“But that’s crazy!” Willow cried. “Cheryl’s inheriting the house. He wouldn’t burn down his own house!”
“Why not? No doubt plenty of insurance. And getting rid of both of us saves him a hundred and fifty thou in blackmail money and does away with whatever we know. Permanently.”
No wonder he hadn’t wanted to shoot them! He was planning to make the fire look like an accident, and bodies with bullets in them wouldn’t fit that scenario. Bodies, according to Uncle Joe’s book on arson, had an annoying tendency—at least annoying from the arsonist’s point of view—not to burn up completely in a fire. Bodies trapped in a closet might still raise questions, but Scott no doubt had an alibi for himself already figured out. His car hadn’t been in the driveway.
Willow took a three-step run at the door. She thudded into it. A shard of mirror crashed to the floor, but the door stood as solid as a rock wall.
The smell of smoke intensified. A wisp drifted up from the crack at the bottom of the door. Cate snatched a dress off the rack and jammed it against the crack. Smoke insidiously sifted higher, around the sides of the door, the wisps multiplying like unfriendly ghosts. Willow coughed. Cate grabbed a hanger to stuff fabric into the narrow cracks around the door.
Where was the smoke coming from? She couldn’t hear any crackle of flames. Had he set the fire downstairs?
Then … foom! Whoosh! The explosion whammed the door.
A memory from long ago: a neighbor, impatient with a slow-burning debris fire, tossing gasoline into the lethargic flames. With exactly the same foom and whoosh of explosion. Plus a loss of eyebrows for the neighbor.
Now she could even smell the gasoline. No Boy Scout campfire methods for Scott. He was all speed and efficiency.
“He’s trying to kill us!” Willow gasped, as if that truth only now fully penetrated. She pounded the door with her fists. More falling shards of mirror.
Now a close-up crackle of fire, then another whoosh. The canopy on the bed going up in flames? Smoke thickened in the claustrophobic closet.
Yet even as Cate stood there feeling both a cold chill and a hot sweat of fear, an irrelevant thought tromped around in her head. Uncle Joe had assured her: no excitement, no danger with the PI assignment. Oh? Then how come her life was on the line for the second time this day? Double jeopardy. Unfair! She was supposed to be just dipping her toe in the PI business, trying it out, thinking it over. Instead, here she was, up to her armpits in killers.
Although there was the fact Uncle Joe had also told her to stay out of Amelia’s murder …
“We have to get out!” Willow cried. She twisted the doorknob frantically. Except, with something braced under the knob on the outside, the movement was useless as wheels spinning in mud. She whirled to stare at Cate. “How can you be so calm! We have to do something!”
Calm? Cate might not be ramming the walls in panic, but she was hardly calm. Thudding heartbeat, slick palms, one terrified eye staring back at her from what was left of the mirror. A thread of prayer looped endlessly in her mind. Lord, help me to think! Help us to get out of here!
A steady haze of smoke oozed around the door, Cate’s barrier of fabric useless against the assault. Louder crackles from outside the door. Willow battered at the broken mirror, then whirled to look at Cate again.
“Wouldn’t this be a good time to do the prayer thing? Throw out a Bible verse or something?”
Cate grabbed Willow’s hand and squeezed her eyes shut. “Lord, I know you’ve already answered my prayers for help once today, and I thank you for that. But we’re in a bad situation here, so could you do it again? Bring us some help, or show us a way out? Something! We ask it in the name of Jesus.”
Willow clutched Cate’s hand, eyes closed and breath held as if expecting to find herself miraculously whisked to a place of safety or drenched in a fire-extinguishing downpour. When nothing happened, she opened her eyes and looked at Cate accusingly.
“That’s it? Can’t you do something more?”
“I guess I could do cartwheels while I pray, but God doesn’t need that. No theatrics necessary.”
“Something is necessary. Because nothing’s happening!”
Cate threaded her fingers together. Think. Think! Unlike most closets built in modern homes, the closet in this old house had been added to the interior of a bedroom that didn’t have one. Maybe there was a weakness in a corner joint, a place where they could break out?
She yanked clothes aside, trampling them as she clambered to a corner. She pounded the walls on both sides of the corner, hammered until her fists ached, but no crack or weakness appeared. She finally stepped back and rubbed her throbbing hands.
Blue-gray smoke hazed the room in an acrid veil. Willow coughed again, and smoke burned Cate’s throat until a spasm of coughing shook her too. She grabbed a sweater to cover her mouth and nose, but it was like trying to hold back Niagara with a sieve.
“Get down close to the floor. The smoke isn’t as thick down low.” Cate took her own advice and dropped to her knees on the floor.
Willow tumbled to her knees beside Cate, her shoulders hunched. But over her shoulder Cate spotted something. She dropped the sweater from her mouth and jumped to her feet. The fallen clothes and hangers revealed a different-looking area on the outside wall. An odd-looking square, like a frame. Then Cate realized what it was. One of those strange, oddly placed windows visible from outside. And it hadn’t been boarded up when the closet was built. It had simply been painted over!
She grabbed a high-heeled shoe and hammered. Glass shattered. Cate stuck her nose to the ragged opening and sucked in a sweet gulp of fresh air. Willow scrambled to her feet and elbowed Cate at the opening.
“We can jump!” Willow cried.
She grabbed another shoe and together they smashed more glass. A shard slashed Willow’s hand, but she didn’t stop hammering even as blood trickled down her arm. Frantically Cate pounded to smooth the bottom edge of the frame. They’d have to crawl out over it in order to jump.
Then Willow croaked, “Look.”
Cate pushed her face through the opening. They were on the second floor of the house here. She’d never been around on this far side of the building. And what she saw was no easy drop to freedom. The lot sloped away steeply under this side of the house, falling away to a street she’d never driven on far below.
If they jumped, they’d hit the slope and keep going, right on down to the hard pavement.
So they could cower in the closet and burn. Barbecued redheads. Or jump and wind up like smashed tomatoes down there on the street.
Cate stood and stretched as far out the window as possible without losing the clamp of toes to the floor. Smoke poured from around a first-floor window in the tower section. A tongue of flame broke through and licked up the corner of the house. He’d set fires on the first floor too, probably even before he’d set the one outside their closet door. Up here, the fresh air from the broken window acted like a draft, and the fire beyond the door rose to a menacing roar. And the temperature in the closet climbed ominously.
Willow suddenly thrust Cate aside and leaned out the window herself. “Hey, isn’t anybody out there? Fire! Fire!” She grabbed hold of the window frame and shook and pushed, like Samson bringing down the pillars of the Philistine temple.
The window frame, unlike Samson’s pillars, did not collapse. Willow slumped backward, face buried in her hands. Cate stepped up and looked out … and down … again. Lord, even if it looks like we’d be jumping to our deaths, should we try it?
Prisoners tied sheets together to break out of jail. Classic escape system. Amelia, however, hadn’t stored a helpful supply of sheets in the closet.
But she did have a boutique of scarves!
Cate grabbed a handful of them, but her moment of enthusiasm fizzled as she stared at them. They were made for decorative purposes, not strength. Knotted together, how many would it take? How long to tie them together? And how strong would the result be?
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Is this the way to do it, Lord?
No answer in words from the Lord, but a crash from the bedroom galvanized Cate into yanking more scarves from hangers. Silky scarves, wooly scarves … Cate didn’t try to choose. She just knelt and tied, one frantic knot after another.
Willow huddled on the floor, head down, hands clasped behind her neck. Cate kicked her in the hip.
“Help me!”
Willow looked up, eyes bleary and puffed from smoke. She rubbed them and blinked. “What are you doing?”
“I’m making a way out of here! Grab some scarves and help me tie them together.”
Willow floundered to her knees. She stared at the clumps of tied-together scarves in Cate’s hands. “It’ll never work. We’d get halfway down and they’d come apart or break.”
“Fine. You stay here and turn into a crispy critter.” A gross but descriptive term Cate had read in Uncle Joe’s book on arson. “I’m climbing down with this.”
After a long scowl, Willow apparently decided she’d rather try even a questionable escape method than become a crispy critter. She grabbed scarves and started tying.
“Why not use dresses?” she asked. “They’re longer.”
“Okay! Anything. Just tie something to something, okay?”
They tied in frantic silence for several minutes. When the tangle of tied garments circled them several times, Cate paused for an inspection. Black cocktail dress knotted with wool plaid scarf. Orchid nightgown tied between black linen slacks and gold-threaded black shawl.
It looked like the work of two children who were going to be in big trouble for playing with Mommy’s good clothes. Or the work of a couple of madwomen.
So what? They could create an artistic masterpiece some other time. Right now, all that mattered was would it hold together? Cate didn’t know much about knots, and she suspected Willow knew even less.
“Here, grab one end and let’s test how strong it is.” Cate held out an end to Willow. They scrambled to opposite sides of the closet.
One knot instantly pulled loose, thumping Cate back against a wall. She retied it. They scrunched low and moved on down the line of knots, testing them. Two more came loose and had to be redone.
Whatever government agency oversaw safety in the workplace would never approve this as an escape system.
“What’ll we tie it to in here?” Willow asked. “It has to be anchored somewhere.”
“I don’t know … look around!”
Which suddenly became more difficult because the room went black.
“What happened?” Willow cried.
“The fire must have burned through the electric wires somewhere.”
A faint light from the starry sky glimmered through the now glass-less window. Flames from the first floor added a more ominous flicker of light.
“How long does this thing need to be?” Willow asked as she peered at it in the faint light. Before Cate could answer, Willow jumped to the window. “I hear something! I think it’s a siren.”
Cate lifted her head. Yes! A siren. Help was on the way! A second thought slammed into the moment of triumph.
Even if help was on the way, how long before firefighters found two women trapped upstairs in a closet? They wouldn’t know anyone was in the house—
All they’d find would be two very crispy critters.
Willow apparently realized that too. She repeated her question. “How long does this thing have to be?”
“I don’t know. But we’re out of time. This will have to do. We’ve got to get out of here now.”
With shaking hands Cate looped the makeshift rope around the bracket that supported the shelf of shoes, and tied one more knot. The most important knot of all. She flung the other end out the window. They watched it drop to within a couple feet of the ground.
“You go first,” Cate said.
“Oh, great. You want me to be the test subject. Then if it comes apart, you’ll know not to try it.”
Cate ignored the grumble and boosted Willow to the window. She managed to scoot around and sit with her feet hanging out the window.
“Am I supposed to do a Tarzan yell when I do this?” Willow asked.
“Whatever.”
Willow grabbed the makeshift rope dangling from the shelf bracket and swung out into empty space. Cate leaned out to watch Willow slither and slide down the makeshift rope. She was going to make it!
But a few feet from the end, a scarf ripped. Willow screamed as she slammed to the ground, torn end of the makeshift rope still clutched in her hands.
But she hit so close to the house that she didn’t tumble and roll down the slope to the street below. She jumped up on the uneven ground and waved the tied scarves victoriously. “I made it! C’mon. Do it!”
Behind Cate the closet lit up as a tongue of flame ate through the wall. The escape rope was shorter now, farther for Cate to fall. Which made tumbling on down the slope more likely.
With no one to give her a boost, Cate shoved clothes and fur jacket under the window, then clambered atop them. She spotted where a section of the rope had almost torn in two, cut by a shard of glass clinging to the window frame. She climbed down, grabbed a high heel, hammered the spot smooth, and replaced the torn scarf with a long black skirt. Smoke poured out around her. Sirens wailed closer. But not close enough for rescue. The fire would engulf the closet first.
She scrambled back to the window, legs dangling over the edge. Then hand over hand, feet dangling, body swaying, she skidded downward. Her hands hung up on the knots. Flames shooting from the first floor grabbed for her. Smoke billowed, enveloping her in an acrid cloud that choked her lungs. She hung on grimly. Only a few feet more …
A knot gave way. Cate felt it slipping loose. Going, going … gone! Falling. Dizziness swept through her. She’d hit and go right down that slope, right onto hard pavement …
Her falling body hit something softer than dirt. Something that crashed beneath her to the ground and tangled around her. Sirens were right out front now.
Hands shoved at Cate. “Get off me,” Willow snapped.
Cate scrambled away, grabbing at dirt, weeds, anything to keep from tumbling down the slope, astonished as she realized what Willow had done. “You broke my fall! You stood right under me and caught me.”
“You need to go on a diet.” Willow stood and shook herself. “You practically squashed me.”
Cate still felt amazed. Again, when the chips were down, Willow had come through. Under the force of Cate’s fall, they could easily have both tumbled down the slope. But she’d put her own safety on the line for Cate.
Above them, flames shot out their escape window. More flames fully engulfed the tower now. Glass exploded as a lower-story window burst from heat and pressure.
“You rescued me twice today,” Cate marveled.
“So I win my hero badge. You can pin it on later. Let’s get out of here! The whole house may collapse.”
They scrambled through weeds and blackberry vines toward the corner of the house. Heat radiated off the old boards. Flames and smoke poured through ragged holes. Sparks and ash fell around them. Cate slapped away a hot spot in her hair. A section of roof collapsed with a whoosh, and a galaxy of sparks filled the sky overhead.
Scott must have set half a dozen fires, maybe a dozen! Flames danced inside every window.
And where was Scott? Long gone. Figuring they were dead by now. Busy establishing his alibi, if he even needed one. Tallying his fire insurance payoff.
They finally rounded the corner of the house, into the unkempt grass of the backyard. Flames hadn’t reached this back side of the house yet, but windows glowed like red devil eyes hungry for victims. A riot of sirens now. Yells. A tangle of boards littered the old rock garden below the stairs. Except there was no stairway now. Only a lone broken board dangled below the open doorway.
Firemen dragging a hose burst around the other corner of the house just as flames erupted through the third-floor doorway. Th
eir sloping yellow hats gleamed in the flame light. They aimed a blast of water upward. One of them spotted Cate and Willow.
“Anyone inside?” he yelled over the roar of the fire.
“There was a man inside earlier,” Cate yelled back. “I think he got away!”
“Get back, farther back!”
Cate and Willow, staying well back, circled around to the front of the house. Fire trucks, police cars, and an ambulance overflowed the driveway. Onlookers filled the sidewalk and street.
“Let’s find a police officer,” Cate said. “We have to tell them what happened.”
“You know what Scott’s going to tell them, don’t you? He’s going to blame us! Guess who they’ll believe. I want to get out of here!”
Willow looked as if she might take off at a run. Cate grabbed her arm and dragged her over to a police car, where an officer was talking on his radio. Still holding on to Willow, Cate told the surprised officer a jumble of information about Scott Calhoun locking them in the closet and setting fire to the house. He didn’t sound skeptical, but he asked the obvious question: why? Then Willow finally started talking too, about embezzlement, missing jewelry, murder, and blackmail.
Willow lifted her hand to motion at the now-missing upper level of the house, and the officer spotted the blood running down her arm.
“We can finish your statement later. Right now, you let the EMTs take care of that hand.”
Cate jumped when a voice barked from the radio. “We’ve found somebody back here! Can’t tell if the person’s alive!”
The officer took off at a run around the flaming house.
“You go over and get that cut looked at!” Cate yelled and took off for the backyard herself, but Willow was right behind her.
Flames blazed up the back side of the house now. Firemen and officers together, working dangerously close to the burning house, were frantically throwing boards out of the tangled pile of the fallen stairway as if they were toothpicks. Two EMTs hovered over something under the pile. A minute later they loaded a motionless form on a stretcher. Cate saw a leg. A loafer. No socks. A moment later the back wall of the house collapsed, burying what was left of the stairway.
Dying to Read (The Cate Kinkaid Files Book #1): A Novel Page 26