Avalanche: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (Sheriff Bo Tully Mysteries) (6 page)

NEXT TO A LARGE SHED,
a tall, dark-haired man in striped coveralls appeared to be doing some maintenance work on a strange-looking vehicle, an orange metal cab mounted over two sets of broad rubber tracks, each set appearing to swivel independent of the other set. It was obviously used for traveling on snow. Tully told Janice to drop him off by the shed, that he would meet her back at the lodge. The man looked up as Tully approached. He put something in his mouth, chewed on it, then blew out a mouthful of husks.

“You must be Grady,” Tully said.

“Yes sir, what can I do for you?”

“I’m Blight County Sheriff Bo Tully. Some of my people and I are up here investigating the disappearance of Mike Wilson. You got any idea where he might be?”

“No sir, can’t say that I do. Not like Mike to just up and disappear like that. Not without taking a car, anyway. I’ve already checked all the places I thought he might be. Did that before Mrs. Wilson called you.”

“How about the Pout House?”

“Yes sir, drove Bessie up there this morning. I yelled Mike’s name and pounded on the Pout House door and got no answer. Then I opened the door and looked in, but it was obvious nobody had been there.”

“You happen to check the back side of the Pout House?”

“No sir. Didn’t see any reason to. It was obvious nobody had been there.” He shook a sunflower seed out of a paper bag and popped it in his mouth.

“What kind of a machine is Bessie?”

Grady cracked the seed with his teeth and blew the husks out the side of his mouth “She’s a Sno-Cat, Sheriff. Use her to groom the ski trails and to get around on the property in winter.”

“That’s what I thought. Are you the only one who drives it?”

“Yes sir, mostly. Once in a while, Mike drives it, but not often. He prefers to get around on his skis. He’s a terrific skier. But here’s kind of an odd thing. Last Sunday I went into Blight City to get a case of motor oil and some other stuff—that’s the morning Mike disappeared—and when I got back Bessie wasn’t where I last parked her. I asked Mrs. Wilson about it, and she said she was pretty sure no one had used it. Well, a little later, when I was out looking for Mike, I could see where he had run Bessie way off down the ridge.”

“That the ridge runs along above the road?”

“Yes sir. I figured Mike had to do it, but there’s nothing much out there. No reason I could see to run the Sno-Cat along a ridge nobody ever goes out on.”

Tully tugged on the corner of his mustache as he stared up at the mountain, now glistening white in the morning sun. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight, Grady. Mike Wilson left the lodge early Sunday morning. You drove into town to get some stuff Sunday and when you got back, the Sno-Cat had been moved, right?”

“Yes sir.”

“And the only person who might have moved it was Mike?”

“Yes sir, as far as I know. Mike didn’t like anybody borrowing equipment. We have a bunch of skis and stuff we rent out, but he wouldn’t want nobody fooling with Bessie.”

“And Mike hasn’t been seen by anybody here since before Bessie was moved.”

“Yes sir, that’s it, far as I know.”

“One more thing, Grady. When Mike disappears with a car, how long is he usually gone?”

“Oh, sometimes a couple of weeks. He had a development deal going for a while, some kind of housing project near Blight City. When he was working on that, he’d stay in town for weeks at a time. Without a car, though, he’s got to be around here someplace. I figure something must have happened to him. If it did, he’s got to be dead. No two ways about it, a man can’t survive up here without shelter in the middle of winter.”

“I appreciate the information. One other thing. I notice the river here is pretty normal. Did the avalanche dam the water up this far?”

“Yes sir, went clear past here. Rose up pretty high. Lifted the dock near to the top of its pilings. I could tell this morning by the water marks and scrape marks on the pilings. The dock’s got steel rings that slide up and down the pilings. The lodge has a boat tied up down there but it’s a good thing it was tied to the dock and not the piling. Otherwise it would have been sucked under for sure. I never heard anything about the river being dammed up until this morning. I guess the dam must have busted loose sometime during the night, because the river was back to normal when I got up. First time anything like that has happened up here, the river getting plugged up by an avalanche. Lived here almost five years and never seen anything like it. Maybe it’s that global warming thing.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. Anyway, I’ve got a favor to ask. I brought a tracker with me, and I wonder if you and Bessie could take him out to the Pout House.”

“Yes sir, that the Indian?”

“Yeah, the Indian. By the way, Grady, when did you give up smoking?”

“About a week ago. How did you know?”

“Sunflower seeds. Used them myself when I gave it up.”

“Seems like once most everybody smoked. Folks knew it was bad for their health too but didn’t seem to worry about it. I guess when I was little there were so many things to die from, smoking just didn’t make the grade. I tell you, Sheriff, I loved to smoke, and I’m getting mighty sick of sunflower seeds.”

“Know what you mean, Grady, know what you mean. By the way, I understand Mike is a terrific skier.”

“Yes sir, he is that.”

“So do you know if his skis are missing?”

Grady laughed. “He must have a dozen pairs, maybe more. Boots and ski poles, too. I never paid much attention to any of his ski stuff. Be hard to tell if any of it is missing. He kept most of it in the equipment-rental room if you want to take a look.”

“Maybe later.”

Grady cracked another sunflower seed with his teeth and blew out the husks.

One of these days, Tully thought, they’ll find out that sunflower seeds cause cancer.

TULLY FOUND DAVE PERKINS IN
the lounge talking to Pap. They were seated on facing couches with their feet up on the same ottoman. There was no sign of the frat boys, but other guests wandered about looking bored.

“About time I put the two of you to work,” he told them.

“We were just talking about going down and soaking ourselves in one of the hot tubs,” Dave said.

“But since neither one of us brought a swimsuit,” Pap put in, “we was wondering if it would be all right to go in naked.”

“Fine with me,” Tully said. “As long as I don’t have to see it. First, though, I’ve got a job for the two of you. I just got back from the Pout House and noticed a set of tracks leading from the back door down toward the river. I want the two of you to go out there and follow those tracks and see if you can make out anything from them. The Sno-Cat they use for grooming trails has wiped out any sign of tracks on this side of the cabin, so don’t bother looking for those. Grady, the handyman, will haul you out there in the Sno-Cat. As for me, I’ve got a dog team and its driver waiting for me and I think the driver may be getting a little impatient with me.”

“Impatient for what?” Pap said.

“Remains to be seen.”

Tully walked out of the lodge just as a heavyset, gray-haired woman came by riding a snowmobile. She pulled up and stopped. “Howdy,” she said.

Tully smiled at her. “Howdy.”

“You must be the sheriff.”

“That be I,” he said. “Bo Tully. What’s your name?”

“Marge Honeycut.” She pulled the makings out of a pocket inside her jacket and began rolling herself a cigarette. “Bet you’ve never seen anybody do this before,” she said.

“Matter of fact I have. You’ll have to meet my old man, Marge. He still rolls his own.”

She snapped a thumbnail across the head of a kitchen match and lit her cigarette. Bo shuddered. Pap lit kitchen matches the same way. Tully had tried it once and caught a piece of flaming sulfur under his thumbnail. Onlookers in the bar thought he had invented some new kind of wild dance.

“Sounds like my kind of man,” Marge said. “I been looking for a good one.”

“I wouldn’t recommend him, if you’re looking for a good one. A good man is hard to find these days, Marge.”

“You’re telling me!”

“So you work here, do you?”

“Yeah, off and on. I clean the cabins up on the mountain. Got this dogsled race coming up and some racer may want to rent Cabin Three. Cabins One and Two are buried in snow. Mostly it’s all pretty easy, except for the squirrels.”

“The squirrels?”

“Oh yeah, they get in the cabins and make an awful mess. I was down with a cold a couple days last week, so I cleaned Cabin Three on Sunday. I suspected the squirrels would be up to no good, so I went back up there on Monday, late yesterday afternoon, and sure enough, some of the little beggars had made a big mess. Chewed up something all over the floor. Took me near an hour to get it all cleaned up. Course I don’t move as fast as I once did. I been thinking of taking a .22 up there and plinking myself a squirrel or two. They ain’t fit to eat, but I might boil them up for my cat.”

“Where do you live, Marge?”

“I got myself a little shack overlooking the meadow. Pretty nice place. It’s lodge property, but Blanche don’t charge me nothing to stay there and I do a little work for her. If Mike had his way, though, he’d probably run me off.”

“People around here don’t seem too fond of Mike.”

Marge agreed with that assessment, referring to the owner as an anatomical obscenity.

“I see you have your own snowmobile,” Tully said. “Wish I’d had the good sense to bring one with me.”

“It ain’t mine,” Marge said. “Belongs to the lodge. It’s the only snowmobile allowed on the property. Anybody shows up with one, they get run off. Grady, that’s the handyman, or so they call him, he gets to use the Sno-Cat to groom the trails and do a few chores around. As far as I can see, he don’t do much. Well, I’d better get to work. Nice meeting you, Sheriff.”

“Likewise, Marge.”

He checked his watch. Janice could wait a bit longer. He crossed the road and walked down to the river. A black, inflatable boat about twenty feet long bobbed up and down next to the dock. It was covered with a blue plastic tarp. Two large outboard motors were attached to the stern. Tully suspected they were both jets, because props would get torn up in a river. The river drifted upstream in a placid back eddy around the dock. Out twenty feet or so the current swept along with considerable force. Upstream, a footbridge suspended from large cables spanned the river. On the far side of the river, several young men raced snowmobiles furiously back and forth along the bank. Got to be locals, he thought. He wondered if one of them might be the naked person DeWayne had thrown down the front steps of the lodge.

THE DOG TEAM SPRAWLED ALONG
its towline, most of its members asleep or yawning. Their driver sat on the sled, her chin resting on her gloved hands.

“About time you got back!”

“I had to get some of my troops activated. Now do you think your mutts can get me to the top of that ridge up there?” He pointed.

“They would love to. But don’t call them mutts. They have feelings too, you know.”

“Sorry.”

Tully climbed aboard the sled and got a good grip on both sides. Janice yelled, “Mush!” The dogs took off in a spray of snow and tails. They reached the top of the ridge much faster than Tully had even imagined, the dogs scarcely breathing hard.

“Can you run me down the ridge now?” he asked.

“How far?”

“Several miles. I’d like to look at the avalanche from the top side.”

“Mush!”

Tully pulled his stocking cap down over his ears, crossed his legs, and rested his head on the back of the sled. The runners sizzled through the snow. The mountains around were achingly beautiful. Far down below he could see the black line of the river wending its way through the canyon. He could even make out some of his favorite fishing holes, as well as the campsite of his and Susan’s aborted tryst. He thought he should put up a marker. Maybe in a year or two he would think of the proper wording. He was still pondering the words for the marker when they reached the avalanche site. Susan shouted “Whoa!” and jammed down the brake. She then put down the snow hooks to keep the dogs from running off with the sled. He pushed himself up and walked over to the edge of the ridge. The slope had been scraped nearly bare by the rush of snow, ice, trees, and rocks. Several minutes passed before he found what he was looking for, a line of gray spots that ran across in a line a hundred feet or so down from the top of the ridge. Tully tugged on the corner of his mustache as he studied the spots. He walked back to the sled and sat down on it.

“Home, James.”

“We’re not moving an inch until you tell me what you found out.”

“Just the ordinary,” he said.

“And that is?”

“I think somebody might have tried to kill me. And maybe Pap, too, for good measure.”

“Not again!”

“Afraid so.”

“How can you tell?”

“You see those gray spots down there in the snow? I’m pretty sure somebody laid out a line of ditching dynamite. The concussion from one stick sets off all the others.”

“Why in heaven’s name would someone want to kill you?”

Tully laughed. There are plenty of reasons. “The real question is how did they know we would be coming along that road when we did?”

“Maybe it was just a coincidence you happened along at just the right time. You ever hear that coincidence confounds reason?” She sat down on the sled next to him. The dogs, sprawled out along the towline, turned and looked back, apparently wondering what the next move was.

“Even if you won’t sleep with me,” she said, “I hate to think about somebody trying to kill you.”

He put his arm around her and gave her a hug. “Well, while we’re up here, I better check in with the office and make sure things aren’t falling apart there.” He pulled his cell phone out of his jacket and dialed.

Daisy answered. “Boss! We were worried sick waiting for you to call. You might have been buried in that avalanche!”

“Almost was. Pap said if it had led us a bit more it would have. Smashed up the Explorer pretty good but didn’t hurt us.”

“We’ve got some news here, too. I’ll let Herb tell you.”

Herb Eliot came on. “Bo! Man, are we ever glad to hear from you!”

“How come? Somebody steal the town?”

“Not quite. But somebody murdered Horace Baker last night.”

Tully sat in silence for a moment.

“You there, Bo?” Herb asked.

“Yeah, I’m here. I’m getting a bit overloaded, though. How do you know Horace was murdered?”

“He was shot in the back of the head!”

“That’s a pretty good indication. Who found him?”

“His secretary, Irene Pooley.”

Janice put her hand on Tully’s arm. “Stop tugging on your mustache like that. You’ll pull it out.”

Tully put his hand in his lap.

Herb went on. “He’s still in his office. We left him just like she found him, waiting for you to get back.”

“It’ll be a while before I get back. The road’s blocked by the avalanche. Besides, we still need to find out what’s happened to Mike Wilson.”

“I was saving the kicker for last,” Herb said.

“And the kicker is?”

“Mike Wilson is Horace’s partner in that development deal.”

“The one the county turned down?”

“Yeah,” Herb said. “You remember Horace threatened he was going to put in a giant pig farm on the land instead? A thousand pigs! So right there we have a couple hundred people wanting to kill him, the neighbors to the pig farm, for example, some of them very capable of doing it. Anyway, his secretary, Irene, says Horace was meeting somebody in his office later that night.”

“Who?”

“She said Horace didn’t say who, and she didn’t want to ask. He had apparently told her numerous times that if he wanted her to know something he would tell her. Irene is pretty shaken up by the whole thing. Guess she liked the miserable old devil quite a bit despite everything.”

“He doesn’t have any family that I can recall. Irene is about it.”

Tully began to sense his rear freezing to the sled. He stood up and began stomping his feet. “Anything at the scene that might give you a clue to the killer?”

“Just that Horace had poured a glass of whiskey for someone. It was sitting across the desk from him, apparently untouched. So he obviously knew the person, knew he drank whiskey. Or she did, as the case may be.”

“And he was shot in the back of the head, while seated at his desk?” Tully said. “I didn’t know Horace well but I know he wasn’t the kind of man to let one of his enemies get behind him. I’m slowly freezing to death up here, Herb. I’ve got to go. Get Lurch and Susan Parker over there to investigate the scene. See if Susan can pinpoint the time of death. I’ll be in touch later today.”

“With me or Susan?”

“You.”

“Right, boss. Now I’ve saved the really bad news for last.”

“What?”

“Clarence is back!”

“Clarence! Nooo!”

“Yup. He’s been gone over a month and I know everybody was hoping he’d been shot or run over or something.”

“We can’t have idiots shooting at him in the city.”

“Couple have already tried and missed. We confiscated their rifles. They said how come, for shooting at Clarence? I said no, for
missing
!”

“I don’t want any shooting in the city. Someone will get killed. You catch somebody shooting, throw him in the slammer. I know what we’ll do with Clarence if we catch him again. The last time we tried to keep him in the Playpen, he scaled the chain-link fence and wiggled through a coil of concertina wire. What’s he been up to this time?”

“Just the usual. He hides under people’s cars and sneaks out and bites them on the ankles.”

“Well, stay after him. And, Herb.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want to hear any more of your problems.” He pushed the off button on the phone.

Janice was leaning into him, her head against his chest. She felt warm and surprisingly soft. That was one of the things he liked best in women, their softness. He caught himself thinking that Tom Duffy had never really been that good of a friend.

“So who’s Clarence?” she said into his chest.

“A little brown-and-white dog.” He gave Janice a hug. “Would you mind if we ran down the ridge as far as it’s groomed? Shouldn’t be much more than a couple of miles. There’s no reason for skiers to come out here, so I’d like to see if there’s some reason to be grooming the ridge.”

A mile or so later, they came to the place where the Sno-Cat had turned around. No reason was evident for the Sno-Cat to have been driven down the ridge. They turned around.

“Maybe the person was out for a Sunday drive,” Janice said.

“Could be,” Tully said. “Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to make one more detour.”

He had Janice stop at Cabins One and Two but found nothing of interest there. Then she stopped at Cabin Three. It was several hundred feet up a trail that led back into the woods from the groomed area. “I’ll only be a minute,” he told her. “Might as well check it out, while we’re here.”

Janice sat down on the sled, her chin in her hands. Tully pushed open the cabin door. He looked up. The ceiling was open to the rafters. A piece of plywood had been laid across two of the rafters. He dragged over a chair from the table and climbed up on it. Then, with considerable grunting, he pulled himself up to the rafters until he could see on top of the plywood. Nothing.

He got down off the chair and searched the bedroom. He found nothing there. Then he went out the back door to the privy. It had a quarter-moon hole cut in the door. He turned the latch and went inside. There was no evident place to hide anything there. He climbed up on the bench for the toilet seats and looked for any nook or cranny where an object might be concealed. Nothing. He got down and started out. The latch had slipped down over the door. He took out his pocket comb, shoved it through the crack at the edge of the door, and pushed the latch back up. On his way back to the cabin, he even stopped and looked in a bird feeder. Not even any bird seed in it. For some unknown reason, he had begun to feel extremely uneasy. He walked through the cabin and out the front door and started up the walk. Suddenly he detected a movement off to his right. He spun and crouched, the Colt .45 coming off his shoulder holster.

“Get down!” he yelled at Janice.

She threw herself flat on the sled. The dogs had leaped to their feet. “Whoa!” she yelled at them.

He had the gun leveled at the unseen menace.

A large black shape flapped off through the trees. A raven. He couldn’t remember having drawn on a bird before. Something about the missing man and the murder in town was starting to get to him. He swept the gun back and forth, watching for any movement in the trees. He saw nothing. Slowly he stood up and put the Colt back in its holster. Slightly embarrassed, he walked over to the sled. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I felt something. Guess I’m getting way too jumpy.”

“I felt it, too,” Janice said.

“Let’s mush back to the lodge. I’ll buy you lunch, if you don’t mind the company of a couple old geezers.”

“You’re not so old.”

“I was referring to Pap and Dave.”

She laughed.