Snowmen In Paradise (Book 2 Tj Jensen Paradise Lake Mysteries) (11 page)

“That’s the Summit Suite,” Will informed her.

“Travis Davidson’s room,” Tj remembered.

She
knocked on the door, but there wasn’t an answer.

“He’s probably still sleeping,” Will s
aid. “It
is
early.”

“Yeah
, probably.” Tj hesitated and then knocked again. When no one responded, she tried the handle, which easily gave way. “The door’s open.”

Tj stepped into the room
, followed closely by Will.

The suite contained a sitting area as well as a separate bedroom
. Tj noticed that the contents of the desk and dresser appeared to have been disturbed. The door to the bedroom was closed, but Tj spotted a drop of blood nearby. She knocked and waited. If Travis was passed out after a long night of partying, he was going to be mad as hell that Tj had awakened him at such an ungodly hour, but if he was injured, he might need their help.

Tj opened the door when he didn’t answer
. Someone was in the bed with the covers pulled up over his head.

“I’
d better check on him,” Will said. “Wait here.”

Tj waited by the door as Will pulled back the covers
. “You’d better call 911.”

Tj sat in the restaurant with a cup of coffee as she waited to find out when she’d be released to go. It had been over three hours and she was getting restless. She’d called the school and explained the situation, and Greg had assured her that he’d find a sub for her classes. Kyle had offered to give the kids she was planning to transport a ride out to Angel Mountain, but she really wanted to be cleared to go by the time the team arrived for practice.

“Sorry about the wait
.” Roy Fisher, one of the Paradise County deputies assigned to the Serenity office, sat down at the table across from her. “I need to take a statement and then you’ll be free to go.

“Where’s Dylan?”

“He’s busy talking to the medical examiner.”

Tj couldn’t help the look of disappointment that crossed her face.

“What now, your old buddy Roy isn’t good enough for you?” he teased. Roy had gone to Serenity High School before graduating and getting a job with the Paradise County Sheriff’s Department. Although he was a few years older than Tj, she’d always considered him a good friend.

“Sorry
.” Tj blushed. “You know I’m happy to answer any questions you have,” she said, trying for a lighter tone.

“Can you describe exactly what occurred this morning
?” Roy asked.

“Before or after I foun
d Travis’s body?” she asked.

“Both
, actually. Start with your arrival at Angel Mountain and work your way forward from there.”

Tj
replayed her arrival, her meeting with Will, and her journey through the grounds to the locker room. She described their discovery of what appeared to be a trail of blood, and her movement through the alley and into the lodge, and then Will’s discovery of Travis’s dead body in his bed.

“How long
had he been dead?” Tj wondered.

“We won’t know until the autopsy is
performed, but the medical examiner is estimating time of death to be somewhere between five and seven o’clock last night.”

Tj frowned
. The lifts were closed by then, but there were still quite a few people milling around at that point. Someone must have seen or heard something.

Roy continued
, “Did you see Travis while you were here yesterday?”

“Yeah
. He was in the bar, talking to a group of snowboarders.”

“And what time was that?”

Tj thought back. “I guess around four-thirty.”

“Did you speak to him?”

“No.” Tj hesitated. She trusted Roy, but she didn’t want to inadvertently bring Sarah and her involvement with Travis into the investigation if she didn’t need to. “Do you have any suspects?”

“Just one,” Roy
said.

“And who might that be?”

Roy hesitated
. “I really shouldn’t say.”

“Come on
, Roy. You know I won’t blab. Besides, you owe me for making me sit here for half of the morning.”

“I guess it couldn’t hurt
. I overheard Boggs mention a press conference later this afternoon anyway.”

“Boggs is here?”

“Yeah, he’s decided to handle the case personally.”

“Ah.”
Paradise County encompassed all of the towns and settlements around Paradise Lake. The main county offices, as well as the main jail, were located in the larger town of Indulgence, on the south shore. The sheriff’s office located in Serenity was a satellite operation with three deputy sheriffs, a receptionist, and a single holding cell. Sheriff Boggs worked out of the larger office in Indulgence and rarely bothered himself with incidents taking place on the north shore.

“I guess I’m not surprised
. The death of a high-profile athlete like Travis Davidson is bound to make the national news. So who’s the suspect?” Tj asked again.

“
Chelsea Hanson.”

“Chelsea?”
Tj was shocked.

“I’m afraid the evidence is stacking up against her,”
Roy admitted. “Boggs had someone pick her up over an hour ago.”

“She’s in jail?”

“’Fraid so. And it looks bad for her. Not only did several witnesses report that she’d argued with Travis yesterday afternoon, they found an ice ax with blood on it in the trunk of her car.”

Tj took a deep bre
ath. She remembered Chelsea coming into the bar and slapping Travis. It made sense that she’d want to get back at Travis for what he’d done to her, and Tj hadn’t been alarmed or surprised at the outburst. She remembered Chelsea leaving the bar and Travis following her. She’d been busy comforting Sarah and hadn’t given a second thought to what happened after that. She knew Chelsea had participated in a climbing demonstration that day, so it made sense that she had her ice ax in her possession. Still, murder? Slapping Travis seemed like a very Chelsea thing to do, but driving her ax into his chest? That seemed very unlikely.

“Chelsea couldn’t have done this,” Tj argued.

“I know that,” Roy admitted. “I’ve known her my whole life. She can be a prima donna at times, but she’s no killer. Still, it looks bad.”

“You aren’t going to keep her in jail
, are you?”

“If it were up to me
, I wouldn’t, but Boggs is in charge of the investigation, and he has a pretty tight rein on things. Tim,” Roy said, referring to one of the other deputies at the Serenity branch of the Paradise County Sheriff’s Department, “and I talked about it, and we doubt there’s going to be much we can do to sway the investigation. Boggs has made up his mind that he has his killer and his high-profile case is all wrapped up. It seems like he couldn’t be more pleased that Chelsea appears to be guilty. Talk about publicity. Imagine the headline: Heiress kills national snowboarding champion. It’s golden.”

“Even Boggs wouldn’t arrest someone for publicity,” Tj pointed out.

“If he had enough cause, you bet he would.”

”Have you ev
en considered other suspects?” Tj asked.

“Tim tried to talk to Boggs about other potential suspects
, but he was pretty much shut down. Part of the problem we’re having is that Chelsea admits to being present when Travis was stabbed but refuses to say who did it.”

“What
? Why would she do that?”

Roy shrugged
. “I guess she’s protecting someone. Tim and I were hoping you might nose around a bit and see what you can turn up.”

“Why me
? You’re the cop.”

“
True, but you’re the one who solved the Zachary Collins murder. You’ve proved that you have good instincts when it comes to tracking down clues and uncovering the truth. Boggs has us jumping through hoops.
His
hoops. We’re under quite a bit of scrutiny, but you aren’t. If you snoop around, Boggs doesn’t ever need to know.”

“What does Dylan say?”
Tj wondered.

“I haven’t been able to discuss the matter with him,” Roy admitted
. “As lead deputy of the Serenity office, he’s been tied up, talking to Boggs and the medical examiner.”

“Okay, then what do you
think
he’d say about my poking around in a police matter?”

“He’d tell you to stay out of it
. He wouldn’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want you to get hurt either, but if I know Boggs, he’s not going to go out of his way to prove Chelsea’s innocence.”

Tj glanced out
of the window. It was starting to snow. Her team would be here in a little over two hours. She wouldn’t have time to look into anything then, let alone a murder, but maybe after she was done for the day?

“Okay, tell me what
you know. I’m not sure what I can do, but I’m willing to listen to what you have to say and take it from there.”

Roy sighed in relief
. “Tim and I interviewed the Angel Mountain staff. Several of them reported that Travis was in the bar having a drink when Chelsea came in. She argued with him, slapped him, and then stormed out.”

That tracked with what Tj had observed the previous day.

“Travis followed her out of the bar. We have at least one witness who said Chelsea headed for the locker room after she left the bar, and she admitted to as much. She told Boggs she intended to get her belongings and go home. Travis came in while she was gathering her stuff and they continued the argument they’d had in the bar.”

Tj cringed
. She could see why Boggs had picked her up.

“And then?”

“She said that while they were arguing, someone came in, picked up her ax, which was sitting near her locker, and stabbed Travis with it. As I mentioned before, she won’t say who. All she’ll say is that after Travis was stabbed, he started yelling and cussing. She was afraid he was going to become violent before he passed out on the floor. Chelsea figured he was drunk. She said she checked for a pulse, which was strong. After that she checked the stab wound, which was barely more than a scratch. She’s insisting the wound couldn’t have killed him. She was trying to decide what to do when she heard someone come in the front door. She knew how it looked, so she grabbed her stuff and left through the bathroom window.”

“Do we know who came in?”

“We don’t.”

“Let me get this straight,” Tj
said, trying to wrap her head around the whole thing. “Chelsea and Travis are arguing and a third party she refuses to identify comes in and stabs Travis. He passes out, but, according to Chelsea, isn’t seriously wounded. Someone comes in, at which point she leaves. There’s a trail of blood from the locker room to the Inn, so we have to assume that someone used the wheelchair to move him. That someone has to be Angel Mountain staff because the alarm on the emergency exit was deactivated and the freight elevator, which requires a code, was accessed.”

“Sounds about right.”

“Can I talk to Chelsea?”

“
’Fraid not. Boggs isn’t allowing any visitors.”

Later that afternoon, Tj was focusing all her attention on her team. She’d told Roy she’d do what she could to help free Chelsea, but she knew if she was going to ask her kids to give 100 percent, she needed to give them the same. “Okay, Gary, it’s up to you. You need a time of 2:26:06. I need you to stay low and watch your edges.”

“I got this
, Coach.”

“I know you do.”
Tj slapped him on the back.

Poor Gary
. Normally, Eric would be making this particular run, but neither Eric nor Sarah had shown up today, so Gary had been recruited to fill in at the last minute. Tj wasn’t surprised Sarah hadn’t bothered to honor her commitment to the team. She’d shared a brief but intense relationship with Travis and was most likely devastated at the news of his death. But Eric? Eric couldn’t care less about Travis. Tj figured he’d be in seventh heaven and ready to roll.

“The snow on the left side of the track looks iffy once you reach the halfway point,” Tj informed him
. “I need you to stay toward the center of the run. Stay focused and you’ll do great.”

Gary pulled
on his goggles. “See you at the bottom.”

Giving him one last thumb
’s-up, Tj said a silent prayer as he made his way to the starting gate. Coaching, she’d realized some time ago, was one-quarter skill building and three-quarters cheerleading and confidence building. If her kids believed they could win, then more often than not they did. If they let the competition cower them, they usually lost.

Rob’s was
a comfy pizza joint with vinyl booths, red-checkered tablecloths, team pictures on the walls, video games, and the best pizza west of the Rockies. As it was on any given day, the place was packed with friends and neighbors sharing a cheesy pie and a pitcher of beer. Tj waved to several people before sliding into a booth in the corner. Just off the beaten path, the restaurant catered to locals rather than tourists, as the establishments on the main drag were known to.