Brown and de Luca Collection, Volume 1

by Maggie Shayne

  “Wasn’t that the name of the liquor store in Blue Lake?” Rachel asked. “It was right next to that souvenir shop the kids were in for so long. I remember thinking it was a cute name.”

  “So he sneaked over there without us noticing?”

  Rachel came closer, standing beside him in a way that had her entire side pressed to his, and looked down at the damp receipt. “Look at the time stamp, Mason. The ink’s running, but it looks like—”

  “Eleven forty-seven p.m. December 20. That was only two hours ago.” Mason shot a killing look up the stairs. When he got his hands on his nephew…

  “We’re doing a hell of a job watching everyone around here, aren’t we?” Rachel shoved both hands through her hair, flustered. No. Scared.

  He looked at her. She looked right back, not hiding her fear, even though she had to know what he was going to say. “It’s because we let ourselves get distracted.”

  She didn’t even argue. “Yeah. It could just as easily have been…”

  “I know. I was thinking the same thing.”

  “We can’t afford to let that happen again. Can we?”

  She sounded almost hopeful, as if he would say, Don’t be silly. It’ll be fine. But the truth was, he agreed with her. Before he had a chance to answer, his cell phone chirped. He glanced at the screen, then answered. “Yeah, Rosie?”

  “Your mother’s fine. I made Marlayna wake her to borrow some pain reliever. She’s probably mad as hell at her, but—”

  “And what about Douglas?”

  Rosie sighed. “He’s not in his room. His coat, gloves, hat and scarf are all missing. And so’s his cell phone.”

  “Hell,” Mason whispered.

  CHAPTER 12

  Thursday, December 21

  The six of us were all crammed into Mason’s Jeep for the trip from our cabin to the lodge. Josh had to sit in the cargo bay in the back, but it was only a few hundred yards. It was a quarter past dawn—only a slight exaggeration—and snowing like I had never seen it snow in my life, and that was not an exaggeration at all. Okay, I know that’s not saying much, since I’d been blind for the past twenty years, but still…

  Finnegan Smart had asked us to meet him in the cutely named but deadly serious Security Shack, where he was organizing his team to go out and search the slopes for Marie’s missing boyfriend. Mason had called him last night, and Smart had searched the lodge and nearby grounds, but this snow made it useless to do more until sunup. We had to see to it that the rest of the gang were safe and sound before we could join him and his men in this morning’s wider search.

  It was storming too badly for anyone to want to ski, but lodge owner Cait met us in the lobby and promised she had tons of holiday fun planned for the day. Songs around the lobby’s twenty-foot tree, a wreath-making class, gourmet hot cocoa brewing taught by the head chef and something called a Santa Swim in the water park.

  Yeah. Frankly, I’d rather be out searching for a missing guest.

  Rosie was on the job to keep track of the family, so I wasn’t overly concerned about leaving them to join in the search. In fact the lodge, with its holiday cheer and happy guests, was feeling more and more like the safest place to be.

  I was nervous this morning. I hadn’t dreamed of a brutal murder, thank goodness, so I hoped that meant Douglas might still be alive. It would have helped if Mason hadn’t been scared, too, but he was. Still strong, confident and determined, but worried. I knew it when he handed me a gun before we left for the lodge. He knew I could use it and feared I might need it. No words were necessary. That shook me more than anything else, I think.

  Once Marie and the kids were settled in at the lodge, Cait donned a white parka with a fur-lined hood and walked us out the front door to the small log cabin a few hundred feet away. It had a rustic wooden Security Shack sign hanging over its red front door. She didn’t knock, just pushed it open, stomped the snow off her boots and went inside. We followed.

  Finnegan had been talking to five members of his security team, but he met her eyes and stopped speaking. Tufts of fading red hair were sticking out from under his blue knit hat. His flannel shirt, worn over a thermal undershirt, was tucked into ski pants, and his crew of four men and a woman were standing around wearing various levels of outerwear. Clearly they were getting ready to begin the search.

  “We can’t have guests going missing like this,” Cait said, accepting a mug of coffee from Finnegan. “If Mr. Douglas never came in from the slopes, we should’ve caught that last night.” She unzipped her parka but didn’t take it off. “What’s the plan, Finn?”

  “A straight-up search of every slope and patch of woodland in between,” he said. “We’ll find him, Cait. There’s no need to worry.”

  “This storm is giving me plenty of need to worry,” she said, turning to gaze toward the window. Then she snapped her sharp eyes our way, fixing them on Mason. “Finn tells me you had reason to believe some kind of suspect might be hiding out at the lodge?”

  He shot the other man a look, then shook his head. “It was a hunch. It didn’t pan out.”

  “Is that why you’ve been keeping such tight tabs on your kids?” she asked.

  Mason hadn’t been ready for that, and I saw him struggling for a reply so I jumped in to save him. “Hey, if you knew those kids, you’d watch them like a hawk, too. Trust me, you don’t want Joshua climbing your Christmas tree.”

  She held my eyes for what seemed like a long time, then looked away. I think she had an inkling we were not being completely up-front with her, and I wasn’t entirely sure it was the right call. But for now, there was no time to get into things. She went behind the desk and sat down in what I presumed was Finn’s chair. There was a radio system on a counter, kitty-corner to the desk, and she slid the chair over to it and began turning dials. “I’ll get Weather Service updates and keep you posted. You keep me up to speed on your progress. Go.”

  So we went. Finnegan handed us each a walkie-talkie as we headed out the door.

  We took snowmobiles. There were rows of them lined up outside the security shack, many with keys in the ignition. I didn’t know if the guests were allowed to use them or just tended to be well behaved enough to be trusted, but it would have been awfully easy to take off with one.

  Then again, where would you go? We were in the middle of nowhere. Mason had obviously driven one before. I had not. My first winter with eyes, after all. So I got a quick lesson, and then followed him, away from the lodge and onto an uphill trail.

  Man, it was coming down. I was wearing my ski mask under my helmet, and my brand-new thermal cold-weather coat and ski pants, and I was still freezing. After an hour my hands were frozen and my left thumb was aching from holding the accelerator down for so long.

  We rode up and down the all-but-abandoned slopes. Oh, there were a few diehards out there trying to get a run or two in between blinding gusts of wind-driven snow, but they were having very little luck. I saw one guy topple, and I was sure the wind was to blame. I wondered why Cait hadn’t closed the slopes yet, then figured she knew best. They probably got storms worse than this on a regular basis this far north.

  There wasn’t going to be any sort of trail to follow, that was for sure. Not with four fresh inches of snow overnight and more coming down every minute.

  After two hours of searching, Finnegan radioed everyone to convene near the top of one of the highest peaks, where a small log cabin sat off to one side of the ski slope. I hadn’t been up this high before. One by one, the powerful machines pulled up side by side and their motors went quiet. Everyone pulled off their helmets and headed inside.

  Mason came over to me just after I climbed off my snowmobile, and was peeling off my ski mask and shaking out my hair. “How are you holding up?”

  “Good.” I held up my mittened hand. “My thumb is tire
d of that throttle, though. It’s a stretch for someone with small hands. Other than that and freezing my ass off, I’m good.”

  “Good.” He took my arm, like that was something he would normally do. It wasn’t, but I liked it.

  You are being such a girl, Rachel.

  So what, Inner Bitch? I can be a girl once in a great while.

  Since when?

  Since I said so.

  I bent my knees to loosen them up, then twisted at the waist, stretching the kinks out, while Mason smiled like he was watching a kitten bat a ball of yarn around. I stuck my tongue out at him for that and caught a half-dozen snowflakes by accident. That’s how hard it was coming down.

  We headed toward the cabin with the others. “I’m getting texts from Rosie every fifteen minutes,” he said as we walked. “Everyone’s fine. Apparently the water park is getting a workout today.”

  “The Santa Swim,” I said. “If we find Scott or Alan Douglas, aka the man of way too many first names, all safe and sound somewhere, remind me to thank him for sparing us the Santa Swim.”

  “I hope that’s exactly what we get to do.”

  We stopped at the cabin door, and I turned to look back behind us, through the falling snow. “There must be a beautiful view, up this high, when you can see it.”

  “Yeah. This is a lousy time for a snowstorm.”

  He opened the door for me, and we went inside. The cabin was stark, just a shelter, really. Several thermos bottles lined a flat counter along one wall. There were scattered chairs and some tables, a couple of freestanding cabinets, a stack of emergency first-aid kits, a fireplace with wood and kindling stacked high, and matches on the mantel. It was, I realized, a place to go in case of trouble. And it had a huge map tacked to one log wall with a red X beside the words You are here.

  The others were gathered near that map now, everyone holding a cup full of something steamy. I grabbed a pair of cups from the stack on the counter and poured from a random thermos, having no idea who had brought what. Coffee, black, emerged. It would do. As I handed a cup to Mason, Finnegan moved closer to the map and cleared his throat.

  “Since there’s no sign of Mr. Douglas on the trails, we have to assume he wandered off them. So now we’ve got to go off-trail, as well.” He drew a line with his finger along the edge of the ski slope we’d just ascended. “Mason, I’ll have you and Rachel tackle the woods along either side of this trail, since we’re already here, and I don’t want to risk you guys getting lost, too. This storm isn’t letting up as quickly as I’d hoped. The rest of us will split into teams and search the other woodlots. Pick your way through, up one side, down the other, going a little deeper into the woods with each pass. Go slow’n’easy. The woods aren’t intended for snowmobile use, and this snow could be hiding all kinds of hazards. We’re going to make several passes through the woods on each side. The final pass ends at the Security Shack. Stay in contact by walkie-talkie.” He looked at Mason. “Can you handle that?”

  “Yeah, we can.”

  “Good. Everybody finish your drinks, partner up and pick a woodlot.” He moved away from the map, and the other five on his team crowded around it, talking low, fingers touching the woodlots that separated the many slopes.

  Mason met Finnegan by the counter. I stayed put, edging only close enough to hear the conversation.

  “Do you think it’s time to call in outside help?” Mason asked the older man.

  Finnegan was refilling his cup and sipping without even giving the steaming coffee time to cool down. “We’ll finish up this search. If we don’t find him by then, we’ll call the state police.”

  Tell him, I thought. Tell him about the murders.

  “That sounds about right,” Mason said.

  What the fuck did he mean, it sounded right? There was a killer up here, for crying out loud.

  Mason sipped his coffee, then lowered the cup again. “Are you at all concerned about this storm?”

  “Truth to tell, I was. But Cait’s been keeping us up to speed on it. The Weather Service says it’s just skirting us as it moves north. Should be sunny and clear again by mid-afternoon.”

  Nodding slowly, Mason took his sweet time. I tried not to be obvious about my eavesdropping, moving nearer a window but still within earshot, pretending to gaze out at the curtain of snowfall that made it impossible to see more than ten feet in any direction.

  “Finnegan, would you handle this any differently if you had reason to believe Douglas might have been the victim of foul play?”

  The man’s pale red eyebrows rose over light blue eyes. “That’s an interesting question, Mason Brown. Do I have reason to believe that?”

  Mason just looked at him, not saying yes or no.

  Finnegan sighed. “This suspect you said you thought might be up here—it’s a more serious thing than you led me to believe, isn’t it, Mason?”

  Again Mason stayed silent. As a cop, Finnegan would understand need to know.

  “Well, if there’s foul play afoot, we’ll be having a mob of panic-stricken guests and a lot of ruined holidays. People’ll be looking to leave in droves, and right now, I’d say that might not be possible, at least for the rest of the day. It’ll take the town boys that long to clear the roads once the snow lets up. And panicked people who are also stuck where they are can be a very bad thing.”

  “I agree.”

  Finnegan nodded. “So let’s give this search our best shot, hmm? God willing we’ll find Mr. Douglas safe and sound and shivering under a pine tree. If not, then we’ll call in the troops and you can tell us what you have to tell us.”

  Mason nodded. “Okay, that’s what we’ll do.”

  Finnegan looked troubled as Mason made his way back to me. He took a long pull from his cup, then walked over to the map again, into the huddle of his team. “Slight change of plans. At the bottom of your first pass, stop at the Shack and arm yourselves.”

  “Wait, what?” one guy asked. “Weapons?”

  “Handguns oughtta be plenty. Load ’em up. Might be there’s more going on here than meets the eye. Be wary. Stay together. And if you see anyone on the slopes, tell ’em we’ve closed ’em down due to foul weather and send ’em back to the lodge.”

  As everyone muttered among themselves, he pulled out a walkie-talkie, contacted someone at the lodge and said, “Shut down the lifts. I’m closing the slopes ’til further notice due to the weather. Tell Cait it won’t be for long.” He hooked the walkie to his belt, nodded at me. “She have a sidearm?” he asked Mason.

  “Yeah.”

  “You know to use it, missy?”

  I smiled a little. “Point it at the bad guy and squeeze?”

  “Sassy one, ain’t she?”

  “You don’t know the half,” Mason said. He drained his coffee, tossed the cup into a nearby trash can, which was a wooden whiskey barrel with the top cut out and a bag lining the inside, and pulled his gloves out of his pocket. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  We drove the snowmobiles down through the woods on one side of the slope. It was rough going, because the visibility stank on ice, and the trees alongside the ski trails were thick. We had to pick our way, and I was no expert with a snowmobile. When we got to the bottom, we crossed to the other side and headed up again. Everything took a lot longer than it seemed like it should, but by the time we were on our final pass down, I was confident that if Alan was anywhere nearby we would have found him, despite the snow. It wasn’t as deep in the woods. Those pines made for a thick canopy.

  I was also convinced that the Irish cop and the Weather Service were dead wrong about this storm. If anything, it was getting worse.

  By the time we’d finished our area and met at the Security Shack once more, we’d completely missed lunchtime and it was pushing on toward dinner. It felt even later. The
storm was so intense that it was dark far earlier than it should have been.

  I shut off the machine and brushed the snow off my clothes. I swore I could still feel the motor’s vibration right to my bones.

  The other sleds were already lined up in front of the shack. There was a big, fluffy, snowy wreath on the Shack’s red door that hadn’t been there before. It gave me a chill at first, making me think of the wreath that had magically appeared on our cabin door with that nastygram angel attached. But Mason knew the minute I went stiff, and apparently knew why. He put a hand on my shoulder and then pointed at the lodge a few yards away, where brightly gleaming outdoor lights cut through the snow to reveal that every door bore a matching wreath. It was fine.

  I sent him a silent thanks with my eyes, and he nodded a you’re welcome.

  We went inside.

  Finnegan had arrived before us and was alone at his desk, looking worried. I didn’t see anyone else.

  “Where’s the team?” Mason asked.

  “I sent ’em to get some dinner. There’s no way they can get home in this, so they’re gonna have to bunk here tonight. We have a barracks for that, though.” He sighed in exhaustion. “I take it you didn’t find anything.”

  “No.” Mason sighed, too, setting his walkie-talkie on the desk. I set mine next to it. “I think it’s time we call the police,” he said.

  “I already have, my friend. Unfortunately, I waited a wee bit too long.” As Mason frowned, Finnegan nodded at the computer monitor on his desk.

  We both moved around so we could see the weather site’s radar screen tracking the monster-sized storm. He poked a finger at its westernmost edge and said, “This is us. The wind changed, folks. There’s a major blizzard heading right for us. What we’ve had today was just the leading edge.”

  “Holy shit,” I muttered.

  “State police will be out first thing in the morning. They’re advising us to call off the search until then, for fear we’ll lose someone else. Not that we could do much in the dark anyway. We’re in for seventy-mile-an-hour gusts, starting within the next couple of hours. It’s gonna be a helluva night.”