Terry Odell - Mapleton 03 - Deadly Puzzles (3 page)

Gordon brushed snow off the SUV
’s door handle and climbed inside. He started the engine, turned on the heat and defrosters, and thanked whatever ingrained Colorado instincts had made him take the extra seconds yesterday to lift the windshield wipers off the glass. He grabbed his brush and scraper tool.

“
Get inside,” he said to Wardell. “It’ll warm up soon.”

Wardell sidled between the SUV and what Gordon assumed was Paula
’s car, since it had accumulated barely two inches of snow. Wardell climbed into the passenger side and sat, arms folded across his chest, hands tucked into his armpits.

Glad this was February and not April, when the spring snow would be wet and heavy, Gordon set to his task. The powdery stuff was much easier to deal with, and Gordon had the windshield clear and the car scraped within a matter of minutes.

When Gordon climbed into the driver’s seat, Wardell was fumbling with his phone. “I’ve tried calling her cell,” Wardell said, “but there’s no signal where we spun out. Not much here, either.”

“
Texts might get through.”

“
Good idea.” Wardell poked at the keys and set the phone in his lap. He rubbed his eyes. “Hey, I’m usually a lot more together than this.”

“
You’ve been out in the snow. You bumped your head. And you’re stressed. It’s understandable.”

Gordon shoved the shifter into four-wheel drive and did a cautious Y turn out of the small parking area in front of the B and B. Any bootprints left by Wardell were already buried under the new snowfall. So was the driveway. Gordon steered the SUV between the rows of trees that lined the drive and made his way along the country road toward the highway.

“How did you find the B and B?” Gordon said.

Wardell seemed to have trouble processing the question. His brow furrowed as if deep in thought.
“Sign. Yeah. I saw a sign with an arrow. I remembered the name from when my wife and I were planning our trip. We’d discussed staying there. It clicked when I saw the sign, so I followed it. Figured more chance of finding civilization than on the main road. I hadn’t seen another car in ages.”

“
Had you walked a long time before you turned off?” Gordon asked. By now, they were approaching the highway, which was about a mile from the Yardumians’. A twenty minute leisurely walk on a snowless day. Over twice that today given the weather and Wardell’s condition.

“
Man, I don’t remember. Not all that long. I remember walking. Walking. Falling. Walking some more. Being cold. And then I saw the house, and the lights. I guess it was closer to the side road than it was from there to the house, if that helps.”

“
It all helps. If you remember anything else, let me know.” Gordon slowed at the intersection. “Which way?”

Wardell faced him and Gordon took his first serious look at the man, who seemed less strained, leading Gordon to subtract a fair number of years from his original estimate. More like mid-to-late thirties. Pointed chin, short hair that would probably be closer to a sandy brown when it dried. His eyes were focused now, a pale brown color. He tugged a knit scarf out from under his coat. Fuzzy purple.

Wardell must have caught the lift of Gordon’s eyebrows. He gave a quick smile. “My wife’s. She insisted I take it.”

“
Smart of her. Hypothermia’s no fun. Now, which way?”

Wardell squinted out the side window.
“Left. I think.”

“
You think? Where were you coming from?”

“
Right. Not right. Not the direction, I mean. We were driving from my uncle’s house in Telluride. We wanted to do some cross-country skiing in Curecanti, then have a late lunch at this Inn in Cimarron we’d heard good things about. Maybe stay the night.” Wardell shook his head. “I’m still out of it, I guess.”

Gordon wondered if Wardell had suffered a minor concussion in the accident. That, and the cold, could scramble anyone
’s brain. The scrape, which he’d apparently reopened when he’d rubbed his forehead earlier, had stopped bleeding. “You’re doing fine.”

Gordon visualized a map of the state. Telluride was southwest of Tranquility Valley, but Curecanti was to the northeast.
“Did you already pass the turnoff to the Bed and Breakfast, or hadn’t you gotten that far yet?”

As he spoke, Gordon fed the destinations into his GPS.
“You took 145 to 62? Then to 550?”

Wardell seemed to be replaying the trip in his head.
“That’s right. I was using the GPS. Not paying a lot of attention until it was time to make a turn. I think we’d been on 550 about fifteen minutes. Or was it still 62? The weather was starting to go bad, and I was more concerned with staying
on
the road, not what its name was.”

“
What time did you leave Telluride?” Gordon asked. It was almost eleven. “Do you remember what time your GPS said you’d arrive at Curecanti?”

“
That I remember. When we started, we were supposed to get there at nine-twenty-seven. That’s my wife’s birthday, so we were joking around, and obviously, the GPS didn’t know about the weather. I kept telling her that her birthday was going to be later and later. I think the last time I looked, it had changed to ten-fifty-three.”

Gordon did some quick math.
“So you must have left Telluride around seven?”

Wardell
’s color was good now, and he seemed with it. “Yes. I remember checking the clock when we left. Seven after seven. We joked about that, too—how it was a lucky time. Guess our luck was bad.”

Gordon ignored the comment, but kept the man talking.
“After your accident, did you walk in the direction you were driving, or go back the other way?”

“
I remember that, too. We hadn’t seen anything that looked like civilization for some time, so I kept going the way we were driving.”

“
Good.” Gordon turned the wheel to the left. “Did you spin across the road or stay on the same side?” he asked before making the turn.

“
Same side.” Wardell’s brow furrowed. “I think. No, I’m eighty percent sure. We did a full three-sixty, at least. Ended up near the edge of the road, but on the right side. The flashers should be on.”

“
Excellent. That gives us a better target. I need you to get into the backseat so you can see this side of the road. I have to watch where I’m driving.”

Gordon waited as Wardell clambered over the seats, and then inched back onto the highway. The road hadn
’t yet been plowed, and he crawled through the cascading snow. One notch below white-out conditions. He figured Wardell’s accident must have happened within a mile of the turnoff. If they hadn’t spotted the car by then, he’d turn around and try going the other way. Wardell was apt to be disoriented after his accident, and might not be remembering correctly.

Gordon wished he was in his official vehicle where he
’d have a way to contact the local State Patrol. He’d told Yardumian to text him, but the phone in his pocket had been annoyingly silent. Between keeping the car on the twisting road and trying to catch blinking lights in his peripheral vision, he couldn’t worry too much about whether the cops were on their way. As he rounded each bend in the road, he hoped he’d see flashing red-and-blue lights indicating the car had been found. And what if they’d found it already and towed it away? Were that the case, surely Wardell’s wife would have been in touch with him.

“
There!” Wardell tapped on the glass.

A ribbon of guard rail protruded through the drifted snow. Gordon eased down on the brake pedal and worked his way to the shoulder. Or what he hoped was the shoulder. Again, he wished he had his own cruiser with its light bar so he could pull onto the opposite shoulder, but he didn
’t need someone to run into him. He shoved the car into Park and kept the engine running, emergency flashers on.

“
What? Where?” He clicked on his high beams, which were useless even if the SUV had been pointed in the right direction. All he could see was whirling snow zipping at him like the stars when the
Millennium Falcon
entered hyperspace.

He switched the headlights to low and reached for the Maglite he kept in his glove box.

“I remember those rocks,” Wardell said. “Up the mountain. See the one that looks like a frog?”

Gordon tried to make out what Wardell was pointing at, but unless the car had levitated when it spun out, that wasn
’t where they would find it. He attributed the blurriness to the snow, not his CSR. “What about the rock?”

“
My wife noticed it. I was looking for it, and I guess that’s why I didn’t see the elk until it was too late.”

Gordon tamped back his frustration at Wardell
’s penchant for going off on tangents. “Does that mean we’ve gone too far? Had you passed the frog rock before you spun out?”

“
No, no. It was still up ahead. But the car should be around here somewhere.” He rubbed his eyes again. “It all looks so different with the snow.”

“
Do you see lights?” Gordon swiped the window with his sleeve.

“
No, not from here. I’ll go look.”

Gordon heard the back door open, and saw Wardell ready to jump out.
“Wait,” Gordon said. “Let me go up a ways, find a turnout, and get on the right side of the road. Should make the car easier to spot. We don’t want to be tromping around in the snow if we’re not in the right place.”

The door closed.
“I guess so.”

“
Trust me,” Gordon said. So far, he’d kept his profession out of any dealings with anyone connected with Tranquility Valley. He was supposed to be taking a vacation from the job, and going incognito was the only way to avoid getting caught up in shop talk.

“
I’m coming up front,” Wardell said.

Gordon waited until Wardell hoisted himself into the front seat before shoving the car in gear. He made his way up the highway until he found a guard rail set far enough off the traffic lane to indicate it was a wide shoulder. He pulled in, then crossed the highway. He still hadn
’t seen another vehicle, confirming his fears that nobody had found the car and called it in. Keeping his flashers on, he crept along the road, stopping every ten feet or so to search for lights. But if the battery had gone dead, it might be an exercise in futility.

“
Would your wife keep the engine running?” Gordon asked. “To keep the heater going?”

“
I guess. If she got cold.”

“
You had enough gas?”

Wardell shrugged.
“Quarter of a tank. We were going to fill up next chance we got.”

Gordon eased forward another ten feet and stopped.
“Anything?”

“
Down there. I think I see lights. But why are they so far away?”

“
Let’s go look.” Gordon bundled up, grabbed the flashlight, found the flares in his emergency kit and set two well behind his car. He feared that someone hadn’t seen Wardell’s car and had bumped it off the road. He didn’t need a repeat of that mishap. Wardell paced the length of the car, shouting his wife’s name.

“
There. There’s the car,” Wardell shouted. He scrambled down the slope.

Gordon followed, more cautiously. A snow-covered sedan sat at the bottom of a short incline. The rear bumper was crumpled, which gave credence to Gordon
’s hypothesis. Wardell was yanking open the car doors. The man spun around. His eyes, caught in Gordon’s flashlight beam, were wide as dinner plates. “She’s not here.”

Gordon picked his way down the rest of the incline until he reached the vehicle.
“What do you mean, she’s not here?”

Wardell shot him an exasperated look.
“What don’t you understand? There’s nobody in the car. And it was on the road when I left, not down here. Something happened to her.”

“
Do you think she would have tried to follow where you went? You told her where you were going, right?”

“
Sort of, I guess.” Wardell continued tromping away from the car, stumbling in circles, shouting for his wife. He started farther into the woods.

Gordon side-slipped after him, grabbing him by his
coat. “Wardell. Wait. Listen to me. You getting lost or hurt isn’t going to help. Before we go blindly off, let’s stop for a minute and do this logically.”

“
Easy for you to say,” Wardell muttered. “It’s not
your
wife who’s missing.”

“
I understand. But taking two minutes now could save hours down the line.” He gripped Wardell’s shoulder and turned him toward the car. “Maybe she left a note.”

“
Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?” Wardell high-stepped through the snow and yanked the car door open. Since Wardell was wearing gloves, Gordon didn’t bother to stop him, but he held him back before he rummaged through the entire contents of the car.

“
Hang on a second,” Gordon said. He pulled out his cell phone and snapped pictures of the car as it lay, and then moved to grab shots of the interior.

“
What are you doing that for?” Wardell asked.

“
This way, if anything’s missing later, we’ll know. You know, in case someone else finds the car and tries to steal something. I’m sure your insurance company will want pictures to document the accident. Or a theft.” He paused, wondering if Wardell would buy it. The man was clearly distraught and might not be processing what Gordon was saying.

“
Like our luggage,” Wardell said. “Which is already gone. It was an overnight case—this was supposed to be a day trip, maybe one night—but it’s missing. So is Roni’s purse.”

“
Would she have taken them with her?”

“
Her purse, for sure. But why slog a suitcase—even a small one—through the woods in the snow?”

Gordon started running through the possibilities. She was missing, but was it voluntary, or had she been taken by force? Had someone come by before the car went over the edge, and she
’d hitched a ride, bringing their belongings with her? Had she wandered off, dazed and disoriented either before or after the secondary accident?

And, because he was a cop, he had to wonder if Wardell had made everything up and was responsible for Roni
’s disappearance. His gut said no, that Wardell couldn’t be that good of an actor, but he wasn’t going to rule out foul play. He finished documenting the inside of the vehicle without touching anything, then backed out and snapped more pictures of the outside. Wardell bounced up and down, stomping his feet and rubbing his hands, but didn’t interfere.

“
You seem to know what you’re doing. You work for an insurance company or something?”

Gordon put his phone away.
“No, but I’ve had experience with this kind of thing.”

“
Oh, so you’ve been in an accident yourself.”

Gordon let Wardell think what he would. If it turned out the man had something to conceal, he
’d be less likely to hide it if he didn’t know Gordon was a cop. “You could say that.”

“
So, what do we do next?” Wardell asked.

“
Did you see any tracks leading away from the car?”
Before you trampled everything?
And did he have an ulterior motive? To hide evidence? Had Wardell hidden the suitcase before he’d set off for Tranquility Valley? If so, why?

Too many questions. Right now, they had to find Wardell
’s wife.

“
I wasn’t paying attention. I’m not an outdoorsy person. I don’t hunt, I don’t hike. I’m an indoor person. My idea of roughing it is what Roni and I are doing this week. Hanging at resorts, maybe a little—very little—cross-country skiing. With rented skis. I prefer the
apres-ski
life.”

In the few minutes they
’d been talking, the storm had turned violent, the wind and snow threatening to carry them down the hillside as if they were debris in an avalanche. Gordon grabbed for Wardell’s hand. “To my car,” Gordon shouted, his words barely audible above the howling wind. Ice pellets stung as they salted his face.

His Maglite was useless. He shoved it into his parka pocket. Grabbing tree trunks for support with one hand, dragging Wardell with the other, Gordon plodded ahead, one booted foot at a time. Next tree. Hang on. Find your balance.

“Can you see the road?” he shouted, inches from Wardell’s ear.

“
No. Snow.”

If there was a bright side, it was that it wasn
’t his CSR that was blinding him. Once they got closer to the road, his car’s flashers and the flares should guide them. No sense of direction. Only up. Up. Step. Grab. Balance. Breathe. Step. Up. Balance. Breathe. Up. Breathe. Up. Breathe. Up.

A glimmer of blinking red broke through the white curtain. Shifting his direction, Gordon resumed the climb. Why did a quarter of a mile going down turn into two miles going up? Panting, he clawed his way over the edge, onto the road and turned to give Wardell a hand.

The man was spent. His breath puffed out clouds of white. Gordon crouched, grasped Wardell’s hand in his and yanked him the last two feet. Both of them sucked wind before climbing into the welcome warmth of the SUV.

Gordon blasted the heater to high.
“Buckle up.”

“
She’ll die if we leave her,” Wardell said.

“
We’ll all die if we don’t. We’ll go to the B and B and get help.” He marked the coordinates on his GPS.

“
Wait.” Wardell jumped out of the car.

“
What the—”

Wardell unfurled the scarf from his neck and fought his way to the nearest tree. Straining to reach a high branch, he tied the scarf around it, then, bent over against the wind, got into the car. He took off his cap and shook out his hair.
“GPS coordinates can be off.”

Gordon didn
’t bother telling him the scarf could blow away or be so covered in snow it wouldn’t be visible until well after the storm passed.

Wardell clutched his cell phone, but his eyes were focused on the window. Gordon fed the
Yardumians’ address into his GPS, trusting it would let him know when they reached the turnoff. Assuming he could stay on the road. The windshield wipers parted the snow and sleet for brief intervals on each pass, but the road itself was a blanket of white.

Wardell muttered to himself. Gordon couldn
’t afford to bother listening. Mostly he heard curses about elks, and a few choice words about Roni not staying with the car.

Snow tires and four-wheel drive helped, but nearly two feet of snow didn
’t make the going easy. The only plus was that since there’d been virtually no traffic on the road, it hadn’t been packed to ice.

So much for a relaxing, stress-free vacation.

It was well past noon by the time his GPS alerted him to the turnoff. Beyond that, red, blue, and yellow lights lit up the falling snow like Fourth-of-July sparklers.