“I’m sure the fire department has already done that. In fact, I’m surprised he’s not already here.”
“I’m sure he’s coming,” Derek said. “So Ted and Nina and Adam. Any reason you can think of why one of them would want to kill you?”
“Not really. Ted is Fae’s father, although I’m not sure she knows it. Nina didn’t even know it until this afternoon. But maybe he’s developed a late conscience and hates me for turning her in to Wayne. Or maybe he lied, and they’ve both known it all along, and Ted’s been working with Fae and Wilson in driving Nina crazy.”
“He seems genuinely devoted,” Derek said, “but then again, I guess he’d have to. But he’s known Nina for years. Ever since Aurora died. If he was going to drive Nina crazy, or kill her—or Tony—don’t you think he’d have done it already?”
“Probably. What about Nina? What if she killed Tony because she thought he was writing the letters? He knew exactly what she’d done, and I don’t think many people did.”
“Possible,” Derek admitted. “We’ll have to have Wayne check her alibi, try to figure out where she was this evening. Could it have been Nina who pushed you?”
I shrugged helplessly. “I guess so. It was a pretty hard push, but I’m small and she’s a lot bigger. So yes, probably.”
“Maybe she thought that guy, Stuart, was sending the letters, and so she arranged a little accident for him, too. But then the letters kept coming, and so she thought she’d made a mistake and Tony was sending them. And she killed him, but the letters kept coming again. So she tried to kill Fae, and got Shannon instead. And now the cat’s out of the bag, and Wayne knows about Fae, so Nina can’t get at her. But why kill you? Does she think you know that she killed everyone else?”
“I suppose she might,” I said. “I don’t, though. Know it. She hasn’t said anything to make me think that. I don’t suspect her any more than I suspect anyone else. And I’m sure I haven’t given her any indication that I think she’s guilty. . . .”
I would have gone on, but now there was a knock on the door. Or rather, a fusillade of knocks. Derek hurried toward the front door, admitting not only Wayne, but Kate, too. She pushed past both the men and got to the kitchen first. Her face was pale underneath the freckles. “Avery! Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I croaked.
“But your voice . . . and your face and hands . . .”
“Smoke inhalation,” Derek explained behind her. “She was trapped in the shed while it burned to the ground. Her hands are blistered from trying to get out, and her face is parched from the heat. So is her throat. Other than that, there’s nothing wrong with her. No burns. Nothing that won’t heal itself in a few days.”
“Thank God.” Kate sat down at the table, as if her legs suddenly gave out. “What happened?”
“I’d like to know that, too,” Wayne growled, taking the chair opposite from her, his jaw tight. “Tell me everything, Avery. From the beginning.”
Derek found a couple of glasses in the cabinet and poured lemonade all around, topping off my glass as I went through what had happened from the time we left the hospital earlier to when Derek hauled me out of the shed. “Were the firemen able to save anything?”
Wayne shook his head. “The shed’s a total loss. If you’d been in there, you would have been, too. There’s nothing left but cinders and ashes and a few pieces of twisted metal.”
“Thank God we both got out.” I tried to pet Mischa, who had curled up in my lap, but it didn’t work. With the bandages on my hands, I couldn’t feel his fur, and besides, it hurt. He opened his eyes and looked at me and didn’t seem to mind.
“So the cat was in the shed,” Wayne prompted.
I nodded. “He wasn’t in the house when I came home, so I went looking for him. I didn’t think he could be in the shed, because it was locked, but then I heard a crash inside. So I opened the door, and he ran out, and someone pushed me in. And splashed gasoline all around and lit a match.”
“But you have no idea who it was?”
I shook my head. “It all happened too fast. And it was getting dark. Mischa startled me when he ran between my feet, and then someone came from behind and pushed me. I never saw who. Or anything about them. Not even whether it was a man or a woman.”
“That’s too bad,” Wayne said. “I’ll have to have a look around tomorrow morning, when the sun comes up, although between the water and most of the fire department tramping through your yard, I’m not sure I’ll find anything.”
“There might be another way,” Derek said. We all turned to him.
“What?”
“He—or she, whoever did it—put the cat in the shed, right? So he—or she—must have walked into the house to get the cat.”
I nodded. “I thought there was something funny about the front door lock when I got home, but I thought maybe we’d forgotten to lock it this morning.”
He shook his head. “We didn’t forget. I watched you.”
“So what if our arsonist walked into the house?” Wayne asked impatiently. “What does it matter? He probably had enough sense to wear gloves. Most burglars do. Most fire starters do, too. They don’t want to get gasoline on their hands.”
“I don’t care about that,” Derek said. “If this guy walked into Avery’s house, chances are Mischa attacked him. That cat attacks me every time I walk in, and he likes me. If someone else walked in, I’m sure Mischa would have attacked them, too.”
“So? If he was wearing gloves . . .”
“Mischa goes for the legs,” I said, hoarsely. All this talking was messing with my voice. “Derek has tiny little puncture marks all up and down his calves.”
“So what do you suggest? We make everyone on the crew wear shorts to work tomorrow?”
“You could go to the B and B right now and ask them all to show you their legs.”
“You’re not serious?”
I shrugged. I was serious, sort of, but if he couldn’t do it, then he couldn’t do it, and that was that.
“Where was everyone tonight?” Derek wanted to know. “Fae and Wilson were in jail, right?”
Wayne shook his head. “I released them both this evening. They admitted to sending the letters to Nina and Tony—Fae’s grandmother, who is Wilson’s mother-in-law, in Kansas City put them in the mail—but they’re alibied for Tony’s murder. Wilson was with Ted, and Fae was with Shannon.”
“But what about the letters? Is it legal to send poison-pen letters to someone?”
“It wasn’t blackmail,” Wayne said. “They didn’t ask for money. And no one’s filed a complaint. There’s nothing I can do.”
“Nina and Ted went to dinner earlier,” Kate added. “At least that’s what they said they’d be doing. They were still gone when I left the B and B just now. Adam went for a run and never came back. That must be a couple of hours ago.”
“Gosh,” I said, “I hope he’s all right.” What if whoever was behind all this craziness had hurt Adam, as well? Someone had tried to kill the previous host of Flipped Out! after all, so what was to keep that someone from doing the same to Adam?
Kate shrugged. “He probably stopped somewhere for something to eat. Or maybe he met a girl. He could have come back without my seeing him, too. I was in the carriage house cooking dinner for Wayne.”
“So any one of them could have set your fire,” Derek said.
We sat in silence for a few seconds, all of us thinking.
“Why you?” Wayne said eventually.
“Excuse me?”
“Why would someone want to get rid of you? It doesn’t make any sense. You’re not involved with the show, other than this week. And you had nothing to do with what happened to what’s-her-name—Aurora Jamison—back in Kansas City. Why you?”
“Someone obviously thinks she knows something she doesn’t,” Derek said. Kate nodded.
“But I don’t! I have no idea what someone thinks I know, or what I know that I don’t realize that I know
.”
“Who have you talked to today?” Wayne asked. He had pulled out his little notebook and pencil stub by now and was taking notes.
I shook my head, exasperated. “Everyone on the crew, plus Melissa. You two, Josh and Shannon. All the usual people.”
“And no one said anything to make you think they felt threatened by you?”
“I don’t think so. I told you about Nina’s letters, and about Aurora Jamison. I told you about Fae and Wilson. I was there when Nina figured out that Ted is Fae’s father—did I remember to tell you that? I ratted out a whole lot of people and spilled a whole bunch of secrets, and any one of them might have been upset by that, at least theoretically, but no one seemed more upset than anyone else. No one seemed murderous.”
We sat in silence for another few seconds.
“Maybe we can arrange a trap,” Derek said eventually.
Wayne arched his brows. “Being on TV must have gone to your head. What do you think this is, an episode of Scooby-Doo?”
I hid a grin. There was a certain resemblance, actually: the four of us and the cat. Derek would be the industrious Fred, always ready to ensnare the bad guy. Kate was the redheaded Daphne and Wayne the lanky Shaggy. If Mischa was Scooby-Doo, I guess that meant I was Velma, the brainy one. Could be worse.
“I’m serious,” Derek said. “Tomorrow morning, I’ll go to the house on Cabot and tell everyone what happened tonight. I’ll explain that Avery still isn’t able to talk because of the damage the smoke did to her throat, and that she doesn’t feel well enough to come to work; she’s just going to rest at home all day. Alone. I bet at some point, one of them will break free from the group and come over here to finish the job. All we have to do is wait.”
Wayne blinked. “That’s not actually a bad plan.”
“Told ya.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re not the one who’ll be staked out here like a goat, waiting for the wolves to descend.”
Derek turned to me. “You won’t actually be alone, Avery. That’s just something I’ll say to make whoever is behind this feel safe. Wayne will be here. Or Brandon. Maybe Josh.”
“Definitely Josh,” Kate shot in. “If this is the person who cut the brake cables on the car and hurt Shannon, Josh is going to want a piece of him or her. I wouldn’t mind that myself.”
Wayne shook his head. “If this is to work, we all have to stay away. You have to be at the B and B or the hospital with Shannon. I have to be working. Derek has to be at the house on Cabot. This yahoo—whoever he or she is—has to believe that Avery is alone and unprotected. We can’t put a whole battalion of people in the house. Just one.”
Derek and I exchanged a look. We both wanted that one person to be him, but we also knew it couldn’t be. Of everyone, he had to be at the house on Cabot.
“Brandon,” I said. Derek nodded.
“I’ll arrange it.” Wayne got to his feet. “Coming, Kate?”
“Coming.” Kate got to her feet, too, and came around the table to give me a hug. “I’m glad you’re OK,” she whispered in my ear.
“I’m glad I’m OK, too,” I croaked back.
She turned to Derek. “You take care of her tonight.”
He nodded. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He followed them to the front door and made sure it was securely locked behind them before he came back into the kitchen again. “Time for bed. Big day tomorrow.”
I nodded and let him carry me up the stairs to bed.
23
The next morning at seven, I found myself alone in the house. Derek had spent the night, ostensibly to make sure I was all right and that my coughing didn’t get worse, but more, I think, just to be next to me and to know that I was still alive and breathing. I didn’t complain; I wanted to be next to him, too. I had that near-fatal accident response that Josh and Shannon probably had, where they realized how close they’d come to losing everything, and they wanted to keep the other person as close as possible every second.
He headed out at a few minutes before seven, and I got ready for the day, and for Brandon. Wayne would be meeting Derek at the house on Cabot to tell the television crew what had happened last night and that I’d be staying home today. He’d also be making comments about how busy he himself was and how he’d have to go to Portland for a few hours in the morning to testify in court. That way, whoever the guilty party was would think the chief of police was safely out of the way. When the whole crew was present at Cabot Street, Wayne would give Brandon the signal to come to my house, since he’d know that none of them would be watching. Cora and Beatrice had agreed to spend the morning at Cabot Street with Derek to get the last of the work done and also so our bad guy or girl would know they weren’t with me. Kate had already told everyone she’d be at the hospital with Shannon this morning, getting ready for Shannon’s release, and Josh was supposed to have been there for breakfast, too, saying the same thing. For all the arsonist/killer knew, the coast would be clear, and he or she could hightail it over to my house with nobody being the wiser.
All I had to do was wait.
Brandon arrived just before seven thirty through the back door. I let him in and then peered left and right before I closed and locked the door behind him. I knew the whole crew was supposed to be at Cabot Street, but it was automatic.
Not that there were a lot of places left where someone could hide and watch the house. The shed, obviously, was gone, reduced to a still-smoking pile of ashes and debris. A shiver crept down my spine when I realized, again, how close I’d come to being part of that pile.
There were the rows of raspberry bushes and the occasional fruit tree, which may be where the bad guy or gal had hidden last night. I’d walked all around and through the raspberry patch, and no one had been there, but if he or she had been crouched in an apple tree, I might not have noticed. There were several fruit trees within easy striking distance of the shed; luckily none of them had been touched by the fire.
Brandon went straight upstairs and made himself comfortable with a thick book on the history of fingerprinting. I stayed downstairs and made tea with lots of lemon and honey to soothe my throat.
Time dragged by. We had discussed the possibility of Derek calling me, or texting, when someone slipped away from the house on Cabot, but we’d decided it was too risky. Just in case the first person to leave had a legitimate errand, we didn’t want the real culprit to notice Derek’s warning to me and to realize that something was up. I was sure the situation was as difficult for Derek as it was for me, but unfortunately, that didn’t make it any easier to deal with.
A few minutes after nine, the doorbell rang. I made my slow way down the hallway, pulling my terrycloth robe around me—I was still in my pajamas and robe to make it look like I was resting and not expecting company—and peered out.
And saw . . .
Adam?
Yep, definitely Adam. Wearing a big grin, along with another pair of tight jeans and another formfitting T-shirt, holding a bakery bag aloft.
Well, hell, this wasn’t going according to plan at all, was it? Adam wasn’t supposed to be here. He had nothing to do with this. And what would happen if the real bad guy showed up while he was here? Would Real Bad Guy kill Adam, too?
But wait . . . Real Bad Guy wouldn’t kill anyone, because Brandon was upstairs ready to save the day. I could hear stealthy steps at the top of the stairs, but I didn’t think I’d better turn and tell him to stand down because it was just Adam. Instead, I opened the door and smiled.
“Hi, Evie.” Adam gave me his trademarked melting grin. It didn’t do anything for me this time, either, especially when coupled with the wrong name. “I brought you a scone.” He brandished the bag. “Can I come in?”
I hesitated. It’d probably be safer—for Adam—if I said no. Just because Brandon was here to save the day didn’t mean that accidents couldn’t happen. If the killer showed up and Adam accidentally got hurt in the melee, I’d feel horrible. Although not
too horrible, since I didn’t really like him that much. And besides, if he went back to the house on Cabot and told everyone I had refused to let him in, they might suspect that something was going on. So I stepped aside and waved him inside.
He walked through the door looking around before turning to me. “Deke told us what happened. You lost your voice, huh?”
I nodded. Couldn’t do anything else, since I didn’t want him to go back to Cabot Street and tell everyone that Derek had lied.
“Wow, that’s too bad. Are you all alone here?” He looked around again. “Where’s the cat?”
Jemmy and Inky had left earlier for their usual amble through the neighborhood, and Mischa was, in fact, upstairs where he could keep an eye on Brandon. He—Mischa—had attacked Brandon when he walked in, the same way that Mischa used to attack Derek. At the moment, he was crouched halfway up the stairs, tail twitching while he thought about attacking Adam. Poor kitty, he couldn’t seem to make up his mind which was the bigger threat to me at the moment: Brandon or Adam.
I pointed to him. Adam looked in the direction of the stairs just as Mischa hissed and launched himself from the fifth step. Adam stumbled back with Mischa attached to his leg, and dropped the bakery bag, which landed on the floor with a thunk.
I was tempted to giggle, but I remembered I wasn’t supposed to be able to use my voice. So when Adam grabbed Mischa and yanked him off his leg, and then sent him skidding down the slick hardwood floor of the hallway, I managed to hold back an outraged scream. Mischa didn’t; he squealed in pain and anger at the rough treatment. He landed on his feet, though, and hit the wall with a slap, before he did an about-turn and came running back for more. Obviously he hadn’t been hurt by Adam’s callousness. I scooped him out of the air in midleap and cradled him to my chest. Adam couldn’t be trusted to treat him with consideration.
“Damn cat,” Adam grumbled, pulling up his jeans leg to look at the damage. “Shit, I’m bleeding.”
He was. Mischa had sunk those little claws straight through Adam’s jeans and into the skin below, and tiny trickles of blood were running down Adam’s muscular leg. Right next to—my eyes popped—a pawful of tiny puncture marks, partially scabbed over. As if he’d gotten them earlier. Say . . . yesterday?
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