Avalanche (A Stone Mountain Mystery Book 3) Read online

  “We’ve got a problem,” Helen said.

  How long had Helen been standing in the doorway?

  “What’s up?” Kalin closed Helen’s file, piled it on top of the other files she’d pulled and gave Helen her attention. If Helen had tried to set up Roy, Kalin would make sure she failed. Maybe Kalin had it wrong. What if Helen set up Jessica? Then the manager’s job opened up for her.

  Kalin believed Jessica was one of the top suspects, except it didn’t make sense Jessica would draw attention to herself by losing her key and not reporting it if she was going to rob the finance center. Unless she wanted Turner to think someone stole her key. Then she’d been fired. The whole situation confused her. Whom could she trust?

  Helen interlocked her fingers and rested her hands on the front of her skirt. “I haven’t dealt with staff issues before and was hoping you could help me with something.”

  “I’d be happy to.”

  Helen wore a blue skirt, high on her waist and held in place by a wide belt, topped with a short cream jacket. Kalin had only seen her in passing on her first day of her promotion, and since then she’d updated her hairstyle from tied tightly behind her head to loosely framing her face. The expensive-looking blonde highlights added a level of softness to her chestnut hair, and the trace of eye shadow feathered on her eyelids complemented her brown eyes. She seemed too timid to rob the finance center, but who knew.

  Kalin glanced at her own jeans and wool sweater and had a sudden longing for something more elegant to wear.

  “Simon Crane was caught using the Internet during his night shift.”

  “Why’s that a problem?” Kalin asked. The night auditor worked from midnight into the early morning. He organized the resort’s daily receipts, preparing them for the finance center to reconcile the following day. He used to report to Jessica, so now he would fall under Helen’s responsibility.

  “It’s the sites he’s looking at. They’re pornographic. He left one of the sites up on the computer screen. The employee working the next shift saw the image. She’s upset and scared to work alone with him.”

  “How often has he been accessing the sites?”

  “The IT department gave me data from the past week. He’s been logging on every night. The scary part is the photos are of girls wearing uniforms that look similar to the front desk uniforms. Could you come with me to talk to him? I’m friends with his wife.”

  “And that makes this awkward for you. Of course I’ll come.” Simon would know how much money the resort made every night. Clearly, his ethics weren’t the greatest, leaving nothing to stop him from being a thief, too. She’d thought he was a little too perfect when she met him. “Does he have access to the safe?”

  Helen pinched her bottom lip between her teeth. “He shouldn’t.”

  “Could he have gotten the combination somehow?”

  “I don’t know, but I doubt it.”

  “Does he ever go to the finance center?”

  Helen stopped fidgeting and clasped her hands. “Every morning he brings the previous night’s receipts to me or whoever is on shift. Sometimes he hangs around to chat.”

  “So he could have seen the combination?”

  “I guess, but he doesn’t have a key.”

  Kalin checked the time. It wasn’t quite late enough for Simon to have gotten much sleep following his shift, but after what he’d done, she didn’t care. “Okay, call him and ask him to come in. We’ll meet him in his office.”

  * * *

  “You look like crap. What’s wrong with you?” Aiden asked.

  Jessica stood in line at the Mountainside Café at the base of the Alpine Tracks ski run. It wasn’t even ten in the morning, and she needed a caffeine boost.

  She glared at Aiden. He was such an idiot. So she wore a wrinkled gray sweatshirt with the hood pulled over her head. Her pants hung loosely from her hips, and she hadn’t bothered to lace up her hiking boots. Who cared? “I lost Roy. My friends all think I helped steal the money and are avoiding me. I don’t have a job. Turner promoted Helen. Like she’s capable. She could hardly function as a clerk. If he thinks she’ll do better than I—”

  “It’s got nothing to do with you anymore. I heard the real estate office needs people. You could work for them again.” Aiden peeled the plastic lid off his cup and added a second pack of sugar to his coffee. He reached the outer door to the café, and instead of leaving, he turned and offered to buy Jessica a tea.

  “You should really talk to the real estate guys.” His eyes raked down her body. “But not in those clothes.”

  “I guess I have to. I don’t have much money saved.” Jessica accepted a chai tea from the barista. “And piss off about my clothes.”

  Ignoring her snap, Aiden dropped a couple of Toonies on the counter and ushered her away from the till to a secluded seat in the corner.

  The radio clipped to the outside pocket of Aiden’s lift uniform squawked. An operator at one of the lifts needed a break. Aiden hit the transmit button. “I’ll be there in ten.” He focused back on Jessica. “How much space do you think the missing money would take up?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do. How big’s the safe? You must have seen the money stacked. Could the bills fit in Roy’s backpack?”

  The café’s window overlooked the base of the ski hill. For early January, the resort was unusually quiet, meaning low revenue. She gave herself a mental kick. It wasn’t her problem anymore. “It’s hard to say, but the money was in small bills. And it depends on what else was in the pack. Did the duffle bag look heavy when you saw him?”

  “Yeah. So let’s assume that’s where the money was. Would he have taken both bags up the hill?”

  “You’re assuming he took the money.”

  “Of course he did. Why else did he trek up the mountain? Anyway, if the bills didn’t all fit in his pack, maybe he stashed the rest somewhere.”

  “He liked to ski at dawn. Everyone knows that.” Jessica lifted her cup and inhaled the scent of cinnamon. The heat penetrating the cup warmed her hands. “Ben doesn’t seem to have anything of Roy’s, and the police would have found the money when they searched the house if that’s where Roy hid it.”

  “I bet the cops suspect Roy had all the money in his backpack. They have no way of knowing about the duffle bag.” Aiden pointed at Jessica with his coffee. “You know Roy. Would he have split the money up and hid it in different places?”

  “How could I know that? I never thought he’d steal in the first place. When Roy left the admin building, where’d he go?”

  “Into mountain ops.”

  “Why didn’t you wait until he came out and follow him?”

  “I didn’t know he’d robbed the finance center. I thought, as usual, he was too drunk to walk home and planned on crashing on a gurney. If I’d known what he’d done, I wouldn’t have left him there.”

  “Could the duffle bag be somewhere in mountain ops?”

  Aiden sipped his coffee and looked at Jessica over the steam. “That’s dumb. How could the money be there and no one’s found it?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Kalin sat beside Helen in the night auditor’s office. Large by resort standards, the office’s windows filled two of the walls, and a pale blue carpet stretched luxuriously across the room. The bright light highlighted the dark circles under Helen’s eyes. Between the theft and the promotion, she had a lot to stress about. “Let’s see what you have.”

  Helen handed Kalin the reports provided by IT. She turned to the computer and showed Kalin the site the night auditor had left on the screen.

  Kalin’s scalp prickled, and she moved her gaze toward a poster of Stone Mountain. “That girl looks sixteen. Is there more?”

  “You need to see more? I think this is enough.”

  “You’re right. I’m wondering how much of this stuff he was looking at. I can understand why the staff wants us to deal with this, and I certainly have no issue firing him today.”<
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  They waited for Simon. Kalin took in the high performance skis leaning against the wall. A set of touring skis rested beside his downhill skis. A water stain underneath the ends of the skis indicated Simon left wet skis there to dry. “That’s a bit sloppy.”

  Helen glanced at the skis. “He used to store those in Jessica’s office because hers was closer to the hill.”

  “I know. He moved them the same day Jessica was fired.”

  Simon arrived and slouched low in his chair, his posture indicating defeat before the conversation even started. He’d tucked his white dress shirt into neatly pressed Chinos. Not one blond hair stuck out of place, but Kalin could smell him from across the room. An odor of sweat oozed from his pores as if he were already stressed about the meeting. She wrinkled her nose and tried not to breathe deeply.

  Helen looked the night auditor directly in the eyes, and Kalin was impressed by her demeanor. “It has come to our attention that you’ve been accessing the Internet during your night shift,” Helen said.

  “Damn it,” Simon whispered, dropping his chin to his chest.

  “Accessing the Internet for personal use is against company policy. If you weren’t accessing pornographic sites, we might be able to let you off with a written warning, however, the sites you were looking at are forbidden by our business code of conduct,” Helen said, sounding like she read from a script. “We’re going to let you go. We have paperwork for you to sign, then we’re done here.” She passed several sheets to Simon.

  He left the papers resting untouched on the desk. “Isn’t there anything I can do?”

  Helen’s face was a ceramic mask. “I’m sorry, but no.”

  Simon gave Helen a smile that would’ve been hard for most women to resist. “Please. You know me. I need this job.”

  Helen shook her head, but the mask remained in place. “This is about breaking company policy and which sites in particular you were accessing, not about whether you need this job.” She slid the list of sites across the desk closer to Simon.

  “What am I going to tell Natalie?”

  “Who’s Natalie?” Kalin asked.

  “My wife.” Simon remained motionless, staring at the papers. “Helen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re friends with her. You know how she’ll take this.”

  “She won’t hear anything from us,” Helen said.

  “If Jessica were here, she wouldn’t fire me.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Kalin said. “She’d follow policy.”

  “You don’t know her. She’s loyal to her friends.” He lifted his eyes to Helen. “Unlike you.”

  Helen started to speak, but Kalin interrupted her. “Simon, there’s no reason to take this out on Helen. The incident was reported to her, and she came to me for advice.”

  “You’re one to make accusations. It’s your brother who ripped off the resort.”

  Other than a slight heat low on Kalin’s neck, she managed not to react. “That’s not what we’re here to discuss.”

  “It’s too coincidental that he disappeared after the theft. He’s probably spending the money right now.”

  Obviously Simon had lashed out at her for being fired, and Kalin gave him a moment to compose himself. Still, the idea made her nauseated. She would not believe Roy stole the money, pretended to die, then took off. He wouldn’t do that. Not to her. Not to her mom.

  Instead of calming down, Simon gave one more poke at Kalin. “Read the radio reports from the day your brother disappeared. Even ski patrol thinks he was up to something. You’ll see what I mean.”

  Kalin took a deep breath. “This conversation has gone off track. The issue today is your termination. It’s time for you to leave.”

  “Maybe you and Roy stole the money together.”

  “Taking your anger out on me is not going to help. We need you to leave, or we’ll have security escort you out.”

  “Be careful what you do here. Stone Mountain is a small resort, and Holden’s a small town.” On his way out the door, Simon turned back. He looked as if he might say something and then changed his mind. They watched him stalk along the hallway until they could no longer see him.

  * * *

  Kalin stomped the fifteen-minute trek back to her office. Firing Simon didn’t rank on her list of fun things to do, even if he deserved to be terminated. And no matter what her intentions were, she couldn’t stop Simon’s comment about Roy taking off with the money from niggling at her.

  Not paying attention, she caught her heel on a rock, tripped and scraped her palms on the sand and dirt used to de-ice the roads. She pushed herself upright and wiped grit from her hands. Her palms stung. Her eyes teared. Taking a ragged breath, she kicked the offending rock and continued toward her office.

  By the time she arrived at the administration building, she stopped feeling sorry for herself and refocused on work. She strode toward the IT department, intent on asking for information about everything Simon had been doing on his computer for the last month.

  Muffled voices drifted from the office. She poked her head around the edge of the doorframe. Constable Miller was talking to Cameron Denham. She stood in the doorway, waiting to be acknowledged.

  Cameron had been working in the IT department for twenty-plus years. He’d graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in computer science at a time when punch cards were still used. He’d been through several financial crises at the resort and was skilled at saving a dollar. He’d pieced together both the phone and computer systems with parts purchased on eBay or anywhere else he could get a deal. He wasn’t up on the latest technologies, but he was the only one around who understood the systems completely.

  Cameron was in the middle of an explanation of telephone technology. “Both calls came through the internal exchange, but the problem is our technology is old. We have a list of all calls made to the front desk, but we don’t know where the calls were transferred to.”

  Miller wrote in his notebook. “So you can’t confirm Helen got a call?”

  Cameron shook his head. “I can tell you we didn’t get a call from any bank. I checked the numbers received at the main exchange that afternoon and none of them belonged to a bank.”

  “I’ll need the numbers.” Miller lifted his head from his notebook and spotted her. “Kalin?”

  “Sorry to interrupt. Can I talk with you privately?” Kalin asked.

  Miller removed his cap and tucked it under his arm. “Sure.”

  They moved to a conference room on the opposite side of the hallway. The pine table shone from a recent polishing, and the chairs had been placed straight against the table’s edge. The room overlooked the ski hill, the Alpine Tracks lift station and part of the hotel across the lane.

  Both Kalin and Miller remained standing. Kalin rubbed her raw palms together and composed herself. She noted Miller examining her, probably taking stock. Miller could star in a calendar for police officers, similar to the kind used for hot firefighters, although Kalin suspected he was unaware of how his looks affected women.

  “Are you ever going to tell me about your chin?”

  “I drove a snowmobile too fast and hit the windshield, but that’s not what I want to talk to you about. Something happened today I think might be related to the theft.”

  Instead of answering, Miller chuckled.

  Kalin turned to see what he’d laughed at. One of the hotel guests hadn’t closed the curtain and unknowingly showed off his butt. “Eww. I didn’t need to see that.”

  “Me neither.” Miller angled his body, so he wasn’t looking out the window. “So what do you have?”

  The conversation was the first relaxed moment they’d had together since the theft and the avalanche, and maybe that meant Miller didn’t really suspect her. “Helen and I fired the night auditor, Simon Crane, this morning. He used the Internet to access porn sites. The photos were of young girls.”

  “Okay. I’ll take a repor
t and check if this falls under the child pornography laws.”

  Getting suspicion off Roy and onto someone else was a priority for Kalin, and she planned to use every opportunity to make that happen. “That would be great, but I’m not explaining this well. Simon brings receipts to the finance center every morning, usually at the same time the safe is being opened. He knows the exact amount of money kept in the safe each night. I’m not saying he stole the money, but I thought you should know he could have seen the combination.”

  Miller made a note in his black book. “Anything else?”

  “I got the feeling he’s friends with Jessica Scott. He said he wouldn’t have been fired if she was still his boss.”

  “You’re not supposed to be working on this.”

  “I’m not. Firing Simon had nothing to do with the theft, and I don’t think Turner wants me to hide information from you. He just doesn’t want me investigating.”

  “How’s Ben doing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “With calling off the search.”

  “He’s okay. I know he feels horrible, and he’s dealing with it, but they’re out searching again today.” Kalin resisted the temptation to call Ben. He’d call if he had any new information. If only they could find Roy, then her mom could have a real funeral instead of a memorial service. Turner wouldn’t allow resources to be allocated for an endless number of searches. If nothing happened today, the searches were probably over.

  “My mom said you called her.”

  “I did.”

  “Any reason you were asking about Jack?”

  “Look at the time. I’ve got to go.”

  “Ha ha. I should’ve known you wouldn’t answer me.”

  * * *

  “I need to see what Simon Crane has been working on for the last month on his computer. I’d like access to everything he did.” Kalin hovered in the IT office. Following up on what she’d overheard was a priority.