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

by Patrick F. McManus

  “What?”

  “It’s simply that your first assessment of Pap yesterday in the car was the correct one.”

  “What was that?”

  “He’s a dirty old man.”

  Pap burst out in a laugh.

  “Hey, don’t say such terrible things about him! I really like your old man. I happen to think he’s the most interesting person I’ve ever met.”

  Pap grinned at Tully, his teeth even and perfectly white, despite all the hand-rolleds he smoked.

  “That’s his modus operandi,” Tully said. “You just remember what I told you, young lady. Now, I’ve got to go investigate the disappearance of a person.”

  Pap said, “You need some help, Bo, I’ll be right here.”

  “Probably later. I get the feeling we may be looking for a body.”

  “A body!” the girl gasped.

  “Sorry, Lindsay, but you’d have found out sooner or later.”

  He went back to his room and put on his shoulder holster and gun and his down jacket. Then he walked back downstairs and out to the parking lot. Janice Duffy was waiting for him at her huge, glistening-white pickup truck. It was parked next to a matching double-axle trailer that probably cost more than most houses. The trailer obviously had been specially designed for hauling her dogs.

  “Well,” she greeted him, “how does the mama’s boy feel this morning?”

  “Part fiery pain, part dull ache. And don’t call me a mama’s boy or I’ll whack you up alongside the head. I still have my pride, you know.”

  “You’re such a tough guy. Anyway, get in and we’ll drive up to the dog pens.”

  The truck skidded sideways in the new snow, and Janice put it into four-wheel drive. “This new snow is miserable to drive in, but it’s perfect for racing,” she said. “The dogs love it.”

  “From the tracks, it looks like you’ve been up here already this morning,” Tully said.

  “Yeah, I came up at five to feed the dogs. Didn’t have any good reason to stay in bed.”

  Tully smiled.

  The dog pens covered at least an acre, with wire-fenced sections for numerous teams and several large flat-roofed doghouses in each section. Janice’s dogs were sprawled on the roofs of their houses. Seeing Janice, the younger dogs began bouncing up and down and yelling, “Take me! Take me!” The older dogs lay there and watched, calm in the knowledge they would be the chosen ones. Tully sat in the pickup and watched as Janice stretched out the single towline from the sled, and then brought the older dogs out one by one and attached them to it with individual tug lines.

  When they were all hooked up, Janice came over and told him, “The lead dog’s name is Flag. He’s a terrific leader. But these are all good, experienced sledders.”

  “Mmmm,” Tully said, getting out of the truck. He wasn’t a dog person, although he did appreciate a good hunting dog, as long as it belonged to someone else. “They’re pretty,” he said, not meaning it. “All Siberian huskies, I take it.”

  “Right. I can see your enthusiasm for dogs is about equal to Tom’s. Still, he doesn’t complain about the cost of feeding them.”

  “Good thing Tom is rich. This looks like an expensive hobby.”

  “It isn’t a hobby! It’s a passion!”

  “Sorry,” Tully said. “Anyway, Mrs. Wilson gave me a map of the lodge grounds. The so-called Pout House is about a mile upstream. Let’s take a look around there first.” He sat down on the sled, his back against the uprights, and took a firm grip on the handrails.

  “Mush!” yelled Janice, standing on the backs of the runners and gripping the handles. She didn’t crack a long whip over the dogs, as Tully had hoped.

  The dogs took off with such force that Tully was nearly thrown out of the sled. He was surprised by their power. Snow sprayed in his face. Ahead of him was a surging line of fluffy tails. Not a great view, actually.

  “So you really do say ‘Mush’!” he yelled back at her. “Shut up!” she said. She was riding on the backs of the sled runners.

  “What do I yell to get the dogs to stop, in the off chance you fall off?”

  “Shut up! I have to concentrate!”

  They arrived at the Pout House much quicker than Tully had anticipated. He had been looking forward to what he expected would be a much more leisurely ride.

  “Whoa!” yelled Janice. The dogs slowed to a stop, as she braked the sled, apparently to keep it from running over the dogs.

  “Whew!” Tully said, pushing himself up. “That was—exhilarating.”

  “You really are a mama’s boy, aren’t you?”

  “Perhaps. Now that you mention it.”

  He walked over to the cabin and tried the door. It wasn’t locked. He pushed it open, stamped the snow off his boots, and went inside. The cabin consisted of two rooms. A propane lantern hung from a chain attached to the ceiling. A barrel stove provided for heat and any cooking that needed to be done. A teakettle sat in the middle of the stove’s flat top, which had obviously been cut and welded with a torch. He looked in the second room, which contained a bed piled with blankets and a comforter. A small bookcase contained a selection of worn paperbacks. Another lantern sat on an upturned apple box next to the bed. There was no indication the cabin had been used for some time. He took the lid off the teakettle and stuck a finger in. The water was frozen. He noticed some snow on the floor. Clearly there hadn’t been heat in the room anytime recently. A second door opened to the back of the cabin. Tully pulled it open. A snowy field spread out before him. He could make out odd shapes scattered about the field and barely protruding above the snow. Then he saw the boot tracks. They led away from the cabin in the direction of the river. He closed the door. He walked back through the cabin and went out the front door.

  “You find what you were looking for?” Janice asked.

  “I don’t know what I’m looking for, and whatever it was I didn’t find it. A vehicle of some kind has mashed down the snow right up to the cabin and wiped out any tracks that might have led into it from the front.”

  “Wow, you detect the obvious right off,” Janice said. “No wonder you have the reputation of being some kind of genius when it comes to solving crimes.”

  “I’ll tell you what it is. I don’t have a wife, so I don’t have anyone to explain the obvious to.”

  “Wives already know the obvious.”

  “Yes, but good wives pretend they don’t. See, Janice, that is your shortcoming as a woman. You never let men get away with explaining the obvious.”

  “I’ll try to live with it.”

  Tully told her he had one more place he would like her to haul him.

  “Where’s that?”

  “The top of the ridge behind the lodge. There’s something the genius in me wants to investigate, namely if my cell phone will work from up there. It certainly doesn’t work down here.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I’ll let you know as soon as I know.”

  9

  NEXT TO A LARGE SHED, a tall, dark-haired man in striped coveralls appeared to be doing some maintenance work on a strange-looking vehicle, an orange metal cab mounted over two sets of broad rubber tracks, each set appearing to swivel independent of the other set. It was obviously used for traveling on snow. Tully told Janice to drop him off by the shed, that he would meet her back at the lodge. The man looked up as Tully approached. He put something in his mouth, chewed on it, then blew out a mouthful of husks.

  “You must be Grady,” Tully said.

  “Yes sir, what can I do for you?”

  “I’m Blight County Sheriff Bo Tully. Some of my people and I are up here investigating the disappearance of Mike Wilson. You got any idea where he might be?”

  “No sir, can’t say that I do. Not like Mike to just up and disappear like that. Not without taking a car, anyway. I’ve already checked all the places I thought he might be. Did that before Mrs. Wilson called you.”

  “How about the Pout House?”

 
“Yes sir, drove Bessie up there this morning. I yelled Mike’s name and pounded on the Pout House door and got no answer. Then I opened the door and looked in, but it was obvious nobody had been there.”

  “You happen to check the back side of the Pout House?”

  “No sir. Didn’t see any reason to. It was obvious nobody had been there.” He shook a sunflower seed out of a paper bag and popped it in his mouth.

  “What kind of a machine is Bessie?”

  Grady cracked the seed with his teeth and blew the husks out the side of his mouth “She’s a Sno-Cat, Sheriff. Use her to groom the ski trails and to get around on the property in winter.”

  “That’s what I thought. Are you the only one who drives it?”

  “Yes sir, mostly. Once in a while, Mike drives it, but not often. He prefers to get around on his skis. He’s a terrific skier. But here’s kind of an odd thing. Last Sunday I went into Blight City to get a case of motor oil and some other stuff—that’s the morning Mike disappeared—and when I got back Bessie wasn’t where I last parked her. I asked Mrs. Wilson about it, and she said she was pretty sure no one had used it. Well, a little later, when I was out looking for Mike, I could see where he had run Bessie way off down the ridge.”

  “That the ridge runs along above the road?”

  “Yes sir. I figured Mike had to do it, but there’s nothing much out there. No reason I could see to run the Sno-Cat along a ridge nobody ever goes out on.”

  Tully tugged on the corner of his mustache as he stared up at the mountain, now glistening white in the morning sun. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight, Grady. Mike Wilson left the lodge early Sunday morning. You drove into town to get some stuff Sunday and when you got back, the Sno-Cat had been moved, right?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “And the only person who might have moved it was Mike?”

  “Yes sir, as far as I know. Mike didn’t like anybody borrowing equipment. We have a bunch of skis and stuff we rent out, but he wouldn’t want nobody fooling with Bessie.”

  “And Mike hasn’t been seen by anybody here since before Bessie was moved.”

  “Yes sir, that’s it, far as I know.”

  “One more thing, Grady. When Mike disappears with a car, how long is he usually gone?”

  “Oh, sometimes a couple of weeks. He had a development deal going for a while, some kind of housing project near Blight City. When he was working on that, he’d stay in town for weeks at a time. Without a car, though, he’s got to be around here someplace. I figure something must have happened to him. If it did, he’s got to be dead. No two ways about it, a man can’t survive up here without shelter in the middle of winter.”

  “I appreciate the information. One other thing. I notice the river here is pretty normal. Did the avalanche dam the water up this far?”

  “Yes sir, went clear past here. Rose up pretty high. Lifted the dock near to the top of its pilings. I could tell this morning by the water marks and scrape marks on the pilings. The dock’s got steel rings that slide up and down the pilings. The lodge has a boat tied up down there but it’s a good thing it was tied to the dock and not the piling. Otherwise it would have been sucked under for sure. I never heard anything about the river being dammed up until this morning. I guess the dam must have busted loose sometime during the night, because the river was back to normal when I got up. First time anything like that has happened up here, the river getting plugged up by an avalanche. Lived here almost five years and never seen anything like it. Maybe it’s that global warming thing.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. Anyway, I’ve got a favor to ask. I brought a tracker with me, and I wonder if you and Bessie could take him out to the Pout House.”

  “Yes sir, that the Indian?”

  “Yeah, the Indian. By the way, Grady, when did you give up smoking?”

  “About a week ago. How did you know?”

  “Sunflower seeds. Used them myself when I gave it up.”

  “Seems like once most everybody smoked. Folks knew it was bad for their health too but didn’t seem to worry about it. I guess when I was little there were so many things to die from, smoking just didn’t make the grade. I tell you, Sheriff, I loved to smoke, and I’m getting mighty sick of sunflower seeds.”

  “Know what you mean, Grady, know what you mean. By the way, I understand Mike is a terrific skier.”

  “Yes sir, he is that.”

  “So do you know if his skis are missing?”

  Grady laughed. “He must have a dozen pairs, maybe more. Boots and ski poles, too. I never paid much attention to any of his ski stuff. Be hard to tell if any of it is missing. He kept most of it in the equipment-rental room if you want to take a look.”

  “Maybe later.”

  Grady cracked another sunflower seed with his teeth and blew out the husks.

  One of these days, Tully thought, they’ll find out that sunflower seeds cause cancer.

  10

  TULLY FOUND DAVE PERKINS IN the lounge talking to Pap. They were seated on facing couches with their feet up on the same ottoman. There was no sign of the frat boys, but other guests wandered about looking bored.

  “About time I put the two of you to work,” he told them.

  “We were just talking about going down and soaking ourselves in one of the hot tubs,” Dave said.

  “But since neither one of us brought a swimsuit,” Pap put in, “we was wondering if it would be all right to go in naked.”

  “Fine with me,” Tully said. “As long as I don’t have to see it. First, though, I’ve got a job for the two of you. I just got back from the Pout House and noticed a set of tracks leading from the back door down toward the river. I want the two of you to go out there and follow those tracks and see if you can make out anything from them. The Sno-Cat they use for grooming trails has wiped out any sign of tracks on this side of the cabin, so don’t bother looking for those. Grady, the handyman, will haul you out there in the Sno-Cat. As for me, I’ve got a dog team and its driver waiting for me and I think the driver may be getting a little impatient with me.”

  “Impatient for what?” Pap said.

  “Remains to be seen.”

  Tully walked out of the lodge just as a heavyset, gray-haired woman came by riding a snowmobile. She pulled up and stopped. “Howdy,” she said.

  Tully smiled at her. “Howdy.”

  “You must be the sheriff.”

  “That be I,” he said. “Bo Tully. What’s your name?”

  “Marge Honeycut.” She pulled the makings out of a pocket inside her jacket and began rolling herself a cigarette. “Bet you’ve never seen anybody do this before,” she said.

  “Matter of fact I have. You’ll have to meet my old man, Marge. He still rolls his own.”

  She snapped a thumbnail across the head of a kitchen match and lit her cigarette. Bo shuddered. Pap lit kitchen matches the same way. Tully had tried it once and caught a piece of flaming sulfur under his thumbnail. Onlookers in the bar thought he had invented some new kind of wild dance.

  “Sounds like my kind of man,” Marge said. “I been looking for a good one.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend him, if you’re looking for a good one. A good man is hard to find these days, Marge.”

  “You’re telling me!”

  “So you work here, do you?”

  “Yeah, off and on. I clean the cabins up on the mountain. Got this dogsled race coming up and some racer may want to rent Cabin Three. Cabins One and Two are buried in snow. Mostly it’s all pretty easy, except for the squirrels.”

  “The squirrels?”

  “Oh yeah, they get in the cabins and make an awful mess. I was down with a cold a couple days last week, so I cleaned Cabin Three on Sunday. I suspected the squirrels would be up to no good, so I went back up there on Monday, late yesterday afternoon, and sure enough, some of the little beggars had made a big mess. Chewed up something all over the floor. Took me near an hour to get it all cleaned up. Course I don’t move
as fast as I once did. I been thinking of taking a .22 up there and plinking myself a squirrel or two. They ain’t fit to eat, but I might boil them up for my cat.”

  “Where do you live, Marge?”

  “I got myself a little shack overlooking the meadow. Pretty nice place. It’s lodge property, but Blanche don’t charge me nothing to stay there and I do a little work for her. If Mike had his way, though, he’d probably run me off.”

  “People around here don’t seem too fond of Mike.”

  Marge agreed with that assessment, referring to the owner as an anatomical obscenity.

  “I see you have your own snowmobile,” Tully said. “Wish I’d had the good sense to bring one with me.”

  “It ain’t mine,” Marge said. “Belongs to the lodge. It’s the only snowmobile allowed on the property. Anybody shows up with one, they get run off. Grady, that’s the handyman, or so they call him, he gets to use the Sno-Cat to groom the trails and do a few chores around. As far as I can see, he don’t do much. Well, I’d better get to work. Nice meeting you, Sheriff.”

  “Likewise, Marge.”

  He checked his watch. Janice could wait a bit longer. He crossed the road and walked down to the river. A black, inflatable boat about twenty feet long bobbed up and down next to the dock. It was covered with a blue plastic tarp. Two large outboard motors were attached to the stern. Tully suspected they were both jets, because props would get torn up in a river. The river drifted upstream in a placid back eddy around the dock. Out twenty feet or so the current swept along with considerable force. Upstream, a footbridge suspended from large cables spanned the river. On the far side of the river, several young men raced snowmobiles furiously back and forth along the bank. Got to be locals, he thought. He wondered if one of them might be the naked person DeWayne had thrown down the front steps of the lodge.

  11

  THE DOG TEAM SPRAWLED ALONG its towline, most of its members asleep or yawning. Their driver sat on the sled, her chin resting on her gloved hands.

  “About time you got back!”