The frigid air boomed and reverberated with the explosion. I squeezed my eyes shut as terror closed my throat.
An image of church school with Rorry floated into my mind. Our teaching: the fall of Jericho. Joshua. I looked up: The moon skidded drunkenly between the branches. Had I been hit? Jack’s shot echoed and reechoed in my head. After the Hebrews blew their horns. The earth was moving, the moon was wobbling in the sky. The walls came tumbling down. I gripped the tree and turned my head to the groaning, trembling slope. A mammoth slab of ice and snow had dislodged from the mountain. Joshua’s troops made the noise. The monumental size of the slide, like a skyscraper imploding, was beyond belief. The avalanche’s deafening rumble pained my ears. A mist of snow burned my eyes. The walls came tumbling down. My knees gave out beneath me as I held onto the tree. A fifty-foot vertical wave of snow was roaring downward, toward us.
A vast cloud of mist exploded upward. Darkness flashed inside it. Jack Gilkey screamed and fell. Then he was sucked into the killer white tide of the avalanche that rushed past me and swept him away.
CHAPTER 23
A helo carried me out. At the roar of the avalanche, the guard in the cabin, who’d been listening to a football game on the radio and was therefore deaf to my cries and the sound of gunfire, came bursting outside. He phoned for help.
On the way to Denver, I told two Sheriff’s deputies all I knew about Jack Gilkey and his deadly, double-dealing relationships with Fiona Wakefield, Doug Portman, and Barton Reed. The paramedics insisted I go to the hospital to be checked for frostbite, injuries, and shock. I kept assuring them that I was fine. But they did not believe a wildly shivering woman whose face and clothes were covered with blood and garbage.
“Lady,” one of them said, “at this point you couldn’t buy a ticket straight home. That ankle looks badly bruised. Did you fall on it when you were holding on to the tree?”
I nodded numbly and looked down at the snow-covered Continental Divide far below, the sparkling rows of tiny cars going east and west, ruby lights one way, diamonds the other.
You can’t buy a ticket home. That was really the problem, wasn’t it? Trying to buy your way into anything. Jack had tried to buy his way out of a prison term by bribing Doug Portman; like Fiona Wakefield, Eileen Druckman had thought her money could bring her a handsome young husband who would really love and cherish her. Nate Bullock had tried to provide a better lifestyle for his beloved pregnant wife by making a video that had killed him. Even I was not immune, with my misbegotten attempts to use earrings and treats to purchase a girlfriend for my dear Arch. And hadn’t the lure of money made me ignore my scruples and try to sell Tom’s skis to Doug Portman?
All that night and the next day, Friday, I was cossetted, bandaged, medicated, questioned, and scolded. With Arch and Todd Druckman in tow, Tom raced to the emergency room to meet me. Todd hurried off to see his mother; Arch brought me soft drinks from the soda machine and (bless him!) some of Julian’s life-restoring fudge. Tom gave me updates and called Rorry to tell her I was all right. I learned that Jack Gilkey’s body had been dug out by Killdeer Ski Patrol’s Avalanche Rescue Team. Arthur Wakefield was being charged with breaking and entering and mail theft. The latter was a federal offense. Arthur, Tom said, had hired a lawyer who was a teetotaler.
During a break between X-rays, I visited my old friend Eileen. I had told the authorities that I wanted to be the one to give her the bad news about Jack. Gently, I did so.
Todd comforted her. She patted his head and kept sobbing that she was sorry, just so sorry. Todd said he was fine! And besides, the nurses had announced he could spend Christmas with her, on a guest sofa in her hospital suite. And then Eileen cried some more, but this time with happiness.
Christmas Eve, bandaged, weak, and awkward on my crutches, I slid into a pew next to a surprised Julian and Marla. Tom and Arch joined us. In the pew behind us, three of my former Sunday school pupils were giggling in their home-fashioned shepherd costumes. They tapped my shoulder and twirled for my approval. I gave them the thumbs-up. Tom kissed my cheek, Marla handed the kids sticky chunks of ribbon candy, Julian winked at everyone. Even Arch smiled. You can’t buy what you want, I reflected. It all comes as a gift.
“I’ve got three news items,” Tom whispered as the organist warmed up for the prelude of carols. “Ready?” I inhaled the sharp, invigorating smell of Christmas greens and nodded. “First,” he said, “we found a computer disk with all of Portman’s records. It was tucked inside a cigar box belonging to a Civil War general. Second, we found Nate’s tape where you left it in the bistro freezer. Cinda Caldwell confessed to being out-of-bounds with him when he died.” He tilted his head at me and I nodded. “She was all weepy, said she’d plead guilty to whatever they wanted to charge her with. The district attorney told her thanks, but the statute of limitations had expired on out-of-bounds excursions. And to her surprise, causing an avalanche that killed somebody who was also out-of-bounds is not a crime. She said she was going to give lectures on winter sports safety, donate some of her shop’s profits to avalanche victims worldwide. I mean, the woman has gotten religion.” He took a deep breath and pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket. “And this, Miss G., is your certificate of reinspection. You passed. The inspector is smitten with your drains. Almost as much as I am smitten with you.”
I hugged him so hard he chuckled like Santa. The service started and the packed church surged into song. We prayed and heard Bible lessons. At the Intercessions, an usher handed the priest a note. He opened it and beamed at the congregation.
“A former parishioner,” he told us, “has given birth to a seven-pound, thirteen-ounce boy. Joshua Nathan Bullock was born to Rorry Bullock at three-thirty this afternoon.”
Everyone smiled and clapped. The tiny white lights on the church’s ceiling-high Christmas tree twinkled and glimmered. I reached out to embrace Arch, and to my surprise, he reciprocated with an enthusiastic, tight hug.
“That’s the best bit of news yet,” I whispered to him.
“Merry Christmas, Mom,” Arch whispered back, and I hugged him harder.
What a gift, I thought, to have a son.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Diane Mott Davidson is the author of ten Goldy novels: Catering to Nobody, Dying for Chocolate, The Cereal Murders, The Last Suppers, Killer Pancake, The Main Corpse, The Grilling Season, Prime Cut, Tough Cookie, and Sticks & Scones. Diane lives in Evergreen, Colorado, with her family.
If you enjoyed Diane Mott Davidson’s
TOUGH COOKIE,
you won’t want to miss any of her tantalizing culinary mysteries. Look for them at your favorite bookseller. And look for her latest scrumptious mystery,
CHOPPING SPREE,
available from Bantam Books!
CHOPPING SPREE
DIANE MOTT DAVIDSON
TOUGH COOKIE
A Bantam Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam hardcover edition/March 2000
Bantam mass market edition/April 2001
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2000 by Diane Mott Davidson
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