BAD PICK

by Linda Lovely

  “Not possible,” I said. “They’re omnivores. Didn’t actually get out of the car at Jamieson Gorge. Tomorrow I’ll scout the site. Maybe there’s a way to corral them in kudzu land. Say, what happens when goats eat poison ivy? I assume it doesn’t bother them or Aunt Eva wouldn’t consider the job.”

  “No, they’re immune. Wish I could say the same.”

  Our dinner conversation relaxed me. Andy was good company. Entertaining and caring. I was looking forward to spending time with him this week. He’d become family.

  Family, yes. But more like a brother than a lover?

  Suddenly, he grinned. “Hey, Mollye says your friends have assigned names to the weeks when Paint or I get you all to ourselves. I understand mine is called Animal Passion. Much cooler than Brewing Trouble.”

  He laughed. “See I tried to warn you that Paint’s trouble.”

  “So glad neither you nor Paint are proctologists. My friends had enough fun playing word games with your professions. I can hear them now. We’d have End Dive and Bottoms Up weeks.”

  After dinner, we returned to Falls Park where we’d first kissed. But the wind was brisk and the night far too chilly for a reenactment.

  “How about a nightcap at Summer Place?” I suggested. “Follow me there. I stopped at the ABC store and bought some Kahlua. Eva and Billy won’t be around to interrupt us.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  I went in the kitchen to start a pot of coffee for Andy and me. Shoot. I’d bought coffee but only the high-test stuff, no decaffeinated beans. While I waited for the coffeemaker to stop sputtering, I poured generous slugs of Kahlua into the bottom of two mugs. Wanted to make sure I mixed in enough sleep-inducing alcohol to balance the caffeine buzz. Otherwise I’d never get to sleep before dawn and the start of a new farm day.

  While I was in the kitchen, the police siren alarm on my phone blared. I jumped a foot.

  “It’s Amber. You can relax.” Andy called from his sunporch chair. “Not a return of the vandals.”

  “Good,” I replied. “I’m going to turn down the volume on this blasted alarm so it doesn’t give me a heart attack or hearing loss.”

  I left the kitchen, drying my hands on a towel. “Hi, Amber. Everything okay? Need something?”

  “Is it safe to light a fire in the cottage fireplace? I didn’t want to fill the cabin with smoke. I know the chimney’s old and I wasn’t sure it worked.”

  “The fireplace is one of the few things that does work. I made sure of it. A wood fire is the only way to keep warm on cold nights like this.”

  “Great,” Amber answered. “Sorry to intrude.”

  “No problem. Just make sure the fire screen’s securely in place before you go to bed. There’s a cord of wood just outside the fireplace, and the last tenants cut a trap door so they could pull the wood in without venturing outside. It’s like a doggie door only we keep it latched inside to keep out squirrels and other varmints when it’s not in use.”

  Amber left and I fetched the mugs of Kahlua-laced coffee for Andy and me. In addition to a table and chairs, the sunporch had an old-fashioned glider. Just big enough for the two of us. Since we had no fireplace to light, we snuggled, and talked. I’m not sure whether this speaks to our sparkling conversation or our low tolerance for alcohol, but we both drifted off.

  I jumped when the wail of a distant police siren woke me.

  What?

  Andy languidly stretched like a big cat. My head had been resting on his arm and I imagined it was numb. I vaguely wondered why a police car was chasing some speedster a couple of roads over from Summer Place. Maybe a drug bust?

  Suddenly Andy found the muted siren considerably more interesting. In fact, he pushed me away as he bounced up. Annoying.

  He gripped my shoulders. “Someone or something’s outside, out there,” he whispered. “We’d better see what triggered your motion detector.”

  Duh. The siren wasn’t a passing cop car at all. It was the alarm for the doorbell motion detector. I’d muted the alarm after Amber set it off.

  I’d turned out the lights before Andy and I settled on the glider with our drinks. Summer Place had no shades or curtains. Darkness was the only way to achieve any privacy when the Medley sisters walked their pooch.

  I fumbled through the purse I’d left on the floor by the glider. Andy retrieved his phone first. By the time my fingers wrapped around my cell, Andy had called up the image recorded by the camera. He put his arm around me and pulled me close as we stared at the screen together.

  A hunched-over shape in a dark hoodie slunk around the side of Summer Place. No question. This intruder hadn’t come to sell magazines or solicit charity donations. I sucked in a shocked breath.

  “Where’s he going?” I whispered though there was no way the prowler could hear me.

  “Could be looking for a back entrance to Summer Place?” Andy whispered back.

  I shivered despite the protective warmth of Andy’s arm. “Or maybe he’s headed toward the cottage. We have to warn Ursula.”

  “Amber should have received the same alert. She has the app on her phone, too. Stay here and call the sheriff.”

  “What do you mean stay here?” I grabbed Andy’s arm as he stood. “Where are you going?”

  “Outside. Need to find out what the guy’s up to.”

  I gripped his arm tighter. “Bad idea. You should wait for the sheriff, too. Unlike Eva, I don’t have an umbrella stand by the door with a handy shotgun. The prowler could be armed.”

  “If it makes you feel better, I’ll get my shotgun out of the truck. But I’m going to go. We need to know what he’s up to. I’ll be careful.”

  I followed Andy to the porch door as I punched 911 into my own cell.

  “I have to go,” Andy repeated. “He might be looking for a back way into Summer Place. My truck, your Prius, and Ursula’s rental are all parked out front. He must know people are inside, even with the lights off. We can’t be sitting ducks. Who knows how long it will be before the sheriff gets here?”

  I stepped outside to follow Andy’s progress. Bent over, he scurried through the sparse grass beside the driveway trying to make himself as small a target as possible. Running on the grass was a lot quieter than footsteps flinging gravel on the drive.

  “What’s your emergency?” The operator’s voice startled me. I’d almost forgotten the phone was in my hand.

  “There’s an intruder sneaking around my property.”

  I quickly gave the Summer Place address.

  “Did you get a good look at him?” the operator asked. “Can you describe him?”

  “He’s dressed in a dark hoodie. Couldn’t see his face. He was crouched over and kept to the shadows.”

  “Did you see a weapon?”

  I glanced toward the rear of Summer Place hoping to catch sight of the prowler in the distance, provide more information. “I don’t—”

  Oh, my God. Flames licked at the front of the cottage.

  “Heaven help us. He’s set fire to the cottage out back! Call the fire department! There are people in there.”

  I didn’t wait to hear the 911 operator’s reply. Andy rounded the corner of Summer Place, and I was happy to spot the silhouette of a shotgun in his hand. Not wearing anything with pockets, I tucked my phone in my bra and ran to intercept Andy. Fear churned my stomach like a Cuisinart on high speed.

  “The prowler set fire to the cottage,” I choked out. “We have to get Ursula and Amber out.”

  We ran toward the fire in tandem as fingers of red and yellow flames snaked up the face of the old cottage between the stone chimney and front door. I could hear Andy’s size thirteens flinging gravel beside me. No attempt to keep quiet now.

  The billowing smoke turned the pale moonlight into a foggy haze.

  “That masonry chimney’s acting like a firestop. It
’s slowing the fire’s spread on the right side of the cottage. But old wood structures like this can flash over in minutes,” Andy yelled. “I’m going around back.”

  As we skirted the cottage, he grabbed my arm and I almost fell over. “Watch out! Whoever set this may be lying in wait, ready to take out anyone who tries to escape. Let me go, you stay back.”

  Fat chance, even though I was plenty scared.

  I hadn’t considered our villain might be setting up an ambush. Couldn’t think about that. Two of us had a better chance of rescuing Ursula and Amber than Andy on his own. I shuddered as I thought about the age of the cottage and its dry-as-tinder wood. Little chance of stopping the fire from devouring the whole structure.

  We heard the screaming twenty feet out.

  “Help! I can’t get Ursula up.” Amber’s loud cries came from the back of the cottage. Not a surprise. The only bedroom was at the back. Right where we were headed.

  “Don’t open the back door,” Andy yelled as we neared the cottage. “It’ll let oxygen rush in and draw the fire down the hall.”

  The back door opened on a hallway that bisected the cottage interior, dividing front room from kitchenette and back bedroom from a bath and closet. “Let’s hope the bedroom door’s closed, too,” Andy added.

  He pointed toward a bedroom window cracked open a few inches. The sill was only three feet off the ground.

  “Amber, can you hear me?” he yelled. “Keep low, out of the smoke. Stay in the bedroom. I’m gonna come through the window and get you two out.”

  “You can’t,” Amber’s scratchy voice tried for calm. “The window’s stuck. It won’t budge.”

  “Let me give it a try.” Andy tossed down his shotgun, hooked his hands beneath the window sash, and shoved. The old wood groaned as the tall window grudgingly moved all of two inches upward.

  “Let me help.” I wiggled in and Andy shuffled left to make room. Once my hands joined his under the sash, he counted, “One, two, three, go!”

  We heaved. Our reward? Three more inches.

  “Still not enough for me to squeeze through. I have to break the glass, even if that means more oxygen to draw the fire this way.”

  “No. Don’t risk it!” I shook my head violently then realized he couldn’t see my protest in the dim light. “Besides shards from those old panes would turn you into mincemeat. The window’s open wide enough for me to slip through.”

  “No way,” Andy said. “Can’t let you go inside.”

  “Yes, you can and you will. You can still break the window if I can’t get them out. Don’t argue.”

  I dropped to my knees and stuck my head and arms through the window. I wriggled left, then right to bump one boob at a time over the danged immovable sill.

  “Andy, give me a shove.”

  “Dammit.” His hands settled on my thighs, and he pushed.

  “I’m almost in,” I called to Amber. “Can you see me? Are you near the window?”

  The heat punched me in the face. I gasped and swallowed a lungful of smoke. My coughing jag only made it worse. My throat throbbed. It felt like tiny embers were dancing inside me. My efforts had bent me in two, and I was stuck. My head near the floor, my butt wedged in the window by a wad of clothes. The waistband on my pants had snagged on the sill, dragging my slacks down around my hips as I wriggled forward. The bunched material wedged me firmly in place.

  “Andy, yank on my slacks, they’re caught,” I yelled.

  Seconds later, I heard a rip and felt cold air on my thighs as Andy shimmied my slacks down. Amber’s fingers found my arm and inched up it to get a tight grip near my shoulder. She pulled just as my derriere, free of interfering fabric, squeezed through the window.

  I tumbled gracelessly into the hot-as-Hades room. Heat roasted my bare thighs as my slacks slithered away to pool around my shoes. I’d managed a face plant. I toed off my Sketchers and furiously kicked my bare legs to free my feet from their trouser handcuffs.

  “Hurry. The smoke’s getting worse.” Amber coughed. “I rolled Ursula off the air mattress. She’s on the floor.”

  “Brie, you okay?” Andy yelled from outside.

  “I’m good,” I answered.

  “Amber, is the bedroom door shut?” Andy asked.

  “Yes,” Amber choked out her answer.

  “Good, that helps,” he said. “Keep low, both of you. Less smoke by the floor. Try and lift Ursula up so I can grab her arms and pull her through. You push. I’ll pull.”

  Thank heavens Andy was a volunteer fireman. He knew more about fires than I ever wanted to know.

  My eyes burned. Tears streamed down my cheeks. Squinting, I made out Ursula’s sprawled form and crawled toward her on my hands and knees. Amber scooted to Ursula’s other side. Together we dragged her to just below the window.

  “Ready to lift?” I asked.

  “Go on three,” Amber answered.

  “One, two, three.”

  My hoarse count used up scarce breath. I gasped and swallowed smoke. My stupidity launched a coughing jag. We hoisted Ursula’s torso up to the windowsill. Through the gray haze and my tears, I glimpsed the blurry outline of Andy’s arms, shoulders, and head. Unable to wedge his entire body inside, he’d poked enough of himself through to grab Ursula. In seconds, he pulled her free.

  “You’re next,” I told Amber.

  “No way,” she said. “You first.”

  “Nope. You’ve been in here longer, inhaled more smoke. You go.”

  “Quit arguing!” Andy snapped. “No time, Amber. Brie’s as stubborn as Eva’s mule. Give me your hands. I’ll wring Brie’s neck once you’re both outside.”

  As Amber wriggled through the window, I heard sirens. Real ones this time. Police, fire, or both?

  Once Amber’s feet vanished from view, I raised my hands toward the open window. Yowzer. Andy pulled so hard I thought my arms might leave their sockets. Before I could blink, he was holding me. Unceremoniously he dumped me over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and trotted away from the building. As my head bounced against his body, I caught upside down glimpses of a swarm of firefighters.

  “Ursula? Is she…?”

  “Unconscious but breathing,” he answered. “She’s with the EMTs—Amber too.”

  When Andy hefted me, my pink hipster panties crawled farther down my behind. I tried to reach a hand around to tug the silk undies up. Couldn’t manage it.

  “Put me down,” I complained. “I’m fine.”

  Suddenly it all seemed too funny. One, my current position had me mooning the unsuspecting firefighters running to the rescue. And, two, I’d willingly participated in the shedding of clothes while on a date with Andy. Not quite nude, but dang close. Would Andy declare he’d won?

  Before I could stop, hysterical belly laughs bubbled up and out. The laughs made my scorched throat ache, but I couldn’t stop. Probably did little to convince Andy I was of sane mind.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Andy lowered me to my feet a safe distance from the fire. He gripped my shoulders to steady me as I swayed, dizzy from the carry. My teeth started to chatter.

  “I’ll get a blanket.” He loped off toward an ambulance that had parked on the one surviving patch of real grass.

  My laughter died almost as soon as it started. I was scared. Make that terrified. I searched for Amber in the confusion. Spotted her standing by an ambulance as the EMTs loaded Ursula inside. Had Amber heard the prowler alert on her phone?

  What in the world was happening?

  First, Karen’s death, then Harriet’s. Now arson? Was this another murder attempt? The lights were off at Summer Place. Had the prowler assumed I was in the cottage? With the truck and cars parked out front, he had to know people were inside one of the buildings when he torched the cottage.

  The firefighters hooked up portable lights. Sadly
their piercing beams offered a clear view of the cottage’s charred timbers and sooty chimney stones. A total loss. It hadn’t been much—inside or out—before the fire. I couldn’t think of a thing worth salvaging out of the blackened hulk, though I did regret losing my Sketchers and the relatively new pair of dress slacks I’d jettisoned on the bedroom floor.

  While I had insurance on Summer Place, I’d settled on a high deductible to make it affordable. Worse, I recalled the “outbuilding” was insured for less than my deductible.

  I started to hyperventilate. My shocked body spasmed with aftershocks. I put my hands on my knees and bent over to suck in a deep breath. Anything to stop the trembling.

  When I opened my eyes, I spotted something gold glittering in the grass at my feet. I picked it up. A miniature gold gavel earring. Ursula must have lost it. Pretty. I’d have to tell her I’d found it. Tomorrow. Hopefully, she’d be well enough to leave the hospital by morning.

  As I straightened, I saw Andy, large gray blanket in hand, rapidly closing in. Absent a pants pocket—or pants—I gave the pierced earring a puzzled look as I tried to decide where to put it for safekeeping.

  Then, duh, I remembered I had pierced ears. Mollye had given me earrings, a certificate to have my ears pierced, and a jar of Paint’s moonshine as a combo Christmas present. I hooked the orphaned earring through my ear lobe just before Andy wrapped me in the scratchy but warm blanket.

  “Thanks,” I tried unsuccessfully to stifle another quivering aftershock.

  Along with the blanket, Andy brought the fire chief.

  “Brie, this is Chief MacLeod. He’d like to ask you a few questions about the cottage.”

  “Chief, thank heavens you arrived so quickly. You put out the fire in time to save Summer Place.”

  The chief stroked his white moustache. “Sorry we couldn’t save the cottage. And I’m sorry to bother you with questions, but we’re trying to figure out what happened. Andy tells me you two reported a prowler minutes before the fire broke out. Is that right?