Flashover

by Annie Bellet

  * * *

  Alma Gautreau had lived in a small triplex on the west side of town, near the factories. The bitter haze of coal hung on the thick summer air, mingling with the smell of charcoal and burnt plastic.

  At least the building hadn’t burnt to the ground. The roof looked mostly intact except on the side where Alma’s apartment was, where it sagged into the charred supports that were now wrapped with caution tape.

  I looked around, but everyone in the neighborhood was sanely boarded up in their air-conditioned homes. Ducking under the caution tape through the gaping hole where the front door had been kicked in, I picked my way through the wreckage, looking for anything intact enough for an impression. The term “wild goose chase” came to mind, long as one enjoyed their goose well done.

  Firefighters and fire hoses leave a lot of mess, sometimes worse than the fire itself. Near a mostly intact wall decorated with the permanent shadows of smoke damage, something glinted, catching my eye. A silver teaspoon. I bent and picked it up. It was filthy from the fire, but as good as place as any to start.

  I tugged my left glove off with my teeth and tucked it into my jeans. Then, with a deep breath, I plucked the spoon out of my other hand.

  Aching, deep inside. Strong smell of medicine and then the claustrophobic press of an oxygen mask. Aching eases, as much as it ever does. Powder mixed in tea, chamomile, the taste herbal and sweet with a terrible chalky finish.

  I let the spoon drop back to the filthy tile floor. Not much to go on, but Alma had been sick.

  The article said she had no surviving family, sad for an eighty year old woman. Her book group was taking care of arrangements. I’d asked Sally how an old woman had her true name, but she’d proven evasive and just flushed while muttering something about “really good coffee cake”.

  Who does an old woman trust, then? Oxygen meant she was quite ill but she’d still lived alone. Someone would have had to look in on her, maybe a neighbor? A nurse? Had to be someone a sick woman would trust with her secrets. God, she’d been living with the combustibles right by her bed. Whoever did this was a real bastard.

  I sighed and stretched, sweat causing my tee-shirt to stick to my back as it ran an itchy trail down my spine. I pulled on my glove. Time to get out of here and do some legwork.

  Turned out that she’d been friendly with the neighbors, though they weren’t overly friendly with me.

  Alma had three nurses over the last year who’d made home visits with her. One nice teenager had even remembered their names before her mother came to see who was at the door. I suppose a big guy wearing gloves on a ninety degree day does seem a bit suspicious. And “Psychometrist” just sounds like “psycho” to most normals.

  That’s me, putting the psycho in psychometry. All right, not a phrase for my business cards.

  The internet is a beautiful thing and I quickly found out that one nurse, the only female of the three, had moved south to New Orleans. The other two worked here in Toil d’Crepuscule, at St. George’s hospital. That rang another bell and I checked the other two articles again.

  The other woman who’d died had been an administrator in human resources at St. George’s. And the house that burnt down had belonged to a Mr. Aubry, who was the head of the pharmacy at, guess where? St. George’s.

  And that was why my talent worked better than police work alone. I got to fill in the gaps, make the logical leaps with a little assistance from the strangeness of the universe. Clearly, someone had it in for people at the hospital.

  Which meant they might not be finished.

  After all, Mr. Aubry had been out at his cabin the Bayou the night his house burnt down. Unfinished business and magic, not a good sign for Mr. Aubry’s chances.

  I went home and changed, pulling on nice trousers and a clean shirt. It was hard not to look crazy wearing gloves in summer, but I tried for as harmless and professional a look as I could stand in the heat. And the gloves were grey, not black. Black gloves always give entirely the wrong impression.

  I nursed a complaining Renault, my beater Toyota, across town to the hospital. Putting on my big, friendly guy smile for the bored looking, heavyset woman behind the reception counter, I asked where I could find either Caleb Dorey or Jules Evans.

  “Jules?” She made a face and my fingers started to itch again. Nom de Zeus. I was definitely on the right track. “He was fired a month ago.” She looked around and then leaned forward with a confidential smile. “Drugs, you know. Heard he was lifting stuff from the pharmacy.”

  Natural born gossips. I love them.

  “Merci beaucoup,” I said, treating her to a wide smile. “You wouldn’t happen to have his address, would you? It is rather important.”

  Of course she did. Lovely woman.