Diane Davidson - Tough Cookie

To the librarian I said, “Do you have any idea who left these for me?” When she shook her head, I asked if she would be willing to ask the staff if they’d received the manila folder from someone they remembered. The librarian took the file and disappeared. She came back to say one of the volunteers had reported to a staff person that the file had been in the drop box that morning. That meant that someone had left it sometime after closing on Saturday and before opening on Sunday. I tucked the folder under my arm, pressed some leftover cookies on her by way of thanks, and took off for home.

Tom had left an apologetic message on the tape. His captain wanted to see him; he’d be tied up longer than he expected. He’d be listening to the football game on the radio. Maybe he’d be home by the fourth quarter. Would I cheer for both of us?

There was another message, a long one, from Arthur Wakefield. I retrieved his wine list with suggested foods as I listened. He’d been able to rescue all but one of his wines from Customs. Still, he was planning on showcasing all five vintages, and a truck should deliver the sauvignon blanc Sunday afternoon.

He needed food for a dozen people, he went on. He’d invite four more people. He knew he’d only put fish, chicken, and red meat on the list—not very helpful—so this phone call was to spark my thinking. But remember, he himself needed to finish the cooking.

He loved the pork I left for him. He’d bought some pork tenderloins, and I should certainly make that dish again to go with the Châteauneuf-du-Pape. I should bring the ingredients for the marinade, though, then mix them with the red wine at his place. I scribbled madly.

A lot of folks had asked him, Arthur went on airily, about the yummy-looking crab cakes I’d made on TV. He wanted something Mexican to go with the zinfandel, but not the egg rolls, since he didn’t want to be running back and forth for appetizers. So please fix a Mexican main dish, he said vaguely, with chicken. Also a fish dish. He’d picked up some fresh sole and spinach while he was in Denver, could I do sole Florentine to go with the chablis? I nodded to his taped voice and continued to make notes.

Last, Arthur said, could I please make the ginger-snaps from the program? He’d gotten a great deal on that wonderful, lush Sauternes, and wanted to give the snaps another try. Had a lot of folks asked him about the cookies from TV, too, I wondered? He didn’t say. He did say that he’d pay for the foodstuffs, plus give me forty dollars an hour for labor, and another hundred for the time and travel I’d put in so far. Not bad. I rewound the machine and made sure I had the food requests right. I had a lot of cooking to do at his place tomorrow, no question about that.

I set aside Arthur’s directives and gripped the anonymously sent file from the library. I was trying to decide where to sit down and study it when Arch marched into the kitchen. He asked if he could do his splatter pattern with water mixed with confectioner’s sugar, dropped onto a cookie sheet. Great idea, I replied. Much better than bleach, anyway.

To give Arch privacy, I fixed myself an espresso and took it along with three cookies and the articles from the library into the living room. I muted the football halftime show and stared at the unopened file. Had The Jerk ordered this weird collection of material for me? My ex-husband had found ways to sabotage me from jail before.

I sipped the thick, dark coffee, especially welcome on a snowy day after working an event, and started reading the first article, dated three years before and headlined: UNSTABLE SNOW MAY HAVE CAUSED TWO DEATHS IN KILLDEER. In it, I read of avalanche victim Nate Bullock, host of PBS’s High Country Hallmarks , who had died the previous day in an avalanche in an out-of-bounds area. One source, who asked not to be identified, claimed Nate had gone to the valley to track lynx. But Nate had not left a marked map, the way a pilot might file a flight plan, so no one, not even his wife, had been quite sure what he was doing or where he was going the day he died.

On nearby Bighorn Overlook, the article went on to say, Fiona Wakefield—heir to the Wakefield corn oil fortune, and an intermediate skier—had died in a fall off a snow-covered cliff that was less than fifty yards out-of-bounds. Estimation of time of death for both Wakefield and Bullock was two in the afternoon.

I frowned. The two of them died on the same day, at the same time? Nobody had mentioned this to me, although Jack Gilkey had mentioned the unstable snow that day.

The next article stated: QUESTIONS LINGER IN TWO KILLDEER DEATHS. Mysteriously, this writer claimed, both Bullock and Wakefield had not been alone. When the ski patrol had found Jack Gilkey, his skull had been bloodied and he’d been dazed. The patrol had discovered his wife one hundred feet below him, over the cliff. Dead. Gilkey had claimed he and his wife had been attacked by a strong-built, ski-masked person. The three of them had struggled; Jack had been knocked unconscious; Fiona had gone over the cliff edge. In trying to rescue Fiona and Jack, the ski patrol had obliterated any sign of other prints in the snow.

In the case of Nate Bullock, the patrol, Forest Service, and Sheriff’s department had found a set of boot prints beside Nate’s, going into the out-of-bounds area. This I already knew from patrolwoman Gail. But only Nate’s body had been found in the search. No one else had been reported missing.

The third article screamed: SNOWBOARD TRACKS ON ELK RIDGE VANISHED INTO AVALANCHE ZONE. It was possible, the writer hypothesized, that Nate Bullock had hiked partway up the mountain with a snowboarder. The two had then parted ways, Nate tracking in the valley, the snowboarder ascending the ridge. Had the snowboarder triggered the avalanche that killed Nate?

WAKEFIELD WIDOWER QUESTIONED focused on Jack Gilkey’s account of the circumstances surrounding his wife Fiona’s tragic death. More details of Fiona’s last day had emerged: Fiona had had too much to drink at lunch, she’d boasted she could beat her husband to the Bighorn Overlook, a roped-off area just off one of Killdeer’s advanced slopes. The overlook faces the out-of-bounds area that includes Elk Ridge, the writer added parenthetically, and skiers occasionally ducked the boundary line to take in the view. Those pristine mountain forests of Elk Ridge, the article reported, were now earmarked for ski-area expansion. According to Jack Gilkey, Fiona had skied ahead of him and ducked the rope. Fiona and Jack arrived at the overlook, then were attacked by someone bursting from the trees. Jack tried to help his wife and was knocked out himself.

QUESTIONS PERSIST IN DEATH OF HEIRESS cited the postmortem drug screen, which showed a blood-alcohol level in Fiona’s body that made her legally drunk. GILKEY CONVICTED OF CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT HOMICIDE added that a mitten belonging to Jack had been found clutched in Fiona’s hand. He had let her drink too much; he had let her go down a run she wasn’t qualified to ski. The nail in Jack’s coffin had been the fact that the ski patrol had apprehended him at the overlook the day before Fiona died. They’d yanked his ticket and warned him away from that spot. But the next day, he and Fiona had raced to the same out-of-bounds overlook.…

Since by law a person who in any way causes another person’s death cannot benefit from it, the article concluded, Jack Gilkey was not inheriting Fiona’s millions. Neither was her son Arthur, however. If Jack for any reason did not inherit, Fiona had specified that her money should go to charity: the Public Broadcasting System.

Finally, WAKEFIELD HEIR FILES COMPLAINT recapitulated Arthur’s furious claim that Jack Gilkey had exerted “undue influence” on Fiona Wakefield in the making of her will. Before Fiona’s remarriage, Arthur had been the sole beneficiary of a twenty-million-dollar estate. Suddenly, Arthur had become, instead of the heir to an immense fortune, the recipient of a paltry million-dollar trust fund. But nineteen million was not going to PBS if Arthur Wakefield had anything to say about it. The article added that ski patrol had verified that it had been Arthur Wakefield who had sent the patrol to the overlook, to try to find his missing mother. They’d found her all right, but she was already dead. Her neck had broken in her fall.