by Janet Bolin
“Shoulders back,” he ordered. “Feet together, hands behind your backs.”
I did all that, adding chin up. Defiantly. Although Clay was facing us, I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. So far, Haylee and I were keeping up with the other recruits, except that we didn’t squirm and grumble, at least not noticeably.
“The fire department must work as a team,” Plug barked. “Anybody who doesn’t want to do that can leave right now.”
Isaac rubbed his hands together as if hoping that Plug might take his own advice and quit the force. Plug scowled at him. Isaac shoved his hands into the pockets of his baggy cargo shorts.
The teens surrounding Haylee and me rustled. One of them was breathing quickly. No one left.
Plug jerked his head toward the fire truck. “Elderberry Bay has two of these. Many of our calls are rural, far from fire hydrants, so both trucks have huge water tanks. Isaac and Clay will demonstrate putting on gear. Teamwork, folks, if you learn nothing else this evening, learn that. You must act as a team. Isaac, you suit up. Clay, you show how to help someone else.” Plug’s eyes seemed to bore into me. “If they need it.”
Clumsy boots, suspendered pants, a heavy jacket, a mask and respirator, an oxygen tank, gloves. Who wouldn’t need help?
When he was all dressed, Isaac stomped his feet. I could barely hear the “Ta-da!” through his mask. He resembled a lanky, amiable alien.
Plug showed us how to turn on Isaac’s respirator and radio, then told him to remove it all and assigned the new recruits to don the gear quickly and to turn on our respirators and radios.
All suited up, I was sweltering. Plug told us to run laps around the ball field. Uh-oh. I was going to flunk out. I could barely move in the huge boots, and Haylee’s pair didn’t seem to fit her any better. The boys started jogging. Haylee and I followed.
Although I lifted my feet, the boots stayed on the ground, doing little besides making rubbery flop-flopping sounds. With each sliding step, I had to resettle my feet into the boots. I rounded second base. Footsteps pounded beside me. I turned my head to see out of the fogged-up mask.
“Put these on,” Isaac panted. He had found smaller boots for Haylee and me.
They were an improvement, but by the time Haylee and I scrunched our feet down into them, the other applicants were far ahead of us.
One boy fell. I thought he would get up, but he just lay there. The other boys kept running, getting farther and farther ahead.
Haylee, Clay, and I all reached the prone applicant at the same time. Clay knelt and took off the boy’s mask. The kid was breathing, but pale. He looked even younger than Russ.
I threw down my gloves, ripped off my mask, and squatted beside the boy. Haylee did the same.
Plug and Isaac lounged against the fire truck.
Clay shouted at them, “He’s fainted!” Clay unfastened the boy’s heavy jacket. By the time Plug and Isaac joined us, the boy’s eyelids had begun fluttering open. He was going to be very embarrassed. I stood up and backed away. He, Haylee, and I had probably failed firefighters’ school in our first ten minutes. Fine.
Plug glared at Haylee and me and adjusted a dry stem of grass from one corner of his mouth to the other. “Laps,” he reminded us.
Haylee and I donned our gloves and masks, then jogged off. We started our second lap. The others were near the end of their third lap, detouring around their friend.
Maybe I should have stayed home and run with the dogs on the riverside trail. Clay could have joined us. Haylee, too.
Clay, Isaac, and Plug helped the recovering boy out of his gear and carried it off the ball field for him. Clay escorted him to an old gray pickup truck. The boy climbed into the driver’s seat and sat with his head in his hands.
Plug waved all of us off the ball field.
Russ pointed at Haylee and me. “They didn’t do three laps. The rest of us did.”
Huge hands balled into fists, Plug stomped forward and put his face next to his son’s. “Who’s runnin’ this department, you or me?”
Russ mumbled, “You.”
“‘You, sir,’” his father corrected him, staring him down until Russ repeated it. I didn’t know quite what I expected to learn about Plug at this training session. He would hardly announce to all of us that he had killed his wife. I did, however, confirm my earlier impressions of the man. He seemed constantly on the verge of rage. Had he been like that before his wife died, or only after?
“I should fail you all,” he said. “Those two for being slow and the rest of you for not helping your fallen comrade. You’re a team, remember? The first thing I teach you, and only the girls get it.” I should have guessed he would pronounce “girls” in a demeaning way.
I didn’t say anything, although I was tempted to fling off the outfit and stalk to Haylee’s truck. But I had to prove that a woman could learn firefighting as well as Russ and his buddies could. Haylee’s chin was raised at what the men should have recognized as a dangerous angle.
If Opal, Naomi, and Edna had seen Russ trying to get us thrown off the squad, would they still want to help the boy?
Probably. Not only that, they’d cheer him on. They wouldn’t want Haylee and me fighting fires or even going along to watch someone’s field of soybeans smolder into ashes. They wouldn’t want us to cart defibrillators to heart attack victims if it meant riding in a fire truck. Fire trucks would go too fast to suit them, though the drivers couldn’t be worse than Edna.
Next, we had to learn how to unroll and carry empty fire hoses. We were told that water spraying through them would make maneuvering them much more difficult.
Susannah passed slowly in her yellow VW. She was driving away from the center of the village, where she lived. More errands, or trying to save Haylee and me from the fire department?
By the time we rolled up the hoses and took off the cumbersome equipment, the boy who had fainted had driven away. At least I wasn’t the first applicant to quit or be fired—though maybe that was a little too appropriate a word.
Plug fanned a handful of papers. “Here’s your test. Go over to the bleachers to do it. You have a half hour.”
None of us had pens or pencils. Clay retrieved some from his truck, and we trooped to sagging wooden bleachers that threatened to give us splinters and chiggers.
Haylee and I sat about two yards apart. Russ plunked down one row above us.
“Spread out!” his father yelled across the field. “No cheatin’, son!” His voice was so freighted with weariness and resignation that I heard unspoken words at the end of his command—no cheatin’, son, for once…
Muttering, “Yeah, yeah,” Russ clomped upward a couple of levels. The bleachers shook.
The questions were multiple choice, and the first few were not difficult.
From across the river in Elderberry Bay, the siren on the fire station’s roof swelled into its wail. The siren was quieter out here near the state forest, but it was still impossible to ignore.
Plug, Isaac, and Clay leaped into the fire truck and roared away.
Russ and his friends laughed. “I guess somebody gave us more time to finish,” one of them drawled. “Hey, miss, you got a smoke?”
I shook my head.
“I don’t smoke,” Haylee said.
One of the boys had a pack of cigarettes. They put their feet on the seats and lit up. “What’d you get for number ten?” one asked.
Haylee looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
“I’d better go home to my dogs,” I said.
Haylee stood up and dusted the seat of her jeans. “I’ll take you.” Together, we started across the infield.
Susannah drove past again, this time quickly, and in the direction the fire truck had taken. Maybe she’d see the firefighters at work and lose some of her fear of fires.
One of Russ’s friends hollered, “Hey, where do you two think you’re going?”
I turned and gave them a dried-up grimace that resembled a smile, but only slightl
y. “Home.”
They seemed to think that was excruciatingly funny. We climbed into Haylee’s truck.
The three young men tossed their cigarettes into dry weeds—apparently fire prevention wasn’t one of their major concerns—and charged across the ball field toward us.
Haylee started her engine.
Russ poked grimy fingers into the gap at the top of my window. “Give us your exam papers and we won’t tell that you left early.”
“Go ahead and tell,” I said.
Haylee eased the truck away from the gangly youths surrounding it.
As we approached the road leading to the center of Elderberry Bay, another siren started. Behind us. Gaining on us.
A blue light flashing from the dashboard, Russ’s pickup truck tailgated us.
Russ was not yet a full-fledged firefighter, but Haylee pulled over, anyway. If she hadn’t, he could have rear-ended us.
Ignoring the stop sign, he sped onto the highway. In their own trucks, his buddies stayed close behind him.
Haylee pulled onto the road. “Working with those guys could be dangerous.”
I folded my unfinished test paper. “We’re not likely to find out.”
28
BY THE NEXT MORNING, I REGRETTED FAILING the fire department’s entrance exam. I’d lost the opportunity to spy on Plug and Russ.
As always, my students cheered me up, but halfway through the morning, Mimi looked at her watch and cleared her throat. “It was last Wednesday, only a week ago, that you had that nice presentation here and gave Darlene Coddlefield that prize sewing machine.”
Georgina, dressed all in lemony yellow, commented, “Too bad we can’t go back in time and do something to prevent the death.” Her eyes glistened.
My eyes blurred with tears, and Mimi’s eyes must have also. Though she’d been embroidering her latest design beautifully, when she threaded her machine with the next color, green, she must have done it wrong. The thread snapped. She rethreaded the machine, then forgot to tell the embroidery software to retrace its steps, and ended up with a gap in the design. Before I could suggest she could start again where the green thread began, she removed the design from the hoop and threw it out.
“Time for a do-over,” she said.
We couldn’t go back a week, as Georgina had wished, and have a do-over that would prevent Darlene’s death, but I owed it to Darlene to find out what really happened. I also needed to exonerate myself, Susannah, and the care we took of the sewing machines in my store.
Susannah didn’t make it easy. Coming into In Stitches around one to give me my break, she blushed and trembled and stared toward the front of the shop as if afraid that Smallwood and Gartener might pop in and question her. Handing a customer change, she sent coins spinning to the floor.
I waited until the customer departed, then asked Susannah, “Did you tell Chief Smallwood about that letter yet?”
She gulped. “Maybe the letter was lost in the mail. Maybe, since it was to her, no one read it. They just threw it away.”
“Don’t count on it. Look at it this way—if Darlene was scamming the public and if Tiffany is still collecting money for charities that don’t exist, you’ll be doing everyone a favor by reporting the fraud.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
I followed her gaze to the front door. No one was there. “The longer you take to explain the whole thing to the police, the worse it could look for you.”
She heaved a tremulous sigh. “I know. And I’ve already taken too long.”
And so had I—for the dogs’ outing. Tally-Ho whimpered.
After the dogs had their run, Susannah was more like her old self. Browsers milled around us, though, and I couldn’t ask if her better mood was due to a determination to confess about that letter. She returned to The Stash for the rest of the afternoon.
My afternoon students put finishing touches on their IMEC entries. Ashley had made great use of the linen she’d bought from me. She had disabled the feed dogs in her mother’s sewing machine so those little pointy teeth couldn’t push the fabric forward or backward. Then she had hooped the linen in a regular old-fashioned embroidery hoop and carefully moved the hoop while her mother’s sewing machine stitched. She had created a misty moonlight scene showing a wistful unicorn standing alone in a forest of bare trees. She called the piece Waiting for True Love. Hmmm. Autobiographical embroidery? Sweet.
And my entry was Flame, Candle, and Fire. Very original. And not autobiographical, I hoped, especially since I hadn’t finished the firefighters’ exam.
However, after the last customer of the day departed, Isaac tiptoed in. “I came at lunchtime, but you weren’t here.”
“Sorry I missed you.” Apparently, he hadn’t frightened Susannah too badly—she hadn’t been quaking with fear when I’d returned, and she’d forgotten to tell me he’d been looking for me. “How did the firefighting go last evening when you all had to dash away from training?” I asked him.
“We were too late. The barn burned to the ground.”
“Anyone hurt?” My mouth went suddenly dry. I managed to croak, “Animals?”
“Nope, nobody hurt, and the barn was used for storing machinery. Most of the tractors and stuff seemed to be elsewhere, however.”
“That was lucky.”
He combed his hand through his hair, making it spikier than ever. “Yes, very.”
“Very convenient, too?” I asked. “Is it being investigated as a possible arson?”
“Plug says it wasn’t.”
“So what caused it?”
“Plug says faulty wiring.” Isaac toed at the floor and ducked his head. “You didn’t turn in your test paper last night.”
“I didn’t finish.”
“The guys did.”
“Haylee and I left earlier.” About a half minute.
“I’ll wait while you finish it now.”
I wanted to refuse. I definitely preferred sitting at a sewing machine to broiling in heavy clothing at a fire. Besides, what if Russ and his friends were as wild with their firefighting as they were with their driving? Haylee and I might end up in a heap of coals.
Maybe we didn’t need to learn more about Plug and his son, anyway. Darlene’s death could have been a freak accident.
My hesitation must have shown on my face. “We need you,” Isaac pleaded.
Gartener and Smallwood didn’t seem to believe that Darlene’s death had been an accident. And neither did I. Someone had tampered with the sewing machine and maybe the table it was on as well. Someone, possibly her husband or her son, had planned to at least injure her. If I passed the test, I’d have more opportunities to watch those two, maybe catch them in a lie about Darlene and her sewing machine.
Isaac urged, “Those kids may work out, but maturity is helpful on the force.”
I admitted, “I’ve seen Russ Coddlefield do some pretty crazy and dangerous things in his truck.”
Isaac stepped closer. His eyebrows went up. “Like?”
Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it. “Oh, you know, the sort of careless driving lots of teenagers do.” I hadn’t been a model teenager, but I had never run anyone off the road.
Isaac leaned against my cutting table and fiddled with my scissors. “Thing is, his dad wants him on the force. Thinks he can make a man of him, but I’d rather we had people who were already men…er…adults.”
Isaac slouched around the store, touching fabrics. Maybe I could turn him into a fabriholic. He backed against a row of homespun linen, faced me, and folded his arms across his chest. “Plug says the boys passed the written test with flying colors but he wouldn’t listen to me when I pointed out that no one monitored them.”
An undercurrent of distrust always seemed to run between Plug and Isaac.
Isaac controlled his obvious anger with a loud gulp. “The boys each missed one question. With the same wrong answer.”
Not wanting to tattle on Russ more than I already had, I tried to keep
my face neutral. I was certain that Russ had originally positioned himself to read Haylee’s and my answers, and all four boys had been comparing answers when Haylee and I got up from the splintery bleachers. After we all drove away, Russ and his friends could have collaborated.
Isaac whipped another test out of his pocket. “C’mon, Willow, give it a try.” He nodded across the street. “Haylee passed it.”
Okay, I had to take the exam. Not only that, I had to pass, or I’d never hear the end of it from Haylee.
“She got all the answers right,” he said. “And I was watching her. She didn’t cheat.”
I laughed. “Of course not. She wouldn’t.”
A boyishly eager look on his face, Isaac advanced on me. “If you choose the same wrong answer the kids did, maybe we can give them the benefit of the doubt.” He frowned. “Not that Plug isn’t already giving it to them, anyway.” His voice was dark with frustration or with the anger I’d glimpsed earlier.
Those teens and their careless and possibly dangerous pranks—if Haylee was on the force, I needed to be, too, so I could watch her back.
My fingers shook only slightly as I accepted the exam from Isaac.
29
AS ISAAC HAD WARNED, THE QUESTIONS on the firefighting test were harder than “What is a fire truck?” Circling as, bs, and cs, I kept thinking about Plug on Thursday, standing by his SUV, his hand underlining the words “fire chief,” and the threat that Edna and I had inferred—if we wanted our shops and apartments to be safe from fires, we’d better leave him and his family alone.
Chief Smallwood lived in Elderberry Bay. Was she afraid to investigate Plug for fear of reprisals? She seemed too confident to consider such a thing, but maybe her reluctance to suspect him stemmed from a subconscious need to protect herself.
I circled my last b and checked my answers.
Isaac was sitting at one of the Chandlers but not touching it. The dogs kept his hands occupied. He stopped petting them to take my exam paper and pull a sheet of paper from his pocket.
I’d expected him to mark my exam later, somewhere else. Failing the test could be embarrassing. On the other hand, passing it could be, too.
