Diane Davidson - Tough Cookie

By nine-fifteen, I was actually humming to myself, a sure sign the culinary work had once again helped me get life back into perspective. I realized the time set for Arch and Todd’s presentation was only half an hour away. I checked that the bread dough had risen properly and sent the boys a silent prayer of encouragement.

The phone rang. Concerned that it might be the hospital calling about Eileen, I picked up rather than letting the machine answer. It was not the hospital. It was Boots Faraday.

“Look, Goldy,” she said without preamble, “Arthur Wakefield insists I owe you an apology.”

“What?”

“Arthur’s an old friend, and he didn’t mean any harm by running that article about you.” She paused, struggling, I supposed, to adopt an unfamiliar apologetic tone. “I … I heard about your friend Eileen Druckman, and that awful Barton Reed, and that you were there when it happened. I realized that you really are in the middle of a mess.”

“Yes, it’s bad,” I admitted. But why call me? Unless, of course, she wanted to confess that Doug Portman’s mean critique of her work had driven her to kill him six days ago.

“There’s something I didn’t tell you,” Boots went on. “I … I … don’t know whether it’s relevant. But … I’ve decided to tell you anyway—It doesn’t matter anymore.” She took a shaky breath. “I do know what Nate was doing the day he died. It wasn’t tracking lynx. That was just the standard story he told me to put out if he ever got caught.”

“Got caught doing what?”

“Filming in Killdeer’s out-of-bounds area. He … didn’t think he’d get killed, of course.” She sighed. “He was trying to make money, before his baby arrived. He … was making a sports-genre video.”

“A what ?”

“An outdoor sports film, haven’t you ever seen them? You can catch them on the sports channels. The most popular around here are the extreme snowboarding videos. They show boarders leaping and spinning and jumping off ledges and generally risking death for a ride.”

“Okay, yes,” I said, remembering the big screen at Cinda’s. “But … what kind of money could you hope to make from one of those?”

She laughed at my naïveté. “Big money. The good ones sell for fifty to a hundred thousand. For the great ones, you can make two hundred fifty thousand to half a million.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No. Nate had talked to a distributor who was a friend of mine, a collage client. The distributor wanted to see a rough cut of whatever extreme snowboarding film he could do. But Nate didn’t want to get Rorry’s hopes up, so he begged me not to tell anybody.”

“Was Barton Reed the snowboarder who was with him?”

“I … don’t know.”

“Were you the boarder?”

She groaned. “Of course not. I don’t engage in risky behavior. By the way, that includes sleeping with married men, in case Rorry has been filling you in on her paranoid baloney.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Listen,” she said brusquely, “I’ve been trying to protect Nate’s good-granola-guy reputation for three years. Don’t you think died tracking lynx sounds better than died making money ? But I wanted you to know the truth. I don’t know if it will relate to any of your problems.”

Or your problems, I thought, such as my wondering if you triggered the avalanche, and that’s why you’ve been lying for three years. After a moment, I asked, “Did Nate or Rorry know Doug Portman?”

“Nate knew about Portman through the artists’ association. I’m not sure whether Rorry knew Portman or not. I just wanted you to know the truth about Nate. Because Arthur asked me to talk to you,” she added stiffly. “And he’s a good friend.”

“Thanks, Boots.” I didn’t say, Is it the truth? Or, Is Arthur more than a friend to you, by any chance? I said only, “You … don’t know anything more about Doug Portman, do you?”

“Only that he wouldn’t have known a decent piece of artwork if he’d run into it.” She banged the phone down before I could comment.

I slid the bread into the oven, set the timer, and simmered some of the cinnamon-orange oatmeal mixture to test it. I took a bite of the creamy concoction with its moist tart cherries. Heavenly. I was about to spoon up some more when the phone rang again. Boots, I figured, remembering more truth.

“I hear you’re still trying to figure things out up in Killdeer,” came the raspy voice of Reggie Dawson.

I exploded. Enough was enough. “Who are you? You’re not a journalist. I checked. What do you want?”

“If you don’t want your son hurt, you better start skiing at Vail, caterer. Quit being such a busybody.”

“You leave my family alone!” I hollered, but whoever it was had hung up. I pressed buttons to trap the caller’s number, and prayed that the telephone company’s central computer had indeed registered the call. Then I called Tom’s voice-mail and told him there had been another threatening call, and could the department please try to trace it, again?

Thoroughly unnerved, I called Elk Park Prep. Yes, I was assured, Arch Korman and Todd Druckman were fine. No intruder could get into that school, the receptionist told me, what with all the metal detectors and video cameras that had been installed over the summer. But hearing the anxiety in my voice, she put me on hold and went to check on Arch’s exact location. When she returned, she said Arch and Todd were just going into English class. Oh, yes, I replied, as relief washed over me. The Spenser report was due in fifteen minutes. I thanked the receptionist and hung up.

The comforting, homey scent of baking bread wafted through the kitchen. Outside, snow fell. I told myself I’d done everything I could to figure out who “Reggie Dawson” was. Arch was safe, and Tom would find the threatening caller. And nail him.

I fixed myself a cup of espresso laced with cream and ordered myself to think positively. At nine-forty-five, I sent good vibes to the boys as they faced the class to perform. I tried to send a telepathic message to Arch to look only at kids he knew would not laugh when he began. I visualized him standing confidently and speaking clearly …. Whatsoever from one place doth fall, is with the tide unto another brought: For there is nothing lost, that may be found … Wait a minute. “Found if sought,” I said aloud, and stared out at the falling snow.

Numerous times, I’d heard an avalanche described as a “killer tide.” A tidal wave of snow that comes down the mountain.

I thought of Arch’s physics experiment. Most of the frosting had spattered on the cookie sheet. But a very few drops, in places only one, had spattered far away. This was what had happened in the hospital waiting room, when Diego had been hit in the eye by a very errant chunk of dried frosting. That’s quantum mechanics. Or quantum physics, if you prefer.

He was filming a sports-genre video , Boots had said.

His camera was stolen along with the TV , Rorry had insisted. But the TV had been the only item recovered.

Whatsoever from one place doth fall, is with the tide unto another brought… . In the killer tide of an avalanche, maybe some things—one item in particular—had followed the patterns observed by quantum physicists and spattered far away.

I chugged the last of the espresso and dialed the main number for Killdeer. After an eternity of punching numbers for menu options, I was finally connected with a woman in Killdeer Security.

“I’m calling about a missing item,” I began.

“Let me get into my program for the Lost and Found,” she said pleasantly. Computer buttons clicked. “How long ago was the item lost?”