Crunch Time

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “Goodness gracious!” Marla appeared at the kitchen door. “This is something I didn’t know! So, what did Humberto do for Donna Lamar?”

  “Brought her business up to a whole new level,” said Tom as he gently placed slices of cake onto gold-edged dessert plates. “Gave her that office rent-free for the first year,” he said, continuing as he scooped even spoonfuls of crème fraîche onto each piece of cake, “just so it would look as if someone was leasing the place. He said he was hoping that would attract more tenants. It didn’t.”

  “And you know all this how?” asked Marla. She plucked a fork from a drawer and began eating a piece of cake.

  “From Humberto himself,” said Tom as he placed a tray holding eight plates on his shoulder. “We talked to everybody after the fire at Yolanda’s place, to see if Donna could have set it. She owned the place and so was the beneficiary of the policy. We were thinking that if we dug into her financials, we’d find a debt on her own rent or something like that.”

  “And did you?” asked Marla breathlessly.

  “Tom,” I said, warning him. Did he really want any information he gave Marla fed into the town gossip machine?

  “Oh, this was all in our report, which we made public,” said Tom. “Goldy, can you bring sugar and cream with the coffee? I didn’t see any out there.”

  Marla blocked his way out of the kitchen. “Tell me what you found out about Donna Lamar and her finances. I’ve endured her singing her own praises this entire evening. I’m desperate for a dose of Schadenfreude.”

  “Let’s see,” said Tom as he placed his tray on a counter. “Schadenfreude, rejoicing in bad news about others. I’ll tell you what isn’t in the report but was a result of my male intuition, how about that? Donna has the hots for Humberto. He gave her that office rent-free, and she thought, I’ve found myself a meal ticket. But alas, Humberto’s taste doesn’t seem to run to women who are close to being his peers, that is, in their thirties, forties, or fifties, no matter how good-looking they are. Does that make you rejoice?”

  “Not really,” Marla declared. “I could have told you Donna was making a play for Humberto after the first five minutes of this party. Goldy, load me up with the rest of the dessert plates. I’ll take them out.”

  I obliged, then stood in the kitchen, thinking. The coffee wasn’t quite done, so I made a quick call to Southwest Hospital, to see if Yolanda Garcia had arrived safely. They wouldn’t tell me anything, so I paged Boyd. He called from outside the hospital. He said Yolanda was in the ER, waiting to be seen, which should be in the next five minutes. I asked if he’d called Ferdinanda, and he said he had.

  “Was she a wreck?” I asked, immediately worried.

  “Yes and no. She told me I should have arrested Kris Nielsen. She’s sure he did this.”

  “Tom didn’t even consider Yolanda the target. He thought maybe it was an attack meant for me or Rorry Breckenridge.” I felt suddenly queasy at the thought that Yolanda might have been the target.

  “I don’t know,” said Boyd. “I gotta go. They’re taking Yolanda back.”

  “Call me later!” I hollered into the phone, but he’d already signed off.

  Somehow, we got through the rest of the party. As soon as the last bite of cake had been downed, the Juarezes stood and told Rorry how much they had enjoyed the dinner. They hoped she and her husband would come down to their restaurant soon. I broke out in a sweat, just then realizing that with all the commotion, I’d completely forgotten to heat their enchiladas. They’d undoubtedly noticed, and I bumbled through an apology. They graciously said it was no problem, that I’d had my hands full with other things. Rorry assured them both that she loved Mexican food and would enjoy the enchiladas for the rest of the week.

  Marla piped up and said, “I’m claiming a few for myself, if that’s all right,” whereupon Father Pete said, “Me too!” and everyone laughed.

  At the beginning of the evening, Rorry had been adamant that the guests turn off their electronics. When Father Pete said he’d have to at least have his on Vibrate, in case a parishioner died suddenly, Rorry relented, but only for him. She hadn’t noticed when I’d used mine to take pictures of Odette, thank goodness. But hostess’s instructions or no, I always, always kept my cell phone on, in case Arch needed to reach me. He knew it, I knew it, and I didn’t care if anyone else knew it.

  In any event, once the Juarezes left, folks at the table pulled out their gizmos and turned them on. Soon all manner of beeping and buzzing caused people to start making their excuses, thanking Rorry and Sean, and leaving.

  In the kitchen, I wrapped Father Pete’s enchiladas up first, as he needed to get Venla home. Marla had been hot on my heels, eager for gossip as well as enchiladas, no doubt, but before we’d even started to chat, her cell phone began beeping urgently.

  “Damn it,” she said. “This is from my home phone. Penny came over to take care of my puppies, and hers, too. I’m paying her. . . . Hello?” Penny’s voice came through loud and insistent. “Calm down!” Marla yelled into the phone. “Start over!”

  “I’m telling you one of your puppies is sick!” Penny shrieked, near hysteria. “Really sick. I don’t know if she’s going to make it.”

  Marla unleashed a string of curses, then told Penny to call Twenty-Four-Hour Urgent Animal Care. Marla said she’d race right home to take in the ailing canine. “Tell Rorry to keep the enchiladas,” Marla said as she hurried out. “And tell her thanks, too. Good Lord, one of the puppies is sick and might not make it? My heart’s already racing. My cardiologist would say—” But then she stopped and gave me an anxious look. “Is this what it’s like to have children? You worry about them all the time? And then something happens, and you worry even more?”

  I said nothing, only helped her into her Mercedes and shut the door. As she maneuvered down the Breckenridges’ driveway, I whispered, “Yes. This is what worrying about your child is like.”

  So I called Arch, who was at home.

  “I’m here with Ferdinanda,” he said in a low voice. “She’s really upset about what happened to Yolanda.” He shifted to a whisper. “She says a guy Yolanda broke up with burned her. I don’t mean he stole money from her, he actually burned her. Is that true?”

  “We don’t know, hon. He wasn’t anywhere near the kitchen when the accident happened.”

  “Well, is Tom there with you?” He could not hide the anxiety in his voice.

  “Sweetheart, I’m fine.”

  “Is Tom with you?”

  “Yes. We’ll be home soon.”

  That worrying stuff? It worked both ways.

  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.”