Crunch Time

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “We were never meant to be anything!” Brie shot back. “No, wait. You were meant to be an accountant, and good luck with that after all these years of not keeping up with tax law.”

  “Brie, honey—”

  “Watch me, Sean,” Brie interrupted. I blinked and kept my eyes trained on her as she fumbled with something on her wrist. “See this antique bracelet you said you bought for me?” she cried. “I know you stole it from her. The initials RB are engraved inside the band. That’s Rorry Boudreaux, in case you’re too stupid to remember your wife’s maiden name.”

  I remembered Rorry cursing when she opened a bureau drawer, looking for something—presumably cash for Yolanda that she perhaps kept with her jewels? Rorry had said, Oh, damn him, before stalking into the closet, where, I guessed, she kept a safe to which Sean did not have access. While she was searching in the drawer, though, I was willing to bet a batch of cream puffs that she’d discovered Sean had taken the bracelet.

  “Watch me, Sean!” Brie shouted, grabbing my attention again. “One of the diamonds came out when I fell running away from that cabin. So now all that’s left is a very sharp setting.” Brie held her wrist with the bracelet to the top of her opposite arm, then dragged it down to her elbow.

  Blood spurted out of the scratch. Sean keeled forward, passing out on the gravel of the church parking lot. Ignoring him, Brie took off the bracelet and dropped it on his back. Then she brushed the blood down her arm and got into the blue Lexus. The tires ground the gravel hard as she accelerated out of the parking lot.

  I looked at Sean. He wasn’t moving. Should I call an ambulance, or go get Father Pete and ask if he has any ammonia salts? When he asks what happened, what should I tell him?

  Oh, for crying out loud. God was punishing me for eavesdropping, to put me in such a quandary. I sighed, slipped my feet into my shoes, pushed through the heavy door, and sprinted to Sean’s side.

  “Sean!” I said. Without ammonia salts, I resorted to shaking his shoulder. When he did not respond, I rolled him over. “Wake up, Sean.” I brushed caked gravel off his face and gently slapped his cheeks. When he still made no sign of reviving, I picked up the antique bracelet, put it into his jacket pocket, then lightly smacked his temples. “Wake up or I’ll call your wife!”

  Finally, Sean blinked. “My— Who are you?”

  “Goldy the caterer. You passed out.” His eyes lolled from side to side. His face was totally drained of color. Was he okay to drive? Should I call an ambulance? I put my hand on his shoulder. “Sean? I put the bracelet in your pocket. Do you want me to get—”

  “Leave me alone.” He shoved my hand away. “You and your snooping. You’ve ruined my life. You and that—” He did not finish the thought.

  “I and that what ruined your life? Fill in the blank for me, Sean.”

  “Shut up.” Sean propped himself up on one elbow so that he was not facing me. He began to make an odd huffing noise. Oh, Lord, he was crying. He got to his feet, wobbled over to the Saab, started it up, and drove away.

  You should have kept your pecker in your pocket, I thought as I raced to my van. When I turned the key in the ignition, Father Pete came lumbering out of the church. He caught sight of me and reared back, his expression one of puzzlement. I merely waved and spun my vehicle in a corona of gravel as I headed toward Main Street. At this point, I really didn’t have time to stay and visit.

  But on the quick drive home, I did want to think. Was Ernest McLeod, the private investigator whom Rorry had hired, the other person who had ruined Sean’s life? Okay, Sean couldn’t stand the sight of blood. So presumably, he could not have raised a .38 and shot Ernest—not without fearing he’d pass out and be found along with Ernest’s body. But Sean could have hired someone to do the job. In fact, he could have paid Stonewall Osgoode, whose beagle puppies he had photographed, to do the job for him.

  There was something else that confused me. Brie had said, When I think of all I’ve done for you . . . Apart from sex, what had Brie done for Sean?

  Rorry Breckenridge’s usual routine was to avoid cooking. But on the day of the church party, Etta was gone, and Rorry had been in and out of the kitchen as much as anyone. Say our saboteur had not been aiming for Yolanda or me, as I had thought. If Rorry had been hit with the ring of pots, or had been burned by the hot oil, then what? Did Sean think he would inherit Rorry’s money if she died? Could Brie, a lawyer, have found out the terms of the previous will, which left millions to Sean, and then sabotaged Rorry’s kitchen in an attempt to get rid of her?

  Could Brie have found out about Ernest’s investigation of Sean and killed him? Or perhaps she had hired Osgoode?

  I had no idea how to find out. The sheriff’s department had no murder weapon yet. And the problem with contract killings was that I’d never heard of there being an actual contract, as in, on paper.

  I called Boyd. He said Tom would be waiting on the porch for me, gun drawn. Very funny, I thought as my van’s engine groaned up our street.

  Talking on the cell, then seeing Tom, arms crossed, on our front porch reminded me of something else. I had not heard back from Lolly Vanderpool. Oh Lord, I hoped nothing had gone wrong with our plan. Guiltily, belatedly, I realized the whole thing had probably been too dangerous in the first place. Still, Lolly had said she would be at Humberto’s dinner party that night. Tom would not be happy to find out that I hadn’t made contact with her.

  And he wasn’t. “Will I see her tonight?” he asked as he opened the front door for me. “Will she be there?”

  “Gosh, Tom. Let me at least talk to her before you start berating me about her, okay?” I looked him up and down. He wore khaki pants, a dark brown sweater, and a shirt and tie.

  “Doesn’t he look handsome?” Ferdinanda crowed as she wheeled herself down the hallway. She had the covered quiche in her lap. “He’s been so sweet to me, too. The monsignor says I have to forgive, so I forgave him.”

  “Only after I apologized profusely for asking you a few questions,” Tom reminded her.

  Ferdinanda shook a crooked finger at Tom. “You don’t fool me for a minute. I’ve been interrogated by experts. And I’ve done some questioning myself, if you want to know the truth.”

  To our great surprise, the doorbell rang.

  “I didn’t hear anybody come up the steps,” Tom muttered. He held his hand out to keep any of us from going closer to the door. When he checked through the peephole, he said, “Jesus Christ.”

  “So the Lord is here?” Ferdinanda asked gaily.

  Tom’s look was so somber that I shivered. “It’s Kris Nielsen and a young woman. Boyd, why don’t you come with me? This may look like a social call, but I doubt it is. Yolanda, stay put. Ferdinanda? You too.”

  Yolanda had her head in her hands. She had looked so happy, so at ease, when Boyd had had his arm around her. Now she looked as if, once again, she were falling apart.

  “Hey, neighbor!” Kris called through the door. “I just wanted to say hello.”

  “Get behind that makeshift curtain,” Boyd told Yolanda and Ferdinanda. He tucked his shirt in so that his service revolver was visible. “Tom, let’s go.”

  “I’m coming out with you two,” I announced as Kris knocked again. “Two cops and one caterer?” I added to forestall their objections.

  Tom’s shoulders slumped. “I wish you would not.”

  I shrugged. “I want to meet our new neighbor, in better circumstances than the last couple of times I’ve seen him.”

  “Don’t goad him, Goldy,” Tom warned.

  “Me?” I said innocently. “Never.”

  Tom opened our front door just wide enough for the three of us to scoot through. When Kris tried to peer around Boyd into the house, Boyd paced forward aggressively, a get-out-of-my-space move. Kris backed up quickly and almost toppled off our porch. Harriet, surprised, merely stepped out of the way.

  “I just wanted to talk to you about Harriet!” Kris said. He wore khakis and a long-sleeved orang
e and black rugby shirt. Harriet, as tall and statuesque as I remembered from the Breckenridges’, had on an ill-fitting navy flannel dress and tattered sneakers.

  “Let’s take this parlay into the street,” Boyd said with a smile that did not reach his eyes.

  When we reached the middle of the road, Tom and Boyd stopped as if on cue. I halted quickly behind them, with a sudden mental image from West Side Story: The Sharks and the Jets were getting ready to rumble. Kris, also taken aback, grabbed Harriet’s hand and glanced at our front windows. I shook my head but did not say what I was thinking: You’re not going to make Yolanda jealous, Kris. It was then that I noticed out-of-place jewelry on Harriet. Despite her tatty clothing, she wore a thin diamond choker and dangling diamond earrings.

  “So here we are,” Tom said, lifting his chin.

  “I was hoping we could—” Kris said, but then stopped and squared his shoulders. “I wanted you to know I’m moving on. Letting bygones be bygones, you know? Life is too short.”

  “Indeed,” Tom murmured. “So I want to warn you very gently not to harass my wife or her friends.”

  Kris’s tone turned steely. “I bought this house”—with his free hand, he gestured at Jack’s place—“so Harriet can have a project—”

  “Yes,” Harriet interrupted energetically, “I’m good with my hands. I work at—”

  “And as long as you’re issuing warnings,” Kris said, interrupting right back and pulling Harriet closer while glaring at me, “here’s one for you, Goldy. Sean Breckenridge is very upset that you snooped around in his business.” He gave me a defiant smirk.

  “His business?” I asked. “What business would that be?”

  Tom cleared his throat and shook his head, one time. I knew better than to speak again. The five of us stood uneasily in the road for a few long moments, until finally Boyd said, “I’m going back in to check on Yolanda. Nice to meet you, Harriet.”

  Harriet, perhaps cowed by Kris’s grip on her hand, merely looked down at the pavement and nodded.

  Tom caught my eye and tilted his head toward our house. I sighed and followed Boyd back to our front door, with Tom right behind me.

  Despite Boyd’s warning to get into their makeshift bedroom, Yolanda was waiting in the hall. Her brown eyes were large and fearful, and when she spoke, her teeth seemed to be chattering. “What did he want?”

  While Boyd gathered her in for a hug, Tom said, “To show off some jewelry he got his girlfriend. Goldy? Let’s get ready to go to Humberto’s.”

  Ferdinanda insisted on knowing what Kris was “up to now,” but Tom merely repeated what he’d said to Yolanda. Ferdinanda spoke under her breath while Tom took the quiche. After a few minutes gathering up keys and whatnot, Ferdinanda rolled herself down the ramp, a skill at which she was becoming quite proficient. Then, over Ferdinanda’s protests, Tom helped her into Yolanda’s old van. He signaled that we were going in his Chrysler.

  “Tom, what are you doing?” I asked. “She won’t be able to manage by herself.”

  “She’s fine,” Tom said. “She admitted to me that even though she can’t walk yet, she did just dandy driving to and from the store. Her weight-lifting exercises, which she has continued with cans from our pantry, make her arms strong enough to lower the wheelchair to the ground, open it, and then get herself into and out of it.” He shrugged. “Or at least, so she says.”

  “Do you believe all she was doing was driving around town?”

  Tom’s face was inscrutable. “She insists she likes the feeling of freedom that driving gives her. Anyway, even with a GPS system, I don’t know if I could find my way to Humberto’s house. It’s perched way up at the end of a private lane on a mountain circled all round with unmarked roads. So I have to follow Ferdinanda. And I want to talk to you alone.”

  I said, “Oh, great. About what? Our little parlay with Kris and Harriet?”

  “No, that was just BS. But I did put a rush on the evidence from the Breckenridges’ house. There were no fingerprints at all on the clamps and bolts that held up that hammered copper ring for the pots. That we could understand, if the house is kept sparkling and is regularly dusted with a cloth. But . . . besides Yolanda’s, there were no distinguishable prints at all on the electric skillet. I mean, there was nothing, and that is weird. Say someone left the pan there for you or Yolanda to use. They wouldn’t wipe their prints off unless they were up to something. And they were definitely up to something, because the screws on the handle were new. But they’d been stripped and were loose.”

  “So someone was trying to hurt her. Or me.”

  “Someone was trying to hurt somebody.”

  “Sean knew Rorry would be in the kitchen, which she usually wasn’t, and he didn’t know that Rorry had changed her will. Maybe he was hoping to kill her or scare her.”

  “It’s possible. That’s why I suggested she not stay in the house last night.” Tom’s voice was calm as he sped to catch up with Ferdinanda, who had turned onto a dirt road north of Aspen Meadow.

  “Something else,” I said. I told him about running into Sean and Brie at the church, and their acrimonious exchange. There had also been Brie’s shrill reproach of Sean, left hanging in the air: When I think of all I’ve done for you. . . .

  “Brie as Ernest’s killer?” Tom’s tone was doubtful. “She just sounds like a garden-variety gold digger.”

  We were still bumping over the gravel. I said, “And what do you make of Kris at this point?”

  Tom shook his head. “He probably came over to our place tonight because we questioned him this afternoon about his buying Jack’s house. He’s very insistent to anyone who will listen that he purchased it solely as a renovation project for his new girlfriend, the lovely Harriet, and not because his ex is currently living across the street.”

  “Baloney. What more proof do you need that he is stalking Yolanda?”

  “A lot more, as it turns out. She didn’t report the assault with the broom handle; she just says when he gets angry, he becomes violent. She won’t give us the name of the doctor who treated her for venereal disease. Not that that’s a prosecutable offense, but don’t you think she’d at least give us the doctor’s name?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  Tom drew up behind Ferdinanda, who’d stopped ten feet in front of a large iron gate. The entire property was surrounded by a tall fence composed of iron spikes nailed to metal rails at six-inch intervals. Two uniformed men came out of a guardhouse to greet Ferdinanda. Tom put down his window, and we could hear Ferdinanda merrily talking to the men in Spanish. She did not protest when they asked to see her driver’s license. After that, they slid open the van’s big door to examine the interior.

  “There is no way I’m letting them into my trunk,” Tom said. “We’ll go home first.”

  “What about the gun? Does the department have any idea who killed the gas station attendant in Fort Collins?” I asked.

  “Not yet.”

  I’d been convinced that Osgoode had killed Ernest, then burned down his house to conceal evidence. Every other person Yolanda had told us about or that we’d learned about—Kris, Hermie, Sean, Brie, Humberto—did every single one of them have an alibi for killing Ernest?

  “And you haven’t found the gun,” I said.

  “Again, Miss G., not yet.”

  “Are you rechecking—”

  “Yes. Everyone’s alibi for the time we think Ernest was killed.”

  Ahead of us, Ferdinanda had been let through the gate. Tom pulled up and got out of the car. He’d closed his window so that I wouldn’t hear what he was saying to the guards, which I found very annoying. No doubt he was thinking of my habit of butting into conversations, or at least of eavesdropping on them. How bothersome to have a husband who knew you so well.

  Tom showed his identification and talked to the guards. He then, apparently, asked for their identification. The guards’ swaggering confidence turned to general consternation, a panicked search for wallets
, and the handing over of cards. Tom held each ID up to the setting sun—what he was looking for, I knew not. Then he handed them back their cards, pointed to the gates, and made a sweeping motion with his right hand to indicate the spiked fence. The guards nodded seriously, then motioned for Tom to go through. There was no check of Tom’s trunk.

  “What in the world was that about?” I asked as Tom accelerated through the gates and waved to the guards.

  “I told them they had an illegal fence,” Tom said mildly. “The county permits them if they’re six feet or lower. Humberto’s spikes are about ten feet high. I told them I was sure they didn’t want to have county officials driving up here tonight with jackhammers to take down a metal fence. Not while Humberto was having dinner guests. And, I added, sometimes county officers bring along representatives from immigration.”

  “There is no way any county official—” But then I caught Tom’s grin. “You are mean.”

  “I’m not. Every single thing I told them was true.” His tone was all innocence. “The fence is illegal. I was sure they didn’t want county administrators driving up here tonight. Sometimes immigration officials accompany county bureaucrats. All true.” His smile widened. “Most of the time it’s damned hard to work for the government. That, on the other hand, was fun.” Ahead of us, Ferdinanda began the steep climb of first one switchback, then another, to ascend the hill to Humberto’s place.

  I said, “Do you have anything else to tell me?”

  “Yeah. There was a safe in Osgoode’s house. Our guys finally drilled into it and found a hundred thou, give or take, in cash. No papers or files, unfortunately, and there was no checkbook conveniently placed in his desk. But the marijuana out at the grow hadn’t been harvested. So what we’re wondering is, how did Stonewall make money to bankroll his rental, purchase seeds online, buy dogs to breed, and support Charlene? That’s what we’re trying to figure out, without Charlene’s help.”

  “Who’s her lawyer?” I asked.

  “Jason Allred,” said Tom. “Aspen Meadow all-purpose attorney.”

  “Why does that name sound familiar?”