by J. J. Cook
Ricky was the last one to go. “It’s been a tough day, Chief. Things will look better tomorrow. Hey! Did you take a look at the puppy I found?”
“Puppy? You brought it with you? I thought you probably gave it to the Humane Society or something.”
“Petey brought him. He seems fine, Chief. We thought he could spend the night until we decide what to do with him.”
Stella followed Ricky to the kitchen. The oldest member of the fire brigade, Tagger Reamis, was playing with the puppy.
Tagger was the only living member of the previous Sweet Pepper Fire Brigade. He was in his early seventies, not physically able to actually fight fires. He liked to be there with the other volunteers. They liked his stories about Vietnam and about the previous fire brigade. He mostly manned the twenty-four-hour communication station they had to maintain at the firehouse.
“Hey, Chief!” Tagger said as the puppy growled and played with an old T-shirt. “I think he likes it here.”
It was ironic that the puppy was a Dalmatian. Stella knew several stations back home that had Dalmatians as mascots. This one was very young, maybe six or eight weeks, and had a big red bow around his neck.
“He seems fine,” she said.
“That’s what I said,” Ricky reminded her. “There’s no one else to take him tonight. Even the pound won’t open until tomorrow morning.”
“The pound?” Tagger scratched his grizzled gray head. “We can’t let the pound take him.”
“He doesn’t really belong to us,” Stella reminded him.
“Ms. Lambert’s dead,” Ricky said. “She can’t take care of him anymore.”
“Never knew Tory to have a dog or any other animal, especially in the house,” Tagger added. “Wonder what she was doing with him?”
“We can keep him for now,” Stella decided. “We’ll have to think about this tomorrow.”
“I’ll take care of him tonight, Chief.” Tagger smiled. “I’m sure Eric will like him too.”
“Eric?”
“Eric Gamlyn.” Tagger pointed to an old picture of the first fire brigade. “Our chief from back in the 1970s. His ghost haunts the firehouse. He built it, you know.”
Stella hadn’t known that. She looked at the grainy, black-and-white picture of the group of men. The chief was a tall, broad-shouldered man. He had a handsome face and blond hair tied back at the nape of his neck. His deep chest showed off the red Sweet Pepper Fire Brigade T-shirt.
“Does he haunt the cabin up there too?” she asked jokingly. “Because I have a problem with odd things happening there.”
“Oh sure, Chief,” Ricky said from the floor where he was playing with the puppy. “Everyone knows that old cabin is haunted. That’s why my mom comes up there to clean every week. She can’t get anyone else to do it.”
“Okay.” Stella yawned. “Well, if Eric says it’s okay, that’s what counts. We’ll talk about the puppy tomorrow.”
* * *
The parking lot was empty when Stella went out. One of the lights on the outside of the building was flickering on and off. Fog was rolling down from the mountains around her. She’d learned quickly why they called them the Smokies.
She climbed on her motorcycle and headed up to the cabin on the narrow, dark road. The outside light she never turned on was flickering too, barely providing enough light to see where the parking area ended and the drop-off to the river began.
She went inside, ignoring the opening door. Out on the deck, the night sounds of crickets, frogs, and other creatures she didn’t recognize, made the night come alive. She was a city girl, born and bred. She knew ambulance sirens blaring through the streets and car tires screeching at stoplights. A barking dog was as close as she came to identifying animal sounds. Ricky had told her the other sounds she was hearing were crickets and frogs.
The hot tub steamed and bubbled at the other end of the deck. Her shoulder and the rest of her aching body wanted to drop her clothes and climb in. She sat in a rocking chair instead, and stared at the blackness that surrounded her.
It wasn’t like she hadn’t lost people before. There had been others she, and a company of well-trained firefighters, couldn’t save. Mostly they were like Tory, dead long before the fire even reached them.
But dead was dead. It was never easy no matter how many times it happened.
This wasn’t even the first time she’d lost someone she knew. Mr. Esposito, the butcher from the next street up in her neighborhood, had fallen asleep with a cigarette in his hand. She wouldn’t even have known it was him if she hadn’t known it was his place.
And there had been her third-grade teacher, Mrs. Ann Foley. She liked to light candles for her dead husband. One got tipped over and caught her drapes on fire. She’d climbed in the bathtub to stay safe instead of getting out of her apartment.
Stella wiped away old tears with those memories. It was funny how you thought things didn’t bother you anymore until something happened that brought all the hurt back. She hadn’t planned for that here. There was no one she could talk to. Everyone was back home.
She stumbled into the kitchen and made some hot chocolate. She decided to combine both therapies—chocolate and hot water—and took off her smoky clothes before she got in the hot tub.
“You’re feeling sorry for yourself,” she said aloud to the crickets and the little bat that liked to swoop around the deck at night. “It’s stupid. It won’t help Tory. You need to go home. You’re in good shape now. You can go back to work. You don’t have to see Doug. But you don’t have to be here for this either.”
“Cutting out already?” a deep, male voice asked.
Stella dropped her cup into the hot-tub bubbles. She used her foot to feel around for it. It was the only possible weapon she could think of at that moment.
“Get out now and I’ll forget you’ve been playing all these practical jokes on me.”
“I knew it! You can hear me!”
Great! He wasn’t impressed by her threats. “Leave now!”
He laughed. “I wish it were that easy. And I wouldn’t call turning on the light when I know you’ll be home late a practical joke. You can have a bad fall if you don’t get up the stairs safely.”
“Look, I don’t know who you are or why you’ve decided you’re my guardian angel, but you should leave now. I’m expecting a police officer in a few minutes. I don’t think he’d be too happy to find you here.”
Stella finally had the cup in her hand. She was one step short of breaking it and using the jagged edge to make her point. The porch was in darkness, but she could make out the man’s shadowy shape in the rocking chair she’d just left.
How did he get in?
He had to have a key. That’s what gave him access whenever he wanted to move things around or try to scare her.
She didn’t recognize his voice—he definitely wasn’t one of her rejected recruits. She didn’t know what else to do to get rid of him. She could hardly step out naked and threaten him. Even in the shadows, she could see he was a big man.
“A pretty girl like you shouldn’t be out here alone, moping.”
“I’m not moping.” She checked herself. She didn’t plan to have a conversation with him. “I’m not joking either. John Trump is with the Sweet Pepper Police Department, and he’ll be here any minute. I’m sure you don’t want to go to jail. Leave now. Don’t come back. We’ll forget this happened.”
Yeah, right. Why don’t I carry a gun?
Her cell phone was useless up here even if it was close enough for her to reach. She had no service until she was back at the firehouse.
She couldn’t believe it—she’d never needed a gun in the city. Here she was, in the boonies of Tennessee, wishing she could at least threaten to shoot someone.
“Is that Ray Trump’s boy?” the shadow asked. “No. It can’t be. Must be his grandson. I think his son’s name was Bobby. That was a while back. I don’t think he’d be courting you.”
That almost brough
t Stella out of the hot tub. “He’s not courting me, if that means what I think it means. He has valuable information about something that happened today.”
“You mean the fire and Tory Lambert’s death. What kind of information?”
This had gone on too far. Stella had to take control of the situation. “Look. I don’t want to hurt you, but if you don’t leave now—”
Before she could complete the threat, there was a loud rapping at the front door. She smiled and turned to her companion.
He was gone.
Is he waiting inside?
She couldn’t sit around wondering. She jumped out of the tub and threw on her clothes, expecting to see him at any second. She clutched the cup in front of her like it was the gun she longed for. If he came at her around the corner, she’d be ready for him.
“Stella!” John began yelling her name. His polite rapping had turned into pounding. “Are you in there? Are you okay?”
She wrenched open the door and the porch light turned off. “Sorry. Someone’s playing a prank on me. I was in the hot tub and he got inside.” She didn’t care what had brought John up there at that late hour, she was happy to see him. It was just luck that he’d come after she’d told the intruder that he would be there.
John was in his police uniform. She decided that he looked good in it. He wasn’t a big man, but he was strong and capable. He took off his hat and set it on the table. His brown hair was short enough that the hat hadn’t messed it up.
He drew his gun and switched on the kitchen light by the door. “That sounds like breaking and entering to me, Stella. Not a prank. Has it happened before?”
“I’ve had a few weird things happen, but I didn’t want to be a baby about it.” She followed behind him as he searched through the other two rooms. “Sometimes people like to play tricks on the new guy.”
All the lights in the cabin were on, including the one on the deck. No one else was in the house.
“You have an alarm system, right? Is this person going in and out? They must have the alarm code. I’ll check into it.”
“Thanks.” She was surprised and flattered by the attention. “Someone broke into my apartment back home last year and took all my electronics. I didn’t get this much of a reaction from the police.”
He smiled and put away his gun. “No one’s lived here for a long time. Except for knowing the alarm code, it could be teenagers. They like to hang out in back areas like this. Maybe you should change your code. I’ll see if there have been any other disturbances up here.”
“I really appreciate it. It kind of spooked me seeing him sitting there.”
“Well, don’t ever feel like you can’t tell me if you have a problem.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, the department. The police. That’s what we’re here for.”
Stella smiled. She didn’t know that much about John, but what she knew, she liked. “Would you like some coffee? I feel like it’s the least I can do since you were ready to shoot someone for me.”
“Sure. That would be great.”
She threw some coffee into the coffeemaker and added water. “Cream? Sugar?”
“Both, actually.” He walked into the small kitchen area. “This is really nice in here. I wasn’t sure what it was like.”
“You mean you thought they’d set me up in a rundown shack like the firehouse?” The whole town had helped clean up and restore the old building.
The lights in the cabin blinked on and off a few times. Eventually, they stopped and stayed on steadily again.
“I think you have a short somewhere,” John said. “Sometimes snakes get into the wiring if a house sits empty too long.”
“Snakes?” She looked around and shuddered at the thought. “I don’t think I like that idea.”
He laughed. “You mean Chief Stella Griffin is afraid of something? I don’t believe it.”
“Yeah, well, there’s a big difference between wildlife and fires.” She moved a little closer to him. She definitely needed a gun.
“Don’t worry. I’ll have someone come out tomorrow and look around. It’s probably nothing. This place may not look it, but it’s been empty as long as I can remember. I’m amazed it’s in such great shape. The firehouse was built the same year as the cabin. Eric Gamlyn built them both, mostly by himself, from what my daddy told me.”
“Eric Gamlyn. Tagger mentioned him tonight.”
“The old fire chief. My dad was a member of the original Sweet Pepper Fire Brigade back about forty years ago when Gamlyn was chief.”
“So I’m living in the old fire chief’s cabin?”
John told her a little about his father and his memories of the old fire brigade until the two-cup coffeepot was ready.
“Yep.” John stirred milk and sugar into the coffee that Stella had poured for him.
“What happened to him? What happened to Eric Gamlyn?”
“He was killed in a fire right before the county took over fire services for Sweet Pepper. Dad said Chief Gamlyn fought hard not to let that happen. When he died, the whole fire brigade fell apart. The county stepped in after that. Service to this end of the county was always spotty. We’ve needed a new fire brigade for years.”
The lights in the cabin went wild, flashing on and off for a few minutes before finally going off completely.
“You really have a problem up here. It could be that your alarm isn’t working right because your electric system is messed up. Maybe you should pack a bag and stay in town for the night until someone can look at your wiring.”
The lights immediately came back on—along with some bluegrass music on the stereo.
“It’s okay.” Stella studied the floor for movement. “I’m not really afraid of snakes.”
“I hate to overrule you, Chief, but as a member of the fire brigade, I have to remind you that there could be an unsafe short in the wiring system, which could cause a fire hazard.”
“You’re right,” she admitted, proud of her student. “Where will I stay on such short notice?”
“At Flo’s bed-and-breakfast.”
“I hope Flo will be all right with me showing up this late. She doesn’t really know me yet.” Stella could barely recall meeting Flo when she first got there.
“Flo’s used to it. Besides, everyone in Sweet Pepper knows you, Stella. I’m sure you could tell that by all the attention you’ve gotten.”
Stella went into the bedroom and grabbed one of her saddlebags. She stuffed a T-shirt, clean jeans, and underwear into it. It occurred to her that John hadn’t told her why he was there.
“By the way, John, what made you come up here so late? Not that I’m complaining, since you may be saving me from snakes and other intruders,” she said when she got back into the living room where he was waiting.
“Oh yeah. Sorry.” He took the saddlebag from her. “I almost forgot. It looks like you were right about Tory. The coroner said she’d been dead awhile before you found her. It looks like she didn’t die because of the fire.”
Chapter 5
Stella let John convince her to leave the Harley since she wasn’t sure where Flo’s bed-and-breakfast was located. He told her he’d either come back or send someone for her in the morning. She walked out of the cabin with him and it made the forlorn sighing sound that she was getting used to. Probably just the wind blowing through the eaves, she guessed. She didn’t believe in ghosts.
She locked the door behind her after setting the alarm. Once the electricity issue was repaired, an alarm code change was next on her list.
Stella got in the police car with John. All the lights in the cabin were off. As John started the engine, the porch light came on again. Just the idea that a group of snakes was responsible for the craziness made her queasy.
Of course, that didn’t explain the intruder who’d vanished.
“So what do we know about Tory. Are they going to do a complete autopsy?” she asked.
“The coroner said he’ll have it done as soon as he can. T
hat will give us some idea what happened. And the police department will investigate.”
“What about an arson investigator?” Stella asked. “Is there one around here?”
“Well, there is one. Mac Williams. He won’t be showing up anytime soon. He never made it out to investigate a suspicious house fire we had here in May.”
“That’s four months ago. Are you serious?”
“That’s why you’re here, remember? The county pretty much abandoned us. You might have to investigate this yourself.”
“I’m not qualified to investigate arson,” she protested.
“Don’t worry. I’ll help. I’m sure Don will lend a hand too.”
“Maybe. He doesn’t seem too happy that I’m here.”
“People don’t like new things—or new people. Nobody likes change. Don is a decent man. He’ll come ar ound.”
They drove through the quiet, dark streets of Sweet Pepper. The only lights were the quaint streetlights and the traffic light. No one seemed to be out but them.
John pulled the squad car into a wide driveway where a large, slightly crooked sign announced their destination, Flo’s bed-and-breakfast. “Here we are.”
“Thanks for the ride.”
“Would you like me to come in with you? I could at least walk you to the door.”
Stella smiled. “Thanks, but I’ll be okay. I’d hate to think that there are bad guys out there that need to be caught and I’m taking up all your time.”
“I already locked up Boyd Jeffries tonight.” He chuckled. “He gets a little rowdy sometimes after he’s had a few. He was dancing at Beau’s bar with a lampshade on his head. The rest of the night should be easy.”
They got out of the car, Stella wincing a little at the acrid odor of smoke still lingering from the fire. Back home, there were so many bad smells that people tended not to notice a little smoke. Here, where the stars looked close enough to touch, the air was cleaner and fresher. She could make out the smell of someone lighting up a cigarette even as she was going down the road on her bike.
