by Ninie Hammon
A fire. The red-orange smears on the left side of the canvas — those were flames! No wonder Bailey was horrified — her sister burned alive!
“A fire where?” T.J. asked.
“I couldn’t tell where she was. Could have been anywhere. The fire could have started … who knows? A chimney caught the wall or candles caught the curtains, or something electric sparked … I don’t know all the things that can start a fire. She was lying face down on a cold floor and she couldn’t move.”
“Tied up?” Brice heard the warble in his own voice.
“Tangled up. She was wearing a dress like a ball gown or a prom dress and there was all this fabric, a big heavy skirt, and it was caught around her and she couldn’t move.”
The scraps of a smile touched her lips.
“María loved to play dress-up, loved the princess-in-a-castle look. I’m not surprised she’d have a dress like …”
Her words trailed off as the soft memories became images with razor edges.
“And fire was flowing across the floor toward her.”
“Flowing — like a liquid?” Dobbs asked. “Alcohol? Like liquor of some kind?”
“If it was liquid, it wasn’t gasoline — not flashing or exploding. Just … she was lying there, watching it flow toward her face.”
Bailey’s whole body shuddered. Brice gave T.J. and Dobbs a should-we-back-off look.
“Maybe we ought to talk about all this a little later, after—”
“No, now. While it’s fresh in my mind.”
Like it wouldn’t remain fresh in her mind for the rest of her life.
“She … she burned to death.” Another shudder, smaller. But more intense. “Her clothing — the skirt caught fire, her legs started to … to burn. And then her hair.”
She stifled a sob. “She was blind before she died.”
That was a conversation stopper. The silence in the room was so heavy it felt hard to breathe.
“Was there anything about you … or Bethany?” Dobbs asked.
“She wasn’t thinking about us. If she had been, I’d have recognized who …” Bailey stopped and turned to Dobbs. “Get out your phone. Google the Boston Ballet website.”
While he poked at buttons, Bailey said that María had pictured tickets.
“I didn’t see them clearly because she didn’t see them clearly. Nothing she saw was clear, but I can picture them now. They were Boston Ballet tickets.” She paused. “Which explains the dress, why she’d be wearing something that formal. That’s how people in Boston dress for the ballet.”
“Got the website. What do you want to know?”
“When is opening night for The Nutcracker?”
“Wednesday, December second, eight o’clock.”
Bailey’s voice was barely a whisper. “She has tickets for opening night.”
“Just ‘cause she’s got the dress on don’t mean that fire is Wednesday night. She coulda—”
“Could have been buying the dress or having it altered — a fire in the dress store. Or just trying it on in her apartment. All I know is she didn’t get to use those tickets.”
Today was Sunday. Bailey’s little sister would be dead, would burn to death sometime in the next four days.
Bailey turned and looked into Brice’s eyes, as if she’d read his mind. And maybe she had.
“Not if we stop it from happening,” she said.
Chapter Eleven
Funny how sometimes you didn’t even know what you were thinking until you heard the words come out your mouth. That blew through Bailey’s mind as she told Brice, T.J. and Dobbs that she was going to Boston.
“I have to go. I have to keep María from going to the ballet — from putting on the dress at all, anywhere, anytime! I have to get Bethany and María and bring them back to Shadow Rock where they’ll be safe.”
The words had the ring of absolute truth to them.
“That federal marshal told you to stay put,” T.J. said.
“And you think I’m going to call him up and tell him where I’m going and what I’m doing?”
“Bailey, you can’t—”
“Who says I can’t? The Federal Marshal’s Service that has jerked me around for more than two years? Or a particular federal marshal, singular? Only one thing in the world matters to my good friend Bernie Jordan — getting a conviction and putting Mikhailov away forever. He doesn’t give a rip about María. Or Bethany — or me either, for that matter, except where I serve his purposes.”
It did occur to her for a moment to consider that the Jessie Cunningham who’d hidden from a monster under a dumpster wouldn’t ever have considered crossing a federal marshal.
“Bailey, be reasonable.” Brice’s voice was infinitely reasonable. “You’re supposed to be dead. You’ve been hiding for two years! It’s not safe for you to show your face in Boston until they arrest Mikhailov, get him off the street.” His words didn’t move her half a centimeter off center.
“If I don’t do it, who will? Who else could convince María to run? Brice, we’ve only got four days!”
She realized she was almost shouting, so she dialed it back.
“Look, right now is the only safe time for me to go. Mr. Sergei Wassily Mikhailov has no idea ‘Bailey Donahue’ exists. He won’t have a clue his ticket’s about to be punched until they arrest him, charge him with murdering Aaron. That’s when he’s going to start scrambling around, trying to figure out how they could make a charge like that stick since he eliminated all the witnesses.”
“When they charge him, he’ll know ‘xactly who he’s looking for,” T.J. said. “They’ll charge him with murdering Aaron Cunningham and some ‘unknown person.’ Maybe they’ve figured out who she is by now, maybe not. But either way, they ain’t gonna charge him with murdering Mr. and Mrs. Aaron Cunningham — which is who Mikhailov thought he was shooting. He’ll figure out the bait-and-switch then.”
“And where will he go looking for said ‘Mrs. Aaron Cunningham’?” For a heartbeat, no more, she ached for that to be who she was, wanted it so bad her heart might break with longing. Then she moved on. “Well, duh, her only living relative is her daughter. Who is in the care of her sister because nobody’s seen Mrs. Cunningham since the day of the car wreck.” Bailey felt a renewed surge of horror. “So if María manages to survive the fire, Mikhailov will kill her! She has to get out of Boston and hide!”
“You need to talk to Marshal Jordan,” Brice said. “You know he’s already started the flywheel turning. He has some plan in mind to keep María and Bethany safe.”
“Safe from what? You’re a beat behind here, Brice. The worst danger my sister’s facing doesn’t have anything to do with the Russian mafia. She’s going to die in a fire before eight o’clock Wednesday night. How am I supposed to make Jordan understand that?”
Brice was losing his patience. It was fear, concern, but it was coming out as exasperation.
“You’re just going to — what, drive to Boston, walk up to your sister’s house, and when she answers the doorbell tell her you’re not dead, but she soon will be if she doesn’t drop her life and run off with you somewhere she’s never been?”
“You got a better idea? That part’s going to happen anyway, the telling her that the sister she thought died is very much alive.”
“It doesn’t have to be dumped on her like a bucket of ice water.”
“What’s a better way?”
“Just about anything.”
T.J. stepped in between them then.
“Every time Bailey’s painted a portrait, it was real. Real past or real future, or real right now — but real, a real Bailey couldn’t possibly have known about but somehow it come out through her brushes. We all in agreement about that part?”
She and Dobbs nodded, Brice didn’t, but he didn’t argue the point, either.
“And every one of them painting’s been different from every other one.” He pointedly looked at Brice when he continued. “Like that one she done of somethin’ that
happened eighteen years ago. Or finding them girls in that closet.” He turned back to the portrait on the easel. “This one’s unique, too, cause this person ain’t anywhere near here, ain’t in West Virginia and maybe never has been.” He looked at Bailey. “The connection is you. And it ain’t no ‘normal’ connection if there is such a thing. All them sparks and static, everything a blur.”
He paused for a beat and the argumentativeness left his voice. Now, he was merely pointing out the obvious. “Just ‘cause we happen to know the person in the painting don’t change nothing.” He turned back toward the horror on the canvas that Bailey couldn’t look at or her knees would fall out from under her. “This is the same’s all the other paintings. We got to look at it like that. This girl is gonna die unless we do something to stop it.”
Bailey let out a little squeak of a cry, didn’t mean to, it just popped out. María had less than a week to live, and Bailey was the only person in the world who could save her.
They were still talking about it ten minutes later when Dobbs came back into the kitchen where the rest of them sat nursing cups of coffee none of them wanted. Bailey knew what she had to do, of course, but the specifics of how to do it … she hadn’t screwed herself up to planning that part.
“I chartered you a plane, a Cessna Citation CJ2. It’ll pick you up at Triple C Airport tomorrow whenever you set it up. Takes about two, two-and-a-half hours to get to Boston.”
Bailey was so thunderstruck — what was the British word Dobbs always used? Gobsmacked. Yeah, so gobsmacked she couldn’t speak.
T.J. didn’t appear to be nearly as surprised as she was. Either he and Dobbs had talked it over beforehand, or he just knew his friend so well there wasn’t much Dobbs could do that would surprise him.
“It’s easier that way,” T.J. said. “I figure Brice here will want to be packing and that’s a hassle when you fly commercial.”
Yeah, they’d talked it over.
“Do I get a vote here?” She tried for flip and chipper and merely sounded like a wounded bird. She had to swallow a couple of times before she could speak. “I … are all of you …?”
“T.J. and I are going with you,” Brice said, trying to make it sound like it was no big deal when any fool knew it was a huge deal. “Dobbs will stay here dog-sitting. Do you know where your sister lives?”
“You could ask Marshal Jordan,” T.J. offered.
“Riiiiiight. I’ll get right on that. The only thing he’s ever said is that she’s still in Boston. I’ll have to find—”
“Already got a call in to Al,” Dobbs said. “He’s on it.”
Al Zankoski was the private investigator Dobbs had hired to track down the identity of the little girl in the only painting Bailey'd ever painted "on purpose."
“Dobbs, you can’t …”
“Can and did. My nickel. I decide how to spend it.”
“What time?” T.J. asked.
“I can’t leave before noon,” Brice said. “Tight squeeze even then, but I’ll make it work.”
“Noon it is, then,” Dobbs said.
“But …”
“Don’t you think it’d be a better use of your time to start gettin’ ready than to stand here sputterin’ and stammerin’ about how we hadn’t all ought to do what every one of us done made up our minds our own selves to do?”
“Don’t you have some getting-ready to do?” Dobbs asked her.
“Ain’t you gonna be bringing home two house guests? I know you got enough bedrooms here to house—”
She parroted the rest of it for him before he could get it out “… all the blond men in the Norwegian Army—”
“Yeah, and their significant others.”
“One of them’s a little girl,” Dobbs said. “How about we all go into town and get … well, whatever it takes.”
“A fooffy bedspread, maybe,” T.J. said, then added, “Do not take that in any way as an endorsement of foof.”
“Toys,” Brice said. “That little girl’s going to need something to play with, don’t you think?”
Bailey’s mind was spinning then, with glorious thoughts she hadn’t even dared to think. She was going to see Bethany … tomorrow! The thought took her breath away so totally she could merely sit down in a corner somewhere and grin her gums dry.
The guys were right, she needed to get stuff. Lots of … well, things. She’d make a list.
She glanced up and saw them grinning at her and she grinned back.
Chapter Twelve
María McKessen looked out through the window at the huge flakes floating daintily on the wind. Big fat ones that quickly stacked up knee deep. Forecasters were predicting a blizzard. Every time it snowed, they predicted a blizzard, but she’d still gotten a call this morning not to come into work today at Damron’s Dress Store. And María needed the money! This was one of only three shopping weekends left before Christmas and this seasonal job would pay for all the Christmas presents she’d been putting on layaway.
And there was the dress.
Just the thought of it put butterflies in her belly. It was so beautiful. A smile lit her face when she pictured the flowing gown she’d bought — using her employee discount or she never could have afforded it — to wear to The Nutcracker.
Well, María would just have to stop by the store tomorrow and pick it up. Maybe get the alterations lady, whose name she could never remember, to fix the hook that was missing an eye.
“Mommy, wook!”
She turned and saw that Bethany had padded into the living room and was standing beside her, looking out the window at the blur of white. It’d been snowing when María’d put the child down for her afternoon nap, but not like this.
The look of joy and awe and wonder on the little girl’s face — María wanted her to see the world that way every day for the rest of her life.
“The snow is falling out of da sky up on top of da world.”
The child’s voice sounded just like the ringing of tiny bells. But not just bells, bells high up in the belfry of some chapel in some mountain range where the air was clear and pure and cold.
And then it didn’t matter anymore that María wouldn’t be able to do all the half dozen items on her to-do list. It was snowing and Bethany loved snow.
“Do we have any carrots?”
“Carrots?”
“For da snowman’s nose. You have to use a carrot so he’ll look like Frosty an’ we need a hat an’ a pipe.”
Bethany was a bright, verbal child who had never spoken in baby talk, and though she was a fount of delightful mispronunciations of words and malapropisms, she spoke clearly. María liked to think that it was because she’d never spoken baby talk to the child. Had spoken clearly and distinctly.
And had spoken a lot of words.
Like, a lot.
It was what she’d always done because there were so many other things she couldn’t do.
Bailey had always understood that.
Bailey is sitting in the middle of the living room floor, folding the towels from the huge pile of laundry Mrs. Anderson dumped there, still warm out of the dryer. María doesn’t think it’s fair that Mrs. Anderson always makes Bailey help her do things but the boys get to do whatever they want and never have to help.
But Bailey says they would just mess it up anyway, whatever it is, and then she’d have to clean up after them so it was easier to do it right the first time.
María is sitting on the couch, propped up with pillows so she can see out the window, where the boys are busy building a snowman in the front yard. And throwing snowballs at each other.
“Why would you want to build a snowman?” Wheeze. “It’s fat and white and” … wheeze … “just stands there.” … Wheeze. “I’d make a snow castle!” Wheeze. “With ice turrets” … wheeze … “and a frozen moat—”
“What good would a frozen moat do?” Bailey is practical.
“There’d be guard walruses” … wheeze … “to keep people out.” Wheeze. “
It would be so beautiful.”
She hadn’t intended the longing to leak into her voice with that last part. She kept longings to herself, all the wanting of things she couldn’t have, the ache to do things she couldn’t do. Those wantings belonged to her and she kept them close to her heart and secret. But Bailey is so safe, sometimes they pop out when Bailey is around.
She stops folding the laundry.
“I have an idea.” Then she gets up off the floor and runs into the kitchen, and María can hear things banging around in there, cabinet drawers opened and closed. Mrs. Anderson has braved the snow to go to the store for the extra food they’ll need since school has been cancelled. Mr. Anderson is out shoveling the sidewalk.
Bailey appears in the kitchen doorway.
“Come and see.”
Everybody knows it’s hard for María to move around. It’s not like she can’t walk or anything like that, but movement takes air and she has to do everything slowly so she doesn’t run out.
María gets up off the couch carefully. She loves it that Bailey doesn’t come rushing over to help her like the “gushers” do. Gushers are people who make over her because they feel sorry for the “pitiful little thing who can’t breathe.” María hates gushers. Bailey just stands at the kitchen door, waiting.
When María makes it to the doorway, Bailey moves out of her way and points to the big double sink. It is piled high with crushed ice from the refrigerator ice maker, and from chunks of the fuzzy ice Bailey must have pried off the walls of the chest freezer.
“We’re going to make an ice castle,” Bailey says, and María sees where she has pulled up a tall stool in front of the sink for María to sit on. “We’ll have to be fast, because it’s going to be melting while we’re building.”
The whole experience is a glorious disaster, of course. The crunchy ice doesn’t stick together at first … until Bailey thinks to go outside and bring in a bucket of snow to use as glue. Their fingers get so cold they can’t move them … until Bailey thinks to get them both a pair of rubber gloves from under the sink, and sets a bowl of warm water on the countertop so they can warm their fingers in it.