Mystified, I went inside and turned on the hall light. I read, standing against the doorjamb.
It was the local rag, the Mammoth Times. The headline grabbed me first, as headlines are meant to do. And then the photo — Hal had run a very large photo above the fold. I studied it with the same scrutiny I’d given the cliff face today, and when I’d fully absorbed it, a very cold hand took hold of my heart and squeezed.
I ran for the phone.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I sat at a window table in the Ski Tip Cafe across from Jeanine Povorenko, who was the girl most envied by other girls from preschool all the way through high school. Jeanine does sports promos now on local cable, a gig originally arranged by Georgia in a fit of brilliant PR. Jeanine has a blond ponytail to the waist and broad Slavic curves and I hated her for a month when I hit adolescence.
Jeanine said, “Now he is a hunk.”
I looked. The Ski Tip pulls in a young hungry crowd, skiers and boarders who’ve spent big bucks on lift tickets and are looking for a feed that is cheap and filling. Guys come back from the slopes like jungle cats with a burn in the muscles and a shine in the eyes, strutting. Almost any of them could have caught Jeanine’s attention.
Any but Jack Altschul, my high school history teacher, by himself at the counter, or Bobby Panetta and the DeMartini twins in a back booth. Not so much because these guys didn’t meet Jeanine’s definition of hunk but because none of them — or the other dozen or so locals I spotted in the room — had anything resembling a shine in the eyes. Watchfulness was more like it. When they took their eyes off their plates it was to search the room for something, and not seem to find it. Lost hope, maybe. The story in the Mammoth Times must surely have shaken faith.
We were a crabbed bunch of worried locals watching the visitors like they’re from another planet.
Jeanine reached across the booth, nudged my arm, and leveled her gaze two tables away. A dozen guys wearing National Guard fatigues shouldered around one of Bill Bone’s huge family tables.
She slouched back and gave me a slow wink.
This, I supposed, was why it was Jeanine and not some other female who was in the newspaper photo: her knowing take on men, and theirs on her.
“Soooo…Caaasie.” Jeanine ran her hand down her ponytail, working it like a pump handle, drawing up the words. Jeanine’s the laid-back queen. “What’s the deal?”
I searched her face for the pinch-eyed look we’d all taken on. I didn’t find it. She was looking good. She had a high-altitude tan and her winter blond was whiter than last summer’s, her ponytail embroidered into a French braid. She was framed by the curlicue cutouts of Bill’s wooden booth, and if I hadn’t known her I would have taken her for a Nordic biathlete. Well, no. The set of her face had the unfazed air of a snowboarder. American all the way.
In the booth behind us someone growled, low and long.
“Thanks for coming,” I said.
She grinned. “Free food.”
“Uh-uh, gotta sing for your supper.” I smiled. We’re not exactly friends; our lives just intersect a lot. She teaches Jazzercise where I pursue last year’s fitness, she used to date my brother, I bought my used Subaru from her. We get along because she’s always blunt and I’m always easy. I wasn’t sure about tonight. I said, “I need to know what happened at Hot Creek.”
She took a drink of her Coke. “Read the paper. Everybody else has.”
“I did. I need the details.”
“Jimbo won’t tell you? He’s been braggin his ass off.”
Then Eric was right, my brother was in on it. I took a long drink of my own Coke. Knot by knot, my hometown was coming undone. “Jimbo’s not home. You’re the one in the paper so I’m asking you.”
“Why do you wanna know?”
“It scared me.”
“Yeah?” She hooked a thumb at Bobby Panetta and the DeMartinis — Jimbo’s buddies — in the back booth. “Guys said it was cool.”
Bill Bone appeared at our booth, red-faced and harried, and set out mammoth bowls of chili heaping above the rim with red onions. The food here is straightforward; Bill believes in an honest serving for your dollars. The ambience is mountain-resort kitsch. The place used to be called Little Switzerland and it’s painted blue and white and most exposed wood has been carved. When Bill bought the cafe he changed the name; every New Year’s he resolves to redecorate. He unloaded a basket of breadsticks. “Chili’s underspiced,” he said. “You’ll be disappointed.”
I tasted it. It was underspiced. I didn’t care.
Jeanine called after him, “Your chili’s always hot, Bill.” She turned her grin on me. “Hey, birthday idea — let’s get him a certificate for Great Expectations. The dating service? They find your soul mate? You know?”
I didn’t, clearly.
“So, Cass, what d’ya wanna know?”
“How you and Adrian Krom ended up in the creek.”
“Started at the Bear Pen. He hangs there when he’s not here.”
He went to the breweries with the locals. He became their best friend. “And…”
“And I sit down. And he likes that. And we order drinks.”
“He didn’t wonder why you joined him?”
She hooted, a spoonful of chili halfway to her mouth. “What, he’s gonna ask if I know what I’m doin?”
Somebody should have. “What did he have to say?”
“He told me how hot I was.” She ate the spoonful. “Well, what he said was beguiling.” She wiped her mouth. “Same thing.”
He cut a wake with the Tacoma ladies. He beguiled Georgia. I wondered if Jeanine knew he’d beguiled Georgia into Hot Creek, but if she didn’t know, I wasn’t going to spread the gossip. I said, “What else?”
“Bar talk. You’ve been in a bar?”
“What’s your hobby, that sort of thing?”
“Sure, Cass. That sort of thing.”
“Well, then, what’s his hobby?”
She selected a breadstick and bit off an end. As she chewed, she gazed overhead at the heavy beveled rafters where Bill had hung antique skis with cracked leather straps. Maybe the answer was up there, and if it was, I gave her the space to find it. She came back to me. “His hobby is mind-fuckin this town.” Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Shock you, Cassie?”
It did, actually. Like the swim in the creek. “How is he mind-fucking this town?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Okay, so we were slammin margaritas — only mine were virgins but he didn’t know that — and we’re talkin about getting crazy and I was working around to, let’s…get…crazy and go down to Hot Creek.”
“You mean it was your idea?”
“To start. She reached for her braid, then dropped her hand. “So he tells me the creek’s off-limits now. Road’s gonna get fenced.”
“By him?”
“Guess so.” She shrugged. “Anyway, he gets really weird about it.”
I sat forward. “How?”
“One minute I’m thinking I don’t have to work very hard to convince him. You know?” She trailed a hand down her shirt, flicking the buttons between her breasts. “And then he kind of turns off. He’s got those bedroom eyes but one minute he’s looking at me all hot and the next he’s, like, cold. He says that shit about it being off-limits and I’m like so? You’re the man. And he doesn’t get off on that, he just gives me this cold look and says it’s dangerous down there. And I was getting a little nervous.”
“But you went.”
“He made me.”
“He forced you?”
“No. He just…turned things around. I’m supposed to be the one getting him so wasted he’ll go down to Hot Creek. Only he’s not drunk. He’s had three fuckin margaritas and he’s stone sober. He’s putting it to me. Creek’s dangerous, gases, a bunch of volcano talk. And I’m like, that’s okay, I know where it’s safe. And he jumps on that. It isn’t safe. And he wants to know if I fully understand that.”