Crunch Time by Diane Mott Davidson

something before you go in. Understand? Yolanda, I know you and your aunt may want to stay there, but I just don’t want the investigation messed up.”
    “Okay,” said Yolanda.
    I asked, “Could you call me when you know what’s going on with John? Because if Yolanda and Ferdinanda decide to stay with us, and John can’t let the dogs out tonight, I’ll need to find somebody else to do it.”
    “Yup,” said Tom as he heaved himself down from the van. “Thanks for your help, ladies.”
    “Tell your friend I’m sorry I hurt him,” said Ferdinanda.
    When Tom said, “He knows,” I wanted to hug him.
    A clap of thunder startled us as we drove toward Aspen Hills. Yolanda had asked if we could trade places, so she could be in back with Ferdinanda. Once they were sitting next to each other, they began to speak in Spanish. I would have tried to follow what they were saying, but they began to speak so fast that there was no way I could make it out.
    Which they no doubt knew.
    I couldn’t help but wonder, Did Yolanda take Humberto’s money to spy on Ernest? And did she actually spy on him and tell Humberto what Ernest was doing? What is the story on those missing assets?
    The sky began to spit large drops. I glanced at my watch. The storm had been brewing all afternoon, and now, at ten to six, it was hitting us. The television meteorologists were always warning that this time of year in Colorado could yield “unsettled” weather patterns. For a caterer, this means “unsettling,” because if you had an outdoor event scheduled, you could, at the last moment, be hustling a lot of chairs and tables inside. Thank goodness for CBHS’s alternate plan to use the gym the next day. Thank goodness we didn’t have anything we needed to cook outside. Thank goodness Arch had his own transportation that night and wasn’t depending on me. Thank goodness . . .
    I recognized my own thought pattern. I was trying to calm myself, trying to get distracted, before something potentially unsettling was due to take place. As Yolanda’s tires ground up the hill into the back entrance of Aspen Hills, I swallowed hard. Up, up, up we went. The engine gnashed its innards as I turned the steering wheel hard for first one, then another switchback.
    On our right, John Bertram’s house, then his garage, came into view. A hundred yards beyond that, crime-scene ribbons wrapped around rocks and posts fluttered in the wet breeze.
    As John Bertram had told us, Ernest McLeod’s house was a third of a mile farther up. When I saw it, my heart plummeted. So much for just worrying about weather, cooking, transportation, and other insignificant issues.
    “Hey, you two,” I said to Ferdinanda and Yolanda. “Everything all right?” They’d both begun sniffling, so no .
    I peered ahead into the gloom. I could not see any police cars. If Ernest had had one garage remote and Yolanda had had the other, how had they gotten in? Well, presumably John Bertram had a spare key to his friend’s house and had given it to the sheriff’s department. And even if John hadn’t, the police had their ways. They’d already gotten in once and found the seventeen thousand under the mattress.
    But if Tom wanted me to honk at the police car, then to get permission to go inside, how was I supposed to do that if I couldn’t see anybody there?
    Yolanda and Ferdinanda were still crying. I pulled over onto the graveled shoulder, then reached into my bag and handed tissues back to Yolanda, who kept one and gave the other to her aunt. Ferdinanda wiped her eyes and then tucked the tissue into another unseen compartment of her wheelchair. I wondered where she kept the baton, and how often she used it.
    We were just above the highest location of the crime-scene tape stretching around a boulder. The rain pelted down; the yellow ribbons blew sideways. I strained to see up to Ernest’s house. There was no police car. Could the investigators have been dropped off by another team?