A way-past-her prime waitress wearing jeans came with a coffee carafe. “Morning, Ted.” She turned over two mugs and poured them to the brim. “I saw on the news they got a fire over in Oregon. You going?”
“Hiya, Lorraine. Don’t know. Might, if they don’t get on top of it quick. Your boy still hauling logs over there?”
“Be doing it all summer. They’re paying him a lot more than he can get around here, but his trips have been cut down. Tree-fallers are having to quit by eleven. It’s so hot and dry, the birds are coughing. Supposed to get to a hundred today.”
She pulled a pad out of the pocket of a ruffled apron and whipped a pencil from a helmet of frizzy blue hair. “You guys eating breakfast?”
Ted ordered a cinnamon roll, but Doug ordered his favorite morning meal—two eggs over easy, sugar-cured bacon and fresh biscuits with real country butter.
After Lorraine left with the order, Ted said, “My God, man, you should’ve ordered an angioplasty with that. I can see you still like to eat. You still cook?”
Doug’s mind took another turn down memory lane. Growing up, he had learned to cook from Ted’s mother. Self-defense she had called it, telling Doug often that the frozen pizza his brother and sister-in-law sold in their blue-collar bar was not a proper diet for a growing boy. “You bet. Good food is one of the few vices I have left.” He picked up his mug and sipped.
Ted laughed. “Don’t tell me you’ve given up hot women.”
Hot women, Doug thought ruefully. One hot woman had been the beginning of the end of the police career of Douglas James Hawkins. If he had never been called out to that domestic abuse scene, if he had never met John Bascomb’s wife...He stopped his galloping regrets. All of that was water over the dam. “Yep, that, too.”
The waitress saved him from Ted’s questions by bringing breakfast. As he buttered a biscuit, he glanced past Ted’s shoulder toward a corner booth across the room and saw the pissed-off blonde sitting alone, partially hidden by a newspaper. He tilted his head toward her. “There's your friend again.”
A bite of cinnamon roll filled Ted’s jaw, but he looked over his shoulder.
“Interesting woman,” Doub said and meant it. He had always been fascinated by a mix of balls and beauty in a woman. “She strikes me as somebody who always does something different from everybody else.” He sneaked peeks at her as he tucked into his breakfast.
“Um, yeah. Wonder where Frank is. She was supposed to meet him here this morning. Frank Bagwell. He’s the real estate agent down the street. She’s trying to sell her bar.”
“Bar? You mean, as in booze? Here?”
“Across the street, next to the grocery store.”
“You said she lived in L.A.”
“She does, but she owns Carlton’s Lounge and Supper Club. It's a long story.” Ted dismissed the subject with a flick of his hand and started a conversation about a high country lake where somebody he knew had caught some nice golden trout. Doug listened to the fish story, but continued to discreetly watch the blonde.
She didn’t look their way once. She placed money on the table, then hurried out. The eyes of most of the men in the room, including Ted’s, followed her, Doug noticed, and he felt a tiny twinge of...what? He couldn’t name the emotion, but it was strange and different.
“Not to sound like an old movie, but what’s a woman like her doing in a place like this?”
“Kicking back, mostly. Getting away from stress. She’s a high-octane real estate broker down in L.A. Shopping centers, apartments and such.”
“And she’s what? Separated? Divorced?” Doug had to put effort into sounding indifferent.
“Divorced.”
“From somebody around here?”
“Naw. L.A. Her ex is a real asshole. They own a restaurant chain down there. He runs it. Maybe you’ve seen ’em. Charlie Boy’s Old South Barbecue.”
Doug could think of several of the restaurant locations scattered through Los Angeles and Orange counties. What came to mind was ice-cold beer, loud rhythm and blues and plenty of Southern atmosphere. “Small world. I’ve even been in one. Not bad food. He’s an asshole? He beat her up?”
“Naw. Alex would hit him back. She’d not one of those helpless females.” Ted cut off another bite of his roll.
Doug had seen for himself that Alex wasn’t helpless. After the confrontation in front of that cabin, he figured she wasn’t afraid of a pack of wolves. “So why’d they get divorced?”
“Charlie’s a drunk, but I suspect that’s one of his more benign habits. I imagine he does a little dope. I wouldn’t be surprised if he even sells a little. He used to come here to hunt in the fall, but I haven’t seen him pick up a rifle in several years. Now all he does is party and chase women.”
Callister might be a sportsman’s paradise, but in Doug’s mind, the last thing it looked like was a playground for the idle rich. “In a town like this?”
“Yep. It’s crazy, but he’s been back three or four times this summer. He’s got a girlfriend here. Some of the gossips around town even think one of her kids is his. Cindy Evans. She’s the bartender at the Rusty Spur.”
Doug’s stomach rose and fell. He looked away, silently cursing and reminding himself of the deceitfulness of women.
“Alex was married to the guy for years,” Ted went on. “He tormented the devil out of her most of the time. Still does if he gets a chance. It’s almost like he sits around and thinks up ways to harass her. She doesn’t go around crying on people’s shoulders, but I can see it in her when they’ve been in a row. Something must have happened last night. She looked like hell this morning.”
Doug nearly choked on a bite of bacon and took a quick drink of coffee. He waited a beat for his stomach to settle. “She doesn’t look like somebody you’d kick out of bed. Why’d she wait so long to dump him? They have one of those arrangements?”
“Alex didn’t fool around if that’s what you mean.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know. We’ve been friends since the first week I moved here and I pulled her Jeep out of a mudhole. I would’ve known if she ever stepped out on ol’ Charlie.”
And if she did step out, Doug suspected, the man across the table would have been the first in line to escort her. He shrugged. “She must have loved him.”
“Hard to say.” Ted shook his head. “Nobody, including me, understood it. They both like money and they’re pretty rich. My guess is that’s what kept them together so long. Neither one of them could stand to split the pie. You ought to see her house.”
The ugly-looking old house, according to the Rusty Spur’s bartender. Doug wished he had observed it more closely when they had passed it last night.
“It's an old mansion,” Ted said. “Built back around the turn of the century by the guy this town and county, even a mountain, are named after. She’s spent a fortune remodeling and restoring it to the way it was originally. It’s full of neat stuff. Looks like a museum. I keep an eye on things and take care of her cats when she’s out of town. One of these days when she’s gone and I’m going up there, I’ll take you with me and show you the place.”
Ted glanced at his watch. “Well, ol’ buddy, I still owe the government a day’s work. Pete Hand, a friend of mine, wants to go fishing over at Hell’s Canyon this weekend. He’s got a good sled boat. You up for it?”
“You bet. First thing I unpacked was my tackle. All I have to do is get a license.”
“Fielder’s Grocery sells ‘em.”
“Okay. Say, listen, I’ve got some time on my hands. I might be interested in that fire-fighting gig. Around here, that is. I wouldn’t want to traipse off to Oregon, but if something happened locally—”
“Great. We can always use an extra hand.”
“Anything special I need to know?”
“Naw. Every fire’s different. For the local volunteers, it’s pretty much on-the-job training. Being in good physical shape helps about as much as anything.”
/>
After he and Ted parted company, Doug took the time to stroll up and down the main street of downtown Callister. He saw a doctor’s office, a drug store and a beauty shop, no discount store, no shopping center.
No street gangs. No teenage dope dealers wielding AK-47s.
Yep, you could leave your keys in your car and find it where you left it when you returned. He was reminded of his youth in a small town in Nebraska. He hadn’t felt so much at ease in years. And having the company again of a good friend was a bonus.
Lastly, he ambled to Fielder’s and bought a few groceries and a fishing license. When he returned to the Silverado, the damaged fender glared back at him like a boxer with an injured eye. He had other things to do, so he put it out of his mind.
The wild blue-eyed woman who’d damaged it was more difficult to erase from his thoughts.
He cranked the engine and crept along until he was beyond the city limits. No traffic met him, so nothing forced his thoughts away from the McGregor woman. She might live in L.A., but she was from somewhere in the South. She spoke with a hint of a drawl and dropped her Rs and Gs in that smoky low tone that summoned to mind erotic bedroom delights.
Before he could stop himself, he had conjured up a fantasy of her willowy body covered by ivory satin and lace or maybe just plain naked. He felt himself swelling against his zipper.
Cool it, he told his cock and reminded himself he had given up women.
Chapter 5
The living room clock’s soft bong brought Alex back to half consciousness. Her mind counted each strike until it registered ten. She jerked awake to see the night easing in around her.
Good Lord. She had returned from town, eaten lunch, then begun her laundry. In the middle of it, fatigue had overcome her and she had taken to her chair for a nap, wasting time sleeping when she still had clothes to pack for her trip to Salt Lake.
Remembering she had left lingerie in the dryer, she forced herself to her feet, shedding the grogginess of sleep. In the utility room, she folded her clothing, then stepped into the back hallway, bent on carrying it to her suitcase. For no particular reason, she looked through the window in the back door. Up Wolf Mountain, a faint orange glow showed against the black sky.
An alarm clanged in her head. She yanked open the back door and stepped out onto the deck. The aromatic smell of wood smoke hung heavy in the warm night air.
Fear sent a spike to her heart. Still hanging on to the stack of clothing, she dashed back into the house to the phone mounted on the kitchen wall, her loafer heels clapping across the hardwood floor. She tossed the clothing on the counter and stabbed in Ted Benson's home number with shaky fingers.
When he picked up, she could tell she had awakened him. “Ted. There's a fire on my mountain. It looks like it’s at Granite Pond.”
“You sure?” His tone changed from sleepy to alert.
“It doesn’t look big, but I can’t tell from here. I’m going up there.”
“No, Alex, wait. We'll be right—”
Clack! She hung up and was down the utility room stairs to her Jeep in a run, chanting a prayer as she went. “My house, my house. OhmyGod, please, not my house.”
Alex had been around the Northwest during fire season enough to know that forest fires always went uphill unless winds changed their paths. To her advantage, Swede Creek ran through the canyon behind and to the side of her house. If the winds didn't rise, the canyon updraft would take the flames in the opposite direction from the house.
She turned the Jeep onto Old Ridge Road and ground her way uphill, the orange color growing brighter with each foot she traveled. When she came to the horse trail that skirted the small glade where Granite Pond lay, she lunged out the door and looked down. The glade and Granite Pond glowed red-orange. The old miner’s cabin was on fire. Orange flames skipped across the wood-shingled roof. Like devil dancers, they climbed the log walls and threw themselves upward, crackling and shooting cinders fifty feet into the air, Though she was a distance away, she felt the heat. A sweet odor she couldn't identify filled her nostrils.
She reacted automatically, half sliding, half falling down the steep hillside. Smoke clogged her lungs. Her eyes darted to the pond as her mind frantically searched for any kind of container that would hold water. But she knew that no spare bucket or anything of the sort lay around, because she kept the area around the cabin as clean as a kitchen floor.
She no sooner reached the bottom before a woman appearing to be nude and colored a surrealistic orange burst from behind a nearby stand of trees, running across the clearing toward her, shrieking, stumbling, falling and stumbling again. “Help meee! OhGodhelpme!”
A few beats passed before Alex recognized her. Cindy Evans!
Cindy plowed into her and grabbed her. “Don’t let him near me! He’ll hurt me!”
The impact knocked Alex backward, but she kept her balance, gripped Cindy’s bare shoulders and caught her focus. "Who?” she shouted. “Who’s trying to hurt you?”
“He’s in there, Alex! He’s in there!”
Alex shook her. “Cindy! Cindy! Stop screaming! Who is it?”
“Charlie!” She began to sob and shake. “Oh, God, Alex...it’s...it’s Charlie....He’s in, in...the cabin.”
Alex’s head snapped toward the inferno the cabin had become. She shoved Cindy away and sprinted across the clearing, straight for the cabin's doorway. Overwhelming heat met her. She neared the door, but heat drove her back. Cindy appeared at her side and clutched her arm. Alex shouted, “I can’t get in there. Are you sure? How do you know?”
Cindy threw her face against Alex's shoulder, her voice hitching. “I know. I…just know. He’s...in there.” A paroxysm of loud sobbing overcame her and she clutched Alex’s shirt with talon-like fingers.
As she fought to rid herself of Cindy’s clinging hands, she saw a train of headlights topping Old Ridge Road. Vehicles bounced down the washboard hillside. Local Forest Service firefighters. Alex wrapped her arms around Cindy, covering her nakedness.
Doors flew open with engines still running. People wearing hard hats and yellow shirts piled out and began strapping water pump cans on their backs. Axes and shovels in hand, they swept toward the flames like a wave of soldiers.
Ted Benson, trailed by Gretchen Peterson, came running. “Jesus Christ!” He turned and barked to Gretchen, “Get my windbreaker out of the truck. It’s behind the seat.”
Gretchen dashed away. Ted grasped Cindy's arms, attempting to pry her away from Alex, but the hysterical woman hung onto Alex’s clothing with the strength of ten. Gretchen came back in a run carrying the wrinkled nylon windbreaker and threw it around Cindy’s body. With Ted’s help, Cindy was coaxed and torn away from Alex. She latched onto Gretchen.
Alex dashed for the cabin door again. “Charlieee!”
“Alex!,” Ted shouted. “Where the hell you going? Stop!”
Balls of fire shot out the cabin’s front door and through both windows as Alex neared. She danced from foot to foot in front of the door. Tongues of flame licked at her. Her flesh burned. Her hair singed. She threw her forearm across her face, protecting it from the hellish heat.
Arms like straitjackets grabbed her from behind. She fought and screamed. “Let me go! I’ve got to get him out!”
“Alex! No—”
She broke free, dashed toward the front door, bobbing her head, seeking a path through the flames.
Ted grabbed her again, but she fought his hold. “He needs me! I've got to get him!”
Ted pushed her to the ground, his shouts filling her ear. “Pete! Goddammit, help me! She's strong as an ox!”
She kicked loose and clambered to her feet again, leaving him prone, but he grabbed her ankle, hobbling her.
Then, a hulking form was in front of her, holding something dark and cape-like and everything went black. Her arms were pinned to her sides and she couldn’t breathe. She shrieked and bucked and kicked with both feet. More hands held her. She felt herself being dr
agged, then pressed to the ground by weight and she felt less heat. The heavy cloth that stank of body odor disappeared from her head and she could breathe. Ted was straddling her.
A deafening Whoosh! jerked her head toward the cabin. The roof collapsed, a violent gush of flames soared and sparks rocketed. Imploding walls followed. Only seconds later, near silence with only an occasional crackle.
“Alex...Alex, you okay?” It was Ted. And he was gasping for breath.
She couldn’t answer. She could only stare at the burning remains of the cabin. Ted lifted himself off her and she sat up slowly. Sourness rose in her throat. She turned and retched, emptying her stomach on the ground.
Ted reached for her. “Jesus, Alex...God, I’m sorry—”
“Hey, Ted!” The call came from up the hill. “Need that chainsaw up here!”
“I hear you,” Ted yelled. He got to his feet. “I gotta help, Alex. They’re making a fire break....Alex?...I gotta go. You okay now?” He picked up a chain saw and backed away.
She rolled to her hands and knees and looked around. The entire glade was on fire. Flames crept up Wolf Mountain in a red spider-web pattern.
She felt a presence and looked up. Mike Blessing thrust an axe toward her. “Come on, girl. We need every hand.”
He set her to work on a fire line behind two other fire fighters. Back-breaking work, cutting brush and small trees with a hand axe, clearing a wide swath of the fuel that would feed the fire. She scarcely noticed, so perilous was the danger of a blowup and all of Wolf Mountain bursting into flames.
Grueling hours later, she staggered to a clearing that was untouched by the fire and dropped, limp from exhaustion. She propped her elbows on her knees and braced her forehead against the heels of her blackened, lacerated hands.
Fire no longer illuminated the small valley. Everything around her was darker than dark. Like neon, patches of red embers dotted the side of the black mountain in front of her. She couldn't draw a breath without inhaling smoke. They had been fortunate that the winds hadn’ t risen. But without them, the glade felt like a windowless room, the air reeking of the terrible stench of destruction. And death.
The Love of a Stranger Page 4