Chapter 4

  At the ski lodge, Kayla was serving as the catering manager for a wedding where a bridezilla was having a major meltdown about the banquet room being too small. But Kayla had set it up with her nearly twelve months ago, told her the seating arrangements and the occupancy size, and asked the bride if she was sure she didn’t want to reserve two banquet rooms at the time. Bridezilla had said no, it was too much of a cost. So what did she think? She could pay for one room and get two now when it was actually the big day? Their other banquet rooms had been completely booked two weeks after the bride’s was reserved.

  Roxie had planned to be the catering manager for this wedding, but she was dealing with a registered couple whose charge card had been declined. The siblings often flip-flopped roles depending on who was involved with some crisis at the time. Kayla would rather have handled the credit card issue, but Roxie had already been trying to cope with the couple, who were in the wedding party and having their own meltdown.

  Blake was dealing with a complaint that someone staying in the room next to theirs had a couple of barking dogs. He usually helped as a catering manager or a banquet manager of any function that didn’t have to do with weddings. As to a guest having dogs in one of the rooms, pets weren’t allowed at the lodge. Only Rosco was because he was the owners’ and because he was an avalanche rescue dog. They’d also used him on searches for missing hikers in the summer, though the wolves used their own heightened sense of smell to search for lost visitors. Their cat Princess Buttercup stayed in their office until she went home at night.

  So Blake had gone up to see about the barking dog issue.

  Landon was helping set up the banquet room next to the bridezilla’s where a party was ready to get underway for a sixty-year-old man’s birthday celebration.

  Kayla swore the bride was giving the guests attending the birthday party the evil eye for daring to take up the room she should have had. Kayla was trying to arrange things in the room in a better way to accommodate the bride’s guests and wedding party. When things were running smoothly, Kayla loved wedding parties that were held here. They were great moneymakers for the lodge. But when they had to deal with a bridezilla, no amount of money was worth it, she felt. She was ready to return to their office and crawl into her shell to work on promotions like she loved doing. Dealing with confrontations was not her thing.

  Kayla loved her siblings. She knew if Roxie hadn’t been busy with the credit card issue with the one couple, she would have taken Bridezilla off Kayla’s hands. Her brothers were another story. They didn’t want to say something to an out-of-control bride they could regret later.

  Come to think of it, Roxie tended to speak her mind too. So if someone was being a royal pain in the ass, she’d probably say something about it.

  The bride frowned, flipped her blond hair over her shoulders for the millionth time, and stalked across the floor to speak to one of her bridesmaids who had just arrived. “I told you to dye your hair brown so I would be the only blond in the wedding party. I have to stand out in the photos.”

  Kayla raised her brows. Talk about a prima donna. If Kayla had a good friend who had said that to her, she would have straightened her out.

  Scowling, Bridezilla pointed at her bridesmaid. “You’re dismissed.”

  “What?” The blond bridesmaid sounded shocked.

  Kayla parted her lips in surprise. She couldn’t believe the bride would go that far and do that to her friend!

  Bridezilla shrugged and folded her arms across her waist. “I made it very clear to you yesterday that you had to change your hair color to brown. But you didn’t do it. So fine. You can’t be at the wedding.”

  The bridesmaid’s jaw dropped. Her eyes were filled with tears. Her mouth was quivering. Kayla wanted to give her a hug and tell the bride off, but her parents were paying for the venue.

  “Go!” Bridezilla waved her hand at the door. “Next time maybe you’ll listen to my rules.”

  “Don’t worry,” the bridesmaid said. “There won’t be a next time.” Then she hurried across the floor and out of the room.

  The other bridesmaids were staring at the departing bridesmaid, looking dumbfounded, but they held their tongues, probably worried their heads would be on the chopping block next.

  “I’ll be right back,” Kayla told the bride’s wedding coordinator. She headed out of the banquet room and found Roxie dealing with the bridesmaid, who was all in tears. Kayla joined them at the front desk and learned the girl was checking out. Kayla gave her a hug. “I love your hair, and I don’t blame you for not changing it. I wouldn’t have either. If she’d been a real friend, she wouldn’t have insisted on it.” Then she said to Roxie, “Give her the room for free last night. And no charge for checking out late today.”

  Roxie smiled at Kayla. Her sister always said Kayla had too soft a heart, and they wouldn’t let her handle billing issues because of it. Any sob story would convince her to allow someone to stay the night for free.

  The girl gave her a heartfelt hug back. “Thanks so much.”

  “You’re welcome. My sister would have given you a refund if she’d seen what the bride had said to you.” Kayla didn’t want the woman to think she was the only one with a heart.

  Roxie was smiling at Kayla like she wasn’t sure about that.

  “Do you want me to take over for you, Kayla?” Roxie asked her as the bridesmaid rolled her bags out of the lodge.

  “No.” Kayla didn’t want Roxie to have to deal with Bridezilla just because she was ready to turn into a wolf and bite her. “Hey, when I get married, if I ever act like that, slap me so I can wake up and realize how important everyone is to me.”

  “You?” Roxie laughed. “No way. I would be shocked if you were mean to anyone over anything. You’re never a drama queen, ever.”

  “Well, just make sure I’m not. I would never want to treat anyone bad like that after all they’ve done to make my day special. Okay, I’m going back to the banquet hall.”

  “Just text me if you need me to take over. Seriously.” Roxie gave her a hug.

  “Okay, I will.” But once Kayla set her mind to do something, she did it. No matter how unpleasant.

  Blake called Roxie, and she said, putting it on speaker, “Yeah, Blake?”

  “Help me chase down two miniature schnauzers that have wrecked a guest room and got out as soon as I opened the guest room door.” Blake sounded frantic, out of breath, like he was running down the stairs.

  “Ohmigod, there they are!” Kayla saw them dashing down the stairs and across the lobby. Rosco stood up, looking unsure what he should do.

  “The two schnauzers are headed for the banquet room hosting the wedding!” Kayla said, tearing off to try to stop the disaster about to unfold.

  Roxie was right behind her, calling Landon to drop whatever he was doing to help them catch a couple of runaway dogs. Kayla gave Rosco a hand signal to stay where he was near his dog bed so he wouldn’t chase after the schnauzers since the siblings were running after them and she was afraid he might think he needed to join the race. They sure didn’t need him in the banquet room adding to the havoc. She could just imagine what the bride would say about that.

  Nate and Nicole parked at the Red Dog Pub. The place was open for lunch and was crowded with patrons. They started talking to the bartender who had been on duty the night Phil had vanished. The pretty, dark-haired woman leaned on the counter and said, “Okay, the police have already been here, and I’ve talked to them.”

  “Right, but we’re here as private investigators looking into the case for the family. We’ve heard there was an argument between Phil and a friend of his,” Nate said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “There were words,” Nate said.

  “And a scuffle,” the bartender said. “I had the bouncer throw them out of here.”

  “Do you know what it was about, exactly?” Nate asked.

  “A girl with them sat on Phil’s lap, and that’s when the other guy got angry. Then Everest grabbed a different girl that I’d never seen in the pub before and forced her onto his lap. That’s when Phil threw a punch at Everest. I called security to break things up and send them out of here.”

  Which confirmed just what Phil’s sister had said.

  “And you told the police this?” Nate asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Anything else?” Nicole asked.

  The bartender shook her head. “I’ve never seen them fighting in here before. They’re in here a lot. And they drink a lot. They were drunk that night.”

  “Did Phil seem…despondent at all during the whole session?”

  “No. He was cheerful, even when his friend got mad at him. He was laughing, wasn’t taking anything seriously. Not until Everest grabbed that other girl and forced her to sit on his lap. Then Phil got angry. Oh, I think Phil said something about the girl being his sister? I might have been mistaken about that. It was noisy in here. That’s all I know.”

  “Okay, thanks,” Nicole said. “Is there anyone else we can talk to about the case?”

  “Just his friends. They would know more about what went on than I would. It was a busy night, and except for the fight, I hadn’t really been watching them.”

  “All right, thanks,” Nate said.

  Then they left and decided to see Gerald, the friend who was so nervous about Phil going missing, and drove over to his apartment.

  They soon arrived at Gerald’s apartment complex, parked, and headed for the door. At Nate’s knock, Gerald opened the door. As soon as Nate told him that Phil’s parents had hired the private investigators to search for the truth behind Phil’s disappearance, Gerald nearly closed the door in their faces.

  “You know what happened,” Nate said, smelling the fear wafting from the man.

  Gerald ran his hands over his long, red hair pulled back into a ponytail. His mustache was a little lighter red than his hair, and he had a full red beard. His green eyes shifted from Nate to Nicole and down to the patio. “He… He, uh, just needed to get away. He has to sometimes. We all know it. His parents know it. And the police say there’s not a reason that raises any red flags concerning his, uh, disappearance.”

  “But you know where he is, don’t you?” Nate bet Gerald knew more than he was letting on.

  Gerald looked like he desperately wanted to close the door in their faces again, as though he knew Nate and Nicole were a couple of alpha wolves and he couldn’t get anything past them.

  “We know about the fight at the bar,” Nicole said.

  That was a great way of telling Gerald he didn’t have to squeal on his friends about it because they already knew.

  “And we know Everest does whatever he wants to,” Nicole said. “And gets away with it.”

  “Exactly, so I have nothing to say.” Yet Gerald still didn’t shut the door.

  “If you didn’t have anything to do with Phil’s disappearance, there’s no reason for you not to tell us the truth,” Nicole said.

  “I–I could be an accessory, couldn’t I?”

  Okay, so that didn’t sound good—like Gerald was involved in Phil’s disappearance. Which meant Phil most likely wasn’t just taking a break from everyone. Who else was involved? His other friends?

  “If you were a witness to a crime but are willing to tell the truth now, you have a much better chance at getting immunity from prosecution.” That was if Gerald had nothing to do with actually killing Phil.

  “Everest’s dad’s a prosecutor, and he’s got a lot of powerful friends, and some are on the police force.”

  “Can we go inside and talk to you?” Nicole asked, rubbing her back. Nate assumed it was bothering her.

  “Uh. Yeah, sure.” Gerald let them inside and locked the door behind them.

  “Tell us what you know,” Nate said as Gerald ushered them into his messy bachelor pad: empty beer cans on tables, the odor of pot lingering in the air, a computer on a desk nearby, the monitor showing a game paused, and a flat-screen TV on one wall that was on too, featuring a werewolf movie.

  Nate had no clue what the name of it was. He never watched werewolf shows. They were just too unreal for him.

  He and Nicole sat down together on the saggy brown sofa while Gerald sat down on an equally saggy blue recliner. A man began howling in pain as he tore off his clothes and turned into a hideous werewolf on the screen.

  Gerald grabbed the TV controller and paused the movie. “Great movie, by the way. If you haven’t seen it, you ought to. Okay, so we all went to the Red Dog Pub the night Phil went missing. Everest’s girlfriend, Sarah, was mad at him, so she sat on Phil’s lap and was kissing him. Everest slugged Phil over it, but then when Phil just laughed, Everest headed over to where Phil’s sister, Vicki, was watching, grabbed her arm, and forced her to sit on his lap. Sarah was incensed Everest would do that. Not because she cared anything about Vicki, but Sarah felt Everest had slighted her all night. And she felt it was all Phil’s fault for pulling her onto his lap in the first place and riling Everest up. But the thing of it was, she’d encouraged Phil to do it. She was jealous because Everest was talking to some other girl at the pub, so Sarah wanted to get Everest’s attention. She got it all right.”

  “You all left together, right?” Nicole asked.

  “We were in two separate vehicles. Phil, Randy, and Ann were in one car, and I was with Sarah and Everest in the other. Everest was fuming that Sarah sat on Phil’s lap, and she was griping at him about the cute black-haired girl he’d been talking it up with at the bar earlier. Anyway, Randy dropped Phil off at his farm, and that was it.”

  “As far as what you’ve told us,” Nate said. “What really happened?”

  Gerald shifted in his chair. “Everest wouldn’t let it go. He accused Sarah of sneaking around his back to be with Phil, and she said she wasn’t. Though it did make me wonder. Then Everest said, ‘You wouldn’t care if he committed suicide tonight, would you?’ Well, if it could get her out of hot water with Everest, she would go along with about anything.” Gerald didn’t say anything after that.

  “What was your role in all this?” Nate asked.

  “I didn’t want to go along with any of it. I mean, if they planned to carry something like that out.”

  “But you didn’t put a stop to it either.” Nate was afraid Gerald was just as culpable.

  “You don’t know Everest. Once he decides something, it’s a done deal. But for some reason, he”—Gerald shrugged—“must have changed his mind.” But Gerald wasn’t looking at them now, his gaze turned down, focusing on his feet as if he realized he’d said too much.

  “Are you sure?” Nicole asked. “I mean, now Phil’s gone.”

  “Okay, go over the scenario again,” Nate said, ready to look for holes in Gerald’s story. Why would Gerald be worried he could be guilty of anything if he really hadn’t known anything about what had happened to Phil?

  But Gerald didn’t say anything differently, like the whole business had been rehearsed. He held his hands up, palms up. “That’s all I got.”

  When he didn’t have anything further to say, Nicole said, “If you think of anything else that might be helpful, please let us know.” She handed him their business card, and then they left.

  “Did you get all that recorded?” Nate asked Nicole. That was what she liked to do.

  “You bet. You know that’s what I always do.”

  Nate was glad she did. “Yeah. So now we hold on to this until we can speak to the others involved in this. If Gerald had anything to do with Phil’s disappearance, it’ll come out. We’ll learn something from the others, or we’ll turn this over to the police and let them work on this bunch.”

  “Yeah, if the police think there’s anything to it.”

  “True. They might believe Phil just took off because he was mad at Everest and there’s nothing more to it.” Which meant they needed to gather more information to really have a case against Everest and the others. Like finding Phil’s body, if he was no longer among the living.

  Nicole leaned back against the car seat.

  “Is your back bothering you?” Nate asked, ready to return her home so she could lie down for a while. She’d been taking an afternoon rest, and he certainly didn’t want her feeling like she had to go with him on any more interviews.

  “Yeah, the hazard of being pregnant and carrying two babies at the same time.”

  “Are you okay with continuing the witness interviews, or do you want to take a break? I can take you home.” Nate was certainly leaning in that direction.

  “No, I don’t want to return to Silver Town when we’re here already and can get this done and maybe learn something. I’m good. Really.”

  “Well, just let me know if you need to stop. I’m serious, Nicole. I know you tend to tough it out when you’re not feeling well, but I don’t want you hurting when you don’t need to.” Beside the fact he didn’t want to injure the babies in any way by having her work too long or hard.

  “I’m good.”

  He hoped so, not only because he was her brother and cared about her but also because his parents and her mate would surely have words with him if he didn’t ensure she was fine.

  Chapter 5

  At the lodge, Kayla wished the doors to the banquet room had been closed before the two runaway schnauzers reached it, but the florist was still hauling wedding flowers into the venue. Kayla could just imagine what a disaster this could be if the two miniature schnauzers raced into the room and tore into everything, knocking over ceramic vases, sending the roses flying everywhere, bashing into the chairs that she had just rearranged for better seating.

  If she’d been a wolf, she could have caught up with them much faster than as a human in heels. She just hoped she didn’t break her neck as she chased after them. The dogs ran straight into the banquet room, and Kayla expected to hear screeches and screams and see Bridezilla rush out, shouting for Kayla to take care of it. Blake caught up to Kayla before they reached the room, Landon rushing to help them out, Roxie right behind them. When they ran into the room, Kayla expected the worst, but then she saw the bride crouched down and hugging the dogs, getting kisses and kissing them back.