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

by Patrick F. McManus

  “I was tempted. So, does my secret investigator have any more interesting info for me?”

  “No, I stayed up until two o’clock watching Mrs. Wilson’s apartment, but nobody came out. This detective work is getting to be a real drag.”

  “Tell me about it! Anyway, I have a new job for a smart math major like yourself.” He folded the guest list and gave it to her. “Don’t tell anybody about this or that you’re working for me. We could have some fairly dangerous people running around here. What I want you to do is go through this list and pick out all the single guests and see if there seems to be anything unusual about them. Then I want you to match the name up with the individual. Tonight at dinner you can point out any suspects for me, surreptitiously, of course.”

  “What kind of person exactly am I looking for?”

  “Either a hit man or a hit woman.”

  “Oh great!”

  “Listen, Lindsay, you don’t have to do it if it scares you.”

  “No, it’ll be fun. Maybe when I get back to school, I’ll change my major from math to law enforcement.”

  “Take my advice, stick with math.”

  Tulley found Janice seated by herself in the dining room. “Mind if I join you.”

  “My pleasure, Bo.”

  He pulled out a chair and sat down. “You been out working the dogs?”

  “Yeah, I drove them up to Cabin Three, but I don’t think I’ll go back there again.”

  “Why? You see something?”

  “No, it’s just that I get this eerie feeling. Maybe it’s because I saw the way you reacted that time, jerking out your gun.”

  “Probably a good idea to stay clear of that place, all right.”

  “Yeah, I think so. By the way. Tom seems to be missing.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “I’ve been trying to call him ever since they got the phone line hooked up and he’s never home.”

  “Probably out having a beer. No reason to stay home, if you’re not there.”

  “I wouldn’t want something to happen to him. He could be in the hospital or lying on the floor at home unconscious.”

  “Or having an affair,” Tully said.

  “Or having an affair,” she said, smiling slightly.

  “I can tell you this, sweetheart, men get over an affair a lot faster than they do a stroke or a heart attack. So just hope it isn’t anything more serious than an affair.”

  “You’re such a thoughtful person, Bo.”

  “I try to be.”

  The waitress came for their orders. Janice took the hot turkey sandwich with gravy and mashed potatoes. Tully went with the clam strips and french fries.

  30

  AFTER LUNCH, TULLY WENT UPSTAIRS and knocked on the door of the Wilson apartment. Blanche opened the door. “Oh, hi, Bo.”

  “I haven’t seen you in a while, Blanche. You been hiding out?”

  “I guess I have. I haven’t felt like talking to people. Everything is such a mess. Mike and I haven’t got along for years, and I didn’t think his murder would affect me so much. And then for Horace to be killed, too. Please come in, Bo.”

  Tully followed her into her Danish Modern living room. Tully had once liked Danish Modern, but no longer. He had seen too much of it and guessed it must now practically drive the Danes themselves mad. Blanche indicated for him to sit on a couch. She sat down in a facing easy chair.

  “Would you like anything to drink, Bo?”

  “No thanks, I just had lunch. I really hate to disturb you, Blanche, but I have some questions I need answered.”

  “Fire away,” she said, folding her hands in her lap.

  “Did you know that Horace and Mike had each taken out key-man insurance on the other.”

  “No. I’ve never even heard of key-man insurance.”

  “It’s a policy that companies sometimes take out on persons they feel are essential to their operation. The idea is that the insurance covers some of the loss if an important person somehow expires or is otherwise disabled.”

  “I see,” she said. “In this case, both Mike and Horace were caused to expire. So who is the beneficiary?”

  “The company. And you now seem to be the company, Blanche.”

  “Good heavens! How much money are we talking about, Bo?”

  “Four million dollars.”

  Blanche sucked in her breath. She sat in silence for several seconds, staring at him in disbelief. Then she said, “That would be a motive for murder.”

  “Yes, it would.”

  “I don’t know what to say. Probably I shouldn’t say anything. Obviously, I didn’t murder Mike and Horace. But you’re thinking maybe I had it done, aren’t you, Bo?”

  “The thought crossed my mind. Four million dollars is a lot of money. But I’m really not accusing you of anything, Blanche. I simply want you to know that anyone looking at this case would realize you had a motive, the most common motive in the world.”

  “I’m aware of that. But I didn’t do it. I would never even think of doing such a thing. And if I did think of it, I wouldn’t know how to pull it off.”

  “I don’t know how it was pulled off, but I do know that both Mike and Horace were murdered. And I need your cooperation to get to the bottom of this thing.”

  Blanche pulled a handkerchief out of the sleeve of her blouse and dabbed at her eyes. “I don’t know anything,” she said, her voice cracking.

  “Would it be all right if I looked through Mike’s gun cabinets?”

  “Bo, you can do anything you think might solve these murders. Wait till I get the key.” She went into the kitchen and returned. “Follow me. I’ll show you where his den is. He called it his den, but actually it’s his bedroom. We’ve had separate bedrooms for a year or more.”

  “I take it he wasn’t a particularly nice man.”

  “No, he wasn’t. If I had killed him, Bo, it wouldn’t have been for money.”

  She showed him two huge cabinets with glass doors. She unlocked both of them and then left the room. The first cabinet was devoted to rifles and shotguns, the other to handguns. The handgun cabinet contained thirty or so semiautomatics and revolvers, each hanging by its trigger guard from a wooden peg. Despite his years in law enforcement, or perhaps because of it, Tully had no great love of guns. He had deputies who could recite the entire history of almost any firearm ever manufactured. He chose to rely on their knowledge rather than pursue the subject himself. His primary concern was that his own gun fire when he needed it to. He noticed there was one empty peg. That interested him more than the guns. Most of the gun nuts he knew would never think of selling any part of their collections. Individual guns were too much a part of their personal identity. So the empty peg was a matter of particular interest. If there had once been a gun on the peg, why would Mike Wilson want to get rid of it? Of equal interest, the three pegs next in the same row contained Colt Woodsmans, no doubt originals.

  He found Blanche seated on a stool in the kitchen. Her hands were clenched together and she appeared to be shaking. Even though Blanche Wilson was at the moment his prime suspect, he felt sorry for her. Tully often felt sorry for murderers.

  “Thanks,” he said to her.

  She nodded mutely.

  He let himself out.

  31

  HE FOUND PAP AND DAVE in the recreation room, which was equipped with about every piece of exercise equipment known to man. They were shooting pool.

  “I see you two are busy working out.”

  “Yeah,” Dave said. “It’s exhausting, too.”

  Pap said, “The reason Dave is sweating, I’ve already taken him for twenty bucks.”

  Tully said, “I would have thought an old tracker like you, Dave, could spot a pool hustler at a hundred yards.”

  He told them about inspecting the suspension bridge. “I’m pretty sure Mike’s body was dropped off the middle of the suspension bridge. I’m not sure that tells us much, though.”

  Pap said,
“I don’t know about that. It tells us that at least one of the persons involved probably was familiar with the back eddy by the dock. So he had been down to the dock in daylight and realized the body would have to be dropped in from the middle of the bridge, if he wanted to get it into the main current.”

  “So you think the killer, or one of the killers, might be a regular at the lodge, or even one of the employees,” Tully said.

  “Seems reasonable.”

  Dave said, “You want me to take a look at the tracks, Bo?”

  “Sure. People have been out tramping back and forth over it, so I don’t know if the tracks will mean anything. But see what you can find. Take Pap with you. He’s generally useless but maybe he can turn up something. He’s had a lot of experience with dead bodies.”

  “Thanks,” Pap said.

  Dave said, “Maybe you can get Lurch back up here to take some impressions.”

  “I don’t think it would help.”

  “Maybe the impressions would match Mike Wilson’s boots,” Pap said.

  “Are you trying to drive me crazy?”

  Dave chalked his cue, then knocked the six-ball into a corner pocket. Next he drove the eight-ball into the same pocket with a three-cushion shot.

  Tully whistled appreciatively. “Just goes to show a wasted childhood has some worth after all.”

  “Thanks,” Dave said.

  “Get out of here, Bo,” Pap said. “You’re costing me money.”

  At five o’clock, Tully went into the lodge office. It was empty. He phoned the department. “What have you got for me, Lurch?”

  “I don’t think you’re going to be happy with this, Boss,” the CSI unit said.

  “Try me.”

  “Just as you suspected, the gun is an original Colt Woodsman. The striations on the bullet that killed Baker match the one from the test shot. Whoever used it probably couldn’t stand to deep-six it. Probably figured he would wait until the ruckus over the murder died down and then go back and collect it.”

  “That’s what I thought. In one of his gun cabinets, Mike Wilson had three original Colt Woodsmans on pegs in a row and one empty peg at the end of the row. He obviously was collecting Woodsmans.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “How about prints?”

  “Sorry to tell you this, boss, but no prints on either the package or the gun. They’d been wiped clean.”

  “Not even on the clip or cartridges?”

  “Nope. Somebody went to the trouble of wiping away every possible print.”

  Tully slumped into Lois’s chair. “What does this mean, Lurch?”

  “It means we can’t tie the gun to Wilson with prints.”

  “If he was collecting Woodsmans, he probably has the serial number on the gun registered somewhere, at least with his insurance company.”

  “And if you can show the gun is part of Wilson’s collection, what?”

  “It means that whoever shot Horace Baker had to have access to Wilson’s gun cabinet. And the gun cabinet is locked. So he, or she, had to know where the key was.”

  “Like Mrs. Wilson?”

  “Like Mrs. Wilson. But the gun had to be taken out before the avalanche. Don’t ask me how it got back on this side of the avalanche.”

  “I was about to ask you that.”

  “I knew you were. Is Herb around?”

  “I’ll get him for you.”

  “Hey, Herb!” Lurch shouted in Tully’s ear. “Boss wants you on line one!”

  We definitely have to do some work on phone protocol, Tully thought.

  “Hi, Bo,” Herb said. “How did you know I was resting?”

  “A lucky guess. I want you to check the last couple weeks of phone records from the lodge into Blight City. Look for anything that might seem unusual. If several calls go to a particular residence, find out who lives there. Maybe you’ll find a pattern of some kind.”

  “If you’re looking for a hit man, I doubt you’ll find him in Blight.”

  “In this instance, Herb, I’m not looking for a hit man, but if you turn one up, that’s okay, too.”

  32

  TULLY FOUND THE HANDYMAN IN his shop working on a piece of equipment.

  “I hate to bother you, Grady, but I need another lift up the mountain.”

  “Yes sir, Sheriff. Hold on just one minute. I need to tighten a belt on this snowblower. One of these days I’m going to have to blow a lot of snow. Blanche has been so upset lately, she hasn’t bothered me about it, but I’m afraid the time is coming.”

  “How well do you know her?”

  “Pretty well. I’ve worked for the Wilsons pretty close to five years now, and she’s always been fair to me. I get my little house to live in and a decent salary. Along with my retirement from the air force, I manage fine.”

  Grady made a couple of turns with his crescent wrench. “Mostly, I stay up here at the lodge. Sometimes I drive down to Blight City, but then where am I? Blight City! So I turn around and come back. There, that does it for the snowblower.”

  The Sno-Cat pulled to a stop next to the Cabin Three trail. Tully tossed out a pair of snowshoes.

  “Wait for me, Grady. I should be back in an hour or so. If I’m not, you might as well go home.”

  “If you’re going in to see old Hoot again, I don’t recommend it.”

  “It’s not my favorite outing,” Tully said, fastening the harnesses on the snowshoes. “Particularly since the last time he told me not to come back again.”

  Grady nodded his head. “Pretty good advice.”

  Even before Tully sighted the old woodsman’s cabin, he sensed his presence. He turned and looked at a thick cluster of trees. “Come on out, Hoot, I know you’re there.”

  Hoot stepped out from behind the trees. He had the hammer back on his rifle. This time he was fully dressed. “That’s a problem with making another bad shot on a skunk, Bo. Makes it difficult to stay hid. I thought I told you I didn’t want to see you back up here.”

  “That’s a problem with being sheriff, Hoot. There’s a whole passel of folks don’t want me back again. But I’ve got a job to do. If you want to be rid of me for good, you better help me with this murder.”

  “I don’t care one way or the other about your murder. I didn’t do it. If I’d done it, there wouldn’t be all this fuss.”

  “I know you didn’t do it. The folks who did do it thought they would be clever. As you probably know, the dumbest way to murder a person is to try and be clever.”

  “That would be my opinion.”

  To Tully’s relief, the old man lowered the hammer on his rifle. “You told me I could find what I was looking for in the hollow tree. I found it, exactly what I was looking for. The problem is, the item had all the fingerprints wiped off.”

  “Sounds like a good idea.”

  “Without the fingerprints, Hoot, the object isn’t much good to me. That was a moonlit night, when the fellow hid the object there. I figure it was bright enough for you to recognize the person.”

  “You figure that, do you?” Hoot snapped back the hammer on his rifle.

  “Yes, I do. And I want to know right now who it was.”

  “If I told you who it was, then the next thing you would want is for me to testify to that fact in court.”

  “You got that exactly right.”

  Hoot shook his head. “You’re the craziest fellow I’ve ever seen. People think I’m crazy, but I couldn’t hold a candle to you, Bo, when it comes to crazy.”

  “Thanks,” Tully said. “Actually I’m not sure you would have to testify, Hoot. But there’s a possibility it might work out that way. I figure you better know it now.”

  “I guess I can either shoot you or tell you.”

  “That about covers it. So tell me.”

  “Mike Wilson.”

  33

  “MIKE WILSON!” PAP SAID. THEY were seated in the dining room.

  “Not so loud,” Tully hissed at him.

  He had told Pap a
nd Dave about his visit to Ben Hoot.

  “You’re lucky he didn’t shoot you,” Dave said.

  “He might still shoot you, he gets a chance,” Pap said.

  “Why do you think I’m telling you two? In any case, don’t mention Hoot’s connection with this. If I haul him into court to testify, he probably will shoot me.”

  “The trick is to figure out how the gun got back to Mike Wilson,” Dave said. “Obviously, Mike must have been behind the killing of Horace Baker.”

  “I figure he had to be, but I don’t know how.”

  Someone put a hand on Tully’s shoulder. He jumped.

  “You’ve got to calm down, Bo,” Lindsay said.

  “And you’ve got to stop doing that, Lindsay. Next time I’ll probably shoot you. Sit down. We’ll get you something to eat.”

  “I’ve already had dinner,” she said. “With him.” She pointed across the room. Marcus Tripp was sitting at a table by himself.

  “I can’t believe you ate dinner with Marcus,” Tully said. “I realize you have pretty thin pickings in the man crop these days, but I have to tell you, Marcus is a weaky. You don’t want to get tangled up with a weaky.”

  “It’s no big deal,” she said. “But I got to thinking about what you said, how hard it is to find a good man nowadays. So I decided I better hold on to Marcus until something better comes along. Also, his father is rich.”

  “Rich is not to be sneezed at,” Dave said.

  “It’s a factor,” Lindsay said. “He’s also kind of romantic.”

  “He may have several good qualities, too,” Tully said. “So how are you doing on my list?”

  “Okay. It’s harder than I thought. Should have something for you tomorrow. Is it all right if I mention the other thing now?” She nodded at Dave and Pap.

  “They’re highly unreliable,” Tully said. “But tell me anyway.”

  “The man was back last night. Left Mrs. Wilson’s apartment at exactly two-fourteen a.m. I had almost given up and headed for bed.”

  Pap said, “Bo has you on a stakeout?”