Crunch Time

Mr. Juarez has been claiming Humberto stole from him?” Tom’s tone was incredulous. “That was what the break-in at Humberto’s was all about? Jesus, Goldy, how long have you known that Ernest stole the necklace?”

“I just learned about it! And after I heard the tale of the necklace, I had to deal with Hermie. Plus, I left you a message. So, give me a break, would you?”

Tom said, his voice peevish, “You said you were going out to the puppy mill with Hermie. No mention of a necklace or of Ernest breaking into Humberto’s place to perform grand larceny.”

“Well, I was going to tell you, once I got through the Hermie mess.”

“Let’s get on with the story of you coming out here.” Armstrong struggled to keep his tone neutral. Clearly, he didn’t want to get between his boss and his boss’s wife.

I shivered and said, “Well, let me think.”

Tom, in spite of his apparent anger, drew a thermos out of somewhere and poured me some black coffee. It was hot and strong and made me feel better than I had in several hours.

“Did Hermie say she was going to shoot somebody?” Armstrong asked.

“No. But you’ve seen her . . . left hand? When she tried to close down a Nebraska puppy mill, somebody fired at her. She lost two fingers.”

Armstrong’s face was impassive. “We know the whole story. She had a toy gun and she was trespassing. When the guy had finished moving a box of puppies, she jumped out of nowhere with her Kmart Kalashnikov and told him to put his hands up. He had a gun and he shot the toy thing out of her hands, which he was perfectly within his rights to do to a trespasser whom he thought was armed.” Armstrong exhaled. “Did she tell you she’d taken shooting lessons? ’Cause that’s what she told us she was going to do after the toy-gun incident.”

I said, “Yes, she told me. But I really am sure she didn’t intend—”

“Why did you bring two vans? Why not just come in one?”

“It was just the way it worked out. I called her, thinking to leave a message. She answered, which surprised me.” I gave Armstrong a helpless look.

Armstrong’s dark eyes were frighteningly opaque. “And why were you calling her today?”

“Because I thought she might talk to me, instead of the cops. Hermie was single-minded in her desire to close down the mill, which was housed in sheds hidden from view. She hired Ernest to get the exact location, which was somewhere on the property of what appeared to be a legitimate operation.” Thinking of those poor, darling puppies, I shook my head. “One of the dogs Ernest adopted, adopted by my friend Marla, got sick. The veterinarian called Marla and said she had to phone the other owners of the adopted beagle pups and have them rounded up and brought in.”

Armstrong said, “Do you know why?”

“I don’t. Maybe while they were all crowded into that dilapidated shed, they got canine flu or something.”

Armstrong glanced at Tom, which I caught in the mirror. Tom gave an almost imperceptible nod. Armstrong said, “The dogs didn’t have the flu. They were being used to smuggle marijuana seeds.”

“What?”

Armstrong raised his thin eyebrows at Tom, who again nodded. Armstrong handed me a Colorado driver’s license. “First of all, just for the record, this guy out here, Stonewall Osgoode? He’s the one you saw torching Ernest’s house?”

Staring blankly from the license photo was the bald guy who’d tossed two Molotov cocktails into Ernest McLeod’s greenhouse. “Yes,” I said. “This is the guy. You might want to show this picture to my son, Arch. He stabbed Stonewall Osgoode with a weeder when Osgoode was trying to break into our house.”

Armstrong said, “Anyway, Osgoode, our vic here, was running a full-service marijuana operation. In his house, we found a map. We’ve just had a radio report from a helo. They found his garden way in there.” He wagged a thin hand toward the Aspen Meadow Wildlife Preserve. “When we had that big forest fire, followed by floods? Some service roads in extremely remote areas were never repaired. That’s where Osgoode’s growers set up camp. But you know hikers in Colorado, not afraid to go anywhere. The growers were armed. Any time hikers came near, there were shots. We’ve had quite a few reports of gunfire, but we didn’t have the location of the grow operation until today.”

“Wait,” I said, “what does this have to do with the seeds in the puppies?”

There was quiet in the car for a moment, until Tom said, “When Armstrong says Osgoode had a full-service operation, it means that, at this point, our theory is that Osgoode grew some of it, probably hiring locals to guard it. You know guys around here. They shoot off a round if they hear wind in the woods. But the full-service part? Osgoode, we’ve discovered, flunked out of veterinary school. But he knew enough to do surgery. In addition to the map in his house, we found surgical instruments in that far shed, the one with the metal roof. He was smuggling some of the seeds he’d bought from who-knows-where to other growers. Somebody wants a regular beagle? They buy a puppy from his legitimate breeding operation. Somebody wants hemp seeds? They buy a spayed female pup from the shed. When he spayed them, he inserted canisters of seeds. Those are the puppies Ernest took, probably because he figured out something hinky was going on. Marla’s puppy got sick when the dog’s internal organs got tangled around the canister. Her dog’s all right now, and they think the others will pull through. But the damage to them was done by Osgoode.”

I said, “That son of a bitch.” I rubbed my forehead. “Do you think Hermie knew about this?”

“She’s denying it,” Tom replied.

I took a deep breath and remembered Ernest’s greenhouse before it was destroyed. “Listen. The day after Ernest stole the puppies? He put their chow next to his own medical marijuana plants. I think he was trying to send us a message, just in case something happened to him. ”

Armstrong said, “Ah, that would qualify as reaching.”

Tom said, “Most investigators tell other people what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. Or they leave a note. You know, like in a file?”

I recalled what Ferdinanda had said Ernest had told her, right before he left for town on foot. If something happens to me, ask the bird. It still didn’t make sense. “Maybe he did leave a note somewhere,” I said. “His files, everything, got burned up in the fire. But I found the puppy chow next to the marijuana,” I repeated stubbornly. “It was after I’d searched all over his house for it. There was no reason for it to be there.”

There was silence in the car for a few minutes. I’d lost the thread of my narrative, and my brain was too addled to pick it up.

Tom said, “Remember that hiker who brought a bleeding puppy into our town’s veterinarian? Way out on a hiking trail? It was a female puppy that hadn’t been spayed. She somehow managed to escape, lucky little thing. We figure Osgoode, or someone working with him, tried to shoot her, and that’s why she was bleeding.”

Armstrong said, “Back to Hermie. She didn’t mention the weed. But how did she know to come in the back way to the puppy-mill shed?”

“She got a . . . oh, God.” I sighed. “She got an anonymous phone call telling her where the secret sheds were that were housing the puppy mill. Whoever it was told her to come armed, because the mill owner had a gun.”

“So that’s why she brought a firearm today?”

“Yes,” I said tentatively. I didn’t want to betray Hermie, but she was probably giving a similar statement to the police right now. I rubbed my forehead. “We were set up.”

Tom said, “Who else knew you were going to be here?”

“I told you, Tom. I called you.”

“Right. But who else knew you were going to meet Hermie?”

“Nobody.”

“Think,” said Tom.

I closed my eyes and went over the events of the morning. “Okay. I mentioned to Yolanda, Ferdinanda, and Boyd that I was going to try to track down Hermie.”

Tom said nothing. Armstrong took notes.

“How did you decide to park where you did?” Armstrong asked.

“Someone had marked the trail with rope. Hermie followed it. And yes, at that point I thought we might be walking into a trap. I couldn’t get any cell phone reception, or I would have called you. But there was no way I was