Suspicious Origin

by MacDonald, Patricia

  Zoe shrugged. “Aunt Britt can take me.”

  “Is it all right with you?” Alec asked.

  Britt smiled thinly. “Glad to be able to help,” she said. “We’ll see you later.” As she turned away from him she saw Lauren, sitting alone in a chair in the corner, one shapely leg crossed over the other, wagging one open-toe pump impatiently.

  Chapter Eight

  “Come on, Zoe,” said Britt. To get out the door, Zoe had to I run the gauntlet of sympathetic friends, which left her tearful and shaken. Britt tried to zipper up Zoe’s pink parka but the zipper was off track, and Zoe pulled away from her impatiently The sky was gray and the day was chilly but both of them inhaled the bracing air gratefully. Vicki was sitting glumly on the picnic table behind the house, staring into the distance. She glowered at them as they came down the back steps.

  “What happened, Vicki?” Zoe asked.

  “‘Don’t smoke. Don’t drink soda. Eat your vegetables,’” Vicki mimicked Caroline in a singsong voice. “She treats me like I’m five years old. Exercises and vitamins and her putting music speakers against my stomach playing some horrible songs…This baby is all she cares about. I’m sick of it. I can’t wait until this whole thing is over and I can get away from here,” she sighed, her voice soft and whispery again.

  “I’ll miss you so much,” said Zoe earnestly. “You and Kirby.”

  “Thanks,” said Vicki. “You’re a good kid.”

  “Why don’t you come over to our…place for a while?” Zoe offered.

  Britt did not want to get into the middle of Vicki’s problems with Caroline. She tried to think of a diplomatic way around it. “Zoe, you’re not feeling well. You’ve had enough for one day. You just got out of the hospital…”

  “That’s true,” Vicki agreed. “I’ll come over another time.”

  “Oh, okay,” said Zoe glumly.

  Kirby, who had climbed up on the Carmichaels’ woodpile, jumped down from the stacked wood and approached the picnic table. Vicki’s angry expression softened, as the cat leaped up on the table and began sniffing the hem of her jacket. “C’mere,” she said grudgingly.

  “We’d better be going,” said Britt, seeing a chance to escape. Zoe lingered to give the cat one last pat.

  They pulled out of the Carmichaels’ driveway and were rounding a curve, past a brown field patchy with snow, when Zoe suddenly cried out, “Stop.”

  Thinking Zoe might need to throw up, Britt quickly pulled over.

  “What is it?”

  “This is it,” Zoe whispered, staring out the car window. Britt followed her gaze and saw, behind a bank of evergreens, the charred struts of the frame, jagged with pieces of lathe and plaster, and sooty clapboards tipping drunkenly, attached on only one side along the remaining wedge of what had been a house. Stairs rose up and ended where once there had been a second floor. Wisps of gray smoke rose from the heaps of ashes and rubble. The stench of the fire still hung in the air. There were a couple of men in hard hats and filthy coveralls shoveling the piles of debris on the lawn into a Dumpster. A man with a notebook, wearing a face mask and a hard hat, was stepping gingerly across the skeletal remnants of the first floor. Britt gazed out the car window at the sight with a feeling of disbelief. She could see, in her mind’s eye, that framed Christmas card. The perfect family. The perfect house.

  Before Britt could stop her, Zoe opened the car door and clambered out. She started up the low rise of the brown lawn toward the blackened frame of her childhood home. Britt got out of the car and followed her. Zoe stopped at the crisscross yellow tape which indicated a police barrier, a few feet from the smoldering ruins. When Britt reached her side she was trembling from head to toe.

  Britt patted the child’s back awkwardly and then looked around at the scorched debris. Greta had died here—trapped in her perfect house. Britt had a sudden memory of coming home from junior high school one day to find Greta on a ladder, painting the window trim on their childhood home. Why are you doing that? Britt had demanded. Greta had leaned back to admire her handiwork. In case Mother comes home, she had said. I want it to look nice for her.

  “My whole life was in there,” Zoe whispered, and then she began to sob. Zoe hid her face with her hands. Britt could see the tears running down the heel of Zoe’s hand, streaking across her wrist.

  “Zoe, maybe we’d better go,” said Britt.

  The child wept noiselessly, as if she had not heard.

  “Lets go back to your dads. Come on. We can come back here another day. It’ll still be here.”

  “Can I help you?” The man in the gray jacket and the hard hat pulled down his mask, jumped off the low wall of the foundation and began to walk toward them.

  “We just wanted to have a look,” said Britt.

  “Well, don’t come any closer. We’re working here.”

  Britt put a protective arm around Zoe’s shoulders. “This little girl was in the fire. This used to be her house.” She could see, from the consternation that rose to the man’s eyes, that he understood this was the child who had escaped, but had lost her mother in the blaze. “We’ve just come from the funeral.”

  “I’m sorry, dear,” he said kindly to Zoe. Then he removed a glove and reached across the tape to Britt. “My name is Todd Griswold. I’m the county fire inspector.”

  Britt shook his outstretched hand. “I’m Britt Andersen. It was my sister who was killed.”

  The man nodded and then looked back at the destruction. “It was a heck of a fire,” he said.

  Zoe sniffed, and tried to compose herself, wiping her eyes. “Is there anything left?” she asked in a small voice. “Any of our stuff?”

  Griswold frowned. “Not from the house, honey. Between the fire, and the water from the hoses…There’s a barn out back. I don’t know if you might have had anything out there…”

  Zoe shook her head sadly. “We were cleaning it out because Dad was gonna turn it into a stable. For a horse. For me. We took everything out of there. Maybe my old sled. My ice skates. They might be out there.” She looked up at Britt. “Can I go and see if I can find them?”

  “Is it safe?” Britt asked.

  The fire inspector nodded. “Just steer clear of the house and the men who are cleaning up,” he said.

  Zoe began to trudge toward the back of the property, avoiding looking at the house and giving the cleanup crew a wide berth.

  “What are you doing in there now?” Britt asked.

  “I’m collecting some evidence,” Griswold said. “For the investigation.”

  “Investigation?” said Britt. “What are you investigating? I thought you already knew how it started.”

  “Well, I can’t say too much about it,” he demurred.

  Britt nodded, and then hesitated. Over the years she had found, somewhat to her dismay, that there was one sure way to get people to divulge almost anything. She played the ace that was always just above her cuff. “It’s just that I’m trying to get a clear picture of things. I’m a producer for a television show. We’re doing a program about fire safety. I thought I might give it a personal slant. You know, since I lost my sister in a fire.”

  “A television show?” he asked.

  Britt nodded. “Probably part documentary, part discussion. I have a network show produced out of Boston.”

  “Will they show it up here?” he asked.

  “Oh sure,” she said. “Your local affiliate will carry it.”

  Griswold nodded, reconsidering. “Well, that sounds like a worthwhile program.”

  “It will be,” she said. She hesitated. “Chief Stern said something about a candle starting the fire,” said Britt.

  Griswold, clearly seduced by the idea of being on television, was suddenly willing to share his expertise. “Well, we know a candle ignited it in the upstairs bedroom where your sister was sleeping. From the wax we can tell that the candle was on the floor. It seems to have set the long curtains on fire.”

  “I guess that could ha
ppen easily enough,” Britt said. She looked around at the crumbling skeleton of the house. “It’s hard to imagine how you can tell anything about the fire. There’s not much left to go on.

  “Oh, the fire leaves us lots of clues. I mean, look at the way the house was consumed. Fire has a pattern to the way it burns. It burns upward. It makes a kind of a V-shape, you see?” He pointed up at the scarred remains of the second floor. Britt looked up and nodded, trying to pretend that she saw what he was pointing to, although it just looked like a charred ruin to her.

  “That bottom of the V should be it,” he said.

  “Should be what?” she asked.

  “The point of origin,” he said. “That should be the lowest point. Then it should move horizontally, across the second floor. But instead, as you can see, the fire moved right down to the first floor.”

  Britt frowned. “So why would it do that?”

  “Accelerant,” he said. “The fire followed the accelerant, across the floor, down the walls.”

  Britt felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck. “Accelerant,” she breathed.

  Griswold nodded. “I found a puddle of it in the basement. Dripped down through the spaces between the floorboards. That happens in these old houses. It was paint thinner,” he said. “We found the cans tipped over in the bedroom.”

  “Oh, right,” said Britt, remembering Chief Stern’s questions to Alec. “That’s right. Apparently my sister was stenciling the walls up there. There were paint cans and thinner on the bedroom floor. I guess that’s why the fire spread so quickly.”

  “Yep,” he said. “That’s what they used.”

  Britt turned and stared at him. “Excuse me?”

  “Whoever set the fire,” he said. He looked at her in surprise, as if he had just realized she didn’t understand the language he was speaking.

  “I’m sorry,” said Britt. “Why does that mean somebody set the fire? Couldn’t the cans just have been knocked over during the fire? It was dark. Maybe my sister got up, panicked by the smoke and the flames, and tried to put it out. Maybe she knocked the cans over by mistake. The accelerant could have dripped through the floorboards that way.”

  ‘Well that would have been possible except for two things. Judging by the burn patterns, the paint thinner had been hurled onto the walls and the furnishings in that room. That, and we found your sisters body still on the bed.”

  For a moment Britt felt dizzy, as if she was going to faint. She reached out, and Griswold grabbed her arm. “Are you okay?” he said.

  “You’re saying it was arson?” she asked. “You’re saying it was done deliberately?”

  “Oh yes,” he said, looking at her in mild surprise. “No question.”

  “But… you can’t be sure…” she breathed.

  “Well, actually I can. That’s my job. And furthermore, somebody was careful enough to take the batteries out of the smoke alarms. Whoever set it didn’t want your sister to escape.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Good God,” said Britt.

  Griswold met her shocked gaze matter-of-factly. “I’m afraid so.”

  “But, why…” breathed Britt. She tried to comprehend what it all meant. “Why would anyone want to kill her…kill them…?”

  “Well, obviously I don’t know the arsonist’s intentions. But, clearly the fire was meant to kill your sister. She had to have been in the room when it was set. There was no accelerant in the other rooms, except for what leaked down to the basement,” Griswold said. “Of course, once you set a fire like that, anyone in the house is in peril of their life.”

  Zoe suddenly appeared from around the back of the property, stumbling across the lawn cradling her white ice skates in her arms. “Aunt Britt, I found my skates,” she called out.

  “That’s great,” said Britt in a distracted voice as she gazed at her niece. Zoe was little more than a child, with her wrists extending inches past the cuffs of her jacket, and braces on her teeth. What reason could anyone have for wanting to kill her?

  ‘Well, I’m going to get back to it,” said Griswold.

  “Thanks,” Britt murmured. “Thanks for talking to me.”

  “No problem.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a card. He handed it to Britt. “When you get your cameramen up here, just call me at this number.”

  “What?” Britt asked.

  He frowned at her suspiciously. “For the TV show,” he reminded her.

  “Oh, right. Of course,” said Britt. “I’m sorry… I was just… a little stunned by that news. Don’t worry. I’ll call you.” She gazed at the card for a moment and then stuffed it into her pocketbook.

  Zoe arrived at Britt’s side and smiled sadly. “At least I have something left,” she said.

  Britt gently brushed Zoe’s hair off her face. Her skin was pale, but still springy and unblemished. She was too young yet even for acne. How in the world could anyone want to take her life? It had scarcely begun.

  She looked up innocently at Britt. “Do you skate?”

  “No, honey, I’m afraid of breaking something.”

  “That’s what my mom always said.”

  “She used to skate,” said Britt. “We both did.” She could remember their childish shouts of glee, as they skated on the pond near their house. She could see the roses in Greta’s cheeks, her breath on the air.

  “Mom liked to watch me skate. She said I was poetry in motion.”

  Britt gazed sadly at her niece. “You really did lose everything, didn’t you?” she said.

  Zoe took it literally. “Not everything. I’ve got these.”

  “Maybe I’ll take you shopping,” said Britt. “We can get you a whole bunch of new stuff. Would you like that?”

  Zoe’s shoulders sagged. “Maybe,” she said. “I don’t feel like it right now.”

  Britt studied her niece’s face and noticed that there were dark smudges under her eyes. “No, of course not. Not right now,” said Britt. “That was stupid of me. Let’s go back and you can lie down for a while.”

  “Okay,” said Zoe. She began to skip and run toward the car as if she couldn’t get away fast enough. She opened the door and tossed the skates in the backseat, and then climbed in the front and slammed the door.

  Britt meanwhile felt as if she was frozen in place, staring back at the charred remnants of the house. Todd Griswold was squatting down, sifting through ashes for evidence. Griswold’s search was methodical, scientific. But Britt, accustomed to objectivity, felt overcome, as if a voice inside her head was screaming, “Why?” It was one thing to think about this fire as an accident. A sputtering candle. A floating curtain. It was horrible, but you could understand. But the idea of someone planning this catastrophe, setting out to kill them…

  Britt began to shiver uncontrollably. Tearing her gaze away from the black reminder of Greta’s fate, she hurried toward the car and slid into the driver’s seat. Zoe was slumped in the passenger seat, her head back against the headrest, her eyes closed. Her eyelashes rested lightly on her pale, dewy skin.

  Britt reached carefully around Zoe and pulled out the seat belt from above her shoulder. She tugged it down across the front of Zoe’s pink parka and buckled it securely around her sleeping niece. Who could begrudge this child her existence? Who could look at that gentle face and see only a problem to be eliminated, an obstacle to be removed. Greta’s only child. Someone had tried to kill them both, but Zoe was still alive.

  Zoe started, and her eyelids fluttered, but then they closed again immediately.

  “You just sleep,” Britt said, pushing the button that locked the car doors. Then, using her index finger, she lifted a stray lock of hair off the child’s forehead and patted it gently back into place. Zoe’s face was softly rounded, perfect in repose. She was the image of innocence, unguarded and peaceful.

  Britt felt something unfamiliar well up inside her as she gazed at the exhausted child. Normally, she was not given to maternal feelings. She looked on other pe
ople’s children with disinterest. But this was different. This was Zoe, and there was no denying the fierce determination that rose in Britt’s heart, in her throat, like tears. “Go ahead and sleep,” Britt murmured. She lifted her wary gaze to the stark landscape that surrounded the car, the street and the smoldering remains of Greta’s fiery grave. You sleep, she thought, and I’ll keep watch.

  That night, in the dark bedroom, Britt pushed the luminous button on her watch. Midnight. She lay in the narrow twin bed, the crown of her head brushing against the maple headboard, her feet nearly touching the footboard. This feels like a coffin, she thought. Irritably, she tore off the headset she was wearing and placed it on the night table beside her with the little Discman she had brought for the trip. She had been lying here for over two hours, listening to soothing music, trying to fall asleep, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the fire inspector, telling her that the smoke alarms were disarmed, the fire set deliberately, to kill Greta.

  No matter how many times she went over it in her mind, the shock was not diminished. Why in the world would anyone want to kill her sister? Her mind couldn’t assimilate the horror of it. Britt glanced over at Zoe’s bed. All she could see was a motionless mound of covers. At least her insomnia had not disturbed Zoe. She could hear the girl’s even breathing across the space between their matching beds.

  Selfishly, for a moment, Britt wished she had insisted on a hotel. At least in a hotel she could deal with sleeplessness by turning on the TV, making a phone call, turning on all the lights and reading for an hour or two. Britt sighed. If she were in a hotel, who would be here with Zoe? Not her father, who had never come back from the Carmichaels. He’d called, around dinnertime, to tell them he would be late. Zoe wanted to wait for him, but Britt had finally insisted on heating up casserole someone had sent over and eating dinner. Britt seethed every time she thought about it. On this, the worst night of Zoe’s life, Alec Lynch had left his daughter alone. What could have been more important than to be with Zoe? she thought. Zoe, who could still be in danger…