The Secret, Book & Scone Society

by Ellery Adams

  Collin reentered the kitchen carrying a red gas can. He unscrewed the cap and stared at Nora with doleful eyes. “I wish you hadn’t gone and played the hero. Things don’t end nice and neat like they do in books. In real life, heroes die. In real life, guys like me get away. And the scarred, sensitive, once-beautiful, bibliotherapist”—he paused as if his emotions had momentarily gotten the better of him—“she has to burn.”

  Chapter 18

  The wound is the place where the light enters you.

  —Pablo Neruda

  “I’m going to my office,” the sheriff told Collin. “I have to be seen by people before this fire gets called in.”

  Collin dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Go ahead. Bob should be here any minute. After I leave, I’ll head to a public place too. That Pink Lady Grill, maybe.”

  “Best burger in town,” the sheriff said. His expression turned dreamy, but he blinked as if he suddenly remembered that he still had a role to play. Jerking his thumb at the three women, he asked, “Is Bob handling them? Like he handled our other problems?”

  “That’s the plan,” Collin said.

  Sheriff Todd Hendricks paused in the doorway, and Nora wondered if his conscience made him hesitate. But he didn’t look at any of the women. He simply waited for several long seconds before he finally left.

  Following his departure, June issued a derisive grunt. “I knew Greer didn’t die from a potassium overdose. Bob must have slipped something more potent in his drink.”

  “You didn’t quite have it all figured out, did you?” As Collin settled into the chair opposite Nora, his boot made contact with the red canister on the floor and the pungent odor of gasoline immediately tainted the air.

  Nora met Collin’s eyes with a cold stare. She refused to let him see her fear. And she was afraid. She felt like she was on the verge of being turned inside out.

  “The lab results will reveal another medicine or a type of poison,” June said, reclaiming Collin’s attention. “Unless you’re paying off the medical examiner too.”

  “There was no need,” Collin said. “The sheriff told the doc to look for potassium in Greer’s body, and the doc found it. By the time lab results come back that could raise questions about the cause of death, I’ll be long gone.” He raised his hands. “And before you ask me to explain what happened to Greer, don’t. This isn’t a novel where the bad guy confesses everything. You don’t need to know every detail.”

  The doorbell rang and Hester let out a tiny shriek. Collin smiled at her. “Speaking of books, it sounds like the wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing character has arrived. Tonight, however, he won’t bother with his disguise. You’ll get to see his wolf side.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Bob said as he stepped into the kitchen. “These ladies aren’t like that slut, Estella. She’d dirty herself with any Tom, Dick, or Harry as long as he was rich enough. I wanted to punish her, but these ladies haven’t done anything to me. I’m not onboard with this.”

  Collin leapt up and got into Bob’s face, his mouth twisting in anger. “Is that so? You’d best get onboard or I’ll make an anonymous phone call describing how you prepared cocktails mixed with potassium chloride stolen from Greer’s hotel room. After Greer drank your special drinks, you saw that he was close to passing out, so you helped him to a hotel golf cart and drove him to a maintenance shed. There, you put a dust mask over his face—a mask connected by plastic tubing to a canister of carbon monoxide—and waited for him to die. Finally, you dumped his body in the bathhouse.”

  “You know I did everything because of her!” Bob shouted. “I pushed Neil for the money. To impress her! And that still wasn’t enough—after all the years I’ve listened to her, given her free drinks, and watched her make a fool of herself with loser after loser. I was done being the nice guy!” He gestured at Nora, June, and Hester. “I was willing to spy on these three for money. Why wouldn’t I? I sold my soul the day I killed your partner. But there’s a difference between bumping off scumbags who wanted to dupe the people of this town and burning three women alive.”

  Collin nodded in sympathetic agreement. “I know. I wish it hadn’t come to this, but there’s no other choice. Get your—”

  “Bob does have another option,” Nora interjected. “He can stop taking orders from you right now. He’s his own man.”

  Bob seemed pleased by this notion. Jabbing a finger near Collin’s face, he said, “The lady’s right. You want to come after me? Go ahead. If I go down, you go down. You see me as a dumb, small-town bartender—a sheep—but I have proof of our transactions hidden away. If anything happens to me, that proof will surface. Down the swift dark stream you go. Remember that, city boy.”

  Collin opened his mouth to reply, but Bob marched out of the room.

  “Hey!” June cried. “Bob! Don’t leave us alone with him!”

  “Down the swift dark stream you go!” Bob shouted from the hallway.

  Though the phrase made no sense, it was familiar to Nora. She repeated the words to herself and tried to place them.

  Collin broke her concentration when he scooped up the open gas canister, causing gas to slosh over the sides and onto the floor, and took off after Bob. As he ran, he left a liquid gas trail in his wake.

  “Bob! Look out!” Nora yelled, lurching to her feet. Her chair slammed against the floor with a dull thud. Beside her, June and Hester sat frozen in fear.

  Nora moved to the cabinets, hoping to find scissors or a sharp knife in one of the drawers. An animalistic scream echoed down the hall, and Nora knew that she was too late to save Bob. Suppressing a sob of terror, she pulled open a drawer containing plastic cutlery.

  Bob screamed over and over. His voice turned from a high-pitched wail to a horrific keening. Underlying these terrible sounds was the distinct whoosh of flames. The trail of gas leading from the kitchen to the hallway had ignited and was now racing back toward its origin point like a fiery bullet train.

  When the trail crossed the threshold into the kitchen, it divided, forming narrow rivulets of flames. The polished hardwood floor and white toe-kick boards blackened and an acrid smoke permeated the air. Nora saw that the gas had also splattered the cabinets and oven. It would be foolish to try to turn off the cooktop burners, so she retreated toward the table.

  “We have to get out!” Nora shouted at her friends.

  June and Hester had been so transfixed by the progression of the flames that they were still seated. But Nora’s urgent cry broke the fire’s spell and both women jumped up.

  Nora hurried to the sliding-glass door leading to the back patio. She spun around, facing the kitchen, her blind fingers fumbling for the lock. As soon as she felt the lock release, she grabbed the handle and shuffled sideways, pulling the door partially open.

  “Go!” Nora yelled.

  June and Hester were so focused on escaping the tainted air and infringing heat, that they didn’t see the shape hurtling toward them through the smoke.

  But Nora did.

  The moment she was outside, Nora screamed for June and Hester to split up and run. She had just enough time to believe that her friends would get away before Collin’s hands clamped around her forearms like two vises.

  “Not you,” he snarled, squeezing hard. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  Nora twisted her shoulders and cried out as Collin yanked her back toward the house. Toward the fire. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t free herself from his iron grip.

  Inside the kitchen, the smoke had thickened into a pewter fog and the flames were hip-high. Nora could hear the room succumbing to the fire’s hunger. The crackling, sizzling, and popping noises were different from those she’d heard the night she’d been burned. This smoke couldn’t rise into the crisp January air of a wide, winter sky. It hung low, like a heavy tomcat waiting to spring. It stung Nora’s eyes and tried to claw its way down her throat.

  Collin pushed her deeper into the room, and she was engulfed by heat.

&nb
sp; Instinctively, Nora hunched her shoulders and bent her head. She fought the urge to cough and again tried to wrench herself loose from her captor’s grasp.

  Collin was raging at her—hurling curses about how she was ruining everything as he dug his fingers into her flesh—all the while maneuvering her so that she faced the stove. He then gave her a mighty shove, sending her careening into the stainless-steel refrigerator.

  Nora pivoted to avoid striking the metal with her cheek, which meant her shoulder took the brunt of the contact. She bounced off the appliance like a rubber ball. The pain and smoke stole the oxygen from her lungs and the world began to tilt.

  Suddenly, Nora was on the floor. The impact of falling chased off her dizziness enough for her to be aware of the fire encroaching near her back. She rolled away from it, moving toward what she prayed were the sliding doors.

  She couldn’t see much. Her eyes were watering and dozens of tiny black dots hovered at the edge of her vision. Shapes shifted and danced, so she kept her eyes tightly shut and rolled over again. And again.

  Chancing the briefest peek, she nearly sobbed in relief at the sight of the sliding door. Naturally, Collin had closed it. Nora thought she saw him standing on the other side, watching her, but she couldn’t tell. His hulking figure seemed to divide into two shadows, but Nora didn’t know what she saw because she had to close her throbbing eyes against the smoke’s persistent sting. She couldn’t even think about Collin’s next move. She could only focus on rolling to the door.

  Nora turned her body, fighting against the blackness coaxing her to surrender. With no more oxygen reserves in her lungs, she was forced to draw in a shallow breath through her nose. The air was now completely polluted, and she began to cough.

  The action pulled in more tainted air, and she felt like her throat was being seared. The pain startled her into opening her eyes. She caught a glimpse of summer sky through glass.

  As if from a great distance, words drifted into her mind. She couldn’t remember where she’d heard them before.

  Float beyond the world of trees.

  Out into the whispering breeze.

  And then the darkness took her.

  * * *

  Nora woke in an unfamiliar, yet all-too-familiar place. Even with her eyes closed, she recognized the steady beeping of the machine by her head as well as the upward tilt of the bed. She moved her hands and there it was: the expectant tug of the IV’s plastic cannula from where it was taped to her right wrist.

  A voice near the foot of her bed said, “It’s okay, Nora. It’s not like the last time.”

  This was such an odd remark that, despite not wanting to see the new scars she’d acquired at the Meadows, Nora opened her eyes.

  Jedediah Craig sat in a plastic chair beside her bed. He had something curled inside his fist, and when he saw Nora’s gaze land there, he unfolded his fingers like a flower to reveal a set of mala beads.

  Jed’s voice had been hoarse, which had made him sound like a different man. Keenly aware of the significance of this, Nora forgot about her own condition.

  “Did you pull me out?” she asked. Her voice was a dry riverbed.

  Jed poured two cups of water. He gave one to Nora and they both drank. When she was done, he put the cups on the nightstand.

  “I wish I’d been there sooner,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  Nora stared at him in surprise. “You saved me. The last thing I remember is smoke burning my throat and eyes. And the sky. I think Collin Stone was watching me. And there was something else. Something important.”

  Jed silently waited for her to remember, but Nora couldn’t.

  With a frown, she brought the hand free of the IV tubing to her throat. “I should be sore. How long have I been out?”

  Instead of answering her question, Jed took Nora’s hand and let the mala beads spill onto her palm.

  “Concentrate on these while I talk. They’re not from Miracle Books, but I thought they’d bring you comfort anyway.”

  When Nora took the beads between her fingers, Jed began to speak. “You were admitted to Mission Hospital in Asheville three days ago. Sending you to Mission was my call. I didn’t think the medical center at Miracle Springs would be good enough if you woke up and exhibited symptoms of PTSD. Burn victims are trauma survivors, and there was no telling how facing a second fire would affect you.” He smiled. “But you seem incredibly unshaken for someone who hasn’t had a painkiller for over four hours.”

  Nora’s gaze followed her IV line from her wrist upward to the metal pole. The only bag hanging from the metal pole was filled with fluids. There was no morphine drip. No intravenous narcotics. “What are my injuries?” she asked.

  “The primary concern was smoke inhalation,” Jed said. “You were treated with oxygen and steroids. There’s a significant risk of infection after such an injury, so it’s common to keep patients for up to three days for observation. The Mission staff has been very thorough. Your chest scans are clear and your white blood count is good, which means you should be able to skip out of here tonight or tomorrow morning.”

  “Skip?” Nora dumped the mala beads on the blanket and fished around for the bed controls. When she found them, she raised herself to an upright position and examined her arms. Her left arm was redder than usual. It looked like she’d spent a day at the beach and had forgotten sunscreen.

  “That’s as bad as it gets,” Jed said.

  Nora found his matter-of-fact tone reassuring. “Am I this lovely shade of lobster elsewhere?”

  “Pretty much from fingers to hairline,” Jed said. “You’ll need a haircut when you get back to Miracle Springs too, though I like how the shorter pieces frame your face.”

  The compliment threw Nora off-guard. She reached up to touch a strand of chin-length hair. “Thanks,” she whispered. She lowered her hand and her fingers automatically sought the burn scar on her forearm. Looking at the shell-smooth skin, Nora said, “You’re right, this is nothing like the last time. So why don’t I remember anything?”

  Jed reached for their water cups again. “You had to be sedated.”

  Nora accepted hers with a small “Oh.”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You were reliving your first fire, which isn’t uncommon for survivors,” he said. “You kept going in and out of consciousness, and the staff couldn’t treat your injuries while you kept taking out your breathing tube or IV line, so they sedated you.”

  Nora suddenly noticed the dark circles under Jed’s eyes and his uncombed hair. “You volunteered to watch over me. Is that why I’m not restrained?” When he didn’t respond, Nora grabbed his hand. “What about your job?”

  Jed grinned. “No one’s going to give a pink slip to the guy who runs into the burning building to save the girl. I’m safe, unless the crew from station nine convince my boss that it’s wrong for a paramedic to steal the firemen’s limelight.”

  Nora laughed. It felt good to hold Jed’s hand. She had so many questions that they were tripping over each other in her head, but the man caressing the skin of her palm with the pad of his thumb was worthy of patience. Not only had he risked his life for her, but he’d also sat vigil at her bedside for countless hours.

  “I’ll never be able to tell you how grateful I am that you found me inside the model house, but I can’t figure out how you came to be there,” Nora said.

  Jed looked aggrieved. “I moved to Miracle Springs because I wanted a fresh, new, quiet life. I didn’t expect to meet someone like you, but after I did, I wanted to know you better. Then you hit me up with the whole murder-theory thing and it totally threw me. I told you that I can’t afford to lose this job. I need it because I’m responsible for my mom’s care. I’ve already screwed up once and she paid the price for my mistake. If I spent the rest of my life trying to make it up to her, it wouldn’t be long enough.”

  He paused. There was only the sound of the machines, and the sense of Jed’s shame and regret, filling the room. Nora wanted to
comfort him, but she knew it was best to stay silent.

  “Despite my desire to toe the line, I couldn’t stop thinking about my responsibility to my profession. Having seen Mr. Greer’s body, I knew I couldn’t forget about what you’d told me, so I asked the ME, Dr. Lou, out for a beer. We talked about sports and a bunch of other cases before I raised the subject of Mr. Greer’s postmortem lividity.”

  Nora almost forgot that she was in a hospital room. “And?”

  “The discrepancy between how the blood pooled in Mr. Greer’s body and how Mr. Greer had been found didn’t escape the doc’s notice. He wasn’t going to rule Mr. Greer’s death an overdose by potassium chloride just because the sheriff pressured him to do just that. Dr. Lou is built like a linebacker. He’s also gay.” Jed grinned. “Over our third round, he shared some unforgettable stories about being one of the first men in his med-school class to come out. Believe me, this man is not easily intimidated, and he’s a stickler for detail. He told me that Mr. Greer didn’t have a preexisting heart condition, so the good doc already had a gut feeling that something was off about the cause of death. Don’t worry, Nora, he’ll wait for the lab results before making a ruling.”

  Nora was about to voice her relief when a nurse entered the room. She had the clipped, efficient gait Nora had observed dozens of times with dozens of nurses.

  “How are you feeling?” the nurse asked while withdrawing a thermometer from her pocket. Approaching Nora on the left, she glanced at Jed. “If you don’t mind.”

  Taking the hint, he scooted out of the way.

  The nurse dropped a blood-pressure cuff on the bed and offered Nora the thermometer.

  “I feel calm and clearheaded and I’m not in any pain,” Nora said. She then opened her mouth wide and lifted her tongue.

  After placing the thermometer in Nora’s mouth, the nurse wrapped the blood-pressure cuff around Nora’s upper arm. “Good” was her simple reply as she began inflating the cuff.