Page 23 of K-9 in Pursuit

“I know, honey. I keep thinking Sharee is going to burst into the house, singing one of her silly songs.” His voice broke. “I… I’d better go. I’m really tired.”

She laid aside her phone and picked up the photos once more. The sheriff’s department investigators, if they had seen these, must have mistaken them for old family photos, irrelevant to Sharee’s murder.

Why had Sharee held on to these? Had she taken the photos with the instant camera so they couldn’t be linked to her phone? Why would she have even wanted them?

Tomorrow, she would give these to the sheriff’s department. It was their job to ask questions like this. But that didn’t mean they’d get answers. There was so much she would never know about her sister. So much it was too late to find out.

“DAISY! DARLING DAISY! Oh, look at her. Isn’t she the cutest thing?”

Brian had stepped into ski patrol headquarters Wednesday afternoon for all of two minutes to collect his pack and when he came out, his dog had vanished. But he only had to follow the excited cries to find her. Currently, she lay on her back in the snow, while two teen girls rubbed her tummy and scratched her ears and made a fuss over her. Dog and girls looked ecstatic.

One of the girls glanced over her shoulder and saw him and straightened. “Your dog is so friendly,” she said.

“Daisy loves everybody,” he said.

At her name, Daisy rolled over, stood and shook, then trotted to him. “It makes me happy just seeing her,” the second girl said.

Brian recognized her. “Aren’t you Sharee’s friend, Leann?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah.” She shifted her ski poles from one hand to the other.

“I’m sorry you lost your friend,” he said.

“You’re the guy they arrested for killing her, aren’t you?” The second girl—slight and olive-skinned, with big brown eyes and a long dark braid—took a step back and cast a wary look at Leann.

Brian stiffened. So far he had been successful in avoiding any of the thrill seekers and reporters who were on the hunt for “the ski patroller who killed that girl” as he had overheard himself described. Leann studied him, but she didn’t look afraid, more…curious. But not too eager. She didn’t whip out her phone to take his picture. “I didn’t kill Sharee,” he said. “That’s why they had to let me go. I was as shocked as anyone to hear that happened. Who would want to kill a sweet girl like Sharee?”

“I’m not sure she’d like being called sweet,” Leann said. Both girls giggled.

He became aware of several people watching them. One man was scowling. He needed to find a way to keep these girls talking about Sharee, but somewhere more private. “Do you two want to ride up the lift with me?” he asked.

They exchanged a look he couldn’t read. Maybe they were trying to decide if it was safe. “We can cut the line if we ride with you, right?” the girl with the dark braid asked.

“You can.” The line to board the lift stretched almost to where they stood.

Leann planted her poles. “Let’s do it,” she said.

He led the way past the queue of waiting skiers to the patrol entrance. A few minutes later they slid onto a chair, Daisy between Brian and Leann. “Tell me about Sharee,” he said. “I didn’t know her that well.”

“We didn’t really know her well either,” the dark-haired girl said.

“I knew her better than Krista.” Leann pointed to her dark-haired friend. “But we weren’t really, you know, close.” She threaded her gloved fingers through the thick fur of Daisy’s ruff. “She was fun.”

“She was always flirting,” Krista said. “And the guys were always attracted to her. When she turned them down, they looked at us.” She laughed, a brittle, sharp sound.

“I know it’s not nice to speak ill of the dead, but she was a real tease,” Leann said. “She’d pretend to like a guy, then tell him he was only a boy and not her type. I saw her do it more than once.”

“That kind of thing might make someone angry enough to kill her,” Brian said.

Leann looked at him across the top of Daisy’s head. “Do you think so?”

“What do you think?” he asked.

She looked away. “It’s crowded today. Sunny weather always brings out the tourists.”

“Were any girls jealous of Sharee?” Brian asked.

“Pretty much everyone,” Leann said.