Once Cass insisted she didn’t know any other names for Walker’s list,Sam turned to face her and remonstrated, “You brought me to Hillvale for a reason, Cass. If you want me to be objective about the town’s problems, you have to tell thetruth.”
“You are young,” she said with a weary wave of dismissal. “When you reach my age, you realize there are layers of truth, and the world consists of shades of gray. I tell you what I know, not what Isuspect.”
Unexpectedly, Walker agreed with her. “I don’t want speculation. Like Sam, I need to be objective. If you didn’t know my father, I believe you. He would have appeared to be any regular tourist. The question becomes—do you have any idea why a fraud investigator would have been inHillvale?”
Sam raised her eyebrows at Cass’s silence. Walker slowed down to check the rearview mirror. But Casswas alert—andpensive.
“Eighteen years is almost a generation ago, dear,” she said at last. “We can’t bring your father back. But wecanrelease the evil energy if we stir things up. We have enough trouble without adding toit.”
Can, not may. Sam shuddered. If she believed Cass... “The evil has already been stirred,” Sam corrected, before Walker could object. “The security managerat the lodge was killed a couple of daysago.”
“Juan? Oh, that’s dreadful.” Cass gave a heartfelt sigh. “His poor mother. She had fourteen children. She was so proud of her son when he took the job at the lodge. I didn’t have the heart to warn her that he would be surrounded byevil.”
“He was here eighteen years ago?” Walker askedimmediately.
“Yes. Many of the lodge employeeshave been,” she conceded. “I don’t know most of them. I really didn’t know Juan that well. Juan’s parents moved down the mountain when the bank foreclosed on their littlehouse.”
Cass waved a dismissive hand at Sam’s look. “I know, give me a minute. My memory isn’t what it used to be.” She sat silent, watching out the window as she gathered her thoughts. “The foreclosures started aroundtwenty years ago. That’s about the time that Geoff began talking ski resorts and development and started buying up land his neighborslost.”
Sam heard her bitterness. “Why did everyone start losing theirhomes?”
“The usual reasons—recession, the mill closing, a rockslide took out the road for nearly a year so tourists couldn’t get in, an avalanche of badluck.”
“It happens,”Walker said curtly, keeping his eyes on the narrow switchback up the mountain. “California real estate is a shell game. Mortgage companies, developers, real estate agents promise the American dream. People overextend their finances to buy a piece of that dream in belief that they’re on the way up in the world. First economic downturn, they’re out on the street. The rich developers sweep in, buythe foreclosed land for peanuts, build a new development, and resell at higher prices to the nextfool.”
“Capitalism, dearest,” Cass said with a smile. “The biggest wolfwins.”
“And the sheep get eaten,” Walker countered. “If that’s the evil you’re battling, it’s pretty muchworldwide.”
“Which doesn’t make it less evil, but no, this evil is innate. It feeds onsouls.”
Before Sam could question this insane conclusion, Walker cursed. She turned back to glance out the windshield. Smoke billowed high above thetrees.
The mountain was onfire.
