“Well, I can tell Miss Drew is just about as stubborn as I am, so no use arguing, Clyde,” she said to the horse, then turned back to me. “Hop on in, Miss Drew!”
“One hop coming up!” Henry announced, lifting my broken leg and me gently into the front seat of the sleigh. There was just enough room up there to accommodate Jackie, me, and my cast.
“Have a nice ride!” Henry yelled out as we pulled away from the resort.
It felt so good to be outside pulled around in a sleigh, I almost forgot why I was there. It was Jackie who reminded me.
“So I hear you’re the one who cracked the case,” she whispered confidentially, even though there was no one else around.
I hadn’t been broadcasting my investigation, but it also wasn’t a secret, so it wasn’t surprising that someone who wore as many hats at the lodge (and who liked to gossip as much!) as Jackie did would have gotten wind of it.
“No one could believe it when we heard it was Marni,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “What a sweet girl. Everyone is as shocked as could be. Hopefully things will finally return to normal around here, though!”
“I hope so,” I said, though I probably didn’t sound entirely convincing.
“Here I am rambling when I’m supposed to be tour-guiding!” Jackie cheerily reprimanded herself. “So what would you like to see on your tour? The hot springs are always a guest favorite.”
“Actually, I was wondering if we could take in some of the backcountry around where Round Top is,” I suggested. I wasn’t trying to hide anything from Jackie, but sharing details about an active case with someone who likes to gossip usually isn’t the best way to keep secrets secret.
“Ooh, you’re still investigating!” Jackie exclaimed. “Can I help?”
So much for subtlety.
“Um, sure,” I conceded reluctantly, then tapped my cast. “Just driving me around to see Round Top is a huge help. It’s hard for me to do much exploring on my own.”
“Okay, I’m the detective’s coach driver like in the old-timey Sherlock Holmes mysteries!” she proclaimed. “This is going to be so much fun!”
“Yeah, I think it will be,” I said, and really meant it. It was hard not to have fun with Jackie around, and it definitely helped lighten the mood of the crime. I still was on vacation, after all.
“So what are we investigating anyway?” Jackie asked. “I thought the case was closed.”
“Maybe,” I said. “It’s always good to be thorough and see if there’s anything you missed.”
“Hmm, you sound like a workaholic to me,” she observed. “Why not just relax and enjoy the rest of your stay instead? Not that I have anything against work! I sure do enough of it! But you are still recuperating, and I can’t help being a bit of a mother hen.”
“Thanks for worrying about me, Jackie,” I said. “It’s really sweet, but I think I can do a little work and relax at the same time too! And you and Clyde are the ones doing all the hard work. It’s not like sitting in a sleigh and taking in the scenery is exactly strenuous.”
“All righty, have it your way, Detective McWorkyPants, but I am going to take you the long way around so you can least see some more of the scenery while you’re here,” she compromised. “We have plenty of daylight, and there’s nothing quite so peaceful as a sleigh ride around our little mountaintop retreat.”
“You win.” I chuckled. I could tell arguing with Jackie wasn’t going to get me anywhere, so I sat back and let her lead the way. It really was beautiful, and a little detour wouldn’t hurt. “The hot springs it is.”
You could see the steam rising from the springs at the far end of the frozen lake. The horse trail ran along the lake, with the water on one side and fluffy, snow-covered pine trees on the other. Mist began to settle over the trail as we neared the springs.
It would have been perfectly serene if it weren’t for the faint growl of a motor somewhere up ahead.
“Do you hear that?” I asked Jackie.
Jackie cocked her head and listened as the noise grew louder. “Well, shoot, it sounds like those darn snowmobiles again. Nothing like a little noise pollution to poo on a perfectly pretty sleigh ride.”
“Do they belong to the lodge?” I asked.
“Nah, we just got brand-new all-electric ones; you can barely hear them, they’re so quiet,” she said, narrowing her eyes in very un-Jackie-like fashion as the motor’s obnoxious roar grew closer. “I’m guessing that’s Dino and his hooligan friends again. They think it’s cute to make a lot of noise and tear up the backcountry. We’ve reported it to the police a bunch of times, but Sheriff Pruitt seems to think it’s funny.”
I narrowed my eyes as well. George had said Pruitt had a bad habit of covering for Dino’s petty crimes around town. I couldn’t help wondering again if he might be covering for bigger crimes as well.
“It sounds like there are two snowmobiles, one ahead of us and one behind us,” I noted as a second motor whirred into earshot from the backcountry beyond the horse trail.
“Whoa, Clyde!” Jackie said, pulling back on the reins. “I don’t want to ride ahead into this mist not being able to see where Clyde is going. Those stupid machines might spook him, or worse, run into him!”
“Do we have to turn back?” I asked.
“Not yet. I’m going to walk ahead a bit and see who’s out there first,” said Jackie, handing me the reins.
“Um, what am I supposed to do with these?” I asked tentatively. “I’ve never driven a sleigh before.”
“You’re not driving, you’re parking!” Jackie said with a wink. “Just hold on nice and tight. He shouldn’t go anywhere unless you tell him to. Right, Clyde?”
Clyde neighed yes. At least that’s what I hoped he meant!
“Are you going to be okay walking through the snow with your foot?” I asked.
“That’s what this is for!” Jackie said, pulling a plastic grocery bag from her jacket pocket, shaking it open, and slipping it over her walking boot. “Keeps my boot dry. Recycling at its finest! I might not be able to sneak around on anybody with my fancy footwear on, but I can hobble along this horse trail just fine.” She grabbed her cane and lowered herself off the sleigh, jingling as she went. “The mist starts to clear a little ways ahead. Just gonna take a quick peek to make sure the coast is clear, and then we’ll be back on our merry way.”
Jackie took a few jingly steps and vanished eerily into the mist. If it weren’t for the sound of her sleigh bells fading down the path as she walked, it would have been like she was swallowed up entirely. I shuddered. The mist rising off the hot springs and settling over the snow-covered trail was beautiful and creepy.
And weirdly quiet all of a sudden. The whir of the snowmobiles had vanished as well, leaving Clyde and me in total creepy silence. My sleigh ride was starting to feel less like a winter wonderland Christmas card picture and more like a scene from a horror movie. Clyde seemed to think so too. He snorted and began shuffling his hooves nervously.
“Easy, boy, Jackie will be back in a minute,” I reassured him, hoping it was true. I don’t think I would have been so spooked, but the double whammy of the horror-movie mist and being trapped in my seat by a ginormo cast had me feeling uncomfortably claustrophobic. Not that I really thought I was going to have to run anywhere. At least I hoped not.
There was a sudden THWACK behind me, and a small jolt vibrated through the sleigh as if a stone had struck it, causing both Clyde and me to jump.
“Whoa, boy,” I said, holding tight on the reins as Clyde whinnied and danced in place.
I cautiously looked behind me. I couldn’t see anything except for trail and mist. The mist wasn’t as dense behind us, but I couldn’t be sure someone wasn’t lurking off to the side of the trail.
Clyde whinnied again, pulling my attention back to the trail ahead of us, where a silhouetted figure began to emerge from the mist.
And it wasn’t jingling.
“Jackie?” I croaked, but my v
oice came out as a whisper.
The figure stepped closer, its silhouette sharpening, the object in its hand becoming clearer. Jackie’s cane pierced the mist and she stepped back into view.
I breathed a deep sigh of relief. “Jackie! Why aren’t you jingling? You nearly scared me half to death!”
“Oops, sorry about that!” she said, stopping to give a perplexed glance down at her boot. “Silly thing keeps falling off. Don’t worry, though, I’ve got extras!”
“Was there anyone out there?” I asked nervously.
“Didn’t see a thing, just a bunch of churned-up snow,” she said. “They must have moved on to make a mess somewhere else.”
“I think someone might have thrown a rock at us while you were gone,” I filled her in. “Clyde started to spook, and then something hit the sleigh.”
Jackie’s eyes went wide with concern. “If someone tried to hurt my Clyde, why, I’d . . .”
She trailed off as a motor roared to life on the trail behind us.
Clyde neighed loudly, dancing in place again. I turned around to see the lights of a snowmobile cutting through the fog, growing closer at an alarming pace as they raced right at us.
“Don’t let go of the reins!” Jackie yelled, rushing toward us, ignoring her broken foot.
I had just tightened my grip on the reins when the earsplitting BOOM of a gunshot exploded into the air behind us. Jackie tried to grab Clyde’s bridle, but the terrified horse reared up on his hind legs, knocking her backward into the snow.
Then he took off, bolting down the trail with me alone in the sleigh, clinging desperately to his reins as the snowmobile roared closer.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Screaming All the Way
CLYDE BROKE INTO A PANICKED gallop, slamming me back against my seat. The mist swallowed us a moment later. I could barely see my hands gripping Clyde’s reins. I could sure feel them, though. I was holding on so tightly, I could feel the leather cut into my palms even through my thick ski mittens.
One-horse open sleighs don’t come with seat belts, and if it weren’t for my death grip on the reins, I would have gone flying right over the side. As it was, I was bouncing around like crazy, jolts of pain shooting through my ankle every time my cast banged against the seat.
“Doc Sherman isn’t going to be happy about this!” I moaned as the snowmobile roared ever closer, spurring Clyde to gallop even faster. Poor, terrified Clyde! That huge Clydesdale heart of his must be pounding!
He veered off the trail, flashing past a warning sign of some sort, but we were moving so fast and there was so much mist, I saw only one word clearly: DANGER.
“That can’t be good!” I cried.
Clyde burst through the mist into a snowy clearing at the base of a steep, snow-packed rocky slope with a jagged peak looming menacingly overhead.
And we weren’t alone. A second snowmobile was waiting for us to emerge not far ahead. Its engine roared to life the second the driver saw us. It was an ambush! The snowmobile behind us had intentionally chased us right at its buddy.
I hadn’t seen who was riding the snowmobile still pursuing us from behind, but the rider in front of us was dressed entirely in white with a full-faced ski mask, camouflaging them against the snow. The only thing I could tell about the rider was that they looked big. And they were rocketing right at us.
Clyde reared up in a spray of snow and cut hard left to get away from them, turning so suddenly the sleigh went airborne, swinging around behind him as it struggled to keep up. I cried out in pain as my cast jammed against the bench, but my awful, enormous cast wedging me into the seat was the only thing keeping me from tumbling out! The ridiculous thing had actually saved my life! The sleigh slammed back to the ground, somehow managing to stay upright as Clyde took off parallel to the snowy mountain peak on our right.
Another gunshot rang out behind us, reverberating through the cold mountain air. It was nothing compared to the deafening WHUMP that quickly followed from the peak rising over the clearing. It was immediately followed by a thundering rumble that dwarfed the sound of the snowmobiles’ engines. I knew what it was before I saw the massive slab of packed snow start sliding off the mountain.
“Avalanche!” I screamed.
Clyde must have known it too, because he started galloping even faster, which I hadn’t thought was possible. But even at a full gallop, a terrified horse can’t outrace an avalanche. There were a million tons of runaway snow headed right at us, and the only thing we had going for us was a head start. We were racing parallel to the mountain—if Clyde could make it to the other side of the avalanche’s path before the snow reached us, we might have a chance.
“Run, Clyde, run!” I yelled.
I don’t know if it helped, but yelling encouragement was about the only thing I could do besides hanging on to his reins for dear life and hoping the sleigh didn’t tip over. The ground shook beneath us, the wall of snow roaring toward us like a massive, endlessly crashing white wave.
By now, I had a pretty good hunch that the DANGER sign I’d seen flash by earlier had also included the word AVALANCHE. Whoever had chased us off the trail couldn’t have been very smart, or they wouldn’t have been firing a gun under a steep snow-packed slope. Our pursuers might not have been geniuses, but they did have better escape vehicles.
I could see the second snowmobile propelling itself to safety with its high-horsepower engine. My escape vehicle may have only had a horsepower of one, but that one horse had heart!
“I believe in you, Clyde!” I screamed over the roar of the avalanche.
But the wall of snow kept closing in until it was towering over us. A cloud of cold whiteness engulfed me, snow slapping me in the face like an icy hand. It was too late! It . . .
“Whoo-hoo!” I shouted as Clyde yanked the sleigh through the bottom of the avalanche’s path an instant before it swept past, showering us with so much snow it really did feel like riding through a cloud.
“Way to go, Clyde!” I cheered. “Way to . . . uh-oh . . .”
We were headed straight for the lake!
“Whoa!” I yelled, pulling back on the reins as hard as I could. It was no use, though. Clyde was out of control!
The lake may have been frozen enough for people to skate on, but a Clydesdale weighs over two thousand pounds! And that’s without the sleigh. Or me. And as if things weren’t bad enough, we were near the hot springs, where the ice would be the weakest from the heat.
The ice groaned under Clyde’s weight, my sleigh skidding wildly behind him like a giant out-of-control ice skate. And then it cracked. The sound wasn’t nearly as loud as the WHUMP of the avalanche, but it was just as frightening. I could see a huge, jagged crack shooting down the center of the ice in front of Clyde, and I could feel the ice falling apart under the sleigh’s runners until there was icy water splashing up around us and I was practically water-skiing!
We’d gone from trying to outrun a giant slab of snow to trying to outrun a crumbling sheet of lake ice! Talk about going from the frying pan into the fire. This was like going from a carbonite cube into the cryogenic freezer!
“Head for the shore, Clyde!” I begged at the top of my lungs. “Please!”
Ice-skaters scattered. Snow geese skedaddled. Clyde kept galloping full speed ahead toward shore. We were almost there.
Only there was a bench in the way.
“Who puts a bench on a frozen lake?!” I shouted.
Clyde leaped over it. The sleigh didn’t. The horse’s reins were yanked from my hands as Clyde tore free from the sleigh’s rigging and I went flying.
Landing face-first in a pile of snow never felt so good. I was cold, banged, and bruised, my ankle was throbbing, and my heart was beating a hundred miles an hour, but I was on solid land, and more importantly, I was alive!
I’d landed on the shore and the sleigh had crashed on its side a few feet away. I finally saw what had thwacked into it when I was waiting for Jackie to come back before the sno
wmobile started chasing us. It wasn’t a rock. Someone had shot it with a crossbow. The bolt jutted from the wooden sleigh’s side. Attached to it was a note:
BACK OFF.
OR ELSE.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Trapped
MY SECOND RESCUE TOBOGGAN RIDE of the trip arrived a few minutes later.
“We’re going to have to get you a frequent-flier card, Nancy,” Berkley, who picked me up (again!), joked to lighten the mood as he and a bearded ski patrolman I didn’t know lifted me onto the toboggan. They weren’t alone, though.
“You okay, Drew?” Joe asked, a look of deep concern on his face.
It seemed that my detecting partner was back from his own mission. I was happy to see him; we had a lot to catch up on.
“A little shaken up, but it sure is good to see some friendly faces,” I told them. “Are Clyde and Jackie okay?”
“Clyde’s fine, just a little frightened,” Berkley said. “Jackie got a toboggan ride of her own after some guests found her stumbling along the horse trail with a nasty gash on her head from Clyde knocking her over.”
“She was a little woozy, but she told us about the snowmobiles shooting at you guys,” Joe added.
“She was more worried about you and Clyde than anything,” Berkley chimed in. “She’s known ol’ Clyde since he was a newborn colt.”
“And half the lodge saw you coming across the lake!” Joe exclaimed. “Now that looked like fun.”
“Next time you can take my place,” I offered.
“I don’t know about fun, but it sure does sound like you guys had a gnarly adventure,” Berkley commented as he and his partner started to pull me back to the lodge.
“Yeah, and it may not be over,” I said softly, making sure Berkley and his partner weren’t looking before locking eyes with Joe and nodding at the note pinned to the sleigh’s side. Joe gritted his teeth.
“We’ve got some work to do after you see the doc, Drew,” he said, hanging back to take a cell phone pic and carefully remove the crossbow bolt and the note to preserve the evidence. It’s exactly what I would have done if I hadn’t been strapped to a toboggan in a humungous cast.