Crunch Time

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.”

“Trudy didn’t see anything.” He sounded discouraged. “We asked her—”

“She can’t see our garage from her place,” I interrupted. “Did she tell you any more about the three people?”

“Just a description. Older couple, both brown-haired, with a gray-haired woman who said she was a real estate agent. But she wasn’t wearing a badge and wouldn’t give Trudy a card. They were only interested in talking to you, but they wouldn’t say why.”

I let this sink in—again. “Can you find out who bought Jack’s house?”

“I can try. Sometimes that kind of thing takes a few days, though, if the agent gives us a hard time or the sale hasn’t closed. Anything else?”

“Well, I wanted to let you know an odd thing that happened.” I waited for him to say what he usually did, which was that odd things were always happening to me. But he didn’t, so I related the story of Yolanda going Chernobyl with Father Pete at the ethnic grocery. “He thought she was certifiable,” I concluded. “Poor thing. She’s been through too much.”

“After the surprised way Kris Nielsen acted this morning when you confronted him?” Tom said. “Does this second incident make you even wonder if Yolanda might be exaggerating the stalking phenomenon? I mean, I know, he was unfaithful and gave her a sexually transmitted disease and hit her with a broomstick. And those things are awful. But—”

“If somebody did all that to me,” I said, “I’d be scared to death.”

“You’re right. But . . . do you believe her?”

“Yes,” I said, but I could hear the uncertainty in my voice. “You?”

“I never believe anyone, Miss G. But I can hold both possibilities in my head. Yolanda is exaggerating and stretching the truth. Yolanda is telling the truth and we’re dealing with a dangerous guy.”

I considered this. “There’s something else I want to tell you. This Peter kid Arch mentioned? The one with leukemia?”

He pulled me close. “Yeah?”

“It made me think, Tom. Ernest was getting thin. He hired Yolanda to cook for him. He invited her to stay in his home, and in exchange all he wanted was meals. He was growing marijuana in his greenhouse. He changed his will all of a sudden, leaving the place to Yolanda—”

“You’re on the right track, Miss G. Our preliminary autopsy indicates he had esophageal cancer.”

Ice formed in my chest. “That poor man. Why do you suppose he kept on working, doing investigations?”

“Some people don’t want others to know they’re terminal, because they don’t want pity. The investigations were probably what was keeping him alive. They were giving him a sense of purpose.”

“And we don’t know where his files are.”

“Except for the one with his will, they burned, Miss G. Forgot to tell you. The fire guys said Yolanda’s seventeen K is toast, too.”

I sighed. “Still, I know that money’s an issue. Why Humberto gave it to her, and what she’s going to do now, besides work for me. But with the filing: Wouldn’t Ernest have had a backup system of some sort?”

“Not necessarily. Ernest was old-school.” Tom exhaled. “Speaking of which, his former partner, John Bertram, isn’t in very good shape. Not because of Ferdinanda whacking him, but because he didn’t know Ernest was sick. He’s having a hell of a dose of survivor’s guilt, I can tell you. We’re having a get-together at their house on Thursday night, you know, the way we do. We’re going to share our recollections of Ernest—”

“I want to help,” I interjected. “And I’m sure Yolanda and Ferdinanda will want to, too. Did John Bertram even know that two women were living in Ernest’s house?”

“Nope. But remember, Yolanda and Ferdinanda hadn’t been there that long.” Tom exhaled. “You might as well know the rest. It looks like Ernest’s body was moved. He was shot in the chest, near the fire road that goes behind John Bertram’s garage. Then he was pulled out of sight of the main road, behind a boulder. As far as we can tell, Ernest wasn’t armed.”

“What was he doing back there?”

“We don’t know. There’s no path going from his house to where we found him. Our theory is that he heard or felt someone following him along the main road, so he ducked down the fire department’s wide dirt trail, which most people don’t even know about. Then when he thought he was safe, he started walking back toward the main road. Whoever was waiting for him jumped out and shot him with a thirty-eight.”

“Shell casings?”

“They’re working on a match now.”

I said, “Were there defensive wounds? I mean, if Ernest struggled with our bald guy, and the bald guy wanted to know what Ernest was up to or what he had discovered, maybe the perp would have tortured him.”

“No defensive wounds. His wallet and anything else he had on him are gone. But it wasn’t a burglary, apparently, or somebody wouldn’t have thought to come back to torch his house. We’re thinking the motive was to shut him up. About what, we don’t know yet.”

“What about Humberto? Does he have an alibi?”

“More or less. His guards are vouching for him, but our guys who interviewed them say they had rum on their breath, and it’s clear they spend most of their time down in the gatehouse that’s outside the high fence surrounding Humberto’s property. So that may not mean much. No matter what, there’s not evidence for a warrant. Kris Nielsen claims he was having brunch in Denver. He paid cash and kept the receipt.”

“Oh, that reminds me. Something else about Kris Nielsen. This summer, he called Father Pete and said he was trying to get an elderly woman involuntarily committed to an institution. The woman sounded like Ferdinanda, and it made me wonder more about Kris Nielsen.”

Tom exhaled. “He has financial resources, no question. As does Humberto Captain. We just don’t know what we’re dealing with here. Plus, we don’t yet know if Marla’s story about Brie Quarles is true, but we’re going to talk again to Brie. Our guys are still checking the scene and Ernest’s house, or what’s left of it. Maybe they’ll find something.”

“I hope so.” A cramp had spread from my chest to the pit of my stomach. Ignoring it, I asked, “How about the pictures you took of the puppies? Did you get any information from one of our town veterinarians?”

Tom sighed. “This past summer? A hiker brought a small beagle puppy that was bleeding into one of our local guys. The puppy was female but hadn’t been spayed.” Tom paused. “The puppy had some buckshot in its backside.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry, the little gal made a full recovery. The veterinarian offered to put it up for adoption, but the hiker said he wanted to adopt the thing, that it was karma. Or dogma, whichever you prefer.”

“Who would shoot a puppy?” I asked.

“There are bad people out there, Miss G., in case I need to remind you. My question is, what was a puppy doing out on a remote hiking trail? If the hiker hadn’t found her, she would have died, that’s for sure. The vet said the hiker was a real animal lover, and that he went back to the same trail the next day, looking for more casualties. He didn’t find any, but he did hear gunfire.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” My stomach clenched again.

“Miss G., relax,” said Tom, reading my mind. “The vet is going to look through his files to see if he recorded who this hiker was and where he lives. We’ll talk to him.” Tom pulled me closer. “And for now? We’re in our own house, the security system is set, and there are two cops under this roof.”

“I think Boyd is developing an attachment to Yolanda,” I whispered. “That’s not going to screw up the investigation, is it?”

“It didn’t hurt the investigation when I developed an attachment to you when there was an attempted poisoning at a party you catered, now, did it?”

The next morning, we were awakened by the sound of water trickling through our gutters. As quickly as it had come, the evidence of the blizzard was disappearing. I pulled back the curtains and looked outside. The sun shone through sprays of drops, spangling our bedroom wall with rainbows. Melting clumps of snow were already dropping from our street’s pines and aspens, and a recognizable thump on our deck indicated the load of snow on our roof had thawed enough for the whole thing to slide off. Shining rivulets of water snaked down the middle of the street. I was pretty sure Arch would have school. Would Brad be there? Would Tom be able to find Hermie? I wondered.

I also wondered how the fencers’ bald looks would go over.

I didn’t dwell on these thoughts. Instead, more sinister worries surfaced, like memories of nightmares: In the darkness, did the cops get a good enough photo of our would-be burglar’s boot prints to match them absolutely to the ones at Ernest’s house? Did that same guy break into our garage and steal Tom’s gun? And how would the guy know where Tom kept the gun? Who were the three people who came to our door yesterday, and what did they want? And in a buyer’s market, who would purchase the house Jack had gutted, when he’d intended to remodel it and it looked horrible? The house has only been for sale for a few weeks. So what gives with that?

Am I being paranoid, or does someone want to keep an eye on us? If so, why?

The answers to none of these were forthcoming. I allowed the thoughts to drain away as I moved through my yoga routine. The scent of ham drifted up the stairs.

When Tom finished shaving, he came out and sniffed. “Sure smells like someone’s cooking a super breakfast again! When Ferdinanda gets out of her wheelchair, maybe we could move her and Yolanda into our basement.” He winked. “Not that your breakfasts aren’t fabulous, Miss G. It’s just good to have a break now and then.”

“From me?”

“You need a break from cooking. I thought I heard Arch moving around.” His forehead furrowed. “Wonder if anyone woke up Boyd?”

But someone had. In the kitchen, the newly bald Arch sat next to Ferdinanda and across from Boyd and Yolanda. In front of my son was a plate of ham, eggs, and a slab of toasted Cuban bread spread with guava marmalade. He was forking in food while asking Ferdinanda questions.

“So you don’t really inhale the cigar smoke?” he said around a mouthful.

“You inhale it a little,” Ferdinanda replied. “You gotta get the taste.”

Rather too loudly, I said, “Hello?”

“I’m just asking her, Mom.” Arch shoveled in more food, then announced, “I checked online, and we do have classes today. There wasn’t enough snow to close a school of fish. Speaking of pets, how cool are those three puppies, Mom? Why didn’t you tell me about them?”

“We were being foster parents for a day. Father Pete’s coming to get them this morning. Speaking of which, did anyone take care of them this morning? Food, water, and the rest?”

Arch said, “I did, Mom. And Sergeant Boyd came outside with me while we were in the backyard.” My son turned his attention to Tom. “I can’t drive my car, though, right? I mean, isn’t the garage still a crime scene?”

“Yes, it is. Sorry, buddy. It’ll probably just be for today. I can drive you down there, if you want.”

“No, thanks,” Arch replied. “I’ll manage. Wait, I can call Gus. His grandparents felt really bad that they couldn’t get their car up our hill, so I know they’ll want to take me.” He turned to Ferdinanda and Yolanda. “Thanks for breakfast. It was super.” And then, bringing joy to my heart, he hugged first Yolanda, then Ferdinanda, who both grinned widely.

When the Vikarioses arrived, Tom walked Arch out to their van. Boyd rubbed the top of his unfashionable crew cut. For a moment, I wondered if he, too, wished he were bald. But Boyd said only, “You’ve got a good kid there, Goldy.”

Yolanda said, “You’ve got a great kid.”

“Hoh-kay,” said Ferdinanda as she wheeled toward the stove. “Next shift. And I don’t want anybody getting in my way!”

Since arguing with Ferdinanda never got me anywhere, I merely fixed hot lattes for everyone else. I usually didn’t change from iced caffeinated drinks to hot ones until October, but since cold and snow had made an early appearance, I thought it was time. When Tom returned, he and Boyd told Yolanda, who again looked exhausted, to stay put while they cleared Arch’s detritus and set the table for the five of us. While the ham and eggs cooked, I spooned a bit of guava marmalade onto my plate and tasted it. It was sweet. But it had a distinctive taste, and I thought I could use it in an American-style coffee cake. I wanted to experiment, because I had some thinking and phone-calling to do, and I did those best while working with food.

Ferdinanda’s scrambled eggs were studded with chopped ham and sliced, caramelized onions. She’d added something else to them—whipping cream, I thought, or butter—that gave them an ineffable creaminess. She’d used the last of the Cuban bread to make a crunchy toast that she’d cooked in a frying pan—in some more butter. Every bite was heaven. I told her that the whole point of being the guest in someone’s home was that the host took care of the guests, not vice versa. She said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” and asked me for the marmalade.

“Now I’m going on the porch to have a cigar,” she said as she pushed away from the table. “You don’t want me to do the dishes, I won’t.”

“I’m coming with you,” Boyd announced. He stood up.

“Nah, I don’t need you!” she called over her shoulder. “I’m ready for anything, I told you! Do you think I survived with Raul and the army, up in the mountains, because I was a wimp?”

“I’m just keeping you company,” said Boyd mildly as he opened the front door for her.

We called our thanks to her as she rolled outside.

“When does she see the doctor again about her leg?” asked Tom, sotto voce.

“Our calendar burned up in Ernest’s house,” Yolanda replied. She looked at the ceiling. “Along with the seventeen thousand in cash, the fireman says. We were in too much of a hurry, with the fire and the puppies, I just forgot about the money.” She sighed. “I’m getting used to starting over. But anyway, I’m going to have to call the doctor and find out when Ferdinanda’s appointment is. It might even be today. I’ve been so frazzled, I haven’t kept track.”

Once Tom had left, Boyd stayed outside with Ferdinanda. Every now and then as Yolanda and I did the dishes, we would peek out at them. With Ferdinanda smoking, Boyd shoveled our sidewalk, the steps to the porch, and the ramp. When he came around back to clean off the deck, he rolled Ferdinanda in front of him. She complained the whole way. We could hear her through the walls.

When Yolanda and I finished the dishes, she asked if she could use our phone so she could try to reach Ferdinanda’s doctor. I replied that she could, and she didn’t need to ask. If she could just use the house phone, I said, I could keep the business line clear, in case clients called.

When she retired to the dining room with the phone, I removed the extra lamb chops from the freezer for the Breckenridges’ party. Then I checked that we had plenty of garlic and said a silent prayer of thanks that we did. So now I was going to think and cook.

I buttered and floured two pans and preheated the oven. Then I pulled out unsalted butter, sugar, flour, sour cream, leavening, vanilla extract, a lemon, an orange, and the guava marmalade. As I creamed the butter and sugar, I ran all the questions about the case through my head. Tom thought Ernest had been murdered to shut him up. With Ernest’s house then burned to the ground, whatever evidence might have been in there was gone—more shutting up.

I sifted flour, salt, and leavenings, then zested a lemon and an orange and minced the result. What had Ernest found out that would make him have to be killed to shut him up? There were lots of possibilities but no certainties. If the motive was to keep something quiet, did the shooter question Ernest, to see if he knew something? Because if so, you’d expect signs of a struggle, and there weren’t any. Maybe the shooter already knew what it was?

I stirred the vanilla, zests, and marmalade into the batter, then carefully folded in the dry ingredients. I divided the batter between the two pans and placed them in the oven.

Ernest McLeod had been a good man, in addition to being kind and generous. Somehow, I felt as if Yolanda was holding out on me, but I had no clue how to elicit information from her. She seemed like a deer perpetually caught in the headlights, and the stabbing of a Peeping Tom the night before was not going to make her any less nervous.

Yolanda returned to the kitchen and announced that as she feared, Ferdinanda’s follow-up doctor’s visit was that afternoon, just when we would have the big push for the Breckenridges’ dinner. In catering terms, this meant right now, it was Crunch Time.

We began in earnest on the menu for that evening’s dinner: Rorry was providing cheeses, crackers, and fruit for people to munch on while they drank wine, which was being provided by a parishioner. Thank goodness Marla was bringing beer to go with the Navajo tacos. We would have to do the fry bread for the tacos on the spot, Yolanda said, because that was how it tasted best. But we could sauté the ground beef and seasonings, plus chop the tomatoes and lettuce in advance. I thanked the Lord we had iceberg lettuce, and plenty of it, because I’d meant to use it to make lettuce cups for the Caprese salad but then decided not to at the last minute. The ingredients for the salades composées, along with the flourless chocolate cakes, were already in the walk-in.

Yolanda and I swiftly divided the prep duties. She would work on the ingredients for the composed salads. I pulled the focaccia dough out of the refrigerator and set it aside to rise. Next I minced the garlic in the blender.

With a sinking heart, I sautéed the ground beef with taco seasoning. Maybe it wasn’t haute cuisine, but a client’s eccentricities were not my problem, I always told myself. As the beef sizzled in the pan, I chopped a mountain of lettuce, another one of tomatoes, and a final one of scallions. Yolanda finished the salad ingredients and made a large bowl of guacamole. Finally, I grated so much cheddar I thought my knuckles were going to give out. Still, when we were done, Yolanda insisted we stand back and admire our work. It helped.

The doorbell rang, startling both of us. Boyd looked in from the deck, held up his hand for us to stay put, then rolled Ferdinanda into the kitchen.

“This is too much,” she muttered, but opened her eyes in admiration when Boyd drew his gun and walked carefully down the hall.

He called to our visitor to identify himself.

Father Pete yelled back, “I’m Goldy’s parish priest! Why don’t you identify yourself?”

“Look here, Father,” Boyd called through the door.

“And furthermore,” Father Pete hollered, “I am not afraid of you! In fact, I’m calling the sheriff’s department!”

“It’s okay,” I said to Boyd, who was looking through the peephole.

Boyd, still defiant, holstered his weapon and opened the front door. “I am the sheriff’s department,” he said to Father Pete, who was punching numbers into his cell phone. “We had an incident here last night.”

Father Pete pocketed his phone and passed by Boyd. The priest gave the cop a decidedly frosty look. Father Pete, who had been a boxer in his younger, thinner days, had twice won the Golden Gloves. He might have been a match for Boyd at some point in his life, but not today, when he came striding down the hall, unafraid, but burdened by a large cardboard box.

Before he got to the kitchen, Father Pete asked me, “What kind of incident, Goldy?” But then he caught sight of Yolanda, who was holding the door to the kitchen open. Father Pete’s mind made an unfortunate leap. “Mistaken identity again?”

Yolanda turned on her heel and shut the kitchen door in our faces.

“Let’s go into the living room,” I said to Father Pete. To Boyd, I said, “Could you bring us the remaining puppies, please?”

“Goldy,” Father Pete whispered to me, “what is going on?” Then he glanced around the living room. Boyd had neatly stacked his pillow and sleeping bag at one end of the couch. The makeshift curtain between the living and dining rooms was pulled back, revealing the cots. In the kitchen, Yolanda and Ferdinanda were again speaking Spanish in fierce, low tones. Father Pete said, “Is that woman staying with you? Who else is at your house?”

I sighed. “That other cot in the dining room is for her great-aunt. Did you hear about Ernest McLeod’s house burning down?” When Father Pete nodded, I said, “They were staying there, and now they’re spending time with us. The sheriff’s department deputy who greeted you at the front door is bunking on the couch. We had a—” Well, what had it been, exactly? “We had an attempted burglary last night. It’s possible it was the same man who burned down Ernest’s place.”

“Goodness gracious.” Father Pete sat in one of our wing chairs and put his box on the floor. “Is there any way I can help?”

I rubbed my temples and tried to think. In the kitchen, Boyd was talking to Yolanda. He clearly had the puppies, because their whining was louder. I asked Father Pete, “Do you know where Hermie Mikulski is staying?”

Father Pete lifted his wide chin. “I do, and she is fine. I cannot, however, tell you where she is. I mean, I promised her.”

I sighed. Maybe Boyd would be able to get it out of him. I said, “Well, do you remember Charlene Newgate?”

“With the secretarial service? Yes. She hasn’t been around the church in a while. Of course, the food pantry is at Aspen Meadow Christian Outreach now . . . why? Does she need food?”

“No, I don’t think so. But do you happen to know . . . if she has a rich new boyfriend?”

“That bald fellow? Is he her rich boyfriend? I saw them at the Grizzly one time, when I was trying to help an alcoholic parishioner—” He stopped talking when he saw my shock. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

I almost couldn’t get the words out. “Do you know the bald fellow? Do you know his name?”

At that moment, Boyd came into the living room carrying a puppy in each arm. Yolanda was right behind him, snuggling the last one to her chest. They wordlessly deposited them in Father Pete’s box.

Yolanda said, “I’ll go get a can of food.”

“That’s not necessary,” Father Pete said. “I already have puppy chow.” He squirmed a bit in his chair, as if he were having a change of heart but couldn’t find the words to match. “Young lady—”

“My name is Yolanda,” she said, brushing her tumble of russet curls away from her lovely face.

“Yolanda,” Father Pete said warmly, “I am sorry you are having so many difficulties. If you need the church in any way, we are prepared to help you—”

“Thank you,” Yolanda said stiffly. “I am fine now.” She patted the puppies one last time, then left.

“Sergeant Boyd,” I said breathlessly, “Father Pete knows where Hermie Mikulski is. He can’t tell me, but he may tell you.”

“I cannot tell either of you,” said Father Pete.

I shook my head. “Father Pete has also seen a bald fellow who may be our perp. He was with Charlene Newgate.” I didn’t know if Tom had filled Boyd in on Charlene’s background, and I didn’t want to do it now.

Boyd looked at me skeptically, but he sat in the other wing chair. He pulled a notebook from his back pocket and nodded at Father Pete. “Tell me what you know, please.”

Reluctantly, I left the living room. I wished I could hear what they were saying, but the crying of the beagles drowned them out.