“That’s right,” I put in.
“Is the house insured?”
“Yes. Of course. Putnam’s Insurance Agency, over on Calvin Street. Are you thinking it could be arson?”
“Our investigation will cover all possibilities.”
“If you’re thinking arson …” I began.
The fire chief and Kelli had been regarding each other warily, but now they both turned to look at me.
“Yes?” the fire chief prompted.
“The thing is, Abilene and I have reason to believe that someone could have, ummm, traced us here to Hello. Someone—someones, actually—who might start a fire. Actually, that’s why we’re here, because we were running away from … them.”
I stumbled through the awkward statement because I could see doubt written on the fire chief’s face.
“They could have traced you?”
“Yes. Possibly.”
“How? Why?”
“Well, I’m, uh, not sure. They had someone working in the post office once, I think, or they might use the license plate on our motor home … or something.” The statement sounded more flimsy and less believable the further I went.
“And you think these, ah, someones, got into the house and tried to burn it with you in it?”
“Yes. Exactly. They tried to do it to my house back in Missouri, and there have been threats on both our lives.” I made a little gesture toward Abilene.
“What she’s saying is true,” Abilene put in, which swiveled the fire chief in her direction. “My former husband … I mean, we’re in the process of getting a divorce, so he’s almost my former husband … has threatened to kill me. Kill both of us.”
“Maybe you should be telling this to the police chief.”
“Well, uh …” Now it was Abilene’s turn to stammer. “If Boone doesn’t already know where I’m at, he might find out, because his cousin is the sheriff, and then—”
“But the house wasn’t broken into. How could they have gotten inside?”
“We haven’t figured that out yet,” I put in.
“Look, it’s been a stressful night for all of you. Why don’t you just get a good night’s sleep, and things will look different in the morning.”
I got an instant glimpse of us through his eyes. One LOL, which here meant “loony old lady,” and one younger woman, paranoid about an ex-husband, both imagining bogeymen in the dark. And what we really were, to his mind, were two scatterbrained women careless with paint thinner and flammable trash trying to wiggle out of responsibility for the fire with a wild story about being tracked down by killers and arsonists.
The only time our stories were going to be taken seriously, I could see, was after we were dead, when someone might say, “Well, how about that? Someone was out to get them.”
“Is the house livable?” I asked, partly as distraction, partly because his suggestion about getting a good night’s sleep reminded me we had no place to do that.
“The house isn’t a total loss, as you can see.” The fire chief motioned toward the untouched towers and gingerbread across the front porch. “But most of it is smoke and water damaged, and the addition on the back side is pretty well destroyed.” To Kelli he said, “I’d suggest you get your insurance people out here as soon as possible. We can’t allow anyone to stay here tonight, of course.”
Abilene and I looked at each other, with the question that passed between us every once in a while in our uncertain lives looming again. Now what?
Kelli had a quick answer. “You can stay at my place. I have an extra room with twin beds.”
I didn’t protest that we didn’t want to put her to any bother. I was just grateful for her continuing generosity. “Can we go inside long enough to get a few things?” I asked.
The fire chief looked over our bare feet and night clothes. He called another fireman over and told him to escort us inside.
The wet, burned smell expanded to a nose-clutching stench as we made our way down the hall. The electricity had gone out by now, and the fireman used a flashlight to guide our way. The actual fire didn’t appear to have extended more than a half dozen feet forward in the hallway, but starlight made murky by lingering smoke showed through the roof farther back. The back door at the end of the hallway, with only a skeleton of a wall around it, dangled on its hinges. If the fire had moved forward rather than to the rear, and if Koop hadn’t awakened us …
The Lord had been looking out for us, and one of my favorite verses from Hebrews came to me, as it often did: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” Thank you for that promise, Lord. Thank you for fulfilling it.
Water squished in the carpet under our bare feet. Fire hadn’t harmed the bedrooms, although water from the hoses had drenched everything. The carousel horses glowed like eerie apparitions in the beam of the flashlight. The fireman actually jumped when he saw them.
We didn’t bother to dress, except to put on shoes. We grabbed only basic necessities: clothes, other shoes, toiletries, Koop’s cat carrier. We had nothing to carry anything in, but Kelli efficiently yanked sheets off the beds, and we bundled everything in those. All three of us were weighed down with the makeshift bags slung over our shoulders, Abilene with the addition of the cat carrier in one hand, by the time we staggered out of the house and down the street to the Bronco.
Abilene and I stayed in the vehicle while Kelli went back to the house to check with the fire chief again and make sure it was okay to leave. Koop had calmed down, and we put him in the cat carrier. Abilene forcefully repeated what she’d said earlier. “There was nothing, nothing burning in the trash room when I went out there. However the fire got started, it was after that.”
Neither of us had been out there flinging matches around. So how had the fire started? I remembered that shredded newspaper where Koop had napped. Oily rags. Old egg cartons. Plastic.
An arsonist’s delight. And, even if Fire Chief Wally Burman thought my story of being traced to Hello was just a loony old lady’s imagination, I had a pretty good idea who’d gleefully tossed a burning match into the trash room.
20
Kelli quickly got us settled in her guest room. It was a cozy room, chinked logs on the outside wall, painted wood paneling on the interior walls. Patchwork quilts covered the beds. Braided rag rugs beside each bed made colorful ovals on the wooden floors. Koop got a bed of his own, a plastic laundry basket filled with a pillow, although I doubted that was where he’d sleep.
Sandra Day had met us at the front door when we first arrived. She looked as if God had used creative imagination when putting her together: mottled Siamese coloring but long hair, six toes on each front foot, and a pug face, the odd combination all nicely held together with a queenly grace. She and Koop had sniffed warily through the screen of the cat carrier. No fireworks, but we were keeping him in the room with us for the time being.
We dug in our makeshift bags until I found a nightgown, Abilene another pair of pajamas. They were dampish but clean. The ones we had on were speckled with ashes and pocked with burn holes. We scattered our other damp clothes around the room to dry. The smell of smoke clung to both of us, and we took turns in the shower down the hall. We got in bed, but both of us felt too wired to turn out the ruffled lamps on the nightstands.
“I think we should thank the Lord for bringing us through safely,” I said. “And for again providing us with a safe place for the night, as he has done so many times before.”
Abilene made a peculiar noise, which it took me a moment to decipher as a clearing of her throat. Then she said, “I-I could do that.”
You could? I was surprised. But I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, so all I said was, “That would be nice.”
“Dr. Sugarman always says a blessing before we have lunch.”
She’d been taking a sack lunch, but I hadn’t realized she and the veterinarian ate together. “Dr. Sugarman brings a sack lunch too?”
“Lately he has been. He says it’s
quicker than going out to eat like he used to.”
I didn’t comment, but I suspected time wasn’t the real reason for Dr. Sugarman’s switch to sack lunches.
“I’ve been thinking maybe I should say the blessing sometimes before we eat, so he wouldn’t be doing it all the time. I’m thankful for the food too.”
“That sounds like a great idea.” I also suspected Dr. Sugarman would be as pleased with her offering a blessing before lunch as I now was with her offer of a prayer of thanks for tonight.
Her prayer wasn’t smooth or elegantly worded, not what you might hear in church or on a Christian radio program. She stumbled and ummm-ed and paused to swallow. It was also brief. But it was heartfelt, and I followed with an amen. And a silent thanks of my own for this big step Abilene had taken.
It was getting close to 5:30 a.m., but we still didn’t turn out the lights. Too much still hung unfinished.
“So,” I said tentatively, “about the fire.”
Abilene raised up on one elbow. “I don’t care what that fire chief thinks, I don’t think the fire was an accident. Somebody started it.”
“He said the back door was locked, and the firemen had to break their way in,” I reminded.
“So someone got in by picking the lock. Then he … or she … started the fire and locked the door again when he went out.”
I certainly didn’t doubt but what the Braxtons had someone, male or female, with lock-picking talent, and they’d be happy to trap us in a killer blaze. I shivered in spite of the comfortably warm room. If it were the Braxtons, which meant they had our location pinpointed and would probably try again, what did that do to our plan to remain here in Hello?
Abilene must have been thinking the same thought, and wanting to dodge it, because she asked, “Could someone from right around here have done it?”
“Like who?”
She answered that with another question. “Who knew about that trash room?”
“Kelli, of course,” I answered reluctantly. But she surely couldn’t have set the fire and gotten home in time to answer the phone. Or could she? The phone had rang and rang, and she’d sounded just wakened when she answered it. But maybe she was slow answering not because she was asleep, but because she was just dashing in the door and pretending the phone had wakened her. Yet what reason would she have to do it? Insurance? I couldn’t believe the insurance money would amount to that much, and I definitely couldn’t believe she’d endanger our lives for any amount of money. Not Kelli.
Yet a tiny suspicion slithered in, unwanted as a snake at a garden party. Could there be something in the house concerning Hiram’s death that she wanted destroyed? Something she was desperate enough to get rid of that she was willing to risk our lives?
No. I’d already decided Kelli was no killer. Or arsonist.
“Lucinda?” Abilene suggested, her tone uneasy.
Yes, Lucinda knew about that inflammable trash. Could she have realized that we suspected she may have killed Hiram because of KaySue and decided it was time to get rid of us? Or at least scare us into moving on? She knew about the engine Nick was installing in the motor home. Had she decided we needed a strong nudge to get us on our way? She quite likely had a key to the house. But she couldn’t have known the house wouldn’t be totally engulfed by a fire, us with it. Was she willing to risk our lives to get us to move on? I didn’t want to think so, and yet it was possible.
“Norman?” I added to the list.
“He had to know about the trash room,” Abilene agreed.
But surely not Norman! He had a crush on me. He was miles from town. He couldn’t even harm his chickens. But crushes were notoriously fickle, the Dorf was in running condition, and maybe Norman was more ruthless about people than chickens. He may also have a key Hiram had given him at some time. If he thought I was about to figure out he was the killer …
“I don’t want to think about this any more tonight,” I muttered finally. I reached up and turned off the lamp.
“Me neither.” The other lamp also clicked off.
But in the morning, the problem was still with us. Kelli was already gone by the time we got up, which was a much later hour than usual because it had been so close to the end of the night before we’d gotten to sleep. She’d left a note saying she wanted to talk to the insurance people as early as possible. “Help yourself to anything edible,” the note ended. “Coffee’s hot in the coffeemaker.”
We fixed scrambled eggs and toast. Koop and Sandra Day looked each other over and, dignified creatures that they were, decided the two-cat situation was tolerable. Abilene called Dr. Sugarman, explained what had happened, and told him she’d be in a little later. I could tell from her end of the conversation that he was worried and wanted to come pick her up, but she told him she’d walk.
We settled at the kitchen table with second cups of coffee. Neither of us really believed someone local had sneaked in and set the house on fire. Abilene offered the first gloomy possibility.
“Maybe Boone hasn’t given up after all,” she said.
“Could be.” Although I thought Boone would be more apt to try something direct, something face-to-face where he could be certain Abilene knew it was him getting even. Running her down with a vehicle. Sticking a gun in her face. Whacking her over the head with a tire iron. Not something as anonymous as a fire in the night.
But the Braxtons just wanted me dead, any way they could do it. Maybe by this time it had become a matter of family pride. It was, at least, definitely a family project. “Maybe the Braxtons haven’t given up either.”
Abilene nodded. Both of us had just stated the obvious.
The only problem was, neither Boone nor the Braxtons could have known about that trash room and how easy starting a fire would be there. Wasn’t it more likely that if either of them wanted to burn the house they’d simply have splashed gasoline on an outside wall and tossed a match? Why bother to get inside?
“The thing is,” Abilene went on slowly, “if it was Boone, he’s going to be really mad his scheme didn’t work. If he’s here, he’ll try again. And next time I-I’m afraid he might do something at the vet clinic.”
“But he wouldn’t get me there.”
“The big thing that matters to Boone, as he put it back there in Oklahoma, is making mincemeat out of me. It’s just that he doesn’t care if you get hurt or killed in the process. He also wouldn’t care if Dr. Sugarman got killed if he got in the way. Dr. Sugarman would try to protect me, I know he would. And Boone might kill him.”
That was what worried her more than her own safety, I realized. Dr. Sugarman, even if she hadn’t yet admitted it to herself, was more to her than just an employer.
“What do you think we should do?” I asked.
Her answer was immediate. “Go talk to Nick. See how soon he can get that engine installed so we can get out of here.”
Keeping Dr. Sugarman safe meant more to Abilene than the job she loved, which told me a lot.
The only way we had to get out to Nick’s Garage was walk. I hoped we’d find him putting finishing touches on transferring the engine from the wrecked motor home to ours. But the half motor home, looking like something chewed on by some monster in a horror movie, still stood in the yard, and our lifeless motor home was still out back.
“Problem,” Nick said when we approached him in the shop, where he was doing something to a green pickup. He wiped his hands on a greasy rag and slammed the hood down. “Someone from the truck company’s insurance wants to examine the wrecked motor home before anything is done to it. I guess I should have expected that. They’re probably anticipating a big claim from the New Jersey folks, mental anguish and all that, and they want to see exactly what the accident did to the motor home.”
“How long will this take?”
“Hard to say.”
“Things have changed, and we’re in kind of a hurry now.”
He nodded, but I suspected wanting something done yesterday was par for the
vehicle repair business, not something he was going to get worked up about. “Say, I heard there was a fire at the McLeod place last night. What happened?”
“Just a blaze that got started in a roomful of trash. The back section of the house is heavily damaged, but we’re fine. Kelli is talking to the insurance company this morning.”
“That’s good. Kind of a bad luck place, though, isn’t it? Old Hiram getting killed there, now this.” He looked us over appraisingly, his tone speculative.
I did not intend to encourage speculation. “It’s a beautiful old house,” I said. “Very spacious.”
Nick apparently took that non sequitur to mean “mind your own business,” which it did. He jumped back to the subject of the motor homes. “Well, hey, I’m real sorry about the delay on the engine, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ll get on it soon as I can. I just hope some of the lawyers involved don’t decide the motor home has to be preserved as is for a trial or something.”
“You mean the whole deal might fall through?” Abilene doesn’t tend to gasp, but this was definitely a gasp.
“Possible.”
Nick went back to the pickup, and Abilene and I moved slowly toward the gate out to the road.
Abilene jammed her hands in her pockets and looked at the ground in front of her feet. “I guess we don’t have to make a decision about whether to leave now,” she said.
Right. No decision necessary. We were still stranded in Hello.
Abilene went on to work. I waved her off and figured with her long strides she’d be at the vet clinic before I made it to the Historical Society, even though the distance was much farther.
I didn’t get much done with the books that day. Doris Hammerstone and Victoria Halburton were on duty at the main desk, and various other Historical Society ladies wandered in and out, not something they usually did. It didn’t take a prompter in the wings to tell me I was the major attraction. Each lady came by my desk with expressions of shock and horror but also eager for a firsthand report on the fire.
What caused the fire, of course, was everyone’s openly asked question, although penny-pinching Victoria also pointed out that I hadn’t put in a full day’s work today and would be docked for the hours I’d missed. Everyone skirted around the bigger, underlying questions, as if it would be indelicate to ask: did the fire have something to do with Hiram’s murder? Was Kelli involved? Was something scandalous going on?
Stranded Page 20
