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little bit, after he took care of the puppies. He returned to the kitchen around, oh, eight? He washed his hands and had some of the pudding, which Ferdinanda announced needed more vanilla, cinnamon, and sugar. But Ernest said it was delicious. He wondered if the dentist would get after him for having it right before his appointment.” She shook her head. “At that point he went off to brush his teeth. His dental appointment had been changed to ten o’clock—”
    “Changed?” Tom said sharply. “When?”
    “I don’t know,” Yolanda said, taken aback. “He just said it had been changed. The dentist had somebody who could only come in on the day Ernest was scheduled. So Ernest’s appointment was changed from two weeks from now to yesterday, Saturday morning.”
    Tom and John exchanged a look. Tom poised his pen over his notebook. “Do you know who his dentist was?”
    “Yeah, I do,” said Yolanda. “I mean, I do now. Drew Parker.”
    Tom nodded to John, who got up and went into the living room to use his cell.
    “Go on,” said Tom.
    “When Ernest didn’t come home in the early afternoon, the way he said he was going to, I called his cell. There wasn’t any answer. I left a voice mail asking him to call me.”
    Tom asked, “When was this?”
    “About two? Ernest always called me back. Always. After half an hour, I tried his cell again. There was no answer.”
    John Bertram returned to the kitchen. To Tom, he said, “They’re searching for Parker.”
    Yolanda looked feverishly at John. “When I couldn’t reach Ernest, I phoned your house! Didn’t you get the message?”
    John shook his head. “My wife and I don’t answer our land line on the weekends. If the department wants me, they call on my cell that’s dedicated to that purpose.”
    Yolanda closed her eyes. “I couldn’t reach Ernest and I couldn’t reach you. I just, I don’t know, I panicked. I thought maybe he’d been in an accident, maybe he’d been the victim of a hit-and-run, like Ferdinanda—”
    My business line rang. Everyone looked at me, so I checked the caller ID. It was the Breckenridges, the hosts for the church fund-raising dinner Yolanda and I were doing Tuesday evening. Saint Luke’s, like every other charitable enterprise in Aspen Meadow, was hurting. Pledges were off, and the plate offering, according to our rector, Father Pete, was way down. Sean Breckenridge, the Saint Luke’s senior warden, had had the bright idea to put on a dinner for the well-heeled. Tickets had been sold to twelve parishioners, who’d ponied up a thousand clams apiece. Father Pete thought he’d died and gone to heaven.
    I picked up the phone and went into the other room. “Goldilocks’ Catering—”
    “It’s Sean Breckenridge,” our prospective host interrupted me. If he was going to cancel the dinner, for which I’d already bought the food, I would wring his neck, no matter what Father Pete thought of that particular crime.
    “What’s wrong?” I asked. “We’re still on for Tuesday night, yes?”
    “Yes,” he said, but sounded tentative. Sean, fortyish, thin, with babyface good looks and dark hair, a lanky frame, and long fingers, did not work outside the home, although he’d been trained as an accountant. “Well,” he said, “we have a problem.”
    “Problem, Sean?” I could just imagine his thin lips twisting as he spoke, his eyes crinkling at the corners, as if everything you said was amusing.
    “I hear you have that Cuban woman working for you. The one with hepatitis C.”
    My skin broke out in gooseflesh. “First of all,” I said testily, “Yolanda is an American citizen. She was born in this country, just as I assume you were . And she does not have hep C. Who told you that?”
    “I heard it at the country club.”
    “Ah. From whom?”
    Sean cleared his throat and said nothing.
    I yelled, “Who did you hear it from, Sean?”
    He paused, taken aback. “I’d, uh, I’d rather not say.”
    “I see. Well,