Ridley Pearson - Killer Summer

“Well, hey, I ought to notify Ketchum and Sun Valley.” Brandon was blocking the doorway.

“Yeah,” Walt said, “go.”

Arthur Remy stepped out of the shower and reached for the monogrammed towel. The initials on it belonged to his hosts, currently hiking a trail on the ski mountain.

His hand swiped the air where the towel should have been.

“Jesus!” he barked, his voice ringing off the imported Spanish tile. He quickly covered his groin.

“What were you thinking?” the man asked.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Talking to the police, initiating inquiries within Branson Risk.”

“Oh, Christ!”

“Did it not occur to you we would be keeping an eye on our investment? That we would be watching you? Did it not occur to you that if you started turning over rocks, something vile would come out from underneath?” He indicated himself. “Voilà!”

“The sheriff came to me, not the other way around.”

“And this theft? An attempt at insurance money?”

“That wasn’t me.”

“Lying won’t help you, believe me.”

“It wasn’t me!”

“Insurance adjusters… is there a lower life-form? Like a dog with a bone. You get them involved… And now, thanks to you, they are involved. What if they decide to look at this more carefully?”

“You’re jumping to conclusions. I had nothing to do with attempting to steal the bottles.”

“That’s what I was told you would say. I said you weren’t that stupid, that you could be reasoned with.”

“It was someone else… a third party… has to be…”

“It was very, very stupid.”

“IT WAS NOT ME!”

“I’ve already told you, it wasn’t us. You panicked. You were afraid that after what happened in Amsterdam… that a closer look… that the insurance would cover it. It was a decent plan, had it worked. You should have come to us. But look where you are now.” He passed Remy the towel. “Look where it leaves you… where it leaves us.”

Remy wiped the shower water from his eyes and then wrapped his waist. “Let’s just calm down, okay?”

“I am perfectly calm. This is me being calm.”

“It’s a misunderstanding,” Remy said, “a fuckup.”

“ Your fuckup.”

“No… no… no…”

“Let me explain.” The man stepped closer. “We have two concerns. The first is that you might try to flee, to shirk your responsibilities.”

“No! That won’t happen.”

“The second,” he said, “is that you understand the degree to which you’ve fucked this up. ” He placed his hands on Remy’s shoulders, his arms locked. “The bottles will be sold, our investment recouped. End of story.”

He kicked Remy’s left knee, snapping it as loudly as a tree branch breaking. Remy screamed and fell back into the shower.

“More people break a leg or a hip in the bathtub than on ski slopes,” the man said. “Did you know that?” He picked up the fallen towel and tossed it onto the writhing man. “No more reminders. Next time… if there is a next time… You don’t want a next time.”

The persistent squeak of the room-service cart’s errant wheel created a counterpoint rhythm to the whoosh of Kevin’s rubber soles on the hotel hallway’s carpet. A good-looking woman in her thirties, with wet hair and pool water clinging to her tan skin like pearls, strode toward him in a tiny bikini.

“Down, boy,” came a girl’s voice over Kevin’s shoulder. He slowed the cart. The woman passed by, offering him a sideways glance that told him she’d caught him staring and that she enjoyed the attention.

“Get a room, why don’t you?” Summer said.

“What’s up?” he said, trying to act casual.

“I have an answer to that, but it’s too dirty to say in a hotel hallway. Dude, she’s ancient. Give it a rest.”

Kevin pushed the trolley forward. “I’ve got to deliver this,” he said.

“We’re still on for tonight?” she asked, walking side by side with him. She showed him the key to the jet. “Fifteen minutes. Right?”

“I’m off at seven,” he confirmed. “But I owe a friend big-time.”

“Where do we meet? I’ll have a bag with me and don’t want to drag it all over the place.”

“A bag? What’s with that?”

“It’s just clothes and stuff. No big deal.”

“I don’t know about this,” he said.

“Are you kidding? I am, like, totally looking forward to this,” she said. “It is so boring here. You don’t even know how much fun you’re going to have. You thought the hot springs were fun?” She took a step closer. “You don’t have a clue, do you?” she said in a raspy voice. She’d seen her mother tease her father this same way.

“Yeah?”

“I told you, you can sit up front,” she reminded. “It’ll be so awesome.”

He glanced over at her, and she offered him as much reassurance as she could muster.

“Yeah, I guess.”

She relaxed. “Awesome. So where do you want to pick me up?”

They made arrangements to meet in back of the hotel a few minutes past seven.

Her plan saved, her face brightened. She kissed him on the cheek, the same way her mother would her dad when she got her way. Kevin flushed and looked away.

“You’re running away, aren’t you?” he said, speaking down to the cart.

Her brain seized.

“What happens to me when it turns out I’m the one who drove you, huh? Have you even thought about that? I’ll bet you have. And I’ll bet you don’t give a crap, do you, because you’ll be long gone?”

“I’m eighteen, Kevin. I can do what I want.”

“Nice try,” he said. “I’m the one who’s eighteen. I’m the one gets in trouble for this.”

“I thought we were going to party in the jet? I promise, that’s happening. The flight I’m on is the last one out, at ten o’clock. You think I could get on a plane by myself if I wasn’t eighteen?”

“Maybe with a fake ID you could.”

“You’ve been hanging around your uncle too long, dude. This is not Without a Trace, you know?”

Kevin looked at her, remembering the hot springs.

“You never drove me down there, okay? All we’re going to do is hang in the jet until my flight, and if anyone ever asks I’ll say I took the shuttle bus, I promise.”

“So, then, why don’t you take the shuttle bus?” he asked.

“I thought we were friends,” she said, pouting and disappointed. “I thought we were going to party.”

Kevin slowed the cart and stopped in front of a room door.

“I’ve got to do this,” he said.

“Come on.” She pressed against him. “Please, Kevin… seven-ten, at the circle out back,” she said, confirming their plans. She hurried off before he had a chance to answer.

The door to the Incident Command Center in the Blaine County Sheriff’s Office was closed, a MEETING IN PROGRESS sign on the wall alongside.

Walt addressed Barge Levy, as Fiona took pictures of Janet Finch’s inspection of the Adams bottles.

“One thing you didn’t explain, Sheriff,” Finch said, never taking her attention off the bottles, “is how you talked Arthur Remy into allowing this.”

“Who said I did?”

“You have the access card. You opened the case.”

“True. And true.”

“Go ahead, be that way,” Finch said.

“Every once in a great while, blind luck plays a hand in an investigation.”

“You stole it from him?”

“Remy showed up at the emergency room earlier,” Walt said. “Slipped and broke his knee, he claimed. I was contacted because the on-call orthopedist and his radiologist judged the fracture to be blunt-force trauma-a baseball bat, maybe a martial-arts kick, to the knee. We ask them to report that kind of difference of opinion, primarily to head off domestic violence against women.”