Tough Cookie

something else altogether. I gave her an innocent look. “You need help?”

She fiddled with the psychedelic headband. “It’s probably nothing. But a guy came into the shop a few nights ago, plastered, wanting coffee. My waiter, Davey, gave him some Kona. I used to know the drunk guy. Name’s Barton Reed. He was a snowboarder until he got into some kind of trouble and had to go away for a while. He’s a big-bruiser type with about twenty earrings in each ear, all little crosses and saints’ medals. Not that he’s religious—I heard he gave up that a long time ago. Anyway, Barton boasted that he’d gotten hold of a poison that could kill you if you just touched it.”

I pondered the espresso in my cup before answering: “Did he say he was going to use it?”

“He said he’d put patches of the poison in a letter, if you can believe that. You open the letter, you’re dead.”

“Did he show the letter to Davey?”

She paused and looked cautiously around the empty shop. “No. Here’s the bad part, Goldy. Barton said he was going to deliver this poison-in-a-letter soon. To a cop.”

My skin prickled. I heard my tone sharpen as questions tumbled out. “Do you know where this Barton guy lives? Did you report what he said?” She shook her head. “How about the cop? Did you get his name?”

Cinda picked up a rag and wiped the counter beside my half-full coffee cup. “Nah, I figured it was a hoax. So did Davey. Plus, who’m I going to report it to? Ski patrol? Forest Service? I couldn’t imagine the Sheriff’s department traveling way over here, to the edge of the county, to hear about some drunk who claims he’s going to send a poisoned Christmas card to a cop.” She shrugged. “So I figured if you came by for coffee today, I’d tell you about it. See what you thought.”

It was getting on to seven o’clock. Still, this was very worrisome and I had to call Tom. Unfortunately, I’d left my cell phone in the van. I asked Cinda for her phone; she hoisted one to the counter. Quickly, I pressed the button for a Denver line and dialed first our home number, then our business line. Tom must have left early: Both calls netted answering machines. I pressed buttons for his Sheriff’s department line and left a voice-mail asking Tom to call Cinda Caldwell about a threat to a policeman. Hanging up, I rummaged through my backpack full of culinary tools, pulled out my dog-eared wallet, and extracted one of Tom’s cards. “Call this number in thirty minutes, Cinda. Tell Tom everything you told me. Thirty minutes. Promise?”

She looked at me uncertainly. She took the card and fingered it cautiously, and I could imagine her telling Tom, Goldy told me to call you, it’s probably nothing, but she figured it might be kinda important—

I put my mittens back on. “Need to hop. They’re doing our show live today. It’s a fund-raiser dedicated to Nate Bullock, remember him?”

Still staring at the card, she nodded her rainbow-pink head. “Sure. The TV tracker dude.”

“I’m doing Mexican egg rolls. Crab cakes. Ginger-snaps.”

Now she looked at me, perplexed. “I’ll try to catch it. But you know my customers would rather see an extreme ski video than a cooking show.” She shrugged.

I finished the roll—flaky, buttery, and spicy-sweet—polished off the coffee in two greedy swallows, and thanked her again.

When I ducked out of the warm shop, another fiercely cold wind struck me broadside. I struggled past the brilliantly lit facade of the Killdeer Art Gallery. In the Christmas-plaid-draped front window, black-and-white photos of backlit snowboarders making daring leaps off cliffs vied with garish, romantic oils of Native Americans beside tipis. A third of the window was devoted to watercolors of mountain villas. Just visible behind these were collages made up of images of ski equipment. When Coloradans enthused over Western Art, they weren’t talking about Michelangelo.

The last shop on the row was Furs for the Famous. Ah, fame. Fame was much desired by the hoi polloi, much despised by celebrities, much avoided by the infamous. As I clomped back down the steps toward the gondola, fueled by Cinda’s rich coffee, I reflected that I had no use for fame. Doing a gourmet cooking show had spawned neither gourmet cooks nor ardent fans. But complainers—who wrote and called and stopped me in the grocery store to ask if they could substitute margarine for butter, powdery dried muck for fresh imported Parmesan, and blocks of generic je-ne-sais-quoi for expensive dark chocolate—these I had in abundance. Tom had given me an early Christmas present: a T-shirt silk-screened with: DON’T ASK. DON’T SUBSTITUTE.

And speaking of Tom, being married to a police investigator had also brought me recognition, as Cinda’s question demonstrated. Sometimes I felt like the pastor’s wife who is told of incest in a church family. Nobody wants to bother the pastor with it, right? Somebody’s sending a poisoned letter to a cop? Don’t bother the cop! Let Goldy handle it.

I walked down the snowpacked path and tramped across an arched footbridge. Four feet below, Killdeer Creek gurgled beneath its mantle of ice. Christmas and the promise of more snow would soon bring an onslaught of skiers. I trudged onward resolutely, not wanting to think about the holiday, and all the parties I would miss catering.

Sell the old skis. Get the new drains, I told myself. Develop the personal chef sideline, then reopen your business. And quit worrying!

I clambered up the ice-packed pathway to the clanking gondola. The car manager, his hair swathed in an orange jester cap, his face spiderwebbed from a decade of sun, stopped a car for me. I heaved my backpack and poles into the six-seater while the car manager whistled an off-tune Christmas carol and clanked my skis into the car’s outside rack. The car whisked away.

Up, up, up I zoomed toward the bistro. Even though snow continued to fall, the sky had brightened to the color of polished aluminum. The muffled grinding of the cable was the only sound as the car rolled past snow- frosted treetops and empty, pristinely white runs. This early, an hour and a half before the runs officially opened, I was alone on the lift. Our small studio audience usually rode up at quarter to eight. Early-bird skiers who couldn’t brave the cold would still be guzzling cocoa at Cinda’s or the Karaoke Cafe. Or they could be poring over maps of Killdeer’s back bowls, those steep, ungroomed deep-snow areas braved by only the hardiest of skiers. Or maybe they would be having their bindings checked at the repair shop, or just staring out at the snow-covered mountains. In other words, they could be anticipating real fun.

I shifted on the cold vinyl seat and peered downward. Below the new blanket of flakes, groomed, nub-bled snow had frozen into ridged rows. The grooming was left to the snowcats, those tractor tanks that churned and smoothed the white stuff after-hours. By the time I skied down at nine, I knew, the new powder would be lumped into symmetrical rows of moguls: hard, tentlike humps of snow arrayed across the hill like an obstacle course. As much as I loved skiing, and I did, this might or might not be fun.

Halfway to the top, the car stopped. This happened occasionally, when children failed to make the hop onto the seats and their parents went nova. But it shouldn’t be happening now. I glanced back at the base; the gondola station was out of sight. A sudden wind made the cable car swing. I shivered and looked down at the runs. How far down were they, anyway?

Think about something else, Goldy. What you’re doing later. Selling Tom’s skis. I tightened my grip on the cold bars and took my mind off the distance to the ground.

Tom’s skis, I reminded myself. Yes. The buyer was Doug Portman. Not exactly a happy thing to think about, but never mind.

Doug Portman was a social-climbing accountant who had somehow become a rather large cog in our state political machine. Dressed in dapper seersucker or corduroy, he was always a hobnobbing presence at law enforcement picnics and other events. I didn’t know what he did to earn his living now, and didn’t want to know. The only thing I knew was that he had married for money and could now indulge in his collecting hobby. Still, I felt guilty about selling him Tom’s skis, since I had not told Tom to whom I was selling them. You didn’t exactly say, Uh, honey? I’m selling one of your most prized possessions to a guy I used to date … oh yes, I still have his number….

Outside, the snowflakes whirled and thickened. My face was numb with cold. I briefly released my death-grip on the metal bars to tighten my hood. The time before Christmas should be full of laughter, parties, shopping, decorating, baking, family gatherings. So why was I dealing with the loss of my beloved business, a live television