Crunch Time (10 page)

“Describe this man.”

Again, I did my best with that while rubbing my hair dry. No, I didn’t get a good enough look at his face to go through a police photo array. What could I say about him? He was tallish, bald, and white. I stopped talking for a moment, then asked, “If the arsonist was the source of your false reports, and he was destroying evidence, say, why would he wait half an hour before torching the place?”

Tom looked at the floor. “Maybe he was watching Ernest’s house. Waiting for you all to come back. I don’t like that one bit.”

“Neither do I. But at least Yolanda, Ferdinanda, and I, plus all the puppies, got out of the house before it went up in flames.” As I told Tom this, a rocklike tightness formed in my chest. “I don’t know what we’re going to do with the dogs. I have no idea why Ernest would have been growing pot. And what about that crazy bald guy? Tell me. Do you think he was trying to destroy evidence? Or was he trying to kill us?”

“Come here.” Tom stowed his notebook, stood up, and gently tugged me toward him. “I don’t know the answers to your questions. But clearly, Ernest pulled somebody’s chain. It’s already making Yolanda crazy, as you’ve seen. I need you to keep a steady head, all right?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Let’s go see how Boyd’s doing.”

When I walked into the living room, Boyd stood up, which I appreciated. Tom and I sat down. I did feel sorry for Yolanda and Ferdinanda, who looked as ragged and ash covered as I had fifteen minutes before.

“Tell him, Goldy,” Yolanda said. “Tell him you came down the stairs when you knew someone was trying to burn down the house. Didn’t you—”

“I’m sorry,” said Boyd, stirring uncomfortably in his wingback chair. “I have to ask you these questions.”

Tom held up an index finger, meant for me.
Don’t get involved in this.

Boyd began again. “So where were you exactly when you heard glass breaking? Downstairs, you said? Where downstairs?”

“I don’t know,” said Yolanda. “I don’t remember. I just heard Goldy screaming about a fire. Then she fell down the stairs, I think because she was in a hurry, or maybe the big explosion made her lose her balance—”

“Did you smell anything unusual?” Boyd asked.

“Like what?” demanded Ferdinanda, turning to Boyd. She tapped one of the metal arms of her wheelchair. “Burning
pasteles
?”

Yolanda gave her aunt another warning glare. “If you mean like gasoline, no, I didn’t.”

“And where were you when Goldy screamed at you?” asked Boyd.

“
Dios mío
,” said Ferdinanda, slapping her forehead. “I’m
hongry.
”

“Look,” pleaded Boyd, “I’m doing the best I can here.”

Ferdinanda shook a bent forefinger at Boyd. She leaned forward and waggled her head at him. Her steely, determined face made him draw back. “We answered your questions, the same ones you’ve been asking since we got inside. I’m tired and I’m going to eat this wheelchair if you don’t leave us alone. The place where we were staying burned down. That’s all.”

“Boyd,” interjected Tom. “Want to stay for dinner?”

“I would love to,” he said. “But I promised SallyAnn I’d go see Bertram.” Tom’s invitation, though, signaled that Boyd didn’t have to ask Yolanda and Ferdinanda any more questions.

“Goldy.” Boyd handed me a pad of paper he’d produced from an inner jacket pocket. “Humor me here. Could you write down everything you saw, and exactly what happened, and when, while you were at Ernest McLeod’s house?”

“Tom’s already asked me questions,” I said.

“Sorry,” said Boyd. “I need it for the record.”

“Okay, but I want to get Yolanda and Ferdinanda settled first. Just five minutes?”

“No,” Tom interrupted, and I flinched. Tom said, “Yolanda? Ferdinanda? Did you know Ernest was growing marijuana in his greenhouse?”

“What?” Yolanda sat up straight, a stunned look on her face. “Are you kidding me?”

“No,” said Tom. “I’m not.”

“I never went up to his greenhouse,” said Ferdinanda. “This wheelchair can’t climb steps.”

“So neither of you had
any idea
Ernest was growing marijuana?” When they shook their heads, Tom said, “Did you ever smell marijuana smoke?”

Yolanda shook her head in puzzlement. Ferdinanda said, “Yeah. I smelled it a couple of times.”

Tom narrowed his eyes. “Did you ask Ernest about it?”

“No,” Ferdinanda said emphatically. “It was none of our business. And before you ask, no, I didn’t tell Yolanda, either.”

“Ferdinanda!” exclaimed Yolanda. “I tell you everything.”

When the old woman shrugged, it looked as if her whole body was rising out of the wheelchair. “I am older than you. I don’t have to tell anybody anything. Now, I’m not going to say any more until Goldy shows us where the bathroom is, so we can clean up.”

There was a brief silence in the living room until Tom said, “Fine. Thanks for giving us your statements. If you think of anything else, please let us know. Actually,” he said, “why don’t I show you the way to the first-floor bathroom while Goldy writes out her statement? Sergeant Boyd needs to wait for it before he goes down to the hospital to see John Bertram.” He said this last part without inflection, but Ferdinanda did drop some of her steely faÇade at this. She knew she was responsible for poor John’s injury.

I started writing out a statement while Tom showed Ferdinanda and Yolanda the dining room, where they would be sleeping, and the little bathroom off the kitchen. Once they were bustling around in there, Tom poked his head back in the living room and said he was going to make some calls, to see if he could palm some of the puppies off on people we knew.

Without warning, Yolanda appeared beside him. “Palm them off forever?” she whispered.

“Yolanda,” said Tom gently, “you find a new place to live, you can take a couple back. How’s that?”

Yolanda, whose lovely face was creased with fatigue and fragments of cinders, nodded but did not move. I finished writing on Boyd’s pad—this time, I added the whole bit about finding the marijuana plants—and then handed it back to him. Boyd scanned it and said if he had any more questions, he would call me.

“Thank you,” I said weakly.

“You need me to go out and buy anything for you?” Boyd’s dark eyes moved from Yolanda to me.

“Puppy chow,” I said meekly. “That’s what we need.”

“No problem. One of the grocery stores is open late.”

I said, “Thanks.”

Boyd muttered something about it being no problem again, rubbed his scalp once more, and said he would be back in twenty minutes.

Yolanda and Ferdinanda were still in the bathroom. I wondered if they had been able to pack any clean clothes into the stuff they’d brought or if they needed me to launder things for them. Well, I supposed they would tell me. Ferdinanda was not someone who kept her needs and opinions to herself.

“Success!” said Tom when I came out to the kitchen. “I called Father Pete first, because he’d be upset if we didn’t. He’s coming over tomorrow afternoon and taking three dogs. Marla’s taking three, and she’s going to call her cleaning lady, Penny Woolworth, who will probably be over tomorrow morning, early, before she starts work. According to Marla, Penny’s been saying she wants a dog, since Penny’s husband, Zeke, is now in prison for stealing cars. Knowing Marla, she probably has more information on Zeke and Penny than I ever did. Oh, and Marla’s coming for dinner, too. I thought the least I could do was invite her to stay. I told her our meal could be a memorial to Ernest, whom she knew, apparently.”

I said, “Goodness. I’ll set us up, then hunt for a bottle of wine to go with the ham.”

“No need for the latter. Marla’s bringing us, and I quote, ‘a couple of bottles of the good stuff.’ She said, and I quote, ‘If Ernie had still been drinking, that’s what he would have wanted me to do.’ ”

“ ‘Ernie’? ‘The good stuff’?”

Tom shrugged. Since Marla’s idea of good wine began at a hundred bucks a bottle, I just shook my head and started setting the table. Boyd returned almost soundlessly, a bag of puppy chow in hand. He and Tom worked on settling the little dogs in our pet containment area with food and water. With Yolanda and Ferdinanda still in their bathroom getting cleaned up and changed, Tom and Boyd trundled off to set up cots in the dining room and make them up with clean sheets. They made a path through the furniture to the bathroom, wide enough for the wheelchair. Tom hung a clothesline across the opening between the living room and the dining room and slung a sheet over it, for privacy. Yolanda and Ferdinanda were set, for now at least.

I showed Boyd out, thanking him profusely as we walked down the hall. He merely nodded.

Fifteen minutes later, the doorbell rang and Marla swept in. She was clothed in full autumn regalia: orange and brown leopard-print St. John’s jacket, russet pants, pumpkin-colored silk scarf, and tobacco-hued Italian leather loafers. She’d had her hair colored so that it appeared bronzed. It was pulled back from her face with clusters of citrine-crusted barrettes that matched dangling citrine earrings. Her face was merry, and she held up a canvas bag that clinked with wine bottles. The effect was dazzling.

“I’m so sorry to hear about Ernie,” she said.

“We all are.”

“He was killed?”

“Yes,” I said quietly.

She leaned forward. “Can you talk about it?” she whispered.

“Not yet. Sorry. Tom may be able to tell you more.” When I hugged her, there was the sound of glass clinking. “Careful of the wine, Goldy,” she said. “I brought a bottle of Dom, plus two of Bordeaux. You shake the Dom, and it’ll explode all over the place.” I let go of her and offered to take her jacket. “Not yet,” she said, “I need to stay warm. The temperature’s dropping fast. Plus, you wouldn’t believe the mess I had to come through on the way over here. I about froze to death in the Mercedes while waiting for a fireman to wave me through. They’ve got half the roads going into Aspen Hills blocked off with water trucks, apparently. It looks as if some asshole started another forest fire, which you wouldn’t think would burn when it’s raining, but—” She stopped talking when she saw my face. “Oops. Are
you
the asshole who started the forest fire?”

Before I could answer, Yolanda emerged from the kitchen. “Marla!” she cried. “I am so glad to see you, you have no idea.”

Marla gave me a questioning glance. I said, “Yolanda and her great-aunt, Ferdinanda, are staying with us for a few days. They were staying with Ernest McLeod, and it was his house that burned down . . . while we were inside. We got out, thank God.”

Marla shook her head and quirked her eyebrows at Yolanda. “You were living with Ernie? The last time I talked to you, out at the spa, you were living with Kris Nielsen.”

Yolanda’s face darkened. “We’ll bring you up to date over dinner. Come meet my aunt Ferdinanda.”

“You call her your aunt, and not your great-aunt?” asked Marla. No detail was too small to be caught by Marla’s antennae.

“I call her my aunt,” said Yolanda. “It makes things easier.”

We moved into the kitchen. Tom relieved Marla of her sack of bottles, then shook his head when he took the first one out. Tom knew his wine values, and Marla’s generosity, even if it did come from inherited money, always amazed him. I put out five crystal glasses while he put a towel over the stopper in the Dom and began the gentle job of twisting it out. Before he could finish, his cell beeped urgently.

Tom put down the bottle and towel and went into the living room to take the call. I twisted the stopper in the Dom until it popped out in my hand, followed by a small gush of bubbly. So someone had done some expensive shaking. I carefully placed the bottle in a champagne bucket, then stuck crushed ice around the edges.

Yolanda and I scooped the food into serving dishes while Marla gave Ferdinanda her usual third degree: When had she come to this country, why were she and Yolanda together, how did she end up in a wheelchair? As usual, it went over the border line between showing interest and being nosy, but Ferdinanda was happy to be the center of attention.

Tom returned. His eyes were hooded, and he gave no indication of what the call was about. He poured the champagne and handed each of us a glass.

“To Ernest,” he said. We lifted our stems and drank.

6

A
fter we’d prayed, Tom busied himself slicing the ham. I passed around the applesauce, the Caprese salad, and—yum—the homemade macaroni and cheese. A crust of cheddar had browned over the creamy lake of pasta, and I took a bite that was both crunchy and soft. When my eyes widened in amazement, Tom smiled. The ham, which Tom had glazed with brown sugar and Dijon mustard, was meltingly tender, and the chunky cinnamon applesauce set it off perfectly. The meal was a wonderful way to remember Ernest.

Marla stopped eating momentarily, took a sip of wine, and turned her attention to Yolanda. “So, when did you and Kris break up?”

“That
pendejo,
” interjected Ferdinanda. “Don’t mention Kris to me. Don’t mention him at this table.”

Taken aback, Marla cleared her throat and touched one of her jeweled barrettes.

I said, “Ernest invited Yolanda and Ferdinanda to stay at his place.” I omitted the part about the rental burning down, knowing that would bring another torrent of questions. “Yolanda was fixing his dinners—”

When Marla waved her fingers to interrupt me, all her gems glittered in the kitchen light. “After the Jerk and I got divorced? And Ernie and Faye did the same thing? Ernie and I used to drink together at the Grizzly. Then he got sober and I had a heart attack, and that was the end of that.” She reflected a moment. “I hadn’t seen him in a while . . . and now you say—” She stopped talking, shocked into silence.

Tom mildly asked Marla, whom everyone in Aspen Meadow would agree was the most reliable source of town gossip, if she had any idea whether Ernest had any enemies.

Marla twisted her mouth to one side. “Well, let’s see.” Then her eyes twinkled. “I heard from a source at the church that he was investigating Brie Quarles.”

“The junior warden?” I asked, incredulous. Brie Quarles, a short, slender lawyer, had a head of wavy blond hair, light blue eyes, and porcelain skin. She was thirty but looked twenty,
and
she had separated from her husband . . . but then I’d heard they were getting back together. They did not have children. So, Brie was being investigated? “Why would Ernest be interested in her?” I asked.

“Don’t know,” Marla said matter-of-factly. “And no, I don’t know who the client is. Maybe Father Pete. I’m sure he doesn’t want his vestry doing things that could get the church bad press.”

Ferdinanda had blanched. At the possibility of wrongdoing in the church? Sad to say, Episcopalians didn’t have the market cornered on
that
one. Tom, meanwhile, had furtively taken out his notebook and written down a few words that I was sure included
Brie Quarles.

“So anyway,” I said, groping for any topic beyond the ecclesiastical, “Yolanda and Ferdinanda will be staying with us for a little while. Tom? Will you and Boyd put in a ramp for Ferdinanda?” I asked brightly, nestling a second juicy piece of ham beside a heap of applesauce.

“Tomorrow morning,” Tom replied, not at all fooled by my digression. “That was Boyd on the phone. He’ll be here at seven.”

“But,” said Marla, also one not to be put off by conversational diversion, “you don’t think Brie had anything to do with—”

“We don’t know yet,” Tom said. “We’re open to all theories. Who was your source on that piece of information?”

It was rare to see Marla blush, but this was one of those times. To hide it, she again turned to Yolanda. “Do
you
know if Ernest had any enemies?”

“We’ve already questioned Yolanda,” Tom said firmly. “Who’s your source of information?”

Marla closed her eyes and sighed. “My cleaning lady, Penny Woolworth. If you talk to her, she’ll never tell me anything again.”

Tom made another mark in his notebook. He said quietly, “We won’t mention you.”

Marla scowled at him, then smiled at Yolanda. “So, when did you move out of Kris’s?”

“A few weeks ago,” said Yolanda before Ferdinanda could offer another opinion of Kris Nielsen.

“That
bitch,
” said Marla.

“What bitch?” I said. “Who are you talking about?”

“Penny Woolworth, my cleaning lady! I share her with Kris Nielsen and a couple of other people,” Marla said. “
She’s
the bitch. I pay her extra to keep me up-to-date on the romantic affairs of all her clients.”

“A cleaning lady sharing dirt,” I observed drily.

“I remember Penny,” Yolanda said weakly, looking into her wineglass. “She used to clean Kris’s house once a week. She was nice. It was too bad about her husband going to prison.”

Marla went on. “Yes, well, our little mountain town doesn’t keep secrets all that well. This not-keeping-secrets is something Kris should have known, or at least have figured out. Penny Woolworth, as you know, is a young woman who’s fallen on hard times, since somebody”—here she looked at Tom—“got her husband sent to prison for car theft.”

“Zeke Woolworth,” Tom said matter-of-factly, “stole not just one or two ultra-expensive cars, but more than thirty, which he eventually sold to chop shops. Unfortunately, before he sold the cars, Zeke would speed all over the place. Sometimes he even crashed into something, usually a pylon, or a street sign, or sometimes a lane divider. He got caught not just once, but eight times. He served short stints, but when he stole a Ferrari and sped up the interstate to Aspen Meadow at more than a hundred miles an hour, he was, yes, finally sent away for two years. He’s getting out soon, but in the interim we’ve all been a lot safer.”

“Maybe so,” said Marla. “But with no income, Penny’s had to work for me and four other people.”

“Marla,” I interjected, “it’s really not right for you to pump Penny for information on her clients—”

Marla waved this away. “How do you think I found out Ernest was investigating Brie? She cleans Brie’s next-door neighbor’s house, and Brie told the neighbor she thought someone was following her. The guy was driving a red pickup truck. I got the neighbor to ask Brie the license plate of the truck, which Brie told her, and Penny got it from the neighbor, who told me.
I
recognized the license plate as the one Ernie had on his old pickup. You see, Goldy,” she said triumphantly, “you’re not the only one in town who can figure things out.”

Tom shook his head. “Did you tell Brie or her neighbor it was Ernest who was doing the following?”

Marla frowned at Tom. “What do you think I am, nuts? No, I wanted to call Ernie first, but then I forgot.”

Tom wrote in his notebook. Marla turned her scowl to the notebook, then raised her eyebrows at me.

She went on. “Anyway, Penny did tell me that Kris Nielsen’s huge house in Flicker Ridge cost over a mil. But he can afford it,” Marla said. She took a sip of wine. “Penny says that she had to work there late one night, because it had snowed in the morning, and she couldn’t get through until the late afternoon. By the time she left, Kris had had more than a few drinks. While Penny was waiting to be paid, she asked him if he knew about expanding a business, because she had more clients than she could handle, and she wanted to hire some more people. She figured he would know the answer, because supposedly he was a successful businessman. He said he wasn’t a businessman, and did she want a drink. She said yes, drank with him, and he ended up telling her that he’d inherited all his money from his dead mother.”

“
What?
” exclaimed Yolanda. “He told me he’d started a company in Silicon Valley and sold it, and that was how he made his money.”

“What was the name of the company?” Tom asked mildly.

“I don’t know,” said Yolanda, dumbfounded. “I didn’t ask.”

“Hmm,” said Tom, in a way that showed he would look it up.

“Well,” said Marla, “I guess sharing the ‘I inherited all my money’ tidbit with his cleaning lady made her recoil in horror. She said, ‘You don’t have to work?’ And he shut up about it. The next time she cleaned, she pressed him again on the business thing. He said he’d turned over all his hiring to the human resources people at his company.”

I said, “For crying out loud.”

Marla beamed. “Penny thinks that Kris should be serving time for being lazy. Penny says it’s not fair that poor dear can’t-keep-from-boosting-cars Zeke is in prison.”

“I agree that Kris should be serving time,” said Ferdinanda. She squinted at Marla. “Does this woman have any real dirt on Kris?”

Marla regarded Yolanda somberly. “Did you know he was, ah, being unfaithful to you?”

Yolanda’s voice was weak. “Yes, I did know that. I mean, I figured it out.” She knew that if she mentioned the venereal disease to Marla, it would be in next week’s
Mountain Journal.

“And you know how he did it?” asked Ferdinanda emphatically. “While Yolanda was working at the spa, Kris hired a nurse to take me out for a drive. Every day I had to go out with that woman so he could have some ‘free time.’ Free time to do what? I always asked that nurse. He’s not going to a
job.
But she never told me.”

“Do you remember the name of the nurse?” asked Tom, as mildly as before.

“Just her first name,” Ferdinanda replied. “Patty. I called her Pattypan, because she squashed any chance I had to take a nap.”

“Ferdinanda?” I said. “You didn’t protest? You just made a joke out of it?”

Ferdinanda pulled herself up tall. “I tried to protest, but I didn’t have a weapon. That’s why I had Yolanda buy me the baton, when we moved out of Kris’s.”

Nobody spoke for a moment. Marla finally said, “Penny doesn’t know anything about this nurse, at least not that she told me.
She
claims Kris drives her nuts because he’s in the house a lot, not out working, and because he loves to go shopping for stuff he doesn’t need, stuff that she then has to dust. But she neglected to tell me that you had moved out, Yolanda, which I am sorry about—”

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” Yolanda said, her tone bitter. “I’m fine.” As if to prove it, she took another swig of wine. “Can we change the subject?”

“I’m still mad at Penny,” Marla said stubbornly. “She should have told me that Yolanda had moved out, and then I wouldn’t have had to ask about it. Oh well,” she said. She looked around the kitchen. “Tom? Could you open that second bottle of wine? We should be talking about Ernest, not about problems with cleaning ladies.”

Tom opened the wine and filled the glasses again. When he sat down, he said, “Unlike many cops, Ernest was a neat freak. His desk was always the cleanest one I’ve ever seen in the sheriff’s department.”

And so we talked about Ernest. Ferdinanda said he was without prejudice and welcomed them into his home. Marla became weepy, and Tom diplomatically moved the open wine bottle off to a cupboard. Yolanda said Ernest cared about his clients. “He cared about everybody,” she added. “Even us,” she whispered.

It seemed as if the conversation was going to veer into something maudlin requiring more boxes of tissues than I knew I had on hand.

Marla and Ferdinanda began to talk about other topics, thank God. The two women seemed to have a natural affinity and found that they agreed on a variety of issues, from immigration reform (they were for it) to using margarine (they were against it). Neither Kris Nielsen’s nor Ernest McLeod’s name came up again.

Concentrating on food kept us from talking about all that had happened. Yolanda gradually seemed to relax. Tom winked at me several times as we ate and talked, and I found the stress melting out of my own body as well.

Speaking of men who love to shop, Tom had gone browsing in some specialty food stores the previous day, before all hell had broken loose with the murder of Ernest McLeod. He’d picked up a box of my favorite toffee, which was made with butter, cream, chocolate, and almonds. He chopped it, placed it on a plate, and passed it around. Marla restrained herself and had only one piece—there was that heart attack, after all—but Ferdinanda and Yolanda each had three pieces, plus coffee into which, as usual, they measured so many teaspoons of sugar, I couldn’t watch.

“If you want me to get those dogs bedded down at my place for the night,” Marla said at last, “I need to get cracking. Penny comes tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll find out why she held out on me regarding—” But when Marla saw Yolanda’s stricken face, she broke off. People may love to gossip, but when they discover how much being the subject of gossip hurts others, they often don’t love it so much anymore. “Sorry,” Marla mumbled.

“I’m doing the dishes,” Yolanda announced as she got up.

Tom protested. “You’re a guest. Besides, I’m the only one who knows where everything goes.”

“You cooked,” said Yolanda. “As soon as I get Ferdinanda settled in the tub, I’m cleaning up. Please just give Marla her three puppies.” Her voice cracked when she said, “Cleaning will help me.” Tom backed off.

Reluctantly, Tom and I gathered up a promising-looking trio of the little beagles. Outside, the weather had become even colder. When we picked up the puppies, they were covered with mud.

I felt horribly guilty. “We should have brought them in earlier.”

“They’ll be all right,” said Tom. “They’ve been out here having fun. Let’s just commandeer the kitchen sink and rinse them off in warm water. Can you get some thick bath towels that you don’t mind having stained?”

“You bet,” I said as I carried one of the squirming puppies into the house. While Yolanda pushed all the plates to one side of the counter, I put the first puppy into one half of the double kitchen sink, then turned the warm water on in the other sink.

“Good Lord,” said Marla, peering down at the grimy animal. “Please tell me you’re going to get those animals clean before they plop down in my Mercedes that I just had detailed.”

“Of course,” I called as I nabbed baby shampoo from the pantry and handed it to Tom. Then I headed to the linen closet.

When I returned, Tom was using a warm spray of water to rinse the shampoo off the puppies. He handed me the first beagle, and I rubbed it down with the old, plush towel.

“Very odd,” said Tom as he handed me the second puppy.

“What is?” Marla and I asked in unison.

“Every single one of these puppies is a female,” said Tom.