Avalanche: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (Sheriff Bo Tully Mysteries) (21 page)

TULLY CAUGHT DEPUTY BRIAN PUGH
in the middle of a yawn as he leaned sleepily against his Explorer. “Not getting enough sleep these days, Pugh?” he said.

“Actually, no. I sure hope I nabbed the right one, boss.”

Tully looked in the rear window. Lois glared back at him. “Looks to me like you did. Roll down the window so I can talk to her.”

The deputy got in, turned on the ignition, and rolled down Lois’s window.

“Hope you’re comfortable, Lois,” Tully said.

“I don’t know why you’re arresting me. I know nothing about any of this.”

“You mean like plotting out two murders, and maybe even a third one off in the near future. That’s not even counting your efforts to kill me and Pap and then kill me again.”

Lois shrugged.

“As you no doubt guessed, Lois, I’ve had you and Grady pretty thoroughly checked out. You have a sheet going back almost twenty years. I don’t think our prosecuting attorneys will have too much trouble tying you into this. Grady and Mike had the combined IQ of celery. You were the only one smart enough to think this thing through.”

“You trying to flatter me, Bo?”

“You are also the one who wore Mike’s boots to make the tracks in the snow.”

“Oh, that’s a good one.”

“Yes, it is. And pretty cold-blooded, too.”

She was thoughtful for a moment. “You think I killed Mike?”

“No. But it might be in your best interest to recall exactly how and why both Mike and Horace Baker were killed.”

Lois chewed her lower lip. “My lawyer and I will have to think about that.”

“Yes, you will,” he said. “Lois, I’m afraid I have much more experience with murder than you do. If at some distant time in the future you decide to continue this line of work, take my advice. This whole thing was far too complicated. You were bound to slip up somewhere. Next time you get involved in a murder, simply have your accomplices shoot the party, deep-six the gun, and split.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, glaring at him.

Tully went back into the lodge. On his way through the lounge, he stopped and took a last look at the three-dimensional map. He thought maybe he should send the EWU geography department a note thanking them for the model. He then walked over to the bar. DeWayne was wiping it down.

“Get you something to drink, Sheriff?”

“A cup of coffee, if you have some made.”

“You’re in luck,” DeWayne said. He poured Tully a cup. Pap walked up and climbed onto a stool. DeWayne set a cup in front of him and poured another coffee.

Tully said, “You got your suntan oil all packed, DeWayne?”

The bartender almost dropped the coffeepot. “Why would I need suntan oil?”

“Oh, I just figured that after the dogsled races you’d head for someplace warm and sunny, like the Caribbean, for example.”

DeWayne slowly and carefully set the coffeepot back on its warmer. “Sounds like fun,” he said. “But you must be confusing me with someone else.”

“I suppose,” Tully said. “It was just a thought.”

Pap dumped two spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee. “Forget the Caribbean. Right now I’ll just be happy to get back to Blight. Never thought I’d ever say that.”

“Pap and I are gonna head in shortly, DeWayne. From now on, you’ll have to flatten any unruly customers yourself.”

“One of my major joys in life.”

Tully noticed Janice sitting at a table in the dining room. A waitress brought her a pot of tea and left. Tully walked over and sat down across from her. “So, how come you’re not out on the trail?”

“My next run isn’t scheduled until this afternoon.” She gave him a smile. “Tom went home, by the way.”

Tully thought about asking if Aunt Margaret had died again but decided against it. “I guess he doesn’t have much interest in your passion,” he said.

“My passion?” she said.

“Dogsled racing.”

She laughed. “No, he doesn’t.”

“Anyway, I wanted to thank you, Janice, for all your help. You’ve been great.”

“I can be even greater, Bo.”

“You’ve mentioned that. But Pap is waiting for me.”

“Have you noticed how stuffy it is in here?”

“As a matter of fact, I have.”

“Why don’t we step out onto the veranda for a breath of fresh air?”

“Okay,” he said. “One last breath.”

They went out onto the veranda. Tully closed the door behind them.

Janice kissed him so long and hard he felt as if she had sucked away half of his oxygen. He gently shoved her back.

“I love you, Bo,” she said.

“I have a problem with that.”

“What?”

“I love you, too. So we can’t ever do this again.”

DRIVING BACK TO BLIGHT CITY,
Tully felt as if Janice’s kiss would affect him for the next six months. Well, at least for an hour. At every possible place to turn around, he slowed down.

“What’s wrong with you, anyway?” Pap said.

“Loss of oxygen,” Tully said.

Pap rolled himself a cigarette and punched in the dashboard lighter. “Now, tell me how you’ve got this caper all worked out.”

“I was hoping you might ask. First of all, the avalanche was deliberately set, for two purposes. One was supposedly to isolate from town everyone on this side of the avalanche. It was avalanche as alibi for murder. That way anyone on the lodge side of the avalanche wouldn’t be suspected of murder, even if they had a motive.”

The lighter popped out. Pap lit his crooked little cigarette. “Well, it fooled me.”

“It would have fooled me, too, except that when I first met him, Grady volunteered the information that Mike Wilson had apparently driven the Sno-Cat while Grady was in town. He was covering his tracks, or more specifically, the Sno-Cat’s tracks. Later I would discover that those tracks ran all the way to the end of the ridge above the lodge. I couldn’t think of any reason why anyone would run the grooming machine way out there, when no one skied out there.”

“So why did Wilson run it out there?”

“Would you mind rolling down your window, so your lethal-smelling smoke goes out your side, instead of into my lungs?

The old man cracked his window. “Satisfied?”

“Not really. Anyway, while I was looking at the 3-D map one time it occurred to me that someone like Mike could ski downhill all the way to Blight and then ski downhill all the way back. But Grady had to drive him out to the end of the ridge in the Sno-Cat. Otherwise it would take Mike too long to get into Blight and back. Then Grady had to bring the vehicle back to the lodge. Grady was covering up his part of the scheme, in case I started wondering about the track out to the end of the ridge.”

They came to the spot where Tully had rescued Lindsay and Marcus from the cabin. “Hard to believe the river was such a menace that night,” Pap said. “Anyhow, I’ve figured out how he got back. He rode the Blight Mountain ski lift to the top of the mountain. Then he was able to ski downhill all the way back to the West Branch side.”

“That’s right. The one weakness in the plan was they had to bring another person into it, to pick Mike up at the base of the mountain, haul him to Baker’s office, and then up to the ski lift before it shut down at one a.m. That was Bitsy.”

“Bitsy?”

“There were three calls from the West Branch Lodge to Countryman’s Feed Store. Why would anyone from a lodge be calling a feed store? It was because of Bitsy. Wilson made the three calls to make arrangements with Bitsy.”

“Shucks, I know Bitsy!” Pap said. “I must have bought five hundred pounds of chicken feed from her.”

“You don’t have any chickens.”

“What has that to do with anything?”

Tully shook his head. “It never stops, does it?

“Nope.”

“Anyway, I don’t think Bitsy had any idea Wilson intended to kill Baker, but she had to know afterward. She’s the one who can tie Wilson to the Baker murder.”

“And we have the gun that killed Baker,” Pap said.

“Yeah, and just as I thought, the gun turned out to be registered with Mike’s insurance company. He may have been a tough guy, but he had a soft spot for guns. He couldn’t bring himself to dump an original Colt Woodsman.”

“How did Bitsy get involved with these bad guys anyway?”

They came to the site of the avalanche. Tully pulled over and stopped. “I think Grady set her up. My theory is that he had been dating her for a month or two.”

“Bitsy wouldn’t date somebody like Grady!”

“You may not know it, Pap, but the pickings are pretty thin these days in the man department. She can tie Grady to the scheme and Mike, too. So I suspect Bitsy wasn’t long for this world either.”

Both of them got out and looked at the remains of the avalanche. Snow, rock, and trees had been cleared from the road and dumped over the edge at a place where the river curved out away from the mountain.

Tully said, “It was all the rock and trees in the avalanche that made me think this thing had been manufactured. I don’t know much about avalanches but my impression is they consist almost entirely of snow. Mike, Grady, and Lois had been planning this thing for quite a while. Mike had found some holes in a rock-slide up by the ridge and covered them up before the snow fell. Then he went back, uncovered them, and placed the ditching dynamite down in the rocks. When the dynamite went off, it ripped everything loose, snow, ice, rock, trees, everything. When it became clear the avalanche had been started by someone, I figured the main purpose was to kill us. My impression was that Blanche was the only person who knew when we would be coming along the road. Then I remembered that Lois had been sitting right next to her.”

“So Grady stopped the Sno-Cat up on the ridge, and he and Mike waited for us to come along. Mike set off the dynamite, and then Grady drove him out to the end of the ridge.”

“Yep. He could have used the night-vision glasses to make sure it was us.”

They got back in the Explorer. “So why did Grady kill Mike Wilson?” Pap asked.

“Greed,” Tully said. “Two million wasn’t enough for them. They decided to go for four. The three of them had conspired to kill Horace Baker for the key-man insurance. Then Mike probably mentioned he had key-man insurance, too. Lois decided four million dollars was better than two million. They would figure out later how to separate it from Blanche.”

“You don’t think Blanche was in on it then?” Pap said.

“No, even though she certainly had the motive. In any case, she would have been another victim before this thing was over. Lois probably had already separated her from a considerable sum. But even without the insurance money, I think Blanche has far more than she’ll ever need or want. That goes for DeWayne, too.”

“What! You think DeWayne is her lover?”

“Not her lover. Her son. He was born out of wedlock when she was a teenager. The father’s family took him and raised him.”

“Scraggs?”

“Yeah, some of the good Scraggs.”

“You think DeWayne knows?”

“Maybe not,” Tully said. “But I bet Blanche is taking him to the Caribbean with her. Probably intends to set him up with his own little beachfront bar. Sounds pretty good. I wish she was taking me.”

“Me, too!” Pap said. “So Lois put on Mike’s boots and made the tracks from the lodge to the river. And Grady picked her up in the jet boat.”

“I’m not so sure about that now.”

Pap stared at him. “You don’t think Grady picked up Lois in the boat?”

“Grady is stupid, all right, but I don’t think he’s that stupid. A person could get himself killed driving a boat up through those rapids.”

“That was my opinion. But the person making the tracks couldn’t get to the river and then float up into the air. Hey, here comes a sheriff’s vehicle.”

“It’s my CSI unit.”

Lurch pulled up alongside them and rolled down his window. “You got the murders all wrapped up, boss?”

“Pretty much, Lurch. Tomorrow the department will be back to normal.”

“I was afraid of that. So what is it you want me to check?”

“There’s a toboggan in the rental room of Grady’s shop. I think I detected some tiny spots of blood on it that should match Mike Wilson’s. I’m pretty sure Grady used that toboggan to haul Mike’s body to the river. He couldn’t have carried it.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, Cabin Three up on the mountain is where Wilson was hit over the head. There’s a stain where I think his nose hit the floor. See if you can get a big enough sample to have his DNA in it.”

“By the way, boss, the state crime lab picked up both Wilson’s and Grady’s DNA on the same piece of evidence the cleaning lady took out of the cabin. That should nail Grady for the murder.”

“Great! See you later, Lurch.”

The CSI unit drove on up the road.

“What evidence is that?” Pap said.

“Sunflower-seed shells.”

“Sunflower-seed shells?”

“While Grady was waiting at the cabin for Mike to return from murdering Baker, he calmed his nerves by chewing sunflower seeds and blowing out the shells. When Mike fell and broke his nose, he splattered some blood on the shells. So we’ve got both his and Mike’s DNA on the same shells.”

Pap shook his head. “Technology is taking all the fun out of crime.”

“It has done that,” Tully said. “So what do you think of my crime solving, Pap?”

“Fair to middling. That’s how I had it figured all along. You can’t do better than that.”