Fire Works in the Hamptons : A Willow Tate Novel (9781101547649) (22 page)

P
IET RAN TO HIS TRUCK to get his gear.

I couldn't go, not dragging Elladaire out of bed again and into a fire. I couldn't help them anyway, and I might even be a hindrance. No one suggested I come, either.

I could tell Piet about the old building and the apartment upstairs, though, so I raced after him in my towel. While he grabbed a heavy fire jacket and helmet and gloves from a hook on the back door of his camper, I shouted that Joey Danvers lived over the bowling alley by himself now, and he used crutches. Piet didn't need to know that his wife was in jail. Maureen actually resided in a hospital for the criminally insane after running Joey over in a fit of madness. She backed up and ran him over again. I guess she was really mad.

“The captain will fill me in on the way.” He gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and ran for the fire department's SUV.

“Joey has a dog!” I yelled after Piet. “Be careful.” I didn't mean be careful of the dog, who was one of my mother's rescues, a sweet hound mix. I meant don't run into the burning building. Don't think of me in nothing but a towel in case you lose concentration. Don't get hurt.

I watched the dust from the dirt road billow up as they tore off. Piet waved his hand out the passenger window.

The house felt cold, though I knew it wasn't. I put on warm pajamas and wrapped up in the dog quilt from the living room but still felt chilled. Elladaire's cheeks were warm, but I tucked another blanket around her anyway. I made a pot of tea. Now that Piet was gone, I could use the top of the stove.

Now that Piet was gone, I felt like an old-time whaler's wife, watching my man sail away for years, if he returned at all. How did soldiers' wives do it? How could firemen's wives watch their husbands speed off to infernos? What about cops' families, when the police got shot at every other day in the news?

They sucked it up, I supposed. Stiff upper lip, the show must go on, no pain, no gain. Bullshit. I wasn't that brave or stoical or altruistic. I wanted to call Piet on the phone and tell him to come back. His last burns weren't all healed. This wasn't his town. Let the volunteers do their thing.

Little Red jumped in my lap. Dogs understood when their humans needed comfort. Or that they usually had a cookie with their tea.

I hugged the Pomeranian and regretted telling Piet about Joey's dog or his crutches. The dog was old, and Joey'd thrown a bowling pin at Maureen. They weren't worth dying for.

Little Red growled. I was squeezing too hard and not sharing enough. And I was a rotten person.

Sherry was a sweet dog, and both Joey and his wife had been hit with the psychic nightmares that stormed across the whole village. They all deserved rescuing.

“Just don't outrun your magic,” I whispered into Little Red's soft fur, as if Piet could hear my prayers. “Come back. I lo—” No. I could not go through this every time a siren blew. “Come back. I want to make love with you.”

And what about the Coleoptera? The fireflies needed him, too. I couldn't read maps for the life of me, but I had the feeling their mama's life depended on it. On me and Piet.

“Don't be stupid,” I whispered again.

So Little Red stopped looking for crumbs and charged at the whole bag of cookies. Smart dog. Smart fire meister. He'd be back.

 

He didn't get home until nearly six in the morning and sank onto the sofa, exhausted.

“I'm filthy.”

“So are Mother's dogs, but they sit there, too.”

I pulled his boots off, hung his jacket over a chair, and brought him coffee and what was left of the cookies. “Tell me.”

Yes, the fire was out. No, no one got hurt. Joey and the dog were waiting outside when the fire engines pulled up.

The building was big. Piet had to circle around it twice to put out all the flames, avoiding the volunteer firemen with their ladders and hoses. Then he went inside to extinguish any embers. He let the locals think their efforts worked, which took him longer. The hardwood lanes were destroyed by the water, the apartment upstairs only had smoke damage. Yes, it was definitely arson.

“And?”

He rested his head on the back of the sofa, leaving his coffee untouched. He took a plastic sandwich bag out of his pocket.

Oh, hell.

Five charred carcasses sank to the bottom of the bag. I shook them, to get a better look.

“Yes, they're your guys.”

“But they're flat, as if—”

“Someone stepped on them,” he finished. “I think I got them all, so no one else gets any ideas. That's what took me so long, waiting for the fire squad to leave. I want to send them to the labs at DUE for analysis.”

“But they were with us, out in the wetlands.”

“Not the ones who visited here first, remember? Maybe they stopped off in town before joining the others at the ditches. Hell, maybe they wanted to bowl a frame or two. Mac thinks it's the same guy who torched that cottage.” He yawned. “Could be. You've got to get them out of here.”

He was in no condition right now to go looking in the salt flats. “You go on to bed.”

“Mmm.”

“By yourself.”

“Okay.”

“I decided I can't have sex with you.”

“Hmm?”

“I take things too seriously, that's all, not that I don't want to or don't find you attractive, because I do. But if we make love, I am going to want to do it again, and spend more time with you. Then I'll get used to having you around and maybe fall in love with you.” If I hadn't already. “And then I'll be heartbroken when you leave.”

“Uhm?”

“And I can't fall in love with someone so much in harm's way. I couldn't sleep all night, worrying about you, and you were right here with the entire fire department, and most likely the neighboring villages, too, from all the sirens. I know you can put out fires, but you're brave and kind and noble and you might do something heroic and get yourself killed. I couldn't stand that, especially if we made love because to me that's like sharing part of yourself, so part of myself would die a little, too. Every time you went out on an emergency call. No, every time the phone rang. So we better not make love, okay?”

He snored. I could never love a man who snored.

 

I wished I could sleep while Piet did. Sure he'd been fighting the fire, but I'd been fighting incipient panic all night. I couldn't nap; Edie was awake.

To keep Piet's rest undisturbed, I took Elladaire and Little Red into town. I wanted to hear what people were saying about the fire.

Some thought we had a pyromaniac among us. Some thought Joey'd set the blaze to collect the insurance, rather than buy out his wife's share. Or Maureen had hired a hit man. Janie at the beauty salon, after hugging and kissing Elladaire, whispered: “It's your bugs, isn't it?”

“They're not my—” Why waste my breath? “Someone's been catching them and using them to start the fires. They're not doing it themselves, not on purpose. I'm putting up more posters telling people not to harm them.”

After a few more stops, I wheeled the stroller out to the more residential blocks. Little Red couldn't go so far, or so fast, not with three legs that were short to begin with. I didn't trust him in the stroller with Elladaire, or her with him for that matter, but he was content to ride in the mesh bag behind the seat, on top of the extra diapers and animal crackers.

I asked Mr. Merriwether if he had any numbers for me. He and his wife had four cars, three houses, two cabin cruisers, and heaven knew how many offshore bank accounts, all from picking the right numbers on sweepstakes, lotteries, roulette wheels, and bingo cards. He scratched his head.

“I'm thinking the number you want is 3,549, but that makes no sense. You don't want to play Pick Four or anything like that in the lottery, do you?”

“No.”

“Forget a password? Lock combination?”

“Neither. I'm not sure what I'm looking for, but I'll keep that number in mind. Thanks.”

 

Mrs. Desmond next door cooed over the baby and offered the Pomeranian a biscuit. Little Red ignored her. A dog biscuit when he'd finished off a bag of animal crackers? Sheesh.

The elderly widow set a pot of water on to boil for me, but she wasn't happy with the alphabet noodle letters I wanted her to use.

“You don't think something terrible has happened to your mother, do you?”

“No, she's fine. Someone would have called me, otherwise. It's m-a-m-a anyway. I always call my mother Mom.”

“Gracious, not you-know-who's mother?” She shifted her gaze to Elladaire. “I heard she was recovering nicely.”

“Mary's fine. Janie just told me.”

“But you want to know if this mama person is alive? If the letters float, that's a good sign.”

That putrid smell of the swamp was a bad sign, to my thinking. I wanted to check. “She's not exactly a person.”

“Oh, dear.”

Despite Mrs. Desmond's misgivings, an M and an A popped right up to the top of the saucepan. That was good enough.

 

My next stop was at Margaret's house and her wool shop. I loved it there, all the colors and textures, the big looms, the vats of dyes in the back. Edie stared around, wide-eyed. Margaret handed her a felted wool teddy bear with button eyes.

“Is it okay if she puts it in her mouth?”

Margaret laughed. “Better than the animal cracker she took away from your dog. So you are looking for something again?”

She didn't mean a woven shawl or a hand-dyed hank of wool. Margaret made finding bracelets, with all kinds of wishes and hopes braided into them. If the wish was honest and heartfelt, the bracelet stayed on until the seeker found the one he or she sought.

Margaret cut a lock of my hair—dark roots and all—and one of Elladaire's curls, then she picked colors and strands from her shelves and baskets. But she needed something from the person who was missing. “It doesn't have to be hair.”

That was good, because all I had was one burnt wing, from the box I was going to mail for Piet.

Margaret carefully picked up the wing that looked like a blackened, shriveled leaf and clucked her tongue.

“It was beautiful, once.”

“And will be again,” she assured me.

She crumpled the wing and sprinkled the ashes over the yarns and hairs she'd collected, then started to spin them together on a drop spindle. When she deemed she had a long enough strand, she cut it into even lengths and braided them together, her fingers flying every which way and her lips moving in some silent chant or prayer or incantation. I didn't ask which.

When Margaret put the finished bracelet around my wrist, I simply stared in awe. There was the aurora borealis, right on my arm, gleaming and glowing and changing colors when I turned my arm. “It's gorgeous.”

“And it will stay on until you find . . . ?”

“Mama,” Edie and I both answered. Only the kid held her hands up to be carried, or to have her diaper changed.

“Good luck.”

 

I tracked our local plumber—and scryer—down at the rental house where he was working that morning. He scratched his head when I explained what I wanted, but he filled a sink with water and stared into it.

“Nope, all I see is clogged drains. Looks like someone flushed down something big. I sure hope they call a plumber from up the Island.”

 

My last stop was at the post office. The blind postmaster wasn't sure he could legally send the little box.

“What about with extra postage?”

He shook the box. “Hazardous materials. Illegal. Where did you say you were sending it?”

I read him off the address in Virginia.

He cocked his head toward his guide dog, listening. “Oh, them. That's all right, then.”

I was sure it would be. I didn't know about the rest of us.

CHAPTER 22