Avalanche: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (Sheriff Bo Tully Mysteries) (2 page)

TULLY GOT BACK TO THE
department well after five. Both the day shift and night shift deputies were either in chairs or sitting on the desks arranged in rows around the briefing room. They were waiting for him. Tully would have felt more secure in his authority if all the deputies had snapped to attention when he entered. Instead, they didn’t even interrupt their various conversations.

As usual, his undersheriff, Herb Eliot, was perched on the edge of Daisy’s desk, chatting with her. He wouldn’t have minded so much if Daisy hadn’t been in the middle of a divorce. He doubted Herb stood a chance with her, but it still irritated him to see Herb always hovering in her vicinity.

Tully glanced over to the far corner of the room. As expected, young Byron Proctor, his Crime Scene Investigations unit, was hunched over his computer, hard at work. Ah, if only the rest of his men were so dedicated. At least they were all better looking, substantially so. On a scale of homely, Byron was a ten. He had both the posture and complexion of a clam, large, crooked teeth that projected outward beneath a wispy mustache, and stiff brown hair that seem to sit on his head like a mound of dried hay. He was seriously tattooed and probably pierced. Tully didn’t even want to know about the piercings. Most people, startled by Byron’s extreme looks, tried to ignore his appearance. Tully, on the other hand, called him Lurch. He was Lurch’s hero. Lurch was also the most brilliant person Tully had ever known. Perhaps most startling of all, Lurch even had a girlfriend, and not just any girlfriend but one of astonishing beauty. The girl, Tully surmised, had to be one of those rare human beings with a deep appreciation for brilliance.

“Okay, listen up!” Tully shouted, stomping the snow off his alligator-skin cowboy boots.

The roar of conversation slowly faded and the deputies turned to face him, few bothering to conceal their boredom.

“I have to make a phone call and I don’t want anyone to leave until I’m done with it. Understand?”

There were a few nods. Tully walked back to his glass-enclosed cubicle. Daisy followed him. She was thirty years old with short black hair, brown eyes, and a compact figure packed enticingly in a short black skirt and white blouse. Everything about her seemed cloaked in an aura of pure efficiency, from the perfectly applied cosmetics to the click-click-click of her high heels on thetile floor. Tully knew she was madly in love with him, but he tried never to let on. Maybe after the divorce, he thought. Maybe.

“I’m afraid, Daisy, that my mother didn’t give me all the details about our missing person.”

“She asks questions,” Daisy said, defensively. “I don’t want to be rude and not answer them. I doubt she’ll tell anyone.”

Tully stood at the window watching the snow come down. “Ma is gossip central in this town.” He looked at the parking area, which contained a section fenced eight feet high with chain link topped with coils of concertina wire. “Daisy, first thing tomorrow, get some of the prisoners to clean the snow out of the Playpen. They can use the exercise.” The Playpen was the prisoners’ exercise yard. “Anyway, fill me in on Wilson.”

Daisy glanced at her notepad. “Blanche Wilson telephoned a little after four from the West Branch Lodge. She said her husband, Michael, has been missing for the last two days. He stormed out of the lodge yesterday morning and nobody has seen him since. None of the cars are missing, so she thought maybe he had gone to the ‘Pout House.’”

“The Pout House?”

“She said that’s a cabin they have about a mile upriver from the lodge. I guess when one or the other of them gets mad, he or she can go up there to pout. Anyway, she sent one of the lodge’s employees up to the Pout House to look for him, and he wasn’t there.”

“So, where else could he have gone?”

“I guess that’s the problem. She couldn’t think of any other place. They have some cabins back up on the mountain, but she didn’t think he would have gone to any of them, particularly with this snow. I told her you’d call when you got in.”

“I’ll do that,” Tully said, tugging at the corner of his mustache. “The West Branch Lodge is a pretty classy place. Costs a bundle to stay there.”

“Yeah, I don’t think Blight City folk hang out there much. Mostly Californians, who come up for a wilderness adventure, except with all the comforts of home. And then some. I hear they have an indoor pool fed from a natural hot spring.”

“They do. My wife and I spent a weekend there once. Pretty nice. It was a freebie. Pap had done some favor for Blanche Wilson’s father and as part of the payoff, he had Carson throw in a weekend for me and Ginger. Pap was pretty fond of Ginger.”

“I guess about everyone was.”

Tully focused for a second on Daisy. She seemed uncomfortable with the mention of his wife. “That was a long time ago,” he told her.

Daisy nodded. “Here’s the number.”

She shoved her pad across the desk to Tully. He dialed.

A woman answered the phone. “West Branch Lodge, Lois Getty speaking. May I help you?”

“This is Sheriff Bo Tully, returning Mrs. Wilson’s phone call.”

“One moment.” He heard her whisper, “Sheriff Tully.”

Another woman took the phone. The voice was soft and cultured, unlike the voices in most of Blight County, which seemed more suited for yelling at dogs. “This is Mrs. Wilson. Thank you so much for calling, Sheriff.”

“Mrs. Wilson, the message I got is that your husband is missing.”

“Yes and I’ve been worried sick. Sometimes he loses his temper and storms off and goes skiing or snowshoeing, but it’s not like Mike to be gone this long. Sometimes he takes a car and is gone for a couple of weeks but no cars are missing. If he doesn’t take a car that means he’s on the lodge property someplace. I’m sure something has happened to him. It’s very cold up here, with lots of snow and more all the time. I don’t think he could survive long if he is injured and out in the open.”

“How long has he been missing?”

“This is the second day. He got upset yesterday about seven in the morning. He put on his coat and hat and left. I figured he’d gone up to the Pout House. That’s a little cabin we have upriver. Occasionally one or the other of us will go up there and stay if we get mad at something, or just to get away from the lodge for a while, particularly if we’re upset with each other. But this morning I sent Grady Brister up to the cabin to check on him. Grady’s kind of our handyman. He said there was no sign of Mike.”

“Anywhere else he could have gone?”

“That’s the problem. There’s really no place. No cars are missing. There are other cabins up on the mountain that we rent to guests during the summer, people who want more of a wilderness experience than they get at the lodge. The snow is deep here but we do have twenty miles of groomed cross-country ski trails. Some of the trails go by a couple of cabins, but there’s no food or water in them now. I just don’t think Mike would go up there, when he could have gone to the Pout House.”

“If you don’t mind my asking,” Tully asked, “did Mr. Wilson leave because you and he had an argument?”

“Yes, that’s why he left. It was so stupid.”

“About?”

“Oh, the usual thing—money! To be more specific, not enough of it. You know how terrible the economy has been. Well, it has hit us pretty hard. About a fourth of our rooms are empty.”

Tully tugged hard on his mustache. “I don’t quite know how to put this, Mrs. Wilson, but are you sure the argument was only about money. That there wasn’t, say, another person involved?”

Mrs. Wilson paused. “What? Oh, you mean was Mike having an affair?” She gave a brief, surprisingly hard laugh. “No, I don’t think so.”

“In the case of a missing person, that is sometimes a factor to consider. I’m sorry I had to mention it. Anyway, Mrs. Wilson, I will be up there shortly. It’s almost six o’clock now. I may bring a couple of other personnel with me. Would you be able to put us up at the lodge for the night?”

“Certainly. I have a room for each of you. And there will be no charge for lodging or meals either, Sheriff.”

“Oh, the county will pick up the tab. Several of the county commissioners still haven’t dropped dead at the sight of my expense account, and I’m trying to finish them off.”

She laughed. “We’ll at least give the county a good discount. When do you think you might get here?”

“About nine, maybe a little later.”

“Nine o’clock. We’ll keep dinner for you.”

Tully thanked her and hung up.

“Can I go too?” Daisy asked.

Tully was silent for a moment, thinking, perhaps thinking a little longer than he should have.

“No,” he said at last.

“Figures,” Daisy said, smiling. “You get to have all the fun.”

“Not all fun. Call Pap and tell him I’ll pick him up in about an hour. Tell him I’ve got a little mystery I may need his help with.”

“What’s the real reason?”

“To get him away from his new housekeeper for a while. I think she’s killing my old man.”

Daisy laughed.

“Then get Dave Perkins on the phone for me. He’s probably still at his restaurant.”

He walked out into the briefing room. It was virtually silent by now, several of the deputies making a point of looking at their watches.

“Sorry to keep you,” Tully said. He ran through a list of assignments for both the night shift and the day shift.

“How come you’re giving us our assignments now?” Brian Pugh asked. He was on the day shift, one of his better deputies.

“Because I may be gone a couple of days. Herb will be in charge.” He nodded toward his undersheriff. A cheer went up from the deputies.

“And just because Herb is a soft touch, I want you guys to keep your so-called minds on what you’re supposed to be doing, preventing crime and catching criminals.”

“That’ll be the day,” a muffled voice said. There was laughter all round.

“True,” said Tully. “But I can use a surprise every now and then.”

Daisy said, “I’ve got Dave Perkins on line one.”

“Okay, I’m done with you,” Tully told the deputies.

“And be safe out there!” somebody said from the back of the room.

“I’m not too worried about that,” Tully said. He walked back into his office and picked up the phone. “So you’re still at the restaurant, Dave? What are you doing, supervising the killing of your customers with those chicken-fried steaks?”

“Yeah, best and biggest chicken-fried steaks in the world. And folks usually don’t die of them until they’re off the premises. So what do you want, Bo? I know it can’t be good.”

“I just thought you might like to spend a day or two up at the West Branch Lodge for free?”

“As I said, what do you want?”

“Nothing much, really. It’s just that I’ve got a missing person up there and may need a tracker. I should point out that the lodge has baths fed by hot springs and even an indoor pool. Be good for your rheumatism.”

“Us Indians don’t get rheumatism,” Dave said. About as much Indian as Tully, he had been nourishing a fraudulent scheme to build a casino next to his café three miles north of the little town of Famine. He referred to his acre or so as the World’s Smallest Indian Reservation. As part of his scam, he wore his long gray hair in a thick braid down his back and a necklace of bear claws down his chest. The rest of his costume appeared to have been pieced together out of a wardrobe from a John Wayne western. “Yeah, I could use a couple of days at the West Branch Lodge. By the way, who’s missing?”

“Mike Wilson. He and his wife own the West Branch Lodge.”

“Shoot, I know Wilson. Kind of an ornery cuss. Heard that new wife of his had tamed him down.”

“New?”

“Fairly new. I guess they’ve been married about five years. You get old like me, Bo, five years is new. Anyway, I’ll head up to the lodge right now.”

“Great,” Tully said. “Pap and I’ll meet you up there.”

“You bringing Pap? This sounds more like a party.”

“That’s my plan. So we don’t want to find Wilson too soon.”

“Hey, I’m way ahead of you on that, Bo.”

TULLY’S LOG HOUSE SAT IN
the middle of a meadow three miles from town. Surrounded by nearly eighty acres of timber, the meadow sloped in the general direction of Blight City. On a clear night, the glow of the city could be seen in the distance. The glow, evidence there were other people in the world, kept him from feeling lonely.

He and Ginger, when they were both in their early twenties, had cut the trees for the house on their own land, the eighty acres Pap had given them as a wedding present. They trimmed, peeled, and cured the logs themselves. Building the house had been an act of love. Neither he nor Ginger ever thought it had involved a single minute of work.

Tully slipped the Ford Explorer into four-wheel drive when he pulled into his driveway. The narrow, gravel road descended steeply down into the middle of the meadow. Ordinarily, he kept the driveway plowed with the ancient Ford pickup truck he had equipped with tire chains and a plow, but the snow in January had been coming so fast he couldn’t keep up with it. The Explorer, twisting and bucking, managed to make it down to the house.

Tully went in the back entryway, stomping the snow from his boots. The house was warm. When he was home for any length of time, he heated the house with birch firewood he cut himself, but when he was away, he let the electric wall panels handle the chore. An open loft overlooked the living room. His easel containing a canvas of a half-finished oil painting could be seen from below. He avoided looking up at it. It filled him with guilt and remorse. He hadn’t touched the painting in two months. It was harder all the time to think of himself as an artist.

On one wall of the living room hung a large oil painting of Ginger in a white dress and holding a bouquet of wildflowers. There were dozens of drawings and paintings of Ginger scattered about the house, but this one had always been his favorite. Even though neither of them knew it at the time of the painting, something had already started to grow inside her head. Shortly thereafter came the terrible headaches and the desperate operation she hadn’t survived. That had been nearly ten years ago. He no longer got tears in his eyes every time he looked at the painting.

Tully still prided himself on being self-sufficient, with two chest freezers packed with salmon, trout, and halibut from his fishing trips, and deer, elk, grouse, quail, pheasants, ducks, and chukars from his hunting trips. He once calculated that the fish and game he accumulated probably cost him only about fifty dollars a pound and well worth every penny. Each summer he invited all the deputies and all his friends out for empty-the-freezer barbecues. He had become famous for his skills as a backyard chef.

He hauled in a duffel bag from a shelf in the attached garage and packed a pair of slacks, clean shirts, a couple of ties, and a blue blazer, for evening wear. In the off chance he might actually have to hunt for Mike Wilson, he pulled a black plastic garbage bag out from under the sink. Holding the bag open, he stuffed in a pair of insulated boots, wool socks, his black wool hunting pants, two wool shirts, a two-piece set of long underwear, a down-insulated jacket, a wool watch cap, and gloves. Then he remembered the heated indoor pool and hot tub and added his swimming trunks.

Not having eaten, he thought for a moment about making himself a sandwich from some leftover meat loaf, home-baked bread, and his own special horseradish, which he grew in his own garden and preserved with his own special recipe. He had once considered employing the horseradish as a toughness test for the department’s new recruits but finally decided it was much too cruel. He abandoned the idea of a snack, preferring to reserve his appetite for the supper Mrs. Wilson had promised. After throwing the plastic bag and duffel into the back of the Explorer, he headed over to Pap’s. Snow was still falling.