Tough Cookie

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2

At six-twenty, my van crunched into the snowpacked parking lot of the Killdeer resort. To the east, the sky was edged with pewter. My fingers ached from gripping the steering wheel. When I turned off the engine, flakes instantly obscured the windshield. I hopped out onto the snowpack. A frigid breeze bit through my ski jacket and I stumbled to get my footing. Righting myself, I tugged up my hood, cinched it tight, and donned padded mittens.

I struggled to get my bearings. Through the swirling drapery of flakes, the parking lot’s digital display flashed the happy announcement that the temperature stood at 19°. Windchill –16°. Welcome to ski country!

Lights from the ski area cast a pall across the imposing face of Killdeer Mountain. Columns of snow spiraled around the lampposts. A lead-colored cloud shrouded the runs. The digital sign went on to proclaim that the mountain now boasted an Eighty-five-inch base topped with Thirty-three inches of new!!!—ski-talk for how much snow we’ve got.

I pulled out my Rossignols, bought on sale long ago. I’d need them to follow Doug down from the bistro at the end of the show. The other skis, the valuable pair, I would be selling to him in less than three hours. I tossed down my poles and put on my boots. Another blustery breeze stung my eyes. The sign joyously screamed: More SNOW on the way! followed by a smiley face and the words Ski with caution!

In the back of the van, I pulled out three blankets to hide the precious skis. The carved names glowed briefly: Abetone, Della Vedetta, Corona. They were a glorious find, and I would have loved for Tom to keep them. Arch, who was obsessed with learning about the Second World War, was extremely unhappy with us for thinking of selling them.

I was supposed to pick up Arch after the show. With his teachers out for a faculty conference yesterday and today, he had stayed overnight with his best friend, Todd Druckman, Eileen’s son, in her gorgeous Killdeer condo. The boys loved to snowboard together. I was dreading one of his adolescent bad moods when he heard these skis were actually sold.

It was not something I wanted to think about. I spread out the blankets, threw a tarpaulin over the whole pile, and locked the van.

I could just hear the muffled jangle and clank of the gondola, half a mile away. Apparently, this morning’s winds had not been strong enough to delay the six o’clock start-up, when the ski patrol ascended the mountain. Resignedly, I shouldered my skis, poles, and backpack, and crunched across the mammoth lot. Buck up! I ordered myself. Doing the show and selling the skis will get you closer to reopening. I breathed in tangy wood smoke and blinked away stinging snowflakes. An arctic breeze whipsawed my scarf, and my boots cracked and slid on the hard-pack. I trudged along in the semidarkness, determined to get out of the cold wind that had whipped to a fury in the lot’s open space. Despite my resolution to be cheerful, I wondered why people thought hell wasn’t frozen over.

Panting, my thighs and toes numb, I finally arrived at the artfully carved wooden sign welcoming me to Killdeer. I leaned my skis and poles against the signpost. Under my bundled clothing, my body felt slick with sweat. Ahead, snow tumbled steadily around gold-glowing street lamps lining the walkway to the gondola. Extracting a tissue from my pocket, I wiped my eyes and blinked at Killdeer’s just-like-Dickens row of brightly-lit Victorian- and Bavarian-style shops. The street lamps, I’d learned, stayed on until the sun was completely up. In my month doing the cooking show, the days had become shorter; the pale, cold sun had risen later and later. I’d teased Arthur that by the close of the year we’d be doing the show in the dark. Arthur had sighed glumly and then suggested we could do a champagne breakfast show, bubbly supplied—like all the other vintages we featured—by Wakefield Wines. Now, thinking of my frozen fingertips, I wondered if Arthur had schnapps up at the bistro. If so, did I dare drink some before “going live”?

Actually, I didn’t want champagne or schnapps. I wanted coffee. I cared not a whit about the admonition that caffeine constricts skiers’ cells and lowers their body temperature. If I wanted to be awake to cook at the top and raise money as well, I desperately needed several shots of the good stuff.

Luckily, I knew there would be one place open at this hour. My spirits rose as I schlepped my load down the short, charming avenue. Storefronts twinkling with thousands of holiday lights made Aspen Meadow’s Main Street, fifty miles away, look as stark as a Shaker living room. In several hours, these brightly festooned boutiques would become a hive of commercial activity. I wouldn’t be trucking in high-priced commerce, but never mind.

I sniffed the scent of the dark, fragrant brew even as I rejoiced at the Open sign dangling from the door of Cinda’s Cinnamon Stop. I dropped my equipment near the covered decking that ran by the shops and clopped up the wooden steps.

“Hey, Goldy!” bellowed Cinda Caldwell from her steamy walk-up window. Cinda’s hair, dyed in a range of pink hues from cotton-candy to scarlet, was luminous behind the swirl of fat white flakes. “Come in, come in, I need to talk to you about something!”

I’d come to know Cinda—tall, athletic, endlessly enthusiastic and energetic—during my stint with the program. “You look worse than usual!” she cried cheerfully. “You’re still doing your show?”

“Yes, but I need your coffee to transform me into a chipper TV personality. Make that a warm, chipper TV personality.”

She guffawed. “Want three or four shots? Need a pastry with your espresso? On the house! C’mon!” she hollered impatiently. “There’s something I really need to tell you!”

“Okay, okay, triple shot, thanks,” I called back dutifully. “And I’d love a cinnamon roll.” I congratulated myself on being too early to appear at the bistro. What else could I do while I waited for Arthur’s crew to finish setting up, but indulge in free treats at Cinda’s?

I stuck my head into the warmth of her shop. The Cinnamon Stop boasted a short counter and eight round wooden tables plastered with snowboard stickers. A higgledy-piggledy assortment of plastic and wooden chairs bunched around and between the tables. The huge screen that showed snowboarding videos during working hours was dark. Cinda, who had gained unexpected renown as one of the first female snowboarders in the state, whisked back and forth in her minuscule working space. She wore a bright yellow turtleneck and purple ski pants. A fluorescent purple-and-yellow headband held her tangle of pink hair in place. On the wall behind her, a poster of a snowboarder catching air vied with old-fashioned Christmas bulb lights strung around a fluorescent Burton snowboard. The board hung at an angle beside a row of Cinda’s freestyle trophies. “Almost there!” she promised me. She was so upbeat, you’d never know she’d blown out her knees several years ago on the Killdeer half-pipe—that long, snow-covered half-cylinder favored by boarders—and hadn’t touched a board since.

“Drink.” Cinda thrust a paper cup of steaming dark liquid at me, then a paper plate topped with a twirled roll glazed with cinnamon sugar. “Listen, before I get into the serious stuff, I have to ask you something.” Her brown eyes, set in an elfin, freckled face, sparkled. “Do I hafta use Grand Marnier in your chocolate truffles? I’ve got some bargain brandy left over and was hoping I could substitute.” She gave me an open-mouthed smile.

I took a healthful swig of caffeine and wondered if you could chug an espresso, slam down a roll, lie politely, and still get the heartwarming effects of caffeine and sugar. Probably not. “The truffles will turn out better if you use high-quality liqueur. Cognac yes, brandy no.”

She surprised me by leaning in close. She smelled like vanilla. “How about this question, then. Didn’t I read in the paper that you’re married to a cop? He works for the Furman County Sheriff’s Department?”

“Yes. He does.” Crime alert. Regardless of what the thermometer said, my mind was not so frozen that it didn’t recognize the coffee, the roll, and the truffle question as an introduction to something else altogether. I gave her an innocent look. “You need help?”

She fiddled with the psychedelic headband. “It’s probably nothing. But a guy came into the shop a few nights ago, plastered, wanting coffee. My waiter, Davey, gave him some Kona. I used to know the drunk guy. Name’s Barton Reed. He was a snowboarder until he got into some kind of trouble and had to go away for a while. He’s a big-bruiser type with about twenty earrings in each ear, all little crosses and saints’ medals. Not that he’s religious—I heard he gave up that a long time ago. Anyway, Barton boasted that he’d gotten hold of a poison that could kill you if you just touched it.”

I pondered the espresso in my cup before answering: “Did he say he was going to use it?”

“He said he’d put patches of the poison in a letter, if you can believe that. You open the letter, you’re dead.”

“Did he show the letter to Davey?”

She paused and looked cautiously around the empty shop. “No. Here’s the bad part, Goldy. Barton said he was going to deliver this poison-in-a-letter soon. To a cop.”

My skin prickled. I heard my tone sharpen as questions tumbled out. “Do you know where this Barton guy lives? Did you report what he said?” She shook her head. “How about the cop? Did you get his name?”

Cinda picked up a rag and wiped the counter beside my half-full coffee cup. “Nah, I figured it was a hoax. So did Davey. Plus, who’m I going to report it to? Ski patrol? Forest Service? I couldn’t imagine the sheriff’s department traveling way over here, to the edge of the county, to hear about some drunk who claims he’s going to send a poisoned Christmas card to a cop.” She shrugged. “So I figured if you came by for coffee today, I’d tell you about it. See what you thought.”

It was getting on to seven o’clock. Still, this was very worrisome and I had to call Tom. Unfortunately, I’d left my cell phone in the van. I asked Cinda for her phone; she hoisted one to the counter. Quickly, I pressed the button for a Denver line and dialed first our home number, then our business line. Tom must have left early: Both calls netted answering machines. I pressed buttons for his sheriff’s department line and left a voice-mail asking Tom to call Cinda Caldwell about a threat to a policeman. Hanging up, I rummaged through my backpack full of culinary tools, pulled out my dog-eared wallet, and extracted one of Tom’s cards. “Call this number in thirty minutes, Cinda. Tell Tom everything you told me. Thirty minutes. Promise?”

She looked at me uncertainly. She took the card and fingered it cautiously, and I could imagine her telling Tom, Goldy told me to call you, it’s probably nothing, but she figured it might be kinda important—

I put my mittens back on. “Need to hop. They’re doing our show live today. It’s a fund-raiser dedicated to Nate Bullock, remember him?”

Still staring at the card, she nodded her rainbow-pink head. “Sure. The TV tracker dude.”

“I’m doing Mexican egg rolls. Crab cakes. Gingersnaps.”

Now she looked at me, perplexed. “I’ll try to catch it. But you know my customers would rather see an extreme ski video than a cooking show.” She shrugged.

I finished the roll—flaky, buttery, and spicy-sweet—polished off the coffee in two greedy swallows, and thanked her again.

When I ducked out of the warm shop, another fiercely cold wind struck me broadside. I struggled past the brilliantly lit facade of the Killdeer Art Gallery. In the Christmas-plaid-draped front window, black-and-white photos of backlit snowboarders making daring leaps off cliffs vied with garish, romantic oils of Native Americans beside tipis. A third of the window was devoted to watercolors of mountain villas. Just visible behind these were collages made up of images of ski equipment. When Coloradans enthused over Western Art, they weren’t talking about Michelangelo.

The last shop on the row was Furs for the Famous. Ah, fame. Fame was much desired by the hoi polloi, much despised by celebrities, much avoided by the infamous. As I clomped back down the steps toward the gondola, fueled by Cinda’s rich coffee, I reflected that I had no use for fame. Doing a gourmet cooking show had spawned neither gourmet cooks nor ardent fans. But complainers—who wrote and called and stopped me in the grocery store to ask if they could substitute margarine for butter, powdery dried muck for fresh imported Parmesan, and blocks of generic je-ne-sais-quoi for expensive dark chocolate—these I had in abundance. Tom had given me an early Christmas present: a T-shirt silk-screened with: Don’t ask. Don’t substitute.

And speaking of Tom, being married to a police investigator had also brought me recognition, as Cinda’s question demonstrated. Sometimes I felt like the pastor’s wife who is told of incest in a church family. Nobody wants to bother the pastor with it, right? Somebody’s sending a poisoned letter to a cop? Don’t bother the cop! Let Goldy handle it.

I walked down the snowpacked path and tramped across an arched footbridge. Four feet below, Killdeer Creek gurgled beneath its mantle of ice. Christmas and the promise of more snow would soon bring an onslaught of skiers. I trudged onward resolutely, not wanting to think about the holiday, and all the parties I would miss catering.

Sell the old skis. Get the new drains, I told myself. Develop the personal chef sideline, then reopen your business. And quit worrying!

I clambered up the ice-packed pathway to the clanking gondola. The car manager, his hair swathed in an orange jester cap, his face spiderwebbed from a decade of sun, stopped a car for me. I heaved my backpack and poles into the six-seater while the car manager whistled an off-tune Christmas carol and clanked my skis into the car’s outside rack. The car whisked away.

Up, up, up I zoomed toward the bistro. Even though snow continued to fall, the sky had brightened to the color of polished aluminum. The muffled grinding of the cable was the only sound as the car rolled past snow-frosted treetops and empty, pristinely white runs. This early, an hour and a half before the runs officially opened, I was alone on the lift. Our small studio audience usually rode up at quarter to eight. Early-bird skiers who couldn’t brave the cold would still be guzzling cocoa at Cinda’s or the Karaoke Café. Or they could be poring over maps of Killdeer’s back bowls, those steep, ungroomed deep-snow areas braved by only the hardiest of skiers. Or maybe they would be having their bindings checked at the repair shop, or just staring out at the snow-covered mountains. In other words, they could be anticipating real fun.

I shifted on the cold vinyl seat and peered downward. Below the new blanket of flakes, groomed, nubbled snow had frozen into ridged rows. The grooming was left to the snowcats, those tractor tanks that churned and smoothed the white stuff after-hours. By the time I skied down at nine, I knew, the new powder would be lumped into symmetrical rows of moguls: hard, tentlike humps of snow arrayed across the hill like an obstacle course. As much as I loved skiing, and I did, this might or might not be fun.

Halfway to the top, the car stopped. This happened occasionally, when children failed to make the hop onto the seats and their parents went nova. But it shouldn’t be happening now. I glanced back at the base; the gondola station was out of sight. A sudden wind made the cable car swing. I shivered and looked down at the runs. How far down were they, anyway?

Think about something else, Goldy. What you’re doing later. Selling Tom’s skis. I tightened my grip on the cold bars and took my mind off the distance to the ground.

Tom’s skis, I reminded myself. Yes. The buyer was Doug Portman. Not exactly a happy thing to think about, but never mind.

Doug Portman was a social-climbing accountant who had somehow become a rather large cog in our state political machine. Dressed in dapper seersucker or corduroy, he was always a hobnobbing presence at law enforcement picnics and other events. I didn’t know what he did to earn his living now, and didn’t want to know. The only thing I knew was that he had married for money and could now indulge in his collecting hobby. Still, I felt guilty about selling him Tom’s skis, since I had not told Tom to whom I was selling them. You didn’t exactly say, Uh, honey? I’m selling one of your most prized possessions to a guy I used to date … oh yes, I still have his number.…

Outside, the snowflakes whirled and thickened. My face was numb with cold. I briefly released my death-grip on the metal bars to tighten my hood. The time before Christmas should be full of laughter, parties, shopping, decorating, baking, family gatherings. So why was I dealing with the loss of my beloved business, a live television fund-raiser for a kind, outdoorsy fellow who’d died in an avalanche, and—as of twenty minutes ago—a crazy earring-studded guy sending poisoned love notes to a cop? Not to mention the sale of a valuable collectible item, more or less under the table, to a man I’d vowed never to see again?

But I was seeing him again. So much for never.