Crunch Time

2

I dropped my knife. Ernest McLeod was dead?

“Wait,” I said.

Yolanda did not wait. She bolted for the bathroom again, where she turned on the fan.

Tom slumped into one of the kitchen chairs. I raised my eyebrows at him, but he just shook his head.

John Bertram rubbed his temples. After a moment, he crossed his thick arms. He started to say something, then ducked his chin and choked up. I picked up the knife, tossed it into the sink, and handed John a tissue.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

John shook his head once, wiped his face, and stuffed the tissue into his pocket.

“Tom?” I said. “How did Ernest die?”

“He was shot.”

I said, “Are you arresting Yolanda? Let me just say, she loved Ernest. She was telling me—”

“Goldy,” Tom asked, his voice gentle, “would you please stay out of this?”

“No,” I said. “And if you aren’t arresting her, you cannot make her go with you.”

We were all quiet for a few minutes, except for Yolanda, who again was sobbing. I washed the knife and my hands and looked at the tomatoes. But I couldn’t concentrate.

Our bloodhound scrabbled at the back door. Desperate to have something to do, I covered the food we’d been working on, except for the bread, pork, and tomatoes, which were still rising, roasting, and awaiting slicing. I put the wrapped dishes into the walk-in, then let Jake in. He snuffled wildly around John and Tom, then cocked his ears when he heard Yolanda crying. In sympathy, the dog again started to howl.

“Jake, be quiet!” I hollered.

Jake shushed, but raced to the bathroom door and started scratching on it. Tom and John waited.

I didn’t know what to do. Finally I washed my hands, picked up the knife, and began slicing the tomatoes again. “Is somebody going to tell me what is going on?” I asked, impatient.

Tom nodded at John. John said, “Near as we can tell, Ernest was killed less than a quarter-mile from his house. Our guys are combing the scene, which isn’t far from my, from our”—he choked up again, then composed himself—“property line. Ernest must have been . . . I don’t know, walking into town, hiking. . . . Our house is about a third of a mile from his, just above the back entrance to Aspen Hills.” John crossed his arms again. “That section of Aspen Hills is pretty deserted, because most folks don’t know about that way in, and if they do find it, they usually give up, because the road winds a bit.”

I thought of Yolanda saying strange cars had been driving by and slowing down. Had she gotten a license plate?

John swallowed. “Ernest has, had, fifteen acres. I bought a couple of lots below his, so I could build our house and a big garage to work on my cars and trucks. There’s a whole field of boulders just above the garage, below the forest service road. I didn’t want somebody coming in and blasting, then putting in a house. . . .” He paused and, without embarrassment, tugged the tissue from his pocket and wiped tears from his eyes. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”

“How has Yolanda seemed this morning?” Tom asked me.

“Her ex-boyfriend is driving her nuts. Plus, she was scared of Ernest’s clients. She’s a wreck.”

“A wreck, huh?” Tom said. “You think it’s because of the clients or because of the ex-boyfriend?”

“I don’t know. She’s just nervous. As I told you before, she doesn’t have any money and she has to take care of her great-aunt. Any one would be a catastrophe.”

“I suppose,” he replied. His green eyes regarded me thoughtfully. “I do think she has money, though. We found seventeen thousand dollars, cash, under a mattress in the guest room at Ernest’s house.”

“Seventeen thou— Wait. You searched a guest room when it was obvious someone was staying there?” I asked. “Did you have a warrant?”

“Miss G.,” said Tom, “don’t start. And don’t mention it to Yolanda, please. We know it’s inadmissible, if it comes to that. I’m just telling you, she has money. We were looking for a weapon. And anyway—” Before Tom could elaborate on one of his favorite topics, which was that people should never keep valuables in the freezer, the back of their closet, or under their mattress, because those were the first places someone looking for weapons or valuables would search, Yolanda returned to the kitchen. She clenched a handful of tissues.

“Yolanda,” Tom said, his voice kind, “please come with us down to the department, just to answer a few—”

“I can’t,” she said firmly, lifting her chin. “Aunt Ferdinanda is at the church, and I told the monsignor I’d pick her up at five. I have to . . . I want to . . . I mean, if Ernest is dead, then his friends need to be called, and then I . . .” Words failed her. After a moment, she said, “I should finish with Goldy, then get Ferdinanda, then go back—” Her mouth hung open and she blinked. Then go back where? She straightened with newfound resolve. “I have to go back to Ernest’s to take care of his puppies.”

“His what?” I said. Yolanda hadn’t mentioned any puppies.

Tom gave me a be-quiet look. “Yeah, we saw all those dogs.” He didn’t elaborate, but seemed to be considering Yolanda. “Okay, look. We won’t make you go down to the department. But we need to ask you some questions.” He pulled a recorder out of his pocket. “And I need to tell you, anything you say can and will be used against you . . .” By the time he’d finished the whole Miranda speech, I thought I was the one who was going to run to the bathroom.

“I have nothing to hide,” said Yolanda, lifting her chin.

Tom tapped the recorder. “I need your permission to use this.”

Yolanda looked miserable again. She used a tissue to wipe her face.

I pressed my lips together and said, “Yolanda, please remember what Tom said. You don’t have to tell them anything. You can ask for a lawyer. These things are important.”

Tom said, “Goldy? Do you mind?”

Yolanda shook her head. “Sure, go ahead with the recorder.” She made a point of glancing at the clock, which read five to four. “I just have to, you know, get Aunt Ferdinanda. On time,” she added.

Tom started the recorder and spoke into it, the usual drill of who was there, where we were, and the date. Then he pulled out his own notebook, as he distrusted technology. “We found nine beagle pups at Ernest McLeod’s house. Where did he get them, Yolanda?”

Yolanda rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know. The dogs were part of a case he was working on. A woman wanted a puppy mill closed.”

“And how long had Ernest had these dogs?” Tom asked.

Yolanda said, “I, uh, how long? Let me think.” She paused to compose herself. “He got them, let’s see, today’s Sunday . . . he brought them home late Friday night. He said they were important to the case,” she repeated, her voice becoming distant. “Saturday morning, before he left for the dentist, he showed me how to feed them, give them water, and clean up the room where he’d put them. He said it was important, if he was ever away, and couldn’t . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Tom said, “And you have no idea where he got them, or why he picked up nine of them?”

“I don’t believe this,” I interjected, which brought another fierce look from Tom. I thought, Who needs nine puppies for an investigation? And picks them up at night? And why get nine, instead of, say, one?

“I told you,” Yolanda said, her voice bleak, “it had something to do with one of his cases. He was helping a lady who thought there was a puppy mill in Aspen Meadow.”

There was quiet for such a long time in the kitchen, I thought Tom and John were waiting for Yolanda to say something more. But she didn’t, and I knew better than to open my mouth again. Instead, I convinced Jake to go back outside. The meat thermometer beeped, so I brought the pork out to rest, then washed my hands and set the risen Cuban bread in the oven. I finished slicing the last of the heirloom tomatoes. Their juice filled the gutters of the cutting board.

“Yolanda,” Tom said at length, “do you own a gun?”

I looked up in time to see Yolanda blushing deeply. “No,” she said. “Of course not.”

“Why of course not?” Tom pressed. “When you were living in your rental, you made a sheriff’s department report that someone was looking in your windows.”

In the silence that followed, I urged Yolanda, “Tell him about Kris.”

Yolanda’s voice was flat. “Kris Nielsen is my ex-boyfriend. He has a house in Flicker Ridge. Ferdinanda and I were living with him until a few weeks ago.” She exhaled. “He knows how to shoot. He told me so.”

Tom said, “He keeps a gun?”

Yolanda said, “Yes.”

“You’ve seen it?”

Yolanda nodded in despair. “He insisted on showing it to me. I think he wanted to scare me. It worked.”

“Do you know what type of gun it was?” Tom pressed her again. “The make? The caliber? Where he keeps it?”

“Tom,” she said, “I don’t know any of those things. I’m not even sure that it was his gun.”

“This Kris, he’s dangerous?”

“I’d say so. He was a very possessive boyfriend. Since we broke up, he’s been driving me nuts. Calling and hanging up, driving his Maserati past the house where we used to live. Two times, my aunt and I glimpsed someone peeking in our windows—”

“Did you get a look at this person?”

She shook her head. “No. But we thought it was either Kris or someone Kris had hired. He has tons of money and can afford to hire people to do . . . whatever. I filed a report a couple of weeks ago, before we moved in with Ernest. The department should have it.”

“And did Kris drive his Maserati past Ernest’s house?”

“Not that we saw. But the past few weeks? There were strange cars driving past Ernest’s house.”

“Can you describe the cars?”

“One was silver, like a luxury car. It came past once, real slowly. But I didn’t get any license plates.”

Tom waited for her to say more. When she didn’t, he asked John, “Could you go into the other room and have one of our guys visit Kris Nielsen?” John disappeared into the living room while Tom turned his attention back to Yolanda. “Could you take us through your movements, starting with Friday night?”

So she did. Ernest had gone out around half past eight, when Yolanda and Ferdinanda were watching a rerun of a telenovela on Ernest’s basement television. Tom asked her which episode was on and what had happened. She gave him a wry look, thought for a moment, then told him. Tom wrote in his notebook. When the program was over, Yolanda rolled Ferdinanda into the guest bathroom and helped her get ready for bed.

John Bertram returned to the kitchen and flicked a glance at Tom. Tom asked Yolanda, “Do you know where Ernest had been that day?”

“Uh,” Yolanda said, again discombobulated. “Friday? He was off doing investigating. I don’t know if that had to do with the puppies or not. He came home, said he’d gotten some good pictures, and then I gave him dinner.” She seemed unsure whether to go on. Maybe she thought someone was going to ask what food she’d made for Ernest.

“On Friday night, you gave him dinner?” Tom said, prompting her.

“That was my job, Tom,” Yolanda explained testily, her eyes lit with defiance.

Tom shrugged. He did not mention the seventeen thousand bucks under the mattress. Nor did he bring up the people Yolanda hung out with, those folks he didn’t like. Instead, he stood and walked into the hallway with John. Yolanda avoided my gaze.

When Tom returned, he smoothly picked up his earlier line of questioning. “So, Ernest said he got some good pictures?”

“Yes.” Yolanda wrinkled her forehead. “He always kept his digital camera with him, in his backpack.”

“His backpack?”

“Yeah, he kept his cell in there, too.” Yolanda took a deep breath. “I never saw him go out without his red backpack.”

“He didn’t have a backpack with him. Just his wallet. Why would he carry a backpack?”

Yolanda said patiently, “He was trying to get more exercise. Whenever he would go out for a walk, he would sling it over his shoulders.” Yolanda made an impatient movement with her hands. “I don’t know, maybe he left the camera in his home office.” When she stopped talking, there was another one of those long silences that were making me so uncomfortable.

I felt myself beginning to fidget, so I offered everyone coffee, even though it was twenty after four. There weren’t any takers.

“Drink, then?” I asked. “As in wine or—”

“Goldy, please,” Tom said. Then he asked Yolanda, “What did you make Ernest for dinner Friday night?”

“Grilled swordfish.” Yolanda brushed her hair back from her face. “You can check the trash if you want. I also made him guacamole and put it on tomatoes. He liked that kind of thing, Tex-Mex, even though he didn’t eat very much.” Her brow wrinkled. “After dinner, he said he had to go out, but that he’d be back that night, hopefully with some dogs.”

“Were you surprised by his mention of the dogs?” asked Tom.

“Nothing about Ernest surprised me,” said Yolanda. A smile lit her face for a moment, then faded. “I did think he was kidding about the dogs. And then around midnight, he rolled up in his truck with a bunch of beagle puppies in cardboard boxes. I heard them yapping. In fact, they woke me up. Ferdinanda, too.”

“Where exactly did you sleep in the house?” Tom asked, although I was sure he already knew the answer. He wanted to get it on the tape. He was up to something, I didn’t know what, but I didn’t like it, and my protective instinct toward Yolanda again flared up. I gave Tom a black look, which he ignored.

“We were in the basement guest room, I told you. We had to use that because of Ferdinanda’s wheelchair. In addition to a little living room with the TV, there’s a small kitchen. Why?”

Tom said, “You want to tell me about the seventeen thousand in cash under your mattress in that guest room?”

Yolanda’s cheeks reddened again. She said, “No, I don’t.”

“Did you steal it from Ernest?” Tom asked mildly.

“No!” Yolanda cried. “I would never do that.”

“But you didn’t want to put it in the bank. Why?” Yolanda closed her eyes and shrugged. Tom went on. “I’m guessing it’s because anything over ten thousand in cash gets reported to the federal government, since it might come from a drug deal.”

Yolanda’s eyes flared. “I don’t do drugs, and I don’t do drug deals.”

“But you have seventeen thousand in cash,” Tom said. “Was it severance from the spa? Something like that?”

“The spa doesn’t have any money. I don’t know why you looked under my mattress. That’s invasion of privacy.”

“We were looking for the gun that killed Ernest. And you won’t tell us where the money came from.”

Yolanda stared out the window over the sink. A stiff breeze was churning the pine boughs. In our backyard, scarlet leaves of wild grass flattened themselves against flailing wands of gold, white, and pink yarrow. A gust of wind made the locks in the doors clatter.

“Why don’t you go on with your chronology,” Tom said finally.

“I will if you’ll stop interrupting me,” Yolanda shot back. When nobody threatened to jump into her narrative, she said, “I helped Ernest get the little dogs settled. He’d stopped to buy them chow on the way home, and together we brought in the bags from his truck. We gave the pups water, and—”

“When you went out to get the bags,” Tom interrupted, which made Yolanda roll her eyes, “did you have the feeling somebody was watching you? Did you see anything, any movement outside?”

Yolanda exploded. “When I’m outside, I always feel as if someone is watching me! I figure it’s either Kris or someone he’s hired to spy on me.” She paused, then went on. “Ernest knew this. That’s why whenever he came in, he opened his garage with the remote, drove inside, and then closed the door with the remote. He knew I was scared. He knew that wherever I went, I was being followed—”

“Hold up,” John Bertram said, actually showing Yolanda a palm. “Did Ernest actually see someone following you? Did he get a description, a license plate, or anything like that?”

“I don’t know,” Yolanda said, her voice despondent. “Goldy, may I take you up on that coffee? Do you have decaf espresso?”

“Sure.” Once more, I offered some to Tom and John, who shook their heads. I fixed Yolanda and myself decaf iced lattes.

“So,” Tom said, prompting her, “Saturday morning.”

“Saturday morning.” Yolanda exhaled and stirred sugar into her coffee. “We got up around seven, or at least, Ferdinanda and I did. She’s an early riser, because she worked in a French restaurant in Havana before Castro took over. Back then, it was her job to make breakfast and start on lunch. Anyway, the habit stuck, and I like to help her get ready for the day. The night before, Ferdinanda had made a bread pudding mixture and put it in our refrigerator. We always wanted Ernest to have breakfast, even if I was only hired to make dinners. So I got Ferdinanda through the bathroom routine and getting dressed. I rolled her into the basement kitchen, preheated the oven—how much detail do you want here?”

Tom said, “No detail is too small. Especially if Ernest was acting odd, or you saw something outside the windows, or Ernest said anything that caught your attention.”

Yolanda said, “I put the casserole dish into the oven and set the table. Ernest came downstairs, said it smelled great and that he’d be back in a little bit, after he took care of the puppies. He returned to the kitchen around, oh, eight? He washed his hands and had some of the pudding, which Ferdinanda announced needed more vanilla, cinnamon, and sugar. But Ernest said it was delicious. He wondered if the dentist would get after him for having it right before his appointment.” She shook her head. “At that point he went off to brush his teeth. His dental appointment had been changed to ten o’clock—”

“Changed?” Tom said sharply. “When?”

“I don’t know,” Yolanda said, taken aback. “He just said it had been changed. The dentist had somebody who could only come in on the day Ernest was scheduled. So Ernest’s appointment was changed from two weeks from now to yesterday, Saturday morning.”

Tom and John exchanged a look. Tom poised his pen over his notebook. “Do you know who his dentist was?”

“Yeah, I do,” said Yolanda. “I mean, I do now. Drew Parker.”

Tom nodded to John, who got up and went into the living room to use his cell.

“Go on,” said Tom.

“When Ernest didn’t come home in the early afternoon, the way he said he was going to, I called his cell. There wasn’t any answer. I left a voice mail asking him to call me.”

Tom asked, “When was this?”

“About two? Ernest always called me back. Always. After half an hour, I tried his cell again. There was no answer.”

John Bertram returned to the kitchen. To Tom, he said, “They’re searching for Parker.”

Yolanda looked feverishly at John. “When I couldn’t reach Ernest, I phoned your house! Didn’t you get the message?”

John shook his head. “My wife and I don’t answer our land line on the weekends. If the department wants me, they call on my cell that’s dedicated to that purpose.”

Yolanda closed her eyes. “I couldn’t reach Ernest and I couldn’t reach you. I just, I don’t know, I panicked. I thought maybe he’d been in an accident, maybe he’d been the victim of a hit-and-run, like Ferdinanda—”

My business line rang. Everyone looked at me, so I checked the caller ID. It was the Breckenridges, the hosts for the church fund-raising dinner Yolanda and I were doing Tuesday evening. Saint Luke’s, like every other charitable enterprise in Aspen Meadow, was hurting. Pledges were off, and the plate offering, according to our rector, Father Pete, was way down. Sean Breckenridge, the Saint Luke’s senior warden, had had the bright idea to put on a dinner for the well-heeled. Tickets had been sold to twelve parishioners, who’d ponied up a thousand clams apiece. Father Pete thought he’d died and gone to heaven.

I picked up the phone and went into the other room. “Goldilocks’ Catering—”

“It’s Sean Breckenridge,” our prospective host interrupted me. If he was going to cancel the dinner, for which I’d already bought the food, I would wring his neck, no matter what Father Pete thought of that particular crime.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “We’re still on for Tuesday night, yes?”

“Yes,” he said, but sounded tentative. Sean, fortyish, thin, with babyface good looks and dark hair, a lanky frame, and long fingers, did not work outside the home, although he’d been trained as an accountant. “Well,” he said, “we have a problem.”

“Problem, Sean?” I could just imagine his thin lips twisting as he spoke, his eyes crinkling at the corners, as if everything you said was amusing.

“I hear you have that Cuban woman working for you. The one with hepatitis C.”

My skin broke out in gooseflesh. “First of all,” I said testily, “Yolanda is an American citizen. She was born in this country, just as I assume you were. And she does not have hep C. Who told you that?”

“I heard it at the country club.”

“Ah. From whom?”

Sean cleared his throat and said nothing.

I yelled, “Who did you hear it from, Sean?”

He paused, taken aback. “I’d, uh, I’d rather not say.”

“I see. Well, Yolanda’s fine.”

“Will she be helping you on Tuesday night?”

“Yes, she will, unless you and Rorry want to come out into the kitchen and do the work yourselves.” According to Marla, Rorry Breckenridge was the sole heir of the Boudreaux Molasses fortune, but—wait for it, Marla had said—Rorry had never so much as baked a spice cookie. I very much doubted she’d be willing to stand in for hardworking Yolanda. And Sean? Forget it.

“I just want everyone to be comfortable,” he said. “I don’t want anyone to worry about getting sick.”

“The guests will be fine. Do you want me to make an announcement at the beginning of the dinner as to Yolanda’s health?”

“No, no.” He hesitated. “We had a call from someone who wants to come and bring a date. It’s not too late to add another couple, is it?”

“Oh, Sean, for God’s sake.”

“Is it all right or not? This couple is willing to pay double the thousand dollars a plate. The church could use an extra four thou, Goldy. Besides, Rorry’s table holds sixteen, so everyone would fit.”

“Who is this extra couple?”

“Why does that matter?” Sean asked.

I wanted to say, Because if it’s Kris Nielsen and another woman, you can cater your own damn party. As the silence between us lengthened, it became clear Sean was not in a sharing mood. “Oh, all right,” I said finally, wondering feverishly about the number of racks of lamb chops I had on hand. “But no more. Fourteen people, and that’s it.”

I thought he was going to sign off, but he said only, “Is your husband home?”

I was immediately wary. “Tom? Yes, why?”

“Does he . . . did he . . . know Ernest McLeod?”

“Let me give him the phone,” I said noncommittally.

But Sean hung up.

Well, now, that was interesting. I’d just found out about Ernest McLeod, and even if the news had been on TV, why would Sean call our house instead of the sheriff’s department? And most curious of all, why would Sean Breckenridge be interested in Ernest McLeod?

I stared at the phone.

Had Ernest been investigating Sean, and Sean had somehow gotten wind of it? Or had Sean Breckenridge been one of Ernest’s clients?

I returned to the kitchen, where the interview had apparently reached another stalemate. I wrote a quick note to Tom that Sean Breckenridge was curious about Ernest. He glanced at the note, nodded once, and mouthed, “Thank you.”

“I did call the sheriff’s department,” Yolanda said at length, her tone miserable.

Tom said mildly, “When?”

“I told you.”

“Tell us again.”

“When Ernest didn’t come home Saturday afternoon, which was when he said he was going to, and there was no answer on his cell, and no answer at the Bertrams’, I got worried. He had told me how much he was looking forward to the seafood enchiladas that I was making that night. And then he didn’t even give me a ring to say he’d be late? That just wasn’t like him. So that’s when I found out the name of his dentist—”

“Why?” Tom said sharply. “Why would you do that?”

Yolanda’s face crumpled into a look of helplessness. “God, Tom! Because he was late! Because I couldn’t reach him! Because Ferdinanda said he hadn’t looked well when he went out! Because I have a crazy ex-boyfriend, and Ernest had told me about these cases, and I thought . . . oh, I don’t know what I thought. And anyway, Ferdinanda was right, he did look weak when he left—”

“Weak?” Tom interrupted.

“I’m not a doctor.” Yolanda rubbed her eyes. “But I was making his dinners, and even though he said he loved the food, I told you, he didn’t eat very much. Then yesterday morning, he said, ‘I’m going to walk to my appointment, get some exercise.’ But he didn’t come back. We were scared he’d been hit by a car or something. So I went through his Rolodex. Drew Parker has an office just above Main Street, in that new office complex. You know the one? That whole new building above Aspen Meadow Dry Cleaners, Frank’s Fix-It Shop, and Donna Lamar’s old office?”

“I know it,” Tom said tersely.

“Frank’s Fix-It Shop,” muttered John. “The only thing Frank has fixed in the last twenty years is a joint he rolled himself.”

“I know!” said Yolanda. “Saturday afternoon, late? I went to Drew Parker’s office, looking for Ernest. There was nobody there. There was nobody at the dry cleaner, and Donna’s office is for lease. So I went into Frank’s Fix-It with a picture of Ernest, asking if anyone had seen him. Frank was so stoned, he just shook his head. He never said a word. And the place stank of weed. Why don’t you people bust him?”

John Bertram said, “Well, we—”

“Who called Ernest to change the dental appointment, do you know?” Tom interrupted sharply, with a cautionary glance at John. Let’s not get distracted here.

“I told you, by the time I got over there, nobody was at the dentist’s office.” Yolanda’s tone was bitter. “Parker’s the only dentist with an office right in town. So Ernest couldn’t have been going to another dentist. Not on foot. When Ferdinanda and I couldn’t find him, we went back to Ernest’s place. I phoned the emergency clinic that’s just outside of town. No one had been brought in. I called Southwest Hospital. Nothing.”

Tom pressed his lips together. He was watching her, as was John. Anxiety for my friend gripped my heart.

Tom said, “Go back to before you made those calls. What made you go out looking for him, if you were afraid of your ex?”

Yolanda said, “Ferdinanda was driving me crazy, saying, ‘We gotta go look for him.’ I didn’t want to go out.” Her dark eyes implored Tom. “I was afraid. So I tried to be logical. I thought, Maybe he’s found out something about a case and he’s pursuing it. Maybe he’s lost his cell. And Ferdinanda was saying, ‘Maybe he’s been hit by the same bastard who hit me. Maybe he’s slipped on all the gravel between this house and town. Maybe he’s unconscious in a ditch. We gotta go out in the van and look!’ ”

“You called Ernest. You went to the dentist’s office and Frank’s Fix-It. You came back and called the clinic, then the hospital. You didn’t think to call anyone else?” Tom asked.

“I told you both, I called John here, whom I hadn’t even met.” Yolanda turned toward John. “Ernest said he trusted you like a brother. And before you ask, Tom”—she directed her attention back to my husband—“I found the Bertrams’ home number in Ernest’s Rolodex, too.”

“Go on,” said Tom. “You called John. When did you drive out to look for Ernest?”

Yolanda shook her head, dismayed. “Around four? I loaded Ferdinanda into my van and off we went. I drove slowly. I told you, there was nobody at the dentist’s office and the guy at Frank’s Fix-It was wrecked. We came home and I tried to call the Bertrams again.” She gulped. “When Ernest still wasn’t home at midnight, I called the sheriff’s department. Since Ernest used to be a cop? They sent out a car, and the policeman took a report. Wait, I have his card.” Yolanda rooted through her purse, then pulled out a sheriff’s department card, which she handed to Tom. “The guy wrote down what I told him, and said maybe Ernest was working on a case. I told him Ernest would have informed us if he wasn’t coming back for dinner. And he would have taken his truck.”

Tom nodded. Presumably, he knew all of this already. He was testing Yolanda, asking the same details over and over, to see if she’d stick to her story.

John Bertram seemed pensive. “Did Ernest say anything to you before he left?”

“Nothing special,” said Yolanda. “I was doing the dishes. Ferdinanda was out on the patio on the lower level. That’s where she likes to sit, when the weather’s nice.” Yolanda gestured impatiently. “It was so she could smoke her cigars. Ernest would”—she pressed her lips together, then composed herself—“he would usually say a few words to her before he left. You can ask her.”

“We will,” Tom promised. He waited a beat. “Now, could you tell me if you knew whether Ernest had any enemies?”

“He had his cases, but he didn’t talk much about them.”

“Do you know if one of the people he was investigating had it in for him?” Tom asked.

Yolanda looked away. Not for the first time, I thought she was hiding something, or not telling the truth. Or something.

“Yolanda?” Tom said. “What was he working on?”

“Well, it would be in his files,” said Yolanda. “They’re in his study.”

Tom raised his eyebrows. “How do you know where his files are?”

“Because he called me in there once,” Yolanda replied, her tone steely, “and asked me to bring him a sandwich.”

“Did you ever open the file drawers, say, when Ernest wasn’t home?” Tom asked, his voice deadpan.

“Oh, Tom, will you stop?” Yolanda cried. “When Ernest worked at his desk, he sometimes had one of the drawers of his file cabinet open. It was a handmade wooden cabinet, really pretty, not one of those ugly metal ones. I asked him if he made the cabinet. He said that he had. He could build anything.”

“Did you open the file drawers when Ernest wasn’t home?” Tom repeated.

Yolanda crossed her arms. “I don’t remember.”

There was a silence. Tom gave John Bertram a small nod.

“So,” said John, “do you know what he was working on?”

Yolanda looked very tired. “I know a bit. Someone was running a puppy mill, I told you. A woman named Hermie needed Ernest’s help with proving neglect or some such thing. She’s an older woman.”

“Older?”

“Midforties, or maybe fifty, I’d say, but she looks sixty. She came over once, and I noticed she’s missing a couple of fingers,” Yolanda added. “I didn’t ask her what had happened to her hand. She did tell Ferdinanda and me that her son thinks she’s crazy, with her closing-down-of-puppy-mills crusade. She said her son didn’t want to hear her stories anymore. He said she cares more about dogs than she does about him.”

“You don’t know her last name?” Tom asked.

“No.”

“Um,” I began, but Tom held up his hand. I knew someone named Hermie. Hermie Mikulski was a tall, buxom, gray-haired woman. This Hermie did have a son, and he went to the Christian Brothers High School. But I was pretty sure she had all her fingers, because she ruled the Saint Luke’s Altar Guild with two tightly clenched iron fists.

To Yolanda, Tom said, “Anything else?”

“Ernest was working on a divorce case. I think there was a lot of money involved.”

“The people getting the divorce?” Tom asked.

“I don’t know,” Yolanda said dully. “There was another thing. Ernest was looking for something for someone. I don’t know the details.”

“You have no idea what he was looking for?”

“No. And I don’t know who the client was.” She glanced at the clock, which read ten to five. “I need to be leaving soon, to go get Ferdinanda.”

“Where is she again?” asked John Bertram.

“The Roman Catholic church. Our Lady of the Mountains. She’s at the monsignor’s house. She didn’t want to stay at Ernest’s place today, because he hadn’t come home, and she, well, she said . . .”

“She said what?” Tom asked sharply.

Yolanda rubbed her forehead. “She said Ernest looked very bad to her yesterday morning.”

“You already said that.” Tom prompted her. “Are you talking about health or something else?”

“Ferdinanda says these things sometimes. She believes in Santería.” I wondered how Tom was going to explain Cuban voodoo to his captain. Well, the captain could listen to the tape.

Tom asked, “Was there anything you saw that would make you think Ernest looked particularly bad?”

“His house frightened me,” Yolanda said.

“Yolanda!” Tom’s voice made me jump. “What scared you about Ernest’s house? Were you worried he’d discover the money under your mattress?”

Yolanda pressed her clutch of tissues to her eyes. When Tom tried to ask her another question, she just shook her head.

I said to Tom, “May I see you in the living room for a moment, please?”

Tom turned off the recorder. “Let’s take a break.”

Once Tom and I were standing in the living room, I asked, “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing to my friend?”

“Since she won’t go down to the sheriff’s department, I’m interrogating her here.”

“Yeah, well, they’ve discovered that torture doesn’t work, you know.”

Tom did not smile. “You stick to catering, and I’ll stick to interrogation techniques that I have used for years, and that do in fact yield results.”

“Why are you being so mean?”

“Mean? When I’m mean, Miss G., you’ll know. At the moment, I want Yolanda to tell us about Humberto Captain. His father, Roberto Captain, brought Ferdinanda, her brother, and the brother’s wife over on a boat from Cuba. The brother and his wife were Yolanda’s grandparents.”

“The Captains?”

“Roberto Captain was a good guy. His son, Humberto? Not so much.”

I groaned. “This is one of the people Yolanda hangs out with, that you don’t like?”

“This is the person,” Tom said. “Listen, I don’t for one second believe that Yolanda asked Ernest if she and her aunt could stay at his house just so they could clean and cook for him. I think the real reason she asked Ernest if they could bunk in with him was so that she could be paid by Humberto Captain to spy.”

“To spy on Ernest? Why? And what kind of guy has Captain for a last name?”

“Roberto’s original last name was something Spanish, but he legally changed it to Captain, because that’s what everyone called him, since he was the skipper of a boat that made frequent trips bringing exiles over from Cuba. Roberto, El Capitán, became Roberto Captain. Roberto’s dead now, but he ferried folks like Ferdinanda’s family to Miami, after they became disillusioned with Castro.” Tom tilted his head. “You don’t remember Humberto Captain’s picture in the Mountain Journal?”

“Remind me.”

“The paper did one of those quizzes, ‘Can you tell whose view this is?’ The first ten people who guessed right got five bucks. The next week, the paper would run a picture of the owner, sometimes with other people, in front of the view. One of those was the view from Humberto’s big living room. Then the next week, the picture was of Humberto, with his arm around a young woman, in front of the view.”

“Wait. What does Humberto look like?”

“Like a guy who stepped out of a casting call for Miami Vice. He’s in his fifties and is shaped like a Brazil nut, narrow at the ends and wide in the middle. He has orangey skin that looks as if he takes daily naps in a tanning bed. Is this sounding familiar?”

“Yes. I’ve seen him at parties I’ve done.” Humberto Captain’s shock of combed-back salt-and-pepper hair went well with the beige, yellow, and light blue tropical suits he wore—despite all the snow and mud we lived with in Aspen Meadow. The newspaper picture of him had made me shudder, and maybe that was why I’d blocked the memory. Humberto’s pale suit seemed to match the light window casement. His tanned skin looked bizarre. His pearly whites were more brilliant than the chandelier he’d been standing under. I asked, “What does this guy have to do with Yolanda?”

“Everything, I’m sorry to say. Humberto is a thief, and Ernest was working on the case. You’re going to have to let me tell you more about it later.”

“But you think Yolanda is working for Humberto?”

“Yes.” Tom ticked off the points on his fingers. “Ferdinanda is beholden to the Captain family for bringing her to this country. And Yolanda has covered for Humberto in the past. He had a big dinner for his cronies, including someone we were looking for, a smuggler. She catered it, but she would not say Word One about who was there, even when we showed her a photo array. We got the guy eventually. But Yolanda was singularly unhelpful.”

“Why would she act that way?”

Tom cocked his head at me and raised his eyebrows, his gesture when he thought I was being naïve. “She keeps saying how scared she is? I think she’s afraid of Humberto, Goldy.” He ticked off another point. “She won’t tell us where she got that cash under her mattress. Oh, and did she tell you why she had to leave her rental?”

“She was afraid of her ex-boyfriend.”

“Yeah, right. The rental house burned to the ground.”

“What?”

Tom shook his head. “Yeah, funny how she didn’t mention that, huh? The fire was set, as in arson, okay? Accelerant was all over the place. Luckily, Ferdinanda and Yolanda were at the doctor. And near the house? We found a green and yellow Unifrutco oil can, the kind the United Fruit Company used to store fuel for their vehicles. It’s also the kind of can Fidel and Raul Castro, and their people, filled with oil and dumped on the sugarcane fields of their American oppressors, before burning the cane to the ground.”

I stared at him. “You really can’t believe Yolanda burned down the house she was living in, can you? I mean, if Ferdinanda came over in a little boat from Cuba, why would she make sure to bring an oil can with her? And keep it all these years? That doesn’t make sense.”

“No, Goldy,” Tom said patiently. “We don’t think Ferdinanda in her wheelchair burned down a rental when she was at the doctor. But we do think Humberto burned the place down.”

“Why would he do that?”

Tom glanced at the kitchen door. “Our theory is that Yolanda wouldn’t play ball and go spy on Ernest, whom she was making dinners for. Ernest, for his part, was working on a missing-assets case I’ll tell you about later. That’s what he was looking for, that Yolanda is being so vague about. As a private investigator, not a sheriff’s department employee, Ernest wouldn’t have had to bother with intrusive things like search warrants. Yolanda was already involved with Ernest in the dinner-making enterprise, so Humberto Captain must have figured, why not get her to do more? Why not have her ask Ernest if she could live there with Ferdinanda? And why not tempt her with cash in the bargain?”

“But then—”

Tom held up his hand. “We think Humberto found out Ernest was onto him. Humberto may have had Yolanda lift the file, destroy evidence, who knows what. Then, we think, Humberto killed Ernest.”

“That’s just beyond—”

“Beyond what?” Tom asked. “Let me tell you, Miss G. You shouldn’t believe everything you hear from Yolanda Garcia.”