House on Fire (ARC)

by Bonnie Kistler

  “Not at the moment, no.”

  She trailed after the young woman as she swept through the house. It wasn’t like on TV. She didn’t unholster her weapon or shout Clear! at every threshold. She moved through the rooms like a casual shopper at a Sunday open house, one who was only looking, thanks, but took the time to peer in every closet. When she finished the ground floor, she climbed the stairs and did the full circuit of the second floor, too, but it was obvious there was nothing amiss up there either, nothing beyond the unmade bed in the master bedroom and the rumpled comforter in Chrissy’s room.

  It was at the threshold of Chrissy’s room that Officer Mateo stopped and looked at Leigh. “I don’t see any sign of an intruder, ma’am.”

  “No.” Leigh flushed and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. I was so sure there was someone—”

  “No need to apologize. That’s what we’re here for. If you like, someone could come out in the daylight tomorrow and take a closer look in the garden.”

  “No, that won’t be necessary.” Leigh followed her down the stairs to the front hall. “I must have imagined it.” Maybe she had. She was so groggy from her lost weekend she could have seen anything.

  The officer hesitated at the front door. “Mrs. Huyett, I never got the chance to tell you how sorry I am for your loss.”

  “Oh.” Leigh went still. “Thank you.”

  “She seemed like a very special young lady. That night at the station? Before you and your husband arrived? You could tell she was scared, but she was being so brave about it. And yet still so courteous to all the officers. I thought at the time what a lovely girl she was.”

  “You’re kind to say so.”

  “Later I found out she went to school with my husband’s niece, Lacey. She couldn’t say enough good things about her. Like that club she started, the antibullying thing?”

  “The Defense League, right.” The Spring to Everyone’s Defense League, Leigh used to call it.

  “My husband, he’s hoping it’s a girl, but I always thought I wanted a boy. Until I met your daughter.”

  It took a moment for Leigh to understand. “You’re pregnant?” She dropped her eyes to the woman’s waistline, but it was too thick with her equipment belt to reveal anything.

  “I’m only four months along. We don’t know what it is yet. But I’ve been thinking how lucky I’d be, if we have a girl and she turns out anything like yours.”

  The radio crackled on the officer’s shoulder, and that finally moved her out the door. It was late now and the night was completely black outside. Leigh switched on the porch light, and it shone a warm glow over the front walk and its tidy edging of little globe boxwoods.

  “Don’t hesitate to call if you hear or see anything again.”

  “Thank you, but I’m sure it was nothing. The wind probably.”

  “Good night, then.”

  “Good night. Good luck with your baby.”

  Leigh locked the door and went through the house, turning off all the lights she’d turned on earlier, first floor up to second. When she reached her own room, she hit that switch, too, but switched it back on an instant later. It was a disgrace how long she’d left the bed unmade, and she was embarrassed that Officer Mateo saw it. She stripped off both sheets in one violent pull and carried them down the back stairs to the laundry room and crammed them in the washer. The water came on with a cleansing whoosh to fill the tub.

  At the bay window in the darkened kitchen she knelt on the window seat and gazed out at the spot where the bench stood in the night garden. The wind could explain the noise she heard, but what could explain the spark? She knew she hadn’t imagined that. It was like a little wink of fairy light in the darkness.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Daddy?” Mia studiously stirred her ice cream to soup. “Did Kip do something bad?”

  Pete threw a startled look at his daughter then a wary glance at the other families in the booths around them to check that no one was eavesdropping. “Well, what does Mommy say about it?”

  This was the protocol he’d learned since the divorce. The parent with primary custody got to set the rules regarding bedtime, diet, TV, and what the child was allowed to know and not know. In the early years Mia arrived every other weekend with a set of printed instructions like a new appliance. But Karen hadn’t passed on any instructions on this subject. How to couch her brother’s arrest for homicide.

  “Mommy says she can’t talk about it. And Gary says I don’t need to know. So does that mean it’s really bad?”

  Her face was the same shade of pink as her Hello Kitty T-shirt. They’d spent the day at the zoo, and it looked like he hadn’t applied enough sunscreen. She had the coloring of her Irish ancestors—black hair and pale, pale skin—and even in May, she burned easily. He should have been more vigilant, or, better yet, planned an outing that didn’t subject her to the sun all day. But he was still new to this kind of visitation and so far not very good at it. Things were so much easier when she came to the house every other weekend and they simply lived their ordinary hectic weekend lives. But after he moved to the job site, Karen vetoed overnight visitation. What he had to do now was drive to Karen’s every Sunday to pick up his daughter and drop off his son. Mia skipped out to the truck while Kip trudged to the front door, and a high-five in passing was the sum of their sibling interaction.

  “He made a mistake,” Pete said finally. “It wasn’t bad. But he broke some rules.”

  She considered that while she swirled a stripe of chocolate syrup through the cream in her dish. “And Chrissy died ’cause of it?”

  “No!” He checked himself to add in a softer tone, “No. Chrissy died because she had a problem inside her head. The accident had nothing to do with it.” He didn’t know whether he believed that or not, but the important thing was for Mia to believe it. “Sometimes bad things happen and it’s nobody’s fault at all. It just—happens.”

  Her pale eyes bored straight into his. “Did God make it happen?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “But why would he?”

  Kip never asked questions like these at her age—or ever—but Mia was a different, more contemplative child. He wished he could give her some kind of answer. Something better than mysterious ways or Deus Vult. He remembered something his grandmother had said at the funeral of a teenaged cousin when Pete was maybe six or seven. God likes to have pretty young flowers in his garden, too. Even as a little boy, he saw the flaw in that argument. Then why doesn’t he just make the old ones young again? “I don’t know, sweetie,” he said.

  “I bet Leigh knows. She knows all the hard stuff. Let’s call her.”

  He wondered. If Leigh heard Mia’s voice on the machine, would that finally make her pick up? “No, we shouldn’t bother her. She’s going through a really hard time right now.”

  “Is that why I’m not allowed to see her?”

  “It’s not that you’re not allowed—”

  “Mommy says I can’t go there.”

  “Just for a little while.”

  “But I miss her.”

  “I know.” He cleared his throat. “Me, too.”

  Mia sighed and let her spoon sink into the liquid. “I miss Chrissy, too. Most of all. At night in bed I close my eyes and put her face inside my eyelids so I can remember her. But I’m afraid someday she’ll just—flicker out.”

  Pete sat back against the hard vinyl of the booth. What a thing for a ten-year-old to say. He had no idea how to respond. Finally he pulled out his wallet and flipped open the photo strip. Chrissy’s photo was there, right next to Leigh’s. He slid it out and passed it over the table. “Would you like to hold on to this?”

  Mia pursed her lips. “It’s not the same,” she said, but she tucked it into her tiny Hello Kitty pocketbook anyway.

&nbs
p; After the divorce, Karen and Gary had moved to Silver Spring, into a new development of mass-produced, cookie-cutter houses called “executive-style” that came with small lots and zero character. It wasn’t where Kip grew up or where his childhood buddies lived, and even in the best of times he didn’t much enjoy his every-other-weekends there. Today he was waiting out front with his hands in his pockets and Karen was behind him hugging her ribs and Pete could read their body language from the end of the driveway: there’d been some kind of blowup with Gary. He leaned over to kiss Mia good-bye in the truck.

  She wrinkled her nose. “Are you always going to have a beard now?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Nothing’s the same anymore.” She sighed and slid to the ground.

  Kip swung up to take her place and slammed the door harder than necessary.

  “Trouble?”

  “Friggin’ asshole.” He scowled and slumped against the door.

  “Seat belt,” Pete said as he backed away.

  Chapter Twenty

  On Monday, Leigh’s email from Polly had an attachment: Rob Canady’s opening brief in the case of Beck v. Beck. Leigh read it through in an hour. It was nothing more than a rehash of the arguments she’d already shot down in the lower court, and one of her young associates could easily draft the responsive brief. But she decided to do it herself. More than ever she felt that the mother-child relationship was something primal, sacred even, and not to be intruded upon by others. Even by the father. After all, his connection to the child was solely genetic. All he did was contribute half the blueprints. While the mother supplied an equal part of the design along with the building site, the construction materials, and all of the labor. She was connected to the baby through blood and nerves and every corpuscle of her being.

  She didn’t write any of that, of course. The only issue on appeal was whether the lower court erred in denying Hunter Beck access to his unborn child, and she confined herself to the legal reasons why that ruling was correct. But there was a force behind her writing that was new, and the words seemed to pour out of her. She finished the brief in half a day.

  Another email arrived from Polly on Tuesday: Ashley Gregg called again. Please call ASAP. She’d called before, Leigh vaguely remembered. The last message said You’ll know what it’s about, but she didn’t, and she never responded. Now she had an embarrassed flash of recall. Ashley Gregg was the personal shopper at Saks. Leigh’s only conduit to the other crazy bereaved lady, Sheikha Devra.

  She rummaged through the desk to retrieve the business card of that young woman who delivered the flowers, Emily Whitman. Sheikh Mazin Al-Khazrati was the name of her late boss, and she googled it and in ten seconds confirmed that he had died in January after suffering a heart attack while speaking at an energy symposium at Georgetown. He was a former OPEC minister from Saudi Arabia but not a member of the royal family, as she might have thought. It seemed that sheikh wasn’t exclusively a royal title; it was an honorific bestowed throughout the Muslim world on tribal leaders and clerics, too. There were literally thousands of sheikhs out there. But no sheikhas. Their wives, singular or plural, had no internet presence at all, and a search for Devra anywhere in proximity to Al-Khazrati came up empty.

  It was morbid curiosity that made her reach for the phone and place a business call for the first time.

  “Oh, Mrs. Huyett,” answered the young woman at Saks. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”

  “I’m sorry. I had, uh.” Leigh cleared her throat. “A death in the ­family.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Ashley said but only in the breezy way of a social convention. “Our mutual friend is anxious to set up another meeting with you.”

  Our mutual friend. Ashley must have imagined their phones were being tapped. Or more likely, Devra imagined it, the deranged widow.

  “Have you known her very long?” Leigh asked. “I was wondering.”

  “Oh, yes. She’s been one of my best customers this last year or so. Such a stylish woman. She has truly exquisite taste.”

  “Did you ever meet her husband?”

  “No, not yet. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, just curious.” Leigh debated what kind of message to relay back to Devra, but everything she thought of came off as too brusque. I’m unable to take on this matter, or I suggest you not pursue this further. Those words were too unkind for a woman so obviously unhinged by her grief. The message should be delivered more gently, in person, and who better to deliver it than Leigh herself? The woman who hallucinated holographic images of her dead daughter. “When would she like to get together?”

  They set a date for the following morning at the same location.

  It wouldn’t be a first client meeting this time—it wouldn’t be a client meeting at all—but Wednesday morning Leigh dressed as if it were, in a suit and heels as before. No pearls this time, though. They’d come unstrung, and she didn’t know what had become of them.

  It was strange to be out in the world, dressed and groomed and on the road. Except for her demented chase after the good reverend, she hadn’t been this far from home since the funeral. Except for a few grocery runs, she hadn’t left the house at all. It was like staggering out of a cave into the blinding sunlight. The letters on the road signs faded in and out of focus like the charts at the eye doctor’s. Better here? Or here? The windshields of passing motorists reflected shards of sun glare, and she had to squint to see their faces through the distortion. They looked unreal to her, like museum specimens behind glass, a diorama of harried D.C. commuters. Everyone in such a hurry to be somewhere else, all of them so busy with their busy lives. Their worlds spinning on.

  She negotiated the heavy inbound traffic and parked by the entrance to Saks, in the same no-parking zone where Ashley directed her before. It was the same spot where she turned on her phone that morning and saw the missed calls from Kip and Peter and the hospital, and that memory was all it took for the grief to billow up and smack her like a wall of water.

  She’d come to think of grief that way, as a giant swell rising up in an otherwise calm sea, cresting into an enormous wave that came crashing down over her. If she was on her guard, if she kept watch for it, she could sometimes see it coming and paddle furiously ahead to miss the worst of it. But too often it came out of nowhere and there was nothing she could do but choke and sputter and gasp for breath.

  The young woman, Ashley Gregg, was waiting at the door. Leigh pretended to be busy checking her phone long enough to pull herself together. She stepped out of the car with a shaky greeting.

  “The sheikha’s already arrived,” Ashley told her as she hurried her along through cosmetics and jewelry and into the elevator. “If you wouldn’t mind carrying this—?” She handed Leigh a hanger holding a plastic-bagged gown, and at Leigh’s blank look, she added, “To—uh—you know.”

  “Oh. Of course.” Leigh maneuvered the gown to conceal the briefcase on her arm as the elevator doors opened.

  The same bodyguard stood at attention outside the door of the designer wear salon. His eyes raked over Leigh as he held the door open, and with a short nod she brushed past him.

  Devra rose from the divan and extended both hands toward her. She’d already removed her black outer coverings, but she was clad in black underneath, too, in a form-fitting sleeveless sheath that revealed a flawless figure. “Leigh. Thank you for meeting me,” she said. “Please, won’t you sit down?”

  “Thank you.” Leigh perched on the edge of the divan. “And thank you also for the beautiful flower arrangement.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The flowers. Your assistant delivered them.”

  The sheikha’s brow furrowed.

  “Emily Whitman. Your assistant?”

  She looked more and more confused. “I don’t believe I know anyone by that name.”

  Leigh didn’t know how to
proceed. If she tried to press too much reality on her, the sheikha might have a complete psychotic break. Hesitantly she said, “Back in January—did your husband suffer a heart attack?”

  Devra gaped at her. “Why would you ask such a thing?”

  “I saw it in the newspaper.” Leigh pulled the printout of the obituary from her briefcase and handed it to her.

  The sheikha read it and looked up with a frown. “I don’t understand. This is about the death of Mazin Al-Khazrati.”

  Gently Leigh said, “Your husband.”

  Devra stared at her a moment. Then she threw back her head and let out a peal of manic laughter. “Al-Khazrati is not my husband! Where did you ever get such an idea?”

  “From Emily Whitman. Your assistant.” Leigh reached in her briefcase for the young woman’s business card.

  Devra shook her head as she read it. “I do not know this person.” She passed the card back. “This confusion is obviously my fault. I should have told you everything from the start.” She rummaged in her handbag—­today it was a crocodile Chanel—and came out with a business card of her own. “Here. This is my husband.”

  Leigh took the card from her and read it:

  His Excellency Faheem bin Jabar

  Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary

  Embassy of the State of Qatar in the United States

  2355 Belmont Road NW, Washington, DC 20008

  She looked up. Carefully she said, “Your husband is the Qatari ambassador to the United States.”

  “That is correct, yes.” Devra folded her hands, as if pleased that the misunderstanding had been so swiftly resolved.

  Leigh couldn’t imagine any reason for the widow of a Saudi sheikh to carry the business card of the Qatari ambassador. But she also couldn’t imagine any reason for Emily Whitman to lie to her. “And this is your address?”

  “That is the address of the embassy,” Devra said. “We have living quarters there, of course, but we spend the weekends at our country estate here in Virginia.”