Ice and Ashes

I had been in this town eleven months and I could already name every boring hour of it.

Frankie. Twenty-three. Married. Wife of a mechanic who thought a wild Friday night was the gas station that also sold jerky. I DJ'd weddings and the winter carnival and one christening, and between gigs I sat in a house that smelled like frozen pizza and motor oil and watched the lake go gray.

Wendell worked for Wade. Wade owned Wade's Auto and Racing, which was exactly as redneck as it sounds. Every February Wade threw a party for his crew, and this year it was a murder mystery dinner at an ice fishing shack on the lake. A converted ice fishing shack. With a theme.

"It's got a real bar in it," Wendell said at breakfast. "And props. Fake guns, fake knives, the whole deal. Wade spent a fortune."

"On an ice shack."

"On an experience, Frankie."

I said sure, fine, whatever, in the tone that means none of those things. But I'll admit I was curious. A shack with a bar on a frozen lake was at least newer than the couch.

We drove out Saturday afternoon, Wendell's pickup rattling over the access road, the lake stretched out white under a sky the color of old dishwater. The shack sat out there like somebody had dropped a cabin from a plane. Strings of lights ran from the roof to a couple of poles stuck in the ice. Little path of lanterns. Smoke curling out of a pipe. It was, and I hate to hand Wade this, kind of magic.

Inside it was warm and low-lit and actually nice. Woodstove in the corner. Long table with a red tablecloth. Fake candle lanterns everywhere. And props. A rubber knife on the sideboard. A stage pistol that was clearly a toy. A pair of vintage ice skates hanging on a nail by the door, all brown leather and rusty blades.

"There's your costume," Wendell said, pointing.

"I'm a DJ who got invited to a dinner. What am I supposed to be?"

"The victim's wife. It's in the envelope Wade gave me. She died ice skating, or something. You wear the skates around your neck, on a strap. It's a clue or whatever."

"I'm not wearing dead lady skates."

"Come on. Wade asked. It's my boss, Frankie. I need this year to go good."

And there it was. The real reason for anything, ever. His boss. I hung the skates around my neck and looked, I assume, like a very sad museum exhibit.

People started arriving. Wade's guys from the shop, their wives and girlfriends, a couple of neighbors. Wade himself is forty, built like a snowblower, twice married and currently single, and he greeted everybody like they'd personally saved his life.

"Frankie! Wendell's wife! You're the DJ, right? I've heard you at the carnival."

"Twice."

"You'll spin for us after the mystery. That's in the deal."

I didn't know there was a deal, but okay. Money had already been settled by Wendell anyway, which is how everything in our marriage worked. Wade's money to Wendell's bank account to the mortgage.

Dinner was chili and buns, which Wade announced as "period accurate for a shack in 1937," and nobody argued because it was good chili.

Then the lights flickered and a woman came through the back door.

She was maybe thirty-two, dark hair cut short, in jeans and a black work shirt with a little flashlight clipped to the pocket. She went straight to the wall and started adjusting a lantern, tilting it, checking the shadow it threw. Quick hands. She moved like someone who had somewhere to be and knew exactly where.

"That's Maddy," Wendell leaned over and said. "Stage manager. Wade hired her from the theater to run the whole mystery thing. She's good, apparently."

I watched her work the room. She moved a prop knife two inches left. She whispered something to a guy playing the detective and he straightened up like she'd ironed him. She repositioned a chair. Every move was small and sharp and exactly right, like she could see the whole room in her head and was just nudging it into place.

Then she looked up and caught me staring.

And I got this jolt. Straight down the spine, no warning. She had a face that was all angles and one raised eyebrow, and the eyebrow said, you're staring.

I was staring.

She crossed over to our end of the table. "Skates around the neck," she said. "Nice. You're the widow."

"Apparently. It wasn't my idea."

"Wade's?"

"Wendell's. He's terrified of Wade."

She laughed. Short, real, one breath. "Everybody is. It's fine, it keeps him lovable." She glanced at the skates. "Those are actually old. Forties, maybe. I'd have killed for those at the theater."

"You want them?"

"I want you to wear them, the widow needs them. But I'm jealous of them, which is a different thing." She was already scanning the room again. "Sit tight. I'll come start you when it's your scene."

She moved off. I sat there feeling like a light in a room that had just been switched on. Which was stupid. I knew it was stupid. I was married. I had been married for a year and a half and I had never once felt a jolt like that at my own kitchen table.

Not the point, I told myself. Pay attention to the murder.

The murder mystery was, plot-wise, exactly what you'd expect from a small town and a chili budget. Old Axel, played by Wade's brother-in-law with a fake mustache, was found dead by the hole in the ice, poisoned, and everyone at the table had a secret. Wendell got handed the role of Axel's business partner, and he read his lines off the card like a hostage video. The guy playing the detective kept drinking real beer and calling it method.

I did my part stiff as a board. I stood when Maddy tapped my shoulder, I said my three lines, I held up the skates as evidence. My widow wept on command. I made a face and hoped it passed.

But mostly I watched Maddy.

She ran the thing from the edges of the room. A flick of the flashlight meant speed up. Two fingers pointed at a chair meant sit. When a clue got skipped she just said, "Hold on. Back up. The ledger's still on the table, gentlemen," and steered the whole thing back on course without embarrassing anybody. Thirty-two years old and running that shack like a general.

At one point she stood next to me for a full minute while the detective did his big speech, arms crossed, watching the crowd. She smelled like coffee and cold air. I did not move away. I want that noted by nobody, because nobody was watching, which was the entire point of not moving.

"You're stiff," she murmured, not looking at me.

"I'm a shy widow."

"You're a DJ. I've seen you work a crowd of four hundred."

"You've seen me?"

"The winter carnival and the harvest fair. You closed with the same song both times."

"I have a rotation."

"You have a crutch." She finally looked at me. The eyebrow again. "Loosen up. Nobody in this room remembers their own lines either."

The mystery wrapped with the business partner guilty, which meant Wendell got to look shocked and then confess, and the table applauded and Wade hollered like his team had won something. Wendell loved it. Genuinely loved it. He was beaming at his boss and I felt a small ugly twist of guilt about a thing I hadn't even done yet.

Because that's what it was. Not yet. Just a jolt and a coffee smell and a woman who could run a room with two fingers.

Maddy started resetting props for the after-dinner bit, stacking the fake weapons back on the sideboard. I carried my plate up, because I was raised right, and stood next to her while she worked.

"Good show," I said.

"Terrible show. But the chili helped." She stacked the rubber knife. "You're on music after this. Wade's got a speaker plugged in behind the bar. The wiring's a hack job, so if it dies, jiggle the green one."

"Jiggle the green one. Got it."

"And Frankie." She paused, holding a lantern. "When everyone's had enough chili and enough beer, come find me in the back room. There's a storage nook back there and a space heater and I have to pack up forty props alone, and I've been in this town seven years and it's boring as hell."

She said it flat and fast, as if reading from a script. Then she picked up the lantern and walked off to the next thing.

I stood there with my plate.

The lake outside was going dark. The lights on the strings came up warmer. Wendell was across the room doing a shot with the guys, laughing at something Wade said, the happiest I'd seen him in months.

And I was doing arithmetic in my head. Not money arithmetic. The other kind.

The back room. A space heater. Forty props. Seven years in a boring town.

I put my plate down and told myself I was just going to help her pack up.

I helped. That was the plan. Help with props, be a good sport, go home.

Maddy had other ideas about pacing. The after-dinner bit was a clue handoff, little envelopes passed around the table with "evidence" inside. She lined them up on the sideboard and called my name.

"Widow. You're delivering. Walk these down the table, one at a time. Don't let them peek