Crunch Time

I said, “That remains to be seen.”

My van had more pickup than Yolanda’s, so we were at the entrance to Kris Nielsen’s mansion in less than two minutes. The place was all one level, and consisted of vast expanses of yellow stucco and numerous windows. The house was topped with a long red tile roof. It was enormous and looked less like a residence than the corporate headquarters for Taco Bell.

“Goldy,” Yolanda said sharply, “please listen to me. This is a very bad idea.”

“You don’t even know what my idea is,” I said mildly, although I wasn’t quite sure what it was myself. How would I parry a thrust from a broom handle? I narrowed my eyes at the road. In my post-Jerk days, I’d taken self- defense lessons. If I needed that training, hopefully it would come back.

At the side of the road, I pulled behind a large cedar tree to conceal my van. Then I got out and jogged down the long driveway.

Well, well. Why was I not surprised to see Penny Woolworth’s Jeep parked at the side of the house? If she’d left the dogs out in that cold car, I’d throw her carefully made latte in her face.

I stepped quickly around to the battered Jeep and checked the interior. No puppies. Was Penny leaving them there? Was it possible Kris Nielsen had thousands of square feet of white carpet? I certainly hoped so. I walked back to the front of the house, where I checked the porch for security cameras. There were none. I rang the bell, then stepped off to the side, out of the line of sight of the peephole.

“Who is it?” Penny’s voice called meekly through the heavy wood a moment later.

“Mountain Journal!” I shouted, making my voice husky. “Need to see Mr. Nielsen!”

There was a pause. “Uh, about what?” Penny’s tentative voice called back.

“Harboring stolen puppies! Open this door or I’m calling the cops! Like now, lady!”

She opened the door a crack. “The puppies aren’t his, they’re—”

I slammed the door open and stepped into a stuccoed foyer. In my head, I could hear Tom’s voice saying, No, no, no. But I pressed forward anyway. I stopped at the edge of the foyer beside the living room, which was filled with chrome and leather contemporary furniture. Beyond it was a dining room, its glass dining room table surrounded by uncomfortable-looking modern chairs. Overhead, a complicated tubular crystal chandelier glimmered. I whirled and glared at Penny Woolworth. “You work for him on Thursdays, huh? Today’s Monday. Where is he?”

“I can’t—”

“Listen to me, Penny, you tell me where he is, or I will call Tom and have Zeke held—”

“What’s going on here?” asked Kris Nielsen from the dining room. Tall, with his shock of prematurely white hair swept back, Kris looked first at me, then at Penny, with genuine puzzlement. He wore a T-shirt, basketball shorts, and running shoes. The shirt made his arm and chest muscles pop out. I swallowed and realized what a really terrible idea it had been to come here. Kris walked toward me, holding out his hand. “We met once before, didn’t we? You’re Goldy?” His blue eyes were kind, merry even. “Is there a problem?” He looked back at Penny for some kind of explanation.

“I got the puppies from her,” said Penny, looking down at an asymmetrically designed area rug.

“And?” asked Kris, still confused. I didn’t shake his extended hand, so he dropped it to his side. When neither Penny nor I followed up on his question, he said, “Goldy, would you like to stay for a cup of coffee?”

“No, thanks,” I said stiffly. “I have to be somewhere.” I felt my courage evaporating, so I squared my shoulders and pointed at Kris. “Leave Yolanda and her aunt Ferdinanda alone. Leave me alone. She may have been afraid of pressing charges against you or of swearing out a restraining order against you, but I am not. Do you understand?”

“What?” he said in disbelief. He swayed back on his heels, as if I’d slapped him.

I turned my body and my pointing finger on Penny. “Whatever he’s paying you for your efforts, it is not worth it.”

“I, I, I . . . ,” said Penny helplessly. “Goldy, wait, you don’t understand.”

But since she offered no explanation of what I didn’t understand, and since Kris was still struck dumb, it was time for me to boogie. In the distance—the garage, probably—I could hear the puppies whining. I raced back to the van.

“How’d it go?” Yolanda asked, staring straight ahead.

“About as well as you’d expect.” I started the van and pulled away from the curb. When we reached the exit of Flicker Ridge, I picked up my cell and hit the speed dial for Tom. If Tom couldn’t do anything else, he could at least come up here and get Ernest’s beagles back . . . or something.

Unfortunately, Tom picked up on the first ring. “Miss G.? I just got off the phone with Kris Nielsen. What were you thinking?”

Nonplussed, I steered the van toward the interstate. This particular turn of events was not what I was expecting. I stared hard out the windshield and said, “I wasn’t exactly thinking.”

“That much is clear.” He was quiet for so long, it made me uncomfortable. Yolanda, staring out her window, was no help. Finally Tom sighed. “He was very upset. Says he has no idea why you barged into his house. He says he invited you to have a cup of coffee, and you threatened him. Did you threaten him? You didn’t take a weapon into his house, did you? A knife, say? Tell me you didn’t.”

“Tom, I didn’t even take a wooden spoon in there.”

“Well, that much is good, I suppose. I did some shucking and jiving with him, said we had strong anti-stalking laws in this state, that I’d heard his Maserati myself this morning—”

“You heard it?” I said, incredulous. “You never told me that! How did you know it was a, ah—” I glanced over at Yolanda. I didn’t want her to know what I was talking about. “How did you know what it was?”

“Oh, Miss G. If I didn’t know my cars by now, I would not be worthy of the title Police Officer.” He paused. “Neither Boyd nor I actually saw Kris this morning, and he insists he was working out on his exercise machines. At home. Maybe it was somebody else’s Mas, who knows. But people in our neighborhood can barely afford to put clothes on their kids’ backs. They don’t have the dough for that kind of vehicle.”

“Exactly!” I said. “That’s why I—”

“Miss G. I have to go. I’m in the middle of a homicide investigation, remember? I promised Kris Nielsen that you would not attempt to contact him in any way in the future, all right?”

“Oh-kay.”

“Those anti-stalking statutes apply to you, too, Miss G. Do you understand?”

“Tom, please stop.” We signed off, not happily.

“What did Tom say?” Yolanda asked.

“Nothing, really. He just wants me to leave Kris alone.”

Yolanda snorted. “That’s rich.”

Outside, the mantle of gray cloud had grown much darker. The wind started up again, this time with such force that it violently swept leaves, pine needles, and bits of trash across the highway. The thermometer in my van indicated the external temperature was thirty-one. When we reached the Ooh-Ah Bridge, with its spectacular view of the Continental Divide—which was behind us—the first snowflakes began to fall.

I cursed silently. These were tiny flakes, the kind that signal a true storm, not a flurry. Worse, the snowflakes didn’t drift slowly downward, they sped sideways with such ferocity and thickness that a sudden, dense white curtain made visibility difficult. First the view of the plains, usually so clear when you’re heading east, disappeared. Then I couldn’t make out the road a hundred yards in front of us. Eventually, I couldn’t see the road ten yards ahead. I got into the middle lane and slowed the van way down.

Yolanda transferred her worry to the weather. “Think they’ll still have these physicals? It looks pretty bad. Maybe you should call and see if the school is going to cancel.”

“Something involving sports at a Catholic high school?” I replied, straining to see out the windshield. “Those kids and parents would turn out if we had flash floods, a tornado, and ten inches of basketball-size hail.”

And they did. By the time we got to Denver and turned onto the street that led to the Christian Brothers High School, the snow was mixed with rain. We passed the crowded parking lot and pulled up near the kitchen entrance.