TWO TO DIE FOR

by Allison Brennan

  It went to motive—a desperate need for money—but it didn’t tell Sean where he was now.

  Finally, he looked up from the computer. Everyone was looking at him. “Trevor has a gambling problem, which may have led him to illegal mining. A get-rich-quick scheme of sorts. We need to track down Kyle, find out if he knew about it, or if he knows where Trevor is now.”

  Lucy said, “I’m meeting Deputy Longfellow shortly at the access road. They’re bringing in a search team to look for Hank. Kyle’s grandmother gave me his contact information. You should call him, find out if he knows where Trevor went. Or maybe you, Mr. Platt, since you have a relationship with Kyle.”

  “You think Kyle knows anything?” Sean asked.

  “I can’t say, but his grandparents said he and Trevor are friends. Trevor was staying in a guest cabin on the Cannon property, but all his things are gone.”

  “Can you get the sheriff to put an APB on his truck?”

  “I’ll try,” Lucy said. “We don’t have proof.”

  “The video surveillance,” Sean said. “I saved a digital copy for the police if they need it. While you work on that end, I’ll track down Kyle Cannon and get answers.”

  “He’s at the fair now,” Lucy said. “Maybe if you talk to him in person would be best.”

  Sean concurred.

  Cyrus Platt spoke up. “Are you suggesting Kyle’s involved in something illegal?”

  “He’s friends with Trevor Martin,” Sean said, “and until we know otherwise, we need to assume he knew about the mining and very well could have been party to it.”

  “I’ve known Kyle since he was a kid,” Cyrus said. “I’ve never found him to be deceptive in any way. I’m not sentimental, but you’ll have to find clear evidence of his involvement before I would believe he would not only illegally mine for gold, but that he would be involved in Hank’s disappearance.”

  Sean knew better than most that people weren’t always who they appeared to be.

  Before he could respond, Cyrus continued. “I’ll join you, Mr. Rogan.”

  “Mr. Platt, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jim said.

  “I appreciate your diligence, Jim, but you stay with Agent Kincaid and meet with the deputy. I’ll go with Mr. Rogan and talk to Kyle.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Sean said, “but call me Sean, okay? Formalities are not necessary.”

  “Sir—” Jim began.

  “Jim, I need to make sure Gracie is okay. If I’m wrong and Kyle is involved in this crime, she’s going to need my support.”

  #

  Kyle sold another of Gracie’s paintings. She really had talent. He didn’t. Maybe that’s why he appreciated her work so much; it was something he couldn’t do.

  She’d been gone for nearly an hour. He knew she was upset about everything that happened yesterday, and he’d tried to be supportive. He was supportive because he knew how important the art gallery was to Gracie, but at the same time, waiting a year wasn’t going to hurt. It might even help her plan better—plan smarter—and he would be back in town to help her. He already had a line on a job as soon as he graduated, working for one of the resorts on the lifts. He loved working with his hands, and there was something calming and methodical about working on machinery. College hadn’t been easy for him, but he’d done okay and was getting a degree in mechanical engineering. It had taken five years and he had struggled his first two years, but in the end, it would be worth it because he could work himself up into a management position at the resort. They preferred to give those positions to college graduates.

  He called her cell phone. She didn’t answer, so he left a message.

  “I sold the large forest painting, the one with the deer family in the background. Why don’t you grab lunch on your way back from getting tea if you get this message? It’s already after twelve and I’m getting hungry. Miss you, baby.”

  He hung up, a little worried that maybe Gracie had gone back to her condo to feel sorry for herself.

  Abigail Geiser came over. Her parents owned the best Italian restaurant in Vail and he’d gone to school with Abigail. He’d always liked her family. “Hey, Abbs,” he said. “How’s the fair going for you?”

  “Great. I mean, really great. My mom watched my booth so I could get lunch.” She held up a coffee mug. “My dad fed me lasagna—I could fall asleep, so I got a double shot.”

  Kyle laughed. “Your dad’s lasagna is to die for.”

  “Don’t I know it. Where’s Gracie?”

  “Getting tea.”

  Something crossed over Abigail’s face, but she didn’t say anything.

  “What?” Kyle asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Abigail, what?”

  “Really, it’s nothing. I saw Gracie nearly an hour ago.”

  “At the coffeehouse?”

  “No—she was coming out of it with that friend of yours when I was walking past on my way to lunch.”

  Kyle tensed. “Friend?” He knew who she was talking about, but he hoped he was wrong. “From school?”

  “The guy who’s been hanging around. I don’t remember his name.”

  “Trevor.”

  “That’s it.”

  “And?”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No, but Trevor and I had a, um, disagreement yesterday. He said he was leaving today.”

  He’d damn well better be leaving. Kyle told him to pack up and get out and he never wanted to see him again. Harsh, maybe, but Trevor wasn’t the guy he thought he was, and he was a bad influence on Gracie. Kyle wasn’t jealous—not about his relationship with Gracie—but she was impulsive, and Kyle had had enough with Trevor’s get-rich-quick schemes.

  “Oh.”

  “Where were they going?”

  “I don’t know. They turned the corner.”

  “Cascade?”

  “Yeah.”

  Gracie’s condo was on Cascade.

  “Is everything okay, Kyle?”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.” He was going to beat Trevor into a pulp. That bastard—if he did anything to hurt Gracie, Kyle would kill him. But why was he worried? Trevor was a scam artist. He wasn’t violent, and his stupid, idiotic plan wouldn’t work. Gracie wouldn’t do it. She’d told Kyle she would never have done it, and Kyle felt guilty that he’d thought she might be buying into Trevor’s manipulative lies. But why she’d even listened to that bastard, he didn’t know.

  “If you need anything, let me know. My mom’s feeling good today, and she wanted to get out, so she’s helping in my booth. If you need me to watch Gracie’s, I can do that. I’m down the center aisle, sort of in the middle.”

  “I have your number. I’ll call if I need something, thanks, Abbs.”

  Abigail walked away and Kyle wanted to kick something. He called Gracie again. And again, the phone went to voice mail.

  “Gracie, it’s me. Please call me back. I need to talk to you.”

  He ended the call and frowned. He considered putting a back in ten minutes sign on the booth and running over to her condo.

  Then he saw Gracie’s dad striding toward him with some tall, dark-haired dude Kyle didn’t know. New security guy? He had a dog with him—the dog looked familiar, but golden retrievers were common.

  “Hey, Mr. Platt,” Kyle said with a glance at the stranger.

  “Kyle.” Mr. Platt nodded. “Where’s Gracie?”

  “Getting tea.” He hoped. He really hoped she was getting tea, or crying in her condo, not doing something stupid with Trevor Martin.

  “This is Sean Rogan. We have questions about your friend Trevor.”

  “Trevor? What do you want to know?”

  What the hell was Trevor up to?

  “Have you seen him today?”

  “No.” That was the truth. He needed to talk to Trevor—and talk to Gracie—before anyone else. A deep fear ate at Kyle, that Gracie was about to make a grave mistake.

  She wouldn’t. She wouldn�
��t do anything like it.

  Rogan said, “We know Trevor was illegally mining on your grandparents’ property, on the east side of the fire access road. Did you know about it?”

  “Mining?” Shit, that explained so much.

  “Do not lie to me, Kyle,” Mr. Platt said.

  Kyle didn’t lie well, so he told him what he knew. “Look—last year I brought Trevor up for spring break to stay with us. He was convinced there was gold all through this mountain. My grandpa humored him, but didn’t take him seriously. But mining? How? That takes equipment and people and permits.”

  “So you didn’t know what he was doing,” Rogan said.

  Who was this guy? Why did this sound like an interrogation?

  “No, I didn’t, but—” Trevor had been gone in the middle of the night twice when Kyle came in late and went to the guest house to have a beer with him. Then, his grandmother had heard odd noises that woke her up. It all made sense now. “I guess he could have been. He’s been acting weird, but I didn’t know about it, I swear.”

  Trevor had offered to help Kyle’s grandparents pack up and move. Trevor had always been a good friend like that, always wanting to help, but in hindsight he hadn’t helped much. He’d slept until noon nearly every day. Now it was obvious—he’d been out all night mining.

  That bastard.

  “We believe he’s responsible for the disappearance of Hank Henderson.”

  “Hank? The ranger?” Kyle almost laughed. “That’s ridiculous. Trevor is a lot of things, but he’s not violent.”

  “It could have been an accident, but Hank went to investigate noises he heard in the middle of the night—where we found the evidence of illegal mining—and he didn’t come home.” Rogan stared at him. “Come clean, Kyle. Did you know?”

  “No, dammit, I didn’t. I swear to God I didn’t know.”

  “Why did Trevor leave?”

  Kyle didn’t say anything. What could he say? He couldn’t tell this asshole and Gracie’s dad what Trevor planned on doing.

  “Kyle, tell me,” Mr. Platt said in his firm, commanding tone. Dammit, that was the last thing Kyle would ever do. He wouldn’t do anything to damage the relationship between Gracie and her father. Gracie would never forgive him, and Kyle wouldn’t be able to forgive himself.

  “Look—last night Trevor and I got into a fight. Not physical, but I told him to leave. He came here to help my grandparents, but he was doing nothing, and now I know why—he was doing this mining thing. I wanted him gone by morning. When I got up I checked the cabin and he was gone.”

  That was all true. He just left out some details.

  “Is that the whole truth?” Mr. Platt asked.

  “Yes,” Kyle said. Okay, that was a lie. It was the truth, but not entirely. But he would never in a million years betray Gracie, especially not to her father.

  The stranger, Rogan, thought he was lying. Kyle could see it on his face, but Mr. Platt believed him and that was all that mattered.

  “When will Gracie be back?”

  “Any minute. You can wait if you’d like.”

  “Where is she?”

  “The coffeeshop.”

  “We’ll come back,” Rogan said.

  Kyle didn’t like this guy. Why did he sound so suspicious? Or was that Kyle’s own apprehension about Abbs seeing Gracie with Trevor? He wanted to check on her, right now, but he couldn’t make a big deal about her not being here.

  But if they left, he could get Abbs to watch the booth and check on Grace himself. He didn’t want Mr. Platt to see Trevor with her. Not that there was anything going on. Gracie was just talking to him. Just talking. She promised Kyle ...

  As soon as Mr. Platt and Rogan were out of sight, Kyle shut down the booth and went in the opposite direction.

  Chapter Nine

  Hank’s body was found less than thirty minutes after they started the search, thanks to the cadaver dogs brought in by the rangers.

  When Lucy had talked to Deputy Longfellow over the phone, she hadn’t thought the cop had taken her seriously. But when they met on the access road, Longfellow and her team let Lucy lead them to the mining site and then farther to the erosion that appeared to have been recent. The rangers had an easier way of getting down the mountain, and a team with dogs found Hank almost immediately at the bottom of the small landslide.

  All day, Lucy had believed Hank was dead, but knowing he was dead hurt. She and Sean hadn’t known Hank well, but they liked him, and he didn’t deserve any of this.

  It would take a while to bring up his body, and Longfellow and the head of the rangers began to process evidence at the mining site.

  “We identified a suspect,” Lucy said. “Trevor Martin, from Colorado Springs. He’s a friend of Kyle Cannon and has been staying with the Cannons for the last two weeks. He left last night or early this morning.”

  “A suspect? Do you have evidence?”

  Lucy relayed what Sean had learned from Cyrus Platt’s cameras, and the fact that the external cameras on the access road side had been disabled. “He may have left prints there.”

  “We may be able to prove he was illegally mining, but proving that he helped Hank off that cliff will be difficult. Of course, we’ll have to wait for the autopsy and we have a crime scene to process.”

  “At a minimum, you should bring him in for questioning.”

  Longfellow agreed, though she seemed skeptical. “Playing devil’s advocate here—and assuming this Martin fellow was behind the mining. Hank comes up, sees the evidence, but slips and falls. That cliff is steep—it could have been a tragic accident.”

  True, Lucy thought, but she didn’t believe so. “He was a retired forest ranger. He knew this area better than anyone.”

  “What’s your theory?”

  Lucy would have preferred to have more hard evidence, but she was pretty certain she had figured out what happened based on the facts they knew and the evidence they’d seen.

  “I think Hank came up here and saw the evidence of illegal mining. Either caught Martin red-handed, or Martin caught Hank unawares. We didn’t find any record of violence for Martin, but I didn’t run him officially. Just public records. My husband is a licensed private investigator for a security firm.”

  “Convenient,” Longfellow mumbled.

  “Meaning, I suspect Martin acted spontaneously, in the heat of the moment, and panicked. He then left town. His friend Kyle might know more, Sean is talking to him now.”

  “This is my investigation, Agent Kincaid. I appreciate your help—I really do—but you need to let me take it from here.”

  “Of course.” Giving it up was difficult, but not as difficult as it had been in the past. Lucy was doing a much better job separating her private life from her professional life. Yet … she couldn’t just walk away. How could anyone? She’d known the victim, and she was trained for this. “Could I tag along?”

  Longfellow nodded. “I need to finish up here, but I’ll put out the APB on Martin.”

  Lucy went back to where Jim Kline was talking to one of the rangers.

  “You heard they found his body,” Jim said as the ranger left. “No visible sign of a gunshot or knife wound, external injuries consistent with a fall.”

  “Trevor Martin may have thought people would believe it was an accident, not even connected him to Hank’s death. And we may not have if we hadn’t found evidence of mining.”

  “That evidence would still be here, even weeks—months—later,” Jim pointed out.

  “But after winter, it wouldn’t be obvious. And the longer it takes to find a body, the harder it is to connect the body with a killer.”

  “It could have been an accident.”

  “Maybe Trevor didn’t intend to kill Hank, but he was involved,” Lucy said. “I need to call Sean.” She wished she could tell him in person, but it would be better from her over the phone than if he heard it from a third party.

  #

  Sean was standing outside the main entranc
e to the art festival when he ended the call with Lucy. His eyes burned and he pinched the bridge of this nose and took a deep breath. Yeah, he’d known the chance Hank was alive was slim to none, but he had hoped. Damn, he had hoped to find him injured, but breathing.

  Unconsciously, he reached down and scratched Bandit’s neck. The dog licked his hand.

  “Bad news,” Cyrus said. “Jim just texted me. I’m sorry about Hank.”

  “Kyle was lying to us.”

  “I don’t think he was. I’m pretty good at spotting a lie.”

  “He didn’t directly lie, but he was holding something back. I need to talk to him. He might not want to say anything around his girlfriend’s father.”

  “I hardly think that’s the case. I’ve had a long-standing relationship with Kyle’s grandparents, and I respect the young man. I’ve been nothing but supportive of his relationship with Gracie.”

  “It’s clear that Kyle respects you, but he’s worried about something. I can get him to talk.”

  Sean didn’t want to leave Cyrus, however. He’d promised Jim Kline he would an eye on him.

  “Jim’s on his way,” Cyrus said. “He said your wife is getting a ride to town with the Deputy Sheriff. When he gets here, you can do whatever you need to.”

  “Thank you,” Sean said.

  “I hope you’re wrong. I abhor dishonesty in business or my personal life.”

  Sean wasn’t wrong, but he didn’t have a sense as to what specifically Kyle was worried about. Gracie? His friend Trevor? Did he know about Hank’s disappearance? Did he think his friend had something to do with it? Or did he know? Could he have been part of the mining all along? Sean didn’t get that vibe from him, and Kyle’s hands seemed too clean to have been working in the mud every night for the last couple of weeks.