Crunch Time

unwanted attention from law enforcement.

What Tom and the department theorized was that after Kris killed his mother, he didn’t need money anymore. He told Stonewall they should get out of the drug business. That was probably why Stonewall had been so upset when his partner had left the enterprise.

And then someone—probably Kris, the department again theorized—had anonymously turned in Stonewall, who’d been kicked out of veterinary school. Kris’s files revealed he had paid a lawyer to defend Stonewall, who’d gotten the light sentence. I can control you, Kris’s actions said. That control thing was the way his mind worked.

After Stonewall’s stint behind bars, he had bummed around for several months, not doing much of anything, according to Charlene. Charlene said when Stonewall drank or smoked dope, he would tell her these things. That Kris had met Yolanda and was crazy in love, but then she had dumped him. And then Kris’s real craziness had once again surfaced. He’d been obsessed with Yolanda, even though that obsession hadn’t stopped him from sleeping around. Yolanda had gotten a sexually transmitted disease. She’d confronted Kris, who’d flown into a rage and hit her with a broom. Yolanda and Ferdinanda had moved out.

Stonewall’s job for Kris expanded from trying to get rid of Ferdinanda—in June—to full-out stalking of Yolanda. The pages I’d taken from the files showed the payoffs to Stonewall, for surveillance, for looking in the windows of Yolanda’s rental and our house, for arson, and for murder. Stonewall’s bank account showed the exact amounts that Kris had paid him being deposited the next day.

Still, Stonewall hadn’t been able to stay away from the easy money of drugs. He had told Charlene that there was “money to be made” in the drug business, but she insisted he hadn’t told her about the puppies or the grow operation. He’d said, “You don’t want to know.”

Yet Kris had found out. He knew Marla’s puppy, rescued from a mill, had gotten sick. We’d gotten the news at the Breckenridges’ party. A dump of Kris’s phone showed a call to the veterinarian’s secretary. She said he claimed to be the puppy’s owner, wanting to know what had been taken out during surgery. She said she wasn’t supposed to say, because the veterinarian was calling the cops. Kris had driven over and, claiming he had adopted a sick beagle puppy, too, charmed the information out of her. She was so sorry, she told sheriff’s department investigators, she just felt so bad for an owner whose puppy had been spayed so a container of marijuana seeds could be smuggled inside. . . .

Stonewall Osgoode had told Charlene it was all over. His “partner,” as he referred to Kris, had fired him. He didn’t want him growing weed, because it could attract too much attention to the two of them. “After all I’ve done for him,” he’d grumbled to Charlene.

From us at the Breckenridges’ dinner, Kris had found out about Hermie Mikulski. His phone log showed he’d called her, to tell her about the puppy mill, to set her up to be there when he hid beside Stonewall Osgoode’s house until an opportune moment to shoot Osgoode. Kris had been hoping to frame Hermie for Osgoode’s death. More important, he wanted to keep the cops from associating him with Osgoode.

Kris had used the same gun that he’d loaned to Osgoode, when he’d hired Osgoode to shoot Ernest McLeod. Tom said Stonewall had killed Ernest, on orders from Kris, using a gun supplied by Kris, the same one Kris used to kill the gas station attendant, the same one he used a few days later to kill Stonewall Osgoode himself. All this was confirmed by the files I’d taken from Kris’s house . . . and the .38 they found beside Kris Nielsen.

Kris had used that same .38 to shoot a fellow grad student, who’d been working at a gas station outside of Fort Collins. That poor young man, Tom theorized, had seen Kris when he was driving back from Minnesota after killing his mother, by sweeping snow over the furnace exhaust pipe. The young grad student, working at the station, had probably accosted Kris, been glad to see him at that ungodly hour. Driving back from Minnesota days earlier than he later claimed, Kris had not wanted anyone to know exactly when he arrived back in Fort Collins.

“Such a waste,” Yolanda said. “So many people died so he could have money. And power over others. But . . . why couldn’t he leave me alone?”

That was the psychology of stalkers, Tom explained. They want their partner back, because without the partner, they don’t feel whole. A piece of them is missing, and they’re desperate to retrieve it. Father Pete had inadvertently given us the clue to Kris’s behavior when he’d talked about his support of Charlene all those years. He’d said the church is a safety net.

Kris hadn’t wanted Yolanda to have a safety net of any kind. That was the key to those papers with dates, letters, and figures that I’d taken from the file marked Miscellaneous. Kris had paid Stonewall to surveil Yolanda—“S.” Stonewall Osgoode, whose files revealed a receipt for a Unifrutco oil can, had burned down the rental. That was “B.” When Kris heard from Charlene that Ernest had left his house to Yolanda, he’d hired Stonewall to murder Ernest—“K”—then firebomb Ernest’s house, while she was in it, just so she would know he could find her anywhere.

In addition to Kris being killed, the big news from my searching the Bertrams’ garage was my discovery of Ernest’s red backpack. Inside was Norman Juarez’s mother’s necklace, a digital camera showing Sean Breckenridge and Brie Quarles in various clinches, and the pages he’d photographed from Kris’s files, which had set him on the track to find out about the suspicious death of Kris’s mother.

Everyone had a lot to thank Ernest for, we heard, when we had the delayed party to celebrate his life a week later. People in AA expressed gratitude for Ernest’s support. Norman Juarez, with the discovery of the necklace and the diamonds in Humberto’s chandelier, was now a wealthy man. The gold, Tom speculated—when Humberto refused to confess—was long gone, spent on Humberto’s land, cars, house, and lifestyle. Norman Juarez is suing Humberto for it, nonetheless.

In typical humble style, Norman said Ernest’s tenacity had brought him new hope after years of trying to lock up that thief, Humberto Captain.

Yolanda apologized to me, again and again, for not telling me Ernest had told her he was investigating Kris. I told her it was fine; I understood the insanity that her life had become. Did I ever.

At the memorial party, Ferdinanda and Yolanda gave thanks for Ernest laying down his life for them. They have moved out of our house and into an apartment in Lolly Vanderpool’s building. Norman Juarez, with his wife’s blessing, gave Lolly Vanderpool a diamond, for her bravery in helping Ernest recover his mother’s necklace. She repaid Julian, returned to MIT, and is no longer working as a hooker.

Norman Juarez gave Yolanda and Ferdinanda another diamond. Yolanda squealed—with happiness? surprise? disbelief?—when she heard Ernest had left his land and house to her. She and Ferdinanda are drawing up plans for a new place. They’re already squabbling over the size of the kitchen.

Rorry Breckenridge is divorcing Sean and moving back to New Orleans. Facing a charge of conspiracy to commit assault, Sean admitted to Tom that it was Kris who’d asked for the Navajo tacos at the church party and Kris who had told him Yolanda had hepatitis. Sean is looking for a job, but according to a gleeful Marla, no one is willing to hire an accountant who hasn’t kept up with tax law for over a decade.

Brie and Paul Quarles are separated. Father Pete asked for, and received, the resignations of both Sean and Brie from the Saint Luke’s vestry. According to Marla, Brie has moved to Albuquerque. Marla said, “Maybe she’s working as a hooker.”

Hermie Mikulski is very happy that Stonewall’s puppy mill is closed. All the beagles have been adopted. She’s now starting a drive to restore habitat for the wild birds that flock to Aspen Meadow. The avian population declined after the forest fire, and she wants to bring their numbers back up. All in all, that pursuit seems safer than trying to close puppy mills.

Norman Juarez offered Tom, Arch, and me a diamond. I was tempted, because if we do have a baby, we’ll probably need more money. But the temptation lasted only a moment.

“I know someone who needs it more,” I told Norman Juarez. “It’s a kid named Peter at Arch’s school. He has leukemia, and the family might have trouble with their bills.”

Norman Juarez gave Peter’s family the proceeds from the sale of three diamonds. At last report, Peter was getting better.

And Tom and I, well, we are trying to get pregnant. It’s fun.

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the following people: Jim Davidson; Jeff, Rosa, Ryan, Nick, and Josh Davidson, with thanks again to Rosa for help with the Spanish in the text; J. Z. Davidson; Joey