That Old Flame of Mine (24 page)

“Except that he set her house on fire.” Myra stuck her head in on the conversation. “He should go to prison for that.”

“He probably will,” Smitty replied. “They could still charge him with attempted murder, the DA said. After all, he said he didn’t know Tory was in the house, but how can we be sure?”

“Well, all I know is that we’re no closer to getting that mess cleaned up.” Myra glared at Stella. “And here we are just a week from the Sweet Pepper Festival. It doesn’t speak well for us as a town.”

“It may be inconvenient,” Stella said, “but finding out the truth about what happened to Tory is important. I’m sure any of you would want to know we’d done our best finding the truth for you too.”

Myra stuck her nose in the air and left the group, cornering Chief Rogers with another request to clean up Tory’s house before the festival.

“I think that’s all well and good,” Lacie said, “but if Victor didn’t kill his mother, who did?”

They all looked at Stella. Pat took out her notebook and pen.

“The police don’t know yet. They’re still looking at all the evidence. I wish there was an easy answer.”

“Has anyone talked to Greg Lambert yet?” Perry bluntly asked. “He’s a good bet.”

“That’s crazy talk,” Flo said. “Why would Greg want to kill Tory?”

“I don’t like to speak ill of the dead,” Perry began, “but we all know Tory, bless her soul, was a flirt and a two-timer when she was young. Look how she yanked around Tagger Reamis. Then she married that car salesman and walked out with Greg when he wasn’t looking.”

“We all know she was pregnant with Greg’s baby before Adam died,” Flo added.

Perry nodded. “A man can only take so much. She made a fool of every man she ever dated. If Victor didn’t kill her, I’d put my money on Greg.”

“What about Tagger?” Stella had to ask.

“Oh, he’s a hero,” Lacie said. “He would never do something like that.”

“Greg’s another story,” Perry added. “He’s no hero.”

That silenced the conversation for a moment. Some of the group drifted off.

Flo gently rubbed her finger on Tory’s picture in the yearbook. “She had a hard life, you know. Her daddy was so mean to her. When she got out from under his roof, she thought it would be okay. Then there were all those fires—her car blew up the day she married Adam Presley. Then he died that terrible way. No wonder she was so happy to have our own fire department again. It didn’t help, did it? She still kind of died in a fire. It was like she knew.”

Chapter 29

O
n her way home, Stella thought about everything she’d heard at the event. She wasn’t sure any of it was really important to finding Tory’s killer. She’d learned a lot about how people felt about things.

Seeing that old picture of her mother had made her homesick. When she went out to the Cherokee, there were two messages on her phone. Her mother must’ve been feeling the same way. She tried returning those calls as she left Myra’s house. She ended up playing phone tag and leaving her own messages. She’d have to try again in the morning.

Stella planned to razz Eric about his legendary charm and good looks. Maybe it was mean taunting a ghost. She hoped he’d show himself to prove how handsome he was. It wasn’t that she didn’t know what he looked like when he was alive. How would he appear now?

The light was on outside the cabin when she drove up. The door opened as usual, before she could reach the knob. There was an unfamiliar sound when she walked inside. Hero was there, whimpering and whining. He ran right up to her and started licking her boots.

“How did you get here?” Stella bent down and scratched behind his ears. He immediately rolled over and let her rub his soft white tummy. “Eric?”

“He was lonely,” the familiar voice said.

“You could’ve opened the kitchen door at the firehouse and let him in there with Banyin. It would’ve been easier than bringing him up here.”

“Your communications person was asleep.”

“It happens. The alert will wake her up if she needs to call everyone.”

“That doesn’t make the puppy feel any better. Animals need attention.”

Hero cuddled up by her foot, as though helping Eric make his point. He put one little paw on her boot and sighed.

“I hope you’re prepared to help with cleanup,” she said. “I haven’t had a pet since I was a kid. My parents took care of it then.”

“You’re a big girl now. You can handle it.”

“We’ll see.” She moved, and the puppy followed her to the sofa. “They loved the candied pepper recipe. Now I have to make it. Speaking of handling things, I heard an earful tonight at the warm-up for the festival judging. It seems you did a remarkable job ‘handling’ all the women who entered your contest category.”

“What?” He sounded surprised.

“He was so handsome and had such a way with him,” she said, badly mimicking Myra’s southern accent. “They didn’t even care when they lost.”

“I’m blushing.”

“Let me see. Why not show yourself? Are you afraid you won’t live up to all the legendary hype?”

She heard him sigh. The entire cabin sighed with him. “I tried to tell you the other night when you passed out—I’m not sure what that would be like.”

“What do you mean?” She asked the question at the same time that her emergency pager went off. “Hold that thought. And take care of Hero. We’ll talk about both of these things when I get back.”

When she was gone, Eric appeared next to Hero. “What do you think? Would I scare her away?”

The puppy wagged his tail and barked.

“I wish I knew if that was good or bad.”

* * * 

Most of the volunteers were at the firehouse, in gear and ready to go, by the time Stella arrived. Only one or two were missing.

“Have you seen Hero?” Kimmie asked, brandishing a pryax. “When we got here, Sylvia noticed right away that he was gone. She went crazy trying to find him. David had to put her in the car.”

“He’s at my place,” Stella explained as she put on her boots. “We’ll talk about it later.”

“Of course. Sorry, Chief.” Kimmie looked a little flustered, worried that she had kept the team from something important. She took her pryax and climbed into the engine to wait.

Stella was putting on her helmet and bunker coat as she climbed in beside Ricky. She was surprised when John scooted in next to her, nudging her to the middle of the large seat as he closed the door behind him.

“Remember how we talked about making runs to Frog Pond and Big Bear Springs?”

“Sure. Is that where we’re headed?”

He nodded, his mouth a tight line in the dimly lit interior of the cab. “Walt Fenway’s place.”

They stared at each other without speaking, both thinking the same thing.

“What?” Ricky demanded as they turned out of the parking lot. “What’s going on? Who is Walt Fenway? That name sounds familiar but—”

“He used to be the police chief,” John explained.

“We questioned him about Adam Presley’s death,” Stella added. “This seems like a big coincidence. Word spreads fast in Sweet Pepper. What was someone afraid he’d told us?”

“Maybe it was enough that he talked to us at all,” John said. “I haven’t told anyone we went out there, have you?”

“No.”

“Are you thinking someone in the fire brigade started this fire?” Ricky asked. “That’s plain crazy.”

“Except that Marty could’ve heard us talking about going out there,” John reminded Stella. “Maybe this thing with Adam Presley affects the Carson interests. Maybe that’s why the old man didn’t want the fire chief and Walt investigating way back when.”

The engine and pumper passed several cars that had pulled off the road to wait. Children waved to them and a few of the volunteers waved back. Ricky pulled the horn. It blared into the evening, scaring a group of chickens that had been roosting next to the road.

Ricky swung the engine onto the old gravel road that led to Walt’s house about ten minutes after they’d left the firehouse.

Long before they’d reached the burning cabin, the heavy smoke told her that the fire was fully involved. Given the size of the cabin, it wouldn’t take much to make it a complete loss. She hoped the fire hadn’t had time to spread to the woods around it and, more important, that Walt had escaped.

She was glad they had a good size group of volunteers. She might need all of them to handle the fire.

There was no point in using the thermal imager—no part of the cabin had escaped the inferno. With no city water in the area, they would have to rely on the water supply in the pumper. She hoped it was enough.

“I know we’re outside,” she yelled to her volunteers over the roar of the fire. “But wear your breathing apparatus. There are chemicals in the treated wood that could be dangerous. Make sure you can see each other while you’re working. No one goes off by themselves.”

As she’d feared, the fire had spread to several of the trees, flames eating up the dry fall leaves, making them look like giant torches against the night sky.

She assigned part of the group to preventing the fire from spreading and the rest to putting out the fire in the cabin. John led the group working in the woods since he knew the area so well. Stella didn’t want anyone falling off the mountain.

When everyone was engaged in doing their jobs, she walked around the perimeter of the area to look for any sign of Walt. If he was still inside the cabin, he was dead. She hoped he’d managed to escape and was somewhere outside the fire zone. She knew he might need help. The faster she found him, the better.

The smoke was so thick and black, she could hardly make out anything within a hundred yards around the cabin. It didn’t help that it was dark and there were no outside lights anywhere close by. They had left the streetlights back on the main road. If Walt was injured, maybe unconscious, it might be impossible to find him.

Just as she considered calling in the sheriff for help in the search, she found Walt. He was sitting on a keg of his hard apple cider, a few hundred yards from the cabin, with a cup in his hands. The orange light from the fire illuminated his face as he watched his home burn. He’d moved in the opposite direction that the wind was blowing so the smoke wasn’t affecting him.

“Walt,” she called his name. “Are you all right? Do you need medical attention?”

He turned his head to look at her. “Of course I’m not all right. I started building that cabin when I was still Sweet Pepper’s police chief so I could retire here. I’m too far from anyplace to get fire insurance I could afford. The only thing I
don’t
need is medical attention, Chief Griffin. Thanks for offering anyway.”

Stella noticed there were two other barrels of cider around him. They were probably the only possessions that had survived the fire. “Do you know what happened?”

“I believe I do. Someone didn’t like me talking to you and John. I went out for supper at the fish house and came back to find this going on. I called 911 myself from the convenience store on the highway.”

“At least you weren’t injured.”

“Yeah. Maybe. Don’t it make you wonder what someone was afraid I might
still
say to you?”

“You mean you didn’t tell us everything?”

“If I had, there would be no need for this. I think this was a friendly warning. Whoever it was didn’t want to kill me or they would’ve done it while I was asleep. Smell that kerosene? The place was soaked in it.”

Stella had smelled it. She’d thought the odor might have come from the chemicals used to treat the lumber in the cabin. “Like Tory’s place. It seems hard to believe that Victor would press his luck so soon. He’s not crazy. This might be a setup not only to warn you, but also to get him thrown back in jail again.”

“We need to speak with Don Rogers when you’re done here and I’ve had some coffee.” He sniffed. “I’ve had a little too much cider sitting around feeling sorry for myself. It takes a lot to sit and watch your home burn down to the ground.”

Stella agreed and went to check on her team while Walt got himself together.

“The pumper’s running low,” Allen yelled at her over the roar of the fire. “I don’t think we have enough water to put out the trees and the house.”

“Let’s give the forest service a call,” John suggested. “We could get them to bring Big Bertha. That’s the plane that drops the water bombs. This is as much their concern as ours. Nobody wants to see a thousand acres or more burn.”

Stella gave him the go-ahead, and John radioed the ranger station farther out in the county. The forest service agreed to send Big Bertha, but it wouldn’t be for an hour or more. That was the best they could do.

She gathered everyone together and told them they had a tough fight ahead of them. “We’ll have to keep going, do what we can until the plane gets here. Use whatever you have to and keep the sparks down. Let’s get out the shovels and the fire extinguishers. Use your boots if you have to.” Stella looked into their tired, soot-blackened faces and wished she had better news before she sent everyone back to work.

The team used the last of the water to douse the flames from the cabin. Petey, Ricky, Kimmie, and David moved in with fire extinguishers and shovels to make sure there were no hidden embers ready to flare up again.

The rest of the team did what they could using fire extinguishers, shovels, and fire-retardant tarps to keep the sparks from lighting anything on the ground even as flames shot from tree to tree above them.

“She’s coming in,” John finally alerted them to the plane’s approach.

“Everyone out of the way,” Stella yelled. “Back up to the road.”

Walt joined them at the gravel road, less than an eighth of a mile from where the fire burned. He’d enlisted Allen and Marty’s help in carrying the remaining kegs of apple cider.

They all huddled together as the pink light of dawn climbed over the tops of the mountains. The large gray plane flew low over the burning trees and dropped thousands of gallons of water across them, some of it splashing back on the weary firefighters, despite the distance.

The water washed down the side of the mountain, dropping like a wave across the trees and the cabin. Some trees cracked under the onslaught and fell to the ground. Hot spots still sizzled in the leaves and peat moss, but there were no visible flames as the plane flew onward.

“They want to know if we need more,” John said. “It’s a round-trip of at least forty minutes.”

“Let’s take a quick look,” Stella said. “We’ll let them know before they get back to their base.”

All of the firefighters trooped back into the woods, brandishing shovels, rakes, and whatever else they could find to search for hot spots. Walt marched around too, looking things over. Stella had misgivings about an untrained worker being in the fire zone. She couldn’t talk him out of it, and she couldn’t argue that he was better trained for emergencies than most of her people.

With the sun starting to peek down on them, the volunteers went over most of the smoking areas and made sure the fire was dead. The long battle showed in their dragging footsteps and exhausted eyes. But they put out every remaining spark.

Stella told John to make the call and tell the forest service they wouldn’t need to send Big Bertha out again. “Thank them for us,” she said, then turned to her team. “I want everyone who came on the pumper to go back to the firehouse. I know you’re tired, but I need you to fill up and clean up. Then go home. You guys have worked hard tonight. Get some rest. Practice is canceled for today.”

It warmed her heart that they didn’t want to leave the scene before the engine team, but she insisted. “I hope to God nothing else happens in the next twenty-four hours, but we have to be prepared. We’ll be leaving soon too. You guys go home.”