Crunch Time

18

Twenty minutes later, I stood under a very hot shower. Tom was downstairs cleaning up. I thought, Maybe I should make this shower cold. And while I’m at it, I could pull Tom into it.

A baby? Tom wanted to have a baby? Why?

What would Arch think of the idea? What did I think of it? Was it selfish for me to wonder what would happen to my catering business if I went back to changing diapers? Besides, wasn’t I too old to have a baby?

Thirty-seven was not that old, I reminded myself as I dried off. I loved Tom. But this thought, the very idea of having another child, was not something I had expected from him. And I felt exhausted just thinking about the prospect of doing the whole infant thing all over again.

There was a tapping on the door and I jumped.

“Miss G.? You coming out?”

“In a sec.” I wondered if I should put on my cotton pajamas, if that would be seen as a signal that I did not want to—

Tom opened the door to the bathroom. “Come on, let’s talk about this like normal married folks. In bed. Make that sitting on the bed, since I have to wait for Boyd and Yolanda. In fact, maybe that’s where I should have broached this subject in the first place.”

“I’ll be right there.” I pulled on my PJ’s and walked quickly across to the bed, where I sat down.

Tom followed and pulled me in for a warm hug. “I’m sensing you don’t like my idea.”

Putting my arms around the man I had come to love so much, I thought, I have to give him what he wants. Then I thought, No, I don’t. Through all the years with the Jerk and then post-Jerk, I’d come to see that my own opinion about what was right was the most important one. “What made you think of this all of a sudden? I mean, why do you want a baby?”

“I don’t know,” Tom replied. “It’s been sort of building in my mind. I love you, and I love Arch. At work, I see death and pain and cruelty, all day, every day. And I just like the idea of making our family bigger, and spreading more joy into the world.”

“Can I at least turn it over in my mind for a while?” I whispered.

“You can turn it over in your mind as long as you want,” said Tom. Did I detect a note of disappointment in his voice, or was my imagination making me paranoid? He kissed me . . . and then his cell went off. He blinked at the screen. “Oh, Christ, it’s Boyd already. ” Tom talked briefly into his phone. “They’ll be here in a few minutes. I’m going out to the driveway, and then we’re going to help Yolanda inside.”

“Wear your service revolver,” I said.

“Don’t worry.”

I shimmied off the bed, slid into a bathrobe, and for reasons I couldn’t quite name, turned off the lights in our bedroom. I pulled open our curtains covering one of the windows facing the street.

Soon Boyd’s car drove into view and crunched over ice in the driveway. Tom waited for Boyd to come around the front of the vehicle, then opened the passenger door. The two of them flanked Yolanda and helped her, slowly, into the house.

Again my skin broke out in gooseflesh, and my glance darted across the street. On the second floor of Jack’s old house, new bedroom curtains there, too, were parted. Was my imagination making me paranoid again? Was somebody, or were somebodies, looking out the window at Yolanda coming home?

Was it Kris? Harriet? Were they watching us? Watching for Yolanda?

I raced downstairs, opened the front door, and waited for Boyd and Tom to bring Yolanda over the threshold.

“Oh, Yolanda!” I cried, seeing the thick white bandages that covered her thighs. “What can I do for you?”

Yolanda’s russet hair was pulled back in a rough ponytail, and her skin looked as if it had been blanched. The wheels of Ferdinanda’s chair squeaked as the elderly woman rolled into the hall. Seeing all of us there, Yolanda said, “I’m fine now. I’ve got my family, my friends, and my painkillers. What else do I need?”

After assuring us that the only thing she wanted was the ladies’ room, Yolanda allowed Boyd to carry her in there. Ferdinanda followed, yelling to her niece in Spanish that she was coming to help. A moment later, the bathroom door closed, water ran, and Boyd reappeared, shaking his head.

“Poor girl,” he said. “I know she’s in a lot of pain.” He pressed his lips together and looked at Tom. “Learned anything yet?”

“The pan that fell apart didn’t belong to the Breckenridges.”

“Interesting,” said Boyd. “Although I have to say, I figured as much. I called one of our teams. They came to Southwest Hospital and took the evidence I had, the broken pot rack, the parts of the frying pan. I uploaded the pictures I took of both ‘accidents,’ so our guys could look closely at them.”

“Good work,” said Tom.

“I also gave the team the names of every single dinner guest. Our guys are out interviewing them now. The one thing I’ve heard so far? Nobody confesses to owning the electric frying pan. It just appeared. I called Rorry on her cell, to find out who could have had time to loosen the pot rack with the cloth dish towels. She said folks were in and out of the kitchen all day. When I asked her who had requested the Navajo tacos? She said she was pretty sure the request had come through her husband. So I called him. The son of a bitch said he couldn’t remember.” Boyd ran his thick fingers over his black crew cut. “He’s lying.”

“Good job.” Tom shook Boyd’s hand.

The door to the bathroom off the dining room opened, and Boyd nodded at both of us, said good night, and moved off to help Yolanda into bed.

When Tom and I were back in our bedroom, I stared at our alarm clock. I didn’t need to set it, because as I had reminded Tom, I did not have a party to cater the next day. Feeling oddly helpless, I walked over to close our curtains. “Tom? I could have sworn Kris, or someone, was looking out the upstairs window over at Jack’s place. Whoever it was was watching for Yolanda to arrive back home, all bandaged up.”

“Miss G.” Tom took his clothes off and slid into bed. “The only way to solve this crime and all the other crimes Ferdinanda mentioned is to work the case. We find out who killed Ernest? Everything else will fall into place.”

“What about Yolanda’s house burning down? And Ernest’s? The attempted break-in here, at our place? You think they’re related to Ernest being shot?”

“I do. I’m just not sure how.” He pulled me to him. I did not resist.

“But how are you working the case?” I whispered.

“Miss G. You heard Boyd. We’re interviewing people. We’re analyzing evidence. Our canvass of Ernest’s neighborhood didn’t turn up much. The shell casings are being analyzed. Maybe somebody else had been out there on that service road, shooting off a weapon, but I doubt it. Maybe the casings will come back to a gun we can prove belongs to one of the people we’re looking at for this crime.”

“People you’re looking at,” I repeated.

“Someone had a big motive for killing Ernest and burning down his house. Our theory is that Ernest had looked under one rock too many, and somebody wanted to destroy him and the evidence.”

“Okay.”

I did not feel as confident as Tom that we were, in fact, going to find out who murdered Ernest. Hermie Mikulski’s face popped into my brain. Had she seen the same man as Sabine Rushmore? Was it too late to call Hermie?

I slid away from Tom and reached for my cell phone.

“Miss G., what are you doing?”

“Just making one more call,” I said quickly, then hustled into the bathroom.

As I suspected would happen, I was immediately connected to voice mail. Either Hermie behaved like most civilized people and refused to answer the phone late at night, or she was still not home.

When I slipped back into bed, Tom did not ask me why I’d been making a call late at night.

Okay, so: I’d spoken to every person that Tom, Yolanda, or anyone else had mentioned in connection with Ernest and his investigations. I’d come up short. If anything, I realized painfully, I’d made things worse. I’d confronted Kris, and, after finding out from Penny Woolworth where Yolanda was staying, he’d bought the house across the street from us. If you had a lot of cash, you could do a real estate deal pretty quickly. Even if Kris hadn’t closed yet, he could have worked out a deal with Jack’s son to rent the place until he did. Maybe, as at the dinner party, Kris only wanted to flaunt to Yolanda that he had a new, pretty girlfriend. People reeling from a breakup could do weird things. Spending a lot of money on a house definitely fell into the rich-people-doing-crazy-stuff category. But was this a rich person doing a crazy thing, or was the rich person actually crazy? I sighed.

I’d questioned Charlene Newgate. If Charlene had been up to something, now she knew she needed to cover it up. I’d used Donna Lamar to help me dig into Sean Breckenridge’s extramarital activities, and she had inadvertently let him know what I was up to. I closed my eyes. I’d questioned the Juarezes, and they’d bought tickets to the fund-raising dinner, where Norman had confronted Humberto. If Humberto really did have the gold and jewels, did he now know to hide them? I wondered.

Tomorrow, I would go talk to Lolly Vanderpool, aka Odette. But I didn’t hold out much hope of that turning into anything substantive regarding the theft of the Juarezes’ gold and jewels. What would a tutor-turned-hooker know?

All the faces involved with Ernest and his cases swam up before my mind’s eye: Humberto, Sean, Brie, Kris . . . I was trying to figure this all out, how the people were connected. . . .

I felt like a failure.

Tom sensed I was still awake. He moved toward me and kissed my forehead. “Stop worrying.”

“If only it were that easy.” I paused, then said, “Thanks for dinner.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Do you mind talking about Ernest’s murder for a couple of minutes? Arch is in his room, and I can’t use his computer.”

“Go ahead.”

“Okay . . . so, Ernest picked up nine puppies, probably because he’d found the illegal mill that Hermie Mikulski had hired him to find. Right?”

“Okay.”

“A bald guy burned down Ernest’s house. Maybe the same bald guy tried to burn down our house, or to break in, before Arch stabbed him with your weeder. But . . . remember Sabine Rushmore had an encounter with a menacing bald guy at the feed store? He was buying a lot of puppy chow. When Sabine tried to be polite to him, he cut her off.”

“You told me,” he said patiently.

“You can talk to Sabine. But did I tell you that Father Pete saw Charlene Newgate, the temp service lady, with a bald guy at the Grizzly Saloon? How many bald guys are there?”

Tom reached over and turned on the light. He made a couple of notes in his trusty book, then firmly closed it and flipped the switch on the lamp. He said kindly, “It’s good to cover everything. I’m glad you brought these things up, Miss G.”

What I had not brought up was our conversation in the kitchen. Still, I’d fully expected that he would want to talk further about his desire for progeny, or, even better, make love that night. But he merely hugged me again, said he was tired, and turned away.

Great, I thought as I fluffed my pillow. A good marriage takes open communication and a willingness to give, the advice givers were always saying. Apparently, this was one more area where I’d failed.

The next day’s dawn brought a deep blue sky and brilliant sunshine. Melting ice gurgled and dripped down our gutters. With any luck, Indian summer’s lush grass would soon be poking through the snow. I lay in bed and realized that we hadn’t even had the first day of fall yet, much less winter.

I felt with my left hand to where Tom’s body had left an impression in the sheets. The linens were cold.

“Miss G.,” he said cheerily, startling me. He had showered and dressed, and now placed a steaming cup of latte on my night table. “Aren’t you the one who told me sloth was one of the seven deadly sins?”

“Thanks for the coffee and for reminding me of my wicked nature.” I smiled at him and glanced at the clock. Quarter to seven? “Where are you going so early?”

“Remember that thing I told you last night, about working the case? That’s where I’m going. What are you up to?”

“About a dollar fifty.” I grinned again. “How’s Yolanda?”

“Still in bed.”

I took a deep breath. “Well, we have Humberto’s dinner party tonight. I don’t suppose Yolanda and Boyd will go. But Ferdinanda promised to make spinach quiches.” I sipped the latte, which was delicious. “Do you remember that?”

“Yup,” said Tom. “She’s banging around in the kitchen already, making the rice for the crust, grating Gruyère, and who knows what all. I’ll tell you one thing, I cannot wait to see the inside of Humberto’s house, either. He must have a security system that rivals a nuclear installation.”

“You said his place was broken into a while back?”

“Last week,” said Tom, sitting on the bed. “Or so he claims.”

“What did the burglar take?”

“He won’t say. He demanded that we analyze his guards’ rum bottles from that night. We said we would if he would pay for the analysis.” Tom shrugged. “He agreed, and we found traces of temazepam on the bottles’ glass.”

“Rum bottles, plural? How many guards are we talking about?”

Tom inhaled. “Three. These are the same guys who alibied Humberto for the time of Ernest’s murder. Remember I told you about our guys smelling rum on their breaths? They couldn’t be very good guards if they drank on duty.”

“When Humberto was broken into . . . was there a security code, like, an electronic burglar alarm, too?”

“Yup. It had been turned off, then on again, while the guards were asleep. So somebody came in, we just don’t know who. Humberto is strangely silent on who had the code.”

“And he won’t tell you what was missing.”

“He will not. But I do have an interesting bit of information. The casings on the gun that killed Ernest? The same weapon was used two years ago, to kill a gas station attendant.”

“What? Where was this?”

“Outside of Fort Collins. The kid was a graduate student at Colorado State. He was just working shifts to make money.”

“Is there any connection to the people around Ernest?”

“Not that we can find.”

I shook my head. Another person killed, and for what? It was all too much. We stopped talking.

Finally, Tom said, “Anything else, Miss G.?”

I looked at him in puzzlement. He gave me such a hopeful look, I couldn’t imagine what he meant by it . . . until I did. The anything else was asking if during the night, I had come to a positive response to his surprise request.

I opened my mouth and then closed it.

He brushed my hair off my face and touched my cheek. “Please don’t go into a panic. We’re going to be married for a long, long time, and we can discuss this any time while your biological clock is still ticking. Okay? And no matter what we decide, we’re going to be happy together. Got it?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Tom.”

He left. I did my yoga routine, then showered, dressed, and made my way to the kitchen. There, Ferdinanda was checking under the lid of a pot of rice, Boyd was hovering over a sink full of soapy water, and Arch was stuffing himself with thick-sliced bacon and pancakes smeared with guava preserves. Sitting beside Arch, Yolanda seemed to be in a daze. She was tilted sideways, with a faraway look in her eyes. A full cup of coffee in front of her looked cold.

“Yolanda, how are you?” I asked.

Arch, his mouth half full, glanced sideways at Yolanda. Then he swallowed and said, “She’s in a lot of pain, Mom, that’s how she is. Even I can tell that.”

“Arch?” Yolanda came back to earth. Her rusty-sounding voice carried a note of reproof. “I’m capable of talking to your mother myself, thanks.”

“Yeah,” said Arch as he picked up his empty dish and took it to the sink. “You can talk, but you never complain. I’m just telling my mom the real situation.”

I said, “Arch? Do you have all your homework?”

Boyd rinsed off the plate and silverware and handed it back to Arch to put in the dishwasher. My son shook his head. “There you go again, Mom, sending me off when you don’t want to talk about what’s really going on.”

“Arch!”

“Mom!” When he tossed his silverware into the dishwasher, the metal clanked explosively. “I’m worried about Yolanda, too, you know! First some guy tries to break into where she’s sleeping, then somebody tries to burn her.”

I said softly, “Arch, please.”

“I’m just saying what we all know.” His tone was stubborn.

“Tom, Boyd, and the whole sheriff’s department are working on it,” I replied, keeping my tone even.

Arch muttered something under his breath and stomped out of the kitchen. I was about to holler after him to come back and apologize when Boyd held up a soapy hand.

“Goldy?” he said. “He’s been traumatized. Give him a break.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I overreacted.”

“Sit down, Goldy.” Ferdinanda poured batter into a sizzling sauté pan on the stove. “I want you to eat some of my pancakes, tell me how good they are with guava jam. And what your son said before he left the kitchen? He told me how much he liked my pancakes.”

I was quite sure that was not what Arch had said under his breath, but I was touched by hard-of-hearing Ferdinanda wanting to cover for him. When she placed a plate with three steaming pancakes—each with a dollop of melting butter sliding sideways—in front of me, I thanked her.

“I make them with sour cream. Now spread guava preserves on top. I’ll make you some espresso.”

Boyd took the frying pan from Ferdinanda and placed it in the soapy water.

“Eat, eat!” Ferdinanda commanded me. “You want them to get cold?”

I obliged. The featherlight cakes had a heavenly tang that was perfectly complemented by the sweet, thick preserves. I groaned with pleasure. “I’d forgotten how good food tastes when it’s made by somebody else. Thank you again. Ferdinanda,” I added, “you’re great.”

“Not so great,” she said darkly. “Cooking I know. How to get rid of Kris I don’t know.”

“Okay, ladies, that’s enough of that kind of talk,” said Boyd.

Yolanda sighed. “Are you staying home today, Goldy? Or going out?”

I rubbed my forehead. How was I supposed to say that I was off to look for Humberto’s girlfriend? Oh, yes, and that I intended to keep trying to talk in depth to one of Ernest’s clients, Hermie Mikulski?

“I still want to talk to Hermie Mikulski some more,” I said, deciding for now to omit any mention of Humberto.

Boyd, still drying dishes, turned to me. “I’m telling you, Goldy, Mrs. Mikulski is in the wind. We’ve left messages for her and cannot find her. The location Father Pete gave us was a bust.”

I made my voice placating. “Fine. So is there any harm in my attempting to talk to her about Ernest? She’s a fellow CBHS parent, and I saw her son get his nose whacked when a kid opened a locker. Maybe I just want to check up on him.”

Boyd shrugged, wiped the now-clean pan, and put it away. “Ready for a trip to the ladies’ room, Yolanda? You want Ferdinanda with you?”

“Naw, she’s okay with just you there,” said Ferdinanda, waving toward the dining room. “I only get in the way. Just wait outside the door till she’s done.”

Yolanda scraped her chair back, then put her arm around Boyd’s wide shoulders. He delicately lifted her around the waist and carried her into the adjoining room.

“Listen,” hissed Ferdinanda. “I gotta talk quick. I told Yolanda she can’t go tonight to Humberto’s, on account of her burns.”

“I figured—”

“But I’ve been thinking,” Ferdinanda interrupted. “Maybe it’s not Kris doing all this. Maybe Humberto’s the one who put that broken ’lectric skillet in the Breckenridges’ kitchen.”

“Why would you think—”

“Humberto came over,” Ferdinanda said, interrupting me again. “To the rental, after Yolanda lost her job at the spa. He said he wanted to help her. She said she didn’t need him. Right after that, our rental burned down. Humberto came back. He took Yolanda aside, said he wanted her to spy on Ernest—”

“We know this,” I said. “Humberto paid her seventeen thousand bucks, which burned up in the fire. And by the way, what are you going to do without that money? Rorry Breckinridge gave me four thousand in cash for you—”

“Let me finish, Goldy!” Ferdinand said, interrupting. “So Yolanda took Humberto’s money, and we moved in with Ernest. But Yolanda liked Ernest so much, she didn’t do it. Spy, I mean. So she told Humberto she was reneging on the deal and that he could have his money back. He was furious!”

“Have you told Tom—”

Ferdinanda waved this away. “I told him last night. But when I got onto the cot, I was thinking, maybe Humberto burned down the rental, and maybe he paid someone to burn down Ernest’s house. Yes, to destroy the files, but maybe to destroy Yolanda. And maybe he sabotaged that kitchen last night, too. As punishment, for not doing what he wanted. That would explain why whoever burned down Ernest’s house waited until Yolanda was back there. It would explain the hot oil accident. If you saw what I saw in Cuba? You would say, ‘It could happen.’ ” From the dining room, Yolanda called for Ferdinanda. “Listen, I want to go shop for groceries today. Alone. Boyd will help me get into Yolanda’s van.”

I said, “That’s a very bad idea. Why don’t you tell me what we need, and I’ll do the shopping—”

Ferdinanda shook a gnarled finger at me. “Don’t you try to stop me! I’ve got my baton. I can take care of myself! If I want to shop, I’m gonna shop.” She wheeled smartly away.

“For God’s sake,” I said to the air. I felt the same blankness I’d felt in bed the night before. Tom had checked out Humberto’s alibi for Ernest’s death and the two fires, and Humberto was in the clear, even if the guards were more blitzed than fraternity boys at Mardi Gras. Lacking an eyewitness or some forensic evidence that pointed to Humberto, this theory of Ferdinanda’s was dead in the water. Still—

“Mom?” said Arch. He had entered the kitchen so quietly, I hadn’t noticed. “I’m sorry I got angry this morning. I’m just bummed out, with Yolanda getting hurt so badly at your dinner last night.”

“We’re all bummed out, hon—”

“Look, I have to go. Tom said I could drive the Passat, and that the tires were okay. Boyd’s going to watch me back out.” He handed me a slip of paper. “This is Lolly’s cell phone number and address.”

I stared at the piece of paper in my hand. “How in the world did you get this?”

Arch rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “I entered ‘math tutor Aspen Meadow Colorado’ into Google, and she was the first name that popped up. I’m surprised she’s here, though. She was the first person to get into MIT from Elk Park Prep in a long time. She should be back there now.”

“I don’t know why she’s here. But thanks, Arch. Listen, one more thing. Could you send her a text from your phone, asking for an appointment today at”—I glanced at the clock—“ten? Say you’re having trouble with calculus and was wondering if she was free.”

“She’s going to wonder why I’m not in school.”

“In the message, tell her you have the day off from the Christian Brothers High School, but you have a calc test tomorrow.”

Arch exhaled impatiently but maneuvered his thumbs at light speed to send the text. “Lolly’s smart,” he said when he was done. “She’s going to know it’s you.” He glanced at his cell. “Oops, here she is. She says she’s full up with tutoring clients, sorry.”

“Tell her you’re desperate and that you’re coming over anyway.”

Arch shook his head. “She’s going to know it’s you.” But again his thumbs flew. A nanosecond later, Arch showed me her reply: “Tell yr ma 2 go f herslf.” Well, great. From behind me, Arch said, “You know, Mom, you could call her, to let her know you want to see her, or that you’re coming over, or whatever. You keep this up, I’m going to be late for school.”

“Not to worry, kiddo, you can go. And thanks for—”

But Arch was already gone. He still had that ability to appear and disappear silently.

Which was what I was going to do, I thought as I put my own dishes and flatware into the dishwasher. Or at least, that was what I had wanted to do: to show up at Lolly Vanderpool’s without making any noise. I hadn’t planned on letting her know that I wanted to see her, or come over, or, as Arch would say, whatever.

Still. Apparently, she already knew I wanted to see her. I would have to think of some way to win her over, some way that did not involve surprise. I would, in investigator parlance, need to find a way to flip her.

Fifteen minutes later, Boyd stepped onto our porch and looked in both directions, then carefully scanned the area across the street. For a few moments, he glared at the house I still thought of as Jack’s. There was no sign of Kris Nielsen, his Maserati, or his girlfriend.

“I’m walking you to your van,” said Boyd. It was not a suggestion. He wore his service weapon outside his clothes, just so anyone watching would get the hint. I couldn’t remember any time I’d ever had an armed escort.

“Thanks,” I said as I stepped into my van a few moments later. “Listen, Ferdinanda wants to go shopping today. She’s adamant.”

“Christ, you women,” said Boyd. “I’ll try to talk her out of it. But I’m staying home with Yolanda,” he said, his gaze on the street. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep the security alarm on.”

“Okay, good. And here.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the wad of bills Rorry Breckenridge had given me the night before. “This is from Rorry. It’s to cover any extra bills Yolanda might have.”

Boyd stuffed the cash in his front pocket. “Anybody snapping pictures is going to think we’re doing a drug deal.”

“Oh, don’t get paranoid on me.”

I thanked him again and scooted my van in the direction of the inexpensive Aspen Meadow apartment building indicated by the address Arch had scribbled. I had a moment of panic: What if Lolly wasn’t there? If she was Humberto’s girlfriend, wouldn’t she be living with him? Somehow, I didn’t think Lolly Vanderpool was Humberto’s girlfriend. Clearly, neither did Arch.

Like all the other vehicles out that day, my car splashed through waves of water and slush. On Main Street, tourists who’d come to see the aspens turning yellow delicately picked through the blackened walls of snow the plows had churned onto the sidewalks. Unfortunately for these visitors, a major early snowstorm stripped most leaves from our deciduous trees. Town merchants who made big bucks off aspen-leaf-shaped pendants, earrings, and charms were not going to be happy.

Nor was I happy when my van encountered a bank of snow at the far entrance to Lolly’s apartment building. Any plans I’d had to slip surreptitiously into a parking space were for naught. I drove around to the other entrance, slid into a spot, and hopped out.

I glanced up at the windows that overlooked the lot. Lolly’s apartment was on the fourth floor. Was she watching me, or was I becoming delusional?

Rock music echoed through the door to her apartment, which I had reached via an ice-glutted outdoor staircase. It was not the kind of building to have a doorman, or even keys to the hallways, but each door did have an eyehole. When Lolly did not answer, I pounded on the door. A slippery sound indicated someone approaching. And then she must have reached the peephole.

“Aw, shit, I knew it!” her muffled voice exclaimed.

“C’mon, Lolly, let me in,” I called through the door. “I really, really need to talk to you. It’s about a friend of mine who was killed.”

After a moment of throwing bolts, she opened up. Instead of the blond wig, she had a severe pageboy that she’d dyed black with blue streaks. She wore an MIT sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off and faded, threadbare jeans. I blinked. And then she really surprised me.

She opened her eyes wide and said, “I didn’t know Ernest McLeod was a friend of yours.”

I swallowed. “May I come in?”

She said, “Crap.” But she pushed the door open anyway and headed into her small living room.

The place was spartan and meticulously clean. A faded orange garage-sale rug adorned the brown linoleum floor. A small, sixties Danish-style sofa, covered with a wrinkled bedspread of much-washed madras, had been pushed against one wall. In front of the couch was a glass-topped coffee table that might have come from the same garage sale. Against the other wall were two mismatched chairs, one wicker, the other a maple ladderback. A large chipped black desk, red desk chair, plus a variety of old wooden bookshelves took up the rest of the wall space. A laptop, a cell phone, and a neat pile of sheet music sat pristinely on the desk. No musical instrument was in evidence.

I craned forward to read some of the titles on her bookshelves. There were chemistry and math texts, plus a number of books on something called string theory. I had a vague notion that this fit somewhere into the realm of quantum physics, although where, I’d been told, the quantum physics people couldn’t exactly say.

In this as in all else, Lolly had her own strongly held opinions. For the clutch of string theory volumes, in the place where a Library of Congress number would be, Lolly had made her own labels. On one: Crap. On another: More Crap. (Apparently this was her favorite word.) For the theory of super strings, careful printing on the label read, Super-Dooper Crap.

“So how do you like my place?” she asked as she disappeared. “Before you answer that question,” she called, “tell me if you want some coffee. I’m trying to be a hostess here, even if you are an uninvited guest.”

I said, “I’d love anything caffeinated, thanks.”

The kitchen was actually a kitchenette, I realized, just around the corner from the living room. Lolly had covered the entrance with another madras bedspread, hung from a wire. Water ran and microwave buttons beeped. I could not imagine the reason for Lolly’s “new crib.” Once again, I perused book titles. Accelerated Calculus. Neurological Science. Hydronics.

Maybe she’d flunked out of MIT. Somehow, I doubted it.

The microwave beeped again, and Lolly reappeared, holding two cups of steaming instant coffee. “I know it’s not your kind of drink, but my espresso machine is on the blink, sad to say.” She handed me a chipped mug and offered a wry smile. “Just kidding, I don’t have an espresso machine. I don’t have any milk, cream, or sugar, either, sorry.” She looked around her cheaply furnished apartment. “You haven’t told me how much you like my place.”

“Lolly—”

“Sit down,” she said, interrupting me, using her free hand to wave toward the bedspread-covered couch. “Here’s what happened. I got a four-point-oh at MIT first year. Since I was on a full ride, my parents were thrilled. So was I. And . . . I celebrated a bit too much when I came home. Got a DUI right on Main Street, next to Frank’s Fix-It. How come nobody ever busts him for smoking weed? Well, he wasn’t driving. Anyway, with me charged with DUI? At this my parents were not thrilled.” She put down her coffee and ran her fingers through her black and blue hair. “First they refused to pay for my lawyer. Not that they would have had that kind of money anyway. But then they kicked me out of the house. So here I am, taking a semester off, ‘for financial reasons.’ ” Her black-painted fingernails hooked quotation marks. Her blue eyes pierced me. “I was lucky, though. A friend gave me a loan. I mean, what bank is going to lend money to a drunk scholarship student, right? With that money, I paid my lawyer, got new tits, and started to work for an escort service. I’m gradually paying back my friend—”

“Lolly—” I said again.

“You’re interrupting me, Goldy,” she scolded, wagging a black fingernail in my direction. “But still. That’s the end of the story of how I became Humberto Captain’s whore.”

I said, “Oh my God.”

“I know what you’re going to say, because I’ve heard enough of it from Father Pete.” She put her hand on her chest in mock seriousness. “ ‘You shouldn’t go from drinking to prostitution, Lolly!’ ” Her dead-on imitation of Father Pete’s voice and manner made me smile, even though I was trying to be serious. “At least,” Lolly said dolefully, “he’s still talking to me. Which my parents aren’t.”

“You have a nice friend, to have loaned you all that money,” I said conversationally as I leaned back on the couch.

“Why do you think I decided to open the door for you just now?” she asked. “I figure I owe you. This friend? He used to work for you. Julian Teller.”

I started at the sound of Julian’s name. I hadn’t seen him since Jack’s funeral. Julian had inherited a packet from his biological mother, who’d given him up for adoption, then tracked him down before she died. In spite of having money for the first time in his life, Julian continued to hold down jobs. He’d been going part-time to the University of Colorado while cooking at that vegetarian bistro in Boulder where the owner took August off. The restaurant had survived the recent downturn, thank goodness. When Julian had told me this, he’d also insisted that I hire Yolanda to fill his place as my assistant. She needed the money and he didn’t, he said. So here was Julian again, reaching out to women with financial difficulties and asking nothing in return.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Lolly. “Julian shouldn’t have loaned me that kind of cash.”

“I was thinking no such thing,” I said huffily. “And if you’re so good at mind-reading, why aren’t you in Vegas?”

“I tried gambling,” she said matter-of-factly. She sipped her coffee. “But you have to have a team. If you’re going it alone, there’s more money in whoring.”

“Good God, Lolly.”

She squinted at me. “Hey, I’m trying to redeem myself here! I’m going to repay Julian. I’ll go back to school. My parents and I will eventually work things out.” She frowned and looked out the dirty living room window. “But Father Pete said I had to do more.”

“Do more?” I felt completely at sea. “Do more what?”

“Do good, Goldy! Jesus, wake up! How do you think I got involved with Ernest McLeod in the first place?”

“Because . . . Father Pete told you to?”

Lolly heaved a large sigh, as if my inability to comprehend her leaps in thinking were beyond her ken. She said, “As far as I know, Father Pete and Ernest don’t—didn’t—even know each other. But after our good rector gave me a lecture on doing something for the good of humanity or whatever, I said to myself, ‘The next person who comes to me for help—unpaid help, that is—I gotta do something for them.’ The next day, Ernest McLeod showed up at my apartment door. Just like you, except he didn’t pound on it and demand to be let in.”

“When was this?” I asked sharply.

“Couple of weeks ago. He’d sorta been watching Humberto for some clients—”

“The Juarezes.”

“Those people who were at the party last night? That man who confronted Humberto? Omigod, I figured they must be. . . . But no, Goldy, Ernest didn’t tell me their names, and I didn’t want to know. So Ernest had seen me with Humberto. He’d followed me. When he came here, he talked about how Humberto had stolen a big whack of dough from these people, or rather, from the man in the couple. Ernest said it wasn’t actually money, it was gold and gems. I didn’t believe him until he showed me a picture of a diamond necklace that had belonged to the guy’s mother. It was from a photo in a Havana nightclub, and the newspaper was all yellowed and raggedy, plus it was in Spanish.” Lolly paused, shaking her head. “But I could see the picture, and the necklace.” Lolly gave me another of her fierce looks. “I’d worn that frigging necklace, Goldy.” My throat turned dry. Lolly went on. “Humberto had loaned it to me to wear to a charity shindig we went to. We had sex in the afternoon, and afterward he told me he wanted me to wear a very special piece of jewelry to the posh dinner. He clipped it on my neck and said it had belonged to his aunt. Since he’d already told me neither his mother nor his father had had siblings, I thought, Duh, I just caught you in a lie, Humberto. So I believed Ernest’s story. And I decided to help him.”

Abruptly she stood and raced to the bathroom. I rubbed my arms, trying to get the feeling back in them. When Lolly came back, her eye makeup was smeared. Somehow I felt that she would be damned before she let anyone see her cry. After a moment she cleared her throat and again took up her story.

“So I said to Ernest, ‘What do you need me to do?’ He told me it wasn’t really legal. I said, ‘That’s okay, neither is prostitution.’ He smiled, you know? And then he said, ‘This’ll be prostituting yourself for a good cause.’ ”

I took a sip of coffee, now cold. I could hear Tom’s voice in my ear. If Lolly had engaged in an illegal search, then any evidence gleaned from that search would be tossed out of court. Still, if all this helped lead to Ernest’s killer . . .

Lolly said, “Ernest told me Humberto didn’t have a safety deposit box, ’cause he’d been following him for weeks, like a Rocky Mountain tick stuck to his skin, he said. And Humberto had never once gone to a bank. But Ernest had followed Humberto to New York City, to Forty-seventh Street, to be exact. The Diamond District. And that’s where Ernest found out Humberto sold a couple of diamonds. So, Ernest said, he was convinced that Humberto got them from somewhere in his house. Ernest asked me to look around for a safe. I did. There wasn’t any safe, at least not then, but I’ll get to that. For Ernest, I looked under pictures, tapped on the floor, checked the backs of closets. Stuff like that. I’m no investigator, but I couldn’t find anything remotely suspicious. I’m not talking about the necklace. That was different; he kept it in a jewelry box, the dummy. But a cache of gold and gems? No.” She shook her head again. “One thing’s for sure. Humberto is not the brightest bulb in the box. So I was sure I’d be able to find the rest of what Ernest was talking about, since I am a pretty bright bulb myself.”

“You’re a supernova, Lolly. But are you telling me Humberto doesn’t have a safety deposit box and doesn’t have a safe?” I asked, incredulous.

When Lolly shook her head, the black and blue hair moved like wings. “Not that I could find. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s not in some place I didn’t find. All he has is his place. But the house does have security. There are two sets of codes, one for the front gate, one for the house itself. Of course, the third time I went over there, I opened my compact and used the mirror to watch him enter the codes, and I memorized them. What you learn in Vegas does not stay in Vegas. Anyway, I watched him do this several times. And Humberto is too stupid or too lazy to realize you need to change the codes from time to time. Furthermore, I’d done enough nose-powdering for him to think I only cared about my appearance. Not only that, I’d faked enough orgasms for him to think I was only in our relationship for the sex. When he paid me, he always said, ‘This is for you to buy yourself a little something.’ I always acted surprised and grateful.”

“Two sets of codes, and that’s it?” I still couldn’t believe what she was telling me.

“No, no, no, that is not it. As I said, there was no hiding place that I could find. But Humberto has his four cars, and his office building. He also has three thugs who guard his house and grounds. They’re all Spanish-speaking, and I don’t speak Spanish.” She sighed. “I did tell Ernest about the necklace, and that it was kept in an unlocked jewelry box. I felt terrible admitting I hadn’t been able to find the cache of stolen stuff Ernest insisted must be there. So I searched again. I went through the bureaus one more time. The closets. I scoured the cars. I looked in the freezer, under the mattress, and in every item of Humberto’s clothing. I checked the seams on all the pillows and upholstery. There was nothing handmade or hand-sewn. While Humberto slept and the guards drank themselves silly out in the gatehouse, I went through every box in the basement and the attic. One day I even took the toaster apart. No diamonds. I figured all I had to say if I was caught was that I’d lost something.”

“But that didn’t happen,” I said.

“Nope.”

I said, “Damn it. But why did you get upset a while ago? It’s not your fault that Ernest was killed.”

“Just let me finish my story, will you, Goldy? I want to get through this. Next time Ernest came over, I told him I’d failed. He said he had a new plan and gave me some of his temazepam. Know the drug?”

“Sleeping pills.”

She pointed a black-painted fingernail at me. “Correct. He asked me to open up the pills and sprinkle the powder into new bottles of the guards’ rum. He said to pour a little rum out of each bottle first, so it would look as if the guys had started drinking them and just forgot they’d opened them. Ernest assured me the dose I was putting in wouldn’t be enough to kill the guys.” When she shrugged, the torn-out neck of her sweatshirt fell off one shoulder, revealing the ratty strap of a bra. She pulled the sweatshirt back into place and went on. “The guys kept their bottles of rum in the refrigerator, so I knew I could do it. Ernest asked for the security codes, and I gave them to him. He also furnished me with a disposable cell and told me to call him the next time Humberto and I were going out on a date. That’s what Humberto always calls them: ‘dates.’ What a joke.”

She rubbed her eyes. I waited.

Finally, she said, “So then Humberto invited me to the opera. He always wanted to show me off to people, like he was such a stud, he’d been able to land a young girlfriend. And he wanted to appear cultured. Yeah, like yogurt, I always thought. Anyway, when he was on his way over here to pick me up, I called Ernest. Then I put the phone into my purse, to throw away at the opera, the way Ernest had told me. When I told Humberto I needed to stop at his place for a jacket I’d purposely left there, I threw away the guards’ open bottles of rum and put the doctored ones in their place.”

“Then what?”

“Down in Denver, I tossed the cell, the way Ernest told me. When the opera was over, I was so nervous we’d surprise Ernest while he was robbing the house, I told Humberto the music had moved my soul. I wanted to make love in the car. He complied.” She ran her hand through her hair.

“And when you got back to Humberto’s house?”

“The guards were all fast asleep. Humberto woke them up, yelling at them like there was no tomorrow. He insisted they search the house. That’s when they discovered the missing necklace.” She sighed. “Humberto called an ambulance for the guards. Then he phoned the police. But I think he was afraid of getting caught telling them about a piece of jewelry he had stolen being stolen, so he clammed up. As soon as the cops left, those son-of-a-bitchin’ guards hollered that I had to be the one who had stolen the necklace.” She lifted her chin, indicating the tiny apartment. “They came over here and tore the place apart.” Her right hand patted the couch. “I had to put this bedspread over my sofa, because they ripped through the old fabric, looking for the necklace. They went through the trash, inside my apartment and out in the parking lot, so I was glad I had dumped the cell in Denver. Then the assholes broke into my parents’ house and ransacked it. But wait, this is the good part.”

“There’s a good part?” I said faintly.

“My mom and dad get back from a church meeting? They surprise the guards. My dad blocks their car in our driveway. He calls the cops on his cell, then takes a crowbar out of his trunk and treks to the front door to threaten whoever’s in the house. So much for ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’ ”

“Oh my gosh, Lolly—”

“Next thing I know, Humberto’s tooling over there, with me beside him. He’s giving my parents five K in cash, in exchange for them saying the guards were their friends who’d come to a party on the wrong night. No charges were brought. Arrests or no arrests, I was furious and told Humberto he had to give me money for new furniture and tell the guards to leave me alone. Otherwise, he could find himself a new”—she hooked her fingers to indicate quotation marks again—“ ‘girlfriend.’ ”

“Good Lord, Lolly.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “The guards backed off. Humberto gave me ten thousand dollars, do you believe that? I called Julian, told him I’d come into some cash, did he want part of his money back? He laughed and said he’d take repayment after I got my degree and a jobby-job. So I bought this spread and those two chairs”—she pointed across the room—“at the Aspen Meadow Secondhand Store. My bank account got fattened up, and Humberto and I got together.” She stopped, and I waited while she summoned the will to tell me the next bit, which I knew was coming. “Next thing I knew, Ernest McLeod had been shot and killed.”

She rubbed her eyes furiously to keep herself from becoming upset. When she finally began to weep, I figured it was better just to let her have her cry.