Killer Summer

by Ridley Pearson

“Enrico!”

  “He was not the way to go. He… you know what that’s all about. You know what he wants from you. And it’s not happiness. It’s not safety and security. It has nothing to do with any of that. My job, whether you like it or not, is to help you make the right decisions. Not run your life. That’s not what I’m talking about. Just to make decisions with a clear head and your eyes wide open. That’s all. That was not the case here. You can be mad at me, that’s okay. Pissed-off? Absolutely. But please know that, in my heart of hearts, I have your best interests first. Not mine, yours.”

  “Violins, Dad.”

  “Yeah, okay. So get dressed.”

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  “If you aren’t there in ten minutes, I’m sending the Texas Rangers after you. I don’t want to do this dinner alone. I need you, okay? We’re a team tonight.”

  “O-kay.” Her voice cracked, and she looked to the carpet. “I’ll hurry,” she choked out.

  She pushed the door shut behind her, then held her back to it, as if blocking out all that she’d just heard.

  Why tonight? Of all nights, why tonight?

  Teddy Sumner’s antennae were sparking. He knew she was up to something secretive. Either it was something she was doing for him, or against him, and, given the past two weeks, he was betting on the latter.

  He left the suite and headed directly to the concierge in the lobby, a blond-haired woman in her late forties, with an agreeable face. He kept his voice low.

  “Your house detective, as quickly as possible.”

  “Of course, sir. If you’d like to have a seat.” She indicated a wing chair with Queen Anne legs.

  “I don’t need a seat, I need your house detective. Right now!” He could be a real bastard when he needed to. This was one of those times.

  She pulled a walkie-talkie from a drawer. “Chuck,” she called into it.

  Sumner spent the next five minutes watching the door to the patio swing open and shut. The bar on the terrace was active, and dinner was already under way for the Saturday-night show on the outdoor ice rink. But all he saw was the world moving on without him.

  The concierge caught him looking. “Scott Hamilton’s All-Stars,” she said, “best ice show of the summer. Would you like tickets?”

  “No thank you,” he said, “just the house detective.” He didn’t want to make conversation. He checked his watch instead.

  Chuck Webb filled out his navy blue sport coat to the point where it wouldn’t button. He had an agreeable face but a drinking man’s complexion.

  Teddy Sumner passed him a hundred-dollar bill as the two shook hands. Webb gripped the bill but didn’t pocket it.

  “There’s no need for that.” He pretended to hand it back, immediately cut short by Sumner’s raised hand.

  “I have a seventeen-year-old daughter who thinks she’s twenty-six. She’s up in the suite, three twenty-seven. I wish I could say I trust her but I don’t. You have kids?”

  “Two boys. A little younger than yours. We use an outfit called Super Sitters. The hotel, I’m talking about. Good people. Patricia can arrange it.” He looked back toward the concierge desk, a yard or two away.

  “She’s supposed to join me at the wine auction,” Sumner said. “I’m betting otherwise. I need someone to keep an eye on her. If she leaves the room, I’d like to know about it. And if she doesn’t head over to the dinner, I need to know about that too.” He pursed his lips. “How about it?”

  “I’m spread a little thin tonight,” Webb said. “I wish I could help out but-”

  “You got cameras? If she doesn’t leave the room in the next fifteen minutes, I need to know. And if she does, then maybe you or one of your guys could just keep an eye on her long enough to make sure she’s headed to the dinner. Please?”

  He fished for another bill but Webb stopped him.

  “Room three twenty-seven,” Webb said. His left hand slid in his pant pocket and came back out empty.

  “I appreciate it,” Sumner said.

  “I’ll need a cell number.”

  32

  The Cherokee took the final turn, pulling past the golf shop and up to the entrance to the inn, where Walt stopped to collect himself.

  The tent, set to seat six hundred for dinner, glowed like a giant white lightbulb fifty yards ahead of him. He viewed that distance as a gulf, an open and exposed area where he was a target.

  The bottles were fakes. Remy’s best bet was to have them stolen prior to the auction and collect the insurance. Salvo and McGuiness were part of the team hired to steal them, Walt felt certain. But proving intent was impossible.

  “You want to run that by me again?” Brandon said.

  “Taking the lead guy into custody is more important than the bottles at this point.”

  Brandon snorted. “Whatever you say, Sheriff.”

  “I know that doesn’t feel right,” Walt said, “but the only way to link this back to Remy is to have George Clooney in custody. Arresting Salvo or McGuiness may not do it, but it would be a start. They probably don’t even know who Remy is, and it’s Remy we want.”

  “But I don’t know how to be incompetent,” Brandon complained. “There’s no way these guys get these bottles.”

  “We’ve got to make it look convincing. If they take the bottles, the bee will return to the hive.”

  Walt had replaced the GPS device belonging to Branson Risk with his own. Branson’s was in the back of the Cherokee. The MC was tracking Walt’s, and he hoped to follow it to whoever was running the heist.

  If there actually is a heist.

  He waited for word from the MC that they had a good signal on the GPS. He was still trying to fit together the connection with the kid getting Tasered at the lumberyard in Bellevue. He couldn’t make sense of it but somehow believed it was connected to the heist.

  “Here comes trouble,” Brandon said.

  “Not now,” Walt said, spotting Gail storming toward the Cherokee. He knew that stride of hers, knew that look on her face. Was it for him or Brandon? He hoped like hell he hadn’t got the date wrong for the girls’ coming home.

  “This is for me,” Brandon said.

  “Well, send her packing. We don’t have time for this.”

  Walt felt relieved. But he also understood the power Gail still wielded. How was that possible? How had he allowed such a thing to happen? For all his strengths, this woman’s reach was suddenly his glaring weakness. It just leaped out at him.

  “You hear me?” Walt said.

  “I get it, Sheriff,” Brandon snapped. His hand rested on the door handle, but he had not opened it.

  Over the radio, the MC dispatcher said, “All set.”

  Walt tripped the handset. “Roger that.”

  “We’re rolling,” he said to Brandon. Gail was five feet from the car.

  “Yes we are,” Brandon said.

  Walt drove ahead. They both watched Gail in the rearview mirror as she threw her hands in the air and followed.

  “I need you, Tommy. Don’t get caught up in this.”

  “Ten-four,” Brandon replied hotly, his eyes never leaving the mirror.

  Walt’s cell phone rang. The caller ID read CHUCK WEBB.

  “I’ve got to take this,” Walt said, slowing the Cherokee to a stop, still a few yards from their destination alongside the tent.

  “Shit!” Brandon snapped. He popped his door and climbed out. “Give me a second. I’ll handle this.”

  Walt power-locked the car doors behind Brandon and answered the call, his eyes lighting on a dozen different locations. He felt absurdly vulnerable. The wine case, strapped in the backseat, suddenly felt like a bomb.

  “Chuck?” Walt said into the phone.

  “Listen, I know we’ve both got enough on our plates, but I’ve got a situation here.”

  “Can it wait?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s Kevin,” Webb said. “We’ve got a seventeen-
year-old female guest who just left the hotel premises carrying a suitcase. She was picked up by Kevin, Walt. Your Kevin. His car, out back by the circle. Reason I know this is the girl’s father is over at the auction. He asked me to keep an eye on her. Considered her a flight risk. And now she’s flown. She’s a minor, pal, and that puts Kevin smack in the middle of aiding and abetting. And, beyond that, statutory-if you catch my drift. And this is one hot babe, so I doubt I’m really that far off.”

  Blood pulsed so loudly in Walt’s ear, he switched the phone to the other side, thinking it might help. It didn’t. He could hardly hear.

  Once again, he glanced at the attaché in the backseat.

  “You there?” Webb asked.

  “Yeah,” Walt answered.

  Kevin would be nineteen in a few weeks. That was how the courts would see it. Webb was basically right.

  “He drove off our property, or I’d offer to help,” Webb said.

  “You have helped, Chuck, big-time. Thanks. I’ll get back to you.”

  Walt ended the call. He caught sight of Brandon. Gail was tearing into him, one of her rants that could peel paint off the walls. Four of his deputies had formed a gauntlet into the tent.

  He speed-dialed a number on his mobile phone. He waited. There was no answer.

  He speed-dialed a second number, and was boiling mad by the time Myra answered.

  “Myra? Goddamn it, Myra!”

  “Walt, what is it?”

  “What do you think it is, Myra? It’s Kevin. Again. He’s not answering his phone, and I need to speak to him.”

  “Because…?”

  “Because he has an underage girl in his car. Underage and carrying a suitcase, Myra. The girl’s father thinks she might be running away, and that puts Kevin square into the middle of it… as in, a felony count. Do I have your attention yet?”

  “I’ll call-”

  “He’s not answering,” Walt said, “which makes me all the more sick to my stomach. Did you do as I asked? His phone service? Did you do that, Myra?”

  “That location thing?”

  “Yes, the Web tracking,” Walt said. “The GPS… did you sign up for that?”

  “I signed up, but I’ve never used it,” she said. “It seemed kind of like… spying, or something.”

  “I need you to go on the Web and find him, Myra, now. Right now.”

  Tonight, of all nights, he thought. Kevin had a knack for bad timing.

  “I don’t have a clue how to do this, Walt. You know me and computers.”

  “Figure it out,” Walt said. “Call someone. Do something. But figure it out. And call me back. We’ve got an hour, maybe less. The father’s going to want answers. Kevin has got to bring that girl back here and right now.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “It’s up to you, Myra. This is something you’ve got to do. Right now, not a minute to lose.”

  “Me?” Since the death of Walt’s brother, Myra’s mothering duties often had been passed to proxies.

  “We’re lucky to have gotten the tip. Find him, and then we’ll deal with it.”

  Walt hung up. He climbed out of the car. Gail was halfway across the lawn, heading away from him. He felt her receding fury as a wave washing out to sea. No longer directed at him, he celebrated that burden lifting.

  Brandon was pale. He looked disoriented. Walt knew that feeling, savored the fact that it belonged to someone else.

  “Stand ready!” he ordered his men as he opened the Cherokee’s back door and removed the seat belt from the attaché’s handle. “Chances are, something’s going down.”

  33

  Fiona studied herself in the mirror. She was wearing a black tea dress. She wore it well. It wouldn’t be considered sexy or daring, just “right.”

  Her cottage had warmed with late-afternoon sun. If she stayed too long indoors, she’d break into a sweat. She gathered up her camera bag and her purse, pulled her only black sweater from a hanger, and deposited everything into the passenger’s seat of her Subaru, then headed next door.

  Leslie and Michael Engleton had offered her a ride to the auction, but she’d decided to drive herself and wanted to tell them in person. Their house sat atop a secluded hill overlooking a teardrop-shaped pond. It faced the slopes of the Sun Valley ski mountain to the west.

  She heard children playing as she entered the house through the kitchen-a niece and two nephews from Carmel, here for two weeks-and wished she’d thought to bring them presents.

  Leslie would not be ready on time. She knew she’d find Michael somewhere close by the children, and there he was, dressed for the auction and on his knees, playing pick-up sticks in the house’s main living room, one of three.

  Michael was a handsome man, with a shock of white hair in the black that rode above his left ear like a feather. She loved the way he looked at her, like there was no one else in the room-one of his many gifts.

  “Perfect,” he said when he spotted her. “She’ll be down in a minute.”

  She wondered if he meant the way she looked or the fact that she’d arrived on time. To his credit, Michael never flirted. But she secretly wished he would try just once.

  She explained her decision to drive herself, that it was a job for her. Though disappointed, he didn’t act surprised.

  “We’ll see you there, then,” he said. He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Maybe by dessert.”

  She allowed herself a smile, at Leslie’s expense, and was turning to leave when she remembered to say something to the children. She had looked after them on several previous visits and liked all three very much.

  It was only then she paid any attention to the pick-up sticks. She stepped closer to the game, looking straight down at the pile of colorful knitting-needle-length wooden sticks interlocked in a jumbled mess.

  Perhaps it was flying with Walt, the bird’s-eye view. Perhaps it was her photographer’s eye. Whatever it was, she saw something in that pile of sticks that ran a spike of adrenaline through her.

  She was in her car, speeding out the drive, before she realized she’d been rude. She’d forgotten to say good-bye.

  34

  With the open attaché displaying the Adams bottles inside the air-cooled Plexiglas case, Walt kept an eye on the crowd at the cocktail party. An ATKINSON’S MARKET bag containing Remy’s pants and belongings rested on the grass at Walt’s feet. If the bottles were stolen without the attaché and its GPS, then Walt’s plan to follow it to George Clooney would fail. Convinced he had not seen the end of these people, he watched for the woman who’d been wearing the copper-colored blouse, the woman who’d pushed the baby stroller across Main Street and stopped the wrecker, the woman who’d run naked from the motel room. He believed she was the one in charge. She was the one he was after.

  Arthur Remy hobbled in on aluminum crutches. Approaching Walt, he looked like a man on too many painkillers.

  “Sheriff…”

  Walt handed Remy the bag. Remy rummaged through his belongings, his pants, his wallet, found the security card, stuffed his pockets. He then dropped the bag and pants into the grass.

  “You have quite a few officers here this evening. I counted four outside.”

  “Deputies, yes. An ounce of prevention…” Walt said.

  He had five total, Brandon and four others. The radios were live, the MC parked nearby, its dispatcher maintaining control over the team. Walt had three roadblocks set up, if needed.

  Remy shuffled over to the case containing the Adams bottles, like a mother hen checking her nest. He glanced at the bottles, then up at Walt, and for a moment Walt sensed Remy knew the bottles had been handled. But Fiona had photographed their position, and Walt believed they had been returned exactly.

  “We need to talk,” Remy said.

  “Anytime.”

  “Give me a minute.”

  A crowd was gathering. Remy turned and raised his voice so they could hear him.

  “An historic evening! A piece of history will end up
in a private collection. It’s not every day that happens.”

  Walt stepped back. Remy was surrounded at once. Condolences over his knee mixed with questions about his discovery of the bottles. He caught Walt’s eye briefly, but if he intended to convey anything it was lost on Walt, whose attention was galvanized by a woman just then entering the tent.

  Fiona hurried toward him.

  “Wow!” Walt said, eyeing her.

  “I know what it is,” she said breathlessly.

  Her present state-flushed and panting-excited him.

  “What what is?” he asked.

  “Sawtooth Wood Products… the kid getting zapped.”

  He drew her away from the display tables.

  “What about it?” he said.

  “Pick-up sticks. The kids, at Michael and Leslie’s, were playing pick-up sticks. The people doing this-the thieves-they’re going to use the logs to block a road. They were after one of the logging trucks. You spill one of those logging trucks… you dump logs on the road…”

  “It would stop traffic for hours,” he muttered, realizing she’d seized upon the escape plan.

  He grabbed for his radio but dropped it, pulling Fiona close to him and throwing her to the ground beneath him, as the walls of the tent briefly flared yellow and an explosion ripped through the cocktail party’s peaceful chatter.

  There were screams, and immediate panic, but no more explosions. Walt rolled off Fiona and sprang to his feet.

  It had begun.

  35

  In one ear Walt heard the calm voice of the MC dispatcher report the explosion. “To all units in the vicinity of the Sun Valley Golf pro shop…” her report began. She was broadcasting a 10-80, the radio code for an explosion, over the secure frequency monitored by the valley’s police departments and all on-duty sheriff’s deputies.

  Walt immediately returned over the same frequency. “Code nine,” he said, ordering the roadblocks established. “All units outside a half-mile radius, hold your current positions.”

  Three months earlier, there had been a shooting in downtown Ketchum. In and of itself, that was a rare event but not unheard of. It being a slow night in the valley, what made things interesting was that every patrol from Bellevue to the North Shore responded, seventeen police officers and five sheriff’s deputies in all. Walt could see it happening again, despite a review board organized by him, following a front-page article in the newspaper ridiculing local law enforcement for overreacting.