Too Rich and Too Dead

by Cynthia Baxter

“Cool!” Thoughtfully, he added, “But not today. Gotta work late. I usually get off at one, but with the sale and everything, we're extra busy.”

  “How about tomorrow?” Mallory suggested.

  “Tomorrow would be awesome,” he said, nodding enthusiastically. “I should be outta here at the usual time.”

  As they decided on a meeting place, Mallory wondered if Dusty thought he'd just found himself a new sugar mommy. She certainly didn't come close to Carly in the looks department. But if this young man's true agenda was acquiring some additional accessories to go with his Rolex, he probably wouldn't care much about what his Good Fairy looked like.

  Besides, she reminded herself as she left the store, what Dusty thinks doesn't really matter. What's important is that the dude is too young to have learned that there's no such thing as a free lunch.

  As she walked back to the Hotel Jerome, Mallory glanced at her watch. When she saw it wasn't even noon, she stared at it for a few seconds to make sure the second hand was moving.

  It was hard to believe how much had happened in the few hours since she'd gotten out of bed that morning. She'd started the day by getting the shocking news that Carly had been murdered. She'd immediately rushed over to Cass-Ber to offer Brett whatever support she could. Next she toured Tavaci Springs, where she'd actually spotted the scene of the crime, at least from the outside. As if all that hadn't been draining enough, she'd then learned that the police now considered Harriet a suspect in Carly's murder.

  Thanks to that new wrinkle, Mallory now found herself smack in the middle of the murder investigation. She'd even set up a meeting with one of her top suspects: Carly's lover-boy.

  With the emphasis on “boy,” she thought wryly.

  She was looking forward to retreating to her hotel room while she tried to figure out exactly how she was going to help clear Harriet of suspicion at the same time she did all the research she needed to do in order to write her magazine article. Ordering lunch from room service—and eating it with her shoes off and her feet up—sounded like a really good way to plan her strategy.

  As she strode inside the Hotel Jerome, she contemplated what she felt like eating while she took that relaxing in-room lunch break. But before she had a chance to decide whether she was in the mood for a local delicacy like mountain lion stew or something more conventional, she noticed that someone familiar was standing at the front desk, even though her back was to Mallory.

  Sylvie Snowdon. The woman Harriet had spoken of so bitterly, mainly because her ruthless determination to acquire the Rejuva-Juice empire for HoliHealth would most likely cost her her job.

  Mallory hung back, ducking behind a cart piled high with luggage. That particular location put her far away enough from Sylvie not to be noticed but close enough to overhear. She only hoped one of the bellmen wouldn't think she was trying to filch somebody's carry-on and sic security on her.

  Peering over the hot pink molded plastic suitcase balanced precariously on top of the cart, Mallory struggled to hear what Sylvie was saying.

  “It's getting close to lunchtime,” Sylvie told the man at the front desk, “and I wondered if you could suggest a good restaurant.”

  “Aspen is full of great restaurants,” the clerk replied politely. “May I ask what kind of place you're looking for?”

  “Someplace quiet,” Sylvie answered quickly. “Someplace private.”

  The clerk thought for a few seconds. “If you have a little time, I'd suggest the Pine Creek Cookhouse. It's a bit out of the way, about a half-hour drive outside of town. And once you get there, you have to be transported up the side of a mountain. But getting there is half the fun. Of course, if you'd rather stay in town—”

  “No, it sounds perfect,” Sylvie assured him.

  “In that case, I'll be happy to make you a reservation.” As the clerk picked up the phone, he asked, “Will that be for one person?”

  Sylvie hesitated before saying, “No, make it for two. And make it for one-fifteen. I'll head over as soon as I can.”

  Mallory was curious about who Sylvie knew in Aspen—well enough to plan a lunch date, no less. Here she'd just assumed she come into town alone.

  It could be anyone, she told herself. She could have friends or even family in Aspen. Just because she works for a company that's based outside of San Francisco doesn't mean she doesn't know people in other parts in the country.

  But she was suddenly extremely interested in finding out.

  The Pine Creek Cookhouse, Mallory repeated to herself. One-fifteen. That means there's plenty of time for me to get there, too.

  As she rode up the elevator, mourning the loss of her shoeless, stressless lunch even though she recognized that it was for a good cause, her cell phone trilled. When she glanced at caller ID, she saw her home number flashing on the screen.

  She would bet anything it was Amanda. Jordan only called in case of emergencies—for example, to ask where she was hiding the plastic garbage bags or to get the name of the Chinese restaurant that made that great shrimp fried rice.

  “Hello, Amanda,” she answered.

  Bingo.

  “Mother, are you all right?” her daughter demanded anxiously.

  “I'm fine,” Mallory told her. “Why wouldn't I be?”

  “Don't they have newspapers in Colorado?”

  “Not yet,” Mallory replied cheerfully. “The sheriff simply posts the latest Wanted poster outside the jail, which is located next door to the saloon—”

  “This is nothing to joke about!” Amanda cried. “Mother, Carly Berman was murdered!”

  “Yes, I know.” Mallory was suddenly as serious as Amanda. “I didn't realize the story had made the news back east.”

  “Of course it has! Everyone in my dorm has been glued to the TV And since it happened right in Aspen, I've been worried sick about you.”

  “What on earth for? It's not likely that whoever had it in for poor Carly made me number two on his hit list.”

  “You don't seem to be taking this very seriously,” Amanda accused.

  “Believe me, I'm taking it very seriously,” Mallory assured her.

  She held her cell phone in one hand and with the other used her key card to open the door of her room. As soon as she walked inside, she let out a gasp.

  “Oh, my goodness!” she cried.

  “What's wrong?” Amanda exclaimed.

  “Nothing's wrong. I just walked into my room here at the hotel and there's a bouquet of flowers on the dresser. Roses, in fact. Red ones. Beautiful, long-stemmed red roses.”

  And they were probably flown into Aspen on a flight that took even longer than the one those poor lobsters endured, she thought.

  “Who do you know in Aspen who's sending you flowers?” Amanda demanded.

  “They must be a gift from the Jerome,” Mallory replied.

  “Jerome?” Amanda asked anxiously. “Who's Jerome?”

  “Relax, Amanda.” Mallory sighed. “The Hotel Jerome is where I'm staying. The management must have sent up the flowers. Hotels often go out of their way to make travel writers feel welcome.”

  She noticed a small white envelope nestled among the stems. Exhibiting impressive manual dexterity, she managed to rip it open with one hand.

  Yet she nearly dropped the phone when she saw what was written on it.

  “I'd love to take you to dinner tonight,” the card read. “Call me. Gordon Swig.”

  Underneath was a phone number.

  “Amanda, I have to go,” she told her daughter.

  “Don't you think you should come home, Mother?” Amanda wheedled.

  “Come home?” Mallory sputtered. “That's—that's preposterous! I'm working, for goodness sake!”

  “But—but Aspen sounds so dangerous!”

  Mallory had to keep herself from laughing. Aside from Carly's murder, the only crime she could imagine being committed in this town was wearing last year's styles.

  “I'll be sure to keep my wits about me whenever I wal
k through a dark alley,” she assured her daughter. “Thanks for your concern, Amanda, but I'll be fine. In fact, I'll call you later.”

  The main reason she hung up was that she wanted to call Gordon to tell him she'd love to have dinner with him. But she hadn't even had a chance to punch in the number printed on his business card before her cell phone buzzed a second time.

  Goodness, that girl won't take no for an answer, she thought crossly.

  But this time, caller ID told her it wasn't her daughter who was calling. It was her boss.

  “Mallory?” Trevor Pierce said brusquely. “Good ness, are you all right?”

  The East Coast media is obviously doing a fabulous job of portraying Aspen as the Wild West, she thought. Either that or Trevor and Amanda should be competing in America's Top Worrywart.

  She wasn't sure whether to be amused by their shared Mother Hen complex or upset that neither of them seemed to think she was capable of taking care of herself.

  “I'm fine, Trevor,” she told him in the same even voice in which she'd just assured her daughter the exact same thing.

  “But the headlines are full of Carly Berman's murder!” Trevor exclaimed. “What's going on out there? Did you see her? Have you two talked?”

  “I was scheduled to interview her on Thursday, but I called her as soon as I got in and she invited me to dinner at her house last night.” Mallory hoped her admission wasn't fueling his concerns. “Then I went to a presentation she gave in town, pushing the youth serum she invented. But I went back to the hotel right afterward. That was the last I heard of her until I turned on the news this morning.”

  “Just promise me you'll be okay.” He hesitated before adding, “After all, the whole reason you're out there in Colorado is that you're working on an assignment for the magazine. That means I feel responsible, both personally and professionally.”

  “I'm fine,” she told him one more time. “But I'm afraid I really have to get off the phone. There's something I have to do right now.”

  “Nothing dangerous, right?” Trevor asked anxiously.

  She laughed, hoping he wouldn't notice how fake her merriment was. “I promise, it's nothing more terrifying than going out for lunch.”

  Mallory didn't see any reason to mention that there was something a bit out of the ordinary on the menu: a side order of espionage.

  “Most travel is best of all in the anticipation

  or the remembering; the reality has more

  to do with losing your luggage.”

  —Regina Nadelson

  What does one wear when playing Mata Hari? Mallory wondered as she stared at the sparse contents of her hotel room closet.

  A large hat, she decided. Not that she'd thought to pack anything along those lines. Still, the one certainty about Aspen was that it offered just about anything money could buy. Especially a lot of money.

  So after she surreptitiously sidled up to the front desk to ask the clerk to make her a lunch reservation—same time, same place as Sylvie's—Mallory's next stop was the drugstore next door to the Hotel Jerome. Just from walking by Carl's Pharmacy a few times, she had ascertained that it was one of those magical emporia that sold everything from sunblock to Aspen T-shirts to wine.

  Sure enough, she'd barely stepped inside and cased the joint before she spotted a display of hats, right at the edge of the art supplies aisle. While the assortment wasn't huge, what it lacked in numbers it more than made up for in diversity. She considered a red Polarfleece stocking cap with a whimsical tassel, a woolen ski hat that looked as if it had been knitted by someone who knew how to yodel, and a straw hat suitable for members of a barbershop quartet.

  But it was the floppy purple felt hat with a brim wide enough to dip fetchingly over the wearer's eyes that she grabbed. It was perfect for her mission, a chapeau that might have stuck out anywhere else but somehow suited Aspen. It was so perfect, in fact, that she carried it over to the cash register without bothering to glance at the price tag—and then didn't even bat an eyelash when it came time to hand over her MasterCard.

  Her next challenge was getting to the Pine Creek Cookhouse before Sylvie and her mysterious lunch date arrived. Mallory hurried to her rental car, spread out the map on the seat beside her, and headed for the hills—literally.

  She began her trip by winding along the same mountain road that she knew led to both Cass-Ber and Tavaci Springs. She bit her lip as she passed the barely noticeable dirt road that meandered toward the Bermans’ house.

  This is the reason I'm doing this in the first place, she reminded herself. To find out who really killed poor Carly.

  Her determination stronger than ever, she continued on for a few more miles, too fixated on trying to make good time to appreciate the scenery. She finally spotted a parking lot up ahead, right where the road ended. In case there was any question as to whether she'd arrived at her destination, a big white sign reading Pine Creek Cookhouse stood at the side of the road.

  Mallory pulled into a parking space and turned off the ignition.

  “Here goes,” she muttered.

  With the help of the rear view mirror, she pulled the purple felt hat down over her ears and tucked her hair underneath it. Then she trudged up a small hill to the wooden shack that appeared to be the rendezvous point.

  Inside, half a dozen people sat on the built-in wooden benches lining the walls. She presumed that, like her, they were waiting to take a ridiculously outdated mode of transportation up into the mountains to enjoy trendy, up-to-date foods.

  Anxiously she checked each face, hoping none of them would turn out to be Sylvie Snowdon's. She was relieved to see that, instead, she was sharing the small space inside the ramshackle building with what appeared to be a honeymoon couple who couldn't keep their hands off each other and a family consisting of a mother, a father, a surly teenage girl seeking refuge from her parents with an iPod, and an equally surly teenage boy trying to achieve the same goal with a Game Boy.

  For a fleeting moment, Mallory wished that Amanda and Jordan were with her. Then she remembered that her children were busy with their own lives.

  Besides, she thought with amusement, Amanda is probably thinking about me right now, agonizing over how her poor helpless mother is faring in this cold, cruel world.

  Just as well she doesn't know that at the moment, said mother is attempting to conceal her identity with a drugstore hat as she throws herself into investigating a murder as if someone's life depended on it.

  Which, of course, it did.

  “Hi, everybody,” a young man who could have been Dusty Raines's little brother greeted the group as he sashayed into the wooden hut. “All set to take a ride up to Pine Creek?”

  He checked out the teenage girl, who emerged from her musical haze long enough to reciprocate. When no sparks flew, the dude instructed, “Then follow me.”

  The seven of them dutifully tromped after their mountain guide, their feet crunching against the thin layer of half-melted snow that still covered the ground. A few hundred feet away stood a boxy wooden sleigh with two horses hitched in front.

  Mallory stayed behind to take some photos. But it turned out she wasn't alone in wanting to capture the moment. In fact, so many cameras were flashing as the honeymooners and the family of four took pictures that it looked as if Michael Jackson had just put in a surprise appearance.

  “Howdy, folks.” The driver, a Burl Ives look-alike, greeted them after the group members had stepped up into the sleigh one by one. “Welcome to the Pine Creek Cookhouse. Before we git on our way, lemme tell you about the three rules we got here. Number one, keep your hands inside the sleigh. Number two, enjoy the scenery. And number three, if you feel like tipping, give it to me, not the horses.”

  The group laughed politely. At least those members who weren't too absorbed by technology to tune into what was actually going on around them.

  As the horses began chugging up the hill, Mallory sat back in her seat and decided to do her best to follow
Rule Number Two.

  Might as well enjoy the ride, she thought.

  Not that she wasn't as concerned about Harriet as she'd been since she'd gotten her frantic phone call. It was just that she wasn't about to forget that the main reason she was here was to write a travel article. The last thing she wanted to do was let down her editor.

  Especially since she'd been hoping to find time to come to the Pine Creek Cookhouse ever since she'd first read about it. It had sounded like a great spot to include in her article, since even people who didn't ski were likely to enjoy a ride up a snow-covered mountain in a horse-drawn sleigh.

  She'd also checked out the menu on the restaurant's Web site. The offerings sounded like suitably Colorado-style fare, especially the Jack Daniel's– marinated caribou and the wild game kebab.

  But for the moment, she concentrated on breathing in the exhilaratingly fresh mountain air as she was hauled uphill by two of the strongest horses she'd ever encountered. The sun smiled down from high in the sky, its golden rays glistening on the snow. The air was scented by the smell of pine, and the bells around the horses’ necks jingled merrily.

  Once again, Mallory found herself missing her children. She was overcome with a yearning to bring them here, at least until she reminded herself that they weren't kids anymore. Like the two teenagers she'd just been observing, they were at that awkward age when their main concern was acting grown up. It would be another decade or two before they could go back to savoring the same simple pleasures that children were so good at appreciating.

  The ride wasn't long, and they reached their destination before she'd had enough of taking in the pristine countryside and listening to the crunch of horses’ hooves against ice-covered snow. Like so many other buildings in Aspen, the restaurant was made of wood. Only this time, the façade went whole hog in recapturing the spirit of Colorado, since the building was actually a log cabin.

  But this being Aspen, it wasn't the type of log cabin the early settlers had really lived in. This was an architect's fantasy of what a log cabin could be, given unlimited resources and modern-day building equipment. A series of peaked roofs jutted up, echoing the silhouette of the mountains behind them. Below each were large windows, some overlooking a deck area that allowed for al fresco dining.