Murder on the Horizon (14 page)

Finally, when Gracie shivered with cold, they had walked hand in hand back up to the Gatehouse. Rob had kissed her once, warm, soft, on the mouth, then climbed into the Jeep,

The internal warmth, the tingle of his lips on hers, and the swallowing hole of sadness that threatened to engulf her lasted all the way down Cedar Mill Road across town to her cabin.

*   *   *

WHEN GRACIE AND
her dog walked through the front door of the cabin, the phone on the kitchen counter was ringing.

Gracie walked into the kitchen, set her pack on the chair, and checked the caller ID.
Timber Creek, CA
.

She stood with shoulders hunched and fists clenched on the counter, head bent, listening to her own succinct message asking callers to leave a name and number and she would return the call as soon as possible.

The beep.

The shriek of a whistle pierced the kitchen.

Even though she was prepared, the sound sent an icicle of adrenaline right down to Gracie's feet.

But instead of slapping the machine off, she stepped back, clapping her hands over her ears.

For two minutes, the whistle blasted, interrupted only by short silences when, Gracie assumed, the caller ran out of breath and stopped blowing the whistle to take in another.

Another beep.

The cabin was plunged into silence.

Gracie's hands were shaking. Her heart was pounding a timpani in her chest.

The first call hadn't been a prank, placed at random. A second call had obliterated that possibility. She was being targeted, deliberately, maliciously.

The first call had been a man's voice. The second a whistle.

Could it be someone from the Edwards clan? The little girl Heather had blown a whistle. But whistles were as easy to come
by as five minutes at the local Kmart. There were plenty of men in the Edwards family. But, she recalled, thinking back, the first call had come before she was really involved with them.

Were the calls a warning of some kind? Or was someone simply trying to scare her?

If that was the case, it was working.

Gracie shot around the kitchen, letting down the window blinds, drawing the curtains closed. She stepped into the mudroom, pulled down the window shade on the door, locked the knob and dead bolt. Locked the front doorknob and dead bolt. Jogged into the living room, letting down blinds, closing curtains. Locked the sliding glass door in the living room. Laid a trekking pole inside along the bottom, so it couldn't be opened from the outside. Let down the blinds.

Then, with a second trekking pole clenched in her hand, she turned off the living room light, climbed up the stairs to the loft, and stretched down on her bed, fully clothed, pole on the floor beside her.

She lay in the darkness, listening to the sounds of the night. Every creak of the old cabin was a man stepping up onto the porch outside, every squeak of a tree branch fingernails scraping down glass.

17

G
RACIE'S
eyes flared open in the darkness. She glanced over at the clock on the little table next to the bed. Giant red numbers read 1:17 a.m.

Two hours after lying down, she had finally fallen asleep.

So why am I awake?

She reached out and felt for Minnie. But instead of being curled up into a black Jelly Belly on her bed next to Gracie's, the dog was sitting up at full alert.

Her hand slid off the side of the bed. Fingers closed around the cool metal of the trekking pole.

She listened, straining to hear again whatever it was that might have awakened her.

Nothing.

Her eyes moved across the ceiling to the little west-facing window.

Gracie kicked free of the sheets and hurtled from the bed. She fell to her knees in front of the window and looked outside.

Through the tree branches on the hillside below, an orange light shifted.

Fire!

Fear flared down her body to her feet.

Her worst nightmare—a fire downhill from her cabin.

Lunging to her feet, Gracie grabbed up the phone from the bedside table and dialed 911. She waited for what seemed like an infinity for a dispatcher to answer, rattled off her name and address, and reported what looked like a structure fire down the hill from her.

She depressed the receiver. Let it up. Dialed the number of her neighbor across the street. Counted off the rings. Eight. Nine. She hung up.

With Minnie right behind, she clumped down the stairs to the first floor, stuffed her laptop into her backpack, and slung it over a shoulder. Hauling SAR shirt and pants off the hanger in the mudroom, she grabbed up a fleece jacket from a hook next to the door and ran outside to the truck.

She flung the passenger's door open. “Minnie! Inside!” The dog sailed in. Gracie dumped her armload on the seat, slammed the door, ran around the front of the truck, threw herself into the driver's seat, and screeched back down the highway. As she raced past, she double-checked her neighbor's house for telltale signs of life. The house was dark.

The truck rocketed down the curving street. At the bottom, Gracie stood on the brakes and squealed to a stop.

In the middle of the block, a house was burning, flames illuminating the front window like a single demon's eye.

Oh, God!

The burning house was John and Vivian's.

The Robinsons' blue Subaru was parked in the carport.

The family was still inside.

*   *   *

ONLY WHEN GRACIE
erupted from the truck did she see Acacia, standing alone in the middle of the street, fingertips to her mouth, eyes saucer wide and focused on the flames, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Gracie ran up to the girl. “Acacia! Are you hurt? Are you burned anywhere?”

A shake of the head.

In the distance, sirens and air horns blasted.

“Where's Nana and Oompah?”

Acacia pointed toward the house.

Without another word, Gracie swept the girl, light as a feather, up into her arms. She half ran back to the Ranger and set her on the passenger's seat. Then she dove back behind the wheel, jammed the truck into Reverse, floored the accelerator, screeched backward fifteen feet, slammed it into Drive, and careened around the corner onto the adjoining street, out of the way of fire trucks, away from the smoke, and, if need be, ready for a fast getaway. She slammed to a stop and jammed it into Park, leaving the engine running.

“Acacia, you stay here with Minnie.” Gracie pulled a blanket from behind the seat, shook it out, and tucked it around the girl. “You keep each other warm.”

From a stuff sack in the truck bed, Gracie pulled fire-retardant Nomex pants and jacket, stiff, leather gloves stuffed in the pockets. Standing in the street, oblivious to the curious stares of neighbors drawn from their houses by the commotion, she hauled the oversized pants on over her shorts, taking ten precious seconds to lace up her boots. The Nomex jacket she threw on over her sweatshirt. She clipped her climbing helmet on her head and hauled on the leather gloves as she ran back up the street and rounded the corner onto Arcturus.

Flames inside the bungalow bathed the front yard in hell's red glow. Smoke, thick and gray, billowed up into the night sky. The tops of surrounding pines swayed and flickered with reflected light.

Gracie dropped down into the yard and ran along the side of the house, through the gate in the fence, and around back, dark and untouched by the fire.

Drawing off a glove, she tested the knob of the back door
with a bare hand. Cool, but locked. She pounded on the door with her fist. “John! Vivian!”

No sound. No movement. No sign of life from inside the house. Adrenaline banged a bass drum in Gracie's ears.

Drawing the glove back on, she turned and aimed an elbow at the door window. Hesitated. Introducing more oxygen into the house would feed the flames. But there was no other way. She banged an elbow against the glass.

It didn't break. But it did hurt like hell. “Dammit!”

She stepped back, grabbed on to the porch railing, and kicked the door window with her boot. The glass spiderwebbed. She kicked again. The window shattered. She thrust her hand through the hole, unlocked the door, and burst into the kitchen.

At the far end of the hallway, the living room was a brilliant furnace. Heavy smoke, acrid, suffocating, curled and writhed around the ceiling like a living being.

Gracie dropped to a crouch and yelled, “Vivian! John!”

No response.

Drawing a cotton handkerchief from a jacket pocket, she tied it bandit-style over her mouth and nose. “Vivian! John!”

Then she heard it. Faint. Muffled. “Help!”

“John!” Crunching on broken glass, Gracie dropped onto hands and knees and crawled across the kitchen vinyl, up the hallway, and into the first room on the left.

Vivian was lying in a heap on the floor next to the bed. On his knees beside her, John was trying to lift his unconscious wife into her wheelchair.

Gracie flew across the floor. “Forget the wheelchair!” she yelled. “No time! We have to get her out of here!” She hauled the quilt off the bed and laid it out on the floor next to Vivian. “Straighten her legs!” Together they straightened the woman's body, then, with Gracie pulling and John pushing, rolled her onto the quilt, throwing the corners around her.

The smoke was descending from the ceiling, thicker,
more lethal. Gracie's eyes teared. She could barely see. Throat and lungs burned, feeling as if hands were squeezing them closed. She coughed, barely able to draw in a breath.

John's breath was coming in ragged gasps.

The wail of a fire engine's siren wound down on the street in front of the house.

Grabbing the quilt in her fists, Gracie thrust herself backward, the heavy tread of her boots gripping the floor. Quilt and Nomex pants slid along the slick hardwood. She lost her grip. Fell back. Elbowed her way up off the floor. Regained a handhold. Feet flat, she pushed off again.

John wormed along the floor after, shoving his wife's inert form with his shoulder, pushing off with bare feet from the bedside table, the wall, the doorjamb.

Together, Gracie and John hauled the unconscious woman out of the room, down the short hallway, through the kitchen to the back door.

There they lifted the blanket and carried Vivian out of the door into fresh air. Between hoarse, painful coughs, Gracie gasped in huge inhalations of sweet air as she backed down the steps and out onto the yard.

Laying her end of Vivian's unconscious body carefully on the ground, she stumbled around the corner of the house. Through the open gate, she saw a firefighter running alongside the house toward the back, dressed head to toe in firefighting gear, yellow helmet, an axe over a shoulder. “We need an ambulance!” she croaked, her scorched throat raw. “Notify Flight for Life!”

*   *   *

WITH HAIR STILL
wet from a shower to rid her body of the nauseating smell of smoke, Gracie lay on her bed, one hand resting lightly on the soft fur of Minnie's back. A blacksmith's hammer pounded an anvil inside her head. Her eyes stung. Her throat and lungs burned.

Chaotic memories wheeling in her mind's eye were
keeping sleep at bay. Sirens wailing, air horns blasting, the choking smell of smoke mixed with diesel, tangerine flames crackling against the night sky, emergency lights throbbing blue, red, and white, the chug of idling fire trucks, the shouts of firefighters, muted voices over radios, glass breaking, the whoosh of spraying water.

The single unforgettable mental snapshot of John holding his granddaughter's hand, a bent, frail figure, ashen, watching the paramedics lift his wife's stretcher into the back of the ambulance.

And the final enormous crash of the bungalow's roof caving in, blasting curls of smoke and sparks into the darkness overhead.

Gracie closed her eyes. Opened them again. Looked at the clock. Twenty-four minutes after two. Closed her eyes. Opened them again. Looked at the clock. Two minutes after three.

Three fifteen.

Three forty-one.

Four oh two.

At five thirteen, certain she hadn't slept a single second, she pushed back the covers and dragged on jeans and a sweatshirt. Eyes propped open by the panda mug of Folgers Instant, she drove down to the bottom of the Arcturus hill.

A pink ribbon along the eastern horizon heralded the dawn. One by one, birds hidden among the tree branches began their morning conversations.

Standing on the road uphill from the blackened exoskeleton of cinder block—all that remained of the Robinsons' delightful home—Gracie watched bleary-eyed firefighters roll up huge fire hoses and pick through the still-smoking rubble, her mind dark with thoughts of anger, hatred, and prejudice, and the torching of the house of an elderly black couple.

18

T
HE
knife sliced through the latex glove and deep into Gracie's index finger. Brain barely registering the pain, she stared with detached fascination at the bright red drops of blood oozing through the slit in the blue latex and splatting onto the butcher-block table in the camp kitchen.

“What the hell?” Allen yelled, jumping over and grabbing her finger with a wadded-up paper towel. He led her over to the sink and held her hand under an icy stream of water.

Gracie stood mute, passive, as Allen hauled off the glove, daubed antibiotic cream on the cut, and wrapped the finger tightly with gauze and white medical tape. Then he handed her another glove and three heads of iceberg lettuce with instructions to tear it up with her hands and make the lunch salad. Anything requiring sharp implements he would handle.

Eyebrows merged into a frown, Gracie sat on the three-legged stool, ripping the lettuce apart with nine fingers and dropping the shredded portions into a giant stainless steel bowl. Throwing to the wind her suspicions of Allen as a white supremacist, she said, “Allen, can I ask you something?”

The head cook was arranging mini-boxes of breakfast cereal onto a giant tray. “Fire away, sweet cheeks,” he said.

“Where does racial prejudice come from? I'm not talking the casual, fleeting, surface kind. I'm talking the deep-seated hatred with a capital
H
kind. Where do you think that comes from?”

“A bright, cheerful topic.”

“People aren't born that way,” Gracie pressed. “It's learned. Taught. But how does such deep-seated hatred begin? And how does it get so bad that you're willing to kill for it? “

“Well, I—”

“Way back when, when I lived in Detroit, I used to work in advertising . . .”

“Back in the Stone Age?”

“I worked with all kinds of people. It didn't matter what their politics or religious beliefs were. What mattered was whether they were good at their jobs, if they were competent. Mostly what mattered was whether they were good people or not.”

“Hold that thought,” Allen said. He picked up the tray of cereal and backed through the swinging door leading out to the dining hall. Reappearing seconds later, he walked over to the stove, picked up a ladle, and stirred a giant steaming pot of oatmeal.

Shredding the lettuce again, Gracie picked up her thread of thought. “I've witnessed racial discrimination and hatred directed at others. Studied about religious persecution. Watched it on TV and movies. But, since living in Timber Creek, for the most part, except for the male chauvinist jerk wienies in the Sheriff's Department, I've had the luxury of living my life as if that type of hatred doesn't exist, certainly without it directed at me or affecting me personally.”

“Until now?” Allen asked.

“I'm not sure,” she answered. “People seem to fear and hate entire races, religions, or classes of people they've never even met, or know anything about.” She looked down at the
lettuce lying limply in her hands and began shredding again and dropping the pieces into the bowl. “I don't get that.”

She sighed and looked up.

Allen was standing on the opposite side of the butcher-block table watching her.

“That's all,” she said with a shrug. “I've just never thought about it before.” For some reason, she felt compelled to say, “Thanks.”

“Glad I could be of help, gumdrop,” Allen said and winked.

*   *   *

WITH A JERK,
Gracie awoke from a deep, dreamless sleep and stared up at a flat ceiling of pine wood.
Where the hell am I?
She turned her head and looked at a bare white wall. Three feet up from the floor was the hem of a heavy green and gold curtain. She looked back over her head at a beige metal desk.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Now I remember.” She was in her office, lying on her sleeping bag.

While helping Allen serve breakfast to the church group, Gracie had dropped a full container of newly washed forks with a splendid crash. A minute later, she dropped an entire jar of salsa, the glass smashing into a million pieces, diced tomato and green pepper splattering the prep table, stainless steel serving counter, and Allen's bright white T-shirt, after which he had growled, “Get out of my kitchen. Go catch some
z
's somewhere. Forward the damn phones down here.”

Gracie had stumbled down the back hallway right past where Minnie lay on her bed in the back closet, Allen calling after her, “And don't worry about Minnie.” As she pushed through the back screen door, she might have heard him grumble, “She's safer here with me anyway.”

Still groggy from a three-hour coma-like sleep and a pillow crease in her cheek the depth of the Grand Canyon, Gracie staggered to her feet and padded barefoot up the carpeted hallway to the kitchen.

She filled a camp mug with cold coffee and stuck it in the microwave for a minute.

Brushing her hair back from her face with a wrist, she leaned on the counter and looked out the window above the sink.

A misty shroud hung over the tops of the trees.

Not mist.

Smoke.

In an instant, Gracie was wide-awake.

She ran to the front door, threw it open, stepped outside, and pulled in a deep breath.

The smell of wood smoke filled her nostrils.

Had the Shady Oak Fire raced up Santa Anita Canyon and entered the valley while she was sleeping? Or was it simply a shift in the wind, pushing the smoke up and over the mountain?

She yanked her pager off her waistband and peered at the minuscule screen. No page.

Back inside the Gatehouse, she jogged from room to room, closing and sealing every window by locking it. Her throat and lungs still hurt from the night before. She didn't need to be breathing in any more smoke.

She grabbed up the telephone in her office and punched in the three-digit extension for the kitchen.

It had barely finished its first ring before Allen answered. “What the hell have you been doing?” he hissed. “I've been calling you every other minute. All I got was a busy signal.” It was the first time Gracie had heard the man sounding anything remotely akin to rattled.

“I've been sleeping,” she answered. “I forwarded calls down to the kitchen. As you so ordered. When you called, you were basically calling yourself. That's why you got a busy signal.”

A pause. “Oh. Well, Mr. Jackson from the Baptist church has been here in the dining hall for the last hour, all in a fussbudgetyflibbertigibbetytizzy. He's bordering on panic
about the smoke, making noise about pulling the whole group out.”

“Have you heard anything?” Gracie asked. “Is the smoke from down the hill or is the fire in the valley?”

“That's why I keep the radio tuned to the local station, insipid music as it plays. It's a wind shift. Still no imminent danger to the valley.”

“Okay, good” Gracie said, blowing out the breath she hadn't realized she had been holding. “Give Mr. Jackson a cup of coffee and a piece of cake and tell him I'll be there in a few minutes to talk to him.” She started to hang up, stopped, and said, “Tell him to have everyone close every window in their rooms. Keep out the smoke. It might get worse before it gets better.”

“Already done,” Allen said and disconnected.

Gracie hung up the phone, leaned back in the chair, and blew out another long breath of relief. Just a bad wind day.
Hopefully
, she thought,
this is as bad as it gets.

*   *   *

GRACIE SNAPPED ON
the light in the kitchen of her cabin, opened the refrigerator, and examined its meager contents. “Shopping list,” she said to herself. “Buy everything.” She lifted the last can of Coors Light from the shelf and let the door swing closed. She was popping the can open when a knock on the front door made her jump.

Minnie barked and hopped up from her little bed next to the door.

Gracie set the beer down on the counter and waited.

Another knock.

Minnie barked again.

“Shhh, Minnie,” she whispered as she grabbed up one of her trekking poles leaning in the corner.

The dog sat down and stared intently at the bottom of the door.

Gracie leaned over and glanced out the side window.
Then, replacing the trekking pole and blocking Minnie's way with her leg, she pulled the door open a dozen inches and slid outside.

Baxter stood on the deck, a picture of pain and dejection. Arms hung limply at his sides, a book Gracie had loaned him in each hand. Shoulders hunched. Tears glistened on his cheeks. “'Cacia's house is gone,” he said, voice wavering.

“I know,” Gracie said.

“It . . . it burned down.”

“I know.”

“What . . . what happened?”

“You don't know what happened?”

He shook his head. “No.”

Gracie studied the boy's face, hating the suspicion, the anger. Hating that she didn't really believe him.

“Is 'Cacia okay?” he asked.

“Yes. Well, at least physically she is. Her gran's not doing well. She was hurt. Smoke inhalation. They took her away in an ambulance. Probably flew her in a helicopter to the hospital down the hill.”

“Do you know where 'Cacia is?”

“No, I don't.”

“I feel really bad,” Baxter said, bottom lip quivering.

“So do I.”

“I liked their little house. It was nice and clean inside. You could see things.” He looked down at his feet, then back up at Gracie. “Can I come inside, Gracie?”

“I don't think that's a good idea,” she answered slowly. “In fact, I think it's best if you don't come here anymore.”

Baxter looked as utterly stricken as if she had slapped him across the face. “But . . . why?”

“I don't like the idea of children with guns. I especially don't like the idea of children . . . or anyone for that matter . . . pointing guns at me.”

Fresh tears filled his eyes and slid unheeded down his face. “I'm sorry, Gracie,” he said with a sob. He hugged the
books to his chest. “I'm sorry. I don't want to do it. I hate doing it. But they make me.”

Gracie's steely will was crumbling. “Who makes you, Bax?”

“My dad. My grandpop. My uncle Win.” He hung his head. “I'm so sorry, Gracie. Don't . . . make me go away. Please don't make me go away.” He hiccoughed in a breath. “You're my only friend.”

“What about your gran?”

“She's okay, but she . . . hugs me too much. And worries all the time. She's always crying. She's not like you.”

Gracie looked at him several more seconds, then said in a quiet voice, “Okay, Bax.” She crouched down and put her arms around him. “You can stay. I'm still your friend.” He clung to her like a limpet, sobbing as if he was carrying the world's cares and sorrows on his thin shoulders, which, Gracie realized, in many ways he was.