Crunch Time (38 page)

“May I know where we’re going, please?” I asked. She shook her head vigorously and exhaled with impatience. “Hermie, please wait for the sheriff’s department.”

“No, no, no.”

“Please, please,
please
don’t take a gun out there. If this person is armed and expecting trouble—”

“I know this person is armed, Goldy.” She wrinkled her brow. “That is why I’m taking my own weapon. And I know how to shoot, too; I took lessons. Nobody is going to deprive
me
of any more digits!” She glanced at a pearl-crusted watch. “Ten o’clock. Now, if you’re coming, follow me. Otherwise, go home and make soup.”

Damn it to hell,
I thought as I jogged back to the van.
Don’t people understand how dangerous firearms are?
If One-Handed Hermie got into a gun battle with the puppy mill owner, I had no doubt who would win, and it wasn’t Hermie Mikulski.

She drove fast, so fast her van slung itself from one side of the two-lane road to the other. Occasionally she crossed the yellow divider line. I prayed that a state patrolman would stop her, give her a ticket for speeding, and then notice the gun. He would take her down to jail, and that would be that.

No such luck. Once we were several miles outside of town, I tried again to reach Tom on my cell. But fate wasn’t smiling on me then, either. We were out of range.

I cursed silently when Hermie’s van zoomed past the sign indicating the Aspen Meadow Wildlife Preserve was five miles ahead. The road turned from pavement to mud mixed with gravel. Hermie’s tires sloshed through puddles and spewed up curtains of sludge and stones. To avoid having my windshield thoroughly spattered, I allowed my van to trail farther behind Hermie’s, and cursed her again.

Our vehicles began to climb. The snow on either side of the road was deeper. Here and there, patches of sun-bleached grass dotted brilliantly whitened meadows that led up to hills thick with pine. Vistas of the ice-capped peaks of the Continental Divide appeared as the road rounded one hill, then another.

My inner ear echoed with Tom’s words:
I still don’t want you going out to the preserve.
And
Miss G., can’t I just ask you not to do something, and you don’t do it?
And I’d said yes.

Yet here I was, trying to follow crazy-ass Hermie Mikulski as she raced her van out to some godforsaken rendezvous with an armed puppy mill owner, in a place with no cell phone reception.

Hermie passed the left-hand turnoff that I was almost positive had been the one Charlene Newgate had taken when she’d been driving ahead of me, the last time I’d been out there. I still suspected Charlene of lying about providing any recent employees to Drew Parker, DDS. But, why would she do that? Money? Maybe. But given the way she’d pulled her fur around her and the proud note in her voice when she’d talked about her “boyfriend,” I suspected another motive: love.

About a mile beyond Charlene’s road, Hermie suddenly slowed and turned left. There had been no sign. A deeply rutted dirt road was lined on either side by thick woods. Occasional mailboxes indicated driveways that veered up out of sight. I didn’t see a single house. This was not a place where builders had ventured to build minimansions; those owners wouldn’t have been able to abide the difficulties of such a horrible dirt road. I surmised that we were in an area where there were a lot of summer cabins, not unlike the one Sabine Rushmore and I had gone through, although that one had had a fireplace and, presumably, some alternative kind of heat for the winter months. Once the first snows hit, the summer owners usually boarded up their places and headed south.

The road itself became narrower, barely wider than a lane. Pine branches brushed the sides of the van. Only an occasional sun-loving aspen, its yellow leaves mostly stripped by the snowstorm, broke through the gloom. I felt like Gretel following Hansel. Problem was, we weren’t dropping stones to let anyone come after us.

At a tree with a rope twined around it, Hermie turned left again, onto a bumpy path that was not wide enough for our vans. Her vehicle bucked and rocked over stones, undergrowth, ruts. Bile rose in my throat and my skin chilled. I fought a sudden urge to stop my vehicle, do a fourteen-point turn in the woods, and hightail it back to town.

Before I could do that, though, Hermie abruptly halted. I braked too, and looked around. We were in deep woods. There was no discernible trail in front of us. I scanned the surrounding forest and again saw a rope tied around a tree.

I am beyond pissed off,
I thought, jumping from my van. I was going to stop this right now. I raced up to Hermie’s door, where I pushed hard to prevent her from opening it.

“What are you doing?” she screamed through the glass. She’d been leaning down to her right and hadn’t seen my approach. “Move!” she screamed. Then she had the bright idea to buzz down her window. “Stop that this instant,” she hissed. “And don’t make any noise.”

“We need to leave.” I looked down to where Hermie had been leaning. She’d moved things around: two pairs of binoculars, plus the digital camera, sat on the floor below the passenger seat, the seat that now held the gun.

“Goldy, you are impeding my progress.”

“That is exactly what I want to do. Hermie, we have to
get out of here,
” I said. “This is not safe. You followed the directions of some anonymous caller. How do you know this isn’t a trap? How do you know the owner of the puppy mill didn’t call you himself?”

She picked up the gun and tapped the inside of her windshield with it. I practically jumped out of my skin.

“Put that away!” I told her.

“Look there, Goldy. Down through the woods. Use these.” She put down the gun, thank God, but used her good hand to pick up one of the pairs of binoculars and hand them to me. “Just below us is the shed the puppy mill owner uses to stow puppies in deplorable conditions. If you come all the way out here because you’re answering an ad for beagle puppies, you only see a nice red barn and a new shed the owner’s put next to the road. You don’t see
that shed
.”

“How do you know about these deplorable conditions?” I demanded as I focused the binocs first on the shed in question. About a fourth of a mile up from it stood a red-painted barn and a newer-looking shed. Across a meadow from the suspect shed stood a sprawling one-story house. I refocused the binoculars. In the house’s driveway sat a dark sport-utility vehicle, its back gate open.

When Hermie didn’t answer, I lowered the binoculars and stared at her. “How do you know?” I asked again. “Did someone have a sick puppy and complain?” I knew from Sabine that Hermie had said she’d gotten on this breeder’s trail owing to a concerned veterinarian. But I wanted to see if she’d give me any other information about this commando operation she was dead set on.

Hermie’s mouth was set in a tight frown. Finally she said, “There’s a veterinary nurse I pay, here in town, to tell me about suspected abuse cases. She told me about the beagles after a puppy in bad shape came into their office. When Animal Control claimed they found no irregularities on the property and I couldn’t find anything out on my own, I hired Ernest.” She picked up the other pair of binoculars and stared through them. “Look now, will you? Check out the driveway. If the puppy mill owner is trapping us, why is he packing his car?”

I trained the binocs on the house and the driveway. I tried to make out the Colorado license plate: BHG 223? Or 228?

My skin chilled again when I saw a bald man. He looked to be about the right size and shape of the man who’d set Ernest’s house on fire. I couldn’t be sure, though. He disappeared and then came back into view carrying three suitcases, one tucked under his right arm, his hands carrying the other two. Trailing behind him was a woman. A sudden breeze made her pleas audible.

“But why? Why won’t you tell me? What have I done? Are you just going to leave me here? Answer me!” It was Charlene Newgate. She wore the same fur coat she’d had on in the CBHS gym. “I love you!” She said his name then. Stony? Sony? Crony? “I love you so much, Stony!” she yelled. When Stony did not heed her, Charlene cried desperately, “I’ll tell the police! I’ll tell them everything! Everything you had me do—”

Stony, the bald man, methodically put the suitcases into the open trunk. Then he turned with startling swiftness and punched Charlene in the face. She fell hard. The bald man said something inaudible down to her inert form. Charlene did not move and did not make any reply that we could hear.

“You see!” said Hermie triumphantly. “You see how he even abuses
people
! What if he kills her? Like in the next few minutes? We have to go down there right now!”

I was so stunned by what I had seen, so unnerved by what Hermie was saying, that she was able to push her door open. The force toppled me backward and I collapsed on top of a small pine tree. I struggled to get balance, but found myself in a tangle of the binoculars and their strap, clumps of snow, damp earth, and pine needles. The needles were wet and shockingly cold. They pierced my cheeks and ears and snarled my hair. When I finally managed to stand, Hermie was plowing through the trees well ahead of me. In her right hand, she was holding her gun.

I cursed under my breath, pulled the binoculars and their strap over my head, and tossed them into the snow. I struggled through the woods, but bushes, branches, and spills of rocks slapped my face and arms and made me stumble. Hermie seemed to be on an actual trail, while I was cutting one. I smashed through the undergrowth to find her footprints in the snow, then followed them. She was about twenty yards in front of me. How far was she going to go? The woods went down a slope that opened onto the meadow that led back to the house. I tried not to think of how a .22, at this distance, would not even hit the side of the closest shed.

“Stop!” I called after her. “Just let him go! Hermie! You’re going to get hurt.”

She paused and glared back at me. “Shut
up
!” she snapped. “He’ll hear you! Do you want that woman to be shot? Because that’s what will happen. And he’ll get away. That’s what always happens with these people,” she muttered, as if to herself, but I heard it anyway. Then she crashed onward at an even faster clip.

My sneakers were soaking wet and I was panting. I made myself trot. I was trembling with heat and fright. For a large woman, Hermie was quicker than I expected. Maybe in addition to learning how to shoot, she’d been working out. My chest tightened with exertion. I prayed not to have a heart attack before I could stop crazy Hermie.

Soon we were out of the woods and in the snowy stretch of open land. I was losing Hermie, who was wearing sturdy hiking boots along with her pearls, her purple silk dress, and her boiled wool coat. She ran forward, about half a football field’s length ahead of me. The tin-roofed barn lay the same distance from her. I cursed again and tried to pick up my pace.

Unfortunately, melting and refreezing snow had formed an ice crust on the meadow. No matter how hard I tried, I could not run. My shoes crunched and slipped, and once I fell headlong on the frozen surface. I got up quickly, ignored a searing pain in my knees, and checked the surroundings again.

Charlene still lay motionless in the driveway. The bald man appeared, carrying a box. Hermie, having broken through to an expanse of brown grass, rushed forward. I steadied myself and clomped heavily toward her back. She was about twenty yards from the house.

“Stop!” Hermie screeched at the bald man. “You horrible creature! Stop or I’ll shoot!” Startled, the bald man dropped his box. Without waiting, Hermie raised her gun over her head and fired.

The firecracker explosion of Hermie’s gun echoed in the chilly air. But then there was an even louder boom, and another. Had the bald man shot back? I heard Tom’s voice in my ears, or maybe it was just my mind imagining Tom’s voice, because there were no police cars, no other people, anywhere.
Get down!
Get down!
the voice yelled. I fell forward onto the snow. Above me, the air splintered with another boom.

I scrabbled across the icy meadow, then began to roll downward. I had to get to Hermie and make sure she was all right. Once again I imagined Tom’s voice:
Always make yourself a moving target.
My jacket, my clothes, my sneakers were soaked. Rocks ripped my sensible caterer’s support hose. My mind scolded,
That’s the only sensible thing about you.

Suddenly I was on snow, behind a building. In the distance, a car drove away. I blinked and looked for Hermie, but could not see her. After a few moments, I was aware of sirens. I lifted my head and scanned the meadow. Hermie lay in an unnatural heap on the tan grass. Her gray curls hung in a limp mess; her coat and dress resembled a dark, wrinkled map. Had I seen her foot move? I thought so.

I hoped the shock of gunfire had only made her faint. . . .
Dear God, let her only have fainted, I don’t want Brad to be without a mother, no matter how crazy that mother is. . . .

I planted my face in the snow to try to shock my brain. Oh yes: the bald man, Charlene Newgate, Hermie Mikulski on a mission of mercy. Yet I could hear no human voices at all. In fact, the only noise I could hear beyond the incessant bleating of the sirens was the yipping and crying of what had to be fifty, no, a hundred little dogs. . . .

I scooted to the corner of the dilapidated shed. Next to its outside wall was damp earth and dead grass. The whining of the dogs was bothering me so much that I shook my head and reached forward to pull open the door to the shed, just as darkness flooded my brain.

Some time later, a blustery foghorn voice stabbed my consciousness, saying,
Come out slowly showing your hands now. . . .

Astonished by a sudden warm wetness moving back and forth across my cheek, then more moist warmth tickling my legs, I scrambled awkwardly to a sitting position. Beagle pups were whining and licking my skin where it was torn. I remembered teaching my Sunday school class about a dog licking Lazarus’s wounds—

“Miss G.? Oh, Christ, Goldy? Are you all right? What the
hell
are you doing out here?”