Tin City Tinder (A Boone Childress Mystery) Page 6

“To?”

  “The truth, and everything that comes with it.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” She tapped my glass and took a sip. “That’s got some bite!”

  “Let the wine rest,” I said. “Scuppernong grapes need to air out a little, or they can overwhelm your senses.”

  “Sort of like you.”

  “Me? How am I overwhelming?”

  “Come on, you have to know. Your soldier swagger. The firefighter hero thing. Plus you’re really smart in class.” She took another sip of wine as I shook my head. “Seriously, all the cool girls think you’re hot and all the hot girls think you’re cool.”

  “What about you? What do you think about me?”

  “I wonder why you’d be interested in a nerd like me.” She ran a finger around the lip of the glass. “Since you just admitted I’m neither hot nor cool.”

  “Nice maneuver there.” I lifted my glass. “But you’re just being coy.”

  “I’m not!”

  She fired a cornbread muffin at my head. I ducked, and it sailed straight into the lake below.

  “Missed me.”

  “I meant to miss you.”

  The server cleared his throat. “Ready to order?”

  “Oops,” Cedar said. “I haven’t even looked at the menu. What’s good?”

  “Do you trust me?” I asked.

  “You run into burning buildings to save possums,” she said, smiling, “and you ask if I trust you to order for me?”

  I turned to the server. “We’ll start with she crab soup, followed by the spicy strawberry salad and the filet mignon, medium rare. For desert—you like chocolate, right?”

  “Stupid question,” she said.

  “For desert, we’ll split the chocolate torte.”

  The server caught my eye and winked. “Excellent decision, sir.”

  He meant my decision to order for both of us. From Cedar’s body language, she liked a take-charge guy. I hoped I was interpreting her right.

  “So,” she said.

  “So. What shall we talk about?”

  “Something intriguing yet stimulating.”

  “That’s my kind of conversation.”

  “Awesome! Then let me tell about my research project.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Oh yeah. Totally seriously. You’re going to love it.”

  While we waited for their appetizer, she told me all about her literature review. Over the salad and entrée, she outlined the design of the project and described her methods for collecting data.

  We split the bottle of wine. She matched me glass for glass until the chocolate torte made its appearance and I poured the last few drops in her glass.

  “Are you trying to get me drunk, Petty Officer?”

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  “I’m not a petty officer.”

  “That makes you a pretty officer, then.”

  A blush bloomed across her cheeks. “Shut up and eat your dessert.”

  “You first.” I cut the torte with my fork and gently placed the chocolate on her tongue.

  “Oh my god!” She covered her mouth.“That’s the best I’ve ever had.”

  I offered another piece. “Care for more?”

  “That’s all,” she said through the next bite. “It’s delicious but too rich. I have to watch my figure.”

  “I could watch it for you.”

  “Haven’t you already been doing that?”

  “Guilty as charged.” I signaled the server to bring the check. “Care for a walk by the lake?”

  “You read my mind.”

  “That’s why I suddenly had visions of differential equations dancing through my head.”

  She threw her napkin at me. “That time, I meant to hit you.”

  A few minutes later, we were strolling on the shore, shoes in hand, fingers locked together. The tips of the waves nibbled at our feet, and the shadows of the coming night silhouetted the trees. The wind had picked up, and Cedar shivered in the cold.

  “Hang on.” I placed my coat on her shoulders. “How’s that?”

  “That,” she said and turned her face up to mine, “was about the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Technically, you didn’t see it, since it’s already dark-thirty.”

  “Just shut up,” she said and leaned into my chest, “and kiss me.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Running the back of my hand along her cheek, I slipped my fingers into her hair and pulled her closer. Our lips touch together, gently at first. Then I pulled her tight, one hand on her neck, the other on the small of her back.

  Cedar eased her petite body into my embrace. She wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled herself deeper into my mouth.

  We kissed for so long I lost track of time. I was only dimly aware of the waves washing over my bare feet. Then I realized that my hands were both on Cedar, and I had dropped my shoes.

  “I think,” I said as the kiss faded, “that the lake ate my footwear.”

  “The perfect end,” Cedar said, almost breathless, “to the perfect date.”

  WEDNESDAY

  1

  After my morning classes, I did my weekly volunteer work at the homeless shelter. For two hours, we ladled out bowls of vegetable soup and stale bread toast covered with slices of processed cheese food. For desert, there was apple pie donated by a local grocery chain. The families at the shelter were grateful for the meal. I felt guilty thinking about the steaks Cedar and I had eaten the night before. Especially when I remember the slice of chocolate torte we’d wasted.

  Cedar was right about it being a perfect date, even if it did cost me a pair of dress shoes. That’s why when she texted me with the message: OMG, I didn’t mind replying: DITTO.

  I was still grinning at her text when I got back home, where more work was waiting. The stalls had to be mucked, the barn raked, and the straw replaced. When I finished, I was starving, but it was the kind of hunger that could be sated by one thing:

  Snickerdoodles.

  Mom’s snickerdoodles, to be exact.

  Which given the fact that she was mad at me, I had little chance of getting. There was only one solution. I would have to make my own. Cooking was like chemistry, right? You get a list of ingredients, follow the procedure, and eureka! Cookies.

  “Cookbook, cookbook.” I scanned the shelf above the stovetop. “Who knew there were so many books on preparing fish?”

  It made sense, actually. Cookies were naturally appealing. Making fish edible took a high level of culinary skill.

  Fish!

  I snapped my fingers. It was the one species I’d not included in my blow fly maggot experiment. All of my subjects were mammalian because humans were mammals. But wouldn’t it be interesting to see how insects responded to non-mammalian tissue samples?

  “Mental note: Add fish.”

  After staring at the shelf for another minute, I settled on the Fanny Farmer cookbook because the name Fanny made me smirk. I looked up cookies in the table of contents and was delighted to discover a recipe for snickerdoodles.

  “The mystery is solved.”

  The recipe was simple: Butter, sugar, cream of tartar, eggs, vanilla, flour, and cinnamon. The instructions were straightforward like a science lab. What was the big deal here? With directions like these, what could go wrong?

  An hour and twenty minutes later, I took a pan of cookies from the oven and set it on the stove top next to the three glass bowls I’d used for mixing, The bowls were stacked next to a metal dish I’d used for working the butter, as well as the decanter of sugar I spilled on the counter when I burned myself putting the raw cookies in the oven.

  I poured a tall glass of milk.

  With a thin spatial, I gently lifted the cookies from the pan and arranged them on a clean, white plate. I sprinkled cinnamon on twice because there’s no such thing as too much cinnamon and put the plate next to the milk glass.

  Taking a bite of the crisp
cookie, I waited for the rich, buttery flavor to fill my mouth, for the warmth to spread over my tongue, and the cold of the milk to harden the dough so that it crunched satisfyingly between my teeth.

  “Oh my god!” I spat cookie everywhere. “Paste! I tastes like paste!”

  I emptied the glass. Refilled it and emptied it again.

  The cookies were totally fibered.

  It made no sense. I had followed the recipe precisely. I held a snicker doodle in the light, turning it over and over. The shape was right, the consistency was right, but the texture was all wrong. It was lumpy and grainy, like congealed cream of wheat. The flavor was worse than the jar of paste I’d eaten in kindergarten.

  I carried the plate to the porch and flung the cookies into the yard. “Bon appetite, birds!” The crows would eat them for sure.

  Bzzt. My pager went off.

  The call codes indicated a house fire in Nagswood, a wide place in the road on Highway Twelve. Only ten miles away. Nobody had a chance to get there before me.

  “No heroics this time,” I admonished myself as I started the truck. My turnouts were on the floorboard, and the hooligan tool was on the gun rack. “Rules and regs, just like Lamar wanted. You’ll even follow the speed limit. Sort of.”

  I radioed Julia, who was working dispatch. “I’m 10-76 and running 10-39. ETA, ten minutes.”

  “You’re first responder,” Julia replied through the static. “You know the drill. Status report only. Don’t take action till the Captain has boots on the ground.”

  “Roger that.”

  “I mean it, Possum.”

  “So do I. Out.”

  I swerved around a fresh load of horse apples in the middle of the dirt road. If I needed any motivation to behave, the apples were there a reminder of all the stalls I’d have to muck if I screwed up again.

  There was nothing like a pile of steaming manure to inspire you to do better, even when you knew in your heart that you hadn’t learned your lesson.

  2

  Like the Tin City and Duck properties, the house in Nagswood was set well off the highway, down a mile long dirt road that was so overgrown with cedar trees and white pines, it was difficult to navigate. If not for a For Sale sign marked SOLD from Landis Commercial Real Estate, I might have driven past the road, and I definitely would’ve missed the sharp left turn through a hedge row, even though there was a thick column of smoke already rising into the blue sky.

  A stream cut the boundary between properties. The ground was scorched. The yard was lined with electrified wire and two large signs warning trespassers that violators would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. No Trespassing signs were ubiquitous in this part of the county. The growth of the towns in the east had forced wildlife west. Hunters followed along behind, and property owners found their quiet weekends destroyed by the baying of Treeing Walkers, a dog breed known for their ability to flush out small game by making enough racket to wake the dead.

  “Number Seventeen reporting in. Julia, I’m on site.”

  “Roger that.”

  I parked next to an old tobacco barn a hundred yards from the house. There was another truck already on site, a half-ton pickup with dual rear wheels. Three firefights stood beside the truck. They were dressed in yellow turnouts with orange piping. Atamasco Volunteer Fire Department was stenciled across their backs.

  How had they gotten there before me?

  “Atamasco VFD’s already on the scene,” I told dispatch.

  “That’s real quick,” Julia said. “Lamar called in right before you. He says to radio in a status check.”

  “Roger that.” I pulled on my turnouts. Grabbed my helmet and the hooligan. Walked across the patchy grass field toward the other firefighters.

  The leader spoke to the other two vollies, and they moved toward the house. They wore hand-me-down turnouts and sweat-soaked T-shirts. Their hair was stringy and hung down past their necks, and unless I was mistaken, they were twins.

  They split up and took either side of the building.

  Something didn’t seem right.

  “Y’all got here quick,” I said. “Thought I’d be first responder.”

  The leader sported a mop of black hair and a threadbare beard. He wore a blood-red shirt under his unbuttoned fire coat. His head barely reached my chin, but he was broad and stump-shaped, which made him seem bigger. There was something familiar about his face, the way his teeth jutted forward from a pronounced prognathism.

  “Looks like you thought wrong.”

  “Atamasco’s a long way from here.”

  “We’re out hunting the Black River. Not that it’s any of your goddamned business.”

  “How’s the hunting?” I offered my hand. “Boone Childress, Allegheny VFD.”

  “I know who you are, Possum. My kid brother is Dewayne Loach.”

  That explained the animosity. The brothers looked nothing alike, except in the shape of the mouth. That’s why he had seemed familiar.

  I faced the fire. “What’s the situation?”

  A deserted farmhouse. An isolated location. A fire burning so hot and fast, it was a loss before the first responders reached it.

  Two times is a coincidence.

  Three times is a pattern.

  Loach spat tobacco juice at my boots. “Farmhouse is engulfed. Going to be a total loss.”

  Nobody could walk up to a house that looked like ground zero and instantly assess the extent of the situation. Maintain professional decorum, I reminded myself. “My captain asked for a visual assessment.”

  “Don’t waste your time. The house’s been empty since forever.”

  “You know the owners?”

  “Doesn’t everybody?”

  “Not everybody,” I said. “You must know this area pretty well?”

  “Ronnie! Donnie! Y’all done yet?”

  “You just said—“

  “Shut it up, Possum. Let us professionals handle the assessment.” Loach spat tobacco juice again.

  It hit my boot.

  “Too slow, Possum.”

  I kicked the wad of tobacco back at him. “This is a pitiful excuse for an assessment, if you ask me.”

  “Didn’t nobody ask you.” He grabbed my turnout and tried to push me away. “How ‘bout you sit in the truck till your daddy gets here.”

  “How about you take your hands off me instead.” I sidestepped, rolled my arm over his, and pushed hard on his straightened elbow. “I’m not in the mood for dancing.”

  “Hands off me, ass wipe!”

  "Gladly." I let him go. “No hard feelings?”

  He looked my hand over like it was leprosied. “Wouldn’t shake your hand if you was a native-born President of the United States, you goddamn liberal.”

  “Liberal? Are you trying to insult me, because I don’t get it.”

  “Donnie! Ronnie! Y’all come on back. Mr. Possum’s going to put this here fire out all by his lonesome!”

  “I never said that.”

  “No you didn’t.” Loach reloaded another plug of tobacco in his jaw. “But I did. Do what you want, but don’t expect us to lift a finger to help.”

  3

  With Loach and the twins watching, I finished the visual inspection. I returned to my truck and radioed Julia.

  “Got an ETA on the tanker?”

  “They’re still ten minutes out. Cap says for you to call him on the radio.”

  I stood on my truck sideboards and radioed Lamar. “Got your status update, Captain.”

  “What’s the situation on site?”

  “We’ve got a level three burner on a single residence. Stick built. Approximately one thousand five hundred square feet with multiple stories.” I stretched out the mic cord. “Fire has spread to all four corners. Flames coming through the roof in three, check that, four different areas.”

  “Exterior fuel sources? Heating oil tanks? LP?”

  “That’s a negative, sir.”

  Firefighters feared LP, liqui
d propane. A pinhole leak and a random spark could create an explosion strong enough to blow down a house. A LP tank for a barbecue grill could swell to twice its size and become a poor man’s claymore, blowing jagged chunks of shrapnel straight through your body, turnout gear be damned. Most of the houses in Allegheny County used LP for heating and had huge tanks sitting right next to the structure. It was enough gas to make a crater deep enough to swallow a fire truck.

  “How many occupants?”

  “None. According to Atamasco VFD. They were first responders. They state that the house is abandoned.”

  “Atamasco is half way across the county.””

  “That’s an affirmative.”

  “Is their captain on site? Their tanker?”

  “That’s a negative.” More static. “This is a suspicious situation.”

  “Roger that. Our ETA is now eight minutes. Do not engage until we arrive. Roger that.”

  How was I supposed to engage without a tanker? “Roger. Childress out.”

  I tossed the mic onto the seat. Nothing to do but wait. Just like Loach and the twins, who were parked on their butts in the shade of an oak tree, passing around a pack of Camels.

  Hat and hooligan in hand, I walked toward the back of the house. It was typical of farmhouses built in the early twentieth century. It had narrow windows, high ceilings, and an attic. Two doghouses protruded from the roof. Flames danced behind the windows in both of them.

  Across the roof, the fire had opened holes the size of a manhole cover, and acrid smoke poured out. I could hear the pop and crackle of the dried-out rafters as they exploded from the heat. In my mind’s eye, I saw splinters as long as my arm flying like jagged arrows in all directions.

  I heard a high-pitched squeal, and the window of the high doghouse blew out.

  “Look out!”

  Glass flew ten, maybe fifteen yards, raining down on the ground. I pulled an arm across my face, dropped to one knee, and heard a scream coming from the doghouse.

  The same doghouse that was engulfed in enough heat and smoke to roast a man alive.

  “There’s somebody in there!” I waved for Atamasco company to join me. “I heard a scream. There! Another one. Someone’s calling for help!”