Wendy Clinch - Fade to White

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

So many people have helped me along the way that its hard to single out a handful. All the same, this book wouldnt be complete without a million thanks to those without whom it wouldnt even be here.

To my wonderful husband, Jon Clinch, whose unfailing support and love I depend on every minute of every day.

To the fantastic women of TheSkiDiva.com, whose enthusiasm and joy make my own love for the sport seem almost halfhearted.

To the great team at Minotaur, who have brought both of the Ski Diva mysteries to fruition.

And to the lovely people of my little Vermont ski town, who have made this flatlander feel almost like a native.

Also by Wendy Clinch

Double Black

ONE

Harper Stone was a whole lot smaller than he looked in the movies, but his ego made up for it. He was a whole lot older, too, but then again hed made his best pictures a long while back. His trademark combination of lounge-lizard panache and offhand gunplay had gone pretty well out of fashion, or else he wouldnt have been freezing his butt on this chairlift, praying for snow, showing off his famous square white teeth for a pickup camera crew out of Albany. Slumming on a Vermont ski slope in a lousy mouthwash commercial.

* * *

What a morning!

The sky was lake blue and well deep, without a cloud anywhere. New England didnt get these gorgeous bluebird days very often, and Stacey Curtis didnt want to waste a second of it. She didnt even stop at Judge Roy Beans for coffee, but went straight to the mountain to make sure she got on the very first chair.

A hand-lettered sign in the base lodge threw a monkey wrench into things, though. The sign said that the Northside chair, the one that accessed the very best trails at Spruce Peak, was closed until further notice. Just that. No explanation. It wasnt a short-term wind hold, that was for sure. Not with this glorious, calm, blue weather. So she figured it must be something mechanical. She shook her head and told herself that if Richie Paxton would take better care of the place these things wouldnt happen. With his wife locked up for murdering his brother, however, Richie was too busy chasing every woman in town to take care of the mountain his family owned. So much for preventive maintenance.

There was an upside, though. If nobody could ride the Northside chair, that meant nobody could ski the Northsideexcept whatever hardy souls felt like trekking a half-mile through the woods from the top of the main lift. A group that Stacey figured would probably include nobody but herself.

She booted up, stashed her bag under a table, and headed out the door. Shed left her skis over by the lift so as not to have to walk forever in her boots, and as she clomped toward them she lifted her goggles, threw her head back, and took in that bright cloudless sky. Yep: It was the color of a bluebird all rightif they had bluebirds around here, which she didnt know. Underneath that sky she felt small and happy and dizzy and just a little bit cold, but she knew shed warm up once she got to the top of the lift and began skating through the woods and along the fire trails over to the Northside.

She caught the first chair and kept an eye out for Chip Walsh as she rode up. Still, she saw only one red Ski Patrol jacket, and that was on a boarder. Not one of the younger guys, by the look of him, but some older dude whod probably shifted from skiing to riding later in life. Good for him. She caught sight of him at the top of the Blowdown glades, slipping under the rope to check out the run before they let in the paying customers. Now that right there, Stacey told herself, is the only reason in the whole world to be on the Patrol. All the first-aid drills and all the practice with the rescue toboggans and all the other nonsense that Chip complained aboutincluding the reckless, smart-ass college kids up from Connecticut, only five or six years younger than Stacey and Chip themselves but a world apartall of that might just be worth the chance to put down first tracks anywhere you wanted. And call it work.

She slid off the lift, put her mittens through the straps on her poles, and took off into the woods. She was puffing pretty hard before shed made it halfway to the Northside, but it was all good. She had let Chip buy her dinner last night at Maison Maurice, the nicest place in townor at least the one with the highest aspirationsand she figured that this was as good a way as any to work off a dessert that she hadnt entirely needed. She emerged from the tree line into an open slope and skidded down below the stopped lift to catch her breath for a minute. The sky looked even bluer up here, where there was nothing but white snow and green trees for contrast. An absolutely perfect day, no question about it. Until she got about halfway down, and discovered why the lift was stopped.

* * *

It was bad enough that all these people were shooting some kind of video on a run shed claimed as her own personal territory, right in the middle of the most brilliant morning on record. It was worse that that horrible Richie Paxton was glad-handing around the periphery of the crowd with that redheaded girlfriend of his, acting like he owned the place when the better part of it still belonged to his father. It was worse yet that they had all kinds of lights and reflectors and God knew what else set up on poles and standards and booms as if this glorious morning needed any help. And it was even worse that some old gray-haired guy in a long black leather coat far too urban for this Vermont morning was stalking around hollering at everybody through a bullhorn like some kind of Hollywood big shot.

Stacey could have tolerated all that. She could have waved at the crowd and skied right on by, found her way down to the bottom of the main lift, and kept doing it all morning long if not for one thinga thing that happened to be wearing a garish yellow Columbia shell with black patches on the shoulders, topped by a long fleece hat with multicolored dinosaur spikes running the length of its spine. The kind of ski gear that went out of fashion with disco, but that certain individuals might still consider cool in a kind of retro way. The way that young men at exclusive golf clubs still wore the madras jackets and grass-green pants favored by the older crowd, either mocking them or fitting right in with them or more likely not knowing exactly which attitude they meant to adopt. Usually whichever one did them the most good at the time. That kind of young men.

Brian Russells kind.

Brian, her ex-fianc.

Brian, whod cheated on her back in Boston.

Brian, right here on her own personal ski slope, wearing that barf-yellow coat and that stupid dinosaur hat as though they were billboards advertising his crappy judgment.

Hed worn the same stuff on the four or five days shed gotten him on a mountain, before their relationship had fallen apart. She didnt know where hed gotten it. In his world, a garish yellow coat and a hat that made you look like Barney were probably the sort of thing you inherited from Father. Things you kept in mothballs in a trunk somewhere, along with the silver and the stock certificates and the keys to the Bentley.

Just the sight of him spoiled her rhythm. It was as if she had been skiing with some kind of smooth and swoopy music playing in her headan old Beach Boys song, maybe, or something cool and swinging like Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennettand the station had suddenly been switched not just to music she didnt like but to something much worse. Rush Limbaugh. Howard Stern. Or maybe an all-news station, just in time for a forecast of some very bad weather.

TEN

Jackpot.

Not only did Brian get in, but the space behind the door was anything but a dead-end utility closet. It was a ski room fit for a sheik, if sheiks indulged in downhill skiingwhich they probably did, since they indulged in everything else. It was gorgeous. There must have been twenty lockers along the walls, each one custom built of what looked like solid cherry. Hand-built shelving units up to the ceiling, where soft indirect lighting bathed the whole place in a warm golden glow. Hardwood floors he was ashamed to be tracking snow all over. And in the far corner, a door that without question opened into the main house.