‘So I was thinking, I mean, obviously the stores are in competition, but … this argument was a little … dramatic.’
‘Tensions were high.’
She nodded.
‘So what do you want me to do?’ said Mike.
‘Who owns Mountain Sports?’
‘A Norwegian couple. Let me check.’ He wheeled his chair to the computer and started typing. After a while, he turned the screen toward her. ‘The owners are …’ He squinted. ‘Maria and Sjurd Nordberg –’
‘Syurd. The js are like ys,’ said Ren.
‘Thankjou.’
‘It doesn’t work the other way round.’
‘How do you know shit like that?’ said Mike.
‘“Norwegian Wood” … my boyfriend in college.’ She winked.
Mike laughed. ‘OK … SYURD Nordberg and his wife have had the store nine months.’
‘Did we talk to them first time round – in the winter?’
He paused. ‘Yes, I think that might have been me. It’s all coming back. Yes – they had nothing much to say. They were too new – new in town, new to the store.’
‘I might go say hi today,’ said Ren.
‘For …’
‘The holy hell of it.’ She smiled. ‘Was that two minutes?’
‘Yes. Get out.’
Ren stopped by Wardwell’s on her way to Mountain Sports. A red-and-yellow banner the length of Wardwell’s window read Twenty-fifth Anniversary Sale: 25% Off. Ren hovered in front of it. A mother and three blonde identicoiffed daughters bumped past her, confident that high hair, Fake Bake and miniskirts worked well across a forty-year age spread. Ren frowned after them, then walked down the steps into the store.
The sale rails were overloaded and pushed against the wall, leaving space at the center for a stack of cartons. Malcolm Wardwell kneeled beside them with a box cutter, slicing through the brown tape that sealed them. He glanced up at Ren and looked back down again.
‘I would like to apologize,’ said Ren. ‘For that last time.’
Mr Wardwell leaned into the open carton and pulled out a pile of vacuum-packed parkas. He stopped and looked up at her.
‘It wasn’t professional,’ said Ren. She gestured to him. ‘Please, don’t let me interrupt you.’
‘I haven’t much help in the mornings,’ he said, standing up, flattening the empty carton and leaning it against the window. He kneeled back down and dragged another one toward him. ‘It’s me versus the slopes for most of the kids who work here.’
Ren watched in silence as Wardwell emptied and folded the next carton.
‘So,’ she said, ‘congratulations on your twenty-five years.’
He nodded. ‘Well, it’s more like twenty-nine, but I don’t include the time it took to set it up. Finding the money, getting around legal stuff. It was a tough time. Jason was on his last vacation before college, we had to readjust our finances. You always have to readjust your finances in this game.’
‘What was here before?’ said Ren.
‘Right before? I’m not sure. Historically? It was a saloon. Full of hurdy girls and rowdy miners.’ He smiled. ‘It was a shell when we got it; we were able to hang on to the original floor, restore that and some of the other timberwork.’ He spoke as if he was telling too much to someone he feared didn’t care.
‘Really?’
‘For whatever use it was. It cost a lot of money and now, because we always need to make so much money, the floors are usually covered in rails and the walls are covered with T-shirts and sweatshirts and jackets …’
Ren looked down at the floor. It was mosaic-tiled in pretty shades of gold, green and red. ‘Let me help you,’ she said, pushing some of the boxes out of the way and opening up the floor. ‘That really is beautiful,’ she said.
He nodded.
‘Where’s your son today? said Ren.
‘He’ll be along.’
‘OK.’
He looked up at her.
‘I guess I should get going …’ she said.
‘Thanks for stopping by.’
Mountain Sports was between a beauty salon and a jeweler on the mezzanine level of a group of stores. It was open and empty.
‘Hello?’ said Ren, walking in.
‘I’m out back,’ shouted Maria. ‘If you need any help, let me know.’
Ren walked to the back door and out on to the balcony. ‘Maria Nordberg?’
‘Yes,’ she said, standing up, blowing a stream of smoke away from Ren. She was in her fifties, freckled and blonde with her hair tied up under a faded floral scarf. ‘I brave the heat for my cigarette.’ She stubbed it out in a pot of sand. From the next-door basement garden, a pre-school teacher stared up as she rubbed sun block on to tiny noses.
Maria rolled her eyes at Ren. ‘As if my one cigarette a day …’ She shook her head.
‘Some people …’ said Ren. She looked out over the Blue River to the mountains where the ski trails wound down smooth and green. The terrace below was filled with people sitting under red umbrellas. ‘What a beautiful day.’
‘I love it here.’
‘Me too. But, sadly, I’m here for work.’ She smiled and showed her badge.
Maria smiled back, but it was different.
And then I go and spoil it all … ‘I’m Ren Bryce with the FBI. I’m looking into the death of Agent Jean Transom.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Maria. ‘I’m sorry about your colleague. It must have been a relief to find her remains.’ Her accent was that happy, sing-song Norwegian that made Ren think of her old boyfriend – he could be saying, ‘I’m depressed and I want to kill myself’ in Norwegian and it would sound like he was telling you he was in a bath of coke with four supermodels.
‘Thank you,’ said Ren. ‘I know you’ve already spoken to the Undersheriff about what you saw – or didn’t see – back in January, so that’s fine, I’ve re-read that. I was wondering, did you have any other staff members around that time, anyone casual? I don’t see anything in the notes. Or anyone that may have seen anything recently. Because the body has been … found. And we need to make sure …’
‘No,’ said Maria. ‘Back when my husband
