Upon a Midnight Clear

by Catherine Mulvany

  Smoke detector!

  He sat up abruptly, disoriented until he remembered where he was—banished to the break room. With the door closed, the smoke wasn’t too bad. He assumed it must be a lot heavier in the main showroom to have triggered the alarm.

  He dressed in seconds, then stuffed his bare feet into running shoes, not bothering with socks, not stopping long enough to tie the laces.

  Alexandra. He had to get Alexandra out of the apartment before it was too late.

  The door wasn’t hot to the touch. He kept his head well enough to remember to check before easing it open. No flames lit the darkness beyond, either, but the air was heavy with smoke. Choking back a cough, Dixon slammed the door shut. He wouldn’t last long without something over his face. Moving quickly, he stripped the pillow and dropped the pillowcase in the stainless-steel sink in the corner. He turned the water on full blast, soaking the percale. Then, with the sopping cloth wrapped around his head, he ventured into the main showroom once again.

  The back wall was ablaze. He couldn’t see the fire through the thick black smoke, but he could hear its roar and feel its heat. Despite the danger, he moved closer. The door to the stairs was back there. If he couldn’t get to the second floor, Alexandra didn’t have a chance.

  The doorknob burned his fingers, a tangible warning of what awaited him on the other side of the thick oak panels. His brain registered the futility of proceeding further, but his heart wasn’t listening.

  Using the pillowcase to protect his hand, he turned the knob. A mistake.

  Heat exploded through the open door like a blow from the devil’s fist, slamming him back twenty feet before laying him out on the floorboards. No use. Only a raging tunnel of smoke and flames remained. The stairs were gone. Just as he’d be gone, too, if he didn’t get the hell out of there.

  Choking, blinded by the smoke, he crawled toward what he hoped to God was the front door, keeping low, trying to suck enough precious oxygen into his burning lungs to keep his brain functional. If he lost consciousness now, before he escaped …

  Dixon found the door with his head, slamming into the frame hard enough to rattle the glass. Dazed, he reached up instinctively to release the bolt. The mechanism gave with a ping and he crawled out into the cold.

  He sprawled on his back in the slushy snow that lay two inches deep on the sidewalk, and fought to drag oxygen into his heaving lungs. Wet flakes landed on his face. He heard sirens in the distance. Alexandra must have called the fire department.

  Alexandra. Oh, God! Alexandra! Rolling over, he shoved himself to his knees, then staggered to his feet.

  He stared up at the two-story building. A reddish glow lit the rear, but the front was dark and deceptively peaceful looking. Inside Alexandra was trapped, perhaps already overcome by the deadly fumes. Where were the damn firefighters?

  Scaling the old building’s brick facade was a piece of cake, given the thickness of the decorative trim around the front windows. Pumped up on adrenaline, he probably could have run straight up the face of Yosemite’s El Capitán.

  Balancing on the narrow stone ledge, he pounded the glass with the heel of his hand, nearly losing his balance when the next window over blew out in a shower of glass.

  A heavy oak chair crashed onto the sidewalk. Alexandra’s head and shoulders, wreathed in smoke and framed by jagged shards of broken glass, appeared in the opening.

  He sagged in relief and came within an ace of falling on top of the poor, battered chair. “You okay?” Which was a pretty stupid question to ask of a woman who sounded as if she were in the terminal stages of emphysema.

  She shook her head. “No, but I will be.” Using a fist wrapped with the folds of an afghan, she knocked out the remaining glass, then padded the windowsill with the coverlet.

  “Here, grab my hand.” Hanging on to a corner of the molding, he stretched an arm toward her.

  “No, I have a ladder.” She coughed in great gasping wheezes. “My mother’s idea.” More coughing. “If only I can get the damn thing hooked.” Behind her, flames flared up with a whoosh. Her Christmas tree went up like a torch. “Oh, jeez.”

  Dixon inched along the ledge and levered himself inside. One end of the ladder was designed to loop over a couple of hooks fastened to the underside of the window frame, but the loops weren’t quite big enough for the hooks. Dixon’s heart measured the seconds as he fought the stubborn nylon. “Got it!” He locked the ladder in place and tossed the free end out the window. The bottom rung reached only two thirds of the way to the sidewalk.

  Alexandra’s face mirrored his own dismay. “Damn,” he said softly. Then: “Don’t worry. I’ll go first.”

  Dixon dropped from the last rung, fighting to keep his balance on the slippery sidewalk. He went down on one knee but managed to regain his feet in time to catch Alexandra before her bare feet touched the slush.

  She was wearing the same filmy pink nightgown she’d discarded so unceremoniously the night before, seemingly oblivious to the way it gaped at the neck and rode up on her thighs, baring an immodest amount of gooseflesh-covered skin to the chill night air. Still coughing and hacking from all the smoke she’d inhaled, she wrapped her arms around his neck and burrowed against his chest.

  Backing them off to a safe distance from the burning building, Dixon watched smoke pour from the broken window and open front door. Whipped by the draft, flames shot up from the roof and licked greedily at the contents of the showroom floor. Baskets, cuckoo clocks, music boxes, quilts—all were gobbled up by the voracious inferno. A muffled crash and a shower of sparks marked the collapse of a rafter in the rear of the building. Simultaneously, the Christmas window display burst into flame. Tinsel flared briefly before sizzling to blackened threads. The reindeer ignited in a domino effect, with Rudolph as the grand finale.

  Alexandra mumbled something into his shirt.

  “What?” He bent nearer, struggling to hear her over the screaming sirens of the approaching fire trucks.

  When she turned toward him, the blank look on her face frightened him. “Santa really meant business this time,” she said in an oddly uninflected voice.

  “Alexandra?” A shiver rippled down his spine. “Alexandra?”

  She stared wide-eyed, expressionless, as the devouring flames sent flickering shadows across her face.

  Dixon shivered, more with apprehension than cold. “Are you all right, Alexandra?”

  “All right?” A section of the roof collapsed with a roar. She laughed bitterly. “No, I’m not all right. Are you crazy? I just lost my home, my business, everything!”

  “Not quite everything, sweetheart.” Dixon brushed the hair back off her forehead. “You didn’t lose your life.”

  “Not this time.”

  Dixon held her. For the moment it was all he could do.

  “Where are you taking me?” Alex asked Dixon for the third time in ten minutes, hoping the repetition would wear him down. Though they’d spent what was left of the night at Regina’s house, Alex had refused to jeopardize her mother’s safety by staying any longer. Consequently, Dixon had arranged for them to hide out elsewhere. His stubborn refusal to tell her exactly where was driving her crazy.

  Dixon didn’t answer, though he did take one hand off the steering wheel long enough to lower his sunglasses and smirk at her over the top of the frames.

  “You’re the most irritating man I ever met.”

  “Oh, yeah? I thought your fiancé held that title. Did you ever get through to him?”

  “No.” Alex frowned. She’d called Mark’s home number repeatedly from her mother’s house, sure he’d be frantic with worry when he heard about the fire. But neither he nor his machine had answered.

  “Do you need to stop anywhere before we leave Brunswick?”

  She jumped on that. “We’re leaving Brunswick?”

  He gave a noncommittal grunt, swerving to avoid a teenager who darted out into the street from between two parked cars.

  Startled, Al
ex turned toward the kid, a grungy-looking specimen in a baseball jacket and baggy pants. She scarcely noticed when he forked her the bird, though, her attention focused instead on the red Thunderbird in the parking lot of the Pioneer Inn. “Stop, Dixon!”

  “Why?”

  “Just pull in here next to the motel coffee shop.”

  “Hungry already?”

  Not hardly. Her stomach rolled. The sports car in front of the end unit was Mark’s. She’d bet her trust fund on it.

  Dixon parked in an empty slot near the coffee-shop entrance. “What’s going on, Alexandra?”

  Before he had time to turn off the engine, she jumped out, making a beeline for the T-bird. She heard Dixon’s footsteps pounding the pavement behind her.

  “Alexandra, wait! Where are you going?”

  Ignoring him, she gulped cold air in a vain attempt to quell the churning in her gut. She was practically across the lot before he caught up with her.

  “Alexandra? What is it?” Dixon’s voice seemed to echo in her ears. What is it? What is it? What is it?

  “Mark’s car.” Her own voice sounded peculiar, harsh, ragged. She stared at Dixon’s hand on her forearm, her only link to sanity in a strange, surrealistic world. If his watch had suddenly melted and dripped off his wrist into a puddle on the pavement, she wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised.

  Dixon tightened his grip. “Where?”

  Alex jerked her head toward the car. “The bastard’s shacked up with someone. That’s why he didn’t answer his phone.” She looked up, half expecting him to tell her she was wrong, but the sadness in his gaze only reinforced her worst suspicions.

  “You don’t know which room he’s in, and you can’t very well go knocking on every door.”

  “No need.” Tugging herself free, she ran toward the door from which Mark had just emerged.

  He didn’t see her at first. He was too busy flirting with his companion, a blonde Alex didn’t recognize. “Mark?”

  He looked up at the sound of her voice. His face paled, then flushed bright red. “Alex! What are you doing here?”

  “I’d ask you the same, but I already have a pretty good idea.”

  “Who’s Mark?” The blonde looked up at him in confusion. “I thought you said your name was Jason.”

  “His name is mud!” Alex spat the words, then ripped the diamond from her finger and threw it at his face.

  He ducked and the ring hit the brick wall behind him. “Alex, let me explain.”

  “What’s to explain? You cheated on me. End of story. End of story and end of engagment.”

  “But darling—”

  She sensed Dixon’s presence behind her even before he spoke. “Don’t you get it, Jordan? She’s not your darling anymore. You screwed up.”

  “Up, down and sideways,” said the blonde. “You low-down, scum-sucking piece of trash!” She thwacked him with her purse.

  Alex would have enjoyed the shell-shocked look on Mark’s face if she hadn’t felt so wretched.

  “Let’s go.” Dixon tugged gently at her arm.

  “No, Alex. Please, you’ve got to listen to me! I can explain everything!”

  “I’m not interested in your explanations,” she told Mark. “I’m not interested, period.” She turned and left without a backward glance.

  “Why, Dixon? Why’d he do it?” They’d been driving almost half an hour. She gripped the dash tightly. The pale line at the base of her ring finger served as a mocking reminder of how close she’d come to making the biggest mistake of her life.

  He shrugged. “Because he’s a damn fool.”

  I’m no genius myself. “I believed him. The evidence was right there in front of me, but I believed him.”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself.” Dixon reached over, laying his hand on top of hers. “Jordan’s a good liar. He’s had years of practice.”

  “I’m better off without him,” she said. Just words. She didn’t feel better. She didn’t even feel good. They turned onto an unmarked road. “Where are we? This road doesn’t look familiar.”

  “It’s private.”

  “Across private property?”

  He nodded.

  “Your grandfather’s private property,” she guessed.

  His lips quirked up in amused approval. “I’ll make a detective out of you yet.”

  They turned down yet another ice-covered, unmarked gravel road. Alexandra studied the snowy landscape, rolling hills as far as the eye could see, the land fenced, but obviously not farmed. No sprinkler pipes or corrugates, just mile after mile of snow-covered sagebrush and bunchgrass. “How much farther?”

  The look he gave her was almost pitying. “You don’t expect me to answer that, do you?”

  “Well, if we’re not close, I’d appreciate it if you’d stop at the nearest sagebrush. I have to go.”

  He mumbled something under his breath.

  “What?”

  “We’re almost there.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Her smile was smug. “I guess the need to go gives me a legitimate ‘need to know.’ ”

  “I guess it does,” he said dryly.

  She chuckled. “Gotcha! I was exaggerating my urgency.”

  Dixon grinned. “Good, because I was exaggerating about almost being there.”

  Naturally, as soon as he said that, she realized she really did have to go. Damn him. Why was he being so secretive anyway?

  “What’s your middle name?”

  He looked at her askance. “Why?”

  “Why not? Don’t tell me that’s privileged information.”

  “No, but—”

  “What’s your middle name, then?”

  He cleared his throat. “Actually, I have two middle names.”

  She twirled a hand as if she were trying to reel the information out of him. “And they are …”

  Was he blushing? He was.

  “Olaf, after one of my mother’s favorite uncles.” He paused.

  “And?”

  “And Kenichi after someone on my dad’s side.”

  “So your full name is Dixon Olaf Kenichi Yano, right?”

  “Right, though I can’t see what my middle names have to do with anything.”

  “I am about to chew you out. And you can’t chew someone out properly unless you use their full name. So hold on to your hat, Mr. Dixon Olaf Kenichi Yano.” She took a deep breath. “I hired you to keep me safe, but—”

  “And that’s exactly what I’m trying to do.”

  “Don’t interrupt! It throws off my rhythm. Okay, as I was saying, I hired you to keep me safe, but there’s no reason to be so damn closemouthed. What do you think? I’m going to take out an ad in the paper announcing our whereabouts? I’m not completely stupid, you know. And I do have rights. This idiotic 007 routine of yours is driving me insane. You … you …” Alex stammered to a halt, unable to think of a fitting description.

  “Arrogant jerk?” Dixon suggested helpfully.

  “Yes!”

  “Obnoxious snothead?”

  “That too.”

  “Devious, secretive SOB?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Did I forget anything?”

  “How about self-important small-town PI with an anachronistic J. Edgar Hoover complex?”

  He winced. “Now, that hurts.” He made quite a business of pulling an imaginary dagger from his heart.

  His silliness forced a reluctant chuckle from Alex. “You’re a hard man to stay angry with.” She sighed. “But don’t you think you’re carrying secrecy too far? It’s my life. Don’t I have a right to know where we’re going?”

  “Okay. Since you put it that way. We’re headed for my great-grandmother’s house.”

  “Your great-grandmother lives out here in the boonies?”

  “Right again. Place’ll make an ideal hideout.” The Jeep veered sideways. Dixon turned into the skid, correcting effortlessly. Alex knew she would have done a one-eighty and landed in a clump of sage
brush if she’d tried the same maneuver.

  “How old is she?”

  “A hundred three on her last birthday.”

  Alex took a second or two to digest the information.

  “A hundred three and living all alone out here? She must be healthy.”

  “Oh, yeah. All the Yanos are healthy as horses. Probably thanks to all the rice we eat. Don’t worry. Great-grandmother’s a kick.”

  Alex smiled nervously as the road dead-ended in front of a neat one-story ranch house with board and batten siding and a shake-shingle roof. The yard was immaculate, edged with topiaried shrubbery, several of which appeared to be cringing away from the tiny figure who tottered out the front door.

  The ancient gnome of a woman, dressed in leggings and an oversized sweatshirt, approached Dixon’s Jeep, gabbling rapidly in a high, shrill voice. Dixon got out, enveloping the old lady in a bear hug that swept her off her feet.

  “How are you, Great-grandmother?”

  His greeting loosed another spate of staccato syllables.

  “This is my client Alexandra Roundtree.”

  The old lady’s head bobbed energetically as she made her way around the car to grip Alex’s hand between her tiny wizened paws.

  Evidently she understood English, which was a relief since Alex really did need a bathroom now, and she was darned if she could think of a graceful way to mime that particular desire.

  “Say hello,” urged Dixon.

  “Ohayo.” Proudly, Alex produced one of the gems of her very limited Japanese vocabulary.

  “A lovely state,” Dixon said with a grin.

  Alex shot him a dirty look. Couldn’t he see she was trying?

  Soon, however, she regretted her polite attempt to greet her hostess in Japanese, as the old lady continued to pump away at Alex’s hand while rattling off a string of incomprehensible syllables.

  Alex shot Dixon a pleading look.

  He shrugged.

  “I’m sorry,” she said when the old lady paused expectantly. “I don’t understand Japanese.”

  Great-grandmother Yano dropped Alex’s hand like a hot potato, turned, and shuffled off toward the house in a huff.