Tough Cookie

by Diane Mott Davidson

  Arthur seemed intent upon assembling wineglasses on the tiled counter next to the array of bottles. “I don’t use the word lightly. I wish to God the prosecutor could have proved premeditation on Jack’s part, but she couldn’t. I’ll guarantee you this, though: Gilkey will marry Eileen Druckman for her money. You’d better watch out for your friend.”

  “I know. And I’m sorry to bring up painful memories.”

  Arthur sighed. “I sure do wish I’d taped Portman’s call to me about paying him to keep Gilkey behind bars. Now he’s dead. So it’s up to me to prove Portman was taking bribes. Then my claim to have the will set aside is infinitely strengthened. Gilkey will be proven once and for all to be a bounder, and I’ll be able to—” He abruptly stopped talking. His eyes rested on the poster on his wall.

  “Be able to what?” I kept my tone lighthearted as I began to measure out the marinade ingredients. “Travel to France? Go live in Tuscany? My fantasy is to eat my way through Italy on a six-month walking tour. The exercise works off the meals.”

  After a moment, Arthur said softly, “My dream is right there.” He gestured toward the travel poster, the lavender-surrounded village with its high church steeple.

  “To go to France? To live there?”

  “Not just France, Goldy, but a particular place.” He stared lovingly at the poster. “I’m going to buy a vineyard in the town of Bandol, in Provence. Here, let me have you taste something.” He reached for a corkscrew, then disappeared to another part of the house. When he returned five minutes later, he carried a bottle of red wine. “I just want you to try this.”

  “Arthur, please. It’s not even nine o’clock in the morning.”

  “Just a sip.” He uncorked the bottle and poured a half-inch in each of two wineglasses. I sighed. Two rules of catering were in conflict: Do not drink alcohol on a job, especially in the morning and The more you need the client, the crazier the client will act. Arthur dramatically proffered me a glass; we toasted each other silently; I took a sip. It was delicious. Even I knew enough about wine to call this red hearty, spicy, and just the ticket for getting your morning off to a great start.

  “That’s my future you’re drinking,” he told me, very seriously. “My wasted future,” he added glumly.

  “Why ‘wasted’?”

  Arthur cocked his head. “What do you taste in the wine? What spices?”

  “I’m not that good at—”

  “I will tell you what you’re tasting.” He clattered his glass onto the counter. “You smell lavender. You taste rosemary. Basil. Bay leaf. You taste Bandol.” He gestured at the poster. “A corner of it, anyway.” His voice cracked. “Bandol is a lovely Provençal village, where I could have bought an operating vineyard for two million dollars. I keep that picture here to remind me what Jack Gilkey stole from me. I could be growing my grapes and relaxing each evening with my view of the sea. But Jack Gilkey ruined that. And your buddy Doug Portman let that killer out of prison.”

  “Doug Portman was not my buddy.” And the sheriff’s department also thinks he was taking bribes, I added mentally. But I did not know how much of what Arthur was telling me was true, so I kept my mouth shut.

  “Yes, yes. It doesn’t matter now, does it?” He felt in his pocket for his Pepto and pulled it out. He did not drink any of it, thank goodness. After staring at it for a moment, he stuffed it back into his other pocket.

  I had one more question for Arthur. “If you’re trying to deprive public broadcasting of your mother’s fortune, why do you work for them?”

  He sipped his wine. “Because a love for public television was something my mother and I shared. Yes, I want the money. But I can’t turn my back on something that was dear to my mother and me. You know? Her favorite show was Nate’s High Country Hallmarks. And they died the same day.”

  I set the wine down, murmured sympathetically, and wondered if I could ask Arthur to fix me one of his perfect espressos. My brain was starting to spin, after only three sips of wine. Unfortunately, the phone rang again. Arthur refilled his glass as more disastrous news was delivered: the cases of Sancerre, including the one intended for tonight’s party, had been left on the loading dock of a warehouse in Glenwood Springs. The only way they could be in Killdeer that night was if Arthur drove over and picked them up. He banged down the phone.

  “I have to go,” he said frantically.

  “I’ll be done in a couple of hours. I can lock up for you,” I assured him. Arthur groaned and patted the Pepto-pocket. “I do it all the time for absentee clients, Arthur. And I’m bonded.”

  He frowned at the food on the counter. “Well … all right. I know how to heat up the pork, but what about the rest of it?”

  “I’ll write it all out for you.”

  His face relaxed. “Thanks, Goldy.” His face tightened again. “Just do the food. I’ll get out the other wines when I come home.”

  “Okay, but you’ll never be back before five, and you should chill the whites for—”

  “No, thanks,” he said abruptly as he opened drawers and scanned the kitchen counters. “Don’t get me wrong. I am grateful for what you’re doing. Looks like my checkbook’s in the car. Can I pay you Wednesday? In fact, can I take you to lunch at the bistro? Wednesday is Gilkey’s day off. We can talk about the last show. Save Thursday, please. I want you to make that oatmeal you gave me, maybe a bread.…”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Afterward, we could ski together, if you want.”

  I laughed. “Sure. But I’m strictly a slow-going blue-run skier. And I rarely have wine with lunch.”

  His puzzled look said Are you joking? But he merely mumbled, “See you at the bistro Wednesday at noon,” grabbed his keys, checked the locked door in the hallway, glanced at the Dresden shepherdess figurine on his front table, and took off.

  I studied the three “sample” bottles on the counter. Why did he have a fit when I offered to get out the rest of the wines? As his Escalade roared down the driveway, I began mixing the crab cake ingredients, thinking hard. Arthur probably didn’t want me fetching the wines because wine geeks are notoriously secretive about their cellars. I rolled the crab cakes in crumbs and slid them into the refrigerator next to the strudel, then peeked out the front window. The Escalade was nowhere in sight.

  The door in the hallway was indeed locked. I hesitated. If I snooped around, but didn’t steal anything, could I lose my bonding? If I snooped around, and Arthur came back and caught me, would he break a wine bottle over my head? Would it be full or empty?

  I won’t steal a thing, I promised myself. If he comes back, I’ll just say I was looking for the wines. To try to help him out, I’ll tell him. What I wouldn’t tell him was that his locked door and furtive ways had me convinced he was trying to hide something besides chardonnay. And that always provokes me to find out if I’m right.

  First I checked his leather jacket for the key. His “lost” checkbook was sticking out of one of the pockets. I remembered his visual check of the Dresden shepherdess on the table. I lifted the delicate china piece and found a small brass key beneath it. When I unlocked the door, it opened onto a carpeted staircase.

  I tiptoed down, holding my breath, and found myself in a long hallway lined with color photographs. This lower level held two guest rooms, a bathroom, and another closed door. The wine cellar?

  Someone desperate for information, valuables, or something had broken into Doug Portman’s apartment the day he died. The sheriff’s department had discovered no evidence linking Portman to alleged under-the-table payments, although they had yet to search through his sealed boxes of military memorabilia. If an uncategorized piece of art or an antique weapon had been within reach of the burglar, it could have been stolen. If there had been files or papers in the condo, they could have been removed. Most significantly, if there had been any immediately recognizable clue as to what Doug Portman was up to, it had vanished. Who needed something belonging to Doug Portman? Needed it badly enough to burg
larize a dead man’s home? If you had nineteen million dollars riding on finding evidence of Portman’s wrongdoing, wouldn’t you rush to go through the place? And if you’d killed him, wouldn’t you know you had only a few hours’ jump on the cops?

  I gulped. How well did I really know Arthur? He had been friendly when he wasn’t nerve-wracked, which was most of the time. Did I really think he was capable of killing someone? Hard to tell.

  I turned the knob on the closed door at the end of the basement hallway. Locked. Did Arthur have the wine-cellar key on him, or was it hidden down here? Where had he kept the key to the basement? In the hallway, under a figurine.

  I walked up and down the hall, much the same way I’d strolled past the “Best of Killdeer” show at the art gallery. Here, finally, were the family photographs that one would have expected to see on the upper floor. All had dates underneath. Several of them featured Arthur a decade ago, standing beside a tall, good-looking woman whom I recognized from the articles left for me: Fiona Wakefield. She smiled with her son from the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, from the steps of the Parthenon. There was a picture from the Sixties, taken in front of the Waldorf-Astoria. In this one, Fiona had her arm around a handsome man I assumed to be Arthur’s father.

  But one photograph in particular caught my attention. In sunglasses, clad in bright snowgear, Fiona smiled on a snowy mountaintop. There had been someone standing next to her, but that person’s image had been neatly sliced away; all that remained were the tips of another pair of skis. A penned-in date indicated a time four years ago.

  The person cut out of the picture had to be Jack Gilkey.

  The photograph was mounted in an acrylic frame. Gilkey stole my future, Arthur had told me. I carefully lifted the framed photo off the wall. Something clinked to the floor. I looked down: At my feet was a gleaming key ring. Dangling from the ring were a door-size brass key and a small steel padlock key.

  CHAPTER 15

  Now that I had the key, the locked door opened easily. Behind it, a padlocked gate barred entry to the cold, gloomy cellar itself. I undid the padlock and removed it, then creaked the gate open.

  I groped for a switch; overhead lights blazed through the gloomy space. The walls were made of Colorado river rock. Stacks of crisscross-style bins held hundreds of wine bottles, each lying on its side. My shoes crunched against the stone-paved floor as I moved cautiously forward. The cellar was not a square, it was not even symmetrical: It had angled walls and dark corners. I shivered. How much had it cost Arthur to put in this storage bunker? Worse, through these thick walls, how would I even hear him if he came back?

  I quickly scanned the bins for anything besides wine. Ignoring the cold, I crossed to a near wall where a bin contained two file folders. I flipped through the first file: it apparently contained a log of what was stored in the cellar. The second file was stuffed with papers detailing outflow from Arthur’s supply—to whom the wine went, when, and how much. I moved on to a set of shelves built into the rock wall. This held two rows of empty bottles; names and dates were scribbled on each label. The labels were difficult to read, but seemed to be records of when the bottles had been consumed. The man obviously carried wine-obsession to new heights. On the floor were more empty labeled bottles, as if Arthur had run out of room for his souvenirs.

  A foot away from the empty-bottle rack, he’d mounted a color poster of limestone cliffs next to a dark blue sea. The poster-photograph looked familiar. I suddenly realized I was looking at the Mediterranean: This was another view of the French village of Bandol.

  I keep the picture here to remind me.

  The four corners of the poster were affixed to the wall with gummy adhesive. I peeled up the bottom right corner, then the left, and discovered what I’d suspected: behind the poster was a double set of shelves just like the one with the empty bottles. For some reason, Arthur had emptied out these shelves and put the bottles on the floor, to make an impromptu—and hidden—storage area. Why?

  Disappointingly, only one shelf contained something: four letters and a UPS package. I was not surprised to see that every single item had been addressed to Doug Portman. Nor was I shocked to note that every one had been slit open and, presumably, read.

  I worked my way through the letters first. Their postmarks indicated they’d been mailed in the first two weeks of December. One was from a potential buyer in Minnesota who wrote to say he was interested in unjacketed bullets from the Civil War. Another was from someone wanting to sell Doug a rifle complete with bayonet. The earliest postmarked letter was from Mexico. It was from one Juanita Martinez, and explained in formal English that Señor Portman’s guest villa awaited him. Señor would be able to do business in the town, Puerto Escondido. Spanish for Hidden Port; I knew that much. I also knew Puerto Escondido was not a high-profile American tourist destination.

  Finally, there was the UPS package, stamped with the return address of Copper Mountain Worldwide Travel. Inside was a ticket and a note. The ticket was a round-trip to Puerto Escondido with a departure date of the twentieth of December and an open return. The scrawled note from the travel agent said: Mr. Portman, This time of year, it’s much cheaper to buy a round-trip ticket. Thank you for your check.

  Heart pounding, I stuffed the ticket and note back in the UPS packet, then folded the letters and tucked them back in their envelopes. I placed the pile on the stone shelves exactly as I’d found them and reattached the poster to the rock wall. Then I fled the dreary cellar, turning off the lights and relocking as I went.

  Safely back in the kitchen, I poached the sole, braised the spinach, and made the easy sauce for the sole Florentine. I whisked together a wine-only vinaigrette. Then I wrote out all the directions for Arthur. He had to be very careful to brush each delicate sheet of phyllo dough with melted butter, I admonished, and stack the buttered sheets on top of the chicken to make a puffed, crispy strudel topping. I wrote out directions for reheating the crab cakes and sole and tossing the salad. Last, I locked the heavy front door, swung it closed behind me, and walked quickly to the Rover. My brain whirled with questions.

  Doug Portman had been leaving Colorado, going one-way to a small town on the Pacific coast of Mexico. He’d used the travel agency of a nearby resort town. He had found himself a villa and business opportunities. He’d been packed. All this Arthur Wakefield had discovered when he’d broken into Doug’s condo the day he was murdered.

  Arthur Wakefield was in the process of battling to have his mother’s will reversed. He desperately needed to prove Jack Gilkey had had undue influence over his mother before she died. Clearly, he believed that if he could prove Jack Gilkey had had undue influence over anybody, that would strengthen his case. If nineteen million clams were at stake, wouldn’t you want a strong case? So Arthur had broken into Portman’s condo to see what he could find.

  Why would Doug Portman be leaving, anyway? Had he gotten wind of the investigation into his parole board activities and decided to take a powder? Was it possible that Arthur had discovered Doug’s travel arrangements—through the travel agent or some other source—and killed him? After the fact, why rob the condo? Could someone else have discovered Doug’s departure plans, and tried to stop him, permanently?

  I shifted gears and headed toward the trailer park that perched on the outskirts of Killdeer. Maybe Rorry Bullock would enlighten me on some of these people. I would certainly welcome some illumination. The more I tried to figure out what was going on in this mountain town, the more muddled I became.

  Actually, I decided when I once again lost my way on the too-quaint, too-curvy streets of Killdeer, what I really needed was caffeine. Cooking, wine-tasting, and snooping were too much to handle before eleven o’clock in the morning, even if you were the toughest cookie in the Rockies.

  The sunshine and fresh snow had lured so many day-skiers that their cars filled the lots near the gondola. I backtracked to the Elk Ridge lot and walked to Cinda’s. It wasn’t a bad trek if you weren’t wearing ski boot
s. Twenty minutes later I was bellying up to the coffee bar and wondering if I didn’t deserve four shots instead of two. And how about a luscious cheese-filled croissant to go with it? After all, I hadn’t had any lunch.

  Cinda, her cottony-pink hair held back with twisted rubber bands, opened her pale eyes wide when she spotted me. She beckoned with a ring-studded hand and then whispered ominously in my ear: “He’s here. The snowboarder. Barton Reed.”

  “Here, now?” Then I added, “May I have a four-shot espresso and ricotta-stuffed croissant to clear my vision?”

  Cinda said, “It’s the guy who made the threat, remember? My other waiter, Ryan, and I have just been talking about it. Barton Reed used to be big in the snowboard circuit, and he drove us all nuts with his temper. Then he went to jail on a fraud charge. Now he’s back, and the law enforcement guys found some threatening card he supposedly wrote. So I don’t want to have to deal with him.” She hustled off. Since it was late-morning coffee-and-hot-chocolate time, her shop was mobbed. She returned quickly, however, balancing a tray of goodies for me: a cup brimming with steaming, crema-topped espresso, a plate with a hot, flaky, ricotta-oozing croissant, and a jar of plum preserves. Zowie! I took a sip of the coffee and looked around the shop. I instantly recognized the chunky-faced profile and spill of earrings: Barton Reed.

  “Did he say anything to you when he came in?” I whispered to Cinda.

  “Yeah. The cops picked him up yesterday,” she replied sotto voce, “but then let him go. His fingerprints weren’t on the threatening card, and it wasn’t his handwriting. But it looked like his handwriting. Then he came in here and demanded to know if we’d told the cops he’d threatened some cop. We played dumb. A couple of other shopkeepers told me Barton’s been making threats all over town. So he can’t be sure who spilled the beans to the cops.”

  “Why is he here now?”