The Art of Death (29 page)
Authors: Margarite St. John
Tantrum
Thursday, July 11, 2013
After pulling his friend further down the lawn toward the road, Dave returned to the porch and looked into the foyer. “I’m going up to find Madeleine before the whole place burns down,” he shouted.
“Don’t,” Steve said, doubting that Dave could even hear him now. “If she sees you, she might shoot you. Let her come down by herself.”
But Madeleine didn’t appear. After hesitating, Dave opened the screen door and battled his way through the smoky foyer. Chunks of plaster and flaming insulation were falling into the hallway leading to the kitchen. He turned to his right and shone a flashlight into the parlor. There he saw Chester. Well, it couldn’t be Chester, so what was it? When he touched the thing, the head turned, the eyes blinked, a hand waved. He leapt back in shock, as if a corpse in a casket had suddenly sat up and winked. Realizing what Steve meant when he said this Chester didn’t need to be rescued, he picked up the creepy thing and threw it out to the lawn.
He returned to the foyer and shone his flashlight up the stairs. He called Madeleine’s name. No answer. As he ran to the kitchen, he removed his shirt and doused it under a faucet before draping it like a hood to cover his mouth and nose. He took the stairs to the second floor two at a time.
The smoke was too thick, the flames too wild to turn right into Chester’s bedroom, where Madeleine, the bulky figure in the window, might still be. Sweating and choking, his makeshift hood beginning to steam, he headed toward the bedroom at the back of the house.
He was confused by the image confronting him. When he tried to grasp it, his fingers slammed into glass. His flashlight barely penetrated the smoke. What had he touched? A window? No, a mirror. He whirled around to see a silhouette in the window, the same shape he’d seen in Chester’s window before the explosion. “Madeleine, is that you?”
“Get out,” she growled. “Nothing worked.”
“What?”
“All is lost.”
Two giant steps and he grasped her arm. “Follow me but do it fast. It’s already an oven in here. We won’t be able to get back down if we don’t move now.”
She jerked her arm away. “Get out. Leave me alone. I can’t go on.”
“Take off that wig. It’ll be a torch. Get down on the floor and we’ll crawl out. I’ll keep my flashlight on.” He groped for her hand.
But, like a child having a tantrum, she suddenly went limp and sat down, an unmovable lump. In a little girl’s singsong voice, she said, “I hate you, Dr. Fell. The reason why I cannot tell.”
And then, to Dave’s horror, a flaming, spitting, sizzling chunk of the ceiling fell between them and the window, setting the curtains on fire and then Madeleine’s wig, which lit up like a torch. As he crawled toward her, the sound of her screams was drowned by the groaning and creaking of the floor beneath him. He scrabbled to back away from the cave-in, but events moved too fast. He was still conscious when he landed one floor below, in the hallway near the kitchen.
As the shock of his fall wore away, the pain of his scorched lungs, the struggle for oxygen, took over. Instinct and adrenaline -- the overwhelming desire to live -- pushed him to move. Feeling for the baseboards, squirming through the flaming chunks of debris as if they were mines, choking on smoke, he began crawling down the hall toward the foyer. Just as he reached it, he ran out of breath and collapsed. Past the screen door, he thought he saw lights -- small round ones, perhaps flashlights in human hands -- bobbing in the darkness, guiding him to safety. But he was done. Those lights were the last thing he saw before he lost consciousness.
Fires of Hell
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Seconds later Dave was jolted back to life. He felt himself being pulled out to the porch and then to the lawn. His shirt was torn off his head and a wet cloth applied to his face.
Dave didn’t know it, but his rescuers were the Massarts. Jeremy and Ashley had seen and smelled the smoke drifting over the pine grove and heard the otherworldly sounds of an old wooden structure burning out of control.
“At first we thought the barn was on fire and called 911,” Ashley said to Steve. “When we realized it was the house, we ran over with water and a first-aid kit, thinking Chester might be upstairs and we could save him. But it was like the fires of hell. When you told us Dave and Madeleine were inside . . . well, it made me sick to my stomach. And then Jeremy ran right in.”
“Madeleine’s still in there,” Dave muttered.
Jeremy dropped to the ground beside Dave. “If you hadn’t been in the foyer, I’d never have found you. There’s no way I can get back in there to find Madeleine. The fire’s way too hot, totally out of control. Look over there. Even the gates of the mausoleum are glowing. What should I do?”
“Nothing you can do,” Dave muttered.
“Where did you see her in there?” Steve asked, crawling on his hands and knees toward his wounded friend.
“In a bedroom on the second floor,” Dave answered, gasping for breath. “I tried to help her get out but she wouldn’t move. When the ceiling fell in, her hair caught fire.”
Ashley placed her hand on Dave’s forehead. “I think he’s going into shock,” she whispered to her husband.
“You’re going to be all right, detective,” Jeremy said. “Hang on. I hear sirens.”
And then the farmstead was flooded with powerful equipment whose cacophony competed with the noise of the fire. Sheriff’s police, including a K-9 patrol, firemen and EMTs swarmed over the grounds.
Steve refused to be taken to the emergency room. After seeing Dave given oxygen and loaded into an ambulance, he called Sheila to tell her what hospital her husband was being taken to. Still too weak to drive himself home, he lingered to see if Madeleine could be found or any part of the house saved.
He still wasn’t fully recovered when Lexie arrived. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said, allowing himself to be covered with kisses and talked to like a baby.
“You shouldn’t either. One of the guys told me you’ve been tasered but won’t get in an ambulance. Have it your way. But at least let this EMT have a look at you. Maybe he can do something about the scratches on your face.”
Steve surrendered. He had no fight left in him.
The Wrights and the Massarts sat on the lawn until the last ember was doused, hoping something could be saved.
The Aftermath
The Authorities
***
The remains in the second floor bedroom at the Appledorn farmhouse were identified as those of Madeleine Appledorn Belden Wright Harrod.
***
The Fort Wayne and Indianapolis police departments discovered that at ApEx someone had made three plastic guns using Madeleine’s computer and the company’s 3-D printer. Dieter admitted to helping Madeleine make the guns. One gun was believed to have been used to kill Kimberly Swartz; the other, to kill Dr. Anthony Beltrami. The third one was not located.
The police also discovered that Madeleine Harrod had purchased a number of pre-paid mobile phones. Based on triangulation of cell tower signals and the known whereabouts of Madeleine Harrod at the time, one was used to lure Kimberly Swartz to the cemetery and the other to lure Dr. Beltrami into the alley behind Babette Fouré’s art gallery.
In the case of Renzo’s death following his fall from a fourth floor balcony, the Coroner concluded that foul play could not be ruled out.
***
The ashes in the unmarked urn in the Appledorn mausoleum were identified as Dan Belden’s but the gun used to kill him was not found.
***
Captain Schmoll reminded Dave Powers every day for a month after the fire that he’d been right: Find Dan Belden’s body and Captain Ahab, the Appledorns' hit man, and the cases would be solved. The fact that Captain Ahab wasn’t real but a figment of Madeleine’s imagination and a disguise she used to lure Kimberly Swartz to her death -- well, that was a detail nobody could have guessed.
The Opportunists
***
Following national publicity about the strange life of the post-Impressionist artist Madeleine Harrod, Babette Fouré immediately doubled and then tripled the price of Madeleine’s paintings but sold Nicole, Girl at the Dunes, to Walter and Debra Richardson at a steep discount.
***
When Brie Dumas heard about the death of her friend from Passages Malibu, she began writing a screenplay featuring herself as Madeleine. The cherub on her silver Tiffany charm bracelet became her favorite conversation starter.
***
Bettina Lazare solicited a proposal from a famous author of true-crime stories to write a book about Madeleine Harrod, tentatively titled
The Death Artist
. It would include some of the artist’s paintings and facial reconstructions as well as a photo of her father’s mannequin, luridly posed against the backdrop of a Victorian house fire.
The Survivors
***
Dave Powers was treated for burns and smoke inhalation. His recovery was quick -- too quick for his wife’s comfort, who thought he should take it slowly, but too slow for Captain Schmoll, who accused Dave of malingering.
***
It didn’t take a month for the compromising circumstances of Renzo’s death to become known in Ventimiglia, Renzo’s hometown. Given his reputation as a Lothario, many ribald jokes were told about how he met his fate on the balcony at the hands of Madeleine Harrod.
Secure in her new-found wealth, Renzo’s wife ignored the jokes. She promptly moved her family to Venice and opened a souvenir shop featuring overpriced carnival masks. Six months later, she married a handsome gondolier with a roving eye.
***
Cleosia Swartz, the Beldens, and the Whiteheads consulted attorneys about filing wrongful death claims against Madeleine Harrod’s estate.
***
Appledorn Exploratorium was liquidated. Only a few employees found new jobs. Dieter was offered a pretty good one in California, but he declined because it was too far away. Travel made him nervous, as did pretty girls, earthquakes, wildfires, and outdoor sports. Fortunately, his parents welcomed him back.
***
Nettie Steenhardt was unapologetic about keeping Chester Appledorn’s death a secret. He hadn’t been murdered. She’d found him after a fatal stroke. Once nature had cleaned the body of flesh, Madeleine used the skull to construct the mannequin’s head. Madeleine wanted the death to be kept a secret, and she, Nettie Steenhardt, knew how to keep a secret.
Nettie found a part-time job as a forklift driver in a warehouse. The money wasn’t great but it paid for cigarillos, beer, and Elderhostel trips to national parks, where she biked and hiked like a thirty-year-old. She was popular with her fellow tourists because even the wild animals were afraid of her.
***
Steve Wright paid off his Dupont Road investors and creditors and began a new project in South Carolina.
***
Everyone else got on with their lives.
Margarite St. John is the pen name of Margaret Yoder and Johnine Brown, two sisters who were born in Iowa, now live in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and vacation in Florida.
Margaret, the Storyteller, is a fan of true-crime stories and forensics programs. Formerly a school teacher with a B.A. in Education from Indiana Purdue at Fort Wayne (IPFW), she enjoys crossword puzzles, Bible study, visits with her three children, and travel with her husband, a local surgeon.
Johnine, the Scribe, is a retired attorney, college professor, and editor with a Ph.D. and Master's in English Language and Literature, a J.D. from the University of Chicago, and a Bachelor's in Psychology. She has two children, five grandchildren, and a poodle/bichon mix named Louie.
We both love beautiful shoes and dogs -- even dogs who eat shoes, like Johnine's Louie, and dogs who don't, like Margaret's sheltie Chip. And we like to travel, especially for settings that later appear in our books.
Readers seem surprised by our dark, irreverent sense of humor. Sometimes they find themselves strangely attracted to our lovable rogues -- though not, of course, to our very twisted villains. Fortunately for us, our readers look forward to the shocking but credible endings.
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