by Leslie Meier
“I hate it when there are fires down here,” said one tired firefighter. “The whole town could go up.”
“We’re earning our pay tonight,” said another, tilting back his head and gulping down a quart of orange juice.
“How much do you make?” asked Lucy, handing him a sandwich.
“A hundred and fifty dollars a year,” he said, with his mouth full of peanut butter. “We’re basically volunteers. One of the last volunteer companies in the state.”
“You’re doing an amazing job,” said Lucy. “Who were those guys who went into the building?”
“That was Rusty and J.J.—disobeying the chief, like usual.”
“It’s gonna go—all clear!” she heard someone yell and looked up. The hose crews began moving back, individual firefighters ran for safety as the huge front wall of the building began to fall. There was a huge crash and a spray of glowing red cinders rose and fell, showering those closest to the blaze.
The firefighters moved back in, pouring water onto the remains of the building. Nothing was left of the Ropewalk but a smoldering heap. Some of the fire companies began to pack up their equipment, preparing to leave.
Surveying the scene Lucy was struck by the unfamiliar new shape of the waterfront, the space formerly occupied by the Ropewalk was now vacant, revealing a view of the harbor beyond. The neighboring buildings had all been saved, but it would have to wait until morning to learn if they had been damaged.
Ted approached her. “Can a reporter have a sandwich?”
“Sure,” said Lucy, spreading peanut butter on a piece of bread for him. “Some story.”
“Not the kind I like to write,” said Ted, taking a big bite of his sandwich.
“Do they know how it started?”
“Not yet.”
“Any word about the manager, Frank Crowell?”
He shook his head.
She turned away. She’d had enough, she was bone tired, she wanted to go home.
“Lucy, can I help?” It was Franny.
Lucy remembered how proud Franny had been of her jewelry shop in the Ropewalk, how excited she’d been about having her own business. “I’m so sorry for you,” she said, enfolding her in a hug.
Franny shrugged. “I was pretty lucky. I hadn’t moved my workshop into the Ropewalk, yet. All my supplies and equipment are still at home. All I had there were finished pieces, and frankly, I’d sold most of them. I didn’t lose much at all.” She blinked a few times. “Most of the others weren’t so fortunate. I don’t know what they’re going to do. They’ve lost everything, and they’re going to have to start over from scratch.” She paused a moment. “If they can.”
Lucy nodded. “Well, Dot should be back soon. She went to make some coffee for the guys who’ll be here all night.”
“Here you go,” said Franny, slapping a sandwich together for a very small firefighter from a neighboring town. The firefighter yanked off his helmet and two braids tumbled down; Lucy realized he wasn’t a he at all.
More power to her, thought Lucy, as she said good-bye to Franny and rejoined Bill and the girls. Not, of course, that she’d want her girls to become firefighters. The work was too hard and too dangerous. Then she remembered Tucker. Nothing was safe, it seemed.
“Let’s go home,” she said, wrapping her arms around Bill and resting her cheek on his chest.
He gave her a squeeze. “You bet.”
Chapter Fifteen
5 days ’til Xmas
Lucy was headed out the door on Saturday morning to do her grocery shopping when the phone rang. It was Ted with an assignment.
“The volunteer firefighters are meeting on Monday night—can you cover it?”
“Sure.” Lucy checked her calendar and wrote in the time of the meeting. “Are they handing out awards or something? Should I take my camera?”
Ted snorted. “Definitely take your camera, but it’s not about awards. Several firefighters have been charged with stealing from the fire. The meeting is to decide what the organization is going to do—they might go on strike in protest.”
“Whoa.” Lucy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “This is the first I’ve heard about this. Explain.”
“Can’t. I don’t have time. I’ve got to be at a press conference in five minutes. Stop by the office later today, OK?”
“OK.”
She had almost made it to the door when the phone rang a second time. This time it was Mr. Humphreys from the high school.
“Ahem, Mrs. Stone,” he began, clearing his throat several times.
Whatever he had to say was apparently stuck in his craw. Finally, he managed to get it out.
“I had a conversation with your legal representative yesterday, and I think I may say it was most enlightening and informative. And as a result of that conversation, Elizabeth’s suspension has been reduced and she will be welcome to return to school on Monday.”
Lucy resisted the impulse to crow. “That’s very good news,” she said. “Thank you for calling.”
* * *
In the car, she flipped on the radio just in time to hear the nine o’clock news report. Ted was right. Four volunteer firemen had been arrested and would be charged with larceny at the Ropewalk fire: Russell Rousseau, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Fred Childs, and George Paxton. Paxton was also the captain of the volunteer force, next in line of command after the chief, Stan Pulaski. All four men had been released on bail pending their arraignment Monday. Tinker’s Cove police were expected to release more details later this morning.
The station promised a “six-pack”—six songs without a commercial—but Lucy couldn’t have told you what they were. She was hardly listening; her mind was occupied by this disturbing news.
Last night she had been at the fire and witnessed firsthand the heroism of the volunteer firefighters, especially the Rousseau brothers. Everyone in town understood the risks involved in fighting fires, and Tinker’s Cove citizens were proud of the volunteer firefighters. The force was one of the last volunteer departments in the state. Most of the neighboring towns had been forced to switch to paid, professional forces, but interest in Tinker’s Cove remained high and the chief never short of volunteers. Members of the department marched in the Fourth of July parade, afterward they held a huge picnic and invited the whole town to watch as they competed in contests of skill such as ladder races and obstacle courses. The most popular, especially if the weather was hot, was to see who could hit a target with water from the fire hose. It was funny to watch people struggle with the hose, which seemed to have a life of its own. Kids and women were usually knocked off their feet; only the strongest men could control the jet of water that shot out of it.
Why would such public-spirited men as the volunteer firefighters steal from a fire? She’d never heard of such a thing, but could understand them taking souvenirs like a sign, perhaps a brick or a unique bit of woodwork. It would be something to keep, a reminder of the night the Ropewalk burned. But that could hardly be called theft, she thought, except by the strictest moralist.
Lucy knew that many people in Tinker’s Cove had been seafarers for generations, and weren’t above picking up a loose bit of flotsam or jetsam and claiming it for their own. When she and Bill were first married they had found a wooden cable spool washed up on a beach and rolled it home, where they had used it as a table for years. Most anything that washed up was considered free for the taking, except for lobster traps. They were left for their owner to reclaim; you could get shot for taking somebody else’s lobster trap.
Turning onto Main Street, Lucy gasped at the sight of the burned Ropewalk. Nothing of the building remained except for a huge heap of burned wood; the paint on the neighboring block of stores had blistered, and the roof shingles had curled with the heat. It was amazing that the firefighters had been able to save the stores—even the church across the street was black with soot. The street in front of the Ropewalk had been closed off with yellow tape; water used to fight the fire had fr
ozen overnight, making it too slippery for traffic.
Lucy took the detour, straining her neck to get a last look as she made the turn and headed for the IGA.
* * *
While she waited in line at the checkout, she listened to Dot chatting with the woman ahead of her.
“It doesn’t surprise me in the least bit,” said Dot, as she passed the cans and boxes through the scanner. “My oldest boy, he was on the Tinker’s Cove force for years but then he went professional over in Gilead. He’s an EMT and all; he got trained when he was in the army.
“Well, Joe told me, one of the reasons he wanted to go pro was that he didn’t like some of the stuff the volunteers were doing.” She paused to find the UPC code on a box of cat food. “I swear, sometimes they hide these darn things. Anyway, Joe said, the attitude was that they could take whatever they wanted because the insurance company would be paying for it all anyway.” Dot’s eyebrows shot up. “And I told him that was a lot of poppycock because we’d all end up paying higher insurance rates. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, that’s what I told him.”
Soon Dot had the woman’s groceries bagged, and she turned to Lucy.
“Seems like I’m seeing an awful lot of you,” she said.
“I can’t seem to stay away,” agreed Lucy, with a smile. “Last night was quite a night, wasn’t it?”
“One I wouldn’t care to repeat, thank you,” said Dot, reaching for a bag of apples and smoothing the plastic so the scanner could read the price code.
“Last night I thought those men were heroes, and today I hear on the radio that they’re bums—I can’t figure it out,” Lucy said.
“In my experience, most men are a little bit of both, if you know what I mean.” Dot leaned across the counter. “But I can tell you this much. If Chief Crowley was running things down at that police station, this would have been taken care of, and nobody would have been the wiser.”
“What do you mean?”
Dot shrugged. “He mostly turned a blind eye, figuring that the firemen deserved whatever they could salvage—it isn’t like they get paid or anything. If somebody complained or something, he would have them return the stuff. It all would have been taken care of without making people look bad.”
“That’s true,” chimed in Andrea Rogers, who had stepped up to the checkout behind Lucy. “Chief Crowley would never have brought charges against Tim. He would have given him a talking-to and brought him home, figuring his parents would take care of it. Now they’ve got this zero tolerance policy.” Andrea twisted her lips into a smirk. “It’s supposed to be zero tolerance for drugs and booze, but I think it really means zero tolerance for kids.”
Lucy nodded in agreement, she was a sadder and wiser woman after Elizabeth’s experience.
“I think you’ve got something there. Has Tim gone to court yet?”
“Not ’til January. Bob says they’ll probably put him on probation and make him take an alcohol education course, plus he’ll be stuck with a conviction.” Andrea sighed. “Every time he applies for a job or renews his driver’s license or whatever, he’ll have to check the yes box.”
“Look on the bright side,” said Lucy. “The way things are going, he’ll have plenty of company. What about next year?”
“MCU doesn’t want him anymore, that’s for sure. We’re thinking of sending him for a thirteenth year at Wolford Academy. He can play there and hopefully he’ll get recruited by another college.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Lucy, watching as Dot rang up the last of her order.
“That’ll be one fifty-four and thirty-one cents.”
“Ouch,” said Lucy, reaching for her wallet.
* * *
At The Pennysaver, Lucy found Ted hunched over his desk, tapping away at his keyboard. She plopped down in the chair he saved for visitors, not bothering to move the clutter of press releases that had accumulated there.
“Listen, Ted. I’m not sure this firefighter story rates page one. From what I heard at the IGA this morning, this is nothing new. The firemen have taken stuff in the past, and Chief Crowley just turned a blind eye on it unless he got a complaint. Then he’d make them return the stuff, but he didn’t bring charges or anything. Tom Scott’s new on the job; he doesn’t understand about small towns.”
Ted looked up and Lucy saw he looked like someone who hadn’t been getting enough sleep. She also thought he looked terribly sad, showing none of the excitement he usually felt when working on a big story.
“I hate this story,” he confessed. “These men risk their lives, they get up out of warm beds in the middle of the night to put out fires and pry people out of crashed cars, and they don’t get paid a penny. Do I care if they take some souvenirs from a fire? Do I care if they help themselves to some fire-damaged stuff that’s going to get thrown out anyway? I don’t give a damn, and that’s the truth. But I’ve got to cover it because it’s already been on the radio and Tom Scott held a big news conference this morning and invited media from all over New England. Goddamn Globe was there.”
He dropped his hands in his lap and shook his head. “What really gets me is that I’m the only one who’s going to mention what this is really about—and only a few thousand people are going to read me and hundreds of thousands are going to read the story Scott’s hand-fed to everybody else. It was slick, let me tell you. Piles of merchandise, stacked up on tables, for all to view. Gold and silver jewelry. Rare coins. Everything all polished up. Even a couple of stained-glass lamps. Worth thousands of dollars, or so he said.”
“I had no idea. I thought it was a couple of bricks or something like that.”
“Nope. You gotta hand it to the boys. They made quite a haul. But that’s not the story, not really. Because it wasn’t the shopkeepers who complained—I’ve been calling them, and they have nothing but good things to say about the firefighters. They all say their businesses were total losses anyway. Nope. You know who filed the complaint. The Gilead fire chief.”
Lucy was beginning to understand. “And Gilead is a professional force.”
“Right. And they’re asking for a raise at the town meeting this year. . . .”
“And they don’t want to have to explain why folks in Gilead have to pay for something folks in Tinker’s Cove get for free,” interjected Lucy.
Ted nodded. “And if the volunteers go on strike, which is what they’re threatening to do, they’ll look even worse, and the voters will get disgusted. This is the end of the volunteers, I’m telling you. When this is over, Tinker’s Cove will have a professional fire department. It’s the end of an era.”
He paused, studying his hands, then raised his head.
“Thanks for covering the meeting for me. I hated to ask, but the kids’ Christmas concert is Monday night, and Pam says I have to go.”
“No problem,” said Lucy.
Chapter Sixteen
3 days ’til Xmas
As soon as Lucy opened the door to the fire station she heard the rumble of the men’s voices. She nodded at the dispatcher and went past his desk into the common room, where CPR classes and training sessions were held. The last time Lucy had been there was when she covered the rabies clinic last spring; then the big room had been filled with assorted dogs and cats, and their owners and the conversation had been friendly as people chatted about their pets.
Tonight, the mood was much different. The gathered firefighters were angry and sullen. Lucy could feel the tension when she entered the room, and it made her pause. The only thing that kept her from turning and fleeing was the knowledge that Ted was counting on her to cover the meeting.
Heads turned and people stared at her; someone snickered and she realized she was the only woman in the room. Dot had been right on the mark when she said the Tinker’s Cove Volunteer Fire Department was a men’s club. “She writes for the paper,” she heard someone say, and the word was passed through the room. Lucy felt uncomfortable under the gaze of so many men and looked for a fami
liar face. She was relieved when she spotted Bob Goodman, Rachel’s husband, and Hank Orenstein sitting in the back. There were empty chairs next to them so she approached them.
“Hi, Lucy,” Bob said with a smile. “Sit yourself down.”
Bob was a tall, lean man with wire-rimmed glasses. He was the only man in the room who was wearing a suit.
“Thanks. For a minute there I felt a bit unwelcome. This doesn’t seem like a very friendly group. And thanks for calling Mr. Humphreys. Elizabeth went back to school today.”
Bob nodded. For a lawyer, he was remarkably taciturn.
Raised voices and the crash of a chair falling caught their attention, and Lucy glanced nervously around the room.
“Are these guys always so rowdy?” she asked.
“They’re not so bad when you get to know them,” said Hank. “They’re just a little upset.”
Hank was shorter and heavier than Bob, with a round face and a beard. He ran a cooperative that sold heating oil and energy-saving devices at discount prices.
“Do you think they’ll really strike?” asked Lucy.
“Might,” said Bob.
“A lot of them want to,” said Hank. “At least the ones I talked to today. They feel like those boys are getting a raw deal.”
“Ted says it was an awful lot of stuff—worth thousands of dollars.” Lucy kept her voice low; she didn’t want to be overheard.
Hank snorted in disgust. “Those boys were just plain greedy.”
Bob nodded. “This time they went too far.”
“What do you mean?”
The two men exchanged a glance, then Hank broke the silence.
“So, how’s Bill doing? Is he keepin’ busy this winter?”
“Bill’s fine. And you don’t have to worry that I’m going to quote you in the paper. Anything you say is off the record. Promise. But I sure could use some background information, and from what you were saying and from what I’ve been hearing around town it seems like there’s been an unofficial policy that it’s okay to salvage stuff from fires. Is that true?”