Killer Summer

8

The Sun Valley resort, with its two hotels, outdoor mall, condominiums, golf course, year-round outdoor skating rink, and a two-thousand-seat amphitheater, was situated at the mouth of Trail Creek, a canyon that narrowed as it headed east toward the Copper Basin.

The mile-high air was so clean, it was almost drinkable. Window down, Walt inhaled, savoring his choice of lifestyle. A red-tailed hawk patrolled overhead-predators seldom rested. SUVs bearing bikes, kayaks, and canoes were stacked up at one of the town’s five traffic lights.

A bustling porte-cochere fronted the Sun Valley Lodge, a newly redecorated version of the grand hotel that had once hosted Marilyn Monroe, Gary Cooper, and the Kennedys. Ernest Hemingway had written part of For Whom the Bell Tolls in Suite 206. Walt drove across the packed five-acre parking lot and borrowed a space reserved for deliveries in front of the modest Sun Valley Post Office. He carried the carbon-fiber attaché case with him, its cut chain dangling like a dog collar. He passed a golf shop, a jewelry store, a bank, and a bookstore on his way to the slightly less prestigious but equally luxurious Sun Valley Inn.

The dark beauty behind the registration desk wore a soft-gray suit, starched white blouse, and a bronze name tag that read SLADANA, and, beneath the name, CROATIA. She had an appealing, provocative accent that also made her difficult to understand. Her eyes so dark, he couldn’t see her pupils.

Walt was three inches shorter than she, his eyes level with her mouth. She had nice teeth.

“A Mr. Malone was scheduled to be your guest,” he said, his uniform introducing his authority. “I’d like to see the room, if I may. Any messages or packages. Anything at all you may have for him.”

Short, dark purple-polished nails tapped the keyboard.

“Randall Malone?” she asked.

Walt nodded.

“I am show voice mail for Mr. Malone… You like?”

“Yes, please.”

“House phone across from restrooms, down hall to left. Room two-sixteen.”

He had been hoping for a FedEx package containing a card that might unlock the attaché case. His disappointment was somewhat abated by the existence of the voice mail.

He worked his way past designer-label hotel guests crowding the lobby bar-pearl-white teeth and breast implants, golf tans, loafers without socks.

He connected with the hotel operator. The man on the voice mail did not identify himself. He recited a phone number and a time-“nine o’clock”-and hung up. The time matched Malone’s unnamed appointment in the BlackBerry.

Walt checked his watch: forty-five minutes late. He had little patience for the cloak-and-dagger that private security firms often embraced. They were wannabe spooks. He doubted the call originated from Malone’s office; they’d have phoned his BlackBerry. So maybe the phone number had to do with the attaché. A ransom payment? Was it time-sensitive? Life or death? A kidnapped journalist in Iraq? An oil company employee in Venezuela? Not much would surprise him, given the residents of Sun Valley.

Whom to call first: Branson Risk or the number left on the voice mail? If the person answering the call failed to hear Malone’s voice, would that have consequences? Convinced the attaché would disappear behind a wall of attorneys, he decided to hold off contacting the security company until he’d returned the call left in the voice mail.

Concerned that the person on the receiving end of the call might be expecting to see the hotel’s caller ID, Walt first picked up the hotel phone and connected to the operator. But he quickly hung up. What if the caller ID from Malone’s BlackBerry had been supplied and was part of the verification procedure?

Walt returned to the Cherokee, retrieved Malone’s phone, and searched its contact list for the phone number that had been left on the voice mail. It wasn’t stored.

He contemplated his options, dialed the number left on the voice mail, and impatiently awaited an answer.