“Nothing,” Stone said, his voice dark and gravelly. He mopped at his bleeding brow with more napkins he withdrew from his pocket.
“The woodshed!” Ian cried.
That was a morbid thought. The woodshed was where Beryl now lay at rest. Beryl, and a huge pile of wood, enough to last them through until winter.
It was around the other side of the house. We ran around the back, making a complete circuit, in case we found her along the way.
Stone’s heavy boots splashed through the melting snow before thumping into the still hard-packed ground underneath. He moved fast and cleanly, head scanning, eyes flitting in every direction, body ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice. Ian loped just behind, while I figured I probably moved in something more akin to a zombie’s shamble.
When we got to the woodshed, next to which my own car was parked, we froze. The door was ajar. There was no sound coming from within. Stone gestured for us to move to the side. He pulled back a boot, and then kicked the door hard, immediately moving to the side in case he was welcomed with gunfire.
The only sound that came from the woodshed was the silence of the dead. Nothing more. Stone did a quick circle around the perimeter of the small building, peering through its two windows, while Ian and I stood back and made sure Maeve didn’t try to escape.
She didn’t make a run for it. Because she wasn’t there. It took another minute to be certain, but Maeve wasn’t in the woodshed, wasn’t anywhere on the estate grounds, hadn’t driven off, and wasn’t running down the main road.
“So where is she?” Ian asked.
“I think she tricked us.”
Stone’s eyebrows went up. He was a real emotion-monster today. “How?”
“She didn’t leave the house. She opened and slammed the front door to put us off her trail.”
Stone was already moving again. We completed the journey around the outside of the house and stormed in the front door. We’d only been out less than five minutes, but already everything had changed.
“What’s that smell?” I asked.
“Where is everyone?” Stone growled.
“What’s that sound?” Ian finished.
The distinctive scent of acrid smoke hung in the air. And not because a pitmaster was hard at work preparing a celebratory barbecue. It was the smell of something burning that you really didn’t want to be burning.
Stone poked his head in the drawing room. When he came out his face had fallen and his jaw was clenched. He held up a cut zip tie.
“Norman’s gone.”
“Where’s everyone else?”
“Not there.”
From the sounds of things, they were all upstairs.
“Hello?” I called up the stairs.
No one replied to me directly, but I was answered by footsteps. Marcus and Jini were hurrying down the stairs, holding a suitcase in each hand.
“What’s going on?”
“Fire! Maeve’s started a fire!”
“And you went to get your belongings?”
Jini nodded at me.
“Dad told us to,” Marcus said.
“Where is he? Where’s Norman?”
Marcus jerked his thumb in the direction of the drawing room while heading for the front door.
Stone shook his head. “Not in there.”
I was going to call after Marcus again, but there was a loud clattering from the direction of the kitchen. It sounded like big kitchen pans being thrown.
“Come on!” I shouted. Stone and Ian were already moving. I should have saved my breath.
The kitchen was filled with a cloud of gray smoke.
“Uncle Joe!” He was standing facing an open door on the right-hand side of the kitchen next to the pantry. “What’s happening?”
He turned, and I gasped. His face was bloody. He touched a hand to his nose and winced. “Norm headbutted me. I was out of it for a second. He used a knife from Maeve’s trolley to cut the zip tie.”
“And?”
Joe pointed at the stove. Covering it was a big damp dishtowel, blackened around the edges. “Maeve set the stovetop on fire with oil.”
“But you put it out? Well done, you!”
Joe shook his head.
“No. It was a distraction.” He pointed through the door he had been standing in front of. “She went down there. Norm too.”
“What’s down there?”
“There’s a basement. Maeve was down there, and Norm went down after her.”
Stone was at the door, peering down the stairs.
“What’s going on?” he yelled.
“Help!” Norman shouted. “She’s crazy!”
Bang. A gunshot rang out.
“Help!” Norman yelled again.
Stone grabbed a dishcloth and held it over his face. I grabbed another and followed him as he began to descend the stairs to the basement.
“Don’t move,” Stone growled, holding his gun in front of him.
Unfortunately, neither of the people down there paid attention to him. They were both too focused on each other.
Peering behind Stone’s shoulder, I took in the scene. The room received some natural light through a series of narrow windows that were fitted just below the ceiling of the room. About half the basement was filled with a number of large sets of shelves, loaded with cans and jars of food and other household supplies. But it was the other half where the action was.
“Fire!” Ian yelped from behind my shoulder.
Maeve was indeed standing next to a fire. It was a rag, stuffed into a glass bottle, and the rag itself was aflame. The glass bottle was filled with a liquid I assumed was gasoline. It was this solitary Molotov cocktail that was slowly filling the place with smoke. In her hand, she still held the gun.
“What’s going on? What is this?” My eyes fixed on something behind Maeve. A large metal thing that looked rather like an engine. “Is that a generator?”
Maeve nodded at me. “Awful old thing.”
“Why weren’t we using it?”
“It turns off every half an hour and needs fixing. And who would have had to do it? Me, that’s who. So I didn’t tell you.”
“She’s crazy,” Norman said, shaking his head. “She’s lost it completely!”
Maeve did not like him saying that. Not one bit. She fired the gun again. And this time, it was at him.
The bullet zinged through the air and into the arm of Norman’s jacket. He stared down at the hole.
“You nearly hit me!”
“I didn’t mean to miss.” Maeve’s hand was wavering, her arm tiring. She squinted at him.
Norman wasn’t about to hang around and see if she would miss this time. He jumped to the side and then made for the stairs. “Stay in the kitchen,” I yelled at him as he ran up the steps, past us. I figured Norm wasn’t much of a danger to anyone upstairs anymore, and there was still nowhere for him to go.
It was Maeve we needed to worry about.
“You all right down there?” Joe called down.
“Stop Norman!” I yelled back.
At the top of the stairs, there was a thump, and Norman fell over into the smoky kitchen. Looked like Joe was keeping him under control. I turned back to our more pressing concern: the unhinged housekeeper.
Maeve held the gun in one hand and picked up her burning Molotov cocktail in the other.
“Get out.” She spat the words with vitriol, eyes seething with anger at us, at Norman, at Beryl—at the world.
“Maeve? Put it down. Put the gun down. Put the bottle down. Let’s just walk out of here nice and slow.”
“Ha!” her voice had become a shrill screech. “Get out!”
Stone still had his gun pointed at her. “Put the bottle down.”
“I’ll put the gun down,” she said with a sly smile.
I didn’t trust her. But slowly, she put the gun down and picked up another of the unlit rag and fuel-filled bottles.
“Put the bottles down, Maeve.”
She shook her head. She held both arms in front of her and lit the rag of the second bottle with that of the first one.
“Put them down or what? If you shoot me, I’ll drop them. Smash! Then the whole place will burn down.”
I looked at Stone.
“Maybe you should put it down,” Ian said to him.
Stone continued to hold it in front of him.
“Bet I could shoot her and catch both bottles before they hit the floor.”
The way he said it, I believed he actually could. But without her gun trained on us, Maeve was no longer a direct threat.
“Let’s step back, Stone.”
He gave a small shrug. It didn’t make a difference to him one way or the other.
We retreated to the stairs, with Ian climbing the first few, me a little in front, and Stone at the foot.
“What do you want, Maeve?”
“I wanted a nice pension and to retire. But Beryl wouldn’t give me that and nor would you.”
It seemed a little unfair to blame me. But arguing the point was unlikely to be productive.
“That’s a shame, Maeve. But there’s nothing to be done about that. Why don’t you put the bottles down and come upstairs so we can have a nice chat?”
“I don’t want a nice chat. I have something important to do.”
“Umm,” Ian called over my shoulder, “what’s that?”
Maeve looked down at the bottle she was holding and gave it an evil grin.
“This house has been like a prison to me for more than twenty years! I know every last creaking, groaning, whining, whistling corner of this place. And now, I’m going to fix it.”
“Fix it?” Ian asked her.
Maeve nodded.
“Fix it with fire!”
Maeve threw one of the bottles she was holding at the ground between her and us. It shattered, and immediately a whole pool of flaming gasoline spread across the floor.
The heat was instantaneous. One second it was a cold and drafty basement, the next a warm wave washed over me. It would have been pleasant if it didn’t mean that, you know, the whole building was likely to burn down around me.
“What do you want me to do?” Stone growled.
I looked at the pool of fire. And the bottles behind Maeve. And the one she was still holding in her hand.
“Maeve? You can still get out. You can get around the fire.”
She shook her head at me. “No!”
With a bitter look, she tossed another of the bottles onto the ground, this one in front of some of the shelves loaded with supplies. Many of the upper shelves were loaded with cans and jars, but the lower ones had sacks of grains and flours. Things that could, would, and indeed started to burn. The flames pooled around and under the nearest set of shelves, and licked at the contents of the lower shelves with hungry crackles.
The pleasant warmth from the first pool of fire had increased to an unpleasant, hot glow. And the air quality was becoming rapidly worse.
Maeve was now only visible through a wall of flames. She was holding two more bottles, ends already lit.
“If you want, I can try to grab her,” Stone said. “Last chance.”
I was not about to send him running through a pool of flame to grab a crazy woman holding two more burning Molotov cocktails.
“Look,” Ian said, pointing. “There’re steps behind her.”
Maeve looked over her shoulder at the staircase, then back at us. Her mouth was a big grin. She nodded at us. Then, to stop any more discussion, she threw both of the bottles she was holding into the burning pool in front of her.
“Move!” Stone yelled.
And move we did.
The heat was becoming unbearable, and something on the shelves was now burning with a dark, acrid smoke.
Ian ran up the stairs, me right behind. When we got to the top, Stone slammed the door behind us.
“That’ll keep the fire out for a little while. We have to evacuate everyone.”
We leaned back against the door.
The worst over.
Then I saw Norman.
The worst was yet to come.
Uncle Joe was standing beside the long dining table. On the bench on one side was Norman, clutching his head, a frantic expression on his face. Uncle Joe was holding a cast-iron skillet.
“I think I might have given him another concussion,” Uncle Joe said apologetically.
Norm shot to his feet. “Out! We’ve got to get out of here!”
“He keeps saying that,” Joe said with a shrug.
“Dynamite!” he shouted.
“What?” Stone crouched in front of him, staring into the old lawyer’s eyes.
“There’s dynamite down there! Left over from the old mining days. Boxes of it! And gallons of fuel!”
Stone gave me a questioning look.
“The family that owned this house owned a mine in the area,” I confirmed.
“Then run!”
There are few things more terrifying than seeing someone like Stone getting freaked out. While he didn’t panic, his whole demeanor took on a level of urgency I had never seen.
He grabbed Norman and threw him over his left shoulder as if he weighed nothing and began rushing to the kitchen door. Joe was already through it, Ian right behind. I was a footstep behind Stone.
“Out!” Stone yelled when we were in the big hallway. “Everyone out of the house! Now!”
We did not go upstairs to check the rooms. We didn’t look into the drawing room or the dining room. We went straight to the front door.
Stone, Norm still over his shoulder, leaped down the entire flight of stone steps. Ian and I both did it in two jumps.
In the driveway stood our entire group, suitcases by their sides, smiles on their faces, happily chattering away.
“RUN.”
Stone has a way with words. When he said it, the word run took on a life of its own. It screamed through every person’s ears, directly into their brains, where it began kicking every synapse they had until it got them moving.
The chatter silenced. The excitement faded. And for the first time, we did something as a whole, united group: we ran.
Amber was pulling a suitcase with one hand while holding Angel against her chest with the other. Angel was looking back in my direction, her eyes alive with excitement and a big grin on her face. She was the only one not freaked out by Stone’s yell.
“Give me that!” I shouted, snatching Amber’s suitcase. “Move! The house is going to explode!”
Amber, panicked for the sake of Angel, sped forward, overtaking everyone despite having to carry her daughter over her shoulder.
Joe loped along beside me. “I haven’t run since… Marcus… was a… boy…”
“Stop talking then!”
We got about two hundred yards when Amber screeched to a stop. Rounding the corner was a big pickup truck, bouncing as it hit every invisible slush-filled rut in the weather-wrecked road.
The truck came to a stop. We rushed toward it.
“Get behind it!” Stone yelled.
Our whole motley crew rushed behind the vehicle and crouched down. Stone dumped Norman unceremoniously into a pile of snow by the side of the road, then made for the driver’s door. The truck was still facing the house. I guess he figured the driver would be safer behind the truck than in it.
He yanked open the door.
“Stone!” called a happy voice. It took me a second to place it. It wasn’t the voice of someone I expected to be driving a big pickup truck. “What’s going on? Oh!”
I stood up. “Nanna?”
Stone had thrown Nanna over his shoulder, and with a couple of leaped steps, he was back behind the truck. He placed Nanna down gracefully. “Get down.”
We all crouched.
“What’s going on? Why are we hiding? Is there a bear?”
We didn’t answer Nanna’s question right away.
We were interrupted.
By the whol
e world exploding.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It turned out that it wasn’t the whole world exploding.
It just felt like it was.
It started with a rushing whoop, Stone slamming his hands over his ears, us doing the same, and then the most tremendous BANG!
The bang turned to a roaring thunder that sounded like a freight train approaching, it got louder and louder, and closer and closer, and then that freight train drove right through us.
My covered ears ached. I slowly lowered my hands.
“Oh my.” Nanna slowly stood up, Stone rising with her.
“Now that sure was something,” Uncle Joe said. “I ain’t never heard anything like that.”
“Watch out!” Ian shouted.
The warning came too late to do anything about it, but just in time for us all to watch as a small lump of wood flew down from the heavens and smacked Norman right on the head. He fell to his knees.
“Oww!” He complained, pressing his hands against his latest head wound.
“He’s definitely going to have a concussion now,” Uncle Joe said with a chuckle.
“Shut up,” Norman complained.
I joined Nanna and Stone in staring back the way we had come.
The tired but grand old house was no more. It had become nothing but a heap of smoking rubble, none of it higher than a single story. Beside it, through the freakishness of the laws of physics, however, was the woodshed, still standing. And beside that my precious baby—I mean my old Honda.
“Wow!” Angel shouted. She clapped her hands together in a one-person round of applause. “Magic!”
But it wasn’t magic. The store of explosives in the basement had not failed despite their presumed age. And they had been assisted by the unused generator fuel.
Nanna squeezed my arm. “Tiffany,” she said in mock disappointment. “I leave you alone for a couple of days and this is what you get up to. You’re worse than a teenager.”
Stone cracked a smile at that. So did I.
“But it wasn’t my fault,” I said in mock complaint.
Nanna shook her head at me. “You always say that.”
“And she’s always right,” Stone said to her in my defense. He put an arm over my shoulder and squeezed it.
As our hearing began to return to normal, the sound of another engine chugging along became audible. I looked back behind us. Driving a big backhoe was Nanna’s husband, Wes.
Reunions and Revelations in Las Vegas: A Humorous Tiffany Black Mystery Page 19