Avalanche: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (Sheriff Bo Tully Mysteries)

by Patrick F. McManus

  “That’s the problem. There’s really no place. No cars are missing. There are other cabins up on the mountain that we rent to guests during the summer, people who want more of a wilderness experience than they get at the lodge. The snow is deep here but we do have twenty miles of groomed cross-country ski trails. Some of the trails go by a couple of cabins, but there’s no food or water in them now. I just don’t think Mike would go up there, when he could have gone to the Pout House.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” Tully asked, “did Mr. Wilson leave because you and he had an argument?”

  “Yes, that’s why he left. It was so stupid.”

  “About?”

  “Oh, the usual thing—money! To be more specific, not enough of it. You know how terrible the economy has been. Well, it has hit us pretty hard. About a fourth of our rooms are empty.”

  Tully tugged hard on his mustache. “I don’t quite know how to put this, Mrs. Wilson, but are you sure the argument was only about money. That there wasn’t, say, another person involved?”

  Mrs. Wilson paused. “What? Oh, you mean was Mike having an affair?” She gave a brief, surprisingly hard laugh. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “In the case of a missing person, that is sometimes a factor to consider. I’m sorry I had to mention it. Anyway, Mrs. Wilson, I will be up there shortly. It’s almost six o’clock now. I may bring a couple of other personnel with me. Would you be able to put us up at the lodge for the night?”

  “Certainly. I have a room for each of you. And there will be no charge for lodging or meals either, Sheriff.”

  “Oh, the county will pick up the tab. Several of the county commissioners still haven’t dropped dead at the sight of my expense account, and I’m trying to finish them off.”

  She laughed. “We’ll at least give the county a good discount. When do you think you might get here?”

  “About nine, maybe a little later.”

  “Nine o’clock. We’ll keep dinner for you.”

  Tully thanked her and hung up.

  “Can I go too?” Daisy asked.

  Tully was silent for a moment, thinking, perhaps thinking a little longer than he should have.

  “No,” he said at last.

  “Figures,” Daisy said, smiling. “You get to have all the fun.”

  “Not all fun. Call Pap and tell him I’ll pick him up in about an hour. Tell him I’ve got a little mystery I may need his help with.”

  “What’s the real reason?”

  “To get him away from his new housekeeper for a while. I think she’s killing my old man.”

  Daisy laughed.

  “Then get Dave Perkins on the phone for me. He’s probably still at his restaurant.”

  He walked out into the briefing room. It was virtually silent by now, several of the deputies making a point of looking at their watches.

  “Sorry to keep you,” Tully said. He ran through a list of assignments for both the night shift and the day shift.

  “How come you’re giving us our assignments now?” Brian Pugh asked. He was on the day shift, one of his better deputies.

  “Because I may be gone a couple of days. Herb will be in charge.” He nodded toward his undersheriff. A cheer went up from the deputies.

  “And just because Herb is a soft touch, I want you guys to keep your so-called minds on what you’re supposed to be doing, preventing crime and catching criminals.”

  “That’ll be the day,” a muffled voice said. There was laughter all round.

  “True,” said Tully. “But I can use a surprise every now and then.”

  Daisy said, “I’ve got Dave Perkins on line one.”

  “Okay, I’m done with you,” Tully told the deputies.

  “And be safe out there!” somebody said from the back of the room.

  “I’m not too worried about that,” Tully said. He walked back into his office and picked up the phone. “So you’re still at the restaurant, Dave? What are you doing, supervising the killing of your customers with those chicken-fried steaks?”

  “Yeah, best and biggest chicken-fried steaks in the world. And folks usually don’t die of them until they’re off the premises. So what do you want, Bo? I know it can’t be good.”

  “I just thought you might like to spend a day or two up at the West Branch Lodge for free?”

  “As I said, what do you want?”

  “Nothing much, really. It’s just that I’ve got a missing person up there and may need a tracker. I should point out that the lodge has baths fed by hot springs and even an indoor pool. Be good for your rheumatism.”

  “Us Indians don’t get rheumatism,” Dave said. About as much Indian as Tully, he had been nourishing a fraudulent scheme to build a casino next to his café three miles north of the little town of Famine. He referred to his acre or so as the World’s Smallest Indian Reservation. As part of his scam, he wore his long gray hair in a thick braid down his back and a necklace of bear claws down his chest. The rest of his costume appeared to have been pieced together out of a wardrobe from a John Wayne western. “Yeah, I could use a couple of days at the West Branch Lodge. By the way, who’s missing?”

  “Mike Wilson. He and his wife own the West Branch Lodge.”

  “Shoot, I know Wilson. Kind of an ornery cuss. Heard that new wife of his had tamed him down.”

  “New?”

  “Fairly new. I guess they’ve been married about five years. You get old like me, Bo, five years is new. Anyway, I’ll head up to the lodge right now.”

  “Great,” Tully said. “Pap and I’ll meet you up there.”

  “You bringing Pap? This sounds more like a party.”

  “That’s my plan. So we don’t want to find Wilson too soon.”

  “Hey, I’m way ahead of you on that, Bo.”

  3

  TULLY’S LOG HOUSE SAT IN the middle of a meadow three miles from town. Surrounded by nearly eighty acres of timber, the meadow sloped in the general direction of Blight City. On a clear night, the glow of the city could be seen in the distance. The glow, evidence there were other people in the world, kept him from feeling lonely.

  He and Ginger, when they were both in their early twenties, had cut the trees for the house on their own land, the eighty acres Pap had given them as a wedding present. They trimmed, peeled, and cured the logs themselves. Building the house had been an act of love. Neither he nor Ginger ever thought it had involved a single minute of work.

  Tully slipped the Ford Explorer into four-wheel drive when he pulled into his driveway. The narrow, gravel road descended steeply down into the middle of the meadow. Ordinarily, he kept the driveway plowed with the ancient Ford pickup truck he had equipped with tire chains and a plow, but the snow in January had been coming so fast he couldn’t keep up with it. The Explorer, twisting and bucking, managed to make it down to the house.

  Tully went in the back entryway, stomping the snow from his boots. The house was warm. When he was home for any length of time, he heated the house with birch firewood he cut himself, but when he was away, he let the electric wall panels handle the chore. An open loft overlooked the living room. His easel containing a canvas of a half-finished oil painting could be seen from below. He avoided looking up at it. It filled him with guilt and remorse. He hadn’t touched the painting in two months. It was harder all the time to think of himself as an artist.

  On one wall of the living room hung a large oil painting of Ginger in a white dress and holding a bouquet of wildflowers. There were dozens of drawings and paintings of Ginger scattered about the house, but this one had always been his favorite. Even though neither of them knew it at the time of the painting, something had already started to grow inside her head. Shortly thereafter came the terrible headaches and the desperate operation she hadn’t survived. That had been nearly ten years ago. He no longer got tears in his eyes every time he looked at the painting.

  Tully still prided himself on being self-sufficient, with two chest freezers packed wit
h salmon, trout, and halibut from his fishing trips, and deer, elk, grouse, quail, pheasants, ducks, and chukars from his hunting trips. He once calculated that the fish and game he accumulated probably cost him only about fifty dollars a pound and well worth every penny. Each summer he invited all the deputies and all his friends out for empty-the-freezer barbecues. He had become famous for his skills as a backyard chef.

  He hauled in a duffel bag from a shelf in the attached garage and packed a pair of slacks, clean shirts, a couple of ties, and a blue blazer, for evening wear. In the off chance he might actually have to hunt for Mike Wilson, he pulled a black plastic garbage bag out from under the sink. Holding the bag open, he stuffed in a pair of insulated boots, wool socks, his black wool hunting pants, two wool shirts, a two-piece set of long underwear, a down-insulated jacket, a wool watch cap, and gloves. Then he remembered the heated indoor pool and hot tub and added his swimming trunks.

  Not having eaten, he thought for a moment about making himself a sandwich from some leftover meat loaf, home-baked bread, and his own special horseradish, which he grew in his own garden and preserved with his own special recipe. He had once considered employing the horseradish as a toughness test for the department’s new recruits but finally decided it was much too cruel. He abandoned the idea of a snack, preferring to reserve his appetite for the supper Mrs. Wilson had promised. After throwing the plastic bag and duffel into the back of the Explorer, he headed over to Pap’s. Snow was still falling.

  4

  IT WAS NEARLY SEVEN WHEN Tully pulled into Pap Tully’s driveway, the Explorer’s wipers slapping away at the falling snow. He saw Pap’s housekeeper, Deedee, looking out the window. The old man had somehow acquired the young woman while they were solving the Last Hope Mine murders the previous fall. She had been working as a waitress at Dave’s House of Fry. Then one day she suddenly disappeared. The next time Tully saw her, she was Pap’s housekeeper. What she saw in his old man, he had not the slightest idea, other than the fact Pap was filthy rich. Deedee smiled and waved, then turned and shouted to someone, presumably Pap. A few minutes later the old man came out on the porch. He was wearing a black wool watch cap, a tan insulated jacket, and black wool pants. His white hair protruded from around the edge of the cap. He threw a small suitcase into the back of the Explorer, stomped the snow off his boots, and climbed into the passenger seat.

  “Nothing like being prompt,” he snapped at Tully.

  “I had to swing by my house and pick up a few duds. Looks like you’ll be warm enough.”

  “Yep, even got on my insulated underwear and wool socks and pacs for my feet. I figure you got to be prepared. A fella who takes a girl tent camping in November, you can’t tell what kind of thing he has in mind for January.”

  Tully started backing the Explorer out of the driveway. “I don’t want to hear any talk about tent camping in November! And fasten that seat belt. This vehicle doesn’t go forward until all seat belts are fastened.”

  Pap started fussing with the seat belt. Never in his life had Tully known an elderly person, such as this seventy-five-year-old one, who could fasten a seat belt.

  “Here,” he said. He leaned over and snapped the buckle closed. “Fastening seat belts is a very complicated thing and requires years of practice.”

  Pap expressed his gratitude with a four-letter obscenity. He shook his head. “A lot of foolishness, these seat belts. Every time a person turns around in this country, somebody comes up with some new thing to keep us safe—air bags, helmets, signs and labels all over the place warning us not to do stupid things.”

  “You’re right about that,” Tully said. “Reminds you of the time you were hiding out down in Mexico.”

  “I’m reminded of the time the FBI got to poking around the county quite a bit back in the old days, whining about all the gambling and prostitution. I figured I’d get out of here and go spend a couple of months down in Mexico. Found myself a nice apartment in Guadalajara. It was warm and beautiful down there, with bougainvillea hanging down over the streets and tiled sidewalks. I’ll tell you this, Mexicans know how to look out for themselves. In the sidewalk right out in front of my apartment house there was a hole about four feet by four feet wide and eight feet deep. There was no sawhorses set up around it or even signs saying ‘Don’t fall in the hole.’ The three months I was down there, not a single Mexican, man, woman, or child, fell in that hole. You know why?”

  Tully steered the Explorer around a drift halfway across the highway. He had heard this story a hundred times. “No, why?”

  “Because Mexicans are smart enough not to fall in a hole, that’s why. They don’t have to be told not to. It’s a pretty darn nice way to live.”

  Pap reached inside his jacket, pulled out his makings, and started rolling himself a cigarette.

  “Those things will kill you,” Tully said.

  Pap straightened up slowly and looked at him. “There you go! Bo, most everything will kill you, one way or another if you wait long enough.”

  “I reckon that’s true. But the smell of those hand-rolleds will probably kill me first.”

  The old man took a drag on his crooked little cigarette and blew the smoke in Tully’s face. “Anyhow, you got to tell me about taking Susan on a tent-camping trip in the middle of November.” He released one of his irritating cackles.

  “Nothing to tell, particularly to an old codger like you. You’d probably drop dead of excitement.”

  Pap grinned. “Try me.”

  “Hey, Susan and I are still friends.”

  “That bad, hunh? Now you got to tell me.”

  “Give me your word you’ll never tell another human soul.”

  “You got it.”

  “Yeah, right, as if your word means anything. But I’ll tell you anyway.”

  Much to Tully’s surprise, Susan, smart, tall, and willowy Susan, a medical examiner with the most fantastic face he had ever seen, had agreed to go camping with him, even though there was snow on the ground. Tully pitched his wall tent on the bank of the West Branch and installed his sheepherder stove in it. He then inflated a double air mattress on the floor at one side of the tent. He unzipped a sleeping bag and spread it flat out over the mattress. He put two sheets on top of the sleeping bag, and then unzipped another sleeping bag and spread it out over the top of the sheets. Then he drove back to town and brought Susan out to the camp.

  Before starting the festivities on the air mattress, Tully’s only reason for going camping in November, he heated water for a package of Mountain House Oriental Style Rice and Chicken with Vegetables. Then he poured them two glasses of Ste. Chapelle chardonnay into plastic glasses. “Ste. Chapelle is the best wine made in all of Idaho,” he told Susan.

  She sipped the wine. “I believe it!”

  The sheepherder stove kept the tent toasty warm. Susan had already stripped down to her two-piece set of long underwear. Tully thought she looked particularly good in long underwear. They sat side by side on the edge of the air mattress and ate their dinner from aluminum plates. Afterward they lay back on the mattress and Tully started telling her about the time he had run into a moose calf up on Lightning Creek.

  Suddenly she got up, put on her jacket and fuzzy booties, and started out the flaps of the tent in her long underwear. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve got to go pee.”

  “She said that?” Pap asked. “I have to go pee?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t like to think of women having bodily functions,” Pap said.

  “Me neither.”

  Tully went on with his report. “Then I heard Susan walking through the snow alongside the tent. I figured she didn’t want to go right out in front of the tent. If I had known she was so persnickety, I would have walked away from the front of the tent myself.”

  Pap nodded. “Some folks like to be considerate.”

  “So anyway I’m lying there on my back and the tent is all warm and everything, and I must have dozed off. As it occurred to me
later, much later, too late, in fact, the problem with Susan walking round to the rear of the tent, there wasn’t any rear to the tent. I had pitched the tent right on the edge of the riverbank.”

  Pap slapped his knee and cackled. “You can be so dumb, Bo!”

  “Tell me about it. Anyway, she stepped over the bank and toppled down through the brush. I guess the brush broke her fall, but then it prevented her from climbing back up. Fortunately, the river goes down a lot in the winter, and the edge of the bed there was mostly river rock, although I guess pretty hard to walk on when covered with snow.”

  “Mighty hard to walk on, when covered with snow,” Pap said, grinning.

  Tully blasted the Explorer through another drift across the road.

  “So Susan walks up the edge of the river for nearly half an hour, until she finally comes to a place where she can climb out. Snow had got down the inside of her booties, which were now wet and mushy. She stomped her way through the snow back toward the tent. All of a sudden, I heard these footsteps approaching the tent, and I snapped wide awake!”

  “Any good woodsman would,” Pap said, “if he hears footsteps approaching his tent.”

  “Yeah,” Tully said. The snow was beginning to let up. He shut off the windshield wipers. “I figure it must be Susan, but I didn’t realize I had dozed off for half an hour. I think she’s been gone only a couple of minutes. Now here’s the bad thing. I decide I’ll play a little trick on her and let on that I haven’t even realized she’s been gone. So I lie back, close my eyes, and continue with my story.”

  “Bad idea,” Pap said.

  Tully shook his head at the memory. “The flaps of the tent burst open and there I was, rambling on with my story: ‘So then here comes this moose calf running right by me, and I think, whoa, the mama can’t be far behind. Well…’ I opened my eyes. Susan was standing there glaring at me, her hair a wet, tangled mess, with dead leaves and sticks and stuff protruding from it. Her underwear was sopping wet.”

  Pap wiped tears from his eyes. “I can’t believe you’re supposed to be my son,” he wheezed. “So, what did you say?”