by Lee Hollis
“Because I am,” he said. “At least tonight. Listen, Hayley, it’s very important we maintain our cover! You never know who he might talk to or what he could tell them,” Bruce said, not the least bit concerned that he might have damaged a future romantic prospect for Hayley.
Especially one with whom she had a complicated history.
No, Bruce wasn’t concerned at all.
In fact, he appeared to be loving every minute of it.
Bruce jumped under the covers and playfully motioned for her to join him.
“Keep dreaming,” she said, rolling her eyes as she crawled into the other side of the bed and shut off the light one last time.
“Oh, don’t you worry, I will,” he said in the dark.
Great.
Her mind would be racing all night wondering just what he had meant by that comment.
Now she was never going to get any sleep.
Chapter 18
Hayley was startled awake by the sound of men’s voices in the distance, yelling at each other. She tried to move, but seemed to be pinned down. She felt a weight holding her across the waist. She shifted and turned her head to see the unconscious face of Bruce Linney, eyes closed and mouth open with short grunting snores escaping past his lips. He was sound asleep. He also had an arm slung around her waist and was cuddling with her.
Hayley wriggled free from his thick muscled arm and slipped out of bed. She padded over to the window and peered out. She didn’t see anyone outside, but could still hear the men shouting.
Suddenly there was a loud banging on the door.
“Hurry! Everybody out of the house now!” a man hollered, and then he was gone.
Hayley spun around to Bruce, who was hugging a pillow and still snoring softly, his bare leg hanging out over the edge of the bed.
Hayley rushed over and tried to shake him awake. “Bruce, something’s happening! We need to get out of the house!”
He snorted and turned away from her, and was now flopped on his back, not happy to be roused out of his slumber.
Hayley grabbed his arm and shook harder.
“Bruce! I’m not kidding! Wake up now!”
He grumbled and moaned to himself before he reluctantly opened his eyes, surprised to find himself staring into Hayley’s face.
“What?” he asked sleepily.
“Come on! We have to get out of here!”
Hayley ripped off the comforter and sheets, leaving his nearly naked self lying on top of the mattress, arms and legs spread out to the four corners, like he was making a snow angel.
Hayley noticed a strong smoky smell in the air, not quite like the smell of a pipe, but rather a fire pit burning.
Suddenly her entire body shook with fear.
“Oh my God! The house is on fire! Bruce, let’s go!”
She grabbed his arm and hauled him out of bed.
He crashed to the floor, and was finally fully awake.
“Fire? What?”
Bruce sniffed the air a few times, and when it finally clicked in his brain that the house was burning down and their lives were in danger, he jumped to his feet, grabbed Hayley’s hand, and hightailed it out of there with Hayley in tow.
He forgot he was still only wearing his underwear.
Hayley and Bruce scrambled out the door to the immaculately landscaped front yard of the main house on the estate, visible by the porch lights which had all been turned on, and quickly realized they were the last ones to escape as all of Penelope’s other guests were already huddled together in various stages of dress. Penelope was directing her household staff to make sure everyone was accounted for, and to report back to her immediately.
They were suddenly bathed in flashing red lights as two fire trucks arrived, careening down the dirt road from the main gate, sirens wailing.
Hayley looked back at the house and saw thick clouds of black smoke billowing up over the rooftop, but no flames.
She still didn’t know where the fire was burning.
Penelope wrapped her silk baby-blue bathrobe tighter around her as she raced up to the four firemen jumping down from their truck and frantically spoke to them while gesturing wildly toward the house. The firemen jogged around the side of the mansion while the remaining men worked feverishly to unhook the hose from the truck.
A few minutes later, the group of firemen emerged, walking calmly, but all with somber looks on their faces.
They spoke to Penelope in hushed whispers, and from the reaction on Penelope’s face, it wasn’t good news.
Bruce, who was now freezing in the chilly night temperatures, wearing only his underwear, hugged himself as he sidled up next to Hayley.
“What do you think is going on?”
“I don’t know, but I think the fire was already out by the time they got here,” Hayley said, watching the scene unfold.
Penelope hugged the fire chief, thanking him profusely, and then wiped a tear away from her eye. She glanced over at her houseguests, all of whom stood numbly in the cold, confused and disoriented.
Hayley couldn’t stand the suspense anymore.
She walked briskly over to Penelope, who stood with a hand over her mouth as she stared at the house, lost in deep thought.
“Penelope, do you know what started the fire?” Penelope shook her head.
“Where was it?”
“The pantry.”
“But it’s out now so we have that to be thankful for,” Hayley said, trying to get some kind of reaction out of Penelope, who remained in a trance-like state. “It could have been much worse.”
Penelope’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Lex and his crew managed to put it out before the fire department could get here.”
“Well, you’re lucky they were here to stop the blaze before it spread to other parts of the house,” Hayley said, watching Penelope, who seemed on the verge of some kind of breakdown. She stepped forward and gently placed a hand on Penelope’s shoulder. “Penelope, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“Lex and his men smelled smoke and realized there was a fire, but they didn’t know where the smoke was coming from, so it took them a while to locate the source. They finally saw it pouring out from underneath the door of the pantry so they got buckets of water to put it out, but the pantry door was locked and they had to bust it down. After they doused the fire and some of the smoke cleared, that’s when they saw her . . .”
“Her? Who?”
“Lena. She was lying on the floor. They think she may be dead.”
“What?”
Hayley heard a police siren in the near distance fast approaching.
Somebody had called 911.
As Hayley comforted Penelope, the police cruiser sped down the road along with the emergency ambulance right on its tail. Both vehicles screeched to a stop. Sergio and two of his officers, Donnie and Earl, bolted from the cruiser while a pair of paramedics rolled a gurney out of the back of the ambulance, and they all raced around the side of the house to the entrance in the back where the kitchen and pantry were located.
Bruce casually strolled up to Hayley and Penelope and cleared his throat. “So does the fire department have any idea when it might be safe to go back inside the house?”
“Not now, Bruce!” Hayley barked.
“I just want to put some pants on! I’m not asking for the world, Hayley!”
“It shouldn’t be too long,” Penelope whispered. “I’m so sorry for the inconvenience.”
“It’s no inconvenience, Penelope. He’s fine!” Hayley exclaimed, giving Bruce the evil eye as he stood barefoot in the dirt, shivering and hugging himself.
“I can’t lose her, Hayley. Please tell me she’s going to be okay,” Penelope said, her voice cracking, as she buried her face in Hayley’s chest.
“She’s going to be fine,” Hayley said.
There was that word again.
Fine.
Everything’s going to be fine.
Hayley never knew why she said things like that. V
ery rarely was everything fine.
Especially right now at this moment.
And more important, she had no idea what she was talking about. She had no idea what the hell was going on in the pantry.
But she did know one thing.
Penelope Janice seemed far more upset over her assistant’s possible demise than she did over her own husband’s death just hours before.
She could barely muster even the slightest frown for that one.
Lena was reportedly embroiled in an affair with Penelope’s husband.
Wouldn’t that have drastically changed Penelope’s opinion of her?
Put a marked strain on their working and personal relationship?
But right now Penelope was sobbing and weeping as if she was on the verge of losing her own daughter.
The paramedics reappeared swiftly, rolling the gurney toward the ambulance. There was a supine body strapped in to it. Penelope broke away from Hayley and rushed over to the paramedics, running alongside them.
“Is she going to be okay?”
“Out of the way, ma’am!”
Penelope reached down and stroked Lena’s black-smudged face. “Lena, speak to me! Are you all right?”
“Out of the way, please, ma’am!” the paramedic screamed again as they tried to load Lena and the gurney into the back of the ambulance. “She has severe smoke inhalation and we need to get her to the hospital.”
Gerard Roquefort finally had the good sense to run over and pull a near hysterical Penelope off the gurney so the paramedics could transport Lena to the hospital for urgent care.
Bruce finished talking to the fire chief and quickly turned and yelled to the other guests, “Hey, everybody! It’s safe to go back inside!”
And then he turned and trotted off inside to find some clothes.
The guests slowly filed back into the house, but Hayley remained outside.
She was going to wait for Sergio.
Hayley knew in her gut that he had been called to the scene for a reason.
When Sergio finally reappeared nearly half an hour later, Hayley made a fast beeline for him. “Why did they call you if it was just a pantry fire?”
Sergio glanced around to make sure no one saw him talking to her, but with the exception of Donnie and Earl, who were too busy teasing each other over something silly, there was no nobody else around.
“The fire department did a routine sweep of the pantry after they got here. The fire was already out thanks to Lex and his crew, but they found a few suspicious items so they thought it would be wise to call me” Sergio said.
“What kind of suspicious items?”
“A cat food dispenser,” he said, straight-faced.
Hayley waited a moment, letting that one hang in the air.
“Okay, I’ll bite. How is a cat food dispenser suspicious?”
“Not just the cat food dispenser, but the other items that were close by. I also found a timer, some chlorine tablets, a bottle of brake fluid. Now separately, I wouldn’t give them a second thought, but together . . . ?”
“What do they do together?”
“There’s a way you can rig a cat food dispenser with a timer that releases chlorine tablets and brake fluid, which when mixed causes a small explosion. And then you’ve got yourself a fire.”
“So we’re talking arson?” Hayley gasped.
“No, Hayley, somebody locked that poor girl inside the pantry from the outside having already rigged an explosion to cause a fire around the same time, knowing she would be trapped in there. She swallowed a lot of smoke and might not make it. If she dies, we’re not talking arson, we’re talking murder!”
Chapter 19
“That’s preposterous!” Penelope snorted, sipping a cup of coffee on her back porch that looked out over the dark blue waters of the Atlantic just as the sun was creeping up over the tip of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park, bathing the whole island in a golden hue. Penelope was still in her cream-colored silk nightgown, most of which was covered by a cherry blossom and crane kimono robe she had probably picked up while doing a sushi special in Japan for her TV show. “Who on earth would get the wild idea to rig my cat food dispenser with some kind of bomb? For what possible purpose?”
“Someone who wanted to cause a lot of damage either to you, or your home, or anyone near the pantry—like Miss Hendricks,” Sergio said, stone-faced.
Hayley hovered behind him, watching Penelope, who on the surface appeared genuinely perplexed and upset about this whole disruptive and disturbing situation.
“It’s just such a wild notion. Why would anyone want to hurt poor Lena?”
There was a long pause.
Penelope’s own motive for eliminating Lena Hendricks was the elephant in the room, and she was not about to acknowledge it.
“We are not sure whether Miss Hendricks was the intended victim, or if she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when the timer went off causing the chemical explosion,” Sergio said.
“But the chief does know that someone purposely locked Lena inside that pantry just before the fire started,” Hayley said, before catching herself, realizing she had just broken her own vow to stay silent and allow Sergio to do his job.
Penelope stared at Hayley, her mouth dropped open, her lip quivering. “Someone . . . locked her . . . inside?”
“Your groundskeeper Lex Bansfield and a couple of his men had to break down the door to get to her. There’s no telling how long she had been trapped in there, and there was no one around in or near the kitchen who would have heard her cries for help, not until people in the house began smelling smoke and realized there was a fire,” Sergio said solemnly.
Penelope sat down in a wicker rocking chair as if the wind had suddenly been knocked out of her. Sergio studied her behavior closely, trying to determine if her obviously pained reaction was natural or a well-rehearsed performance from a seasoned TV performer used to being in the spotlight and having a camera follow her around to record her every action and emotion.
Hayley was already convinced Penelope wasn’t faking it, having witnessed firsthand how genuinely distraught she was when she first learned Lena had been seriously injured.
“Is there any word yet? Is she going to make it?” Penelope asked, her voice cracking.
“I honestly don’t know,” Sergio said quietly, shaking his head. “They’re still treating her at the hospital.”
“I just don’t understand why anyone would do such a horrible thing . . . to Lena, of all people, she was such a sweet girl . . .”
“It could be the same person who pushed Conrad over that cliff,” Hayley said, unable to stop herself.
Penelope’s eyes narrowed, focusing squarely on Hayley, and she growled in a low voice, “By all accounts, Hayley, my husband had too much to drink and fell off that cliff. Correct me if I’m wrong, Chief, but there is absolutely no evidence to suggest anyone shoved him. This fire is an entirely different story. If someone deliberately locked Lena inside that pantry with a rigged cat food dispenser set to go off and cause a fire, then that is premeditated murder.”
“You’re right, I’m sorry,” Hayley said, neither believing Penelope was right nor that she was sorry for saying it.
In her gut, Hayley was still convinced they were now dealing with two murders, not just one.
“Mrs. Janice, who has a key to the pantry?”
“The entire kitchen staff. We keep a key hanging on a hook by the door. Everyone knew where it was but nobody used it because we always just kept the pantry unlocked.”
“Did anyone else besides the kitchen staff have access to the area?”
“Just about everyone. People were in and out of there all the time getting coffee, grabbing a snack, all sorts of deliverymen were sent back there. I encouraged everyone to help themselves to any food in the pantry if they were on the property working.”
“What about the cat food dispenser?”
Penelope blanched and threw
a hand to her mouth.
“What is it, Penelope?” Hayley asked.
“No. She would never . . ”
“Who?” Sergio asked, stepping forward.
Penelope struggled with herself, not wanting to divulge any more, but she knew the chief of police would not leave her alone until he got all the information he wanted.
She sighed and whispered, “Clara.”
“The cook you recently fired?” Sergio said, almost accusingly.
“My husband fired her. I rehired her after . . ” she said, making sure her eyes were locked on Hayley before she continued. “After his tragic accident!”
“So it was Clara’s job to feed the cat,” Sergio said.
“Yes, but Clara wasn’t even here last night. I saw her leave after dinner. She went home to her family, and I’m sure if you call them, they will confirm that she was with them the whole night,” Penelope said confidently, unwilling to believe her devoted cook was capable of such a heinous crime.
“Yes, but she could have set the timer on the cat food dispenser before she left,” Hayley murmured.
Still, it was loud enough for Penelope to hear and she clearly did not appreciate Hayley’s on-the-fly theories and less-than-expert opinions.
Too much had happened in the short span of this holiday weekend for Hayley to even care anymore what Penelope Janice thought of her.
“It would have been possible for Clara to rig the cat food dispenser with the chemicals and set the timer, but if her alibi checks out, then it would have been impossible for her to have locked Lena in the pantry before the explosion. It had to have been someone else,” Penelope said.
Penelope folded her arms, happy with herself for stomping all over Hayley’s attempts to indict Clara, convinced in her mind that Hayley was still blaming Clara for her rough bout with food poisoning.
In her own mind, Penelope must have believed she had just outsmarted them both. But the cold hard fact remained that even if it had been impossible for Clara to have locked Lena in the pantry before the fire, she could have easily been working with someone else who did.
Which meant Clara the cook was hardly in the clear for Lena’s attempted murder.
