Crunch Time

17

Rorry prohibited Tom and me from doing more than washing and drying the dishes and silverware, which we carefully placed on the large table at the far end of the kitchen. Rorry again insisted that Etta was the only one who knew where everything went, and she would go ballistic if the caterer and her husband tried to put stuff away in its proper place. When Rorry laughed, it was sincere, not condescending. So I acquiesced. On a more serious note, she made me promise to call her with an update on Yolanda. Furthermore, I was absolutely, positively supposed to forget about the broken china. She and Sean had received it as a wedding gift, and she was glad it was gone.

Tom, meanwhile, was pacing around the kitchen like a fearsome jungle cat. He trusted Boyd, but I knew Tom, and he wanted to make sure his associate hadn’t missed anything. He opened cupboards, asked Rorry questions, lifted up pans, crouched on the floor to check for proof that nothing had been overlooked. When he was satisfied, his team would begin to sprinkle black graphite fingerprint powder all over everything. I began gnawing my fist, desperate to tell Tom all I’d learned that day. But with Rorry coming in and out of the kitchen, I had to keep my mouth shut.

And then there was Yolanda. To keep myself from going crazy with worry—that worry again—I called Boyd, because I knew the privacy lovers at the hospital wouldn’t give me a nano-update on Yolanda’s condition. Boyd, who luckily was outside checking messages on his cell, said tersely that a nurse had told him Yolanda had first-, second-, and a few third-degree burns on her legs. Nothing was bad enough to warrant a hospital stay, the nurse had said. I rolled my eyes. Welcome to managed care. They were bandaging Yolanda up now, the nurse said, and she would be in pain for a couple of days, probably not able to work, although Yolanda kept insisting she had to work.

“That’s ridiculous,” I interjected. “We don’t have catered events for the next week.”

“She thought you had mentioned something about Saturday.”

I sighed. “It was canceled. Part of the wave of clients deciding they couldn’t afford to have parties.”

“All right, I’ll tell her.” Boyd’s tone was relieved. “How’s Ferdinanda holding up?”

“I’m still at Rorry’s. Arch said Ferdinanda is sure Kris Nielsen is behind this.” When Boyd didn’t reply, I said, “What do you think?”

“I have to look at the evidence, of which we do not have much.” Now his voice was terse. “What’s the big guy doing?” I cleared my throat. I did not want to tell Boyd that Tom was prowling around the kitchen checking for evidence that Boyd might have missed. I hesitated just long enough for Boyd to say, “Oh, I get it. He’s checking my work.”

“Uh—”

“That’s all right, I’m used to it. Tell him we’ll talk when I bring Yolanda home.”

We signed off. Tom, crawling around on Rorry’s kitchen floor, reminded me of Sabine Rushmore hunched over the rental cabin’s fireplace, sifting through ashes. But there was no way I was ever going to tell him that. Finally, Tom’s team arrived. He gave them the go-ahead to start with the fingerprint powder. I skedaddled into the foyer.

I gave Rorry the promised update on Yolanda. She shook her head and said she was going to start bringing her crystal in from the porch. Since she clearly did not want me to touch any more of her stuff, I dialed Marla’s cell to ask about the puppies.

“The sick one is in surgery,” she said, her voice low. “But a nurse or assistant—I don’t know what she does up front here—took a call from the doc. He said to ask me if this was a rescue dog. I said, ‘Why, is he prejudiced against rescue dogs?’ She didn’t like that, so I said yes. Then she wanted to know, or I guess it was the veterinary surgeon who wanted to know, if there were more rescue dogs who’d been adopted with this one. I said yes again. So her eyebrows went up. I thought, What in the hell is going on? Finally, she said that all the other rescue dogs who were adopted along with this one needed to be brought in immediately. I said, ‘What, do they all have rabies or something?’ ”

“This is not making any sense,” I said.

“Maybe not, but don’t worry, Penny is bringing her dogs and the rest of mine. I then had the unpleasant task of calling Father Pete and asking him to saddle up and bring all his new pups over to Twenty-Four-Hour Urgent Animal Care. Since he’d just gotten back from taking Venla home, then had settled the dogs for the night and poured himself a glass of ouzo, he was not a happy camper. But he’s coming. I asked him to bring me some ouzo.”

“Not a great idea.”

“If you saw the tiny plastic chair I’d been sitting in for the last hour, you’d think it was a superb idea.”

“Marla,” I said in protest, “you’ve had a heart attack.”

“And I’m going to have another one being anxious about these puppies. Oops, here’s Father Pete. And Penny, too! Gotta go.”

I glanced at my watch; it was quarter to nine. Tom’s team was still hard at work when he appeared in the foyer. He asked, “Could you go get Rorry for me?”

She was not on the porch, where she’d moved all the crystal to the wheeled tea cart. Back in the foyer, the sound of voices raised in anger emanated from upstairs. I crept back to the kitchen.

“Tom? They’re arguing. What am I supposed to do, interrupt a domestic quarrel?”

“You want my gun?”

“Oh, ha ha.” Of course, there was no way Tom would ever loan me his firearm.

“I’ll get her,” he said. He stood up. I watched him make his stealthy way up the spiral staircase. My stomach clenched and prickles broke out on my skin. If anyone had interrupted the Jerk when he was howling at me, that person would have risked physical attack. What if Sean hurt Tom?

A door slammed. Sean Breckenridge, his face blazing, stormed past Tom. He raced down the stairs and into the foyer. Tom signaled for me to stop him from entering the kitchen. In the kitchen entryway, I raised my arms like someone about to be crucified. Sean seemed not even to notice me. He sprinted sideways in the foyer and went through a door, which he slammed behind him. It probably went to the basement, where, presumably, there was a guest bedroom.

Tom said to me, “Okay, come on up. I need you now.”

Oh, peachy, just what I wanted—to deal with a woman whose unfaithful husband had just stalked away. Nevertheless, once upstairs I went to the closed door Tom pointed toward and knocked gently. Rorry, her eyes filled with tears, opened the door so suddenly I was taken aback. The enormous room behind her featured a four-poster mahogany bed and oodles of lace.

“Is everything all right?” I asked. I felt like a dolt asking, but I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t heard their argument.

“No, but that’s all right. What’s up?”

“We . . . wanted to check on you. And Tom needs you in the kitchen, please.”

She shook her shoulders, as if to bring herself back to full awareness. “Just a sec.” She went to a mahogany dresser that was the size of my catering van, pulled open a drawer, and said, “Oh, damn him.” She grabbed a batch of keys and disappeared into a closet. When she emerged, she was holding a considerable wad of cash with the keys.

“Rorry, you’ve paid us,” I protested. “You’ve tipped us. There’s no need to—”

“This isn’t for you,” she said matter-of-factly. “My husband took . . . he emptied—” Then something occurred to her—decorum, maybe—and she clammed up. “Let’s go downstairs.” She closed the bedroom door quietly, moved past me toward the staircase, and held the large roll of bills aloft. “Does Yolanda have health insurance?”

“Yes.”

Tom had returned to the kitchen and had gotten down on his hands and knees again. The two-man fingerprint team was working at the far end of the room. They were making an unholy mess. Rorry ignored all of them as well as the chaos. She took my hand and pressed the clump of cash into my hand. “This is four thousand dollars. Those insurance companies don’t cover everything, so please let me know if Yolanda’s medical bills are more than that, would you? This happened in my kitchen, and I feel responsible.”

“Rorry, really, you don’t—” But she marched up to Tom. “Thank you,” I said to her back, then stuffed the money into my apron pocket.

“What can I do for you, Officer Schulz?” Belatedly, Rorry looked with despair around her kitchen. In addition to every cabinet being open, Tom’s team had spilled the fingerprint powder on the cabinets and countertops. Rorry cocked her head at Tom. “How long will the kitchen have to be like this?”

“I’ve gotten what I need to have analyzed. Sorry about the black powder. Do you and Sean have Colorado driver’s licenses? I’m wondering if your prints are on file.”

“We do and they are. Don’t worry about the mess.” She frowned at the open cabinet doors. “What are you looking for inside all these?”

“Space. You said earlier the electric frying pan wasn’t yours, correct?”

“That’s right.”

“And, Goldy?” Tom asked. “You brought your own roasting pans, correct?”

“Yes.”

Tom pointed at an empty area in a cupboard that held shiny top-of-the-line pots. “Rorry? There’s space for an electric frying pan here.”

Rorry ducked down, peered into the cabinet, and wrinkled her brow. She shook her head. “I just wish I knew where Etta kept everything. Do you want me to phone her?”

“Yes, please.”

Rorry put in a quick call to Beaver Creek and explained the predicament to Etta, who replied quickly. Rorry closed the phone. “That’s where she keeps the double boiler.”

Tom picked up his notebook and read through it, flipping pages. “No double boiler in the inventory I’ve taken.”

Rorry, genuinely puzzled, turned to me. “You couldn’t have packed it up with your things, could you?”

“She did not,” Tom said decisively. “I’ve already inventoried every single item in her van.”

“But,” said Rorry, again scanning the kitchen, “where is it?”

“My guess,” Tom replied as he got to his feet, “is that whoever put the electric frying pan onto one of your counters wanted to make it look as if it really was yours.”

Rorry slumped into one of her kitchen chairs. “Oh, my God. Why would someone do that?”

Tom peeled off his gloves. “To make it look as if you had put what we’re assuming was a sabotaged electric frying pan on the counter.”

Rorry shook her head. “Who would do such a thing?”

“That’s what I’m going to find out,” said Tom. He crossed his arms. “I’ve only gotten a few fingerprints, but I’m going to check them out. Still, I’m guessing those belong to Yolanda, Goldy, and my man Boyd. Whoever did this, and I’m guessing again here, wiped everything down.” He paused for a moment. “Mrs. Breckenridge, you and Mr. Breckenridge have children?”

Rorry blushed. “We have a little boy, Seth. He’s five.”

“I’m not being judgmental here,” Tom said soothingly. “I just want to know who inherits your money if something happens to you.”

Rorry put her finger to her mouth as she got up and closed both doors to the kitchen. “It was Sean. But I had my will changed about a month ago,” she whispered. “Sean doesn’t know. If something . . . happens to me, my money goes to Seth, with my cousin as executor. Thirty-five million dollars.”

I swallowed hard. That was a lot of money.

“You’re sure Sean doesn’t know?” Tom asked, his voice just above a whisper.

“I flew back to Louisiana last month, ostensibly to visit old friends, but really to see our family lawyer. He drew up the documents himself.” She hesitated. “My husband and I are not getting along. I’m hoping we can straighten things out, but I wanted to be covered. Just in case.” She hesitated. “Did Goldy tell you I hired Ernest McLeod to follow Sean, to see who he was . . . having an affair with?”

Tom hitched his eyebrows at me. I said, “I didn’t know until tonight that Ernest was working for her. I also found out tonight that the person Sean is fooling around with is Brie Quarles.”

Tom said, “Anything else you’re not telling me?”

“I found a credit card belonging to Sean out at that cabin I went to this afternoon.”

Tom shook his head. “Have you still got it?”

My cheeks reddened. In fact, I did. I pulled it out of my pocket. “Do you want it?” I asked him, then turned to Rorry. “Or should she—”

Rorry held up her hands to stop me. “Don’t give it to me. I’ll just cancel it and then cut it up.”

“I’ll take it, please,” said Tom. He turned to Rorry. “I’d feel better if you went to a neighbor’s house for the night. It’s possible you weren’t the target of the pan ring falling or the skillet accident. But we want to cover all the bases. We’ll wait here while you pack. Then call us when you get where you’re going, and let us know where you are. Then phone Etta and have her bring Seth to you in the morning.”

“There’s no need for you to wait.” Rorry moved toward the foyer. “That ‘just in case’ I mentioned? I always keep a packed suitcase in the trunk of my Mercedes. I’ll drive up to our Beaver Creek condo tonight and change the security code so Sean couldn’t get in even if he wanted to. Seth and Etta and I will be fine,” she said, reassuring me. She glanced around at the chaos of the kitchen. “Will your people clean this up?”

“I’ll ask them to,” Tom promised.

Rorry thanked us both again, turned on her heel, and walked quietly away.

Tom packed up his evidence kit and placed his notebook in his coat pocket. “Miss G., are you ready to go?”

“The sooner the better.”

Tom spoke quietly to his team. Then we left.

The snow clouds had unraveled. Pinpricks of starlight filled the night sky. If Arch had been with us, he would have pointed to the Milky Way, now a river of brightness overhead. Away from Colorado’s metropolitan areas, the glorious fields of stars on clear, moonless nights was breathtaking. I did not want to have my breath taken away, however, and once out of that godforsaken house, I greedily inhaled lungfuls of fresh, cold air that tasted like ice cream.

I followed Tom home. Knowing that once we arrived, Ferdinanda would fill the house with her rage over Yolanda’s accident, I called Tom on my cell. There were things I needed to tell him.

“I need to bring you up to date on what I’ve been doing,” I said.

“There’s more?”

“I wanted to let you know why I was out by the Aspen Meadow Wildlife Preserve. I tried to tell you about it, but you cut me off.”

“My captain was standing right next to me. I still don’t want you going out to the preserve. Especially not alone.”

“Why don’t you want me going out to the preserve?”

Tom heaved a sigh. “Miss G., can’t I just ask you not to do something, and you don’t do it?”

No, I thought, but said reluctantly, “All right, whatever. But remember, Ernest was taking care of Yolanda when he was killed. She has been a dear friend for ten years. I want to help her. I want to find out who murdered Ernest. And now you know about Rorry hiring him.”

“Right. Okay, go back. Where were you, exactly?” I told him about Donna, the evidence she’d collected, and the cabin in the woods. Tom said, “Whose house was this? I’m supposing you dispensed with the usual formalities, like search warrants?”

I decided not to tell him about Sabine breaking a window next to the one that was already broken. “The owners are long gone.” Tom muttered something under his breath, and I plunged on. “I found Sean’s credit card under the woodpile out there. Donna had given me a bag with evidence from one time when they’d broken into one of her rentals, and inside it were cheese wrappers and a wine bottle. So I bought the same kind of everything and observed Sean and Brie indulging in the—” Well, how to put it, exactly?

“The food trap. Anything else?” I told him about possibly seeing Charlene, or her BMW, anyway, on the way to Sabine’s. And after Sabine and I ran away from the abandoned love-nest, she told me about seeing a suspicious bald man at the feed store. She’d thought perhaps he was Hermie’s beagle breeder, whom Hermie thinks is running a puppy mill hidden behind a legitimate operation, I concluded.

“Back up,” said Tom. “It was while you were trolling through the cabin, presumably, that you heard the gunshots?”

“Well, yes.”

“Christ, Goldy.”

A silence fell between us. I felt terrible, unable to speak. Unfortunately, any disagreement between Tom and me reminded me of the many arguments the Jerk and I had had, conflicts that had ended with him beating me up.

We were passing Aspen Meadow Lake. The sparsely placed streetlights reflected in the icy water’s surface. I was suddenly aware of how exhausted I was. The fatigue from catering, the shock of Rorry’s china breaking, the pot holder crashing down, the boiling oil burning Yolanda, and now Tom’s extended silence—all these threatened to pull me under.

“Miss G.,” Tom said at last, “I just worry about you.” When I said nothing, Tom asked, “Did Rorry tell you whether she had a prenup? I mean, we can find out, but she could just divorce him. She doesn’t have to prove he can’t keep it zipped.”

“She has a prenuptial agreement, Tom. Her father made her get one drawn up. He didn’t trust Sean, smart fellow. Rorry did. Plus, she’s religious. She loves the church and she thought she loved Sean. So before she divorced him, she wanted proof of the affair. Sean knew he’d have to keep his dalliance secret. Don’t you think the DA might be interested in the fact that Rorry hired Ernest McLeod to get the proof for her?”

In front of me, Tom braked at the Main Street red light. He said, “The DA might find that interesting. But the grand jury might want to have more than an empty wine bottle, some cheese wrappers, and Sean’s credit card with your fingerprints on it.”

I sighed.

We hung up so as to negotiate our icy street. The van’s tires crunched noisily between the plowed and frozen snowbanks. Tom parked by the curb and pointed for me to take the driveway. I moved slowly along the slippery drive and managed not to slide into Arch’s Passat, which was outside the garage.

“Oh my God, how glad am I to see you!” Ferdinanda cried when we came through the front door. She’d been parked out in the hall, apparently, waiting for our arrival. Behind her, Arch gave me a helpless look. Clearly, he’d tried to soothe Ferdinanda, to no effect.

“I’m so sorry about what happened to Yolanda—” I started to say, but Ferdinanda interrupted me.

“This didn’t happen to her.” She wagged a wicked-looking finger in my direction. “Kris did this to her. Tom!” she said reprovingly as he helped me off with my coat. “You gotta do something about this man. He’s going to kill my niece unless you kill him first.”

“Let’s go into the kitchen,” Tom replied softly.

Ferdinanda didn’t budge. “I want to go down to that hospital.”

“Sergeant Boyd is bringing Yolanda back here,” Tom said evenly. “He just phoned me and they’re leaving now. If we take off, we’ll miss them.”

Ferdinanda crossed her arms. “And Boyd and Yolanda are just going to walk right up the sidewalk to the house? With Kris living across the street?” My mouth must have fallen open, because Ferdinanda looked bitterly triumphant. “Yeah, he came today in that loud car of his. Then a truck with furniture arrived. Kris drove out again and returned with a girl who had two suitcases.”

“A girl?” I said, confused.

“A young woman,” Ferdinanda replied, dismissing this person with a wave. “You know. A whore.”

I said, “What? Arch, would you please go upstairs?”

Arch groaned but clopped upstairs anyway. Ferdinanda wheeled herself around in a tight circle, then pushed herself toward the kitchen. “Tom!” she cried over her shoulder. “Come out here, please, without Goldy, so I can talk to you without her asking stupid questions.”

Tom patted me on the shoulder and whispered, “She’s just upset. Why don’t you look at those pictures you took again? Maybe you’ll remember how you know Humberto’s girlfriend. I’ll go calm Ferdinanda down.”

I sat on the living room couch and scrolled through the photos I’d taken. I had seen this young woman in some other context, not one associated with catering. I was having a hard time making a withdrawal from my mind’s memory bank, though, because Ferdinanda’s shrill voice still emanated from the kitchen. Tom’s calm replies were like a low rumble. I placed the cell phone on the coffee table, plugged my ears with my fingers, and stared at one of the images.

School, I thought. I know her from some academic context. And just as surely, I realized that she had some connection with Arch—not as a hooker, thank God. She had helped him. But doing what?

I took the stairs two at a time and knocked on Arch’s door. When he let me in, his face was racked with worry.

“What is it?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

He went back to his bed, where he sat down and crossed his arms. “Not really. What do you need?”

“Arch, is something—” No, I’d already asked him that. I inhaled sharply to steady myself. Whatever was bothering him, he’d tell me in his good time. Or not. “It’s just that I’m trying to place a guest from tonight’s dinner party. I took a picture with my phone.” I cued up the best image and handed him my cell.

Arch turned his attention to my phone. His brow furrowed as he paged through the pictures. Then he smiled and shook his head. “She sure looks different from when she was helping me with my math homework.”

“Who is it?”

“Gosh, Mom. I can’t believe you don’t recognize Lolly Vanderpool.” He handed the phone back to me, a glint of triumph in his brown eyes.

“Your old babysitter?” I squinted at the picture. “The one who had a full ride at Elk Park Prep? You’re kidding.”

“Nope. You used to say she was the smartest person you’d ever met, don’t you remember?”

“Not really. Well anyway, I thought Lolly went to college.”

“So did I.”

“It doesn’t look as if that worked out.” Mentally, I added, And if she’s really smart, why hasn’t she made a better career choice?

Arch grinned mischievously. “So what’s she doing instead?”

I pressed my lips together as high-pitched Ferdinanda and low-toned Tom continued their dialogue downstairs. To Arch, I said, “Did you get your homework done?”

“Good old Mom.” Arch heaved himself up off his bed. “As soon as the conversation gets interesting, you find a way to make me do something else.”

“I’m not making you do anything else.” Although, of course, I was.

“Math homework’s done.”

“Good. Thanks for staying here with Ferdinanda. And for helping figure out the puzzle with Lolly.”

“No problem.” Arch walked me to the door of his room. “Do you think Lolly’s available to come over tomorrow night, to do some tutoring with me? She could wear that same outfit.”

“Very funny, buster.”

Reluctantly, I went back down to the kitchen. Ferdinanda wailed at Tom, “But I don’t understand why you can’t arrest him. Look at what he’s done!”

Tom rubbed his chin for a moment. “Let’s put it this way. Do you like the fact that Fidel Castro promised elections within a year of taking over the country but, in all the fifty years since, has never held free elections?”

“Of course not!” Ferdinanda retorted. “I believe in democracy. I believe in freedom of speech. He wouldn’t allow either. That’s why I left.”

“Presumably, then,” Tom said patiently, “one of the reasons you came to this country is that we are a nation of laws that we enforce.”

Ferdinanda waved this away. “Kris peeped in the windows of the house we were renting. Or he hired somebody to do that. Then he burned the place down.”

“Ferdinanda, we have no proof—”

“So we moved to Ernest’s house. Then Kris killed Ernest and burned down his house. Today he moved in across the street. He’s crazy, Tom! Now, tonight, he tried to kill Yolanda. Aren’t any of those things laws that have been broken?”

“Breaking and entering, arson, murder, and attempted murder,” Tom said, still calm, “are all against the law. But Kris has an alibi for every single one of those events, and we do not have a shred of evidence that he was involved in any of it.”

“Isn’t stalking against the law?” asked Ferdinanda. “He stalked her.”

“If we could prove it, it would be,” Tom replied. “I understand what you’re saying.” It was clear to me, and no doubt to Ferdinanda, that he may have comprehended the older woman’s accusation, but he was by no means certain of its veracity. And yet, he trusted Yolanda and Ferdinanda, liked them, even, as I did. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have allowed them to come live with us.

Ferdinanda held her hand up to her ear. “You know I’m partially deaf. Why can’t I hear you?”

Tom got up. “Ferdinanda, you know Goldy and I want to help you and Yolanda. I don’t know why someone would target one or both of them or even somebody else, in the Breckenridges’ kitchen. As I’ve said here several times, it sounds as if all the guests were in and out of that kitchen during the day. So I can’t just go and arrest one person, can I? As I keep telling you, we actually have to have evidence. On the other hand, you could tell me more about Humberto Captain than you have. Did he know about Ernest’s investigation of him?” Ferdinanda muttered under her breath. “Speak up, Ferdinanda! I can’t hear you.” The older woman fixed Tom with a baleful stare. Tom, unheeding, changed the subject. “Boyd will be home soon with Yolanda. Do you want one of us to stay here in the kitchen with you until they arrive?”

Ferdinanda, who was already wheeling away, stopped. “No. I’ll tell you what I want. When they get back, I want you and Boyd each to stand beside Yolanda and bring her into the house. She needs to be protected.”

“All right,” said Tom. I could hear the fatigue in his voice, but he pressed buttons on his cell to tell Boyd how they were going to bring Yolanda into the house. Ferdinanda, satisfied, rolled herself into her makeshift bedroom without, I noticed, a word of thanks to Tom.

I shook my head. “Tom, I have something to tell you.” I related Arch’s news about his former babysitter, Odette, aka Lolly Vanderpool. “She’s more than smart. She’s brilliant. You should let me talk to her about Humberto.”

Tom’s sea-green eyes were full of skepticism. “You’re going to interrogate a prostitute about a john who’s a murder suspect, between your catering events?”

“Please, listen. First of all, it’s much more likely she’ll talk to me than she would to someone at the sheriff’s department. Second, we’re having dinner at this murder suspect’s house tomorrow night—”

“I’ll be wearing a weapon—”

“And third, I don’t actually have catering events this week. Just the dinner at the Bertrams’ place on Thursday night, and for that I’m making soup.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want you talking to Humberto alone.”

“Humberto? No way. I only want to talk to Lolly.”

“Couple things, then. You have max two days to talk to her before we do. And you have to tell me immediately whatever she says.”

“Oh-kay.” I moved toward the walk-in. “Have you eaten? I’m famished.”

“Yeah, I did. Wait, let me talk to Ferdinanda for a minute.” He knocked on the swinging door between the kitchen and the dining room. When Ferdinanda roughly told him to enter, he asked her questions in a low tone. Again, Ferdinanda’s querulous reply made me wonder what was going on, but when Tom said, “Thank you,” I was even more curious. When he closed the dining room door, he said, “I’m going to fix you dinner.”

“Tom, please. Don’t. I can do it. And besides that, I don’t think we have anything ready—”

“You do enough, Miss G.,” Tom interrupted. He peered into the depths of the walk-in. “I came out to the kitchen yesterday and found Ferdinanda rummaging through the freezer.”

I sighed. I’d found her in our pantry. Tom had found her searching through our freezer. In spite of the fact that I’d said mi casa es su casa, Ferdinanda’s proprietary attitude toward our kitchen was getting a little old.

“Anyway, she asked me if she could thaw a package of ground pork. I said yes, and I just got her permission to cook one of her recipes that she was telling me about.” He flipped through some papers by the computer. “All right, here we go.”

I was too tired to argue. “Sounds great.”

“I’m also putting together a salad for you,” he said, his head back in the walk-in. He emerged carrying the pork, a container of cooked rice, and a bunch of fresh cilantro, which he placed on the counter. “Now, where is that balsamic vinaigrette I was making. . . .”

“What you’re making is a mess,” I said. But I found the sauté pan and brought out the olive oil for him.

“I have an ulterior motive,” Tom said.

“Yeah,” I replied, “you don’t want me to get grouchy because I’m hungry.”

“That, too,” he said as he washed his hands to prepare for cooking. “Not another word until I have the food in front of you.”

He poured me a glass of an expensive sauvignon blanc that Marla had given us, set the table for one, and went about his tasks. Twenty minutes later, he placed a heavenly scented platter on the table, filled with ground pork in a steaming orange-lime sauce. Next to it he put two bowls: one filled with fluffy heated rice topped with chopped fresh cilantro, the other brimming with a salad of baby field greens, grape tomatoes, toasted pine nuts, and tidbits of blue cheese, all cloaked in Tom’s new dressing.

“This is enough for at least four people,” I murmured. “But thanks.”

“Don’t worry about too much food,” said Tom as he pulled a chair up close to mine. “If I know Arch, he’ll have smelled something in the air, and he’ll be banging in here in a couple of minutes, wanting a second dinner.”

“So what’s your ulterior motive?” I asked.

“Have some salad first,” he said.

I obliged. “Great dressing. What’s in it?”

Tom’s smile was so akin to the Cheshire cat’s that I became nervous. “Oh, mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, balsamic vinegar, garlic, olive oil, fresh basil. It’s what I’m calling it that reveals my ulterior motive.” He opened his eyes wide. “That’s Tom’s Love Potion.”

“Tom,” I said as I took my first bite of the pork. It was velvety and scrumptious. I would have to ask Ferdinanda for the recipe. “This is out of this world. And in the love potion department? I’m a sure bet. You needn’t have gone to all this trouble—”

“I want us to have a baby,” Tom blurted out.

I swallowed hard to avoid choking. “What?”

At that moment, my current baby, sixteen-year-old Arch, whacked the kitchen door open. “Aha!” he exclaimed. “Food! And does it smell great!” He looked from Tom to me. “What’s the matter? Mom, you look as if you saw a ghost or something.”

“I, uh, yeah, well,” I said. “Let me get you a plate and silverware.” I pushed my chair back, but Tom held up a hand.

“I’ll do it,” he said in that commanding way he had.

“Mom?” asked Arch. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I’m just peachy.”