Diane Davidson - Tough Cookie

“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 , puhleeze. 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.”

“Rorry, you’re an old friend.” I asked gently, “Why did you decide to have Nate’s baby, now ? After all these years?”

She pressed her lips together, struggling to keep the emotion in. Then she answered, “I lost one baby when he died. And … I miss Nate terribly, even with all the … unanswered questions. The baby is for me—for us . I decided to have the baby now for what Nate and I could have been.” Before I could reply, she pulled back her sleeve to check her watch. “I need to go. Can you still take me to work at the warehouse? I’m doing a double shift today. A coworker can bring me home later.” Before I could ask whether doing a double shift was a good idea, she excused herself to freshen up.

I sighed quietly, picked up our mugs, and fit them into the trailer’s small, packed dishwasher. When Rorry returned wearing snow boots, a jacket, and a hat, we took off for the Killdeer warehouse.

The enormous supply area was only a quarter-mile beyond the turnoff for the path to Elk Ridge and Elk Valley. I didn’t want Rorry to see the signs to the place where her husband died. To distract her, I asked her to tell me about her work.

“It’s not very exciting,” she said with a laugh. “I just track the inventory for the supplies going up the mountain.” We pulled into the parking area of several mammoth, brown-painted warehouses. Two heavily clad workmen were unloading boxes from a truck bearing the logo of a Denver wholesale food supplier. Numerous signs warned not to park, not to enter, not to do anything but go away. “That’s the central storage area for produce, meats, canned goods,” Rorry said as she pointed beyond a row of snowcats. “The tracks for the canisters start up there and go straight to the bistro. It’s pretty efficient, really. Well, gotta go.” She hesitated before opening the car door. “Goldy … I’m sorry to burden you with all my troubles.”

“Rorry,” I tried one final time, “it’s possible that even if Nate did go up the ridge with a snowboarder, it was completely innocent. He could have been filming something else, and then things went wrong—”

“Then where’s his camera? Sony VX-One Thousand, digital-video, industry-standard for filming out-of-doors? You gotta have a camera if you’re going to film tracks or skiers or just do clips of trees. Suppose the kid didn’t steal it when he took our television. If Nate was carrying that camera, the avalanche team or groomers or somebody should have found it, shouldn’t they? They found Nate’s hat, fifty feet from his body. They even found the note still inside his jacket.” She raised her eyebrows and held out her hands. “Don’t know? Me, either. And if his little hike was so innocent, why wouldn’t his girlfriend come forward afterward? ‘We weren’t making love, we were just hiking and chatting about public television! Then he went down the hill, and I went up!’”

“Rorry—”

She unsnapped her seatbelt. “Look, thanks for your concern. The casseroles will be great. I’ll call you when the baby comes.” She struggled to find her next words. “Please, Goldy. If I could turn Nate’s death into a Sunday school lesson in redemption, believe me, I would. But I can’t.”

“If you could just find this person—”

Her golden eyes blazed and her cheeks flushed with anger. “I don’t want to know who it is anymore. Or to see her. I’m pregnant again. I have to stay calm. My husband was unfaithful to me, I barely have enough money to live on, and my car’s been wrecked. But I am not going to lose this baby. I’m not stupid, Goldy. Nate’s girlfriend never came forward because she didn’t want to admit she was screwing a man with a pregnant wife.”

With that, Rorry climbed out of the car and slammed the door. She walked away clumsily, her shoulders slumped, her head bent. Somehow I knew there were tears in her eyes. You have not thought of every angle , I wanted to call after her.

The girlfriend—or whoever the snowboarder was with Nate that day—had triggered an out-of-bounds avalanche. But Rorry was wrong. The snowboarder hadn’t stayed silent because of an affair with a man with a pregnant wife. The snowboarder hadn’t come forward because she—or he—had started an avalanche that had killed a man with a pregnant wife.

CHAPTER 16

I drove out of Killdeer feeling as low as I had since the health inspector closed my kitchen. Poor Rorry. I was personally acquainted with the bitterness that welled up after betrayal. Yes, indeedy, I reflected as I moved into an unplowed lane on the interstate, a husband’s cheating could poison your whole outlook. Not only that, but I also had firsthand experience in the no-income, no-vehicle department. But I was lucky: Now I had a husband with an income, and a friend who’d loaned me a car. Rorry was vastly, vastly unlucky. Had someone stolen her car and deliberately wrecked it? Why would someone do that? Had it been her Subaru that had hit the van behind mine? Or would that be too much of a coincidence? In any event, I kept a kestrel-eye on the Rover’s rearview mirror. One catapult off a cliff per week was all I could handle.