Iced to Death by Peg Cochran Page A

was jumping to conclusions, but how to let her down easily?
    “Let’s not say anything just yet.” Alice put a finger to her lips. “I’ll let Stacy tell me in her own time.” She winked at Gigi. “In the meantime, tell me about your evening with Declan.”
    Reg had given up jumping on Gigi’s leg—his way of saying
let’s go
—and had curled up in a sunbeam that slanted across the braided rug in Alice’s foyer. “I didn’t spend the evening with Declan,” Gigi corrected. “I was working. And it was terrible.” Gigi hesitated for a second, but Mertz hadn’t said anything about not telling anyone about Bradley’s death. Besides, the news would be all over town before the noon whistle blew.
    “As I was leaving, I found Bradley Simpson’s body in the parking lot.”
    “Body?” Alice squeaked. “As in . . .”
    Gigi nodded. “Yes. He was dead.”
    “What on earth happened?”
    Gigi shrugged. “I have no idea.” She shivered, even though the sun coming through the window was warm against her back. “Someone had stabbed him with an ice pick. Murder.” Gigi didn’t see any need to broadcast the fact that Declan’s name was on the murder weapon.
    Alice gasped. “What are things coming to? Although from what I’ve heard, there are plenty of people who won’t be sorry to hear that he’s gone.” She folded her arms across her chest. “How his poor wife can stand him, I don’t know. My neighbor”—she jerked a thumb to the right—“does a bit of housework for them. She said Barbara Simpson has resorted to . . .” She made the motion of holding a glass to her mouth and drinking. “Not that anyone can blame her.”
    Gigi thought back to the previous evening and Simpson’s obnoxious speech. No, she didn’t think anyone could blame Barbara Simpson at all.
    Gigi spent the rest of Sunday—a bitterly cold day with a ferocious wind that picked up the newly fallen snow and tossed it around—curled up on the sofa with a book, Reg nestled in at her feet. She felt incredibly weary from all the work and strain of the evening before. She really needed to run the vacuum and throw a load of laundry in the washer, but she couldn’t bring herself to move from her cozy nook.
    Every time the floor creaked or a window rattled, she jumped, thinking it was Pia coming home from wherever she was. Even though Gigi was relishing the time alone in her own cottage, she was worried about her sister. Pia’s studio wasn’t in the best part of town, and Pia wasn’t known for being cautious.
    Gigi’s real fear was that Pia had somehow learned about Gigi’s late departure from Declan’s on Saturday night. Her sister was known for jumping to conclusions, and Gigi had a strong feeling she knew what conclusion Pia would arrive at.
    Pia appeared just as Gigi was heating up a bowl of lentil soup for her dinner. Although she was sorry to have her dinner interrupted—she was going prop her book up and continue reading—she was relieved to see that Pia was okay. She did look tired, though, and there was a smudge of blue paint on her right cheek.
    “Want some soup?” Gigi opened the cupboard and began to reach for another bowl.
    “What is it?” Pia peered into the pot on the stove.
    “Lentil.”
    Pia shuddered. “No, thanks. I had my fill of that when I was in the commune. Ghastly stuff. Looked like dirty water with a handful of lentils thrown in.” She opened the cupboard, took out a can of processed cheese Gigi most definitely hadn’t purchased, and sprayed it directly into her mouth.
    Gigi cringed. Suddenly her sister looked more like a lost child than the grown-up woman she was. She remembered their childhood and tiptoeing into Pia’s room to comfort her after a nightmare when their mother was too occupied with her grief over losing her husband to do much of anything.
    Pia stretched her arms overhead. “I’m beat. I think I’m going to go to bed. I worked all night.”
    “I know,” Gigi said more sharply