THIRTEEN

Orly Peterson and Chuck Schultz were shown into that part of the Hoffman living quarters that doubled as the resort office. Ever since he had met them at the door, David Hoffman had subjected them to a barrage of self-justification about how he couldn’t be expected to look after all of his guests, that it wasn’t his fault if a man didn’t tell his wife where he was going, and after all, when a man goes out on a new Polaris snowmobile, there’s no telling how far he’s going to go, but that it was such a fine new machine and that once he noted that it was missing he was sure that Hofstead—who was a snowmobiling fanatic after all, I mean, you’d have to be to go out in that cold last night, wouldn’t you?—had just gone out for more snowmobiling and that he was sorry he had to call them up on such a little thing but the man’s wife was worried and insisted on it, and what’s a man to do? I mean the customer has to be served, and would they like to sit down?

Orly was somewhat dazed by this volcano of words and was determined not to lose his meager opening. “Yes, that will be fine, but” he almost shouted, “first I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”

The nervous jabbering of Hoffman rapidly subsided into a worried gasping sound. “Yes? Yes? What is it? Have you found Hofstead?”

“I’m afraid John Hofstead has met with an accident. He’s dead. I’ll need to inform Mrs. Hofstead, and then I’d like to talk to you, if I may. Would you be so kind as to bring Mrs. Hofstead here?” As Hoffman stood there with his mouth hanging open, Orly added, “Now?”

Orly had never spoken to Martha Hofstead, but he knew who she was. Martha, for her part, had only to recognize the uniform to realize that this was not a routine visit. She had been hoping that she was being called in to aid with the search for her husband, but one look at the young and inexperienced deputy’s face told her that he was the bearer of bad news. The other deputy, Chuck Schultz, politely mumbled when he was introduced to her and quickly returned his gaze to his feet. Nevertheless, it was still a shock to her when Orly said, “Mrs. Hofstead, I’m afraid I have some very bad news for you. Would you please sit down?”

Martha did as she was told.

“This morning, about an hour ago,” continued Orly Peterson, nervously consulting his watch, “your husband was found underneath the loon at the end of the lake. It appears he was driving his snowmobile near the statue, came too near it, and bumped his head and fell. He was dead at the scene.”

At the word “dead” Martha let out an involuntary gasp.

“I have just come from the scene of the accident. Jimmy Clark, our medical examiner, accompanied me and we have taken the body … er … your husband to the, uh, morgue. On your instructions, we will notify the funeral home of your choice to, uh, you know, take it, uh, him from there.”

Martha was whimpering softly and Orly somewhat awkwardly put his arm around her. “Please, Mrs. Hofstead, if there is anything we can do, just let us know. Are there any relatives that you would like us to notify? Is there anyone special that you would like to have with you at this time?”

Martha sobbed, “Yes. I want Borghild. Can I see Borghild?”

Peterson made a stiff but perceptible nod to David Hoffman, who went scurrying after Borghild Kvamme. As Martha wept and Schultz continued to stare at the floor, Orly Peterson breathed deeply and thought, “yah, this is part of the job, too. And I don’t think I’ll ever be any good at it.”

Borghild entered the room and wordlessly helped Martha to her feet. She held her in her arms for several minutes as Martha’s body convulsed with sobs. Finally, she said, “Come on, let’s go back to your room,” and led her meekly away.

After an embarrassed silence, Orly said, “And now, Mr. Hoffman, if I may have a few words with you?”

For the briefest of seconds, Hoffman had the look of a scared rabbit. Then he abruptly said, “Let me go get my wife.”

As Hoffman left the room, Deputy Schultz said, “What you wanna talk to them for? The guy’s dead; we told the widow. Let’s go back to town.”

“Now look, Chuck. You know how Palmer likes to have everything done right and all bases covered. He put me in charge and I don’t want him to give me any of that ‘How come you didn’t do such-and-such?’ stuff. These people are the owners of the resort and the owners of the snowmobile that killed a guy. So maybe there’s a wrongful death suit. Ever think of that? So we go to court and some hotshot lawyer asks, ‘What does the sheriff’s report say?’ You gotta think of those things. I had this one professor in a criminal justice class that kept saying, ‘Get down all the facts. You can decide later what’s relevant.’”

Chuck Schultz, who had not attended college, had no intention of doing so, and tended to resent anyone who had, was not impressed. “Like, all right, so, he goes, ‘Yah, I saw him go out on a snowmobile. I didn’t see him come back.’ And we go, ‘Thanks for your extremely valuable cooperation!’ That it?”

Orly had never had much success in enlightening Schultz on the finer points of serving the law and the citizen. Now he merely looked pugnaciously at Schultz and said, “Yah, that’s about it.”

At that moment, Hoffman returned and introduced his wife to Peterson and Schultz. Orly was not prepared for meeting Sharon Hoffman. Whereas the husband had been a meek, soft-spoken, chubby little fellow, Orly was taken aback by the force of Sharon’s domineering manner. Her voice, even in the fatuous “How do you do?” was of such a quality that Orly began to feel he should apologize for his presence. She was at least three inches taller than her husband, and her pale blue eyes seemed to say, “Let’s get this over with. I’m a busy woman.” Somewhat flustered, Orly shook her huge hand and said, “If we could just trouble you for a few minutes, uh, for our report, you know.”

“Of course. What would you like to know? Has David offered you any coffee?”

“Well, uh, ah …”

“He didn’t? David! For heaven’s sake, get these men some coffee.”

As David quietly disappeared in the direction of the kitchen, Orly leaned back and decided that the impending coffee demanded an informal approach. “So, you’ve got a nice place here. How long have you been running it?”

“We’ll be starting our eleventh year this May.”

“But,” Orly asked, “this hasn’t always been open in the winter has it?”

“No, this is our first year as an all-weather resort.”

“How’s it going?”

“Can’t complain. Or at least, it wouldn’t do us any good if we did, would it? No, we won’t quite break even by keeping it open this winter. But we didn’t really expect to our first year. Next year will be the real test. We’ve had enough interest so that I think next year could be a real breakthrough.”

“Yah, well, winter sports are getting to be real popular. Especially now that they got lightweight clothes so you can get out and enjoy things. I’ve even been out to Andes Towers Hills over by Alexandria a few times.” Orly smiled as he thought of the shapely form of his girlfriend, Allysha, in a ski outfit.

“Well, that’s what we thought. We don’t have a high enough hill around here for a downhill run, but there are plenty of beautiful cross-country ski areas. Maplewood State Park isn’t that far away. And, of course, snowmobiling has always been popular.”

“Are you into snowmobiling yourself?” Orly asked, mainly to keep the conversation going until the coffee arrived.

“Yes,” Sharon smiled, pushing her long brown hair away from her eyes. “About five years ago we bought a big old Arctic Cat 440 Puma at an auction sale. It’s almost like an antique now, of course, and we don’t have it for our guests to ride. But that got us started. David, you know, had never really had a hobby, and he really started to get interested in snowmobile racing.” She lowered her voice, “Frankly, I think he finally found one avenue for unsuspected aggression and competitiveness. Anyway, pretty soon he was zooming around those oval tracks, competing in lake enduros, and having the time of his life.” As David came in with the coffee, she continued, “Weren’t you, dear?”

“Weren’t I, er, wasn’t I what?”

“Enjoying your snowmobiles.”

“Oh, yes, certainly,” Hoffman said. He was immediately so distracted that he sat down with the coffee pot in his hands as Chuck forlornly held out his empty cup. “We are quite the snowmobilers, you know. Why, I even competed in the International 500 race.”

Chuck burst in, “You did? Hey, that was the big one. The one from Thunder Bay to St. Paul. How did you do?”

David smiled modestly, “Well, I didn’t win. But I didn’t expect to. I just entered for the experience. What matters to me is that I finished! Most people can’t say that. It’s quite a ride. You twist and turn and run into rocks and trees. There isn’t a spot ten feet long that’s smooth. And it’s really, really tough on the body.” Impatiently Sharon spun her index finger around to indicate that he should finish serving the coffee.

“Gotta be in pretty good shape, huh?” asked Chuck.

“David may not look like an athlete,” Sharon unexpectedly put in, “but he takes good care of himself. Don’t you, dear?”

Deftly fielding what he considered to be a compliment, David continued. “Actually, the year I finished was the second time I entered the International. The first time I broke a sway bar right about at the Canadian border. This caused the steering to lock and it really slowed me down. I quit when I got to Duluth. But the second time? That was something! There were about three hundred and fifty contestants in all. And you could tell almost from the start who would finish, you know, the ones who had double welds on their machines and who had changed shocks and put on skid plates. And not all of them made it either. At one point the whole race was stopped after several sleds collided in the woods. They had to get medical helicopters to fly in and take people away to the hospital. But I made it all the way.”

Chuck nodded in appreciation. “All the way to St. Paul, huh?”

“Well, technically no. But all the way to Forest Lake, where the race ended. That was good enough for me,” David added.

Orly thought he had done enough in the way of paying for his coffee with polite conversation and was eager to proceed with the matter at hand. Turning back to Sharon, he asked, “And so, you now have snowmobiles available for your guests to use?”

“Yes, we have six sleds.”

Mentally totaling up the cost of snowmobiles, Orly raised his eyebrows and said, “That represents quite an investment.”

Sharon, pleased that another man had been impressed with her capital investments, said, “Well it does, of course, but only one of them is new. We bought a new Polaris this year, and the dealer let us buy some additional used ones. You see, we had two Arctic Cat sleds before—the big ones, a ZR-580 and a ZR-440. Those things can hit speeds of up to a hundred miles an hour, you know. Well, we didn’t want our guests driving anything like that, and we had modified them for racing on ice by putting metal studs in the track and by adding these sharp carbide skegs to the skis. I mean, they were really beautiful machines—I won a few races on ice myself—but probably not the most practical sleds for anything but racing. So, we got the dealer to take them in trade and we came back with one new Polaris and a motley collection of Yamahas, Ski-Doos, and one little Arctic Cat.”

“And last night? Were they all in use?”

“David? Were all the sleds in use last night?”

“Yes,” replied the mild innkeeper. “I thought that perhaps all the couples would each go two to a sled. But it didn’t work out that way. Everyone wanted their own.”

“And who would that be,” Orly continued.

“Let’s see.” Hoffman scowled. “There was Mr. Hofstead. He said his wife wouldn’t be coming and he wanted the new Polaris. I figured since it was his party, that was only right. Then there was Mr. Pekanen. He had a Ski-Doo. And Mr. Sandberg, he had the other Ski-Doo. Then there was the Swenson-Nelson couple. I thought they could go together, but then they saw those matching Yamahas and decided that they each had to have one. Those are nice sleds—Exiter II STs—mountain sleds, you know—570cc liquid cooled twin and Mikuni carbs! And, well, I guess that’s about it.”

“But didn’t you say that all six sleds were being used last night?”

“Huh?”

“That’s only five.”

“Oh, of course. I drove the other one, the Cat, myself. I wasn’t sure I trusted those people to drive around on a cold night all by themselves, especially Pekanen and Sandberg, who acted like they had never been on a machine before. In fact, the only one I had complete confidence in was Hofstead, and he was the one who had the accident. Isn’t that ironic?”

“Um, yes it is,” Orly agreed. “Now, you all went roaring off across the lake. Who was in the lead?”

David looked surprised that the questions should have been asked. “I was, of course.”

“The whole time?”

Hoffman leaned forward to refill Orly’s coffee cup before replying. “No, come to think of it, just at the beginning. It seemed that as the guests got a little more confident in handling their machines, they started to be a little more daring. They would surge ahead or go off the track for a ways. But we stayed together for quite a while. By then, I was more confident that they could handle their sleds and I paid less attention.”

“Well, somehow, Mr. Hofstead must have gotten separated from the group. Wouldn’t you have noticed that?”

“No, no. It wasn’t like that. When you are out in front of a group of snowmobilers you don’t always look back to take roll call. You just go. At one point I noticed one sled turn and go back in the direction of the Otter Slide. After a while I noticed that there were only four of us out there so I figured another one must have gone back.”

“Couldn’t you tell who had gone back and who was still with you?”

“No. Not at night. If it had been day I could have been able to at least tell you what kind of sled it was. In fact, if I hadn’t been driving a sled myself, I could have told you what kind of sled it was just by the sound. But it was dark. And I couldn’t hear anything above the noise of my own machine. All you can really see out there are the lights, and that could have come from anyone. In fact, there are a lot of people in Vergas who own sleds. It could have been anybody from around here.”

“So when you came home, did the rest follow?”

“At that point there were three machines zipping back and forth on the clear portion of the ice. They were racing and having a good time and so I just waved to one of them—I have no idea who it was, maybe he didn’t even see me—and I came back to the resort. We work long hours here, you know, and I was pooped.”

“And none of them followed you back?”

“To tell you the truth, I didn’t look to see. I just parked my sled and came in and went to bed. I didn’t know Mr. Hofstead hadn’t come back until this morning.”

“So it’s entirely possible that Mr. Hofstead could go off by himself and no one would have noticed?”

“That’s right,” Hoffman said, and massaged the sides of his face with both hands. “I feel just terrible about it. But we can’t keep our eyes on all our guests all of the time. He was an experienced snowmobiler. I just can’t believe he could have had such a misfortune. Still, I guess it happens to everyone. When your ticket number is called, you gotta answer, right?” His wife stared at him as though she expected him to admit liability at any moment.

“What?” asked Chuck Schultz. “Answer what number?”

“Thank you, Mr. Hoffman,” Orly cut in. “We won’t take any more of your time. I’m sorry about this and appreciate your cooperation. I hope that other ‘Winter Wonderland Weekends’—that what you call ’em?—will be more successful. Mrs. Hoffman? Nice to meet you and thank you for the coffee. Let’s get back to town, Chuck.”

The news of the death of John Hofstead rapidly spread among the guests of the Otter Slide Resort. Borghild and Harry agreed to take Martha back to Fergus Falls. Gary Swenson volunteered to drive Hofstead’s car back to town, but unfortunately so did Clarence Sandberg and Myron Pekanen. What was becoming an ugly and uncomfortable scene was ended when Chuck Schultz appeared and said, “I’m supposed to drive Hofstead’s car back to town. Who’s got the keys?”

Within thirty minutes David and Sharon were alone at the Otter Slide. An irregular and tragic parade made its way back to Fergus Falls. Inside their cars, the participants of the Winter Wonderland Weekend were alone with their grief and alone with the question: “How does this affect my place in Hofstead Hail?”