“I never thought you killed him,” George cut in.
Luke smiled. “Yeah, but I think you and my mother are the only two people who can truly say that.” He laughed. “Anyway, I was determined to remember. And it was starting to happen! Every once in a while I’d get a flash of memory. Nothing clear, just a feeling that when Mueller and I had had our accidents, somebody else had been there.”
He turned to Nancy. “Then you had your ‘accident’ on the rope tow, and all of a sudden there were three people there, too—me, you, and Michael. It was like I was reliving a memory: seeing an unconscious body and then Michael. I had this flash, a picture of his face, smiling—sneering—at Dieter and me as we argued in the Broken Leg Cafe.”
“So you asked him about it,” Nancy prompted.
“And he denied it,” Luke said. “But I kept getting more disturbing flashes. I felt sure that Price had more to do with what had happened to Mueller and me than he was saying. But I had no proof.” His face softened. “And then George recognized me. And she believed in me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Nancy exclaimed. “I could have helped! And we might have been able to wrap this case up before so many people got hurt!”
George just looked at Nancy. “You didn’t like Luke, remember? Would you have trusted the word of someone accused of being a murderer? The only reason he wasn’t prosecuted in Colorado was because the police didn’t have proof, not because they didn’t have suspicions!”
“And then he disappeared,” Ned added. “That must have looked plenty suspicious!”
“All the same,” Nancy said softly, “I wish you’d told me. I trust you.”
“Do you?” George asked evenly. “You didn’t tell me what you were finding out about Luke or the murderer. I was going nuts, not knowing.”
“It sounds to me,” Gunther said, “as if you two had a language gap, the way I did when I first came to this country. I had studied English, but I had—what do you call it?—a communications problem.”
“That’s it exactly,” Nancy said ruefully. She smiled at George, and George smiled back.
“Hey,” Ned said, rising and pulling Nancy up with him, “now that the storm’s over and we can go out in the snow again, you people don’t mind if we desert you, do you? We have things to do and places to go.” He threw Nancy a teasing smile.
“Where?” Nancy asked, grinning.
“You’ll see,” Ned answered vaguely.
They went out into the early morning sun. The storm had ended and the trees, covered with glittering ice, shone silver in the light. Ned waited until they had reached the car to take Nancy in his arms and kiss her. “Come on!” he said exuberantly.
“Where?”
“Back to the hotel Jacuzzi! The rest of the gang won’t think of it, so it’s the one place we can count on being alone. We have,” he added, kissing her again, “a lot of vacationing to catch up on!”
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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