Murder on the Horizon

by M. L. Rowland

  “You should have been here when the camp was full of kids. Your kids. It was awesome. They were awesome.”

  “Wish I could have,” he said. “The summer was hellaciously busy. Seems like I haven’t had a free afternoon for bloody months.”

  “I know the feeling,” Gracie said. She studied his profile for a moment, aware that they were both stalling, both talking about anything and everything but . . . “Why are you here?”

  Rob turned toward her. “Because . . .” He stopped.

  Gracie closed her eyes, took in a breath and held it.

  “I missed seeing you.”

  Gracie opened her eyes.

  “Missed your down-to-earthness. Your sanity.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far . . .”

  “You ground me, Gracie. Keep me focused on what’s really important in life.”

  “Okay, so if that’s true . . .”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “No. I . . . Yes. I mean . . .” She shook her head. “Never mind.”

  Rob took her hand. “Can we sit somewhere? Please?”

  She gestured to a bench several feet away at the edge of the water. They walked over and sat down, Minnie lying in the sand at their feet.

  Rob leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped, looking out over the lake. “I wanted to see you,” he said. “That’s why I drove up today.”

  “Long drive.”

  “Awful, disgusting traffic.”

  “I might not have been here. Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?”

  He straightened. “I called.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Yes, I did. I left a message on your cell.”

  “Oh. Oops. Sorry. Forgot to check.”

  “When you didn’t answer or return my call . . . as usual, I might add.”

  “Sorry. I’ve had . . . things . . . going on.” The excuse faded away.

  “I figured I’d drive up anyway. Take a chance. I wanted to . . . I . . . Before I . . .” He blew out a breath, running a hand through his hair and making it stick up in the back.

  Gracie almost smiled. A global superstar tongue-tied. And vulnerable. One of the reasons she loved him.

  “I wanted to see you,” he said again. “Talk with you. Spend time with you. I haven’t seen you since . . .” He sat up. “The last time I saw you, you bolted.”

  “I had to get back.”

  “You left without a bloody word, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. That I did do.” And she was paying for it now. Big-time.

  Rob settled elbows on knees and looked over the water again. “I just wanted to sit and talk with you. For a little while.” Then he reached out and took Gracie’s hand. “If that’s okay.”

  “I’d like that,” Gracie said.

  As the daylight waned, drawing in the exquisite mantle of stars and darkness along with an occasional mosquito, Gracie and Rob sat on the little bench overlooking Ponderosa Lake and talked. About what they had been doing over the past months, about the search for Baxter Edwards and Gracie’s growing affection for the boy, about Rob’s newest movie, a dark and brooding action-thriller taking place in the mean streets of Los Angeles.

  Throughout, Gracie never mentioned the nightmare that was growing around her. And Rob never mentioned his impending marriage. Both, Gracie figured, holding on to the warmth and peace of the moment.

  Finally, when Gracie shivered with cold, they had walked hand in hand back up to the Gatehouse. Rob had kissed her once, warm, soft, on the mouth, then climbed into the Jeep,

  The internal warmth, the tingle of his lips on hers, and the swallowing hole of sadness that threatened to engulf her lasted all the way down Cedar Mill Road across town to her cabin.

  * * *

  WHEN GRACIE AND her dog walked through the front door of the cabin, the phone on the kitchen counter was ringing.

  Gracie walked into the kitchen, set her pack on the chair, and checked the caller ID. Timber Creek, CA.

  She stood with shoulders hunched and fists clenched on the counter, head bent, listening to her own succinct message asking callers to leave a name and number and she would return the call as soon as possible.

  The beep.

  The shriek of a whistle pierced the kitchen.

  Even though she was prepared, the sound sent an icicle of adrenaline right down to Gracie’s feet.

  But instead of slapping the machine off, she stepped back, clapping her hands over her ears.

  For two minutes, the whistle blasted, interrupted only by short silences when, Gracie assumed, the caller ran out of breath and stopped blowing the whistle to take in another.

  Another beep.

  The cabin was plunged into silence.

  Gracie’s hands were shaking. Her heart was pounding a timpani in her chest.

  The first call hadn’t been a prank, placed at random. A second call had obliterated that possibility. She was being targeted, deliberately, maliciously.

  The first call had been a man’s voice. The second a whistle.

  Could it be someone from the Edwards clan? The little girl Heather had blown a whistle. But whistles were as easy to come by as five minutes at the local Kmart. There were plenty of men in the Edwards family. But, she recalled, thinking back, the first call had come before she was really involved with them.

  Were the calls a warning of some kind? Or was someone simply trying to scare her?

  If that was the case, it was working.

  Gracie shot around the kitchen, letting down the window blinds, drawing the curtains closed. She stepped into the mudroom, pulled down the window shade on the door, locked the knob and dead bolt. Locked the front doorknob and dead bolt. Jogged into the living room, letting down blinds, closing curtains. Locked the sliding glass door in the living room. Laid a trekking pole inside along the bottom, so it couldn’t be opened from the outside. Let down the blinds.

  Then, with a second trekking pole clenched in her hand, she turned off the living room light, climbed up the stairs to the loft, and stretched down on her bed, fully clothed, pole on the floor beside her.

  She lay in the darkness, listening to the sounds of the night. Every creak of the old cabin was a man stepping up onto the porch outside, every squeak of a tree branch fingernails scraping down glass.

  CHAPTER

  17

  GRACIE’S eyes flared open in the darkness. She glanced over at the clock on the little table next to the bed. Giant red numbers read 1:17 a.m.

  Two hours after lying down, she had finally fallen asleep.

  So why am I awake?

  She reached out and felt for Minnie. But instead of being curled up into a black Jelly Belly on her bed next to Gracie’s, the dog was sitting up at full alert.

  Her hand slid off the side of the bed. Fingers closed around the cool metal of the trekking pole.

  She listened, straining to hear again whatever it was that might have awakened her.

  Nothing.

  Her eyes moved across the ceiling to the little west-facing window.

  Gracie kicked free of the sheets and hurtled from the bed. She fell to her knees in front of the window and looked outside.

  Through the tree branches on the hillside below, an orange light shifted.

  Fire!

  Fear flared down her body to her feet.

  Her worst nightmare—a fire downhill from her cabin.

  Lunging to her feet, Gracie grabbed up the phone from the bedside table and dialed 911. She waited for what seemed like an infinity for a dispatcher to answer, rattled off her name and address, and reported what looked like a structure fire down the hill from her.

  She depressed the receiver. Let it up. Dialed the number of her neighbor across the street. Counted off the rings. Eight. Nine. Sh
e hung up.

  With Minnie right behind, she clumped down the stairs to the first floor, stuffed her laptop into her backpack, and slung it over a shoulder. Hauling SAR shirt and pants off the hanger in the mudroom, she grabbed up a fleece jacket from a hook next to the door and ran outside to the truck.

  She flung the passenger’s door open. “Minnie! Inside!” The dog sailed in. Gracie dumped her armload on the seat, slammed the door, ran around the front of the truck, threw herself into the driver’s seat, and screeched back down the highway. As she raced past, she double-checked her neighbor’s house for telltale signs of life. The house was dark.

  The truck rocketed down the curving street. At the bottom, Gracie stood on the brakes and squealed to a stop.

  In the middle of the block, a house was burning, flames illuminating the front window like a single demon’s eye.

  Oh, God!

  The burning house was John and Vivian’s.

  The Robinsons’ blue Subaru was parked in the carport.

  The family was still inside.

  * * *

  ONLY WHEN GRACIE erupted from the truck did she see Acacia, standing alone in the middle of the street, fingertips to her mouth, eyes saucer wide and focused on the flames, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Gracie ran up to the girl. “Acacia! Are you hurt? Are you burned anywhere?”

  A shake of the head.

  In the distance, sirens and air horns blasted.

  “Where’s Nana and Oompah?”

  Acacia pointed toward the house.

  Without another word, Gracie swept the girl, light as a feather, up into her arms. She half ran back to the Ranger and set her on the passenger’s seat. Then she dove back behind the wheel, jammed the truck into Reverse, floored the accelerator, screeched backward fifteen feet, slammed it into Drive, and careened around the corner onto the adjoining street, out of the way of fire trucks, away from the smoke, and, if need be, ready for a fast getaway. She slammed to a stop and jammed it into Park, leaving the engine running.

  “Acacia, you stay here with Minnie.” Gracie pulled a blanket from behind the seat, shook it out, and tucked it around the girl. “You keep each other warm.”

  From a stuff sack in the truck bed, Gracie pulled fire-retardant Nomex pants and jacket, stiff, leather gloves stuffed in the pockets. Standing in the street, oblivious to the curious stares of neighbors drawn from their houses by the commotion, she hauled the oversized pants on over her shorts, taking ten precious seconds to lace up her boots. The Nomex jacket she threw on over her sweatshirt. She clipped her climbing helmet on her head and hauled on the leather gloves as she ran back up the street and rounded the corner onto Arcturus.

  Flames inside the bungalow bathed the front yard in hell’s red glow. Smoke, thick and gray, billowed up into the night sky. The tops of surrounding pines swayed and flickered with reflected light.

  Gracie dropped down into the yard and ran along the side of the house, through the gate in the fence, and around back, dark and untouched by the fire.

  Drawing off a glove, she tested the knob of the back door with a bare hand. Cool, but locked. She pounded on the door with her fist. “John! Vivian!”

  No sound. No movement. No sign of life from inside the house. Adrenaline banged a bass drum in Gracie’s ears.

  Drawing the glove back on, she turned and aimed an elbow at the door window. Hesitated. Introducing more oxygen into the house would feed the flames. But there was no other way. She banged an elbow against the glass.

  It didn’t break. But it did hurt like hell. “Dammit!”

  She stepped back, grabbed on to the porch railing, and kicked the door window with her boot. The glass spiderwebbed. She kicked again. The window shattered. She thrust her hand through the hole, unlocked the door, and burst into the kitchen.

  At the far end of the hallway, the living room was a brilliant furnace. Heavy smoke, acrid, suffocating, curled and writhed around the ceiling like a living being.

  Gracie dropped to a crouch and yelled, “Vivian! John!”

  No response.

  Drawing a cotton handkerchief from a jacket pocket, she tied it bandit-style over her mouth and nose. “Vivian! John!”

  Then she heard it. Faint. Muffled. “Help!”

  “John!” Crunching on broken glass, Gracie dropped onto hands and knees and crawled across the kitchen vinyl, up the hallway, and into the first room on the left.

  Vivian was lying in a heap on the floor next to the bed. On his knees beside her, John was trying to lift his unconscious wife into her wheelchair.

  Gracie flew across the floor. “Forget the wheelchair!” she yelled. “No time! We have to get her out of here!” She hauled the quilt off the bed and laid it out on the floor next to Vivian. “Straighten her legs!” Together they straightened the woman’s body, then, with Gracie pulling and John pushing, rolled her onto the quilt, throwing the corners around her.

  The smoke was descending from the ceiling, thicker, more lethal. Gracie’s eyes teared. She could barely see. Throat and lungs burned, feeling as if hands were squeezing them closed. She coughed, barely able to draw in a breath.

  John’s breath was coming in ragged gasps.

  The wail of a fire engine’s siren wound down on the street in front of the house.

  Grabbing the quilt in her fists, Gracie thrust herself backward, the heavy tread of her boots gripping the floor. Quilt and Nomex pants slid along the slick hardwood. She lost her grip. Fell back. Elbowed her way up off the floor. Regained a handhold. Feet flat, she pushed off again.

  John wormed along the floor after, shoving his wife’s inert form with his shoulder, pushing off with bare feet from the bedside table, the wall, the doorjamb.

  Together, Gracie and John hauled the unconscious woman out of the room, down the short hallway, through the kitchen to the back door.

  There they lifted the blanket and carried Vivian out of the door into fresh air. Between hoarse, painful coughs, Gracie gasped in huge inhalations of sweet air as she backed down the steps and out onto the yard.

  Laying her end of Vivian’s unconscious body carefully on the ground, she stumbled around the corner of the house. Through the open gate, she saw a firefighter running alongside the house toward the back, dressed head to toe in firefighting gear, yellow helmet, an axe over a shoulder. “We need an ambulance!” she croaked, her scorched throat raw. “Notify Flight for Life!”

  * * *

  WITH HAIR STILL wet from a shower to rid her body of the nauseating smell of smoke, Gracie lay on her bed, one hand resting lightly on the soft fur of Minnie’s back. A blacksmith’s hammer pounded an anvil inside her head. Her eyes stung. Her throat and lungs burned.

  Chaotic memories wheeling in her mind’s eye were keeping sleep at bay. Sirens wailing, air horns blasting, the choking smell of smoke mixed with diesel, tangerine flames crackling against the night sky, emergency lights throbbing blue, red, and white, the chug of idling fire trucks, the shouts of firefighters, muted voices over radios, glass breaking, the whoosh of spraying water.

  The single unforgettable mental snapshot of John holding his granddaughter’s hand, a bent, frail figure, ashen, watching the paramedics lift his wife’s stretcher into the back of the ambulance.

  And the final enormous crash of the bungalow’s roof caving in, blasting curls of smoke and sparks into the darkness overhead.

  Gracie closed her eyes. Opened them again. Looked at the clock. Twenty-four minutes after two. Closed her eyes. Opened them again. Looked at the clock. Two minutes after three.

  Three fifteen.

  Three forty-one.

  Four oh two.

  At five thirteen, certain she hadn’t slept a single second, she pushed back the covers and dragged on jeans and a sweatshirt. Eyes propped open by the panda mug of Folgers Instant, she drove down to the bottom of the Arcturus
hill.

  A pink ribbon along the eastern horizon heralded the dawn. One by one, birds hidden among the tree branches began their morning conversations.

  Standing on the road uphill from the blackened exoskeleton of cinder block—all that remained of the Robinsons’ delightful home—Gracie watched bleary-eyed firefighters roll up huge fire hoses and pick through the still-smoking rubble, her mind dark with thoughts of anger, hatred, and prejudice, and the torching of the house of an elderly black couple.

  CHAPTER

  18

  THE knife sliced through the latex glove and deep into Gracie’s index finger. Brain barely registering the pain, she stared with detached fascination at the bright red drops of blood oozing through the slit in the blue latex and splatting onto the butcher-block table in the camp kitchen.

  “What the hell?” Allen yelled, jumping over and grabbing her finger with a wadded-up paper towel. He led her over to the sink and held her hand under an icy stream of water.

  Gracie stood mute, passive, as Allen hauled off the glove, daubed antibiotic cream on the cut, and wrapped the finger tightly with gauze and white medical tape. Then he handed her another glove and three heads of iceberg lettuce with instructions to tear it up with her hands and make the lunch salad. Anything requiring sharp implements he would handle.

  Eyebrows merged into a frown, Gracie sat on the three-legged stool, ripping the lettuce apart with nine fingers and dropping the shredded portions into a giant stainless steel bowl. Throwing to the wind her suspicions of Allen as a white supremacist, she said, “Allen, can I ask you something?”

  The head cook was arranging mini-boxes of breakfast cereal onto a giant tray. “Fire away, sweet cheeks,” he said.

  “Where does racial prejudice come from? I’m not talking the casual, fleeting, surface kind. I’m talking the deep-seated hatred with a capital H kind. Where do you think that comes from?”

  “A bright, cheerful topic.”

  “People aren’t born that way,” Gracie pressed. “It’s learned. Taught. But how does such deep-seated hatred begin? And how does it get so bad that you’re willing to kill for it? “