Tough Cookie

My eyes wandered over the diagram to Elk Valley, where Nate Bullock had died three years ago. Nate wanted to make extra money. Doing what? I really can’t say…. Striped red lines indicated both the valley and the ridge above it as out-of-bounds for skiing. Just to the west of Elk Valley lay a green-dotted area labeled Area III Expansion. On the map, I retraced my route this morning along the main road and then to the parking lot by the Elk Ridge Nature Trail. If I had come out the other side of the parking lot the first time, I could have found Arthur’s condo without a hitch. Speaking of directions …

Near me a ski patroller was carefully buckling yellow straps around a transport sled. I called a greeting down and received an answering smile from the patroller, a young woman with a thin, tanned face.

“I don’t want to interrupt you,” I began.

“You’re not. Have you lost somebody? Do you need help?”

I told her I was just waiting for my son. “But I do have a couple of questions about the map, if you don’t mind.” I introduced myself and said that yesterday I’d done a fund-raiser for Nate Bullock up at the bistro.

“Yeah,” the patroller said mournfully, “I knew Nate. Everybody did.” Her genuine sadness seemed a contrast to Rorry’s bitter words from yesterday: I’m not sad. Just puzzled. And then there had been Boots’s angry comment: Don’t get me started on Rorry.

I turned back to the map. “What I can’t figure out is why a high-country-wise person like Nate would go into a dangerous area like that.”

She shrugged. “There hadn’t been a slide there in thirty years. Nate probably thought he’d be okay.”

I glanced at the slope. “Rorry Bullock, Nate’s widow? She’s an old friend of mine.”

The patrolwoman put her hands on her knees, sprang up agilely, and brushed snow from her legs. She was about my height, with dark blond hair poking from beneath her red hat. She moved with a graceful, unconscious athleticism, and as usual at the ski resort, I felt horridly uncoordinated and chubby. But not corpulent. At least, I hoped not.

“Yeah,” she said, “Rorry’s getting close, now. With that baby about to pop, I’m surprised she came up to the bistro yesterday.”

“But she did,” I said. “Unfortunately, I was so busy yesterday that I didn’t get a chance to talk with her very much. I know she’s an employee of Killdeer Corp and lives in a trailer, but I don’t know where she works or have her exact address or phone number any more. Any ideas?”

The patrolwoman harnessed the sled to her shoulders. “Last I heard, Rorry was working the night shift at the container warehouse. I’m pretty sure her number is listed. Oh, and she has the only green-and-white mobile home in Killdeer.” She expertly stamped snow off her boots, signaling that she was ready to go.

“Ah,” I said hesitantly. “Do you think it’s okay to talk to Rorry about the avalanche? I kind of got weird vibes from her yesterday.”

The patrolwoman shrugged inside her harness, then pointed to two patrol members working the bottom of the slope. “Ask Gail. The tall one. She knows Rorry pretty well. She was also on the search team that found Nate.”

I thanked her and galumphed between skiers and boarders to Gail, whose windburned, leathery face was framed with long, shiny black hair pulled off her forehead with a thick red band. I scanned the slope—still no Arch. As I introduced myself to Gail, I recognized her: she was the woman who’d pulled me up from the snow yesterday morning, when I’d fallen after disembarking from the gondola. She recognized me, too, and said I’d done a great job on the Bullock fund-raiser. How about that, I thought. A compliment, for a change!

I told her I was looking for my son and his friend, both snowboarders, both late. Gail asked for their description and said she hadn’t seen them, but she’d keep an eye out.

“The patrolwoman over there by the map?” I asked. “The one with the sled? I told her I was a friend of the Bullocks. She mentioned you were on one of the search teams that went out for Nate.”

Gail nodded sadly. “Yeah, I was.”

“Uh, Rorry and I were real close before she moved to Killdeer. I’d like to hook up with her again, bring her some casseroles for when the baby arrives. But she seemed to be in an awfully bad mood when I saw her yesterday …”

“That figures. The memorial is hard on her, I think. And of course, losing Nate, and then their baby, that was horrible, too.”

I’m not sad, Goldy. Just puzzled.

“Uh,” I ventured, “the patrolwoman over there said an avalanche hadn’t come down Elk Ridge for thirty years.”

Gail shrugged. “You get the right snow conditions, a slope steeper than thirty degrees, a trigger, it could happen anywhere. That’s why we set explosives on some peaks. We want to anticipate slides.”