But what if he is inside? He might be okay. He could have wrapped himself in a wet blanket. Or be hidden from the fire under his desk. Anything is possible. An image of the flying, burning woman with her churning arms and legs flashes through her mind again. Her breath catches. The only thing certain is that Gary’s chances of surviving—if he is in there—are decreasing by the second.
And she’s the only one here, the only one who can help him. She can’t search the grounds first. She can’t wait for the firefighters. She has to do something.
She studies the antique French doors to his bedroom. On the other side of the glass, the drapes are ablaze. She wraps her hand in the lightweight fabric of her top and tries the knob. The heat is searing. It won’t budge. She jerks her hand away. The doors are flimsy and insubstantial by modern standards—she’d helped Gary pick them out at an estate sale in Brenham—but still too sturdy for her to break down. Even if she kicks out the glass, the panes are too small for her to crawl through.
She’ll have to break down the doors. But if she does, then what? She doesn’t even want to think about it.
There’s a gardening shed on the edge of the backyard. She sprints over to it. It’s unlocked. Finally, a door she can get through.
“Something heavy. Come on, Maggie. Something heavy.”
Fueled by adrenaline, she hefts a pickax over her shoulder. It will do. She runs back to the house, slower with the weight of the pickax. She hesitates at the door. Maybe Gary will come running out if she breaks a hole for him, because the last thing she wants is to go in that house herself.
“Please, God,” she whispers, “don’t make me have to go in there.”
Planting her feet, she swings the pickax with all her might like a giant bat at the doorframe. Wood splinters. Glass shatters. At the end of her swing, the weight of the pickax pulls it from her hands, slinging it into the room.
For half a second, she feels a strange sucking of the air around her into the house, like an inhale from something monstrous and alive, then flames exhale with a giant whoosh. Maggie falls backward, shielding her face, screeching with pain. Her four hundred dollars’ worth of Johnny Was top ignites, just like the gown on the woman she’d watched jump through the second-story window nearly thirty years ago. She hugs herself and rolls, smothering the fire with the dirt and her body. When she’s out of the range of the hungry, fiery monster reaching for her through the bashed-in door, she lies still as a corpse. She smells soot and tastes dirt, but she doesn’t move. She feels relief that she’s not in the house, then crushing guilt.
A wet tongue licks her cheek.
“Gary.” Her voice is weak. She coughs. “Gary.” She kneels, butt on her heels, hands bracing on her knees.
The tongue of fire no longer laps from the house. Louise whines, then darts through the broken door.
Hoarse and croaking, Maggie crawls after her dog. “No!”
A suited firefighter appears in her peripheral vision, grabs her shoulder, and yanks her back. “Ma’am, stop,” he says in a bass voice.
For a moment, she thinks she’s hearing her father. But that can’t be. He’s dead. Long dead. Her mind returns to the present. She struggles to break the man’s grip. “No. Gary. Louise.”
The firefighter peers at her burned clothing then speaks into a radio clipped to his chest. “I need an EMT.”
“Help them, please.”
Maggie tears her eyes away from Gary’s room. A fire truck is parked on the side of the house, and an ambulance beside it. Lights are flashing. Sirens are wailing.
“Holy shit,” the firefighter says.
Maggie’s gaze jerks back to the maw of the fire. Her dwarfish black-and-white dog appears. She’s carrying something in her mouth. The firefighter rushes to help Louise, and Maggie is on her feet, sprinting.
She’s shouting their names. “Gary. Louise.”
But when Louise clears the door and bounds toward her, Maggie’s shouts fade. The unreality of what she sees robs her of thought and voice. Just as Louise reaches Maggie, the firefighter tackles the burning dog and smothers the flames. Maggie slumps to the ground, numb, the blackened finger of her former lover in the grass beside her where Louise dropped it, still wearing his ridiculous gold ring.
Four
Shivering in a shock blanket, Maggie croons to Louise and rocks the dog like a baby. Maggie had only submitted to treatment from the EMTs on the condition that they treat Louise first. Miraculously, while Louise has less of her long fur, her burns are relatively minor. The EMTs warn Maggie to monitor the dog’s coughing and breathing but assure her that Louise appears she will heal just fine. Better than a human would, because dogs are resilient that way.
Maggie will heal, too. Her arms are red, with a few blisters. She lost a good bit of her eyelashes, eyebrows, and arm hair. But all of her physical injuries are cosmetic and temporary.
“I don’t understand. How did Louise get out alive?” she asks a firefighter. A genderless, nameless, faceless, shapeless person as far as Maggie is concerned. A disembodied voice from a sooty face and a body in bunker gear.
“Because she’s short, and she wasn’t in there long. Two or three feet above the floor, you’re fine. Up high burns first. That’s why we coach people to stop, drop, roll, and crawl. Once the ceiling starts to rain burning materials onto the floor, the floor catches, and that doesn’t work anymore. Your dog made it out just in time.”
“But not Gary.” Maggie’s voice breaks.
Louise licks her face.
“No. Not Gary.”
“How did this happen?”
“You’ll need to talk to the fire marshal about that.”
“Who?”
The firefighter points at an unmarked SUV with a light on top parked next to a phalanx of Fayette County Sheriff’s Department vehicles. “If you’re ready, we can go over there now.”
Maggie stands.
Louise squirms out of her arms.
“Let me put her in my truck first.”
The firefighter follows her to Bess. At the truck, Louise resists, almost clinging to Maggie. Maggie lifts her and shoves her in, slamming the door before she escapes. The dog starts barking madly and jumping like she’s on a pogo stick. Maggie feels guilty turning away. When she does, she nearly plows into a perimeter barricade of plastic sawhorses and tape that had been erected while she was with the EMTs.
The firefighter grunts and removes a helmet. “Your dog is worried about you.” Long, silky hair cascades down her shoulders.
“I’ve only had her for a week. It’s crazy. I can’t believe she went into the fire. She’s never even met Gary.”
“Some dogs are like that. Special.”
Maggie wishes they’d arrived earlier, so Louise could have been special for Gary when he was still alive.
The firefighter leads her to the fire marshal. “Ma’am, are you ready to interview Maggie Killian? She called the fire in and was on scene when we got here.”
The woman is writing on a paper attached to a clipboard. She turns to Maggie, not the firefighter. She’s short and thick in a red bunker jacket open to show the suspenders on her coveralls. Shoulder-length steel-gray hair peeks out from her helmet. “Now is fine. Thank you.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The firefighter walks away without another word to Maggie.
The fire marshal stares at Maggie through horn-rimmed glasses, sizing her up. “Maggie Killian.”
Maggie nods, wondering what someone who sounds so East Coast is doing in small-town Texas. “Yes.”
“I’m Karen Rosenthal, fire marshal for Fayette County. Let’s get a deputy from Fayette County to join us.”
“Okay.”
Karen waves over a bowling ball of a man in a sheriff’s deputy uniform. “Deputy Troy Mason, this is Maggie Killian.”
Maggie and the deputy shake.
“She called in the fire. Ms. Killian, start from the beginning.”
Maggie pulls the shock blanket tighter around herse
lf. “I was coming to see Gary. I picked up dinner at Royers and drove out here. I saw dark gray smoke from a distance, then I came around the last bend in the road and saw the house in flames. I called 911.”
“Was there anyone here when you arrived?”
“I didn’t see anyone outside, but I don’t—didn’t—know about inside. Gary’s truck was here.”
“No other vehicles, no signs of other people?”
“No.”
“You didn’t see anyone leaving?”
“No.”
“An explosion?”
“No.”
“Explosives, accelerants, matches, lighters, or anything else that might be used to start a fire?”
“Nothing.”
“Smell anything odd?”
“Just smoke.”
“Why were you here?”
“We were . . . we used to be together. I’ve been traveling. I called him, and he asked me to come over.”
Troy cuts in. He’s got a thick, slow Texas accent. “How long since you seen him, ma’am?”
“A few months, I guess.”
“Talked to him?”
“I heard from him a lot. He didn’t, um, he didn’t take our breakup well.”
The fire marshal’s eyes are big and shrewd behind her lenses. “Were you familiar with his house?”
“Very. I helped him remodel and furnish it over the last few years.”
“Any electrical issues, to your knowledge?”
“He had the whole house updated and rewired. It was old and crappy before that. But I don’t know if he had any current problems.”
“Did Mr. Fuller smoke?”
“No. He is—was—a singer. He believed it was bad for his vocal cords.”
“Would you characterize him as suicidal?”
Maggie shakes her head. “Do you know who this man is?”
“Gary Fuller.”
“Gary Fuller, international country music star, the biggest entertainer out of Texas since George Strait. He had a very healthy self-esteem, stoked by the admiration of an adoring public. I don’t think he’s been depressed since I’ve known him, which is over ten years. Certainly not suicidal.”
“That doesn’t mean he hasn’t been. Or wasn’t recently.”
“If our breakup is any indication, he was sad, he got mad, he got over it.”
“How do you know that?”
“He was with another woman last night. To me, that was the normal, confident Gary.”
A firefighter—one of rank, Maggie assumes from the patches on the uniform—pulls Karen aside. The two have a brief, whispered conversation with Troy listening in. The firefighter nods, then ducks under the barricade and trots back to the house, talking into the radio the whole way.
Karen and Troy return to Maggie.
Maggie wipes her eyes.
Karen says, “Are you okay, Ms. Killian?”
“Rough night. The fire. Gary. And all the firefighters. My dad was a volunteer firefighter here in Fayette County when I was a little girl.”
Karen’s eyes drill into hers. “And?”
“And . . . nothing. I’m just emotional. Memories and present circumstances colliding.”
Troy picks up the conversation where they’d left it before he and Karen stepped away. He drawls, “Who was the other woman with Mr. Fuller that night?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Did it upset you?”
Maggie snorts. “Not in the slightest.”
Troy and Karen look at each other. The fire marshal nods at the deputy.
Troy says, “I’d like to talk to the people close to him, to get a feel for what was going on in his life and who was in it.”
Maggie shivers. She just can’t get warm. “It sounds like you think someone set this fire deliberately. Like they killed him.”
The two answer at the same time.
Troy says, “We can’t rule anything out.”
“Premature,” Karen says. Then she adds, “I’m not at liberty to give out additional information at this time.”
Something about her tone raises hackles on Maggie’s neck and suspicions in her mind. “Am I a suspect?”
“I wouldn’t say suspect. I’m investigating the cause of the fire.”
Troy crosses his arms. “I’m investigating other potential crimes.”
Maggie says, “What would you call me, then?”
Karen shrugs at Troy.
He says, “A person of interest with potentially key information.”
Maggie closes her eyes. She’s been down this road before. Last week, in fact, as public enemy number one after the death of her cowboy fling, Chet. It’s ludicrous they’re homing in on her for Gary’s death now. She could come up with a list as long as her arm of people that would benefit from his demise, if Fayette County wants it. For now, she’ll say as little as possible beyond the facts. “I called 911. I was injured trying to save him.”
“Ah, the sheriff himself has arrived.” Karen beckons a tall man in a ten-gallon straw cowboy hat. To Maggie, she says, “You’d be shocked how often a person sets a fire then has second thoughts. Even more stick around the scene to glory in the aftermath. Or to get treated for their injuries.”
“It wasn’t me.”
“I certainly hope that’s what we find. For now, just give us your contact information for a follow-up interview.” Karen puts a new sheet of paper on top of the stack on her clipboard and holds it out to Maggie.
“And let me guess—don’t leave town.”
Troy’s eyes have been on his boss, who is consulting with a man who appears to be the fire chief. He cuts them to Maggie for a moment. “Spoken like a woman who’s heard it before, I’d say.”
Maggie fumes, but complies, the blanket falling from her shoulders, the pen digging into the paper. Gary is gone. Gone forever. Another man close to her has succumbed to violence. First, Chet was bludgeoned to death. Then Patrick, a Wyoming rancher she went out with a time or two, was shot dead. Next, Hank, the love of her life, barely survived a rifle shot. And now Gary, her former boyfriend, is dead. Never mind that the fire marshal and a deputy are eyeing her like the easy answer to a hard question barely a week after she was a suspect in Chet’s death. That pales in comparison to the more obvious truth.
She’s a freaking black widow.
Five
After Maggie’s written her list, the fire marshal and deputy release her.
Maggie drives by rote toward her house, her hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel. It’s nearly ten p.m. The lapse of time between now and when she’d first seen the dark gray smoke is like a black hole in her life.
She groans. Louise lifts her head, checking on her. Maggie fondles the dog’s ears. How is she going to come to grips with never seeing Gary again, after he’d been in her life, in one way or another, for a decade?
Her heart hurts. Gary’s family will be devastated. They’re a tight-knit clan, all nine of them—his mother and his seven siblings and their families living in houses Gary built for them on a family compound near Boerne, outside of San Antonio. Well, six siblings, since Kelly is of the Nashville world now. Who is going to tell them? And how will they react when they hear she was there when it happened?
There will be a service for Gary. Maggie will have to go. She groans again. From day one, Gary’s mother, Merritt, hasn’t been Maggie’s biggest fan, citing ample and readily available evidence that Maggie was trouble. Merritt’s gossip rag obsession makes Wallace’s fascination seem like a passing fancy. She had to know that Maggie had dumped her golden boy. The recent smear story online about Maggie in the bad old days will just add more fuel to Merritt’s fire. Maybe Maggie hadn’t fulfilled Merritt’s worst prophecies of tanking Gary’s career, saddling him with unwanted children, dragging him into addiction, and sucking him dry financially. But Mama Fuller still mourned that he never married a Miss America, a princess, or a Hollywood actress befitting her boy’s stardom, and she laid that squarely on Ma
ggie’s shoulders. Maggie thought it probably had more to do with the fact that Gary was tied to his trailer park mama by her short apron strings, but no one asked her.
Her phone rings as she pulls up to her dark house. Without looking at caller ID, she answers. “Hello.”
“Maggie.” It’s Hank’s voice.
For a moment, Maggie loses her sense of direction. She’s disoriented in the darkness, unsure of up, down, left, or right. She shakes her head to dispel the vertigo. “Uh, hey, Hank.” Her voice sounds scratchy. She clears her throat.
“Why did you leave? Why are you ignoring my calls and texts? I mean, really, what the fuck is going on? I don’t get it, Maggie.” His voice sounds raw like hers. Fire raw.
“Not now, Hank.”
“When, then?”
Good question. Never, maybe. “I don’t play second fiddle.” Especially not when first fiddle is carrying his child.
“What?”
“Lose my number.”
“I—”
She ends the call and turns the phone over so she can’t see the damn dimple-cheeked picture of him. She’d cry if she didn’t feel so numb from the fire and Gary’s death. It was such a mistake to go to Wyoming. She’d been right to rebuff Hank last spring. She should have just left him—them—in the past. Note to self: change my phone number.
She pulls up in front of the Coop and sees a moon-silver car in her headlights. Shit. The renter. Maggie had driven here on autopilot, but Leslie must have another night or two left in her visit. She’ll look it up later. For now, she has to find another place to stay.
It’s too late to show up unannounced at Michele’s.
Maggie texts Michele: Got room for me at Nowheresville? She uses Michele’s nickname for her property and new house.
Michele: Just tonight or forever?
Maggie: Tonight. Need shower, whiskey, shoulder to cry on.
Michele: Mi casa es tu casa. What’s wrong?
Maggie: I’ll tell you when I get there.
She reverses Bess and the trailer back onto the road and makes the short drive to Michele’s new house. She and Louise alight and traipse to the door. The cicadas buzz in the trees, vibrating Maggie’s very bones. The humidity feels oppressive after Wyoming, and the night air smells to her like decay.
Maggie Box Set Page 31
