Murder in Vail (12 page)

Chapter Thirty-five

Glen raced up the stairs and pounded on Lance’s door. Lance was slow to answer it, and when he did, he held a pair of scissors in his hand as a weapon.

“Gwen has disappeared,” Glen announced breathlessly. “I’ve looked everywhere, inside and out, but I can’t find her.”

“Oh God. This can’t be happening. Again.”

Yvette came running up to Lance and grabbed his arm. “All the women in the family are dead except me,” she cried hysterically. “We have to get out of here.”

“Now, honey. Just because Gwen is missing, doesn’t mean she’s dead. She’ll turn up,” Lance said, trying to be strong for his wife. “No matter what, I’ll protect you. I promise.”

To Glen, he said, “What are we going to do?”

“Are there any hiding places in the house or outbuildings where she might be? She may have just panicked and wanted to hide.”

Lance thought about it for a few moments.

“There’s a decent-sized storage room under the staircase, and there are some utility rooms back by the generator where we were this morning,” Lance said. “There’s also the shed over by the ski trail where we keep all of our skiing equipment. It’s quite a distance over there—probably farther than the length of a football field from here. It won’t be easy to get to in this snow.”

Calmer after her outburst, Yvette suggested, “What about binoculars? Maybe we could look to see if we can find her.”

“That’s a fantastic idea, cupcake. I have a pair of high-powered binoculars in my bureau. I’ll get them.”

Lance hurried across the room and pulled open the bottom drawer. “Here they are.” He held up a large pair of binoculars in a black case.

“Great,” Glen said. “Why don’t you two look, and I’ll go down and check out the storage rooms.”

After Glen left, Yvette walked to the door and locked it. With a serious look on her face, she asked her husband, “Do you think Gwen might be hiding from Glen?”

Lance looked surprised. “You know, I hadn’t thought about that. Do you think so?”

Her face took on a pensive look. “Well, if she thinks Glen is the person who killed her mother and Rachel, she might be afraid of him and not want to be alone with him.”

“I hadn’t thought about it that way. I thought whoever had killed Mom and Rachel had also gotten to Gwen.”

“I did too at first,” Yvette said. “But if I thought you had killed them, I would be afraid to be alone with you, and I would probably try to hide someplace.”

She added giving him a kiss on the cheek, “Not that I would ever think that you were a murderer.”

He hugged her. “You know I could never murder anybody.”

“I know you couldn’t. You’re too sweet.”

“So, do you think Glen did it?”

“I don’t know,” Yvette said. “I do know he doesn’t love Gwen the way he should. The way you love me.”

“How do you know that?”

“A woman can tell. He doesn’t say nice things to her or about her. He’s flirty with other women.”

Lance seemed surprised. “I always thought he was just kidding around. I thought they just bantered and sparred, you know, like some couples do, but that it wasn’t really serious.”

Yvette thought about it. “Maybe. But I wouldn’t like it if you talked that way to me. Sometimes they say really hurtful things to each other.”

“I would never talk to you that way.”

“I know. We wouldn’t be married if you did.”

Lance thought for a moment. “But I don’t think Glen would kill Gwen. It wouldn’t make sense. If he murdered my mother so Gwen would inherit, he would lose her inheritance if Gwen died before she got it.”

“No he wouldn’t,” Yvette corrected him. “Your mother died first, so your sister inherited then. If she dies after, Glen would inherit from her.”

Lance considered what Yvette said. “You know, that’s right. I hadn’t thought about that.” He looked at her proudly. “How’d you get so smart?”

“Just because you’re pretty, doesn’t mean you can’t be smart too.”

Chapter Thirty-six

Lance stood on the balcony scanning the pristine white countryside with his binoculars. He methodically checked the landscape in vertical lines up and down, as if he were mowing a lawn. He started in the far west and moved east.

When he looked northeast, about fifty yards north of a large snow-covered box that he knew must be the ski shed, he thought he saw something red in the snow. Focusing the lenses tighter on the object, he was sure it was red, and there looked like there was something greenish brown too.

Lance opened the sliding glass door a couple of inches. “Honey, come her and take a look at this.”

Yvette threw a blanket over her shoulders and stepped out onto the balcony, shutting the door behind her. Duchess immediately got up on her hind legs and began to scratch rapidly on the glass.

“Did you see something, Lancie?”

He stood behind her and positioned her shoulders directly toward the spot. “Look out there,” he pointed. “About fifty yards left of the ski shed.”

“Is the ski shed that big lump of snow?” she asked.

“Yes, that’s it. Now go straight to the left about half the length of a football field.”

Yvette moved the binoculars slowly along the line that Lance had directed.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Keep looking. There’s something there.”

She kept scanning the area for several moments, adjusting the focus twice.

“Wait! I do see something. Yes, it’s red and kind of spotted around. And there’s something dark green. It looks like it might be clothing.”

Yvette took the binoculars down from her eyes and looked gravely at Lance. “I think it might be blood.”

There was a loud rap on the door. Lance crossed the room to answer it, but not before stopping at the desk to pick up the scissors. “You stay back, dear,” he told Yvette.

“Who is it?” Lance asked through the door.

“It’s me, Glen. I checked all the storage rooms, but I couldn’t find Gwen.”

Lance glanced over his shoulder at Yvette. “Lock the door behind me when I leave, and don’t answer it for anybody but me. Okay?”

Yvette nodded. “Be careful, Lancie.”

In the hallway, Lance stood away from his brother-in-law, holding the scissors tightly, and told Glen what they had seen through the binoculars.

“Oh God,” Glen murmured. “Please don’t let it be Gwen.”

“We need to go check it out,” Lance said. “Let’s go get Stephen. The three of us can go together.”

They hurried down the hall to the study. Lance rapped on the door. “Stephen!”

Stephen opened the door. He looked like he had just woken up.

“Gwen is missing,” Glen told him.

“What?”

“We think we see blood in the snow north of the shed,” Lance said.

“Oh God.” Stephen grabbed his sweater and pulled it on. “Let’s go check it out.”

They hurried down the stairs and stopped at the coat closet. Stephen handed each of them a heavy jacket, gloves, and a ski mask. “We need to go to the utility room out back to get snowshoes. They’ll make things a lot easier.”

Stephen led the way to the utility room outside the kitchen door. The other two waited in the kitchen while Stephen went outside and pulled out three pairs of webbed snowshoes and ski poles.

“Glen, put these on,” Stephen said, tossing a pair of snowshoes to his brother-in-law. “They’re the best thing for walking across unplowed snow.”

Glen stared at the wide, odd-looking mini-skis. “I’ve never worn these before,” he said, sitting down on a kitchen chair and strapping one on. “They’re really light.”

“They will definitely do the job and get us there a lot faster,” Stephen said.

Before he put the snowshoes on, Lance hesitated.

“I don’t know if I should leave Yvette,” Lance said, lowering his voice. “I don’t like the idea of her being alone in the house with Helga.”

“I don’t blame you,” Glen whispered back. “Helga’s walking around with the biggest butcher knife I’ve ever seen. She scared me to death with it a little while ago.”

“Stay if you’d rather,” Stephen said. “Glen and I can go.”

Lance looked back and forth at Stephen and Glen. He decided he needed to go with them.

“No, I want to come. It’s better if we stay together. Just give me a minute to go back up to warn Yvette to beware of Helga.”

Lance ran up the stairs two at a time. When he reached the room, he tapped lightly on the door.

“Yvette?”

“Who is it?”

“It’s me, cupcake.”

“How do I know it’s you?”

Lance smiled. “That’s good,” he said. “Don’t trust anybody. You don’t need to open the door. Just listen. We’re going out to check the red spots in the snow. You’re going to be alone in the house with Helga. Do not leave the room under any circumstances, and don’t open the door for her for any reason. Understand? I don’t trust her—and she has a knife.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t let Helga in. I have one of your golf clubs for a weapon, too.”

“That’s good. We’ll be back soon. You can watch us through the binoculars if you want.”

“I will. We need a password. So I’ll know it’s you when you get back.”

“Won’t you recognize my voice?”

“Well, yes. But I’d feel better if we had a password.”

“Ok. What do you want the password to be?”

Yvette looked around the room.

“I know. Duchess.”

“Duchess it is. I’ve gotta go. Be careful.”

“You be careful too, Lancie.”

Chapter Thirty-seven

Before they stepped out the back door to start their freezing journey, they all zipped up their heavy ski jackets and pulled on black masks.

Glen laughed. “I feel like we’re on our way to rob some arctic bank.”

The door slammed on their way out, and Helga came running from her room. She peered curiously out the window at them, her knife at her side.

“Be on the lookout for any tracks in the snow,” Stephen told them. “If she’s out here, and she left from the back door like we did, we may be able to find some tracks.”

The snowfall was heavier now as the three men trudged through the snow toward the east, moving slowly at first until they got the hang of walking in the odd contraptions on their feet. Never having skied or used ski poles before, Glen couldn’t get a rhythm going with the ski poles and fell several times.

Stephen moved much faster than his brother and brother-in-law and kept getting far ahead of them. He stopped occasionally to let them catch up. Once, when Stephen was several yards ahead of them, Lance noticed Stephen lighting up a joint.
“He never misses an opportunity,”
Lance thought sadly to himself. Stephen doused it in the snow before Lance and Glen caught up with him.

As they came closer to the area where Lance had seen the red color, they became frustrated when they couldn’t find anything. Lance turned around and looked back at the house in the distance. He could barely make out Yvette standing on the balcony. It looked like she had a white flag on the end of a long stick that she was pointing toward the north.

“Can you see Yvette, Stephen? I think she’s trying to direct us. She has the binoculars.”

Stephen squinted. “I think she means we need to go farther this way,” Stephen said, taking the lead again.

With her binoculars, Yvette could see that they were within forty feet or so of the red color. She kept pointing the golf club with her white scarf tied around the end in the right direction.

“What they doing?” a harsh voice yelled from nearby.

Yvette screamed and almost dropped the golf club. She turned to see Helga standing on the balcony of the master bedroom.

“Gwen has disappeared,” Yvette called back. “We looked through the binoculars and saw something in the snow. They’re going to check it out.”

Helga stared out over the white expanse at the men in the distance. She drew her coat close to her, but said nothing else.

The men looked back for Yvette’s signal and saw that she was still directing them farther north. Stephen slushed up a small hill, shaded his eyes and squinted. Then he yelled out, “I see something!”

They approached the site slowly and realized the red color on the snow did indeed look like blood. It was matted and splattered, as if it had been sprayed around on the snow.

“Please don’t be Gwen,” Glen pleaded.

Stepping closer, they saw the sleeve of a camouflage jacket with a bloody hand at the end. The arm, they suddenly realized, was lying in the snow by itself—it wasn’t attached to a body.

Glen moved closer to the hand, knelt down, and examined it. “Oh, thank God.”

“What, Glen?” Lance asked.

“It’s a man’s hand.”

“Thank heavens,” Lance said. “But whose?”

Stephen pointed to the snow on the other side of the arm. “Look over there. Tracks.”

Large cat tracks led away to the north from where they stood. “A mountain lion got him.”

“A mountain lion!” Glen almost shrieked. “Let’s get out of here.”

“You’re not in Miami anymore,” Stephen snickered. “Don’t worry, though. This probably happened last night. The cat is probably far away by now.”

Lance looked at the arm distastefully. Bones protruded from what was left of it. Most of the skin and muscle had been chewed off. “Who do you think it is—or was?”

“I don’t think. I know,” Stephen answered. “See that camouflage hunting shirt? It’s one of the poachers for sure. Probably froze to death in the storm, and the mountain lion got a free meal out of it. Good for him.”

“What a way to go,” Lance grimaced.

Stephen shrugged. “Serves him right.”