Murder in Vail
Authors: Moore,Judy
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Murder in Vail
Judy Moore
Excerpt from Murder in Vail
Thunder cracked and lightning lit up the room. She pulled the covers up to her neck, clutching the sheets. She lay still as a statue, paralyzed by the storm. Even with her entire family in the house, Sally felt afraid. The storm made the house feel so unnatural, so eerie.
Lying in bed, dreading the next bolt of lightning, Sally’s mind went immediately to the disaster of a dinner. I wish I hadn’t lost my temper, she thought regretfully. I wanted to break the news gently, not scream it at them. She remembered the shock and hurt in their faces and felt guilty. She needed to find some way of making peace, of calming everything down.
Another crack of lightning pierced the winter night, this one very close, and illuminated the room. Suddenly, she thought she saw the doorknob begin to turn. Then it stopped. Then it started again. Probably one of the kids, she decided, but the way it started, stopped, and then started again disturbed her.
“Is someone there?” she called out. The doorknob stopped turning, and she thought she heard footsteps scurrying away.
Murder in Vail
A Books to Go Now Publication
Copyright © Judy Moore 2016
Books to Go Now
Cover Design by Romance Novel Covers Now
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Also published on Smashwords
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First eBook Edition –September 2016
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, any place, events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and story lines are created from the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously.
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Dedication:
To my mother, who has always loved a good mystery
Acknowledgment:
Thank you so much for the support, encouragement, and feedback in the writing of this book to Eunice Moore, Judy Witgenstein, Bonnie Jones, Nancy Raughley, Judy Littleton, Anne Sommers and Arlene Bailey.
Look for Judy Moore’s other titles
Somebody Killed the Cart Girl, Birds of Prey, The Hitchhiker on Christmas Eve, Airport Christmas, and The Holiday House Sitter.
Contents
Chapter One
1
Chapter Two
7
Chapter Three
12
Chapter Four
19
Chapter Five
24
Chapter Six
27
Chapter Seven
31
Chapter Eight
34
Chapter Nine
37
Chapter Ten
40
Chapter Eleven
43
Chapter Twelve
47
Chapter Thirteen
49
Chapter Fourteen
52
Chapter Fifteen
55
Chapter Sixteen
58
Chapter Seventeen
62
Chapter Eighteen
68
Chapter Nineteen
70
Chapter Twenty
73
Chapter Twenty-one
79
Chapter Twenty-two
82
Chapter Twenty-three
84
Chapter Twenty-four
86
Chapter Twenty-five
88
Chapter Twenty-six
90
Chapter Twenty-seven
94
Chapter Twenty-eight
96
Chapter Twenty-nine
99
Chapter Thirty
102
Chapter Thirty-one
105
Chapter Thirty-two
108
Chapter Thirty-three
111
Chapter Thirty-four
113
Chapter Thirty-five
115
Chapter Thirty-six
118
Chapter Thirty-seven
122
Chapter Thirty-eight
125
Chapter Thirty-nine
129
Chapter Forty
132
Chapter Forty-one
135
Chapter Forty-two
138
Chapter Forty-three
140
Chapter Forty-four
144
Chapter Forty-five
148
Chapter Forty-six
150
Chapter Forty-seven
153
Chapter Forty-eight
156
Chapter Forty-nine
160
Chapter Fifty
164
Chapter Fifty-one
168
Chapter Fifty-two
171
Chapter Fifty-three
174
Chapter Fifty-four
178
Chapter Fifty-five
180
Chapter Fifty-six
183
Chapter Fifty-seven
187
Chapter Fifty-eight
191
Chapter Fifty-nine
197
Chapter Sixty
200
Chapter Sixty-one
205
Chapter One
It was Christmas, so Sally had to see her children. And worse, their dreadful spouses.
Her three children visited her
—
and her money—only once a year, and a few days each year were plenty. Sally could barely tolerate them anymore. None of them worked, had children, helped charities, or knew how to do much of anything except spend money. They lived off their trust funds—and those funds were disappearing quickly.
Sally really couldn’t figure out where she went wrong. She’d read every parenting book available back in the eighties, and she stayed at home to raise her kids. But her children had grown into the most materialistic, useless adults she’d ever met. And their spouses were even worse.
It must have been the money, she told herself. All that money.
Her husband’s family had millions, which he had turned into billions. When he died of a heart attack at age fifty-one, Sally became one of the first female billionaires in North America. She often wondered what her life would have been like if she hadn’t met Jack Braddock at the Pan American Games when they were both twenty-one. She was just a suntanned, middle-class girl from Southern California. But she competed on the U.S. synchronized swimming team, and he rode for the Canadian cycling squad. She medaled. He didn’t.
The attraction between them had been immediate, and they became inseparable from the day they met. She had no idea he came from one of the wealthiest steel families in Canada. They married six months later. She accompanied him to the Olympic Games the next year—where he finished in the middle of the pack—but she couldn’t compete because synchronized swimming had yet to become an Olympic sport. By the time it was, she had two children and another one on the way.
Sally and her husband had been so happy together for thirty years. Then he died, and she was suddenly alone. That was nearly six years ago. Now she lived by herself with her two Labradoodles and her housekeeper on top of a mountain near Vail, Colorado. It had been their second home since the children were young, and Sally moved in full-time after Jack died. Living in Canada for most of their married life, Sally and Jack loved winter sports and took up skiing together. With their athletic ability, they became so proficient that helicopter skiing held the only challenge for them. They skied down mountains in Colorado other skiers didn’t even know existed.
The biggest disappointment of her husband’s life was that none of his children took any interest in the family steel business. Now it was run by a board of directors made up of outsiders. Still the primary shareholder, Sally’s only participation was to attend the annual meeting every year in Toronto.
Her husband had set up trust funds for their three children in hopes they would build businesses of their own. They received twenty-five million dollars each when they turned twenty-four years old. Her husband chose the age and the amount—that was how much his family’s business was worth when he took it over when he was twenty-four. By the time he died, his personal fortune had grown to more than three billion dollars. But the opposite was the case with her children. Each year, their fortunes became more and more depleted.
In retrospect, Sally wished they had paid more attention to the advice of another billionaire, Warren Buffett. His philosophy? “Give your children enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.” Great advice. Sally and her husband had given their children enough to do nothing—and that is exactly what they had done. It had been a huge mistake giving them that much money at such a young age, a decision Sally would always regret. The money her children already had received was the last they would get from her. Sally was adamant about that. She planned to follow Buffett’s example this time and give the vast majority of her fortune to charity.
At fifty-six, Sally stayed active supporting several charities, painting watercolors, skiing, and of course, swimming. She swam for an hour every day in her large outdoor pool, summer or winter, many times when it was snowing. Sometimes she even practiced her old synchronized swimming routines. As a result, she had the body of a forty-year-old.
It was snowing today, two days before Christmas, as she backstroked across the long, infinity pool. She could see the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains in the distance, rising behind the steam that floated off the heated swimming pool. The snowflakes felt so cool as they fluttered down onto her face, refreshing her in these final minutes of her hour-long swim.
A few more circles of angels and that will be it for today,
she thought, scissor-kicking out to the center of the pool. She floated for a few moments, then brought her right foot up to her left knee, and then lifted it straight into the air, pointing her toes. Sculling evenly with her hands underwater, she moved in a large circle around the middle of the pool for several seconds, her extended leg perfectly straight. She could have gone longer, but the twenty-eight degree temperature became too uncomfortable for the exposed leg.
Finally, she swam to the shallow end, stepped out of the pool, and picked up one of the thick beach towels that were stacked by the pool’s edge. Shaking the snow from the towel, Sally quickly dried off and tied it around her waist. She grabbed a second towel and flung it around her shoulders, pulling it snugly around the top of her one-piece white bathing suit. The icy wind slapped at her bare skin as she hurried across the two-tiered deck, past the hot tub, to the back door of the house.
She stepped into the warmth of the kitchen and scurried over to the small fire that was ablaze under the brick hearth. As she warmed her hands at the fire, she could feel the endorphin rush begin to engulf her body, bringing that familiar feeling of peace and tranquility.
Then the doorbell rang.