Iced by Carol Higgins Clark Page B

mind raced. This might be a good time to break the news of who he was to Geraldine. “Louis, did you hear that?” Regan asked him. “This is a portrait of King Louis! Don’t you think this would look great hanging in your restaurant?”
    “Wait a minute!” Geraldine snapped. “What restaurant?”
    “I’m the one you’re mad at,” Louis said quickly. “Please listen to us!”
    “YOU!!! You brought that lawbreaker into the bosom of this town and let him run wild among our youngsters?” Geraldine shook her head and stalked out of the barn. “You don’t deserve to have the big benefit.” She turned and pointed her finger at Louis. “The police force in this town has a wonderful motto.” She straightened her back. “ ‘To share with all a safe and peaceful environment by encouraging mutual responsibility and respect.’ You, sonny, showed no respect for Kendra and Sam Wood or for the Grants or for anyone in this paradise in the wilderness.”
    Louis’s lip quivered. “I’m sorry.” He turned to Regan.
    “Let’s get going. It’s no use.” He started down the driveway, his feet crunching in the snow.
    “Louis, wait,” Regan called. She turned to Geraldine, who was wrapped in a red-and-black jacket. “Ms. Spoon-fellow, from what Louis tells me, and from what I’ve read about you, your grandfather was a silver miner who lost the potential to make a lot more money when silver was demonetized.”
    “Don’t mention that snake President Grover Cleveland’s name in my presence,” Geraldine warned. “That was his big idea.”
    “Didn’t eighty percent of Aspen go bankrupt?”
    “Eighteen ninety-three was a terrible year, um-hmmm.”
    “But your grandfather, unlike a lot of other people, chose to stay here...”
    “And tough it out.”
    “He didn’t abandon ship, shall we say.”
    “That’s right. He used his resources to open a saloon. He figured that people needed a place to go and forget their troubles. Have a few shots of whiskey, tell jokes, get drunk. Pop-Pop liked to bring people together.”
    “So why don’t you give Louis that chance?”
    “What’s that guy got to do with my Pop-Pop? Don’t mention them in the same breath, missy.”
    Regan paused and inhaled deeply. If she failed now, it was all over for Louis. “Ms. Spoonfellow,” she said earnestly, “Louis is trying to open more than a restaurant. It’ll be a place where he’ll have poetry readings and society meetings and whatever else people want to gather for. The paintings of local artists will be on display all the time. If anyone is trying to promote the Aspen idea of keeping culture in this town, it’s Louis. Like your Pop-Pop with his saloon, he just wants to bring people together. If you have the party moved to that other restaurant, which is just another commercial joint, he’ll be finished.”
    Geraldine kicked a mound of snow with the tip of her boot. Her white hair seemed to blend into the snowy mountains in the distance behind her. The creases in her forehead deepened. “What about that Eben fellow? He’s a no-good varmint.”
    “Louis was trying to give someone a fresh start. He thought that Eben wanted to pull himself up by the bootstraps and begin his life again. Like the old silver miners who came to Aspen looking for a new life. No one would have hired Eben if they knew he had a criminal record. The only thing Louis is guilty of is sticking out his neck for somebody.” Regan paused. “It didn’t work out so well, but I don’t think he should have to pay so heavily for it. If this town is anything, I thought it was open-minded. I thought it was a place where all different kinds of people can hang out together...”
    “People who can afford it,” Geraldine snapped.
    “Still. People come here to ski and socialize and have some grog...”
    “Peppermint schnapps is a local favorite,” Geraldine observed.
    “Peppermint schnapps, whatever,” Regan said. “This town was built by people taking