Cold River

by Liz Adair

  The smell of smoke was still strong, so Mandy left the sliding glass door wide and opened the front door and all the downstairs windows. When she heard the whine of Leesie’s hair dryer, she judged that it was safe to shower without robbing her sister of hot water, so she crept upstairs. Each step was an effort, for her joints felt rusty and on the verge of seizing up. She dropped her clothes in a heap at the bathroom door, turned on the hot water, and leaned into the shower to feel the warmth of the steam as it billowed up. Almost reluctantly, she adjusted the temperature of the water to something less than scalding, stepped inside, and closed the shower door.

  There was something comforting about standing in a square, tile-and-glass cocoon, swathed in clouds of warm, ethereal mist, with water washing over her shoulders and sliding down her back. The shivering stopped; her joints became supple again as she lifted her arms to wash her hair, and she felt the warmth creeping back into her core.

  Over the sound of splashing water, Mandy heard Leesie calling through the bathroom door. “I’m going. I’ve checked out back. Everything’s fine. The living room has aired out, but it’s colder than a well digger’s shovel down there, so I’ve closed the doors and turned on the fire.”

  Mandy didn’t open her eyes because she had water running down her face. “Thank you,” she called.

  “See you later. I’m gone.”

  Mandy stood under the shower, willing her mind away from the memory of orange flames and cedar smoke and the panic that made her limbs work like rusty hinges. She thought about her mother and what she would think of Leesie’s newfound interest in bluegrass. From there, Mandy’s thoughts turned to Opening Festival just weeks away, and she wondered if she should tough it out or if she should look for another situation.

  She didn’t leave the shower until all the hot water was gone. Reluctantly, she turned off the tap, reached for her towel, and stepped out. The mirror was fogged clear to the bottom, and a cloud of steam hung in the air. She toweled off, dressed, and went downstairs to sit by the fire, allowing her dark, springy curls to air dry.

  She braved the chilly, gray morning for just a moment to go out on the deck and check the siding. No smoke. She laid her hand on one of the black spots, but it was cool to the touch. Brushing the soot from her hand, she went back in. As she washed at the kitchen sink, she eyed the clock. Two hours until Fran was to show up.

  It was a long two hours. Minutes stretched to eighty or ninety seconds at least, and the little hand on the clock seemed frozen in place. Mandy prowled around the house, unable to be still, unable to read, unable to think about anything except a fire deliberately set. She looked up Doc MacDonald’s phone number, and twice she had the handset to her ear and her finger on the first button before deciding to wait until Fran got back. Finally, she sat at the piano and began playing hymns. As her fingers found the chords and melodies that were as familiar to her as her grandmother’s face, she became calmer, and the nervous restlessness that had kept her in constant motion began to leave. When Fran returned, she had to hammer on the door to be heard over Mandy’s rollicking version of “Count Your Blessings.”

  She let her neighbor in and assured her that she had checked the burn site frequently. The fire was definitely out.

  “Thank heavens!” Fran sank into a chair. “You have no idea how worried I’ve been. I hated to leave, but I’m shorthanded right now. It’s hard to keep good help when Vince won’t pay anything more than minimum wage.”

  “I was a little worried, myself,” Mandy said. “But everything’s fine. Now, why didn’t you want me to call Doc MacDonald?”

  Fran grimaced. “Insurance. My premiums are sky high as it is. I had a devil of a time finding someone to insure me because of where the house is situated. I have to have insurance because of the mortgage. But if there was a police report about a fire, I might be cancelled. I don’t know who I could get to insure me then.”

  “Surely if somebody set the fire it wouldn’t affect your insurance!”

  “Well, that’s just the thing. I’ve been thinking about it. I don’t know if you’ve noticed a faint musty smell?”

  Mandy nodded. “Just when I moved in. Not lately.”

  “It’s left over from the flood,” Fran said. “Maybe there’s a bit of mold somewhere under the house.”

  “Mold? What does that have to do with fire?”

  “Do you know anything about spontaneous combustion?”

  Mandy frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Fran laughed, a short, nervous bark. “I forgot. You’re from the Southwest. They never have that problem there. Do you know the expression Make hay while the sun shines?”

  Mandy’s frown deepened. “Fran, what are you talking about?”

  “You need five good, dry, sunny days to put up hay— mow it, dry it, and bale it. That’s hard to come by up here sometimes. If you get pushed by rainy weather coming in and the hay isn’t completely dry, you run the risk of having the hay bales spontaneously combust and burn down your barn.”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing. Are you making this up?”

  Fran laughed again, less nervously this time. “No, truly. It’s something about the compression of the hay and being stacked densely in the barn. Internal heat from bacterial growth in the wet hay builds up, and it gets so hot that the hay actually ignites. Every year we lose at least one barn in the county that way.”

  “So, what does that have to do with anything?”

  “I wonder if that may not be what happened here. Maybe there was some bacterial action that started the fire.”

  Mandy wrinkled her nose. “It sounds a little far-fetched.

  “Any more than hay bales spontaneously combusting?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Let me do a little investigating, see if that ever has happened. Don’t call Doc until after that, okay?”

  Mandy’s brows contracted as she considered.

  “I’m going to go down under the house and check around, see if I can feel any areas that are hotter than they should be,” Fran continued.

  “That might make me breathe easier,” Mandy drew her hand across her forehead. “I don’t know, Fran. I’m real uneasy about this.”

  Her landlady was quiet for a moment, staring at the ceiling. “What I’m uneasy about is, why didn’t the smoke alarm go off? Or wasn’t there any smoke in the house?” She got up and dragged a chair to the passageway beside the kitchen.

  “I never thought about that! There was lots of smoke in the house.” Mandy followed her and watched as she stood on the chair and took the cover off the alarm.

  “There’s no battery.” Fran looked down at Mandy. “Did you take it out?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I don’t know. I know that when I rented the house to you, there were batteries in all the smoke alarms.”

  “This isn’t making me feel any better.” Mandy folded her arms and hunched her shoulders. “Spontaneous combustion I might be able to believe, but spontaneous battery disappearance? I don’t think so.”

  Fran replaced the cover. “Well, call Doc if that will make you feel any better.” She jumped down and pushed the chair back up to the table. “But what will he say, besides advising you to get out while the getting is good?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like you said, Mandy, a box of stinkbugs is one thing. Poison and fire are completely different.”

  “Poison?”

  “I was there when you got sick, remember? Word is going around that it was likely mushroom poisoning.”

  “But Grange said it was too early for mushrooms.”

  “Mutt Maypole had morels a week ago. Oh, Mandy!” Fran flung herself back in the chair. “I don’t want to sound so selfish and money hungry! Go ahead and call Doc. Tell him everything. I don’t want something to happen to you. It’ll be my fault because I was afraid of losing my house.”

  “Losing your house? Surely you wouldn’t lose it!” Mandy sat opposite and l
ooked earnestly at her friend.

  “If the insurance rates doubled or tripled, it would really tap me out. I don’t know if I could make the mortgage payments.”

  “But you said you’d let me out of the lease. Wouldn’t the same thing apply if I left you holding the bag for the rent?”

  “No, because it’ll soon be summer, and I can easily find a renter then. In fact, I can rent it as a vacation cabin and make three times what I get from you.”

  Mandy leaned back in her chair and sighed. “Leaving seems so cowardly.”

  “It seems practical to me. I mean, what do you owe these people?” Fran seemed to think for a moment. “Not to get all spiritual on you, but do you ever think that God may have a purpose for you somewhere?”

  “Yes. Certainly.”

  “Well, what if that purpose isn’t here? What if God’s trying to get you somewhere else, only you’re resisting?”

  “I’ve thought of that myself. It’s so hard to know.” Mandy ran her fingers through her curls. “Okay, here’s the thing. I won’t call Doc— yet. But the next suspicious thing that happens, I’m on the phone immediately.”

  “If you decide to leave, the news will be all over town in a minute. Mission accomplished. There won’t be a next suspicious thing.”

  “There is that. But it’s so hard to let them win.”

  Fran stood. “There you go again,” she said with a laugh, “fighting God.”

  Mandy smiled and stood to walk her to the door. “Maybe so. But if I do decide to leave, the trip up here has been worth it to have you as a friend.”

  Fran gave her a hug. “I think so too. I’m going to run up and grab some batteries and come down and make sure all your smoke alarms are working. Then I’ll get under the house and have a look.”

  “Thanks.”

  Mandy followed Fran out the door and watched from the porch as she got in her pickup and drove up the hill. Mandy went back in and glanced at the clock, noting that Leesie would be home before too long. Nothing had been resolved, and she knew no more than before, but when she went into the kitchen to make lunch, she was humming a tune.

  “YOUR EYES LOOK like two burnt holes in a blanket!” Leesie paused in the act of scrubbing out the oatmeal pot and regarded her sister as she came down the stairs. “And you’re late. I thought you wanted to get to work early today.”

  “Thanks for that positive start to my day.” Mandy took a spoon and tasted the oatmeal congealing in a bowl on the counter. “I had a bad night.” She put the cereal in the microwave and pushed some buttons.

  “How come?” Leesie crouched to put the pot under the counter.

  “I thought I had to stay awake to listen, in case someone was coming to set the house on fire again.”

  Leesie stood. “Really?” Her eyes were wide. “You think someone set the fire deliberately?”

  The microwave dinged, and Mandy carried her breakfast to the table. “What other explanation is there?”

  “I don’t know. I’m pretty clueless about how a fire gets started— my tent mates at summer camp will swear to that. But isn’t it a stretch to think someone was going to try to burn the house down? I mean, we talked about the fire all the way to church, and Jake was wondering if there couldn’t be some corrosion in the wiring from the flood. He thought maybe something shorted out and started the fire in a wall.”

  Mandy shook her head. “Fran said it couldn’t be electrical. There isn’t any wiring in that wall.”

  “You don’t think so? I know there aren’t any outlets right opposite where the fire was, but I’ll bet you anything there are some wires that go across that wall. I mean, the electrical panel is in the laundry room, and there are all kinds of outlets in the bathroom. How do the wires get there?”

  “Why would Fran say something like that, then?”

  “I don’t know why she’d say it to you, but I can see why she’d say it to her insurance agent. I’ll bet she’s afraid her premiums will go up or afraid she’ll have to rewire or something.”

  Mandy leaned her chin on her hand and stared at the steady drizzle outside as she considered. “Fran did say something about that. She didn’t want me to call the deputy sheriff for just that reason.”

  “Well, there you go!” Leesie looked at her watch. “Jake will be here any minute.” She grabbed her coat and backpack and went to stand by the window.

  Mandy sighed. “Now I’ll lie awake worrying about corrosion in the wires and another short somewhere else.”

  “We’ve got smoke detectors.”

  Mandy grimaced. “That’s another thing. There weren’t any batteries in the smoke detectors, and Fran swears she made sure they were there when she rented the house to us.”

  Leesie snorted. “Or she meant to make sure they were working and forgot but doesn’t want to admit it, since we almost ended up as toast. Oh, there’s that pickup again.”

  “What pickup?”

  Leesie pointed as a shiny red, 80’s vintage pickup drove slowly by. A fellow with a sandy, Butch Cassidy moustache and a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes turned his head to look at the house as he passed.

  “Who’s that?” Mandy asked.

  “I don’t know, but he was pulling onto the highway as we turned off onto our road yesterday. There’s Jake and Willow. Bye.”

  Mandy took a bite of her oatmeal and chewed thoughtfully as she watched her sister dash out to catch her ride. Shortly after they disappeared up the hill, the red pickup cruised slowly by again. The hair on the back of Mandy’s neck prickled, and she stared at the road long after the bright red tailgate had disappeared behind the screen of blackberry bushes that clawed their thorny way out of the barrow pit where the road turned.

  Her mind worked for a while on the puzzle of the red pickup but returned to the conversation she had with Leesie about the cause of the fire. “But wouldn’t a short have blown a breaker?” she murmured, turning an inquisitive gaze on the door to the laundry room.

  She put her dish in the sink. Then she rose and went to the hall, where she peered through the half-open door at the gray box on the wall above the washing machine. “You’re on your own, Mandy,” she chided herself. “Suck it up! There’s no one to take care of you.”

  Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door open and approached the corner occupied by the washer. She leaned over its solid bulk and gingerly touched the metal door of the electrical panel, half expecting to be zapped. When nothing happened, she exhaled, pulled it open, and examined each of the switches. Not knowing if she should feel relieved that all the switches were in the on position, she closed the panel door and frowned all the way to the kitchen.

  She put her dishes in the dishwasher and checked her planner, realizing with a sinking heart that she had an appointment with Grange first thing. She couldn’t muster the same enthusiasm this morning that she had felt last Friday when she promised Mo she’d speak to Grange about their plan. Sighing again, she stowed her planner in her purse. She put on her jacket and checked her image in the mirror. Leesie was right— her eyes had smudgy half-moons underneath.

  “I look like a hag,” she muttered in disgust, then wondered why she should care how she looked when she met with Grange.

  Mandy opened the door, ducked her head, and leaned against the stiff breeze that made needles of the chilly rain as she ran to her car.

  She was halfway to her office before the heater started blowing warm air. “My kingdom for a sunny day,” she said aloud. As she slowed to turn into the district office parking lot, she passed a yellow mini-van emblazoned with the words Short Hauling in purple.

  She parked in the superintendent’s space and dashed for the porch, glancing around to see if Grange’s pickup was there. She spied it, and the hour she had pledged to spend with him stretched out ahead of her as bleak and chilly as the weather.

  No one was at the reception desk, but Mo came out of his office to greet Mandy as she went up the stairs. “He’s not in the best of moods this morning,�
�� he warned, glancing at Grange’s office.

  “Perfect,” she whispered, leaning against the newel post and closing her eyes. When Mo nervously cleared his throat, she opened her eyes, and the sight of his anxious face made her straighten up and make a show of taking heart. “Don’t worry, Mo. The worst he can do is say no.”

  “I know,” Mo said in an earnest half voice. “He’s not really like that. He’s really supportive and fair and great to work with. It’s just that when… since… whenever…” He looked at the floor. “Today just isn’t a good day, I think.”

  “Tell me about it,” Mandy murmured as she turned to traverse the mezzanine. She had just rounded the corner by Grange’s office when she was startled by a sudden thunk, and a large, rectangular box bounced off his open door and landed in his doorway. She kept her eyes on her own office and marched on, resolving to be pleasant and unflappable in the approaching conference, no matter what.

  She felt enthusiasm begin to creep back as she studied the folder Mo had left on her desk on Friday. She had forgotten, in the excitement and trauma of the weekend, how well he had laid out his case and how solidly he had buttressed it. She glanced at the clock and saw it was time to present the idea, so she took the folder and rose. Checking herself in the mirror, she forced herself to smile at the solemn face that looked back at her. She took a deep breath.

  Mandy had deliberately set the meeting in Grange’s office because she didn’t want him to feel she was dictating to him from a position of power in the larger, superintendent’s domain. As she stepped into the hall, she paused a moment to say good morning to Mrs. Berman and then knocked gently on Grange’s doorframe.

  He sat with his back to her, elbows on the desk, head in his hands, and fingers rumpling his dusky locks. She knocked again.