Home Free

by Sonnjea Blackwell

  “Come on, I’ll give you a ride.” We threw the bike in the back of my SUV, Lucifer staring at us, and I ignored the speed limits so she wouldn’t be late. The Element handles better than you’d imagine given its boxy shape. I squealed around the corners, but the car hugged the ground and didn’t feel tippy at all. I was impressed. Angela was green.

  “I don’t get in that much trouble if I’m late,” she said.

  We pulled up to the front door at five twenty-nine. I gave her a smug look, and she scowled.

  “What? We’re here, you’re on time, and I’m starving. It’s obviously a sign.”

  She rolled the bike into the restaurant, disappearing behind a door marked Employees Only, only to reappear behind the cash register wearing her red Main Street Pizza apron and beret. I stood in line behind a family of six, thanking God and modern science for birth control and wondering what the French hat had to do with Italian pizza.

  “Can I have a medium pepperoni and pineapple, to go, please?” I asked Angela, politely, in case she was still perturbed.

  “Extra cheese?” she offered.

  I paid and waited for my dinner, then drove home like a normal person, only about five or ten miles over the speed limit and obeying most stop signs.

  I sat on the barstool and ate my pepperoni and pineapple pizza at the counter, wondering how people thought up recipes. Which led me to wonder how people knew to open the prickly pineapple to find the good part.

  I found these thoughts less disturbing than thinking about killers and weirdos leaving me mysterious notes, so I didn’t fight them. When it started getting dark, though, I had a harder time keeping my mind in non-scary territory. I sat on the couch in the living room, watching non-scary sitcoms and closing my eyes and hitting mute on the remote anytime a commercial for a crime show came on. I cursed Jack and Kevin and Pauline for not coming over when I actually wanted them to. I cursed Debbie for not baking me any more cookies. I cursed Angela as I double-checked the locks on the doors and windows for the third time. I cursed Danny for not finding me irresistible enough to at least merit a friggin’ phone call. I finally dropped into bed with all the lights blazing. Somehow, I found the glass French doors in the bedroom less appealing tonight, and I cursed Mikey out loud for scaring the crap out of me.

  I had crazy dreams about dancing pineapples, and I woke with a start when the phone rang at two in the morning. I answered it without looking at the display.

  “What?”

  A small voice on the other end said, “Alex?”

  “Yeah, who’s this?”

  “Angela. Alex, Sherry’s house is on fire. I thought you might want to know.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Holy fucking shit. “Are you okay? You’re not outside, are you?”

  “Hunh-uh. I didn’t see anything, I just woke up when I heard the sirens. I looked outside and saw the flames.”

  “Sherry?” I was afraid to ask.

  “There’s an ambulance here, and they brought her out on a stretcher. She was moving her arms around, so I don’t think she’s dead.”

  I agreed. I’d never heard of a corpse flailing their arms around. “Stay inside your house. Don’t open the door to anybody, unless it’s the cops or the firemen asking questions. Don’t come over here tomorrow, either. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I may not the safest person to be around.”

  “Okay.” She sounded disappointed.

  “Thanks for calling, Angela. We’ll get this straightened out soon, and then you can come over and work on the computer some more.”

  “Good, ’cause I had another idea I wanted to try about the raisins. Bye.”

  “Bye.” I hung up and sat back against the pillows and felt the tears streaming down my cheeks. I didn’t know when they’d started. What the hell was going on? Brian and Mikey had both warned me to stay away from Sherry’s, and it looked like they were right on that count. But why?

  A disturbing thought drifted through my brain. Nobody had harmed Sherry until I told them that I was going to visit her again. Shit. Now I wasn’t just annoying people, it looked like I was jeopardizing their lives. I hoped it was just a phase.

  I called the hospital, claiming to be Sherry’s sister. She had smoke inhalation and some minor burns, but she was in good condition and would probably be released the next day. That was a relief.

  The tears had subsided, but I couldn’t let go of the fear that someone had tried to make sure Sherry didn’t talk to me. I reminded myself about jumping to conclusions. Maybe the fire wasn’t even deliberately set. Coincidences happen all the time. Once, Max and I went to Las Vegas on vacation. There was a pool boy convention going on, and we ran into Raoul from our condo in the bar at the Luxor. What a coinky-dink.

  I sighed. Obviously, I wasn’t going to be able to let it go. I picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Salazar.” Grumpy. I’d forgotten it was the middle of the night.

  “Hey, it’s me.”

  “Hey yourself. What are you wearing?” Less grumpy.

  “Somebody just torched Sherry Henderson’s house.”

  “Goddammit, Lex -- ”

  I cut him off before he could turn grumpy again. “Jeez, Danny, I’m not suggesting you did it.”

  “You spent the night with my brother?” Danny asked, his jaw a little tense. We were sitting at my kitchen counter, sipping hot chocolate with mini marshmallows. I’d filled him in on my visit to Sherry’s house and the license plate and breaking into Mikey’s office and my conversations with his brother and mine and everything I knew about the body shop murder.

  I groaned. “Not with him, stupid. On his couch. In a drunken stupor.”

  He glared a minute longer, then dropped it. “There are probably plenty of people besides our brothers who had a motive for killing Chambers, Lex,” he said. “And there really are coincidences, you know.”

  “So you think the fire was a coincidence?”

  He made the who the hell knows? face. “It very well may have had to do with the body shop. But I think it was most likely a coincidence in terms of my brother telling you not to go over there.” I noticed he didn’t say anything about my brother. “I’ll go by in the morning and check it out, see if it was intentionally set. You should get some sleep now.”

  “You think my brother is involved, don’t you?”

  “I think he lied. You know he was at Sherry’s house, yet he claims not to know her. And he definitely didn’t want you to go see her. That’s weird, but not criminal. But the idea Mikey proposed, about Chambers maybe skimming from the boss... I don’t know. You think Brian might be moolighting?” I snorted and Danny shrugged and went on. “You asked me once if I thought Mikey could kill someone and let me take the blame. What about Brian? Could he kill someone and let Kevin take the blame?”

  I thought about that. Picturing Mr. Wonderful killing someone was absurd. It would look bad, for crying out loud. But if I could get around that, it actually wasn’t too hard to imagine him letting Kevin take the fall. Brian’s biggest regret in life was not being an only child.

  “You don’t want it to be your brother,” I said.

  “And you don’t want it to be yours. But the reality is, every bad guy out there is somebody’s brother or son or father, you know?”

  That was a depressing thought. He stood and I walked him to the door.

  “Are you okay here by yourself?”

  I was scared shitless, but I figured if I pretended not to be, I might feel better. I nodded.

  “Because I could always stay, you know,” he offered in the depravity-inducing voice.

  I rolled my eyes. “You’ll check on the fire in the morning?”

  “First thing. I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”

  “Okay. Hey, Danny?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How do you think people knew to peel a pineapple to get to the good part? You don’t have to peel an apple.”

  “Lex, you are one weird chick.�
�� He kissed me on the forehead and left.

  My mind wandered the rest of the night, but it wasn’t occupied with the mysteries of fruit. It occurred to me that I didn’t know my brother at all. Brian was all about appearances, the appearance of being a fine, upstanding pillar of the community, the appearance of being a faithful family man, the appearance of being above reproach. I honestly had no idea what went on under that façade of perfection. I thought about the suggestion that maybe Chambers was skimming from his supplier. I tried to envisage Brian as a drug dealer, but I kept thinking of Al Pacino in Scarface, and the juxtaposition was so preposterous that I gave up. There had to be another explanation.

  I heard someone come in the front door at about six in the morning. Logic told me it was Jack, but fear gripped me anyway. I cowered in bed until I heard water running in the kitchen and the refrigerator door open and close. I guessed bad guys probably wouldn’t come over to make breakfast, so I got up and pulled a robe over my underwear and nightshirt and went to investigate. Coffee was brewing and Jack was reading the paper at the counter, eating blueberry yogurt from a plastic cup. My last blueberry yogurt, actually.

  “Morning, sunshine.”

  “That’s my last yogurt.”

  “Huh? Oh, sorry.” He offered me the half-empty container. “Want the rest?”

  I waved it away and went to forage. I settled on a granola bar. “Can I have the front section?”

  He slid the paper across the counter, and I poured us coffee. It occurred to me that we were like an old married couple, comfortable and compatible. I could do worse. In fact, I had done worse. Jack and I had only slept together once, but that was more than the whole last year of my marriage to Max, not to mention Max and I lacked the companionability I shared with Jack. I shoved his coffee at him and flipped through the paper, looking for news about the fire. Nothing. Must have happened too late to make it into the morning edition.

  “Didn’t see you yesterday.”

  “Busy day. You?”

  Let’s see, I was playing detective, which may have resulted a woman’s house being torched, leaving her flailing and smoke-choked. I almost had a cardiac episode thinking about Danny, and I considered going back to school to study botany and the inscrutability of fruit. “Nah, nothing much.”

  I took my coffee with me to the bathroom, showered and did my hair. Last night’s lack of sleep was obvious in my face, so I did the best I could with concealer and foundation, then added red lipstick to draw attention away from the bags. I pulled on a pair of khaki cargo shorts over a pair of string bikinis that said maybe in red embroidery. Then again, maybe not, I sighed. I put on a bra and slid a black t-shirt over my head, trying not to smash my hair, and laced up the red tennies.

  I went to the office for my purse, then decided to make a phone call before I went out. I dialed the non-emergency number for the police department and asked to be connected to Jimmy C.

  “Alex, what can I do for you?” he offered when he came on the line.

  “I was wondering if there’s anything new on the body shop investigation.”

  “The police department does not comment on on-going investigations.” He wasn’t alone.

  “I understand. Meet me in the park in an hour?”

  “That’s correct. Thank you for calling.”

  There was an envelope on the front porch, and I picked it up absently, sliding the paper out as I beeped the Element open. I hadn’t seen Jack again, but the monster truck was still parked in the driveway, dwarfing the odd SUV, and Lucifer was perched on the hood. I gave him a scratch behind the ears as I walked by. I slid on my shades and slid into the driver’s seat and pulled away, waving to Debbie as I drove. She was setting out little bowls of nuggets for the strays before she left for work. I still held to my opinion that men were better, but I guessed the cats hadn’t eaten her last yogurt this morning. I glanced at the note. One word again. WHORE. That’s just rude, I thought. More sparkly rainbow sticky letters, but clearly the tone had changed. The message concurred with Brian’s assessment of my reputation, but no matter how far I stretched my brain, I couldn’t see Scarface with sticky letters and confetti.

  “Who has time for this shit?” I asked the steering wheel, backing out of the driveway. It offered no opinion, and I gave it a good hard smack.

  I slowed down as I approached Cherry Street. I pulled over a block away from Sherry’s house and looked around. No sign of Danny’s car. There was a fire department pickup parked in front of Angela’s house. I got out and walked the last block. There was still the hint of charred wood smell in the air. The roof and two of Sherry’s exterior walls were gone, the other two blackened and crumbling. I could see clear through to the backyard, and there didn’t seem to be anything left inside except a bathtub and toilet. They were avocado green, and if anything in the house deserved to be burned, it was them. Two firemen in yellow turnout pants and navy Minter Fire Department t-shirts, but no jackets or helmets, were making notes on clipboards.

  “Oh my god, Sherry!” I gasped.

  One of the firemen looked up and put his hand on my arm. “It’s okay, ma’am, she’s fine. You can check on her over at Mercy, but she wasn’t seriously hurt.”

  “Thank goodness. What happened?”

  “Faulty wiring. These places around here are just thrown together. Fire traps.”

  Faulty wiring? I wondered if Danny would concur. “Hmmm. Well, thanks. I better go check on Sherry now.”

  I walked the block and got back in the Element, turned north onto McKinley and drove the couple of miles to Mercy Hospital. I wanted to check on Sherry early, in case my mom was working later today. I went to the information desk.

  Luckily, the information lady was no one I knew, which would facilitate lying.

  “Hi, I’m here about a patient. Sherry Henderson.”

  “Name?”

  “I’m her sister, Alex Henderson.”

  “She’s in two-oh-three, and she’s scheduled to be released this morning. Oh wait, it says here we’re doing an interagency transfer.” The woman tapped her pencil on the desk and flipped some pages on a chart. “Right. She’s going to Minter Villa. Twenty-eight day program. Your folks came in this morning and took care of the paperwork, so there’s nothing you need to do. You can visit your sister until they come to move her.” She checked her watch. “Shouldn’t be too long now.”

  “Minter Villa? Isn’t that the loony bin?”

  The information lady looked over her glasses at me. “Minter Villa is a psychiatric facility. They also provide rehabilitation services for drug and alcohol addiction. It is not called a loony bin.”

  “Can’t my sister just check herself out when she decides she wants a fix?”

  “She was under the influence of narcotics when they brought her in last night. The cops gave her the choice of completing the program or being charged. So yes, she can check herself out. But it wouldn’t be smart.”

  I thanked her out loud, and God silently, and turned to leave. Minter Villa was a locked facility. Nobody would be able to finish the job while Sherry was there. The wiring at her place probably was faulty, but I suspected it had had help. And I had a feeling that if I knew who the helper was, I’d probably know who did Chambers. As I reached for the door handle, my heart stopped. The Music Man car was parked just outside.

  Dammit, I thought, what the hell was he doing here? There were plenty of explanations, I reminded myself as I did a little backwards skip-step, turned and ran for the stairs. The information lady gave me a look, but she didn’t say anything. He could be visiting my mom at work. I glanced at my watch. Nope, she wouldn’t be here for another couple of hours at least. I took the stairs two at a time and was grateful Sherry was only on the second floor. I was definitely going to join the gym soon. He could be visiting any number of patients, for any number of reasons. I exited the stairwell onto the second floor, ignored the questioning glances from the nurses at the nurses’ station and followed the arrow that indica
ted Sherry’s room was down the hall to my left. The fact that his car was here didn’t prove that he even knew Sherry, let alone that he was the faulty-wiring-helper or that he was here to finish the job.

  So why did I have this sick feeling in my gut?

  I skidded to a stop in front of the door, my sneakers squeaking on the linoleum floor. Angela stood outside the room.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, huffing a little.

  “I brought Sherry some clothes since hers got all burned.”

  “But why are you out here, in the hallway?”

  “The doctor’s examining her now and told me I had to leave.”

  I had no idea how long ago the “doctor” had kicked Angela out of the room, but I assumed I had no time to waste. I flung open the door and barged into the room. The bed to my right was empty. The bed to my left was hidden behind the privacy curtain. I flung that open as well.

  “Get away from her, you jackass!” I yelled.

  Ginger Jorgenson looked up at me over her chart. She gave me a bemused expression and waited to see what cleverness I would come up with next. Sherry was asleep in the bed. A couple of large bouquets of flowers adorned the window ledge.

  “Oh, hey Ginger, I thought you were someone else.”

  “Like who?” she asked, still enjoying my idiocy.

  I shrugged. I had known Ginger my whole life. Most of our teachers, at least in elementary school and junior high, had arranged their classrooms in alphabetical order, which put Ginger directly behind me almost every year. She was the one who always knew the correct answer when I fumbled with the Spanish for boat or couldn’t come up with any of the current Cabinet members. She also had a knack for getting me in trouble by passing notes to the person next to me, making it look like I did it. Once she farted loudly, then patted me on the shoulder and said, “It’s okay, Alex. Everybody gets gas.” I never knew why she disliked me, but I had a feeling it was a Darwinian thing, where she felt like I was the weak member of the species and it was her duty to get rid of me for the well-being of the rest of the clan. Of course, my reasons for hating her were obvious and legion.