Wired (4 page)

“This isn't as exciting as I thought it might be,” Chet said.

Budgie had driven to the nearest gas station and pulled up at a self-serve pump.

“Who said anything about excitement? All I promised you was a ski lesson. Don't pull in, keep driving.”

So Chet drove past, with the man in the white Ford still following us.

“How about a U-turn?” I said to Chet.

“That's illegal.”

“You wanted excitement. Take it where you can.”

“Hah, hah,” he said dryly. But made the illegal U-turn anyway. That, at least, made it impossible for the man in the white Ford to stay with us.

Now we were driving back toward the gas station. I thought it would be obvious if we kept circling in the Jeep, so as we neared the gas station, I pointed to the parking lot of a burger place across the street.

“Now you're talking,” Chet said, making the turn. “I never say no to food.”

“Not today,” I said. “Maybe just park behind that truck over there.”

“No burgers?”

“Ski lesson number one,” I answered as Chet parked behind the truck. “Eat less. Exercise more.”

We were hidden from Budgie. I jumped out of the Jeep and peeked around the truck to watch him. He was still pumping gas.

A red Lincoln Navigator pulled up behind Budgie's van, as if the driver was waiting to put gas in too. Except the driver stepped out and, without saying a word, opened the rear door of Budgie's van. Another man got out of the passenger side of the Navigator and stepped to the rear of Budgie's van too.

It didn't look like Budgie had noticed.

The driver was a big man, shaved bald and wearing wraparound sunglasses. His friend was even bigger and had a buzz cut and a goatee. Both of them reached into Budgie's van, pulled out the stolen ski gear and put it into the back of the red Navigator.

I'm not the smartest, but it was obvious to me what was happening. Who would believe me though? It would be my word against theirs.

Unless...

Cell phone!

Goatee Guy handed Budgie an envelope. Budgie opened it and pulled out some money. In an instant, Goatee Guy reached out and grabbed the envelope. He shoved it down the front of Budgie's coat.

I couldn't hear what Goatee Guy was saying. But I could imagine. If that was a payoff for stolen equipment, then Budgie wasn't too smart to pull out the money.

Goatee Guy and his friend moved back to the Navigator. Without a word to Budgie, they drove off.

I jumped back into the Jeep.

“Time to go,” I said to Chet. “Another U-turn. Now we're following a Navigator.”

“Let me guess,” Chet said. “You have no idea why.”

“Ski lesson number two: Don't irritate the instructor.”

“These lessons don't sound like fun,” he said, pulling a quick U-turn.

“Ski lesson number three,” I said. “Girls think good skiers are cool.”

We caught up to the Navigator.

I took my cell phone out of the inside pocket of my ski jacket. As we got close to the Navigator, I held up my cell phone as if I were making a phone call and used
the camera feature to take a photo of the Navigator's license plate.

At the next traffic light, we pulled up beside the Navigator. With my cell phone at my ear, as if I were in conversation with someone, I snapped a photo, hoping I would get a good shot of the passenger.

“Let's head back to the hill,” I said.

“That's it?” he said.

“That's it. We'll get together next Monday for a lesson.”

He noticed the cell phone in my hand. “Let me give you my cell phone number,” he said. “I'm going to watch you put it in your cell and save it. That way you won't have an excuse not to call.”

I entered his number and saved it. Then I checked the images on my phone.

Good.

I had a clear shot of the license plate. And not a perfect shot of the passenger, but good enough to make out his features. And a few photos of Goatee Guy handing the envelope to Budgie. Distant shots, but probably good enough.

I didn't know if the photos would be useful, but I knew I had just seen some- thing important.

Chet stopped at the lodge so that I wouldn't have to walk across the parking lot in my ski boots. We set up a time for his ski lesson. Then I jumped out and he drove away.

At the ski hill my skis were where I had left them. For a few minutes I stood in the bright sunshine beside my own skis. The mountain-side and the green of the spruce trees were above. Skiers laughed and shouted all around me like they didn't have worries.

But I did.

After a few minutes of standing and doing nothing but thinking, I realized something. Cassie had been the first person down the hill after I had nearly hit the wire. She knew the snowboarder with the blue hat. She had stolen snowboards with him.

If they were such good friends, maybe it wasn't an accident that she showed up after I had fallen. Maybe she was looking to see if the wire had hurt me.

I wanted to smack my head. It didn't make sense. If she knew about the wire, then why did she run into it herself? If she was part of it, she would have known the wire would be there.

I stood in the sunshine a few more minutes.

I thought of something. Two weeks ago, after Garth hit the wire, our coach had found him knocked out. Our coach had not seen the wire himself. Someone must have taken the wire away before he got there. That meant that someone had been waiting beside the wire, ready to untie it, probably with pliers, right after Garth fell.

And if that was true for Garth's accident, then someone must have been waiting beside the wire during my run too. That someone was probably Sid. But because I ducked in time and then went back up the hill, Sid had to jump on his snowboard and get away instead of untying the wire.

All of this would explain Cassie. If she were part of this, she would also think that Sid had pulled down the wire right away. That would explain why the wire surprised her!

I spent a few more minutes in the sunshine thinking about Cassie. I remembered that I had asked Cassie if she was a tourist here on vacation. I remembered that she had not answered my question. I remembered that she had told me her name instead. Did that mean she didn't want me to know why she was at Big Bear?

I thought of the way she spoke, like she was from New York. If she was a tourist, she was probably staying at the resort hotel right here on the slopes.

I had an idea.

I walked toward the front desk of the Big Bear Hotel. My ski boots clunked on the floor. That didn't matter. A lot of people wore their ski boots inside the hotel.

I stopped beneath a stuffed moose head above the front desk. I looked across the desk at a short guy with red hair and lots of freckles.

“Nathan,” I said to him with a grin. “Do you remember the day I fixed the bindings on your skis?”

“Sure do,” Nathan said. “I still owe you a big favor for that.”

“How about now?” I said. “Can you see if someone named Cassie Holt is staying here?”

Nathan frowned. “We're not allowed to give out room numbers to anyone.”

“I'm not asking for her room number,” I said. “I just want to know if she is staying here.”

He kept frowning.

“Nathan,” I said, “if someone called the hotel and asked to speak with Cassie Holt, what would you do?”

“I would look her up on the computer and put the call through to her room.”

“What if she wasn't staying here?” I asked.

“Then I would tell that person she wasn't at the hotel.”

I grinned. “Should I go make that phone call? Or can you tell me right now?”

He grinned back. “I'll look it up.”

He typed some letters into his computer keyboard and checked the computer screen.

“Nope,” he said. “No Cassie Holt.”

“Nuts,” I said.

“Hold on,” he told me. “There is a John Holt. He has two rooms booked. Do you think one of the rooms is for her?”

“Maybe he is her dad,” I said. “Where are they from?”

“Come on, Keegan,” he said. “This information is supposed to be private.”

I kept grinning. “Remember how you wouldn't have been able to ski with that cute girl all day? But I fixed your bindings right away, didn't I?”

Nathan looked both directions. He leaned forward and whispered. “They are from Long Island, New York. They got here four days ago and they will be checking out a week after Christmas.”

He squinted at the screen. “It says they have a Ford Taurus.”

Nathan misunderstood my strange look.

“Hey,” he said. “We ask for that information in case a car is hit or the lights are on and we need to contact the guest.”

“I don't suppose it was white, was it?”

“ Yeah,” he said. “How did you know?”

“Just a guess,” I said. “Thanks. Now I owe you.”

Nathan looked at something else on the screen. “This is strange,” he whispered.

“What?” I said. “What's strange?”

“It says here that the two rooms have been comped.”

“Comped?”

“Yes, comped. It means the rooms are free. So are meals and ski tickets. They don't have to pay a thing for their whole visit here.”

“What's strange about that? Doesn't the resort give out free ski weekends all the time?” I asked. “I always hear about them on the radio.”

“Usually there is a message on the computer that tells the staff why the room is comped. If it's someone important, we need to know,” said Nathan.

“What reason do they give for this one?”

Nathan looked at me. “That's the thing. There is no reason,” he said. “And I've never seen something like this before. What do you know about this girl?”

“Not enough,” I told Nathan. “Not nearly enough.”

I wanted to know more about Cassie Holt. So I went to the ski shop to rent a snow-board.

“You?” the guy behind the counter asked. The guy's name was Bubba. He knew me because sometimes I teach skiing to people who rent skis from him. He was short and wide with a beard. “Keegan Bishop? Champion downhill racer? On a snowboard?”

“Sure,” I said. “Why not?'

“Are you goofy?”

“Hey,” I said. “You don't have to call me names.”

He chuckled. “In snowboarding, if you ride with your left foot forward, you're called a regular. If you ride with your right foot forward, you're called a goofy.”

“I don't know if I'm goofy or not,” I said, feeling goofy just saying it.

“Try this,” he said. He put a snowboard on the carpet. “The bindings are set up for a goofy.”

I put my feet into the bindings. I imagined myself on a ski hill.

“It feels, um, goofy,” I said.

“That's why they call it that,” he told me. “Most people are regulars.”

He pulled out a different snowboard. “Take the three-day rental, Keegan. It saves you money. The first day will be weird. But don't quit. Once you get used to it, you'll like it.” I paid him for three days.

“Yup,” he said. “Before you know it, you'll be riding fakie and hitting ollies.”

“Huh? Did you just start speaking French or something?”

“You'll be riding backward, jumping bumps and riding the tail of your snowboard.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Maybe instead of learning how to snowboard, I'll just learn how to talk like a snowboarder.”

“Just enjoy the surfing out there,” he said.

“I will.”

“Oh, by the way,” he said as I got ready to leave. “Keep a good eye on your snowboard. It's worth four hundred dollars.”

“I won't lose it,” I said.

“I'm not worried about you losing it,” he told me. “I'm worried about it getting stolen.”

“Stolen?”

“Yes,” he said. “Stolen. It's been bad this year. From what I'm hearing, every week here at Big Bear thousands of dollars of ski equipment has been stolen.”

He whistled. “Add that up. Even if you sold the stolen equipment for half price, that's a lot of money by the end of the season.”

I thought of Cassie and Sid walking away with two snowboards. That added up to eight hundred dollars. And it only took them five minutes.

“Boy,” I said, “thousands of dollars every week. Isn't it time somebody did something about it?”

I wanted to reach the Pipeline run so that I could see Cassie. I thought she would probably be there with the other snowboarders. I was going to ask her to give me some snowboard lessons. I thought that would be a good way to get to know more about her. And to ask a question or two.

To get to the Pipeline, I first needed to ride the chairlift to the top of the mountain and then take a small run that met up with the Pipeline.

As I got off the chairlift at the top, I fell. It was the first time I had fallen getting off the chairlift since I was eleven years old.

It did not get easier. I fell down so many times that I wished I had bought a butt pad to protect myself.

Little kids on snowboards passed me. Old people on snowboards passed me.

Every time I got up, I wobbled a bit and then fell. At the speed I was going, I wasn't going to reach the Pipeline run until after Christmas.

Then, slowly, I began to catch on. Because I had skied so much already, I knew a little. As I cut across the side of a hill, I learned to dig the uphill edge of my snowboard into the snow to slow down or stop. I learned to turn by skidding one board edge or the other.

I also learned to sink into my turns by bending at the knees and to rise out of my turns by standing again. It helped when I kept my arms level with the slope of the hill.

I decided not to go to the Pipeline right away. Instead I used other runs to practice as I went to the bottom of the mountain.