Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

Hot Wire by Steve Corwin

P. J. McLean, chuckling at the memory of the flying sofa, crested the top step and paused before an ornate hall mirror. He straightened his tie, flexed his forty-five-year-old biceps, laughed at himself, and turned crimson on discovering he was being watched.

The freckled, heart-shaped face peering over the door chain held mixed amusement and apprehension. “You seem awfully cheerful.”

“Sorry. I was just thinking about an old photograph. I’m expected by Mrs. Zoe Zack.” The extended business card was examined briefly, then tucked away.

His observer unchained the door and stepped aside. “Come in, we’ve been waiting for you. I’m Tina, my grandmother’s in back. Between the heat, her gout, and the fire she’s not doing well.” Answering the unspoken question with a fleeting smile, she said a bell was wired to the downstairs street door.

The living room reflected a sparse tidiness sharpened by light flooding in from overhead dormer windows. McLean followed Tina Zack’s athletic figure across the room and down a narrow hall with scrubbed plaster walls desperately needing paint. Along the baseboards, hinting at the building’s age, old fashioned gas valves stuck out ready to trip the unwary. The pungent odor of smoke tinged the air. It belonged to a fire barely kept out of the apartment by luck and a deteriorating brick wall. The fire had ravaged City Center Antiques two nights earlier and had killed the store’s owner, Clement Firth.

Tina stopped before a closed door, rapped lightly, and went in, beckoning McLean to follow her into a smallish room of faded opulence.

Zoe, swollen feet propped on an ottoman, filled a substantial red leather wingback. An aluminum walker leaned against the wall. An open pack of Kools lay beside a gallon pitcher of iced tea on a card table in front of her. The table, piled high with papers, evidently served double duty as a desk. Even with every window open and a fan valiantly churning the air, the room was muggy and choked with tobacco smoke.

McLean’s hand traveled involuntarily to his tie; he hated the damned things but felt first impressions were vital. His only concession to the heat was a shortsleeved pin-striped Arrow shirt and no jacket. He pulled a notebook and a thin sheet of fax paper from his pocket. The fax, which he’d received in his truck only minutes before, was the floorplan for City Center Antiques.

Tina settled onto a short stool at her grandmother’s left, their kinship obvious in their high cheekbones and delicate chins. Zoe settled back. “You started work very early.” She motioned toward her apartment’s west wall and the fire-ravaged store on the other side.

McLean acknowledged as much as he sat down at the card table, gratefully accepting the offer of tea. The glass, to his surprise, was crystal.

Tina, noting his reaction, flashed him another smile, one tinged with sadness. “My great-grandmother’s.”

Zoe glanced sideways at her granddaughter, then turned lively but troubled eyes to McLean. “So, you’ve come to help us.”

His gaze was one of kind neutrality. “I’ve been hired to find out what started the fire.”

Anxiety flitted across Zoe’s face and a hint of anger creased Tina’s. “That doesn’t mean I’m not in your corner. After all,” he allowed a glimmer of smile, “I’ve been retained by your lawyer. But my purpose is to discover the truth.”

“And then?” Tina asked.

“And then I report to Sarah Shallott. She takes it from there.” Sometimes. McLean was known to force conclusions occasionally, not always with felicitous results when his demand for justice overrode good sense.

“I see. So if I did nothing wrong, I have nothing to fear from you.”

“Even if you did something wrong by accident, you have nothing to fear.”

Tina’s look said “yeah, right,” but her lips didn’t move.

McLean, already familiar with the fire department report listing basic information for everyone involved — names, addresses, Social Security numbers, dates of birth — went over them again quickly. That out of the way, he turned to his own inquiry. “Some of these questions probably repeat what you’ve already been asked, but...”

“That would be difficult,” Tina said shortly. “We filled out a quickie form under the flickering light of a burning building. That Arnold Frye never asked a damned thing. Yesterday morning he told Grandmother the fire started in her pile of rags and he hoped she could live with it. Because of that, that man, my grandmother may lose everything.”

Zoe didn’t look up from her folded hands. “Don’t swear, dear. It’s not becoming.”

Tina squeezed her grandmother’s arm. “You worry about the silliest things.”

“No, dear, I worry your anger will cause more trouble. Please continue, Mr. McLean.”

He flattened the computer-generated floorplan on the table, then led the two women skillfully from room to room, short questions triggering long answers as he built a pre-fire picture of the building and its contents.

They knew the building from the intimacy of long use, first as owners, then as reluctant renters. Zoe had neared retirement giving public demonstrations on furniture restoration for a marginally likeable man. A long drop from the proud woman who’d inherited an entire city block during Eisenhower’s first term.

“I was always careful with those rags, Mr. McLean. Knowledge gained from my grandfather. Hard-learned knowledge. He burned down the first store on this site sometime around 1895.”

Tina nodded. “She was careful, believe me.”

McLean did, but for other reasons. He sipped his tea, jotted a few notes, and kept going. The stifling room made his neck, confined by the tie, want to explode. Did they know what Firth’s plans were for the holes in the second floor? No. Had they ever changed the fuses in the store? Zoe vaguely remembered where the box was but couldn’t remember the last time she’d changed one. That had become Firth’s problem when he took over.

“Did you always have a packaging operation?”

Zoe shook her head. “Another one of Clement’s brainstorms. I don’t know if it made money, and I hated having those plastic packing pellets around. Terrible things. They stuck to everything, got into everything. Still I guess it wasn’t too bad an idea. He sold collectibles by mail, and the packing was certainly good for that.”

When he asked if the packaging room doubled as a dressing room, he drew guffaws. The hair dryers were used to tighten shrinkwrap around valuable shipments.

From an ingrained sensitivity to lost dreams, McLean hesitated before broaching the last subject. “I believe you worked for Mr. Firth. How did he come to take over the store?”

For the first time anger furrowed Zoe’s face. “Yes, I worked for him. I, who’d built the store up from nothing. I, who’d sunk my life’s savings into it.” She wheezed to a stop, then let out a throaty laugh. “And now, I’m being a silly, stupid old woman.

“I had mortgaged the store, this entire block, trying one business after another. A vain old woman’s effort to leave my grandchild something besides a block of decaying, money-swallowing buildings. Finally I used the furnishings from our house to start the antique store. But I was much better at buying than selling. I so hated to part with all that lovely craftsmanship.” She waved vaguely around the denuded apartment. “And this is what’s left.”

Zoe smiled wanly, “Clement offered such a perfect way out. He’d take over the store and my debts. Put everything right, then sell it back to me. Of course nothing ever really works out, does it? Somehow the bills still piled up, although he kept the big creditors happy.”

McLean mentally ticked through his notes from Sarah Shallott. “But he never legally took on your debts.”

Zoe’s face reddened. “No, he didn’t.”

“So they remain yours.” He nodded to himself. “You were laid you off two weeks ago. Why?”

“It was a kind of combination sick leave,” she wiggled a gouty foot, “and layoff. Just for a few days originally. Then he broke his arm...” She shrugged.

“So things have been up in the air. Including your finances?”

Zoe looked glum. “I should say so. What happens now? I suppose I get the store back. Along with the banks screaming for their money and Clement’s unpaid contractors’ bills.” She wiped her brow with a handkerchief and said softly, “This is really too much.”

“Was he insured?” Tina asked.

“About a half a million on the inventory.”

She flushed slightly, but her voice remained flat, “Sounds right. I haven’t been in the store for weeks, but say what you will about Clement and Regina Thom, they knew antiques.”

“What do you know about the manager, Regina?”

“Not much,” Tina answered, “but I was there the day she walked into the store. He looked like someone had dropped a brick on his foot.”

“When was that?”

“A year ago. Just as he and Grandmother firmed up their deal. I was supposed to be store manager; Grandmother was to appraise and refinish. Then Regina walked in, they went upstairs for a few minutes, and when they came back down, she had my job.”

“An irritating development, surely?”

“At first I wanted to turn the pair of them into sausage. I mean really, the guy broke his word less than an hour after giving it. But it worked out better for me. I start my sophomore year of college next month. Pre-law and accounting.”

“So, no hard feelings?” McLean tried not to sound dubious.

Tina snorted. “I suppose. She acted like she owned the place, bossed Grandmother around as if she didn’t know country furniture from Sears’ best. She knows all right.”

“Let’s move to Saturday night. The fire report says you and Regina were together during the incident. At midnight. That you walked out of the Jumping Jack, saw the flames, and called the fire department.”

“We belong to the same athletic club. And in fact we were working out together, well, at least we were in the same room. We left at the same time because I wanted to know what was going on with Clement.” She almost smiled. “He broke his arm falling down the stairs. I warned him when he remodeled that they were too high and too narrow.”

“Who turned in the alarm?”

“I did. Regina was rooted to the spot. Kind of like a snake charmed by the flames.”

“You called 911. Then what?”

“I woke Grandmother up and got her out of here.” Tina’s tone indicated the question was stupid.

McLean swallowed a small grin. “Then?”

“We’d gone down the back stairs and had come out in the alley. Clement was still in the store; he lived there.” Her voice cracked, and she looked away. “We saw two firemen and told them. Smoke was pouring out the upstairs windows, and those guys went into it.” She sounded awestruck.

McLean rose to leave. “I’m sorry about your loss. I’m certain Sarah will try her best to put you right.”

“I don’t want to mislead you, Mr. McLean,” Zoe said. “Show him the agreement, dear.”

Tina shot her grandmother an unreadable look but dug through a pile on the makeshift desk to produce a wrinkled piece of paper. “I got Clement to sign it last month. Pre-law isn’t a total waste of time.”

It was a will of sorts. A guarantee that if Clement Firth died, his estate would cover all outstanding claims against the business.

“He signed this willingly?”

“Yes, even joked about it. Said he didn’t have any family and that we might as well benefit from his death.”

Tina escorted McLean out. On the walk down the hall he snagged one of the old gas valves with his foot and nearly fell. Trying to recover his poise he said, “Haven’t seen these in years. Do they still work?”

Tina hid a smile. “Lord, no. Grandfather unhooked the pipe in the basement years ago. Grandmother is terrified of gas.”

On reaching the street he yanked off the tie and tossed it on the pickup’s seat, next to the cellular phone and the fax, his mobile link to Mort Reed, partner and friend. The coveralls he’d worn earlier that morning, jammed under the seat, contributed a faint aroma of their own.

He started the engine and turned the air conditioner on high. As he waited for the cab to cool off, he again studied the aging two story brick buildings with their wooden dormers peeking past the rooflines. Altogether seven stores fronted on Main Street, each business sharing a common wall with the next. Zoe’s apartment was above a tobacco and popcorn shop. City Center Antiques was its neighbor to the west. To the east a sandal emporium struggled to survive in southern Oregon’s logger country. He pulled into the sparse traffic, his thoughts more on his visit to the fire building earlier that morning than on his driving.

Summit Fire District firefighter Tom Lopez had met him outside the antique store shortly after six A.M. Lopez unlocked the barred front doors. “We had to break them open to get in. Along with the door at the rear, and that was a job.”

Pushed through the entrance by a melancholy gust of air and met by the dank odor of water-soaked plaster, they paused over the threshold, giving their eyes time to adjust to the flaccid natural light just bright enough to make their flashlights useless. Power, cut off during the fire, remained off.

McLean motioned to their right. “Zoe’s workspace?”

Lopez had looked up from replacing the keys on his belt loop. “Yeah. Actually, it was a clever idea of Firth’s — someone adept at refinishing, caning, that kind of stuff, placed right out in front where people could watch her work. As long as she was seated, the gout wasn’t a big problem. It was pretty successful. Juanita and I used to stop in just to watch her. And,” he smiled ruefully, “buy a thing or three.”

McLean nodded. Juanita Lopez was known to have a discerning eye and unerring feel for value.

A hole gaped above Zoe’s scorched workspace. With the exception of blackened ceiling tiles every few feet, it was the only flame damage on the first floor.

“Frye thinks the fire started here?” McLean sounded skeptical.

Lopez poked a pile of soggy cloth. “He blamed the fire on Mrs. Zack’s leaving oily rags in a bucket, then dropping a cigarette into it. We found the bucket, but its lid was on tight. Besides, she never smoked in the store. Looks to me like these towels were on a table directly overhead. They and the table were ignited by the fire that started on the second floor. The table collapsed, and the towels fell through a vent hole. They left a false trail, and the chief took it.”

McLean studied the ceiling tiles hanging from a frame suspended two feet beneath the original ceiling. A handy means of cutting a room down to eight foot walls instead of ten, saving considerably on heating bills. “Those tiles fire retardant?”

“I doubt it.” Lopez’s face darkened. “Firth did a rehab in here within weeks of taking over. Lowered the ceiling, painted, generally moved things around. Stupid county doesn’t keep track of stuff like that, and he put up those cheap fiberboard tiles. I’m amazed this place didn’t light off. As it is...” he motioned to the rectangular spots dotting the ceiling.

“What are those?”

“Firth cut holes in the upper floor every twelve feet, the size of vents for an air pump. We’re just lucky there weren’t more towels to fall through in other spots.”

They turned toward the only set of stairs, buried at the rear of the store. Lopez stopped and opened a flimsy door leading into a room beneath the stairs. McLean whistled softly at the flattened cardboard boxes and plastic garbage bags full of Styrofoam packing popcorn.

“The good part.” Lopez pointed up, to a hole the size of a large cupboard opening directly into the space above the false ceiling. “The heat pump duct work was to go in here. Makes sense, I suppose, but if this room had caught fire...” He shrugged, and McLean nodded. Any fire starting in the storage room would have roared through the space between the real and false ceilings in a feeding frenzy guaranteed to destroy the building. The weekend fire was nothing compared to what it could have been.

Lopez shut the door and circled left, past the buckled steel door guarding the alley entrance, and led the way upstairs. To McLean’s experienced eye the smoke pattern looked out of line with where the fire started.

“We found Firth down here.” Lopez vanished into a dark, twisting hallway that dead-ended against a brick wall. After two false turns McLean found another narrow hall with Lopez standing over a chalk outline.

“The firefighters who pulled Firth out of here must have been swallowing their hearts.”

Lopez glanced at him with a thin smile. “Thought we’d made a good rescue, too. Firth turned out to be heavier than he looked. Harvey and I busted our humps dragging him out of here.”

McLean nodded, remembering the fiftyish antique expert with a porcelain smile, taillight red hair, and iron handshake. He stopped beside Lopez and studied the chalk lines. “What were fire conditions like?”

Lopez made a small deprecating move. “The usual. Easy at first, then when we made that last turn,” he nodded at the doorway, “smoke dropped to our ankles, heat barely tolerable. Visibility about this far.” He held his thumb and first finger an inch apart. “I found Firth when I hit his head with my knee. I was tracing the wall with my left hand. Had a flashlight in my right, lot of good it was doing. Anyway, my knee hit something and I kinda fell forward and put my left hand right in the center of his chest.”

“So he was on his back.”

“Yeah.”

“What else happened?”

Lopez caught McLean’s raised eyebrows and frowned. “Chief Frye ordered a firefighter on a ladder in front of us to open up with a two and a half inch line.”

Hitting a fire from the front with a water stream while firefighters were coming up behind the blaze was inexcusably amateurish, but it explained the odd smoke pattern. It had happened to McLean and the memory never faded. Like being hit with a red-hot hammer. A physical force so immense it left no option but retreat. Chief Arnold Frye was such a bungler it was no surprise he’d missed the cause of the fire.

Lopez shrugged and moved on. His flashlight picked out the blackened remains of a door opening into a square room the size of a large bathroom. Their passage loosened some soot, and McLean let out a wall-rattling sneeze.

Lopez laughed. “I don’t get it. You’re supposed to have enough money to pay off the national debt, but here you are breathing this stuff.”

McLean flashed his light around the room. “What would you do if you won the lottery tomorrow?”

Lopez thought for a bit then laughed. “Same-o same-o, I suppose.”

McLean grunted. He stuck with fire investigation because he liked it. And from brute curiosity. Fire was a conniving, slippery foe, and he found untangling its trail a fresh puzzle every time.

“It started in here. Where they packed stuff for UPS or mailing or whatever.” Lopez let McLean past.

The small room had been loaded on Saturday night with cardboard and shipping popcorn. A fire load of considerable promise. If the blaze hadn’t been spotted early, when it broke through the window overlooking the street, the damage would have been worse. Much worse.

“What’s in there?” McLean nodded toward a half-hidden door.

“Firth’s living quarters. They’re actually above the shop next to the antique store. These buildings are so damned old and have had so many occupants.” Lopez shrugged. “Small wonder he didn’t make it.”

McLean wondered why, since Firth had to go through the fire room, he hadn’t grabbed the extinguisher by his door and tried to douse the blaze.

They continued touring the maze of short hallways, which eventually took them to the building’s other side. There a straight hall ran two-thirds the length of the building, opening onto a series of small rooms, each filled with period furniture.

Lopez turned into a room dominated by a four-poster bed, a chin-high chest of drawers, a secretary, and two chairs. Everything in the room, like everything else on the second floor that wasn’t charred, was heavily sooted. “Thought this would interest you.” He ran a finger down the secretary. “I don’t think this is the same piece I looked at several weeks ago, but it’s supposed to be.” He wiped off an engraved card saying the secretary had been built in Pennsylvania about 1804.

Lopez left shortly after seven. Like all volunteer firefighters, he had to work for a living. The fire department provided action, a sense of well-being, and good deeds, but it didn’t pay the bills.

McLean photographed and sketched, starting in the street and working back to the packaging room where the fire had started. The floorplan sketches he faxed to Mort Reed, who redid them on his Macintosh and faxed them back. That done, McLean returned to the shipping room and stood in the center of its blackened shell, willing the fire to speak to him. To brag about its direction, its fury and force. About where it started and about its devious ways of spreading. About its deadly intentions.

Finally he knelt before a metal ring, all that remained of a cardboard shipping drum, and scraped gently through the ashes and a tangle of wires. The possibilities were narrowing.

The truck slammed into a pothole, bringing up the possibility of a broken spring. McLean concentrated on his driving and steered into a one-hour photo processing shop where he dropped off the morning’s work. He then drove the six remaining blocks to a leafy neighborhood and Regina Thom’s Victorian, where he parked behind a cobalt blue Miata.

“Who’s there, Eric?” The female voice from deep within the house carried a note of exasperation.

Hostile grey eyes sandwiched between slick black hair and a cold-reddened nose flicked sideways, then returned to McLean. “Some guy. Says he’s here about the fire.”

With ill grace Eric let their visitor in just as the woman belonging to the voice stepped into the front room, vigorously toweling her hair. She wore a tightly cinched robe and rubber thongs.

“Miss Regina Thom?”

“Last time I checked, yes.” There was a hint of amusement in her voice. McLean took it, and the boy’s snicker, in stride.

“You witnessed the fire Saturday night at City Center Antiques. I’d like to impose for a few minutes to get your impressions of what happened.”

Regina Thom, who at twenty-nine still had the wholesome good looks of a Midwestern cheerleader, gripped her robe at the neck. “Let me change first. I’ve been packing, and it’s dirty work. I couldn’t take another second of it.” Eric’s smirk melted beneath her icy glare. “Entertain my guest for a minute, if you’re up to it. Get him coffee or something.”

Eric shrugged and hung a cigarette from pouty lips.

“Outside with that. I’ve told you no smoking in the house.”

Nervous hurt flicked across his face, like a Doberman kicked by its master.

She ignored him altogether and turned to McLean. “There’s coffee in the kitchen.” She nodded toward the back of the house.

“I’m fine, thank you.”

Regina left accompanied by the slap of rubber on linoleum. McLean admired the room’s furniture, wondering about its history, particularly its recent history. He noted with amusement an elaborate electronic weather station and several other expensive catalogue toys. Eric, coughing between drags, followed every move from the verandah.

McLean, a weekend woodworker himself, ran appreciative fingers over a secretary, its open slant lid exposing a series of small cubbyholes and drawers. He examined the joinery on a small drawer, sighing with envy at the precisely fitted dovetail joints. He replaced it and examined a large color photograph sitting edgewise in a slot. A young Regina sat in the lap of a sharp-featured woman with deeply sad eyes. A teenage girl, sunlight glittering off henna curls, stood behind them, hands gripping the older woman’s shoulders.

“My family, Mr. McLean. My brother took it.”

“Very handsome. Do they live in the area?”

Regina’s face pinched but almost as quickly relaxed, although her voice took on a husky edge. “They’re dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I. Now, how can I help you?” She settled onto a couch, fixed McLean with a look of calculated neutrality, and ignored the front door as it opened. McLean, standing beside the secretary, tensed slightly at the shadow floating past on thick-soled white shoes in an acrid cloud of residual smoke.

Eric slouched up to the doorway leading to the back of the house. Without taking her eyes off McLean, Regina called to him to continue packing.

“You’re leaving town?”

Regina’s eyes shifted slightly. “What with my job in ashes and my employer dead, I see no point in staying around.”

Surveying the large pile of boxes blocking half the living room he remarked that she was a fast worker.

“I don’t have to explain myself. Now what can I do for you?”

“Tell me what you saw Saturday night. Both before and after the fire.”

“I saw smoke and flames pouring from the second floor. I knew Clement was up there, at least he was supposed to be. It was late.”

“Did the fire seem unusual in any way? Did it move rapidly, for example?”

“I have no idea if it moved rapidly. I’ve never seen a building bum down, much less watched a kind and generous man die.”

“Were you the last to leave the building?”

“I suppose so. Unless Clement let someone in after hours I don’t know about. I left about seven. Saturday is always a long day for us.”

“What did you do after leaving Mr. Firth?”

“The health club has a small restaurant. I ate a light dinner, then went into the weight room.”

“Any idea how the fire started, or where?”

“No. The store’s old. I’m no expert. I mean no one looks at a building like it’s going to bum, but I’d bet on the wiring. The place was always blowing fuses. Will your insurance company try to blame Mr. Firth for doing some of the wiring repairs himself?”

“Are you a close friend with Miss Zack? I believe the two of you were together the night of the fire. At the Jumping Jack.”

“I’d hardly say we’re close friends, but her grandmother and Clement, Mr. Firth, were having difficulties and I, well, I commiserated with her.”

“Did Mr. Firth own the building?”

Regina worried her lower lip. “That’s what so upset Tina. He’d taken over her grandmother’s debts along with the business, but he hadn’t paid everyone and some of them were getting nasty.”

Clement Firth began looking neither kind nor generous.

Perhaps reading McLean’s expression, Regina clucked. “I never said he was a good businessman. It seems he was as disorganized as Zoe was. I tried, I tried often, as his store manager, to get him to pay those bills, but he just didn’t take owing money seriously, I guess. He is, he was, quite a salesman. I’m afraid Zoe’s no better off now than before.” She stopped talking and looked down at her hands, but McLean sensed more than was said. A hint of broken promises. A hint even of anger.

“His will should help her out somewhat.”

“Will? Clement had no will.” Regina laughed uncomfortably.

McLean rubbed the bum scar barely hidden by his mustache. “Was Firth married? His background seems a bit sketchy.”

“No. Never.” An oddly positive statement for a relationship less than a year old.

“Were you and Clement close friends?”

Regina’s face hardened. “Do you mean were we lovers? Of course not. And you never answered my question. Will the insurance company blame Clement?”

“I work for Zoe’s lawyer. The insurance company will send its own person. Did you know Mr. Firth in Florida?”

Regina bristled. “How would I have known him in Florida? I’ve never been there in my life. We met here, in Summit, last year when he hired me to run the store.”

She rose abruptly. “Since you’re not from the fire department or the insurance company, we have nothing further to discuss.”

Eric ghosted into the doorway, a crooked grin on his face and a razor knife in his hand. “You need help leaving, pal?” Stuffed up with his cold, he sounded as threatening as Daffy Duck.

“I’ll see myself out, thank you.” McLean left casually, one eye trained on Eric, reflected in a front window. Eric, watching him watch, took a one-step lunge like a child teasing a chained dog. McLean stiffened but didn’t quicken his pace out to the truck.

He ransomed the developed photographs, then headed for the opposite side of town to meet Juanita Lopez, Tom’s wife. Her living room, like Regina’s, overflowed with a variety of furniture styles. Nothing was less than a century old and McLean’s involuntary reaction was always to stand in the center of the room, touching nothing.

She smiled at his discomfort, then sat down at a cherrywood table that had probably cost Tom several weeks’ profit from his garage. “Sit down, P. J., and show me the photos.”

McLean sat down at the table almost reverently and slit open the pictures’ protective envelope. “Are these the same pieces of furniture you and Tom looked at several weeks ago?”

Juanita studied them carefully. “No.” She tapped a photo of the walnut secretary Tom had pointed out. “Have you heard of marriages or monkeys?”

“Never in the same sentence.”

She arched an eyebrow. “I was in the shop three weeks ago, hunting. I went back Friday, determined to buy the secretary. It was expensive, but we buy because we like, not for investment. This is the piece that was there Friday. It isn’t the piece that was there three weeks ago.” Her voice rose in anger. “But Clement insisted it was the same. Acted like I was some taco-brained chica.”

McLean swallowed a smile. Anyone who underestimated Juanita Lopez because of her accent was stepping in front of a bus. “Were they similar?”

“Oh sure, if you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing.” She lifted her shoulders gracefully. “The first one was made of walnut. Beautiful piece. Crafted by someone who loved what he did. This one.” She snapped the picture with a short fingernail. “A marriage and a monkey. The top part was grafted on. It didn’t fit properly and was made of pine. That’s the marriage. The bottom, well that was a little better, a little older, but the hardware on the drawers was wrong and the slant top was made of oak while the main body was walnut. That’s the monkey. As in monkeyed with. He wanted the same amount of money, though. Twelve hundred dollars. That man had brass, I’m telling you.”

McLean showed her the rough inventory he’d taken that morning. “Is this consistent with what you saw Friday?”

She looked over the list, then sorted through the photographs. “This is what I saw Friday all right. But most of it isn’t what we looked at three weeks ago. I can’t be positive, but I’d guess that whatever happened to my secretary happened to a lot of other stuff in there, too. Most of this is junk. Some of it’s old, okay? But it’s still junk.”

McLean thanked Juanita, then borrowed her phone and told Mort Reed he was on the way.

Mort rolled into his combination living room and office followed closely by McLean and Caleb, Mort’s Rottweiler friend, aide, and guardian. Not that Mort needed guarding. He pivoted to a stop, grabbed an overhead bar, and, with biceps capable of crushing bricks, hoisted himself into an easy chair. He’d spent hours hunched over his computer digging through databases from Oregon to Florida and looked tired.

“You have everything I’ve been able to dig up on Zoe and Clement,” he motioned to the wad of papers in McLean’s fist. “How’d the inventory go with Regina? Any surprises?”

“Just her boyfriend, Eric. A noxious little twerp in white oxfords.”

Mort’s mouth tightened, “Twenty going on twelve, good build but a little pimply? Eyes like a dead cat?”

“You’ve met.”

“An orderly at Summit Memorial. We’ve crossed paths. Anything else?”

McLean stretched. “This fire smells like week old carp. Firth was setting up an insurance scam.”

“And he got caught in his own bonfire?”

McLean shrugged and thumbed the printouts. “We know Firth had a fire in Orlando. He netted just over thirty thousand dollars. Our contact there thinks the fire was deliberate, but officially it was an overheated extension cord. Firth’s name keeps popping up in insurance reports. The adjusters are convinced he was a con artist, but so slippery he’d never been tagged. Arson may have been his latest hobby.”

Mort scratched Caleb’s ears. “So Zoe’s store was just the latest? He takes over, inflates the building’s value through shoddy rebuilding, torches it, and collects?”

“I think it was more devious than that. He knows fire insurance will generally only pay to rebuild. Seldom hard cash to travel on. But inventory is something else. Provided it’s destroyed. I think he remodeled the store intending to bum it to the ground. He had some genuine antiques, Zoe’s at least, and jacked his inventory insurance way up. Funny thing happened on the way to the fire, however. He slipped the good stuff out the back door, possibly to Regina’s. That’s why Zoe was forced to take a vacation. He couldn’t risk her figuring out what he was up to.”

“Only he screwed up and basted himself setting the fire?”

“That’s how it looks.”

Mort nodded. “I had a chat with the medical examiner this morning while you were clumping around the bum site. They ran a blood gas on him, and Clement’s carbon monoxide reading was high enough to kill two men.”

“Drugs, anything like that?”

“It seemed pretty straightforward, so they didn’t run any tests.”

McLean turned the information over. Smoke, specifically carbon monoxide, is the biggest killer in a fire. You don’t get fire gases in your blood if you’re not breathing, so Clement was alive when it started. So far it fit like a cheap boot. All you had to do was pull hard enough.

Skimming Mort’s printouts, he came to a dead stop, picked up Summit Fire’s official reports, then compared numbers which he showed to Mort. “Why don’t you play dial-a-database again in Florida while I make a call.”

McLean punched out Zoe’s number, let it ring twenty times, then hung up, puzzlement creasing his face.

He left Mort battling with a Ma Bell clone and on a hunch drove downtown. He circled City Center Antiques twice and was about ready to go home, convinced his imagination was in overdrive. On a whim, he parked, skirted a delivery truck blocking the way, and walked down the alley behind the building. Regina’s little blue Miata peeked out from behind a dumpster.

He sidled around to Main Street. The shop was secure, but someone had forced Zoe’s door, then wedged it shut. He slipped into the downstairs foyer and at the sound of shattering glass overhead broke into a canter. He topped the stairs and barrelled toward the open apartment door.

Eric stood in the middle of the living room, a violently struggling Tina Zack clasped around the stomach while he fumbled in a coat pocket. Shards from a shattered vase littered the floor. She planted an ineffectual elbow into Eric’s midriff just as he propelled his angry load into McLean’s arms.

Scuffling, followed by a sharp slap, came from down the hallway. Tina whirled around but faltered before Eric’s soulless gaze above the .45 he’d wrenched from his pocket. Regina appeared a few moments later, gripping the telephone. “Old fool didn’t want to part with it.”

“What have you done to my grandmother?” Tina would have lunged for Regina had McLean not held her arm. Zoe’s voice rolled down the hall assuring them she was fine, although her walker had been moved out of reach.

If McLean’s sudden appearance upset Regina’s plans, she made no sign. “The pair of you lie on the floor and hold hands. Eric, watch them while I finish this up. If either one lets go, shoot them both.”

For the first time Eric looked genuinely scared. “I never shot anybody before. Why can’t I tie them up?”

“Just watch them, dammit. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” She picked up a small toolbox and a short length of flexible copper pipe and slipped down the front stairs. McLean waited, but the bell didn’t sound.

Eric coughed violently, wiped his forehead, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He plucked one out with his lips. “Stay down, you two.” He was so congested he could barely be understood.

A metallic clink from the basement, followed by a faint hissing drew McLean’s attention away from Eric and toward a small piece of paper fluttering away from a gas jet. He lifted his head at the sound of the door buzzer, but Eric’s shoe caught his ribs a sharp jab. “Stay down, you heard her.”

The hissing grew in pitch. “What’s Regina doing, Eric?” He already knew the answer as the unmistakable odor of natural gas filled the room.

Eric sneezed, sniffed, muttered, “shut up,” and pulled a Bic lighter from his pocket.

Tina’s eyes widened, but McLean moved his face into hers and whispered, “Close your eyes and hold your breath.” Tina crossed her eyes mockingly but followed his example.

The flat whump, heard a mile away, lifted the roof six inches and blew out every window on the second floor, raining glass and bricks on startled pedestrians and an irate Regina Thom.

McLean’s hearing, already damaged by years of sirens, was slower returning than Tina’s. They sat across from each other in Hank’s Bistro, two days and two blocks removed from Zoe’s former apartment. Mort occupied the end of the table. A jaunty lavender scarf covered Tina’s singed curls. McLean had settled for a baseball cap, but the fried ends of his brown hair jutted out in demoniacal tufts. Zoe, sitting beside her granddaughter, had escaped the blast with little more than a powdering of brick dust.

“I still don’t understand how we survived. All of us. And how could anyone be so stupid?”

McLean smiled at Tina. “Eric forgot he couldn’t smell. He knew what Regina was up to but thought he’d have some warning. Not that it would have mattered. She’d planned on killing him as well. She hasn’t admitted as much, but the look on her face on seeing him walk out of the hospital was not relief.”

Tina rubbed her temples. “Explain how we survived.”

McLean laid a yellowed picture on the table and nudged it toward the two women, who studied it with mock horror, then genuine perplexity. “That looks like a sofa sticking through the roof.”

Both Mort and McLean laughed. “This happened years ago. Two less than experienced handymen decided to fix a gas-fired heater in their basement, only they didn’t shut off the gas. The repairs made, they tried to relight the pilot light.”

Tina rolled her eyes. “Let me guess. They wound up on Mars.”

“Nope, they wound up with minor burns and a wrecked house. The explosion launched the sofa and parted the roof like a clam shell, which snapped shut with the results you see.”

“In other words, you were willing to risk our lives using information based on a flying couch.”

McLean shot Tina a baleful look. “Well, considering the alternative...”

Mort spoke up. “What happened isn’t all that unusual. P. J. took a chance, sure, but people have blown the walls off house trailers and suffered nothing more than minor bums and temporary hearing loss. It’s just the nature of gas explosions. Had Eric waited for Regina to trigger the blast, after the gas had run for a while and the mixture was considerably richer, everyone in the building would have died.”

McLean scratched his mustache. “It was a close thing, to be sure, but not as carefully planned as Clement’s death. How she and Eric managed it may never be known, but they loaded him up with lidocaine, which she’d snagged thanks to Eric’s hospital connections, and together they pulled him into the hallway.”

Zoe interrupted. “Weren’t they afraid of a drug test or something on the corpse?”

McLean looked at Mort, who said, “It was a calculated risk. He had quite a bit in his system anyway from having his arm set. It was a nasty break, and they hoped it’d be overlooked.”

“After sending Eric away,” McLean said, “Regina took a long extension cord, wadded it up, tied foam rubber around it, then sank it in the middle of a barrel of Styrofoam packing pellets. She plugged in the two hair dryers, turned them on, and went to join you at the health club.”

Tina lifted her eyebrows. “So? This started a fire? Is that why you asked about the fuses?”

McLean nodded. “Yes. There were thirty-amp fuses in all the sockets. Should have been fifteens or twenties. That was Clement’s doing. I won’t get into the math of it, but those two hair dryers were pulling far more electricity than the extension cord could handle, but not nearly enough to blow the fuses. The cord got hot, and wrapped in foam and buried in the barrel it got a lot hotter a lot faster until it burst into flames. After that... well, that plastic popcorn bums like gasoline.”

“I still don’t see why it wasn’t just Clement setting up another fraud,” Mort said.

“I thought it was at first, but after studying Clement’s history and the way he’d rebuilt the store, I wondered. His location of choice was the first floor storage room underneath the stairs. He’d already begun to set his own plan in motion. He shifted the inventory that he’d sell later. Regina just moved first.”

Mort studied his fingers. “What made you suspect it wasn’t a simple mistake by Clement?”

“Tom Lopez. He found Firth lying on his back, hands across his chest. Someone fleeing a fire is almost always going to be on their stomach crawling, and their hands are usually up near their mouths.”

Tina pressed both palms into her eyes. “But why? Why kill Clement, why kill us?”

“Money and revenge. You and your grandmother were unforeseen nuisances that had to be dealt with.” McLean’s face clouded over. “Clement, however, was a more personal issue. Regina was his daughter.”

There was a stunned silence. Mort continued the story. “P. J. cottoned on to it when he noticed that both their Social Security numbers were issued in Florida. She said she’d never been there. When someone lies, you want to know why. I already had his marriage certificate, and it didn’t take long to unearth her birth records.”

Zoe shrank. “How awful. How could a child hate so much?”

McLean was enured to life’s hard twists, but he had trouble finding his voice. “That’s something she’s more than willing to talk about. Clement ran off when Regina was two. She had a brother and sister, both older; both doted on her. Both died young in separate car accidents about two years apart. Clement surfaced for both funerals and tried to collect what he could in insurance settlements. He’d only run out, not divorced his wife, so he figured he had legal rights to their estates.”

Tina looked nauseated. “I never liked him, but that’s lower than even I thought he’d sink.”

“He sank a lot lower. Regina’s mother died just over a year ago of ovarian cancer. A long, hard death. A dozen or more operations, terrible bills, no help from anyone, especially her husband. Again Clement showed up, after she’d died, of course, but this time Regina had the last word. Unable to cover her mother’s bills, she’d declared personal bankruptcy.”

Zoe shuddered. “But why in heaven’s name did she come here, and why would he let her in on his scheme?”

“She felt, logically I suppose, that he owed her and was in a position to pay off. He took her on because she threatened to blow the whistle on him. She’d unearthed the truth about the Florida fire, including how it was started. Fortunately for us, she knew nothing about fire behavior. When Regina decided to strike, she mimicked his first fire by setting it in the second floor packing room. Clement had refined his approach. If she’d known, it would have been harder to solve this.

“Of course,” McLean smiled across the table, “you threw a wrench into her plans with that will. Regina’s plotting was for nothing if the money went to cleaning up after Clement.”

Mort pushed away from the table. “So, no money for Regina now. Insurance companies don’t pay people who kill the insured.” A hint of admiration crept into his voice. “Clever way she planned on doing the four of you in, though. Sort of a dial-a-bomb.”

A shiver coursed through McLean. “She expected the gas to knock everyone out, including Eric. Then she’d skip across town and dial up a remote control appliance switch she’d rigged to short out.”

Tina looked out the window, down the street toward the brick shell of her inheritance. “Grandmother and I stand to collect a bundle after all is said and done, but there’s no joy in it. What’s more, I don’t see why he signed the will.”

A knowing light glowed in Zoe’s eyes. “Petty revenge. To get back at the woman who fought him tooth and nail every step of the way in what he considered legitimate inheritances. Perhaps, too, as life insurance. He knew how much she hated him. But it seems he forgot to tell her. Poor old Clement, he never did get this cashing in on death thing right.”