Diane Davidson - Tough Cookie

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 Kill-deer. 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.”