Red Duck, Idaho, may be just a speck on the map, but it's perfect for a hardworking single mom looking for a good place to start over. Arriving with recipes, ambition, a silent prayer and two teenage boys, Lucy Carpenter is ready to cook her way into the hearts and wallets of celebrities who frequent the nearby ski resort and watering holes.
But she needs somebody to put the word out—and that somebody is Drew Tolman, former pro baseball player turned local big shot. She's heard the rumors—scandal, women and more—but he's the man Lucy needs on her side. It takes a little effort and a lot of decadence—in the kitchen—but word of Lucy's culinary talents spreads like melting chocolate.
Soon everyone's got Lucy's number, but her best caller is Drew. He's eager to convince the deliciously tempting Lucy that she's the dessert he's been saving room for….
"That stretch of Timberline Highway by the golf course looks like a slaughterhouse floor." The blue Idaho sky with its popcorn-shaped clouds reflected in the sheriff's sunglasses. "I don't recall such a massacre so close to town before."
Lucy Carpenter grabbed her two sons by their shoulders and drew them in close. Her lanky sixteen-year-old, Jason, shrugged out of her protective embrace, while her twelve-year-old, Matt, stuck next to her as his mouth dropped open.
The deputy, a whipcord thin man wearing a cowboy hat and sporting a red Fu Manchu mustache, remarked, "It'll be one hell of a job scraping off the pavement."
The lump forming in Lucy's throat ached, making it more difficult to swallow. Her skin grew clammy. The band of her bra seemed to constrict and cause a thin line of perspiration to roll between her breasts. With one hand, she flipped open the top two buttons on her wool jacket, welcoming the chill air through her knit shirt.
Suddenly, moving to Red Duck seemed like a horribly ill conceived idea. How could these two men talk so casually about a dead body on the road?
Jason's voice regressed to a prepuberty squeak. "Mom, I told you Boise wasn't that bad!"
"I never said it was a crime capital." Lucy's response was a little too abrupt, and perhaps on the defensive side, when she didn't intend for it to be.
"I simply said the city was a bad influence on you."
"I only smoked some pot. They kill people up here!" That last part, or rather that first part, had both law officials looking at her son as if he were a notorious drug dealer.
"We don't tolerate any mary-wanna-go-to-jail in this town," Sheriff Roger Lewis cautioned, his small eyes narrowing to slits. He had a dark tropical tan that George Hamilton would envy. Silver hair framed his long face, and his teeth were a blinding white. He sported a felt-brimmed cowboy hat in the same silver color that accessorized both law-enforcement uniforms. And each officer had a very large revolver in a holster.
Lucy's eyes felt dry. She blinked and tried to focus. The deputy ran his forefinger under his nose, scratched it, then shifted his weight to an exaggerated stance. "Back in the late nineties, a few bad apples from Boise brought some cocaine with them, and several fledgling businesses went up some noses." He traded glances with the sheriff, the pair obviously recollecting the damage. "The Iron Mountain Paragliding School was one of them."
"What Deputy Cooper's saying—" the sheriff hitched his pants to high-water level while looking directly at her son "—is we won't tolerate any big-city trouble."
The crispness in the late May day seemed to evaporate, Lucy's cheeks growing warm. Indignance threaded through her. She laid a hand on Jason's shoulder, drew him close. This time he didn't resist. "We don't smoke marijuana and I wouldn't dream of bringing any drugs into town."
But as she spoke, she recalled her firsthand encounter with drugs and her son.
Jason had been caught with a marijuana cigarette in his hall locker. He'd been put on suspension, but it wasn't his first violation in the nearly two years since her divorce. There had been the day he'd cut class to go fishing with his buddies, and received his second speeding ticket on the way home. He'd had his driver's license taken away for thirty days. His rebellious behavior after her ex-husband left them was why she'd made the decision to move her two boys to the small town of Red Duck.
The glossy travel brochures touted that tourists might flock to Timberline, but they played in Red Duck. Golf, biking, skiing. Red Duck had a year-round population of three thousand that swelled to six thousand depending on the season.
Nestled in a flat valley at the base of the Wood Ridge Mountains, Red Duck only had two traffic signals on Main Street. All the buildings had the same false-fronted design—from the old Mule Shoe Bar to the new Blockbuster on Honeysuckle Road.
"Mom, can we go now?" Matt asked, the freckles on his face prominent from being in the high altitude sun.
They'd arrived in town a good hour ago and, for the life of her, she hadn't been able to find their rental. She'd gone several miles beyond Main Street, even into the Timberline Resort, but the road she was supposed to turn on seemed to have vanished.
She drove the do-it-yourself moving truck with all their possessions packed inside, navigating the best she could, with her sixteen-year-old, at the helm of her beloved car, following behind. Each time she'd stopped to turn around, Jason had raised his hands in exasperation as if to say, "Where are you going?" Then he'd clamped hard on the steering wheel and accelerated far too fast for her comfort.
Against her better judgment, and for lack of an alternative driver, she'd let her son make the two hundred mile trip from Boise to Red Duck in the Passat. She'd insisted Matt ride with her so he couldn't distract Jason—who'd totaled his small pickup almost two months ago and was without a car.
In defeat and puzzlement, Lucy had brought the boys to the sheriff's department, hoping the law officials would know how to direct her. Now she regretted that decision. Being put under a microscope before she'd even unpacked a single dish wasn't how she had envisioned their arrival.
Lucy squared her shoulders. "I'm renting a house on Lost River Road and I can't seem to find the turnoff. I've been up before. I thought I knew how to get there, but for some reason, the street's missing."
Matter-of-factly, Sheriff Lewis said, "It happens in the spring. Snowmelt. You get some flash floods out that way from the Lost River."
The deputy added his two cents. "It's a river that comes and goes depending on the rainy season."
"The street was washed out last week. Nobody's gotten around to putting up a new sign yet."
"Aw jeez," Jason whined. "We live on a street that disappears, and they've got dead bodies here, too."
"Dead bodies?" Sheriff Lewis echoed, his hand falling too close to his holster. "Where's a dead body?"
Matt's voice came out in a quiver. "Timberline Highway. The big massacre."
The sheriff had the nerve to laugh. Lucy was about to tell him that it wasn't funny in the slightest.
"That's no dead body. It's a road-kill elk," Deputy Cooper supplied, his facial expression trying to remain neutral, but a grin cut across his mouth.
"And a damn big 'un. What's left of the carcass and guts is spread out on both lanes, blood splattered from here to kingdom come. My guess it was a three-quarter-ton diesel that got it."
The sheriff cocked his hat. "I'm thinking a Hummer."
"Drew Tolman drives a Hummer," the deputy mused. "I haven't see it in town today."
"Too early." Sheriff Lewis gazed at the sun.
"Tolman doesn't roll into Opal's for breakfast until noon."
"Unless it's Little League season. Then he gets there about nine. Orders the same thing every day. Steak and eggs."
"Sometimes he swaps out the steak for six sausage links. I saw him do that a few times."
At that, Matt said, "Mom, I'm hungry."
They'd been snacking on crackers and fruit in the car, and now that food had been mentioned, Lucy's stomach growled. She could all but taste her special roasted pepper omelet with seasoned potatoes.
"We'll get something as soon as we find the house." To the sheriff she queried, "If the road is washed out, how am I supposed to get there?"
"Cooper'll draw you a map on how get in the back way. What's the address?"
"346 Lost River Road."
Sheriff Lewis gave them each another long, skeptical glance. "That's Bud Tremore's teardown."
Lucy cringed, not wanting to have to explain that to the boys in mixed company. "What's a teardown?" Jason asked, slipping away from her once more. While it was a physical distance, she'd been feeling the emotional distance as well. He wasn't her baby anymore, and she hoped this move would help their relationship retain some of the closeness they'd once had. Relocating would allow him to make new friends, boys who were boys and not young men who thought they were tough and knew everything.
The sheriff didn't give her the opportunity to elaborate. "A teardown is just what you think it is. A building that's going to be torn down. Real estate in Red Duck is so pricey you just can't buy good land anymore. You take what's a pile of junk, demo it and build new." Looking at Lucy, he arched his brows. "I didn't think Bud was renting out that place anymore."
He wasn't. Or wasn't going to until she'd convinced him otherwise.
On her scouting trip, she'd been quickly disillusioned. She'd learned through a Realtor that the people who worked here most likely didn't live here. They lived in Twin Falls or Shoshone and rode a bus to and from town.
Bud Tremore owned the Salmon Creek RV Park, and when she'd been at her rope's end, unable to find a place to live, she'd stopped in to use the restroom and put a dollar in the vending machine for a bottle of Coke. She'd got to talking to Bud, and ended up telling him her hard luck story—something unlike her. But it had been a long day of disappointment, and he mentioned having a vacant house he used to rent out before the foundation resettled and knocked off the right side of the porch.
She'd begged him to show it to her, and she'd made a deal on the spot for $1,500 a month. Dirt cheap. Rent in Red Duck was obscene. She couldn't even think about buying, not even with the proceeds from the sale of her Boise house. And Timberline? You couldn't touch a home for less than two million.
"We have to live in a piece of junk?" Jason's question broke through Lucy's thoughts.
"No. It's not bad at all. I really liked it and there's a view of the ski mountain."
Well, sort of. The trees blocked it off. But they could fix up the house and make it a home. It was the best she could do and still live in Red Duck.
"I never wanted to move here," Jason grumbled, flipping the key of her Passat open and closed like a switchblade. "Why can't we go back to Boise? All my friends are there."
She kept an assurance in her voice she hoped would convince him. "You'll make friends here."
Matt rubbed his belly. "I'm hungry."
"We'll get something to eat soon." The deputy returned with a map. She followed his finger as he traced a road, showed her how to get to the house.
"Just what is your business in town?" the sheriff asked, puffing out his chest like a rooster.
Lucy stared at him a long moment. "My business."
Then she thanked the two for their time, put the boys back in their respective vehicles and began traveling on Honeysuckle Road.
Her hands gripped the wheel of the moving van, her stomach pitching. Not from hunger this time, but from trepidation. She hoped she wasn't making a mistake.
