AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It doesn’t apply out here,” I say. “At least not in decent weather, with plenty of fresh water.”
“But if she hasn’t been found, something is keeping her from getting back here.”
“Yeah,” Dalton says. “The lack of a GPS. Or even a damn compass.”
“She could be lost,” I say, “and heading in the wrong direction. We’re not giving up hope.”
“Percentage-wise, how much hope do you actually have, Detective?”
“I always have some. I’d just prefer not to stick a number on it.”
Her lips twitch in a humorless smile. “Understood. We’ll just keep saying there’s still hope, and telling ourselves we believe it.”
“We did find something else,” I say. “Possibly about Bruno’s death. Do you have his work history on file? He said he’d worked in the north before. I’d like more on that.”
She taps the tablet. “It’s right here. He worked in the Yukon maybe five years ago. It wasn’t construction, but he had done that before, and I thought the northern work experience would help.”
“You said it wasn’t construction. What kind of operation was it?”
Another tap. “He has—” She clears her throat. “Hehadtwo engineering degrees. Two specialties. Civic and geological. Up here, he was doing the second.”
“Geological.”
“Right.” She passes me the tablet. “Working on a mining operation. Gold mining.”
I spend the next two hours with Yolanda’s tablet. She’s given me free access to the crew’s files. I haven’t told her that Bruno said he’d been pushed, only that we found some evidence to suggest the possibility. I also don’t tell her about the gold nugget. She’s still one of my two prime suspects, and I can’t afford to panic her. Yet I don’t mind worrying her just a little. Suggest hemighthave been pushed off that cliff. Ask to see his records but don’t explain why. If she is the confederate who betrayed Bruno, then having her on edge could be to our advantage. Let her frantically try to cover her tracks rather than call in a plane and flee the scene.
I now have a theory about what Bruno was up to. He’s a mining engineer, and he realized he was in the Yukon, not Alaska. He’d been sneaking into the forest. Did he have a better idea of where we were and know there was the possibility of gold? That seems like a long shot—if a mining engineer knew there was gold up here, the place would be crawling with speculators. Instead, there’s one very small placer mining camp… where someonehasfound gold.
I think Bruno stumbled over that camp. He knows this wilderness. He felt comfortable out there. He may even have been playing around with a bit of panning to ease the boredom. He finds the camp, and he knows he’s struck literal gold. The factthat it’s someone else’s gold? Well, that depends on whether this miner is following the rules, and given the camouflaged tent, he might not be.
Placer mining is legal in the Yukon… with a registered claim. To stake a claim, you must stake out the area. That means you have to be on-site and place actual stakes in the ground. Then, having done that, you must file an application, which is usually done in person as it needs to be notarized. Once you have your claim, you’re allowed to mine.
The problem is that miners are a secretive bunch, even paranoid. Let’s say our miner is poking around, looking for a place to stake his claim. He finds gold. Serious gold, judging by the size of the nugget that seemed to fall out of Bruno’s pocket. Is he going to want to leave the site to file an application? What if someone sees his application—or his stakes—and suddenly he has one section along a river filled with miners.
It’s very possible he’s doing more here than just staking a claim. He’s mining, illegally. While his application is being processed? Or before making one?
If so, what happens if someone stumbles over his camp? Someone who recognizes what he’s found, because that’s their own specialty? Someone who may have the contacts needed to steal a one-person mining operation and sell the claim?
Bruno was shoved off a cliff less than a half kilometer from the camp. That’s not insignificant. Not when he had a gold nugget in his pocket.
Bruno finds the camp and pulls someone else in. Someone with connections. Or he didn’t pull them in at all, but they followed him and demanded their share.
Selling the claim, in conjunction with another person, fits the conversation we overheard in the forest that night. It also fits what Bruno said before he died. Something he did for hiswife, something to make money. He wanted to be sure she still got her share.
Is it possible that Yolanda is that second party? That he pulled her in because she has connections, access to a plane, and access to a satellite phone, all ways to start that claim application while they’re out in the forest. Maybe that’s what they were arguing about that night. Not the job but the claim.
Yolanda demands something. Bruno is furious—it’shisfind. He storms off. She goes into the forest, heading for the claim site. Penny follows. Bruno figures out where Yolanda’s gone and goes after her. Penny sees them argue. They kill her, fight over it, and Yolanda gets rid of the sole witness by shoving him off the cliff. Or Yolanda shoves him off the cliff and then kills Penny as the sole witness.
Do I believe that’s what happened?
In my gut, no. I’m still pissed off at Yolanda blocking me about why she’d been in the forest that night. I know she was up to something. It could be something criminal. But meeting Bruno, knocking him into a gorge, and killing Penny and another woman who’d witnessed something or been a part of it? On the surface, that’s the obvious answer. Yolanda had means and opportunity. Motive, though? There’s where it gets trickier.
Yolanda is the granddaughter of a billionaire. Émilie obviously adores her, so there’s no chance of being cut out of the will. From what Yolanda said about inheritances, though, she’s a lot like me when it comes to family money. Oh, it’s a whole other level for her. My parents were just well-off professionals, leaving enough to vault their daughters into the world of investment bankers and stock portfolios.
Still, the principle, I suspect, is the same. I shoved my money into that portfolio and never thought of it again until we considered a new Rockton. Then it became a tool. Same for April.We didn’t put everything we have into Haven’s Rock, but only because the others wouldn’t allow it. Neither of us cared. It wasn’t actually our money, any more than a lottery win.
Yolanda grew up in a family with boggling amounts of capital. She stands to inherit far more than I did, and with Émilie being in her eighties, she’s not going to have to wait long. Yet she still went out and built her own company. She’s a successful professional heir to a billionaire… who seems completely focused on her career, living in residence with her crew, expecting no special treatment.
