The Last Chance Olive Ranch

by Susan Wittig Albert

“I think you ought to go back to our place and go to bed.” Ruby looked at the heap of flaming rubble that had once been Sofia’s beautiful cabin. “There’s nothing we can do to help the fire crew, you know.”

  That was true enough. The county fire marshal’s truck had just pulled up, with two more pickup trucks behind him. Volunteers wearing bright yellow firefighters’ gear, helmets, and heavy gloves were running up the steep hill to get to work. Pete’s tanker was empty, but the firefighters had driven their brush truck up the hill as far as they could go, then pulled their hoses out and were spraying down the flaming underbrush. Equipped with shovels, axes, and rakes, the crew was working both sides of the blaze, and Jerry was running a chain saw somewhere close to the top of the hill. Chet and Jason were piloting a tractor with a scraper blade, creating a wide firebreak around the perimeter of the fire. It wouldn’t be long before the blaze was completely contained, but the firefighters would likely stay until past dawn, digging out hotspots and watching the wind to make sure that flying embers didn’t hopscotch into an unburned area and ignite a new blaze.

  Ruby was right. There was nothing we could do to help the fire crew. There was something I urgently needed to do, though, so I took the hand Ruby held out and let her pull me to my feet.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get you back to the cabin. I’ll get you some aspirin for that headache and we’ll have another glass of wine. What you need is sleep.”

  I stood for a moment until the Tilt-A-Whirl stopped spinning and I could walk without staggering like a drunk. Finally, I said, “I’ll be glad to go back to the cabin, but there’s something we have to do first.”

  I might have slurred a word or two, because Ruby put a hand on my arm and bent forward to peer at me. Sounding concerned, she said, “You don’t look all that good, China. I think you should—”

  “Come on,” I growled, and shook off her arm. I trudged around the burning ruins of the cabin, heading toward the back. My head was pounding, I could feel the pain of the burn on my shoulders, and every other step was a stumble. But I knew where I was going and I was determined to get there.

  And I did, with Ruby striding along beside me, pleading with me to listen to her. If anybody had been around to see us, we must have looked like a comic pair. Ruby was wearing her ratty, knee-length Dallas Cowboys sleep shirt, leggings, and flip-flops, her hair a tangle of carroty curls dusted with ash; I sported a Mickey Mouse tee, my face and arms were streaked with black soot, and my hair looked as if I had dressed it with a blow torch. And I jiggled.

  “But where are we going?” Ruby cried, her flip-flops slapping the ground.

  “Not far.” I rounded the back corner of what had been Sofia’s home and stopped. “Right here.”

  “Here?” she asked. “But why? Really, China, I don’t—”

  “I want to see where the fire started.” I bent over to examine the corner of the old cabin.

  Like our cabin and all the others, Sofia’s home hadn’t been built directly on the sloping ground. Instead, it sat like a heavy log box on top of wooden beams that rested on square concrete piers—a common kind of construction in Texas, called pier and beam. Because the land sloped toward the lane, the piers under the front of the house were about three feet high while the piers at the back were only eighteen inches or so. Under the cabin, there had been a crawl space where the plumbing and electrical connections were installed. There was no skirting around the foundation. It was all open. Or rather, it had been, before the fire. Ruby had told me earlier that the logs were from the original construction. They must have been well over a century old and very dry, and they had burned fast. Sections of the log walls were still standing, especially in the front of the house, but the old wooden floors had burned completely through to the ground. All that was left was flaming rubble, studded by the concrete piers. An erratic wind was blowing, but it couldn’t dispel the heavy, acrid smell that hung over the burned cabin, and I could hear the sharp pops and crackles of flames and the occasional sigh of a timber falling to ashes.

  As I stood there at the back corner of the house, I was remembering that when I had gone through the front window to look for Sofia, I had seen that the back wall was ablaze—but not entirely, and not evenly. Now, as I tried to picture it in my mind, it seemed to me that the fire had been brighter and more intense in the right rear corner of the large single room, near Sofia’s bed, where I had seen the flames streaking up the wall into the rafters. I remembered seeing another area of flames in the center of the back wall, beside the door to the lean-to bathroom. But it seemed smaller, and so did the fire in the back left corner, the kitchen corner.

  Of course, the room had been filled with smoke, so maybe my vision had been obscured. And I had been intent on getting Sofia out of there, so I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to anything else. But the uneven nature of the blaze was curious, I thought now, and it was puzzling me. It wouldn’t be at all unusual for a fire to start in the kitchen—a stove burner that Sofia had forgotten to turn off, or the electric percolator carelessly left on—and spread to the rest of the house. The kitchen was probably the source of most household fires.

  But how could a fire start in the kitchen, leapfrog sideways along the wall, and then leapfrog again, into the opposite corner? And as I remembered it, the fire had seemed to have a head start—to have been burning longer and brighter and hotter—in that right rear corner, not in the kitchen. Something wasn’t right here, and I needed to find out what it was. That might not be possible, though. If Pete and Jerry had hosed down the back wall in an effort to save the house, they might have destroyed what I was looking for—whatever that was.

  The night was pitch black, but there was a glow from the fire on the hillside and from the flames that still burned in the interior of the cabin, and I could see fairly clearly. There was enough left of the wall to tell at least part of the story, and what I saw on the outside pretty clearly mirrored what I had seen on the inside when I entered the burning house. At this moment, I was standing just outside the point where the fire had been most intense, in the corner nearest Sofia’s bed. The bathroom, a small square structure built against the back of the cabin, had not completely burned. When I stepped around it to look at the kitchen corner, I saw that it was pretty heavily burned now, and I noticed the mangled remains of what might have been a mid-sized propane tank. Between these three burned sections, however, the logs at the base of the walls were intact and unburned, at least three or four feet high.

  I went back to the outside corner of the cabin, nearest what once had been the bed. The night sky was black and the area was lit only by the flames on the hillside. I was bent over, looking, when the corner was suddenly brightly illuminated and I heard a man say, “How about we shine a little light on that?”

  I straightened up, blinking. The man holding the flashlight was thin and weather-beaten, with piercing blue eyes and a close-trimmed gray beard. He wore khaki pants tucked into fire boots, a blue short-sleeved uniform shirt, a red cap that said Kendall County Fire Department, and a silver badge on his breast pocket. I couldn’t read the badge or the insignia on his sleeve, but I could guess who he was. I was right.

  “Tom Sullivan, fire investigator.” He set down the large metal toolbox he was carrying and held out his hand—the hand that wasn’t holding the big, businesslike torch. “Who are you?”

  “China Bayles,” I said, shaking his hand. Ruby was at my heels. “And this is Ruby Wilcox. We’re from Pecan Springs.”

  “We’re not exactly dressed for company.” With an apologetic grin, Ruby offered her hand.

  “Nobody is when there’s a fire in the middle of the night.” His tone was firm and not entirely friendly. “What’s your business here?”

  “We’re guests at the ranch,” I said. “I’m here to do a workshop tomorrow.”

  I understood Sullivan’s firm tone. I had been involved in a couple of arson investi
gations in my earlier incarnation as a criminal defense attorney and I had done my share of research on the subject. Some arsonists like to stick around and bask in the glow of their flaming handiwork, so if you hang around the scene of a fire—which was exactly what Ruby and I were doing—you’re liable to find your name on the fire investigator’s suspect list. And since it now appeared to me that there could be three separate ignition points in this cabin fire, I was pretty sure that what we were looking at was arson, and I was glad to see somebody who knew what he was looking at. Or looking for.

  “We’re staying in that cabin,” Ruby explained, pointing over her shoulder. “We smelled the smoke and got up. China pulled Sofia out of the burning house while I drove down to the ranch house to call 911.” She put a hand on the back of my head. “That’s how her hair got all singed,” she added helpfully.

  Sullivan took out a small notebook. “B-a-l-e-s?” he asked. A radio at his belt crackled. He listened a moment, unhooked it, said “Roger. I’m on-scene. Check you in ten. Out.” He looked at me. “B-a-l-e-s. Right?”

  “No, B-a-y-l-e-s,” I said, and watched him scribble. “China. As in the country. Yes, that’s my real name,” I added, when he looked up and raised an eyebrow at me.

  “You entered the structure when it was burning?”

  “I did,” I said, and waited for the how and what questions I knew were coming. I wasn’t disappointed.

  “How’d you get in?” His pencil was poised now. He was scrutinizing me. “What did you do once you were in there?”

  “The front door was locked,” I replied. “I broke in through the front window, crawled to the bed—the smoke was pretty heavy—and pulled the lady—Sofia—out the front door. It was a quick trip. Quick as I could make it.”

  “Sofia’s been taken to the hospital,” Ruby put in. She gave me a proud glance. “China is quite a hero. Heroine,” she corrected herself hastily. “She went back into the burning building a second time, to get a box that Sofia was worried about. Would you like to see her burns?”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Sullivan was still scribbling. “You were the woman who got blown out when the propane tank exploded?”

  “That’s me,” I said. “So it was propane?”

  He nodded. “Standard household hundred-and-twenty-five gallon tank. The fire weakened the fittings, ignited the gas, and it went off like a bomb. I didn’t see it, but there would have been shrapnel flying everywhere. Lucky you weren’t badly injured.” He flipped the page in his notebook. “When you went in the first time, where was the fire? What exactly did you see?”

  While Sullivan took notes, I told him about seeing the intense fire in the right rear corner, in the area by the bathroom door, and in the kitchen corner. “Seemed a little strange to me,” I added, “so Ruby and I came back here to have a look.”

  “Yeah, strange.” He looked from me to Ruby. “Before the fire—did you hear anything? Somebody walking, a vehicle, a dog barking?”

  “Before the fire,” I said ruefully, “we were asleep. Sound asleep, I’m afraid.”

  “We had a nice bottle of wine before we went to bed,” Ruby added, in explanation. “The fire woke us up about midnight.”

  “How about earlier in the evening, before you went to bed. Any unusual traffic on this lane? Strange cars, trucks, motorcycles, anything?”

  “We were both out, in different places,” Ruby said. “I got back first, about nine thirty. China got back about ten.”

  I frowned. “Yes, that’s right. I got back about ten. But—”

  Sullivan looked at me. “Yes, but what?”

  “Nothing,” I said hesitantly. “But I’ll keep thinking about it.”

  “Okay.” He gave me a close look, then pocketed his notebook and took out an expandable metal pointer. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.” He aimed his torch on the ground just inside the pier that had supported that corner of the cabin. “Ah,” he said, letting out his breath, long and slow. And then: “Aha.” He probed delicately with his pointer, and I saw that he was poking at a pile of partially burned rags.

  “Jeans,” he said. He wrinkled his nose. “Smell anything?”

  “I don’t have a very good smeller,” I said.

  “I do,” Ruby put in. She was leaning over us, looking intently at the half-burned jeans. “I smell lighter fluid.” She hesitated. “And something else.” Another hesitation. “This is weird. I think I smell . . . crayons? And maybe putty?”

  “You’re smelling rancid olive oil,” Sullivan said. “Really rancid olive oil. And lighter fluid.”

  “So somebody soaked the jeans in olive oil,” I said, “and added lighter fluid to get the fire started.”

  “That’s what it looks like,” Sullivan replied. “I’ll take a look, but I’ll bet we’ll find the same kind of fuel setup beside the bathroom and at the kitchen corner. Three points of ignition.”

  I nodded. “That would square with what I saw when I came through the window.”

  “But how was it started?” Ruby asked. “With a match?”

  “I’ll have a better idea once I pull this stuff out and do a forensic analysis,” Sullivan said. “The arsonist might have used candles. The average candle burns at a rate of about thirty to forty-five minutes per inch.”

  “So a four-inch candle could burn for, say, two hours,” I said thoughtfully. “Give or take.”

  “That’s about right,” Sullivan replied. “He—or she—could have set the candles, with the oil-soaked jeans wrapped around the base, and added a few squirts of lighter fluid to ensure that when they burned down, the olive oil would ignite. That would give plenty of time for a getaway. Once ignited, the oily denim would sustain flame for quite a while, long enough to set fire to the dry flooring just above it. Once that caught, the walls would be next.” He withdrew his pointer. “I don’t want to disturb this material until I can start working on it, but I’m betting we’ll find traces of candle wax.”

  “But why olive oil?” I asked. “Surely there are more effective fuels. And the candle—it might have blown out. There are all kinds of ways this could have gone wrong. It doesn’t seem very . . .” I hesitated. “Very well thought-out.”

  “Maybe it was a spur-of-the-moment thing,” Ruby put in. “Maybe this person only had a small can of lighter fluid, but a lot of olive oil and some old rags. So he used—”

  She stopped, biting her lip, and I knew what she was thinking. Pete and Jerry and Maddie—yes, Maddie, too—had easy access to hundreds of gallons of olive oil. And so did Chet, I thought uneasily, remembering the bottles of rancid oil in the backseat of his Jeep. And then, with a jolt, I remembered where else I had seen similar bottles.

  “Right.” Sullivan stood up, brushing his hands. “Could be somebody working on the spur of the moment with available supplies. As far as the olive oil is concerned, that’s probably what was handy. Plenty of olives growing around here. And the stuff is flammable, as you know if you’ve ever had it catch fire in a skillet. In fact, it’s fairly long-burning, which is what you want if you’re aiming to start a structure fire.”

  Ruby and I exchanged grim looks. “What’s next?” I asked.

  “I’m declaring this a crime scene.” He opened his tool kit and took out a roll of yellow crime-scene tape. “You can go back to your cabin now and get some sleep. But first, give me your contact information.” He handed Ruby his notebook and pencil.

  We took care of that, then Ruby touched my arm. “Come on, China. I’ll grab some more of those aloe leaves for your shoulders. Maybe I’ll put a few in the fridge, too. Cool aloe might feel really good.”

  I looked up the hillside. Jason was driving the tractor and I could see Chet silhouetted against the flames about a hundred yards away. He was wielding a chain saw, taking out larger trees in front of the tractor. I looked at Ruby and pointed at Chet, mouthing, I have to talk to him.


  She frowned. “You look awful, China. You need to get off your feet. Really.”

  “I will,” I said. “In a few minutes. You go on.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No,” I said, and turned to hike up the hill.

  It was tough climbing. Troubled by what I was thinking and no longer distracted by the conversation with Sullivan, I could feel my head throbbing and the skin on my shoulders and back was tight and hot. I had to pick my way through charred underbrush and around the still-burning cedar stumps. The ground was hot and this wasn’t the best terrain for sneakers, but I kept on going. I had to.

  I was halfway up the hill when Chet looked up and saw me. He turned off his chain saw, pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his face, then put up his hand, telling me to stay where I was. He began making his way downhill. A few moments later, he was gripping my arm.

  “What are you doing up here, damn it?” His voice was rough. “I heard you got knocked out in that propane blast. I wanted to get down to see how you were, but we’ve been pretty busy up here.”

  “I’m okay,” I said. It was a lie but there were more important things. “You have to come down to the cabin with me. There’s a guy here from the county fire department. We need to talk to him.”

  “Tom Sullivan?”

  “Uh-huh. You know him?”

  “Sure. Everybody knows Tom. He’s the county fire investigator. Every time there’s a fire, he’s on scene. What’s this about?”

  “Just come on,” I said, and started back down the hill.

  Sullivan had finished looping the crime-scene tape around the back of the cabin and was about to go to the front when we stopped him.

  “Hey, Chet,” he said. “Looks like you guys are getting things under control up there.” He glanced from one of us to the other. “So what’s on your minds?”

  “Earlier, you asked me if I had seen any strange vehicles,” I said. “The answer is still no. But Chet and I did see a vehicle behaving . . . well, strangely. I think it might be something you need to know.”