Widowmaker (Mike Bowditch #7)(25)
10
Widowmaker was situated on the steep southeast-facing slopes of East Kennebago Mountain. The last time I could remember the resort having been in the news was a decade earlier, when a chairlift had malfunctioned, sending dozens of skiers plummeting to the ground. A man from Connecticut, a father of two, had died. There had been a number of gruesome headlines in the tabloids playing on the Widowmaker name. After the accident and the subsequent multimillion-dollar civil suit, the mountain resort had struggled to stay open.
Then, last year, a big ski company from out west had bought the place for pennies on the dollar. Pulsifer had said the new owners were looking to renovate the outdated lodge buildings and lifts. I wondered if they were considering bigger changes as well. I didn’t know the first thing about marketing, but it seemed like they might want to rebrand their new investment with a less macabre name.
The access road to the resort crossed the frozen Dead River on a bridge that looked like it should have been replaced a decade earlier. Almost immediately, I came upon a cluster of businesses that had been built since the days when my father had driven a snowcat on the mountain. There was a grocery store plastered with signs that seemed to make a big deal out of its liquor selection; something called Kennebago Estates, which I guessed to be condominiums, offering many discounted units for sale; and a family restaurant, the Landing, which had an overly large and empty parking lot, as if its owners had opened the place with unreal expectations of how busy they would be.
One of the few landmarks I recognized from my childhood was the campus of the Alpine Sports Academy. The dormitories and halls had been built in the style of Swiss lodges—a timber-frame design that now seemed dated—but they looked better maintained than the other buildings I’d seen so far. Somehow ASA had managed to thrive even while the adjacent resort had fallen into disrepair—a tribute to the fund-raising prowess of its head of school, or at least proof that having half a dozen alumni with Olympic medals was enough to make the pickiest of parents overlook a lot of the mountain’s flaws.
Soon the ski slopes came into view. Dozens of white trails flowed in all sorts of crazy directions from the snowcapped summit; they followed the grooves between the dark forested ridges the way meltwater streams will find their own zigzagging paths downhill after a storm. There seemed to be a lot of empty seats on the chairlifts.
The big hotel in the middle of the village loomed into view: the hub of activity for everything going on at Widowmaker. I hadn’t expected to find a parking spot this near the top at the height of the season, but, to my surprise, a Volvo wagon was pulling out as I pulled in.
It was colder here than it had been at home. The air had a sharpness to it that promised imminent snowfall. As I crossed the lot, I noticed that I was one of the only people not dressed for skiing. Just about everyone else was clomping around in ski jackets, pants, and boots, as heavy-footed as Frankenstein’s monster. Unencumbered, I sprang lightly up the stairs that led to the center of the resort’s little village.
A recently shoveled sidewalk led between two big buildings: the Widowmaker Hotel and a plazalike strip of stores and restaurants. I saw signs for a market, a Laundromat, a coffee shop, and a few restaurants. You had to pass through an alley to reach the base lodge. It was a big post-and-beam building with wide doors. I followed a family of skiers inside.
I paused to remove my sunglasses at the entrance. At first glance, the great room seemed like a cozy-enough space; it was lighted by elaborate chandeliers and warmed by an enormous river-stone fireplace. But a closer inspection revealed that the carpet had been scuffed down to the backing in spots, and on the ceiling there were water stains shaped like prehistoric continents. Drafts blew about the room, carrying clattering echoes from the cafeteria and voices from the changing areas, where people were putting on and taking off their boots and helmets.
A sign for the Sluiceway pointed me up the stairs to the second floor.
Inside an arch, a teenage hostess stood behind a podium. She had a skier’s tan, which made her gray eyes look grayer, and she was wearing a tight sweater, which accentuated the muscles in her firm little arms. She showed me the braces on her teeth when she smiled.
“One for lunch?” She lifted a menu from the stand.
“Is Amber working today?”
“Amber? She should be here somewhere.” She glanced around the room. Only the bar itself seemed to be illuminated by artificial lights. The rest of the place was awash with natural light from a wall of windows. The air smelled of french fries.
A shout went up from a table of guys in plaid snowboarding jackets. “No, she f*cking didn’t, dude! That’s not what she f*cking said!”
It wasn’t even noon yet, but those shredders were already buzzed.
The hostess blushed. “If you want to sit at the bar, I’ll send her over.”
“Thanks.”
She smiled brightly again, and I wondered how many drunken men mistook her innocent friendliness for flirtation. If I had been her brother, I wouldn’t have wanted her working at a place where guys got wasted before noon. I took a seat at the bar, positioned so I could keep an eye on the rowdy snowboarders.
I had never skied Widowmaker during my Colby years. East Kennebago was the runt of the local ski mountains, with no interesting geological features—no horns or windswept snow plains—to amp up its sexiness. Because its trails had been built on the southeast-facing slopes, the sun had more time to melt whatever snow fell, turning powder into water, and water into ice. The ski term for the mountain’s characteristic surface was frozen granular, but my classmates who had skied Widowmaker called it “death cookies” and warned me away.