Pack of Lies, page 20
“Jesus,” Julien whispered. “That bad?”
“That depends—did you bake me a spoon cake?” Eli asked, heart pounding with excitement he probably shouldn’t be feeling.
“I didn’t have time. Some of us have been working,” Julien said, lowering himself to the floor next to Eli with a grunt. “Cody made an impromptu trip up the mountain after he attacked you. That’s where he was when Annabelle went by his room last night. Ahmet, Claudia and Jonas were on their own balcony smoking and saw him come down the ski lift. You were absolutely right. He wasn’t dead yet.”
“Nice of them to share after I was already dragged to the dungeons,” Eli muttered.
“Wouldn’t have done you much good with the way you dug up the murder weapon. Or was there some other reason you ran upstairs ahead of everyone else?” Julien asked pointedly.
“Oh, did you notice that? I thought you’d be too busy shoving past me to cover your own sins.”
Julien bit his lip as he studied Eli’s face. “Is this another impasse?” he asked finally.
“Seeing as only one of us has been wrongfully placed under desk arrest, forgive me if I don’t view our situations as equally grim. Notice how I’m assuming you know I didn’t kill Cody,” Eli added, and winced when it sounded a lot less blasé and a lot more desperate than he’d intended.
“I know,” Julien said immediately, flapping his hand like the idea was ridiculous.
“Well, I’ve always said you’re far too trusting,” Eli said to distract from his helpless smile.
Julien snorted. “You have no idea.” He abruptly reached into his pocket and pulled out the deck of Sweet Pea cards.
“Oh, excellent, I could go for a nice round of Go Fish,” Eli said sarcastically, then stopped when Julien pulled a small sheet of folded paper out from between the cards.
“I wanted to grab this in case Bucknell decided to search our roo—my room.” Julien stared down at the paper for a long moment, as if now that it was out he wanted nothing more than to stick it back in the box.
“If that’s a note confessing your undying love for me, I’ve got to warn you, I don’t think I’ll be around much longer. States to flee, identities to burn.”
“And they call me melodramatic,” Julien said with a quick smile. “I bet you anything that whatever he went up there for is what got him killed last night. We just need to figure out what Cody found up the mountain, and you’ll be out of here.”
“Oh, is that all? Well, let me pack my bags now.”
Julien handed Eli the paper decisively, though there was a slight shake in his fingers. “Here. I think he went here.”
Eli hesitantly accepted it and unfolded what looked like... “Why, Mr. Doran, is this a treasure map?”
“I don’t know,” Julien said. “I found it in my brother’s notes on Maudit.”
Eli hummed, studying the paper. It looked like the photocopy of a crude drawing of the mountain with Maudit Falls labeled neatly at the bottom. In different handwriting, near the center of the page, someone had scrawled what seemed to be a list of instructions.
Begin at the base of the wolf’s tail.
Follow the backbone to the muzzle.
Pluck its fangs.
“Does that mean anything to you?” Julien asked, and Eli looked up at him. He had a careful sort of expression on his face. Watchful. Guarded. Everything Eli assumed his own face was.
“I don’t know what this means,” he said carefully, mouth dry and the same sensation of danger stalking him just around the corner. But there wasn’t really. Just more of the same sort of lying he did all the time.
Julien held his gaze a beat longer, then nodded. “Neither did I at first. I didn’t know if it was a map or riddle or hell, maybe I should be keeping an eye out for wolves running around the mountain.” He laughed briefly and Eli tried to smile. It felt unnatural on his face. “Then last night Patrick told me one of Maudit’s myths. Little Blue Wolf and the monster in the mountain. Have you—do you know that story?”
Eli blinked. “I may have heard of it. I’m not sure,” he said slowly. He might not have grown up around other werewolves, but it was hard to escape the seemingly never-ending misadventures the Little Wolf Who Smelled of Bluebells. He’d liked to trail after Helena sometimes when she took her great-grandchildren out into the woods and told them grim tales of Little Blue getting into various predicaments, losing bits of himself and dying a little more inside each time. As far as Eli could tell it was all just a warning not to forget they were wolves first or ever give that up, though that could very well be down to Helena’s telling. She wasn’t particularly maternal, but extremely...traditional. “Let me guess, Little Blue loses his tail to the monster in the mountain?”
“Got it in one,” Julien said, and shuffled through the Maudit cards. “Long story short, the monster bites down on the tip of the wolf’s tail after he spends the night in his mouth.”
“Kinky.”
“Here,” Julien said, tossing one of the cards at Eli. “Look familiar?”
Eli twitched in shock. It was a similar image to the painting in the retreat. A figure begging, reaching longingly toward the falls. The same painting Nia had commented on when she and Brett had visited, which meant...well. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. The scene was titled Little Blue Wolf.
“What if it really is a treasure map?” Julien said quietly, urgently. “If the falls are the Little Blue Wolf’s tail, then the base of the falls—”
“No,” Eli said. “Those are behind the retreat. I’ve been all over that lake and under the falls themselves. There’s nothing there.”
Julien deflated slightly.
“Rivers empty into mouths, don’t they? What if the lake is the monster’s mouth, the river is Bluebell’s tail and the base—”
“Is somewhere up the mountain. Wherever the headwaters are,” Julien finished.
Eli flicked the card around between his fingers. “Granted, it’s been a while since I brushed up on my limnology, but I doubt that’s going to be a precise point on the map.”
“It doesn’t need to be. I just need to follow the river upstream until I cross the backbone.”
Eli dropped the card. “What does that mean? You’re going there? Now?”
Julien nodded impatiently as if he wasn’t agreeing to the most foolish plan Eli had ever heard. “My brother left this for me to find. He wanted me to go there. It’s the entire reason I came to Maudit. Then Cody took an impromptu trip up the mountain and it got him killed. Which means the murderer must know what’s up there, too. They could be destroying the evidence right now.”
“Very noble. One question. You and what guide?” Eli snapped. “Because I’ve seen what you call hiking, and the only upside is you won’t even complete step one until the snow melts, which should at least make steps two and three a bit easier.”
“Cody’s dead, someone’s planted a knife on you and the authorities are on their way. The same authorities who didn’t notice Ian Ackman disappear, filed every weird thing that’s happened on this mountain misogynistically as Annabelle’s hysteria, and allowed Bucknell to sequester you away in here on some very shady legality. Do you really trust them to protect you?”
“Of course not,” Eli said quickly, though he could hardly explain he didn’t plan on sticking around that long.
“How seriously do you think they’ll take a treasure map based on a folktale? This could be my last chance. I have to at least try.”
Eli looked into Julien’s eyes, dark and pleading with him to understand. “Fine. I’m coming with you.”
“What? No, Eli—”
“You wouldn’t be able to track the river on the clearest of spring days, never mind in this snow. And if what you say is true, and there is something at the end of this map that helps identify Cody’s killer... As fond I am of your hands, I’d rather not place my fate in them while I wait around here.”
There was also the small matter of a possibly murderous wolf out on the loose. Eli couldn’t just let Julien wander into the woods without one natural set of defenses. He’d be utterly helpless.
“All right,” Julien said at last. “I can’t pretend I wouldn’t appreciate the company.”
Eli took one last look at the map and handed it back to Julien. “Now that we’ve settled that, is it time to stage an office break? There may be gold in them there hills.”
* * *
It was the simplest thing to walk out the back door of the lodge. Julien wasn’t sure where the others had gone, but it was well out of sight. Of course, considering the chaos that had met Bucknell’s announcement that Eli had been placed under arrest, it would have been surprising to find the other guests sitting around playing pinochle. Based off the expressions on their faces alone, Julien would guess Mr. and Mrs. Miura were somewhere snowshoeing their way out by any means necessary. A big part of Julien wished he could join them.
The ski lift was running; Julien wondered who had turned it on and when. Or maybe Cody had never gotten a chance to turn it off last night. Maybe he’d planned to go back up the mountain and had only returned to the lodge to...do whatever it was that had ultimately led to his murder.
It was an easy enough ride to the top of the mountain, although Eli still insisted on pulling all his limbs up onto the seat until he was doing something more akin to squatting than sitting. Far less nerve-racking was following him through the snow single file, and watching the competent, sure-footed way he moved. If this was what walking on your toes got you, maybe they should all give it a go.
Eli told him headwaters in the mountains often just came from melted snow that fed into multiple tributaries that then fed into the river, rather than some clearly bubbling fountain secreted away like Shangri-La. He would be able to get them to the stream farthest up the mountain, however, and they could walk that until they saw something meeting the description of a backbone.
Eli said he knew where the stream was because of a map they had in the retreat and Julien didn’t argue. He couldn’t risk the wrong question right now.
More and more he’d felt like they were walking toward a precipice and a fall they wouldn’t survive. But what could he do now to change things? He’d come here with one goal and was close, so close to reaching it. Everything else—the murder, Eli, his razor-sharp silver tongue, the way he squirmed and whimpered before he came, the soft whuffing sounds he made in his sleep—that was unexpected, peripheral. It had to be.
“I was worried for a moment.” Eli interrupted his anxious thoughts. “Back in the lodge when the mob pulled their pitchforks, I wondered if you might think I killed Cody, too. I’d completely understand if you had, of course.”
Julien avoided the unspoken question. “Maybe I do think that. Maybe I’m just choosing to ignore it for now because I need you and your divining rod to track this stream to the treasure.”
Eli looked over his shoulder at Julien and wiggled his eyebrows. “Isn’t that a coincidence? I’m avoiding all sorts of important things for the sake of your divining rod, too.”
Julien snorted and Eli turned to face forward again.
“I’m thankful, though. That you’re helping me,” Julien felt compelled to add. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”
Eli was quiet for a beat, and when he spoke he almost sounded embarrassed. “Yes, well. Like I said before, I’ve got just as much reason to figure out what the hell is going on as you do. I’d rather not have to leave this place. I just got here.”
Julien frowned. “There isn’t any...danger of you getting fired because of all this, is there? I mean, I’d be more than happy to talk to the owners of the retreat if you need someone to vouch for you. Who are they again?”
Eli shot him a small smile that made Julien’s stomach flip. “You’re sweet. But no, it’s not the threat of termination I’m concerned by. It’s more that...” He hesitated, and for a long moment there was only the sound of their boots wading through the snow.
Then, speaking so quickly he sounded breathless, Eli said, “I don’t want to let them down. I don’t want De Luca to use me as an excuse to take the retreat away from them. I don’t want them to think maybe reb—the retreat is more trouble than it’s worth, just like everyone said it would be. At this point it would be better if I just go away and stop tarnishing the place. I really should have known I’d be utterly inept at this ‘doing good’ thing.”
“Hey.” Julien couldn’t stop himself from touching Eli’s arm and bit back a smile when Eli immediately tangled their fingers together and held on. “We’re going to figure this out. I don’t think anyone could ever see you as inept. Not at anything. You positively ooze...ept. And besides,” he added hastily lest anyone dwell on that witticism, “they can hardly expect you to handle something like this any better than you have. Solving murders isn’t in the job description, is it?”
“With Ollie and the whippet? It should be,” Eli muttered. “They get mixed up in murder themselves on a quarterly schedule.”
“Murder? Those are your bosses?” Julien asked, heart skipping when Eli nodded. “Are they dangerous? Are you in danger?”
“It’s nothing like that. They work for one of those very official investigative government agencies. Solving murders is very much in their job description.”
“A government agency? You mean like FBI or something?”
“Or something,” Eli agreed, but he dropped Julien’s hand as he said it.
“Do they—” Even though they weren’t touching anymore, Julien still felt Eli stiffen. He changed directions. “How’d you end up working here?”
“Oh, I dated Ollie back in the day. Then he married Dayton, I lived in their house for a couple months and they offered me this job. Not exactly in that order, but you get the idea.”
“That sounds...cozy,” Julien said. “You’re close?”
“They’re my family now,” Eli said as if it was as simple as that. He turned to eye Julien curiously. “Do you think that’s strange?”
Julien considered that. “No. No, I guess not. I sort of think of Frankie, my ex-wife, as family. We got together as kids and stayed married twenty years. I hope she’s always in my life. Actually I introduced her to her current wife, Natalia, who was a grip on one of my sets. Don’t know if I’d spend months living with the two of them. But—” He shrugged. “Frankie moved back in with me for a couple of weeks after—after Rocky died. Just so I wasn’t, you know, alone.”
“She sounds lovely,” Eli said gently.
“Yeah, the best,” Julien said, and just barely bit back the impulse to blurt out how much Frankie would like Eli, as if he was a five-year-old introducing his friends. Except one friend had divorced him and the other had pretty adamantly stated that they were nothing more than a one-night stand. That had happened twice. And almost certainly wasn’t happening again. Unless it did?
“What kind of celebrity are you, anyway?” Eli was saying. “Only one divorce? Still on good terms? I’m positively disillusioned.”
“Er, two divorces actually. But Marla’s great, too,” he said hastily when Eli twitched his eyebrow into a position that honestly said more than most Shakespearean monologues. “We were only married for three years. I met her right after Frankie and I called it quits. It was a strange time in my life and she has this superpower of making the craziest schemes seem reasonable.”
“What happened, did she get you into a cult? Religion? Oh no.” Eli’s voice went soft and horrified. “She didn’t—she didn’t get you framed for murder and then drag you out into the wilderness looking for buried treasure, did she?”
“First off, would we say drag?” Julien laughed. “Second, no. She’s just very...effervescent. Boundless. Up for anything always. We met zip-lining in the French Alps. The problem was I was behaving like that because I was going through something; she’s like that all the time. She’s a photojournalist in São Paulo now.”
Eli’s expression had turned distant, thoughtful. “You’ve been married most of your life.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Julien said, a little strained. “I guess I’m a commitment sort of guy.” Then he heard himself and added, “Not that I have to be. I mean, it really depends on what the other person wants. I can keep it casual, too. In fact it might be nice to do things differently, if the opportunity, uh, was there.”
Fortunately, Eli didn’t even seem to be listening anymore. “Do I spy with my little eye the elusive backbone?”
“No need for sarcasm,” Julien muttered, then realized Eli wasn’t talking about him. Up ahead was a procession of boulders left behind by some shifting glaciers, like the tide marks its place with stones.
“Don’t suppose you know which way west is?” Julien said, and Eli rolled his eyes and walked to the right.
“I agree, by the way. You couldn’t have done this without me,” he said over his shoulder. It was a much shorter walk to the muzzle, less than two minutes, and Eli and Julien came to a stop again. There, at the end of the boulder line, was a small sloping cliff face of about twelve feet topped by a triangular slab of stone jutting out of the mountain.
“Is that the muzzle?” Julien asked, staring up.
“As opposed to what, Little Blue’s party hat?” Eli looked around. “You know, we’re not too far away from the tower, I don’t think. Two or three miles. Come on. We should be able to climb over here on this side; it’s less steep.”
“Climb? You think there’s something up there?”
“Some sort of den, at least,” Eli mused, poking around the rock face, for what, Julien didn’t know. Ideally an elevator button.
“How do you know that?”
