Dark Tort

much less stop, on ice.

Julian slowed to a crawl, which caused a line of impatient drivers—all from out of town, I was willing to bet —to form behind us. After we circled the lake, the road finally widened and a bevy of drivers tooted triumphantly as they zoomed past. I gritted my teeth. An obese, bearded, particularly infuriated fellow driving a Volvo flipped us the bird as he whizzed past, too closely, on the left. Since we were still going uphill, Julian stared grimly ahead and kept his snail’s pace. And then, twenty yards in front of us—oops!—the Volvo went into a wild skid across the left-hand lanes and collided with—oops!—a state patrol car hidden in the pines. The boom and crunch of crashing metal and breaking glass made the Rover shake.

“Oh my God,” said Julian, as he slowed the Rover even more. “That guy in the Volvo is so unbelievably screwed.”

“Julian!” I admonished him. “Are the two of them okay?”

He stared out his window. “Sure. The state patrolman just got out of his wrecked prowler, and he is not a happy camper. And look at that—the fat bearded guy is waddling toward him and yelling, ’cuz he’s mad the cop was in his way. Oh, man, I am so glad I’m not out there.”

“Me, too.” And then I thought of Arch, fifteen and a half and clutching his freshly minted learner’s permit. How would he have done piloting a vehicle in this mess? I immediately felt nauseous, and banished the thought. I was supposed to call him a bit later, so we could coordinate another driving lesson. I glanced at my watch and reminded myself that in teenage-boy time, half past nine in the morning was early yet. My cell was safely tucked in my pocket, as I’d promised Tom, and working out our mom–son instruction could wait until Julian and I had finished setting up at the Ellises’.

Once we were through town, Julian headed toward Flicker Ridge, where both Meg Blatchford and the Ellises lived. Flicker Ridge, an ultraposh area developed in the last decade, was also where Charlie Baker had purchased a house, once the prices for his paintings had skyrocketed. I wondered if his many-windowed mansion, perched at the top of the ridge, had been put up for sale yet. How long did it take to settle an estate, anyway? I had no idea.

Julian moved cautiously around a plow in the right lane. I pressed my lips together. Catering in a firm specializing in estate law, you’d have thought I’d have picked up lots of legal knowledge oddments, such as the period of time it took to settle the estate of a single man. But in fact, I hadn’t picked up a whole lot. Folks had their wills and revocable and irrevocable trusts, plus writs and motions and suits, and they scurried around, yelling at one another, ushering in clients, or hiding out in their offices and calling me on my cell to bring them coffee, preferably made without any of Richard’s booze mixed in. Which, of course, I was happy to do.

The one thing that I had learned, though, I thought as Julian eased the Rover around another collision, was the meaning of the word tort. A tort was any type of wrong. Fraud. Embezzlement. Theft. Something a wealthy client could get sued for. And what every attorney I knew moaned and groaned about was attempts at tort reform, meaning caps being put on the amount of money the good little guy could take from the rich bad guy. With tort reform, they all shrieked, they would all be out of business. Torts kept many a lawyer alive, but they made everyone hysterical.

I’d take the other kind of torte any day.

Julian’s voice startled me out of my reverie. “Look at how gorgeous everything looks!”

With his left hand, he was pointing at the wide field and dense evergreen forest rising on our left. The snowy meadow sparkled in the sunshine. Up in the woods bordering the flatland, every tree’s branches bore a sculpted cargo of ice. Multiplied thousands of times, the profusion of whitened branches was indeed breathtaking. At the base of the hill, several stands of tall, gray-barked aspens stood out in sharp relief. Their snow shed, the branches were still trimmed with thick bouquets of yellow leaves the color of a school bus.

“You know what they say about Aspen Meadow, don’t you?” Julian asked. “You take half your pay in scenery.”

I smiled in spite of myself. There had been much protest from town environmentalists over the building of Flicker Ridge, which was coming up on our right. The exasperated developer, now-deceased Brian Harrington, had given three thousand acres of meadow and wooded hills—largely unbuildable, cynics had pointed out—to Furman County Open Space. Brian’s critics had shut up, Brian had taken a huge tax write-off, and Aspen Meadow now had miles of hiking trails that enticed tourists all through the summer months. During the fall, winter, and spring, the Harrington Hills, as Brian had insisted they be called, attracted only the most dedicated of snowshoe enthusiasts. With each new snowfall, the hills became more impenetrable—and more stunning.

A moment later we turned through the stone entryway to Flicker Ridge. Because the homeowners here had contracted with their own snow-removal folks, the roads were better plowed than the ones in town. Julian gave the Rover some gas. On either side of us, enormous, villalike houses, gray and beige and pink, rose like ghosts above rolling expansive yards, now patchwork fields of green and white. There were no kids, no sleds, no snowball fights. It was eerie.

After a mile, Julian maneuvered the Rover around a left turn and gunned the engine toward the peak of the ridge. On a treed spread across from Charlie Baker’s many-windowed McMansion, Meg Blatchford lived in the one log residence Brian Harrington had been unable to get torn down. I could just imagine Brian going head-to-head with Meg Blatchford. Brian might have been able to handle troublesome eco-activists, but he was no match for seventy-nine-year-old Meg.

Meg’s half-mile-long driveway had been plowed, I was thankful to see, but the fact that it was shaded meant much of it was still icy. After some skidding, Julian decided to park halfway up. We could hoof it the rest of the way.

The house, which was a cabin that had been added onto on both sides by Meg’s father, was set in a thick stand of lodgepole pines, those towering, slender evergreens whose trunks, tourists were always amazed to hear, had been used for the actual poles for the lodges; hence the name. In a cleared area, Meg had set up her softball pitching-practice area. She had built a mound at one end, where she kept a covered basket of softballs. At the other edge was a wooden wall with a painted O. She had told me one time that once she had a spot to practice every day, her pitch became more deadly than ever. I was very willing to believe her.

Meg, appropriately wearing a thick gray jacket with the hood up, came out to greet us.

“Oh, look!” she exclaimed. “Julian! Goldy! You came. Oh, dear Julian, look at you, the second visit in one day. Can you come in for a quick cup of tea?”

I nodded, and we stamped the snow off our boots. I was so glad we weren’t going to have to stand outside while she did more pitching practice. Meg Blatchford, tall and athletic, with a head of white curls and a spring in her step, played on several women’s senior softball teams, and she was the star pitcher on each one. She was the most inspiring older person I’d ever met. Her wrinkled face was always tan—dermatologists be damned—because one of her teams traveled year-round, to places like Phoenix, Tucson, and Fort Lauderdale. Her brown eyes sparkled with life, and her broad-shouldered, slender frame moved more quickly than mine ever had. Far from doting on her, members of our church community were often proclaiming Meg’s latest doings: Meg’s team just took the tristate trophy. Meg won most valuable senior softball player in the state. Meg Blatchford just snagged the Denver-area Senior Female Athlete of the year! (And we’re just betting she could take out the winner of the Junior Female Athlete of the year and kick her butt!)

Julian and I followed Meg’s straight-backed, nimble step up the wide redstone steps that led to the old cabin part of her residence.

This central section had been decorated by Meg’s mother, Eugenia Blatchford. The living room’s beamed ceiling was low, which made the large room feel snug. One whole wall was made up of a massive hearth that Eugenia had painstakingly composed of layer after layer of smooth river rocks. The other walls were hung with a dozen-plus sets of elk and deer racks. Between all those horns, Eugenia had placed black-and-white photos of Blatchford ancestors posing in late-nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century Aspen Meadow, when it was first a trading post, then a lumber town. I was also surprised to see two Charlie Baker paintings, one on either side of the room. I didn’t remember that Meg had had any.

While Julian and Meg commented on how the snow had snarled traffic in Aspen Meadow, I nipped over to look at the painting to the right of the fireplace. It was titled Venison Stew. The central image was a lone deer standing in a snowy pine forest. With his usual thickly applied brushstrokes, Charlie had just caught the filtered sunlight illuminating the tawny browns, deep greens, and pearly ground. Underneath the image