Crunch Time

investigators have been dropped off by another team? There were no lights. Was it possible they were done already?

Tom had said they would be there. I honked three times. There was no reponse.

I punched in first Tom’s cell, then his office number, but was directed to voice mail both times. I left messages saying I couldn’t see a department car at Ernest’s house, and that I’d honked, to no avail. If I couldn’t see the investigators or reach them, should we go in?

Could the team have left already? That didn’t seem likely. County investigators usually stay on a fresh murder for hours in pursuit of clues. I didn’t know which investigators were assigned to Ernest’s place. I wasn’t sure I wanted to risk Tom’s wrath by going into the house without the permission I’d promised him I would get.

I called Tom’s cell four more times during the next ten minutes. I tried Sergeant Boyd, his most trusted subordinate, and got voice mail there, too.

On my last try to Tom, I said that even if Yolanda and Ferdinanda decided to stay with us, they would need toiletries, clothes, and so on. I knew he wouldn’t want us to come back to Ernest’s house when it was completely dark and the team had left, would he? I supposed we could go to the grocery store for essentials, I said, and run the washing machine for Yolanda’s clothes for tomorrow. . . .

I reluctantly hung up. Ferdinanda and Yolanda had started up their Spanish conversation again. Shame or no shame, I wanted to ask Yolanda why she hadn’t felt the confidence to call me when Kris hit her. She knew my history. Had she been too proud to ask for help? I wondered.

While waiting for Tom to call back, I contemplated Ernest’s dark house, which was barely visible now through the relentless downpour.

The weathered-gray-clapboard-sided house had originally been a one-story summer vacation home for a public school teacher. The teacher, who’d had the old-fashioned name Portia, had lived and worked in Denver from the end of the Second World War, when the house had been new, until the early seventies. Never married, Portia had lived year-round in the house after her retirement. Like many Aspen Meadow residences of that era, the place had been small—only two bedrooms and one bath. But its glory had been the fifteen gorgeous, sloping acres that commanded a spectacular vista of national forest.

I stared at my cell phone, willing Tom, Sergeant Boyd, or someone from the department to call me. Nothing. I shook my head and stared back at the house.

Over the years, Portia had told Ernest, she’d had multiple offers from builders riding various booms. He told us this story as he waved his hand, the way she had, as if Portia had been a princess who’d dismissed suitors who weren’t up to snuff. These builders, Portia had angrily told Ernest, were trying to take advantage of unincorporated Furman County’s lax building restrictions. They wanted to put sixty structures on one-quarter-acre parcels. How could anyone enjoy the view with all the houses cheek by jowl? No, no, Portia told Ernest. She put her house up for sale several times, to take advantage of rising prices. But she stood firm in one area: Whoever purchased it had to sign a legal notice that he or she would never tear down the original house nor subdivide her land. Buyers weren’t interested in a small, outdated, ramshackle place with only two bedrooms and a single bath. Builders were scared to death to sign away their desire to develop.

And then along came Ernest McLeod, a cop who was unmarried at the time. Ernest charmed Portia and asked if he could have her permission to buy her house and add on to it. No matter what, he promised, he would never subdivide her land. And for the addition, he would use the same siding, let it weather, and keep Portia’s style of architecture, which even an amateur art critic would sneeringly call nondescript. Ernest also insisted he would do all the work himself and, as if to prove it, showed Portia pictures of the addition he’d done to his place in Denver. He’d also told her he’d just been accepted into the Furman County Sheriff’s Department. He wanted to live in Aspen Meadow, because the people were so nice. And, he said, he would be using the land only to host picnics for his fellow law enforcement officers.

Portia, a lifelong Republican who was a great believer in law and order, had gladly sold Ernest her house. Shoveling the long driveway might have kept her in shape for the first decade of her retirement years, but the winters had begun to grind on her. She wanted to move to Arizona. The deal was made, and they were both happy.

Portia had sent Ernest postcards from Tucson, which he’d shown us. In reply, he’d sent her pictures of her old house, with whatever project he was undertaking highlighted in “before” and “after” snapshots. Ernest had begun by adding a garage and a cantilevered second story that featured a second, new kitchen, a new living/dining room, and two more bedrooms, plus two more baths. He’d then moved on to building a deck in the middle of the second-story facade, with a greenhouse on one side and a glassed-in winter porch complete with wood-burning fireplace on the other. He’d carved a sign that said PORTIA’S PERCH and hung it outside the winter porch, then another one that read PORTIA’S PARCEL, which he’d staked next to a boulder. Portia had written back to Ernest that they were her favorite photographs; she showed them to everyone in her retirement home.

Even after Ernest married Faye, who divorced him three years into their union for the Wyoming doctor, he’d sent snapshots to Portia, until his last letter was returned, stamped “Addressee Deceased.” He’d told us about her passing with tears in his eyes, and shortly after that, his casual drinking had turned heavy, then addictive, and he’d been forced into early retirement. Still, he’d told us at one of the department picnics he still hosted at his house, he’d found spiritual renewal through AA and a “new way to fight the bad guys,” as he put it, in his job as a private investigator.

Tom and I had often admired the view from Ernest’s deck. Every house in Aspen Meadow had a slightly different view. It was that same puzzle posed by the Mountain Journal, which Tom had reminded me of: “Whose view is this?” For a whopping five bucks, you could drive around and try to figure it out.

Portia, for her part, had hated the newspapers and had called the cops when the Mountain Journal had shown up, uninvited, to take a photograph of her view. Ernest said Portia called the media “a bunch of pinkos.” Remembering, I smiled as I recalled Tom putting his arm around me as he pointed out the spectacular vista of national forest, with its steep nearby mountains. Around Ernest’s house, the land was peppered with quartz and granite boulders, towering lodgepole and ponderosa pines, stands of aspen, and the occasional perfect, Christmas tree–shaped blue spruce. After some December poachers had come in with chain saws, which they’d used to cut down over two dozen of the spruce, Ernest had put up signs every twelve feet that read ABSOLUTELY NO TREE CUTTING, although he’d told us we could come get a tree any time we wanted. We demurred, saying Portia wouldn’t have wanted it.

I sighed and stared at the house, which, with all the additions, had a hodgepodge look to it. The place already showed indications of neglect, although Ernest had been gone—I couldn’t bring myself to think dead—for only two days. It was hard to make things out through the wind, the rain, and the gathering gloom. The PORTIA’S PERCH sign hung at an angle. The long deck had the painful look of abandonment. When Ernest hadn’t returned Saturday night, Yolanda clearly hadn’t known to bring in the pots of annuals. These massive displays—petunias, geraniums, nicotiana, and a dozen other florals—had died from the frost we’d had the previous night. Every spring, Ernest had grown the flowers from seed in his greenhouse, before placing them outside on the deck. Now they looked scraggly and forlorn, as did the whole house, come to think of it. I felt a rush of sorrow.

After fifteen minutes, I still hadn’t heard back from Tom. No one appeared. Yolanda and Ferdinanda seemed to have exhausted their conversation. Ferdinanda’s voice sounded like stones scraping together when she said she needed to go to the bathroom.

I called John Bertram’s house, since it was just down the road. There was no answer, and the place was dark. I started the van, moved it to the end of Ernest’s driveway, and honked again. There was no response.

Finally, I told Yolanda and her aunt that I would call out to whatever law enforcement people were in the house, if there were any, to get their permission to come in.

Pulling on my jacket, I took the remote that Yolanda handed me and jumped from the warmth of the van. I was immediately stung with freezing rain and another clap of thunder, but I trotted up the driveway to the garage door anyway. When I opened it, only Ernest’s pickup was inside.

“Hello?” I called.

I raced to the door leading into the house, tentatively calling, “Tom Schulz sent me!” and “Hello!” The only response was a chorus of yips. Nine puppies? Only nine? The place sounded like a kennel at feeding time.

“Is anybody here?” I yelled when I pushed through the door.