Afraid to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

“Adoquin,” she repeated in a whisper. Closing her eyes, she refused to think of O’Keefe and how, after all the years and heartache, she was still attracted to his slow, sensual smile and the glint of bad-boy humor in his eyes, and the way his jeans hugged his butt. He would only break her heart. Again. And he might just want a bit of revenge for what had happened in the past.

It didn’t matter anyway, she told herself as she plumped her pillow and turned over. She had a major intimacy problem. Major. Courtesy of her cousin Emilio half a lifetime ago.

Damn that darned paperboy!

He never showed up on time, at least not early enough for Mabel Enstad, who rose well before dawn, around four o’clock in the morning, and wanted to read her newspaper with her morning tea and biscotti before her husband woke up. It was going on six now and Ollie, as always this early, was still sawing logs, his snoring rippling down the hallway and sounding like a flock of agitated geese.

She peered through the curtains and noticed that it was snowing heavily again, yet there were no tracks near the mail/newspaper box indicating that the daily had been delivered.

“Lazy whelp,” she’d muttered, knowing full well that the delivery “boy” was really Arvin North, a thirty-six-year-old deadbeat father of four who fought his ex-wife for every nickel of child support she wanted. It galled Mabel to think that any of her hard-earned money went to the lazy loser, and at this time of year, when people gave a special gift to their mail and paper delivery people, Mabel sent a Christmas card and forty dollars in crisp ten-dollar bills, anonymously of course, to Roberta, the ex–Mrs. North, a lovely woman who sang in the church choir. Mabel always included a note with the money, instructing that each of Roberta’s deserving children receive one of the bills for Christmas. As she let the drapery fall, Mabel made a mental note to go to the bank later this week and pick up the new bills so she could make her donation. However, as the curtain closed, she noticed something in the side yard between her house and the Swansons’.

A snowman ... make that a large snowman, or maybe even a woman nearly anatomically correct, sat directly in front of the snowman her grandchildren had made two days ago. The “woman’s” rump was pushed right up against what would have been the groin of Frosty.

“Oh, for the love of Saint Pete,” she grumbled, knowing who the culprits were. They lived next door. Rented the old Brandt place and had been trouble ever since. Those neighbor kids, the Swanson boys, were trouble. Though she couldn’t prove it, of course, Mabel was certain the teenagers had been behind the rearrangement of her Christmas yard ornaments just last year. The lighted, grapevine deer were her pride and joy and she placed them, along with a plastic Santa and his wife, strategically in her yard. The lights she’d strung in the fir trees only added to the charm of her display.

Buck, the larger of the deer, even moved its head slowly side to side.

Last year, that randy, mind-in-the-gutter Jeb Swanson had moved the perfectly innocent deer into the most unflattering and positively disgusting position, mounting it upon its more serene and unmoving mate as if they were fornicating! In the yard. A few feet from Santa and Mrs. Claus!

Now, it seemed, they’d come up with a new, perverse prank. Nasty little hellions! Destined to become criminals if the parents didn’t take charge and quick!

And now look!

In her slippers, Mabel, muttering to herself, hurried to the back door, where she plucked her jacket off a hook and stepped into her waiting boots. She threw her knit cap onto her head and pulled on a pair of gloves before grabbing the big flashlight that Ollie kept by the back door.

Trudging toward the front of the house where four new inches had added to what was already half a foot of old snow, she made her way to the front yard, past her still intact Christmas display. So far, Santa, his wife and the deer hadn’t been touched, but in the space separating her house from that of the Swansons’, the snowman had definitely been messed with.

She had half a mind to bang on the Swansons’ door and wake up the whole darned family, dragging them out of their snug beds to take a gander at what the sons had done. “Should be enrolled in art class,” she muttered under her breath and noticed that the coal eyes of the snow woman had b

oth fallen onto the ground ... or weren’t anywhere to be seen ... No, actually, as she shined her light over the abomination, she realized that there were no finishing touches, no top hat or stick arms or carrot nose, as there were on Frosty directly behind her.

Nor was there a satisfied smile or a dangling cigarette on the snow woman’s face, the kind of thing that would be just up those little brats’ alley. To her horror, she even wondered if they’d taken Frosty’s carrot nose and placed it lower ... but, no! His nose was where it should be, thank the good Lord!

“Weird,” she said aloud, and heard the sound of a car behind her. She glanced over her shoulder and noticed the twin beams of headlights cutting through the veil of snow as a car came over the rise. Finally! That miserable paper delivery man decided to make his appearance, after six A.M., no less! Mabel told herself she needed to call the distributor of the paper and complain.

Too bad Arvin would get a view of this snow woman, a creation who definitely had curves in all the right places, even if she had no face, no scarf, no ... What the heck was that?

Mabel squinted at the foul snow sculpture.

As the headlights from the approaching car flashed over the snow woman, something glinted beneath the dusting of powder, something bright and sparkling, high on the middle “ball” of the woman’s body. Leaning over, Mabel shined her flashlight more directly on that area, a few inches below where the neck would be and, yes, there was something brilliant buried in the packed snow, something reflective.

“What the devil?”

As the beams from Arvin’s little Mazda’s headlights washed over the snowman, Mabel scowled and brushed away some of the snow that had collected as she tried to get to the glinting bit of metal ... A ring, maybe? She had to work at it, scraping away the packed snow, her fingers, deep in her gloves, feeling a hardness that was surprising until she realized that it wasn’t snow beneath the night’s dusting, but ice. Thick, solid ice.

She felt the first niggle of anxiety.

The hairs on the back of her neck raised.

Jumping Jehoshaphat! Was the ring ... was it ... oh, my God, inserted through a nipple? A real breast?

Revulsion rippled through her and a new fear clutched at her heart. Was this “snow woman” a real woman, dead and trapped in ice? “No ... oh ... no ...”

Jumping, startled as she heard the sound of her paper being slammed into its box, she brushed aside more snow, higher up, on the head of this sick creation.

Her heart was beating wildly now, panic settling in, and she wondered why she hadn’t picked up Ollie’s shotgun propped by the back door. She could have loaded that sucker before venturing out ... Oh, dear God in heaven, she remembered what she’d seen in the news about a woman frozen and left in one of the town’s church’s nativity scenes.

Surely that was an isolated incident.