Snowmen In Paradise (Book 2 Tj Jensen Paradise Lake Mysteries) (10 page)

The boys were dressed in dark blue slacks with long
-sleeved white dress shirts, while the girls wore short white dresses with dark blue belts and shoes. Tj had been concerned about how the dress would look on Rhonda, who was a bit large boned, but she had to admit Jenna had done a wonderful job of getting the outfit to flatter her shape and fit her curves perfectly.

The medley began with
a slow song, followed by a slightly faster number the group could dance to. Tj was shocked not only by how well the group harmonized but how well they moved as a team. In the week Kyle had been working with them, he’d managed to turn them into a real show choir that might actually be able to hold its own in a local competition one day.

Following the opening
number, which lasted almost ten minutes, Sasha and her group came out for their mash-up of Katy Perry songs. Sasha and Marley didn’t always get along, but when the trio, which included Rhonda, began to perform, Tj let out the breath she’d been holding since she’d grouped them together over a month earlier. Not only did the girls sing and dance their hearts out but they actually made it look like they were having a wonderful time.

Tj
stood up and clapped until her hands stung before finally taking her seat for the ballad that was scheduled next. Sasha, tall and lean, with dark hair, eyes, and skin, was as focused and driven a student as Tj had ever known. Tj had no doubt she could achieve anything she set out to do, including drag Kendall Grant, who was shy, with a tendency to fade into the background, into a showstopping number that would bring down the house. Sasha had a dynamic personality and a strong voice, and Tj expected her to carry the number while Kendall stayed in the background, but when Kendall belted out the opening solo loud enough to be heard in the back of the room, she almost fell out of her chair.

After Sasha and Kendall
finished, Ryder came out with his band and shook the room with an awesome rendition of a couple of rock-and-roll classics. After the numbers presented by the small groups were finished, the entire choir came back on stage for the finale. By the time the show was over, Tj had laughed and cried and laughed some more. She didn’t know how he’d done it, but somehow Kyle had turned her misfits into a team.

After
the kids had gone, Tj hugged Kyle as tightly as she could. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“It was my pleasure
. I loved working with the kids, and I think they like working with me. This has been the best week I’ve had in a long time.”

“About that
. . .” Tj had started to ask Kyle if he would stay on with the choir after the concert on Wednesday night when Mayor Wallaby walked up behind them. He was dressed in a huge knee-length brown coat and a fur-lined brown hat that made him look like a walrus.

“Tj, I’m
glad I found you,” he said.

“What’s up?”

“Have you seen Travis?”

“Travis?”
Why would he think she’d seen him? The man was a thorn in her side and she’d gone out of her way to avoid him.

“He’s missing
. I was hoping you’d seen him.”

Tj frowned
. “What do you mean, missing?”

“He was supposed
to have dinner with the men who are interested in sponsoring him for the upcoming season. It was a
very
important dinner,” the mayor emphasized, “but he never showed up.”

“Why would you think I
’d know where he was?”

“
I called the lodge, but Albert Pitman told me that he hadn’t seen him all evening. He asked his staff, but the last time anyone saw him was this afternoon in the bar. I’ve been tracking down everyone who was there and might have talked to him. It’s really not like him to miss such an important meeting.”

Tj thought back to the important meeting he’d missed when she
’d trudged through the snow to talk with him about the opening ceremony. It seemed to Tj that missing important meetings was something he was very likely to do.

“I didn’t talk to him,” Tj informed the man
. “I was in the bar to talk to one of my students, who had been invited for a drink by the ‘hero’ you’ve been trotting around town. Apparently, Travis—who, by the way, is much too old for a seventeen-year-old girl—had been coming on to her. When I arrived, they were at a table with some other people. Chelsea Hanson came in, slapped him across the face, and then left. He followed her out of the door, and that’s the last I saw of the toad.”

“I see
.” Tj suspected the good mayor was beginning to regret his partnership with the town’s prodigal son. “If you happen to run into him, will you call me?”

Tj shrugged
. “Yeah, okay.”

After she left the dress rehearsal, Tj headed to Jenna’s to pick up Ashley and Gracie. Her dad and grandfather both had plans, so Jenna had offered to pick all the girls up from school, give them dinner, and help them with their homework. Tj figured she was going to owe Jenna a
lot
of babysitting time once the carnival was over and things slowed down a bit.

“So how was the rehearsal?” Jenna asked after making a sandwich for Tj. They sat at Jenna’s kitchen table while the girls finished their homework in the dining room. Dennis was off for a
few days, but he’d headed into town to share a cold one with the guys rather than spend the evening in a house full of little girls.

“Really good,” Tj answered as soon as she swallowed the bite of ham she’d been chewing. “I can’t believe how much progress Kyle has made with the kids in just a few days.”

“That’s wonderful,” Jenna said, although the joy she was attempting to convey didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Something wrong?” Tj asked. She’d been friends with Jenna long enough to know when
there was something on her mind.

Jenna looked around the room to make sure there weren’t any little ears lurking about. “Before Dennis
went out, we had a talk about our future.”

“Sounds serious
.” Tj frowned.

“Basically
, what it boils down to is that Dennis wants to have another baby.”

Tj hesitated. “And you don’t want to?”

Jenna sighed. “Honestly, I’m not sure. When Dennis and I first became engaged, we talked about having a big family, like the Waltons. We dreamed of three boys and three girls, all with blond hair and blue eyes.”

“Six is a lot.” Tj grimaced.

“Yeah, it is. Six sounded like fun before I’d had any children, but now that I know how much work they are . . .” Jenna paused. “Don’t get me wrong, I love Kristi and Kari more than life itself, but I’m not sure I could handle six kids plus a business and still have a life.”

“Dennis really wants six children?” Tj found that hard to believe.

“No, not six. Not anymore, that is. But he really wants a boy, and he thinks three children would be just right.”

“You
might have another girl,” Tj pointed out.

“That’s what I said
, but Dennis argued that since we already have two girls, the odds of having a boy are in our favor.”

Tj laughed. “I’m pretty sure the odds are close to fifty
/fifty with each pregnancy.”

“Yeah
.” Jenna smiled. “I know that, but Dennis is convinced if we have another baby, we’ll have a boy. I want him to have his son, but things are really hectic right now. I’m not sure the timing is right.”

“So what are you going to do?”

Jenna sat back and stared into the fire. Her face softened as, Tj suspected, she thought about the reality of a third child. “When Dennis first suggested another baby I was horrified, but now that I’ve had a chance to think about it,” Jenna said with a smile, “a baby would be fun. We have plenty of room after the remodel to the house, and I’m sure Mom and Bonnie would handle things at The Antiquery.”

“I’m sure they’d be more than happy to handle things,” Tj agreed.

“And if we had a baby now,” Jenna added, “there wouldn’t be too large a gap in age between the baby and the other two girls.”

“True.”

“And all the baby furniture is in the attic just waiting to be put to use. I even saved a lot of the clothes.”

“It sounds,” Tj observed, “
like you’re a little more certain than you think you are.”

Jenna looked at her b
est friend. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

Tj pulled into the parking area of Angel Mountain Ski Resort early the next morning. It was barely six-thirty and the ski lifts wouldn’t be open to the general public for hours, but as the ski coach at the local high school, she had a key to the locker rooms. Grabbing the equipment she planned to use during practice that day, she piled everything onto the cart she’d brought from Maggie’s Hideaway and pushed it over the ice-covered walkway toward the well-lit building.

“Morning
, Tj,” William Bolton, Angel Mountain’s vice president in charge of operations, greeted her. “You’re here early today.”

“I wanted to drop
off this stuff before I headed to work,” she explained. “I promised a couple of the kids a ride here, so I figured I wouldn’t have room for their equipment as well as my own.”

“I caught the tail end
of your workout yesterday,” Will commented. “It looks like Connor Harrington is on fire this year.”

“Yeah, he’s really improved his time over last year
. He’s hoping for a scholarship and is working hard to make sure that happens.”

“Has he applied for one of the
Angel Mountain scholarships?” Will helped Tj maneuver her cart over the curb lining the parking lot. “It’s a competitive process, but I think Connor has a good shot at it.”

“I
’ll mention it to him, but he’s really looking for something that will pay for his entire education. Still, I guess every little bit helps.” Tj slipped her key into the lock and turned the handle. Pushing her cart, she made her way to the back of the room, where the larger lockers for season-pass holders and ski-team members were. Pausing near the bank of lockers reserved for her team, she frowned. There was something on the floor.

“That looks like
—”

“Blood,” Tj finished
for him.

She
followed what appeared to be a trail of blood toward the very back of the room. “I think whoever was injured left through this door.”

“That’s odd
.” Will frowned as Tj stood in front of the emergency exit. “The only way the door can be opened without sounding the alarm is if it’s deactivated first. The only people with the code are security staff and resort management, all of whom would have been obligated to report an accident.” He pulled up the incident reports on his cell phone and scanned the most recent entries. “I don’t see anything in yesterday’s reports.”

“Maybe they were in a hurry,”
she suggested.

Tj opened the door
after Will punched in the code, and they both stepped out into the alley at the back of the building, which accessed other buildings in the ski village as well. She was trying to imagine where an injured skier might have gone when she noticed a spot of blood on the snow about ten feet from the doorway. That spot led to another one that took her to the back door of the Inn.

“It looks like the injured party was a guest who returned to his or her room after the accident,”
Will said.

Tj frowned
. “Yeah, looks like.” She fought the feeling of déjà vu that suggested that the trail of blood was really something more. “Do you have a key to this door?”

“I have
the master key to Angel Mountain,” Will confirmed.

“Maybe we should follow the trail to the end
to make certain someone isn’t seriously injured,” Tj suggested.

W
ill opened the door, which led into the administration office located at the back of the Inn. There was no one in the office; most staff didn’t arrive until eight o’clock. The night desk clerk was watching a movie in the lobby and hadn’t noticed the pair arrive. Tj saw a chair tucked into a corner of the room. It was covered with a blanket and didn’t seem to be out of place, but a little voice in the back of her mind nudged her to check it out further. She lifted the blanket and realized that it was actually a wheelchair.

W
ill went into the lobby to question the desk clerk, while Tj followed the faint trail from the office to the service elevator, which could only be accessed by code. Tj turned to Will when he walked up behind her.

“The night clerk doesn’t know anything about an accident,”
he confirmed. “He said he came on shift at ten o’clock and the evening was uneventful.”

“Do you know the
code to access this elevator?” Tj asked.

W
ill punched in a series of numbers.

The door slid open and
they both stepped inside. Tj pushed the button for the third floor, where the guest rooms were located. The elevator floor appeared to be clear of blood, but the trail resumed in the hallway just outside the elevator door. It looked like someone had tried to clean up the blood but had missed a few drops. It most likely wouldn’t even be noticeable if they hadn’t been looking for it; the carpet in the hallway was a deep burgundy. They followed the blood trail to a room at the end of the hall.