Tough Cookie (28 page)

Soon the trees opened onto a granite ledge. I slid to a stop on the ice-covered outcropping. Realizing I was just fifteen feet from the edge of the precipice sent my heart into my throat. I breathed deeply to steady myself; my eyes watered from the frigid wind. Despite the danger nearby, the panoramic sweep of snowcapped peaks, forested valleys, and ice-sculpted ravines was undeniably stunning. To our left, skiers in a back bowl resembled gnats floating down a hill.

"Wow," said Marla. "I never knew this view was here."

"The ski patrol doesn't want you to know," Arthur told her. "That's why they closed the old path." He pointed to smoke rising from a small building on a hill to our right. The plain beige edifice, which looked as if it had once stood in the middle of a forest, was now surrounded by hundreds of tree stumps. "That's the expansion area. The resort is under tight construction-loan deadlines, so they're working night and day to clear it. Killdeer needs to start lift construction in the spring. Over there," he added, pointing to a small cabin at the edge of the construction area, "Killdeer Corp has stationed a full-time security guard, just in case any environmentalists take violent exception to the expansion plans."

He raised his eyebrows at us and pointed higher up the peak to the right of the construction area. That mountain featured a bare shelf of trees clustered around a sheer dropoff. "That's Elk Ridge," said Arthur. "The steep area below the ring of woods is a leeward-facing, thirty-two-degree slope." He swept his mittened hand down to a wide, partially wooded, gently sloping valley below the ridge. It looked like a postcard of a pristine, snowy meadow. "That's where the avalanche came down three years ago, the one that killed Nate Bullock." Moving parallel to the dropoff near us, Arthur worked his way to the edge. I stayed put and motioned for Marla, standing next to me, to do the same.

"Not to worry," she muttered, her eyes on the perilous drop-off. Arthur kept moving forward.

"Careful, Arthur." The words were out of my mouth before I noticed. Motherly habits die hard.

Arthur knelt on his skis and gestured to the area below the drop off. "There," he said, "is where Jack Gilkey pushed my mother to her death. In court, Jack insisted I'd given her too much to drink, that someone - me, he meant to imply - came out of the trees and hit him so hard with a rock that he fell unconscious into the snow. Then whoever this Mr. Atlas was, he pushed my mother over the edge." He looked at us. "Do you actually think one person could incapacitate a strong man and push an athletic woman to her death?"

"It's possible," I said grimly, thinking back to the terrible stories of spouse abuse and murder that I'd heard since my years of ridding myself of The Jerk. Arthur gave me a black look.

"No, Arthur, Goldy doesn't think one person could do all that," Marla said hastily. "Let's go back."

I asked sympathetically, "How much wine had Jack given your mother at lunch?"

He shrugged. "Three glasses of a spatlese Riesling that I'd recommended. And no, I wouldn't have given them a bottle if I'd known he was going to taunt her to race here. Race here? Why would you do something so foolish?"

Why indeed? I murmured that I did not know, and recalled Jack's claim that Fiona had initiated the race idea. And I'd believed his explanation: that his wife had had too much to drink, that she had challenged him - her young, virile husband - to race to a dangerous spot, to prove - or so it seemed - that she, too, was young, virile, and sexy, since she was willing to take risks.

That weirdly victorious expression again swept over Arthur's face. "Don't you want to see what those articles were talking about, Goldy? The articles you thought I left for you?"

"She doesn't." Marla said it firmly. "And if she gets any closer to that edge, I'll have another heart attack."

Arthur took a last long look over the side of the outcropping, his face unreadable, then got to his feet and skied quickly past us, toward the run. When we found our way out - Arthur checked for lurking ski patrol members before we sneaked back onto Bighorn - he showed us how to get onto Easy-as-Pie. "Matter of minutes." He turned back to the rope. "I'm going back in for a bit."

Marla and I shook our heads in sympathy. . . and bafflement. Arthur nodded to us, as if he'd made the point he intended to make. He asked me to call him that night about the exact menu they'd put on the graphic for the next show, then scooted under the rope. Soon he disappeared through the trees.

"That guy is weird," Marla commented as she adjusted her goggles. "Plus, he drinks too much."

Eileen was waiting for us at Big Map; she waved enthusiastically as we skied up. Wearing a skintight royal blue ski suit and a red-and-royal-blue tasseled dunce cap, she looked the epitome of cute as a button. No matter what Arthur Wakefield thought of Jack Gilkey, he had clearly wrought a transformation in Marla's and my old friend.

"Come on, come on, we don't have much time," Eileen chided gaily. "Jack's going to meet us at the bistro at twenty to three. Feel okay on Mission Hill? It's a very smoothly groomed intermediate run."

Marla and I said Mission Hill sounded fine. With our skis stored in the gondola rack, and Eileen's snowboard lying across half her metal seat, we rumbled back up the mountain. Once we'd unloaded and found the run, it was just a matter of minutes before the three of us were laughing and shouting, spraying snow on each other, and yelling "Wahoo!" every time we sped past each other down the slope.

Jack Gilkey caught up with us the second time we ascended in the gondola. Under her breath, Marla muttered, "I'd forgotten how yummy-looking that guy is." Jack, dressed in a fashionable beige-and-black ski suit and a dunce cap to match Eileen's, seemed cordial, even a tad shy, toward Marla and me. His solicitude and affection for Eileen was obvious. I watched as he cautioned her to slow down, sternly, like the mother hen Arch often accused me of being.

Eileen knew how to ride a snowboard, I'd give her that. She must have been practicing every day for years to be able to make the jumping, leaping, twisting moves she did that afternoon. Marla and I laughed at her antics, while Jack skied cautiously behind her. Maybe this trying-to-prove-you're-virile thing was a universal phenomenon in May-September relationships. Who knew? They were having a great time. We all were.

One thing about intermediate ski slopes: There's a lot of yelling. Kids call to their parents to wait for them, and vice versa. Usually it's all good fun. Sometimes it isn't. Husbands and wives scream at each other to speed up or slow down. Ski school instructors try to keep their charges in an orderly line behind them, calling out directions like a caterpillar head noisily instructing its lengthy tail. An occasional skier wears a Walkman, even though it's illegal. These skiers want to block out the noise, or time their ski maneuvers to the bars of Strauss waltzes or Three Dog Night. I don't listen to a Walkman, but I do ignore the yelling. It's distracting and can make you fall.

So I didn't hear a bawled caution. At least, not the first one.

Yelled warnings of "Look out! Move! Get out of the way!" finally got my attention, however. I brushed snow from my goggles but couldn't see what the problem was. I skied to the far side of the run. More screaming erupted as I looked up the hill and tried to determine the source of the commotion. In her sparkly suit, Marla was easy to spot on the opposite side of the run. A ski school class had stopped in its tracks. A gaggle of snowboarders in backward baseball caps flew down beside me. Further up the slope, a lone snowboarder was hurtling down the hill. He was headed toward a skiing couple not far from me. . . .

The startled couple moved one way, then another to get out of the speeding snowboarder's way. Each time they sped up and turned to avoid him, he changed direction. It was like watching a torpedo homing in on a target.

The couple, I suddenly realized with horror, was Eileen and Jack.

"Eileen!" I screamed. "Jack! Get out of the way! Move!" What could I do? "Hey, snowboarder!" I shrieked. "Stop!"

Eileen and Jack turned back, then started to scoot toward the trees. Down the boarder came, faster and faster. Was he drunk? Was he crazy?

The snowboarder hit Eileen and Jack with all the force of a speeding bowling ball. Two bodies went flying. The big boarder struggled to right himself, then kept going down the hill. As he came nearer, I feared for a moment he was going to hit me, too. Then I realized he was slowing down.

He stopped inches away from the tips of my skis. Then, almost in slow motion, he toppled sideways and then backward into the snow. Cautiously, I made my way to his side.

When I removed his dark goggles, Barton Reed's eyes were closed. The sound of wailing drifted down the hill. Jack Gilkey was crying, calling desperately for help. He was leaning over a blue-clad body sprawled in the snow.

Eileen.

-18- The ski patrol took Eileen and Barton down the mountain in sleds. The two patrol members would tell us only that Eileen was unconscious. Barton was nearly so, and had a broken leg. How fast was the boarder going, the patrol wanted to know? As fast as any downhill racer I've ever seen on television, I told them. It wasn't the kind of collision where folks get covered with snow. It was the kind of crash that leaves limp bodies. Lifeless bodies.

The patrol wouldn't let us near Jack, whom two other patrolmen were treating for shock. Marla and I got permission to leave and skied down. As we lugged our equipment to our cars, I filled her in on what I knew about Barton Reed. That he was a convict. That he was in remission from cancer. That he had had a possibly deadly resentment for Doug Portman, and apparently also had it in for Eileen or Jack or both.

We headed eastward in convoy, Marla in her four-wheel-drive Mercedes behind the Rover. Overhead, two Flight-for-Life helicopters thundered eastward. The ski patrol members had told us where Eileen and Barton were being taken: Lutheran Medical Center in Wheat Ridge, northwest of Denver. I tried to keep my eyes on the road while punching in our home number on the cellular.

"Eileen's been hit," I began without preamble when Tom answered. "On the slopes. I saw it coming. I didn't - " My voice cracked. "I couldn't do anything."

"Slow down, Miss G. Someone hit Eileen? What was it, a skiing accident? Is she all right?"

"She's unconscious. Oh, Tom. Barton Reed hit her. He was watching for her and then he hit her. With his snowboard. It was deliberate. I saw it." Emotion closed my throat. I struggled for control and said: "The helo's taking her to Lutheran now. Reed, too. Oh, Tom, why would he do a thing like that?"

"I don't know. Look, Wheat Ridge is in Jefferson. I'll call someone from the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department to be there at the hospital when they arrive. You. . . think I should pick up Todd from school and bring him down? What about Arch?"

Of course Todd should go to his mother. I told Tom so. "But I have to warn you, she looked terrible. All limp. Would you. . ." I couldn't say it. Tears welled in my eyes. "Would you see if . . . if the priest from St. Luke's can come down, too?" Best to prepare for the worst.

Ninety minutes later, Marla and I careened side by side into a hospital parking lot. Belatedly, I realized I'd tossed my ski boots in the Rover's hatch and driven to Wheat Ridge in my socks. By the time I'd tied up my sneakers, Marla was opening the Range Rover door and peering inside.

"Goldy? Can we walk in there instead of running? I can feel my blood pressure rising."

"You shouldn't go in. Just stay out here and relax."

"Are you kidding? The best place to be when you're having a heart attack is inside the hospital."

"Marla - "

"I am kidding." We walked across the snowpacked road to the hospital. Low, dark clouds obscured the view of the Front Range. Marla asked, "Did you see what happened?" I nodded, and she went on: "I've been thinking about it all the way over here. Like TV. Instant replay." She shuddered. "It wasn't what it seemed."

The automatic doors opened. A rush of warm antiseptic air washed over us as we entered the high-ceilinged hush of the hospital's lobby. As we headed for the information desk, I asked, "Wasn't what it seemed in what way?"

Marla faced me. "That snowboarder, the one you said you knew? Barton Reed. He was headed for Jack. Not Eileen."

"How'd he miss?"

"Who knows? I saw it right from the start. Reed was perched at the top of the run. Eileen had boarded to the side. Jack was traversing the run. Reed took off toward Eileen. But he was on a snowboard. To gain momentum, he would have to go fast one way, then turn, still cruising fast, and fly over to hit Jack. Jack was too far away for Reed to go straight down the fall line to whack him." I suppose I looked puzzled, because she continued: "Goldy, listen. A snowboard is different from skis that way. To build up momentum, if he was aiming for Eileen, he would have gone left, not right, and then doubled back to hit her."

I struggled to recall what I'd seen. I didn't know enough about snowboarding to analyze the way Barton Reed had come down the slope. Had Jack seen the danger? I thought he'd reversed direction to protect Eileen, or at least to get her out of harm's way. Had he been trying to protect himself instead?

The woman at the information desk informed us that Eileen Druckman was in critical but stable condition in Intensive Care. Internal injuries, head injuries, what? I pressed. The woman replied that she did not know. Starting soon, Eileen could have family-member visits, two people at a time, for ten minutes-per hour. As Marla and I rolled up the elevator to Intensive Care, I again tried to dredge up the memory of precisely what I'd seen on Killdeer Mountain. If you didn't know much about snowboarding - and I didn't - interpretation was not possible. To be perfectly honest, I didn't know how much Marla knew about snowboarding, either.

Plus, what did I really know about any relationship between Barton Reed and Jack Gilkey? When I'd dropped Arch off on Saturday morning, Jack had known about Reed's sentence. He'd also known that Portman denied Reed parole.

I had never thought to ask how he'd come by his information. Tom and Arch were standing in the ICU waiting room when we arrived. Todd, though, was nowhere in sight. I was so happy to see Arch I hugged him before he could protest.