October's Fire (Fairy Glen Suspense Book 1)

by Valerie Power

  Walt answered, “Got caught out after dark again, honey?”

  Down the slope, the winding road led through the gully-like canyon. Two pinpoints of blinding blue halogen grew bigger and brighter. An engine downshifted as it passed, whining with the high revs, slowing to pull up to the gates.

  “I need you to pick me up,” her voice quavered into the phone.

  “What’s that?” Walt yelled over the television and Justin and Clara arguing, and she covered the phone instinctively, as if whoever was in the car might hear. Talking as loudly as she dared, she said, “Hitch up the trailer and come pick me up on Del Diablo highway."

  “Del Diablo? How’d you get all the way over there? Ok, I’m heading out, but it might take me…oh, 45 minutes, to hitch up and drive all the way around there. Will you be okay?”

  The driver of the car, a white Porsche 911, was punching in a code to the gates.

  “Call me when you’re close,” she whispered. “I love you.” She hung up.

  On noiseless wings the owl swooped down from above, nearly squeezing a scream out of her. She urged Scarlet to move again, following the owl as it flew straight ahead of them like a kite in the wind.

  * * *

  REBECCA WAS HALFWAY THROUGH another Saturday night shift of wok-flinging and chicken-slinging. She was on cook duty, Darius was at the front, and with Billy off for the night and the new guy on the drive-thru—a humorless 20-something with no apparent personality—she realized she felt very lonely. Jeremy had missed his third day of work in a row now, with no phone call, no excuse, and Mr. Fariz was for sure gonna fire his ass.

  She took her break and went out back. Sipping her iced green tea, she stared east at the virgin hillsides between Fairy Glen and Rancho Alto, cardboard cutouts devoid of detail against a perfect indigo gradient. The last she’d seen Jeremy, he was walking into a bunch of ambulances, which might explain his absence, although she wouldn’t tell that to Darius or Mr. Fariz.

  A huge white owl flew straight towards her out of the dark. She shrieked and ran inside. Fucking wildlife!

  Tonight, she’d definitely ask her mom for a ride. With barely any moon and crazy giant birds flying around, she didn’t want to walk home, and she was too proud to ask Darius.

  When she called her mom’s cell phone, it went to voicemail. At the beep, she said, “Mom, I could really use a ride home tonight,” hating how small her voice sounded.

  * * *

  DEIRDRE DIDN’T WANT TO linger by the giant billboards out on the highway—there was no place to hide. So she got off and led Scarlet across Del Diablo at the new intersection. On the other side was a small community of vacation homes on the shores of Lake Hemingway.

  Across the highway, she felt safer. This erstwhile resort was now a few decades past its prime, due in part to the sinking reservoir level that left boat ramps stranded way above the water line. Houses and ‘mobile estates’ that were once well-kept now sagged without the luxury of face lifts. But it felt homey and comforting, especially after what she’d just been through.

  Walking down the dirt streets, under the large oaks, a chill seeped in and the sweat grew cold on her cheeks. She shivered and pulled her sleeves down, zipped up her fleece jacket all the way. Shock was taking hold, and fatigue dropped on her like a lead blanket. She needed to sit down and get warm.

  There was one place she could go. Gorda y Flaco’s. The only restaurant—really the only business—in Del Diablo. She hadn’t been there in years, not since she’d married Walt. She kept walking down towards the shore.

  Cars were parked haphazardly in the dirt lot, pickups and beaters for the most part. Sounds of the locals enjoying Saturday night spilled out, seventies rock playing on the jukebox. The glow from the restaurant was enough to check Scarlet over. Her horse hadn’t suffered even a scratch, but was still shaky and drenched in a quickly cooling sweat. She tied her to the antique hitching post, tucked her fleece jacket under the saddle to cover Scarlet’s rump, and went inside.

  “You look like you could use a drink,” said the man at the end of the bar. He was old and grizzled, looked like a fisherman who drank too much himself.

  “Don’t listen to old Sheffie. He’s talking about himself again.” The bartender was Gorda herself, a very large woman whose smooth round face was perfectly made up with rouge and bright red lips. Her eyes, looking like two shiny black buttons tufted into a homemade doll’s face, lingered on Deirdre. “You okay? You’re a little scratched up,” she said, quietly enough that the nosy old man couldn’t hear.

  Deirdre nodded, noticing her torn pants. “I’ll take a margarita on the rocks with salt."

  Should she call the nearest Sheriff’s station? She figured Gorda probably knew the number by heart—her place was known to be the scene of a barroom brawl or two. If she had Deputy Harvey’s card, she could call him directly. And what would he do? Go to Paraiso and investigate, contact Brian Bartley and ask him if he had an assassin hanging around his property? Tramp around in the woods looking for this mystery man that apparently only she—and Vivian—and now this other rider, whoever she was—had ever seen? Yeah right. She imagined him listening to her story and then closing his notebook.

  “That your horse out there?” It was Sheffie again, practically yelling from the end of the bar to be heard over the jukebox and the crowd of rowdy revelers.

  “Yep.” Deirdre raised her voice to his level.

  “Nobody’s tied up a horse out there since 1973!”

  “How would you know, Sheff?” asked Gorda mildly.

  Sheffie picked up his drink and moved down the bar towards Deirdre. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he said.

  Cold washed over her face. “I’m just waiting for my husband to pick me up.”

  Gorda slid her drink to her. “Are you sure you’re ok?”

  “Yeah, I just had a tough ride.”

  Gorda looked disbelieving, but let it be.

  The old vagrant got close enough that she could smell his whiskey and see his yellowed teeth. “Haven’t seen the Black Witch, have you?” His laughter rose in gales that Deirdre tried to drown out with successive swallows of lime-tart, salty tequila. She slammed her glass down with a shaky hand.

  “This lady here’s not in the mood to talk,” Gorda said to him. Her low voice felt like warm butter rolling into your ears. Years of practice soothing drunk customers, Deirdre guessed. “Why don’t you tell me the story again?” Gorda said, and moved down the bar aways and started washing glasses before Sheffie had a chance to sit down next to Deirdre. His attention successfully diverted, he followed Gorda like an expectant puppy, sat a few stools away, and started talking loudly to no one in particular.

  “See there were these gypsies, in the valley. No one trusted them farther than they could throw ‘em. But they had these amazing horses.” His voice went from a tooth-bereft drawl up into a high-pitched whistly wheeze. He coughed a little, took a swig of his drink, and continued.

  As she listened, Deirdre’s eyes unfocused. The tequila was doing its job, and the bar’s warm terracotta ambiance began to twinkle. Sheffie’s voice ran on like an old car idling in the background. She looked up, for the first time noticing the papel picado, colorful squares of tissue paper cut like doilies and strung together to form a banner. Beyond the locals dancing to the jukebox, on the mantel of a fireplace of rounded adobe brick accented with blue and yellow Mexican tiles, were photos of Gorda’s family. Deirdre didn’t know Gorda other than to say hello—didn’t even know her real name—but the people in the photos looked like relatives of hers, even from this distance.

  “And one of ‘em was beautiful. Ahhh, Kathy. She and I had a thing going for a long long time… Long red hair,” Sheffie turned to Deirdre who was now mostly staring at the floor, letting the words ooze over her. “Kinda like yours! Boy lady, you got bee-yoo-tiful hair…”

  Sheffie paused to look at her, then went on with his story, “Anyways, her mom, well, let’s just say, she was something e
lse. You didn’t want to mess with her, oh no…”

  Deirdre sensed something and turned her head. Walt was standing behind her, a sly grin on his face, mustache cocked to the side. “Should I be jealous?” he asked. She threw her arms around him and hugged him tight, feeling like she’d never been happier to see him in her life.

  * * *

  HECTOR OPENED HIS EYES. He still held the gun in his hand, that was the first thing he felt. The next thing he felt was a cracking pain in his head. Oak leaves poked his face, the smell of the dirt cooling after a hot day, the dryness of the brush filling his nostrils. He lifted his head and gave his body a once over. Deciding it was okay to sit up, he tried to remember the last thing before blackness overtook him.

  He had spotted the woman. She was downslope from him, about 30 yards. He’d seen the fear in her eyes, even in the deepening twilight. He’d heard her scream without moving her mouth, her horse like a statue, staring at him with wild eyes, snorting through flared nostrils. Her scream had filled the air, a conjuring. What had happened next? Nothingness.

  Now, it was full dark. No human sound from anywhere. Crickets chirped down by the creek. He eased himself to his feet, and groaned as the pain in his head flared again.

  He reached back, felt a familiar stickiness on the back of his skull. Anger flooded him. Anger killed the pain. But anger would get him nowhere, so he quickly reined it in.

  He put his gun back in its holster. No memory of how he’d been knocked down, except for one nosy redheaded bruja and her crazy chestnut horse.

  * * *

  9 O’CLOCK CAME AND went with no word from Rebecca’s mom. She left the restaurant and snuck around the side of the mani-pedi salon so Darius wouldn’t see her when he left, and dialed her home phone. Justin answered.

  “Justin, what are you doing up?”

  “Dad left to pick up Mom.”

  “Pick her up from where?” Just then, Jeremy’s car pulled into the parking lot. He rolled down his window.

  “Okay, never mind,” she said, and hung up.

  She walked over to the car. “You owe me a bike,” she said. But then she saw his face, and remembered the ambulances. “Are you okay?”

  “I need to figure something out. Maybe you can help me.” He looked really desperate.

  “Okay…” she said, and got in. They drove south, through Rancho Alto. The dark streets completely twisted her sense of direction.

  Rancho Alto streets were all curved, made no sense. If you looked at a map it was like a bunch of snakes with Spanish names lying in a tangled pile, sometimes crossing each other several times. It was completely ridiculous. It was probably on purpose, to confuse outsiders.

  But Jeremy seemed to know his way through, and soon they were climbing Del Diablo highway, the dark lake glimmering in the starlight.

  “So you know the guy you egged?” he said finally.

  “Yeah. Chad.”

  “Chad’s dead.”

  “Holy crap. So those ambulances…?”

  He nodded. He turned onto a canyon road off Del Diablo. “By the time I got there he was in a big shiny black bag with a zipper, all closed up.” He swerved around a curve and stepped on the accelerator to kick the car into a lower gear.

  So that made two of Jeremy’s compatriots that were pushing up daisies now. Not exactly comforting.

  Soon they came out at a spot high above and to the east of Rancho Alto and Fairy Glen, in the hills, at some fancy custom building site at the end of the road. When she asked him how he knew the gate code, he said his dad worked here. That was something they had in common, their dads both worked construction.

  He pulled up next to a sprawling Tuscan-style mansion with full landscaping and a multi-colored stone facade, a shimmer of a pool showing in the backyard. “You didn’t tell me we were coming to the Olive Garden,” she said. “I left my coupons at home."

  They got out and Rebecca came around, leaned against the driver’s side. Jeremy folded his arms on the roof.

  The two stared in opposite directions, him at the fake Italiano monster mansion in front of them, the only completed house here. She turned to study the framework of a halfway built house in the near distance. At least it wasn’t hideous yet.

  Jeremy continued his train of thought. “Heroin overdose. That’s what they said. His blood alcohol was crazy high too, but they say what killed him was heroin.” He paused. “Chad didn’t do heroin, that’s the thing. Just meth. And Tanya. Probably crystal too.”

  “And heroin is sooo much worse than meth, right?”

  “Yeah, it is! Haven’t you heard of all the rock stars that’ve OD’d on the stuff? It’s a ticket to oblivion, man, sometimes permanent oblivion. All meth does is make you lose a lot of weight. And your teeth.” He paused. “And your friends.”

  Rebecca couldn’t help but laugh, although she wasn’t sure if his humor was intentional.

  “It’s not funny Beck. I don’t think that overdose was his idea, if you know what I mean.” He turned to face her, leaning sideways on the car.

  “I’m starting to get the picture. But wait, educate me, since I’m relatively drug-free. Aren’t meth and crystal the same thing?”

  Jeremy paused. “Crystal is my sister dude.”

  That one silenced Rebecca. Her heart broke a little as she remembered…the girl on the road. The White Lady. That was his sister.

  “Half sister, actually. 14 going on 25.” He flipped his hair back and looked into the distance again. “Dildo—excuse me, ‘Dad’—got Tanya pregnant when he was still married to my mom. Classy huh? Nine months later, boom, Crystal came into the world. The wedding was afterwards, so Tanya could fit into her dress. A couple years later she popped out another. By that time she was playing the good wifey. But she started using again, and cheating on my dad with her dealer. Chad.”

  “Nice.”

  “Anyway, I hated Chad as much as the next guy. Yeah, I got my supply from him. It was business, but when I got wind what he was doing to my little sister, it sent me over the edge—Jesus, I wanted to kill him. I went over there last Sunday night. Fucking Tanya was passed out. Great mom she is. Crystal was out slutting it up somewhere, but Chad was there.”

  His voice had taken on an edge, and it felt like it dropped five degrees all of a sudden. Rebecca pulled her hoodie around her.

  “First, I played it cool, got my delivery from him,” Jeremy continued. “But as I was leaving, I turned around, and pulled this out.” He grabbed his stupid dragon belt buckle, popped something, and a short, shiny two-edged knife appeared, looking cheesy and dangerous at the same time. “And I say to him ‘If you ever, EVER touch my sister again, I’ll slit your throat. I mean it.’”

  Rebecca put a hand on his arm. “Okay. First of all, put the knife away.”

  “Why, are you scared? Huh?” He let out a laugh, then hung his head.

  “Uh, no. You don’t scare me. I’ve been around real gang members. They’d wipe the floor with you. Where’d you get that thing, anyway, Hot Topic?”

  He slotted the knife back into the belt buckle. “I was just joking, but it came out wrong. Sorry.”

  “I know Jeremy. That’s why I’m even here in the first place. If you were a total asshole I’d just write you off like all the rest of them.” She kicked his tire. “Second, I’m sorry about Chad, really. I’m sorry about your family. But what can I do?”

  “Shit, I’m used to my family being fucked up. What I’m worried about is the fact that somebody got killed inside my step-mom’s apartment. And, like, my little sister lives there. Tanya’s a total mess now, totally freaked out. She’s been calling me every day, all day, begging me to stay over there.” Rebecca’s antennae perked for a second.

  “Okay,” she said, thinking. “Who else would want to kill Chad—besides you that is? Same guy that killed Mitch? What was his motive?”

  Jeremy lifted his top lip. “Listen to you: ‘motive’? What are you, CSI or something? You’re such a geek.”


  “Do you have to make fun of me? I know that’s just a defense mechanism."

  “Ooooh, now you’re the Profiler!”

  “Hey, maybe you are an asshole after all.” She started to walk away.

  “Wait! Beck…” He ran after her, grabbed her hand, and kept running, like a little kid on the playground, up the raw dirt bank to the west, dragging her behind him. She couldn’t help it, she started laughing, breathing hard from running up the hill, and when she got to the top, she doubled over to catch her breath.

  He went into the half built house and she followed. It was framed up, but not drywalled yet. Instead of wood, the frame was constructed of metal. Looked like steel, I-beams. How did she know all this stuff? She’d absorbed more than she realized during those summers working with her dad.

  She looked up through all three stories, and was overwhelmed with the beauty of the structure, its bare bones. She was attracted to manmade things, the bigger and more industrial, the better. Humanity was astounding. They had achieved complete domination of the environment, but were now over the peak and rocketing downhill, destroying the very thing they had mastered.

  “Whatcha thinkin’ about, Profiler?”

  She pulled her eyes from the wonders overhead and asked, “What’s this place all about? Why all the metal?”

  “It’s supposed to be fireproof. There’s a bunch of other stuff they do, besides the metal, when they build it. It’s called Shelter in Place.”

  “You sure know a lot about this place. You must bring all the girls here."

  He ignored that, but continued. “These are prototype homes—proof of concept. You’re supposed to be able to ride out a firestorm inside. They even have little safe rooms, automatic shutters, weird shit like that. It’s for the rich and paranoid.” He wasn’t as stupid as she’d thought. He told her more details, and while he talked, she dropped her eyes to look at his feet, then worked her way up. His stupid jeans that were hanging off his ass, his stupid belt buckle, his shirt…wait, his shirt was good. Just a plain white t-shirt. She could make out the V-shape of his torso, and the cotton was damp from the mist up here, so it clung. She was significantly shorter than him; he was about six feet and lanky. Her eyes moved back down, and now she didn’t mind the low slung jeans quite as much.