Tough Cookie

To the librarian I said, “Do you have any idea who left these for me?” When she shook her head, I asked if she would be willing to ask the staff if they’d received the manila folder from someone they remembered. The librarian took the file and disappeared. She came back to say one of the volunteers had reported to a staff person that the file had been in the drop box that morning. That meant that someone had left it sometime after closing on Saturday and before opening on Sunday. I tucked the folder under my arm, pressed some leftover cookies on her by way of thanks, and took off for home.

Tom had left an apologetic message on the tape. His captain wanted to see him; he’d be tied up longer than he expected. He’d be listening to the football game on the radio. Maybe he’d be home by the fourth quarter. Would I cheer for both of us?

There was another message, a long one, from Arthur Wakefield. I retrieved his wine list with suggested foods as I listened. He’d been able to rescue all but one of his wines from Customs. Still, he was planning on showcasing all five vintages, and a truck should deliver the sauvignon blanc Sunday afternoon.

He needed food for a dozen people, he went on. He’d invite four more people. He knew he’d only put fish, chicken, and red meat on the list—not very helpful—so this phone call was to spark my thinking. But remember, he himself needed to finish the cooking.

He loved the pork I left for him. He’d bought some pork tenderloins, and I should certainly make that dish again to go with the Châteauneuf-du-Pape. I should bring the ingredients for the marinade, though, then mix them with the red wine at his place. I scribbled madly.

A lot of folks had asked him, Arthur went on airily, about the yummy-looking crab cakes I’d made on TV. He wanted something Mexican to go with the zinfandel, but not the egg rolls, since he didn’t want to be running back and forth for appetizers. So please fix a Mexican main dish, he said vaguely, with chicken. Also a fish dish. He’d picked up some fresh sole and spinach while he was in Denver, could I do sole Florentine to go with the chablis? I nodded to his taped voice and continued to make notes.

Last, Arthur said, could I please make the ginger-snaps from the program? He’d gotten a great deal on that wonderful, lush Sauternes, and wanted to give the snaps another try. Had a lot of folks asked him about the cookies from TV, too, I wondered? He didn’t say. He did say that he’d pay for the foodstuffs, plus give me forty dollars an hour for labor, and another hundred for the time and travel I’d put in so far. Not bad. I rewound the machine and made sure I had the food requests right. I had a lot of cooking to do at his place tomorrow, no question about that.

I set aside Arthur’s directives and gripped the anonymously sent file from the library. I was trying to decide where to sit down and study it when Arch marched into the kitchen. He asked if he could do his splatter pattern with water mixed with confectioner’s sugar, dropped onto a cookie sheet. Great idea, I replied. Much better than bleach, anyway.

To give Arch privacy, I fixed myself an espresso and took it along with three cookies and the articles from the library into the living room. I muted the football halftime show and stared at the unopened file. Had The Jerk ordered this weird collection of material for me? My ex-husband had found ways to sabotage me from jail before.

I sipped the thick, dark coffee, especially welcome on a snowy day after working an event, and started reading the first article, dated three years before and headlined: UNSTABLE SNOW MAY HAVE CAUSED TWO DEATHS IN KILLDEER. In it, I read of avalanche victim Nate Bullock, host of PBS’s High Country Hallmarks, who had died the previous day in an avalanche in an out-of-bounds area. One source, who asked not to be identified, claimed Nate had gone to the valley to track lynx. But Nate had not left a marked map, the way a pilot might file a flight plan, so no one, not even his wife, had been quite sure what he was doing or where he was going the day he died.

On nearby Bighorn Overlook, the article went on to say, Fiona Wakefield—heir to the Wakefield corn oil fortune, and an intermediate skier—had died in a fall off a snow-covered cliff that was less than fifty yards out-of-bounds. Estimation of time of death for both Wakefield and Bullock was two in the afternoon.

I frowned. The two of them died on the same day, at the same time? Nobody had mentioned this to me, although Jack Gilkey had mentioned the unstable snow that day.