Avalanche: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (Sheriff Bo Tully Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF Page B

I’d say this comes from a fistfight.”
    “I think you may be right.” Tully backed into an opening between a Yukon and a Lexus sport utility vehicle. “I’ll go in and see if I can round up some clothes for these two. And a pair of crutches.”
    Lindsay said, “I still have a room here. All my stuff is still in my room, number 222. They can get me some clothes from there.”
    “I have a room too,” Marcus said. “Room 318.”
    “You each have a room?” Tully asked. “So what were you doing in the cabin?”
    “I thought it would be romantic,” Marcus said.
    Tully shook his head. “I hope you realize now, Marcus, that romance is not what it’s cracked up to be.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Okay then,” Tully said. “So all we need is crutches for you, Lindsay, and some bathrobes or something so you can get to your rooms.”
    “You actually think they’ll have crutches?” Lindsay said.
    “They ski here, don’t they? Of course they’ll have crutches.”
    He got out and walked up to the lodge. Even in the dark, it was impressive.
    Built in the Twenties, the outer walls had been constructed of stones and logs. He vaguely recalled that a couple of movies had been filmed there. One of the massive doors swung open at scarcely more than the touch of his hand on the handle. A forest of candles illuminated the foyer but nobody was at what he took to be a registration desk. He walked toward the sound of voices and into a lounge area. He stopped a young woman. She was wearing a green jacket with a West Branch Lodge emblem on it. “Ah, you work here,” he said.
    “If anyone is watching,” she said. “I’m Wendy Curtis. What can I do for you?”
    Tully explained about the crutches and bathrobes or other covering for Lindsay and Marcus to get to their rooms. He gave her the room numbers.
    “You look as if you could use some new clothes yourself, Sheriff.”
    “Not as badly as I need a stiff drink, Wendy.”
    “The bar is just around the corner. I’ll take care of the robes and crutches.”
    Tully thanked her and walked into the lounge. A bar ran along the wall to his left. At the far end, a tall, stocky bartender leaned over it in intense conversation with a young woman. Whatever he was selling, the woman wasn’t buying it. She actually stomped her foot at one point. She wore a leather jacket and jeans and even in the dim light Tully rated her somewhere between very cute and gorgeous.
    Tully called down to the bartender. “Excuse me, but could I get a drink here?”
    The bartender glared at him. “Can’t you see I’m busy!” he snapped. He went back to arguing with the woman.
    Tully grabbed the bartender by the hair and smashed his face up and down on the bar. But only in his mind. The man had a neck thick as a rhino’s. Nothing is more embarrassing than grabbing a handful of hair and then not being able to move a man’s head. This had never happened to Tully and he didn’t intend for it to.
    At last the woman pushed back from the bar, still shaking her head, and stormed off. He thought he detected cheeks glistening with tears when she went by him. Another good reason to whomp the bartender’s face up and down on the bar. Perhaps they were having a lovers’ quarrel. The bartender couldn’t have been out of his twenties. A lock of dark hair curled down onto his forehead. Youth. Muscle. Looks. It was hard to imagine a more disgusting combination. The man came down the bar toward him, his demeanor suggesting menace.
    “So?” he said.
    Tully undid the badge from his belt and laid it on the bar. “What will that buy me?”
    “Oh-oh,” the bartender said. “You must be Sheriff Tully. You have to admit you’re kind of a mess.”
    “Mess or not, I’m young Sheriff Tully. If I were old Sheriff Tully, you’d be dead by now. Or wishing you were.”
    “I’m sorry. I mistook you for one of the locals.”
    “The locals?”
    “Yeah, they’re kind of a rough lot—no offense. The mountains back here are