by Bill Hopkins
Chapter 32
Sunday Afternoon into Sunday Night
After sleeping most of the day, Rosswell awoke, thinking he'd have time to hustle down to Mabel's before supper.
Mrs. Bolzoni didn't look up from sweeping the front porch. "I make the special tonight for the supper."
Rosswell jerked to a halt before he reached the steps, forming a question, knowing that the answer would be delicious. "What's the special?" The delightful smells of the supper wafted from the kitchen onto the porch. "Tell me. I need to know." Like one of Pavlov's dogs, he'd begun salivating.
Alessandra stepped around her mother. "Roasted bone marrow on crostini, sea salt sprinkled over it, mixed green salad with Italian herb vinaigrette, New York strip steak, sides of grilled Portobello mushrooms and baked new potatoes, all accompanied by a nice cabernet sauvignon-sweet tea for you and me-and Ricotta cheesecake for dessert."
Rosswell mulled over falling to the ground and weeping. Instead, he swallowed a few times to lower the saliva content of his mouth. "I have urgent business that I must attend to in town."
"Poverino, you die nearly in the fire and I make special for you, but you go to be with frogs."
"Momma." Alessandra put her finger to her lips. "He's had a rough time."
"I lose two good guests and the judge not will eat my food. Throw it to the pigs." Mrs. Bolzoni sniffed and clumped back into the house. "Frogs bring nothing but trouble," she threw over her shoulder before the door slammed.
Lost two guests? The Four Bee had somehow morphed into The Hotel California? You can check in any time you like, but you can never check out? No. Wait. That's not what the song said. But if two guests had gone, then that meant Rosswell could double up on his portions. Haste clouds judgment.
Alessandra interrupted Rosswell's thoughts. "You'll have to forgive her. There's been a lot of strange things going on around here lately."
"Your mother's a saint on earth. I need to eat her supper. It would be rude of me not to."
"We need to talk, you and I."
"I'll be glad to talk to you, Alessandra."
"It's important."
"First, tell me which guests left."
"Philbert and Theodore."
"I'll try to help your mother by making sure the leftovers are minimal."
"Thank you, Judge. And then a talk?"
"Tomorrow. I promise."
After supper, Rosswell fired up the truck's replacement, a 1999 metallic bronze Kia Sephia with the driver's door spray-painted white. He dubbed the asthmatic four-banger Sofia. Gas mileage ran close to ten miles to the gallon and Rosswell wasn't certain that the pistons fired in sequence. The sun, although not yet setting, shined clear and bright, allowing him to drive in a strong light. He needed the strong light to see through his tears at the thought of giving a thousand dollars to the husband of one of his clerks for the piece of junk he was driving. There wasn't time to go car shopping. Rosswell needed a ride in a hurry and the Kia Sephia was the only thing available on the spur of the moment. Plus the tags had been expired only a month. Rosswell prayed that all the state troopers were somewhere else today. Tomorrow, he'd make the car legal.
"Judge, I've got a question." Ollie settled in the corner booth in the back of the restaurant, the one badly lit by buzzing fluorescent ceiling lights. "Who started that fire? And where is Jill?"
"That's two questions."
Mabel trotted up. "I need your order. The place is filling up."
Rosswell didn't hesitate. "The biggest steak you've got." It was a good time to make up for all the meals he'd missed recently. "Rare. With blood running from it. And a huge baked potato. Make that two potatoes. Lots of butter. Real butter."
"Drink?"
"Water. I'm on a diet. Oh. And coffee. Make it to go."
"Ollie?"
"Don't call me Ollie. I'm your father!"
"I know." She waited, pencil poised.
"Cheese sandwich and a Coke."
Mabel scurried away.
Ollie said, "Kids have no respect these days."
"It's an epidemic."
"You'll blossom soon from two things. The food. And the hot air inside you. Tell me where Jill is."
"The short answer I'm sure of first. I don't know where Jill is."
"And the long answer of who started the fire you're not sure about?"
"I'll tell you what started that fire. A big front from the Gulf of Mexico brought in lots of humidity and wind." Rosswell drew a meteorological picture (a large arrow pointing north) on the paper placemat to demonstrate. "Then a dry front from Canada increased the wind and lowered the humidity." A large arrow going south. "Add in a drought." Squiggles, indicating evaporation. "A couple of sparks or lightning." Zig-zag lines. "I know it's complicated, but that's a recipe for a perfect firestorm." Rosswell admired his own handiwork.
Ollie drummed his fingers on the table. "Nathaniel Dahlbert started that fire and you know it."
"Did you smell gasoline or any other accelerant? I mean before the cars started crashing into each other."
"Uh?no." Ollie stopped drumming and bent to inspecting his fingernails. "Doesn't prove anything. It's a wonder we survived."
Mabel arrived, bearing a plate with the largest sirloin steak Rosswell had ever seen, plus a water and a huge coffee. The sides, two gigantic baked potatoes, rested on a separate plate, both drowning in butter. "Hope that holds you until your bedtime snack."
"That is my bedtime snack. I need it to go."
"You know where the go boxes are."
Ollie's sandwich and soda were, in Rosswell's estimation, puny compared to his bedtime snack.
Ollie snatched up Rosswell's ticket Mabel had laid on the table. "Hope you charged him enough. That looks like a week's worth of meat for an ordinary person."
Mabel said, "If the judge starts getting too expensive, he can work it off on weekends," then disappeared.
Rosswell fetched a go box from the pantry and began arranging his food. "A wildfire is an inefficient way to kill someone. We're living proof." Enough salt and pepper landed on the steak to preserve it for an eon. "We survived because we found a break in the fire and skedaddled."
"What's the matter with you? Nathaniel is trying to kill us."
"He's had lots of chances to knock us off but didn't take them." Tucking the tabs of the box securely gave Rosswell a chance to think. "Back to the same question I had earlier. Why are we still alive?"
"He's not had a good enough chance to kill us yet, or we would be dead."
"What about the cave? Are you not seeing what I'm seeing?"
"Judge, with the stress we've been under, we could've seen Peter Rabbit hopping down the bunny trail."
Rosswell sipped from the syrupy coffee he'd prepared with a glutton's share of sugar and a dash of salt. "Maybe we can agree on this." Delicious. He slurped down the last of the coffee and signaled Mabel for a refill. "I'm not saying that Nathaniel isn't trying to kill us. I can't figure out why he hasn't killed us yet. Are we serving some kind of purpose for him?"
"We're providing an immense amount of irritating entertainment for him."
"I learned something in the military. An officer in the field who's spying on his opponent looks for five things: shape, shadow, color, movement, and sound."
"We're not in a war."
"Yes, we are. Let's think about this situation with Nathaniel as if we were scoping him out in the field. First, shape. He's got a business that looks legitimate yet he's hiding something. Shadows are next. If you're skulking around, you don't want the enemy to see your shadow. Turk is one of his main shadows but that guy is as stupid as a drunk possum. Color's a good one. Nathaniel is so white he's an albino and his orange hair makes him stick out like a scarecrow singing alto in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir."
"Color. That's a good one. Maybe he's blending in somewhere and we haven't noticed him because he's too obvious to hide. Take me. I can't disguise myself. Even people who don't know me recognize me."
Rosswell nodded, discarding the temptation to voice an observation that a giant rodent sporting a purple tattoo atop a bald head is hard to miss. "Next is movement. Lots of people know about him but we can never catch him outside of his castle, except for the time I saw him talking to Mrs. Bolzoni."
Ollie said, "Last one is sound. We've never heard a sound from Nathaniel except when he's up close. And he sounds like he's got a problem with his voice."
"Maybe he's sick." Ollie started to speak, but before he could, Rosswell shushed him. "That's it. Nathaniel is sick. He's dying. He knows he's dying. He wants us to die before he does. It's all in the timing. We know he's got Tina. But where?"
"You're right, Judge. I understand completely. Except that we don't know that he has Tina."
"You're both missing something important." Jill, complete with coffee pot and waitress dress stood next to their table. "But you could use some apple pie."
