Crunch Time gbcm-16

by Diane Mott Davidson

“I’m flattered,” said Lolly. “But I’m sure I make more money turning tricks. See you cats later.” She got out of the car.

  “Be careful, Lolly,” said Tom.

  “No worries.”

  When we got home, the streetlights indicated something different about our house.

  “What the hell is that?” asked Tom. We both stared at one of the pine trees in our front yard.

  A carved wooden mask was nailed to the trunk. Tom shook his head as he pounded ahead of me up the new wheelchair ramp.

  “Hey, guys!” said Arch when we came through the door. He was sitting in the living room with Yolanda, Boyd, and a very smug-looking Ferdinanda. “Did you see the cool Santería mask that Ferdinanda made? I helped her nail it to the tree out front.”

  “What does it mean?” Tom asked coolly.

  Arch’s face dropped at Tom’s tone. Yolanda looked at her hands, while Boyd, clearly in mental discomfort, straightened his shoulders. Ferdinanda lifted her chin.

  “Tom!” Ferdinanda said. “You let me worry about what it means.”

  “It’s our front yard,” Tom replied evenly.

  Ferdinanda sighed. “It’s to ward off evil spirits.”

  “I thought that’s why we all went to church,” Tom replied.

  “This is extra,” Ferdinanda said.

  “What is the significance of that mask?” asked Tom.

  “The exact significance?” said Ferdinanda. “After all these years, I forgot. You know what? I’m tired.” She yawned, stretched her arms over her head, and turned the wheels of her chair toward the dining room. “I’m going to bed.” Then she stopped. “Hey! Where’s the ice cream you were out buying?”

  “I forgot,” said Tom, before starting up the stairs. I bade everyone good night, then gave Arch a stern enough look that he nodded. Time for him to go to bed, too.

  In our bathroom, I pulled out Lolly’s photocopy. With Tom’s mood turning foul after hearing about Lolly’s dealings and seeing a Santería mask in our front yard, he probably wasn’t ready yet to hear about Lolly doing an illegal search of Humberto’s wallet.

  Humberto Captain had kept several receipts, only one of which interested me: Aspen Meadow Printers, High Country Dry Cleaners, Frank’s Fix-It, and Excalibur Safes.

  Excalibur was delivering its premier model, the Deerslayer, on Friday. Room for numerous guns and pistols, the receipt said, with anchor holes for bolting to the floor, an electronic/mechanical lock, and two-hour resistance to fire. The Deerslayer was touted as their best model for storing papers and valuables.

  Yeah, I thought. I just bet.

  Say Humberto had figured out that Ernest had stolen the necklace, and either killed him or had him killed. He had put the .38, the gold, and the gems somewhere, until the safe could be installed. But Ernest had insisted that Humberto did not have a safety deposit box, and Lolly had searched the house. If Humberto had put the weapon and valuables into one of Donna’s houses, I would be sunk. Yet Lolly had not said Humberto kept keys with him all the time. He kept his wallet with him. And the wallet had yielded these receipts.

  Without a warrant, there was no way Tom or I or anyone could get access to a fancy safe after Friday. But I could visit the three local places the next day. Perhaps one of the receipts would lead to something.

  I stuffed the paper back in my pocket and took a quick shower. Once in bed, I felt guilty about Lolly, about the photocopy, about things in general. I loved my husband. When he slid between the sheets beside me, his warm presence made me feel, more than ever, that I wanted him to be happy.

  Well, I knew what that meant, didn’t I?

  I felt a quirk of emotional discomfort. Was I ready for this? Were we?

  Was anyone ever ready to bring another being into the world? Probably not. But I realized suddenly Yes, I want this, too.

  I said, “Why don’t I forget the protection tonight?”

  He pulled me in for a warm hug. “Are you sure? You think it would be okay if our family got bigger? Should we talk to Arch?”

  “If we do, it’ll get his hopes up. He’s always wanted a sibling. Better just to keep it to ourselves, I think, until we know something.”

  “Miss G., are you sure?”

  Unexpected tears slid down my face. “Yes.”

  When the alarm went off at seven, I woke up, startled. Had I been dreaming, or had something occurred to me? Something had been wrong about Humberto’s house. What was it? But the dream, or memory, was as elusive as sunlight flashing across the surface of Aspen Meadow Lake. I hopped out of bed and almost fell down. Exhaustive lovemaking had led to extremely sore muscles.

  “Good God,” said Tom, as he rolled over to bop the ringer on the clock. “I can’t move.”

  “Me either. But we have to.”

  “How about a shower together?”

  Well, I knew what that meant, and after twenty minutes of having sex in a hot shower, my muscles were screaming at me. But I felt great, and I moved through a slow yoga routine that eased the physical pain a bit.

  In the kitchen, Ferdinanda said, “I already fed Arch. He left because he is meeting someone to review for a math test.” She appraised me with a lifted eyebrow. “You made some racket last night.”

  “We didn’t,” I protested. In fact, we’d made a special attempt to be quiet.

  “Yeah,” she said as she rolled over to the espresso machine, “you didn’t. But I could tell by that stupid happy look on your face that you made some kind of something.”

  My cheeks grew hot. Instead of responding, I bustled about feeding Jake the bloodhound and Scout the cat. Both animals were acting neglected. Jake had his own way of showing this: He came up close and gave me a long, mournful gaze. I patted him, whereupon he threw himself onto the kitchen floor to have his tummy rubbed. Scout, on the other hand, trotted away after eating, without so much as a backward glance. This feline behavior meant that only after he had gotten over his sulk would he twine around my legs and purr.

  I let Jake outside. Ferdinanda chuckled and offered me espresso mixed with cream and ice. My face heated up again. Why should I feel embarrassed for making love to my own husband in our own house?

  Boyd came into the kitchen. Maybe I was being paranoid, but it seemed as if he, too, was evaluating my expression. He smiled furtively but said nothing. There would be hell to pay from his boss if he so much as said a word about our personal life.

  “Yolanda’s going to help you with the soup today,” Ferdinanda told me briskly. “I’m going to chop the mushrooms. You got chicken stock in your freezer?”

  “Yup,” I said, and moved with relief to the walk-in. Yolanda called to Boyd, asking for help making up the cots. He disappeared.

  “I made you toasted pork sandwiches for breakfast,” said Ferdinanda when Tom appeared in the kitchen, dressed for work. “Sit down and eat. You’re going to need strength after that night you had with Goldy!”

  Tom’s questioning expression made me shake my head. Ferdinanda removed a cookie sheet from the oven and slapped it onto the table. English muffin sandwiches lay in neat rows, with sliced grilled pork steaming around the edges and melting cheese oozing onto the pan. Ferdinanda pulled a spatula out from beside her thighs in the wheelchair—one of these days, I expected her to retrieve a full-grown alligator from the wheelchair’s depths—and began levering sandwiches onto our plates.

  Boyd came back out and said Yolanda needed Ferdinanda to help her change her bandages.

  “I’m going,” said Ferdinanda, wheeling away. “You three eat, or I’m going to be angry.”

  Tom’s cell rang as he was eating his sandwich. He said, “Schulz,” then listened. When he hung up, he told Boyd and me, “Stonewall Osgoode was an army ranger who got a dishonorable discharge for dealing drugs. Then he went to veterinary school at Colorado State but was kicked out of there for dealing drugs. This is what we call self-destructive behavior.”

  “Colorado State?” I asked. “In Fort Collins, where the murder of
the gas station attendant happened?”

  Tom nodded. “That gas station attendant was a grad student in chemistry. Stonewall Osgoode probably had nothing to do with that, since he was definitely in his room when the kid was killed at the gas station. They found Osgoode’s roommate, who’s now a full-fledged vet, Dr. Hopengarten. Dr. H. had had the flu and remembers pulling an all-nighter that night, December twenty-third, because he had to turn in a paper on Christmas Eve, the twenty-fourth, or risk flunking a class. The two of them only had enough money for a studio apartment. Stonewall was there, asleep in the same room, so Dr. H. knows Osgoode never left.” Tom ate his last bite of sandwich, then said, “Oh, and get this. Dr. H. suspected that Osgoode was dealing drugs to support himself in school. Dr. H. is also pretty sure Osgoode had a partner. Whenever the phone rang and it was for Osgoode, it was always the same guy on the line.”

  Boyd put down his sandwich. “Did Dr. H. see this partner?”

  “Nope,” said Tom, discouraged. “And he has no idea who it was. But when Dr. H came back from turning in his paper, it was all over the news that shortly after midnight, this kid had been shot and killed at a local gas station. What Dr. H. particularly remembers, though, is that Osgoode went somewhere late that morning and came back in a foul mood. He said he was going to have to find a job to support himself, because he’d just lost the one he had. Dr. H. said, ‘What job was that?’ but Osgoode said, ‘Some people have no guts at all,’ then clammed up. The next week, the Fort Collins police pounded on their door and arrested Osgoode for dealing drugs.”

  “Somebody turned him in?” Boyd asked.

  Tom said, “Yeah. Our guys got good information from the Fort Collins authorities. An anonymous informant called them and gave the names of people Osgoode had sold drugs to. The cops pulled in the users, and they all immediately confessed that Osgoode was their supplier.”

  I said, “Please tell me Osgoode gave up the name of his partner.”

  “Nope. But Osgoode wasn’t as broke as he made out to Dr. Hopengarten, because somebody paid all his legal bills and court costs.”

  “Who?” Boyd and I asked in unison.

  Tom shook his head. “Don’t know, and whoever it was didn’t visit Osgoode in jail, either. Only the lawyer came, and he was a high-priced criminal defense attorney who managed to wangle a plea deal. Osgoode got a ten-year prison sentence, suspended, and only spent eighteen months in jail. Apparently the DA figured all those drug users wouldn’t make very good witnesses.”

  I shook my head. Tom stood, cleared our dishes, and said, “I need to get down to the department.”

  After he left, Boyd and I finished cleaning the kitchen. When he went into the living room to watch the news, I quietly pulled Lolly’s photocopy out of my pocket. Ferdinanda and Yolanda were talking in low tones in the dining room, so I crept down to the basement and loaded pink and yellow photocopy paper into our printer, slipped in Lolly’s paper, and let ’er rip.

  Inspecting the result, I didn’t know if they’d fool anybody. But as I scissored away to make the copies look like actual receipts, I resolved that I was certainly going to try.

  As I walked back up the stairs with the fake receipts in my pocket, the memory that had disturbed me early that morning resurfaced. The part of Humberto’s house that had been weird was an aspect of the décor.

  Lolly had told me Humberto had redecorated the house at a fast clip. It had begun the day after Ernest broke in and stole the necklace. Why redecorate then? Okay, he wanted to put in surveillance cameras, but you could do that without painters and a whole bunch of new furniture.

  That elusive memory was still flashing, but it was out of reach. I decided to make my first stop the Aspen Meadow Library.

  I put four frozen homemade coffee cakes into my canvas bag. Food bribes usually worked if someone balked at helping me, and I couldn’t let that happen. Then I asked Boyd if he would accompany me to my van. When we were walking down the ramp, he asked me where I was going.

  Surprised, I said, “Just running a few errands.” He lifted his eyebrows questioningly, but there was no way I was going to tell him what I was really up to.

  In the van, I glanced across the street to see if Kris or Harriet was anywhere around. Neither was. I realized I didn’t even know what kind of car Harriet drove. Would Tom be able to find that out, if I didn’t know her last name? Or would he say if I continued to try to snoop into Harriet’s life, I’d be stalking her?

  Ten minutes later, I breezed through the library doors and headed right to the reference desk. I didn’t know the new reference librarian, a young, slender woman who wore a khaki pantsuit and had black hair with red streaks. Didn’t anybody lucky enough to have black hair just wear it au naturel these days? I guessed not.

  I offered her a coffee cake for the librarians’ break room, and she gratefully accepted. Then I asked my question, and she brightened. She said she loved a challenge, and I had the distinct feeling that she would have helped me out, food bribe or no.

  She moved with alacrity to the website archives of the Mountain Journal. I certainly did not know how to search for the articles I needed, the ones that asked, “Can you guess whose view this is?” The following week, the answer was given, complete with a picture of the home’s owner.

  Miss Black and Red Hair found the answer by swiftly pressing buttons, and soon I was looking at Humberto Captain’s view, which the librarian had put next to a photo of Humberto proudly pointing to the vista. In fact, I was interested in neither of these views. What did capture my attention was that memory that had been wriggling out of reach. Above Humberto’s head, there was not a light fixture in the shape of a wagon wheel. There was something else entirely.

  I thanked the librarian and revved my van in the direction of Frank’s Fix-It Shop, which I thought was the most likely of my receipts to turn up what I wanted.

  Frank’s Fix-It, next to Aspen Meadow Bank, looked as run-down as the bank appeared modern and immaculate. I made a U-turn, parked directly in front of the shop, then banged on the door until a heavy young man wearing torn jeans and a scruffy sweatshirt opened up. The scent of marijuana wafted out around him.

  “We’re closed,” he said, looking at his wrist that was without a watch. He blinked and slowly turned his head to squint at the bank’s clock, which indicated it was half past ten.

  “Your advertisement says you open at ten,” I lied smoothly. The guy looked around for a sign with his hours, but in fact he didn’t have that, either. I figured it was better to play on his sympathies than to piss him off. And wait: If he’d been smoking grass, shouldn’t he have the munchies wicked bad? I pulled another coffee cake out of my big canvas bag. “Would you like to eat a homemade coffee cake?”

  The fellow eyed the cake greedily. “Well—”

  “Here.” I handed him the cake in its zippered bag. “And, please, please can you help me?” I pulled the pink receipt out of the bag and thrust it under his nose. “My boss says I have to get this today, as early as possible. If I don’t, I’ll lose my job.”

  Now the stoner stared at the receipt, his mouth hanging open. Drool trailed from his lower lip as he clutched the coffee cake to his chest. After a few long moments, he said, “We have this?”

  “Please help me,” I begged. “It’s your receipt.”

  “Awright.” He pushed the door halfway open and lumbered into the darkness of the store. I quickly stepped through and followed him.

  The place positively reeked of weed. The wooden floor was worn through to concrete in a number of places, and Frank, or his son, or someone, had sprinkled sawdust on top. The counters were so dusty it was hard to tell if the glass cases actually held anything. But when the guy rounded the corner and ducked behind a curtain, I followed him there, too.

  The fluorescent light he turned on did not help. He put the coffee cake on a cluttered table and again gaped at the fake receipt. With more clarity than he had mustered so far, he said, “I have no idea where in hell
this is. Or even what it is.”

  “Oh, I know,” I said cheerfully. “Why don’t I find it?”

  “I can’t leave you here with the stuff,” he said dully. “We’ll lose our insurance if I do.”

  I almost choked at the idea of them even having insurance. “I won’t break anything.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said stubbornly.

  We seemed to be at an impasse. But a torn red plastic chair offered a solution to our problem. I said, “Why don’t you sit down while I hunt? Then you can eat the cake and keep an eye on me at the same time.”

  “Well, I do got the munchies.”

  “Go for it. But may I have the receipt back, please?”

  “Awright.” He handed it to me, then made his way to the chair. He sat down heavily, opened the bag, and broke off a hunk of cake. Well, I didn’t mind if he dispensed with the whole utensil thing. I just didn’t want to watch.

  I surveyed the vast, untidy storage room. Shelves at odd angles were filled to bursting with dusty articles. Damn it, I thought, why can’t anything be easy?

  Half an hour later, I realized I was hungry, too. All I had found in searching through the first two-thirds of the shelves was an assortment of toasters with frayed cords, pots missing handles, clocks without hands, and broken, functionless tchotchkes.

  The stoner had finished half the cake, and now he was openly smoking a joint.

  Well, great. This was another one of those situations where the fact that I was married to a sheriff’s department investigator did not look so hot. I was unlawfully searching for something that I was pretty sure was valuable but that did not belong to me. Meanwhile, the man entrusted with the care of said article was huffing away on an illegal drug. If a reporter from the Mountain Journal came in, I’d be, as they say, screwed.

  On the last set of shelves, my hands closed on a large, dirty plastic bag. Inside was what looked and felt like a bunch of dirty rocks. But the receipt number, oh, the blessed receipt number, was the same as the pink one in my hand. And the rocks, I suspected, had been carefully coated with mud, in order to hide what they really were.