Love Is Murder

Steve have passed along the information if he were the killer? She didn’t know.

The house was still silent. She walked downstairs and peered into the library. Trevor was still on the couch, no longer snoring, but bundled under a blanket. Angie must have put it back on last night.

Lucy closed the library door and padded silently to the lodge’s office. She picked up the phone and was relieved to hear a dial tone. Outside, the wind still blew like an angry god, dawn barely visible in the white that rained down around them.

“Alpine County Sheriff’s Department.”

“Sheriff Mackey please.”

“He’s not in right now. This is the dispatcher, how many I assist you?”

“This is Lucy Kincaid at the Delarosa Retreat. Sheriff Mackey spoke with Steve Delarosa yesterday about an unattended death. We have a serious problem up here, and I need to talk to the sheriff immediately.”

“One moment.”

She was put on hold. Lucy didn’t know what the dispatcher was doing. She waited impatiently.

A small stack of papers was tucked under the desk calendar, making it lopsided. She vaguely remembered that Steve had been reading something when she’d walked in last night.

She pulled out the papers and unfolded them. The top pages were a handwritten letter in bold, confident block letters dated over two years ago from Leo Delarosa to his son, Steve. The bottom pages were a formal Last Will and Testament.

She read the letter first.

Son,

Today is your eighteenth birthday. I hope to be here to watch you drink your first beer (legally!) and get married (you’ll find the right girl, just be patient) and have a child of your own.

But my heart attack last year was a wake-up call for both of us. I don’t know how long I’ll be here, whether I’ll live to see my grandchild or not. Because God sometimes has ideas about things that we don’t understand, and because I’m not too good in talking about my feelings and all that crap, I decided to write this letter.

My words don’t always come out right. They sound like criticism (like when I told you that you were too smart to get a C in Algebra). What I should have said was, “Son, you’re a smart boy. I’m proud of you and proud of your grades. I’m disappointed in the C because I know you can do better. But I’m not disappointed in you.”

I’ve never been disappointed in you, Steve.

You were the best thing that happened to your mom and me. We didn’t think we could have kids-hell, we tried often enough! And then you came. She loved you the minute she found out you were growing inside her belly.

Your mom would be proud of you today. God took her home way too soon, and I cursed Him for it. You needed your mom. I wanted you to have her in your life more than the ten years you had her. I needed her.

Damn, I’m going to cry now. I just want you to know that I’m proud of you, and I’m proud that you want to keep the Delarosa growing in the spirit that your mom and me always wanted. I won’t blame you if you decide you want something else, because I know a bit about wanderlust. I was in the navy for three years because I needed to get off the mountain. But the mountain called me home.

I have taken care of you and Grace. Grace means well, and she wants to please me, but she doesn’t love the Delarosa like we do. That’s why I changed my will to reflect that you and Grace need to agree to sell, and not until you’re twenty-one.

Steven John, you are a smarter young man than I was. If you sell, you sell free and clear. There is no debt, thanks to your grandfather. You remind me a lot of my dad. I was proud of him, too, but more than that I admired him.

I admire you even more.

You’ll do the right thing for you, for Grace, and for the mountain.

Until then, I’ve still been contributing to the nest egg, as your mom liked to call it. Sometimes a little less than I wanted, but always at least a token, every month since the day I married your mom. We joked about how we’d travel to Hawaii and Tahiti and Bora-Bora. Always someplace warm. Hell, I never wanted to go any of those places (except Hawaii, I’ll admit) but that nest egg will keep the Delarosa running during the lean years.

I hope you never have to read this letter. I’m going to tear it up when you’re twenty-one and write a new one. But in case I’m too stubborn or stupid to remember to say it, I want you to know, son, I love you.

Dad.

Lucy read the letter twice, tears in her eyes. No wonder Steve was so heartbroken over the debt …

Would Leo have told his son in a letter that wouldn’t be read until his death that the mountain was debt free and there was a nest egg to run the place “during the lean years”?

Did that sound like a man who had been running in the red for years?

Someone had lied.

Either Leo Delarosa lied about the nest egg-though Lucy couldn’t imagine why he’d do it in a letter that wouldn’t be read until he was dead-or the nest egg had been stolen.

Or it was hidden somewhere.

She scanned Leo Delarosa’s will. It appeared standard, and showed the amendment where Steve and Grace would have to agree to sell.

There was also another clause. The right of survivorship.

If Grace dies, Steve gets the mountain. If Steve dies, Grace gets everything.

Yet right now, there didn’t appear to be anything left to have.

“Ms. Kincaid?”

Lucy had forgotten she was on hold with the sheriff’s department.

“Yes, Sheriff Mackey.”

“Sorry to keep you waiting. I’ve been out in this godforsaken blizzard half the night. What can I do for you?”

“Did you speak to Steve Delarosa last night?”

“Yes, he told me one of the guests had died at the lodge. That you all thought she might have killed herself, or had an accident or something.”

“My brother Patrick was a San Diego detective. Vanessa Russell-Marsh was murdered.”

“That’s a one-eighty from Steve’s call.”

“Patrick didn’t want to alert the killer, but I work for the coroner’s office in Washington, DC, and I’m pretty certain that Mrs. Marsh was injected with something in her neck. And last night, my brother was drugged.”

“Is he all right?”

“He will be. But he’s out for the rest of the day, and I don’t know who drugged him or who killed Vanessa. We’re in trouble here and need you.”

“I wish I could help, but there’s no way I can get up to the lodge. The roads are all closed, we can’t even reopen until the snow stops.”

“What about cross-country skis? Snowmobiles? Something?”

“It’s treacherous from here, but-I have two deputies who know this county better than even Leo Delarosa.”

“You knew Steve’s dad?”

“Hell yeah, we went to school together. He was older than me, but we played on the same football team. Good man.”

“And Grace?”

“Well, I met her at their wedding. Pretty lady.”

“You don’t know anything else about her?”

“No, can’t say that I do. After Leo’s heart attack, he didn’t come into town as much.”

“Could you run her and her sister for me?”