Crunch Time

by Diane Mott Davidson

  In the van, I checked my watch. It wasn’t even ten o’clock, but my stomach was rumbling. The Aspen Meadow Pastry Shop had survived the downturn, and I thought a buttermilk doughnut and a cup of brewed coffee would do the trick.

  I still hadn’t heard back from Hermie Mikulski. Then again, I hadn’t been expecting her to be checking her voice mail. On the way to my doughnut, I decided to leave her another urgent message.

  “Hermie Mikulski,” she answered briskly. Her gravelly, serious voice startled me.

  “This is Goldy Schulz.” I coughed to hide my surprise. “Sorry.” I maneuvered the van into a spot on Main Street not walled off with plowed snow. “My husband, the sheriff’s department, e-everyone,” I stammered, “we’ve been trying to reach you.”

  “Yes, well, I’ve been very busy, what with trying to keep this town safe for animals. Plus, my son’s nose is very bruised and swollen. He can only have soup, and I have to make it for him.”

  “So, you’re at your house? May I bring some homemade soup over to you and Brad?” I remembered the mushroom soup that I was planning on taking to the Bertrams’ house. I could go home and make a double batch—

  “No, thank you.” Her voice scraped my ears, and I cringed. “I am perfectly capable of making soup.”

  “I understand.” I tried to make my voice soothing, when in truth I was desperate to ask, Where the hell have you been? “Actually, Hermie, I’m calling because you said you were a client of Ernest McLeod’s, and he was my friend—”

  “Huh,” she interrupted. “I left a message at the sheriff’s department, saying Ernest McLeod was killed because he was in the process of helping me close down a puppy mill, which I am absolutely positive is hidden somewhere on the grounds of a legitimate breeding operation.”

  “When did you call the sheriff’s department?”

  She paused. “I reached your husband’s voice mail this morning.”

  “Did you tell him where this mill was?”

  “If I had known where the puppy mill was at that point, I would have told him. How stupid do you think I am?”

  At that point? What did she mean? Not wanting to scare her into hanging up on me, I said, “Actually, I think you’re very smart, Hermie. That’s why I called you. You’ve been staying away from home—”

  “I had been getting threatening phone calls,” she said. “You know, ‘Mind your own business, you eight-fingered hag,’ that kind of thing. I was scared.”

  I paused. “But why are you at your house now?”

  She didn’t say anything for a minute. Had she heard about Marla’s puppy being sick? I wondered. At length she said, “I came home to get some clothes this morning. Along with all the other messages on my machine, there was an anonymous one giving me a number to phone if I wanted the location of the puppy mill. I called and got directions. The tipster said I shouldn’t go right away, that I should wait until around ten. So I’m going out there as soon as I’m dressed. And no one is going to talk me out of it! The tipster also told me the puppy mill owner had a gun. The police don’t care and won’t protect me or the dogs. So I’m taking my own firearm.”

  “Hermie,” I said desperately, “please don’t—”

  “If you wish to join me, be at the Aspen Meadow Lake parking lot in fifteen minutes.”

  “Hermie, this is not safe for you. This is a very bad—” But she had hung up.

  I was less than five minutes from the lake. I called Tom, left a message on his voice mail saying I was meeting Hermie at the lake, that someone had told her the location of the secret mill on the grounds of a legitimate breeding enterprise. I asked him to please, please come, because Hermie was bringing a gun, which I’d already told her was a terrible idea. I sighed and hung up.

  What should I do? I wondered. I pulled the van out of the parking space and raced up Main Street.

  I was almost to the lake when I heard the vroom-vroom sound that had so upset Yolanda and Ferdinanda. I braked hard. Luckily, no one was behind me. On my right, on the snowy sidewalk, Harriet, the lovely, tall woman who had been Kris Nielsen’s date at Rorry’s party, had just opened the passenger-side door to a white Maserati. Kris’s Maserati. I squinted. She wore jeans, a black turtleneck, and a leather jacket.

  Where was she going? The Maserati pulled out in front of me, which gave me a chance to look hard on my right. The only thing directly on my right was the two-story building that had held Mountain Rents. A red and white FOR LEASE sign hung in the upstairs window. Below, on the main floor, was Frank’s Fix-It.

  Maybe she was going in to drop something off? I shook my head as the Maserati moved up Main Street. You could leave a broken article with the potheads at Frank’s Fix-It and it would be there for years, gathering dust and spiders as it deteriorated, and when you came back to claim it, they’d say they hadn’t been able to repair it, after all.

  I shook my head as the Mas made it through on a green light, while I got stopped by a red.

  A few moments later, the van was chugging toward the lake. At the ramp that led to Upper Cottonwood Creek Road, I turned left, so I could get to the parking lot in time to meet Hermie Mikulski. Hermie Mikulski drove a large beige van that was like mine, only newer. When she pulled into the parking lot, I jumped out of my vehicle and waved to her.

  Her window powered down and I hurried over. Hermie’s pale, wide face was heavily made up, but the foundation and powder did not conceal the dark circles under her eyes. Her short gray hair, curled in complex whorls, had not been brushed. She wore a purple silk dress, a string of large pearls with matching earrings that pulled down her large lobes, and a purple boiled wool coat embroidered with green crewelwork. She looked like she was going to a meeting of my mother’s New Jersey bridge club.

  The remaining fingers of Hermie’s left hand gripped the steering wheel. On the passenger seat lay a gleaming .22. This was not something you’d see at a bridge club meeting.

  “Hermie,” I said, my voice full of concern, “I just think it is a very, very bad idea for you to go out to this place, much less take a weapon. I’ve called the sheriff’s department and asked my husband to meet us—”

  “I don’t have time to wait for him. He’ll have to get a warrant and by then the breeder may have cleared out his mill kennels and hidden the evidence. Those puppies could die.”

  “But if you’d just talk to him first—”

  “Look, Goldy,” she said brusquely, “you don’t have to come with me. I invited you and I can disinvite you.”

  Damn it. When Tom was in a meeting or en route to a scene, he rarely checked his voice mail. “Where are you going, anyway?”

  Her powdered face broke into a wide smile. “Out by the Aspen Meadow Wildlife Preserve. My tipster told me how to get in the back way. You see, this man, the breeder, claims to have a legitimate operation. I’ve seen it. It’s a spanking-new red-painted barn that you can view from the dirt road that leads to his house. That’s what Animal Control sees when they come out. But according to the tipster, the mill operator has several sheds where he actually breeds puppies in the most deplorable conditions. Oh, that son of a bitch! I’m sure Ernest found the sheds, and then he was killed. But now my tipster has marked the precise way to get there!” She patted binoculars and a digital camera on the seat beside her. “I’m going to get the evidence I need.”

  “May I know where we’re going, please?” I asked. She shook her head vigorously and exhaled with impatience. “Hermie, please wait for the sheriff’s department.”

  “No, no, no.”

  “Please, please, please don’t take a gun out there. If this person is armed and expecting trouble—”

  “I know this person is armed, Goldy.” She wrinkled her brow. “That is why I’m taking my own weapon. And I know how to shoot, too; I took lessons. Nobody is going to deprive me of any more digits!” She glanced at a pearl-crusted watch. “Ten o’clock. Now, if you’re coming, follow me. Otherwise, go home and make soup.”

  Damn
it to hell, I thought as I jogged back to the van. Don’t people understand how dangerous firearms are? If One-Handed Hermie got into a gun battle with the puppy mill owner, I had no doubt who would win, and it wasn’t Hermie Mikulski.

  She drove fast, so fast her van slung itself from one side of the two-lane road to the other. Occasionally she crossed the yellow divider line. I prayed that a state patrolman would stop her, give her a ticket for speeding, and then notice the gun. He would take her down to jail, and that would be that.

  No such luck. Once we were several miles outside of town, I tried again to reach Tom on my cell. But fate wasn’t smiling on me then, either. We were out of range.

  I cursed silently when Hermie’s van zoomed past the sign indicating the Aspen Meadow Wildlife Preserve was five miles ahead. The road turned from pavement to mud mixed with gravel. Hermie’s tires sloshed through puddles and spewed up curtains of sludge and stones. To avoid having my windshield thoroughly spattered, I allowed my van to trail farther behind Hermie’s, and cursed her again.

  Our vehicles began to climb. The snow on either side of the road was deeper. Here and there, patches of sun-bleached grass dotted brilliantly whitened meadows that led up to hills thick with pine. Vistas of the ice-capped peaks of the Continental Divide appeared as the road rounded one hill, then another.

  My inner ear echoed with Tom’s words: I still don’t want you going out to the preserve. And Miss G., can’t I just ask you not to do something, and you don’t do it? And I’d said yes.

  Yet here I was, trying to follow crazy-ass Hermie Mikulski as she raced her van out to some godforsaken rendezvous with an armed puppy mill owner, in a place with no cell phone reception.

  Hermie passed the left-hand turnoff that I was almost positive had been the one Charlene Newgate had taken when she’d been driving ahead of me, the last time I’d been out there. I still suspected Charlene of lying about providing any recent employees to Drew Parker, DDS. But, why would she do that? Money? Maybe. But given the way she’d pulled her fur around her and the proud note in her voice when she’d talked about her “boyfriend,” I suspected another motive: love.

  About a mile beyond Charlene’s road, Hermie suddenly slowed and turned left. There had been no sign. A deeply rutted dirt road was lined on either side by thick woods. Occasional mailboxes indicated driveways that veered up out of sight. I didn’t see a single house. This was not a place where builders had ventured to build minimansions; those owners wouldn’t have been able to abide the difficulties of such a horrible dirt road. I surmised that we were in an area where there were a lot of summer cabins, not unlike the one Sabine Rushmore and I had gone through, although that one had had a fireplace and, presumably, some alternative kind of heat for the winter months. Once the first snows hit, the summer owners usually boarded up their places and headed south.

  The road itself became narrower, barely wider than a lane. Pine branches brushed the sides of the van. Only an occasional sun-loving aspen, its yellow leaves mostly stripped by the snowstorm, broke through the gloom. I felt like Gretel following Hansel. Problem was, we weren’t dropping stones to let anyone come after us.

  At a tree with a rope twined around it, Hermie turned left again, onto a bumpy path that was not wide enough for our vans. Her vehicle bucked and rocked over stones, undergrowth, ruts. Bile rose in my throat and my skin chilled. I fought a sudden urge to stop my vehicle, do a fourteen-point turn in the woods, and hightail it back to town.

  Before I could do that, though, Hermie abruptly halted. I braked too, and looked around. We were in deep woods. There was no discernible trail in front of us. I scanned the surrounding forest and again saw a rope tied around a tree.

  I am beyond pissed off, I thought, jumping from my van. I was going to stop this right now. I raced up to Hermie’s door, where I pushed hard to prevent her from opening it.

  “What are you doing?” she screamed through the glass. She’d been leaning down to her right and hadn’t seen my approach. “Move!” she screamed. Then she had the bright idea to buzz down her window. “Stop that this instant,” she hissed. “And don’t make any noise.”

  “We need to leave.” I looked down to where Hermie had been leaning. She’d moved things around: two pairs of binoculars, plus the digital camera, sat on the floor below the passenger seat, the seat that now held the gun.

  “Goldy, you are impeding my progress.”

  “That is exactly what I want to do. Hermie, we have to get out of here,” I said. “This is not safe. You followed the directions of some anonymous caller. How do you know this isn’t a trap? How do you know the owner of the puppy mill didn’t call you himself?”

  She picked up the gun and tapped the inside of her windshield with it. I practically jumped out of my skin.

  “Put that away!” I told her.

  “Look there, Goldy. Down through the woods. Use these.” She put down the gun, thank God, but used her good hand to pick up one of the pairs of binoculars and hand them to me. “Just below us is the shed the puppy mill owner uses to stow puppies in deplorable conditions. If you come all the way out here because you’re answering an ad for beagle puppies, you only see a nice red barn and a new shed the owner’s put next to the road. You don’t see that shed.”

  “How do you know about these deplorable conditions?” I demanded as I focused the binocs first on the shed in question. About a fourth of a mile up from it stood a red-painted barn and a newer-looking shed. Across a meadow from the suspect shed stood a sprawling one-story house. I refocused the binoculars. In the house’s driveway sat a dark sport-utility vehicle, its back gate open.

  When Hermie didn’t answer, I lowered the binoculars and stared at her. “How do you know?” I asked again. “Did someone have a sick puppy and complain?” I knew from Sabine that Hermie had said she’d gotten on this breeder’s trail owing to a concerned veterinarian. But I wanted to see if she’d give me any other information about this commando operation she was dead set on.

  Hermie’s mouth was set in a tight frown. Finally she said, “There’s a veterinary nurse I pay, here in town, to tell me about suspected abuse cases. She told me about the beagles after a puppy in bad shape came into their office. When Animal Control claimed they found no irregularities on the property and I couldn’t find anything out on my own, I hired Ernest.” She picked up the other pair of binoculars and stared through them. “Look now, will you? Check out the driveway. If the puppy mill owner is trapping us, why is he packing his car?”

  I trained the binocs on the house and the driveway. I tried to make out the Colorado license plate: BHG 223? Or 228?

  My skin chilled again when I saw a bald man. He looked to be about the right size and shape of the man who’d set Ernest’s house on fire. I couldn’t be sure, though. He disappeared and then came back into view carrying three suitcases, one tucked under his right arm, his hands carrying the other two. Trailing behind him was a woman. A sudden breeze made her pleas audible.

  “But why? Why won’t you tell me? What have I done? Are you just going to leave me here? Answer me!” It was Charlene Newgate. She wore the same fur coat she’d had on in the CBHS gym. “I love you!” She said his name then. Stony? Sony? Crony? “I love you so much, Stony!” she yelled. When Stony did not heed her, Charlene cried desperately, “I’ll tell the police! I’ll tell them everything! Everything you had me do—”

  Stony, the bald man, methodically put the suitcases into the open trunk. Then he turned with startling swiftness and punched Charlene in the face. She fell hard. The bald man said something inaudible down to her inert form. Charlene did not move and did not make any reply that we could hear.

  “You see!” said Hermie triumphantly. “You see how he even abuses people! What if he kills her? Like in the next few minutes? We have to go down there right now!”

  I was so stunned by what I had seen, so unnerved by what Hermie was saying, that she was able to push her door open. The force toppled me backward and I collapsed on top
of a small pine tree. I struggled to get balance, but found myself in a tangle of the binoculars and their strap, clumps of snow, damp earth, and pine needles. The needles were wet and shockingly cold. They pierced my cheeks and ears and snarled my hair. When I finally managed to stand, Hermie was plowing through the trees well ahead of me. In her right hand, she was holding her gun.

  I cursed under my breath, pulled the binoculars and their strap over my head, and tossed them into the snow. I struggled through the woods, but bushes, branches, and spills of rocks slapped my face and arms and made me stumble. Hermie seemed to be on an actual trail, while I was cutting one. I smashed through the undergrowth to find her footprints in the snow, then followed them. She was about twenty yards in front of me. How far was she going to go? The woods went down a slope that opened onto the meadow that led back to the house. I tried not to think of how a .22, at this distance, would not even hit the side of the closest shed.

  “Stop!” I called after her. “Just let him go! Hermie! You’re going to get hurt.”

  She paused and glared back at me. “Shut up!” she snapped. “He’ll hear you! Do you want that woman to be shot? Because that’s what will happen. And he’ll get away. That’s what always happens with these people,” she muttered, as if to herself, but I heard it anyway. Then she crashed onward at an even faster clip.

  My sneakers were soaking wet and I was panting. I made myself trot. I was trembling with heat and fright. For a large woman, Hermie was quicker than I expected. Maybe in addition to learning how to shoot, she’d been working out. My chest tightened with exertion. I prayed not to have a heart attack before I could stop crazy Hermie.

  Soon we were out of the woods and in the snowy stretch of open land. I was losing Hermie, who was wearing sturdy hiking boots along with her pearls, her purple silk dress, and her boiled wool coat. She ran forward, about half a football field’s length ahead of me. The tin-roofed barn lay the same distance from her. I cursed again and tried to pick up my pace.