Tough Cookie

“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 lattés, 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.

“Oh, yes, your show,” said Cinda.

Doggone it. “See you later,” I gushed as I pushed past Cinda to lead Rorry out. “Thanks for letting us use your tape player.”

“Well?” Ryan stage-whispered as we made our way to the exit. “Did you see what you need?”

I was acutely aware of Cinda’s rigid form behind us, her ears tuned to our every word. “Not yet,” I replied loudly. “Maybe the tape’s too screwed up.”

Anything to stall for time.

* * *

The sun was struggling through parting clouds as Rorry and I crunched through the new snow to the car. Her questions spilled out. You see who the snowboarder was? No.

Was Nate really filming a sports video? Yes. How did the avalanche start? Not sure, I replied tersely. Probably from the construction noise that day. She paused, then asked in a low, husky voice, Did you see him die? No, I replied honestly. I really need to look at it again, I added grimly, and have the police analyze it.

When I dropped her at the warehouse, I asked her once more if she was doing okay. It had been a successful trip, but arduous. Yes, yes, she assured me quickly, just fine. She handed me a spare key to her trailer and said a co-worker would be bringing her home about midnight. Then she disappeared behind the large warehouse doors. It was hard to tell if she was satisfied with my answers about the tape. Probably not, I reckoned, since half of them were lies.

As I drove away, I tried to figure out the best way to get to the bistro, where the show would be filmed. The new, unplowed snow was too deep to try to get up the back road in the Rover. I wasn’t going to ski down. So I had to take the gondola both ways. But how would I avoid Cinda’s, with its panoramic view of the path to the gondola?

I decided to park in the Elk Ridge lot. Then I could walk back through the trees to the creek, find the first way across, and head straight to Big Map. I had on thick waterproof leggings and good boots, and could probably move pretty fast. But Cinda was younger and much stronger than I was. Bad knees or no, I didn’t want to tangle with her.

I glanced at the camera case on the passenger seat beside me. What should I do with the cassette? Would it be safer with me or safer in the car? In the past week, it seemed as if everyone I’d come to know in Killdeer had had their place or their automobile broken into. I couldn’t risk leaving the tape in the Rover: I stuffed it into a small opaque plastic bag inside my cooking-equipment bag.

The parking lot was three-quarters full of cars and emptying quickly. Folks had had enough of skiing. They wanted to beat Denver’s Christmastime rush-hour traffic. I remembered Tom’s warning not to be alone. To get up to the bistro for the final episode of Cooking at the Top, I would have to take the least public route possible.

The trailhead, filmed as Nate’s establishing shot, offered food for thought. In the film, these signs appeared without posted warnings. Now, the arrows to Elk Ridge and Elk Valley were covered with a sign stating Closed for Winter——No Entry. Beyond the trailhead, a formidable wooden barrier stretched from one sheer rock outcropping to another. But there was something else that offered possibilities.…

A bright orange sign posted beside the trailhead screamed Construction Workers Only!!! and marked the beginning of what must be, under the plowed snow, a dirt road. Did the construction road wind around to the gondola? Was I willing to chance it?