Crunch Time by Diane Mott Davidson Page A

There were no lights. Was it possible they were done already?
    Tom had said they would be there. I honked three times. There was no reponse.
    I punched in first Tom’s cell, then his office number, but was directed to voice mail both times. I left messages saying I couldn’t see a department car at Ernest’s house, and that I’d honked, to no avail. If I couldn’t see the investigators or reach them, should we go in?
    Could the team have left already? That didn’t seem likely. County investigators usually stay on a fresh murder for hours in pursuit of clues. I didn’t know which investigators were assigned to Ernest’s place. I wasn’t sure I wanted to risk Tom’s wrath by going into the house without the permission I’d promised him I would get.
    I called Tom’s cell four more times during the next ten minutes. I tried Sergeant Boyd, his most trusted subordinate, and got voice mail there, too.
    On my last try to Tom, I said that even if Yolanda and Ferdinanda decided to stay with us, they would need toiletries, clothes, and so on. I knew he wouldn’t want us to come back to Ernest’s house when it was completely dark and the team had left, would he? I supposed we could go to the grocery store for essentials, I said, and run the washing machine for Yolanda’s clothes for tomorrow. . . .
    I reluctantly hung up. Ferdinanda and Yolanda had started up their Spanish conversation again. Shame or no shame, I wanted to ask Yolanda why she hadn’t felt the confidence to call me when Kris hit her. She knew my history. Had she been too proud to ask for help? I wondered.
    While waiting for Tom to call back, I contemplated Ernest’s dark house, which was barely visible now through the relentless downpour.
    The weathered-gray-clapboard-sided house had originally been a one-story summer vacation home for a public school teacher. The teacher, who’d had the old-fashioned name Portia, had lived and worked in Denver from the end of the Second World War, when the house had been new, until the early seventies. Never married, Portia had lived year-round in the house after her retirement. Like many Aspen Meadow residences of that era, the place had been small—only two bedrooms and one bath. But its glory had been the fifteen gorgeous, sloping acres that commanded a spectacular vista of national forest.
    I stared at my cell phone, willing Tom, Sergeant Boyd, or someone from the department to call me. Nothing. I shook my head and stared back at the house.
    Over the years, Portia had told Ernest, she’d had multiple offers from builders riding various booms. He told us this story as he waved his hand, the way she had, as if Portia had been a princess who’d dismissed suitors who weren’t up to snuff. These builders, Portia had angrily told Ernest, were trying to take advantage of unincorporated Furman County’s lax building restrictions. They wanted to put sixty structures on one-quarter-acre parcels. How could anyone enjoy the view with all the houses cheek by jowl? No, no, Portia told Ernest. She put her house up for sale several times, to take advantage of rising prices. But she stood firm in one area: Whoever purchased it had to sign a legal notice that he or she would never tear down the original house nor subdivide her land. Buyers weren’t interested in a small, outdated, ramshackle place with only two bedrooms and a single bath. Builders were scared to death to sign away their desire to develop.
    And then along came Ernest McLeod, a cop who was unmarried at the time. Ernest charmed Portia and asked if he could have her permission to buy her house and add on to it . No matter what, he promised, he would never subdivide her land. And for the addition, he would use the same siding, let it weather, and keep Portia’s style of architecture, which even an amateur art critic would sneeringly call nondescript. Ernest also insisted he would do all the work himself and, as if to prove it, showed Portia pictures of the