Flipped Out (35 page)

“Earlier? She went to her apartment, I went to mine. I have no idea what she did, but I took a shower and changed my clothes and grabbed a sandwich. Figured I’d give you some time to simmer down before I showed up to apologize.”

“You were going to apologize?”

“’Course.” His eyes were very blue looking into mine. “I should have supported you, at least in front of Melissa. Even if I didn’t agree with what you said.”

“Thank you.”

He shook his head. “That’s what a good boyfriend does. Although for the record, I don’t think she killed Tony. Seriously, with the fights we used to get into, she would have been more likely to kill me, and she never did.”

“I know,” I admitted. “I don’t really think she did it, either. I just couldn’t resist giving her a hard time. She bothers me. The way she’s always snuggling up to you . . .”

“She does it because she can tell it bothers you,” Derek said. “Just pretend it doesn’t, and she’ll stop.”

“I’ll try that next time.”

He nodded. “God, Avery . . . When I realized you weren’t here, and the shed was burning to the ground, possibly with you in it . . . I swear my heart stopped beating.”

I smiled, although my eyes were filling with tears again. I must have rehydrated sufficiently. “Anyway, I don’t think it was Melissa. It probably wasn’t Fae or Wilson, either, since I’m guessing they’re still at the police station with Wayne. At least they were when Melissa was released, and if she didn’t have time to set this up, then they wouldn’t have, either.”

Derek nodded. “Who does that leave?”

“Other than the rest of Waterfield? If it has to do with the house on Cabot, and with Tony, I guess it leaves Ted and Nina and Adam.”

“Any idea why any of those three would want to kill you?”

I shook my head. I’d had a little time to think about it while I was soaking in the tub, and I had come up with zilch. Zip. Nada. No reason at all why anyone would want to get rid of me.

“We should check with Wayne,” Derek said when I reiterated as much, “just in case he let Fae or Wilson go. We should report the fire to him, anyway.”

“I’m sure the fire department has already done that. In fact, I’m surprised he’s not already here.”

“I’m sure he’s coming,” Derek said. “So Ted and Nina and Adam. Any reason you can think of why one of them would want to kill you?”

“Not really. Ted is Fae’s father, although I’m not sure she knows it. Nina didn’t even know it until this afternoon. But maybe he’s developed a late conscience and hates me for turning her in to Wayne. Or maybe he lied, and they’ve both known it all along, and Ted’s been working with Fae and Wilson in driving Nina crazy.”

“He seems genuinely devoted,” Derek said, “but then again, I guess he’d have to. But he’s known Nina for years. Ever since Aurora died. If he was going to drive Nina crazy, or kill her—or Tony—don’t you think he’d have done it already?”

“Probably. What about Nina? What if she killed Tony because she thought he was writing the letters? He knew exactly what she’d done, and I don’t think many people did.”

“Possible,” Derek admitted. “We’ll have to have Wayne check her alibi, try to figure out where she was this evening. Could it have been Nina who pushed you?”

I shrugged helplessly. “I guess so. It was a pretty hard push, but I’m small and she’s a lot bigger. So yes, probably.”

“Maybe she thought that guy, Stuart, was sending the letters, and so she arranged a little accident for him, too. But then the letters kept coming, and so she thought she’d made a mistake and Tony was sending them. And she killed him, but the letters kept coming again. So she tried to kill Fae, and got Shannon instead. And now the cat’s out of the bag, and Wayne knows about Fae, so Nina can’t get at her. But why kill you? Does she think you know that she killed everyone else?”

“I suppose she might,” I said. “I don’t, though. Know it. She hasn’t said anything to make me think that. I don’t suspect her any more than I suspect anyone else. And I’m sure I haven’t given her any indication that I think she’s guilty. . . .”

I would have gone on, but now there was a knock on the door. Or rather, a fusillade of knocks. Derek hurried toward the front door, admitting not only Wayne, but Kate, too. She pushed past both the men and got to the kitchen first. Her face was pale underneath the freckles. “Avery! Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I croaked.

“But your voice . . . and your face and hands . . .”

“Smoke inhalation,” Derek explained behind her. “She was trapped in the shed while it burned to the ground. Her hands are blistered from trying to get out, and her face is parched from the heat. So is her throat. Other than that, there’s nothing wrong with her. No burns. Nothing that won’t heal itself in a few days.”

“Thank God.” Kate sat down at the table, as if her legs suddenly gave out. “What happened?”

“I’d like to know that, too,” Wayne growled, taking the chair opposite from her, his jaw tight. “Tell me everything, Avery. From the beginning.”

Derek found a couple of glasses in the cabinet and poured lemonade all around, topping off my glass as I went through what had happened from the time we left the hospital earlier to when Derek hauled me out of the shed. “Were the firemen able to save anything?”

Wayne shook his head. “The shed’s a total loss. If you’d been in there, you would have been, too. There’s nothing left but cinders and ashes and a few pieces of twisted metal.”

“Thank God we both got out.” I tried to pet Mischa, who had curled up in my lap, but it didn’t work. With the bandages on my hands, I couldn’t feel his fur, and besides, it hurt. He opened his eyes and looked at me and didn’t seem to mind.

“So the cat was in the shed,” Wayne prompted.

I nodded. “He wasn’t in the house when I came home, so I went looking for him. I didn’t think he could be in the shed, because it was locked, but then I heard a crash inside. So I opened the door, and he ran out, and someone pushed me in. And splashed gasoline all around and lit a match.”

“But you have no idea who it was?”

I shook my head. “It all happened too fast. And it was getting dark. Mischa startled me when he ran between my feet, and then someone came from behind and pushed me. I never saw who. Or anything about them. Not even whether it was a man or a woman.”

“That’s too bad,” Wayne said. “I’ll have to have a look around tomorrow morning, when the sun comes up, although between the water and most of the fire department tramping through your yard, I’m not sure I’ll find anything.”

“There might be another way,” Derek said. We all turned to him.

“What?”

“He—or she, whoever did it—put the cat in the shed, right? So he—or she—must have walked into the house to get the cat.”

I nodded. “I thought there was something funny about the front door lock when I got home, but I thought maybe we’d forgotten to lock it this morning.”

He shook his head. “We didn’t forget. I watched you.”

“So what if our arsonist walked into the house?” Wayne asked impatiently. “What does it matter? He probably had enough sense to wear gloves. Most burglars do. Most fire starters do, too. They don’t want to get gasoline on their hands.”

“I don’t care about that,” Derek said. “If this guy walked into Avery’s house, chances are Mischa attacked him. That cat attacks me every time I walk in, and he likes me. If someone else walked in, I’m sure Mischa would have attacked them, too.”

“So? If he was wearing gloves . . .”

“Mischa goes for the legs,” I said, hoarsely. All this talking was messing with my voice. “Derek has tiny little puncture marks all up and down his calves.”

“So what do you suggest? We make everyone on the crew wear shorts to work tomorrow?”

“You could go to the B and B right now and ask them all to show you their legs.”

“You’re not serious?”

I shrugged. I was serious, sort of, but if he couldn’t do it, then he couldn’t do it, and that was that.

“Where was everyone tonight?” Derek wanted to know. “Fae and Wilson were in jail, right?”

Wayne shook his head. “I released them both this evening. They admitted to sending the letters to Nina and Tony—Fae’s grandmother, who is Wilson’s mother-in-law, in Kansas City put them in the mail—but they’re alibied for Tony’s murder. Wilson was with Ted, and Fae was with Shannon.”

“But what about the letters? Is it legal to send poison-pen letters to someone?”

“It wasn’t blackmail,” Wayne said. “They didn’t ask for money. And no one’s filed a complaint. There’s nothing I can do.”

“Nina and Ted went to dinner earlier,” Kate added. “At least that’s what they said they’d be doing. They were still gone when I left the B and B just now. Adam went for a run and never came back. That must be a couple of hours ago.”

“Gosh,” I said, “I hope he’s all right.” What if whoever was behind all this craziness had hurt Adam, as well? Someone had tried to kill the previous host of
Flipped Out!
after all, so what was to keep that someone from doing the same to Adam?

Kate shrugged. “He probably stopped somewhere for something to eat. Or maybe he met a girl. He could have come back without my seeing him, too. I was in the carriage house cooking dinner for Wayne.”

“So any one of them could have set your fire,” Derek said.

We sat in silence for a few seconds, all of us thinking.

“Why you?” Wayne said eventually.

“Excuse me?”

“Why would someone want to get rid of you? It doesn’t make any sense. You’re not involved with the show, other than this week. And you had nothing to do with what happened to what’s-her-name—Aurora Jamison—back in Kansas City. Why you?”

“Someone obviously thinks she knows something she doesn’t,” Derek said. Kate nodded.

“But I don’t! I have no idea what someone thinks I know, or what I know that I don’t realize that I know.”

“Who have you talked to today?” Wayne asked. He had pulled out his little notebook and pencil stub by now and was taking notes.

I shook my head, exasperated. “Everyone on the crew, plus Melissa. You two, Josh and Shannon. All the usual people.”

“And no one said anything to make you think they felt threatened by you?”

“I don’t think so. I told you about Nina’s letters, and about Aurora Jamison. I told you about Fae and Wilson. I was there when Nina figured out that Ted is Fae’s father—did I remember to tell you that? I ratted out a whole lot of people and spilled a whole bunch of secrets, and any one of them might have been upset by that, at least theoretically, but no one seemed more upset than anyone else. No one seemed murderous.”

We sat in silence for another few seconds.

“Maybe we can arrange a trap,” Derek said eventually.

Wayne arched his brows. “Being on TV must have gone to your head. What do you think this is, an episode of
Scooby-Doo
?”

I hid a grin. There was a certain resemblance, actually: the four of us and the cat. Derek would be the industrious Fred, always ready to ensnare the bad guy. Kate was the redheaded Daphne and Wayne the lanky Shaggy. If Mischa was Scooby-Doo, I guess that meant I was Velma, the brainy one. Could be worse.

“I’m serious,” Derek said. “Tomorrow morning, I’ll go to the house on Cabot and tell everyone what happened tonight. I’ll explain that Avery still isn’t able to talk because of the damage the smoke did to her throat, and that she doesn’t feel well enough to come to work; she’s just going to rest at home all day. Alone. I bet at some point, one of them will break free from the group and come over here to finish the job. All we have to do is wait.”

Wayne blinked. “That’s not actually a bad plan.”

“Told ya.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re not the one who’ll be staked out here like a goat, waiting for the wolves to descend.”

Derek turned to me. “You won’t actually
be
alone, Avery. That’s just something I’ll say to make whoever is behind this feel safe. Wayne will be here. Or Brandon. Maybe Josh.”

“Definitely Josh,” Kate shot in. “If this is the person who cut the brake cables on the car and hurt Shannon, Josh is going to want a piece of him or her. I wouldn’t mind that myself.”

Wayne shook his head. “If this is to work, we all have to stay away. You have to be at the B and B or the hospital with Shannon. I have to be working. Derek has to be at the house on Cabot. This yahoo—whoever he or she is—has to believe that Avery is alone and unprotected. We can’t put a whole battalion of people in the house. Just one.”

Derek and I exchanged a look. We both wanted that one person to be him, but we also knew it couldn’t be. Of everyone, he had to be at the house on Cabot.

“Brandon,” I said. Derek nodded.

“I’ll arrange it.” Wayne got to his feet. “Coming, Kate?”

“Coming.” Kate got to her feet, too, and came around the table to give me a hug. “I’m glad you’re OK,” she whispered in my ear.

“I’m glad I’m OK, too,” I croaked back.

She turned to Derek. “You take care of her tonight.”

He nodded. “I’m not going anywhere.”

He followed them to the front door and made sure it was securely locked behind them before he came back into the kitchen again. “Time for bed. Big day tomorrow.”

I nodded and let him carry me up the stairs to bed.

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