Free Tucker Peak by Archer Mayor

picked up her wine again and took another sip. “You don’t exactly pursue the same interests. Plus, he’s normally pretty self-effacing. This is the highest-profile I’ve seen him, which probably ties in to what you just said. And you could be right. Proximity may’ve colored his thinking. That’s another reason I’m wobbling. I can’t make up my mind.”
    “What exactly are they accusing Tucker of?”
    “Cooking the research, paying off a naturalist or two, keeping crucial facts off the books. The idea of laying a pipeline into a lake and drawing water to make snow isn’t so bad all by itself. There’s hardly a mountain around that doesn’t do something like that. Tucker did it about twelve years ago themselves, when they tapped into their current pond. But it’s how many gallons and the rate of extraction and how many times a day or week this new lake will be used that only the mountain will know about. There’s monitoring equipment and on-site inspectors to keep people honest, but who’s kidding who? In a state like Vermont, there aren’t the resources for that to mean much. Machines can be fooled, and there aren’t enough inspectors to go around. And that doesn’t even touch the hotel and the new chairlift and the extra planned trails, all of which will leave footprints on the environment.”
    “I thought you said Phil McNally was playing ball,” I reminded her.
    Gail made her eyes wide as if she were going nuts and jerked her head around in pantomime. “I know,” she burst out. “That’s my problem. McNally’s a good guy, Betts is a saint, the corporation’s done all the right things. Which only means TPL is either a bunch of cranks led by a sentimental old man, or right on the money and occupying the last line of defense, with VermontGreen as one of the enemy. It’s driving me crazy.”
    She paused, relaxed a little, and added, “And it’ll add spice to your life, too, even though you’ve got nothing to do with it.” She suddenly studied me more closely. “Unless you do. You never told me why you’re going undercover. Is it connected to all this?”
    “No, we think the girl’s murder may have had something to do with a string of burglaries up there. But what is TPL planning to do? They really going to create havoc?”
    She looked unhappy again. “I’m on the suspect list, remember? They wouldn’t tell me. But assuming they fit the model, they’ll try to undermine McNally’s hospitality, mess up the mountain’s day-to-day business, block traffic, slow the lift lines, and be loud and obnoxious. Basically do the civil disobedience thing until the cops run them in and make them front-page martyrs. It might actually turn out to be handy for you. Maybe you can use the chaos to flush out whoever you’re after.”
    I had my doubts about that. It sounded like the goal was to fill the resort with protester-busting cops, which was hardly the low-key scenario I’d been hoping for.
    I gazed out the dark window at the distant lights and answered her vaguely. “I guess I’ll find out soon enough.”
    · · ·
    The next morning, I ran into Sammie Martens as I climbed the stairs to the top floor of the Municipal Building. She was headed down, dressed for the outdoors.
    “You get the go-ahead from the chief?” she asked.
    “I had to wear him down,” I told her. “And he said if we don’t get something in four weeks, he’ll shut us down.”
    That didn’t seem to bother her. “Good. I was hoping he’d bite. I was thinking last night we ought to find someone who used to work at Tucker Peak—to maybe educate us a little—when I suddenly remembered one of Snuffy’s men moonlighted in security. I was going to chat with him, if that’s okay.”
    “Is he the one Manning said was crooked?”
    “One and the same. I read the internal report about that, though. Clean as a whistle.”
    She checked her watch. “And he’s due at his office in ten minutes.”
    “But he doesn’t know