Catch Me if Yukon

by Maddy Hunter

  As he studied Mindy, Quinn clicked his pen to retract the point, then clicked it again to advance it. Retract. Advance. Retract. Advance. “How long have you been an employee at Last Frontier Ziplining, Mindy?”

  Her eyes shifted nervously. She held up her forefinger as if it were a roman numeral. “One week,” she said in a small voice.

  Quinn’s voice rose an octave, cracking with disbelief. “Seven days?”

  “Not full seven. I have weekend off. But I make no mistake all that time.”

  He stared at Sydney Ann, nonplussed. “Just how long has this outfit been in operation?”

  “Counting today?” She forced a smile. “A week.”

  He made a notation on his pad. “With a flawless performance record until today. I suppose congratulations are in order. You avoided any fatalities until day seven.” He shook his head. “How much training were you required to go through before you earned your instructor’s status?”

  Mindy and Sydney Ann exchanged dubious looks, accompanied by slow shoulder rolls. “Zipping,” reflected Sydney, ticking the list off on her fingertips. “Rappelling. Knot tying. CPR. Safety tips.” She crooked her mouth at Mindy for validation. “About two weeks?”

  “Ten days,” corrected Mindy. “They give us weekend off.”

  “Almost two weeks,” repeated Quinn. “Two weeks to qualify you to be entrusted with the lives of countless tourists.”

  “We move clip from one cable to another,” Mindy fired back, demonstrating the process in slow motion for him. “One cable to another. It not like brain surgery.”

  “And you couldn’t possibly have made a mistake and failed to tether Mr. Thorsen to the anchor cable. Is that your claim?”

  Mindy shook her head adamantly. “If I not attach to cable, man’s carabiners would be flopping from harness. Boomboom, boomboom. Man’s carabiners not floppy. They fastened to hitching cable.”

  “Until they weren’t,” Quinn pointed out. “What line of work were you in before you were hired here, Mindy?”

  “I work as chamber maid in lodge at Denali.”

  “And before that?”

  “In Belarus? I work for family company what make room freshener. All organic. Very healthy. I make up name for scents. Cinnamon Potato,” she said proudly. “Alfalfa Garlic.”

  Which probably explained why she’d needed to seek alternative career opportunities in another country.

  “I’d love a job like that,” mused Goldie. “Only instead of room freshener, I’d like to be able to give names to eye shadow and blush. Whisperberry.” She pronounced it slowly and sensuously, as if she’d been dying to say it out loud for a long time. “What color do you think that sounds like?”

  “Shell pink,” fantasized Orphie. “With maybe a hint of bergamot.”

  “Bergamot?” Goldie gave her a squinty look. “What’s bergamot?”

  “I think it’s a town in Germany,” said Florence.

  A sharp knock sounded on the door.

  “What?” Quinn called out.

  A man poked his head through the opening. “Need to speak to you for a sec, Sarge.”

  Quinn left the room for a quick two minutes before returning. I suspected he’d been on the receiving end of unwelcome news because when he rejoined us, his body language screamed of exasperation. Retaking his seat, he ranged a long look at us and sighed. He nodded at Mindy. “After Mr. Thorsen fell, why didn’t you rappel to the ground immediately to check on his condition?”

  “It against company regulation to leave guest on platform without instructor, so I no could leave. Sydney go instead. She by herself on platform seven.”

  He lasered a look at Sydney Ann. “And how long did it take you to reach Mr. Thorsen?”

  She puffed out her bottom lip. “Ten minutes? Maybe less? I made the 911 call, then rappelled to the ground, but it seemed to take me forever to reach him because I had to fight through a whole bunch of scrub brush.”

  “What was his condition when you reached him?”

  She spoke her words slowly, self-consciously. “He landed facedown, so I rolled him over and checked the pulse in his neck, but I couldn’t find it. So I detached his harness and pulled his jacket and shirt apart to listen to his heart, but when I still couldn’t hear a heartbeat, I knew…you know…that…that he was dead. That’s when I sent out an SOS text to the other instructors on the course. So they converged on platform six to help get the stranded guests through the rest of the zips so they could get down.”

  Quinn jotted something onto his notepad before returning his gaze to Mindy. “So, to reiterate: it’s your opinion that Mr. Thorsen detached his carabiners merely to showboat?”

  “Showboat?” Mindy’s features puckered in confusion. “What you mean, showboat?”

  “A showboat is the same thing as a big shot,” interjected Grover, “only on a grander scale.”

  Mindy crossed her arms and nodded her head emphatically. “Man was showboat.”

  “Excuse me, Officer,” Ennis called from his perch on a footlocker at the back of the room. “If Thor did release his own carabiners, won’t his fingerprints be all over the metal?”

  “They would be,” said Quinn, “if all trace of prints hadn’t been obliterated when his harness was detached. From what I was just told”—he bobbed his head toward the door—“the prints on the carabiners are smudged beyond our capacity to lift them.”

  It took Sydney Ann a couple of heartbeats to comprehend what Quinn had just said, but when enlightenment struck, she rounded her mouth into an O of indignation. “Are y’all saying you can’t get any fingerprints because of me?”

  “I’m saying the fingerprints are unsalvageable,” Quinn responded in an even tone.

  “Well, what’d y’all expect me to do?” she huffed. “Are y’all saying I shouldn’t have touched him? That I shouldn’t have bothered to check for a pulse or listen to his heart? I spent a whole half hour of training time breathing into the mouth of a plastic dummy to get CPR certified. I know what to do to revive someone, but he was beyond any help I could give him.”

  “Sydney Ann did the right thing,” applauded Goldie. “I’m sure it was pure accident that she screwed up the way she did.”

  “Does that mean we’ll never know the real reason why Thor detached himself from the anchor cable?” asked Florence. “I can’t imagine what he was trying to prove—I mean, other than showing off.” She fluttered her fingers in the air. “Look, ma. No hands.”

  “What if none of this had anything to do with showing off?” suggested Orphie in a conspiratorial tone. “What if Thor was trying to detach someone else’s hooks and detached his own by mistake?”

  “You think Thor was trying to kill one of us?” squealed Grover.

  Orphie shrugged. “Why not? He didn’t like any of us. Maybe he saw this as the best chance he’d ever have to get rid of one of us. It wouldn’t have been too hard, what with the straps being tangled like they were.”

  “Straps not tangled,” charged Mindy between gritted teeth.

  “Unhook the clips,” Orphie continued, “leave them draped over the hitching post thingie, and no one’s any the wiser…until they step too close to the edge.”

  The group pondered her theory as they crossed glances. “But which one of us did he want to kill?” whispered Florence.

  “By the same token,” Quinn spoke up, “if all of you despised Mr. Thorsen as much as he despised you, what would have prevented one of you from deciding that this was the perfect opportunity to take advantage of getting rid of him? Quite successfully, I might add. And by a serendipitous twist of fate, there are no fingerprints to link any of you directly to his death.”

  Sydney Ann threw her arms into the air. “Go ahead,” she railed at Quinn. “Why don’t y’all just shoot me now and get it over with.”

  Goldie gasped. “Oh my god
. Is she confessing?”

  “I believe she’s referring to the unwitting part she played in corrupting the fingerprint evidence,” explained Ennis.

  “I didn’t do that on purpose!” swore Sydney Ann.

  “So are you going to arrest her?” asked Orphie.

  Quinn ranged a look around the room, his flinty expression cowing everyone into silence. “As I told you when we began, I’m only taking preliminary statements this morning, but I’m ruling this as a suspicious death, and none of you are above suspicion. Whether this is a case of criminal negligence on the part of the instructor or an intentional homicide remains to be seen. I’ve just begun my investigation, so you can expect to see a lot more of my face in the days to come.”

  I hung my head in despair. No problem there. Maybe he and Lieutenant Kitchen could form a tag team.

  “I don’t know what your itinerary looks like, Mrs. Miceli, but you’ll need to remain in Denali until further notice. That applies to the Last Frontier instructors also.”

  I stared at him, dumbstruck. “But…we’re planning to leave tomorrow.”

  “Not now, you’re not. I’m sorry.”

  “But…but…it’s going to be impossible to book accommodations for all our guests on the spur of the moment at the height of tourist season. What are we supposed to do, sleep on the bus?”

  “You work in the travel industry, Mrs. Miceli. I’m sure you’ll find some way to resolve the problem.”

  Easy for him to say. I knew I should have packed more antacids. But as he stood up, summarily dismissing us, I realized I had much more to worry about than overnight accommodations.

  Two guests dead in four days.

  Two book clubbers dead in four days.

  Oh my god. Were they killing each other?

  I cast a wary look at the faces around me. Whether I wanted to believe it or not, there was a good possibility that someone in this room was a cold-blooded murderer.

  “Do you think Thor’s death might be related to the death of one of our other tour members in Girdwood a few days ago?” Goldie called out as Quinn made his way to the door.

  He stopped in his tracks. “Are you talking about the Bigfoot homicide?”

  “Is that what they’re calling it?” asked Orphie. “Oh my goodness, wait until Emily’s father finds out. Won’t he be surprised? He’s the one who saw it, you know.”

  “He didn’t actually see it,” I corrected.

  Quinn regarded us in an obvious fluster. “The victim was a member of your tour group? You’ve suffered two deaths in how many days?”

  “Four,” I said in an undertone.

  “Okay, folks.” He herded us back to our seats. “Sit yourselves back down. No one’s going anywhere yet.”

  nineteen

  “Lieutenant Kitchen and Sergeant Quinn have decided to coordinate their investigative efforts,” Etienne informed me when I arrived back at the cabin.

  Tag team. I knew it.

  Because Quinn’s additional questioning had delayed our departure by another hour, we’d missed Lieutenant Kitchen’s scheduled interview session, which was unfortunate for his investigation because the people whose alibis were the flimsiest were all with me. We’d had to stop for lunch on the way back—despite the trauma of the morning, everyone was starving. When we pulled into the cabins’ parking lot, things didn’t improve because we had to fend off reporters who were skulking about in search of a story about this latest incident.

  “Two of your guests have died under suspicious circumstances in four days. Do you think you’re cursed or just incompetent?”

  “Would you advise future travelers to avoid Destinations Travel on their next vacation because of your curse?”

  “Do you think Bigfoot had a hand in this most recent death?”

  Etienne had enveloped me in his arms when I’d opened our cabin door, hugging me tight against his chest, which is when he’d sprung the news about the coordinated investigation.

  “I figured as much.” I snuggled against him. “Does that mean they’ll hold joint interview sessions rather than schedule them one after the other all day long?”

  “That’s the idea. And since you missed Kitchen’s earlier session, he’s arranged for a special meeting to take place at four o’clock this afternoon for you and the book club members, with Sergeant Quinn in attendance. I’ve already sent a text to the affected guests to request their presence in the lodge at the appointed time.”

  “Uff-da.” I dragged myself across the floor and belly flopped onto the bed. “My head’s about to explode from all the questioning. And you know what they’ve come up with so far? Diddly-squat.”

  Etienne joined me on the bed. “Tell me.”

  It took twenty minutes, but I told him exactly what had happened on the zipline platform, ending with Quinn’s theory that the incident most likely would be categorized as either criminal negligence or homicide. “Someone unclipped those carabiners. If Thor didn’t do it himself, someone else did—with the obvious intent of killing either Thor or another member of the group.”

  Etienne intertwined his fingers with mine, his flesh warm, his touch reassuring. “I’m not sure what I would have done if you’d been the person who’d fallen, bella.”

  I’d tried to avoid going there mentally, but thinking about it now caused a tingling sensation to slither up my spine. Omigod. Did one of the book clubbers want me dead? But…but…what did I do? I probably didn’t even read the same kind of books they read.

  “Do you suppose you could hold me for a little while?” I asked as I crawled into his arms. “Just until my heart stops racing?”

  It took forty-five minutes, but by the time we needed to gear up for our next wave of duties, I was operating on all cylinders again.

  “Our meeting is in precisely one-half hour,” Etienne reminded me as he rolled to the side of the bed. “Can you manage that?”

  “You bet. But would you do me a favor? Would you stop by Florence’s cabin to see how she’s faring? Maybe escort her to the meeting so she won’t have to go by herself? Although, for a woman whose husband died only a few hours ago, she’s doing remarkably well.”

  “Really?” He stood up. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  “I don’t know what kind of thing it is. It’s an observation. She’s sure not shedding any tears over Thor. Does that mean she could have killed him? I don’t know. But if it turns out that she did kill Thor, does that increase the likelihood that she’s a person of interest in Delpha’s death too?” I blew a puff of air toward the ceiling. “Did you pick up any new details from Lieutenant Kitchen at the meeting?”

  He shook his head. “The Dicks repeated their alibis. George and Osmond linked their phones to the television so they could show the whole room the pictures they took during their forty-five minute museum tour. They mentioned that was your idea. Alison shared for the first time that she left the museum after five minutes because she found herself experiencing a flare-up of an intestinal disorder that rears its head when she’s under stress, so she headed for the ladies’ room and stayed there until just before dinner. Lucille Rasmussen empathized with Alison’s plight by informing the room that she’d suffered from the same disorder for years when her husband was alive, but she hadn’t suffered a single flare-up since she’d cut back on fiber and buried Dick.”

  He paused. “I’m still not sure if she meant that to be a commentary on low-fiber diets or marital bliss. Everyone else was otherwise occupied at the glacier, which Kitchen knew about from our first meeting. So if our book club members aren’t more forthcoming when he questions them, I’m afraid no one is going to learn anything new.”

  “Here’s something new, and you’re not going to want to hear it. Because of Sergeant Quinn’s investigation into Thor’s death, we have to stay in Denali.”

  “But we’re scheduled to
leave tomorrow.”

  “Not anymore. We have to find new accommodations until we’re given the okay to leave.”

  He muttered something in exasperated Italian before planting a kiss on my cheek and heading out the door. I remained inert for another ten minutes before heading for the bathroom, where, to my utter delight, I discovered the water had been restored.

  After washing my face, freshening my makeup, and spritzing my hair with styling gel, I returned to the bedroom to change out of my ziplining clothes. As I pulled on clean jeans and a V-neck top, I tried to anticipate Lieutenant Kitchen’s line of questioning, but it seemed that no line of questioning, no matter how clever, could negate the fact that all our guests had been at dinner when Delpha died, so none of them could have killed her. She’d been alive when she’d responded to my texts, so that cleared everyone of suspicion. No one could have been in the restaurant and on the hiking trail at the same time.

  Unless Delpha was already dead when you received those texts, said a little voice in my head.

  I yanked my top over my head and stood very still for a moment, bowled over by the suggestion. Already dead when the texts were sent? But…how…?

  A recent conversation began flirting with my memory. Just on the edges. A conversation with Jackie. And then I recalled something she’d said. How the Toms with their broken appendages couldn’t text one-handed, so they’d enlisted her thumbs to send their messages for them, to the detriment of her manicure.

  So…like in the case of the Toms and Jackie, what if Delpha wasn’t the one who’d replied to my texts? What if the person who’d responded had been her killer?

  As if caught in the blowback of an explosive blast, I sank back onto the edge of the bed, my mind going off in six different directions.

  Uff-da. I never considered that possibility. But…but…is that why Lieutenant Kitchen hadn’t been able to give me any specifics about Delpha’s phone at our first meeting? If there’d been no phone at the scene, he wouldn’t have even known she was carrying one until I told him. Had her killer stripped her of all her valuables after he’d attacked her? Phone? Jewelry? Cash? Credit cards?