Snowbound (14 page)

Late Thursday morning Lew Coopersmith sat in front of the quartz-and-granite fireplace in his living room, drinking hot, fresh coffee with John Tribucci.

An hour and a half earlier he had gone to the Mercantile on an errand for Ellen, and Tribucci and Matt Hughes had been discussing slide developments. The latest report from County Maintenance was that a second dozer had been brought in—there was also a rotary snowthrower on hand —and the crews were beginning to make some progress. But at a conservative estimate it would still be the day after Christmas before they had the pass road cleared, weather permitting. Coopersmith and Tribucci had eventually left the store together and then walked up to the slide. You could hear the sound of the machines from there, although the work itself was invisible from within the valley.

After a short time they came back down again, and Coopersmith invited the younger man to the house for coffee since Frank McNeil had decided to keep the Valley Café closed as long as they were snowbound and Walt Halliday did not open the bar in the inn until 4 P.M. Tribucci had readily consented, saying smilingly that as much as he adored his sister-in-law, her coffee was on the same qualitative level as that of an Army mess cook’s.

Now Coopersmith began filling one of his blackened Meerschaum pipes from the canister of tobacco on the low table between them. “You think the weather will hold, Johnny?” he asked.

“Hard to say. Forecast is clear for the next couple of days, but we may be in for another storm either Saturday or Sunday. If you want a pessimistic opinion, Lew, it will be two or three days after Christmas before the pass is open again.” He paused and frowned into his cup. “I just hope the baby doesn’t decide to arrive until New Year’s now.”

“Even if it does, Ann will be fine. Doc Edwards has delivered dozens of babies in private homes.”

“I know, but I’d feel better if she had hospital care when the time comes.”

“We’ll all feel better once things are back to normal. I don’t like being cut off from the outside world for so long a time, even if it isn’t total isolation. It makes me feel helpless and vulnerable.”

“Vulnerable to what?”

Coopersmith fired his pipe with a kitchen match. When he had it drawing to his satisfaction, he said, “Well I don’t know exactly. I guess it’s just that I don’t have complete control of my own life at the moment. It’s like being up in an airplane—you’ve got to depend on somebody else. And when you’re dependent, you’re vulnerable. That make any sense to you?”

“I think it does,” Tribucci said. “In fact, I suppose in a way that’s why I keep worrying about Ann and the baby.”

Leaning back in his armchair, Coopersmith sighed and chewed reflectively on the stem of his pipe. At length he asked, “What do you make of the café break-ins, Johnny?”

“I don’t know what to make of them. It’s a damned peculiar business, happening two nights in a row like that.”

Coopersmith nodded. On the second occasion, as on the first, the rear door had been jimmied and propped open; but the damage had been considerably heavier, owing to the magnitude of Tuesday night’s storm: bottles and jars blown off shelves and shattered on the floor, cans and perishables ruinously frozen. Frank McNeil had been livid, far more concerned about his private property than the avalanche which had left the valley snowbound. That was the primary reason he had decided to close the café until after Christmas.

“I talked to most everyone in the valley yesterday and Tuesday,” Coopersmith said, “and drew a complete blank. Whoever did it pulled it off clean both times.”

“Well, at least it didn’t happen again last night.”

“That’s something, anyway.”

Tribucci made a wry mouth. “McNeil says that’s because yesterday he told Zachary Cain he knew he was the one responsible and was going to have him arrested as soon as the pass is cleared. Says that put the fear of God into Cain.”

“Horse apples,” Coopersmith said.

“Yeah. Cain is a funny sort, that’s true enough, but he just doesn’t strike me as the type to go in for malicious mischief.”

“Me neither. He hasn’t bothered a soul since he’s been here. Besides, the idea that he would do it because McNeil asked me to investigate him when he first came is ridiculous. I told Frank there wasn’t any way Cain could have found out about that in the first place, but trying to talk sense to McNeil is like trying to talk sense to a ground squirrel. He’ll be lucky if Cain doesn’t sue him for slander.”

“That’s for sure,” Tribucci agreed. “Thing is, though, I can’t picture anyone else in the valley doing the break-ins either. Not for any reason.”

“Same here. But somebody did it, and for some reason.” Coopersmith’s pipe had gone out, and he relighted it. “Well, whatever the answer, I’ll see if I can’t ferret it out sooner or later.”

The two men had a second cup of coffee and talked briefly of Christmas, of what gifts they had gotten for their wives—Ellen was in the kitchen, out of earshot—and determined they would get together at Vince’s house on Christmas Eve for some traditional eggnog and cookies and caroling.

When Tribucci had gone to relieve his brother at the Sport Shop, Coopersmith finished his pipe and brooded mildly over the slide and the café break-ins. He poured himself a third cup of coffee and, tasting it, decided it could use a little sweetening. He stood up and went quietly to the sideboard for the brandy decanter.

Wearing warm old clothes and a pair of fur-lined boots, the Reverend Peter Keyes left his cottage at the rear of the All Faiths Church at one thirty to do his daily shopping.

He was not as deeply concerned about the pass slide as some of the other valley residents, although it
would
prevent him from spending Christmas afternoon and evening with his relatives in Soda Grove. Coming so close to Yuletide, it was of course an unfortunate thing; but no one had been killed or injured, for which thanks could be given, and the Reverend Mr. Keyes was not one to question an act of God in any circumstance. For all the inconvenience to his friends and neighbors and to himself, it was nonetheless the season of joy and charity and great faith: the celebration of the birthday of Jesus Christ.

The Reverend Mr. Keyes walked along the side of the church, beneath the three slender, obelisk-shaped windows and the sharply pitched alpine roof with its squared, four-windowed belfry and tall steeple at the rear: a simple frame church which, he felt, suited perfectly the simple life of those who made the Sierra their home. As he started toward the street, he noticed a medium-sized, unfamiliar man standing at the signboard adjacent to the front walk, reading the arrangement of glassed-in plastic letters which told of the coming Sunday services.

The minister altered his path and approached the stranger—no doubt one of the San Francisco businessmen he had heard were staying at Mule Deer Lake. Perhaps, since the man was reading the signboard, he was thinking of attending services; the prospect, if true, was a pleasing one.

When the newcomer heard the Reverend Mr. Keyes’ steps in the snow, he turned. Very dark, he was, almost sooty-looking, with a hard cast to his face and a feral, overbright quality to his eyes. But the minister well knew how deceiving appearances could be, and as he reached the man, he smiled and extended his hand. “Good afternoon. I’m Reverend Peter Keyes, the pastor of All Faiths Church.”

“Charley Adams is my name,” Kubion said. He took the proffered hand. “Nice to meet you, Reverend.”

“I noticed you reading the signboard, Mr. Adams. May I ask if you’ll be joining our congregation on Sunday?”

“Well, I just might do that, all right.”

“We’ll be more than pleased to have you.”

“There’s only one service, I see.”

“Yes—at noon. The village is really too small to make more than one feasible during the winter, although we have two throughout the summer season.”

Kubion glanced at the church. “Are the doors open now?”

“Oh, of course. They’re seldom locked.”

“I’d like to step inside for a minute, if I could.”

“Certainly, please do.”

Kubion nodded a parting and moved away along the front walk. The Reverend Mr. Keyes watched him climb the five front steps and enter the church and then smiled gently to himself. Appearances were indeed misleading; Charley Adams was an agreeable sort of person—and no doubt a good and devout, if somewhat diffident, Christian.

He thought Kubion had gone into the church to pray.

John Tribucci was alone in the Sport Shop, stocking shelves in the tobacco section, when the dark stranger came in at two o’clock.

“Something I can do for you?” Tribucci asked pleasantly.

“Well, maybe there is,” Kubion said. “I was wondering if you’ve got any snowmobiles in stock.”

“Snowmobiles?” Tribucci managed to conceal his surprise. “Why, yes, as a matter of fact we do—just one. It was given to us on consignment by a chain sporting goods outlet in the county seat.”

“Be okay if I looked at it?”

“Sure.” He led Kubion around to the rear of the store, where the machine sat in the center of a small display of skis, snowshoes, and ice skates. It resembled a two-seat scooter mounted on skis and wide roller treads—black chassis, white cowl, red and white trim. “It’s a Harley Davidson, fast and durable. Plenty of features: dual headlights, eighteen-inch molded track, shock-dampened steering, ski-mounted hydraulic shocks. Engine is twenty-three horsepower, good enough for cross-country slogging, and one of the quietest on the market.”

“How much gas will it hold?”

“It has a six-gallon tank.”

“Okay—what does it sell for?”

“A little better than fifteen hundred, plus tax. That’s a good price for the quality, considering what some of the bigger mobiles cost these days.”

Kubion frowned. “I didn’t know they ran anywhere near that much,” he said. “This the only one in the valley?”

Tribucci said dryly, “You mean, does anybody own an older model they might want to sell for a few hundred?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s what I mean.”

“I’m afraid not. The only other mobile in Hidden Valley is one my brother owns, and it’s a Harley similar to this one—last year’s model. He’d be willing to sell it, I think, but I doubt if he’d take less than a thousand.”

“Still pretty stiff,” Kubion said, and shook his head. Then, in a self-conscious way, he laughed. “You’re probably wondering why all the sudden interest in a snowmobile.”

“Well—yes,” Tribucci admitted. “With the valley being snowbound, it’s not exactly the time people think of winter sports.”

“Winter sports didn’t have anything to do with it; being snowbound is the reason. See, this friend of mine and me—we’re staying out at Mule Deer Lake, you probably know that—we’re expected back in San Francisco for Christmas. So we got to thinking last night that we could split the cost of a snowmobile and use it to get to one of the towns in the area, where we could rent a car. But we didn’t figure the things to be so expensive; we just can’t afford that kind of money for something we might not even use again.”

Tribucci said, “You could get to Coldville all right in a mobile, swinging east by northeast; it’s rough country, fifteen miles of it, but with a map and the mobile’s compass and fair weather it could be done safely enough. Still, you’d have to have quite a bit of knowledge of mountain country like this.”

“Couldn’t we walk out, too, the same way?”

“You could, but I wouldn’t advise trying it. That’s a hell of a trek on snowshoes—and if a storm hits, you’d freeze to death.”

“No shorter way to do it, like going over or around those pass cliffs and then picking up the county road into Soda Grove?”

Tribucci shook his head. “The upper approaches to both cliffs, where the trees thin out, are made up of snow-and ice-covered talus and walls and pinnacles of granite. To the west the terrain drops sharply and there are gullies and declivities filled with drifts of loose snow—you must have noticed coming in how deep and wide the canyon is on the other side of the pass. To the east, you’ve got a long series of smaller ridges and more deep snow pockets.”

Kubion said, “And I guess it would be dangerous to try scrambling over the slide itself?”

“Suicidal is the word. That mass may seem like a solid pack, but it isn’t. You couldn’t scale this end, and even if you could, your weight on all that imbalanced, down-slanted snow and rock would start a shifting and resettling that’d bury you in seconds. That’s why the clearing process is such a slow and methodical one.” Tribucci paused. “About the only practical way you could get out of Hidden Valley immediately is by helicopter, assuming the weather holds. But unless your leaving is a definite emergency, I wouldn’t count on it. The county only has one chopper, and there are priorities.”

“Then I guess we’re stuck good and proper, and we’ll just have to make the best of it. Sorry to take up your time.”

“Not at all.”

When Kubion had gone, Tribucci resumed stocking the tobacco shelves. It would have meant a not inconsiderable profit if he’d been able to sell the mobile, and with the baby due so soon, the money would have been more than welcome. But then, he hadn’t really expected to make the sale from the first—not under the present circumstances and having correctly assumed the reason for the dark man’s sudden interest.