The balding, chubby man who sat across from me cracked his knuckles for the third time. He looked nervous, and he checked his phone every twenty seconds.
“Is everything okay?” I asked. He had a suitcase and a sack full of what looked to be presents.
“Oh yes, I’m just hoping to get home for the holidays before the snowstorm hits,” he said.
“Storm? I didn’t realize they were calling for one.” I pulled out my own phone to check the weather network app.
“It should be here by tomorrow. I’m just nervous it will show up early. I’ve been away on a business for a month and I have a long drive ahead of me. I really just want to be at home right now.” The man smiled kindly at me.
I nodded. Me too, buddy. Me too. But I needed to find a killer first. Guess I wouldn’t be jogging outdoors this week.
The ride was four hours long and there was still two hours to go, so I leaned back on my parka and thought about ways to train without my punching bag. At least my neck would get a rest; I’d strained it three times already this month. Man, I couldn’t believe I’d allowed myself to get talked into this. It hadn’t been easy to tell Detective Cody Lumos, the new guy I’d just started dating two weeks ago, that I was running off to the Laurentian Mountains the weekend before Christmas to investigate at my ex-boyfriend’s beck and call—especially since I’d refused him for the last three months on the grounds I was getting over this jerk. Luckily, he was an understanding guy. Since Rebel was away at her family’s place, he even agreed to feed my dog and water her plants. Running out of things to pout over, I pulled up the resort’s website on my phone to pass the time. The resort boasted adult-sized tree houses that were dispersed throughout a breath-taking forest—each with a sunny terrace, comfortable bed and a propane stovetop for cooking. It touted that it was a nature-loving thrill-seeker’s ideal adventure spot—sounded like my ex’s cup of tea, or rather can of beer; he wasn’t a big tea drinker. Personally, I hated the frigid temperatures of winter unless I was fireside, looking out at the dazzling snowflakes from the comfort of a cozy warm blanket. That was one of the main reasons Lucas and I hadn’t worked—well that and the bugs. I also hated mosquitos, blood-sucking pests that they were, which brought me back to the thought of Holly. After much hysterics, he’d finally told me that he’d found her frozen in the snow. That was about as much as I knew. I accepted my lunch from the smiling steward—wine and smoked meat with a pickle on a pretzel bun. If Lucas was paying, then I might as well have some fun.
Lucas was waiting for me on the platform of the Montreal train station when I arrived. He was tall, over six feet, with dark hair and dark eyes, cute in a way that would have been hot if it weren’t for his jagged teeth. They made him more guy next door, which unfortunately, I preferred. In small-town tradition, he and I had dated in high school, as had most of our friends. Musical chairs. We’d only gotten serious after having both moved away for years and returned. In that time I had become a police officer (who quit in the first year) and he had travelled the world hanging from cliffs and jumping from mountains. You could say we were like oil and vinegar but they probably had more in common.
His lean, handsome face no longer looked lean and handsome. It looked gaunt under dark stubble. His large brown puppy-dog eyes were bleary, red and swollen. His broad shoulders were hunched inward—a far cry from the adventurous man who scaled mountains and navigated rapids on a regular basis.
“She’s dead, Pen,” were the words he greeted me with. He held out a hand for my suitcase, ever courteous, even in his disheveled grief.
“So you said,” I replied. I hadn’t expected his blushing bride to make a miraculous recovery since we last spoke but I kept that barbarous little retort to myself, lest my bitterness show. Instead I gave his outstretched hand a squeeze before letting him take my suitcase. The crowd surged around us as I stared at him, questions swirling.
“Tell me what happened,” I said finally.
Lucas stared down at the train station parking lot. “Somebody killed her,” he said softly, as if he still didn’t believe it.
“I realize that,” I said. “I meant how?”
Lucas raised his red-rimmed eyes to mine.
“I don’t really know. I mean, I found her, Penelope. She was…” He dropped his eyes again and then reached out and touched my boob.
“Whoa, buddy. What are you doing? This is not how we console each other… anymore.” As a matter of fact, he hadn’t tried this move since he was fourteen.
“Sorry,” he said and inched back. “You have something…”
I looked down and removed the tiniest piece of pickle from the sweater beneath my coat. Ugh, I was a hot mess. “You mentioned face down in the snow?” I asked again, unable to keep the impatience out of my tone.
“I just don’t know!” Curious faces turned our way. Damn. He brought his head back up, but his eyes weren’t seeing me. They were looking through me.
“Did you call the police?” I asked.
He shook his head. “The woman who runs the resort did,” he answered quietly. “Marie-Angelique—she’s the one who invited me to the resort on business. Holly hated the look of the place but she decided to tag along, anyway.” He looked at me and then looked down sheepishly. “We hadn’t had a proper honeymoon.”
“Aw, poor you guys.” I said, with a sigh. “And then what?”
“And then I found her last night,” he began. He took a breath and continued, his voice a little stronger. “When I found her body, I ran back to the main chalet and one of the owners was still up.” Lucas’ face paled beneath its stubble. “They called the local Police Department.” His eyes focused on mine suddenly. “Penelope, they think I did it.”
“The owners think you killed Holly?” I prodded.
“No.” Lucas swallowed. His eyes went wild again. “The detective in charge questioned me for hours!”
“And they took your fingerprints?”
He nodded.
“Did they take anyone else’s?”
His eyes refocused. “I think so.”
“So, they’re not just targeting you then, Lucas. Calm down. Did they search everyone’s room?”
“No, just mine, but one of the guests asked the cops if they had a search warrant.”
“Are the police still at the resort?”
“They left right before I drove out to pick you up. They’d been at the resort since I found Holly last night, just before eleven—asking questions, searching.” Panic was seeping into his voice again. He picked up speed. “Detective Belanger said he’d be back to see me later. He practically dangled his cuffs at me when he said it.”
I stopped walking, which forced him to turn to look at me. Then I cleared my throat and looked straight into his frightened eyes. “Why are you so panicked? You didn’t kill her, did you?”
“No!” he yelped. The intensity of his answer turned the heads of the last of the disembarking passengers. “Of course not,” he said in a deeper, modulated tone. He closed his eyes for a few heartbeats. When he opened them again, they were clear of panic. Then he straightened his shoulders. “Penelope,” he said in a nearly steady voice. “I made a mistake leaving you. I was a jerk to you but I swear that I did not kill Holly. Please, say you believe me.”
I looked into his sincere red eyes and believed him completely. Well, almost completely. “Then, who did?” I asked.
He began to crumble again, shoulders first. “I don’t know. I don’t know! I can’t even believe it happened. She was just face down in the snow.” His voice was leaping in pitch.
“We’ll figure out who did this together,” I promised rashly. I would say anything at this point to alleviate his mounting hysteria. “But I’ll need your cooperation. Let’s get on the road and you can fill me in on the way.”
He opened my door for me and swept his arm out to gesture me inside his truck. I sat back, opened the weather app on my phone and scrolled through the many warnings and alerts about the snow
currently pounding Quebec City. “They’re saying we should start seeing serious snow by tonight.” I set my phone aside.
“We’ll be safe and dry at the resort by then,” Lucas said.
The driving seemed to calm him and it didn’t hurt me, either. From the moment we drove into the Tremblant area, we were surrounded by milky white skies. The mountains, hills and fields were completely covered in bright and fluffy snow blankets. This was exactly what I needed if I was going to deal with Lucas’ hysteria for the foreseeable future.
“So, tell me why the police think you did it.” I said.
“Golly gee whiz, Pen. They don’t seem to want to confide in me,” he answered after a moment of silence. I actually giggled. Truthfully, I was relieved to hear the sarcasm in his voice. That was the jerk I knew and loved. “Sleighs & Slopes Adventure Resort is pretty isolated. It’s unlikely that a stranger would have been on the grounds last night, and none of the others staying at the resort knew Holly.”
“Who are the others?” I asked. “Run them down for me.”
He sighed before speaking, but complied. “First, there are the Tremblés, Marie-Angelique and Justin. Marie-Angelique’s overly friendly; she tries very hard to make everyone comfortable, but her husband Justin is a bit strange.”
“Strange like Paul Bernardo, Jason Vorhees or Mr. Dress-up?”
“A combo, I suppose,” Lucas retorted. He looked over at me with amusement in his eyes. He reached his hand out and pressed it over top of mine, at the same time pressing down on the gas pedal. The snowy trees whizzed by.
“Lucas?” I had to know the answer. “You asked me here to investigate because that’s what I used to do for a living… not because you want to get back together, right?”
“Are you seriously asking me that right now?” he exploded, pulling his hand away.
“Well?” I probed, all the while watching the road nervously.
His foot eased up on the gas. “I do miss you. We’ve been best friends for years. Can you blame me for turning to you right now?”
“Yes, I can and I do. You married someone else right after we broke up. Good lord, some people take longer to decide on what to eat.”
“I know. I know. I was dumb.”
“The dumbest. But, Lucas, I need you to know I’m not here so we can get back together.”
“I understand. I don’t know who else to turn to. The police suspect me. I would, too, if I were them. You used to be a cop and you think like them.” He glanced over at me, his swollen eyes pleading.
I switched on the heated seat, sat back and watched the white landscape scroll past my window, wishing the heat could penetrate the cold knot of dread churning inside. “I was barely a cop. I quit after the first month. You know that I never really thought like them—that was the problem.”
“You worked for your dad as a private investigator, and, as a journalist, you must investigate?”
“Well, yes.” Damn, he had a point. “I was more of a junior-level private investigator and I was always getting myself into hot water,” I said softly. “I’ll see what I can do on two conditions.”
“Anything… name them.”
“No coming on to me and you’ve got to tell me everything. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” he said flatly, as if the feeling in his voice had been washed away by his tears.
“So, back to Mr. Strange. Give me details.”
“You’ll see when you meet him. One minute he’s laughing and the next he’s vacant—sort of a split-personality type. His wife calls him an eccentric artist.”
“Do they have any other family there?”
“Their teenage son, Felix, and their handyman, Noel Bluebird. He’s not family, but he’s not an outsider, either. I don’t know what to make of him—he has an odd relationship with the kid.”
“Odd, like how, as in my affectionate uncle used to play games with me kind of odd?”
“Gross, no. I mean. I don’t know. They’re just close, you know? Like a father and son usually are. The boy listens to Noel, and he seems to interact with him more than his own father. That’s it for staff that was there last night.”
“What about other guests?”
“Besides me, there’s a man named Matt who walks with a limp.” He stopped for a moment to think. “There’s Dr. Amélie Belle. She’s a psychologist with a big personality. I think she’s a lesbian but I can’t figure out who her girlfriend is. Her niece is with her but I think she’s leaving now that all of this happened. Then there’s Denise. I mentioned her before. The one who insisted on a search warrant? She was married to a lawyer for twenty years. She’s always with another woman but I haven’t really spoken to her.” He paused. “Those are all the guests I’ve met.”
“That’s it?” I asked incredulously.
“Well, there are more people but not everyone socializes at the main lodge. Besides, I told you the Tremblé’s are looking to increase business. That’s why they invited me down here this weekend. They want me to invest. It was primarily a ski resort and spa but they’ve added treehouses, zip lines, and dog sledding in an attempt to re-brand it as an adventure resort. They’re also adding rock climbing to the summer program. It could be a good investment for me.”
Lucas’ tone was conversational now. Providing hard information seemed to have done him some good.
“Back to the people who were there last night,” I said. “Did anyone seem to know or have a history with Holly?”
“No,” he answered thoughtfully. We drove along a tree-lined road for ten minutes or so, winding up and around a mountain. Along the way, we passed a sporting goods store touting the exciting sport of ice fishing and snowmobile rentals. I hoped this place had a fireplace, I couldn’t imagine what a cabin or tree house in the woods in December would be like.
“We’re here.”
As we drove through the gap, the trees gave way to a wide clearing, and scattered cabins of various shapes and sizes appeared. They all had sunny terraces, picnic tables and fire pits. Snow blanketed trees surrounded the resort. Big wet snowflakes had begun to fall. The place was charming, despite the yellow crime scene tape we passed.
Lucas pulled up alongside a car in the parking lot. Two women were being dropped off by a younger woman in a Cadillac.
“Yoo-hoo!” The younger woman waved her hand out the car window at us and honked as she drove away.
I shifted in my seat and looked at Lucas curiously. “Friends of yours?”
He nodded his head. “The tall woman in the vest with grey hair is Denise but I forget the other lady’s name.”
Denise was practically Amazonian. She beamed at me through the glass of our windshield, smoothing her black-and-red puffy down vest with her free hand. She must have greased the inside to squeeze into it because I was almost positive her boobs were squished together into an enormous uni-breast under there. Her large, solid backside was packed into original Levis jeans with only flannel covering her arms. The other woman was wearing a fur coat that swallowed up what I imagined was a petite, five-foot frame. Her white hair was styled and smoothed to perfection. She wore oversized white retro shades and her pout was painted peach and lined just outside her mouth’s natural borders. Before we could get out, Denise took off like a racehorse and her companion followed, doing her best to keep up. I wondered what they were discussing with such animation. They moved up the path and disappeared through the trees.
We waited a moment and then followed them down the path. Snow-covered and surrounded by tall pines, the chalet looked like it belonged in a storybook. We climbed the stairs and crossed the large porch, past a log bench and invitingly placed Muskoka chairs. Lucas held open the oversized wood door and waved me into an attractive lobby decorated in plaid, fur and warm tones. An enormous fireplace with a bright and cheerful fire beckoned me toward the couch and chairs
I sighed, for the moment forgetting the reason I’d come.
“Isn’t this place cozy?” Lucas said in my ear.
>
I glanced upward.
“Let’s just get down to business.” I said.
We shook the snow off our coats and stamped our feet and then he hurried to the registration desk. The shelves that flanked the stone fireplace were stocked with books and board games. Despite my comment, I imagined a cozy weekend with Cody, curled up by the fire: reading, sipping coffee, and playing cards.
At the desk, a young woman smiled at us from behind a laptop and lamp.
“Bonjour, welcome to Sleighs & Slopes Adventure Resort,” she said. Her name tag read: Lea Bonnet. She wore oversized square glasses that I was sure were fake, an ostrich feather vest, and her sleek black hair covered one eye.
“Welcome back, Mr. Vallerand.”
Just as Lucas began to respond, we heard, “There you are, my little Lucky Penny! And there’s jerk face.”
I felt Lucas stiffen next to me at the sound of his oh-so-flattering nickname. We both spun in the direction of the voice and, as I had already surmised, there stood my troublesome sidekick, Eve Banter. At five-foot-four, she was almost completely overtaken by the oversized winter scarf and woolen cap.
“I’ve been chasing you for hours,” Eve said as she rushed toward us. “This place is gorgeous, don’t you think?” She waved her arms to encompass the lobby. “I can’t believe I finally caught up to you!”
“Eve?” I squeaked in complete and utter surprise.
She cocked her head at me. “Yes?”
“What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Bohemian Lake, spiking the egg nog and annoying Rebel at the Retirement Center, like normal.”
“Ah, ha! So, you do think I’m normal.” Eve smirked.
Cookies, Corpses & the Deadly Haunt Page 15