Jack poured salt in the wound. When she had seen him yesterday it had taken every ounce of self-control she had not to shame the very name of bush hospitality by refusing him so much as a cup of coffee.
    “And I do too have someone to talk to,” she said suddenly to Mutt. “I’ve got you. Vow of silence my ass.”
    Mutt licked her face with a large, wet and understanding tongue. Kate went back to work on the Jag.
    The next time she pressed the starter the engine turned over, coughed twice and settled into a loud purr. She unhitched the sled and pushed the snow machine out of the shop. She checked the survival gear in its locker, took out the mosquito net that she had neglected to remove after the first frost and added a