“No? What do you think happened? He was your friend. You must have some ideas about what transpired Friday night.”
All three of the men exchanged amused looks and laughed. This wasn’t the reaction I was expecting.
“Friend?” Tony finally spoke, “I guess you could call him that. I still think of him as my commanding officer.” The other two men nodded in agreement.
“Really? I thought he was your friend because from what you’ve already told me, you guys got together pretty regularly.”
“That’s true,” said Abe, “but it was more of a mutual interest kind of thing. Not too many people want to play survival games in the woods at night with a guy like Jonah—Crater. We were a pretty exclusive group.”
“Okay. So why do you think Crater left the game, and why do you think he was killed?”
“What are you a cop?” Mike asked with a chuckle. The other men laughed but I sensed that they were uneasy.
“No. I’m just looking out for the interests of my staff and the Chalet in general.”
“Right,” Abe said. “I can understand that. You’re trying to run a business. You want to know something like this isn’t going to happen again. Look, from my perspective, Jonah left because he got bored. And honestly, I wouldn’t put it past him to leave and hook up with some starstruck chick while we were out there dragging our asses through the mud and brambles. Maybe you should be looking for an angry husband.”
“Did Crater do that before? Leave you?”
Tony, Abe, and Mike all laughed again. Abe spoke up, “I wouldn’t be surprised if one of your lady guests at the Chalet will put the tale of how Crater McMurphy seduced her on social media next week. It was kind of his MO. Ask your friend Tate.”
As if summoned, Tate stepped from his office at the very moment. He stopped like a deer caught in a car’s headlights when he saw me and his three former associates talking.
“There he is. We were just telling Mandy about Crater’s reputation with the ladies. She wanted to know if Crater ditched us for women often,” Abe directed his comment to Tate, and Tate’s face grew cold. I decided that no response was as good as a ‘yes’ response. I changed the topic although I was dying to hear what Tate had to say on the subject of Crater’s womanizing ways. I also wanted to know about the unfinished business Tate mentioned. It would have to wait. I didn’t want the other three guys around when Tate and I spoke. I walked away from the three friends and stepped closer to Tate’s office because he stood completely still in the doorway.
“Did Skye go home?” I asked, noticing that Tate’s fingernails were no longer painted red.
“No, she’s at the kid’s activity center. Shannon is going to meet me there when she comes to pick Skye up. I decided we were going to have a little talk. We will go get Skye after.”
“Are you going to talk to Shannon about how she left Skye in the parking lot?”
“Yep, among other things. I’m tired of Shannon’s crap,” Tate said angrily as he leaned against the doorframe. “She keeps our kid away from me, but then she dumps her all alone out there? I’m not putting up with that any longer. Skye deserves better. I deserve better.” Tate’s face grew red, and he smacked the doorframe with his hand. Instinctively, I stepped back. I’d never seen Tate so angry before. It was disconcerting.
I took a deep breath. “If you need a quiet place to talk to Shannon, you are welcome to use my office,” I offered. Tate’s office was much too close to Slopes for Tate and Shannon to have a heated argument. My office offered more privacy than Tate’s did. I didn’t want any family disputes on display for the Chalet’s guests. Tate was already quite angry and I worried that things might escalate.
“Thanks. I may take you up on that.” Tate ran his hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, Mandy. I didn’t mean for you to see me like this. Sometimes Shannon gets under my skin.”
I appreciated the apology, but I was a bit shaken by Tate’s anger. I had never seen him so worked up before, and honestly, this side of Tate was more than a little frightening. I knew that he had been upset when Shannon left Skye on Saturday, but honestly, he seemed even more worked up today than he was on Saturday. I wondered if something else had happened to cause Tate so much irritation.
“I was wondering if we could talk later?” I leaned in. I still wanted to ask Tate why he apparently lied about his whereabouts Saturday morning.
“Sure. You can call me later. I’ll be home tonight.”
I nodded at him, and I began to step away, but then thought I should say something else, “I hope you can figure something out with Shannon. Good luck.”
Tate shook his head and returned to his office.
A WHILE LATER, I WAS sitting in my office going over invoices, when I heard a knock at my door. Looking up, I saw a petite white-blonde woman with sapphire blue eyes staring toward me from the doorway. She was tiny, but the look on her face was fierce.
“May I help you?” I shifted in my seat to acknowledge the woman. I didn’t recognize her, and I wasn’t accustomed to Chalet guests showing up at my office.
“Are you Mandy Swift?” The woman asked.
“Yes.”
The woman stepped into my office and closed the door behind her. “I need to have a word with you.”
I felt the little hairs on my arms stand on end. That is when I realized that I was face to face with the ice queen herself, Shannon Tennyson.
“I’m Shannon, Tate’s ex.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Shannon?” I was so taken aback by the woman’s boldness, that my statement came out as a question.
Without an invitation, Shannon took a seat across from me. “It has come to my attention that Tate has been taking our daughter on his dates with you. I don’t feel I should have to go into the many reasons why this is not acceptable behavior.”
“Okay, hold your horses, Shannon,” I practically bellowed, “First of all, I haven’t been on a date with Tate. If you are referring to this weekend, I was merely helping your daughter learn how to ride her skateboard—at her request—I might add. Second, if you have a problem with whom Tate spends his time, I suggest you speak to Tate about it.”
“I will be speaking to Tate. I just don’t appreciate a woman like you stepping in and disrupting my daughter's life trying to play ‘happy family’ with her. Skye is too young and impressionable to comprehend what is happening. When Tate drags her along on one of his dates, it confuses Skye. Are you prepared to be a part of her life? As a woman, I would think you would understand. Children get attached to people.”
“Again, Shannon, Tate, and I are only friends. We are not dating,” I protested.
“I don’t think my daughter sees it that way. The three of you spent an entire day having lunch and playing together. Of course, Skye thinks you are a significant part of her father’s life now. She wants to know if you are going to be her other mommy.”
I was gob-smacked. I didn’t know what to say. And, if I’m being completely honest, I was rankled. I went on one outing with Tate and his daughter. Did Skye really think I was her dad’s girlfriend? I suspected that Shannon was lying but I couldn’t be sure.
“And you aren’t even very good at child-minding, are you? Letting a small child run off on her own as you did was completely irresponsible,” the ice queen continued her accusations.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. I did no such thing.” I had enough. I wasn’t about to tolerate any more of Shannon’s accusations. I stood from my chair and pointed a finger at Shannon, but she didn’t stop with her verbal assault.
“I know that Skye ran away from you when you were getting ice cream on Sunday. Luckily, she didn’t get knocked over or kidnapped in that crowd. You, Miss Swift, are a distraction for Tate. How can he watch our daughter when his eyes are on you?”
“Skye wasn’t hurt. She only ran off for a little while, and Tate found her right away.” I couldn’t believe I was defending myself to Shannon. She was the woman who left her daughter alone in a re
sort parking lot! Yes, Skye ran off, but kids do things like that, and she was fine.
“I have half a mind to tell Tate that we need to rethink our custody arrangement. I don’t know if I can trust him with my daughter any longer.”
Now Shannon had really crossed a line. “If anything, Tate deserves more time with his daughter. He is a great dad. He loves Skye. He misses her.”
“Huh!” Shannon stood and leveled her striking blue eyes towards me before opening my office door. “Fat chance!”
“Besides, how do you know what happened on Sunday? I thought you were in California,” I accused before she could leave.
“Just stay away from my kid,” Shannon snapped as she stepped out of my office and slammed the door behind her.
I was absolutely flummoxed. I don’t have a better word for what I was feeling. Shannon showing up and accusing me of messing with Tate and her daughter’s feelings was too much. I had already decided that Tate and I were better off as friends, and I wasn’t even sure if Tate wanted to date me. I thought things couldn’t possibly get worse, but I was wrong.
AFTER WORK, I WENT home and poured myself a big glass of red wine. The day was exhausting—between meeting Shannon and Tate’s outburst at Slopes—I didn’t know what to think. I reached for my cellphone and dialed Tate to talk some more. I knew he’d be off work and that he transferred Skye back to her mother earlier in the day.
“Hey Mandy,” Tate answered his phone. His voice was raspy and low.
“Hey Tate, is this a good time to talk?”
Tate didn’t answer me quickly. I could hear him set something down. It sounded like a drinking glass with ice in it. “I’m sorry about Shannon, Mandy. I had no idea that she was going to go looking for you.” Tate’s words were slow and deliberate-sounding. I got the impression that he was drinking too like maybe he’d been drinking for a while.
“Shannon told you about that?”
“She did. She also said you insisted that you and I aren’t dating. Thanks for that, I guess.”
“I think Shannon got the wrong impression about us. I didn’t want your ex to think I was interfering in your parenting methods. She said some pretty nasty things.”
“I know. I guess that begs the question, what are we doing?” I imagined Tate running his hands through his hair the way he did when he was flustered.
“Um.” I fidgeted with my hair, pulling it from the bun so it could cascade down my back. I hadn’t intended to discuss our non-relationship when I called Tate that night.
“I like you, Mandy. I thought you liked me too. Was I wrong?”
I hesitated before I answered him. “No, you weren’t wrong,” I tried to swallow the gravel that had suddenly taken up residence in my throat. I didn’t know what else I could say.
“Okay, I thought maybe I was reading too much into what we were doing together—especially after Shannon told me you weren’t interested in me. It seems like we spend a lot of time checking up on each other.” Tate chuckled uncomfortably.
Is this what I wanted? I had to ask myself. I liked Tate a lot, but his life seemed so complicated. Tate has a young, impressionable daughter and an irrational ex-girlfriend. I was fairly sure that I wasn’t ready to include that kind of energy in my life. Also, I had seen a different side of Tate that day, and I was still reeling a bit at the force of his anger. I decided to set my concerns aside for the moment. I know it was the coward’s way out, but I wasn’t ready to have the ‘I think we should just be friends’ conversation with Tate.
“Actually, the reason I called you was to ask you a question about Crater.”
“Really?” Tate sounded disappointed.
“Abe, Mike, and Tony told me it wasn’t unusual for Crater to take off and let you guys fend for yourselves during your outings.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s true.”
“Why do you think he did that?”
“Jonah was a self-important jerk with a short attention span.” Tate croaked. “It amused him to watch the rest of us struggle, and when he tired of watching, he found something else to do.”
“There’s something else. Jed said that your account of what happened on Saturday was different from the other men’s. They all acted like they didn’t spend much time at camp Saturday morning, but you said you were there until just before you picked up Skye.”
“You don’t believe me?” Tate’s voice cracked.
“I didn’t say that, Tate. I just wonder why the other guys would tell me that.”
“Probably because it’s true. I guess they didn’t want to mention what happened to me.”
“What do you mean?”
Tate chuckled a bit. I heard what sounded like ice cubes clinking in a glass.
“I guess I’m not as fit as I used to be. I didn’t make it to camp until two. My punishment for losing was clearing the camp. Jonah left a few surprises for me.”
“Surprises. Like what?”
“He’d hidden my car keys and phone near the camp latrine. He left a gutted fish in my car. That’s just a couple of examples of Jonah’s work.” Good grief—with friends like Crater, you didn’t need enemies. “After I found my keys and phone, I took my car to the carwash. I couldn’t let Skye ride in my car like that.”
“Wait, you said that was your punishment, but Crater left the camp long before you returned. How could he have done that? How could Crater have known that you lost the game?”
“Good point. Maybe he did it before he knew I lost. I wouldn’t put that past him. We weren’t exactly on the best of terms Friday night.”
“You said you and Crater had unfinished business. What was that about?”
“Mandy, that’s probably something you don’t need to know.” Tate’s voice was nearly a whisper, and I sensed that he didn’t want to tell me something.
“Is your unfinished business relevant to the case, Tate? If it’s a motive for killing Crater, then I think it is relevant.”
The line went quiet for a few seconds. Initially I thought that Tate hung up on me, but then I heard the clink of ice cubes again. “It’s about Skye. On Friday night, Jonah and I talked about her.”
“Skye?” What could an eight-year-old girl have to do with Crater McMurphy?
“Yeah. I guess at some point Shannon told Jonah the truth about her.”
“I’m not following you, Tate. What are you talking about? What about Skye?”
Tate groaned.
“I stopped going on Jonah’s adventures when I found out that Shannon was pregnant. She begged me to stop going. I was excited to be a dad, so I didn’t fight Shannon on this. I did everything she asked of me, Mandy. I tried to make her happy, but Shannon was never satisfied. She was always angry with me, and I couldn’t figure out why.”
“Did you ask her?”
“I asked her over and over again, and Shannon would just cry. When Skye was a baby, people kept saying how she didn’t look like me or Shannon. I remember I used to get so mad when people would say that. I couldn’t understand how people could be so ignorant and insensitive. Who says stuff like that? When Skye turned two, Shannon told me the truth. She had to. Skye had to have a tiny medical procedure. Surgeries are tricky for little kids. She had her blood-typed. Skye was type ‘B.’ I have ‘A’ and so does Shannon. I knew there was no way that Skye could be mine.”
OMG. Tate was not Skye’s biological father.
“I remember this one time I’d been out on one of Jonah’s adventures. He sabotaged the bike I was riding. I had an accident, and I bent the wheel of my bike and dislocated my shoulder. It took me the entire day to get back to camp. By the time I got to camp, everyone was gone. I had no idea that Crater had ditched us—me, Mike, Abe, and Tony—on the first day. Jonah went back to town, and got a room at a hotel and waited for us.”
“The hotel where Shannon was staying?” I asked as I began piecing the puzzle together. I remembered Tony telling me that Shannon used to travel with the group.
“Wait. What? How
did you know that?”
“Tony told me that Shannon used to tag along with you and get a hotel room and that she would wait until your adventure was finished. He said it was because Shannon didn’t trust you.”
“Yeah. That’s about the size of it. It turns out that I should have been the worried one.”
I took a deep breath. “And I’m guessing this bike accident happened a little less than nine years ago?” Skye was 8-years-old. Tate and Shannon were both fair—blue-eyed blonds—Skye was dark like Crater McMurphy.
“Yeah, it did. I guess Shannon didn’t have a lot of self-confidence back then. She thought I’d ditched her and took off with another woman. Really, I was just struggling to get out of a remote canyon.”
“And she met Crater at the hotel?”
Tate didn’t speak for a moment. “I didn’t know about that, Mandy. Not until much later.”
“So it’s true. Did Shannon tell you who Skye’s father was back then? Did she tell you what happened between her and Crater?”
“Not at first. We fought about it—a lot—after we got the blood tests. I loved Skye. I helped raise her. I still wanted to be her dad, but I couldn’t find a way to work things out with Shannon. I couldn’t take the lies anymore, and I left her. As far as everyone knew, I was Skye’s dad.”
“You said you didn’t know about them until much later. When did you find out about Crater and Shannon?”
“When Jonah showed up here on Friday, he told me he knew about Skye. I guess he’d been trying to track me down for a while.”
“What did Crater say to you?”
“He said that Shannon contacted him several years ago, demanding child support. He didn’t believe he was Skye’s father, but in the end, he agreed to take the paternity test.”
“And?”
“And he found out that he was Skye’s biological father.” I heard Tate’s voice crack.
“What happened after that?”
“Surprisingly, Jonah started paying the child support. He told me that he asked for nothing in return. I don’t think he wanted his wife to find out the truth. Jonah told me that he and his wife didn't have kids. I always assumed they didn’t want any.”
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