Crunch Time by Diane Mott Davidson Read Free Book Online Page B

“What scared you about Ernest’s house? Were you worried he’d discover the money under your mattress?”
    Yolanda pressed her clutch of tissues to her eyes. When Tom tried to ask her another question, she just shook her head.
    I said to Tom, “May I see you in the living room for a moment, please?”
    Tom turned off the recorder. “Let’s take a break.”
    Once Tom and I were standing in the living room, I asked, “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing to my friend?”
    “Since she won’t go down to the sheriff’s department, I’m interrogating her here.”
    “Yeah, well, they’ve discovered that torture doesn’t work, you know.”
    Tom did not smile. “You stick to catering, and I’ll stick to interrogation techniques that I have used for years, and that do in fact yield results.”
    “Why are you being so mean?”
    “Mean? When I’m mean, Miss G., you’ll know. At the moment, I want Yolanda to tell us about Humberto Captain. His father, Roberto Captain, brought Ferdinanda, her brother, and the brother’s wife over on a boat from Cuba. The brother and his wife were Yolanda’s grandparents.”
    “The Captains?”
    “Roberto Captain was a good guy. His son, Humberto? Not so much.”
    I groaned. “This is one of the people Yolanda hangs out with, that you don’t like?”
    “This is the person,” Tom said. “Listen, I don’t for one second believe that Yolanda asked Ernest if she and her aunt could stay at his house just so they could clean and cook for him. I think the real reason she asked Ernest if they could bunk in with him was so that she could be paid by Humberto Captain to spy.”
    “To spy on Ernest? Why? And what kind of guy has Captain for a last name?”
    “Roberto’s original last name was something Spanish, but he legally changed it to Captain, because that’s what everyone called him, since he was the skipper of a boat that made frequent trips bringing exiles over from Cuba. Roberto, El Capitán, became Roberto Captain. Roberto’s dead now, but he ferried folks like Ferdinanda’s family to Miami, after they became disillusioned with Castro.” Tom tilted his head. “You don’t remember Humberto Captain’s picture in the Mountain Journal ?”
    “Remind me.”
    “The paper did one of those quizzes, ‘Can you tell whose view this is?’ The first ten people who guessed right got five bucks. The next week, the paper would run a picture of the owner, sometimes with other people, in front of the view. One of those was the view from Humberto’s big living room. Then the next week, the picture was of Humberto, with his arm around a young woman, in front of the view.”
    “Wait. What does Humberto look like?”
    “Like a guy who stepped out of a casting call for Miami Vice . He’s in his fifties and is shaped like a Brazil nut, narrow at the ends and wide in the middle. He has orangey skin that looks as if he takes daily naps in a tanning bed. Is this sounding familiar?”
    “Yes. I’ve seen him at parties I’ve done.” Humberto Captain’s shock of combed-back salt-and-pepper hair went well with the beige, yellow, and light blue tropical suits he wore—despite all the snow and mud we lived with in Aspen Meadow. The newspaper picture of him had made me shudder, and maybe that was why I’d blocked the memory. Humberto’s pale suit seemed to match the light window casement. His tanned skin looked bizarre. His pearly whites were more brilliant than the chandelier he’d been standing under. I asked, “What does this guy have to do with Yolanda?”
    “Everything, I’m sorry to say. Humberto is a thief, and Ernest was working on the case. You’re going to have to let me tell you more about it later.”
    “But you think Yolanda is working for Humberto?”
    “Yes.” Tom ticked off the points on his fingers. “Ferdinanda is beholden to the Captain family for bringing her to this country. And Yolanda has covered for Humberto in the past. He had a big dinner