Paws of the Yeti

by steve higgs

  Big Ben powered the machine down the slope toward our friends and the police chief. They were waiting for us at a confluence of ski runs, off to one side and out of the way as skiers raced down the hill. As we neared them, Francois indicated to the sky in an urgent manner and then down the slope as he took off in his Ski-Doo with Hilary and Jagjit on his tail.

  It was time to get inside.

  Disappointment and Dachshunds. Wednesday, November 30th 1615hrs

  We had made it back to the hotel as the winds were really picking up and the sun had appeared to set prematurely, the thick black clouds blocking it out almost entirely. All around the buildings of the resort, shutters were being closed over windows as they prepared for a battering. Snow was coming in thick, stinging lumps that felt more like hailstones, but none of us hung around to examine them. We rode the Ski-Doos into the underground parking garage we had collected them from just as men working there were closing the roller-shutter door.

  Looking about and out into the storm, one of the men asked, ‘Where are the other two?’

  I guessed that he meant the Ski-Doos when I answered. ‘Had to leave them behind. We’ll go back for them when the storm passes.’

  He flapped his lips a few times, trying to form an answer and looked ready to send us back out to get them when Francois took his hand and shook it, leaning in to whisper something quietly in the man’s ear. The man’s face registered shock as his eyes bugged out: Francois had told him about the Yeti.

  I didn’t want word to spread because I knew it would cause panic. There had been sightings of something that could be dismissed until this point. With the attack and death just a couple of days ago and now the police chief claiming to have seen it himself, widespread panic was likely. Had there not been a storm, the news would likely cause the resort to empty, but then I expected the cable car couldn’t operate in these conditions and would be grounded so no one could get out until it passed.

  Oh!

  If no one could get out then no one could get in, which meant Amanda wouldn’t get in. I checked my watch. She would have landed by now and be on a train probably. I needed to call her, but there was no signal in the underground carpark.

  Now that we were all off the Ski Doos, we were all sort of looking at each other, each waiting for someone else to speak. It was Francois that broke the silence. ‘Still willing to challenge the Yeti legend?’ he asked. The question was directed at me and I was having a hard time finding an answer.

  My immediate reaction was to reject the concept, but then what had just chased and threatened to kill me? Whatever it was, it wasn’t a man in a costume. But a Yeti? The idea was ridiculous.

  ‘It sure looked like a Yeti to me,’ said Hilary. A sentiment that was echoed by Jagjit.

  Francois added, ‘I think we should be thankful there was only one of them.’ I was still reeling slightly from the challenge to my base beliefs when he said, ‘I shall have to shut the slopes to cut off its food source and organise a hunting party to catch and kill how ever many of them are out there.’

  Its food source.

  I smiled. ‘How many animals live this far up the mountain? Are there any deer or elk or whatever is indigenous here?’

  My question was clearly aimed at Francois, but Jagjit picked up on what I was suggesting. ‘Yeah. An animal that size would need a sustained supply of food and I don’t think it is a herbivore.’

  Francois shrugged. ‘There are rabbits and birds and a few other small animals. Nothing big though. Not this high up. It’s permafrost, or for nine months of the year it is.’

  ‘Shall we get inside, chaps?’ I asked. We had been outside a long time and the ride down the mountain at a terror-induced velocity had added wind chill. I was cold enough to want to get into somewhere warm so my friends were probably colder as both Jagjit and especially Hilary were slight and carried little or no body fat. I talked as we moved toward the door through to the hotel. ‘I can’t explain what we just saw. I will say that I don’t believe it lives here and I refuse to believe that it is the same creature that attacked people here a century ago. So, it is something else. If there is no food source then someone is feeding it.’

  ‘How could anyone feed that without losing a limb?’ Big Ben asked.

  We pushed open the door that led from the corridor that connected the parking garage with the hotel reception and basked in the blast of warm air that assailed our faces. The reception and lobby of the hotel was half-filled with people, most of whom were staring out the large window at the front of the hotel to see the storm outside. There wasn’t much to see as darkness has descended, but we could hear the wind whipping around outside and as we looked, a bolt of lightning, unseen in the storm, illuminated everything for a nanosecond.

  ‘I need to find Anthea,’ announced Hilary, throwing the rest of us a wave as he headed for the elevators. The ladies had taken themselves and a credit card to the hotel’s spa this afternoon but were sure to be back in their rooms now.

  Jagjit began to hurry after Hilary, saying, ‘Yeah, I had better find Alice,’ as he went.

  Then Francois began crossing the lobby but was going backwards so he could look at Big Ben and me as he spoke, ‘Whether that was a Yeti or not, I still need to close the slopes until it can be caught.’ Then the crowd swallowed him, leaving just the top of him visible as he moved toward the doors.

  I looked at Big Ben expectantly. Everyone else had already gone. ‘I need to find some women,’ he said, then looked over the top of my head at the skiers milling about. The storm had forced them off the mountain earlier than most of them would have planned and there were still people coming in now, though I could see the numbers left outside diminishing. ‘There’s some. Catch you later. Have fun with Amanda.’ He stuck his thumb in his mouth and mimed blowing up his chest to make himself look bigger, then swaggered over to where a gaggle of twenty-something-year-old ladies were chatting.

  ‘I doubt Amanda will get here,’ I called after him.

  He paused and turned, considering my statement, then worked it out. ‘They’ll close the cable car, wont they?’

  I nodded.

  ‘So, we’re trapped here.’ His eyes had a faraway look to them. ‘I can use that,’ he said as he turned back to the ladies. As I contemplated what my next move might be, I could hear him asking the ladies which of them wanted to be protected from the evil storm.

  My next move was to go back to my room and check on the dogs. I couldn’t take them outside in the storm so the parking garage would have to be their toilet. I would get some gear from the room to clean up/pick up any mess they left. I also needed a shower from all the frantic running through the snow and abject terror.

  Upstairs, as I fumbled for my key card, the door barked at me until I got it open and the ferocious beasts it contained were able to establish that it was just me. They snuffled excitedly about my feet and jumped at my legs to be fussed. Ushering them inside, I closed the world outside so I could sit on the floor and give them what they craved. Normally, when I get home, they get excited and fuss about me but then want to be let into the garden so they can chase pigeons and squirrels and water the lawn. Since that was not an option, I clipped on their leads and collars and took them down to the garage. I wasn’t too worried that their exercise level would drop. They were such lazy creatures that they rarely asked to be taken out and often hid when they heard me get their collars. A few days of hanging out indoors wouldn’t bother them at all.

  The parking garage was filled with cars though there was a gap where two Ski-Doos ought to be parked. I wondered how they would weather the storm, but believed they were heavy enough to resist the high winds. They could be dug out, restarted and ridden back down when the storm had dissipated.

  What about the Yeti though? I had been tussling with what I had seen since our escape from it. A nine-foot-tall, bear-like white furred beast with horns and tusks. The term I had for it was aberration. How could it be that a creature like that could e
xist anywhere on the planet without it being common knowledge?

  It couldn’t.

  Surely.

  So, what had I seen? It was troubling but I refused to believe that there was a Yeti and that it lived undetected in the mountains of Europe, venturing out to kill people when it got a bit peckish. Whatever the case, the police chief was right and it needed to be caught. I suspected that meant they would shoot it and that didn’t sit comfortably with me.

  My musings led me around the car park twice as the dogs sniffed about and lifted their legs on the wheels of several cars. As I was leaving, a woman came through the door into the carpark being led by two more Dachshunds. The boys instantly perked up, pulling on the leads to meet the new dogs. Dachshunds are so rare in England that I can go months without seeing another but then I remembered Hubert telling me his wife had a pair.

  ‘Madame Caron?’ I asked tentatively. I hadn’t met nor seen a picture of the woman so this could be her dog walker for all I knew.

  ‘Oui,’ she answered.

  ‘Bonjour. I’m Tempest Michaels, the detective your husband hired,’ I explained switching to English. I could have given most of the sentence in French but couldn’t remember what the French word for hired was and had I done so, she might well have launched into a long sentence in French that I would have failed to understand.

  As my dogs met her dogs and the four of them attempted to make a knot from their leads in their desperation to sniff one another, she leaned forward and shook my hand. ‘Bonjour, Monsieur Michaels, Francois told me you all saw the Yeti that killed my daughter.’ Mrs Caron looked terribly sad, filled with a grief she was barely containing. No tears came though, which I was thankful for as I never know what the right thing to do is in such circumstances.

  ‘We saw something,’ I conceded.

  At my comment she tilted her head in confusion. ‘You don’t think it was a Yeti?’ she asked.

  I looked down at that point because the hand holding the dog leads was being yanked continually as the dogs played. They weren’t playing though; they were having a four-way.

  ‘Oh, goodness!’ exclaimed Madame Caron because her little girls were being humped by my boys.

  My immediate reaction was to break them up but then I considered that the little chaps got even less action than me and I was certain I wouldn’t want to be disturbed at this point. Also, the girls appeared to be quite willing participants.

  ‘Do we, ah… do we leave them?’ I asked.

  ‘No! Get them off, get them off!’ Madame Caron demanded while tugging at her own pair of leads.

  I said, ‘Sorry, chaps,’ as I reached down to lift each of them off the girls. Bull growled at me in a convincing way, or at least, as convincing as a dog the size of my shoe could manage. He was not happy. I looked back up at Madame Caron’s horrified face. She was petting her dogs, one tucked under each arm and smooshed into her face as she cooed to them in French.

  I replayed our brief conversation in my head to work out what we had been talking about when we noticed the dogs. ‘Madame Caron, you asked me about the Yeti. My answer is that I don’t know what to think. It is clearly not a man in a costume but I am unwilling to assume that it is a dread beast that has so far defied discovery.’

  ‘What about the pictures from the previous attacks. I have seen them myself. This region has a history of Yeti problems and there are probably more attacks than those we know about. People go missing here sometimes.’ The last sentence was delivered in a hushed voice like it was a secret she wasn’t supposed to talk about.

  Bull and Dozer made a new attempt to get away from me by lunging in tandem. They wanted to get to the girls but Madame Caron was unlikely to put them back on the floor until I had gone and I felt that it was time for me to leave her alone.

  I said, ‘I cannot comment on old photographs and rumours. I will, however, investigate this case to the fullest of my ability and intend to reveal the truth.’

  Madame Caron looked a little stunned at my statement. ‘The only truth you will find is that my daughter was killed by a Yeti, Mr Michaels. I don’t want you dredging up her past in your foolish quest for another explanation.’

  A tear escaped her right eye and began to track its way down her face. ‘Very good, Madame Caron,’ I replied. ‘I feel that this is not the time, but for my investigation I have some questions only you can answer.’

  ‘You wish to interview me? Am I a suspect?’ Her tone was defensive.

  ‘Not at all, Mrs Caron. I just need to establish some facts.’

  She turned to go, dismissing me as she moved away. Over her shoulder she said, ‘Speak with the hotel manager, he will arrange a meeting.’

  I called, ‘Good evening.’ As she left, then tugged the leads and led the dogs back into the corridor that would lead into the hotel reception. There were two things that stood out from our short conversation:

  1. She used the distinct phase “Dredging up her past.”

  2. Michel Masson had not passed on my message

  As I pushed my way through the door and into the hotel lobby, I pulled my phone from my pocket and pushed the button for Jane. My office assistant was able to find information that most people couldn’t. With something like this, I wouldn’t even know where to start.

  ‘Hey, boss,’ she answered the phone in her usual deep voice. ‘It’s James.’

  I had to mentally adjust what I was going to say then as my cross-dressing computer wizard had elected to dress as a boy today. He didn’t do that very often anymore, preferring to wear girl clothes because he said they were more comfortable and his boyfriend preferred it. I thought it was all a little odd, but it was none of my business so I kept my mouth shut.

  ‘James, I need you to do some research.’

  ‘Of course. What have you got?’

  ‘Well… what I thought was going to be a simple case of a crazy murderer dressing up turns out to be something else. Can you look up everything you can find on Yeti sightings, investigations, hunts and evidence of it existing in the French Alps, please?’

  There was a moment of silence, then James said, ‘Sorry, I was waiting for you to say you were only joking.’

  ‘I wish I was. Something chased us today and it wasn’t a man. Just pull together whatever you can that looks interesting and let me have it. That’s a secondary task though. What I need you to do first is look into the two rival families here. The Carons and the Chevaliers. Focus especially on Marie Caron and anything embarrassing in her past.’

  ‘Okay, boss. Anything else?’

  ‘Yeah. How’s it going?’

  ‘At the office?’

  ‘In general. I abandoned you to run the place again and now Amanda is on her way here…’

  ‘Erm, about that. Is there something going on between you two? Not that you have to tell me, of course. I get that its none of my business, but you have both been acting differently around each other for a week now.’ James lapsed into silence.

  How did I answer him? I thought Amanda and I had acted as we always would, but clearly, we had been fooling ourselves. ‘I, ah. We,’ I started speaking but couldn’t work out how to frame an answer that was both truthful but didn’t tell him anything because we hadn’t worked out what there was to tell yet.

  James cut in, ‘It’s early days, right? Say no more. I won’t mention it again. I’ll get on with that research.’

  ‘Thank you, James.’

  ‘Boss?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Good luck. I hope you two work out.’

  Then he was gone. I thumbed the contact entry for Amanda.

  ‘Hi, Tempest,’ she said as she answered the phone. ‘I’m almost at Tignes now but the weather outside looks awful.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s why I am calling. They have shut the cable car so you won’t be able to get up the mountain.’ Amanda said a rude word in response. ‘I don’t know how long it will be shut for but you will need to get on the internet and find your self a place
in Tignes to crash for the night. There’s no chance it will reopen before the morning.’

  ‘Dammit. I was looking forward to having a couple of days together.’

  ‘Me too,’ I agreed. ‘But maybe it will only be one night, and you can get here tomorrow. I doubt I will be able to wrap this case up in the next day though, so I will still be embroiled in the Yeti case when you get here.’

  ‘That’s fine, I can join in. You have Big Ben with you already, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, and Jagjit and Hilary.’

  ‘Hilary? What’s he doing there?’

  ‘He’s become Mr Spontaneous ever since the witch nearly killed him so he’s here with Anthea having a few days off work for skiing.’ I then filled her in on the day’s events but deliberately left out the bit where I had almost messed myself running away from a giant Yeti creature.

  ‘Sounds like an interesting case,’ she said.

  ‘Well, like normal, I have no idea what is going on yet.’ Amanda and I spoke for several minutes back and forth. I think we both wanted to spend time in the other’s company and this was the best we could manage. Neither wanted to end the call and it was almost as if I was a teenager again filled with out of control hormones. In the end, Amanda said she was arriving in Tignes and needed to go.

  I wished her a good evening with a tinge of disappointment that I would not see her until tomorrow. ‘What shall we do now?’ I asked the dogs, but all I got back was grumpy faces which made me wonder how long it would be before they forgave me for breaking up their orgy with the girls. I took to a knee to get down to their level and pat their heads. ‘I’ll tell you what, chaps. If I can, I’ll set up a date for you while we are here. How does that sound?’ Bull cocked his head to one side, curious about what I was saying, while Dozer just wagged his tail. ‘How about some dinner then?’ Speaking a word, they recognised very well caused two pairs of ears to lift with interest. I took them upstairs and stroked their fur while they ate, then dealt with my own needs.