Tough Cookie (24 page)

Cinda, her cottony-pink hair held back with twisted rubber bands, opened her pale eyes wide when she spotted me. She beckoned with a ring-studded hand and then whispered ominously in my ear: "He's here. The snowboarder. Barton Reed."

"Here, now?" Then I added, "May I have a four-shot espresso and ricotta-stuffed croissant to clear my vision?"

Cinda said, "It's the guy who made the threat, remember? My other waiter, Ryan, and I have just been talking about it. Barton Reed used to be big in the snowboard circuit, and he drove us all nuts with his temper. Then he went to jail on a fraud charge. Now he's back, and the law enforcement guys found some threatening card he supposedly wrote. So I don't want to have to deal with him." She hustled off. Since it was late-morning coffee-and-hot-chocolate time, her shop was mobbed. She returned quickly, however, balancing a tray of goodies for me: a cup brimming with steaming, crema-topped espresso, a plate with a hot, flaky, ricotta-oozing croissant, and a jar of plum preserves. Zowie! I took a sip of the coffee and looked around the shop. I instantly recognized the chunky-faced profile and spill of earrings: Barton Reed.

"Did he say anything to you when he came in?" I whispered to Cinda.

"Yeah. The cops picked him up yesterday," she replied sotto voce, "but then let him go. His fingerprints weren't on the threatening card, and it wasn't his handwriting. But it looked like his handwriting. Then he came in here and demanded to know if we'd told the cops he'd threatened some cop. We played dumb. A couple of other shopkeepers told me Barton's been making threats allover town. So he can't be sure who spilled the beans to the cops."

"Why is he here now?"

"Says he's looking for somebody. He's clutching a cross. Maybe he's waiting for a vampire."

I started in on the flaky, hot croissant.. It was superb. "You said he was waiting for somebody? Could he be waiting for Doug Portman? Does he know Portman is dead?"

"He didn't say. But he must, everybody in town knows. I'm telling you, that guy's lift doesn't go to the peak." She tapped her forehead meaningfully. As she did so, Reed shuffled to his feet and stomped toward the exit. At the door, he stopped and turned. He held Cinda and me briefly in a withering glare.

"Who could he be looking for?" I wondered in a low voice.

"I sure don't know." Cinda shook her pink-filament hair. "But it's not likely he'll be opening up his soul to any of our waiters again soon."

I didn't like the feeling this gave me. I thanked Cinda for the coffee, told her I'd see her later, and backed away from the bar. Before heading for the Rover.

I made a visual check of the lift ticket windows, repair shop walk-up, and crowds going into and out of the , Karaoke and Gorge-at-the-Gondola cafes. No Barton Reed. No, wait.

He was across the creek, standing in line for the gondola. With the crowd around him, I couldn't see if he was carrying a snowboard. Had he spotted the person he'd been waiting for, or had he given up?

If the sheriff's department had released Barton Reed, there was nothing I could or should do. I asked for directions to Rorry's trailer park at one of the lift ticket windows, then trekked back to the Rover.

The West Furman County Mobile Home Court - so named to distinguish it from any connection to the much-sought-after appellation Killdeer - was surrounded with a snow-laced five-foot-high chain-link fence. The fence was hung with fierce no-parking warnings, and the entry was flanked with signs informing the unwary that the motor court was for residents and their guests only; other vehicles would be towed and their owners fined. All the ski resorts had parking problems. No doubt some skiers thought nothing of leaving their vehicles here, in the low-rent district.

Where the rest of Killdeer featured picturesquely winding roads, the snow-covered-but-unplowed roads of the employees' trailer park were laid out in ramrod-straight gridlines. I pulled in behind a red Subaru wagon. Hmm. Like its neighbors, the Bullock trailer stood perpendicular to the curb. Green and white siding peeled away from a sagging bay window; the trailer's bottom rim was patched with rust. There were no signs of life.

I hopped out of the Rover and walked up to Rorry's red car. The front bumper was crumpled, the right headlight gone. I fingered the cold metal of the impacted area. Rorry claimed somebody had stolen her Subaru, then smashed it up. I believed her. It hardly made sense that a pregnant woman would risk her unborn child to wreck a caterer's van. I edged back over the thick ice to the Rover, loaded up the casseroles I'd made, then carefully made my way to a rickety wooden staircase that led to an unpainted aluminum door.

There was no doorbell, but the door opened the moment I started to shift the dishes around to find a way to knock.

"Bummer about the car, huh?" Rorry said wistfully. "It's my fault, I guess. I shouldn't have left the keys in it." She wore a navy blue knitted maternity dress with thick cables and an uneven hem. Her skin was the color of mashed potatoes; her light brown eyes looked cloudy; her hair, blond and thin, curled softly around her face. She looked like an unhappy ingenue. If my arms had not been full of covered casseroles, I would have given her a hug. She pulled the door open as wide as it would go.

"Yeah, bummer," I agreed, with a backward glance at the red Subaru. I decided not to mention what had happened to my van. When possible, I'd learned, do not upset a very pregnant woman.

"It's the second time I've been a crime victim in this park," Rorry said bitterly.

"The second time?" I prompted as I followed her to the tiny kitchenette.

Rorry opened the freezer section of a small refrigerator. "The first time was after Nate died. When I had to go down to see the coroner, some kid broke in and stole our TV and Nate's videocamera. The cops caught him with the television, but he denied stealing the camera. The little creep."

"For heaven's sake," I muttered as I tucked the casseroles into the only freezer space free of icy stalactites and stalagmites. Respect for personal property was a very low priority in Killdeer, it seemed. I shook my head, turned, and gave Rorry a long, tight hug. I told her I'd be right back.

"Do you still love coffee?" she asked when I returned with the box of baby blankets.

"More than ever." She pressed a button on an ancient drip machine to start a pot brewing. Rorry had always invited me in for a cup of coffee, even when she and Nate had lived in a tiny Aspen Meadow apartment. Back then, he'd had a little business making videos of recitals, high-school graduations, and weddings. Apparently he and Rorry had also badly wanted children, and now. . . On the counter, a torn herb-tea package and half-full glass mug of green liquid indicated the mother-to-be wasn't indulging in caffeine these days. Next to them stood one of those porcelain coffee-bean containers and a grinder from an expensive mail-order coffee bean house. Low-income folks, I'd found, always bought a few food luxuries in case someone dropped in.

Rorry waved at her minuscule living area. "Please, sit down. And thanks for the casseroles and baby blankets."

"No problem. It was fun putting it all together. And it's nice to know someone can make use of Arch's things." I walked into the wood-paneled living area, where the linoleum of the kitchenette gave way to green shag carpet. This space featured a miniature sagging green-and-gold brocade couch, two stained gold chairs, and a fruitwood-veneer coffee table with a small pile of cardboard coasters featuring beer logos. The furnishings were all from that Seventies-era style known as "Mediterranean." It must have been in that decade, I reflected as I sat on the couch, that this trailer had been built and sold as a furnished home. If Killdeer could spend millions expanding onto adjacent slopes, why couldn't they subsidize low-income housing for their workers?

"Here you go." Rorry set a large mug of steaming coffee on one of the cardboard coasters. She winced. "Don't look at the rug. My boss back at Aspen Meadow Carpets would have had a fit."

"I won't tell," I vowed, "if you promise not to squeal to my food-snob clients that I brought you meatballs." She laughed and sipped her tea. I drank some of the coffee and pronounced it delicious.

Rorry smoothed the blue dress over her huge belly, then said, "Thank you for being so nice, Goldy. I don't deserve it, after how bitchy I was to you." Her light brown eyes held mine. Flecked with gold, puffy from lack of sleep, they were weary and apologetic. And sad.

"Don't worry about it, I can handle bitchy. Remember when the president of the Episcopal Church Women objected to our class doing Ezekiel-in-the-Valley-of-Dry-Bones in the narthex? Now that was bitchy."

She smiled thinly and shifted with obvious discomfort in her chair. "We had fun with that class, didn't we?" When I nodded, she pulled a miniature bottle of lotion from a pocket, squirted some onto her right palm, and rubbed her hands with a nervous wringing motion. "We did Ezekiel after we did Joshua and the walls of Jericho," she mused. "We were a pretty rambunctious group." She took a deep breath. "I still stay in touch with St. Luke's through the prayer chain. That was a great community. In Killdeer, there's nothing like it. You've got the very rich and then you've got their servants, who live in trailers at the edge of town. Guess what category I fall into?" She laughed humorlessly.

"If you don't like it," I blurted out, "why do you stay?"

"We used to love to ski." Rorry's voice was unexpectedly defiant. What had she said at the fund-raiser? She was just puzzled Her mood swings were bewildering. Or maybe not. After all, she was nine months pregnant and, as far as I could tell, alone. "I suppose you've heard the rumors," she went on bleakly. "That's one way that Killdeer doesn't differ from Aspen Meadow. The gossip mill runs around the clock."

"Nope, haven't heard any rumors. And I'm a servant, too, you know."

"But you're dying of curiosity, and so is everyone at Front Range PBS. They sent you."

"Nobody sent me, Rorry," I told her. "I saw you Friday. . . and suddenly missed our friendship. So I called."

She stared at the low, stained ceiling and went on as if I had not spoken. "The TV people won't tell me anything. Oh, sure, they have their annual do in memory of Nate. They're not raising funds for me, because the FCC says they can only raise money for themselves. For equipment! What a joke!"

"Rorry, I don't know what - "

She banged her mug down on the battered coffee table and glared at me. "Nate's the father of this baby I'm carrying."

"Ah." Either she'd been artificially inseminated, or she was losing her mind.

She read my expression accurately. "The first time we conceived, we had to freeze his sperm and go through artificial insemination. I was seven months pregnant when I had the miscarriage. Then last year I read' an article, about women laying claim to the frozen sperm of their deceased lovers. So I decided to use what I had left of Nate." When she scowled, her eyes crinkled in anger. "Use it before his girlfriend did, that is - "

I gagged on my coffee and remembered what Arthur had told me about Rorry's suspicious nature, about her claims Nate was having an affair with Boots Faraday. "You think another woman would actually - "

Rorry held up a hand. "Nate said he and Boots Faraday - the collage artist, do you know her?" When I nodded, she raised a thin blond eyebrow. "Nate said Boots was giving him business advice. Then he went out-of-bounds to film something, and she said he was tracking lynx. Unfortunately, the wildcat population doesn't buy a lot of videotapes, so I doubt a film of tracks was his so-called moneymaking idea." She tsked and asked, "Do you know anything about tracking wild animals?"

"Not a thing, I'm happy to say."

"You hear of a sighting," Rorry continued in the same aggressive tone, as if determined to prove something to me. "You go where the trail might be and you look for scat. You find it, you start filming."

"Rorry, I'm not following you - "

She heaved herself up, crossed to the kitchenette, 'and pulled something out of a drawer. Wordlessly, she thrust an envelope at me. I pulled out a much-crumpled note. Meet me at the Ridge trail at 2:00. Make sure nobody sees you. And remember your equipment, pal. The handwriting was slanted and feminine.

Rorry, bitterly triumphant, announced: "Lynx don't buy videos, and they don't write notes, no matter how endangered they are. Arthur Wakefield and the TV people claim Nate was not doing a tracking project for them. But they didn't know what he was doing, so the spin, the story, the myth came out of the Killdeer Artists' Association and Boots Faraday." She raised her voice to a mocking falsetto. "'Brave Outdoorsman Loses Life Tracking Vanishing Colorado Wildlife.' What crap! The only prints on that trail were from a man and a woman. Nate and his girlfriend, Boots. Bring your equipment, puh-leeze. They sneaked into the out-of-bounds area to make love. Where no one would see."

"There's no hay to roll in in Killdeer Valley, Rorry." She shook her head dismissively. I persisted. "But the footprints diverged. One set went up, one went down."

"So you have heard some rumors." Her eyes blazed. "Not rumors, but information. From the ski patrol.

After the fund-raiser, I was worried about you. So I asked a patrolwoman to tell me about the avalanche. I thought it might help me understand what was going on with you. That's it." I took a deep breath. "But if their paths parted, maybe he was just keeping her company - "

"Maybe he was planning on getting undressed at the bottom of the hill and waiting for her," she said hotly.

I bit the inside of my cheek. My old friend had clearly spent three years of sleepless nights worrying over details, trying to piece disparate data bits into a coherent theory of her husband's death. She hadn't grieved properly because she didn't know what had happened. Worse, too many unknowns had left her with a sense of betrayal deeper and more devastating than grief.

"Rorry, the Killdeer Artists' Association said that Nate was trying to diversify, to provide a better living - "

"Oh, don't give me any of Boots Faraday's bullcrap. I've heard her line about Nate wanting to raise money for us, blah, blah, blah. Boots is a great skier and snowboarder and a successful artist. She called here and called here and called here before Nate died. Each time, she tried to hide her identity. Why? She's sexy as can be, as I saw when I went to one of the association's meetings with Nate. She was flirting all around, trying to get everyone to sign a petition, to get rid of Doug Portman. You saw her at the fund-raiser on Friday, didn't you? You see, she just can't get Nate out of her mind. She's obsessed. I think she's the one who wrecked my car, then returned it just to torment me."