Tough Cookie

I hustled back to the kitchen, tucked two tiny boxes of apple juice and four bagged cookies into Arch’s backpack, then handed him the pack in the foyer. I mumbled, “Treats inside.” Arch glared and shook his head: Stop talking, Mom. Lettie waved gracefully as she bounced down the sidewalk. Arch did not look back.

I rechecked the foodstuffs going to Arthur’s place, kissed Tom twice, and set out. After I crossed the Divide, the sky lightened. Approaching Killdeer, smoke from wood-fires hovered in the valley and turned the air pleasantly acrid. By nine I was pulling into the Elk Ridge Nature Trail parking lot. It was chock-full of brightly clad day-skiers. They were pulling out their skis and poles, calling to each other as steam issued from their mouths, and jouncing along merrily in their ski boots toward the bus stop.

As I wended the Rover through the lot to get to the turnoff to Arthur’s, I passed the glistening humps of snow that marked the base of the Elk Ridge trail. I felt a twinge of jealousy for the skiers. The mid-December day seemed made for skiing: the sun glittered off pristine slopes, the sky extended endlessly in a cloudless periwinkle dome, a light breeze carried fresh, sweet air off the peaks, and five inches of new powder topped an eighty-five-inch base. What more could you want?

Let’s see, I answered myself playfully as I pulled into Arthur’s driveway. How about a friendlier relationship with my son? But I doubted that was really possible with a fourteen-year-old boy. Well, what else would I like? How about a new van, and my business restored? And oh, yes, to find out what had happened to Doug Portman, and why someone had left me a pile of articles about two other Killdeer deaths from three years ago.

The doorbell bing-bonged into the depths of Arthur’s condo. I realized I was going alone into the house of a man I worked with, but didn’t know very much about. Remembering Tom’s admonition I put down the box I was carrying—causing my injured arm to yelp with pain—and pulled the cellular phone out of my pocket. I dialed my husband’s sheriff’s department answering machine and announced to the tape that I was at the doorstep of Arthur Wakefield’s place. It wasn’t exactly protection, but it was something. Arthur pulled the door open. As usual, he was clutching a pink bottle of antacid.

“Come in, come in,” he said.

“Good morning, Arthur! I was just letting my husband the cop

know where I was.”

He shot me a curious look, noticed the box at my feet, struggled to get the Pepto into his pocket, then took the carton. “I’m in a phone battle with a supplier. Might have to go over to Vail to look for some cases of the sauvignon blanc.”

“I’m sorry,” I murmured. Being a wine importer did not sound like a whole lot of fun.

“You can set up in the kitchen. Need me to carry in any more boxes?”

“That’s okay, Arthur, I can handle it.” Thankfully, the phone rang. Arthur dumped the box into my hands and rushed to take his call.

In the barely-used-but-beautiful yellow-and-white kitchen, it was slow going finding the utensil drawers, cupboard for baking sheets, and bowl and cutting board cabinets. At least Arthur had made a neat design of the buffet schedule, with meticulous notes beside each entrée concerning its placement. Now I just had to teach him how to finish the dishes themselves.

“I heard you had some trouble with Boots Faraday,” Arthur said grimly as he rushed into the kitchen and slammed the portable phone onto the tile counter.

What had Boots Faraday done after we’d met? Spent the rest of the afternoon calling people to complain about me? “I delivered your wine and stayed for lunch. Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to like me very much. And by the way, you didn’t tell me you ran an article that described me as a crime-solver, for goodness’ sake.”

“Sorry, sorry, that’s show biz. Hype. Look, I’ll talk to Boots. The Bullock thing is extremely sensitive to her. Rorry is convinced to this day that Boots was having an affair with Nate. I’m sure they weren’t. Boots was just trying to help Nate with some business venture. But Rorry was so jealous that Nate got paranoid. Boots started calling him from pay phones and using coded messages, and that just made matters worse. She’ll come to her senses, don’t worry. I’ll get her to apologize—”

“Please forget it, Arthur.” I hesitated. “What business venture was Boots helping Nate with?”

Arthur shrugged. “Come on, Goldy. It’s all I can do to keep the wine business straight.”

And speaking of business, I was desperate to ask Arthur about his love/hate connection with PBS. But I figured that his TV work, along with his vintages and his complaints to the probate court, was what kept him on antacids. “All right, then,” I said pleasantly, “We’ve got a lot of cooking to do here. Should we start? Please? How about with the salad? I made one of mixed field greens. Didn’t dress it, though.”