Payback in Paxton Park

Book 4: A Paxton Park Mystery

by J.A. Whiting

Genres: Paranormal Romance; Supernatural suspense; Romantic Suspense

Synopsis

This is book 4 in the Paxton Park Mystery series by USA Today Bestselling Author J A Whiting.

Finishing a ski run on the slopes of the mountain resort town of Paxton Park, Shelly Taylor and her friend, Juliet, hear a scream near the maintenance building and see the office manager rush outside. A gruesome scene sets a police investigation in motion and drags Shelly and her friend into it.
Will Shelly's unusual dreams contribute to the needed clues in time to solve the crime before a desperate killer strikes again?

This story has some mild paranormal elements.

Release date: August 19, 2018

Publisher: Whitemark Publishing

Print pages: 264

Sample

Chapter 1

 

 

With the early morning sun rising over the mountain behind her, Shelly T

aylor skied with care over the white powder of the resort’s intermediate trails. Her friend, Juliet, stayed close by to offer encouragement and praise as the two made their way to the bottom for the third time that morning.

 

As employees of the resort, the young women were allowed to ski from 6am to 7am at no charge and this was the first time twenty-eight-year old Shelly had the courage to attempt the slopes since the car accident a year ago that took her twin sister’s life and left Shelly with a long and painful recovery.

 

“You did great.” Juliet high-fived her friend. “You were awesome.”

 

“Yes, if you like skiing with someone who moves like an old lady.” Shelly shook her head, but the excitement and joy of shushing down the slopes was written all over her wind-chilled face.

 

“It was the first time you’ve skied in over a year. You should be really proud of yourself.” Juliet gave Shelly a warm pat on her back. “I’m proud of you. How is your leg doing?”

 

“I feel good, but it’s probably due to the endorphins flooding my body from the thrill of skiing. In an hour or so, I probably won’t be able to walk.”

 

Juliet chuckled. “But it will have been worth it.” Checking her watch, she asked, “Do we have time for another run?”

 

“I don’t think I dare do another one,” Shelly said. “I don’t want to push it. Wait until I tell Jack I skied today. He’ll be so excited.” Jack and Shelly had been dating for about six months and both enjoyed the outdoor activities offered from living near the mountain and forest.

 

At the base of the hill to the right, a good-sized lodge, called the barn by the workers, was tucked into the trees where the slope’s groomers and resort maintenance workers made their offices. The lodge-like building stood in front of several huge garages where snow equipment and trucks were kept.

 

Passing by on the way to the resort’s main lodge, Shelly noticed the barn’s front door was open. It was freezing outside. Why didn’t someone shut the door?

 

A blood-curdling scream shot through the air and caused the two young women to halt in their tracks.

 

“What was that?” Juliet’s gaze was pinned on the worker’s lodge.

 

After exchanging glances, Juliet and Shelly skied towards the barn, and as they approached, a man raced out through the open door, bent over at the waist, and got sick onto the snow.

 

Unsnapping her skis, Juliet dropped her ski poles and ran to the man who they recognized as Troy Broadmoor, a resort employee and manager of the barn.

 

“What’s happened?” Juliet put her arm over the man’s shoulders and when he straightened up, his face was ghostly white.

 

“Are you okay, Troy?” Shelly glanced around trying to figure out why the man had screamed.

 

Troy, in his early thirties with sandy-colored hair and big brown eyes, looked from Juliet to Shelly like he had never seen another human being before. Wearing jeans and a long-sleeved, flannel shirt, the man blinked at them without speaking as his shoulders began to shake.

 

“Troy?” Juliet asked. “What’s wrong? Are you ill?”

 

“No.” Troy’s eyes were wide and wild as he looked back to the building and gestured towards it. “Inside. Grant and Benny are inside. It’s Grant and Benny.”

 

“Are they working in the lodge?” Juliet questioned. When Troy didn’t answer, she asked with a hesitant voice, “Is something wrong with them?”

 

Troy’s pale face turned to Juliet. “Dead.”

 

Hearing the word, Shelly felt like she’d been slapped and she took two fast steps back from Troy. “Dead? Are you sure? What happened to them?” A flood of anxiety shot through her body.

 

“Inside,” Troy said as he shook his head from side-to-side. He’d been good friends with the two men and his pain from what he’d discovered was almost tangible. “Don’t go in there.”

 

Shelly stepped to the opened doorway of the building and peered gingerly into the first room to see nothing out of the ordinary … chairs, desks with folders and papers resting on the tops, a lamp on each desk, and eight metal floor cabinets standing against one wall. “Where are they, Troy? Where are Grant and Benny?”

 

“Office.” The sandy-haired man dropped to his knees in the snow, muttering and waving his hand in the air, so Juliet put her hand on his back to comfort him and then exchanged worried looks with her friend.

 

“I’m heading inside to see what’s going on,” Shelly said.

 

“Should you? Maybe stay out here. I’ll call for help.” Juliet used her free hand to unzip the pocket of her jacket and remove her phone.

 

Shelly peeked in through the door and raised her voice. “Hello? Grant? Benny? Is anyone inside?”

 

No response.

 

“I’m going to walk around the building.” Shelly headed off to look in through the windows.

 

The sun’s glare hit the front window’s pane of glass making it impossible to see into the room so Shelly moved around to the rear of the lodge where she spotted one of the slope grooming machines parked off to the side by one of the equipment buildings.

 

Peering through the window into the manager’s office, Shelly almost fell back onto her butt from the shock of what she saw.

 

Two men lay face down on the floor, pools of blood surrounding their bodies.

 

Shelly’s stomach lurched and she sucked in several breaths of the icy cold morning air before running, as best she could in her ski boots, back to the front entrance.

 

“Grant. Benny.” Shelly locked eyes with Juliet and shook her head. “I’m going inside to see if they might be unconscious.”

 

Walking through the barn’s main room, Shelly turned to the right into the hallway and moved past two doors to the office where the fallen men lay on the scuffed tiled floor. Being careful not to step in the blood, Shelly called their names even though she knew they both must be dead. Crouching next to Grant, she reached out her hand, but froze with it in mid-air, unable to touch him.

 

Don’t touch. Don’t disturb the scene.

 

With a racing heart and perspiration running down her back, the young woman watched the men’s backs for a rise and fall that would indicate they were still breathing. The part of Benny’s face that Shelly could see looked white and rubbery and her spirits fell as any hope the men were still alive slipped away. In slow motion, Shelly stood and looked around the room.

 

A chair had toppled over.

 

A few pieces of paper had fallen to the floor from the desktop.

 

A piece of something was on the floor beside the desk. A chunk of cement?

 

Feeling numb, Shelly shuffled across the cramped room to the opened closet and her jaw dropped. The big, black safe had almost been pulled from the floor. It had large, heavy bolts that attached it to the floor, but some had been chiseled out and removed. How long had it taken someone to cut that safe out? Benny and Grant were killed because of a robbery?

 

“Shelly, come out of there.” Juliet called nervously from outside and the words broke Shelly out of her state of horror and disbelief, and she stumbled out of the building.

 

“What did you see?” Juliet asked as she turned away from Troy so he wouldn’t hear their conversation.

 

“They’re dead,” Shelly whispered, her eyes glazed over.

 

“Are you sure? Is anyone else inside?”

 

“I didn’t see anyone ... just Grant and Benny.” Shelly sank down and sat in the snow away from Troy, all of her energy drained away.

 

“Could you tell what happened to them? Were they … stabbed?”

 

“I don’t think they were stabbed,” Shelly mumbled. “I think they were shot.”

 

Jayne Landers-Smyth, “Jay” for short, a long-time police officer with the town of Paxton Park and Juliet’s older sister, jogged around the resort lodge with another officer and two EMTs and headed up the hill. Puffing as she approached, Jay asked, “What’s happened in there?”

 

Juliet pointed to the door. “Two employees are in the office off the hall. We think they’re both dead.”

 

With their hands on their weapons, the officers entered the cabin and did a search, then called the all-clear so that the emergency medical workers could enter the building, and after fifteen minutes more, Jay emerged.

 

“The office safe was nearly stolen. The resort workers must have come in and disturbed the robbers as they were trying to remove the safe. Benny and Grant were shot and killed.”

 

Juliet winced and tears filled her eyes. “Who would do this? Kill two guys just to steal a safe?”

 

“I can’t say anymore,” Jay told her sister.

 

When an EMT came outside to tend to Troy, Jay spoke gently to Shelly and helped her to her feet. The two went into the front space of the building where Jay asked the young woman for a statement about what had happened.

 

“I saw them through the window,” Shelly said flatly. “Grant and Benny. I knew them … not very well, but a group of us got together once in a while. The guys were in the group.” Shelly made eye contact with Jay. “Why would someone kill them? Over the contents of a safe? How much money was in there? I’m not a police officer, but it looked like they were shot at close range, execution-style. Were the people who did this professionals?”

 

As a law enforcement officer, Jay was unable to confirm or deny Shelly’s comments or answer her question about the contents of the safe, but the woman’s eyes clouded over and she let out a long sigh.

 

Chapter 2

 

 

Sitting at the kitchen table of Shelly’s rented bungalow, the young women stared at their coffee mugs, stunned into silence. Shelly’s Calico cat, Justice, perched on her owner’s lap sensing her mood and trying to comfort her.

 

“I have to be at the bakery in an hour,” Shelly sighed. “I don’t know how I’m going to get any work done. I feel like all my energy has been sapped.”

 

“I have to lead a cross-country ski tour this afternoon,” Juliet said. “I wish they’d cancel all the planned activities today. All anyone will be asking me about will be the murders. What will I say?”

 

“Management will call a meeting,” Shelly reassured her friend. “They won’t cancel anything, but they’ll give you ways to deal with the barrage of questions and comments you’ll be getting. At least I work in the kitchen. I don’t have to handle the tourists and guests.”

 

Juliet leaned across the table and asked softly, “What do you think happened?”

 

“Grant and Benny got caught in the middle of a robbery,” Shelly said with a sad shake of her head.

 

Looking pointedly at Shelly, Juliet asked another question. “Have you had any dreams recently?”

 

Caught off-guard in mid-swallow, the coffee caused Shelly to choke for a moment and the coughing motion jostled the cat in her lap. Swallowing hard to clear the last bit of liquid from her throat and dabbing at her watering eyes with her napkin, she took a deep breath. “No dreams.”

 

“Nothing? Nothing that foreshadowed the robbery?”

 

Shelly shifted around uncomfortably. “I can’t foresee things, you know. I can’t tell the future. I just have dreams … dreams that are probably the result of my sleeping mind working on things I’ve heard or experienced or thought about during the day.”

 

Juliet tilted her head to the side and said with a soft tone of voice, “I think your dreams are a little more than that.”

 

Since her twin sister, Lauren, died in the car accident, Shelly had been experiencing dreams where Lauren visited her and seemed to provide clues or information about Paxton Park crimes. Initially, Shelly had brushed off the suggestion that the dreams might be the result of a heightened perception of situations and people and the dreams might be her subconscious working on a problem while she slept.

 

In her police work, Jay had been employed in departments that occasionally used the help of a psychic and she kept an open mind about specialized skills. She explained to Shelly that her sleeping mind might be leading her to something she’d only noticed in passing during the day. The importance of those things might be highlighted in the dreams by Lauren’s appearance. Shelly’s subconscious might be pointing her to things overlooked while awake.

 

Jay invited Shelly to be an as-needed consultant to the police department and her duties included sitting-in on interviews, speaking with people, and offering her perspective in on-going investigations. Shelly believed she wouldn’t be of any use, but if Jay thought her input was helpful, she felt she had a duty to assist in any way possible.

 

“Jay will ask you to help on this,” Juliet said. “You were familiar with Grant and Benny. You might notice things other people overlook.”

 

“I know.” A shudder ran over Shelly’s shoulders. “I wish I understood these dreams. I wish I knew how to control them. I wish I wasn’t so clueless about the whole thing. It seems like silliness to think my dead sister comes to me in dreams to help us solve a crime.”

 

A tiny smile crossed Juliet’s face. “But, she has helped on three recent crimes. Whether Lauren is really there in spirit pointing you to clues or your mind uses Lauren to highlight something important, it works. You can’t discount your … gift.”

 

Shelly sighed inwardly and asked herself, Is it a gift or a burden?

 

 

* * *

 

 

Late in the afternoon, Shelly and Juliet sat in front of Jay’s beat up old desk in her cramped office of the Paxton Park police station. Tapping at her laptop, Jay asked without looking up, “So what can you tell me about the three men?”

 

Juliet said, “Troy Broadmoor works as a scheduler and office manager for the mountain operations. He’s always friendly, a nice guy, kind of serious.”

 

Jay put her elbows on the desk and folded her arms. “Troy told me he overslept. That he was supposed to report to work at 5:30am, but didn’t arrive until nearly 7am.” An eyebrow went up on the police officer’s face. “Coincidence?”

 

“It’s possible, isn’t it?” Juliet asked.

 

“Do you think he’s lying?” Shelly questioned, her blue eyes pinned on Jay.

 

“I need to consider all the options,” Jay told them. “Has Troy ever been late to work in the past? If not, why today? If he’s late on occasion, then his tardiness this morning isn’t a first-time thing and wouldn’t be thought of as unusual.”

 

“I don’t know if he’s ever been late,” Juliet told her sister. “We only know him casually. We don’t work with him.”

 

“You’re thinking if he was late to work today, it could be because he was in on the robbery?” Shelly asked.

 

“It crossed my mind,” Jay said. Forty-three-year-old Jay was fifteen years older than her sister and was a twenty-year veteran of the Paxton Park police force. A tall, stocky woman, Jay had a keen intelligence, a calm, kind manner, and the ability to diffuse difficult situations. The officer was a well-respected and valued member of the community. “What do you know about Grant Norris and Benny Little?”

 

Juliet said, “They worked grooming the mountain, doing maintenance on the equipment, making sure the lifts were safe and in good working order, things like that.”

 

“They told me they’d both worked at the resort for a number of years,” Shelly said.

 

“Grant was married,” Juliet said. “Benny had a live-in girlfriend. They seemed like normal guys, hard-working, enjoyed the outdoors, liked their jobs.”

 

“When a group of us would go out for drinks or get together for some activity, Grant and Benny often joined in,” Shelly said. “We’d all been out snowshoeing together a couple of weeks ago.”

 

“Did they seem like their normal selves?” Jay asked.

 

“I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary,” Juliet said.

 

“I didn’t notice anything either. Things seemed normal, but I was with Jack and a couple of other friends for the most part,” Shelly said. Something had been picking at her since she’d been inside the maintenance building. “What was in that safe that was so important that it caused two men to lose their lives?”

 

Jay fiddled with a pen on top of her desk. “Seventy-five thousand dollars.”

 

“Why was there so much money in there?” Juliet asked with wide eyes. “Don’t they clear it out every day?”

 

“Why do they have any cash in the safe at all?” Shelly questioned. “What do they need so much cash for? They do maintenance. They aren’t selling things.”