A Crime for Christmas Read online

  Archie’s surprise appeared to be genuine, but appearances can be deceiving.

  “Why have Grant call the broker? Why not do it yourself?” I inquired.

  “Grant briefs me on where our money is going, but he’s more hands-on with the firm’s investments and the financial side of things, while I focus on daily operations and development,” Archie explained. “Much of the vision for what we do is mine, but Grant’s always been the better business mind.”

  “Is it the kind of business mind that would hedge its bets so the firm still makes a profit if the pipeline goes through?” I asked.

  Archie tensed up in his seat like it had been him I’d accused. “Absolutely not! That would go against everything this lodge and our firm stand for. I’m sure this is just an unfortunate oversight.”

  “So you and Grant always see eye to eye on things?” I asked, thinking about the argument I’d witnessed between them through the window of Grant’s suite right after I broke my leg.

  “Well, er, I don’t think any business partners agree all the time, of course,” he said. “But largely, yes, we share the same overall vision.”

  “I saw the two of you arguing after the opening ceremony,” I told him. “And it looked pretty heated.”

  “Were you spying on us, Nancy?” he asked, looking genuinely hurt.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, but I saw you through the window and I’d heard that there’d been death threats against both of you because of the pipeline and I was concerned,” I told him. “And now that there’s an active investigation, it sounds like whatever you were arguing about may be relevant to the case.”

  Archie sighed. “Grant was upset about my plan to turn our backcountry land into a permanent nature conservancy. And to be fair, I’d just had the idea that morning and should have discussed it with him before making the announcement, but . . .”

  “But . . . ?” I prompted him when he fell silent.

  “Grant has been urging me to keep our options open with the lease to the pipeline,” he confessed, not meeting my eyes. “Which I obviously rejected, by the way. I’m sure the only reason he’d even consider it is because of all the political pressure he’s under. He represents a lot of different constituents, and many of them are for it, including a lot of people in town. I don’t agree and think it’s shortsighted, but I admit that there are some persuasive arguments, and I understand why some people are for it.”

  “But that goes against your whole mission!” I objected.

  “Which is exactly why I’ve stood my ground and insisted we have to keep the interests of the lodge and Grant’s political career separate,” he said. “I do think it’s important, though, to try to understand where people are coming from. That way you can have compassion for them and better explain your point of view so they can see how it actually benefits them, too.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to have much luck changing the minds of Dino Bosley or Sheriff Pruitt, no matter what you say,” I shared.

  He nodded sadly. “Some people are so set in the way they think, you may never get through to them, even if the thing they think they want just hurts them and the town in the end. But I believe there are people who really will listen if you treat them fairly and give them a chance.”

  “And what about Grant? Did he listen?” I asked.

  “Grant doesn’t want the pipeline either, he’s just in a difficult position,” he said. “And to be honest, the lodge is as well.”

  “But you have all the leverage!” I reminded him. “You own the land the pipeline needs, and there’s nothing they can do to make you give it to them if you don’t want to.”

  “Yes, it looks that way, thankfully. The pipeline company wants to get this deal done fast or shift gears and find another location. Our position appears strong on paper, and there’s no reason for them to think we can’t just wait them out. And if we succeed in stopping them here, it may inspire others to stand up to them in the next location too. . . .” Archie let the sentence trail off.

  “Exactly!” I agreed. “Shutting them down here would be a huge victory for the whole conservation movement.”

  Archie pinched the bridge of his nose. “Only we had to borrow a lot more money than we expected to renovate the lodge the way I dreamed it. If the Grand Sky Lodge doesn’t open strong and generate enough income to cover costs right away, we may not be able to repay the loans.”

  My eyes went wide. I’d known remaking the lodge as an eco-resort had been expensive, but not so expensive that they were in financial trouble before they even opened! No wonder Archie was so anxious over the sabotage. He had a lot more at stake than just bad publicity and a rocky start.

  “The firm is so heavily leveraged that we could lose the entire business along with the lodge,” he continued. “If it gets off to a slow start and we can’t raise more emergency capital, we could be forced to either lease that one small sliver of land to the pipeline—or risk losing all of it.”

  My stomach sank. “If they knew how precarious your financial situation really is, they could just wait you out.”

  “And I’m afraid we could be left with few options if they did,” Archie revealed, hanging his head. “They’re offering a huge sum of money. And Grant is right that in a worst-case scenario, we could use that money to do a lot of good. Not just to save the lodge and see our vision succeed; we’d have a windfall left over to reinvest in all kinds of new conservation efforts.” Archie paused, shaking his head like he was trying to erase the thought from his mind. “But it would mean compromising my core values and contributing to the destruction of the very same natural resources I pledged to protect.”

  I could see the internal debate tormenting him as he stood up and started pacing in front of the fire.

  “I wanted to create the land conservancy to take the decision out of our hands and make that option impossible,” Archie declared. “That way the land would be protected even if we aren’t, and we’d be forced to find another way. It wouldn’t be the first time we had to fight from behind to make a project work.”

  “That’s really admirable, standing up for your principles and putting the future of the land over your own success,” I said. “A lot of people would never even think to do that.”

  “But I didn’t really think it all the way through before rushing to announce it,” he said sadly. “As Grant pointed out, turning hundreds of acres of lodge-owned land into a forever-wild nature preserve that can’t be developed is basically the same as giving it away as far as investors are concerned. The property value of the entire resort could take a huge hit, making it impossible to raise the money we may need to save it. I hate to admit it, but he’s right.”

  It was a complicated predicament, that was for sure. Archie’s attempt to do the right thing and save the land from exploitation could indirectly lead to the failure of his vision for an environmentally sustainable eco-resort.

  “I also didn’t take into account how much the move would hurt Grant politically,” Archie added. “Refusing to lease the land to the pipeline is one thing—Grant could always defend it by deflecting the blame to me and saying his hands were tied—but him agreeing to turn it into a nature preserve? A lot of his supporters, including many of the important ones he relies on to get reelected, would see that as an aggressive act to block the pipeline against their interests.”

  “You mean like Harry Crane?” I asked.

  “I don’t know who that is,” replied Archie.

  “A backroom oil lobbyist who’s been helping fund the push to exploit protected wilderness areas all over the country,” I informed him reluctantly—if he honestly didn’t know, I didn’t want to add to his torment. “He’s basically a professional anticonservationist.”

  “That can’t be right,” Archie stated.

  “He’s also a close associate of Larry Thorwald,” I said, dropping the second part of the equation on him.

  “I can’t believe Grant knew about this,” Archie ins
isted. “Yes, he was considering leasing the land, but only as a last resort. He would never take money from those people. It goes against everything our firm and this lodge set out to achieve. It has to be a coincidence.”

  I’d thought so at first too when Frank told me. Political campaigns take contributions from all kinds of people. But—

  “It sure is a funny one, especially when you combine it with the All Alloy stock purchase,” I reminded him. “You’d almost think he had insider info on the pipeline’s plans.”

  “I refuse to believe it,” Archie said. “Grant and I have been friends and partners for decades. I can’t imagine he would help them sabotage my dream for financial gain.”

  Sabotage. There was that word again. What I still didn’t know was what Grant’s apparent involvement with the pipeline had to do with the attacks on the restaurant and Chef K. Not to mention the break-ins. Could it be another tactic to put pressure on the lodge to lease the land?

  “Grant went back to the state capital for a meeting,” Archie said before I could pose the theory to him. “The two of us are going have a long conversation and get to the bottom of all this as soon as he gets back tomorrow.”

  “I’d like to interview him as well,” I said.

  “No,” Archie said firmly. “This is personal, and I’m going to handle it myself.”

  He walked out of the room before I could argue. I was going to have to trust Archie with this part of the investigation for now—at least I hoped I could trust him.

  He’d just admitted that he might be forced to decide between leasing the land to the pipeline and saving the lodge, and if he did, his firm could make a pretty penny off the All Alloy stock he said he didn’t know made parts for the pipeline.

  With as much action as the five days had seen, I was prepared for something crazy to happen at any minute, but the rest of the day turned out to be shockingly uneventful. No new discoveries, gold nuggets, hidden doors, or, thankfully, sabotage! And as much action as I’d seen the last few days, I was exhausted. And since getting to bed early was literally what the doctor ordered, I figured it was about time I followed Doc Sherman’s advice.

  Besides, I wanted to be up bright and early the next morning to watch the sun rise—and to watch Brady shoot footage of Liz teaching the kids how to ski for their documentary! They planned to hit the slopes before they officially opened for the day to take advantage of the beautiful morning light while they still had the mountain all to themselves.

  I wheeled myself over to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Before I left the lodge hospital, a nurse had patiently showed me how to get things done from the wheelchair. At her suggestion, I had a paper cup ready at the sink so I could rinse without standing up.

  Then I reversed the chair back into bedroom and positioned it next to my bed. I’d also learned how to move from my wheelchair to a bed or a chair. My transfers still weren’t perfect, but I was able to use my right leg and arms to swing my body from one seated position to another. From there it was just a matter of lifting my cast onto the bed.

  I smiled once I was all tucked in. It certainly wasn’t easy to learn all this stuff, but I was proud of myself for getting here.

  I woke up well rested and excited to take a short break from the investigation. I transferred to my wheelchair and made my way over to the window looking out on the slopes, armed with my iPad, my walkie-talkie, and my now-trusty binoculars. I’d gotten to spend enough time looking through them the past few days that I practically had the mountain memorized!

  Seeing the first light break over the mountain was downright glorious. Brady was still getting set up, and I couldn’t see Liz and the kids through the binoculars—the slope they were shooting on was just out of view—but I could see Liz checking each Thing’s gear through one of the camera angles on my iPad.

  Brady had me hooked up with a live stream of all the different camera angles. He was going to be skiing along with them, shooting as he went, but he also had remote cameras set up at different places on the trails along with the drone. Liz and the kids were even wearing small GoPro action cameras to film their points of view too. I had my walkie-talkie tuned in to the radio channel they were using for the tiny remote radios they wore in their helmets, so I could listen in as Brady gave them direction.

  I looked through the binoculars again to catch the rest of the sunrise over the empty mountain, and I noticed it wasn’t entirely empty anymore. A well-bundled skier was getting ready to drop in on a nearby slope on the western edge of the mountain that everyone called Round Top because of the little dome at the top of the trail. The mountain hadn’t opened yet, so the skier must have been an employee or someone else with permission to ski, though there was no way to tell who it was, with the full-face ski mask they were wearing. Whoever they were, they were lucky! What a beautiful time to ski. The sunrise had turned the freshly groomed snow a gorgeous golden hue. The scene would have made a beautiful painting.

  Except, I realized as I traced with my binoculars the run the skier was about to take, something was off. I’d spent enough time staring at the mountains through the binoculars to notice something about the trail was different, but it took me a minute to figure out what.

  Some of the ski boundary signs had been moved. They were now in the middle of the old trail, changing the course of the run about halfway down. I didn’t think much of it at first—I figured the groomers had just decided to make some changes—until I followed the new course with my binoculars.

  Right off the side of the mountain! And the skier was already on their way down with no way to warn them!

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Wipeout!

  IF THE SKIER FOLLOWED THE boundary signs, he or she was going to plummet off a twenty-foot ledge!

  I stared helplessly at the doomed skier. The slopes still weren’t open, so there was no ski patrol in sight, and the only other people on the mountain were Brady, Liz, and the kids. I could see Brady a couple of slopes over, heading back toward the kids, who were goofing around at the top of the same slope where I’d seen them earlier, but I couldn’t see Liz on any of the camera angles.

  The only thing I could think to do was to radio them.

  “Brady! Liz! Come in! There’s a skier in trouble on Round Top! They’re about to go off the side!” I yelled into the walkie-talkie, but all I got in response was static. Had they even heard my call for help?

  I frantically tried switching the channels, trying to find ski patrol dispatch, yelling, “Mayday! Mayday! Rescue emergency on Round Top!” over and over again into each channel in case anyone heard.

  “Nancy, is that you?” Henry’s voice buzzed over the walkie-talkie.

  “Henry!” I shouted. “Get ski patrol to Round Top now! Someone moved the trail markers, and there’s a skier headed straight for the ledge!”

  “Oh my, but how—” Henry started to ask, but I cut him off.

  “There’s no time! Get help now!”

  “On it!” he said, clicking off.

  Even if Henry reached ski patrol right away, there would never be enough time for them to get up the slope before the skier reached the ledge. All they’d be able to do was hope the person was still alive to rescue at the bottom.

  I picked the binoculars back up with shaking hands. Stuck in my suite in a wheelchair, there was nothing more I could do but watch. The skier was closing in on the halfway point, mere yards from the moved boundary signs, seconds away from launching themselves over the side.

  I couldn’t watch. I was about to shut my eyes to block out the inevitable fall when there was a flash of movement farther up the slope at the edge of my binoculars’ field of vision.

  Liz! Her ponytail waved in the air behind her as she swooped down from a steeper merging trail and rocketed toward the condemned skier. And what a turn! She carved hard, going nearly parallel to the snow, then dropped herself into a controlled skid-out right in front of the unsuspecting skier, wiping them both out mere feet from the ledge!


  The skier hit the ground hard—but thanks to Liz, it was ground they hit and not air! As bad as the wipeout looked, the skier was still in one piece. They wouldn’t have any idea how close they’d come to going over the edge. And the only reason they hadn’t was because of Liz’s daring rescue—so daring that she’d risked going over herself if she’d misjudged her skid even a little.

  I watched through the binoculars as Liz sat up, dusted herself off, and lifted herself back onto her skis. The other skier leaped up with their back to me, whipped off their mask, and started yelling at Liz. Liz pointed and the skier turned, revealing their shocked face as they gaped at the ledge a few feet away.

  Chef K. As soon as I saw her face, I knew the moved signs weren’t an accident. Someone had tried to take her out.

  She stood there, silently staring over the ledge at the fate Liz had saved her from. This time it was Chef K who embraced Liz with a hug.

  Watching the scene unfold through my binoculars, I realized something else. Chef K had also been the person originally scheduled to go down the trail where I broke my leg during the opening day’s inaugural run. Markers had been put in the wrong place that day too, and if Chef K hadn’t canceled at the last minute, she would have been the one to wipe out on the ice because of it, not me.

  My “accident” hadn’t been an accident at all. Someone had set a trap to take out the chef, and I’d just had the bad luck of stepping in it.

  The unmarked patch of ice that broke my leg hadn’t been a mere groomer’s mistake, and I was pretty sure that whoever set that trap had set this one as well. But who? Chef K had been scheduled for the inaugural ceremony before I took her place, so a ton of people would have known about it—but this was just a random morning with a whole mountain full of different trails. To get the answer, I’d need to find out who knew that Chef K was going to be the first one down Round Top that morning.