Dark Tort gbcm-13 Read online

  Outside, I was momentarily blinded by sunshine reflecting off the snow. Blinking, I reshifted my box and tried to bring the deck into focus, because I most decidedly did not want to catapult down the steps and send fifteen pounds of cake, frosting, plates, and candles skittering across our backyard. Each piece of our deck furniture, I saw, bore a thick white cap. I’d forgotten all about my poor geraniums; they were probably done for. Oh, well. I had bigger problems. Much bigger.

  I put my box down on the picnic table and pressed the buttons to set the security system. Any intrusion would summon the security company, Tom, and Tom’s .38.

  Turning toward the garage, I shifted my box again and glanced overhead. Caterers always worry about the weather: Will there be trouble getting to the event? Will people arrive late and screw up the food-serving schedule? If the driveway is slippery with snow, will either Julian or I slip and break an ankle while retrieving the boxes from the Rover? I prayed that the Ellises would have an empty bay in their garage that we could use.

  Shiny white clouds sporting gray underbellies raced across the sky from west to east. As soon as a nimbus obscured the sun, the light quickly went from bright to dark. It didn’t look as if more precipitation was imminent. Still, we’d received enough snow that mud could be a problem. All around our backyard, pine and aspen trees were heavily laden with the white stuff. Explosive thumps signaled loads of snow sliding off branches and landing on the ground. In many ways, it was a typical autumn day in the high country. “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”? As Arch would say, I don’t think so.

  Julian and I stomped through the snow toward the Rover, which he had turned on to warm up. When I stopped to rest—I was still suffering from a sleep deficit the size of the national debt—I could hear brave song from the few remaining birds. Well, I consoled myself, at least it wasn’t winter yet. Not technically, anyway.

  When Julian eased the Rover to the end of our driveway, I looked up and down the street. Unfortunately, every single vehicle bore a thick hat of snow, making the cars unrecognizable. But nothing looked suspicious, and I couldn’t imagine that any wannabe hit-and-run driver would have spent the entire nineteen-degree night parked by our curb, waiting for something to happen. At least, I hoped not.

  The roads were treacherous, with a thick mixture of ice and slush plastering the pavement. As we headed up Main Street toward the lake, I was glad we were in the Rover. Furman County’s gargantuan plows had swept the snow into a mountain range of mire bordering the sidewalk through town. Shop owners, eager to entice customers driven inside by the storm, were out brushing new white hats off their jack-o’-lanterns, giant black felt spiders, and witches.

  Two of the merchants had thrown in the towel on Halloween. Instead, they’d hastily festooned their storefronts with garlands of twinkling red and green lights and signs announcing the numbers of days and weeks left until Christmas, a holiday Dusty Routt would not see. I sighed. But then the SUV in front of us skidded sideways on the uphill approach to the lake. Julian, who had allowed plenty of room for such an eventuality, gently pressed the brakes.

  I was tempted to holler at the SUV driver. Apparently he hadn’t heard, or didn’t care to know, what longtime Coloradans knew well: four-wheel drive helps you go in snow, but it does not help you go, 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 impe
netrable—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 was Charlie’s list of stew ingredients, inscribed in gold calligraphic letters, and, typically, without directions. As in the other paintings I’d seen, the perimeter of the painting was filled with fanciful decorations. Here the images looked like little rectangular blocks embellished with squiggles. With my nose almost on the painting, I squinted and finally made out tiny sticks of butter, animated with thin legs and arms and smiley faces, marching in a merry band around the deer and the stew ingredients.

  Meg settled herself in a chair near the hearth. Her two couches and four chairs were all constructed of rough-hewn logs. Each one sported horsehair cushions and was piled with Native American woven blankets in shades of rust, sand, and gray. The decorator of the H&J reception area might have thought she was evoking the Old West, but this was the real deal. I picked out a chair near Meg and sat down.

  “Goldy and I have a party to do in a little while,” Julian said from the doorway. “Why don’t you let me get the tea so you all can have time to talk?” Before we could respond, Julian trod quickly across a Hopi rug of the same weave and earth tones as the room’s blankets and cushions. “Don’t worry,” he said as he disappeared around a corner. “I’ll find what I need.”

  I felt suddenly awkward, sitting in this Old West living room with a woman whom I admired but did not know very well. Meg, usually so forthright, smoothed imaginary wrinkles out of her jeans and stared at the ashes in the fireplace. “I don’t know where to start, and I know you can’t stay long.” Her voice trembled. “I talked to Sally Routt this morning, and I feel so disconnected…” She pulled a tissue from where she’d tucked it into her waistband, and began to weep quietly.

  “I understand,” I said softly. I felt my own throat close. Maybe coming over to this house had not been a good idea.

  Meg dabbed her eyes and nose. “Sally said you were trying to help figure out what happened to her daughter. She said you’d promised to keep the police and press out of it.”

  “That’s not exactly—” I began, but stopped. “Look, Meg. I am trying to help Sally. Why don’t you start by telling me why you wanted to see me.”

  “Well.” Meg cleared her throat and gave me the benefit of her clear brown eyes. “You remember my neighbor Charlie Baker.”

  I nodded. “We were friends. We used to cook together sometimes.”

  “He was a wonderful, eccentric old coot.” She smiled, remembering, then frowned. “You know how much Charlie adored our congregation, and the feeling was mutual. He always insisted on making all the pancakes for the Shrove Tuesday supper. He relished running the luncheon café at the church during the Episcopal Church Women’s home tour.”

  I tried to keep the impatience out of my voice. “We did the baked goods for the bazaar together.”

  “You remember how upset he was when Father Biesbrouck died.”

  “I do.”

  “But never mind,” she said brusquely. “That hurt us all. When Charlie found out he was sick, he had a lot to do, you know, legally. H&J was his firm, and they sent Dusty over to work with him, to get his affairs in order. She…she came every day. What a dear girl. She would help Charlie, then she would always come over here to say hello, bring me some warm whole wheat bread or something else that Charlie had made for me. Even though he was sick, he still baked. Dusty said he claimed it made him feel as if he could live forever.” She stopped talking for a moment. “Poor Charlie. He wanted to have one last show, in March.”

  “I know,” I interjected. “I did the food for it—”

  She waved this away. “People came from all over, they bought Charlie’s paintings. He sat in a chair and soaked it all in. But when I drove him home, he was in a foul mood, poor thing. There’d been an accident outside the gallery, and that slowed us down…but he hardly seemed to notice it. When I left him off, he asked me if I knew of any private investigators.”

  “A private investigator? To find out what?”<
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  Julian appeared, carrying tea things. After he’d set down the tray, he said, “Do you all want me to leave?”

  “No, no,” Meg said, her voice distressed. “It’s all right.” Julian poured the tea and gave me a wide-eyed look, as in What’s going on? I shook my head quickly, then took the proffered cup, which Julian announced was Darjeeling. Meg barely nodded when Julian put her cup down on a small table made of intricately twisted branches.

  Meg fixed me with that gaze of hers. “I told him to try H&J. He said he had other business to do there.”

  “What kind of business?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, he didn’t say.” She frowned, lost in her reminiscence. “I guess he meant his will, but that’s just conjecture.”

  “Uh,” Julian interjected, “I don’t want to be rude here, but Goldy and I need to think about getting over to the Ellises’ house.”

  Meg stood up. “All right, then,” she announced. “I didn’t ask you to come here because of Charlie. I wanted to see you because of Dusty.” She glared at the tea things, as if they were somehow getting in the way of her story. “Could you bring your tea into my workout room? I’ll show you…what has me disconcerted.”

  Julian and I glanced at each other, then picked up separate mugs. Julian doused his with sugar, and then we dutifully followed Meg down a narrow hallway and into a small log room that had bookshelves on three sides and a wall of wavy-glassed casement windows overlooking the ridge. Incongruously, a treadmill and two weight machines were placed in front of the shelves and windows.

  “Used to be my father’s office,” Meg said by way of explanation. She moved over to the treadmill, which had been placed next to the bank of windows on the far side of the room. “I walk here, and run a bit, too. Do my exercises, push-ups and working with weights. Looking out the window keeps me from getting bored.”

  I peeked out the window, which had a view through the pines…to Charlie Baker’s house. In profile, the house looked like the glass prow of a ship, set at anchor overlooking Flicker Ridge. From the window, one also had a good view of the iron fence around Charlie’s house, and the gate to his driveway.