Tough Cookie

Tom picked up a foil-covered platter from the marble counter and crinkled up a corner. Underneath the silvery wrapping lay dozens of crisp brown Chocolate Coma Cookies, each one studded with dried tart cherries, toasted almonds, and dark chocolate chips.

“What in the—?”

“Miss G., you wanted your recipe tested, didn’t you? After I finished putting in the drains—”

“Tom! You’re done?”

“ ‘O, ye of little faith,’ ” he began as the boys catapulted into the kitchen howling that they’d fed the animals, could they please go get some breakfast burritos? Todd and Arch both seemed better, each buoyed by the other’s presence, each enthusiastic about the prospect of their upcoming holiday party. They did not want to discuss Eileen’s condition, but only asked me to send them good vibes for their presentation. I promised I would.

Tom set two cookies on a small china plate and left it by my espresso. The crunch of almonds, tang of cherries, and rich, luscious chocolate woke me right up. I decided to call the upcoming day’s TV menu “Feel-Your-Oats Holiday Breakfast.” Rashers of crisp Canadian bacon, a bowl of icy vanilla yogurt, and a mountain of fresh fruit would go perfectly with the two starchy dishes I’d decided to prepare—spicy Swiss oatmeal and homemade bread. By seven-thirty, I had called early-rising Julian. He was flattered to fax me his new five-grain bread recipe. I thanked him, then proofed yeast while measuring out the cereal. A fresh, dimple-skinned orange, a new jar of Indonesian cinnamon, and more tart cherries beckoned to go into the oats.

By nine-fifteen, I was actually humming to myself, a sure sign the culinary work had once again helped me get life back into perspective. I realized the time set for Arch and Todd’s presentation was only half an hour away. I checked that the bread dough had risen properly and sent the boys a silent prayer of encouragement.

The phone rang. Concerned that it might be the hospital calling about Eileen, I picked up rather than letting the machine answer. It was not the hospital. It was Boots Faraday.

“Look, Goldy,” she said without preamble, “Arthur Wakefield insists I owe you an apology.”

“What?”

“Arthur’s an old friend, and he didn’t mean any harm by running that article about you.” She paused, struggling, I supposed, to adopt an unfamiliar apologetic tone. “I … I heard about your friend Eileen Druckman, and that awful Barton Reed, and that you were there when it happened. I realized that you really are

in the middle of a mess.”

“Yes, it’s bad,” I admitted. But why call me? Unless, of course, she wanted to confess that Doug Portman’s mean critique of her work had driven her to kill him six days ago.

“There’s something I didn’t tell you,” Boots went on. “I … I … don’t know whether it’s relevant. But … I’ve decided to tell you anyway—It doesn’t matter anymore.” She took a shaky breath. “I do know what Nate was doing the day he died. It wasn’t tracking lynx. That was just the standard story he told me to put out if he ever got caught.”

“Got caught doing what?”

“Filming in Killdeer’s out-of-bounds area. He … didn’t think he’d get killed, of course.” She sighed. “He was trying to make money, before his baby arrived. He … was making a sports-genre video.”

“A what?”

“An outdoor sports film, haven’t you ever seen them? You can catch them on the sports channels. The most popular around here are the extreme snowboarding videos. They show boarders leaping and spinning and jumping off ledges and generally risking death for a ride.”

“Okay, yes,” I said, remembering the big screen at Cinda’s. “But … what kind of money could you hope to make from one of those?”

She laughed at my naïveté. “Big money. The good ones sell for fifty to a hundred thousand. For the great ones, you can make two hundred fifty thousand to half a million.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No. Nate had talked to a distributor who was a friend of mine, a collage client. The distributor wanted to see a rough cut of whatever extreme snowboarding film he could do. But Nate didn’t want to get Rorry’s hopes up, so he begged me not to tell anybody.”

“Was Barton Reed the snowboarder who was with him?”

“I … don’t know.”

“Were you the boarder?”

She groaned. “Of course not. I don’t engage in risky behavior. By the way, that includes sleeping with married men, in case Rorry has been filling you in on her paranoid baloney.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Listen,” she said brusquely, “I’ve been trying to protect Nate’s good-granola-guy reputation for three years. Don’t you think died tracking lynx sounds better than died making money? But I wanted you to know the truth. I don’t know if it will relate to any of your problems.”

Or your problems, I thought, such as my wondering if you triggered the avalanche, and that’s why you’ve been lying for three years. After a moment, I asked, “Did Nate or Rorry know Doug Portman?”