Snowbound Suspicion

by Cindi Myers

  Carl grinned, showing a broken incisor. “Bette is an old friend,” he said. “A real nice girl. When you see her, you tell her I said hello.” He pushed past Cody and out the door. Cody started to follow, but Travis held him back.

  “I just want to get a look at his car,” Cody said.

  “Dwight is taking care of that,” Travis said. “He’s going to follow him and see where he’s staying.”

  Of course Travis would have thought of that. Cody sat on the bar stool again.

  Travis’s phone rang. He answered it, turning slightly away from Cody and speaking low. Then he pocketed the phone and looked around the room. “Gage!”

  Every head in the room swiveled toward the sheriff. There was no mistaking the urgency in his voice. Gage came over. “What’s up?” he asked.

  Travis voice was rough with strain. “There’s been another woman killed,” he said. “They found her in her car near the high school.”

  * * *

  “TO LACY!” MAYA held a glass of champagne aloft in a toast. “A wonderful friend who is going to be a beautiful bride, my future sister-in-law and a woman who knows how to throw a great party!”

  “To Lacy!” the others echoed.

  “Speech! Speech!” someone called.

  Cheeks flushed with happiness—and maybe a little from the champagne—Lacy stood. “Thank you all so much for coming tonight,” she said. “It’s been so special for me to get to spend this time with all my favorite women in the world.” She spread her arms wide, as if to give them all a hug, and they clapped.

  Lacy gestured to the one vacant place at the tables. “I’m so sorry Paige wasn’t able to be here. Everyone keep your fingers crossed that the highway opens again before the wedding.”

  “I ate her share of the refreshments,” Emily said, to more laughter.

  “Wasn’t the food fantastic?” Lacy said. She held up her champagne glass. “I want to propose a toast to my friend Bette, who made this scrumptious feast.”

  “Thanks to Rainey, too,” Bette said. “She helped a lot with the cupcakes.” Together, Rainey and Bette had baked carrot cake and devil’s food cupcakes, decorated with cream cheese or buttercream frosting, and decorated with hand-piped snowflakes.

  “And now I have something else for you all,” Lacy said. She beckoned to Bette, who came forward and began handing out little white boxes tied with silver ribbon. “These are just little thank-yous to all of you for being in my wedding. I appreciate each of you so much.”

  A beaming Casey held aloft the little crystal snowflake on a silver chain that Lacy had chosen for her.

  The other women oohed and aahed over the jewelry they received while Bette rearranged the refreshment table, consolidating the food so it looked less picked-over, and removing empty trays and platters. There wasn’t that much left, a sign that the women had enjoyed everything. Fortunately, the petit fours were the only casualty of Doug’s tampering.

  “Bette, come up here,” Lacy said.

  Bette turned, surprised. Lacy had retrieved a white gift bag from somewhere. “I have something for you, too,” she said. “You didn’t think I’d leave you out, did you?”

  Feeling a little self-conscious, Bette walked over and accepted the gift bag. “Open it!” Emily called.

  The bag contained a large box wrapped in silver paper. Bette lifted the lid of the box and gasped. “Lacy!” She lifted out a pristine chef’s smock, her name in dark blue lettering on the left breast pocket. Beneath this was a pair of checked chef’s pants. Tears stung Bette’s eyes as she stroked the fabric.

  “I remembered you saying how one day you wanted a real chef’s outfit,” Lacy said.

  Yes, Bette had said that. But these items, the cut and quality of them, had been out of Bette’s reach when she had so many other expenses associated with starting her catering business. “They’re beautiful,” she said.

  The friends hugged, then retreated to the kitchen with the boxes. “That’s a really nice gift,” Rainey said, admiring the chef’s coat. “You’ll look real professional in them.” She nodded toward the party. “Travis found himself a really nice young woman. I wasn’t too sure at first, but then it goes to show I can be inclined to misjudge.”

  “I think we all do that,” Bette said. She had misjudged Rainey, mistaking her insecurity for animosity and her concern for her son as involvement in his wrongdoing.

  “Doug still hasn’t come home,” Rainey said. “It’s not like him to be away so long. I guess he knows he’s in big trouble over those petit fours.”

  “I had to tell Lacy what happened,” Bette said. “And I’m sure she’ll tell Travis. It’s up to them what happens next.”

  Rainey nodded. “I wanted him here because I wanted to keep him out of trouble,” she said. “I thought away from the city, he’d have less temptation. And this would be a good job to have on his résumé. I guess you know how it is—when you have a blot on your record, people never want to look past it. They don’t even give you a chance.”

  “I know.” Lacy had given Bette a chance—her wedding planner had already talked to Bette about catering another wedding for a client in Denver, and with a few more jobs like that, and good references, she would be on her way.

  “The problem is, a young man who’s used to the city life gets bored here in the country,” Rainey continued. “There’s not enough for him to do. And it’s always been hard for Doug to make friends. He told me recently he ran into someone he knew from Denver, who was visiting Eagle Mountain, and that seemed to cheer him up. But I worry, you know? Maybe if his father had stayed around to be a good influence on him he would have had an easier time of it. Or if I’d stayed in Denver to keep a closer eye on him, but as soon as he was out of school, he was anxious to be out on his own, and the opportunity came to take this job with the Walkers—I didn’t feel I could pass it up. They’ve been so good to me—I hope they don’t blame me for what he’s done.”

  “I’m sure they won’t.” Bette squeezed the older woman’s arm. “I’ll make sure they know you didn’t have any part in this,” she said.

  Rainey sniffed and turned away. “They’re still talking and eating in there,” she said. “You have time to put your gift in your cabin. You don’t want those nice things getting dirty. And really, I can handle cleaning up after them myself. I’ll box up the leftovers and we can deal with the rest in the morning.”

  “Thanks. But I shouldn’t be gone long.” Bette grabbed her coat from the pegs by the back door and stepped outside. The moon was almost full and provided plenty of light for the walk to her cabin. The old snow crunched underfoot, but new flakes were beginning to fall, like a sifting of powdered sugar over an already-iced cake.

  She reached the cabin and shifted the box to one arm so she could dig out her key. The new one the Walkers had given her when they changed the locks was attached to a key chain with a rabbit’s foot—maybe they hoped this key would be luckier for her than the last one. She grabbed hold of the key chain and started to pull it out when a strong arm wrapped around her neck and dragged her back. She dropped the bag that contained the chef’s outfit, the contents spilling across the welcome mat in front of her door. She tried to shout, but the arm around her neck tightened. “Hello again, Bette,” a familiar voice growled in her ear. “Or should I say, goodbye.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Anita Allbritton was a short, plump woman of about forty, with strawberry blond hair and round, tortoise-shell glasses. She taught business technology and computer science at the high school, and worked summers at the local Humane Society thrift store. She drove a burnt-orange Toyota Yaris, and was discovered in the front seat of this vehicle in the high school parking lot by a parent who was picking up his son from a sleepover.

  “I recognized Anita’s car and thought it was odd it was parked way out on the edge of the lot like that,” the very agitated man tol
d Travis and Cody, who had insisted on coming with the sheriff to the scene. “I stopped to see if there was any kind of note or obvious sign of trouble.” He swallowed, struggling for composure. “I couldn’t believe when I looked inside and saw...saw...” He shook his head, unable to go on.

  What he had seen was Anita Allbritton laid across the front seat of her vehicle, her throat cut and her wrists and ankles bound with duct tape. Travis had found the Ice Cold Killer’s card in the ashtray of the car, and a bloodstain beside a dumpster behind the school that he thought indicated the kill site. The car itself was clean of evidence.

  “It almost looks like it was just vacuumed,” Gage said, studying the vehicle’s gray carpeting. “Do you think he did that—took the time to vacuum it out?”

  “Maybe.” Travis looked around the lot. “There are no lights this far out. No games or other activities tonight. Not a lot of traffic on the road. The killer may have felt he could take his time, be more careful. It was just chance that the parents decided to meet here to pick up the kids from that birthday sleepover. Just chance that the dad drove over to take a look.”

  “You don’t think he’s the killer?” Gage asked.

  Travis shook his head. “He had his two children in the car with him. We’ll confirm the time he left his house with his wife, but I’m pretty sure it will check out.” The man had been devastated by the discovery, and had vomited on the edge of the parking lot. Fortunately, by the time Travis questioned him, he had pulled himself together and was anxious to get his children away from there.

  Deputy Jamie Douglass, an attractive young woman with long dark hair worn in a bun beneath the regulation Stetson, joined them. “I talked with the Delaneys,” she said. “They’re the parents who met Mr. Karnack here to drop off his son, Colin. They didn’t even notice the car parked over here. They live on the other side of town. They chose the high school as a good place to meet because it’s halfway between the two homes.”

  Travis surveyed the area. The school was flanked on three sides by empty pasture. Across the street the school district’s bus barn and maintenance sheds were deserted. “There’s a neighborhood behind the bus barn,” Travis said. “Start knocking on doors over there. Maybe someone was driving by here and saw something.”

  “Yes, sir.” Jamie shoved her hands into the pockets of her Sherpa-lined leather jacket. “I’m sorry I had to break up your bachelor party with something like this,” she said.

  “You weren’t interrupting anything,” Travis said. “Whenever I’m not working on this case, I’m thinking about it—and dreading the next call about a dead woman.” He looked at the Yaris. “It was only a matter of time. We aren’t even managing to slow him down.”

  “Maybe we’ll catch a break this time and someone saw something,” Jamie said. “I’ll get right on it.”

  “What can I do to help?” Cody asked, when she was gone.

  “Go back to the ranch,” Travis said. “Tell the women at Lacy’s party to spend the night there. We have plenty of room. I don’t want any of them out driving around tonight. And I’ll feel a lot better if there’s at least one cop there with them.”

  “Of course.” Cody hesitated, then said, “Don’t let this eat at you. You’re doing everything you can to catch this guy—he’s just not giving you anything to work with.”

  Travis studied the toes of his boots. “They tell you in the academy not to take the job personally. Maybe that works in the city, but in a small town like Eagle Mountain, everything is personal. I knew almost every one of these victims—some better than others, but they’re all my responsibility. I wasn’t just hired by the town—the citizens of this county elected me to do a job. There’s no way to do that job except by taking it personally.”

  “It’s why you’re good at it,” Cody said.

  Travis swore—something Cody had never heard him do. “I’m not good at it right now,” he said. “If I was, I would have caught this guy—or guys—by now.”

  There was no sense arguing about it, Cody thought. In Travis’s position, he would feel the same way. Though he could have told Travis that sense of responsibility wasn’t limited to small-town cops. As much as Cody had tried to deny it in the weeks since it had happened, he felt responsible for the man who had killed himself in front of him. The man might be the worst kind of criminal—one who preyed on young children. But Cody’s job had been to bring him to justice. When the guy pulled the trigger on that gun, he had cheated his victims and their families of that justice. He had prevented Cody from doing his job.

  The drive to the ranch on the narrow mountain road seemed to take forever. Snow was falling again, and the cold seeped through Cody’s clothes and the layer of bandages to his wound, until he felt like a giant was gripping him with strong fingers and squeezing, hard. The pain pill he had taken before the party had long since worn off. All he could do was grit his teeth and clench the steering wheel with one hand and keep pushing forward.

  At the ranch, the women were gathered in the living room, donning coats and exchanging hugs. They stopped talking when Cody walked in and turned to look at him. “Cody, you’re white as a sheet,” Mrs. Walker exclaimed. “Come sit down before you fall down.”

  He shook his head. “Ladies, I have some news,” he said. He looked for Bette in the crowd but didn’t find her. She was probably in the kitchen, cleaning up after the party. “I’m afraid there’s been another murder, a teacher from the school.”

  “Who?” It was Maya who spoke. She pushed her way to the front of the group. “Cody, please tell me,” she said. “You’re talking about one of my coworkers.”

  “Anita Allbritton.” He looked at them sternly. “That information doesn’t leave this room. The sheriff hasn’t had time to notify her family.”

  “Poor Anita,” Maya moaned. “How horrible.”

  “Travis wants you all to stay here tonight,” he said. “We’d feel better if you weren’t out on the roads tonight.”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Walker said. “We have plenty of room.”

  “It’ll be like a slumber party,” Lacy said. “We’ll find night things for you to wear—and we still have a couple of bottles of champagne and more food.”

  They moved away from the door, removing coats and talking all at once about this latest turn of events. A group clustered about Maya, asking about Anita, while Emily and Brenda conferred with Lacy and Mrs. Walker about sleeping arrangements. Cody interrupted them. “Where’s Bette?” he asked.

  “In the kitchen, probably,” Lacy said. She smiled. “The party turned out so wonderful. It was a real triumph.”

  “I’ll let her know what’s going on,” he said and made his way to the kitchen.

  Rainey was alone in the room, arranging leftover sandwiches in plastic storage containers. She looked up at his arrival. “Hello,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Is Bette here?” he asked.

  “No, she isn’t. She left a little while ago to put something away in her cabin and she hasn’t come back yet. I told her I didn’t mind cleaning up after the party and I guess she decided to take me up on the offer.”

  “That doesn’t sound like her, leaving you to do the work,” Cody said.

  “Well, no, it doesn’t. But maybe she was tired. She worked really hard today.” She yawned. “So did I.”

  “I’ll stop by her cabin and check on her,” Cody said. He moved past her to the back door, quickening his pace as he stepped into the snow. He told himself the latest murder had raised his anxiety level, but he couldn’t shake the sense that something was really wrong. By the time he could see the row of cabins ahead, he had broken into a painful jog, every movement jarring his injured shoulder.

  The scene didn’t look right. Something was scattered across the porch of Bette’s cabin. He bounded up the steps and stared at the gift bag, a box wrapped in torn silver paper, and what loo
ked like a top and a pair of pants spilling across the doormat. A gift? But what was it doing here?

  He stepped over the items and pounded on the door. “Bette! Bette, it’s me, Cody!”

  He pressed his ear to the door but heard nothing inside. He tried the knob, but the door was locked—and Bette was the only one with a key to the new lock.

  He forced himself to step back, to slow down and examine the scene objectively—to think like the cop he was. He studied the items strewn across the doormat. They hadn’t been placed—they had been dropped. Bette had been standing here in front of the door, maybe searching for her key, and something had made her drop the package. Surprise? Fear?

  He retraced his path to the steps and studied the snow illuminated in the moonlight. The snow here was churned up, then dug into grooves. A struggle, then someone being dragged backward, the person’s heels digging in. Heart pounding, he followed the marks until they stopped, beside the track from a vehicle.

  He squatted down and studied the impressions, still fairly clear despite a light dusting of snow. Deep tread on wide tires. But not car or truck tires. They were too close together. They were tractor tires—or no, tires of one of the utility vehicles used around the ranch for everything from hauling hay to plowing snow to herding cattle.

  That meant that whoever took Bette was probably still on the ranch. Cody pulled out his phone and called Travis. “I’m here at the ranch and Bette is missing,” he told the sheriff. “Looks like someone grabbed her on the front porch of her cabin. I found the tracks of what looks like a utility vehicle. I’m going to follow them.”

  “Wait for me,” Travis said. “I can be there in thirty minutes.”

  “I don’t have time to wait,” Cody said. “The snow is covering the tracks fast.” And he didn’t know what whoever took her planned to do with Bette. He might already be too late. “Where is Carl? Is Dwight still with him?”