And with that he marched me out of the suite and kicked the door shut behind us.
“Sam, wait—” I began. I followed him, protesting. “Let’s take a minute. You really need to talk with Tracy and Cissy before you make a change like this.”
“Oh, she’s been rubbing them raw ever since she got here. It’s not just me.” The drawl was gone and the businessman was back, the man with his finger on the pulse of the Wood River Valley. “You run your own wedding business in Seattle, don’t you? You’re bonded and so forth?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“But nothing! You’re the only man for the job, pardon the expression, and that is that.” He paused on the step below me, and turned to look me straight in the eye. Unlike Tracy’s big blue eyes, Sam’s brown ones were small and watery, and rather tired. “Please, Red, as a favor to me and my womenfolk?”
“Oh, all right.” As we continued down, a thought occurred to me. His finger on the pulse... I’d promised B.J. to ask around, but I’d felt like a ghoul grilling Danny about his dead crewmate. Sam, on the other hand, wasn’t traumatized by this death, and he might very well be able to help me. Or direct me to someone who could. “Sam, tell me something. Was there an investigation into Brian’s accident?”
“Of course,” he said promptly. We were crossing the lobby, where guests relaxed and tourists wandered, checking out the famous lodge. None of them was within earshot, so Sam paused to answer me in a serious tone. “A smoke-jumper fatality is extremely rare, thank God. This is a BLM base, so they looked into it, plus the local police had to sign off, that kind of thing. It’s not a fire-management issue, since the accident was unrelated to the Boot Creek fire itself, or there would have been a whole task force here. But still, there were all kinds of experts swarming around by the next day, going over the safety procedures inch by inch. It’s funny, though...”
“What’s funny?”
He lowered his voice even further. “I heard there were some closed-door meetings, and some higher-ups flown in for them. The official report is going to be delayed, but they won’t say why, which is kind of unusual. Julie Nothstine was consulting with them for a while, and she told me about it. She’s a local gal who used to be a safety-and-health officer for the BLM. Retired now, but sharp as a razor. She can be something of a handful, though, and after a while the NIFC fellows shut her out of the investigation.”
He pronounced it ni f-cee, and it took a moment to register that he meant the National Interagency Fire Center, the big administrative operation located at the Boise airport.
“So you think they’re covering something up?”
“Oh, nothing that dramatic. Prob’ly just some lawyer somewhere, afraid NIFC will get sued or something. The investigators have all gone back to Boise, but Julie’s an old friend of mine. I could ask her more about it, if you want.”
“I do, Sam, thanks. You see, I was just curious—”
“Of course you are, him being your cousin.”
“—and I was also wondering what’s been done with his personal effects.”
I tried to make it sound casual, hoping he wouldn’t ask me why I didn’t just call Brian’s parents. To my relief, Sam Kane was used to being considered the authority in all questions.
“Now, that I don’t know,” he said, “but I’ll betcha we can find out. Hey, Al, got a question for you.”
The man who looked up from his armchair in the lobby was dark and lean, with lively brown eyes and crooked teeth.
“This here’s Carnegie Kincaid, Brian Thiel’s cousin,” said Sam. “Al Soriano. He’s a jumper.”
“I’m sorry about Brian,” said Al, rising and extending his hand. “He was a good guy.”
Sam cut right to the chase. “Carnegie’s wondering what happened to her cousin’s belongings, his PG bag and so on. Any ideas?”
Al shook his head. “I think they sent it all to his parents.”
“Already?” I spoke sharply, making Sam frown, so I softened my tone and brought out my cover story. “The reason I’m asking is that I gave Brian a little, um, keychain once, when we were kids. He kept it as kind of a souvenir, and I was hoping to get it back. Did anyone find any jewelry or anything?”
“Not that I heard of. But Dr. Nothstine might know.”
“I was thinking that, too,” said Sam. “Thanks, Al. We’ll see you later.”
And if asking this Nothstine person doesn’t pan out, I vowed, I’m calling it quits. B.J. can just tell Matt she lost the damn necklace, and leave it at that. I’ve got a wedding to run.
“Excuse me,” came a voice from behind us. Shara Mortimer, a carry-on bag over one shoulder, held out a manila file. “Here are my notes and your copy of the contract. As long as you’re an employee of Paliere Productions—that is, until this coming Sunday—you’re to call in at least daily and report on the status of your event. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly.” I tucked the file into my tote bag. Should I try to make peace? It’s always worth trying. “Shara, I’m sorry things didn’t work out.”
“Better you than me,” she muttered, for my ears only. Then, louder, “The rest of the paperwork is upstairs in the suite. Here’s the key. You have a vendor meeting there tomorrow morning at eight, so you’d better prepare. Good luck, and good-bye.”
“I hate to say it, but good riddance,” said Sam, watching her go. “Now—”
“Sam, you’ve given me a big job, so I’d better start doing it. I’ll call you after I’ve gone over the contracts and—”
“Hold on there,” he said. “I’m heading up to White Pine for a coupla hours. Before you go fussing with the details, why don’t you come up there with me and get the big picture? Got to start at the top, Red!”
He had a point. The paperwork would make more sense to me if I knew the layout of the ceremony site. And maybe the wide-open spaces would clear my head, so I agreed.
Soon Sam and I were climbing into his mammoth SUV, its air conditioner already set to blasting by the uniformed bell-man who drove it up to the lodge entrance. I must admit, when the temperature’s pushing a hundred, valet parking has its appeal.
I looked around the vehicle’s interior, wide-eyed. I expected leather upholstery, of course, but not separate DVD screens for each rear passenger, or more cup holders than I own cups.
“Like it?” asked Sam. It was a rhetorical question. “Nice and roomy.”
“I’ve had smaller apartments,” I observed, and he laughed. I was tempted to ask about gas mileage and pollution and petty details like that, but there was no point. In Sam Kane’s world, if you could afford it, you deserved it, and that settled it. I tried a safer query. “No bucket seats?”
“That was Cissy’s idea,” he told me, patting the bench seat between us. “She likes to cuddle, even when we’re on the road. What a woman. Hey, there’s Jack.” He braked and opened his window. “Howdy, son-in-law!”
I craned around him to see Jack Packard approaching from the parking lot. He wore light khakis and a blue-on-blue Hawaiian shirt that hung straight down from his muscular chest and blew in the breeze against his flat, tight torso. Oh, my. Good thing I’d be keeping my distance from him this week. Look but don’t touch, that’s the ticket.
“Hi,” said Jack, leaning into Sam’s window. He slid his sunglasses up on his fair hair, and his golden eyes found me. “Afternoon, Carnegie. Where’s this old devil taking you?”
“Up the hill to check out Wedding Central,” said Sam. “Red’s replacing the New York girl. That OK with you?”
“You’re asking me for an opinion?” Jack retorted, and cocked his head at me. “Nobody asks the groom anything, do they?”
“You get your say,” I said weakly. At this point I was melting, and it wasn’t from the temperature.
“Well, I say it’s a fine replacement.” He slapped the edge of the door lightly. “In fact, I’ll ride up there with you and give you the groom’s-eye-view of the whole plan.”
“Oh, that’
s not necess—”
“Climb in!” crowed Sam, and I was on my way to the White Pine Inn, hip-to-hip with Jack the Knack.
Chapter Ten
OUR DRIVE BEGAN ON ASPHALT, BUT ONCE OFF THE SUN Valley road we hit gravel. The private route wound for miles up a dry creek bed between wooded, steeply tilted slopes, crossing rocky little ravines that once carried tributary creeks into the main channel. But these, too, were dry in this extraordinarily hot June. Even in the SUV we bounced and jostled over the deep ruts, which left a dust cloud hanging behind us and made Sam grumble.
“Blasted delivery trucks. Cissy’s got them coming and going every two minutes with something new for the inn.” He swerved around a pothole. “I swear, they tear up the road worse than my construction equipment. I wanted to pave the whole goddamn thing before the wedding but the county’s still processing my goddamn permits. I’ve got half a mind to do it anyway. What do you say, Red, shall we break the law and pave the road?”
“We’ve only got—ow!—we’ve only got three days,” I said, grabbing the dashboard to steady myself. It was either that or grab Jack, and the dashboard was safer. I kept sliding toward him, his thigh warm against mine. He smelled, quite pleasantly, of soap. “If they didn’t finish the job on time, we’d have to fly the guests in.”
“Don’t think I haven’t thought about it,” said Sam. I knew he was quite the small-plane aficionado, so his next remark didn’t surprise me. “I’m gonna build a little airstrip up there, you know. Once the wedding tents are cleared off, I’ll have the meadow leveled and take a bunch of trees down, then Cissy can have her lampshades brought in by helicopter.”
Sam went on describing his ambitious plans, the dozens of minimansions he would build and sell, each with its own minikingdom of acreage, though none as fine as the White Pine Inn itself. I tried to listen, to break my fevered awareness of Jack’s body, his muscles moving under the thin shirt, the sun gilding his hair.
It didn’t work—real-estate development not being a big interest of mine—so instead I gazed out the windshield and tried to concentrate on the non-Jack scenery.
The scenery was pure Idaho. Unlike the dark and dripping hemlocks of Seattle, the ponderosa pines around us stood bright green and glossy, in calendar-photo contrast to the hard and cloudless blue of the afternoon sky. As we passed one of Sam’s construction sites, a 180-degree vista wheeled before us like a panning shot in a movie, with a view down to the Wood River Valley and out to the high, jagged skyline beyond. There wasn’t a freeway or a shopping mall or a skyscraper in sight, just open country and open sky.
I felt my headache dissolving into the limitless distance. Oh, Aaron should see this.
Aaron? Wait a minute, why was I thinking about Aaron Gold when Jack the Knack was mere inches away? Aaron was hundreds of miles away, and besides that, he was irritable and uncommitted and he’d refused to come with me on this trip. How dare he invade my present thoughts while I was reconnecting with my past?
Sam startled me out of these reflections by taking the next hairpin turn at a hair-raising speed. Presumably, since he was still alive, he was a better airplane pilot than he was a driver. He overcorrected and we fishtailed a little, sending a spurt of gravel into the ravine below.
“Careful, there,” said Jack, amused and unflappable. “If I’m not in one piece to say ‘I do’ on Saturday, you’ll have to answer to Tracy.”
Tracy. The bride. Jack’s wife. The mention of her name was a slosh of cold water on my overheated state. This is a married man you’re drooling over, said my better self. Of course, my worse self chimed in Not yet he isn’t, but I told her to shut up.
“Aw, shut up,” said Sam. To Jack, not to me. “You’re lucky to be in one piece to begin with. Like I keep telling Danny, anybody who goes jumping out of a perfectly good airplane should have his head examined.”
“So I’ve heard,” Jack answered, but absently. He was staring at the western horizon, where a gunmetal-gray mountain of thunderheads had begun to dwarf the green mountains below. “Here we go again. We’ve had enough lightning strikes for a whole season already, and it looks like more coming. These woods are like kindling.”
Sam chuckled. “You itching for a Pulaski? You should be thinking about your honeymoon. Cissy’s got the cottage all done up.”
“Cottage?” I asked. “B.J. told me the honeymoon was in Costa Rica.”
“It is,” said Jack. “A spa for Tracy and after that an ecotour in the rain forest for me. But she’s got a huge fan club down there, and her manager has her doing interviews the minute we touch down. I wanted some peace and quiet first, so we’re staying at White Pine for a few days.”
“Sounds nice.”
“Nice!” said Sam, gunning the engine up a final incline. “Heaven on earth. You can see for yourself, ’cause we’re here.”
B.J. was right: White Pine was spectacular. The threestoried inn, a tiered affair of log and shingle, thrust out from the crest of the ridge like the prow of a ship, its myriad skylights and bay windows glinting in the sun.
The inn’s deep eaves and fancy woodwork suggested a Swiss chalet, but with none of the flimsy alpine kitsch you sometimes see in high-country motels. Here everything was richly substantial, with sure-handed design and gracefully executed details. From the massive fieldstone foundation to the tiny brass latches on the casement windows, Sam Kane bought only the best.
The road continued past a long, narrow parking area— crowded by pine trees and as yet unpaved—and disappeared into the woods. Somewhere farther, I assumed, the road led to the resort’s condominiums and the other private houses still under construction. The construction site we had passed must be almost straight below us, judging by the way the road had doubled back on itself, but it was out of view below the treetops.
We alighted from the SUV. The landscaping around the half-circle drive was still sketchy, but with a million-dollar view of mountains and forests, who misses a few shrubs? As I took in the view, I took in a deep, contented breath. The air up here was almost as hot as in the valley, but the teasing breeze that trailed across my skin bore the clean, exciting scent of sun-warmed pines. Heaven.
“Heaven must smell like this,” I said.
Jack smiled at me, the killer smile, but Sam was already throwing open the front door of his castle.
“Come on in!” he called, and waved an arm proudly. “Ain’t this grand?”
Grandiose was more like it. The main room of the inn was vast, its western wall all windows under the soaring, open-beamed ceiling, with a generous flagstone veranda hanging out over that fabulous view. It was the kind of space that’s called a “great room,” and with good reason.
I glimpsed a gleaming kitchen down a hallway to the right, and on the left a wide staircase led up to a sort of mezzanine level with its own sitting areas among the corridors and doors.
“Sleeps sixty, including the staff, or it will once I hire ’em,” said Sam. “Kitchen could feed an army. It’s not all done yet, of course, but Cissy’s been working on the decorating in the rooms we’re using for the wedding.”
“I can tell.” I made a careful attempt to sound enthusiastic. The furnishings were mostly oak and leather, millionaire cowboy stuff, which suited the building and its rugged location. But overlaid on this masculine foundation were layers upon layers of ruffly pillows and cutesy whatnots and flowery curtains, most of them purple. Lots of purple. “She certainly has...a special touch.”
I was saved from further fibs when Sam’s pocket crackled and squawked. He pulled out a walkie-talkie and barked into it.
“What? No! No, no, no! Dammit, just stop what you’re doing and wait for me.” He switched off and turned to us with a preoccupied frown. “I’ve got a new foreman pouring foundations out there along the ridge, and if he doesn’t straighten out, he won’t be foreman long. Jack, you show Red around the place, would you? I shouldn’t be long.”
Jack barely had time to agree before Sam was out the door and
gone in a rooster tail of dust. I listened to his engine fade in the distance, leaving us alone. Alone with Jack Packard in a building full of beds...
But some daydreams don’t hold up in the harsh light of reality. What exactly were you planning to do? I asked myself. Drag him down onto one of Cissy’s purple bedspreads? What on earth would he think of you then?
“You OK?” Jack touched my arm. “You look a little car-sick.”
“I’m fine.” I moved away and raked a hand through my hair. “Just a bit queasy. Let’s start in the kitchen, shall we? I could use some cold water.”
As I stood at the polished granite counter, sipping from the glass Jack handed me, I took refuge in Shara Mortimer’s paperwork. The general outline of the wedding was clear enough: an outdoor ceremony, champagne and a grilled supper back at the inn, and dancing under the stars. Very festive, very lavish, and, as I’d expect from Paliere Productions, very efficiently documented.
I put on a businesslike air, nodding gravely and making notes in the margins, until I regained my composure. Jack waited patiently, his arms folded, leaning against the stove. It was a restaurant-style range, double wide, with all the latest bells and whistles. He looked good there.
Though he’d look better naked. Maybe I should have poured cold water over my head. Down, girl.
“Right!” I said briskly, wrenching my gaze away from Jack to survey the rest of the kitchen. Strictly speaking, this was the catering manager’s domain, but taking over the Kane/ Packard nuptials at the last minute put me in a tricky position. If I was to command the respect and confidence of my vendors at tomorrow morning’s meeting, I needed to arm myself with the details of the venue.
So I checked on refrigerator and freezer space, extra sinks, power supply, the servers’ access route from kitchen to veranda, all the while scribbling away in the fat spiral notebook I always have at hand. Eddie keeps nagging me about upgrading to something electronic, but I like paper. You would think he’d be the old-fashioned one, at his age, but—
Death Takes a Honeymoon Page 9
