Stranded (26 page)

“Well, uh, no. Not really.” True. I already knew what Hiram was doing. I was just trying to find out if Lucinda knew.

“Have you heard rumors?”

I shook my head. Definitely not. No rumors. Hiram had apparently been careful as the proverbial long-tailed cat in a roomful of rockers.

“I suppose you’ve heard what Hiram did to me years ago, how he left me at the altar and ran off to marry another woman?”

“Umm, uh, well . . .”

“For years after that, I wouldn’t have trusted Hiram about anything. If he’d said it was Monday, I’d have looked at the calendar to be sure. If he’d said two plus two equals four, I’d have checked on my fingers. I had money I’d inherited invested in my husband’s family’s bank, and I warned Bill if they dealt with Hiram in any way I’d yank my money out. But Hiram changed in his later years.” She smiled wryly. “Or maybe he just got too old for the chase. In any case, he was trustworthy now. We had a good thing going, and Hiram wouldn’t have done anything to damage it.”

“That’s . . . comforting.”

But not true. I still didn’t know which woman Hiram intended to marry, Lucinda or KaySue, but I definitely knew he was up to his same old devious, womanizing tricks. And Lucinda’s statement about money and the bank reinforced what I already knew, that she did have a temper when she was pushed hard enough, and she would retaliate.

By the end of the day, I had to admit Lucinda was either blithely unaware of KaySue’s existence, or she’d simply outwitted me, because I didn’t know any more than I did before.

Maybe I’d better give up sleuthing and take up fireplug construction.

19

When we got home, Abilene and I walked up to the corner to inspect the fire hydrant. It’s odd how you see some ordinary thing such as a fire hydrant almost daily, and you can identify one instantly when you see it. But when you actually get down to making one, you realize you don’t know the details at all.

So I took a tape measure and measured height and circumference, and Abilene sketched the hookups and various lumps and bumps, and I measured them too. Then we spent the next two evenings out in the trash room working on building a fire hydrant. We ruined several large pieces of Styrofoam until we got the knack of how to cut it without breaking it, but, fortunately, there were plenty more pieces to experiment with. We cut and glued and taped, tore apart and remeasured and cut again. It was not easy stuff to work with. Great sculptors, I suspect, are not soon going to switch to Styrofoam as a medium for their artistic work.

Koop batted bits of the stuff around for a while, then found a place to sleep in some shredded newspaper that had probably also been packing material at one time. We did as much giggling as cutting, gluing, and painting, and we both wound up with splotches of red paint in odd places. We’d found a shelf with various partially full cans of paint in the laundry room.

“How did you get red paint behind your ear?” Abilene inquired.

“Probably the same way you got it on your right elbow.”

Even Koop had a speck on his tail.

Up close, our fireplug certainly wouldn’t fool anyone as authentic, but from a distance it was passable, bright red and light enough to toss around. I took it to the Wednesday afternoon rehearsal, getting a few odd looks as I carried it through town. I can usually walk anywhere without drawing any more attention than your average stray cat, but carrying a bright red fireplug does tend to increase one’s visibility. Several people peered out from store windows. Suzy at the flower shop saw me, did a double take, and came to the door to laugh and call, “Going to a fire, Ivy?”

Fortunately I didn’t run into any oversized dogs, or I might really have been in trouble.

This was a partial dress rehearsal, with a full dress rehearsal scheduled for Friday evening. Time was growing short, with the big performance only a week and a half away. There were two tiny dressing rooms behind the stage, although they were barely big enough to turn around in, and Charlotte was flying up and down the stairs, getting two sets of chorus-line costumes distributed and the ladies dressed, undressed, and dressed again. I lugged the imitation fountain down to the stage, and the ladies pranced an enthusiastic, if somewhat ragged, revolving wheel routine to the music of “Tiger Rag.” Although they all had to stop and take a break when Lulu Newman’s hip developed a glitch. She was the centerpiece in all the circular movements, her statuesque figure holding everything together.

Stella Sinclair, who was in the street scene, had brought her potbellied pig, DaisyBelle. DaisyBelle took an unfortunate dislike to our fireplug, and I had to rush onstage and rescue it from being trampled into Styrofoam bits when she charged, tossed it a good ten feet, and charged again. No one seemed particularly fond of DaisyBelle, who liked to run up behind people and stick her snout where it didn’t belong, but the fact that Stella had personally paid for the new set of spangled chorus-line costumes apparently insured the pig’s welcome.

On the night of the performance all the props would already have to be downstairs, crowded in behind the stage. Otherwise I’d be carrying them right through the audience since there was only that one stairway up to the third floor. The first row of seats would be reserved for actors and chorus-line ladies to sit in when they weren’t performing, because there was so little space backstage. I had to wonder if things hadn’t been somewhat more upscale when Gypsy Rose Lee was here.

After the rehearsal, everyone gathered in the lobby for coffee, cookies, and a rehash of the evening’s successes and problems. The fireplug drew praise, as did the Three Stooges’ rendition of “Three Little Fishies.” Ben Simpson had given a well-memorized if, to my mind anyway, not particularly rousing impersonation of Will Rogers, but now he kept arching and rubbing his back. Charlotte Sterling, looking frazzled from all her trips up and down the stairs, came up and leaned against the wall beside me. Across from us, Stella was feeding DaisyBelle dainty bites of cookie and cooing about what a good pig she was.

“Good pig, my eye,” Charlotte muttered. “If that ugly creature gets a little too cozy with her snout just one more time—” She hacked the air with one hand. “Instant pork chops.”

After DaisyBelle’s attack on our fireplug, I also wasn’t feeling too kindly toward her. A couple of small hams in addition to pork chops would be nice, I decided.

“Don’t tell anyone,” Charlotte added in a confidential tone, “but dressing sixteen not-so-young ladies is more work than dressing sixteen two-year-olds. At least the two-year-olds don’t keep worrying about how big their butts look.”

I was scarfing down chocolate chip cookies, but Charlotte just had coffee, black. She looked as if she needed the caffeine to keep her going.

“It’s great how everyone works in unison to pull this all together,” I offered as a generic soother.

“Although we may wind up pulling each other’s hair before this is all over. If Emily complains about that Moe wig one more time . . .” She rolled her eyes. Then, as if she’d like to think about something other than costumes, pigs, and wigs, she asked, “So, how’s the search for the secret room coming?”

“So far it isn’t. I’ve been too busy. But I’ll probably get back to it within the next few days.”

“If you find a secret room, are you going to have a grand unveiling like that guy did on TV when they whacked into some old gangster’s vault?”

“I hadn’t thought about that, but it could be fun, couldn’t it?” I smiled. “Maybe we could make it a money-raising event for the Ladies Historical Society.”

Charlotte laughed. “Great idea.” She gave DaisyBelle another venomous glance. “We could sell barbecued ham sandwiches on the side.”

“Actually, by now I’m pretty sure there isn’t any secret room,” I admitted, “but I’m going to keep looking. I did find a cartoon from the 1930s under a baseboard. Maybe, if nothing else, I’ll find a gold nugget Hiram had hidden away somewhere.”

“Oh, much to my surprise, I had a bite on the Randolph place. Some Texas people on their way to ski at Aspen.”

Someone came up then, looking for a can opener, which Charlotte promptly pulled out of her apparently bottomless purse.

I was feeling frazzled too, by the time I got home. I’d jaunted up and down those stairs to the third floor quite a few times myself. I was happy just to plop in front of the TV for the evening. Abilene reported that Dr. Sugarman had sent her on several errands with the pickup that afternoon, so she was happy too.

We went to bed about 9:30, rather earlier than usual. We left the bedroom doors open, as we usually did, because Koop likes to prowl around in the night, sometimes sleeping on Abilene’s bed, sometimes on mine, sometimes getting a midnight snack. I was in the midst of a pleasant dream about pork chops smothered in mushroom gravy when something landed in the middle of my chest.

I oofed and floundered awake. “Koop, what’s the matter with you?”

I sat up and tried to push him off my chest, but he seemed to have developed Velcro paws. His fur felt electrified.

Now he added a hiss and growl to his stiff-legged stance, then suddenly leaped off me and skittered toward the doorway, yowling.

At that moment I became aware of a peculiar smell. Smoke! And a strange flickering light in the hallway. I dashed to the doorway in my nightgown, then started screaming.

“Abilene! Abilene, we’re on fire!”

The flickering light—oh, and now a tongue of flame!—came from the trash room where we’d been working. Abilene’s bedroom was closer to it than mine. I dashed down the hallway, screaming at the top of my lungs. More tongues of flame. A faceful of smoke that made me cough.

Abilene met me at her doorway in her flannel pajamas. Koop whipped around her feet, then tore down the hallway away from the fire. The fire crackled hungrily now as it licked around the door frame. Dark smoke billowed out of the room. Bicycle tires, I remembered.

“I’ll call 911!” The cell phone, where was it? I couldn’t seem to think straight.
Lord, help me! Where is it? Oh yes, my purse.

Where was my purse? In the bedroom. I backed toward the door, afraid to take my eyes off the leaping flames for fear they’d explode into a firestorm behind my back.

“I’ll get water! There’s a bucket in the kitchen—”

“No!” Water buckets weren’t going to do it. Maybe a hose would, but we didn’t have one. And I wasn’t going to let Abilene risk her life for this old house! I grabbed her hand, yanked her down the hallway, then gave her a shove. “You find Koop, then go out the front way. I’ll get the cell phone and meet you there.”

Abilene, unshovable when she doesn’t want to be shoved, dug in her heels. She looked back at the fire. The kind of person who’d stand and fight till the walls crumbled to ashes around her, I thought, partly exasperated, partly admiring. But I shoved again, and she reluctantly moved on down the hallway, calling for Koop.

I flicked the switch in my bedroom, and the light came on. The electricity was still working.
Thank you, Lord!
The red numbers on the digital clock read 12:02. I spotted my purse on a chair, grabbed it, then hesitated momentarily. We might lose everything. What else should I save?

Clothes? Mementos? No, not stuff. My few important papers and records were still in the motor home, and all that really mattered were Abilene and Koop. I left everything behind and raced for the front door, frantically fumbling for the cell phone as I ran. The hall was filling with smoke now. I had the feeling the flames were right behind me, a fiery demon on my tail, but when I glanced back I saw they were still back at the doorway to the trash room. But becoming bolder as they edged along the carpet like dancing elves. Evil elves.

I glanced up the stairs as I flew by, then stopped short. What if Koop had gone up there? And Abilene went after him.

“Abilene!” I yelled. I peered up the stairs, ascending into blackness. Much as I loved dear Koop, I couldn’t have Abilene risking her life getting trapped up there while looking for him.

“Out here!” She was at the door, her shoulder holding it open, an iron arm clasped around a squirming Koop, the other hand reaching for me.

Outside . . . yes, we were safely outside!
Thank you, Lord
. . . I took several deep breaths of unsmoky air and punched in the numbers on the cell phone. Then I wondered, did Hello even have a 911 system? I’d never checked. Would a call go through to a local 911 system, or was I calling some other city, some other state?

A voice answered, and I yelled, “Where are you? Are you in Hello?”

“Yes.”

Another grateful
Thank you, Lord
, and then I yelled “Fire!” and gave the address.

From the front of the house, except for a bit of flickering light behind the etched glass in the doors, everything looked oddly normal.

“Maybe it isn’t as bad as we thought,” Abilene said. “Isn’t there a fire extinguisher in the laundry room? I could go back and—”

I grabbed her arm again. “No!” Yes, there might be a fire extinguisher in the laundry room, but the door was only a few feet up the hallway from the trash room. Too dangerous. “Just hold on to Koop.”