02 Avalanche Pass by John Flanagan Page A

confuse things further. As if making everything perfectly clear and understood.
    “The special tour group. We got permission to bring ’em in a day early because of the heating problem.”
    “Heating problem?” she repeated, her eyes wandering involuntarily to one of the duct grills set in the ceiling. She hadn’t heard of any problem with the thermostat. She hadn’t noticed any change in the temperature in the lobby, either. There seemed to be nothing wrong with the heating system as far as she could tell.
    “Yeah. Look—,” he paused, his eyes searching for her name tag.
    “Jenny,” she supplied nervously, “Jenny Callister.”
    “Fine,” he said, comfortable now that they were on first name terms. “Now look, Jenny, Ray Archer rang earlier to let you people know. We had this group booked into the Meriton Hotel in Salt Lake City but their heating system had some kind of a meltdown. They’ve got real problems down there with three-quarters of their rooms having no heat of any kind, so Ray organized for this group to check in here tonight. Weren’t you told?”
    His easy manner suggested that he knew it wasn’t her fault. It was simply a breakdown in communications within the hotel. Jenny wasn’t so sure. She shook her head.
    “It’s the first I’ve heard of it,” she said defensively. Her hand hovered over the phone on her desk. “Maybe I’d better call Ray myself.”
    Kormann shrugged. “Sure. Go ahead.” He shook a cigarette from a pack and lit it, unconcernedly, while she hit the buttons on the phone. Ray Archer was the Day Manager of the transport company. If the call went through to him, it would be the first he’d heard of this arrangement too.
    Jenny Callister looked at the phone receiver in exasperation.
    “The line’s dead,” she said. He raised an eyebrow in polite surprise. It wasn’t unheard of for the phone line to go down in Snow Eagles Canyon. Usually it was a case of a small, localized avalanche bringing down one of the power poles that carried the line.
    “Yeah?” he said. “Well, I guess it won’t be down for long.”
    In fact, it would be down for another forty-five minutes. Then the linesmen who had cut the line a few miles from the hotel would reconnect a bypass line some eight miles down the road before driving back to Salt Lake City and a payment of ten thousand dollars in their bank accounts. He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a slim Nokia cell phone, offering it to her.
    “Here. Try this,” he said but the girl shook her head, the exasperation mounting.
    “They’re no use in here. The hotel’s in a dead spot.”
    He’d known that too. But for her benefit, he feigned ignorance and replaced the phone in his pocket. “Look,” he continued in a helpful tone of voice, “just check your computer there. You’ll see this group is booked in: name of Pallisani. Eleven double rooms.”
    Quickly, she punched the computer keys. An abbreviated guest list flashed up on the screen before her and she sucked in her lower lip nervously. She really didn’t like the way things were going here. There was no sign of any Pallisani group. She punched up the bookings for the next day.
    “They’re here,” she said. “But not till tomorrow.”
    The Canyon Transportation representative looked at her, throwing his hands out and letting them fall to his sides, with a slight show of exasperation. “That’s right. I told you that. They were supposed to be in Salt Lake City tonight but there was a problem. Your list for tonight should have been altered.”
    “Well, it hasn’t,” she said, beginning to dig her heels in. Kormann leaned over the desktop and swiveled the computer screen slightly so that he could read it.
    “Look, help me out here, Jenny,” he said placatingly. “This guy Pallisani has been on my butt all day about the heat at the Meriton. You’d think the whole damn thing was my fault. Could you check it one more time?”
    She shrugged. “Well, okay.