“Liz!”
She stopped, but did not turn. Silence stretched between them. Liz fought the urge to look at him, to see his expression. But she’d taken all of the cold glances she could handle from him this morning. She would not turn around and face another one.
Finally he spoke. “Don’t go far. The sheriff will be here in a minute. He’ll want to talk to you.” His voice was flat, impersonal.
The same voice he’d used three years ago, the day their engagement crumbled.
Throat tight, Liz gave a single nod and left the coffee shop.
SEVEN
Tim stood inside the front entrance, watching for the sheriff’s car. When the white Durango pulled beneath the awning, he stepped outside.
“Richards.” Sheriff Zach Daniels stood from the driver’s seat and folded muscled arms over his barrel chest. “What’s the situation?”
Tim straightened to his full height and still had to raise his chin slightly to look the six-four sheriff in the eye. “Everything’s quiet down here. Word hasn’t gotten out yet. The body’s up at the top of the lift.” He briefly outlined the information he’d learned from the teenager, the sheriff nodding as he listened. “The owner, Mr. Harrison, has arranged for a snowmobile to take you up.”
Sheriff Daniels’s gaze swept over Tim’s ski suit. “You off today?”
“Yes, sir. But I’ll stick around if you need me.”
Daniels gave a curt nod and leaned into the car to grab the radio. He requested a deputy to be dispatched to Eagle Summit Resort before tossing the radio back inside and slamming the door closed. “Hang close for a little while. Somebody will relieve you shortly.”
The man strode toward the door without waiting for an answer. Tim fell in step behind him. Inside, a handful of skiers marched across the lobby toward the rear door, their ski boots clattering on the tile floor. Mr. Harrison, hovering beside Liz near the front desk, spotted Tim and the sheriff and hurried in their direction.
“I’m Greg Harrison,” he said. “My wife and I own Eagle Summit Resort.”
Sheriff Daniels shook the man’s hand. “I understand a body has been found on the premises.” His voice boomed throughout the lobby. The skiers skidded to a stop and turned to stare.
Harrison winced and spoke in a low voice. “If you don’t mind, can we step into my office to talk? I’d prefer not to alarm the guests.”
He led them to an office beyond the front desk. When he opened the door and gestured for them to enter, Tim followed the sheriff into a large room with no windows and only two chairs—one behind a cluttered desk and one in front of it. Sheriff Daniels strode without hesitation to the high-backed desk chair. Tim crossed to stand against the opposite wall, turning in time to see Liz precede Harrison through the door. The sheriff noticed her and turned a questioning glance on Tim.
“This is Liz Carmichael,” Tim said as Harrison closed the door. “She arrived in Park City late last night and witnessed something that might prove helpful.”
The sheriff’s stern expression relaxed into a warm smile when he looked at Liz. Tim shifted his weight from one foot to the other. His attractive former fiancé frequently had that effect on men. Daniels rose and extended a hand across the desk.
“Miss Carmichael, I’m Zach Daniels, Summit County Sheriff. It’s a pleasure to welcome you to our town.”
Liz took his hand. “Thank you, Sheriff.”
He gestured toward the chair, and Liz seated herself, placing her purse on the floor beside her. Harrison came to stand against the wall beside Tim, while Daniels slid back into the desk chair.
“Where are you from, Miss Carmichael?”
“Portland originally, but I live in Kentucky now.” She perched on the edge of her seat, hands clasped tightly in her lap. “Though, I’m not a stranger to Utah. I went to college at the U.”
“Ah, a fellow alumni from the University of Utah.” Sheriff Daniels leaned against the chair back. “But I’m sure you were there long after me. I probably graduated about the same time as your grandfather.”
Tim saw Liz’s rigid posture relax a fraction as she returned his smile. “I doubt that. You’re not nearly old enough.”
“You’d be surprised.” He propped his elbows on the arms of the chair and steepled his fingers. “I’ve never been to Kentucky, but I hear it’s beautiful. Where do you live?”
Tim watched as the sheriff drew Liz out with a few minutes of chatter, admiring his technique that put her completely at ease. He effortlessly extracted the reason for Liz’s trip to Utah and the details of her arrival in Park City. Tim would have jumped in with, “Describe what you saw” immediately, but he recognized the wisdom of Daniels’s approach. A calm witness was much easier to question. Only when Liz relaxed enough to rest her back against the chair did he bring the conversation around to the point.
“So tell me about last night, Miss Carmichael. Deputy Richards said you saw something that may be important?”
The sheriff’s first mistake, though an unwitting one. At the mention of Tim’s name, Liz glanced sideways at him and her shoulders stiffened.
She can’t stand to be in the same room with me.
Which was completely unfair. After all, who was the injured party here? Who got dumped three weeks after announcing their engagement to his friends and his whole family? Who was left looking like a chump? He gathered his eyebrows into a scowl as Liz gave a halting account of her midnight view from the balcony.
Sheriff Daniels let her finish before uttering a word. “Interesting. Did you notice what he was wearing?”
“A bulky jacket, probably a ski jacket. It might have been black or some other dark color. I …” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t know about the rest. I want to say jeans, but I can’t be sure. They could just as easily have been ski pants.”
“And snowboarding boots?”
She nodded, then hesitated. “I—I think so. I mean, if he was carrying a snowboard, surely he had on the boots.”
“About how big was the snowboard he carried? And how did he carry it?”
She shot Tim another quick glance that stabbed at him. Did the sheriff’s question bring to mind for her the time she helped him shop for the right size of snowboard, as it did to him? Her lips tightened for a moment before she answered. “I can’t say for sure how long it was. Four and a half feet, maybe? He carried it lengthways, under his right arm as he walked.”
“And then you saw the lift start to move.”
“After a little while.”
“How long after?”
Liz’s expression grew doubtful. “I don’t really know.”
“An estimate,” Daniels prompted. “It could be important. Five minutes? Ten? Half an hour?”
“Not half an hour.” She shook her head. “About twenty minutes, maybe?”
The sheriff pursed his lips and rocked in the desk chair for a few seconds, his unfocused gaze on her. Then his smile returned and his eyes refocused. “Anything else?”
Liz shook her head. “Not that I can think of.” She looked down at her hands in her lap. “I’m afraid I wasn’t very much help.”
“Every piece of information helps us build a clearer picture of the events surrounding the crime. We appreciate your help.” Daniels gave a huge rock forward to launch himself out of the chair. Tim stood straighter, and beside him Harrison stepped forward as Liz picked up her purse and rose.
“If you remember anything else, give me a call.” He fished a card out of his badge case and handed it to Liz. “I’m sorry you received such an unpleasant welcome on your return to our state, Miss Carmichael. I hope the rest of your trip is pleasant.”
“Thank you, Sheriff.”
Liz took the card and stepped toward the door. As Harrison reached for the knob to open it for her, a quiet tap sounded. The woman from the front desk stood on the other side.
“Ski patrol is outside with the snowmobiles you asked for,” she told Harrison. “To take you up to the, uh, the …�
�
Harrison rescued her. “Thank you, Kate. We’ll be right there.”
With a nod of farewell toward the sheriff, Liz left without another glance in Tim’s direction. An unreasonable stab of disappointment shot through him as he watched her walk away.
Harrison gestured through the doorway. “If you’re ready?”
Daniels rounded the desk, and as Tim fell in beside him, he spoke in a low voice. “Were you rough on that girl before I got here?”
Tim started. “Of course not. She approached me after she heard the news, and told me the same story you just heard.”
The sheriff’s eyes narrowed. “She seemed nervous around you.”
Tim set his teeth together. He kept his eyes forward, aware that Daniels studied him as they walked. “We have a history.”
After watching him for a few more steps, Sheriff Daniels gave a single nod. “I wondered.”
Discomfort gnawed at Tim as he stepped back and let his boss exit the office first. That man was way too observant.
Liz quickstepped across the lobby, eager to put some space between her and Mr. Harrison’s office—or rather, the people inside Mr. Harrison’s office. In all her obsessive worries the past few months, she had known she would have to face Tim during this trip. It was bound to happen, since he was Ryan’s best man. But she sure didn’t anticipate being thrown so closely together with him so soon after her arrival. Or that he would be so stone-faced every time she looked at him.
What did you expect? Hugs and kisses? You dumped the guy for one of his friends.
An inward cringe kicked up her pace, so she was practically running when she rounded the corner that took her away from the lobby—and away from Tim.
Every time she looked his way, guilt stabbed at her. Guilt—and something else. But she didn’t want to think about what that might be. She’d much rather subject herself to a day spent in Grandma’s acerbic company.
The elevator doors slid open as her finger reached for the button. Jazzy and Caitlin stood inside, their faces lighting when they caught sight of her.
“There you are,” Jazzy said. “We were hoping to see you before we took off for the day. Where have you been?”
“Talking to the sheriff.” Liz waved vaguely in the direction of the office she’d just left. “He wanted to hear about that guy I saw last night.”
She tried to sidle past them into the elevator, but Caitlin grabbed her arm and pulled her aside. “Oh, no, you don’t. You’re not getting away that easily.”
“Yeah, we’re not letting you escape without an explanation. You were engaged to a tall, dark, handsome dreamboat and you never told us?” Jazzy held up a hand and crooked her fingers. “C’mon. Dish.”
The elevator doors swooshed closed. Liz spared a longing glance at them. Eventually she’d have to come clean to her friends about the disastrous ending of her relationship with Tim, but right now she didn’t think she could talk about him. Not when he was just around the corner, a few yards away.
“Listen, I promise I’ll tell you all about it later. But right now I’ve got to get up to my grandmother’s room before she has a cow.” She let her gaze travel from Jazzy’s eyes to Caitlin’s, silently pleading with them to let her off the hook.
Tenderhearted Caitlin conceded first. “Okay, we’ll save our questions for tonight.” She placed a warm hand on Liz’s arm. “But now we know why you were so reluctant about this trip. Are you going to be okay?”
“I’ll be fine.” Liz put more confidence in her tone than she felt.
She would be fine. As long as she kept her distance from Tim.
Two snowmobiles waited outside the back door, the drivers in their red ski patrol jackets standing nearby. Tim zipped up his ski suit as he followed Sheriff Daniels toward them. He noticed a few skiers staring at the sheriff on their way to the nearby chairlift, skis perched on their shoulders.
“That the one over there?” Daniels nodded toward the chairs gliding upward.
“No. It’s that one.” Harrison pointed in the opposite direction, beyond a thick tree line.
The lift he indicated was not moving. Tim glimpsed an empty chair, a double, suspended from thick wires just beyond the tops of the pine trees. From down here he couldn’t see more than one chair. He glanced at the balconies lining the building they’d just exited. Assuming Liz’s room was on one of the upper floors, she probably had a good view of five or six chairs before the cable disappeared beyond a dip in the slope.
They arrived at the vehicles and Harrison gestured toward the waiting patrollers. “They’ll take you up to the top.”
“You’re not coming?” Daniels’s tone voiced disapproval.
“My wife manages the ski resort,” Harrison explained. “She’s up there now, where they found the—” he gulped “—him. She’ll be able to answer your questions better than I.”
Daniels nodded and approached the closest machine. “I’m expecting another deputy any minute now. He’ll need to get up there, too.”
One of the patrollers stepped across the bench seat of his snowmobile. “It’s a quick ride up to the top of Crested Eagle. I’ll drop you and come back.”
Tim mounted the machine behind the other ski patroller and held on to the seat back. They let the snowmobile carrying the sheriff lead the way across the flattened snow. Cold air blew in Tim’s face as the machine gained a little speed. If he’d known he’d be going to the top instead of an on-duty deputy, he’d have grabbed his ski mask and gloves out of his truck. It was going to be even colder up there.
A young woman wearing a green ski suit with the Eagle Summit logo emblazoned on her chest stood at the far edge of the building in the center of the trail leading to the Crested Eagle lift. Probably assigned to send skiers back to the other lift. The girl stood aside to let them pass, and Tim nodded as they zipped by her.
When they rounded the bottom line of trees, the terrain slanted slightly downward toward the Crested Eagle lift’s loading ramp. He’d skied here many times, but now he looked at it with eyes sharpened by the discovery of a body. Behind him, a line of pine trees effectively blocked the view of the lift hut from the lodge’s parking lot. Liz must have seen the guy crossing the trail for no more than a dozen steps. He glanced behind him at the ruts their snowmobile runners left in the snow. Could they pinpoint the exact place the man crossed by his footprints? Probably not. Some skiers put on their skis and poled from the lodge to the lift, but most walked, carrying their skis and boards. There would be dozens or even hundreds of prints.
Even so, Tim continued to scan the ground as they approached the lift hut. He saw what might have been deep boot prints in the soft snow at the edge of the trees, but he zoomed past before he could be sure. Another Eagle Summit employee, a lift operator, stood guard at the hut. The young man leaned against the side of the building, but leaped to attention as the sheriff zipped past. The door to the hut stood open, and Tim glanced at the machinery inside.
The Crested Eagle lift wasn’t long, only a hundred chairs or so. The runs it serviced were mostly advanced—steep, deep and usually bumpy, exactly the kind he liked. Green skiers stayed away from this part of the mountain, preferring the gentler slopes on the other side.
The run beneath the lift was no more than a hundred yards wide. Tim kept his eyes on the trees to his right as they climbed to the top. They were thick and full. He’d skied in there often enough to know that there was a narrow trail down the center, with just enough room for sharp turns as you glided downward. The snow in there was always soft and deep—a joy to a competent skier.
A small crowd stood near the hut at the top, huddled close together well away from the unloading ramp. Tim glanced at them long enough to note five people before his gaze was drawn to the figure lying on the snow-covered ramp. The body lay on its side facing away from him, the legs bent in a sitting angle.
The snowmobile carrying the sheriff came to a stop by the group, and Tim’s drew up beside it. The roar of the engine
s died away as Tim climbed off the bench seat. The silence of his immediate surroundings was broken by the distant echo of voices, skiers enjoying a day on the slopes, unaware that a man lay dead close by.
A woman stepped forward, her straight, chin-length dark hair sprinkled liberally with gray. Her snow boots left no imprint on the packed snow as she approached the sheriff.
“I’m Emma Harrison.”
Daniels took her gloved hand. “We met your husband down at the lodge. He said you manage this ski resort?”
“That’s right.” Her gaze flicked toward the body briefly, before returning to the sheriff. “We’ve never had anything like this happen, though. I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do next.”
Daniels gave her a comforting smile. “We’ll figure it out together. First let’s take a look at what we’ve got here.”
From the look on her face, Mrs. Harrison wasn’t eager to get any closer to the body than necessary. She stayed where she was when the sheriff stepped around the snowmobile. Tim followed, his boots crunching on the snow.
When they drew near, the sheriff squatted down beside the body and examined it closely. Tim stayed back a couple of feet to give him room. A dark ski cap covered the man’s head and had slipped down over his eyes.
“What’s this?” Daniels reached out and carefully lifted the ski hat to peer beneath it. He drew a sharp breath. When he twisted around, his eyes pierced Tim’s.
“Richards, call dispatch. Get a team out here now.” His voice held an unmistakable note of command. His gaze shifted to Mrs. Harrison. “I want this resort shut down immediately. Get every skier off the mountain.”
Tim looked down at the body, his hand frozen in the process of unzipping the pocket that held his phone. A piece of critical information, hidden by the ski cap, had not been relayed to the kid who broke the news about the body.
This was no nighttime snowboarder who’d accidentally frozen.
The man had been shot through the head.
EIGHT
Murder in D Minor Boxed Set Page 23