A Touch of Flame

by Jo Goodman

  “I’m not certain you heard correctly, but regardless, your response was to start drinking.”

  “And there you go. Pointing a finger.”

  Ridley watched his hands tighten on the edge of the table. She couldn’t tell if he was steadying or restraining himself. She slipped a hand inside her pocket and touched the scalpel. She ignored his comments and continued her investigation of his symptoms. “Has this happened to you before, Mr. Salt?”

  “Not like this. Not so I think I’m gonna die.”

  “You’re not going to die.” She watched his broad features wrinkle as he grimaced and swallowed hard in quick succession. His reaction had nothing to do with what she said. He was fighting off the volcanic rise of acid from his stomach to the back of his throat. Ridley was not terribly sympathetic but neither did she judge him. “What did you do when you experienced this before?”

  “Don’t know. Probably just went to sleep.”

  Ridley doubted that. More likely, he passed out and the symptoms vanished in time. “I’m going to give you something that will ease the burning.” She turned her back on him to go to the cupboard, where she measured out a teaspoonful of sodium bicarbonate. She carried it back and held the spoon out for him to take.

  He stared at it. “What is that?”

  “Sodium bicarbonate. Baking soda.”

  Jeremiah Salt frowned deeply. “Lily waggled a spoonful of that at me.”

  “You could have saved yourself a trip in the cold if you had taken it.”

  “Maybe. And maybe I’d be dead. My wife’s trying to kill me.”

  Ridley found that the spoon was suddenly difficult to hold steady. She was reluctant to address his last comment. It was put to her in such a matter-of-fact tone that she suspected he was not trying to goad her into reacting; he believed it. “Here,” she said, carefully holding the spoon out to him. “Take this.”

  “Maybe you’re trying to kill me, too.”

  “Mr. Salt, you came to me.”

  “Yeah? Well, you could be in league with Lily and Louella Fuller and that damn busybody Amanda Springer. You all want me dead.”

  “Please, I don’t want to regret letting you in here. Take this. It’s only baking soda. Every home has some. Your stomach can no longer accommodate your drinking. I would venture to say that it’s the same for your liver, but that’s a wait and see.” When his mouth remained as mutinously closed as a child refusing peas, she carried the spoon back to the cupboard and set it down. “If there’s nothing you will permit me to do for you, then you may as well leave. You obviously are not in as much pain as you would have me believe, else you would not refuse the cure.”

  “Why did you tell people it was my fault?”

  Ridley frowned, unable to follow. “I don’t understand your question.”

  “About the Fullers. Why did you say it was my fault?”

  “I said no such thing.”

  “I repaired those dampers. They fit the way they were supposed to.”

  “I’m sure they did.”

  “Then why’d you say different? Get people all stirred up and looking at me like I murdered that little girl. My own wife. Regulars at the Songbird. That little girl was my Lizzie’s age. Did you know that? Just my Lizzie’s age.”

  Ridley watched him press a fist against his chest and suck in a breath as the heat rose again. His ruddy face glistened with sweat. His upper lip was dotted with beads of it. He used his flannel shirtsleeve to mop his brow. Ridley wondered if there was anything she could say that would cut through his alcohol haze and decided that there wasn’t. She held her tongue.

  “You should go back where you came from,” said Jeremiah. “People say you’re a troublemaker, and I don’t disagree. It takes some work to be a busier body than Amanda Springer, but I think you’ve managed.”

  Ridley backed away when he slid off the table. She expected him to cross to the door, but he didn’t. He rounded the table, keeping one hand on it for support, and approached her medicine cupboard. “What are you doing?”

  He looked back over his shoulder and growled at her. “Taking the hemlock. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “It’s baking soda. Not poison.”

  He shrugged. “I guess we’ll see.” He lifted the spoon close to his nose, sniffed, and then put it in his mouth.

  Ridley might have laughed at the face he made if the circumstances had been different. She had considered mixing the soda with water to make it more palatable but a dry dose would neutralize the acid more quickly. “Don’t spit it out,” she warned him. “Swallow all of it.”

  White powder dusted his upper lip and the groove directly below his nose. He set the spoon down and swiped at his mouth and nose with the side of his hand. “That it?” he asked.

  “That’s it,” she said.

  He nodded, wavered slightly on his feet. “Now about that other thing I was saying.”

  Ridley backed the rest of the way to the door and set her hand on the knob. “I suggest we leave that discussion for later.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Do you need help getting home? I can get the sheriff; he’s just next door. He’ll escort you, see you return safely. He might have a coat you can borrow.”

  He snorted. “Have it all thought out, don’t you? Probably want me to go home by way of the jail. Well, I ain’t doing that.”

  She lifted her chin and set her shoulders. There was no intention on her part to act aggressively, but in hindsight she reflected that Jeremiah Salt saw it that way. She only had a moment to prepare for his assault. He crossed the room with a speed and steadiness that she could not have predicted. Ridley did two things at once: She pushed open the door leading to the stoop and yanked the scalpel out of her pocket. Neither of those actions gave him pause.

  Acting on instinct, she ducked and spun, eluding his outstretched hands. Leaving by the surgery was no longer a safe exit; she would have to back through the door and he would be on her. Ridley ran for her office instead, skirting the table and then shoving it in his path. The obstacle was only temporary, but it gave her time to flee through her office and the kitchen. She charged toward the front door and was glad that she had never gotten around to having a key made for it. She did not have to fumble with the lock. She flung it open, ran to the lip of the front porch, and jumped. Although the path was clear of snow, there were still icy patches that she was able to avoid in daylight. That was not the case now. One foot came down firmly on a dry land; the other did not.

  Her arms worked like windmills as she tried to restore her balance. In the end, there was nothing to be done except surrender to gravity. Ridley tried to make the fall as painless as possible by throwing her weight sideways so she could land in a pile of shoveled snow. She was only partially successful. Scrambling to her feet was an ungainly exercise. The stitch in her side made her gasp for breath. She was still on her knees when she glanced behind her and saw that Jeremiah Salt was on the porch. He also jumped off the porch but aimed for a snowbank. It slowed him down but he didn’t fall.

  Pressing one palm firmly against the sharp pain in her side, Ridley ran awkwardly for the gate. Her other hand tightened into a fist. It was the first she realized she no longer held the scalpel. It was pointless to search for it. She slipped through the gate and closed it behind her. He was nearly on top of her.

  “Ben!” she shouted, running toward his house. “Ben Madison! Wake up!” She grabbed a handful of snow as she hurried up the path to his porch and packed it between her palms. She spun around and let the snowball fly. It was luck, only luck, that it landed squarely on Jeremiah’s nose. She took another handful, packed it, and while he was still scrabbling at his face, she tossed it at one of the second-story windows in Ben’s house. It missed the window but thumped solidly against a blue shutter. She was on the first step of the front porch when Jere
miah caught her by the waist, squeezed, and lifted her off her feet. He threw her in a pile of shoveled snow. She wasn’t hurt, but she couldn’t get up. Thrashing only made her sink deeper. She stilled and looked up at the deep shadow that was Jeremiah’s face.

  “He’s not there,” he said, pointing to the sheriff’s house. “I saw him duck into the Butterworth before I came here. Most likely chatting with his mama. Hardly matters that it’s the middle of the night. That’s how rumors get started around here. Ben with his mama; Hitch with his. Ugly things get said and passed along.”

  Not by Ben, she thought. Jeremiah might be right about Hitch. She turned her head in the direction of the hotel. Had anyone heard her? There was no one at any of the windows.

  Jeremiah followed her gaze. “He didn’t see me, in case you’re wondering.”

  Ridley looked back at him. “What do you want?”

  “You came to my business and threatened me. I’m returning the same. I want you to stay away from me, from my family. Find someone else to sweep your damn walk. I don’t want you near my boy, either one of them. That goes for my daughters, too, and I especially don’t want you talking to Lily. I know you run into her now and again. She tells me, so there’s no good denying it.”

  “Is there anything else?”

  “You take back what you said about those dampers. You make people understand I had nothing to do with what happened to the Fullers.”

  “I never—” She stopped because he was bending over her, reaching for the collar of her robe. He fisted the material and yanked her into a sitting position. He was breathing heavily, snorting like a bull. She recoiled at his moist breath. “Whatever you want,” she said.

  “That’s right. That’s better.” He let her go, dropped her back into the snow. “It would not be good for you to go back on your word.” He scooped some snow into his hand, made a loose ball, and with no warning of his intention, shoved it against her mouth. He held it there while she sputtered and squirmed and pushed at his arms, but he would not be moved. Ice worked its way between her teeth and into her mouth. Jeremiah Salt backed away when he was ready. “Bicarbonate of soda, eh? Does the trick.”

  Ridley spit snow and swiped at her mouth. “Go,” she said when she could speak. “Just go.”

  He shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

  She watched him stumble, but he righted himself quickly and made his exit without a humiliating fall, not that he could be humiliated, she thought. In his current state of mind, embarrassment was unlikely to be his companion. Ridley was not confident that he would recall anything that he had said or done this evening. He would be a walking, talking tabula rasa. A blank slate.

  Ridley was finally able to push herself upright but moving was not without considerable pain. Once again, she placed a palm over the spot where the pain was centered just above her hip and then ignored it. She found the porch step and used it to support her as she got to her feet. Once she was standing, she paused to catch her breath. There was never any question in her mind about what she would do next. The lamps burning in the windows of the Butterworth’s dining room beckoned. Ben beckoned her, not because he was the sheriff, but because he was Ben.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ben shoved away from the table and stood when he saw Ridley framed in the dining room entrance. She was standing, but only barely, and shivering so hard it seemed that her bones might break. His eyes fell from her pale face to the hand pressed against her right side. Runnels of blood slipped through her fingers. “You’re bleeding.”

  Ridley offered a wan, apologetic smile. “Yes, I think I am. It’s nothing, really. Just a—”

  He knocked over a chair as he leapt forward and caught Ridley before she dropped to the floor. He eased her down. His mother was standing behind, looking over his shoulder. “Ma! Something to staunch the bleeding.”

  Ellie yanked on a white linen tablecloth. A vase of flowers toppled. She caught it in one hand and held out the tablecloth in the other. “Use this until I find something better.” There were no guests in the dining room, but Mr. Butterworth was in his office at the back, tallying the day’s profits. The cook had left for home and her helpers with her. Ellie had been preparing to retire to her suite when Ben arrived. “I think there is something you can use in the kitchen.”

  Ben removed Ridley’s hand from her wound. He couldn’t see a thing except that she continued to bleed. He untied the belt of her robe and lifted the flannel. He winced because it was Ridley, but he had seen worse. He carefully tugged on her cotton nightgown and found the rent at the center of the blossoming blood. There was only a small tear in the fabric, but when he tore the material for a better look, he saw that the wound was not a puncture but a slice at least six inches long. From what he could tell at first glance, it was not terribly deep, but neither was it a grazing wound.

  Under his breath, he said, “What the hell?” and pressed a balled-up corner of the tablecloth to the cut. His mother had hurried off in the direction of the kitchen and he called out to her just as she was coming through the door. He expected her to be carrying towels, napkins, or bandages the hotel might have on hand. Instead she was waving a pair of scissors at him. He feared for her life, then his own, as she wended her way around tables and chairs and bumped into most of them. He could not recall that she had ever looked so frantic. She generally met every sort of complication or crisis with a composure that could make a person believe she had ice in her veins. He knew better, but what he observed now was something else again.

  Ellie knelt beside Ben and lifted the part of the tablecloth he wasn’t using. She began cutting it into strips, snipping and tearing, until she had a dozen pieces of cloth suitable for bandages. “I couldn’t find anything back there. I think Mrs. Vandergrift sent all the towels to the laundry. You would think . . . never mind. These will do.”

  Ben tossed the bloody ball of cloth to one side and took a clean strip from Ellie. He folded it several times, making a pad, and pressed it to Ridley’s injury. “Are you all right?” he asked his mother. “You seem . . . I don’t know . . . discomposed.”

  “Out of practice.”

  “I guess there’s not much call here to set a bone or fix a scrape.”

  “Not much, and there was always Doc to call on.” Ellie lifted Ben’s hand a few inches so she could see the wound then replaced it. “What in the world did she do?”

  He shook his head. He didn’t know if she had done it or if it had been done to her. “How about holding this? I’ll give you a fresh bandage and then I’m going to get a basin of water and clean her up a little. Is there an empty room?”

  “Second floor and straight ahead at the top of the stairs. Are you going to take her up there?”

  “No, I’m going to take her back to her surgery. I’m taking blankets from the room.”

  “Of course. I should have thought of it.”

  Ben did not comment. He rose, headed for the kitchen, and set a kettle on the stove. While the water was heating, he went in search of Mr. Butterworth, found him in his office, and explained the situation. Butterworth volunteered to get the blankets so Ben could return to the dining room. Ben stopped in the kitchen, checked the temperature of the water, and found it sufficiently warm to use. He poured it into a pot and carried it out.

  “I think she’s coming around,” said Ellie.

  As though on cue, Ridley moaned. Her eyelashes fluttered.

  Ben said the first thing that came to his mind. “She’s not wearing her glasses.” He knelt beside her and set the pot on the floor. He could hear Butterworth pounding down the stairs. As far as he was concerned, the man could not arrive soon enough. He dipped a linen strip in the pot until it was soaked, wrung it out, and made another pad.

  Ellie put aside the one she was holding over Ridley’s wound and widened the rent in the nightgown so Ben could begin cleaning the area. “Not too hard,” she said
. “You warmed the water, didn’t you?”

  He gave her a look he knew she would recognize and correctly interpret as back away.

  Ellie held up her hands, palms out. “All right. I was merely trying to be—”

  “Helpful. Yes, I know. I could use a couple more damp pads.”

  Mr. Butterworth dropped an armload of blankets on the seat of a chair. He was out of breath but still able to make audible commiserating noises at the back of his throat. “Has she been able to tell you what happened?”

  “Soon,” said Ben, but he wasn’t sure he was speaking the truth. “Spread a few blankets across her legs. Tuck her in.”

  Butterworth did as instructed while Ellie made a pillow and slipped it under Ridley’s head. She folded another blanket and laid it across Ridley’s chest and shoulders. Ben had wiped away enough blood by then that they could clearly see the injury.

  “Stitches,” said Ben, shifting his attention to Ellie. “She’ll need them. You think you can still do that?”

  “It’s been a while, but yes, I can stitch her up.”

  “All right. What about you, Mr. Butterworth? Can you help me move the doctor to her surgery?”

  Butterworth nodded. “We can make a blanket sling.”

  “Good.” Ben set a clean pad over the wound and fixed it in place by sliding two cloth strips under her and tying off the ends. He heard her moan softly and ignored it because he couldn’t stomach the thought that he was hurting her.

  Butterworth and Ellie went after their coats. Ben retrieved his from the back of the chair where he had been sitting. His eyes never left Ridley as he put on his hat. He thought she might have stirred, but when he hunkered down beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder, she didn’t acknowledge his presence.

  That changed when they moved her outside. The cocoon of blankets was no real barrier to the cold. She shivered hard inside them and paradoxically fought to be out of them. Ben thought they might drop her before they reached the street. It was the hand that Ellie placed on Ridley’s brow and then at the crown of her head that seemed to calm her. Ellie stayed with her until it was time to open the door and then she led the way through the house to the surgery.