Crunch Time

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