Tough Cookie

She read my expression accurately. “The first time we conceived, we had to freeze his sperm and go through artificial insemination. I was seven months pregnant when I had the miscarriage. Then last year I read an article, about women laying claim to the frozen sperm of their deceased lovers. So I decided to use what I had left of Nate.” When she scowled, her eyes crinkled in anger. “Use it before his girlfriend did, that is—”

I gagged on my coffee and remembered what Arthur had told me about Rorry’s suspicious nature, about her claims Nate was having an affair with Boots Faraday. “You think another woman would actually—”

Rorry held up a hand. “Nate said he and Boots Faraday—the collage artist, do you know her?” When I nodded, she raised a thin blond eyebrow. “Nate said Boots was giving him business advice. Then he went out-of-bounds to film something, and she said he was tracking lynx. Unfortunately, the wildcat population doesn’t buy a lot of videotapes, so I doubt a film of tracks was his so-called moneymaking idea.” She

tsked and asked, “Do you know anything about tracking wild animals?”

“Not a thing, I’m happy to say.”

“You hear of a sighting,” Rorry continued in the same aggressive tone, as if determined to prove something to me. “You go where the trail might be and you look for scat. You find it, you start filming.”

“Rorry, I’m not following you—”

She heaved herself up, crossed to the kitchenette, and pulled something out of a drawer. Wordlessly, she thrust an envelope at me. I pulled out a much-crumpled note. Meet me at the Ridge trail at 2:00. Make sure nobody sees you. And remember your equipment, pal

. The handwriting was slanted and feminine.

Rorry, bitterly triumphant, announced: “Lynx don’t buy videos, and they don’t write notes, no matter how endangered they are. Arthur Wakefield and the TV people claim Nate was not doing a tracking project for them. But they didn’t know what he was doing, so the spin, the story, the myth came out of the Killdeer Artists’ Association and Boots Faraday.” She raised her voice to a mocking falsetto. “ ‘Brave Outdoorsman Loses Life Tracking Vanishing Colorado Wildlife.’ What crap! The only prints on that trail were from a man and a woman. Nate and his girlfriend, Boots.

Bring your equipment, puhleeze. They sneaked into the out-of-bounds area to make love. Where no one would see.”

“There’s no hay to roll in in Killdeer Valley, Rorry.” She shook her head dismissively. I persisted. “But the footprints diverged. One set went up, one went down.”

“So you have heard some rumors.” Her eyes blazed.

“Not rumors, but information. From the ski patrol. After the fund-raiser, I was worried about you. So I asked a patrolwoman to tell me about the avalanche. I thought it might help me understand what was going on with you. That’s it.” I took a deep breath. “But if their paths parted, maybe he was just keeping her company—”

“Maybe he was planning on getting undressed at the bottom of the hill and waiting for her,” she said hotly.

I bit the inside of my cheek. My old friend had clearly spent three years of sleepless nights worrying over details, trying to piece disparate data bits into a coherent theory of her husband’s death. She hadn’t grieved properly because she didn’t know what had happened. Worse, too many unknowns had left her with a sense of betrayal deeper and more devastating than grief.

“Rorry, the Killdeer Artists’ Association said that Nate was trying to diversify, to provide a better living—”

“Oh, don’t give me any of Boots Faraday’s bullcrap. I’ve heard her line about Nate wanting to raise money for us, blah, blah, blah. Boots is a great skier and snowboarder and a successful artist. She called here and called here and called here before Nate died. Each time, she tried to hide her identity. Why? She’s sexy as can be, as I saw when I went to one of the association’s meetings with Nate. She was flirting all around, trying to get everyone to sign a petition, to get rid of Doug Portman. You saw her at the fund-raiser on Friday, didn’t you? You see, she just can’t get Nate out of her mind. She’s obsessed. I think she’s the one who wrecked my car, then returned it just to torment me.”

“Rorry, you’re an old friend.” I asked gently, “Why did you decide to have Nate’s baby, now? After all these years?”