Page 37 of Fire Peak

“Only if you don’t get caught.”

“I never get caught.”

He lifted his eyebrows. Suddenly they seemed very close together. It was so intimate, being surrounded by coats and jackets, with barely room to turn around. He leaned even closer, bracing a hand against the wall behind her, watching her pupils dilate in response. “Is that so?”

Surprising him, she ducked under his arm and slipped out of the coatroom. “Catch you later, Perini.” And she disappeared into the crowd of guests milling in the foyer.

He drew in a long breath. It was going to take him a few moments to wrestle his sudden erection down to a manageable size. Bested by Charlie Santa Lucia once again…where it counted, this time.

17

At the next opportunity, Charlie locked herself into the lodge’s office and got to work learning more about April Whitfield. What she found was eye-opening, to say the least.

For one, the Whitfield family was not only extremely wealthy but fairly horrible. They’d made their original fortune back in the robber baron days. They’d been on par with the Rockefellers and the Gettys, but instead of taking a place in high society, they’d kept a lower profile, the better to continue their exploitative ways, perhaps.

They’d invested in diamond mines in Africa, used slave labor in the Caribbean, even helped overthrow the kingdom of Hawaii, all in the name of profit. In the late nineteen-twenties, when the nation was starting to build an electrical grid and required lots of copper, they sent prospectors to Alaska in order to pin down the location of an exploitable copper mine.

The prospectors accomplished their mission by befriending the chief of the local Ahtna tribe, who knew the territory well. The Ahtna were no fools; they directed them to the location of a type of copper they themselves didn’t value. However, whatever compensation or exchange they were promised never materialized—thanks to the Whitfields. Their policy was to take what they could, maximize profit at all costs, and then move on. Which was exactly what they did with the copper mine.

When the mine was depleted, after they’d gotten a two thousand percent return on their investment, the Whitfields pulled the plug on everything associated with it—the mining structures, the train tracks they’d built to bring in supplies and ship out raw copper, everything. They’d even hired someone to set fire to all the remaining buildings. Fortunately for Firelight Ridge, the man had made a stop at the local watering hole—a precursor of The Fang—and gotten so drunk he spilled the beans. The townspeople tossed him out on his ass.

April Whitfield grew up with that history, and from an early age, spoke out against her family’s investment policies. She attended protests against everything from pipelines to mineral rights. As the heiress to a great fortune, now pledging to right the wrongs of her ancestors, she made for good copy.

At the age of eighteen, she traveled to Alaska to see for herself what her family had done. Her plan was to write a book, according to a short interview she gave to an Anchorage newspaper. She was traveling with a friend, who she referred to only as Bulldog.

The article didn’t say much about Bulldog, except that he refused to provide his real name or speak to the reporter. He glared at the interviewer during the entire conversation.

April Whitfield never left Alaska again, not even for family funerals. A few articles were written after her disappearance from public view. Page Six published a snide article about her vanity lodge, and how much it cost to build, so much that it had no chance of ever recouping the investment. April Showers Funds on Pet Project, read the headline.

Given April’s history of flitting from one protest to another, no one expected her to stick with the lodge. But after some time passed, and she didn’t reappear, the newspapers forgot about her.

Her name did surface in a blog based in Blackbear, in a post from two years ago. April Whitfield has vowed to remain neutral on push for more tourism in Firelight Ridge. This stance has left both sides unhappy with her. After all, she’s already sitting pretty as the owner of the most exclusive resort in the Wrangells. Business owners who could use more summer traffic believe she should join their cause. Said Billy Jack, owner of the Magic Breakfast Bus, “April has full occupancy all summer long, so why not share the wealth? Guess it’s not in her genes to do that.”

On the other hand, opponents of tourism would like to see her take their view that enough is enough, that there’s no need for more lodges and restaurants, and that a moratorium should be imposed. Says Luke Chilkoot, one of the more prominent critics of development, “She oughta just shut down. We don’t need outsiders coming in here. But if she won’t do that, then she should support the ban.”

As for April herself, her only comment was this: “I’ve worked my ass off to build this lodge up and I’m not going anywhere. Whatever Firelight Ridge decides is fine with me. Everyone can just leave me out of it.”

That definitely sounded like the April Charlie had come to know.

As for the Whitfield family, lately they’d been in the news mostly thanks to various lawsuits from indigenous groups, investors who felt they’d been cheated, and vendors who’d been stiffed.

Lovely family. Charlie was glad for April’s sake that she’d found her own place here in Firelight Ridge.

Was it possible that the strange occurrences here had to do with any of those lawsuits?

She scrawled down some notes to share with Nick, names of the groups suing the Whitfields, names of local business owners who might be upset with her for not taking their side in the tourism dispute.

Bulldog…what had happened to Bulldog?

She tried a search on that name, combined with Firelight Ridge, and got nothing. Then she tried Bulldog plus Fangtooth Gulch, the town’s old name.

Bingo. The news article from the Blackbear Express was dated February 26, 1979.

A local man was found dead in the Wrangell forest, just outside of Fangtooth Gulch. Known only as Bulldog, he’d been living in the area for the past three years. By the time the body was discovered, it was frozen solid and wolves had done extensive damage to it. While his partner was able to identify him, authorities have been unable to discover any more information about him, including his given name and place of origin. If anyone does have information they are urged to contact the Alaska State Troopers.

Wow. Charlie sat back in her chair. Was that the heartbreak everyone talked about, the one April herself never mentioned?

Was Bulldog her lover? Who had killed him? Who was he?

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