Tough Cookie

CHAPTER 1 Show business and death don’t mix. Unfortunately, I discovered this while hosting a TV cooking show. Up to then, I’d enjoyed being a TV chef. The job didn’t pay well, but this was PBS. Arthur Wakefield, the floor director, had crisply informed me that most chefs made nothing for guest visits, much less five thousand clams for six shows. He could have added: And what’s more, those chefs’ kitchens haven’t been closed by the county health inspector! But Arthur said nothing along those lines. Like most folks, he was unaware that my in-home commercial catering kitchen had been red-tagged, that is, closed until further notice. So: Bad pay notwithstanding, I was lucky to have the TV job. Actually, I was lucky to have any food work at all. And I certainly didn’t want more than our family and a few friends to know why. I could not tell my upscale clients—those who’d made Goldilocks’ Catering, Where Everything Is Just Right! the premier food-service business of Aspen Meadow, Colorado—that our plumbing wasn’t up to code. And of course, I could never let it be known that my dear husband Tom was ransacking the house for valuables to sell off, so we could buy fancy drains and thereby get my business reopened. No plumbing? No drains? It sounded nasty. Sordid, even. In September, things had gone badly. The county health inspector, giggling from the shock engendered by his surprise visit, closed me down. The bustle in our kitchen immediately subsided. Calls for catering gigs stopped. Suppliers sent letters asking if I wanted to keep my accounts current. Yes, yes, I always replied cheerfully, I’m looking forward to reopening soon! Soon. Ha! Without my business, an enterprise I’d lovingly built up for almost a decade, I entered a spiritual fog as thick as the gray autumnal mist snaking between the Colorado mountains. I gave up yoga. Drank herb tea while reading back issues of Gourmet. Spent days gazing out the new windows in our beautifully-remodeled-but-noncompliant kitchen. And repeatedly told Tom how gorgeous the kitchen looked, even if I couldn’t work in it.… Truly, the place did look great. So what if it didn’t meet new county regulations mandating that every commercial kitchen sink have backflow protection? Months earlier, Tom had rescued the remodeling job after a dishonest contractor had made our lives hell. During time away from his work as a Homicide Investigator for the Furman County Sheriff’s Department, he’d put in marble counters, cherry cabinets, expensive windows, a solid oak floor. And the wrong drains. To fix the problem, Tom was now tearing out the guts of three new sinks and prying up the floor beneath. He insisted we should heal our temporary cash-flow problem by selling a pair of historic skis he’d bought years before in an odd lot of military memorabilia. In October, I’d started calling antiques dealers while wondering how, during a prolonged closure, I could keep my hand in the food business. There’d been no takers for the skis. How else to get money? I’d wracked my brain for other ways to work as a cook: Volunteer at a school cafeteria? Roll a burrito stand up and down Aspen Meadow’s Main Street? Eventually, it had been my old friend Eileen Druckman who’d come through with a job. Loaded with money and divorced less than two years, Eileen had just bought the Summit Bistro at Colorado’s posh Killdeer Ski Resort. Eileen—fortyish, pretty, and blond, with cornflower blue eyes and a full, trembling mouth that had just begun to smile again—had hired a good-looking young chef named Jack Gilkey, whose food was legend in Killdeer. To Eileen’s delight, she and Jack had quickly become an item personally as well as professionally. When I told Eileen my business woes, she and Jack had kindly offered me the position of co-chef at the bistro. But I couldn’t work restaurant hours—seven in the morning to midnight—fifty miles from home. Restaurant workers, I’d noticed, had a high mortality rate, no home life, or both. Eileen, ever generous, had promptly pitched a cooking-show idea to the Front Range Public Broadcasting System. They’d said yes. I’d demurred. Eileen argued that my cooking on TV, at her bistro, would boost her business plus give her a huge tax write-off. Meanwhile, I could use my television exposure to publicize the new culinary venture I’d finally hit upon: becoming a personal chef. That particular avenue of food work requires no commercial kitchen; it only requires a wealthy client’s kitchen. Just the ticket. So I’d said yes to show business. The Killdeer Corporation had offered free season ski-lift passes to me as well as to my fourteen-year-old son, Arch. Shot through with new enthusiasm and hope, I couldn’t wait to cook and ski. I gave up herb tea for shots of espresso laced with whipping cream. In November, I plunged eagerly back into work. Every Friday morning, I would appear at Killdeer’s Summit Bistro to do my bit before the camera. At first I was nervous. And we did have a few mishaps. Thankfully, Cooking at the Top! was taped. Viewers never saw me s***h my hand—actually, sever a minor artery—while boning a turkey during the first episode. The spray of blood onto the prep counter had been distinctly unappetizing. The following week, I produced a meringue so sweaty it needed antiperspirant. I also dropped two roasts—one of them stuffed—and splattered myself with a pitcher of Béarnaise. But with glitches edited out, even I had to admit the Saturday morning broadcasts looked pretty good. On the upside, I told jokes on-screen and mixed cream into smashed garlicky potatoes. I chatted about the rejuvenating properties of toasted, crunchy almonds while folding melted butter into almond cake batter. I gushed about the trials and joys of learning to ski as I chopped mountains of Godiva Bittersweet Chocolate. I swore to my viewers that my recipe made the darkest, most sinfully fudgy cookies on the slopes. I even assiduously followed Arthur’s tasting instructions: Take a bite. Moan. Move your hips and roll your eyes. Say M-m-mm, aaah, oooh! Yes! Yes! Watching the footage, Tom had quipped that the program should be called The Food-s*x Show. All in all, the first four weeks of taping went well. By Week Four, though, my personal-chef business still had not taken off. I only had one upcoming job. Arthur Wakefield himself had offered me a gig the following week: preparing food for a holiday in-home wine-tasting. Arthur supplemented his floor director income by working as a wine importer. He needed to showcase some new wines—and serve a gourmet meal—to high-end customers and retailers. So, even in the personal-chef department, things were looking up. Unfortunately, in Week Five, Cooking at the Top! hit a snag, one occasioned by a predictable Colorado crisis: blizzard. “Don’t get hysterical on me, Goldy!” Arthur wailed into the telephone December the sixteenth, the night before we were due to tape the fifth episode. I held the receiver away from my ear and pictured him: Short, slender, with a handsome face and a head covered with wiry black hair, Arthur was single and, with the income from two jobs, well-off. Unfortunately, no matter whether he was fretting about the show or his precious wines, he wore an air of gloom. Sporting a band-collared black shirt, black pants, and brown rubber-soled shoes, he strode everywhere hunched forward with apprehension. That guy is stuck in a Doppler shift, my son—currently studying ninth-grade physics—had commented. As Arthur quacked into the receiver that night, I imagined him tipping forward precipitously, straining to peer glumly out his condo window, anxiously assessing the thickening wash of snow. Without taking time to say hello, he’d launched into his late-night communication with a grim update on the severe winter storm bearing down on us. The weather service was predicting four feet of white stuff. Nevertheless—Arthur tensely informed me—despite problems with transportation and prepping, Front Range PBS had to shoot the show the next morning. I told him that it would take me an hour just to ready the ingredients on the menu. Arthur didn’t want to hear it. “Then leave an hour early so you can deal with the roads!” he snarled. So much for sympathy. I gripped the phone and glanced out the bay window Tom had installed during our remodeling. An old-fashioned street lamp illuminated fast-falling flakes swirling from a black sky. In the living room, wind whistled ominously down our fireplace flue. I sighed. “Sorry I snapped,” Arthur moaned. “I’ve got a blizzard and a crew in revolt. Plus, my boss says our show has to raise money. The annual fund-raiser got canceled, so we’re up.” He moaned again, pitifully. I registered the clink of a bottle tapping glass. “One of our PBS people was killed a while back. This fund-raiser is a memorial for him. We have to do it.” I sighed and murmured a few consoling words. I didn’t ask why it would be a good idea for us to risk our lives remembering someone who was already dead. “Killdeer’s been dumped big time,” Arthur reported dourly. “We’ve already got thirty-five inches of new snow. I couldn’t open my door this morning.” He stopped to drink something. “Are you getting any?” In Colorado, this meant snow, not s*x. “About a foot today,” I replied. Our mountain town lay forty-five miles east of the Continental Divide and forty miles west of Denver. Five to six feet of snow over the course of a six-month winter was normal. This was much less than the snowfall registered in Vail, Keystone, Breckenridge, and Killdeer—all ski resorts west of the Divide. Arthur groaned. “The snowboarders and skiers? They’re ecstatic! They’ve got an eighty-inch base in December! How’m I supposed to get our van up a road covered with seven feet of white stuff? My crew’s having a late-night drinking party, like a farewell before our broadcast.” I heard him take another slug of what I assumed was wine. “Know what that crew’s thinking, Goldy? I’ll tell you. They’re thinking Donner Pass.” Tucking the receiver under my ear, I started heating some milk: It was definitely a night for hot chocolate. “Arthur,” I answered calmly, “why does the show have to be live? Why don’t you just postpone the taping?” I adjusted the flame under the milk. “Better yet, why not tell me exactly what’s going on?” “Look.” I heard another gulp. “High winds closed the bistro early tonight. Whenever gusts reach forty miles per hour, Killdeer Corp closes the gondola, so tonight’s telethon was canceled. That’s why the kitchen crew couldn’t do your prep.” I tapped the gleaming new Carrara marble counter and glanced at my watch: half past ten. “So we have to raise money during our show?” He cleared his throat. “The show was an annual telethon. It brings in about ten thousand bucks each year, and the station uses the money to buy equipment. So tonight, when the telethon got canceled, my boss announced to viewers that instead of seeing our show Saturday morning, viewers could tune in tomorrow morning for a live version of Cooking at the Top!” He took a gulp. “We have to do it tomorrow, Goldy. The professional fund-raiser folks say that if you put people off for long, they’ll stow their checkbooks. Don’t worry, I’ve got phone-bank volunteers.” “You said it was a memorial,” I reminded him. “Haven’t you ever watched it?” “Never. I can’t take telethons. Too much tension.” “It’s in memory of Nate Bullock. High Country Hallmarks, you must have watched that.” Arthur took another desperate swig. Nate Bullock, I thought. A pang of regret wormed through my chest. Yes, I had watched High Country Hallmarks. And I’d known Nate. His wife, Rorry, had once been my friend. “Wait a minute,” said Arthur. “My other line’s ringing. Probably a supplier telling me he slipped into a ditch with a truckload of champagne. Can you hold?” I said yes. I gripped the phone cord, glanced out at the snow, and thought back. Eleven years ago, Nate and Rorry Bullock had been our neighbors in Aspen Meadow. Rorry. She and I had had good times teaching Sunday school at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. But our work and our relationship had ended when the Bullocks moved to Killdeer. High Country Hallmarks, Nate’s hugely popular, locally produced PBS show, had covered exciting aspects of Colorado life, from tracking cougars to evacuating in advance of flash floods. Safe at home, snuggled inside cocoons of comforters and sipping cocoa, Arch and I had watched it together often when he was little. Tragically, Nate had been killed in an avalanche three years ago—tracking lynx for one of his own shows, reports said, although the television station denied knowledge of such a dangerous project. The papers had reported that the cause for the avalanche, and the reason for Nate’s being in its path, were a mystery. Investigations had led nowhere, and his death remained shrouded in unanswered questions and pain. Poor Rorry. The thought of my widowed friend brought sadness. Although I’d written to her after Nate’s death, I’d received no response. Arthur returned to the line and announced he’d just calmed one of his cameramen. He tried unsuccessfully to conceal a burp and went on: “All right. At six, two cameramen, a handful of volunteers, and I will drive up our equipment van on the—plowed, they promised me—back road. Is your van four-wheel drive?” “No. And my tires are marginal.” Another side-effect of my cash-flow problem. “Then take the gondola up the mountain. Since the bistro staff couldn’t do any of the prep, the owner and her head chef,”—here he sighed—“will be helping you. Now listen, going live is just a bit different. People expect mistakes. Don’t worry, it’s part of the fun.” “Oh, gee, Arthur. It doesn’t sound like fun.” Overseeing a close friend who knew nothing about food prep and her chef-c*m-boyfriend chopping mountains of scallions in time for a live broadcast? Fun? A wave of queasiness assaulted me. “Just be there by seven, Goldy,” Arthur said, ignoring my protests. “Don’t come early. I have too much to do and you’ll be underfoot. When you get there, you can tell Eileen and Jack what you need and I’ll run you through the telethon scenario. We’ll start filming at eight. Ciao!” He hung up. The wind wailed around the house. I whisked cream and sugar into a heap of dry Dutch-style cocoa, beat in the steaming milk, and liberally doused the cocoa with whipped cream. Worries about the next morning crowded in as I set two fragrant, filbert-studded fudge cookies on a china plate. I took a bite of cookie and nearly swooned over the combination of life-restoring dark chocolate and crunchy toasted nuts. Forget the show! Consume chocolate! Oh, and get some sleep, I ordered myself. Otherwise, people will call in to complain that the chef looks half dead. The phone rang again. “Hey, Goldy, honey, how you doing?” Doug Portman’s obnoxious greeting sent ice down my spine. “Coming up to Killdeer tomorrow?” “Yes, Doug.” What strange bedfellows failed remodeling makes, I thought as I sipped the cocoa. Doug Portman and I had history. We’d dated unhappily after I’d rid myself of The Jerk, my abusive ex-husband. But pretentious, penny-pinching Doug was a well-known collector of military memorabilia, and our drains-crisis had brought him back in our orbit. “Still want to sell those World War Two skis?” Doug asked imperiously, his voice as gruff as ever. “The ones Ike signed?” “If the price is right.” Tom’s historic skis had belonged to a veteran, a member of the 10th Mountain Division. On the skis, the soldier had carved the names of each of the Alpine towns where he’d fought. More importantly, the trooper had somehow convinced Eisenhower himself to carve Ike onto the left ski. An antiques dealer had told Tom the skis could sell for as much as ten thousand dollars, of which we, unfortunately, would get only half. Remembering Doug and his insatiable passion for military memorabilia, plus the fortune we’d need to replace the drains, I’d called him two weeks ago and offered him the skis for nine thousand. He’d turned me down. “I’ve changed my mind. Eight thousand. Cash.” Doug said triumphantly. “Take it or leave it.” “Great,” I said, surprised and pleased. “Meet you at your cooking show, then.” Doug lived in Killdeer. “And hey. If I’m going to buy your skis, I want some of those goodies you’re making.” He paused. “I heard they charge nine bucks for spectators. Suppose you could leave me a free ticket at the restaurant desk? We’ll ski down together afterward. It’ll be fun.” Everybody promised fun. I sighed and told him no problem. A free ticket? Eight thousand dollars to spend, and Doug couldn’t spring nine bucks for public television? But this was typical. Doug never paid for what he could scavenge for free. I told him I’d see him the next morning and signed off. With my hopefully soporific hot drink in one hand and the second oversized chocolate cookie in the other, I strolled to the kitchen’s back wall. Gusts of wind plastered icy flakes against our new windows. I put down the cocoa and placed my palm on the cold glass. The snow relentlessly batted against the pane, tat-tat-tat-tat. A whirling curtain of snow streamed past our deck light. The deck itself boasted at least eighteen inches of new powder. I prayed for Tom to be safe. He was down in Denver, working a fraud case. His Chrysler’s snow tires were in pretty good shape. Piloting my own rear-wheel-drive van to Killdeer the next morning would be another story. I wanted to do the show. I pulled my hand away from the window and sipped my creamy drink. With my catering business shut down, the program’s wide audience still showcased the personal-chef venture, for which I refused to give up hope. Now, with Doug’s offer, I finally had a deal for the skis. Plus, knowing the show was dedicated to remembering dear Rorry Bullock’s husband, I had to get to Killdeer in the morning. I bit into the cookie and watched the snow. Christmas was only nine days away, but the Yuletide spirit eluded me. I’d bought a snowboard for Arch—his heart’s desire—and a new revolver for Tom. I was no gun-lover—far from it—but I’d learned a great deal about firearms from Tom. The dangers and risks of his work had convinced me he needed another weapon, even if all he used it for was practice. So: We had some gifts. Our tree sparkled in the living room. We had plans to bake Christmas cookies together, as a family. But without a job after the New Year, I felt a lack of purpose, and Christmas was just one more landmark on a calendar I didn’t want to face. Things could be worse, I consoled myself as I drank more cocoa. I could be out in this weather. I could be facing the holidays without a husband, like Rorry Bullock. My heart ached for her. Handsome and effervescent, Nate Bullock had always been one to court—and then miraculously escape from—the perils of mountain life. Had he secretly been tracking Canadian lynx, reintroduced to the Front Range after the native lynx habitat had been destroyed by development? Who knew? One fact everyone agreed on was that Nate Bullock had strayed—or hiked intentionally—into Killdeer Valley, an area that was off-limits for all humans, not just skiers, because of the possibility of avalanches. The avalanche, that killer tide of snow that sweeps the unsuspecting to their death, was much to be feared in the Colorado mountain winter. That’s why the Valley is out-of-bounds, Killdeer officials had solemnly intoned, ever wary of their liability insurance. Avalanches in the high country happen without warning. Of course, this had not prevented Killdeer Corporation from recently deciding to expand the resort onto the slope adjacent to the Valley. Next season, a new lift would take skiers and snowboarders right over the area where Nate had died. Poor Rorry, I thought again, with guilt. Would she be at the fund-raiser? Would she want to talk to me, when all I’d done was write her a sympathy note? Why hadn’t I been more persistent in checking up on her after Nate’s death? I finished the cookie and downed the cocoa. Late at night, problems loom large. I had to crawl to bed and get some beauty sleep. Or, as I checked my pudgy, curly-blond-haired reflection in the frosted window, just some sleep, period. Early the next morning, in an impenetrable, windy, predawn darkness, I loaded the historic skis into my van. It was still snowing hard. A torrent of flakes iced my face as I stamped inside. I left a note for Tom, whose large, warm body had finally snuggled in next to mine around two a.m. I packed up my boots and skis, traipsed out to check the tread on my radial tires—barely adequate—and set out for Killdeer. As my van negotiated the snow-crusted expanse of Main Street, the wind lashed fresh snow across my windshield. When I pulled over to scrape it off, I was hit in the face with a swag of holiday evergreen and a strand of white lights. Convulsing in the wind, the decorations had torn loose from a storefront. I climbed back into the van, shivered, and started the slow trek to the highway. Once the van was headed west on Interstate 70, I cranked the wipers as high as they would go to sweep off the relentlessly falling snow. Traffic was light. Beside the road, a herd of bighorn sheep clustered below a neon sign warning of icy roads on both sides of the Eisenhower Tunnel. When I passed Idaho Springs, a radio announcement brayed the news that an avalanche had come down late the previous afternoon at the Loveland Ski Area. Cars slowing down to watch the cleanup were clogging the road, the announcer solemnly declared. “Perfect,” I muttered. Twenty minutes later, I braked behind a long line of cars. Through the snowfall, I could just make out dump trucks laboring in the Loveland parking lot as they scooped away a three-story-high heap of snow, rocks, and broken trees. Under the pile was a maintenance building. The radio announcer passionately recited a rumor of a scofflaw skier who’d ducked a boundary rope and precipitated the slide. The avalanche had raced down the hillside, snapped a stand of pines like matchsticks, and buried the vacant building. Passengers riding up the high-speed quad lift had seen the skier schuss to safety—and away from being caught. Concentrate on your driving, I warned myself, as I entered the neon-lit purgatory of the tunnel, that deep, dark passageway bored beneath the Continental Divide. After a few minutes, the snowpacked descent from the tunnel loomed ahead in the early morning grayness. When I emerged, a sudden wind whipped the van, rocking it violently. Another thick shower of snow blanketed my windshield. I thought: What would it be like to die in an avalanche?