Crunch Time (26 page)

She shook her head. “No. But there are other people who live out here. It’s just hard to see their houses with all the trees.”

“Has there been any other, you know, suspicious activity in the wildlife preserve? Some reason for people to be shooting?”

Sabine divided her ponytail just below the rubber band, then pulled it in two sections to tighten it. “Well, there’s Hermie.”

“Not Hermie Milkulski.”

“The very same. She’s an animal-rights activist, do you know her?”

I sighed. “Yes.”

“Did you know she lost two fingers a couple of months ago, when she was trying to close down a Nebraska puppy mill
by herself
? The owner shot her hand.”

I shook my head. “So that’s how it happened.”

“Unfortunately, yes. And since she was trespassing, the owner was within his legal rights. I heard she promised her son that she wouldn’t go out of state anymore, nor would she go into places alone. Now, apparently, Hermie only acts locally. When she suspects some kind of abuse is happening, she just calls Furman County Animal Control.”

“She doesn’t go out of state, and she doesn’t go alone,” I echoed. Hermie had done more than call Animal Control. She’d hired Ernest to do her dirty work. It wouldn’t help to tell Sabine this, and I knew Tom would not appreciate my sharing this tidbit.

Sabine shrugged. “Whenever the Animal Control people don’t find what Hermie thinks they should find, she raises a stink. She was here once, asking me a bunch of questions. Some guy near here has a legit breeding operation on his farm. But Hermie claimed this was cover. She actually used that word.” Sabine sighed. “Anyway, someone who bought a puppy from this breeder called Hermie and said the puppy got sick and then died. According to Hermie, the buyer said it was the veterinarian
himself
who suspected a mill. Also according to Hermie, Animal Control went out and couldn’t find anything. Hermie insisted that the mill, or mills, were hidden in sheds, or kennels, somewhere on the breeder’s property. Now, wait for it. Hermie thought this breeder knew he was onto her, words she also used. So, even though she’s left-handed, and she’d lost those fingers from her left hand, she learned to shoot a pistol with her right.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I wish I were. And she told me she was ‘withdrawing from society.’ ”

I thought for a minute. “So . . . Hermie thought illegal breeding was going on out here? Would that occasion gunfire? Or could Hermie be the one shooting?”

Sabine shrugged. “When Hermie showed up at my door, she was acting half crazed, asking if I knew back roads in the preserve that would lead onto private property. I told her, I don’t. Plus, you know how it is out here. There really aren’t good maps.”

“So . . . she never found the place?”

Sabine said, “I don’t think so.”

“Do you know if she had any evidence of deplorable conditions?”

“I don’t. But then I began to have suspicions. At the feed store, I ran into a bald guy, a very smarmy character, buying lots of bags of puppy chow. I held the door open for him—”

“
What?
”

Sabine closed her eyes and shook her head. “I mean, I have nothing to go on, but he put out bad vibes. When I asked him if he was raising puppies, he told me to get out of his way. After Hermie visited, talking about all her suspicions, I found myself wondering about that guy. Yes, Hermie
is
very excitable. She told me she was thinking of hiring an investigator to find the secret kennels, and get proof of the abuse for Animal Control. But listen, I really need to go feed the horses. Does that answer your questions?”

“All but one, Sabine. Did Hermie say the guy she suspected was raising beagles?”

Sabine’s forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. She said, “How did you know?”

14

I
said, “Thanks for all your help,” then hugged her and hustled out to my van.

On the way back to town, my cell phone began beeping. I had three messages. Three? Why hadn’t my cell rung?

Tom’s voice said, “Miss G.? Where are you? I’m just getting back to you now, sorry, it’s been a firestorm at the sheriff’s department. Please call me.”

Then Yolanda announced, “Hi! We finished at the doctor’s office. I’m driving back up from Denver now. When we get to your place, I’ll check your schedule to pack everything up. See you soon.”

Once again, Tom’s voice implored me: “Miss G.? I know I didn’t answer your earlier message, but now I’m getting worried that you haven’t called me back. Are you all right? Please call me as soon as you get this message. This morning I had meetings, and then I was out of cell range.”

I called him back immediately, and he picked up on the first ring. “Sorry, Tom,” I burst out. “I was out at Sabine Rushmore’s place. She lives near the wildlife preserve.”

“Goldy, what in
hell
were you doing out there?”

“Tom, look. I was just trying to figure out who broke into—”

“Miss G., we’ve been having reports of shots fired out there for weeks. It’s what I was working on when Ernest was killed. And in case you didn’t know, it’s not hunting season—”

“I know, I know! Sabine and I heard gunshots—”

“Oh, Christ.” Tom groaned. “You weren’t out in that area where we had the big wildfire a couple of years ago, were you?”

“But . . . that’s less than a mile from where we were. Why?”

“Please listen.” Tom’s tone turned guarded, as if someone were hovering nearby. “I don’t want you out there anymore.”

“Listen, Tom! Sabine saw a bald guy who might be running a puppy mill. I didn’t see him, though, and Sabine didn’t know where he might be—”

“Goldy! Will you please not go out to the preserve?”

“Oh, Tom. Sabine and her husband live right—”

“Please? We have a big problem in that area that I’m not at liberty to discuss. In fact, I don’t want you going to any remote locations at or near the preserve.”

Okay, somebody really was standing right next to Tom. I asked, “Will you tell me later?”

He said, “Maybe,” and then announced that he had to go.

“But I need to talk to you! Did you reach Hermie Mikulski? Did you talk to Charlene Newgate? Because I thought I saw—”

“You’re breaking up,” said Tom through static. Then his voice was gone.

Damn it.
I hadn’t been able to tell Tom about how Hermie had lost her fingers. Nor had I shared the details of Hermie’s suspicions of a guy running a puppy mill on his property, with a legit breeding operation as cover, a guy Sabine might have encountered, who was bald. And then there was that car that I thought had been Charlene Newgate’s BMW, also on its way out to the preserve.

Speaking of which, what was going on out in the preserve that Tom had been so secretive about? And how was I going to discover more about these privacy-loving adulterers—presumably the very married Sean Breckenridge and his girlfriend—if I couldn’t trek to remote cabins in the woods?

I called information and got the Mikulskis’ home number. Like Tom, I was connected to voice mail. I identified myself and said I didn’t know any more about the investigation into Ernest’s death. I said I really would like her to call me on my cell, as soon as possible, about a puppy mill situation. I left my number and closed by saying I hoped Brad was recovering from hurting his nose.

It had been a long afternoon, with lots of frustrations. The formerly poor Charlene Newgate had struck some kind of gold with her new boyfriend. I was almost positive that one of them had been driving that silver BMW out by the preserve. Where had he or she been going? And if the boyfriend had a big fancy house and I didn’t know his name, how was I going to find out?

Donna Lamar was also suddenly rich. How had
that
happened? She was having trouble with a lustful couple that was breaking into her unsecured rentals. How could anyone catch such wily sinners?

As I was coming up on Aspen Meadow Lake, my mind said:
Wait.
There was more than one way to catch people with their pants down. I didn’t have the DNA of Sean’s lover. But I had their
garbage
. And I knew Sean would be attending the party that night. Maybe his girlfriend would be, too. If there were wrappers in their trash, I could figure out what food they liked. It might be like one of those algebra problems where you know the values of two variables, and an equation puts them together. With food, I was definitely in the putting-together business.

I checked my rearview mirror. No one was following the van, for which I was thankful. My mind was soaking up Tom’s and Yolanda’s paranoia. Plus, Tom’s words had unnerved me. Someone was shooting guns out in the preserve? Why? People
hiked
out there. What if a stray bullet hit one of them? Was that what had happened to the bleeding beagle puppy brought in by a hiker to a local veterinarian?

I set this troubling thought aside. The rubbish,
their
rubbish, was what I needed to concentrate on.

There was no shoulder on this part of the road, only a high stone wall on the far side. Next to my lane, stretching as far as the eye could see, was a deep, snow-filled indentation. I pulled the van over to the edge of this ditch. The van still stuck out a bit into the road, but drivers in Aspen Meadow were used to swinging around horses, cyclists, and runners. With luck, they could steer past a caterer’s vehicle. I eased the van up to a trash can, just in case I needed to explain myself to a roving sheriff’s department deputy or worse, a state patrol officer. The sheriff’s department tended to indulge me, but the state patrol was something else altogether. I mean, I’d gotten in their way in one or two traffic accidents. They had not been amused.

As I dug into the smelly plastic bag of trash that Donna Lamar had collected, I tried to look like any tourist wearing catering clothes who decides to dump camping detritus while standing ankle-deep in snow. I turned a pair of sleeping bags inside out. They were somewhat mangy, but a woman’s pair of underpants dropped out of one. I picked it up.
Donna,
I thought,
you really do need a detective
. The panties were from Victoria’s Secret, black and lacy, size four. She was either small and slender or medium height and skinny. Well, I couldn’t exactly ask to see women’s underclothes when they came through the door at the Breckenridges’ place. But it was a start.

There was nothing in the other sleeping bag, so I set them both by the side of the road. I picked up first one, then a second plastic glass and held them to the sunlight. One had a semicircular tinge of mauve lipstick, but not enough to be able to tell what the exact color had been. The other just had the vague, vinegary scent of old wine.

Donna had put the cheese wrappers into a separate paper bag, and the stench when I opened that sack practically sent me into the ditch. I dumped the litter onto the snow and examined it carefully.

There were shreds of scarlet and gold foil from a package of an expensive Camembert I knew: Le Roi et la Reine. My king and queen of romance had fancy tastes. A red wax globe held a bit of moldy Gouda with the brand name ’s-Gravenhage. I knew that Dutch word meant “the Hague,” but I wasn’t familiar with the brand of Gouda, although I probably should have been . . . unless Sean and his girlfriend got them from mail order? Maybe. The box of water crackers was Carr’s, found in most supermarkets.

There was only one thing left in Donna’s bag: an empty wine bottle. I didn’t recognize the brand, but it was a Riesling
Auslese Kabinett,
with the further indication that it was a
Qualitätswein mit Prädikat,
the highest grade given to German wines. A partially missing price tag indicated the bottle had come from—hallelujah—Aspen Meadow Liquors. Would Harold at the liquor store be as privacy-conscious as the library, the schools, the church, or doctors’ offices? I certainly hoped not.

I stuffed the sleeping bags, undies, wine bottle, and all the wrappers back into Donna’s big plastic bag. I’d store it in the garage for Tom, just in case he needed it for evidence, although there was no chain of custody, and my fingerprints were all over everything. But having something tangible sometimes helped in interrogations, if things got that far. I cleaned my hands with disinfecting wipes from the glove box, wheeled the van away from the shoulder, and gingerly pressed on the accelerator. In catering terms, it was getting late, and I really, really didn’t want Yolanda stuck with all the packing.

As I drove back toward town, I tried to unwind from the cabin incident by concentrating on that night’s dinner. The cooking was largely done, except that I had to arrange the composed salads on whatever china plates Rorry wanted us to use. The lamb chops could easily roast over at Rorry’s. Yolanda had volunteered to make the Navajo tacos, which would involve deep-frying pieces of dough—what the Navajos call “fry bread”—then quickly splitting these flat rolls and stuffing them with prepped ingredients. I was dreading serving something at a catered party that I had never actually prepared before. But Yolanda had said she knew how to make them, and I trusted her. Plus, if the tacos didn’t work out, they didn’t work out, period. As Julia Child had been fond of saying, “Never apologize.”

My cell phone beeped with a message, probably sent while I was outside the van checking through the lovers’ garbage. It was not from Tom, as I hoped, but from Rorry Breckenridge. She’d announced to my voice mail that the Hanrahans and the Bells were snowed in and had canceled, but that Father Pete had added two guests. Some people, apparently, felt guilty about coming at the last minute, so they would be bringing platters of extra food. If that was all right, she’d added. She was apologetic. One person had already brought over some caviar and put it in her refrigerator. Another was bringing enchiladas, and someone else was bringing several bottles of champagne.

I shook my head at the irony. The church wasn’t managing to make its budget, but guests were outdoing themselves bringing goodies. Go figure.

Plus,
enchiladas?
Did this mean the Juarezes were coming? Oh, I
so
didn’t want a scene between them and Humberto at the party.

I didn’t call Rorry back, because really, what could she do? It sounded as if this party was becoming more and more like a potluck, anyway, albeit a fancy-schmancy one. How far this all was from the simple but elegant dinner we had initially envisaged, back when the party was going to be outside in the Indian summer air, on the Breckenridges’ enormous deck.

My cell rang: Marla.

“Okay, so I’m bringing beer to this shindig tonight,” she said without preamble, “and now I’m wondering, if we’re having Navajo tacos, should I bring Mexican beer? Wouldn’t you rather have the Dutch variety?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. My friend’s voice warmed my heart. “Any kind would work.”

“Where are you?”

“On my way to Aspen Meadow Liquors.”

“Not to buy beer, I hope.”

“No, I need some more white wine. German white wine, in case you’re wondering.”

“Why German white wine?”

“If I tell you, you can
not
tell anyone.”

“About German white wine?”

“Marla? I need information, the kind you can often get. But you can’t tell anyone what I’ve found out.”

“Okay, okay. But satisfy my curiosity. Does this big secret refer to Riesling or Liebfraumilch?”

“Riesling.” I took a deep breath. “Donna Lamar told me a couple is breaking into her rentals to have sex. So I went out to a cabin where they’d supposedly been. Get this—
one
of our lovers is Sean Breckenridge.”

“Oh my God. Poor Rorry.”

I summed up the trip out to the cabin and finding the credit card, which, I admitted, might have been stolen from Sean. I told her about hearing the gunshots and going through the bag of evidence. “And now I’m going to buy the stuff that our loving couple had to eat and drink. I’m hoping that if Sean did indeed drop his own card out at the cabin, his girlfriend will be one of the guests and they’ll both indulge tonight.”

“I simply cannot
wait
for you to expose these people. Should I have some of each of those cheeses, so it’ll look like it’s no big deal?”

“What you
should
do is act uninterested.”

“Uninterested? All right, all right,” she said to placate me. “Speaking of tonight, I’m already ravenously hungry. Now, don’t worry. My cardiologist has given me a bunch of rules, and much as I’d like to, I’m not going to pig out.”

I said, “Uh—”

“Oh,” she said dismissively, “you know how it is with your parties. As long as one of the people at the dinner is cooking, like a hostess, guests hold back from gorging themselves. But when we have to buy a ticket or pay for the meal ourselves? It’s full speed ahead on the stomach stuffing.”

“You’re right in your observation, I’m sorry to say. That’s why I never, ever sell tickets to an all-you-can-eat buffet. Folks will come to that kind of meal pulling a cooler.”

“What do you suppose the guests at the Breckenridges’ will be wearing?” she asked. “I mean, it’s a church event, but does that mean folks will wear churchy clothes?”

“The way I’ve seen it work, the more swish the locale, the more people tend to get dressed up, even in Aspen Meadow, which is Denim Heaven.”

“Maybe,” Marla said thoughtfully, “but we also like to be authentic, you know, to the theme of the party. So if there’s going to be a hayride or anything involving straw bales, folks will pop five or six hundred for cowboy outfits, right down to the red and white bandanas and Billy the Kid fringed leather jackets.”

“The decorating theme is Abundance of Fall. You could come as a cornucopia.”

“Are you making fun of my
size
?”

“No, silly. I’d say this will be more fancy-pants, because the Breckenridges are loaded and their house is huge.”