Cold Call: A Cold Poker Gang Mystery

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  As the jet taxied up to Doc’s private hanger at the Boise airport, Lott caught a glimpse of Fleetword Kort standing just outside the building, waiting for them.

  Lott was surprised that Fleet was there to meet them. It seemed Fleet had a Jeep SUV for them gassed up and ready to go.

  Fleet was a tall, lanky man who towered over Lott. Lott had never seen Fleet out of a silk suit with his hair combed perfectly. This morning was no exception.

  He was Doc’s closest friend from high school and college, but the two were about as opposite as they came. Doc seldom wore anything but jeans and button-down shirts with the sleeves rolled up. And while Doc was solid and muscled and tanned from guiding rafts on the River of No Return in the summer, Fleet looked so thin that lifting a weight might break something.

  After they put their luggage in the back seat of the Jeep, Fleet showed them that he had stocked the back of the Jeep with all sorts of equipment they might need while up in the mountains, from extra food to flashlights to sleeping bags and tents.

  Then he handed both Lott and Julia special satellite phones. “These should work in most areas, depending on the terrain and height of the mountains. Think of them for emergency use only. I’ll have a helicopter standing by here if you need something.”

  “Thank you,” Lott said, tucking the phone in his bag in his car.

  Julia nodded and looked puzzled at Fleet. “Is where we are going that remote?”

  Lott knew Julia had sent Doc and Annie directions to Trish’s rented home on the edge of a lake in the mountains. So no doubt Fleet had looked it up.

  “About as remote as it gets in the lower forty-eight states,” Fleet said. “That you can actually drive to.”

  Lott was not sure he liked the sounds of that in the slightest. Julia only nodded, but clearly didn’t like that either.

  Then, as they were about to head out, a State Police car pulled up next to the Jeep and an officer got out, leaving his hat in the car, and came toward them, smiling.

  It took Lott a second before he recognized Ben Stephens, a former Las Vegas detective and one of the nicest men Lott had ever known.

  Ben had reached detective status about ten years before Lott retired and Lott and Andor had taken him with them on numbers of cases as he got his feet under him. In essence, they had trained him.

  Five years ago, just about the point that Lott and Andor both retired, Ben had taken a job up here in Idaho to be closer to family. He still had the military flat top cut to his dark hair and shoulders that looked like he could play pro football.

  Lott gave Ben a big hug, then introduced him to Julia, who shook his hand.

  Before Lott could introduce Ben to Fleet, Fleet said, “Ben, glad you could make it.”

  “Anything for you and Doc,” Ben said to Fleet.

  Then Ben turned to Lott and Julia. “We’re going to have extra State Police patrols in and around the McCall area, in case you need backup. I know this isn’t official business, but considering what you are doing, we felt it only logical to be close.”

  “Thank you,” Fleet said. “And you have told no one of the reason for all this?”

  “In this state,” Ben said, “only the four of us really know what you are suspecting. Too dangerous any other way.”

  Lott was too surprised to even say anything quickly.

  “In fact,” Ben said, “I’m going to be up there on patrol myself over the next week. I’ll be staying with a cousin in McCall, but can scramble to help at any moment, day or night.”

  He handed Lott a piece of paper with a private cell phone number and the Idaho State Police phone number on it.

  “Did Fleet tell you there is an outside chance we might have another Willis Williams problem?” Lott asked, folding the paper and putting it in his wallet. “Chances are she’s fine.”

  “Andor called last night, right after Fleet called,” Ben said, nodding. “We don’t want you two walking into a hornet’s nest without some resources.”

  “Thank you,” Julia said. “With luck, we’ll find my friend alive and well.”

  “That’s what we are all hoping,” Ben said, nodding. “And expecting, actually. But better to be safe on this.”

  “How are the county and local police in the area up there?” Lott asked.

  “Small town slow and decent,” Ben said, shrugging, “at least from what we can tell over the years. Nothing that would make them suspects in anything. But I wouldn’t trust them with much of anything.”

  Lott and Julia both nodded.

  Ben wished them both well and headed back for his patrol car.

  Lott turned back to Fleet. “Looks like we have a lot covered. Thank you.”

  “Yes, thank you,” Julia said.

  Fleet nodded. “We have tried to think of as much as we can. Now it’s up to you two.”

  “We’ll try to stay out of trouble,” Lott said.

  “Well, as much as we can considering who we are,” Julia said, winking at Fleet.

  Fleet blushed and shook his head and then turned for his car.

  All Lott could do was laugh.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  May 13, 2015

  1:30 P.M.

  McCall, Idaho

  With only one stop for lunch, they had reached the small resort town of McCall in the early afternoon and checked into Shore Lodge, right on the edge of Payette Lake. Fleet had made them reservations there for the night because he had said it was too far to drive into Trish’s home in one push.

  After the smooth, but winding drive from Boise up through the mountains, Julia was glad they had decided to do that.

  The road was only two lanes wide and barely that in some places. She was tired from lack of sleep last night and didn’t want to take a chance of having to drive any road in this area after dark. Neither her nor Lott’s eyesight was good enough for that kind of strain at their age. And she could tell the drive had tired Lott out some as well.

  Shore Lodge didn’t look like much from the highway, but it stretched three stories tall along the white beach, with long docks and ski boats tied up in neat rows in the blue water. The May afternoon air had a bite to it and some of the mountains around McCall still had snow on them, which worried her as they got their bags out of the car and headed up the concrete steps and through the massive log front doors.

  Inside the high ceilings and huge polished old logs just stunned her. She had seen fake interiors like this one, but never something genuine and really made out of logs so large she could barely imagine the size of the trees they came from.

  A middle-aged clerk was at the long wooden front desk that looked out over the calm blue waters of the lake. He told them the lodge had been built over a hundred years before out of massive pine trees and except for a short period as condo units, had been a hotel the entire time.

  Julia was flat impressed. The furnishings in the lobby were warm and cozy patterned cloth, the bases also made out of logs, and there was a wonderful smell of fresh steak in the air coming from a restaurant nearby. A crackling log fire in the massive stone fireplace to one side of the huge lobby looked wonderful and welcoming.

  Julia felt instantly at home.

  The hallway to their rooms was narrow and like walking down through history, with old black and white photos on the walls of the last hundred years of the area.

  Life in these mountains had clearly been rugged. Far more than Julia could imagine.

  Their rooms were side-by-side on the second floor and as comfortable as the main lobby. The beds were even featherbeds, which she couldn’t believe.

  What hotel had featherbeds anymore?

  Lott stored his bag and came over into Julia’s room as she moved out onto her room’s deck that overlooked the bright blue waters of the natural lake.

  The air smelled so fresh and cool, it seemed almost fake.

  Pine-covered mountains towered into the sky around her far higher than she had imagined possible. She had lived in Reno for years and had be
en used to the mountains going up to Tahoe, but these mountains dwarfed those by factors.

  The crisp air smelled of summer pine. Around the lake she could see hundreds of homes built into the trees, each had a dock sticking out into the dark blue water.

  Just standing there staring at the natural beauty seemed to drain the tensions from the worry about Trish and the long drive. Here, Las Vegas seemed like a distant dream. She had a hunch this was the dream and the city was reality.

  Lott stood beside her, leaning on the wooden railing and looking out over the lake as he took a deep breath of the cool mountain air. “Doesn’t get much better, does it?”

  She looked up at him. “It doesn’t.”

  His dark eyes looked at her and they held that gaze for a moment. She almost reached up and pulled his head down to kiss him, then decided now was not the time. Not with her worrying about Trish and them both being so tired.

  “I’m going to take a two-hour nap with the this patio door open and that wonderful air flowing in here,” she said, “then take a shower and meet you for an early dinner in three hours in that restaurant off the lobby. How does that sound to you?”

  “Perfect,” he said. “He glanced at his watch. “Two p.m. local time now. See you at five in the restaurant.”

  With that he turned and headed out of the room, pulling the large, wood hallway door closed behind him with a solid thump.

  That could have gone another way very easily. She knew that. But there would be time.

  And clearly Lott understood that as well. One of the many things she was growing to love about him.

  He understood her.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  May 13, 2015

  5 P.M.

  McCall, Idaho

  The dinner that night had been fantastic, sitting at a table against the window looking out over the lake. The chairs were solid wood with comfortable cloth padding and the wooden table was covered in a tan tablecloth with a single candle to one side.

  Lott felt a lot better after a nap and a shower and clearly Julia did as well. She seemed to be almost beaming and enjoying every detail around them.

  Both of them had tried the pan-fried trout on the recommendation of their waitress, a young college woman with short brown hair working the summer between semesters.

  Lott couldn’t believe how the trout just melted on his fork and in his mouth. He could never remember eating any fish that fresh before, and the buttered potatoes were perfect as well, accented by steamed spears of asparagus.

  After they shared a piece of key lime pie, they headed out and down toward the dock in front of the lodge. The sun was already behind the mountains and the air had turned cool, but neither of them seemed to care as they walked along the narrow shoreline as the small waves lapped at the coarse sand.

  They walked in silence for a few minutes, then turned back.

  “You up for a movie to relax?” Lott asked. “I saw they had some old classics to rent at the front desk.”

  He didn’t feel like sleeping after the nap just a short time before, but he knew they needed to rest. Who knew what tomorrow was going to bring. With luck, nothing but finding Julia’s old friend alive and well.

  Julia shook her head. “Actually, I was thinking about a drive. Let’s cruise around this area a little bit, go past William’s estate, get the lay of this small town just in case.”

  Lott stopped and looked down into the green eyes of the woman he cared about. She clearly was focused and worried.

  “A good idea,” he said, nodding. “Then we come back and relax with a movie.”

  She smiled. “Deal.”

  Two hours later, they were watching a classic Fred MacMurray movie in Julia’s room. She fell asleep on her bed about halfway through and Lott shut the movie off, told her to get ready for bed, and headed for his room.

  He really wanted to just curl up with her, but the time would come for that. After they found her friend.

  CHAPTER NINE

  May 14, 2015

  8:45 A.M.

  McCall, Idaho

  They had a great breakfast in the lodge of eggs, bacon, and homemade bread as they sat looking out over the smooth blue waters of the lake. The weather was crisp and there was frost on the ground, but the day promised to be sunny. Lott had watched the weather and knew a small storm was scheduled to come through during the night, but nothing bad, and the next day was to be clear and sunny as well.

  Then they filled up the gas in the Jeep, got some snacks from a grocery store, and called both Fleet and Annie to tell them they were headed out.

  “Drive carefully,” Fleet had said.

  Lott had assured him he would and they set up a time to contact Fleet and Annie the next afternoon, since they planned on staying at Trish’s house for the night, even if she wasn’t there.

  The road that headed east toward Trish’s place turned bad almost from the start. The moment they left McCall, the pavement ended and the road turned to gravel. It was wide and Lott could make good time on it, avoiding the chatter bumps where he could.

  There was some traffic, but not much after they were twenty miles out of town.

  For the first hour the road kept climbing gently up a valley with mountains that towered over both sides of them, mostly covered in pine trees. As they got higher, the road got narrower and narrower as the valley narrowed down. They crossed back and forth over a fast-moving stream with spring runoff coming off the mountains.

  Snow still clung to areas of shade under the trees and in the ditch along the road. And ahead they could see snow-covered peaks. Lott had no idea if they were traveling into trouble or not.

  Just after two hours, the road peaked over a tall summit with a sign that said, “Road Open.”

  “Good to know,” Julia said, shaking her head with a worried look.

  They were so high, Lott could feel the thinness of the air.

  From the sign, the road stayed along the top of the ridge of rock and scattered scruffy pine trees for a short while and then started down a cliff-face, far, far too steep for anything but brush to grow on.

  The road, if that was the right term for the goat trail they were on, was barely wide enough for their Jeep and there were no guardrails at all. The road seemed to be cut out of the cliff face and twisted in and out of any tiny crevice in the hillside.

  Once Lott had started down the road, there was no place to stop or even think of turning around.

  Talk about feeling trapped.

  He wasn’t sure if he was up for this kind of stress, but at the moment they clearly had no choice.

  On Julia’s side, the drop had to be a good two thousand feet down into a tree-covered valley floor, the trees so tiny below they looked like kids’ toys.

  She was holding on to the door handle beside her so tight, her knuckles were white.

  Lott gripped the steering wheel in the same fashion. He had no memory of ever driving something like this road, and he was more worried about meeting another car coming up than anything else.

  After the longest forty-five minutes he had ever spent, he had managed to creep down that excuse of a goat trail to the valley floor where the road widened beside a mountain river.

  Neither of them had said a word the entire time.

  Julia managed to pry her fingers from the door handle and took a deep breath. “How about we stop and let me just kiss the ground a few times.”

  Lott laughed, feeling more relieved than he wanted to admit. “My driving that bad?”

  “Great driving,” she said as he pulled over. “Shit excuse for a road.”

  With that he could only laugh and agree and not say anything about the fact that he was pretty certain they needed to go back out that way as well. When Fleet had said this was remote, he hadn’t been kidding in the slightest.

  And if Fleet had warned them about that stretch of cliff road, neither Lott or Julia would have driven in here. Or at least Lott hoped he would have been smart enough to not try it.
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  They rested in a wide area beside the loud, rushing river before moving on. The sky up through the mountain peaks was bright blue, but the air felt very cold.

  The side road to Trish’s home cut off the main road about ten miles of winding gravel road farther down the valley.

  Her road was back to a one-way dirt goat track and it wound up a narrow canyon until it topped over a small summit. The climb wasn’t that far and thankfully, with mountains on both sides, it didn’t feel that bad.

  Much better than driving along a cliff face. Nothing could match that cliff drive in pure terror factor.

  Just over the summit, in front of them was a deep blue mountain lake that seemed to almost sparkle in the afternoon sunlight. It was fairly large and filled the bowl between two tall mountains covered in pine and rock.

  From where the road came over the top of the hill, the water was only about a hundred feet below the edge of the gravel.

  Lott could see that the road wound down along the lake to a large log structure on the far side of the blue water. A long dock stuck out into the water at the end of a path from the building.

  “Wow!” Julia said. “No wonder Trish wanted to live up here.”

  Lott had to agree. It was stunningly beautiful.

  And isolated.

  Very, very, very isolated.

  CHAPTER TEN

  May 14, 2015

  2 P.M.

  High Mountain Valley

  Near the Central Idaho Primitive Area

  Lott parked below the log-framed lodge, tucking the Jeep back under some trees and out of the way so it wasn’t obvious. He wasn’t sure why he did that, but as he realized just how isolated this place was, his little voice started shouting at him to go carefully. And after all the years of being a detective, he had come to trust that little voice.

  They climbed out into the cool afternoon air. The intense silence was the first thing that Lott noticed. No sounds at all, not even a slight breeze through the pine trees that formed walls on the hillsides above the log building.