I looked out over the ice surface. “I didn’t think there’d be so many people.”
“That’s okay. No one expects you to audition for Stars on Ice your first time out.” She pulled a pair of skates out of the bag at her feet. “They should fit,” she said.
I undid my boots and pulled on the extra socks I’d tucked into my pocket. Maggie laced the skates for me, wrapping the ties around my ankle at the top and double knotting the bow.
We stepped onto the ice and my legs slid out to the side until I was more than halfway down into a pretty decent split. My arms flailed until I could latch on to Maggie and I did, wrapping both my arms around her waist in an awkward bear hug. I managed to pull myself up, but my ankles wouldn’t stop wobbling. The only way to stay upright was to keep a death grip on Maggie and press my knees tightly together. My feet kept trying to slide off in opposite directions. Every bit of coordination I thought I had was gone.
“Take a second to find your balance,” she said.
“It’s going to take more than a second,” I said. I tried to straighten out more, clutching at Maggie’s jacket like it was a lifeline, because it was. I got both feet together and pointed in the same direction.
“Link your arm through mine,” Maggie instructed.
I pried my fingers from the front of her coat, put my arm through hers, and smiled triumphantly.
And then immediately fell on my snow pants.
Maggie, who had somehow known I was going to fall, had let go of me a split second before I went down.
“Ow!” I said, glaring at her.
She pulled me up and had the good sense not to smile. I found my balance again, and this time I didn’t end up on my padding. “Okay, we’re going to try a little skating,” she said.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think I’ll stay right here and enjoy the scenery.”
“You can do this.” She tugged on my arm, and for a moment I was gliding across the ice.
Although my brain said forward, my feet decided to move sideways and independently of each other. I windmilled my arms to try to stay upright. But I didn’t.
That was how it was for two turns around the outdoor rink: Maggie alternating between giving me confusing instructions and pulling me back to my feet.
“I have to sit down,” I said finally. I was sweating like a bear in a sauna. and I was pretty sure my feet had tied themselves into knots inside my skates. Maggie was more or less dragging me around while I clung to her, bent at a ninety-degree angle at the waist. It was the only way I could keep my feet from sliding off on a tangent. I pretty much looked like Wile E. Coyote on skates.
Maggie steered me over to the bench and I dropped inelegantly onto it. “Go skate,” I said, waving her away. “Go.”
She went, which meant I could sit and sulk silently for a while.
Mary glided over, stopping with a flourish and a little spray of ice chips. I should’ve guessed she could skate. She held out a thermos. “Hot chocolate?”
“Yes, please,” I said gratefully. Sulking went a lot better with some chocolate.
She sat down beside me, took one of the cups from the inside of the thermos, and filled it about half-full. I inhaled the scent of steaming chocolate.
“Your first time on skates?”
I nodded.
“So what do you think?”
“I think ice is very cold, very slippery and very hard,” I said.
“So you had fun, then?” Mary said, her eyes sparkling over her cup.
I gestured at the rink. “How do you all do that so easily?” Maggie was skating backward. Backward, talking to Claire.
Mary smiled. “Back in the dark ages when I was young, all there was to do here in the wintertime was skate and toboggan. If you stayed home someone would find a chore for you to do.”
I took another sip of hot chocolate. My fingers were starting to thaw.
“My first pair of skates were hand-me-downs from my older brother,” she said. “I had to wear two pair of my father’s woolen socks with them to fit. “
I wiggled my toes in my skates. The feeling was coming back to my feet. I looked at Mary. “Mary,” I said. “If you tell me you skated to school uphill both ways through waist-high snow, I’m going to whack you with a snowball.”
Mary laughed and shook her head. “Of course not,” she said. “Snow was closer to over my head.”
I snatched a chunk of snow from the ground and threw it at her. It disintegrated against the front of her coat. She just laughed harder.
We watched the skaters zip by, and then Mary’s face grew serious. “Kathleen.” She hesitated. “You know about Ruby?”
“That she was arrested? Yes.” I blew on my hot chocolate and took another drink. “Ruby didn’t kill Agatha.”
“The police have evidence,” Mary said. “They found a glove belonging to Ruby with the body.”
“She found Agatha’s body. She was upset. She could have easily dropped a glove.”
Mary studied her skates for a moment. “That’s not the only evidence. Bridget says they have a piece of glass that was found in the alley and paint that matches the paint on Ruby’s truck.”
It struck me that Bridget was doing too much talking, but I didn’t say that out loud.
“The glass is from the kind of headlight Ruby has on her truck and”—Mary cleared her throat—“the headlight is broken.”
She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “And it looks bad that Agatha left all that money to Ruby’s boyfriend,” I said.
“Yes, it does.”
“What it looks like and what the truth is are not always the same thing. I know Ruby didn’t kill Agatha.” I finished my hot chocolate and gave the cup back to Mary. “Thank you,” I said. “This is probably going to sound crazy, but could Agatha have had any enemies?”
Mary twisted the top back on the thermos, then looked at me and shrugged. “She was an old lady. When she was teaching, sure, there were some irate parents and some kids who didn’t like her. She was a pretty strict teacher. But enemies? No.” She banged her skate boots together, knocking off the snow that was clinging to the metal blades. “It had to be an accident.”
“More proof that it wasn’t Ruby,” I said. “She wouldn’t have left Agatha to die in that alley.”
Mary stood up. “I hope you’re right.” She gave me a finger waggle and skated away with the thermos.
Susan and Eric came skating by then. Each of them had one of twins by the hand. The little guys could skate better than I could. They grinned at me and I waved at them.
Susan gave me a quick smile. Her attention was focused on the boys. Eric didn’t look good from a distance and he looked even worse closer. His hair went in every direction around his black earmuffs. His color, even in the crisp, bracing air, was bilious, and he needed a shave. He had more than I’m-a-sexy-bad-boy stubble.
He looked like he’d been on a three-day bender, which wasn’t likely, since I’d never seen him drink so much as a glass of wine. He’d been close to Agatha. Having her die in the alley by the restaurant had to have been painful.
I wondered if Eric had heard about Ruby being arrested. If he hadn’t, he would soon. And when the newspaper went online after midnight, the whole world would know.
I thought about what Mary had said. Ruby could have easily dropped her glove or even have given both of them to Agatha earlier in the day. As for bits of paint, I didn’t know enough about automotive paint to know whether it could be narrowed down to one specific vehicle, although it didn’t seem likely.
And then there was that piece of glass that might have come from the headlight of Ruby’s truck. Was that the sliver of glass that had caught in the fabric of my pants? Was I, indirectly, responsible for Ruby getting arrested?
Even if, big if, the glass had come from Ruby’s truck, it didn’t mean she’d been driving it. She was pretty generous about loaning the truck. Maggie had borrowed it last summer, but it refused to run for her, which is how we’d ended up on our first “road trip” with Roma.