Death's Last Run (5 page)

WADE

Wade pushed the sealed white envelope marked with an N across his cheap metal desk. They were in Wade's cramped office at Avalanche — because where else would Wade be? He'd done nothing but work in the three and a half years since he'd opened this damn bar.

He had trouble releasing his hands when the envelope got to the other side. There was enough cash inside to put a big dent in Wade's problems.

These were his best friends in the world. Why couldn't he tell them the truth?

Stu Norris took the envelope. Wade watched him quiver as he slipped it into his inner jacket pocket. He wondered how Stu reconciled these envelopes with his position as police inspector — which in Whistler made him head cop in town. Was he torn between his friends and his job?

“How much is in here?” Norris asked.

“Eleven grand.”

Beside Norris, Chopper leaned back on two legs of his chair, twirling his blond dreads like he didn't have a care in the world. Wade watched them, side by side, such different men — they always had been — Norris small and nervous, Chopper big and bold. And Wade somewhere in the middle, on both counts.

“It's been a good week,” Chopper said. “These dudes in Seattle have been moving Mountain Snow like crazy. Keeping me up nights in my lab, but that's cool. I dig the midnight oil.”

“Shame,” Norris said, “that production has to stop.”

Wade frowned. He met Chopper's gaze, and Chopper looked confused, too. “What are you talking about?” they said virtually in tandem. Neither of them laughed, like they normally would, at the synchronicity.

“Richie didn't tell you?” Norris shook his little head back and forth. “He was supposed to tell you both. Piece of shit drug dealer.”

Chopper tumbled his chair forward so it was back on all four legs. “Relax, man. Richie's cool. Whatever this problem is, it can't be the end of the world.”

“You vouch for that?” Norris said.

“Are we back to that?” Chopper held his palms face-up in the air. “I brought Richie in over a year ago. He's been nothing but lucrative for us all.”

Norris wrinkled his mouth. “I don't like his attitude. Stomps into my office, tells me how to do my job. And I don't like how he looks at Zoe in her photographs.”

“Please. Richie's not a pedophile.”

“Not like that,” Norris said. “He eyes her up like . . . collateral.”

“You think he'd hurt her?” Wade asked. “I mean, if things got bad?”

“No!” Chopper shook his head vigorously, blond braids whipping back and forth. “Richie's good shit. And yes, I vouch for him. His bling is only skin deep.”

“You have an extra cigarette?” Norris asked Wade.

Wade pulled two cigarettes from his pack and passed one to Norris. His ashtray was overflowing, but he didn't feel like crossing the room to the garbage bin. “Shit, Stu. This must be bad. I haven't seen you smoke in years.”

Norris' small limbs trembled like he'd just had a quintuple espresso. He clutched at the cigarette and flicked Wade's lighter a few times before he got it. He took a deep draw in and exhaled before saying, “I have to get out of here. My family belongs in a city — not in this frivolous ski town.”

Chopper and Wade exchanged glances again.

“Frivolous?” Wade said.

“Zoe needs a real cello teacher, someone worthy of her talent. My wife needs an intellectual community. Do you know that her book club in Pemberton actually chose a murder mystery for last month's discussion? And I need . . .” Norris picked at his fraying cuff. “I don't know what I need. A new jacket, for starters.”

Wade took a sip of coffee, which he'd laced with cherry brandy to take the chill out of his bones. It was a cold winter, difficult to keep the office warm.

Chopper said, “What's really eating you, man? You're not deep-throating that cigarette because of cellos and literature.”

Norris cast his eyes around Wade's office like he didn't trust the Grateful Dead posters on the walls. “I hate my bosses.”

Wade was tempted to laugh but held back. “You sound like you did when we were seventeen. Remember the first time we wanted to hit the road with Avalanche Nights?”

“Of course I remember. My parents said no, as usual. Trying to keep me boxed into life as they knew it.” Wade watched Norris' fingers curl as he spoke, clenching like he wanted to form a fist. Odd that he was still so angry, twenty years after leaving home. Odd, too, that he couldn't bring himself to form that fist.

Wade turned his gaze to Chopper. “Do
you
remember? When we got to Stu's place, the truck loaded up with all our road gear, Stu came storming out of his house and said in
exactly
that voice he just used, ‘I hate my parents.'”

Chopper gave Wade a sideways smile. “How the hell do you remember that?”

“I remember that whole ten years,” Wade said, “from age sixteen to twenty-six, probably verbatim. God, I even loved the hangovers.”

“My wife calls those the lost years,” Norris said. “I tend to agree. You and Georgia should have a child. I guarantee you'll stop pining after ten years of musical failure.”

Wade wouldn't call it failure, exactly. The band had had some good reviews. They just couldn't make a living. “Did we really plan to be thirty-eight and still living within half an hour from the shit-hole where we grew up?”

“Would you guys stop trashing our home?” Chopper looked at both of them sternly. “Some people think this is the most beautiful place on Earth.”

Wade took a deep breath and said, “Richie suggested reviving the band, getting together for an event here in Avalanche.”

“Yeah.” Norris snorted. “He said that to me, too. What's in it for Richie?”

“Come on, Norris.” Chopper waved his hand in front of his face to move the cigarette smoke away. “Richie's on our side.”

“So was Sacha,” Norris said. “Until everything went so fucking wrong.”

They were all quiet. Sacha's death had messed them all up, in very separate ways.

Chopper said, maybe to deflect tension, “I like the band revival idea. I'm game for another night onstage.”

Norris shook his head and muttered, “Are you two done reminiscing? We have grown-up issues here, problems that live in the present.”

“So kill the suspense, Stu. Why the hell would we have to stop production of Mountain Snow?”

“Sacha Westlake's mommy,” Norris said through clenched teeth, “doesn't like my suicide verdict. She wants the
FBI
to come investigate. So instead of having my back, telling the Americans to stay at home because they trust their man in Whistler, the
RCMP
says sure, come play in our sandbox. Let's share the investigation.”

“Can't you just give them what they need?” Wade didn't see the big deal. “Show the dude your files, let him poke around town until he's satisfied?”

“No, because they won't give me a name. Their man is undercover, and apparently that means keeping me in the dark, too. Me — the head cop in town.”

Wade said, “You like the verdict, though, right? You think they'll come to the same conclusion.”

“I don't
like
that a young girl committed suicide on my slopes. But I think that's what happened. Don't you?”

Wade nodded. Took another large gulp. He wanted to add more brandy but he didn't want Norris and Chopper to see. Not that they were judgmental like Georgia, but still.

He drained his mug and pushed some papers aside so he could see the monthly calendar that was taped to his desk. He couldn't look at that page without remembering Sacha's round little ass squished onto it after — or occasionally during — a shift. He could almost imagine that he was holding Sacha's hands, whispering words that would get her excited. She was so easy to turn on, Wade could just —

“Are you looking at the calendar for something?” Norris asked.

Wade mentally shoved Sacha off the schedule and willed his mind to focus on the dates. Two weeks took them to the end of February, when he needed to pay his landlords forty-five thousand dollars in back rent — or close the bar.

“Avalanche has two weeks to survive if I can't put together forty-five grand by March first.”

Norris shot Wade a look of concern. “Things are that close to the wire?”

“Yup. Landlords gave me notice.”

“Isn't it busy season?”

“Slammed every night. Which means break-even, at the extortion rent I'm being charged. Only way I've been starting to turn a profit is through my new laundry services. I've saved about twenty of the forty-five. But it's not going to stay saved — payroll alone will eat a good chunk of that. And I can't exactly ask my staff to work for free.”

Norris frowned. “So if you can't survive without laundering, why not shut the doors?”

Wade wished he could answer that.

“Shit, man.” Norris opened the envelope from his pocket. He winced as he pulled out a couple of thousand and slid it across the desk to Wade. “Give it back when you can.”

“Thanks.” The two grand wasn't going to touch Wade's problem. “How does Zoe like her new cello?”

On most people,
ear to ear
was an expression. On Norris, because his head was so small, it was practically the literal truth. “Loves it. Man, she's going to be something.”

Chopper was tilting back on his chair again. “Look, Wade, I'd give you the money. I would. But I think you'd be better off without this place.”

Wade blinked hard. “Maybe. But I plan to do whatever I can to keep it.”

“Why?” Norris had a hard look in his eyes, but a kind one, like he was talking to a child and trying to make a firm point. “Because we played our first gig here?”

“I still have the old risers that formed the stage that night. I use them for karaoke.”

“You're living in the past,” Norris said. “Don't you know it's fucking dangerous there?”

“It's not all about the past. I've been writing some new songs . . .”

“Which you could play in a new bar,” Chopper said. “Owned by someone else. Is there a present-day reason why you can't close Avalanche?”

“Georgia. She makes me feel like a fuck-up. I know her parents think I am — when I nearly had to close a year and a half ago, they gave us a hundred grand of their retirement fund.” Which was why his wife had signing authority, but Wade wasn't about to admit that. “And then the envelopes started not long after, and I've been slowly digging myself out — paying off taxes, suppliers, credit card loans. Once I pay this last chunk to the landlords, I can devote the rest of my income to repaying my in-laws.”

“But if it's a money pit, should you maybe walk away?” Norris met Wade's eyes with sympathy, though he was clearly still on edge about the undercover. “Swallow your pride? Find another way to pay back your in-laws? Maybe something with a healthier lifestyle.”

Wade looked back and forth between his two friends. Chopper full of drugged-out Zen, Norris full of rules and regulations. It was rare for them to be giving the same advice. Still . . . “And another way to launder cash for you guys and Richie? You need this place as much as I do.”

“We'll figure something out,” Chopper said. “It's not worth killing yourself over.”

Wade tugged at his hair, felt the prick of a few hairs coming loose. Georgia had been telling him for weeks that he needed a cut but he'd been putting it off. He couldn't justify paying his Whistler stylist the hundred bucks she'd want, and neither could he bring himself to go back to that discount barber who made him look like a twelve-year-old redneck.

Wade's phone beeped with an appointment reminder. “That's my interview. A new waitress, I'm hoping.”

“She new to town?” Norris was quick with the question.

“I get it,” Wade said. “Everyone could be the
FBI
.”

Wade saw Norris and Chopper out and picked up the résumé on his desk. Lucy Lipton. Two years' waitressing experience in a café in Toronto. He couldn't call the reference because the café had closed down. Typical way to fudge experience — which was a point in her favor, because the
FBI
would no doubt arrange for an excellent list of fake references.

Wade heard a light knock. A thin brunette pushed the door open and smiled. “Are you Wade? I'm Lucy.”

“Have a seat. I've just pulled up your résumé.” Wade didn't know much, but he knew this girl was no
FBI
agent.

Still, Norris was right. It wasn't a chance he could afford to take.