Authors: Lorena McCourtney
Magnolia didn’t make any doubtful noises. She knows my history with the Braxtons. She peered at me anxiously. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Geoff’s around here somewhere. He’s been spraying the roof down so the fire wouldn’t spread to the house.”
Magnolia patted her chest and took deep breaths. She wears ear plugs, but apparently she’d remembered to yank them out before running over here. With the plugs in, she’d once slept through a two-bear attack on a garbage can right outside their motorhome in Wyoming, so it wasn’t surprising she’d missed the initial explosion tonight.
So I had to ask, “What woke you up?”
“I got up to go to the bathroom. I realized Geoff wasn’t there, and then I looked out and saw what was going on over here. Oh, Ivy, maybe you shouldn’t have come home! Maybe even after all this time it’s too dangerous for you here.” She was concerned enough that she apparently hadn’t even noticed she was wearing mismatched slippers, one of hers and one of Geoff’s. “Does Mac know about this?”
“Not yet.”
Should I call him? I wanted to. But there was nothing he could do now except give me a comforting hug, and that would be a little messy in my current syrupy condition. And maybe what he’d give me would be a scolding for not moving out to the RV park.
“I’m going inside and take a shower,” I announced.
***
Koop followed me into the bathroom. I intended to wait until I got out of the shower to call Mac, but instead I just washed off one ear and punched his name on the contact list on my non-smart cell phone. Even if he scolded, I needed to talk to him. He answered on the second
ring. I sat on the edge of the tub. Koop had already claimed a
surveillance spot on the closed toilet seat.
“What’s wrong?” Mac demanded.
I didn’t bother to ask how he knew something was wrong. Even in the best of times, we don’t tend to call each other to whisper sweet nothings in the middle of the night. Or crow about how many points we just made on some Facebook game. Although I was curious— “Do you leave your phone turned on all night?”
“When I’m worried about you, Ivy, yes I do.” He repeated his question. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine. Just a minute while I get some syrup out of my ear.” I dabbed at my ear with a washcloth and picked up the phone again. “Are you still there?”
“You want to tell me why you have syrup in your ear?”
“It’s a, umm, long story.”
“How about if I come over, and you can tell me all about it?”
You have to love a man who’s willing to rouse himself out of bed in the middle of the night when all he knows is that you have syrup in your ear. “Thank you. I’d appreciate that.”
I showered and then dressed in the same jeans and T-shirt I’d taken off when I went to bed. By the time I was through in the bathroom, Tasha had cleaned up both the kitchen floor and the sticky steps. The police car was gone, and one fire truck rumbled away as I stepped outside. The motorhome was now just a stark skeleton squatting on a burned-out chassis, like the bones of some angular dinosaur. The tires were burned down to bare wheels. A scent like soggy, burned garbage mixed with a
chemical tang hung in the air. A fireman from a smaller fire-fighting unit came over and said he’d remain on duty all night in case of a flare-up. I thanked him, and he also said investigation into cause of the fire would start first thing in the morning.
“I think you should come spend the night with us,” Magnolia said.
“Or with us,” Tasha added.
“Thanks, but Mac will be here in a few minutes.”
No one left until Mac arrived, however. The stars were already fading into a paler blue in the eastern sky when he parked his pickup out on the street and picked his way through the fallen debris littering the yard. We surveyed the ruins together.
“I guess I should have listened to you and moved the motorhome over to your RV park.”
Mac didn’t say
I told you so.
He simply wrapped his arms around me. “I’m just glad you’d moved into the house.”
We stood that way for a minute until I said, “Thanks for coming.”
“About that syrup in your ear. . .?”
“The booby trap I set for the Braxtons worked on me.”
He didn’t question my setting a booby trap. I’m not sure it’s a good thing when people see nothing unusual about someone setting a booby trap; just another day in the life of Ivy Malone.
“Do you think the Braxtons did this?” I asked.
“That would be my first guess, yes.”
We walked around to the far side of the motorhome. I told him how I figured the Braxtons had rigged dynamite to explode under the motorhome, same as they’d done to my Thunderbird down in Arkansas. Although, looking at the skeletal remains now, I didn’t see any big hole blasted up through the floor. The motorhome door lay on the ground at least a dozen feet from the burned-out wreckage. The explosion had blown it right off the hinges.
“Looks as if the Braxtons weren’t skimpy with their dynamite,” I said. “Drake probably deducts it as a business expense for Braxton Construction.”
Mac nodded, but he tilted his head thoughtfully. “The way the door blew off, it almost looks as if the explosion came from inside rather than under the motorhome. Not that I’m any expert on explosions,” he added.
Unfortunately, the Braxtons were.
Chapter Fifteen
A couple hours later, the guy who’d stayed all night watching for flare-ups drove off and two guys in bulky suits started plowing through the blackened ruins of the motorhome. Mac commented that the materials used in construction of an RV could be more hazardous than in a regular house, which probably explained their heavy-duty gear. One man had a camera and took photos from all angles inside and outside.
Another police officer arrived and questioned me, and I was pleased that he circled the motorhome with yellow crime scene tape before he left. Then a man from some state agency dealing with fires and arson arrived. Mac wandered over to Magnolia and Geoff’s yard while I was once more being questioned. I spotted Eric and Tasha going over there a little later too.
I sat on the back steps of the house as the investigator asked all kinds of questions. When was the motorhome last driven? Was the air conditioner in working condition and when was it last used? Had I cooked on the kitchen stove last evening? Were there any problems with it? How about electric or propane problems? Had I moved all my belongings into the house or had I lost everything in the fire? Was there insurance? What time was I last in the motorhome? Why had I moved into the house? And about a zillion more questions about both the motorhome and me.
A question about why I hadn’t lived in the house for almost three years finally gave me an opening to tell him about my hostile relationship with the Braxton clan, including how they’d dumped the body of the woman they thought was me in the bathtub. I left out the part about getting caught in my own booby trap. Not really relevant, I assured myself.
The man made no comment and showed no reaction to any of my statements, so I couldn’t tell if he was taking me seriously or reserving a space for me in the loony bin. Did these guys have special training in facial and body control? Stoneface 101, attendance required. He merely said he appreciated my helpfulness and, with the usual request that if I thought of anything more to call him, he gave me his card when he left.
Mac returned as soon as the man was gone. The day was already warm, and we went into the kitchen for lemonade. I could see now that the side of the house facing the motorhome had more damage than I’d earlier realized. I gave Mac a rundown on what the investigator had asked.
“Some of the questions seemed irrelevant, but I suppose it’s all routine procedure in an arson case,” I said.
“Probably.”
Something about his reserved answer made me ask, “You think there may be something more going on here?”
“We’ll just have to wait and see.”
Magnolia, Geoff, Tasha and Eric trooped across the street en masse. I could tell they had something on their collective minds. Magnolia announced what it was.
“This latest incident has us all worried. We think it’s too dangerous for you to stay here in the house alone.”
Mac said, “Ivy could—”
I interrupted him. “I think—”
Tasha interrupted both of us. “We’ve talked it over and decided the best solution is for you to move in with us temporarily. We’ll clean out our extra bedroom and there’ll be plenty of room.”
I was momentarily taken back by this.
They’d
decided? Hey, I might be an LOL, but my brain functions hadn’t deteriorated to turnip level yet. I didn’t need decisions made for me.
Another thought instantly overrode that ungracious reaction.
God will provide.
God’s provision is something I’ve always believed in, and God was providing now through the caring of good friends.
“We discussed your coming to our house,” Magnolia said, “but then we all decided you’d be safer with Eric and Tasha. Their house isn’t right across the street like ours—”
“And we’re thinking the Braxtons don’t know that you’re friends with us, so they wouldn’t have any reason to look for you at our place,” Tasha added.
No one mentioned Eric’s body-guard physique, but I figured that also played a part in the decision.
I studied the four of them watching me anxiously – no five, because Mac’s concerned eyes watched too. I was just ready to say okay when Mac touched my arm.
“Could I talk to you for a minute?”
He pushed me around to the other side of the burned-out hulk. “Look, it’s great that Eric and Tasha are willing to provide a place for you to stay. But I think you should reconsider staying on Madison Street at all. The Braxtons aren’t likely to give up, you know, and sooner or later they will figure out where you are. I think you should get far away from here.
Now.”
“My motorhome isn’t exactly in traveling condition,” I pointed out. As if to emphasize that fact, a dangling chunk of black stuff fell off and clunked at our feet.
“We could get married.”
For a moment I was indignant at the sound of that. As if marrying me would be some big sacrifice! But I quickly chucked that reaction. Mac didn’t mean it that way. At the moment, he was worried, and definitely not in romance mode. So I honestly took some time to consider that choice.
But finally I brought up the bottom line in my thinking. “If I run away now, even if we got married, the Braxtons will always be after me. I’ll be running for the rest of my life. Always looking under the motorhome for dynamite. Constantly trying to hide my trail so they won’t find me. Forever wondering what new and improved method of doing me in— and maybe you too!—they might come up with. I can’t live that way.”
Mac nodded slowly. “Okay, then. We’ll concentrate on nailing the Braxtons. That’s our goal.” He didn’t sound happy about it, just resigned.
We went back to the foursome waiting by the house, and I thanked Eric and Tasha for their invitation. “Koop can come too, I hope?”
“Of course.”
Thank you once more, Lord. Thank you for friends who care.
“What about the Friday night barbecue?” Tasha asked. “Is it still on?”
Magnolia lifted her magnificent eyebrows. “Of course.”
Eric and Tasha went home to get the bedroom ready. The rest of us loaded my minimal belongings into Mac’s pickup and hauled them over to my temporary new residence. I wondered if the Braxtons were somehow watching, frustrated that I’d again escaped their clutches. But the fact that I
had
escaped was mildly reassuring. They hadn’t been watching closely enough to know that I wasn’t in the motorhome last night. Hopefully, even if Mac was worried, this move would escape their attention too.
On the way through to the bedroom at Eric and Tasha’s house, I noted that Elvis had a new home on the wall of the living room. A tin-can-lid frame had replaced the broken plastic one. It went nicely with Elvis’s curl-of-lip smile.
The bedroom was small but certainly adequate. A narrow bed stood along the inside wall, beside it a nightstand and a chest of drawers. Some small creations of Eric’s filled a table along the opposite wall, the all-too-familiar mannequin head there as well. Apparently Eric hadn’t figured out a use for it yet. The one window looked out on the back yard, where the purple cow with its motorcycle-handle horns stood under the heavy shade of that jungle of oak and maple. A wheelbarrow full of discarded pieces of metal stood under one tree. Or maybe they were valuable parts destined to become Ockunzzi Originals. It was hard to tell, given Eric’s quirky creativity.
Koop, cool cat that he is, gave the room a quick inspection, batted at a cat made of bolts and screws, with oversized metal-washer eyes, then turned his attention to what was really important. Washing his hind leg.
Mac went back to the RV park, and I settled down with insurance papers on both motorhome and house. Blessedly, the box of my most important papers was among the items I’d carried into the house before the fire. I called the insurance people, and they said they’d send someone out. I also called both the police officer and the arson investigator and left messages to let them know where I was, in case they needed to contact me.
All was quiet at the motorhome the rest of the day. I assumed there was lab work on the fire to be done. No more officials came around to ask questions. I organized my belongings in the bedroom a little better. That night, the bed was comfortable, and Koop curled up beside me, but I tossed and turned restlessly. Had my move to Tasha and Eric’s bedroom been noted by the Braxton’s? Was this putting them in danger too? I kept feeling as if someone was watching me. Were Braxtons lurking around outside, planning their next assault? Or maybe it was just that mannequin’s head watching me. I quickly scoffed at that. Mannequins have no seeing abilities. But I got up and turned the head to face the wall and finally went to sleep.
The next morning, when I strolled down to the house to see if anything was going on, the scent of barbecued motorhome still hung heavy in the air. I thanked the good Lord again that I wasn’t barbecued along with it. Then I noticed that the crime scene tape was gone. I thought that odd, but maybe some kid had made off with it because he wanted something cool
to drape in his room.