Crunch Time

by Diane Mott Davidson

  Yolanda and Ferdinanda both were screeching. Groggy, I looked at the clock. It was twenty to ten. Arch wasn’t home, and neither was Tom. Or at least I hadn’t heard them. With Yolanda and Ferdinanda yelling, I raced into the dining room first. Blinking madly, I thought I should have picked up the phone en route.

  “What is it?” I cried. It was still dark in there, so I turned on the light, a used chandelier I’d bought at a garage sale and Tom had rewired. “What’s wrong?” I persisted. “Why are you screaming?”

  They both pointed at the dining room window. This was my house, damn it. Undaunted, I walked across the room and looked outside.

  The light spilling from the window illuminated Arch’s face. He was wearing a woolen hat. My son stood facing me, knee-deep in snow, openmouthed. He blinked. In one of his hands he was holding Tom’s long, sharp-pointed weeder. It was covered with blood, and the blood was dripping into the snow.

  11

  “Come inside,” I called. “Arch!” I motioned to him. “Quickly!”

  When Arch turned, he clung to Tom’s weeder, as if to protect himself. I raced outside, heedless of the snow, and embraced him, avoiding the weeder.

  “Is that your blood?” I yelled. “Arch? Are you all right? Did someone hurt you?”

  “I’m fine,” he said weakly. “I want to go inside.”

  I put my arm around him. He was still clinging to the weeder as we plodded as fast as possible to the front. Yolanda pulled the door open as we traipsed in.

  “Did you call the cops?” Arch asked me. He tossed the weeder on the floor, where it clattered against the wall. I tried not to look at the blood, but couldn’t help myself.

  “I did,” said Yolanda as she closed the door. Barefoot and shivering, she hugged her sides. “They’re sending a couple of cars and notifying your husband of a Peeping Tom or possible intruder.”

  To Arch, I said, “What happened?” Arch’s teeth were chattering, and his hands were shaking. I said, “Wait. Come out to the kitchen and warm up.”

  He unzipped a borrowed white parka, which he dropped on the other side of the hall from the weeder. “I’m freezing.” He paused in the hallway and hugged his sides. “I just stabbed somebody.”

  I said quickly, “Somebody was trying to break in?”

  Arch’s brown eyes were huge as he looked at me. “Yeah. At least, I think so.”

  “Oh my God, Arch,” I said, embracing him again. He pulled away from me awkwardly. “I wish you wouldn’t have—” I wished he wouldn’t have what, exactly? Tried to protect us?

  Arch pulled off the borrowed hat. He was bald.

  “What the hell—”

  “Oh, Mom, don’t. We really did decide we were all going to shave our heads, in sympathy with Peter.” He used his heels to push off the borrowed snow boots and clomped out to the kitchen.

  Ferdinanda and Yolanda’s mouths dropped open when they saw Arch’s hairless head, but to their eternal credit, they said nothing.

  Ferdinanda, who was busily making my son cocoa, said, “You are a good boy.” She slapped down the whisk and, despite what she’d said about Americans and hugs, leaned out of her wheelchair and pulled Arch’s waist toward the metal frame. “I know your mother is proud of you. We are all proud of you.”

  “You are a very good boy,” echoed Yolanda.

  As Ferdinanda continued to hold him, and without Yolanda and Ferdinanda able to see him, Arch gave me a helpless look. I shrugged.

  “Did you see who was outside?” Yolanda asked Arch, once we were all gathered around the kitchen table. “Was it someone trying to break in?”

  “I think so,” said Arch. “I was coming up our road, once the Vikarioses left me off on Main Street—”

  He was prevented from continuing by the crashing sound of our front door opening.

  “Goldy?” Tom called.

  “That was quick,” said Ferdinanda.

  And then, before I could even get to the door, Tom was through it. “What happened?” he demanded. He was standing in the hall, shaking and staring at the bloody weeder. “I was on my way home when the call came through.”

  “We’re just hearing about it from Arch,” I replied. “In the kitchen. So far, all we know is that Arch stabbed the guy, with your weeder there.” I pointed at the dripping garden tool. Tom shook his head, glanced at the weeder, then stormed down the hall. I followed. Boyd had come through the front door; he brought up the rear.

  “Have somebody bag that thing for evidence,” Tom ordered Boyd, who relayed the message to an officer behind him. “And have somebody else bring the dining chairs that are in the living room into the kitchen, would you please?”

  “He was outside the dining room window,” Arch was saying to Ferdinanda and Yolanda, “and then I—”

  “Arch, are you all right?” Tom asked, taken aback by my son’s bald-egg head.

  “I’m fine. Well, sort of.” He sipped cocoa. “You want me to start over?”

  “Yes, please,” said Tom. In that command-taking way Tom had, he motioned for Yolanda and me to sit at the table flanking Arch. My son must have seemed like a pretty cool customer for someone who’d just attacked a would-be intruder with a garden implement. Boyd brought in extra chairs and put them down carefully. Tom placed a recorder on the table and pulled out his notebook. Then he and Boyd sat, while Ferdinanda rolled her wheelchair over to be beside Yolanda.

  “What happened to your hair?” Tom asked Arch.

  “One of the guys on the fencing team has leukemia, and the chemo has made all his hair fall out. So the other team members and I shaved our scalps. You know, in sympathy.”

  Tom nodded. “Okay. Begin about an hour ago, and tell me what happened. Don’t leave anything out.”

  “An hour ago,” Arch said, “let’s see.” His hand trembled as he put the cup back on its saucer, and liquid spilled across the table. Maybe he wasn’t quite as cool as I’d thought.

  “I’ll get it, you talk,” said Ferdinanda, already on her way to the sink for a sponge.

  Arch inhaled. “An hour ago is about when Gus’s grandparents left off our sick friend, Peter, at his house on the other side of Cottonwood Creek. The Vikarioses couldn’t get up our hill, so I told them I could walk. I was coming up our street, and I”—here he swallowed—“I saw someone peeking in our dining room window. So I cut through the neighbor’s backyard, then slipped into our garage—”

  “How’d you get in there?” asked Tom.

  “Someone, the guy probably, had broken open the side door. The snow was making everything quiet. The guy was still looking into our dining room, so I tried to figure out what I could use against him. I don’t know how to shoot, but I do know fencing. I figured I’d have the most luck with your weeder, Tom. So I took it off its hook and came up behind the guy. He was pushing the numbers on a cell phone, maybe to call someone, maybe to text. He didn’t hear me, so I lunged at him, the way I’d learned in épée. Got him in the back. He squealed. He whirled around and tried to get the weeder away from me. But I did a parry and riposte and stabbed the front of his shoulder. He howled again and fell against the house wall. I was about to gouge him again when he gave up and started running toward Main Street. He was yelling his head off.”

  “Schulz,” said a patrolman from the door. “We’ve got a blood trail from outside your house to Main Street, where we lose it. Looks like the perp had a car parked down there. No outside surveillance cameras on any stores, either. He might have dropped this, though.” The patrolman held up a black watch cap.

  “Yeah, yeah, he was wearing that!” Arch interjected as Ferdinanda expertly wiped up the spilled liquid, placed the cup back on the saucer, and patted Arch’s arm.

  “Thanks,” said Tom. “Check for boot prints or anything he might have dropped, all right?” Like a cell phone, I thought, but dared not hope. To Arch, Tom said, “I need you to remember everything you can about this guy. How tall he was, hair color if you saw any hair, like his eyebrows, say. I need to
know whether he was fat or thin, how old you think he might have been, what he was wearing. No detail is too small.”

  Arch drained the last of his cocoa. “He was taller than me, but not as tall as you. Maybe just under six feet? He was stocky, but I couldn’t have said how old he was. Not a kid, though. A man. I don’t remember his eyebrows, because I was concentrating on attacking him. He was dressed all in black. I’m like, ‘Dude, you’re trying to break into somebody’s house in a blizzard! Why not wear white?’ ”

  “Dressed in a black coat? Or a jacket? Black jeans?”

  Arch closed his eyes as he tried to remember. “I don’t know what kind of pants they were. He had on a bomber-type jacket, only it wasn’t leather, or the weeder wouldn’t have gone through.” Worry suddenly creased Arch’s face. “You don’t think I really hurt him, do you, Tom? I mean, you don’t think I killed him, do you?”

  “If you’d killed him,” Tom said matter-of-factly, “we’d have a body. You probably just grazed him.” Tom stood, as did Boyd. Tom put his big hand on Arch’s shoulder. “You did a good job.”

  “Thanks.”

  Tom said he was going outside to work with his colleagues.

  “Wait,” I said, then took Tom into the hall. “The main garage door was open when I got home.”

  Tom cocked his head. “Any idea who opened it? Or how?”

  “Ferdinanda thought Boyd might have left it open. She’s not sure. Anyway, I closed it. Sorry I didn’t see the side door broken into.”

  “That piece-of-crap flimsy hollow door,” Tom said, fuming. “I should have replaced that thing months ago—” Arch poked his head into the hallway. He wanted to get online with his pals to tell them what had happened. Was that okay? Tom asked him to hold off. “Anything else I need to know, Miss G.?”

  “Trudy said there were three people sniffing around here today—”

  Boyd appeared in the hallway. “Tom,” he said, his tone ominous. “You’d better come look at this.”

  Tom shook his head and followed Boyd. Curious, I threw on a coat and trailed behind them to the side door to the garage, which was now blindingly illuminated with sheriff’s department lights.

  I shivered when I saw what they were all looking at. The medicine-type cabinet where Tom had installed the hidden compartment was open. His forty-five was gone.

  The investigative team split up. Half worked the garage scene, the other half the area outside the dining room window. The snow continued to fall.

  A buzzing began in my brain. One more thing, it said over and over. It would take hours, I knew, for Tom to fill out reports regarding our watch-cap fellow’s attempted burglary—if that’s what it was—and the actual one, of a firearm being stolen. Because if the guy had had a gun, why wouldn’t he have used it on Arch? I shivered and felt suddenly nauseous.

  Yolanda and Ferdinanda went to bed; whether they would sleep was anybody’s guess. Tom insisted that we keep the security system armed at all times. I returned to the kitchen, too nerve-racked to sleep. The Breckenridges’ party loomed. I decided to mix extra bread dough for the double batch of focaccia. It would taste better if it rose overnight in the refrigerator, anyway. I mixed yeast, spring water, flour, sea salt, and fresh rosemary, and placed the savory-smelling concoction into a buttered plastic container, which I covered and put in the walk-in.

  The police were still outside, and Tom and Boyd with them. I decided, What the hell, I’ll go ahead and make the two flourless chocolate cakes. Initially I was going to make only one, but with the addition of six people, Sean’s two, plus Humberto and Tony and the women accompanying them, there was no way one would work for everybody.

  I preheated the oven, prepared the pans, then melted unsalted butter and bittersweet chocolate in the top of my double boiler. I sifted cocoa and sugar onto waxed paper and set them aside. Unfortunately, that same terrifying thought invaded my brain: What if the man who’d stolen Tom’s gun had used it on Arch? I felt dizzy and began breaking eggs. Why oh why had Arch felt he had to attack someone? I gritted my teeth and folded the ingredients together, then poured them into the prepared pan and placed the pan in the oven.

  As I sat at one of our kitchen chairs waiting for the cakes, waiting for Tom, waiting for clarity, I felt so much nausea and vertigo I had to put my head between my knees. I probably had some medication to treat this condition somewhere. I also probably had batteries somewhere. But when you’re nauseated and dizzy, the last thing you can remember is where you put important stuff.

  I would have to talk to Arch, who looked especially vulnerable with his shaved head. Then again, he knew what I’d gone through with the Jerk, and he worried when I got into scrapes with bad guys. Like Brad Mikulski, Arch worried about his mother. Now that he was older and knew fencing, it was no wonder he’d thought he could take on a would-be intruder. I shook my head.

  When the puffed cakes emerged, they looked and smelled heavenly. I placed them on racks. I cleaned up after myself and finally felt tired enough to think sleep might be possible. I left a note for Tom. When he came in, could he please cover the cakes? Thanks.

  As I was heading upstairs, Boyd walked quietly through our front door. He said if it was all right with me, he wanted to stay at our house until all this blew over. Like a storm, I thought. When I hesitated, Boyd said he’d already asked Tom, and he’d said it was fine, as long as it was okay with me.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” I said. Arch’s room had two beds, I told him, and he was welcome to one of them, as long as Arch didn’t mind. But Boyd replied that if we had a sleeping bag, he would prefer to bunk on the living room couch. It was a lumpy sofa, I warned him, but he said he’d slept on a lot worse when he was in the army. I found one of our sleeping bags and handed it to him.

  In the bedroom, I closed our curtains, changed into pajamas, and lay on our bed to wait for Tom, and for the sleep that my body had promised. But my heart started thumping again, and my skin suffered wave after wave of gooseflesh.

  The Breckenridges’ dinner was scheduled for the next evening, and my jumpy mind said all those extra guests would be a challenge. But Yolanda would be there to help, and Ferdinanda had proved her mettle in the kitchen. Plus, we would have Boyd. He didn’t enjoy cooking or serving. Still, when Tom had sent him to watch over me when I was doing an event, and Boyd had been involved in culinary duties, he’d been stoic. Now his only work would be to keep us safe.

  Around midnight, Tom came into our room.

  “Are you awake?” he whispered. When I told him I was, he said he’d covered the cakes and stored them. He was going to have a quick shower and then come to bed.

  “Size-eight boot,” he said without preamble when he slipped between the sheets ten minutes later. “Same as what we found in the mud over at Ernest’s. Our guys are trying to get good photographs of the print. And we’re sending the weeder to the lab to have the blood analyzed, see if we get some kind of hit. The watch cap’s going, too. It didn’t look to us as if there were any hairs in it. But it’s dark out, so maybe the techs will find something we couldn’t see.”

  “But you’re thinking it’s our bald guy.”

  “That’s my guess at this point.”

  “So,” I said slowly, “you’re giving up on the idea that Yolanda burned down Ernest’s house? And her rental?”

  “At this point, yes.” Tom paused. “This guy. In a twenty-four-hour period, he burns down Ernest’s house and maybe he steals my gun, although if he had it, it’s a miracle he didn’t use it on Arch. I don’t get it. What’s he up to?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe he thinks we have clues to some of Ernest’s cases? Maybe he’s somebody who’s been sent to scare Yolanda? They think she knows something?” When Tom said nothing, I said, “I have a few things to tell you. Charlene Newgate, the secretarial service lady? I’ve known her for a long time, and she’s never had any money. But she’s got lots of it now.”

  “You saw her at the CBHS event, the way you planned?”


  “I did, and I was very circumspect—”

  “You? Circumspect?” Tom interrupted, with a smile in his voice.

  “Stop, okay? I asked if she’d ever worked for Drew Parker, and she clammed up.”

  “I know. Our guys found the number of the secretarial service in Parker’s office, and she gave them the same silent treatment.”

  I continued. “Well, Charlene said she didn’t even know who Parker was, but I think she was lying.”

  “My wife, the human polygraph.”

  I ignored this. “Charlene is not attractive, okay? But she said she had a new boyfriend, which Marla promised to look into. Charlene was wearing fancy clothes and was driving a Seven-Series BMW.”

  “Nice boyfriend. We’ll try to take another run at her tomorrow.”

  “Something else. Remember the Hermie Yolanda mentioned, with the missing fingers? I know her. Her name is Hermie Mikulski, and I saw her today at CBHS. She has a son there, named Brad. Hermie’s missing two fingers on her left hand, Tom. That’s new since the last time I saw her. She wants you to call her. And she isn’t old, the way Yolanda said, she just has prematurely gray hair. I can’t believe this is the same Hermie—”

  “Let me talk to Boyd again.” Tom put his clothes back on, picked up his cell, and disappeared.

  Half an hour later, when I was beginning to wonder if I would ever get any sleep, Tom returned and again began to undress. “Hermie Mikulski’s neighbors say she hasn’t been living in her house for a while. She told them she and Brad would be staying in different motels for a while, until some problem she had is resolved. They know she lost two fingers, but they don’t know how. We left a message on her home phone, we’re trying to get a cell phone number for her, and we’re trying to find out where she is. So far nothing.”

  “Doesn’t the school have a number for her?”

  “Not at this time of night.” Tom slid between the sheets. “How are you doing?”

  “Not so hot,” I said honestly. “Listen, Tom. Marla said something else. Apparently, the house across the street from us sold. The buyers are an older couple with school-age children. Remember when I told you that three people were here this afternoon? The real estate agent who handled the sale of the house brought these people over here to talk to me. When Ferdinanda wouldn’t open the door, they went to Trudy’s.”