Tough Cookie (10 page)

As I was finishing my first no-meat-accompaniment glass of wine, Tom called. I filled him in on my latest accident without too much detail, ignoring Marla's smirks. Tom said he was bringing Arch home from Todd's. My son was worried about me; he'd changed his mind about staying with Todd and wanted to be in his own place. Tom also said he'd called Julian. Julian was skipping his night of old films to join us for dinner - dinner that he would fix.

Marla told me to sit still while she set our oak kitchen table. She lamented that the library board was having a I dinner meeting that evening, so she wouldn't be joining us. I watched her work. No question about it, the glass of merlot was killing the pain in my arm. I'd have to suggest tea with it to Arthur instead of beef. . . . Marla I hugged me gently and left, promising to call.

Two hours later, Tom, Julian, Arch, and I dug into Julian's succulent, lemon-and-garlic-laced sautéed jumbo shrimp - his scrumptious version of scampi- 1 served over spinach fettucine. I took a good look at Julian. His handsome, haggard face, dark-circled eyes, and ear-length brown hair gave him the look of a typical sleep-deprived college student.

He sensed my mood. "Don't you like the shrimp?" he asked earnestly.

"It's out of this world," I replied, and meant it. But the events of the day had taken away my appetite. Arch and Tom, their mouths full, made mm-mm noises.

Julian put down his fork. "Goldy, now that your van's totaled, I want you to take my Rover. If I stay in Boulder, I don't need it." Julian's deluxe white Range Rover had been a gift from former employers. Before I could protest, he persisted: "My apprenticeship pays enough for me to share an apartment with some friends I've made. And I will be able to get around, oh mother of all mother hens."

"Julian," I murmured, "don't. Who are these friends, anyway?"

He laughed while Tom looked doubtful. Arch, stricken, exclaimed, "So you're moving out? You're leaving us?"

"Guys!" cried Julian. "If you're going to miss me so much, I'll come back every weekend!"

We agreed that I would take the Rover, and I thanked him. Julian beamed. I didn't know how difficult it would be to drive that vehicle for a personal chef assignment, especially with a bandaged arm. But the Rover was luxurious. More importantly, it had four-wheel drive. Julian then further mollified us with helpings of his pears poached in red wine and cinnamon sticks, surrounded with golden pools of crème anglaise. The first mouthful of juicy, spiced pear accompanied by the silky custard sauce was almost enough to make me forget my troubles. Still, I found that I couldn't take more than three bites.

When the dishes were cleared, I searched for and found a bottle of generic buffered aspirin. Tom announced that he was doing the dishes, no easy task, as our lack of kitchen drains still dictated use of the ground-floor tub. I was to relax, he insisted, and Arch and Julian should go do something fun.

Julian opened his backpack and pulled out a foil-wrapped package of his trademark fudge dotted with sun-dried tart cherries. I declined any, but Tom took two pieces before clearing the plates. With a mischievous smile, Julian offered a chunk to Arch. "Hey, buddy, how about a second dessert? Better yet, how 'bout I fix a batch of this Christmas fudge for Lettie? I can put in crushed peppermint drops instead of cherries."

Arch shot him a dark look. "No, thanks." Lettie was Arch's girlfriend, or at least he had been "going out with" this lovely, long-legged blond fourteen-year-old - the never actually went anywhere - at the end of summer. To me, of course, Arch provided no updates on the status of the relationship. My only indications that he had any social life at all at Elk Park Prep were the carefully folded notes I found in his pants pockets when I was emptying them in the laundry room. Fearful that these papers were homework assignments that he would later accuse me of tossing - this had happened - I always unfolded them enough to read the first line. If Arch's small, vertical handwriting began, This class sucks! then I knew to toss the paper. He was communicating with somebody, anyway. Still, if we needed to plan for an additional Christmas present-Arch was notoriously last-minute on these things - I needed to know.

"So, is Lettie still in the picture?" I asked, noncommittally.

"Don't worry about it, Mom." Arch's eyes gleamed behind his glasses as he informed Julian, who now seemed repentant that he'd brought Lettie into the conversation, that he had something to show him. The boys disappeared. I swallowed three aspirin and wondered if there was any chance they could be contemplating Arch's ninth-grade reading assignment in Elizabethan poetry, or the homemade quantum mechanics experiment he was supposed to devise for his physics class. Probably not.

"Are you all right?" Tom said quietly, once he'd filled the bathtub with soapy water and the dishes were soaking. "You hardly ate a bite."

The aspirins weren't kicking in. "No, I'm not all right. But I will be soon. Thanks for asking." I wiggled my unfeeling fingers, rubbed my rapidly-blackening elbow, then tried and failed to move - my neck from side to side. If I hadn't broken anything, how come everything hurt so much? Tom came over and gave me a healing kiss.

Just before eight o'clock, a state patrolman knocked on our door. Into our kitchen Tom ushered a tall, corpulent man with black hair so short and thin it looked like someone had ground pepper over his scalp. His name was Vance, and he wanted me to write down all I remembered about the accident. I scribbled what I remembered of the blur of events: cars skidding every which way, my inability to see what happened, being hit: from behind, skidding, being smacked again and again and again. I'd hit another vehicle, crashed through the guardrail, and sailed down the hill. I begged for information about the truck's driver. The cop announced glumly that he'd died. My heart ached.

Officer Vance read what I'd written, put down the pad, and tapped the tabletop. "Tell me again what happened on the way up to the tunnel. Before the accident."

Patiently, I tried to visualize, then articulate, the happenings of those few minutes. The snow had been falling in sheets. Visibility had been wretched. What vehicles I could see were sliding haplessly on the ice. Then something had hit my van. All around me, cars were honking, thudding, spinning out of control. I'd careened down the hill, crashed into the truck, sunk into deep snow. I'd truly believed, I told the officer, that I was going to be buried alive in the white stuff.

As I related my story, neither Tom nor Officer Vance interrupted me. When I'd concluded, Officer Vance mused, "As far as you could see, then, there was a white pickup truck about ten yards in front of you. There was also a vehicle behind you."

"And one behind that, and one behind that." I waved my hand in a gesture of ad infinitum. The movement made my elbow howl with pain. "The noise of the crash was like books falling on your head. Thud, thud, thud, thud."

"But you couldn't see the cars behind you very well," the policeman asked, "because of the poor visibility, right? Are you sure you didn't hear that thud, thud, thud; and then your mind just supplied the image of books falling?"

I frowned and thought back. I knew this cop was trying to get at something. There had been a vehicle directly behind me. And yes, one behind that. That was all I could remember seeing. When I announced this, Tom pursed his lips. Officer Vance didn't blink.

"Right," Vance murmured. When Tom sat down at my side, Officer Vance slid the salt, pepper, and three unused serving spoons into a line. His thick, carrot-like fingers moved the salt cellar. "This is the white pickup." Then the peppermill: "This is you." The first spoon: "This is the guy behind you, another van." The second spoon: "Then there's another vehicle behind that van." He placed the last spoon in place. "Then here's somebody quite a bit farther back."

I concentrated on the objects, then moved the first two slightly to give the right scale of distances. But I had not seen a fourth vehicle, somebody quite a bit farther back. It had been snowing too hard.

Vance pointed to the last spoon. "The driver of this car farther back, a woman from Idaho Springs, was in a Subaru station wagon. Only she didn't skid into anybody. She was right behind another Subaru wagon, and the two of them were ten car-lengths behind you. Just before the accident, she swears that other wagon sped up wildly and rammed into the van behind you." Officer Vance moved the next-to-last serving spoon up toward the first spoon. "Then she heard the noise of cars colliding. She braked, and skidded. Ahead of her, the other Subaru sped up and rammed the van twice more. The snow made it hard for her to see exactly what had happened. In a fraction of a second, she saw the truck, and then your van, go over the cliff edge." He sighed. "By the time we got there, what with the snow and all the cars going by on the way to the tunnel, there weren't any skid marks left. Apart from what this woman said, we don't have a trace of the two vehicles behind you."

"I don't remember the cars behind me. Van, one or two Subarus, nothing."

Vance shrugged. "You were hit, you hit a truck."

"But. . . because of the snowfall, I didn't see the truck. At least, I didn't see it go over."

"The guardrail was busted in two places," he told me, "but aside from that, we don't have much physical evidence. The van behind you took off," - he raised his shrewd, assessing eyes to mine - "and we can't find this Subaru the woman saw."

"So. . . are you telling me this accident was a planned hit-and-run?" I was incredulous. "That someone deliberately rammed the van behind me? Rammed it three times? Why would anyone do anything that insane?"

Officer Vance held up his hands. "That's what I was hoping you could help me with."

Tom reached over and gently clasped my fingers. "You witnessed a ski accident in the morning - "

"I didn't witness it," I protested. "I just. . . saw a guy lying on the slope. He died in the ambulance."

"In the road accident," Vance interjected, "we still don't know the identity of the guy in the pickup. We only know he's dead. Which makes the accident vehicular homicide." I moaned. "With the storm so bad, they won't be hoisting up either vehicle until the morning." He paused. "Did you see any vehicle, any person you recognized, anywhere on the road from Killdeer to the Eisenhower Tunnel?" Officer Vance demanded.

"No. Sorry."

"Did you witness any aggressive driving prior to your being hit?" Again, I shook my head. Officer Vance sighed. "This could have been a drunk. It could have been someone ticked off with the van driver, which would explain why the van was long gone by the time we got there." When I stared at him in baffled disbelief, he picked up the pad, placed a card with his name and number on the table, and thanked me for my time. And if I remembered anything else. .. . I nodded mutely and thanked him for coming. Tom showed him to the door.

"Do you think someone was trying to hit me?" I asked Tom, when he returned to the kitchen and poured milk and sugar into some cooked rice. "What are you doing?"

"Making a treat. I know you're bullheaded enough to try to cook tonight, and you can't do it on aspirin and an almost-empty stomach."

I sighed. "You didn't answer my question about the car accident."

He nodded and stirred the cooking mixture, which gave off a rich, homey scent. "I don't know. Hitting a van behind someone else's van isn't a very reliable way to kill someone on the road. Still, driving Julian's Rover is a good idea," he added thoughtfully. "As far as the roads go, the storm was breaking when Arch and I came through. No matter what, I feel more comfortable with you behind the wheel of a four-wheel drive. And speaking of the Rover, did you know General Farquhar had all the windows tinted very dark and bulletproofed?" I rolled my eyes at the mention of the super-paranoid military man, Julian's benefactor. Tom searched for a set of custard cups, then went back to stirring. "I want you to keep the cellular with you all the time. Watch who's around. Have somebody with you if you can. Just as a precaution, especially over in Killdeer, okay?"