The Best Laid Plans

“Anything else?”

  “Oh, yes. Tell me please, do you suspect me of this killing?”

  “Why would I suspect you?”

  “It is a simple matter, very simple, for me to place a curse on someone, anyone really,” she stared directly at me. “And cause their death in a most unusual way.”

  “Is there something you’re trying to tell me?”

  She studied me for a moment. “I predict the solution to this mystery will be utterly unexpected. To discover it, you must first uncover a diabolical plan crafted by a conspiracy of evil forces, some of them shrewdly disguised as friends or allies.”

  As soon as Madame Fortunata left, a trim older couple, who must have overheard our conversation, approached me. I didn’t recognize them from my news photos, but I didn’t assume the photos captured everyone who’d attended the event.

  “Are you trying to find out what happened?” the woman asked. “We were there when they found his body.” Her teeth made a slight clicking sound as she spoke.

  “Barney and Betsy Blankenstoop,” the man said. “Happy to help.”

  “You were on Callingdon Mountain Peak when Donegal Cain’s gondola arrived?” I asked.

  “We saw everything,” Barney said.

  “Everything,” Betsy agreed. Click, click. Her teeth again.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “When the gondola arrived, a young lady opened the door, looked inside, and screamed ‘My God, he’s dead,’” Betsy said. Click, click. “Then an older man yelled to the crowd ‘I’m a doctor,’ and pushed past the young lady to go inside.” Click, click. “When he came outside again he shouted ‘Call 911, maybe it’s not too late.’” Click, click, click. “But the young lady screamed ‘No, no. He’s dead, I saw him. I saw him! He’s dead and it’s all my fault. All my fault.’” Click, click.

  “And people were calling 911 on their cellphones,” Barney said. “They were screaming ‘Send paramedics, he’s been stabbed.’”

  “How could they know he’d been stabbed?” I asked.

  “The young lady said so. She yelled it,” Betsy said. Click, click.

  “No, dear. It was the older man,” Barney said. “By then, the young lady was just standing there, staring at the ground and moaning, as if in shock.”

  “I’m sure the young lady yelled about the stabbing,” Betsy insisted. “Her voice reminded me of our great-niece, Loretta. Quite a deep voice.” Click, click.

  “Lorna is the one with the deep voice, dear. Loretta has a shrill voice.”

  “No,” Betsy said. “Loretta has the deep voice, almost like a man’s.” Click, click.

  I interrupted the couple to show them the news photos on my phone and see whether they recognized either of the people they’d seen at the gondola. They picked out two photos of the young lady and one of the older man. I thanked them and, as was my habit, handed each one a business card, requesting their contact information in return.

  The instant they walked away, still debating the timbre of their great-nieces’ voices and Betsy’s teeth still clicking, a husky man, probably in his early sixties but built like a barrel of muscle, positioned himself in front of me. He leaned into my face. “You should have checked in with me first. Roy Lutano. Head of resort security. Let’s talk in my office. Now.”

  He placed his hand, about the size and texture of a baseball mitt, atop my shoulder and guided me toward the exit.

  Lutano’s office was a windowless cubbyhole at the far end of a dank underground hallway. He shut the door behind us and snapped the deadbolt.

  “Privacy,” he said.

  “I’m sorry about any confusion,” I told him, “I’m working for—”

  “I know exactly what you’re doing.” He eased into his office chair and signaled for me to sit. “Wish you’d checked in with me about this gondola business. Maybe we can help each other.”

  I stole a glance at his tiny office. A dozen framed photographs stood on his desk. A lovely woman who I supposed was his wife and a slew of pictures I guessed portrayed their adult children and young grandchildren. Lutano’s only other office decorations were paperback book covers torn from Michael Connelly mystery novels, affixed to the walls with cellophane tape.

  As it turned out, Roy Lutano had been hired on at Callingdon Mountain after losing his job as a town constable after a local election swept out the mayor and the rest of the council. I gathered the resort administrator and police shunted him aside during the Donegal Cain investigation. Lutano’s curiosity and pride, along with his love of a good mystery, compelled him to learn what really happened in the gondola. I reflected on my own so-called detective career and decided I both liked him and empathized with him.

  “Mind if I ask what you found out so far?” he asked.

  “Wish I could tell you. But anything I find goes to my client first.”

  “Fair enough. But could you mention me in your report? I’m the new guy here, stuck in a basement office, and I could use some publicity. Like I said, maybe we can help each other.”

  “Delighted to,” I said. “What can you tell me?”

  “Well, whatever happened up there, the snowboarder probably wasn’t part of it.”

  I nodded as if I knew what he was talking about. “The snowboarder never even entered my mind. What convinced you?”

  He looked at me as though I were a befuddled toddler. “For one thing, after we pulled him out of Cain’s gondola he rode to the top in another one. So he was mid-air in another gondola, behind Cain’s gondola, the whole time. Unless he turned into some kind of invisible flying ninja acrobat.” Lutano shook his head. “Not likely, even for a hot-dogging freestyler used to all that screwball jumping and spinning and flipping upside down on the slopes.”

  “And of course Donegal Cain was alive when you pulled the snowboarder away from him.”

  Lutano leaned forward. “We didn’t really have to pull him away, not really. Soon as we told him what was going on, he apologized, took a quick selfie with Cain, and went looking for another gondola. Nice enough guy. Just wanted to get to the Peak and freestyle back down. Hard to tell which one of them was more stoned, though.”

  “You mean…”

  “Donegal Cain. Eyes so bloodshot they matched his parka.”

  “Red parka?”

  “Blood red. One of those oversized, overstuffed ones. Paramedics had to cut it off him with shears to get at the knife underneath.”

  I nodded again as I recalled what Madame Fortunata had told me. “You said ‘we’ pulled him out of the gondola?”

  “Myself and a temporary security guy I hired for the event. College kid. But forget about him. Art student. All he seemed to notice was the snowboarder’s parka was the same shade of blue as the gondola. Same shade of blue as the sky. That’s the only thing the damn art kid talked about. How all that blue blended together.”

  Lutano shook his head again. “Some think it was murder, others say suicide, others say some kind of freakish accident. And some say we’ll never know.”

  My detective radar pinged. “Haven’t heard the accident theory. What kind of accident?”

  “Freakish, like I said. Maybe Cain filched the knife from the resort restaurant, Lord knows why, and hid it in his waistband. He was too stoned to stand up, fell down the wrong way, and took an unlucky poke.”

  Another attempt to shield the resort’s reputation from a shocking murder, I wondered? “Accident seems unlikely.”

  “Everything about this crazy mystery is unlikely,” Lutano said. “Why would the solution be any different?”

  I showed him the photos of the young lady and older man the Blankenstoop couple had picked out. “Ever see either of these folks?”

  “Sure. That’s Marlee Wilson. She’s an assistant in the resort’s marketing department. Set up the Donegal Cain promotion. And the man’s a top sports doctor, Dr. Armand Wilson. Never met him.”

  “Both named Wilson?” I asked. “Married? Related?”

  “Who knows? Com
mon enough last name.”

  “But Marlee Wilson knew Donegal Cain?”

  “Sure. Maybe the doc did too.”

  “Why do you think so?”

  “Cain took a spill and broke a couple of bones last winter. Still in a lot of pain from the surgery, at least that’s what everyone says. A big sports doc like Wilson might get involved in something like that.”

  Next stop, the resort’s marketing department to interview Marlee Wilson. She wasn’t there. She’d taken an “unexpected absence” according to the department manager, who invited me to sit in the lone visitors’ chair in his cramped work cubicle.

  “I guess it makes sense, after what happened,” the manager said from behind his desk. “But it’s not like her to just leave a voicemail and take off.”

  “What did her voicemail say?” I asked.

  “Listen for yourself.” He punched a couple of buttons on his phone and another to put the phone on speaker. A woman’s shrill, quivering voice filled the cubicle.

  “Hi. It’s Marlee. I’m so sorry for what happened. It’s my fault. I’m responsible for everything. I never should have…done it. I’m taking some time off to decide how to handle what I did. I hope you understand. I’m so, so sorry. I know I shouldn’t have done it.”

  I didn’t think Marlee’s voicemail rose to the level of a confession and I didn’t know for certain who I could trust, so I decided I’d notify Detectives Trut and Zoya after I spoke with Dr. Wilson and learned more. I figured the successful doctor would stay at The Callingdon Mountain Grand Resort Hotel, the best accommodations the resort had to offer. I confirmed his room number and found him there. Easy enough for someone with my cheating-spouse peeper experience.

  “I’ve already spoken with the police,” Wilson told me as he stood blocking the half-opened door to his generous suite. “I’m sure you can get whatever you need from them. Besides, a friend in the state legislature informed me Donegal Cain’s death was ruled a suicide. Everyone knows Cain’s injuries and botched surgery ended his career as a competitive skier. He must have been despondent over it. I understand he became an unstable drug abuser as well.”

  “I doubt the suicide ruling will stand,” I said from the hallway. “And after what I learned a few minutes ago, the police will be too busy looking for a young lady named Marlee Wilson to talk with to me. Maybe you could spare just a minute?”

  “My daughter had nothing to do with this,” he said.

  “Your daughter.”

  “Marlee, of course.”

  “You know where she is?”

  “Why shouldn’t I just slam the door in your face?”

  “I haven’t told the police what I learned about Marlee yet.”

  He glared at me and his face flushed. But he stepped aside and let me in. Barely. We sat across from each other in a seating area immediately inside the suite’s entrance. He’d grudgingly moved his parka from one of the chairs so I could sit. An overstuffed dark maroon parka.

  “Just tell me what you saw and heard,” I said. “That’s all I’m asking.”

  “I’ll tell you what I told the police. Nothing more. When the gondola arrived, Marlee opened the door, looked inside, and screamed ‘Oh God, he’s dead.’ I looked inside and saw what I assumed she saw, Donegal Cain sitting in the corner, slumped over, both of his eyes closed and his face deathly pale. I went in to try to help him but realized there was nothing I could do. He was still breathing but barely had a pulse. He needed emergency hospital care, immediately. So I came back out of the gondola and shouted for someone to call 911. Then somebody in the crowd began screaming that Donegal Cain had been stabbed.”

  “Was your daughter the one who screamed he’d been stabbed?”

  “Leave her out of this. She’s been through enough heartache with Donegal Cain.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You need to leave. I told you exactly what I told the police. Now get out. And leave my daughter alone. She already spoke with the police. There’s nothing more to say.”

  “Your daughter knew Donegal Cain. Did you know him too?”

  “I’m not the one who botched his surgery, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  It wasn’t. “Where is Marlee? The police will need to see both of you again, right away.”

  “I’ve told you everything I know. Now, do I need to call Security or will you get out of my room?”

  As soon as I left Dr. Wilson my cellphone buzzed. It was the marketing department manager who supervised Marlee Wilson.

  “Marlee just called,” he said. “She’s coming to the office. She said she wants to explain. I wasn’t sure who to tell.”

  “When do you think she’ll be there?”

  “Twenty minutes. She said she knows what she did was wrong and she won’t run away from it. Do you think Donegal Cain committed suicide because of her? Everyone is saying he killed himself. Or maybe it was an awful accident, nothing anyone did on purpose.” The manager’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “I know Cain was definitely alive when he left for the peak because I went to the departure ceremony at the base lodge and I saw him go into the gondola. Then he waved through the window as the gondola left. Should I have told you that when we spoke earlier?”

  I didn’t answer his question, just thanked him and ended the call. Grateful for my habit of always exchanging contact information, I phoned resort security head Roy Lutano. Because the solution to the impossible Callingdon Mountain mystery finally hit me. I told Lutano everything. He agreed with my analysis.

  “Do you have the authority to make an arrest?” I asked.

  “No, but with reasonable cause I can detain anyone on the property until the police arrive.”

  Two days later, with the Callingdon Mountain killer in police custody, I finished my report to my client. I covered every detail, connected every dot, laid out where every piece of the puzzle fit.

  The telltale clue that finally registered with me: the red parka. With Donegal Cain “sitting on his butt, slumped in the corner of the gondola,” as Detective-Sergeant Zoya described, and the lethal knife beneath his oversized and overstuffed blood-red parka, Marlee Wilson couldn’t have seen Cain had been stabbed in the back, as a confused Betsy Blankenstoop stated Marlee had screamed. Nor could anyone in the crowd know he’d been stabbed, as an uncooperative Dr. Wilson had intimated.

  Which meant, only the killer could have known.

  Perhaps more obvious to someone with sharper detective skills than mine, just one person was in the gondola with Donegal Cain when it was remotely possible to commit murder: Dr. Armand Wilson.

  But what exactly happened?

  The prominent sports doctor, enraged at “total horn dog” Donegal Cain for mistreating his daughter, implemented a simple, but effective, plan. He introduced himself to Cain before the promotional event in order to provide the pain-stricken skier with feigned sympathy and two high-dosage prescription opioid pills.

  Before the gondola departed for Callingdon Mountain Peak, Cain was, as Roy Lutano described, merely “stoned,” but by the time he reached the mountaintop he was unconscious, slumped in the corner of the gondola, apparently dead but actually still alive.

  A waiting Dr. Wilson entered the gondola and lifted Cain’s thick parka to insert the knife into his lower back at the precise angle the skilled surgeon knew would prove fatal.

  Only the killer could have known then that Donegal Cain was stabbed, so it was a nervous Dr. Wilson who inadvertently divulged the stabbing to the crowd, in the deep voice— “almost like a man’s”—that Betsy Blankenstoop heard.

  But it was Marlee Wilson’s shrill voice that Madame Fortunata had heard arguing the night before. The hurtful end of the “passionate affair” between Marlee and Donegal Cain, prompting the argument between Marlee and her father. Then the furious Dr. Wilson crept downstairs from his suite to the hotel restaurant and pilfered a steak knife, which he easily concealed in his own parka, setting in motion his plan for the mysterious Callingdon M
ountain murder.

  And Marlee Wilson’s seemingly damning voicemail? She was not involved in the killing and knew nothing about her father’s involvement. She’d violated resort policy by booking Donegal Cain’s promotion for “personal, not professional” reasons, she confessed. And therefore she felt responsible for whatever had happened to him.

  What of her department manager spreading the rumor Cain’s death was perhaps an accidental stabbing in the back or Madam Fortunata’s “vision” of Cain in her sleep and her “conspiracy of evil forces” prediction?

  Simply the manager’s noble but absurd attempt to protect Marlee if she was involved and the ramblings of a self-proclaimed psychic.

  Luckily, spotting unreliable evidence is not my weakest detective skill.

  Finally, I never could verify who might have influenced or requested a suicide ruling. I didn’t want to press my client about it and couldn’t determine whether Dr. Wilson played a role.

  In the end, I guessed it didn’t matter much. I also guessed the Medical Examiner ran a standard toxicology screen on Cain, but concluded opioid pain-pills were part of the skier’s post-surgery prescription regimen.

  My report gave former town constable Roy Lutano well-deserved praise for aiding the investigation and detaining the deadly doctor until police arrived. But as it turned out, Lutano didn’t need my help. He retired as head of resort security to collect a small municipal pension and write a debut mystery novel based on the strange Callingdon Mountain murder.

  So I applied for his vacated security job and got it. Working at the resort for a steady paycheck provided a refreshing life-change from sporadic gigs skulking outside no-tell motels with a cheap camera.

  As a bonus, even now, whenever I stroll the grounds of the gorgeous Callingdon Mountain resort, people smile, nod at me, and whisper conspiratorially to their companions. And why wouldn’t they? After all, I’m the famous detective who solved the impossible Callingdon Mountain murder mystery.