Crunch Time

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “Did you feed them?” Yolanda asked from the doorway.

  “I haven’t even rinsed out the mop.”

  “I’ll do the mop,” she said, grabbing it. “You feed them.”

  “Okay. Where’s the puppy chow?”

  Yolanda looked around and frowned. “We put the bags of food right there.” She peered at the shelf, as if willing the chow to appear. “Oh, wait, I finished the first bag he bought this morning. Damn. Do you see more in here?”

  I looked around the storage room. “Nope. Would it be in one of these cabinets?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, her voice frantic. “I’ll do the mop and take this stinky bag out to the trash bin in the garage, and then I’ll give them fresh water.” From the distance, Ferdinanda called to Yolanda. Yolanda inhaled and closed her eyes. “Goldy, could you go look for more puppy chow? Maybe John Bertram’s wife has already been in here and she moved it. She’s a slob without the first clue about how to keep a house.” Like her husband, I thought, who was a slob who couldn’t find a police file if his life depended on it. Yolanda went on. “I wouldn’t doubt that she moved it, ’cause in addition to being messy, she’s also absentminded. Oh, yeah, and allergic to dogs. Still, I know Ernest bought several bags of puppy chow. In the kitchen, maybe? I’ll check the garage. Ernest is—was—a neat freak, so we should be able to find it somewhere, no problem. Thanks, Goldy,” she said as she rushed off, clutching the mop handle, to tend to Ferdinanda.

  John Bertram! I wished I had his cell number. But then I remembered that he was down at Southwest Hospital. He was having his baton-bashed knees examined and treated. Maybe that was where Tom was, too, which could explain why he wasn’t getting my calls. I was willing to bet that SallyAnn Bertram was also at the hospital. Whenever a cop is hurt badly enough to be taken to the emergency room, the spouse drops everything to go check on his or her loved one. Staying at home, imagining how bad things could be, did not help.

  I phoned the Bertrams’ home number and waited until I was connected to voice mail. I left a message for SallyAnn, asking that she please get in touch with me. Guiltily, I added that I hoped John was all right.

  I climbed up the stairs, then poked around from room to room, ostensibly looking for puppy chow, but also to figure out if the cops had finished their investigation. Ernest had made one bedroom his own. It was a masculine blend of brown and white, with a white rug and chocolate-colored Roman shades. The cops had pulled the mattress and linens off and emptied the drawers. I wondered what they’d found.

  Ernest had turned the other bedroom into a study. It was only slightly more tidy. The wooden file cabinet was open, and a single file lay on Ernest’s desk between the computer and telephone. A bag filled with papers was on the floor. Had the sheriff’s department’s guys been interrupted? It certainly looked that way.

  That slightly odd smell I’d noticed when I first came in was a bit stronger upstairs. It wasn’t like spoiled food, it wasn’t like men’s cologne or soap, and it wasn’t from one of those plug-in air fresheners. It was like . . . clover. Or maybe alfalfa. I was extremely curious, but I was on a mission for puppy chow.

  En route to the kitchen, I passed the large room that Ernest had made into a living and dining space. A white leather sectional sofa stood atop Navajo rugs, all new since Faye had moved out. The dining table and chairs were a contemporary mahogany style, and I wondered if Ernest had made them or bought them locally.

  When I moved into the kitchen, I wondered how anyone could keep a cooking space so sparkling clean. But Ernest had. He’d put up old-fashioned pine-paneled cabinets that he’d reclaimed from a log cabin that was being torn down. Ernest had been big on recycling materials before it was fashionable. I smiled when I saw a framed poster for a local production of the Oscar Wilde play The Importance of Being Earnest in the kitchen, where he’d refinished the cabinets and put down a hickory floor. The effect was dazzling.

  I moved from one highly organized cabinet to another: No puppy chow. I sighed in frustration. The last thing we needed was more delays before getting back to our house. Even if Yolanda and Ferdinanda were able to get every last bottle of shampoo and deodorant they needed, I still foresaw a trip to the store on the way home, and I hadn’t given a thought to dinner. I tried to think what we had in the refrigerator, in case Arch arrived first. . . .

  The phone startled me. I looked around and saw it on the wall. On the third ring, I figured Yolanda was still dealing with Ferdinanda, so I glanced at the caller ID. It read Captain, Humberto. Was he calling Yolanda, on Ernest’s home number? And should I pick up the phone, or not? Well, what harm could come if I did answer it? I picked up the receiver and pressed Talk.

  “This is Goldy Schulz.”

  Click.

  I slammed the phone down and made a mental note to tell Tom about the call. Yet even as I went back to hunting for puppy chow, I felt guilty. I didn’t want to believe that Yolanda was working for Humberto.

  I checked both bathrooms for puppy chow. Nothing. The winter porch was next, but it was cold and empty except for the bent-twig furniture Ernest had put in there.

  “Doggone it,” I muttered, and headed off to the greenhouse, the only room left that I hadn’t searched.

  Because of the black clouds, rain, and fog, darkness seemed to be falling quickly, even if it was technically still summer. I turned on the lights by the greenhouse door before entering. The alfalfa-type smell was stronger in here. But the switches I’d flipped also contained an exhaust fan. I coughed and looked around. Ernest had been growing string beans, peppers, and tomatoes. The reclaimed glass Ernest had used for the walls made the darkness outside seem huge, despite the overhead lights. At the far end of the greenhouse were some big, bushy green plants and—victory!—a bag of puppy chow.

  Only, would somebody please tell me what dog food was doing in the greenhouse, next to big bushes? Wait a minute. As Tom was always saying, “I may have been born at night, but I wasn’t born last night.”

  These weren’t ordinary bushes . . . they were marijuana plants. Hello!

  I counted them: six. I knew that under Colorado law, you could grow six plants legally if you were the provider for a card-carrying medical marijuana user. But . . . Ernest was a recovering addict. Was it really such a good idea for him to be growing a plant with narcotic properties? And why had he left the puppy chow up there? So the dog food would absorb some of the marijuana’s properties and the puppies would sleep through the night?

  And why, oh why, had the cops missed this?

  Or had they?

  Okay, I’d graduated from the University of Colorado, one of the top party schools in the nation, and I hadn’t been born last night, either. I knew enough about weed to know that it was the bud, and not the leaves themselves, that provided a quality high. Harvested leaves only produced what was known to folks in the know as schwag, and everyone from stoners to stockbrokers knew that schwag was junk.

  Ernest’s marijuana plants each boasted large buds, so they were ready for harvest. Without thinking, I walked over to Ernest’s shelf of tools, picked up a pruner, and snipped off a large bud.

  It was then that my vision caught a movement outside: what looked like a small rock, only not on the ground, because it was moving. For the first time since I’d entered the house, fear scurried down my spine.

  I squinted. What with the rain and fog, it was hard to make things out. I watched for a moment, and saw the moving rock was a person, a tall, heavyset person who was carrying something in one of his hands. Was he a cop? I doubted it. The guy was moving in too stealthy a manner. Was he a looter?

  I swallowed my fear and tried to think. Kill the lights, my inner voice said. Try to get a better look at him, without his seeing you. And call the cops. I shoved the marijuana bud deep into my jacket pocket, reached for the switch, and turned off the greenhouse lights. I rooted around in my pocket for my cell while keeping my gaze fixed outside.

  The man seemed to be wearing a
dark jacket. My dousing of the lights had not bothered him—just the opposite, in fact. My mouth dropped open in disbelief as the intruder used his free hand to pick up a large rock. He reached back and heaved it at the greenhouse.

  I ducked as the rock exploded through the glass. Damn it! Where is my cell phone? Rummaging for it, desperate to call 911, I saw the intruder bring a small object out of an unseen pocket. He fumbled with the thing, whatever it was. Then a light flared in the near-darkness. The man was bald.

  This guy had a lighter? What was he going to do, have a cigarette while he waited for us to come out? Or maybe Ernest was his medical marijuana provider, and he was going to smoke his last joint before getting some new buds?

  He was going to do neither. He lit the thing he was holding in his other hand. It flared hugely. It was a cloth, hanging out of a glass bottle. Oh my God, the man is holding a live Molotov cocktail. He reached back and flung the flaming bottle toward the hole he’d already smashed through the greenhouse glass.

  “Yolanda!” I screamed as I raced out of the greenhouse. I dug my hand into my pocket and finally grasped my cell. “Get out! Get Ferdinanda out! Right now!”

  The Molotov cocktail crashed through the hole in the glass. There was a sudden whoosh that actually propelled me headfirst down the stairs to the basement. The cocktail had reached its target. Damn, I thought as I rolled and got awkwardly to my feet. Damn, damn, damn.

  My cell phone had skittered across the floor. I grabbed it and pressed 911. “I need a fire truck up here right away!” I hollered at the operator. “Ernest McLeod’s house, I don’t know the address. Sorry.” Then I hung up and stuffed the phone in my pocket. I knew enough about emergency services to know that the operator could figure it out. I barreled toward the garage as Yolanda raced in from it. We barely avoided colliding.

  “Goldy!” Her face was filled with alarm. “What is it? Why were you up here yelling? What’s going on—”

  “Somebody’s trying to burn the house down!” I grabbed her and turned her around by the shoulders. “You need to get Ferdinanda out right now! And, and, and we need to take the puppies out, too!”

  “I’ll put Ferdinanda into the van,” she called over her shoulder, “and open the garage door. Where is this person? Where is the, the fire?”

  “In the greenhouse! When you get Ferdinanda into the van, wait for me to bring the puppies. Then back the van well out into the street and keep the windows closed. Be sure you lock the doors!”

  “Where will you be while I’m getting Ferdinanda—”

  “Just do it!”

  Yolanda raced off to her duties. I rushed into the puppy room, where the dogs were barking crazily. Either they already smelled smoke, or they had picked up on our sudden anxiety, or both.

  I glanced out the window in the storage room but could not see the bald man. Then I looked wildly around the room. What was I going to put the puppies in? What had Ernest used?

  I didn’t know, and couldn’t find out on short notice. I yanked open the storage closet marked Yard and dumped out a cardboard box of spades, gardening gloves, and fertilizer. Fertilizer! What if Ernest had kept fertilizer, which was highly combustible, up in the greenhouse? Rain or no rain, this place would go up like a tinderbox.

  Upstairs, there was another crash, tinkle, and whoosh. The bald arsonist had sent in another Molotov cocktail.

  “You son of a bitch!” I screamed. The puppies were crowding around me, whining and yipping. “Okay, dogs, I didn’t mean you.” I put five beagles in the first box, then hustled it out the garage door. Smoke was already filling the house, and the smoke alarm was beeping so loudly I couldn’t think.

  I ran into the garage, trying not to jostle the puppies too much. Yolanda was in the driver’s seat of the van. Ferdinanda was in back, next to several plastic bags of stuff, which I assumed contained as many of their belongings as they’d been able to pack. I wondered fleetingly where the seventeen thousand bucks was.

  “Can you help me?” I asked Yolanda. She immediately unlocked the rear door, slid it open, and took the box of dogs. Ferdinanda gripped the sides of her wheelchair.

  “If only I had my old rifle,” she said fiercely.

  I moved bags around, trying to figure out where we were going to put the other box of dogs. The old woman’s wrinkled hand tapped my arm.

  I said, “Ferdinanda—”

  “With my scope, I could see Batista’s people—”

  “Ferdinanda,” I cried cheerfully, “not to worry. Tom has a gun at our house! Now, I need to go back—”

  “That bastard, Kris,” she said, her tone still stubborn.

  Yolanda begged, “Please let me help you, Goldy.”

  “Guard Ferdinanda,” I ordered tersely. “Close the van windows and call nine-one-one. I’ve already phoned them once, but I didn’t have the address here.”

  I sprinted back into the house. Smoke stung my eyes. It did not smell like marijuana, I noted bitterly. I should have put a wet rag over my nose and mouth, I thought, too late. It was hard to think with the fire alarm continuing its high shrill.

  In the storage room, I pulled open the door marked Trains and dumped out another cardboard box, this one filled with tracks for an HO set.

  “Sorry for the accommodations,” I muttered as I chased the last four puppies, who’d decided that they didn’t like me after all. I finally corralled them all into the box. I dashed to the van, placed this second puppy box on the floor of the passenger side, and jumped in.

  “Hit the gas!” I yelled to Yolanda. As she backed out of the garage, I stared into the night to see if I could see the bald man. The fire, which was now raging, lit only the long grass, trees, and rocks on Ernest’s property. “Hurry!” I called to Yolanda.

  Alas. We had barely turned out of Ernest’s driveway when the strobe lights of not one but two police cars lit the street in front of us.

  “What the hell?” I asked. “Where were they, in the neighborhood?”

  The police cars blocked the roadway, so Yolanda pulled over. I looked behind us. Ernest’s house was completely ablaze.

  A barrel-shaped uniformed cop approached us, shining a blinding flashlight at us. When he was some distance away, he called, “What are you doing at this house?”

  “Getting my belongings,” Yolanda cried.

  “It’s okay,” I said as relief washed through me. “We know this guy. Remember Sergeant Boyd? He’s great.”

  “Getting your belongings?” Boyd shone the light into the van. When he saw me, he said, “Goldy? What the hell are you doing here?” He directed the flashlight at Yolanda. “Yolanda? Is that you?”

  “Yes.” But her voice wavered, as if she weren’t quite sure who she was.

  “Please listen,” I begged Boyd. “Yolanda and her aunt are Ernest McLeod’s friends. They were living here.”

  Boyd exhaled. “Anybody in the house now?”

  “No, thank God. But a bald man threw two Molotov cocktails at Ernest’s greenhouse! He may still be around here.”

  “Armed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Description?”

  I did the best I could, but the enveloping mist and darkness, plus my surprise at the bald man’s actions, made it hard to recall details beyond “sort of hefty, maybe tall.”

  Boyd nodded anyway and spoke into his radio to officers fanning into the field around Ernest’s house. Then he put his hand on Yolanda’s shoulder. Romantic sparks had flown between these two when Boyd had come out to the spa to help me the previous month. Now he said gently, “Are you okay?”

  “No,” she said, staring straight ahead.

  “Hang in there.”

  I said, “Do you know if the fire trucks are on their way?”

  “Hold on.” Boyd again spoke into his radio, and received a reply that the fire engines would arrive in less than ten minutes. Boyd clipped the flashlight onto his belt and rubbed his scalp. His once-black hair was turning to gray at the sides, but he stil
l wore it in an unfashionable crew cut.

  “Where were you guys?” I asked. “Why weren’t investigators inside the house? I called and called, but nobody answered.”

  Boyd ignored my question and looked back at Ferdinanda. “Yolanda, would you introduce me to your aunt?”

  I smiled. Apparently, courting rituals took precedence over the deliberate setting of a house on fire and the destruction of evidence. But when Yolanda patiently went through introductions, she seemed to calm down.

  Finally, Boyd said, “The team in the house got a call that shots had been fired five miles away. It’s the next neighborhood over, and they were the closest cops. They couldn’t find anything, but then they got another call. More shots fired. So they called us, and a couple more of us raced up here. We kept looking in that neighborhood and in this one, but we didn’t find anything.”

  The puppies whimpered at me, and I patted them.

  “Did you take anything else?”

  “No,” I said guiltily, keeping my eyes on the puppies. It felt, of course, as if that big bud of marijuana was burning a hole in my jacket pocket. But I didn’t want to tell Boyd about it in front of Yolanda and Ferdinanda. I needed to tell Tom about it first, I decided.

  Boyd rubbed his forehead. “Do you know where Tom is now?”

  I said, “He’s supposed to be at Southwest Hospital.”

  “Why there?”

  “He’s, uh, with John Bertram,” I said, trying to avoid giving the reason.

  “What happened?” asked Boyd, his voice on edge.

  “I hit him with my baton!” called Ferdinanda from the back. I heard the unmistakable sound of Ferdinanda snapping her weapon open. She thrust it through the window at Boyd, who jumped back. “You be nice to Yolanda, or I’ll hit you, too!”

  I put my head in my hands. It was going to be a long night.

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