Crunch Time gbcm-16

by Diane Mott Davidson

  And finally, “What if the person who burned down Ernest’s house finds out where we are and comes over and attacks her?”

  “Yolanda,” I said as we drove down the ramp to the interstate, “please. Your aunt strikes me as someone who can take care of herself.” I wanted to ask whether she knew Ernest had made her such a huge beneficiary of his will. Another issue continued to niggle the back of my brain: What was the nature of Yolanda and Ernest’s relationship, exactly? She’d said they were just friends, but did you leave a “friend” your house and property? Or did you leave it to a lover because you were afraid you were going to die soon?

  Either that was the possible title of a morbid country song or I needed more coffee.

  Anyway, Tom would kill me if I broached these subjects. So . . . I tried to stay nonchalant as I asked, “Do you want to talk about Ernest?”

  “I am afraid. I’m afraid of his clients. I’m afraid of Kris. I’m afraid of whoever burned down our rental, of whoever burned down Ernest’s house. I never used to be afraid, and now I live in fear.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to remember how I used to deal with Arch when he had unreasonable panic attacks during the divorce from the Jerk. I’d get him to catalog the fears, and then I’d try to defuse each one.

  “What are you most afraid of? It doesn’t have to be sensible.”

  “Kris. He hurt me.”

  “He hurt you,” I repeated, and glanced over at Yolanda. Her spill of russet curls glinted in the cold light. She stopped talking and stared at her lap. This immediately made me paranoid, and so I felt it was now my duty to check the rearview mirror for . . . well, for what, exactly? I’d seen one Maserati in my entire lifetime, and I’d thought it was a sports car made by Chrysler.

  “Yes,” she said, and her voice caught. “I keep thinking about what he did to me and how I failed to protect myself, protect Ferdinanda—”

  “You know what? Enough already,” I said as I signaled to exit the interstate.

  “Enough of what? Where are you going?” Yolanda said. She looked around wildly. “Why are you taking this exit?”

  “I’m just removing the threat.” Or trying to, I added mentally.

  I headed back west, took the exit for Aspen Meadow, then zipped through the entrance to Flicker Ridge. Yolanda shook her head as I raced to the top.

  “You are making a mistake, Goldy,” she warned, and in that moment, she sounded like Tom. Oh, well. I was going to do what I’d always wished I’d done with the Jerk: confront him, damn it.

  I said, “That remains to be seen.”

  My van had more pickup than Yolanda’s, so we were at the entrance to Kris Nielsen’s mansion in less than two minutes. The place was all one level, and consisted of vast expanses of yellow stucco and numerous windows. The house was topped with a long red tile roof. It was enormous and looked less like a residence than the corporate headquarters for Taco Bell.

  “Goldy,” Yolanda said sharply, “please listen to me. This is a very bad idea.”

  “You don’t even know what my idea is,” I said mildly, although I wasn’t quite sure what it was myself. How would I parry a thrust from a broom handle? I narrowed my eyes at the road. In my post-Jerk days, I’d taken self-defense lessons. If I needed that training, hopefully it would come back.

  At the side of the road, I pulled behind a large cedar tree to conceal my van. Then I got out and jogged down the long driveway.

  Well, well. Why was I not surprised to see Penny Woolworth’s Jeep parked at the side of the house? If she’d left the dogs out in that cold car, I’d throw her carefully made latte in her face.

  I stepped quickly around to the battered Jeep and checked the interior. No puppies. Was Penny leaving them there? Was it possible Kris Nielsen had thousands of square feet of white carpet? I certainly hoped so. I walked back to the front of the house, where I checked the porch for security cameras. There were none. I rang the bell, then stepped off to the side, out of the line of sight of the peephole.

  “Who is it?” Penny’s voice called meekly through the heavy wood a moment later.

  “Mountain Journal!” I shouted, making my voice husky. “Need to see Mr. Nielsen!”

  There was a pause. “Uh, about what?” Penny’s tentative voice called back.

  “Harboring stolen puppies! Open this door or I’m calling the cops! Like now, lady!”

  She opened the door a crack. “The puppies aren’t his, they’re—”

  I slammed the door open and stepped into a stuccoed foyer. In my head, I could hear Tom’s voice saying, No, no, no. But I pressed forward anyway. I stopped at the edge of the foyer beside the living room, which was filled with chrome and leather contemporary furniture. Beyond it was a dining room, its glass dining room table surrounded by uncomfortable-looking modern chairs. Overhead, a complicated tubular crystal chandelier glimmered. I whirled and glared at Penny Woolworth. “You work for him on Thursdays, huh? Today’s Monday. Where is he?”

  “I can’t—”

  “Listen to me, Penny, you tell me where he is, or I will call Tom and have Zeke held—”

  “What’s going on here?” asked Kris Nielsen from the dining room. Tall, with his shock of prematurely white hair swept back, Kris looked first at me, then at Penny, with genuine puzzlement. He wore a T-shirt, basketball shorts, and running shoes. The shirt made his arm and chest muscles pop out. I swallowed and realized what a really terrible idea it had been to come here. Kris walked toward me, holding out his hand. “We met once before, didn’t we? You’re Goldy?” His blue eyes were kind, merry even. “Is there a problem?” He looked back at Penny for some kind of explanation.

  “I got the puppies from her,” said Penny, looking down at an asymmetrically designed area rug.

  “And?” asked Kris, still confused. I didn’t shake his extended hand, so he dropped it to his side. When neither Penny nor I followed up on his question, he said, “Goldy, would you like to stay for a cup of coffee?”

  “No, thanks,” I said stiffly. “I have to be somewhere.” I felt my courage evaporating, so I squared my shoulders and pointed at Kris. “Leave Yolanda and her aunt Ferdinanda alone. Leave me alone. She may have been afraid of pressing charges against you or of swearing out a restraining order against you, but I am not. Do you understand?”

  “What?” he said in disbelief. He swayed back on his heels, as if I’d slapped him.

  I turned my body and my pointing finger on Penny. “Whatever he’s paying you for your efforts, it is not worth it.”

  “I, I, I . . . ,” said Penny helplessly. “Goldy, wait, you don’t understand.”

  But since she offered no explanation of what I didn’t understand, and since Kris was still struck dumb, it was time for me to boogie. In the distance—the garage, probably—I could hear the puppies whining. I raced back to the van.

  “How’d it go?” Yolanda asked, staring straight ahead.

  “About as well as you’d expect.” I started the van and pulled away from the curb. When we reached the exit of Flicker Ridge, I picked up my cell and hit the speed dial for Tom. If Tom couldn’t do anything else, he could at least come up here and get Ernest’s beagles back . . . or something.

  Unfortunately, Tom picked up on the first ring. “Miss G.? I just got off the phone with Kris Nielsen. What were you thinking?”

  Nonplussed, I steered the van toward the interstate. This particular turn of events was not what I was expecting. I stared hard out the windshield and said, “I wasn’t exactly thinking.”

  “That much is clear.” He was quiet for so long, it made me uncomfortable. Yolanda, staring out her window, was no help. Finally Tom sighed. “He was very upset. Says he has no idea why you barged into his house. He says he invited you to have a cup of coffee, and you threatened him. Did you threaten him? You didn’t take a weapon into his house, did you? A knife, say? Tell me you didn’t.”

  “Tom, I didn’t even take a wooden spoon in there.”

  “Well, tha
t much is good, I suppose. I did some shucking and jiving with him, said we had strong anti-stalking laws in this state, that I’d heard his Maserati myself this morning—”

  “You heard it?” I said, incredulous. “You never told me that! How did you know it was a, ah—” I glanced over at Yolanda. I didn’t want her to know what I was talking about. “How did you know what it was?”

  “Oh, Miss G. If I didn’t know my cars by now, I would not be worthy of the title Police Officer.” He paused. “Neither Boyd nor I actually saw Kris this morning, and he insists he was working out on his exercise machines. At home. Maybe it was somebody else’s Mas, who knows. But people in our neighborhood can barely afford to put clothes on their kids’ backs. They don’t have the dough for that kind of vehicle.”

  “Exactly!” I said. “That’s why I—”

  “Miss G. I have to go. I’m in the middle of a homicide investigation, remember? I promised Kris Nielsen that you would not attempt to contact him in any way in the future, all right?”

  “Oh-kay.”

  “Those anti-stalking statutes apply to you, too, Miss G. Do you understand?”

  “Tom, please stop.” We signed off, not happily.

  “What did Tom say?” Yolanda asked.

  “Nothing, really. He just wants me to leave Kris alone.”

  Yolanda snorted. “That’s rich.”

  Outside, the mantle of gray cloud had grown much darker. The wind started up again, this time with such force that it violently swept leaves, pine needles, and bits of trash across the highway. The thermometer in my van indicated the external temperature was thirty-one. When we reached the Ooh-Ah Bridge, with its spectacular view of the Continental Divide—which was behind us—the first snowflakes began to fall.

  I cursed silently. These were tiny flakes, the kind that signal a true storm, not a flurry. Worse, the snowflakes didn’t drift slowly downward, they sped sideways with such ferocity and thickness that a sudden, dense white curtain made visibility difficult. First the view of the plains, usually so clear when you’re heading east, disappeared. Then I couldn’t make out the road a hundred yards in front of us. Eventually, I couldn’t see the road ten yards ahead. I got into the middle lane and slowed the van way down.

  Yolanda transferred her worry to the weather. “Think they’ll still have these physicals? It looks pretty bad. Maybe you should call and see if the school is going to cancel.”

  “Something involving sports at a Catholic high school?” I replied, straining to see out the windshield. “Those kids and parents would turn out if we had flash floods, a tornado, and ten inches of basketball-size hail.”

  And they did. By the time we got to Denver and turned onto the street that led to the Christian Brothers High School, the snow was mixed with rain. We passed the crowded parking lot and pulled up near the kitchen entrance. We were late, but it was only half past nine. We needed to be done setting up in two hours. The buffet lunch wasn’t due to start until noon, but hungry teenage athletes would be ready to eat at half past eleven, if not earlier.

  Plus, I had to make sure I connected with Charlene Newgate at noon. I hoped I’d be able to find her in the gym.

  Alas, the kitchen doors were locked. Yolanda guarded the van—in case someone came along and told us we had to move—while I went inside to hunt for the athletic director, Tony Ramos. Tony was supposed to have unlocked the kitchen doors, and I didn’t have his cell phone number.

  A deafening amount of noise echoed off the tiled walls of the hallways. I checked Tony Ramos’s office: empty. I shot down the hallway and pushed my way into the gym, where the din was even louder than in the halls. Parents, students, doctors, nurses, and volunteers packed the space in a free-for-all atmosphere that was like a postgame celebration. The walls were hung with banners announcing championships the school had won in various sports. Someone with a bullhorn was trying unsuccessfully to impose order on the chaos. Parents called to one another in recognition, teachers made out name tags, and there was an excited buzz among the kids: Would the developing storm mean school might be canceled the next day?

  While I was looking for Tony Ramos, I bumped into Sean Breckenridge. This was not a metaphorical bumping but a quite literal one, as my attention was focused on searching for Tony. Sean had been holding an oversize camera up to his eye, and neither of us saw the other until I’d whacked his lens and ended up on the gym floor. My elbow immediately screamed with pain, but I pressed my lips together.

  “Oh, gosh,” he proclaimed. “I’m sorry!”

  “It’s my fault,” I said after he’d helped me up. “Are you all right? Did I mess up your camera? I’m sorry.” As I said this, I pushed up my sleeve, which had torn. Blood spurted from my elbow.

  Sean looked away quickly. “Did I, did I do that?”

  “No, I did,” I said, pulling my sleeve down to my wrist. “Sean?”

  He looked back at me cautiously. When he saw my sleeve was back in place, he used the long fingers of his free hand to brush his thinning dark hair over to one side. He glanced at his camera, which seemed to have weathered my impact. “Yes?”

  “Are you all right?”

  Embarrassment flooded Sean’s thin face. He cleared his throat. “Fine, thank you.”

  He clearly wasn’t, but since the last time we’d talked he hung up on me, I said quickly, “Have you seen Tony Ramos? The athletic director?”

  “Yes,” Sean said slowly “I just took a picture of him with the basketball team. I’ll show you where he was.”

  I followed Sean’s tall, bowlegged body. The camera seemed to weigh him down, so that he listed like a leaking ship. At one point, he seemed to remember something and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a tissue and wiped his face.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” I asked.

  “I’m fine,” he said, then hoisted his camera again and resumed his slow, tilted walk across the gym floor.

  Wait a minute. Camera?

  “Sean, what are you doing here?” I rushed up to his side. I mean, he was the senior warden of our Episcopal church in Aspen Meadow, and his only child was five. Marla had said the kid was precocious, but I doubted he was in high school already. “Are you the official school photographer?”

  Sean shook his head as we threaded our way around clumps of students and parents. When we passed the entrance to the locker rooms, the odor of sweat almost knocked me flat. Sean said something unintelligible, and I hustled up to his side.

  “I didn’t hear you,” I said.

  “I’m the volunteer school photographer. They needed somebody, so here I am.” After a moment, he said bitterly, “There’s Tony.”

  He pointed at Tony Ramos, a short, muscular fellow with close-clipped gray hair straight as a bristle brush. Tony Ramos had been the subject of media coverage this summer, when a national sporting goods company had bought a contraption he’d invented for the CBHS girls’ fast-pitch softball team. Tony had christened it the Pitch Bitch, but when the sporting-goods company had bought the thing for an estimated eight figures, they’d vowed to change it to something more “acceptable to young women.” Tony, not the most garrulous of people in ordinary circumstances, had said, “No comment.” When asked if he would retire from CBHS, he said merely, “No.” Now he was listening to a very pretty woman whom I could see only in profile. She was making comments, bending in toward Tony, and then laughing flirtatiously. When she turned and put her hand on Tony’s arm, I cringed. I recognized her: Brie Quarles.

  “Tony?” I said. Sean Breckenridge slithered away. “Sorry to bother you, but we need to—”

  “The kitchen door!” he said, slapping his forehead. “I’m so sorry, Goldy. Brie,” he said, turning to her, “I’d love to hear more. Some other time, okay?”

  “All righty!” said Brie as she caught sight of me in my workplace kitchen duds. Her smile faded and she turned away. Even though we were both parishioners at St. Luke’s, and we both ostensibly subscribed to the idea that being Chr
istian meant, at the very least, being nice to each other, I clearly wasn’t important enough to merit a bit of conversation.

  “Hello, Brie,” I called after her. She stopped and turned around, giving me as blasé a look as possible. Despite the weather, she wore a pink polo shirt, khaki shorts, and flashy metallic flats. I certainly hoped she had a good winter coat somewhere in the gym. I said merrily, “I’m catering the church fund-raising dinner at the Breckenridges’ place tomorrow night. You’re going to be a guest?”

  “What is this,” she asked, “twenty questions?” And with that, she whirled on one of her flats and flounced away to talk to someone more important.

  Well, I thought as I accompanied Tony Ramos to the kitchen entrance, that was interesting. A truism I’d heard expressed on the radio suddenly came to mind: that the Church of England—in America, the Episcopal Church—is the last bastion standing in the way of the spread of Christianity. I wasn’t quite that cynical, because I did love Saint Luke’s, and the parish did a great deal of good in the community. In any event, I would have to grill Marla on the possibility that the reason the married Brie Quarles had been under surveillance was that she was fooling around with the married athletic director of Christian Brothers High School.

  Tony, feeling remorseful about not being where he was supposed to be when we arrived, helped us schlep in all the boxes. The man was strong, I’d give him that. He then commandeered four athletes to move the two long tables we’d be using to serve food in the gym. In fact, Tony and his soldiers helped so much, our work took half the time I’d allotted.

  And lo and behold, who should walk into the kitchen but Arch! I hadn’t seen my own sixteen-year-old son for two days. As usual, I noticed how he was becoming tall and gangly. Also as usual, his disheveled, toast-colored hair looked as if it hadn’t seen a comb lately. The gray circles under his brown eyes indicated he’d stayed up too late with his pals. But he looked happy.

  “Hey, Mom.” A shy smile flickered across his face. “How’re you doing?”

  “Fine, thanks.” I tilted my head at Yolanda, who was arranging the pork on large platters. “Yolanda and her great-aunt, Ferdinanda, are staying with us for a few days. They’re on cots in the dining room.”