Home Fires

23

Real angels never look for the angles.

—Booker Grove Methodist Church

If I’d found him, I probably could’ve collected my nickel from Reid when I broke for the afternoon recess the next day.

As I crossed the atrium that connects the new part of the courthouse with the old 1920s part, I almost banged into a hefty young white man who began with an apology and ended with a pleased smile on his face. “Judge Knott! Glad to see your hair’s none the worse for all those sparks.”

It was the volunteer fireman who’d hauled out the pulpit on one shoulder the night Balm of Gilead burned.

I fumbled for his name. “You’re Donny, right? Donny Turner?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he beamed, “and I owe you an apology. I didn’t know I was ordering around a judge that night.”

“No problem,” I said. “How’s it going?”

“Just fine. Hey, maybe you can help me?”

“Sure. What do you need?”

He took a crumpled slip of paper from his jeans pocket. “I got a call to come see Special Agent Ed Gardner? In Major Dwight Bryant’s office? You happen to know where that would be?”

“Well, you could have gone in directly from the street behind, but there’s a staircase. Let me show you.”

I led him through double glass doors, along a wide hall, down the stairs and through another set of glass doors. As we walked, Donny Turner kept up a running chatter on why he was there. He didn’t seem to be completely sure.

“I reckon they want to get an in-depth report of what it was like when them churches was actually burning? From one of the troops? Somebody as was right there, don’t you reckon?”

“You were at all three?”

“Well, not that little one with the trailer. Burning Heart of God? Boy, that was a real appropriate name, won’t it? Naw, none of us got to that one. We was all at Mount Olive, working on that fire, when the little ’un went.”

Donny Turner’s Colleton County accent was as thick as Daddy’s—wasn’t is always won’t, fire is far—and he was bad for making every other sentence sound like a question, but I grew up on those sounds and I’ve never needed a translator.

“Did you know Charles Starling or Raymond Bagwell?” I asked.

“Oh, sure. Charles, anyhow. He was a year behind me but we rode the same school bus and we carpooled after I got my license. Till he quit school? Man, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I heared he was the one done it.”

“Really?” I halted on the stairs and stared at him.

Surprised, Donny stopped, too. His eyes met mine briefly, then darted away. “Well, no, I guess not really. He was sorta wild in school, always breaking the rules? He was the one spray-painted our bus when we was in middle school? And you know his momma kicked him out of the house ’cause he kept burning holes in everything with his cigarettes and I heared he was real mad with Balm of Gilead ’cause they stole his granddaddy’s land?”

“Yeah, that’s what I heard, too.” I said.

“Maybe that’s how come they want to talk to me? ’Cause I know Charles could’ve done it?”

Again his eyes shifted away. Nervousness?

“Ed’s and Dwight’s problem, not yours,” said the preacher.

“But you can call Dwight this evening,” said the pragmatist. “See if he wants to watch a movie.”

We entered the Sheriff’s Department through the glass doors. “Right around that corner.” I told Donny Turner. “Major Bryant’s office is the second door on the left.”

At that moment, a familiar person rounded the corner.

“Hey, Chief!” said Donny. “They got you down here, too?”

“Uh, yeah, well, you know how it is.”

Was it my imagination or was the chief of West Colleton’s volunteer fire department having trouble looking Donny Turner straight in the face?

“I’d better not hold y’all up.” he said, giving me a nod as he passed. “I believe they’re waiting on you, Donny.”

“Yeah, okay. See you later then.”

The chief headed through the swinging doors and Donny turned back to me. “Nice seeing you again, Judge. Thanks for showing me how to get here.”

“You Never Can Tell?” asked Dwight. “How old’s that one?”

“1951,” I said. “I’ve been wanting to see it for ages and Vallery Feldman at Blockbuster finally got it in for me. Dick Powell and Peggy Dow. She was in Harvey. Wonder what ever happened to her?”

“This isn’t one of those goopy musicals, is it?”

“Trust me. Dick Powell’s a dog who comes back to earth to find out who murdered him. There’s a horse angel, too. You’ll love it.”

Dwight’s not quite the old-movie addict I am unless it’s set against the Second World War. Then we both cry when Van Heflin dies or John Payne throws himself on a hand grenade to save his comrades. (At least, I cry. Dwight always claims a summer cold or sinuses.)

Uncle Ash and Aunt Zell had already gone up to their room and I was in the kitchen waiting for Dwight to come before microwaving some popcorn.

The rain had begun again and I held the side screen open for him. His sandy brown hair was damp and his cowlick was standing straight up as he swiped at it.

“So how’d it go with Donny Turner?” I asked.

Dwight looked at his watch. “Fourteen seconds,” he said. “Ed Gardner owes me five bucks.”

“Excuse me?”

“I bet him I wouldn’t be here two minutes before you asked about Turner. He thought you’d be more subtle and take at least five.”

“Very funny. Just for that, we eat our popcorn plain tonight. No butter. No salt.”

“Hey!”

I pinched him on the side just where a slight bulge was forming when he belted his jeans too tightly, and he quit grousing.

“Did y’all arrest him?” I persisted.

“We’re a long way from another arrest. Of course, a lot of arsonists do start out fighting legitimate fires, then move on to setting them and he sure fits the profile.”

“But?”

“No ‘but.’ We didn’t push him hard. Just told him we wanted to get an idea of how long it takes people to respond to a fire call. What was he doing when he was paged? That sort of thing. Because Ed and his people haven’t found any signs of a timing device. The pour patterns indicated that whoever did it seems to have sloshed gasoline around and lit a match right then, so we need to know where people were right before the alarms went off.”

“Where was Donny?”

“Around. Coming home from a Little League ball game when the first fire started, home early and watching television with his parents when Mount Olive went up. Or so he says. We’ll see.”

“I take it that means you confirmed A.K.’s story?”

“Off the record?”

“Always.” I held up my hand in the Boy Scouts’ three-finger pledge of honor.

“Okay. Ed did reach out and touch the Pritchett woman today and she corroborated. ATF’s still not ready to cut them loose though.”

The lid was about to bounce off the popper bowl. I opened the microwave, poured some of the popped kernels into a big wooden bowl and put the rest back in to finish. Dwight snitched a few as we waited.

“Donny Turner tell you about how Charles Starling spray-painted their school bus once?”

“And how careless he is with cigarettes? Oh, yes indeed. Why do you think we’re taking a closer look at Turner?”

“On the other hand,” I said, “maybe it’s not as obvious as it looks. What do you want to drink? Bourbon?”

“Beer if you’ve got it.”

I pointed him toward the refrigerator.

“And what do you mean, not what it looks?” Dwight popped the top of a long-necked bottle and took a deep swallow. “If it’s not racism or pyromania, what else would it be?”

“Murder?”

“Arthur Hunt? Who’d want to kill a harmless old drunk like Arthur Hunt?”

“I don’t know. You’re the detective. But the man is dead and nobody seems to be paying much attention to that.”

“We’ve paid attention,” Dwight protested. “There’s nothing there. No next-of-kin. No insurance on his life. Nobody threatened by him.”

“I heard him threaten Reverend Ligon.”

“When?”

“Sunday before last. Mr. Ligon fired him for drunkenness and Hunt said he was going to tell the deacons all about Ligon.”

“Ligon sound worried?”

In all honesty, I had to say no. “But look at the results. Ligon wanted to enlarge the church and he couldn’t get the votes to do it legitimately. Now with the fellowship hall out of the way and the most fortuitous end of the church burned, he can call in the architects and insurance money will foot most of the bill. Not to mention all the money that’s been donated.”

“Reverend Ligon?”

I had to admit it was hard to picture that very proper man with a gas can in one hand and spray paint in the other.

“He’s not the only one who wanted to remodel,” I said. “Maidie tells me there’s a sizeable contingent that’s burning to build.”

Dwight grinned and I had to smile, too, as I realized what I’d said.

“All the same,” he reminded me, “how many of them would know to use that brand of spray paint?”

I nodded. “Or know Starling’s way of printing?”

The bell rang on the microwave and I dumped the rest of our popcorn into the big wooden bowl.

“A horse angel, huh?” said Dwight as we headed upstairs to my VCR.