Sugar

by Karin Kallmaker

  You've worked hard, she told herself. You've got a nest egg for the business and you won't be spending it on employees anytime soon, so it's time to decide what you need most now. New place to live?

  She'd think about it tomorrow, she decided, then felt better for having made a decision, even if it was not to decide.

  "Don't forget the time, Sugar. I'll get the layers out of the oven, no problem." Gran peered at the timer. "It's going to be hard not to sample. That's a heavenly aroma, your chocolate sponge."

  "Thanks." Sugar blushed, feeling a pleasant thirteen again. "I really think it's the barest hint of cayenne. It wakes up the chocolate aroma and flavor. Time-wise, I'll just make it. Thank you so much for watching the clock for me."

  "The way your landlord sounds, you don't want to leave anything to him."

  "Not a good idea," Sugar agreed. She wanted to be there when the fire department cleared the remains of her belongings. Gran's ancient but well-maintained Olds '88 would hold a lot of her things. She already missed her marble slabs. She lightly misted the fondant. "I think it's a little less humid here in Redmond. This is drying more quickly than I expected."

  "Now, I've always thought this slope caught a tad less of the ocean moisture, but you can't get the weather folks to admit it." Gran moved heavily from the sink to the table, sinking down in a chair. "Old bones, old bones," she muttered.

  Sugar hid a frown of concern. She hadn't seen Gran since Christmas and Gran's old bones were moving far more slowly. "Have you been to the doctor?"

  "I have, and there's no room in my life for hip replacement. I can't be laid up like that."

  Sugar made a noncommittal noise. Hip replacement was something she knew absolutely nothing about, but Gran was obviously in discomfort. "What kinds of things would you need doing?"

  "Well, there's my canning, beginning with the apricots, and baking for the shelters. Church events—nobody is going to see to the Harvest Fair. It can't wait until the last minute. It takes the whole summer to get people to commit to having a booth and so forth."

  "Surely someone would step in." Sugar remembered Gran organizing the Harvest Fair from years ago. "Time someone else did."

  "Not someone I'd trust to do it right. Or let me have my say once I was back on my feet."

  Ah, well, that made sense. Sugar supposed that if Gran had ever really wanted someone else to do the work, she'd have let go when she turned seventy. She patted the mound of fondant. It was a miracle of chemistry that a boiled sugar solution would knead into such a delicious, versatile substance. "That's done, then."

  Hands washed and hair brushed, barely, she put on the jeans and T-shirt that Gran's friend had dropped off. The tee was a little tight. Likewise the jeans, but a look in the mirror said the shape suited her. Her license and credit cards tucked in her back pocket and cell phone hooked on her belt, she carefully steered the mammoth car toward her old home. It wasn't far from Redmond to Issaquah, but typically Lake Sammamish Parkway was congested on weekdays.

  She'd slept poorly and still hadn't beat Gran to the kitchen this morning. Over coffee and a discussion of their baking day—Gran supplied quick breads and fruit cobblers to a halfway house and a women's shelter—Sugar had braced herself for a lecture on her pronouncement of the previous night. But Gran had never alluded to Sugar's declaration. She hadn't even sighed or looked pained and worried aloud about Sugar's single status.

  What had Gran said last night? That if Sugar was honest and virtuous, Gran would be content? Well, she'd finally been honest about liking girls. Virtue, well, zero opportunities accounted for that—at least in the last few years. It had been a while since she'd even had a chance to be naughty.

  Gran's lack of response was somehow disconcerting, but thoughts of that went out of her head at the sight of not only a fire department SUV but a sheriff's cruiser in front of Robert's house. She nearly kept going, but then she spotted a tall, familiar figure in a white King County Fire District T-shirt talking to the cop. Robert stood on his porch, his arms crossed defiantly.

  "Ah, here's the property owner now," Charlie said to the cop as Sugar warily approached.

  "I'm not the owner, he is," Sugar said. She thought Charlie had understood that.

  "There's been an alleged burglary," Officer Tuhrez informed her.

  "You owned some of the items in there, right?" Charlie looked indignant. Sugar saw that another firefighter was circling the outside of the blackened building, and that the yellow warning tape over the doorway was torn.

  "Oh, yes. Some of them."

  "Laptop, copper bowls, knife set, heavy-duty Calphalon? All stuff that was there yesterday?"

  "Yeah, I was hoping some of it survived."

  "It's been cleaned out." Charlie looked accusingly at Robert. "The tape was breached. Somebody did some breaking and entering."

  The sheriff shifted in his black boots. "Technically, if entrance was through an unlocked door it wasn't breaking."

  "What about stealing?"

  "I didn't take anything of hers. It would have all been worthless." Robert didn't leave the safety of the porch.

  "I don't suppose you'd let me take a look in your garage, would you?" Officer Tuhrez, who, in Sugar's opinion, could have taken

  butch lessons from C. Bronson, Firefighter, gestured at the closed garage door.

  "Not without a warrant." Robert crossed his arms smugly.

  Looking at the smoldering remains of her ambition, Sugar felt that same disbelieving numbness she'd experienced yesterday afternoon. Then it shattered in a flash of white-hot rage. Her knives! The bastard had taken her knives. How unbelievably petty. How cruel, too, to take advantage of her loss by stealing from her!

  "Are you okay?" Charlie started toward her in concern.

  Sugar waved a hand. With a deep breath she bellowed, "I don't need a warrant!" and bolted for the closed door.

  "Stop her," Robert screamed.

  "Miss, don't do that," Officer Tuhrez ordered. If Charlie had given her an order, she might have obeyed, but the cop just didn't have the same command.

  The two-car-wide door was wood, old and heavy. She'd watched Robert's wife struggle with it many times, but Robert was too cheap to get an automatic opener. In her anger she flipped it open as if it were cardboard. The footsteps right behind her belonged, thankfully, to the two people in uniform. Robert skittered to a stop at the corner.

  Sugar had the satisfaction of watching him turn a deep purple. The hue of shame, Gran would say.

  "For the record," Charlie said conversationally, "that pile of stuff looks exactly like the things I took note of yesterday in the dwelling."

  He'd even taken her plasticware, some of which had been warped by the heat.

  "Would you like to explain?" Office Tuhrez had a we-are-not-amused look on his face as he turned to Robert.

  "You don't have a warrant. You can't look!"

  "You asked me to stop her. Now I see stolen property in plain sight. I can get a warrant to search the entire premises at this point."

  "Then, then," Robert spluttered, "then arrest her!"

  "For opening a frickin' door?" Charlie burst into laughter.

  "Look," Officer Tuhrez said with exaggerated patience. "You can give the lady her things back and see if she feels generous in forgetting all about this, or I can tag it all as evidence and call the crime scene people."

  "She can have her crap back," Robert snapped. "It's all worthless, anyway."

  Sugar said indignantly, "For your information, those knives probably cost more than your truck. They were a gift from my entire family when I got out of culinary school and my name is engraved on each blade." Sugar couldn't stop her voice from shaking. Even now she didn't know if they'd survived, though the protective roll that housed them seemed to be intact. "I could slice your testicles into pieces so thin you could see through them—"

  "Enough," the sheriff said firmly. "He's willing to give it all back. What do you say?"

  "She threaten
ed me! You heard her!"

  "You, sir, are looking at charges for a high-level misdemeanor at the very least, which can have a hefty fine. I wouldn't make waves right now." Officer Tuhrez turned back to Sugar.

  "If I don't take my stuff now, when would I get it back?"

  "Could be weeks, months." He shrugged.

  She was sure the laptop was toast. The cookware she could get by without. The knives, if the handles had survived, were irreplaceable. She didn't want to let Robert the slimeball off the hook. He didn't deserve mercy.

  "I just took it all for safekeeping."

  "Then why did you deny you had it?" Charlie demanded.

  "I realized it looked bad," Robert said sullenly.

  Sugar didn't believe him for a minute, but pressing charges would be one huge waste of time. It wouldn't resurrect her recipe files. "One condition—nothing moves until I make some sort of record of what was ... moved." It would give her some sort of hold over him and maybe his insurance company. If he had installed the oven wrong then maybe she could get some kind of settlement for her laptop and printer and things like that.

  She pulled her digital camera out of a box with a sour look at Robert. She pressed the On button while holding her breath, then sighed in relief when the greeting chime and display operated normally. "This will save time and bother," she announced, and started taking pictures before Robert could do more than make a strangled sound. He watched thereafter in stony silence.

  "All done?" Charlie leaned over the largest carton, heaped high with Sugar's anodized cookware. Over her shoulder she said cheerily to Robert, "Hey, thanks for putting most of it in these boxes. Makes it easier to put them in Miss Sorenson's car." Under her voice, she added, "You moronic, selfish, male chauvinist bastard excuse for a human being."

  Sugar smothered a laugh. Robert started to say something but glared instead.

  Reaching into a box, Sugar rescued and unrolled her knives, fearing the worst as the plastic outer wrap broke into brittle pieces. The fabric underneath looked singed. A wave of relief washed over her as the first handle emerged—it looked fine. She slid the knife free of its pouch and hefted it.

  "Whoa! Don't slice me, I'm helping!"

  Startled, Sugar turned to Charlie. "Oh, sorry, I didn't know you were there." She sighted along the blade of her favorite twelve-inch utility knife. It was perfect. "I don't get to use these much, but they're very precious to me."

  Charlie made a show of giving Sugar a very wide berth. Feigning a patronizing smile, she said soothingly, "Of course they are."

  Sugar grinned as she slipped the blade back into its pouch. "The holder is toast, but the knives ... that's a relief."

  "You could put seven dead bodies in here," Charlie said of the Olds' trunk when Sugar opened it.

  "My grandmother's," Sugar explained. She caressed the glossy sea-green paint. "It seats about twenty."

  " 'Remember to bring your jukebox money.' " Charlie snapped her fingers along with her words. " 'Cause the love shack, it's a little of place where . . . ' " Charlie studied Sugar's expression. "Don't know that one, huh?"

  "I don't get out much."

  Charlie looked skeptical, but all she said was, "The car's a beauty." She gave it a loving look as they trudged back to the garage for more boxes.

  "Thank you for helping. And for . .. everything."

  "I hate bullies. You were inspired."

  "I got mad. And I knew he never locked the door. He'd park up to it at night."

  "I meant the image of thinly sliced scrotum."

  Sugar spluttered with laughter. "When you work in a restaurant around men, meat, fire and knives, you learn effective threats."

  "Sounds like restaurants gave you the same education I had to hang out in a firehouse to get."

  Sugar looked the question at Charlie as she picked up the last box.

  "I'm following in my father's footsteps. Hung out in the fire-house after school for years. That's how I recognized those commercial Sabatier knives. They had just one of those, for boning fish, and heaven help me if I touched it."

  "You must have had some great meals." Firehouses, by legend, had some of the greatest amateur chefs in the country.

  "It was just Pop and me, so any meal he didn't have to cook for the two of us was good eats. Hey, why don't you back this barge up to the front door and we'll start grabbing stuff."

  "Let me move my Honda to the street. A glass guy is supposed to be here in an hour or two."

  "Sorry about the car, really," Charlie said. "No way were we looking for keys in a burning building."

  "I understand." Sugar plodded off to start the Honda. The interior was still soaking wet in places and the seats covered with glass, but it wasn't as bad as she had thought it would be. The ice scraper from the glove box proved useful for flipping glass off the seat, and the engine eventually turned over with a little coaxing. She found

  a parking place on the street and realized with chagrin there was absolutely no reason to lock it.

  When she got back to her grandmother's car, Charlie was waiting, her legs looking impossibly long in close-fitting Levi's. "Where do you want to start?"

  "You don't have to help me—"

  The light brown eyes were smiling at her. "I know. Meet you inside."

  Officer Tuhrez was having a sotto voce conversation with Robert, which suited Sugar just fine. It took three back-and-forths to turn the Olds around in the street, but she made it and carefully backed up the drive to her former home.

  The stench was even worse.

  "I happen to know, from personal experience, that most clothes can be deodorized," Charlie offered. "Invest in a boatload of baking soda and follow the directions on the box. Might take a few washes. Hey, Pop."

  The other firefighter turned to meet them, and Sugar would have known he had to be Charlie's father from the striking resemblance the two shared. It wasn't just the identical navy wind¬cheaters, white KCFD tees and blue jeans. Her father was darker skinned, suggesting that Charlie's mother had been fair, but the light brown eyes, high cheekbones and chiseled nose were a match.

  "Do I want to know what that was all about?" He indicated the departing sheriff with his chin.

  "No. Just a typical asshole trying to get away with typical asshole stuff. This is Sugar Sorenson, who used to live here."

  "You were lucky." His gaze was matter-of-fact. "The fire began in an electrical short that had nothing to do with the oven operation. Could have happened in the middle of the night. Given the proximity of the sleeping area to the source, and the lack of kitchen facility ventilation, it's likely you'd have never woken. The smoke alarm—" He pointed. "It's not between the bed and the cooking area. So it would have gone off only after smoke had reached the bed."

  "Oh." Sugar didn't know what else to say.

  "This, by the way, is the site arson investigator," Charlie said. "My father, Chuck Bronson."

  Sugar held out her hand. "How do you do."

  His handshake was firm and brief. Charlie got her muscles from him as well. To Charlie, he said, "Do you want to step through this with me? It's textbook. Something like it'll be on the exam. Plenty of code violations."

  "Yeah, thanks." To Sugar she said, "That's why I tagged along. I'm hoping to move over to the arson unit. Pop and I'll finish up then I'll bag clothes for you."

  "You mean you didn't come here this morning to rescue me one more time?"

  Charlie gave her a lopsided smile. "That was all icing on the cake."

  "Speaking of. . . I'll start looking for stuff I can take with me now." Sugar smiled at Chuck, not knowing quite how to thank an arson investigator.

  "Oh, hey, here." Charlie thrust a business card at Sugar. "Could you call me early next week?" She rolled her eyes meaningfully at her father, who had turned back to his clipboard and diagrams. "About, um, your business?"

  "You mean ... ?" Sugar raised her eyebrows.

  "Yeah." Charlie nodded enthusiastically after glancing once agai
n at her father. Maybe it was his birthday, Sugar speculated.

  "Sure." She glanced at the card. "At the mobile number?"

  "That would be perfect."

  After an exchange of conspiratorial smiles, Sugar turned to the soot-smeared cupboards. The cheap faux wood veneer had peeled and cracked. The first cupboard of cookware was full of heat-ruptured nonstick pans, including the ones she used to boil the sugar solution that became fondant. The second one she checked was her bakeware. Some of the Pyrex pieces had shattered, attesting to the high heat near the source of the sudden blaze, but the anodized metal pans and baking sheets looked like they might have survived.

  It was a while before she could bring herself to look at the recipe files. The metal drawers full of five-by-seven cards were still wet. She was amazed to find the cards inside mostly dry, but the moment she touched the card in front it crumbled like a dead leaf. "Oh, no!"

  Charlie was at her side in an instant. "It does that. Paper rarely survives any kind of high heat."

  "I was saving up to buy a scanner." Sugar blinked back tears. Her carefully constructed business plan had not included Complete Catastrophe as a line item.

  "What a shame. I know it's not any help right now, but Pop is right, you could have lost more than that."

  Sugar nodded, trying to be comforted. "I know." She mur¬mured thanks when Charlie handed her a tissue. "Sorry to be a baby about pieces of paper."

  "Hey, I've seen grown men bawl at the sight of a singed teddy bear." Charlie all at once had the gaze of a direct, no-nonsense professional. "If you're thinking you got away with no damage, you're wrong. A fire is always traumatic. Talk to somebody if the nightmares don't stop after a week or so."