Tough Cookie (32 page)

Rorry moaned in disgust. "I go out, nine months pregnant, and all everybody offers me is booze."

Boots's expression said: Didn't I tell you this woman was difficult? She said abruptly, "Did you get my message, Goldy?"

"I didn't get your message, I just talked to you a few hours ago - " But I stopped when Boots shot me a stern look. Aha: She was trying to ask me if I'd told Rorry her story about Nate making an extreme sports film the day he died.

"That's okay." Two spots of color flamed on Rorry's cheeks; she was glaring at Boots. "You don't have to try to send Goldy some kind of secret message, the way you used to do with Nate and your early morning calls. I know your code. One ring means, Call me back. Two rings mean, Meet me for lunch. He finally told me, you know." Rorry's tone was angrily triumphant. Boots looked flabbergasted. "He swore it was all innocent. That you were just afraid of my jealousy. If it was all innocent, how come I had the phone company trace your calls to a pay phone outside the Killdeer Art Gallery? Why didn't you call from your house? Too afraid I had caller ID?" She whirled on Arthur. Startled, he cradled the wine to his shoulder. "Are you married, Arthur? That's the kind of guy Boots goes for."

Arthur's voice squeaked, "Rorry, please! Boots Faraday is a customer!" Boots clamped her mouth into a forbidding line. Arthur gulped, set the wine flask down, and frowned. He repeated his question: "What exactly are you and Rorry doing up here, Goldy?"

Luckily, Rorry remembered my warning about not I divulging the purpose of our trip. I told him I just wanted to make sure Jack and his staff were prepping , the last show. Arthur nodded, and Rorry announced that I we had to go. During the gondola trip down, I endured Rorry's litany of complaints about Boots Faraday, who, Rorry insisted, had tried desperately to break up her marriage.

"Boots does have a really nice body, for an older woman," Rorry conceded as the car door opened at the base. "I even thought Nate might have been doing a porno film of her, and she'd use photo clips from it in one of her stupid collages."

"Well, we'll find out, won't we," I commented as we headed for the building marked Base Security-Patrol Office and pushed through to the Lost and Found. Rorry, again distinctly uncomfortable, insisted she had to sit down.

"Are you all right?" I asked desperately.

"Yes, it's just that damn woman," Rorry replied as she lowered herself into a padded chair. "She gives me indigestion."

"Item?" inquired the patrolman behind the desk. It was Hoskins! These people must run on a six-day rotation, I thought. My helper from the day of Doug Ponman's accident asked if I was doing all right, and if my son was okay. I told him we were both fine, but that my friend and I desperately needed help finding something. Hoskins said seriously, "And the item is . . ."

"A camera case." Rorry reached up to slap her ID onto the counter. "Initials N.R. It's in the safe, we called."

Hoskins tapped keys on his computer, disappeared, then returned with a dirty, crumpled case made of heavy-duty gray fabric, frayed in places. When Rorry saw it, she cried out in surprise and alarm, and began to weep. Damn, had I done the wrong thing? She held out her hands and I gave the case to her. She hugged it to her huge belly, rocking back and forth and sobbing as if her heart were broken.

"Rorry," I said softly as I knelt down beside her chair. "I'm sorry. What can I - "

"You want me to get a paramedic in here?" Hoskins asked me. "She doesn't seem well."

"She's not going into labor. Could you please just get her a glass of water?"

"Take the camera," Rorry moaned when Hoskins had left. "See if the cassette's in there, watch it somewhere, and then let's get out of here. I can't take any more in one day. Please, Goldy."

When Patrolman Hoskins returned with water for Rorry, I asked if there was a VCR in another office where I could watch something quickly. He shook his head, then asked dubiously, "Are you sure your friend is going to be all right?"

"Yes, I think so. This camera belonged to her dead husband, and. . . It's a long story."

"You need a VCR?"

"Yeah."

Hoskins lifted his chin at the wide front window. "Cinda's got a couple of VCRs at her place. Why don't you try her?"

Of course. I thanked him and went back to Rorry. I unzipped the case and checked the camera, which was spotted with rust. The word Sony was still visible. I rezipped the bag, patted Rorry's shoulder, and murmured that I would be right back.

The snow seemed-to be letting up a bit as I made my way to the Cinnamon Stop. The cafe was still hopping with business, though, and a video showing a freestyle snowboarding competition was drawing oohs and aahs from the enthralled crowd. I shouted my request to Cinda, who was steaming milk for a latte. Did she have an extra machine in the back where I could watch a film? She gave me a puzzled look, then cried "Sure!" and muttered something to the waiter I recognized as Ryan. He pointed to a door and I waded through the boisterous crowd to join him.

"You need help with a video?" Ryan asked. "Yeah, my friend's pregnant and about to pop. My Lamaze teacher gave me a childbirth video," I improvised blithely, "and I need to see if it's in good enough shape to show."

Ryan shrugged, as if my lie were the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard, which it probably was. He turned on the VCR while I struggled to open the camera, first with my fingernails, then with a pair of scissors from Cinda's desk. When the latch finally gave, the shears snapped. Ryan took the cassette and showed me how to operate Cinda's VCR.

Fast-forwarded, Nate Bullock's tape was spotty with visual static. When the film opened with the first shot, the snow-capped rustic sign for Elk Valley and Elk Ridge, I grabbed the remote control from Ryan and hit "Stop."

Ryan turned to me. "Lamaze at a ski resort? What is this, 'Cliffhanger Childbirth'?"

I opened the office door to usher him out. "It's women's stuff. Not a place you want to go, Ryan."

He muttered something like You can say that again and zipped out. Worried about Rorry in the present, and I what this video was going to show me about the past, I took a nervous breath. Then I hit the Play button.

Nate Bullock's garbled-but-familiar PBS voice gave me a jolt. I couldn't make out a word of what he was saying. From the tone of it, it sounded like an introduction. After the shot of the sign, his next shot was of the path beyond it. Next the camera panned to his companion, whom I couldn't quite make out. Rorry was right about one thing: She was a female. The woman had a snowboard slung under her arm. Nate went from a long shot to a close-up.

I cried out: A conservative form-fitting navy-blue ski suit, no psychedelic outfits. A short cap of brown hair, no spill of pink curls. No jewelry. But her athleticism, her pretty face with its freckle-sprayed pixie nose, her bright, lopsided smile: All these were unmistakable.

Cinda Caldwell. Barton Reed's words in the hospital echoed in my brain: Said she was hurt, but that was crap. Just chickened out. Of course, Cinda was the most famous female snowboarder in Killdeer. Young, pretty, and as adept at snowboarding as anyone. She was the best. Got hurt. Wanted to be famous. Never happened.

No, it never happened, I thought as I watched. Nate expertly clicked off the camera and then resumed taping from the valley. Cinda was far above, on the right edge of Elk Ridge. Nate zoomed in on her doing a smooth right to left, then left to right maneuver on the steep white slope. Cinda's flowing movements were as effortless and breathtaking as big-wave surfing.

Nate's garbled voice came on again; the tape clicked off. The next time Cinda appeared she was up higher, near the top edge of the steep, forest-lined bowl that Arthur had pointed out to Marla and me the day before. Nate zoomed in. Poised unafraid at the edge of the bowl, Cinda's face was happy but determined. Then her concentration broke. She stared, puzzled, into the distance. A look of horror spread over her face, and she gestured to the camera.

"Over there," I could lip-read her saying. She pointed and mouthed the words again. Nate lowered the camera. You could hear him yelling. Then the camera rose and panned vertiginously. I blinked and realized I was looking through treetops at Bighorn Overlook. In the distance, Cinda screamed. Her voice sounded as if she were underwater.

A small noise made me jump. The office door had , opened. Cinda, her flaming pink hair backlit by the cafe's bright lamps, stood rigidly in the oblong of light.

She stared at the initials on the camera case in my hands, then lifted her eyes to meet mine.

She said, "What are you going to do with that? Get me killed, too?"

-21- No," I said immediately. "At least, I'm trying not to. Is this film why you quit snowboarding? You were afraid?"

"Yes. Still am. Not to mention feeling guilty about Nate."

I took a deep breath. "And do you feel afraid because you saw who pushed Fiona Wakefield over the cliff?"

She sighed. "Yes. But all I saw was people struggling on Bighorn Overlook. Does the tape show what happened?"

"I haven't gotten that far."

Cinda closed the door, muffling the noise of the cafe behind her. "What are you planning on doing?"

I shrugged and glanced at my watch. Desperate as I was to see the rest of the tape, my fear of interruption and my desire to protect evidence, not to mention my need to do the last PBS program, dictated that I not view any more of the tape just then. I needed to find out what Cinda knew, and then I needed to split. Fast. "I haven't got immediate plans," I answered noncommitally.

"Goldy, please. Don't turn in that tape. It'll be the end of me. I was hoping you could figure out what happened, and leave me out of it - " She bit her lip.

"What are you talking about?" I stared at her. "Leave you out of it? You were so eager to get me to figure things out, you left the articles and ordered The Stool Pigeon Murders and the avalanche book, didn't you?" She nodded bleakly. "For crying out loud, Cinda, you took my frigging library card?"

"It dropped out of your wallet here a few weeks ago. I'd been meaning to give it back to you. But then you got involved looking into Portman's death. And I thought, well, Goldy's the one who's supposed to be so good at solving crimes, why not let her solve this one?"

"Did you call me pretending to be a journalist named Reggie Dawson?"

She grimaced. "Of course not." She sighed. "Look, I know you're angry, but please, think about what I've gone through since the avalanche. That day changed my life, for the worse. Who killed Fiona Wakefield? And did whoever do it see me up on the ridge? Did Nate tell anyone that I was the one he was filming? Does anyone know I'm the one who started the avalanche that killed Nate Bullock?"

"What do you think?" I asked her. Again, I was aware of the tape in her VCR. I was also aware that I suddenly did not trust Cinda Caldwell.

"I followed Jack Gilkey's criminal trial," she was saying. "I don't think Gilkey knew I was the one snowboarding in the out-of-bounds area on Elk Ridge. But Gilkey, or whoever pushed his wife off the overlook, knew some snowboarder was on Elk Ridge. It was in the papers when Nate died. In jail, Gilkey befriended my old buddy Barton Reed. Maybe it was just. to be friendly, but Gilkey asked Barton a million questions about scofflaw snowboarders in Killdeer. Barton wrote me about his new friend; told me the two of them would be out soon; we could all go snowboarding. I wrote back that I hadn't done any boarding since my knees gave out the year before."

“Why didn't you tell me all this last week, when you were so upset that Barton had made a threat against someone in law enforcement?"

The freckled skin around Cinda's pale eyes crinkled in sudden fury. "Oh, sure. And then have the cops ask me, 'How do you happen to know so much about Fiona Wakefield's death, Ms. Caldwell?' And I say, 'Well, Officer, I think I saw something just before I caused an avalanche in an out-of-bounds area, an avalanche that killed a PBS star!' Do you think that kind of confession would keep me out of prison?"

How long had I been away from Rorry? How was I going to manage to be up at the bistro in less than an hour? "Look, Cinda, I have to go - "

"I had to tell you what Barton said!" she continued, impassioned. "Do you think I don't have any conscience left? Barton had cancer, he was half crazed, he wanted to kill some guy in law enforcement. I couldn't be responsible for two deaths! Why don't you play the tape? Then we can see what's what."

"No," I said firmly, as I ejected it from the VCR, slotted it back into Nate's camera, and zipped up the case. "I need to leave. Meanwhile, Cinda, you have to come forward and talk to the authorities. This tape can help, and you must help, too. We have to find out who really killed Fiona - "

"If it was Jack, he can't be tried for the same crime twice," she countered stubbornly.

"I know, but listen. Eileen Druckman is one of my best friends. If it is true that Jack cold-bloodedly killed his wife, then Eileen has to know. She has to dump him, before it's too late. If it was Arthur, he needs to be arrested and punished. If it was Barton Reed, then we can close the case. If it was Boots Faraday, then she can get ready to teach art classes in prison."

"I can't," said Cinda, her jaw clenched. "I'll go to jail for the rest of my life." She held out her hand. "Give me the tape, Goldy."

"No."

At that moment the office door opened. Cinda and I froze. Rorry Bullock's huge belly came through first. She looked blankly from Cinda to me. Behind Rorry, Ryan's head appeared. He peered over Rorry's shoulder.

"Hey boss," he said desperately. "I've got four people out here screaming for vanilla lattes, and I can't find a new bottle of extract."

I announced: "Time to go." Hoisting the camera case, I made an internal bet, the kind that always drives Tom crazy when I tell him about it later: Cinda would not risk exposing herself in front of Ryan. Nor would she wrench the case from my hands while Rorry was there. She knew she'd have a struggle on her hands, one she was bound to lose.

Rorry, the very pregnant widow of the man whose death Cinda had inadvertently caused, said, "Goldy, I need to go to work. And you need to do your show," she reminded me.