Burn All Alike

by Nene Adams

  Chapter Nine

  “Okay, fine, let’s make sure of our facts before we start prophesying doom.” Mackenzie denied the urge to run around in circles screaming her head off.

  Veronica passed a hand over her face. “I don’t know much about the Big Burn, just that it was very destructive.” She squared her shoulders as though preparing for a blow.

  “There’s an account in the library written by a local author.” Mackenzie tried to recall details from the book she’d read in high school as well as her personal family history. “When the fires started in spring, the police thought it was kids a-larking, as Meemaw used to say. Eleven local fires, then a huge wildfire started over by Copper Ridge. With the wind and dry weather, the fire spread out of control. Volunteers stayed in town after the evacuation to try and protect as many buildings as possible. They managed to save City Hall and some of the downtown area, but a lot of places burned before the fire died.”

  Words couldn’t convey the terror she’d felt as a child, listening to her grandmother tell the story in a voice shaking with emotion.

  Meemaw Cross had loaded her children and the family’s hallowed silverware into the Studebaker and drove to Laxahatchee City to wait for news, leaving her husband behind to preserve their house if he could. The woman hadn’t driven a car in her life until that night, the journey made more harrowing by most of the population of Antioch fleeing the flames and jamming the single lane dirt road with traffic.

  Mackenzie admired Meemaw’s courage and the woman’s quieter bravery, too, with what she imagined were the long, interminable hours until morning to find out if her husband survived, if her home was lost, if the Big Burn had taken everything away and left her a destitute widow with no money in the bank and children to feed.

  “They made folks tough in those days,” Veronica remarked when Mackenzie finished her story. “Well, if Mr. Female’s research is correct, the fires happening now are more-or-less identical to the fires in 1945. The dates aren’t quite the same, but the sequence is on the dot. It’s too eerie to be a coincidence.” She clapped a hand to her forehead. “Oh, Lord. I need to call Detective Maynard.”

  “Do you have to?” Mackenzie took hold of Veronica’s arm to prevent her from rising. “If Female and Little Jack find out I spilled the beans, there’ll be hell to pay.”

  Although Veronica didn’t pull free, the tension in her muscles made it obvious she held herself still by an act of will. “Detective Maynard and Chief Irvine have been conducting a joint serial arson investigation with Mr. McCarty from Macon since Rosalyn Parker’s warehouse burned down weeks ago. There’ve been other fires since spring, some not listed in the file you got from Mr. Larkin. Detective Maynard needs to know about the connection to 1945, Mac. A lead like that could be important to his case.”

  “Jimmy knows about the Big Burn.” Mackenzie tightened her grip. “He knows, Ronnie. We both grew up in Antioch and he listened to Meemaw Cross just like me. I promised Little Jack I wouldn’t spoil Female’s scoop. If the story leaks, he’ll kill me.”

  Veronica gently eased her arm from Mackenzie’s grasp. “I’m sorry. It’s a matter of public safety. I have to inform him, Mac. I don’t have a choice.”

  “Wait,” Mackenzie said as an idea occurred to her. A brilliant, nasty, wicked idea. She ought not to do it, but the lure of revenge proved too sweet to deny. “Maybe there’s something else at work here. Or I should say, someone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I haven’t said anything to Little Jack because I just thought of him myself.”

  “Him, who?”

  Mackenzie felt positively evil. She willed herself not to cackle and twirl an imaginary mustache into points. “Turnip—ah, Turner Erskine, Debbie Lou’s brother. No, don’t shake your head. Hear me out, Ronnie.”

  Veronica sighed. “I know you hate Deborah Louise—”

  “Turnip’s suing me over a desk he claims was destroyed in the Parker warehouse fire,” Mackenzie stressed, waiting for the ball to drop. She didn’t have to wait long.

  “You’re suggesting Turner Erskine caused the fire.”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m giving you the facts. He claims I made an erroneous appraisal on a valuable secretary desk. I remember doing the appraisal as a favor to Debbie Lou when we were still dating. His desk was a cheap reproduction that wouldn’t even make good firewood and I told him so. Now he’s claiming I was wrong. Since the desk in question burned in the warehouse fire, it’s my word against his in court unless I agree to settle.”

  “How much money are we talking about?”

  “If the desk had been an original 1780 Goddard Townsend, the value would be somewhere in the region of seven million, maybe more depending on the market. He wants the full value, but his lawyer informed me he’ll settle for a million.”

  Veronica stared at her, mouth hanging open in shock. “A million dollars?”

  “That’s right.” Mackenzie relaxed against the sofa cushions. “Leaving aside the question of what his desk was doing in Rosalyn Parker’s warehouse that night, the fire seems mighty damned convenient for him, don’t you think?”

  With a sense of deep satisfaction almost rivaling the afterglow of really good sex, she watched Veronica buy into the notion of Turnip Erskine as arson suspect. Did she feel guilty? Nope. Not one bit. Turnip had brought this on himself, she decided. Implicating Alexander Purvis would have been the cherry on top of a nice, cold, vengeance-is-mine sundae, but she didn’t have much to offer on the attorney except her dislike.

  “I’ll talk to Detective Maynard.” Veronica took her cell phone out of her pocket. She frowned at the display. “Oh, right…Aimwell Forest is a dead zone.” She went to the old-fashioned avocado-green rotary dial telephone hanging on the kitchen wall.

  Mackenzie waited for Veronica to complete her call and return to the living room. “What did Jimmy say?”

  “He’ll look into it.” Veronica sat down and slung an arm around her shoulders. “Listen, Mac, if things don’t work out with Erskine and you need a loan—”

  “Hush your mouth, Veronica Betty Birdwell. I will not take your money. I have plenty of my own, thank you.” Nevertheless, Mackenzie was pleased by the offer and by the thought of Turner Erskine squirming in the interrogation room under Jimmy Maynard’s baleful glare. She’d been there, she’d done that and she never wanted to repeat the experience. Cousin Jimmy could be a scary, stone-cold bastard when bird-dogging a suspect.

  Veronica wrinkled her nose. “I knew I’d regret telling you my middle name.” She stretched out her legs, narrowly avoiding bumping the coffee table. “Turner Erskine doesn’t solve our problem, you know, unless he set all the fires.”

  “Antioch is Turnip’s hometown. I’ll bet he grew up with stories about the Big Burn.” Mackenzie shrugged and cuddled Veronica, glad the morning wasn’t too hot for closeness. “But you’re right. He’s no criminal mastermind. If he isn’t responsible for everything—and Turnip couldn’t find his ass with both hands and a navigation system—then we’ve got a pissed off ghost who can set fires, which scares the hell out of me.”

  “Did you see the wait-about doing something else? Anything at all. Did it speak to you? Did you sense anything?”

  “No, no and no. The ghost just sort of hovered there, burning. You know how sometimes when you go camping and make s’mores, you set your roasting marshmallow on fire so it goes all black? That’s the ghost, but with flames everywhere.”

  “If you see it again, Mac, try to make contact,” Veronica suggested.

  Mackenzie stared. “You’re joking. What, like use a Ouija board?”

  “Just open yourself to the possibility.”

  “Next you’re going to tell me to step into the light.”

  “Never do that.” Veronica sat up abruptly and grabbed Mackenzie’s wrists hard. “Never, ever do that, Mac, not unless you—” she choked, coughed and continued, “—unless you’re dead. Promise me.”

  Afte
r the initial startle reflex subsided, Mackenzie almost made a joke, but Veronica’s utterly serious expression changed her mind. “I promise.”

  Veronica’s eyes were shuttered, as if she kept a secret pain hidden. A moment later, she smiled too brightly. “Let’s put sandwiches in the cooler and go down to the lake.” She stood and moved into the kitchen.

  Following her, Mackenzie wondered what ghosts Veronica needed to lay to rest.

  Chapter Ten

  “For Lake Minnesauga take Highway 11,” Mackenzie sang under her breath while walking across the warm sand, “the prettiest place this side of Heaven.” She grinned and explained to Veronica, “Highway 11 used to run past Antioch north to Atlanta. Everybody used it when they went to the lake. Daddy drove us kids up here almost every summer to go camping until the year he got sick. Anyway, I remember these signs by the side of the road advertising cheesy tourist traps like Opaline Falls and the Red Rock Mystery Spot. The campground here had signs, too, and radio jingles. That stuff tends to stick in your head.”

  Veronica nodded and stepped aside to avoid a boy running to catch a beach ball. “A catchy jingle can be persistent. The Germans call it an ‘ear worm.’”

  “How apt.”

  “What happened to Highway 11? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “I’ll bet the old road’s still around, but everybody takes I-85 these days.” Mackenzie chose a spot on the beach bordering the lake. Close enough to the water if she wanted a swim, but too far away to be splashed by enthusiastic children. “Let’s sit here.”

  Veronica set down the mini-cooler and spread out a couple of oversized beach towels on the tawny sand. She’d changed into a cobalt blue, one-piece bathing suit in the cabin and twisted her hair into a rough braid. The late summer sun poured light as golden as sourwood honey on her head, making her look so beautiful, Mackenzie felt her chest clench around a knot of raw emotion she didn’t quite want to name. Not yet. Instead of bursting into tears or kissing Veronica until they both succumbed from oxygen starvation, she scanned the surroundings for something else to focus on.

  The shallower end of Lake Minnesauga hadn’t changed much since she was a girl. A man-made beach described a gentle curve around the blue-green waters. About a hundred yards from shore, an anchored pontoon marked the drop-off where the lake’s depth plunged from eight feet to twenty-six. On the other side, densely packed trees and a tumble of limestone rocks crowded the waterline. If not for the people swimming, playing, shouting and playing music, this oasis in the forest would have been picture perfect and peaceful.

  Three structures stood on the beach: a concession stand, a brick building holding the restrooms, and the lifeguard tower—currently manned, so to speak, by a teenage girl. Mackenzie didn’t think she knew the lifeguard, but it was hard to tell from a distance.

  She considered buying a hot dog with the works from the concession stand, remembered the turkey sandwiches in the cooler and plopped down on the beach towel next to Veronica. “I swear, the lake gets busier every year,” she complained.

  “It’s the heat.” Veronica shaded her eyes with a raised hand. “Next week, maybe temperatures will start to drop.”

  “Hah! You ask me, the dog days of summer are for the birds.”

  A young woman ran past them. Mackenzie brushed sand off her swimsuit, a one-piece number in a dark plum she’d thought said “sophisticated and sexy” in the store, but in the sunlight seemed more like the color of a fresh bruise. “How’s everything at the police station? Was there much fire damage?”

  “Detective Maynard said the damage is mostly cosmetic and the holding cells are intact. We’ll have no problem drying out the Saturday night drunks,” Veronica replied with a certain satisfaction. “I’m glad I have the weekend off.”

  “Why?”

  “Dollar beer night at the Get-R-Done.”

  Mackenzie winced. The last time the roadhouse ran a dollar beer night, a long-haul trucker had exchanged offensive words with the bartender. When the argument escalated, he fetched a semiautomatic rifle with an M203 grenade launcher out of his big rig. After the smoke cleared, the roadhouse’s owner had to replace the stage and part of the roof since the trucker had been too high on methamphetamines and catfish-flavored vodka to aim straight.

  “Not that I mind taking inebriated rednecks to the station,” Veronica went on. “I just dislike having to scrub vomit out of the back of my cruiser.” She shook her head. “You wouldn’t believe some of the disgusting stuff those men have in their stomachs. I once found a handful of chalk—you know, like you use on a blackboard—and dryer sheets. The man claimed he’d eaten them on a ‘double dog dare’ for five dollars and a lap dance.”

  Her appetite gone, Mackenzie rummaged in the cooler for a soda. When she glanced up, she caught sight of the teenage lifeguard sitting in the chair at the top of the tower. The girl wore a neon orange bikini that clashed with her red streaked, brown hair extensions. Her dark skin gleamed with oil or sweat.

  A wink of light lanced into Mackenzie’s left eye. She assumed the annoying beam was a reflection from the lifeguard’s mirrored sunglasses, but the light seemed too yellow. She blinked as an object swam into view in her peripheral vision.

  The spirit appeared as one dimensional as usual, a pure black shadow in the midst of a roiling, hot yellow inferno. The incandescent golden eyes glowed.

  Mackenzie turned her head to observe more of the spirit without looking straight at it. Her gaze was drawn behind the apparition to the tall, whitewashed lifeguard tower in the background. The tower stood eight feet above the sand.

  She reached for Veronica’s hand. “Do you see that?”

  “What?” Veronica’s sudden, indrawn breath confirmed the spirit’s presence. “Mac, I see it,” she said unnecessarily. She rolled to her knees. “Maybe I—”

  The lifeguard tower burst into flames.

  “Jesus!” Mackenzie surged to her feet, vaguely aware of Veronica doing the same.

  At the top of the burning tower, the lifeguard began screaming in shrill, mindless terror. To Mackenzie’s perception, the world seemed to pause for a long moment, everyone and everything frozen. A heartbeat thudded in her ears, and another, and by the third beat, time resumed its course with stunning speed.

  A nearby woman began praying loudly, calling on the Lord to preserve the girl and if not to take her home to Jesus quickly before she burned. A man cursed. A child’s frightened cry was taken up by other children wailing in confusion.

  Beside her, Mackenzie heard a gray-haired fellow mutter, “Someone ought to do something, damn it, what do we pay our taxes for?”

  Veronica shouted over her shoulder, “Call nine-one-one!” as she sprinted toward the lifeguard tower, her bare feet kicking up sand.

  Mackenzie grabbed the arm of a gawker, a bald man whose fascinated gaze remained fixed on the spectacle. She dug her nails into his flesh, gratified when he winced and looked at her. “Do you have a cell phone?”

  He shook his head.

  “Go to the concession stand,” she told him, making sure he paid attention to her. “Use the phone behind the counter. Dial nine-one-one and tell the dispatcher we need the fire department out here.” When he hesitated, clearly torn between fear of her and fear of missing an interesting development, she barked, “Do it!”

  He took off at a run.

  She hastened after Veronica, dodging several people moving away from the heat and smoke. Reaching the base of the tower, she realized the fire had started somewhere in the center of the wooden latticework supporting the structure and doubling as a ladder. Many of the planks were already covered in char patterned like alligator skin. The fire ate greedily, hungrily, leaping higher as flames consumed the dry wood as if it were oiled.

  “Jump!” Veronica shouted to the lifeguard.

  “I can’t!” The girl sounded on the verge of hysteria. She stood with her toes hanging over the edge of the platform shaking so violently, her sunglasses fell off.

&nb
sp; Mackenzie finally recognized her. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she yelled, “Fanette Nadine Bloodworth, get your ass down here right this minute, or I will tell your daddy I saw you kissing Jeremy Follett behind the Little Giant last week.”

  “I don’t care!” Fanette wept. “I’m not jumping!”

  “I’ll tell your daddy, I swear…and then I’ll tell your mama!”

  Letting out a loud shriek, Fanette jumped. She landed in the sand and started to fall, but Veronica caught the girl around the waist and dragged her several yards down the beach.

  Mackenzie went after them.

  The tower continued to burn.

  Chapter Eleven

  Mackenzie coughed when the wind blew smoke in her face. Putting her hands over her mouth and nose, she retreated farther from the crackling flames. The spirit might not put out any warmth, she thought, but the fire sure did.

  Fanette stood next to Veronica, breathing hard. On sighting Mackenzie, she cried, “Don’t you tell Mama about me and Jeremy, please! She’ll kill me!”

  “I won’t say a word,” Mackenzie promised. “Are you okay?”

  “Uh-huh. I think so.” Fanette lifted a bare foot and examined the bottom. A shiver ran through her. She put her foot down. “Thanks. Did that lady’s cigarette start the fire?”

  “I didn’t see anybody by the tower.” Not a living person, anyway. Mackenzie turned to Veronica. “Did you?”

  “What did this woman look like?” Veronica asked Fanette. “Did you take a picture with your cell phone?”

  “My boss doesn’t let us have cell phones on the tower.” Fanette paused. “The lady looked, I don’t know, Asian maybe?” She sounded doubtful.

  “Chinese? Vietnamese?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can you describe her? Any detail you can remember will help.”

  Fanette heaved a huge sigh, as though already bored with the conversation. “Asian, like I said. Straggly dark hair, looked like she needed some serious conditioner, you know? And she shouldn’t be walking around in the sun with skin that pale, but at least she had the sense to cover up, not like some of the people I see around here. Peeling lobsters. Yuck!”