by Kit Frazier
I sighed. “I think that’s why I tripped so hard for John. Because I’m trying to wean myself off of bourbon-soaked, midnight calls to Mark,” I said, not believing a word of what I was saying.
Mia nodded thoughtfully. “What about your FBI agent?” Mia asked. “Maybe you should give him a call.”
“Logan is not my FBI agent. And what am I going to do? Call him up and ask him to arrest John for taking files I helped steal from a crime scene? Besides, John’s some kind of undercover Customs Agent, not a criminal.”
“No, I meant call the FBI for you. You know. Like a date.”
“Oh,” I said and sighed. “Agent Logan has made it very clear his interest in me is strictly business.”
“Maybe,” Mia said dreamily, “he’s just waiting for a starlit night to sweep you into his arms and declare his undying love and then, Boom! Fireworks.”
“Mia,” I said. “He’s practically a reincarnation of John Wayne. I don’t think he does starlit nights and fireworks. Plus, he thinks I’m a kook.”
“You are kind of a kook,” Brynn said, opening a bottle of wine. “But you’re a cute kook.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said. We sat in a circle, Brynn and I on the sofa, Mia on the floor in front of us, and the concern in my friends’ eyes was almost painful. I sighed. “I think mostly it’s just that I’m alone. Again.”
“Hey, you’re not alone!” Mia said, raising the glass of wine that Brynn had just given her. “That’s what friends are for.”
Brynn lifted her glass and grinned.
“When you are sad, we will get you drunk and plot revenge against the rat-bastard who made you sad, ” Mia said.
Brynn clinked glasses. “And when you think it can’t get any worse, we will tell you horrifying stories of just how bad it could be.”
I smiled, but my heart wasn’t in it. “I’m sorry. It’s just…John. I was so sure there was something there.”
“See? That is why you have got to start dating,” Brynn said. “The only way to get over indiscriminate sex is to have more of it.”
“Ah, querida, look at the bright side. At least you got two men following you around. Three if you count your friend the earless bald guy,” Mia said, and wrapped her arms around me. “There’s only one thing to do.”
“Two things, actually,” Brynn said. She got up and went to my answering machine and hit the program button. The machine said, Press erase again to erase all messages.
“No!” I yelled.
Mia and Brynn stared at me.
I had about six months of old messages from Mark on that machine. Comfort calls. I wasn’t ready to erase them, but I didn’t want my friends to know that.
“Don’t have a cow,” Brynn said. She punched the second program button and the machine barked, Please record message in a mechanical male voice.
Wineglass in hand, Brynn leaned over the machine and in a breathy, Marilyn Monroe voice, she said, “Hello…you’ve reached Cauley MacKinnon. I am available, however, I am not attainable. Leave your message and when I get over my snit, I’ll call you back.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“I’ve got exactly what you need,” Mia said, and she opened her big, embroidered bag and pulled out a stack of Chic magazines, some DVDs and a half-gallon of ice cream.
“George Clooney,” Mia said. “And Ben & Jerry’s.”
Storm clouds were amassing on the south-eastern horizon and were rolling into the Hill Country at an alarming speed. I flipped on the Weather Channel to confirm what I already knew Hurricane Jenny was bearing down on the Gulf Coast.
It was late when my friends left, barely beating the storm front. Closing the door behind them, my heart felt a lot lighter, despite the fact that I’d been played like a cheap banjo by a hot Customs Agent.
I sighed. “Good friends are worth their weight in chocolate,” I told Marlowe, who was working his way through what was left of a peanut butter sandwich.
I polished off the rest of the wine and watched the rest of Lethal Weapon 18, letting Mel Gibson fog my brain of pesty thoughts of anything important.
Licking the last of the chocolate ice cream from a half-bent spoon, I rinsed bowls and glasses in the sink. Marlowe stalked into the kitchen, grumbling as he turned twice and settled at my feet on the throw rug.
Outside, the wind was picking up and I could hear it shift through the canyon behind the house.
As I rinsed the clinging bits of brownie from the bottom of a bowl, Marlowe growled low in his throat.
“Relax tough guy, it’s hurricane season. This is just a summer storm,” I said, tucking the bent spoon into the silverware rack of the dishwasher. Marlowe was bristling, and I found that I was bristling, too. The air was charged with electricity, the way it does when there’s going to be a helluva storm.
Marlowe growled again and I went very still. The limbs of the magnolia tree at the front porch scraped the living room window like gnarled fingernails clawing a chalkboard. I was a little murky from the wine, but I wasn’t inebriated. I didn’t think.
Had I locked the front door after Mia and Brynn left?
“We’re being ridiculous,” I told Marlowe, who stalked alongside me as I went to check the front door, flipping on every light in the house along the way.
The wind outside began to gust and I yelped when lightning flashed outside the living room window.
I rattled the front door knob, making sure it was latched. It was locked, but I unlocked it and locked it again, just to be sure.
“See?” I told Marlowe. “All locked. We’re fine.” But the wind screamed through the canyon, and the old house moaned with the force of it. My heart kicked and suddenly, I wasn’t so sure we were fine at all.
“It’s just the wind,” I said, but the hair along Marlowe’s back spiked. He didn’t seem convinced.
“You’re right,” I said. “What we need is a distraction.”
Glancing warily toward the front window, Marlowe padded beside me as I made my way to the sofa where I settled in and proceeded to click though a hundred and fifty channels of crap before landing on a Classic Movie revival of the old Hitchcock showing of “Rebecca.”
I snuggled the quilt around me as the movie went on, getting creepier by the minute. Lighting crashed outside the front window at the same time the inferno flashed in the old black and white movie and I nearly flew right out of my skin.
“I guess Hitchcock isn’t the thing to watch when you’re already feeling skittish,” I said to Marlowe. I was about to change the channel when the creepy face of Mrs. Danvers flickered on the television screen and I swear my hair stood on end.
I looked down at Marlowe. “Did I lock the windows?”
The dog grumbled, but he followed as I began systematically checking the locks, starting with the window in the kitchen. Thunder boomed so close that it shook the house and the magnolia near the front porch crashed against the living room window. I rushed back to the living room, hoping the low branches hadn’t broken the pane.
The window was intact, but with a bang that loud, I was certain the tree was damaged.
I leaned over the sofa to peer out the window, but because every light in the house was on, the only thing I could see was my own reflection, distorted in the rivulets of rain.
I squinted against the windowpane, trying to make out the tree in the dark and lightning struck again. My neck prickles, and I watched. My reflection dimmed, and in its place was the horrible, grinning face of Van Gogh.
I couldn’t even scream.
The thunder was almost instantaneous, and it shook the house hard. The lights stuttered and went out.
I did scream then, and Marlowe threw himself against the window, snarling so hard that foam flew from his muzzle.
“Marlowe,” I screamed. “Stop it!”
But he threw himself against the pane again and the glass shook, and I struggled, grabbing for his collar.
“Oh, Lord, please,” I pleaded.
Ma
rlowe snarled, scrabbling as I dragged him down the hall toward the bedroom, where I kept low, searching for the telephone in the dark.
I found the phone tangled in the bed sheets, and quickly dialed 911. I didn’t wait for a greeting.
“There’s someone outside my house!” I hissed as I struggled to keep Marlowe under check as he squirmed and snarled, snapping his teeth.
“There’s someone outside your house?” a female voice repeated.
“There-is-someone-outside-my-house,” I repeated, panic rising in my throat.
“What is your address?” she said and I told her, but I was having a bit of trouble on account of my voice was shaking.
“Has this person threatened you?” the woman said.
“Yes,” I said, thinking about Van Gogh’s promise to cut off my ears.
“Is he armed?” the woman asked, and I was about to answer when the front window crashed.
I screamed and dropped the phone. Marlowe lunged, choking, because I still had him by the collar. The dog dragged me halfway down the hall, my knees chafing against the hardwood floors.
“Marlowe,” I hissed.
Lightning flashed again, illuminating the living room, and there I saw the big, wet lips and the sweaty, corpulent face that lurked in my worst nightmares.
Van Gogh’s knife glinted green in the flash of lightning, but near him, there was a smaller, concentrated flash of fire, a small orange flame that didn’t dim once the lightning subsided.
Grinning hideously, Van Gogh dropped a lighted match onto my Turkish rug.
Marlowe howled, the fur at his neck bristling. I stood there, wide-eyed, staring as the small flame hit the rug. It flashed and took off, zipping across the rug in long streaks, like someone had squirted lighter fluid.
My heart stopped. Marlowe went wild and in an instant, he broke my grip.
“No!” I screamed, watching as Van Gogh raised the knife to attack, but Marlowe was focused. The dog leapt and Van Gogh yelped as Marlowe’s teeth sank into his knife hand.
My heart skipped. Warm, wet wind billowed and crashed through the shattered window, but Marlowe kept his grip on Van Gogh’s big arm, snarling even as the man tried to shake him off, trying to shift the knife from one had to the other.
“Weapon.” A dark voice whispered and I choked. My father’s voice.
“I don’t have a weapon.”
“You do, Cauley,” the voice said, and was gone.
I scrambled to my feet, tripping over the phone, and I hoisted myself onto the kitchen counter, searching for a frying pan, wondering if the operator was still on the line, wondering if she believed me, wondering if police were on their way, cursing myself for not calling Cantu instead.
Lightning flashed again and the fire in the living room began crackling. The flames flickered, silhouetting the shape of Van Gogh fighting with the dog. The air filled with smoke and the sounds of growling and bitter struggle.
“Hold on, Marlowe!” I groped under the counter until I felt the rough edge of Aunt Kat’s cast iron frying pan and came up with it full force and headed straight for Van Gogh.
The fire was spreading, casting the living room in a weird orange glow. Dodging the mounting flames, I reared back and hit Van Gogh in the face so hard that the metal rang, and the reverberation traveled up my arm past my elbow and rattled my teeth.
Marlowe writhed and snarled but didn’t let go. Momentarily stunned, Van Gogh made a muffled moan, probably because I’d loosened a couple of his teeth, and I reared back to hit him again.
“Drop it or I kill the dog,” he lisped, shaking his left fist toward Marlowe’s muzzle.
Swallowing a gasp, I dropped the frying pan, which made a gonging sound on the hardwood floor.
Van Gogh grinned at me, and he hit the dog anyway.
Marlowe yelped as he hit the floor, struggling to get his bearings.
My eyes went wide. “You lied!”
Van Gogh smiled through his own blood. “He’s not dead.”
I grabbed for the frying pan as the sound of sirens rounded the corner onto Arroyo Canyon.
Van Gogh lunged, the knife glistening with blood from his face and I jerked away, barely missing the blow. He fell, but quickly scrambled to his feet. The sirens grew louder as a patrol car slid into my driveway, the headlights slicing the orange glow of fire in the living room.
“This isn’t over,” Van Gogh sneered in the weird light, and he turned, loping down the hall toward my back bedroom like he knew exactly where he was going.
He probably did, since it was probably him who’d broken into my house, stolen my computer and left me the gift of a severed ear. I heard the back door bang open, and the sound of the wind in the canyon grew stronger, and I knew Van Gogh was gone. For now.
My knees gave. Dropping to the floor, I picked up the phone and crawled toward Marlowe, choking on smoke.
“Miss? Miss? Are you okay?” the operator was saying. “The police are on their way. They should be at your door any minute.”
“Better tell them to bring a fireman,” I said. Marlowe seemed stunned but otherwise unharmed, and I went for Aunt Kat’s little red kitchen fire extinguisher.
A young cop busted through the front door, gun drawn but shaking. The kid looked just as scared as I felt.
“I should have called Cantu,” I whispered to Marlowe, who was busy growling at the young cop.
“Where’s the intruder?” the cop said, his voice cracking only a little.
Unhooking the nozzle on the fire extinguisher, I nodded toward the back door. He fumbled the radio back his utility belt.
He grabbed my arm, dragging me to the door.
“Fire department’s on its way,” he said, listening to his radio squawk. “You going to be okay?”
I screamed, “My cat’s in there!”
“Out!” he yelled, pulling me and Marlowe out the open front door.
“I’ve got to get her out! She’s probably in the closet,” I yelled.
With the dog and I deposited on the front porch, the cop moved slowly down the hall, creeping flat against the wall, coughing and talking quietly into the radio in his epaulet.
I told Marlowe to stay, and ran back into the house, fire extinguisher at the ready. Stupid or not, Muse was still in there, and I had to get her.
“Muse!” I screamed. “Muse?”
A big gust of wind rattled what was left of the front window as Marlowe leapt through the pane. The flames swelled, crackling as they consumed the Queen Anne chair.
“Dammit, Marlowe! Get back!” I yelled, but he was barking, flinging spit.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I hit the lever on the fire extinguisher. The cylinder made a pitiful hissing sound and went dead.
“Shit, shit!” I yelled, shaking the bottle. “Muse!”
In a hot whoosh, the curtains were alive with flashfire.
No way could a fire spread this quickly.
There were more sirens, and in moments, two firemen with a big hose burst through the front door. Smoke swelled through the living room.
“Outside!” the big fireman yelled.
“My cat’s in the bedroom closet!”
“I got your cat. Get out!” he said, shepherding me and the dog onto the front porch again, and after a scuffle in the back bedroom loud enough to hear over the snapping flames, the younger, rangy fireman came out with a cyclone of a cat. He gladly handed her off to me.
On the porch, I turned in time to see the big fireman flood the living room with thirteen thousand gallons of pressurized water.
The rain had stopped but the clouded night seemed darker than usual as I stood in the front yard bathed in flashing red lights and the halogen beams of emergency vehicle headlights.
Half a dozen cops and firefighters milled about in the yard. Outside the circle of lights, police radios squawked in the darkness like obnoxious night insects. Despite the heat of the evening, my teeth chattered.
Marlowe stood next to me, shifting from paw to
paw, growling. In my arms, Muse writhed like she was possessed.
Beckett and Jenks had left that morning on a week-long gay-rodeo-thing, but The Bobs and everyone else on the street were wandering about in robes and pajamas, craning their necks and whispering behind their hands.
Cantu squealed around the corner in Arlene’s station wagon. “Cauley,” he said, bolting up the drive. He issued a sharp nod to a couple of the patrol cops. “What the hell is going on?”
“I’m all right,” I said, hugging Muse close to me. “Did you draw this?”
“Went out for milk and heard it on the scanner,” he said. “Your earless guy?”
My lower lip trembled, but I nodded. “I swear, I had all the doors and windows locked.”
“Locks only keep out honest people,” Cantu said, looking at the charred remins of the broken window. I told Cantu what happened, but my teeth were chattering and I shivered.
Cantu draped his jacket around my shoulders. “Your insurance company’s taking a beating.”
“I’m not going to report it. I just got one claim back and it’s hard enough to get homeowner’s.”
Cantu shook his head and we turned in unison as the big fireman sloshed through the wet front yard, making his way toward us. He was holding something.
“Your house has been secured,” the he said. He handed me a charred, half-empty bottle of wine.
“Is the house all right?” I said.
“Damage is contained to the living room, but it’s wet and you got some pretty good smoke saturation. You prob’ly oughta stay somewhere else tonight,” the big fireman said. He had an enormous black mustache and dark eyes that glinted with disapproval. “Any reason your smoke detector didn’t have batteries?”
“A friend of mine needed batteries for his Sims game.”
Cantu snorted.
The fireman shook his head and pulled a notepad from his pocket. “You know how this fire started?”
“Yes,” I said. “A big bald earless maniac broke in and lit a match.”
The fireman looked up from his notepad. Cantu shrugged.
“No flammable liquids spilled?” the fireman said.
Frowning, I shook my head.
