“I thought you might like it,” Tully said.
He sat down on the sled and tucked Lindsay’s crutches in on each side of him. She wiggled in between his knees and wrapped her arms around his legs.
“This kid knows all the moves,” Janice muttered. “Mush!”
The pups took off full speed up the slope, scarcely noticing the extra weight, as far as Tully could tell. They arrived at the site of the avalanche in the same mad scramble as before, the dogs ready for a complete tour of the mountain.
“You need to work them more,” Tully told Janice.
“Already you’re an expert on sled dogs.”
“Yes, well, in my judgment you will have no trouble winning the race with this team. I wish my detectives had half their enthusiasm.” He slipped his hands under Lindsay’s bottom and pushed her up. He handed her the crutches. Then he pushed himself up, grunting slightly as he did so. The grunting did not go unnoticed by Janice.
“Maybe you need to work out a bit more at the gym,” she told him.
“I hate exercise in all its meaningless forms,” he replied. He walked down to one of the gray holes, squatted, and pointed. “Can you get a shot of this, Lindsay?”
“Yes. Do you want yourself in the shot?”
“Of course. I need to be in it to show the proportions.”
“You could have brought a yardstick,” Janice said. “That would have shown the proportions even better.”
“Yardsticks don’t have to win elections. How does my hair look?”
“Lovely,” Janice said.
“What are those splotches, anyway?” Lindsay asked.
“The remains of dynamite blasts,” Tully said. “You may have to testify you took the picture.”
“Do I get to testify, too?” Janice said.
“That can be arranged. You are a witness.”
Lindsay said, “I’ve taken four shots. How many do you want, Bo?”
“Depends,” Tully said, climbing back up to her. “Let me have a look at them.”
Lindsey brought up each of the photos on the LCD monitor and showed him. “Good,” he said. “I’m even handsomer than I thought.”
“Which is saying quite a bit,” Janice said.
“I don’t think Janice likes you very much, Bo,” Lindsay said.
“She loves me, Lindsay. All women do.”
Janice laughed. “He could be right about that, kid.”
Tully said, “One more favor, Janice. Run us over again to Cabin Three.”
“I hate that place,” she said. “It gives me the creeps.”
“It gives me the creeps, too, but I need to check something out.”
Marge Honeycut’s snowmobile was parked outside of Cabin Three. Lindsay and Janice sat on the sled while Tully went into the cabin.
Tully said, “Marge, what are you doing in a crime scene?”
“What crime scene?”
“The crime scene I should have put a crime-scene tape around so you would know it was a crime scene.”
“The only crime I noticed here, Bo, is the rotten little squirrels got in again and chewed up something all over the floor.”
“I take it you swept the mess up.”
“Sure.”
“Where is it?”
“I dumped it in this plastic bag.” She showed him the bag.
“The bag have anything else in it before you dumped in the mess?”
“Nope, it was empty.”
“Good, let me look in the bag.”
Marge held the bag open for him. He looked in. “Excellent! You done good, Marge.” He took the bag from her and tied a knot in it. He took a felt pen from his pocket. “Watch what I’m doing, Marge.” He wrote the date and time on the bag and then drew a mark across the knot.
“I seen what you done. You wrote the date and time on it. What’s the mark on the knot for?”
“To keep people from messing with it. Do you know what this means?”
“No.”
“It means, Marge, you may have to testify in a murder trial.”
She clapped her hands together. “Wonderful!” She went out, started her snowmobile, and rode off.
Janice yelled at him. “Hurry up, Bo. I’m getting that creepy feeling.”
“Lindsay!” Tully yelled out the door. “Bring your camera in here.”
She came in a rush, her crutches flailing through the snow. “What, Bo?”
“I’m going to crouch down over here and point at this little dark spot on the floor. Can you get a picture of it and me.”
“Sure, there’s a flash on the camera.”
She snapped the photo.
“Take a couple more at different angles,” he told her.
She took several more pictures. “How’s my hair?” he said.
“Still good.”
“Can I have the memory card?”
She took it out and gave it to him. “There may be some pictures of me on it,” she said.
“No problem.”
“Naked.”
“No problem.”
He heard something rustle behind him and spun around, his hand reaching inside his jacket. A squirrel was sitting on a kitchen shelf staring at him. It had a pine cone in its mouth.
“You almost gave me a heart attack, squirrel, but I planned on taking you with me.”
“It’s only a cute little squirrel,” Lindsay said. “You have to calm down, Bo. You’re getting way too jumpy.”
Cute gets on my nerves, he thought. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll calm down.”
39
AT 2:45 TULLY WAS OUTSIDE the lodge staring up the slope of the mountain. No sign of the frat boys. He couldn’t believe they would be late. He checked his watch again. Five minutes to three. He sighed. Pap came out and stood next to him. The old man took out the makings and started rolling one of his cigarettes.
Tully said, “A couple more minutes and I’ll have you roll one of those for me.”
The old man snapped his thumbnail on a kitchen match and lit the cigarette. The end of the paper burst into a tiny flame, then died to a glow. Pap blew a cloud of smoke at Tully. “Can’t,” he said. “These things will kill you.”
“Those things are already killing me,” Tully said. “I might as well smoke them myself.”
“No sign of the boys?”
“Nope.”
“Maybe they all got killed in an avalanche.”
“Just my luck,” Tully said.
He looked at his watch again. One minute to three. He squinted up at the slope. A tiny dot shot out into the open. Then another dot. Finally a third dot.
“Great!” Tully said. “Here they come. And they’re on time.”
Pap squinted up at the skiers. “I thought there was supposed to be four of them.”
“Three is good enough.”
The skiers swooped in and slid to a stop in front of Tully and Pap.
“How’s our time?” Rodney asked.
“Perfect!” Tully said.
Wiggy and Turk joined Rodney in a cheer.
“How was it?” Pap asked.
“Great!” Turk said. “Exactly like the 3-D map indicated. The guys that made it must have been really good. Maybe I’ll switch over to geography.”
“Where’s Lance?” Tully asked.
“Oh, he’s coming,” Rodney said. “He took a header into a drift, but he’s all right.”
Tully squinted up the ridge again, just as another dot zipped into sight.
“Shoot,” Tully said. “I thought I’d saved a hundred bucks.”
“Keep the money,” Wiggy said. “This is the best skiing we’ve had in years.”
Lance slid to a stop in front of them. “These rats left me, and I wasn’t even dead,” he said.
“Worse yet, Wiggy just told me I could keep the money I promised you, not that my promises mean anything.”
“Hey, the skiing was fantastic!” Lance said. “You saved this vacation for us, Sheriff. I may even apologize to yo
ur Indian friend for him beating me up.”
“That would be nice. Was my deputy waiting for you?”
“Right where you said he would be. Brian hauled us into town, bought us each a submarine sandwich, and then hauled us up to the Blight Mountain Lodge ski lift. Just as you showed us on the map, it was all downhill from the top of the lift to here.”
“You did good,” Tully said. “And don’t forget, I may need you to testify at a trial.”
“Cool!” Turk said. “This gets better all the time.”
Tully snapped his fingers in front of Pap. The old man dug in his pocket and pulled out a thick wad of bills. He peeled off four hundreds and gave them to Tully, who dealt them out to the boys. “Now you better lay off the booze the rest of your time here or I’ll call your parents. Furthermore, alcoholics make terrible witnesses at murder trials.”
“You bet, Sheriff,” Lance said.
Tully and Pap went back into the lodge. They stopped at the 3-D map. “My theory proved out like a charm,” Tully said.
“I take it you’re pretty happy,” Pap said.
“Yes, I am. I just proved that a good skier can ski downhill all the way around Mount Blight and do it in six hours. That’s plenty of time for Mike to have killed Horace Baker.”
“Mike killed Horace Baker?”
“I don’t know. I just know that it was possible for him to do it.”
“Do we have this case wrapped up?
“We’re getting close. Now all we have to prove is who killed Mike.”
“I hope that don’t take long, because my housekeeper is probably worried about me.”
“You mean you haven’t called Deedee since we’ve been up here?”
“Of course not. You never call a woman when you’re out on an adventure. Ruins the whole thing.”
“You’re right. I forgot.”
“You didn’t call Susan, I suppose,” Pap said. “Now that you and her are talking again.”
“No, I don’t think she regards hearing from me to be all that urgent. I’ll probably take a few days off, though, and go on a February camping trip. Think she’d be interested?”
The old man laughed until he was out of breath and in pain. “I see I never taught you to live without hope, Bo,” he said at last. “It screws up a man’s judgment.”
That night Tully ate dinner with Dave. Pap and Lindsay were at another table, the two of them engaged in their usual animated conversation. The old man was dangerous, but better him than Marcus, he thought. Marcus was probably more dangerous to women than Pap. The kid was weak. The worst mistake a woman could make was to marry a weaky, no matter how thin the pickings. Weakies turn women into tigers, and Tully already knew too many tigers.
“You got this crime solved?” Dave asked after the waitress had taken their orders. “I notice you went with the T-bone.”
“Getting close,” Tully said. “I’ve got Lindsay working on a list of the guests, to see if any of them stands out for some reason.”
“You looking for a hit man up here?”
“It’s something I’ve considered.”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Dave said. “The road is supposed to be open by noon tomorrow. Then everybody is gone, including the hit man or hit men. And best of all, me! As I understand it, the lodge then fills up with dogsled racers.”
“Sounds awful,” Tully said. “I can’t stand the thought of being trapped here with dog people. All they talk is dog. So I’ve got to get this thing solved by noon tomorrow! You see anybody in this dining room that seems a likely suspect?”
Dave looked around. “How about our three guys over at that table in the corner? Maybe the guy you flattened is the hit man. Arrest him. He seems as good as any, even though he’s probably innocent.”
“Details, Dave. Details.”
40
AFTER HE WAS FINISHED EATING, Tully walked over to Pap and Lindsay’s table and took Lindsay by the hand. “I need to talk to you, young lady.”
“Can’t you talk to me with Pap here?”
“No, I can’t.”
“He wants to warn you about me, Lindsay,” Pap said, smiling.
“Pap is my buddy,” she said. “I told you that.”
Her crutches were leaning against a chair. Tully leaned them against the wall and sat down across from her. “Yes, you did. But I’ve known Pap for over forty years, and I can tell you right now he is nobody’s buddy.”
“That’s mean,” Pap said.
“Actually, Lindsay, I figure you’re smart enough to take care of yourself. What I need to know is if you found anybody on the list that seems to stand out.”
“The only ones are those guys in the corner. You flattened one of them the other night.”
“I wish people would stop using that word.”
“Flattened?”
“Yes. Anyway, why do you think one of them might be the hit man?”
“It’s not so much the men but the women.”
“The women?”
“Yeah, they all look like hookers.”
Tully pretended to look casually around the room, taking in the table in the far corner.
“I’m not sure I know what hookers look like,” he said.
“Escorts might be a better word. You’ve got to admit the men are a pretty grubby bunch, but the women are all babes. How do a bunch of duds like that end up with three beautiful young women?”
“Happens all the time,” Tully said. “But I wonder the same thing.”
Lindsay said, “I would have to be paid a whole lot of money even to be seen with one of them.”
Tully took another casual look around the room. “I see your point.”
“And if you study them closely, you see that the women seem intensely interested in everything the men say. You ever see wives act that way?”
“Can’t say I have,” Tully said. “I do remember, though, that my wife, Ginger, was always very…uh…you may be right. Did you get their names?”
“They all registered as if they were married. But that doesn’t mean anything. The names could be phony, too.”
“Probably are,” Pap said. “What we need are fingerprints. Then we can find out who they really are.”
Tully called a waitress over. “Do you know who I am?”
“Sheriff Bo Tully,” she said, smiling.
“Right. Don’t look now, but there’s a table over in the far corner of the dining room with six people seated around it, three men and three women.”
“The one where you flattened that man the other night?”
Tully sighed. “That’s the one. Would you have the busboy not touch that table after the people are gone? And please don’t mention this to anyone. Tell the busboy to keep his trap shut, too, or I’ll arrest him.”
“Yes sir.”
“I’m going to collect the drinking glasses from that table, and I don’t want the people there to know anything about it. Will you take care of this for me?”
“Yes sir.”
“What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“Vera.”
“Pap, give me a bill.”
Pap dug the wad out of his pocket and peeled off a hundred. Tully gave the bill to the waitress. She appeared shocked.
“It’s okay,” Tully said. “He’s rich.”
The waitress and Pap beamed at each other. “Thanks!” she said.
“I didn’t know you were rich, Pap,” Lindsay said after the waitress left.
“Yup,” Pap said. “Modestly so.”
“I’m the only sheriff of Blight County in a century that hasn’t ended up filthy rich,” Tully said. “So far I’ve only accomplished the filthy. It doesn’t seem fair.”
“Some of us are just more competent than others,” Pap said.
“Would you see about collecting the men’s glasses from that table,” Tully said to Pap. “And keep them in the right order.”
“You don’t have to tell me everything, Bo.”
“You do good w
ork, Lindsay.”
“Thanks. Can I stay and help Pap?”
Tully shrugged. “Yeah, I guess a math major can take care of herself.”
Walking through the lounge, Tully tapped on the office door. No one answered. He tried the door. It was open. He walked in. Lois had apparently gone to her room. He flopped into her chair and dialed the phone. Herb answered.
“What are you doing there this time of night, Herb?”
“Hey, Bo! To answer your question, running this department is time-consuming. Keeps me working both night and day. I just turned out the night shift. Actually, it’s pretty peaceful here right at the moment. Your skiers make it back okay?”
“Yeah, right on time. Brian did a good job. Anyway, I’ve got some more work for you, Herb.”
“How did I ever guess?”
“What we need right now is to tie the gun I found to Mike Wilson. I doubt he registered it with the ATF, but he probably has it listed with his insurance guy. Would you see if you can track it down with the insurance?”
“You got it, boss. I’ll check on that tomorrow. He probably has all his guns listed with the insurance company.”
“Let’s hope so. What’s that noise?”
“Clarence! He barks all day. He’s driving me nuts.”
“I told you and Daisy to get rid of him!”
“Daisy won’t let anybody touch him. She loves that dog. And Clarence loves her. But she split with Albert the Awful, and her new apartment owners won’t allow dogs.”
“That dog better not be there when I get back. Otherwise he and I are taking a drive deep into the woods.”
“Good. That way we’ll be rid of Clarence and you’ll have Daisy’s wrath on you. By the way, the new Blight Bugle feature writer stopped by and wrote a feature on Clarence.”
“Are you crazy, Herb? Letting him do that? Now we’ll have the whole town up in arms if we do Clarence.”
“Maybe he could be shot while escaping.”
“The feature writer? Let me think about that.”
41
TULLY WENT UP TO HIS ROOM. He was exhausted. The two murders were getting to him. He couldn’t remember when he had had such a hard time solving a crime. He ran the tub full of hot water. Then he looked through the paperback books stacked on a shelf. The only author he recognized was Danielle Steel. He took the book into the bathroom with him and read it while he soaked in the tub.
Avalanche: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (Sheriff Bo Tully Mysteries) Page 14