The Body in the Snowdrift (17 page)

Gertrude finished the song, wailing, “Call on me, darlin', just call on me.” Ophelia's hand shot up, and without looking down, Gertrude drank, smacked her lips, and dropped the bottle back into the waiting receptacle.

The room had exploded with applause, whistles, and the occasional “We love you, Gert!” Apparently, the nickname was all right on campus.

“Thank you, thank you so much. You're a lovely audience.” The huskiness in her voice was more pronounced tonight than it had been when Faith had had that brief interchange with her in the dining room at Le
Sapin. Could be the cigarette smoke. Or the joint? Today's marijuana was not your father's reefer. Stronger several times over, usually laced with something else, and harsher. Maybe Gert grew her own.

Two skinny undergrads of indeterminate sex had provided backup. The only resemblance to the Holding Company was their hair—long and frizzy, the old “put my finger in a socket” look. One of those guys who were always around at things like this came up and fiddled with the mike, twirled some dials on the sound system, then crouched in readiness, a bookend to Ophelia. The girl seemed safe enough. The only liquid in any proximity was water—and she probably wouldn't even drink that, saving it for the diva instead. Gertrude was the only person in the room—perhaps the only person in the world—who mattered to the girl.

Some more people drifted in; a few left.

“I knew her, you know,” Gertrude said softly into the mike, sharing a secret just with them, just with the people lucky enough to be in this room on this particular winter night. Cosmic. “Out in the Haight. Janis. A wild thing. Beautiful. None of the photographs ever captured her essence. Who she really was. We didn't deserve her, and she left us. We killed her.”

This was not quite the story Faith had heard, but it played well with the audience. Gertrude appeared to be about to say something more, but then she closed her eyes—the better to commune?—and transformed herself into Donovan, rasping out “Mellow Yellow” to the appreciative group who joined in lustily every time the only two words they knew came up.

It was quite a performance, but Faith had seen enough.

 

Tom was a heavy sleeper, but a child's cough or cry in the night—or, in this case, his wife's step on the carpeted floor—wakened him immediately.

“Hey, you. Where have you been? A farewell party with your
compadres
?”

Faith walked closer to the bed.

“Phew. That must have been some wingding. You stink, my love.”

Hoping she wouldn't rouse him, she'd planned to jump into the shower and get rid of the smell of cigarettes and beer that clung to her body.

“It's a long story. I'll tell you all about it in the morning. What's been going on here?”

“Not much. Mom and Dad brought Ben home, and he fell into bed almost as fast as Amy had, but I did get him to do his teeth.”

The Fairchilds were very big on teeth. It was the first thing Marian ever noted about anyone, Faith had observed. “She has good teeth,” or “He has a very white smile,” she'd say. Maybe they had been in the placebo group in the Gardol study when they were kids. Had happened to be sitting on the wrong side of the classroom that day.

“That's a relief. What about Betsey—and Scott?”

“Betsey came slamming in, ripping because some teenager from North Carolina beat her in Scrabble. I went down when I heard the door, figured it was you. I thought maybe I could get her to calm down and talk
a little, but no hope. She did agree to a cup of Sleepy-time tea, but the moment I raised my availability as a listener, she was off again. ‘Thank you, Tom. Thank you
very
much.' You know how she says it. And ‘I have my own pastor, should I be in need of any advice, which I am not.' So I poured myself a brandy and went to bed. I don't know if Scott and Andy are home or not. I presume so, because I did hear Dennis come in, and he must have been with them.”

“You go back to sleep. I'm going to take a quick shower. Sleep in if you want. I'll take the kids in the morning. I promised the crew I'd have breakfast with them. They're making me something special, and then I'm going to brief the new chef.”

“I would have thought you'd seen enough of them tonight.” Tom sounded slightly annoyed.

“I wasn't with them. I was…well, I'll tell you tomorrow. Now I just need to get this smell out of my hair and get to bed.” Faith wanted her husband to be alert and understanding when she explained that she had spent a few hours tailing an aging hippie and her acolyte to Animal House.

She had turned on the taps and started to undress, when she was seized by a question that had to be answered immediately. She turned the water off and slipped out the door and down the stairs. The light over the sink kept her from knocking into the furniture. She slowly turned the knob to the kids' room and pushed the door open. There was enough light to see four mounds. She stepped in and listened contentedly to the soft breathing coming from the bunk beds. She was about to leave, when she realized that there was no noise at all
coming from one of the bottom bunks. She peeled a corner of the sheet from the lump on the pillow. The old rolled-up blanket trick. If he were sleeping next door, he wouldn't have tried to make it look like he was here. He wasn't with Ophelia the roadie. So where
was
Scott?

 

“Are you
sure
you want to go?” Faith asked her children. Wednesday had dawned cold and bleak. “You can come with me and hang out in the kitchen for a while, then go with Dad to the Sports Center. Or this morning might be a great time to take the Ben & Jerry's tour.” She thought for sure this last suggestion would do the trick. It was a lousy ski day.

“Mom,” Ben explained patiently. “How am I ever going to learn to ride the rail all the way if I don't stick with my lessons and practice?”

Faith now knew this was Ben's description of going down the rail slide on his board in the Terrain Park, not hopping a freight car bound for Frisco.

“Yeah,” Amy piped up. “And how am I going to get good enough to ski with Ben if I don't go?”

“You're never—” Ben started, then catching his mother's gaze of disapproval, did a 180 and finished, “going to get better if you don't practice. You're right, Amester. Besides, Mom”—somehow, he was managing to invest his prepubescent voice with David McCulloch–like measured tones—“a lot of kids won't be there, so we'll have like private lessons.”

“Don't say
like,
” she said automatically, then resigned herself to bundling all of them up for the outdoors. It would have been nice to linger in the condo a bit longer, but she knew when she had been beaten.

This was the Fairchild side, as in the “Let's bike to Alaska” dream Dick mentioned all too frequently.

She left Amy with her group inside the lodge and walked up to the main lift with Ben to meet his. The lift had just opened, so there weren't many people in line. Faith watched idly as skiers reached for the chair and sat back. One, two, three—they moved slowly up the mountain. Four, five, six—they swayed slightly side to side, skis up like toothpicks. Then suddenly, the lift stopped.

The people waiting in line grew still, eyes on the lift. The slight morning breeze, which had made small eddies in the snowy surfaces of the slopes, died down. Then suddenly, everything in front of Faith was almost literally turned upside down as she watched in horror with everyone else. Swiftly, inexorably, the chairs on the motionless lift came sliding down the cable, crashing into one another and spilling their contents to the ground. One man jumped, his arms outstretched like some kind of rara avis. Screams filled the air and the people in line frantically pushed their way under the ropes, streaming down the slope toward the lodge as others were racing up. Ben grabbed her arm.

“
What's happening
?
What's wrong
?”

She pulled him close to her, wrapping him against her body as she turned him away from the ghastly sight.

“Something's wrong with the lift. Help is coming, so don't worry.” She struggled to keep her voice calm.

The first ski patrol snowmobiles, stationed close to the lift, came roaring by.

Faith stood, immobilized. It had been like any acci
dent: slow-motion seconds that seemed to go on forever, then fast forward and chaos.

Some of the people on the ground were getting to their feet. The members of the ski patrol had one man on a stretcher and were moving a young girl, a boarder, onto another. For a moment, Faith thought it might be Ophelia, but when they took her helmet off, a mass of dark brown curls tumbled to her shoulders. She looked scared, but she was nodding.

Faith had to get Ben away.

“Let's go back to the condo. The ski patrol is taking care of things. The lift stopped before the chairs were too high off the ground, and it looks like no one has been badly hurt, thank God.”

“But what happened, Mom? Why did all the chairs slide like that?”

“I don't know, sweetheart, but we'll find out.”

“This isn't something that happens a lot, is it?” he asked anxiously. “I never heard of it happening.”

“No, the lifts are very, very safe. They're inspected all the time. When we find out what happened, we'll know more. But you shouldn't worry about going on them.” Faith resolved to take Ben down to one of the other lifts at the resort as soon as they knew what was going on. This had been an accident. A freak accident.

Pete was walking away from the lift. He looked grim.

“Stay here a moment,” Faith told Ben, pointing to one of the ski racks outside the lodge.

She caught up to Pete. “What's wrong with the lift?”

“Nothing's wrong with the lift,” he said. “Someone wedged the bull wheel—that's what keeps the lift run
ning. Be all right for a while until you got to the wedge, then just like someone picking up the end of a curtain rod and letting all the rings slide off.”

“So it wasn't an accident?”

“No, Mrs. Fairchild, it wasn't an accident.”

“And going back to work would be the worst thing in the world, I guess? Especially when you're sooo busy at the gym and the mall! I thought you'd want to help, that being married meant helping out when times were rough. Looks like I thought wrong.”

Craig Fairchild's voice was suffused with sadness. It was far worse than one of his blowups. Faith wished she hadn't walked in on this particular scene. Neither Glenda nor Craig had noticed her. Perhaps she could slip back out. She'd come to her in-law's condo, expecting that Tom would be there with the rest of them, but apparently they were all still on the slopes. Both Amy's and Ben's ski groups were down at the Sports Center—far away from the scene at the base of the mountain.

It had been total chaos until the staff managed to get
the word out that the problem was an easily repairable equipment malfunction and that there had been no serious injuries. Bruises, some aches and pains, but only the young snowboarder had sustained anything worse—unfortunately, she had broken an ankle. She'd be laid up for the rest of the season. The Staffords lurched into damage control once more and suspended lift fees for the rest of the week for those staying at Pine Slopes and gave a free day to everyone else. Craig had been in the thick of things, racing around, reassuring people he knew and people he didn't. “I plan to be first on the lift the moment Pete gives the okay,” Faith had heard him declare over and over. Ben had wanted to stay, but fortunately Steve, one of his instructors, came over and told them about the change in plans for the morning. Faith offered to take Ben down to the Sports Center while Steve rounded up the others. Then it was “Hurry up, Mom. Steve said to get down there right away.” And Faith reflected, not by any means for the first time, how one's children will always behave better for total strangers and certainly for ski gurus than for their parents. It was both reassuring and disheartening.

While she was fulfilling Steve's wishes, Craig must have returned to the condo. And now here he was, engaged in a bitter argument with his wife. Glenda was wearing a pearly white ski outfit today, lustrous and formfitting. It was trimmed with pale gray fur at the color and cuffs. A hat of the same fur—fox?—was on the floor. Pulled off in irritation? She tossed her hair back, and it seemed to crackle, as if a flashbulb had burst. The full effect was intimidating, a reincarnation
of Narnia's White Witch. Craig was standing face-to-face with his wife, and Faith had a sudden impulse to pull him away, lest Glenda turn him to stone with her icy touch.

“Don't start laying this on me!” Glenda's voice was louder and not a bit sad. “I'm not the one who's losing everything we own!”

Faith closed the door firmly behind her. She didn't want to hear any more. No, that wasn't it. She definitely wanted to hear more, but at any moment, one or the other would spot her, an eavesdropper, a voyeur.

“Hi, the ski school has moved down to the Sports Center for the morning and I wanted to let Tom know, but he's not next door. Do you know where he is?”

Craig shook his head. “I haven't seen him since the accident, but I'm late for a meeting with Freddy. If I run into Tom, I'll let him know.”

“Thanks. I left a note next door and I'll leave one here, but I don't seem to be having much luck with that form of communication. Tell him I have to brief the new chef and then I'll be free. If he doesn't meet me at the restaurant, I'll come back here.”

“Okay,” Craig said, and turned to Glenda. “We'll talk later. I won't be long.” He reached out to give her a kiss. She took a step backward and sat down.

“I don't know what my plans are. But yes, we
will
be talking.”

Looking grim, Craig left, and Faith started to follow him. She'd already called the kitchen once to tell them she was running late for the surprise breakfast the crew had prepared. She didn't want to keep them waiting
any longer, especially since the new chef would be arriving soon.

“You heard, didn't you?” Glenda said. It wasn't an accusation. More a point of information.

“Some of it,” Faith admitted.

Glenda stood up and walked over to the bookcase. She reached behind a book and took out a pack of cigarettes.

“I'm trying to quit, but not today. Do you mind?”

Faith did mind—minded that Glenda hadn't been able to stop and minded the smell—but she nodded. It was Glenda's life, and as she had amply demonstrated, she was a big girl who made her own decisions.

“He's stripped what little savings we had, taken a second mortgage on the house, and borrowed money from anyone stupid enough to lend him some just to put a bundle into this two-bit resort. I'm no Donald Trump, but even I could tell him that he'd have been better off standing on the Bourne Bridge and throwing it all into the Cape Cod Canal. But it's always ‘Freddy thinks' or ‘Freddy wants.'” Glenda's smoking matched her invective. She'd take a drag, pulling the smoke deep into her lungs, expel it forcibly, and wave the cigarette, stained deep red from her lipstick, into the air with a punching motion, as if Craig were close at hand.

“Oh dear,” Faith said, inwardly noting the inadequacy of the words but unable, after all that had been happening since her arrival at Pine Slopes, to come up with anything else. “Do Dick and Marian know?”

“I doubt it. I don't think anyone knows—and I don't want anyone to know.
Capice?
”

Faith capiced.

“What he has to do is get it all back. If we have to, we can sue the Staffords. Undue influence.”

Glenda probably watched a lot of Court TV, besides
The Apprentice,
Faith speculated. She was right about the influence part, though. Craig would do anything for Freddy, and that meant doing anything for Pine Slopes. It was clear now why he'd pressed his father to have the birthday celebration here; also why Craig seemed to know so much about the inner workings of the place—and care so much. He was losing his shirt.

Investing in a ski resort was all well and good if you could afford the possibility that you might be saying good-bye to the money. True of any investment, but especially one so dependent on the will of the gods. If it snowed, you'd make money. If it didn't…And even if it did snow, there were other factors, and those had been coming fast and furious at Pine Slopes: the loss of the chef, the prank at the pool, today's sabotage—still a secret, from what Faith had observed. The break-in at the condo was being kept under wraps, too. And then there was Boyd Harrison's death. Although terrible in itself, its ramifications—the calling in of the loans—were a further disaster.

“Look, I know you probably think I'm a terrible wife. That I should stand by my man and let him deal with this himself.”

“No. Of course I—”

“Let me finish. I know how you Fairchilds stick together. This family is like a club. Dick's the president, Marian's the secretary, and the rest of you show up for
meetings. Maybe there's a secret handshake. For sure, there are a lot of inside jokes. It hasn't been easy being the newest member. But the thing that's made life the hardest is the bill of goods Craig sold me. I thought he had money, a lot of money. He had a great car—and hefty payments every month, I found out too late—took me to nice places, and flashed his Amex card around. He was
known.
”

Faith could picture it all—all too well.

“When I met the family, I could tell there was money there, too.”

“But—”

“Give me a break, Faith. I know church mice get more than Tom does, but you come from money and make a lot of money. What are you wearing today? I'll bet you anything it's not from the Gap. Then there are the Parkers. They live in a mansion. My family lived in a place the size of Betsey's Great Room, and there were six of us. Dick and Marian are the types who have their money safely stowed away, making more money. Marian walks around in sweaters my mother would give to the Salvation Army, but on Marian they look right. Because she can buy any sweater Talbot's sells, but sews up the holes in her old ones instead. Think about it. They own three houses. Could you blame me for assuming that Craig was like the rest of his family? A clever businessman, money in the bank? I almost forgot Robert. That seems to happen a lot in the Fairchild Club. Maybe he's the one I should have gone after. He's definitely got bucks, and he's as good-looking as Craig, maybe better.”

Faith had to get to the restaurant kitchen, but she couldn't leave Glenda like this.

“It
is
a hard family to fit into. I think all families are, even for those born into them.” Maybe especially for them, she added to herself. “But everyone was truly pleased when Craig married you. He's been so happy, and I suppose we took it for granted that you were, too. He's done a stupid—no, make that terrible—thing. One of the rules of marriage is that you have to talk to each other about decisions like this. I think Craig wanted to surprise you. Make a huge profit and buy you a house like his sister's.” Or a ring, Faith thought, and again kept the thought to herself. “He's like a little boy in some ways.”

“Well, I'm not sure I have the time or patience to wait for him to grow up. I love Craig. He's very sweet and good to me, but I can't trust him.”

Enough was enough. Glenda had just admitted she'd married Craig for his money. From the remark about the size of her house, it was clear she had come from a poor background, but that was no excuse. A reason, but not an excuse. Faith looked her sister-in-law straight in the eye.

“Can he trust you?”

Glenda turned red, angrily stubbed her cigarette out against the fireplace, and threw the butt in with the logs.

“I think you'd better mind your own business, Faith. I'd watch out if I was you.”

For the second time that week, Faith found herself trembling with rage at one of her sisters-in-law.

“Is that a threat of some kind?”

Glenda picked her hat off the floor and put it on, deliberately turning her back on Faith.

“Take it however you want.”

 

The kitchen smelled heavenly, and Faith felt the morning's events melt away like a late-spring snow. The appetizing fragrance would make a great first impression when the chef arrived. If whatever it was tasted as good as it smelled, there could be a new addition—something with a Latin flair—to Le Sapin's menu.

“Ah, Señora Confianza, we have been keeping your food hot for you,” Eduardo said. Faith knew they must have been watching the clock anxiously, and yet from their relaxed poses at the counter and against the wall, it was as if they had all the time in the world. A nice feeling. No “Where have you beens?” to greet her. No guilt.

“Sit down, sit down,” Alessandro said with a flourish, leading Faith to a place setting on the counter.

“I hope you like this. It is a dish from Peru.” Eduardo put a plate in front of her. She could smell onions, garlic, and the sauce had tomatoes in it. There was also a hint of peanuts. What could it be?

“I know I'll love it.”

They gathered around to watch her take the first bite.

“
¡Riquisimo!
” she declared—and it
was
delicious.

The dish was fantastic. Faith thought of what Calvin Trillin's daughter used to say when she was younger: “My tongue is smiling.”

“Okay, what is this? And I hope there's more.”

“It's Peruvian.
Llapingachos
with Salsa de Mali
. We eat a lot of potatoes in Peru. First, we mix mashed potatoes with onion and cheese, add a little salt and pepper, and make little flat cakes, which we fry. Then we put the sauce on—tomatoes, garlic, more onion, and peanuts. We used peanut butter today, because we could not find any peanuts to chop up, but it tastes almost the same.”

Peruvian potato pancakes. Faith loved the whole idea.

“Before you leave, we will make you some Bolivian
salteñas
,” said Juana. “We make round circles of piecrust and put all sorts of good things on one half—chopped beef, onions, olives, tomato, garlic, rice, sometimes hard-boiled egg—then we fold it over and bake it in the oven. You can buy them anywhere. People are always happy to walk around eating
salteñas
.”

“I'd like that. Every culture had a kind of food like your
salteñas
—sandwiches, of course, but Cornish pasties are even more similar, and then there are Italian calzones, Chinese dumplings, and Polish pierogies. Portable food to take to work or for a picnic.” Faith scraped the last morsel of potato cake from her plate and was promptly rewarded with another helping. She looked around at her crew, so young, so eager.

“There was a problem with
la silla del ascenso,
the chairlift, yes?” Vincente asked with poorly disguised casualness.

“Yes, but it's probably been fixed by now, and no one was seriously injured. One girl has a broken ankle. It was very lucky that it didn't happen later in the day.”

Eduardo and Vincente exchanged glances. What do they know about all this? Faith wondered. As help—
and foreign help, in addition—they had a kind of presence that might have caused them to learn more about what was happening at Pine Slopes than others. A built-in Harry Potter cloak of invisibility. People would talk in front of them, assuming they didn't understand and mostly not noticing them in the first place. Like the chairs, tables, cutlery, they were just there at the restaurant. Not people, but things.

Faith looked at her watch. The chef would be here any minute. There was nothing to do to get ready, though. The kitchen was gleaming, and she'd prepared a list of possible specials for next week. They still had John's list and were a day ahead, since Nordic Night had bumped duck à l'orange and butternut squash ravioli with brown butter and sage.