Diane Davidson - Tough Cookie

“I know,” Arthur replied grimly. “Don’t I know.”

I summoned a firm voice. “Would you go first, please?” He shot me another skeptical look, then skied ahead on the two-foot-wide trail through the trees.

Marla poled her way up next to me. She was breathing hard. She peered in disbelief at the path Arthur had just taken. “What is this, a frigging obstacle course?”

The ground on the trail path alternated between deep clumps of snow and slick ice. I carefully made my way over the bumps. With my goggles on, the scarce sunshine in the woods brought sudden twilight. I had agreed to come here because I wanted to know more about Arthur and the deaths three years ago. But I was wary, and intended to remain extremely cautious.

Soon the trees opened onto a granite ledge. I slid to a stop on the ice-covered outcropping. Realizing I was just fifteen feet from the edge of the precipice sent my heart into my throat. I breathed deeply to steady myself; my eyes watered from the frigid wind. Despite the danger nearby, the panoramic sweep of snowcapped peaks, forested valleys, and ice-sculpted ravines was undeniably stunning. To our left, skiers in a back bowl resembled gnats floating down a hill.

“Wow,” said Marla. “I never knew this view was here.”

“The ski patrol doesn’t want you to know,” Arthur told her. “That’s why they closed the old path.” He pointed to smoke rising from a small building on a hill to our right. The plain beige edifice, which looked as if it had once stood in the middle of a forest, was now surrounded by hundreds of tree stumps. “That’s the expansion area. The resort is under tight construction-loan deadlines, so they’re working night and day to clear it. Killdeer needs to start lift construction in the spring. Over there,” he added, pointing to a small cabin at the edge of the construction area, “Killdeer Corp has stationed a full-time security guard, just in case any environmentalists take violent exception to the expansion plans.”

He raised his eyebrows at us and pointed higher up the peak to the right of the construction area. That mountain featured a bare shelf of trees clustered around a sheer dropoff. “That’s Elk Ridge,” said Arthur. “The steep area below the ring of woods is a leeward-facing, thirty-two-degree slope.” He swept his mittened hand down to a wide, partially wooded, gently sloping valley below the ridge. It looked like a postcard of a pristine, snowy meadow. “That’s where the avalanche came down three years ago, the one that killed Nate Bullock.” Moving parallel to the dropoff near us, Arthur worked his way to the edge. I stayed put and motioned for Marla, standing next to me, to do the same.

“Not to worry,” she muttered, her eyes on the perilous drop-off. Arthur kept moving forward.

“Careful, Arthur.” The words were out of my mouth before I noticed. Motherly habits die hard.

Arthur knelt on his skis and gestured to the area below the dropoff. “There,” he said, “is where Jack Gilkey pushed my mother to her death. In court, Jack insisted I’d given her too much to drink, that someone —me , he meant to imply—came out of the trees and hit him so hard with a rock that he fell unconscious into the snow. Then whoever this Mr. Atlas was, he pushed my mother over the edge.” He looked at us. “Do you actually think one person could incapacitate a strong man and push an athletic woman to her death?”

“It’s possible,” I said grimly, thinking back to the terrible stories of spouse abuse and murder that I’d heard since my years of ridding myself of The Jerk. Arthur gave me a black look.

“No, Arthur, Goldy doesn’t think one person could do all that,” Marla said hastily. “Let’s go back.”

I asked sympathetically, “How much wine had Jack given your mother at lunch?”

He shrugged. “Three glasses of a spätlese Riesling that I’d recommended. And no, I wouldn’t have given them a bottle if I’d known he was going to taunt her to race here. Race here ? Why would you do something so foolish?”

Why indeed? I murmured that I did not know, and recalled Jack’s claim that Fiona had initiated the race idea. And I’d believed his explanation: that his wife had had too much to drink, that she had challenged him—her young, virile husband—to race to a dangerous spot, to prove—or so it seemed—that she, too, was young, virile, and sexy, since she was willing to take risks.

That weirdly victorious expression again swept over Arthur’s face. “Don’t you want to see what those articles were talking about, Goldy? The articles you thought I left for you?”

“She doesn’t.” Marla said it firmly. “And if she gets any closer to that edge, I’ll have another heart attack.”

Arthur took a last long look over the side of the outcropping, his face unreadable, then got to his feet and skied quickly past us, toward the run. When we found our way out—Arthur checked for lurking ski patrol members before we sneaked back onto Bighorn—he showed us how to get onto Easy-as-Pie. “Matter of minutes.” He turned back to the rope. “I’m going back in for a bit.”

Marla and I shook our heads in sympathy … and bafflement. Arthur nodded to us, as if he’d made the point he intended to make. He asked me to call him that night about the exact menu they’d put on the graphic for the next show, then scooted under the rope. Soon he disappeared through the trees.

“That guy is weird,” Marla commented as she adjusted her goggles. “Plus, he drinks too much.”

Eileen was waiting for us at Big Map; she waved enthusiastically as we skied up. Wearing a skintight royal blue ski suit and a red-and-royal-blue tasseled dunce cap, she looked the epitome of cute as a button . No matter what Arthur Wakefield thought of Jack Gilkey, he had clearly wrought a transformation in Marla’s and my old friend.

“Come on, come on, we don’t have much time,” Eileen chided gaily. “Jack’s going to meet us at the bistro at twenty to three. Feel okay on Mission Hill? It’s a very smoothly groomed intermediate run.”

Marla and I said Mission Hill sounded fine. With our skis stored in the gondola rack, and Eileen’s snowboard lying across half her metal seat, we rumbled back up the mountain. Once we’d unloaded and found the run, it was just a matter of minutes before the three of us were laughing and shouting, spraying snow on each other, and yelling “Wahoo!” every time we sped past each other down the slope.

Jack Gilkey caught up with us the second time we ascended in the gondola. Under her breath, Marla muttered, “I’d forgotten how yummy-looking that guy is.” Jack, dressed in a fashionable beige-and-black ski suit and a dunce cap to match Eileen’s, seemed cordial, even a tad shy, toward Marla and me. His solicitude and affection for Eileen was obvious. I watched as he cautioned her to slow down, sternly, like the mother hen Arch often accused me of being.

Eileen knew how to ride a snowboard, I’d give her that. She must have been practicing every day for years to be able to make the jumping, leaping, twisting moves she did that afternoon. Marla and I laughed at her antics, while Jack skied cautiously behind her. Maybe this trying-to-prove-you’re-virile thing was a universal phenomenon in May-September relationships. Who knew? They were having a great time. We all were.

One thing about intermediate ski slopes: There’s a lot of yelling. Kids call to their parents to wait for them, and vice versa. Usually it’s all good fun. Sometimes it isn’t. Husbands and wives scream at each other to speed up or slow down. Ski school instructors try to keep their charges in an orderly line behind them, calling out directions like a caterpillar head noisily instructing its lengthy tail.