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

by Patrick F. McManus

  He called the number on the National Guard pilot’s card. A female voice at the guard station told him that at that moment Stolz and his helicopter were out on a rescue mission. She would get Ron up to the lodge, she said, as soon as he returned. “Can I give you a heads-up call when he gets back?”

  “Can we wait up here a bit?” Tully asked Grady.

  “My time is your time,” the handyman said.

  “We’ll await your call,” he told the woman. He gave her his cell phone number.

  Tully stared out at the falling snow while they waited. After a bit he said, “Where are Cabins One and Two?”

  “Farther up the mountain past Cabin Three. You want to run up there?”

  “Might as well.”

  The groomed trail wound up considerably higher on the north side of the mountain, with one ridge branching off to a higher ridge and that ridge branching off to yet another. They at last arrived at Cabin Two, which was almost buried in snow.

  “Nobody stays at Cabins One and Two this time of year,” Grady said. “From here the trail levels out and runs north for about five miles. Cabin One is right at the end. I haul skiers up here with the Sno-Cat and they can ski out to the end and then ski downhill all the way back to the lodge. I checked out both One and Two earlier looking for Mike, and there were no tracks leading into either one.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Tully said. “Makes me want to take up skiing.”

  “I prefer the Sno-Cat,” Grady said.

  “Well, sure,” Tully said.

  His phone rang. The woman said Ron Stolz was on his way.

  20

  THE HELICOPTER LANDED IN THE clearing next to the lodge an hour after Tully got the call from the Air Guard station. They loaded Mike Wilson’s body on the chopper.

  “You ready, Lurch?” Tully asked.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “Good.” He reached in a pocket and took out several folded sheets of paper. “When you get a chance, Lurch, run a check on these names for me. Find out everything you can about them.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, an ambulance will meet you at the airport and haul the body down to Susan’s lab. We should know the cause of death pretty quick. Eliot will pick you up and take you to the office, so you can get busy on your assignments.”

  “When am I supposed to sleep?”

  “When these murders are solved. Right now, get me the info on the list. And don’t tell me how. There’s no point in both of us going to prison.”

  “Right.”

  “You’re not going soft on me are you, Lurch?”

  The CSI unit shook his head.

  “Good.”

  The chopper lifted off in a blizzard of snow. Tully could see Lurch’s pale face peering down at him from a side window.

  Speaking of going soft, Tully thought, I’m exhausted. He tramped through the snow back up to the lodge and climbed the broad front steps using the handrail. Inside the entrance, he stepped into the room with the 3-D map of Blight County. He sat down on the bench against the wall. He didn’t bother to turn on the room lights, enjoying for a moment the darkness and solitude. The rowdy quartet of frat boys came in through the lodge door and headed toward the bar. Marcus Tripp, Lindsay’s former young friend, came trailing in a short while later. He seemed sad. Maybe he was still mourning his car.

  Tully leaned his head back against the wall and studied the peak of Mount Blight protruding above the top of the box. After a moment he got up, turned on the lights, and walked over to the map. All the cross-country ski trails were marked on it, as well as the hiking trails, the ski trails in dots of white, the hiking trails in dots of green. He studied the map for a long time, then walked into the restroom. He washed his hands and face and then his hands again. There are some things that never wash off.

  When he got to the dining room, most of the other guests were already at their white-clothed tables eating and drinking. It sounded as if some of them had been doing substantially more drinking than eating. He pulled out a chair and sat down with Dave and Pap.

  “I guess you got Lurch into the helicopter okay,” Pap said.

  “Yeah, kicking and screaming. It will be good to get him back to the department, where he can do some actual work. I pulled the boots off the body, bagged them up for Lurch so he can see if there’s a match between them and the impressions he made of the tracks in the snow.”

  “I can’t imagine there will be a match,” Dave said. “Wilson was as heavy as I am, maybe heavier. The tracks were made by somebody a lot lighter. I’ll bet on it.”

  The waitress came and took Bo’s order. He went with steak, mushrooms, baked potatoes, and pea salad. Dave and Pap were already eating the same. “I’ll take a single-malt Scotch, too,” Tully told the waitress.

  “Getting pretty fancy there,” Dave said.

  “Treating myself,” Tully said. “After today, I need a treat.”

  “I saw you having dinner with that other little treat,” Pap said.

  “Who? Lindsay? You stay away from her, Pap!”

  “I think that’s pretty stingy of you, wanting her all to yourself.”

  Dave smiled. “I’m staying out of this. Two old codgers fighting over a young girl.”

  “Hey, nobody’s messing with that girl,” Tully said.

  Pap chuckled his evil chuckle. “Just joshing you, Bo, just joshing you. She does seem to have taken a liking to me, though.”

  Tully shook his head at the hopelessness of dealing with Pap. The waitress brought his drink. He took a sip and almost spit it out on the table. Reluctantly, he managed to swallow. “Yuck,” he said, screwing up his face. “That is absolutely the worst Scotch I’ve ever tasted. It certainly isn’t single-malt.” He turned and looked over at the bar. Instead of DeWayne, one of the waitresses was pouring drinks. “How can she mess up a single-malt Scotch?”

  “DeWayne must have got sick or something,” Pap said.

  Voices at a table in a far corner grew louder and then angry.

  “Wonder what their problem is,” Dave said, twisting around in his chair to see better.

  “Probably ordered single-malt Scotch,” Tully said, cutting into the steak on the plate the waitress had just slipped in front of him. He forked a piece into his mouth, ignoring the ruckus in the corner.

  “Hey, they’re jumping up and starting to go at it!” Dave said, happily.

  Tully continued to chew.

  Blanche Wilson came up behind him and whispered in his ear. “Bo, would you please handle that business in the corner. DeWayne isn’t here right now.”

  Tully heaved a long sigh. “Yes, ma’am.”

  He shoved his chair back and tossed his napkin onto the table. He got up and started to mosey toward the three men in the corner, one of whom now threw a punch at one of the other men, missing wildly. He heard Pap tell Dave, “I taught Bo to mosey like that.”

  “I thought it was a fairly professional mosey,” Dave said.

  Tully came up to the men. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, you’re disturbing the ladies, particularly the lovely ones at your own table.” The young women were in fact looking extremely annoyed. One of the burlier of the fighters spun around and stuck his face in Tully’s. “Beat it, pal. This ain’t none of your…”

  Tully felt the familiar numbness rising up his right arm. He didn’t want to look down but he did. The man was flat on his back, a bit of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. It often bothered Tully that he never afterward had any recollection of hitting a person. This was once again the case. It usually happened as soon as the spittle sprayed by some drunken idiot hit his face. Or maybe it was the sheer banality of tough talk. The other two fighters looked shocked. Tully reached down, grabbed the prostrate drunk by the lapels, lifted him up, and placed him in his chair. The man slumped forward, his head coming to rest in his plate. Tully took a glass of ice water from the table and dribbled some on the back of the man’s neck. The man moaned and shoved hims
elf upright. The women at the table were silent and obviously disgusted, although by no means embarrassed. Tully turned to the other two men. “So, is this little disagreement over?”

  They nodded.

  “Good,” Tully said. “The problem is we’re all trapped here together, and tempers are getting a little short. Mine is shortest of all, as you can see. So please try not to annoy me again.”

  One of the men said, “How come all the hassle?”

  “Maybe because we’ve had a murder or two since you’ve been up here.”

  “There might be another,” one of the men growled.

  Tully turned to face him. “I want you to look over at that table on the far side of the room. Those two men standing there with their hands in their jackets? They belong to me. If one of you makes a wrong move when I turn my back, or any other time, they’ll shoot you dead. So you better hope nothing happens to me anytime soon. Am I clear about that?”

  The men nodded.

  He looked the women over once more. They were all much younger than the men, dressed to the nines, and with hard-edged good looks. He said, “I hope I didn’t disturb your dinner, ladies.”

  One of the blondes gave him a wink and a quick little smile. “You have a lot of nerve,” she said.

  When he got back to his own table, Blanche Wilson was furious with him. “When I asked you to handle the situation, I didn’t mean for you to knock people unconscious.”

  “I’m sorry, Blanche, I thought that’s what you meant. Besides, I knocked only one person unconscious. If you want the other two knocked unconscious, I’ll go back and take care of it.”

  Blanche Wilson stomped back toward her office.

  21

  AT SIX THE NEXT MORNING Tully was up and seated alone at a table in the dining room, drinking his first cup of coffee of the day and waiting for his breakfast. Lindsay came up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. Tully jumped.

  “My, you’re jumpy today,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, I guess crime is getting to me.”

  “May I sit with you?”

  “Sure, if you promise to be good.”

  “I’ll be good,” she said. “And I have something really good to tell you. You know how you asked me to watch out for anything strange going on around here?”

  “Yeah.”

  She told him how about midnight she couldn’t sleep and decided to tie a plastic bag around her cast and go down to the basement and sit in the hot tub.

  “And guess who was already sitting in it.”

  “I haven’t a clue.”

  “Your dad!”

  Tully uttered an anguished “Nooo!”

  “Yes!”

  “I hope you went back to your room instantly.”

  “No way. I climbed in across from him and we had a great time.”

  “Please don’t tell me that!”

  “He was a perfect gentleman, Bo. I can see you don’t know your own dad very well.”

  “Were you wearing a swimming suit?”

  “Yes, silly!”

  “Was he?”

  “I was afraid to look. Anyway, he told me some wonderful stories about when he was sheriff, and how much better he was than you.”

  “Sounds like Pap all right. So that’s your big revelation, that Pap thinks he was a better sheriff than I am?”

  “No, it isn’t. Do you want to hear this or not?”

  “Yeah, tell me.”

  “I headed back to my room about one-thirty and was just about to open my door at the far end of the hall…”

  A waitress delivered Tully’s bacon and eggs and hash browns, and took Lindsay’s order, the fruit cup and a bran muffin. Tully poured her a cup of coffee from the thermos on the table.

  “And?” he said.

  “And just as I was about to close my door, I saw a man come out of the suite of rooms at the other end.”

  “Somebody playing footsie, is that what you think?”

  “At one-thirty in the morning? Of course that’s what I think!”

  “Maybe it was the woman’s husband, going down for an early morning hot tub.”

  “Not a chance!” Lindsay leaned across the table and whispered. “Unless, of course, he has come back to life!”

  Tully tugged on the corner of his mustache. “You’re saying the suite of rooms belongs to the Wilsons?”

  “Right! What kind of detective do you think I am?”

  “A pretty good one. So, did you recognize the man?”

  “No. He was in a shadow and too far away. He was tall though.”

  “Who do you think it might have been?”

  “None of the jerks from school, that’s for sure.”

  “How about DeWayne, the bartender? He would be my guess.”

  “Could be.”

  Tully released his mustache and drummed his fingers on the table. “The plot thickens.”

  Lindsay grinned at him. “So, do you want to hire me as a detective for your department?”

  “Sure, fifteen hundred a month and all the graft you can collect.”

  22

  AFTER BREAKFAST, TULLY WENT OVER to Grady’s shop. The handyman apparently hadn’t arrived for work yet. Tully wandered about the shop, looking at his tools. He loved tools. There were chain saws, table saws, band saws, chop saws, radial-arm saws, reciprocal saws, and even a powerful-looking saw mounted in a frame on a wall, apparently for the purpose of cutting large sheets of plywood. Sheets of pegboard contained hundreds of hand tools, each on its own black outline. Tully had not a clue about the uses for most of the tools. It was evident that Grady was equipped to handle any emergency that might befall the lodge, even to totally replacing it.

  Tully opened a door at the back of the shop. A wooden walkway led to a small house behind the shop. Tully walked over and knocked. Grady opened it. As usual, he seemed pleased to see the sheriff.

  “Morning!” he said. “Come on in, Mr. Tully.”

  “Don’t mind if I do. Grady, you have a cozy little place back here, nicely screened off from all the turmoil of the lodge.”

  “Yes sir, it suits me fine. I’m not much for socializing.”

  Tully pulled out a chair and sat down across from the handyman.

  “Right now, Grady, the evidence seems to suggest that Mike Wilson accidentally drowned. But I don’t think so. I have a feeling he was murdered.”

  “Murdered?”

  “Yep, murdered. I’ll know soon enough. My question for you is, do you have any idea at all who might have done Mike in?”

  Grady scratched his head. “Nobody comes to mind, just off hand. Mike could be pretty ornery, but I don’t know if he bothered anybody so much they would want to kill him. There’s some pretty rough customers back in these mountains, and I’m pretty sure Mike had dealings with them. There’s one in particular, a fellow named Ben Hoot. I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

  “Like what?”

  “Murder. I think Hoot could kill a man in the morning and forget about it by noon. Among other things, he runs a still someplace back in there. He is supposed to be kind of a magician when it comes to making shine.”

  “A bootlegger?”

  “Yes sir, that’s what I’ve heard. You might have noticed that the lodge bar is pretty generous with its servings of whiskey.”

  “You mean Mike bought whiskey from this Hoot?”

  “I’m not saying one way or the other. It just occurred to me that if you’re looking for someone capable of murder, this Hoot might be your man.”

  “Listen, Grady, how do I find this Hoot fellow?”

  “I don’t know if it’s such a good idea to go out looking for him.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “Yes sir. Well, you take a left turn when you get to the top of the ridge above the lodge. There’s that track we groom for the cross-country skiers. You know how it winds up around the mountain to the north? Right where the track heads up the mountain, there’s a trail goes up to one of the lodge�
�s cabins. Number Three it’s called.”

  “I’ve been on the trail,” Tully told him. “I’ve been to the cabin by dog.”

  “Yes sir,” Grady said. “You keep on that trail past the cabin. Hoot lives back in there someplace. I personally have enough sense enough not to go poking around up there, and I don’t advise you to do it either, Sheriff.”

  “Is this Hoot crazy or what?”

  “Yes sir, he’s crazy. And that’s about the nicest thing I’ve ever heard said about him.”

  Back at the lodge, Tully found the bartender washing up some glasses. A couple of men were already having their first drinks of the day at the far end of the bar. Tully wondered if the whiskey they were sipping had been imported from up on the mountain. DeWayne looked up.

  “Sheriff! How you doing?”

  “Fine, DeWayne. I’ve got a question or two to ask you.”

  “Fire away.”

  “You’re a Scragg, raised in these parts. What can you tell me about this Hoot fellow I’ve heard about?”

  “Ben Hoot,” DeWayne said. “What do you want to know?”

  “Do you think he’s capable of killing a man?”

  DeWayne laughed. “About as capable as he is of slapping a mosquito. You think he might have killed Mike?”

  “Just a thought. I don’t know if anybody killed Mike, but I’ll probably find out later today.”

  “I doubt he killed Mike.”

  “Why?”

  “You found the body, didn’t you? If Hoot killed him, you never would have found the body. Over the years, assorted folks have gone missing around here, and no sign of them has ever turned up.”

  “You think Hoot did them?”

  “Don’t know, but he’s always the prime suspect. Not that anyone would have accused him of it face-to-face. As you know, Sheriff, folks have a way of going missing in these mountains.”

  “I hear he has a still back in the mountains. Supposed to be some kind of magician in the manufacture of shine.”