Presumed Guilty & Keeper of the Bride (12 page)

Too visible. Where was the light coming from?

With new apprehension she turned and stared up at the basement window. Reflected in the shattered glass was a flickering dance of orange light. Firelight. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “Chase…”

He turned and stared.

Even as they watched, the glow in the window shards leaped to a new and horrifying brilliance.

“We have to get out of here!” she cried.

He shoved against the hatch. “I can’t get it open!”

“Here, let me help you!”

They both pushed up against the wood, pounded it with their bare fists. Already, smoke was swirling in through the broken window. Overhead, through the cracks in the floorboards, they could see the terrible glow of flames consuming the house above. Most of the heat was funneled up, toward the roof, but soon the timbers would give way. They would be trapped beneath falling debris.

The hatch was immovable.

Chase snatched up the fire extinguisher and began to pound it against the wood. “I’ll keep trying to break through!” he yelled. “You get to the window—yell for help!”

Miranda scrambled over to the window. Smoke was billowing in, a thick, suffocating black cloud. She could barely reach the opening. She glanced around in panic for a crate, a chair, something to stand on. Nothing was in sight.

She screamed louder than she had ever screamed in her life.

Even then, she knew help wouldn’t reach them in time. The basement window faced the back of the house, toward the garden. She was too far below the opening for her voice to carry any distance. She glanced up, at the floor beams. Already, the evil glow of heat shone through. She could hear the groan of the wood as it sagged. How long before those beams gave way? How long before she and Chase collapsed under that smothering blackness of smoke? The air had grown unbearably close.

It’s already an oven,
she thought.
And it will only get hotter….

Eight

C
hase pounded desperately at the hatch. A board splintered, but the barrier held. “Someone’s nailed it shut!” he yelled. “Keep calling for help!”

She screamed, again and again, until her voice cracked, until she had almost no voice left.

She heard, in the distance, the sound of a dog barking, and Mr. Lanzo’s far-off shouts. She tried to shout back. All she could manage was a pitifully weak cry. There was no answering call. Had she imagined the voice? Or couldn’t he hear her?

Even if he did, would he track her screams to this small opening facing the garden? Safety lay so close, yet was so unreachable. If she stood on tiptoe she could actually poke her hand through the shards of broken glass, could feel the soil beneath her fingertips. Just inches away would be her beloved delphiniums, her newly planted violas….

An image of her garden, of rich, moist earth and a freshly tilled flower bed suddenly flashed into her mind. Hadn’t she just expanded that bed? Hadn’t she used a pickax to break up the sod? The pickax—where did she leave it? She remembered laying it against the side of the house—

Near the cellar window.

With her bare fist she broke away the last shards of glass. Something warm ran down her arm. Blood, she thought with a strange sense of detachment. But no pain—she was too panicked to feel anything but the desperate need to escape the flames. She reached through the open window and ran her fingers along the outside wall. Nothing on the right, just the rough clapboard shingles above a granite foundation. She shifted to the left side of the window, swept her hand along the outside frame and touched warm metal. The pickax head!

She gripped it so tightly her fingers cramped. Painfully she managed to slide the heavy iron head sideways, in front of the window. With a little wriggling she maneuvered first the sharp point, then the blade end, through the window opening.

The pick landed with a hard clang on the concrete floor.

Coughing and gasping, she dragged the tool into the blinding smoke. Already, flames were engulfing the floorboards above her head. “Chase!” she cried. “Where are you?”

“I’m here!”

She started toward the sound of Chase’s voice but halfway across she lost her bearings. The whole room seemed to be moving around her like some crazy circus ride.
I can’t faint now,
she thought.
If I do, I’ll never wake up.
Already her knees were giving way. How she needed a breath of fresh air, just one! She sank to the floor. The concrete felt blessedly damp and cool against her face.

“Miranda!”

The sound of Chase’s voice seemed to jump-start some last internal surge of strength. She struggled back to her knees. “I can’t—can’t see you….”

“I’ll find you! Keep talking!”

“No, we’ll both get lost! Stay by the hatch!” She began to crawl, moving in the direction of his voice, dragging the pickax behind her. The sound of the fire above them had grown to a roar. Fallen embers lay scattered and glowing on the concrete. Blinded by smoke, she put her hand on one and the pain that seared her skin brought a sob to her throat.

“I’m coming for you!” Chase shouted.

His voice seemed far away, as though he were calling from some distant room. She realized she was fading, and that the room had grown dark, and that this inferno was where she would die. She clawed her way forward, dragging herself and the pickax a few more precious inches.

“Miranda!” His voice seemed even more distant now, another world, another universe. And that seemed most terrible of all—that she would die without the comfort of his touch.

She reached out to drag herself one last time—

And found his hand. Instantly his fingers closed around her wrist and he hauled her close. His touch was like some wondrous restorative. She found the strength to rise once again to her knees.

“Here,” she said with a cough, dragging the pickax toward him. “Will this work?”

“It has to!” He staggered to his feet. “Stay low,” he commanded. “Keep your head down!”

She heard him grunt as he swung the pickax, heard the thunk of the metal slamming into the wood. Another swing, another blow. Splinters flew, raining into her hair. He was coughing, weaving. Against the backlight of flames she could see him struggle to stay on his feet.

He swung again.

The hatch gave way. A blast of cool air flew in through the jagged opening. The inrush of fresh oxygen was like throwing fuel on the fire. Everywhere, timbers seemed to explode into flame. Miranda dropped to the ground, her face buried in her arms. An ember fell hissing onto her head. She brushed it away, shuddering at the smell of her own burning hair.

Chase gasped in one last breath of air, then, grunting from the effort, he heaved the pickax against the wood.

The hatch flew apart.

Miranda felt herself yanked upward, through some long, dark tunnel. She could see no light at the other end, could see no end at all. There was just that black passage, the dizzying sense of motion, the clawlike grasp of fingers against her flesh.

Then, suddenly, there was the grass.

And there was Chase, cradling her in his arms, stroking her face, her hair.

She took in a breath. The rush of air into her lungs was almost painful. She coughed, drew in more air, more! She felt drunk on its sweetness.

The night was a whirlwind of noise, sirens, shouting voices and the crackle of fire. She gazed up in horror at the flames; they seemed to fill the heavens.

“Oh, God,” she whispered. “My house…”

“We made it out,” said Chase. “That’s all that matters. We’re alive.”

She focused on his face. It was a mask of soot, lit by the hellish glow of the fire. They stared at each other, a look of shared wonder that they were both still breathing.

“Miranda,” he murmured. He bent and pressed his lips to her forehead, her eyelids, her mouth. He tasted of smoke and sweat and desperation. All at once, they were both shaking and clutching each other in wild relief.

“Mo! Honey! You all right?”

Mr. Lanzo, dressed in his pajamas, scuttled toward them across the lawn. “I was afraid you were inside! Kept tellin’ those idiot firemen I heard you screaming!”

“We’re okay,” Chase said. He took Miranda’s face in his hands and kissed her. “We’re fine.”

Somewhere, a window shattered in the heat of the flames.

“Hey! You people move back!” a fireman yelled. “Everyone get back!”

Chase pulled Miranda to her feet. Together they retreated across Mr. Lanzo’s lawn and onto the street. They watched as the fire hoses unleashed a torrent of spray. Water hissed onto the flames.

“Aw, honey,” said Mr. Lanzo sadly. “It’s too late. She’s gone.”

Even as he said it, the roof collapsed. Miranda watched in despair as a sheet of flame shot up, turning the night sky into a blazing dawn.
It’s all gone,
she thought.
Everything I owned. I’ve lost it all.

She wanted to scream out her fury, her anguish, but the violence of those flames held her in a trance. She could only watch as a strange numbness took hold.

“Ms. Wood?”

Slowly she turned.

Lorne Tibbetts was standing beside her. “What happened here?” he asked.

“What the hell do you
think
happened?” Chase shot back. “Someone torched her house. While we were in it.”

Lorne looked at Miranda, who stared back at him with dazed eyes. He looked at the burning house, which had already collapsed into little more than a heap of firewood.

“You’d better come with me,” he said. “I’ll need a statement. From both of you.”

“Now do you believe it?” asked Chase. “Someone’s trying to kill her.”

Lorne Tibbetts’s gaze, in the best poker player tradition, revealed absolutely nothing. He began to doodle in the margin of his notepad. Nothing artistic there, not even a few healthy free-form loops. These were tight little triangles linked together like crystals. The geometric creation of a geometric mind. He clicked his pen a few times, then he turned and yelled, “Ellis?”

Ellis poked his head in the door. “Yo, Lorne.”

“You finished with Ms. Wood?”

“Got it all down.”

“Okay.” Lorne rose to his feet and started out of the room.

“Wait,” said Chase. “What happens now?”

“I talk to her. Ellis talks to you.”

“You mean I have to tell it all over again?”

“It’s the way we do things around here. Independent questioning. Routine police procedure.” He tucked his shirt into his trousers, smoothed back his hair and walked out the door.

Ellis Snipe sat in Lorne’s vacated seat and grinned at Chase. “Hey, Mr. T. How ya doing?”

Chase looked at that moronic, gap-toothed smile and wondered,
Was Mayberry ever this bad?

“Why don’t we start at the beginning,” said Ellis.

“Which beginning?” Chase shot back.

Ellis looked confused. “Uh, you choose.”

Chase sighed. He glanced at the door, wondering how Miranda was holding up. No matter what Dr. Steiner had said, a hospital bed was where she belonged. But the old quack had simply dressed her glass cuts, examined her lungs and declared hospitalization unnecessary. What Dr. Steiner had neglected to consider was her emotional state. She’d lost her house, her possessions; she was left with no sense of order to her life. What she needed was a safe place, a cocoon where no one could hurt her….

“Uh, Mr. Tremain? You think you could maybe try and cooperate?”

Chase looked at Ellis. What was the point of fighting? he thought wearily. Ellis Snipe looked like the kind of robot who’d follow orders to the letter. If he had to, he’d sit there all night, waiting for Chase to talk.

For the second time that night Chase told the story. He took it back to the cottage, the evidence of a break-in, the secret files. This time he left out the information about Lorne Tibbetts and his fling with the librarian. Some things, he thought, should remain private.

Ellis wrote it all down in a weird, spidery script that couldn’t possibly be produced by a normal personality.

When Chase was finished, Ellis asked one and only one question. “Was there anything in those secret files about me?”

“Not a thing,” said Chase.

Ellis looked disappointed.

After Ellis had left, Chase sat alone at the table, wondering what came next. A third cop, another go-around with the story? The whole affair had taken on a surreal quality, like some never-ending nightmare. For ten minutes he waited for something to happen. Then, fed up with being ignored, he shoved his chair back and went in search of Miranda.

He found her in the same interrogation room where he’d first laid eyes on her over a week before. She was sitting alone. A smudge of soot blackened her cheek, and her hair was dusted with ash.

She gazed at him with a look of utter exhaustion. “The cop station from hell,” she murmured.

He smiled. Then he saw her hand. It was encased in bandages. “Is it as serious as it looks?”

“The doctor just believes in doing a thorough job.” She looked in wonder at the free-form sculpture of surgical gauze and tape. “I was afraid he’d amputate.”

“A hand as nice as yours? I wouldn’t have let him.”

She tried to return the smile, but couldn’t quite manage it.

“You have to leave the island,” he said.

“I can’t. The terms of my bail—”

“To hell with the bail terms! You can’t wait around for the next accident, the next fire.”

“I can’t leave the county.”

“This time you were lucky. Next time—”

“What am I
supposed
to do?” She looked at him in sudden anger. “Run and hide?”

“Yes.”

“From
what?
I don’t even know who’s trying to kill me!” Her cry echoed in the stark room. At once she flushed, as though shamed by the sound of her own hysteria.

“If I leave, I’ll never know what I’m running from,” she said quietly. “Or if I’m still being hunted. What kind of life is that, Chase? Never knowing if I’m safe. Always waking up at night, listening for footsteps. Wondering if that creak on the stairs is someone coming for me….” She shuddered and stared down at the table.

Lord,
he thought.
How did I ever get involved with this woman? She’s not my problem. I’m not her white knight. I should get up and walk right out of this room. Who would blame me?

And then a voice inside him said,
I would.

He pulled out a chair and sat across from her. She didn’t look up. She just kept staring at the ugly tabletop.

“If you won’t leave, then what are you going to do?”

She shrugged. It hurt him to see the hopelessness in that gesture. “Does it matter?”

“It matters to me.”

“Why?” The look she gave him made him want to say things he knew he’d regret. That he cared whether she lived or died. He cared what happened to her. He cared too much.

He said, with unassailable logic, “Because what happened tonight is somehow tied in with Richard. The break-in at Rose Hill. The fire. And you.”

She gave a dispirited laugh. “Yes, somewhere in all this mess, I seem to fit in. And I haven’t the faintest idea why.”

The door opened. Ellis said, “There you are, Mr. T. Lorne says you both can go. Says he can’t think of any more questions.”

I hope I never see this place again,
thought Chase as they followed Ellis down the hall, into the front office. Lorne was sitting at one of the desks, talking on the phone. He glanced up as Chase and Miranda walked past, and motioned to them to wait.

“Oh, hell.” Chase sighed. “He just thought of another question.”

Lorne hung up and said to Ellis, “Bring the car around. We got us another call.”

“Man, oh, man,” Ellis whined as he headed out to the garage. “This is one heck of a Thursday night.”

Lorne looked at Miranda. “You got a place to stay?”

“I’ll drive her to the hotel,” said Chase.

“I was thinking along the lines of someplace safer,” Lorne said. “A friend’s house, maybe?”

“There’s always Mr. Lanzo,” said Miranda.