by Nero Blanc
“Right, boss.” Orlando Polk turned and headed back into the burning barn, while Collins unlatched the gate at the far end of the paddock and began moving the horses farther from the blaze.
By the time the manager reentered the stable, the entire building had filled with smoke. He pulled his shirttails up to cover his mouth and nose and worked his way back toward the tack room. The main sprinkler valve was located on the wall a few feet away from the room, but fortunately the fire had moved up rather than out and hadn’t yet reached the valve. The system was old and had been shut down only the prior week because of leakage over a few of the stalls—which had resulted in a work order but no actual repair as yet. By the time he reached the valve, he was choking and coughing uncontrollably. The smoke clogged his lungs, and his eyes felt as though they were burning up. Tears coursed down his cheeks as he reached for the round handle of the valve.
But the moment he got his hands on the metal ring, a sharp pain shot through the back of his head. In the split second that Orlando remained conscious and aware of his surroundings, he heard a pinging noise he couldn’t quite identify and assumed it was produced by whatever had slammed into the back of his head. Then his thoughts returned to the sprinkler valve, and he was able to twist it open even while his body began crumpling to the dirt floor where it remained, inert as a rag, as water cascaded from the ceiling.
After securing the horses in B paddock, Todd Collins hurried back to the lower stable. When he reached the east entrance, he found his trainer, Jack Curry, standing near the barn door, and noticeably out of breath. Jack was another large man, but only in his mid-forties and more solidly built than his boss. Curry loved to affect any posture and attitude that remotely resembled John Wayne. Stance, swagger, speech, laconic grin, penetrating scowl: Jack had each characteristic memorized, and his private impersonation brought results. People instinctively respected and trusted Jack Curry. In Todd’s opinion, the trainer was a class act; “the best damn horseman on the East Coast,” who also happened to have once been married to Todd’s eldest daughter, Fiona—the emphasis being on ex. In her father’s estimation “Jack was, and continues to be, the only man capable of steadying such a high-strung filly. And look at her now,” he’d add with a rueful shake of his white mane. “I swear, a brood mare has got more sense than that woman.”
“I ran up the moment I saw the flames, Mr. C,” Jack now told his boss in his typically easy drawl. He coughed, then spit emphatically into the dirt. “How’d this damn thing get started?”
“No telling.” Todd glanced into the barn. “Good . . . Orlando was able to get the sprinklers going. Have you seen him?”
“No, sir. I thought he was off today.”
“No, no, he’s around. He helped me get the horses out, then went back in to monkey with that blasted sprinkler system.” Todd peered into the steamy, belching murk. “He must still be inside.” Collins moved toward the stable entrance, but the trainer grabbed his arm.
“I wouldn’t go in there, Mr. C. There’s no guarantee those sprinklers are gonna do their job. They’re old as the hills. Those pipes fail, or break along the line, the place’ll go up like a haystack. Orlando probably scooted out the other end. He’s no hero.” The final comment held a note of cowboy disdain, as if the barn manager could never hope to compete with someone whose stock in trade was saving damsels in distress and rescuing wagon trains that were under savage attack.
Todd pulled his arm free. “I don’t like it. If Orlando were outside, he would have come down to check on the horses. I say he’s still in there. We’ve got to get him out.” With that, Todd’s tall frame limped decisively into the stable.
Jack watched his former father-in-law disappear in the smoke and shook his head. “Crazy old coot; gonna get us both killed over some lousy greaseball.” He pulled a handkerchief from his rear pocket, pushed it into a neighboring horse trough, rang it out, covered his nose, and ran inside.
Jack had no idea whether the sprinkler system was going to win its battle or not. The crackling and sighing of burning wood appeared to be getting louder with every step he made, as though the barn were getting ready to collapse around him. He couldn’t help second-guessing the wisdom of entering the structure. “Mr. C,” he shouted through the swirling smoke, “where the hell are you?”
“Over by the valve. Polk’s been knocked unconscious. Get over here and give me a hand.”
Coughing and blinking back acid tears, Jack worked his way over to the valve, where he found Todd crouched over Orlando’s prone body. “Is he alive?”
“I don’t know. Let’s get him out of here.”
“This place is gonna come down on top of us, Mr. C. Any second.” Jack ducked to the side as a bale of burning hay thudded down from the loft above, hissing when it hit the water on the ground.
“I don’t think so,” the old man shouted back. “I think it’s going to hold. Let’s get Orlando out of here pronto, though. I don’t want to push our luck any more than we already have.”
Jack bent down and slid his arms under Polk’s shoulders and lifted his chest, while Todd took hold of his feet.
“Ready?” Jack said.
“You betcha.”
They stood in unison, hefting the limp form and moving gingerly toward the east end of the stable. A loud and continual hissing sound now prevailed in the barn, and the smoke was heavy with steam and the smell of charred wood and ruined saddle leather.
Exiting the stable they heard the muffled sirens of approaching fire engines. After they set the body down in a grassy patch, Todd straightened and looked at Jack. “Did you call the damn fire department?”
“No.”
Todd kicked at the dirt with his good leg. “Damn . . . It must have been Ryan. Why can’t she listen?”
“Something wrong with the fire department, Mr. C.?”
Collins knelt down and checked Orlando’s pulse. “I like to keep situations like this in-house.”
CHAPTER
2
Contrary to the sleepy atmosphere that presently prevailed at Newcastle’s morning newspaper, the Herald, the offices of its afternoon rival, the Evening Crier, were rife with scurrying and worried feet, with furrowed eyebrows, grim expressions, and the kind of terse remarks that can’t help but sound insulting even under the most benign of moments—which “deadline” at a daily city newspaper definitely was not.
Although the dreaded moment was nearly four hours away, the Crier’s editors, reporters, columnists, and advertising account executives knew full well that the time could evaporate in the blink of an eye; and most were secretly en-vying the Herald employees as they did almost each and every day. Not that the folks at the Herald didn’t go through the same hysteria on a regular basis; it’s just that for them it rolled around at nine at night, not nine in the morning.
Annabella Graham stepped off the elevator on the third floor of the Crier building and into this tense melee, just as she had every Friday for the past seven years: equipped with a manila envelope tucked under her arm. Belle, as she preferred to be addressed after suffering too many puns of the anna-gram variety, was the crossword puzzle editor at the Evening Crier. She was thirty-three years old, bouncy, and lithe, with quizzical gray eyes, blond hair the color and consistency of dandelion down, and a radiant smile that revealed how little she cared about her looks. She was also smart.
Preferring to create her week’s offering of puzzles in the quiet and comforting atmosphere of her home, rather than at the Crier’s offices, Fridays were one of the few times the other employees got a glimpse of their Belle.
On the weeks when she opted to deliver the seven puzzles after deadline’s witching hour, most of her coworkers stopped by to chat, inquiring chummily about her husband, Rosco, a local private eye, or their two dogs, Kit and Gabby. But when she chose to arrive in the morning, as she had today, very few greeted the resident “brainiac” with more than a preoccupied nod. They were a mercurial crowd whose personalities switched back
and forth, depending on where the big and little hands sat on the clock; and they had hard news to attend to. Word games might be popular with readers—very popular, actually—but to those who wrote the leading stories, Belle’s contributions couldn’t compete with lethal twenty-vehicle pileups on the interstate, or corporate malfeasance, or government lies, or domestic violence, or celebrity scandals, or war dead, or starvation in Africa, or any of the other fun articles that made the front page.
Belle had never much liked spending time at the Crier. It wasn’t the people she objected to; they were an entertaining bunch once you got them away from work, and she and Rosco enjoyed socializing with them. Instead, it was the building’s architecture that she found off-putting. It was postmodern gone to seed, like an inner-city high school after a long and wearying week. A pale, dirty brown was the color of choice—which some politely called “greige” or even “sepia,” while others chose earthier and less flattering epithets: words that don’t normally appear in family newspapers.
Belle proceeded down the dingy hall, dodging the various messengers and copyboys, until she reached her own cubicle-sized office, where she opened the door into the stark and unlovely space. A chipped laminate desk, an office chair that listed to one side, and a bookcase (mostly empty) stared forlornly back at her. Atop the desk sat a small collection of pencils, a few sheets of quarter-inch graph paper that had been there so long they were almost as brown as the walls, a blotter pad, and an in-out box. It was there that Belle placed the manila envelope containing a week’s worth of crosswords accompanied by their solutions. After that major effort, she was free to go home—a simple and predictable ritual, albeit a little odd. As long as the interoffice mail boy found the package, there at seven o’clock on Friday evening (word games for the next week being exempt from the demon deadline), everyone was happy.
Belle fiddled with the envelope, repositioning it until the edges took on a military precision, then murmured a quiet, “Well, that’s that. Enough thrills and chills for one week. It’s off to the the dog park for me.”
“Oh, nay, nay, nay, say it isn’t so, my dear Bellisima. One can’t vacate the dank underbelly of the venerable Evening Crier simply because something as trivial as the sun may be shining in the bright universe beyond. You don’t see any of the other moles running for daylight, do you?”
She turned to find Bartholomew Kerr, the Crier’s diminutive gossip columnist standing in her doorway, the greenish glow of the fluorescent overhead lighting casting an olive patina over his nearly bald pate and on his upturned face with its oversized black glasses. Depending on circumstances, Bartholomew either resembled a scrawny baby bird or a housefly searching out a tasty bread crumb.
Despite his oddball appearance and his florid, and often pretentious, speech, Kerr was one of Belle’s dearest friends at the newspaper. He prided himself in knowing everyone in the city of Newcastle, and what they were up to and when—that is, everyone whose name could be recognized when reproduced in boldface type in his “Biz-y-Buzz” column.
“Good morning, Bartholomew,” Belle responded with a glowing smile. “Does it seem unusually hectic around here today, or is it my imagination?”
Kerr strolled into Belle’s office and perched his tiny frame on the corner of her desk. Only the tips of his suede loafers touched the linoleum floor. “Ah, alas, trouble ventures into the illustrious realm of high society. Why on earth do you think I’ve ventured into this fetid arena before eleven o’clock? I gather you haven’t heard about the fire?”
“Fire?”
Kerr released a cherubic chuckle. “Oh, my dear Bella. Please say that word one more time for me, will you? It has such an angelic and innocent ring when floating from your lips. Although from the fever in your eye, I might question whether you’re a devoted pyromaniac.”
“What fire, Bartholomew? I haven’t heard anything about it.”
“Tsk, tsk . . . that’s why the intestines of our Evening Crier are working overtime. The Herald went to bed too early and missed the story, so we have ourselves a good old-fashioned scoop. Apparently, someone torched one of the horse barns out at King Wenstarin Farms.”
“That’s horrible. Were any animals killed?”
Kerr threw up his hands in mock horror. “I’m sorry, I have misspoken myself. There is no evidence—as yet—that this was a torch job. That’s only my catty presumption. Although since the Family Collins is insured to the nines by the Dartmouth Group, I suppose it won’t be long before a certain crossword-puzzle editor’s hubby, one Rosco Polycrates by name, is called in to . . . look things over, shall we say? We all know your dear boy is this burg’s favored PI when it comes to ferreting out insurance fraud, don’t we, now?”
Belle stomped her foot on the floor. “Bartholomew, stop, please. Did any horses die?”
“Ah, the kindhearted demoiselle. Women do love their prancing steeds, don’t they? I believe most men would first ask if any of the human race had been injured.”
Belle raised an eyebrow. “That’s certainly a chauvinistic statement.”
“But true, nonetheless. I’ve been taking a little survey around the dungeon this morning, and I’ve found that on first hearing of the blaze, women ask only about the four-footed beasts; with men, it breaks down to about fifty-fifty.”
“I’d say that only proves that women are focused on one thing, and that men are all over the place.”
“You’re speaking metaphorically, I take it? I wouldn’t care to make any off-color references to the stud business. Well, at any rate, to answer your question: All valiant members of the Equus caballus family escaped without harm. However, the barn manager lies in a comatose state in ICU at Newcastle Memorial. If it turns out to be a torch job, and our dear fellow drifts into the hereafter, then we’ll have ourselves a dirty little murder among Newcastle’s hoity-toity. Won’t that keep ‘Biz-y-Buzz’ abuzzing?”
Belle sat in her chair and put her feet up on the end of the desk farthest from Kerr. Then she became aware that her jeans were beginning to fray at the cuff and wondered how long it would take Bartholomew to begin drawing comparisons to the Little Match Girl. She stifled a self-conscious groan. Shopping for clothes had never been one of her favorite pastimes; there were too many choices; blue was “in,” then it wasn’t; skirts were pencil thin, then flouncy; ditto with blouses and jackets and dresses: Who knew what to choose when designers and manufacturers seemed in such a state of flux?
“You’re certain King Wenstarin Farms is insured by the Dartmouth Group?” she asked as she edged her feet back off the desk and hid them under her chair.
“Oh, please, dear girl, there is nothing I don’t know when it comes to Newcastle’s idle rich. Of course Papa Collins—that would be Todd—has worked hard for his filthy lucre, as did his father before him . . . although one might say that importing Irish whiskey during the early twenties at the height of the Volstead Act was frowned upon by some, most notably the FBI and that dear dead man, J. Edgar Hoover.”
Belle bolted up straight in her seat. “You mean Collins’s dad was a bootlegger? King Wenstarin Irish Whiskey? That was bootlegged?”
Kerr rolled his eyes. “I think I like the way you pronounced that nasty word more than I liked the way you said fire. Yes, mia Bella, old man Collins was not in the most legitimate of trades. Where have you spent your life, my child? Everyone knows King Wenstarin started out as illegal hooch and that both of Todd Collins’s uncles evaporated from the face of the earth when they tried to expand their market share by moving their product from Boston to New York. Of course that was before Todd was born. After Prohibition, Collins père, the only member of the family not to have been Tommy-gunned out of the picture, managed to turn the business into a legitimate importer of ‘fine’ spirits. Then Todd took over King Wenstarin and turned it into the multimillion-dollar corporation it is today.”
Belle sighed. “Multimillion dollar . . . I like the ring of that. I wish Rosco and I could work our bank account in that d
irection.”
“Be careful what you wish for, dear child. Todd’s offspring are not to be admired or imitated. The three are nothing but a bunch of dilettantes. All they know about money is how to spend it, and spend it, and spend it. The eldest daughter, that would be the oft-married Fiona, used to pal around with your former competitor, Thompson Briephs, so I imagine your friend Sara might provide some pithy insights into the woman.”
Belle nodded. Thompson Briephs had been the crossword editor at the Herald before he was murdered a few years back. It was the case that had introduced Belle to the man who would become her husband, and had also cemented a lasting friendship with Thompson’s octogenarian mother, Sara Crane Briephs, a woman Belle had come to view as her surrogate grandmother.
“Wait,” she said, suddenly crinkling her brow, “You mean Fiona Collins and Thompson Briephs were an item? Before he died?”
“Well, dear girl, he wouldn’t have made much of an item, as you put it, after he was dead and gone, now would he? The Collins tots are a wild bunch, but I think necrophilia might be pushing the envelope, even for them.”
“Is their mother still around?”
“Around? Yes, but discarded long ago. You know how such familial relationships work in the moneyed set, my angel. Toddie has his millions, then reaches the fine old age of fifty-plus and starts shopping for a trophy wife. Long-suffering mother of his offspring is unceremoniously shown the exit, and Miss Twentysomething moves into the Big House instead. That first little bride took Mr. Todd for a pretty penny and skedaddled to Miami’s South Beach and a stable of Cuban houseboys—or so I hear. Todd is now on wifey number three, a comely lass named Ryan. Of course, even she will fade in time. It’s now two years or so post-white-gown-and-lace-veil. So I’ve been told that at the age of thirty-seven, she’s interviewing only the best of cosmetic surgeons.” Kerr clasped the palms of his hands to his cheeks. “I’m sorry. Was that naughty of me? Oh, well . . . But then again, Toddie-pie is presently seventy-four. Perchance he has lost his wandering eye and will keep Mistress Ryan for the duration. Only time will tell.”