by Kit Frazier
The fireman was scribbling away when Marlowe went on alert, ears pricked, tail stretched straight.
I slipped my fingers under the dog’s collar and held tight, and a battered gray Mercury screeched past the fire truck and squealed to a stop in front of Cantu’s station wagon. I should have been surprised, but I wasn’t.
Dressed in dark jeans and a black tee shirt with FBI printed in big white letters, Tom Logan badged the uniforms at the driveway and moved purposely up the walk, his dark eyes locked on mine. It might have been concern, but he looked mad as hell.
Marlowe went wild, broke my hold and loped down the stone path greet him.
“You okay?” Logan said, his eyes still on mine. Absently, he patted Marlowe’s head as the dog fell into step beside him.
“Hello, stranger,” I said. “Fancy meeting you here. Have you got my house bugged?”
“I heard Armageddon broke out, and I only know one person who can incite that kind of panic,” he said, stopping in front of the big fireman. Logan nodded at Cantu, and Cantu nodded back, somewhat grudgingly I thought.
“Your earless buddy?” he said, and I nodded.
Logan’s jaw muscle tightened. He turned to the fireman. “What’ve you got?”
“Brewster Dietz,” the fireman said, his chest puffing imperiously. Looking past me, he talked to Logan, and his voice went about two octaves lower than when he’d spoken with us. Logan had that effect on people.
“You make this for an accident?” Logan said.
Dietz shook his head. “Spread fast. We’ll get the arson dog in here. See if there’s any accelerants.”
Logan nodded then headed toward the front door. Marlowe let out a strange, yodeling bark and took off after him.
“Hey!” I said, going after the dog, but Dietz put a hand on my shoulder.
“Guy knows what he’s doing,” Dietz said. “Let him do his job.”
I stood in my front yard, Muse squirming in my arms as we waited. From somewhere in the living room, Marlowe barked three strange little barks. Within moments, Logan ducked out the doorway, Marlowe trotting along behind. Logan was flipping through his own notepad.
“Find anything?” Dietz said.
Logan squinted. “Too early to tell.” He ripped a page from his small notebook and handed it to the fireman.
I rose to my tiptoes, craning to get a peek. The fireman nodded before folding it and stuffing it into his pocket.
“The way we figure,” Dietz said. “The damage was contained to the living room, the girl’s got mild smoke inhalation, borderline inebriation and some very bad judgment. She busted back into the house and tried to put out the fire.”
“Hey! I’m standing right here,” I said. “And I was trying to get my cat.”
Logan ignored me. “Too inebriated to drive?” he said to Dietz.
“I’ll drive her,” Cantu said.
“Thanks,” Logan said. “I’ll take it from here.”
Cantu and Logan stared at each other for a long moment.
“Hey,” I said to Cantu. “Why don’t you go on home. I bet Arlene’s getting sick of you riding to the rescue. I’ve already told you most of what happened. Can I come down to the station and fill out paperwork tomorrow?”
After a bit more staring, Cantu nodded. “I’ll wait for the techs to get here. Then we’ll round up some uniforms and start a search pattern for your earless guy.”
“Thank you,” I whispered to him as Logan cupped my elbow.
Despite numerous protests, mainly from me, Logan herded me and both animals toward his old Bureau car. I wanted to go back into my house and get a change of clothes, but Logan said I’d already come close to messing up a perfectly good crime scene.
“Hey,” Dietz yelled after us. I turned to look at him. “Nice jammies.”
Scowling, I climbed into the passenger seat, both animals jockeying for position.
“What was his problem?” I said.
Logan shook his head as he pulled out of the drive and I swear I saw the beginnings of a smile. “You were standing in the headlights,” he said. “You can see right through your pajamas.”
Chapter Twenty-four
In the end, home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
That may be true, but Robert Frost never met the MacKinnons. They’ll take you in, but you’ll pay for it for the rest of your life.
Despite copious amounts of red wine and a surplus of smoke inhalation, I filled Logan in on the events of the evening, beginning with my friends and Mel Gibson and ending with Van Gogh and the fire. I’d judiciously left out the part about John Fiennes screwing my brains out and absconding with my research. Was tired and sore and very embarrassed.
Logan handed me his cell and I called my mom just before we pulled past the front porch. He turned off the ignition and we sat in the driveway for a moment without saying anything.
“Were your friends there when the fire started?” Logan said.
“No, they left. I was cleaning up.”
Logan had the good grace not to laugh out loud.
Marlowe leapt over me and landed on the driveway in front of Logan, looking up as though waiting for further instruction. I narrowed my eyes.
My mother met us at the back door, took one whiff of my smoke-saturated pajamas and said, “Jesus, Cauley, what on Earth have you gotten yourself into?”
Ordinarily, I would have been annoyed at her tone, but as she led us into the kitchen of the house where I grew up, it was comforting. Logan and I let the animals loose to explore.
“What the hell is going on?” the Colonel said, eyeing Logan.
I was disoriented, and forgot to introduce everyone, so Logan put his hand out to the Colonel. “Special Agent Tom Logan. FBI.”
The Colonel nodded, looking Logan up and down, then reached out and shook his hand. “Thanks for bringing her home.”
“Ah!” Mama said. “Cauley, baby. Are you hurt?” She turned to the Colonel. “Stephan. Get me the Vap-o-rub.”
I shook my head. “I just need some sleep.”
Mama took me by the shoulders. “You look beat, honey. Let me draw you a bath.”
In my peripheral vision, I saw Logan raise his brows.
“No bath,” I said. The last time I took a bath, I got taken to the cleaners by a certain Customs Agent.
Logan grinned down at me. “You sure about the no bath thing?”
If I hadn’t been dirty and smoky and completely offensive, I might have thought he was flirting with me.
Logan looked closely at me, and I could feel his gaze like he’d touched me. Under his breath, he said, “You want to talk about what happened?”
“You mean the fire?” I said hopefully.
“Before that.”
“I can’t right now,” I said. I couldn’t tell him about John Fiennes. Even though there was nothing between Logan and me, sleeping with John seemed like a betrayal somehow. “Can I call you tomorrow?” I said.
Logan looked at me for a long time. “All right,” he said. “Call me sooner if you need me.”
I nodded. “Thanks, Logan. For every thing.”
He stood there for what seemed like a long time, and finally said, “What were you and your friends doing?”
“Having a pillow fight in our underwear.”
Logan laughed out loud. He had a great laugh, warm and deep and true. “You know,” he said. “Your new friend the fireman was right.”
“About what?”
“Nice jammies.”
The Colonel snorted and Logan walked with him to the door.
“You’re leaving?” Mama said. She’d been setting out the tea service and stopped, a china cup in her hand.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ve got some things to settle at the office, and it’s going to be a long night.”
Mama set the cup down and intercepted Logan.
“Mr. Logan,” Mama said. “Would you like to join us for the Fourth of July soiree down by the lake?”
“I’d love to, Mrs. MacKinnon, but I don’t know what my schedule’s going to be like.”
Mama smiled warmly as the Colonel walked Logan toward the door. I could hear Logan and the Colonel talking in hushed tones, and I couldn’t shake the cloud of guilt over my weekend with John.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Mama said, advancing on me. I shook my head.
There was so much to say that I couldn’t say anything, and for the first time in my life, my mother let it go without comment.
I trudged up the polished stairs to my old bedroom, which was pretty much the way I’d left it. Canopy bed nestled opposite the narrow window seat—essay awards lined the chair rail. Drama ribbons and debate trophies scattered the shelf on the south wall.
On an autopilot I’d thought long since extinguished, I made my way to the upstairs bathroom, brushed my teeth with one of the packaged toothbrushes my mother always keeps for guests. The perfect southern hostess. I wondered if I would ever be like her. I wondered if I wanted to be.
I filled the sink to splash my face. The water was warm and it felt like heaven, so I splashed again, and I considered a shower to get the smoke out of my hair, but I was so tired I thought my knees would give out. I slid under the sheets, kicking to loosen Mama’s hospital corners. Staring at the ceiling of my childhood, I wondered how the hell I’d wound up back where I’d started.
It wasn’t hard to figure out. I’d stood in the way of Scooter getting the help he needed, stolen evidence, spent two days debauching myself with a man I barely knew, got all my research stolen again and nearly got my Aunt Kat’s house burned to the ground.
I rolled over in my old twin bed, wrapping the covers around me like a cocoon.
I wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen next. In the larger scheme of things, it didn’t really matter. I would tell Logan about breaking into the pet shop and about John taking off with the research. The debauching myself, I thought, probably didn’t need to be told.
But I could tell Logan all that later. After all, in the words of Margaret Mitchell, tomorrow was another day.
That night, I dreamed long, looping dreams about the fire. In the flames I saw the faces of Selena, Van Gogh, John Fiennes, and then the dream skipped back to the day Scooter and I talked in the shed. I jolted awake several times, disoriented.
The night stretched on and on until the first rays of sunshine slipped through the twelve-light window and bathed my old bedroom in warm, golden light, the kind of brilliant, forgiving sunrise that comes only after a terrible thunderstorm.
The scent of bacon and homemade waffles drifted up the staircase, intruding on the slow waking that follows a really bad day. I inhaled the scent. The Colonel must be cooking breakfast.
For a moment, the past ten years slipped away. Then I realized I was having a hard time moving my head.
Marlowe and Muse had found their way into the bedroom and were attempting to suffocate me with a combined sixty-eight pounds of fur.
“Cauley?” Mama said from the bedroom door. “Come to breakfast, hon.”
Bracing myself on my elbows I sat up and looked at the alarm clock. Eight-thirty.
“Church in an hour,” she announced. “Daylight’s burnin’.”
“When we hear the ancient bells growling on a Sunday morning…” I grumbled, feeling terrible because I’d been skipping Sundays for more than a month.
“Don’t quote Nietzshe on Sunday, Cauley, it’s not nice,” Mama said. She stood at the door wearing a cream-colored linen dress, pearls at her throat. She looked like a fading fifties movie queen, and I wondered if I would look like her some day.
“I’m having a really bad day and I’m not even out of bed yet,” I said.
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger,” Mama said.
“That which does not kill us makes us want to kill somebody else,” I muttered.
Mama let out a long, beleaguered sigh. “All right. You going to at least make it to Sunday dinner? Your sister’s bringing the children.”
“I’ve got a lot to do today.”
Mama stood silently. “Anything I can do to help?”
“Turn back time.”
Sighing, she sashayed over, sat at the edge of the bed and hugged me hard.
I sat up and let the hug seep all the way down to my bones. “Actually, there is something,” I said. “Will you keep Marlowe and Muse for a couple of days?”
“Consider it done, baby.” Mama pushed my hair out of my eyes and looked at me hard. Then without comment, she rose and glided back to the door and turned.
“Cauley?”
“Hm?”
“I like that Tom Logan. He’s a nice man.”
“Mama,” I said. “He’s just doing his job.”
She smiled like she didn’t believe me and pulled the door closed.
“Ah!” I said, and my mother’s words hit me like one of those cartoon Acme anvils. My mother was right. Tom Logan was a nice man. I yanked the pillow over my head.
“I slept with the wrong man!” I yelled into the pillow.
Shoving the pillow away, I stared at the ceiling. “Ah, well,” I said grimly. “Not the first time.”
John Fiennes. Call me a sentimental idiot, because despite the fact that he’d screwed my brains out then run off in the night with every stitch of research I’d done, I believed John had feelings for me. I often have bad taste in men, but this time, I didn’t think so.
I showered, wrapped one of my mom’s big, fluffy towels around me and rummaged through the dresser where I found one of my old pairs of jeans and a tee shirt that said Don’t Mess With Texas. The jeans were about two years too tight and so was the shirt. Since I’d left the house in my nightgown, I didn’t have a bra. I called a cab, hoping I wouldn’t be involved in any accidents on the way home.
I took the stairs two at a time, trying to get out the door before anyone noticed my lack of proper undergarments a definite no-no in any proper southern household.
In the kitchen, Mama was pouring coffee. The Colonel was at the table, reading the Sentinel.
“Need me to carry you somewhere?” the Colonel said, looking up over the newspaper.
“Called a cab, but thanks,” I said. I wanted to sit down and pour syrup over a stack of waffles and talk to the Colonel, see if he could help me untangle some of this mess, but if I did, I’d get roped into going to church, and I was running out of sick leave. I figured I’d call the Colonel when I got home.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” Mama said, then she got a good look at me. “Good Gawd, Cauley, where’s your brassiere? What if you get in an accident?”
“I’ll probably get better ambulance service,” I said. “I gotta go.”
I snitched a couple of pieces of bacon and a waffle, which would not make my jeans fit any better and headed for the door.
“Your life is going down the toilet!” she called after me.
If she only knew.
Twenty minutes later, I climbed out of the cab, paid the driver and was standing in my front yard. The house looked like it was still standing only out of sheer stubborn will. Story of my life.
The man I thought I might be falling for slept with me then stole my files. And I was perilously close to losing my job. I was going to have to start over. Again.
Sighing, I trudged up the porch steps and swung open the door.
“Oh!” I said, staring into my living room.
“Hey,” Mia said. She was wearing cut-offs and a sports bra and she was holding a mop. Brynn was kneeling next to her in head-to-toe Donna Karan, attractively accessorized with bright yellow rubber gloves and a pine-scented bucket of water. A wet-vac droned noisily in the corner. The house was hot and humid because all the windows were open to let the place dry out. Most of the water from the fire hose was gone, and my friends were mopping and scrubbing char-marks off the end table.
“Did I hear Cauley?” Shiner c
ame around the corner with a baking sheet of chocolate chip cookies.
I shook my head. “I love you guys.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Brynn said, handing me a sponge. “You and the 4th Infantry.”
“When everything’s dry, we’ll come help you paint,” Mia said. “Chic Magazine had a whole spread last month on the Best Bachelorette Pads.”
Smacking his hands against his jeans, Shiner said, “I threw what was left of the rug and coffee table out back in my truck.”
“Thanks,” I said, wincing as I kicked aside a pile of wet towels before kneeling next to Brynn. “Jeez this is a mess.”
“Your mom called Mia, but we didn’t get details. What happened?” Shiner said, and their eyes went wide as I told them.
I shook my head. “Those flames spread way too fast. I’d bet the sum of my student loans that Van Gogh sprayed the place with accelerants. And speaking of flames, how mad is Tanner?” I said to Shiner.
“Mostly he’s worried,” he said. “He said you’ve got one more day of leave. After that, you can extend your leave, but it’ll come out of vacation. You stay on this story, you gotta do it on your own time.”
“I haven’t been at the Sentinel long enough to get any more vacation time,” I said. And I couldn’t afford any more time off.
Shiner shrugged.
“Fine,” I said. What I didn’t say was that I had nearly twenty-four hours to get the Scooter-thing figured out. I’d promised his parents I’d get to the bottom of it.
“We put some stuff we didn’t know what to do with in your bedroom,” Brynn said. “Couple of blankets. They aren’t burned, but they smell like smoke.”
“The whole place smells like smoke,” Shiner said.
“I’ve got some aromatherapy stuff my herbal guy gave me,” Mia said. “You want me to get a pot and start simmering?”
“No!” we all said in a chorus of alarm.
“Look at the bright side,” Brynn said, pulling a damp DVD from under the sofa. “There’s always George Clooney.”
After sucking most of the water out of the sofa and floor with the wet-vac, we left all the windows open and set fans blowing on all the damp surfaces.
Mia, Brynn and Shiner left, and once again, I was alone. Despite the efforts of the roaring industrial-sized fans stationed along open windows, the place reeked of smoke and damp fabric. It also felt empty without Muse and Marlowe, even though neither of them belonged to me.