Crunch Time

Father Pete said he’d have to at least have his on Vibrate, in case a parishioner died suddenly, Rorry relented, but only for him. She hadn’t noticed when I’d used mine to take pictures of Odette, thank goodness. But hostess’s instructions or no, I always, always kept my cell phone on, in case Arch needed to reach me. He knew it, I knew it, and I didn’t care if anyone else knew it.

In any event, once the Juarezes left, folks at the table pulled out their gizmos and turned them on. Soon all manner of beeping and buzzing caused people to start making their excuses, thanking Rorry and Sean, and leaving.

In the kitchen, I wrapped Father Pete’s enchiladas up first, as he needed to get Venla home. Marla had been hot on my heels, eager for gossip as well as enchiladas, no doubt, but before we’d even started to chat, her cell phone began beeping urgently.

“Damn it,” she said. “This is from my home phone. Penny came over to take care of my puppies, and hers, too. I’m paying her. . . . Hello?” Penny’s voice came through loud and insistent. “Calm down!” Marla yelled into the phone. “Start over!”

“I’m telling you one of your puppies is sick!” Penny shrieked, near hysteria. “Really sick. I don’t know if she’s going to make it.”

Marla unleashed a string of curses, then told Penny to call Twenty-Four-Hour Urgent Animal Care. Marla said she’d race right home to take in the ailing canine. “Tell Rorry to keep the enchiladas,” Marla said as she hurried out. “And tell her thanks, too. Good Lord, one of the puppies is sick and might not make it? My heart’s already racing. My cardiologist would say—” But then she stopped and gave me an anxious look. “Is this what it’s like to have children? You worry about them all the time? And then something happens, and you worry even more?”

I said nothing, only helped her into her Mercedes and shut the door. As she maneuvered down the Breckenridges’ driveway, I whispered, “Yes. This is what worrying about your child is like.”

So I called Arch, who was at home.

“I’m here with Ferdinanda,” he said in a low voice. “She’s really upset about what happened to Yolanda.” He shifted to a whisper. “She says a guy Yolanda broke up with burned her. I don’t mean he stole money from her, he actually burned her. Is that true?”

“We don’t know, hon. He wasn’t anywhere near the kitchen when the accident happened.”

“Well, is Tom there with you?” He could not hide the anxiety in his voice.

“Sweetheart, I’m fine.”

“Is Tom with you?”

“Yes. We’ll be home soon.”

That worrying stuff? It worked both ways.

17

Rorry prohibited Tom and me from doing more than washing and drying the dishes and silverware, which we carefully placed on the large table at the far end of the kitchen. Rorry again insisted that Etta was the only one who knew where everything went, and she would go ballistic if the caterer and her husband tried to put stuff away in its proper place. When Rorry laughed, it was sincere, not condescending. So I acquiesced. On a more serious note, she made me promise to call her with an update on Yolanda. Furthermore, I was absolutely, positively supposed to forget about the broken china. She and Sean had received it as a wedding gift, and she was glad it was gone.

Tom, meanwhile, was pacing around the kitchen like a fearsome jungle cat. He trusted Boyd, but I knew Tom, and he wanted to make sure his associate hadn’t missed anything. He opened cupboards, asked Rorry questions, lifted up pans, crouched on the floor to check for proof that nothing had been overlooked. When he was satisfied, his team would begin to sprinkle black graphite fingerprint powder all over everything. I began gnawing my fist, desperate to tell Tom all I’d learned that day. But with Rorry coming in and out of the kitchen, I had to keep my mouth shut.

And then there was Yolanda. To keep myself from going crazy with worry—that worry again—I called Boyd, because I knew the privacy lovers at the hospital wouldn’t give me a nano-update on Yolanda’s condition. Boyd, who luckily was outside checking messages on his cell, said tersely that a nurse had told him Yolanda had first-, second-, and a few third-degree burns on her legs. Nothing was bad enough to warrant a hospital stay, the nurse had said. I rolled my eyes. Welcome to managed care. They were bandaging Yolanda up now, the nurse said, and she would be in pain for a couple of days, probably not able to work, although Yolanda kept insisting she had to work.

“That’s ridiculous,” I interjected. “We don’t have catered events for the next week.”

“She thought you had mentioned something about Saturday.”

I sighed. “It was canceled. Part of the wave of clients deciding they couldn’t afford to have parties.”

“All right, I’ll tell her.” Boyd’s tone was relieved. “How’s Ferdinanda holding up?”

“I’m still at Rorry’s. Arch said Ferdinanda is sure Kris Nielsen is behind this.” When Boyd didn’t reply, I said, “What do you think?”

“I have to look at the evidence, of which we do not have much.” Now his voice was terse. “What’s the big guy doing?” I cleared my throat. I did not want to tell Boyd that Tom was prowling around the kitchen checking for evidence that Boyd might have missed. I hesitated just long enough for Boyd to say, “Oh, I get it. He’s checking my work.”

“Uh—”

“That’s all right, I’m used to it. Tell him we’ll talk when I bring Yolanda home.”

We signed off. Tom, crawling around on Rorry’s kitchen floor, reminded me of Sabine Rushmore hunched over the rental cabin’s fireplace, sifting through ashes. But there was no way I was ever going to tell him that. Finally, Tom’s team arrived. He gave them the go-ahead to start with the fingerprint powder. I skedaddled into the foyer.

I gave Rorry the promised update on Yolanda. She shook her head and said she was going to start bringing her crystal in from the porch. Since she clearly did not want me to touch any more of her stuff, I dialed Marla’s cell to ask about the puppies.

“The sick one is in surgery,” she said, her voice low. “But a nurse or assistant—I don’t know what she does up front here—took a call from the doc. He said to ask me if this was a rescue dog. I said, ‘Why, is he prejudiced against rescue dogs?’ She didn’t like that, so I said yes. Then she wanted to know, or I guess it was the veterinary surgeon who wanted to know, if there were more rescue dogs who’d been adopted with this one. I said yes again. So her eyebrows went up. I thought, What in the hell is going on? Finally, she said that all the other rescue dogs who were adopted along with this one needed to be brought in immediately. I said, ‘What, do they all have rabies or something?’ ”

“This is not making any sense,” I said.

“Maybe not, but don’t worry, Penny is bringing her dogs and the rest of mine. I then had the unpleasant task of calling Father Pete and asking him to saddle up and bring all his new pups over to Twenty-Four-Hour Urgent Animal Care. Since he’d just gotten back from taking Venla home, then had settled the dogs for the night and poured himself a glass of ouzo, he was not a happy camper. But he’s coming. I asked him to bring me some ouzo.”

“Not a great idea.”

“If you saw the tiny plastic chair I’d been sitting in for the last hour, you’d think it was a superb idea.”

“Marla,” I said in protest, “you’ve had a heart attack.”

“And I’m going to have another one being anxious about these puppies. Oops, here’s Father Pete. And Penny, too! Gotta go.”

I glanced at my watch; it was quarter to nine. Tom’s team was still hard at work when he appeared in the foyer. He asked, “Could you go get Rorry for me?”

She was not on the porch, where she’d moved all the crystal to the wheeled tea cart. Back in the foyer, the sound of voices raised in anger emanated from upstairs. I crept back to the kitchen.

“Tom? They’re arguing. What am I supposed to do, interrupt a domestic quarrel?”

“You want my gun?”

“Oh, ha ha.” Of course, there was no way Tom would ever loan me his firearm.