Destination Lake Tahoe: Destination Murder Mysteries, #3

By Ann Shepphird

An avalanche is the least of Sam's problems.

 

On her third outing as a travel writer for "Carmel Today" magazine, former investigative reporter Samantha "Sam" Powers is invited to cover the reopening of the historic Lake Tahoe Mountain Lodge. The press trip has all the hallmarks of an amazing adventure, offering winter activities like skiing with a former Olympian, snowshoeing, dog sledding, and riding in a horse-drawn sleigh.

 

At the Lodge, a huge storm hits and guests start vanishing. As Sam begins to investigate the disappearances—with help from her best friend Lizzy—she stumbles into the culprit's sights. When she finds herself dangling off a mountain peak, Sam wonders if her nose for mystery may have taken her too far this time.

 

"Destination: Lake Tahoe" is the third in the Destination Murder Mystery series, which combines exotic locales and a behind-the-scenes look at the travel industry with the twists and turns expected from a good mystery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: 4 Horsemen Publications
• Release date: Jun 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781644508466

Book preview

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Book Club Questions

About the Author

Destination Lake Tahoe

Destination Murder Mysteries Book 3

Copyright © 2023 Ann Shepphird. All rights reserved.

4 Horsemen Publications, Inc.

1497 Main St. Suite 169

Dunedin, FL 34698

4horsemenpublications.com

[e-mail]

Cover by J.Kotick

Typesetting by Autumn Skye

Edited by Jen Paquette

All rights to the work within are reserved to the author and publisher. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 International Copyright Act, without prior written permission except in brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Please contact either the Publisher or Author to gain permission.

This book is meant as a reference guide. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. All brands, quotes, and cited work respectfully belong to the original rights holders and bear no affiliation to the authors or publisher.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023931543

Print ISBN: 978-1-64450-844-2

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-64450-845-9

Audio ISBN: 978-1-64450-847-3

eBook ISBN: 978-1-64450-846-6

Mixing travel elements into a mystery novel comes with its challenges. I want to provide as full and accurate a description of each destination as possible, while also telling a good story that (by necessity) includes a little murder and mayhem. For this reason, in Destination: Lake Tahoe—and all the books in the Destination Murder Mystery series—I’ve attempted to combine the two by creating a fictional world within the larger destination. In this case, while evocative of the Lake Tahoe area, the lodge, the valley where it sits, and all the action that takes place there is a total product of my ima gination.

My thanks, as always, to all who helped bring this book to life, especially Jill Bastian, Erika Lance, Kathleen Matschullat, Jen Paquette, Marc Sapoznik, Jordan Weiner, Valerie Willis, Jane Wortman, and Jeff Wolf.

Finally, I would like to dedicate this book to all my friends, both near and far.

CHAPTER

ONE

Best-laid plans, am I right? I mean, I had been in some tough situations before. As a former investigative reporter, I had met my share of sketchy characters in places I probably should not have been. But this, this was a doozy. Here I was on my third big assignment as the travel columnist for Carmel Today magazine, and I found myself holding onto a tree for dear life on one of the highest, steepest, and most avalanche-prone mountains in Lake Tahoe. As the snow continued to fall and my poles and skies dangled from my arms and legs, I pondered how the hell I was not only going to get back down the mountain but help catch a murderer in th e process.

As you may guess, this was not how I expected my trip to go. As originally laid out, my assignment to cover the newly renovated Lake Tahoe Mountain Lodge looked amazing: a once-in-a-lifetime chance to stay at a historic lodge in a gorgeous mountain setting and ski with an Olympic gold medalist, among other cool winter activities. It had all the elements of an incredible—albeit challenging for the rudimentary skier that I am—trip that would make a great story for the magazine. You can see that, right? The truth is that ultimately it was incredible—you might even say illuminating—even if it also included a massive snowstorm and the aforementioned murder.

The assignment to cover the lodge in Lake Tahoe came, as they all did, from my editor at Carmel Today magazine, Mona Reynolds. A longtime family friend, Mona had lured me—Samantha (but everyone calls me Sam) Powers—into the world of travel writing six months earlier when I returned to Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. I came home to help my Uncle Henry take care of my ailing father (Carmel’s former police chief) after a dozen years away in Los Angeles, first at college and then working as a crime reporter at the local newspaper.

Mona had always been a bit of a role model for me. Also from Carmel, she worked for years in New York City as a features editor for Vogue magazine. My late mom had been her babysitter so when I was young Mona would visit us when she came to town. Tall, willowy, and always stylishly dressed, Mona had a thick shock of black hair that had morphed into a stunning silver now that she was in her mid-60s. In a way, there was a sort of symmetry to our relationship. Just as I idolized Mona, she had idolized my mom, even if they could not have been more different: my mom a flower-loving (and flower-shop-owning) bohemian and Mona the ultimate fashionista. I, in case you were wondering, was neither of those things.

Mona first mentioned the potential new assignment at my 35th birthday party, which was held at our family house out near Carmel Point. Yeah, birthday. I hadn’t expected it to hit me, but have to admit that it did, mostly because so much else in my life was still in flux. I’m not sure where I expected to be at 35—which just sounded so ADULT—but it wasn’t back in Carmel helping my uncle run the family home and care for my dad.

The party also marked the first time that Uncle Henry and I had invited friends over to the house since I returned. They included some of my favorite people in the world, many of whom I hadn’t seen since the death of my mother ten years earlier. Others were new friends I met while researching my previous story, which focused on the Monterey Peninsula as part of a preview of the area for tourists attending the annual Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tournament. The party also included a surprise visit from Detective Roger Kai, who I got to know a few months earlier on my first travel assignment—to a luxury resort on the Hawaiian island of Maui, no less—and been kind of seeing (as well as one can when separated by 2,000 miles of ocean) ever since. It was a very pleasant surprise that led to a very pleasant three-day visit that only solidified I was falling for the guy.

So, if birthdays are an annual way of summing up your life, I will say that although I wasn’t where I expected to be and (again) 35 just sounded so ADULT, my life actually looked pretty darn good. On the upswing, you might say, even if there were still a few wrinkles to be ironed out. Like, was this home now? And if so, when was I going to admit that and permanently close up my life back in Los Angeles?

I decided to table those wrinkles (while at the same time wondering if you could actually table a wrinkle and, if so, does it require an iron?) for the moment and instead focused my attention on where in the world I would be headed on my next assignment. Procrastination? Maybe. Avoidance? Definitely. But writing about travel was my new job, after all, wasn’t it?

Mona made me wait until I was back in the office to hear about the assignment. And even then, I had to wait because the day I arrived in the office all hell was breaking loose. Part of it was due to the fact that Carmel Today was engaged in a major overhaul, something Mona had been working on since taking over the failing magazine a year earlier. She had been making baby steps, now undertaking the biggest adjustments after the recent departure of the long-time managing editor and in consultation with the new owners, Bob and Barb Carpenter—especially Barb, who had worked in magazines and was the driving force behind their purchase of Carmel Today.

As with all change, it did not proceed as easily as envisioned, especially when wrangling a team of editorial, sales, and administrative people used to doing things a certain way. The first of the big pivots involved taking the print edition of the magazine from monthly to quarterly. In the year and a half since Mona took over, the staff had been adding all sorts of digital content to the magazine’s website and social media accounts (some of which I was responsible for). With the new forms of content—and the way things were going in the magazine industry—it made sense to not publish a physical copy every month. Most of the area publications that were Carmel Today’s closest competitors were already quarterly, and theoretically we’d still be publishing just as many pages (and thus content), but in four thick magazines instead of twelve thinner ones.

Luckily, this didn’t change my position. As the magazine’s part-time travel columnist, I was responsible for posting the short around-town newsy items that fell under the travel realm (restaurants, hotels, attractions) on the website and our social media accounts before they went into the magazine anyway. All it really meant was that the bigger travel features that fell under the Splendid Adventures header—and the bigger trips that generated those features—would now fall seasonally. In practice, they already were, as the column didn’t run every month and there had been a backlog of stories that ran in between my first two features anyway.

It did mean restructuring the way the office worked. Katie Rogers, the very competent new managing editor, brought with her a fresh discipline to the operations. That meant that the assistant editor and niece of the owners, Chelsea Plumrose—who everyone in the office called Fuck You Chelsea or FU Chelsea under their breaths (okay, maybe that was just me)—wasn’t allowed to run amok like she had before. When I came into the offices, I constantly found them at odds with each other, which I found funny because Katie and Chelsea looked and dressed exactly the same. Although they were about 10 years apart in age (Chelsea in her 20s, Katie in her 30s), they were both petite, with long straight hair pulled back into a ponytail (Katie’s red, Chelsea’s blond) and wore boots, leggings-style pants, designer tops, and short jackets. It was enough that I wondered if there was some magazine editor uniform I’d missed. I mean, I guess I was somewhat close in my typical style of dress—if you traded the designer tops for t-shirts and tanks, the short jackets for unstructured sweaters, and the boots for tennis shoes. At 5’7", I was also a good five inches taller than both of them, which would have made me feel like a giant if Mona didn’t tower over me by at least four inches. Just a middle-of-the-road giant, I guess.

All this is to say why, with Katie (nicknamed Captain Katie) now in charge and FU Chelsea constantly trying to undermine her, the office tended to be a little frosty. I reflexively put on a heavier sweater and added a scarf just to attend the editorial meetings, which were still held in the office once a month. I also tended to position myself between our young art director, Ben Conners (yes, I had a nickname for him, too—Ben at Comic-Con—because he was a typical computer geek who’d be quite at home there) and the older columnist Terry (Tottering Terry) to avoid any frost. Metaphorical, of course.

This is also why Mona suggested we take a break after the meeting and go over the new press trip invitation at my friend Lizzy Icaza’s dog-friendly cafe, the Paws Up. Naturally, Mona brought her rescue Yorkie-poo, Cornwall, part of Carmel’s unwritten edict that everyone have a dog by their side. In Cornwall’s case, this meant swaddled in a designer satchel that matched Mona’s scarf (I kid you not) as we walked through Carmel-by-the-Sea’s main drag filled with cute-as-a-button galleries, shops, wine-tasting rooms, and restaurants, and over to Lizzy’s cafe.

Paws Up wasn’t the only dog-friendly establishment in Carmel—not by a long shot—just the latest in the town’s long tradition. Lizzy conceived hers to be a bit more casual and local-focused (although tourists had been discovering it as well), located as it was in the courtyard of a building her grandmother owned a few blocks outside the center of town and surrounded by professional offices instead of retail stores. Its close proximity to the Carmel Today offices made it our regular hangout—and also a good place for the hand-off of Uncle Henry’s latest rescue bulldog, Buster, who I would be taking to visit my dad in his assisted living facility afterward.

As Mona and I reached the entrance to Paws Up, Uncle Henry—looking every bit the distinguished law professor that he was with his tweed jacket, more-salt-than-pepper hair, and black-rimmed glasses—was already standing on the sidewalk outside chatting with Lizzy. Buster, the English Bulldog, was at his feet chatting with Lizzy’s dog Canoodle, who was some sort of Dachshund-Schnauzer-Lab mix. Just your typical scene in Carmel-by-the-Sea.

As Henry handed me the leash, he turned, and his eyes met Mona’s briefly (how could they not when they were the same height) before quickly looking away. Lizzy and I grinned at what was obviously a budding romance, even if they were pretending they were nothing more than old family friends. I mean, it was a little weird because, in my mind, they were both, you know, OLD (mid to late 60s), but we had been letting them keep their mystery, at least for now.

Nice seeing you, Mona.

Henry.

We let the awkward pause hang a bit before Henry nodded twice and left. Lizzy, Mona, and I then moved into the cafe, where we found a table and released Cornwall from his satchel. Cornwall and Buster did the usual butt-sniff hello with each other and Canoodle and then plopped down beside us.

I gave Canoodle a pet and was reminded again just how much he resembled Lizzy—both long and lean and incredibly athletic. Lizzy had curly black hair that she kept short and carried the same antic energy as her dog, who had already moved on to greet other people (and dogs) in the cafe. Lizzy and I had been friends as long as we could remember. We grew up together and both came from a long line of families who had settled on the Monterey Peninsula. Since Lizzy had six brothers and I was the only child of older parents, we had always been sisters in everything but name, even if we hadn’t spent much time together in the past decade.

While Lizzy never officially moved away, she had spent more than a dozen years on the professional tennis tour, where she achieved some success as a doubles specialist. When she retired from the tour and came back to town permanently a few years before I did, she didn’t take one of the many coaching jobs she was offered and instead started transforming what had been a languishing cafe space into the Paws Up. Lizzy told me that the cafe had been a dream