Page 1 of The Burnt
Chapter One
Simon Griffin reclined on a large leather chair in the sun room of his home in Banff—a home that had been unimaginatively called Mountainview by its original owners. After he’d purchased it, Simon had renamed the house The Paddock as a tribute to his favourite bar in Toronto, the city he’d grown up in.
He never tired of the view from this vantage point, especially in the evening as the sun dipped behind Sundance Ridge, which spread out before him beyond the Bow River. The mountains carried a heavy coat of white January snow that slowly faded out of view as the darkness enveloped the surrounding property. It was six-thirty in the evening. The only light visible now was from the backyard lamps which flooded the property as a security measure against intruders and sightseers who wanted to get a look at Simon’s famous house.
Simon was proud that The Paddock was one of the largest private properties within the confines of the town of Banff—a property which lay within the national park boundary. When he’d bought it, he had wanted a place away from the hustle and bustle of the city. It was ridiculously big for his needs—over seven hundred and fifty square metres in size with six bedrooms and seven bathrooms. He had joked about having one bathroom for every day of the week. His friends had said he was nuts to leave the faster pace of the big city.
“Visiting Banff on a holiday, sure, but who actually lives there other than the kids who wait tables at the tourist restaurants?”
If Simon wanted big-city life, Calgary was only an hour away. He kept an apartment there in case he was in town late for business, but for the most part he liked Banff…except for the tourists. When he had moved here in 1984, it wasn’t so bad. Back then he’d been able to keep the gates to his driveway open and walk about the streets without having to dodge around people. But in recent years, things had gotten out of control, and now, during the summer, they even closed down Banff Avenue to cars in an attempt to control the flow of visitors. Ironically, thanks to its natural beauty and wide-open spaces, Banff was now overpopulated with tourists. They walked blindly out into the streets. Some even parked their cars in front of his driveway—“It’s okay, I’ll only be a minute.”Simon sometimes didn’t want to leave his property due to the swarms of picture-snapping sightseers.
Through the window, Simon spotted a young man playing with the latch on the back gate—another tourist caught out too late while snowshoeing along the well-worn trail which ran between the property and the Bow River. The man was persistent, rattling away at the gate latch.
Simon went to the back door and opened it.
“This is private property,” he called out, trying not to sound annoyed. “The gate’s locked. You’ll have to keep going along the river ’til you come to the street.” He waved the man in the right direction.
“Sorry,” the fellow yelled back. “Nice place. I thought this was my hotel.” The man shrugged and headed off in the wrong direction.
Idiot.
Once he was sure the man was gone, Simon headed back and flopped into his chair. If he had any real clout in this town, he’d have that damned pathway fenced off and the tourists would stop disturbing his peace.
His thoughts were interrupted as Jasmine, his housekeeper, brought him his after-dinner coffee.
He glanced up at her. Her shoulder-length wavy brown hair, rounded face and tall, slender frame were more familiar to him than his own features. She gave him a weak smile. Her glazed eyes and furrowed brow signalled to him that she was working through one of her migraines.
“Thank you, my dear,” he said. “Why don’t you just call it a day and go and rest that head?”
She gently rubbed her temples. “Thank you, sir. I’ll be fine.”
Although Jasmine worked for him, she was the closest thing Simon had to family… aside from his son.
“By the way, a boy dropped this off for you this afternoon,” she said, pulling out an envelope from her left pants pocket. “I would have given it to you earlier, but you had the office door closed, and I needed to lie down.”
Simon didn’t remember hearing a car on the drive, and a visitor would have had to buzz through on the intercom to gain access.
“A boy dropped it off?”
“That’s what I said.”
“At the front door?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But, Jasmine, the gates are locked. How did he get in to knock on the front door?”
She shrugged. “Maybe he climbed the fence.”
She turned and left him with the envelope. Just as she was closing the door she added, “He said someone asked him to deliver it.” Then she was gone.
Simon looked at the envelope in his hands. He turned it over and examined the back. Nothing. No identifiers. He opened the envelope. Inside he found a single letter-size piece of white paper with a simple hand-written message on it.
I’m watching you and I know what you did.
Simon’s hands began to shake when he saw the signature.
Milo.
