Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_03 (23 page)

Jill was still banging on the other door, and he stared at her. “Who's she?”

“A police officer. Quick, quick, get a coat and come on!”

“Where's the fire?” the old man insisted.

“Downstairs, back door. I saw flames. Come on!”

Betsy ran to the stairs and hustled down. She stopped at the bottom. Patricia was gone, the front door left standing open. The dim night light revealed no sign of smoke, but Betsy could smell it now. Upstairs, the pair who lived in the other apartment were questioning Jill's insistence they leave right now. Betsy looked toward the back of the hall, where an obscure door let into a narrow hallway to the back door and the back entrance to Crewel World.

I shouldn't
, she thought, remembering all the warnings that said get out, get out, get out. But she ran to the back door and put her palm on it. It was cool. She felt in the side pocket of her purse and found her keys. She unlocked the door and opened it cautiously. The smell of smoke was much stronger in the narrow back hall, and when she snapped on the light, there was a haze in the air. The door to the rear parking lot had a small glass insert, and Betsy could see the shifting yellow and orange of flames outside, but none in the hall itself.

The cat in the pillowcase was struggling and yelling to be set free. Outside, she could hear Patricia calling, “Help, help! Fire, fire!” Someone was coming down the stairs.

Betsy closed the back hall door. She ran out the front behind the old man, now wrapped in a purple chenille bathrobe—the siren that summons the volunteer fire department began bawling—past him and around to the front door to Crewel World. No flames in there. She unlocked the door and went in.

Patricia was suddenly beside her, grabbing her arm. “What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Fire extinguisher!” said Betsy, and handed the pillowcase to Patricia. She raced to the back storage area where a small foam extinguisher hung on the wall. She grabbed it, dodged around Patricia on her way back out. She ran to the driveway to the rear of the building.

“Stop her!” shrieked Patricia.

“Wait, wait, wait!” called Jill, coming in hot pursuit, but Betsy kept running. The ice-rutted surface of the driveway hurt through the slippers. The grit and salt-pitted surface of the parking area kept her from sliding as she stopped short. The fire was bigger than she'd thought it would be, as high or higher than the back door. It was made of log chunks—fireplace wood!—and smelled like a charcoal grill. She approached until she felt the heat of the flames, pointed the fire extinguisher, and squeezed the handle. It was stuck; it wouldn't move.

Jill grabbed it away from her. “Back!” she ordered, and Betsy retreated, but not far. Jill pulled out the little pin in the extinguisher's handle and squeezed as she stepped toward the fire.

The fire ducked under the onslaught of the extinguisher, but rebounded. It was too big for the little extinguisher to harm it. Jill moved around to a different angle, spraying white foam at the base of the flames.

Betsy became aware of approaching sirens and slithered back down the rutted driveway to the street. Cars pulled up to both curbs were disgorging men carrying yellow firemen coats. As the pumper approached, its huge engine roaring, she stepped out into the street to raise an arm and point. The men from the cars ran past her. The truck slowed, its siren cut off, then it obeyed her urgent signing, turned into the driveway and stopped. Two men bailed out.

Betsy went to check the entryway to the apartment building. There huddled the other three tenants, a young couple in winter coats and slippers hugging one another against the chill and the elderly man hiding behind them in his chenille robe and wingtip shoes on sockless feet. “Everyone all right?” asked Betsy.

“Where's the fire?” asked the man of the couple.

“Outside the back door. I don't think it's gotten inside the building yet.”

Patricia hurried up, still holding the pillowcase. “Are you all right? Where's Jill?” Patricia's voice sounded harsh, unlike her normal quiet tone. Her makeup looked strange because her natural color was gone. Her hairband was a twist of black velvet and metallic gold, her earrings looked like real diamonds.

“Back with the firefighters. I'm all right.” Betsy took the pillowcase from her. Sophie, hearing Betsy's voice, began complaining again about her strange confinement.

“How did it start?” asked the old man.

“I don't know.”

A large blond policeman—Betsy suddenly realized it was Lars, Jill's boyfriend—came up and offered them a seat in his nice, warm squad car. But Sophie was beginning to experiment with burrowing, so Betsy went into her shop instead and closed the door. There was a faint light coming in the front window from a streetlight. She put the pillowcase on the floor. Sophie rolled it over a few times, then pushed her way to the mouth of the pillowcase. “Ree-ooooow!” she complained.

“Yes, your highness, I apologize for the rude treatment,” said Betsy. “But we couldn't leave you up there to die, could we?” She was trembling all over, from cold and shock. Her voice sounded funny to her ears, so she shut up.

Sophie sat to make a single stab at putting her thick, long fur back in order. Then she looked around. Finding the surroundings familiar, if wanting in light, she did the familiar thing. She went to her chair, the one with the cushion on it, jumped up, and lay down. “Reeeew,” she complained again. Betsy turned a chair at the library table around and sat down to comfort the cat. It took only a minute to have Sophie purring as Betsy tickled her under her chin, and soothing the animal soothed her own nerves. Still, Betsy kept an eye toward the back of the shop, expecting either flames or a fireman to come shooting through at any second.

But neither happened. In forty minutes Jill joined her, looking smudged, and said, “It's gonna be a real skating rink back there in a while, water all over everything. Say, can the other tenants come in here? Lars wants to get back on patrol.”

“Of course. Shall I turn on the lights and start the teakettle?”

“Better wait till we see if the wiring is okay.”

The three tenants thanked Betsy, then wandered around the dim shop, strangers in a strange world.

After what seemed a very long while, an enormous fireman came in to declare the fire out, and the tenants followed him out, asking if they could go upstairs. Betsy turned on the lights.

They'd no more than left when Patricia came in to take Betsy by the hands. “I just heard a fireman say this fire was
set!
Betsy, this is impossible! You have to do something!”

“Oh, yeah?” said Betsy inelegantly, pulling back to release herself. “What do you suggest I do?”

“Run away. Get out of town. Get dressed and pack your bags right now. I'll drive you to the airport. You can buy a ticket on the first plane to—to anywhere. You can't stay here, you're going to get
killed!
” She'd straightened her coat and recovered most of her color, but her eyes were frightened.

“I can't run,” said Betsy. “For one thing, I don't have anywhere to go. For another, I can't afford to go anywhere.”

“I'll loan you the money—or we'll all get together and loan you the money, the Monday Bunch will. And what about what's-his-name, your ex-husband? He'd be glad to take you back. When I talked with him last week, he sounded so anxious for you to forgive him. He'd do anything for you, Betsy, truly he would.”

Betsy shook her head. “What Hal's been doing is attempting to murder me. Mike Malloy is going to arrest him for it, if he hasn't already.”

Patricia stared at her. “He is? Arrest Hal? How do you know?”

“Because I told him to. Hal and I wrote mutual wills when we first married and never revoked them. He thinks he'll get all that lovely money I'm heir to.”

“But he won't,” said Patricia, a woman whose husband had a law degree. “He can't.”

“That's right,” said Jill tiredly. “But Betsy didn't know that until her attorney told her, and it's unlikely Hal Norman consulted with an attorney before deciding to murder Betsy.”

“Oh.” Patricia had gone from scared and excited to anxious and regretful. Betsy felt a stab of compassion for her. Hal was so very handsome and charming, the pig.

“Here, come and sit down. Can you smell smoke in here?”

Patricia could not have been more surprised at Betsy if she had turned into an orange. “I'm sure you can smell the smoke blocks from here,” she said, and sat down on Sophie's chair, the cat barely escaping in time.

Jill said, “How did you come to see the fire?”

“I told you, I was driving by and saw the flames reflected on the ice and snow. It just happened to catch my eye.”

“What were you doing in town this time of night?” asked Jill.

Patricia stared at her, and Betsy could all but see the raising of the drawbridge the rich and powerful live across. “First of all, it wasn't ‘this time of night' when I came by,” she said calmly. “It was only a little past midnight. I was in the Cities attending ‘The Messiah.' Peter couldn't come,” she added, forestalling that question. “He had a political meeting to go to, and I just couldn't face another one of those things. So I said I already had tickets—which was a lie—and went by myself.” She unbent a little and said, “And I drove through town because I grew up in Excelsior, and I wanted to look at it by night, see the Christmas lights on the houses, and on the house Peter and I used to own. So I was driving slowly, and I was looking around.”

Jill's cop facade melted into a smile. “Pretty in town this time of year. All right. Thank you, Patricia.”

The drawbridge came back down. “You're welcome, Jill. May I go now?”

“Have you talked to the fire marshal?”

“Yes, a few minutes ago. He said I should talk to the police before I left. Will you do?”

“Yes. Did he ask you if you saw anyone leaving the scene?”

“Yes, and I told him I didn't.”

“That's too bad. All right, go on home.”

Patricia stood with such weariness that Betsy said, “I don't think I've thanked you for ringing our doorbell. Thank you very much. You probably saved our lives. I'm sorry they made you wait.”

“Well, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished. Good night.”

After she had gone, Betsy said, “What do you think?”

“I think she was driving around town because she misses living here and because she didn't want to go home to an empty bed. Her husband is starting to be seriously noticed by the political kingmakers in this state. But it's taking up a lot of his time, spending the required hours at his law office, doing the legislative thing in Saint Paul, and keeping his political mentors happy. She's attractive and correct and smart, a good political wife. But I don't think she likes the attention nearly as much as he does, and she's becoming protective of the children.”

“She doesn't talk about them, does she? That's sad. That boy is handsome, and the girls are pretty. Are they very bright?”

“I hear the oldest is in a gifted program and the star pitcher on his baseball team. His parents didn't like Patricia, you know. Their son married very young and he chose a woman whose father worked in a factory and whose mother cooked in a café. And Patricia got pregnant. They stopped paying their son's college expenses, and Peter nearly had to drop out of his last year in law school. But she worked two jobs, and Peter graduated near the top of his class. He joined a prestigious law firm and became a state senator. Patricia began talking and dressing like she'd been to finishing school and insisted their first daughter be named after her husband's mother. And now there's talk about Peter making a run for Congress. His father died a couple of years ago, and his mother has decided it was all the old man's fault, that she herself has long suspected that her daughter-in-law is charming and perfectly acceptable.”

Firemen brought big fans into the hall and the shop to began blowing the last of the smoke out. Betsy made an urn of coffee for them.

Joe Mickels turned up, ruffled and angry. “What's going on here?” he demanded.

“Someone tried to set fire to the building by stacking cordwood at the back door and squirting charcoal starter on it,” said Jill.

“Is this another attempt to get at you?” Joe asked Betsy.

Betsy nodded, unaccountably embarrassed.

“Well, goddam it, why don't you leave town?”

“Because they might follow her,” said Jill. “Here she has friends to help watch out for her, and she's on familiar ground. I don't think you want her to be put at more risk just so you don't have to fill out a few insurance forms.”

“Hmph,” snorted Mickels and borrowed the phone to summon someone to board up the back door.

After Mickels left, Betsy, too tired to lift her arm, asked, “What time is it?” and Jill looked at her own watch.

“Quarter to four.”

The fire chief came in and said they could go up and gather a change of clothes and, if the apartment smelled too strongly of smoke and they had no place to go, a Red Cross representative would be called to find them a place to stay for a day.

Betsy went up with Jill. She stood inside it a long minute, sniffing, then said to Jill, “I can't tell if it stinks of smoke or not.”

Jill said, “I think it does, but not too badly. I'm sorry about this, Betsy.”

“Why? There wasn't anything you could do. I'm just glad Patricia was feeling homesick. If she hadn't seen that fire, it might've gotten into the stairwell. But I'm mad at Malloy. I thought he would have Hal under arrest by now!”