White Fire

21

It was hard to believe the Mineshaft Tavern was part of Roaring Fork, with the sawdust on the floor, the basement rock walls hung with rusty old mining tools, the smell of beer and Texas barbecue, the scruffy working-class clientele — and above all, the talentless stoner at the mike strumming some tune of his own composition, his face contorted with excessive pathos.

As she walked in, Corrie was pleasantly surprised. This was much more her kind of place than the restaurant of the Hotel Sebastian.

She found Ted at “his” table in the back, just where he’d said he would be, with an imperial pint in front of him. He stood up — she liked that — and helped her into her seat before sitting down again.

“What’d you like?”

“What are you drinking?”

“Maroon Bells Stout, made right down the road. Fantastic stuff.”

The waiter came over and she ordered a pint, hoping she wouldn’t get carded. That would be embarrassing. But there were no problems.

“I didn’t know a place like this could exist in Roaring Fork,” said Corrie.

“There are still plenty of real people in this town — ski lift attendants, waiters, dishwashers, handymen…librarians.” He winked. “We need our cheap, low-down places of entertainment.”

Her beer arrived, and they clinked glasses. Corrie took a sip. “Wow. Good.”

“Better than Guinness. Cheaper, too.”

“So who’s the guy on stage?” Corrie kept her voice neutral in case he was a friend of Ted’s.

Ted snickered. “Open-mike night. Don’t know him, poor fellow. Let’s hope he hasn’t quit his day job.” He picked up his menu. “Hungry?”

She thought for a moment: could she spare the money? But the menu wasn’t too expensive. If she didn’t eat, she might get drunk and do something stupid. She smiled, nodded.

“So,” said Ted. “How are things going in the charnel house up on the mountain?”

“Good.” Corrie contemplated telling him about what she’d discovered but decided against it. She didn’t know Ted well enough. “The remains of Emmett Bowdree have a lot to say. I hope to get permission to work on a few more skeletons soon.”

“I’m glad it’s working out for you. I love to think of Kermode getting her knickers in a twist while you’re up there doing your thing.”

“I don’t know,” Corrie said. “She’s got worse things to worry about now. You know — the fire.”

“I’ll say. Jesus, how awful was that?” He paused. “You know, I grew up there. In The Heights.”

“Really?” Corrie couldn’t hide her surprise. “I never would have guessed that.”

“Thank you, I’ll take that as a compliment. My dad was a television producer — sitcoms and the like. He palled around with a lot of Hollywood people. My mother slept with most of them.” He shook his head, sipped his beer. “I had a kind of messed-up childhood.”

“Sorry to hear that.” In no way was Corrie ready to talk to Ted about her own childhood, however.

“No big deal. They got divorced and my dad raised me. With all the sitcom residuals, he never had to work again. When I came back from college I got my butt out of The Heights and found an apartment in town, down on East Cowper. It’s tiny, but I feel better about breathing its air.”

“Does he still live up there in The Heights?”

“Nah, he sold the house a few years back, died of cancer last year — only sixty years old, too.”

“I’m really sorry.”

He waved his hand. “I know. But I was glad to get rid of the connection to The Heights. It really frosts me the way they handled that Boot Hill thing — digging up one of the most historic cemeteries in Colorado to build a spa for rich assholes.”

“Yeah. Pretty ugly.”

Then Ted shrugged, laughed lightly. “Well, stuff happens. What are you going to do? If I hated the place so much, I wouldn’t still be here — right?”

Corrie nodded. “So what did you major in at the University of Utah?”

“Sustainability studies. I wasn’t much of a student — I wasted too much time skiing and snowmobiling. I love snowmobiling almost as much as I do skiing. Oh, and mountain climbing, too.”

“Mountain climbing?”

“Yeah. I’ve climbed forty-one Fourteeners.”

“What’s a Fourteener?”

Ted chuckled. “Man, you really are an eastern girl. Colorado has fifty-five mountains over fourteen thousand feet — we call them Fourteeners. To climb them all is the holy grail of mountaineering in the U.S. — at least, in the lower forty-eight.”

“Impressive.”

Their food arrived: shepherd’s pie for Corrie, a burger for Ted, with another pint for him. Corrie declined a refill, thinking about the scary mountain road up to her dentist’s-office-on-the-hill.

“So what about you?” Ted asked. “I’m curious about how you know the man in black.”

“Pendergast? He’s my…” God, how to put it? “He’s sort of my guardian.”

“Yeah? Like your godfather or something?”

“Something like that. I helped him on a case a few years ago, and ever since he’s kind of taken an interest in me.”

“He’s one cool dude — no kidding. Is he really an FBI agent?”

“One of the best.”

A new singer took over the mike — much better than the previous one — and they listened for a while, talking and finishing their meal. Ted tried to pay but Corrie was ready for him and insisted on splitting the check.

As they got up to leave, Ted said, his voice dropping low: “Want to see my tiny apartment?”

Corrie hesitated. She was tempted — very tempted. Ted looked like he was all sinew and muscle, lean and hard, and yet charming and goofy, with the nicest brown eyes. But she had never quite been able to feel good about a relationship if she slept with the guy on the first date.

“Not tonight, thanks. I’ve got to get home, get my sleep,” she said, but added a smile to let him know it wasn’t absolute.

“No problem. We’ll have to do this again — soon.”

“I’d like that.”

As she drove away from the restaurant, heading toward the dark woods and thinking about crawling into a freezing bed, Corrie started to regret her decision not to “see” Ted’s tiny apartment.