Ice Cold: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

unreachable.”
    On that point he was right. Maura was too conscientious to be out of touch for long. “I’ll give her a call,” Jane said, and hung up, grateful that her own life was so settled. No tears, no drama, no crazy highs and lows. Just the happy assurance that at that moment, her husband and daughter were at home waiting for her. All around her, it seemed, romantic turmoil was destroying people’s lives. Her father had left her mother for another woman. Barry Frost’s marriage had recently collapsed. No one was behaving the way they used to, the way they should. As she dialed Maura’s cell phone, she wondered: Am I the only one around here who’s still sane?
    It rang four times, then she heard the recording: “This is Dr. Isles. I’m not available right now, but if you leave a message, I’ll return your call as soon as possible.”
    “Hey, Doc, we’re wondering where you are,” said Jane. “Give me a call, okay?” She disconnected and stared down at her cell phone, thinking of all the reasons why Maura hadn’t answered. Out of range. Dead battery. Or maybe she was having too good a time in Wyoming, away from Daniel Brophy. Away from her job, with all the reminders of death and decay.
    “Everything okay?” Frost called out.
    Jane slipped the phone in her pocket and looked at him. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m sure it’s fine.”

S O WHAT DO YOU THINK HAPPENED HERE?” SAID E LAINE, HER VOICE faintly slurred from drinking too much whiskey. “Where did this family go?”
    They sat huddled around the fireplace, swaddled in blankets that they’d pulled from the cold upstairs bedrooms, the remains of their dinner littering the floor around them. They’d eaten canned pork and beans and macaroni and cheese, saltine crackers and peanut butter. A high-sodium feast, washed down with a bottle of cheap whiskey, which they’d found stashed at the very back of the pantry, hidden behind the sacks of flour and sugar.
    It had to be
her
whiskey, Maura thought, remembering the woman in the photograph with the dull eyes and the blank expression. The pantry was where a woman would hoard a secret supply of liquor, a place where her husband would never bother to explore, not if he considered cooking to be a woman’s job. Maura took a sip,and as the whiskey burned its way down her throat, she wondered what would drive a woman to secret drinking, what misery would make her seek liquor’s numbing solace.
    “Okay,” said Arlo. “I can come up with one logical explanation for where these people went.”
    Elaine refreshed her glass and added only a splash of water.
    “Let’s hear it.”
    “It’s dinnertime. The wife with the bad hairdo puts food on the table, and they’re all about to sit down and say grace, or whatever these people do. And the husband suddenly clutches his chest and says, ‘I’m having a heart attack!’ So they all pile into the car and rush off to the hospital.”
    “Leaving the front door unlocked?”
    “Why bother to lock it? What’s in here that anyone could possibly want to steal?” Arlo waved dismissively at the furniture. “Besides, there’s no one around for miles who’d bother to break in here.” He paused and raised his glass of whiskey in a wry toast. “Present company excepted.”
    “It looks to me like they’ve been gone for days. Why haven’t they come back?”
    “The roads,” said Maura. She pulled out the newspaper that she had bought at Grubb’s Gas Station and General Store earlier that day. A lifetime ago, it seemed. Spreading it flat, she slid it into the firelight so they could read the headline, which she’d noticed when she paid for the newspaper.
    C OLD W EATHER R ETURNS
    After a week of unseasonably warm weather, with temperatures peaking in the high 60s, a blast of wintry weather appears headed our way. Forecasters predict that two to four inches of snow could start falling Tuesday night. A far more powerful winter storm is right on its heels, with the potential of even heavier snowfall on Saturday.
    “Maybe they couldn’t get back here,” said Maura. “Maybe they left before the Tuesday storm, while the road was still clear.”
    “It would explain why the windows were open,” said Doug. “It’s because the weather was still warm when they left. And then the storm came in.” He tipped his head to Maura. “Didn’t I tell you all that she was brilliant? Dr. Isles always comes up with a logical explanation.”
    “It means these