Crunch Time

“Doggone it,” I muttered, and headed off to the greenhouse, the only room left that I hadn’t searched.

Because of the black clouds, rain, and fog, darkness seemed to be falling quickly, even if it was technically still summer. I turned on the lights by the greenhouse door before entering. The alfalfa-type smell was stronger in here. But the switches I’d flipped also contained an exhaust fan. I coughed and looked around. Ernest had been growing string beans, peppers, and tomatoes. The reclaimed glass Ernest had used for the walls made the darkness outside seem huge, despite the overhead lights. At the far end of the greenhouse were some big, bushy green plants and—victory!—a bag of puppy chow.

Only, would somebody please tell me what dog food was doing in the greenhouse, next to big bushes? Wait a minute. As Tom was always saying, “I may have been born at night, but I wasn’t born last night.”

These weren’t ordinary bushes . . . they were marijuana plants. Hello!

I counted them: six. I knew that under Colorado law, you could grow six plants legally if you were the provider for a card-carrying medical marijuana user. But . . . Ernest was a recovering addict. Was it really such a good idea for him to be growing a plant with narcotic properties? And why had he left the puppy chow up there? So the dog food would absorb some of the marijuana’s properties and the puppies would sleep through the night?

And why, oh why, had the cops missed this?

Or had they?

Okay, I’d graduated from the University of Colorado, one of the top party schools in the nation, and I hadn’t been born last night, either. I knew enough about weed to know that it was the bud, and not the leaves themselves, that provided a quality high. Harvested leaves only produced what was known to folks in the know as schwag, and everyone from stoners to stockbrokers knew that schwag was junk.

Ernest’s marijuana plants each boasted large buds, so they were ready for harvest. Without thinking, I walked over to Ernest’s shelf of tools, picked up a pruner, and snipped off a large bud.

It was then that my vision caught a movement outside: what looked like a small rock, only not on the ground, because it was moving. For the first time since I’d entered the house, fear scurried down my spine.

I squinted. What with the rain and fog, it was hard to make things out. I watched for a moment, and saw the moving rock was a person, a tall, heavyset person who was carrying something in one of his hands. Was he a cop? I doubted it. The guy was moving in too stealthy a manner. Was he a looter?

I swallowed my fear and tried to think. Kill the lights, my inner voice said. Try to get a better look at him, without his seeing you. And call the cops. I shoved the marijuana bud deep into my jacket pocket, reached for the switch, and turned off the greenhouse lights. I rooted around in my pocket for my cell while keeping my gaze fixed outside.

The man seemed to be wearing a dark jacket. My dousing of the lights had not bothered him—just the opposite, in fact. My mouth dropped open in disbelief as the intruder used his free hand to pick up a large rock. He reached back and heaved it at the greenhouse.

I ducked as the rock exploded through the glass. Damn it! Where is my cell phone? Rummaging for it, desperate to call 911, I saw the intruder bring a small object out of an unseen pocket. He fumbled with the thing, whatever it was. Then a light flared in the near-darkness. The man was bald.

This guy had a lighter? What was he going to do, have a cigarette while he waited for us to come out? Or maybe Ernest was his medical marijuana provider, and he was going to smoke his last joint before getting some new buds?

He was going to do neither. He lit the thing he was holding in his other hand. It flared hugely. It was a cloth, hanging out of a glass bottle. Oh my God, the man is holding a live Molotov cocktail. He reached back and flung the flaming bottle toward the hole he’d already smashed through the greenhouse glass.

“Yolanda!” I screamed as I raced out of the greenhouse. I dug my hand into my pocket and finally grasped my cell. “Get out! Get Ferdinanda out! Right now!”

The Molotov cocktail crashed through the hole in the glass. There was a sudden whoosh that actually propelled me headfirst down the stairs to the basement. The cocktail had reached its target. Damn, I thought as I rolled and got awkwardly to my feet. Damn, damn, damn.

My cell phone had skittered across the floor. I grabbed it and pressed 911. “I need a fire truck up here right away!” I hollered at the operator. “Ernest McLeod’s house, I don’t know the address. Sorry.” Then I hung up and stuffed the phone in my pocket. I knew enough about emergency services to know that the operator could figure it out. I barreled toward the garage as Yolanda raced in from it. We barely avoided colliding.

“Goldy!” Her face was filled with alarm. “What is it? Why were you up here yelling? What’s going on—”

“Somebody’s trying to burn the house down!” I grabbed her and turned her around by the shoulders. “You need to get Ferdinanda out right now! And, and, and we need to take the puppies out, too!”

“I’ll put Ferdinanda into the van,” she called over her shoulder, “and open the garage door. Where is this person? Where is the, the fire?”

“In the greenhouse! When you get Ferdinanda into the van, wait for me to bring the puppies. Then back the van well out into the street and keep the windows closed. Be sure you lock the doors!”

“Where will you be while I’m getting Ferdinanda—”

“Just do it!”

Yolanda raced off to her duties. I rushed into the puppy room, where the dogs were barking crazily. Either they already smelled smoke, or they had picked up on our sudden anxiety, or both.

I glanced out the window in the storage room but could not see the bald man. Then I looked wildly around the room. What was I going to put the puppies in? What had Ernest used?

I didn’t know, and couldn’t find out on short notice. I yanked open the storage closet marked Yard and dumped out a cardboard box of spades, gardening gloves, and fertilizer. Fertilizer! What if Ernest had kept fertilizer, which was highly combustible, up in the greenhouse? Rain or no rain, this place would go up like a tinderbox.

Upstairs, there was another crash, tinkle, and whoosh. The bald arsonist had sent in another Molotov cocktail.

“You son of a bitch!” I screamed. The puppies were crowding around me, whining and yipping. “Okay, dogs, I didn’t mean you.” I put five beagles in the first box, then hustled it out the garage door. Smoke was already filling the house, and the smoke alarm was beeping so loudly I couldn’t think.

I ran into the garage, trying not to jostle the puppies too much. Yolanda was in the driver’s seat of the van. Ferdinanda was in back, next to several plastic bags of stuff, which I assumed contained as many of their belongings as they’d been able to pack. I wondered fleetingly where the seventeen thousand bucks was.

“Can you help me?” I asked Yolanda. She immediately unlocked the rear door, slid it open, and took the box of dogs. Ferdinanda gripped the sides of her wheelchair.

“If only I had my old rifle,” she said fiercely.

I moved bags around, trying to figure out where we were going to put the other box of dogs. The old woman’s wrinkled hand tapped my arm.

I said, “Ferdinanda—”

“With my scope, I could see Batista’s people—”

“Ferdinanda,” I cried cheerfully, “not to worry. Tom has a gun at our house! Now, I need to go back—”

“That bastard, Kris,” she said, her tone still stubborn.

Yolanda begged, “Please let me help you, Goldy.”

“Guard Ferdinanda,” I ordered tersely. “Close the van windows and call nine-one-one. I’ve already phoned them once, but I didn’t have the address here.”

I sprinted back into the house. Smoke stung my eyes. It did not smell like marijuana, I noted bitterly. I should have put a wet rag over my nose and mouth, I thought, too late. It was hard to think with the fire alarm continuing its high shrill.

In the storage room, I pulled open the door marked Trains and dumped out another cardboard box, this one filled with tracks for an HO set.