Murder in Vail Read online

  Murder in Vail

  Judy Moore

  Excerpt from Murder in Vail

  Thunder cracked and lightning lit up the room. She pulled the covers up to her neck, clutching the sheets. She lay still as a statue, paralyzed by the storm. Even with her entire family in the house, Sally felt afraid. The storm made the house feel so unnatural, so eerie.

  Lying in bed, dreading the next bolt of lightning, Sally’s mind went immediately to the disaster of a dinner. I wish I hadn’t lost my temper, she thought regretfully. I wanted to break the news gently, not scream it at them. She remembered the shock and hurt in their faces and felt guilty. She needed to find some way of making peace, of calming everything down.

  Another crack of lightning pierced the winter night, this one very close, and illuminated the room. Suddenly, she thought she saw the doorknob begin to turn. Then it stopped. Then it started again. Probably one of the kids, she decided, but the way it started, stopped, and then started again disturbed her.

  “Is someone there?” she called out. The doorknob stopped turning, and she thought she heard footsteps scurrying away.

  Murder in Vail

  A Books to Go Now Publication

  Copyright © Judy Moore 2016

  Books to Go Now

  Cover Design by Romance Novel Covers Now

  http://www.romancenovelcoversnow.com/

  Also published on Smashwords

  For information on the cover illustration and design, contact [email protected]

  First eBook Edition –September 2016

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, any place, events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and story lines are created from the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously.

  If you are interested in purchasing more works of this nature, please stop by

  www.bookstogonow.com

  Dedication:

  To my mother, who has always loved a good mystery

  Acknowledgment:

  Thank you so much for the support, encouragement, and feedback in the writing of this book to Eunice Moore, Judy Witgenstein, Bonnie Jones, Nancy Raughley, Judy Littleton, Anne Sommers and Arlene Bailey.

  Look for Judy Moore’s other titles

  Somebody Killed the Cart Girl, Birds of Prey, The Hitchhiker on Christmas Eve, Airport Christmas, and The Holiday House Sitter.

  Contents

  Chapter One 1

  Chapter Two 7

  Chapter Three 12

  Chapter Four 19

  Chapter Five 24

  Chapter Six 27

  Chapter Seven 31

  Chapter Eight 34

  Chapter Nine 37

  Chapter Ten 40

  Chapter Eleven 43

  Chapter Twelve 47

  Chapter Thirteen 49

  Chapter Fourteen 52

  Chapter Fifteen 55

  Chapter Sixteen 58

  Chapter Seventeen 62

  Chapter Eighteen 68

  Chapter Nineteen 70

  Chapter Twenty 73

  Chapter Twenty-one 79

  Chapter Twenty-two 82

  Chapter Twenty-three 84

  Chapter Twenty-four 86

  Chapter Twenty-five 88

  Chapter Twenty-six 90

  Chapter Twenty-seven 94

  Chapter Twenty-eight 96

  Chapter Twenty-nine 99

  Chapter Thirty 102

  Chapter Thirty-one 105

  Chapter Thirty-two 108

  Chapter Thirty-three 111

  Chapter Thirty-four 113

  Chapter Thirty-five 115

  Chapter Thirty-six 118

  Chapter Thirty-seven 122

  Chapter Thirty-eight 125

  Chapter Thirty-nine 129

  Chapter Forty 132

  Chapter Forty-one 135

  Chapter Forty-two 138

  Chapter Forty-three 140

  Chapter Forty-four 144

  Chapter Forty-five 148

  Chapter Forty-six 150

  Chapter Forty-seven 153

  Chapter Forty-eight 156

  Chapter Forty-nine 160

  Chapter Fifty 164

  Chapter Fifty-one 168

  Chapter Fifty-two 171

  Chapter Fifty-three 174

  Chapter Fifty-four 178

  Chapter Fifty-five 180

  Chapter Fifty-six 183

  Chapter Fifty-seven 187

  Chapter Fifty-eight 191

  Chapter Fifty-nine 197

  Chapter Sixty 200

  Chapter Sixty-one 205

  Chapter One

  It was Christmas, so Sally had to see her children. And worse, their dreadful spouses.

  Her three children visited her—and her money—only once a year, and a few days each year were plenty. Sally could barely tolerate them anymore. None of them worked, had children, helped charities, or knew how to do much of anything except spend money. They lived off their trust funds—and those funds were disappearing quickly.

  Sally really couldn’t figure out where she went wrong. She’d read every parenting book available back in the eighties, and she stayed at home to raise her kids. But her children had grown into the most materialistic, useless adults she’d ever met. And their spouses were even worse.

  It must have been the money, she told herself. All that money.

  Her husband’s family had millions, which he had turned into billions. When he died of a heart attack at age fifty-one, Sally became one of the first female billionaires in North America. She often wondered what her life would have been like if she hadn’t met Jack Braddock at the Pan American Games when they were both twenty-one. She was just a suntanned, middle-class girl from Southern California. But she competed on the U.S. synchronized swimming team, and he rode for the Canadian cycling squad. She medaled. He didn’t.

  The attraction between them had been immediate, and they became inseparable from the day they met. She had no idea he came from one of the wealthiest steel families in Canada. They married six months later. She accompanied him to the Olympic Games the next year—where he finished in the middle of the pack—but she couldn’t compete because synchronized swimming had yet to become an Olympic sport. By the time it was, she had two children and another one on the way.

  Sally and her husband had been so happy together for thirty years. Then he died, and she was suddenly alone. That was nearly six years ago. Now she lived by herself with her two Labradoodles and her housekeeper on top of a mountain near Vail, Colorado. It had been their second home since the children were young, and Sally moved in full-time after Jack died. Living in Canada for most of their married life, Sally and Jack loved winter sports and took up skiing together. With their athletic ability, they became so proficient that helicopter skiing held the only challenge for them. They skied down mountains in Colorado other skiers didn’t even know existed.

  The biggest disappointment of her husb
and’s life was that none of his children took any interest in the family steel business. Now it was run by a board of directors made up of outsiders. Still the primary shareholder, Sally’s only participation was to attend the annual meeting every year in Toronto.

  Her husband had set up trust funds for their three children in hopes they would build businesses of their own. They received twenty-five million dollars each when they turned twenty-four years old. Her husband chose the age and the amount—that was how much his family’s business was worth when he took it over when he was twenty-four. By the time he died, his personal fortune had grown to more than three billion dollars. But the opposite was the case with her children. Each year, their fortunes became more and more depleted.

  In retrospect, Sally wished they had paid more attention to the advice of another billionaire, Warren Buffett. His philosophy? “Give your children enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.” Great advice. Sally and her husband had given their children enough to do nothing—and that is exactly what they had done. It had been a huge mistake giving them that much money at such a young age, a decision Sally would always regret. The money her children already had received was the last they would get from her. Sally was adamant about that. She planned to follow Buffett’s example this time and give the vast majority of her fortune to charity.

  At fifty-six, Sally stayed active supporting several charities, painting watercolors, skiing, and of course, swimming. She swam for an hour every day in her large outdoor pool, summer or winter, many times when it was snowing. Sometimes she even practiced her old synchronized swimming routines. As a result, she had the body of a forty-year-old.

  It was snowing today, two days before Christmas, as she backstroked across the long, infinity pool. She could see the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains in the distance, rising behind the steam that floated off the heated swimming pool. The snowflakes felt so cool as they fluttered down onto her face, refreshing her in these final minutes of her hour-long swim.

  A few more circles of angels and that will be it for today, she thought, scissor-kicking out to the center of the pool. She floated for a few moments, then brought her right foot up to her left knee, and then lifted it straight into the air, pointing her toes. Sculling evenly with her hands underwater, she moved in a large circle around the middle of the pool for several seconds, her extended leg perfectly straight. She could have gone longer, but the twenty-eight degree temperature became too uncomfortable for the exposed leg.

  Finally, she swam to the shallow end, stepped out of the pool, and picked up one of the thick beach towels that were stacked by the pool’s edge. Shaking the snow from the towel, Sally quickly dried off and tied it around her waist. She grabbed a second towel and flung it around her shoulders, pulling it snugly around the top of her one-piece white bathing suit. The icy wind slapped at her bare skin as she hurried across the two-tiered deck, past the hot tub, to the back door of the house.

  She stepped into the warmth of the kitchen and scurried over to the small fire that was ablaze under the brick hearth. As she warmed her hands at the fire, she could feel the endorphin rush begin to engulf her body, bringing that familiar feeling of peace and tranquility.

  Then the doorbell rang.

  Chapter Two

  In wet feet, her short blonde hair still dripping, Sally tiptoed quickly on the black-and-white square tiles of the foyer past the wide central staircase to the front door and opened it. A slender woman in a tan suede coat with a white fur collar and matching fur-rimmed ski cap, stood in the doorway.

  “Good grief, Mom. Couldn’t you at least get dressed to greet us?”

  “Nice to see you too, Gwen.” Sally stepped forward to hug her thirty-three-year-old daughter.

  “Don’t touch me!” Gwen exclaimed, jumping back. “You’re all wet. This is suede.”

  Sally stepped back and finished drying her arms with the towel.

  Gwen eyed her mother’s bathing suit. “How can you swim when it’s snowing outside, Mom?” she asked, frowning. “Can’t you skip it just one day?

  “No, I can’t, Gwen,” Sally answered. “Anyway, the pool is heated. I don’t even notice the cold.”

  Goldie and Silver, Sally’s blond and grey Labradoodles, came running down the stairs from an upstairs bedroom and leapt on the visitor.

  “Goldie, get down!” Gwen said, trying to push the blond dog off. The second she was successful in getting Goldie to obey, Silver jumped on her.

  “Goldie, Silver, come here,” Sally called to them. But it didn’t do any good. The excited dogs kept jumping on Gwen.

  “Mother, please get the dogs off of me. They’re going to ruin my coat!” Gwen cried. “Can’t you control them?”

  Sighing, Sally took both dogs by their collars, pulled them through the open front door into the snow, and then shut the door quickly behind them.

  Gwen made a show of brushing off her coat and examining it for any signs of stains. Finally convinced no damage had been done, she took off her large sunglasses and pulled off the fur cap, carefully smoothing her shoulder-length, strawberry blonde hair.

  Sally stepped over to look through one of the long vertical window panes that ran alongside the front door as she tied the towel around her waist. “Where’s Glen? He came along, didn’t he?”

  “He’s taking forever getting the luggage.” Gwen opened the door a crack. “Glen! Glen! What’s taking you so long? Hurry up!”

  Gwen and Glen. Everyone thought that was so cute, so sweet. But there was nothing sweet about the relationship between Sally’s daughter and her husband.

  “Coming, Your Majesty!” an irritated male voice yelled back from the driveway. That was followed by, “Get down. Get down!” to the dogs.

  “Mom, why can’t you hire more help?” Gwen complained. “Every year we have to drag all of our luggage in ourselves. There’s no one around to help with anything.”

  “It’s good exercise,” Sally responded tartly. “Maybe you should try helping him.”

  Gwen rolled her eyes, ignored her mother’s comment, and strode through the foyer into the living room. Sally noticed small snow spots on the back of her daughter’s suede coat but said nothing. Everyone knew better than to wear suede in the snow.

  In the center of the vast living room, a huge stone fireplace stretched two stories high. The entire wall surrounding it was glass from floor to ceiling, yielding a spectacular view of the snow-covered Rocky Mountains and the gorgeous snow-tipped Douglas firs that covered the landscape. Huge leather couches, rustic bookcases crammed with books, coffee tables scattered with magazines, Oriental rugs, and fresh flowers filled the room. On one wall was Sally’s favorite watercolor, one she’d painted the year after her husband died, of the very scene they were gazing at now from these windows.

  A huge Christmas wreath was centered on the stone chimney, decorated with delicate white angels, silver ribbons, and baby’s breath flowers. A matching garland hung across the wide mantel of the fireplace. In the corner stood a beautifully decorated 30-foot high blue spruce Christmas tree with hundreds of tiny white lights, huge silver balls, and an intricately sculptured white angel blowing Gabriel’s horn at the top.

  Gwen stopped to admire the tree. “The tree really is pretty,” she complimented. Then, gazing around the rest of the room, her critical eye focused on the floor. “But, honestly Mom, when are you going to get rid of those hideous rugs? They’re such an eyesore.”

  Well, we’re off to a good start, Sally thought with an inner sigh, ignoring her daughter’s annual insult about the rugs. Sally would never replace those rugs. She and her husband bought them on their honeymoon.

  The front door flew open and a tall man with receding brown hair and the beginning of a spare tire around the middle came banging into the foyer pulling two large suitcases and carrying a shoulder bag on each arm
.

  “We should have brought Joseph with us,” Glen grumbled, referring to their butler back in Palm Beach.

  The dogs dashed in behind him, slipping and sliding on the tile floor. Goldie bumped Glen’s leg and one of the bags slipped off his arm and fell on the floor.

  “Be careful!” Gwen shrieked, running to the bag. “My cosmetics are in there!”

  “I am not your man-servant,” Glen hissed at her. “Don’t talk to me like that!” Setting down the bags, he took off his beige trench coat and shook off the snow.

  “I’ll take that, Glen,” Sally said pleasantly, taking the coat to the hall closet. “How’s everything in Florida?”

  “Warm. We must have been crazy to leave that weather to come up here.” He gave his mother-in-law a surprised look. “Mom, what in the world are you doing in your bathing suit? Please tell me you haven’t been swimming in this weather!”

  Sally cringed as she always did when her son-in-law called her “Mom.” She wasn’t his mother, and she had asked him to call her “Sally” when he married her daughter. But Glen switched to the overly personal name early on. They had never been close, and it felt like a pretense.

  “Unless there’s a blizzard, I’ll be swimming,” she replied with a smile.

  Glen rubbed his arms and gazed around the vast room. “It’s chilly in here.”

  “I was just getting ready to build a fire. Glen, would you be a dear and do it for me while I go change?” Sally asked.

  Glen seemed taken aback. “Me? Build a fire?”

  Sally tried not to smile. She enjoyed giving him little assignments to see how he would react. Glen was selling boats in Miami and hanging out at South Beach bars when he met her daughter. He had become accustomed to money very quickly.