Christmas Cookie Murder #6 (12 page)

Stan had played the first few notes of “Silent Night” when a sudden explosion rocked the ground they were standing on. Everyone looked up, there was a collective intake of breath. Flames were shooting from one of the narrow windows of the Ropewalk.

Lucy saw Stan running toward the firehouse, clutching his trumpet to his chest. A few others, volunteer firemen, also ran to help. Moments later the scream of sirens filled the air as the fire engines roared out of the station and tore off down the street. The rest of the carolers stood rooted in place, watching in horror as the flames grew larger and smoke began to billow into the night sky.

S
uddenly, they were all running down Main Street toward the fire. Everyone wanted to see the spectacle; it was the biggest thing that had happened since the sardine cannery fire some twenty years ago.

“This is history being made right here,” Lucy heard one man tell his son. “You look and don't forget and you'll have something to tell your grandkids.”

All Lucy could think about, as she ran along with the crowd, were the people inside the mall. With less than a week left to Christmas it must have been packed with shoppers. She remembered the clutter of stalls and the narrow walkways, not to mention the aged wood. It had all looked most attractive, but Lucy wouldn't have wanted to be inside it in a fire. It wouldn't take much smoke to turn the old building into a death trap.

Holding tight to Zoe's hand, Lucy followed Bill, hurrying to keep up with him. Toby had run ahead with his friends, Elizabeth had also joined a group of high schoolers. Sara ran along with her father.

No one had had time to set up barricades, but the crowd didn't advance past the edge of the Ropewalk parking lot, where the fire trucks were parked and the volunteer firemen were laying hose. There, you could smell the smoke and feel the heat of the flames that had now spread from a single ground-floor window to several more, including some on the second floor. People were streaming from the exits, holding scarves and handkerchiefs to their soot-blackened faces. Lucy spotted Franny and ran up to her, first making sure that Bill had a firm hold on Zoe's hand.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Franny coughed and nodded in reply.

“Can everybody get out?”

“I think so.” Franny dabbed at her eyes. “It's dinnertime, so there weren't too many people, yet. Frank Crowell, he's the manager, raised the alarm and told people to go to the exits. Do you see him?”

Lucy and Franny scanned the faces of the people in the crowd looking for Frank, who was instantly recognizable because of his flamboyant handlebar mustache.

When they failed to see him, Franny began asking who had seen him last.

“He was behind me,” said a woman Lucy recognized. She had a stall selling stained-glass suncatchers and lampshades that she made herself. “I heard his voice, telling everyone to keep moving.”

“Did he get out?”

“No. I saw him go back,” added a tiny woman with curly white hair, who was clutching her Ropewalk shopping bag as if it were a life preserver. “He got us to the exit and then he turned back.” She shook her head. “I don't know why.”

Hearing this, Franny ran up to Chief Pulaski, who was giving orders through his megaphone. Lucy followed, but couldn't hear what Franny was saying over the din of the sirens and the throb of the pumper truck's diesel engines. She saw Pulaski shake his head, mouthing something to two new arrivals, volunteer firemen who were pulling on their gear. Lucy caught a glimpse of a head of thick red hair just before one of the men put on his helmet.

By now, huge flames were leaping from the Ropewalk windows, bathing everything and everyone in a flickering red light. Now and then there was a popping nose; someone said it was window glass exploding from the heat of the fire. The parking lot was filled with fire trucks, hoses snaked everywhere, and in the distance sirens could be heard as fire companies from the neighboring towns of Gilead, Smithfield, Hopkinton, and Perry answered the call for mutual aid.

Lucy watched as the two firefighters lowered their face shields and vanished into the burning building. The last thing she saw was the reflective letters on the backs of their coats. They had the same name: Rousseau.

“Why aren't they pumping any water yet?” she asked Bill.

“It takes time to lay hose,” he said, as water started streaming from two, then three hoses. “Here it comes.”

“Finally.” Lucy was clutching herself, her arms across her chest. She was holding her breath, waiting for the two Rousseaus to emerge from the building.

They finally did, holding an unconscious figure between them, just as flames began to erupt from the roof and everyone had given them up for lost.

EMTs rushed up with oxygen and a stretcher, and police officers began setting up sawhorse barricades, pushing everyone back to the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street.

Moments after the street had been cleared, a ladder track began moving very slowly along it, stopping so hoses could be shifted to minimize the damage of the heavy truck rolling over them.

“They'll never be able to save it,” said Bill, and Lucy realized he was right. The firefighters were now spraying water on neighboring buildings, the harbormaster's office, and a row of shops that included Jake's Donut Shack, a real estate office, and a T-shirt shop. “This street's so narrow the buildings are awfully close together,” he said. “It'll be a miracle if the whole block doesn't go.”

As she watched, Lucy began to make out the faces of people she knew. Rachel's husband, Bob, was one of the volunteer firefighters, so was Hank Orenstein, Juanita's husband. When a ladder was extended from one of the fire trucks to the roof of the Ropewalk, Lucy gasped to see Hank begin climbing it.

“What's he doing?” she asked Bill.

“Trying to vent the fire, I think. He's going to try to break a hole in the roof.”

“Oh my God. What if he falls?” Hank and Juanita's daughter Sadie was Zoe's best friend.

“He'll be careful.” Bill put an arm around her shoulder.

“I hope so.” Lucy watched as Hank leaned from the ladder and swung his fire ax, she took a breath and choked on the smoke. What must it be like up on that ladder, so close to the fire? She could only imagine the heat.

The street was now running with water, the red-and-yellow flames were reflected in the wet surface. The firefighters' faces were gleaming with sweat, she saw one man lean against an engine, his chest heaving as he mopped his face. An EMT approached him, offering an oxygen mask, and he took it.

All at once, it was too much for Lucy. She couldn't watch anymore. It wasn't just a spectacle, something to see. Real people's lives were going up in smoke. She thought of all the individual craftsmen who had opened shops in the Ropewalk, all the labor they had put into making and marketing their wares. The Ropewalk was supposed to offer a new chance to people in the economically beleaguered town, now all those hopes and dreams were going up in smoke. Lucy turned away.

“I can't watch anymore,” she said to Bill.

“Are you going home?” he asked.

It was tempting. Their house was far from the fire. She could take a bath, make herself a snack, even go to bed with a book.

“No.” She shook her head, watching as several more firefighters collapsed against the ambulance, waiting for their turn at the oxygen. Down the street, the clean, white light from the IGA's plate-glass windows caught her eye.

“I'm going to get some food and drink for the men—they need nourishment and fluids,” she said.

Bill nodded and hoisted Zoe up onto his shoulders, where she perched like a little monkey. Lucy hurried down the street, relieved to get away from the overwhelming sights and sounds of the fire.

When she approached the store, she saw the cashier, Dot Kirwan, standing in the doorway, arms folded across her chest, watching from a distance.

“That's a real shame, that is,” she said, nodding grimly.

“All that work, all those high hopes,” agreed Lucy.

“Don't tell me you're doing your Friday night grocery shopping,” said Dot. “I haven't had a customer since the sirens went off.”

“I thought I'd get some juice and stuff for the men—they've been at this for quite a while and they look like they need to refuel.”

“Why didn't I think of that?” Dot grabbed a cart and pushed it over to the dairy case where she started filling it with gallon jugs of fruit punch and cartons of orange juice.

Lucy took another cart and wheeled it to the bakery aisle, where she grabbed boxes of doughnuts and loaves of bread. A few aisles over she found big jars of peanut butter and jelly and added them.

“Ring this all up—I'll use my charge card, OK?”

“I don't think so,” said Dot, raising her eyebrows. “Joe can take it off his taxes as a charitable donation.” Joe Marzetti was the owner, but Dot really ran the store. “I'll just get a knife or two and we'll be off.” She hurried over to the deli counter and grabbed some sandwich spreaders; as an afterthought she grabbed a package of paper cups.

Pushing the cart back down the street toward the burning Ropewalk, Lucy felt better. At least she was making herself useful. The policeman at the barricade pushed the sawhorse aside when he saw them coming and they rolled their carts next to the ambulance. Dot passed out the juice while Lucy made sandwiches, using the child seat of the cart as a work surface.

Up close, she saw the toll the fire was taking on the firefighters. One man's helmet rolled onto the ground and she bent to pick it up, shocked to discover how heavy it was as she handed it back to him. Underneath their heavy slickers the men were sweating, and their faces were blackened with soot. Just walking in their heavy rubber boots and coats had to be an effort, and many of the men were also burdened with tanks of air. Yet they scrambled up the ladders and hauled hoses around, never hesitating when they were given an order.

“I hate it when there are fires down here,” said one tired firefighter. “The whole town could go up.”

“We're earning our pay tonight,” said another, tilting back his head and gulping down a quart of orange juice.

“How much do you make?” asked Lucy, handing him a sandwich.

“A hundred and fifty dollars a year,” he said, with his mouth full of peanut butter. “We're basically volunteers. One of the last volunteer companies in the state.”

“You're doing an amazing job,” said Lucy. “Who were those guys who went into the building?”

“That was Rusty and J.J.—disobeying the chief, like usual.”

“It's gonna go—all clear!” she heard someone yell and looked up. The hose crews began moving back, individual firefighters ran for safety as the huge front wall of the building began to fall. There was a huge crash and a spray of glowing red cinders rose and fell, showering those closest to the blaze.

The firefighters moved back in, pouring water onto the remains of the building. Nothing was left of the Ropewalk but a smoldering heap. Some of the fire companies began to pack up their equipment, preparing to leave.

Surveying the scene Lucy was struck by the unfamiliar new shape of the waterfront, the space formerly occupied by the Ropewalk was now vacant, revealing a view of the harbor beyond. The neighboring buildings had all been saved, but it would have to wait until morning to learn if they had been damaged.

Ted approached her. “Can a reporter have a sandwich?”

“Sure,” said Lucy, spreading peanut butter on a piece of bread for him. “Some story.”

“Not the kind I like to write,” said Ted, taking a big bite of his sandwich.

“Do they know how it started?”

“Not yet.”

“Any word about the manager, Frank Crowell?”

He shook his head.

She turned away. She'd had enough, she was bone tired, she wanted to go home.

“Lucy, can I help?” It was Franny.

Lucy remembered how proud Franny had been of her jewelry shop in the Ropewalk, how excited she'd been about having her own business. “I'm so sorry for you,” she said, enfolding her in a hug.

Franny shrugged. “I was pretty lucky. I hadn't moved my workshop into the Ropewalk, yet. All my supplies and equipment are still at home. All I had there were finished pieces, and frankly, I'd sold most of them. I didn't lose much at all.” She blinked a few times. “Most of the others weren't so fortunate. I don't know what they're going to do. They've lost everything, and they're going to have to start over from scratch.” She paused a moment. “If they can.”

Lucy nodded. “Well, Dot should be back soon. She went to make some coffee for the guys who'll be here all night.”

“Here you go,” said Franny, slapping a sandwich together for a very small firefighter from a neighboring town. The firefighter yanked off his helmet and two braids tumbled down; Lucy realized he wasn't a he at all.

More power to her thought Lucy, as she said good-bye to Franny and rejoined Bill and the girls. Not, of course, that she'd want her girls to become firefighters. The work was too hard and too dangerous. Then she remembered Tucker. Nothing was safe, it seemed.

“Let's go home,” she said, wrapping her arms around Bill and resting her cheek on his chest.

He gave her a squeeze. “You bet.”

5 days 'til Xmas

L
ucy was headed out the door on Saturday morning to do her grocery shopping when the phone rang. It was Ted with an assignment.

“The volunteer firefighters are meeting on Monday night—can you cover it?”

“Sure.” Lucy checked her calendar and wrote in the time of the meeting. “Are they handing out awards or something? Should I take my camera?”

Ted snorted. “Definitely take your camera, but it's not about awards. Several firefighters have been charged with stealing from the fire. The meeting is to decide what the organization is going to do—they might go on strike in protest.”

“Whoa.” Lucy couldn't believe what she was hearing. “This is the first I've heard about this. Explain.”

“Can't. I don't have time. I've got to be at a press conference in five minutes. Stop by the office later today, OK?”

“OK.”

She had almost made it to the door when the phone rang a second time. This time it was Mr. Humphreys from the high school.

“Ahem, Mrs. Stone,” he began, clearing his throat several times.

Whatever he had to say was apparently stuck in his craw. Finally, he managed to get it out.

“I had a conversation with your legal representative yesterday, and I think I may say it was most enlightening and informative. As a result of that conversation, Elizabeth's suspension has been reduced and she will be welcome to return to school on Monday.”

Lucy resisted the impulse to crow. “That's very good news,” she said. “Thank you for calling.”

 

In the car, she flipped on the radio just in time to hear the nine o'clock news report. Ted was right. Four volunteer firemen had been arrested and would be charged with larceny at the Ropewalk fire: Russell Rousseau, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Fred Childs, and George Paxton. Paxton was also the captain of the volunteer force, next in line of command after the chief, Stan Pulaski. All four men had been released on bail pending their arraignment Monday. Tinker's Cove police were expected to release more details later this morning.

The station promised a “six-pack”—six songs without a commercial—but Lucy couldn't have told you what they were. She was hardly listening; her mind was occupied by this disturbing news.

Last night she had been at the fire and witnessed firsthand the heroism of the volunteer firefighters, especially the Rousseau brothers. Everyone in town understood the risks involved in fighting fires, and Tinker's Cove citizens were proud of the volunteer firefighters. The force was one of the last volunteer departments in the state. Most of the neighboring towns had been forced to switch to paid, professional forces, but interest in Tinker's Cove remained high and the chief was never short of volunteers. Members of the department marched in the Fourth of July parade; afterward they held a huge picnic and invited the whole town to watch as they competed in contests of skill such as ladder races and obstacle courses. The most popular, especially if the weather was hot, was to see who could hit a target with water from the fire hose. It was funny to watch people struggle with the hose, which seemed to have a life of its own. Kids and women were usually knocked off their feet; only the strongest men could control the jet of water that shot out of it.

Why would such public-spirited men as the volunteer firefighters steal from a fire? She'd never heard of such a thing, but she could understand them taking souvenirs like a sign, perhaps a brick or a unique bit of woodwork. It would be something to keep, a reminder of the night the Ropewalk burned. But that could hardly be called theft, she thought, except by the strictest moralist.

Lucy knew that many people in Tinker's Cove had been seafarers for generations, and weren't above picking up a loose bit of flotsom or jetsam and claiming it for their own. When she and Bill were first married they had found a wooden cable spool washed up on a beach and rolled it home, where they had used it as a table for years. Most anything that washed up was considered free for the taking, except for lobster traps. They were left for their owner to reclaim; you could get shot for taking somebody else's lobster trap.

Turning onto Main Street, Lucy gasped at the sight of the burned Ropewalk. Nothing of the building remained except for a huge heap of burned wood; the paint on the neighboring block of stores had blistered, and the roof shingles had curled with the heat. It was amazing that the firefighters had been able to save the stores—even the church across the street was black with soot. The street in front of the Ropewalk had been closed off with yellow tape; water used to fight the fire had frozen overnight, making it too slippery for traffic.

Lucy took the detour, straining her neck to get a last look as she made the turn and headed for the IGA.

 

While she waited in line at the checkout, she listened to Dot chatting with the woman ahead of her.

“It doesn't surprise me in the least bit,” said Dot, as she passed the cans and boxes through the scanner. “My oldest boy, he was on the Tinker's Cove force for years but then he went professional over in Gilead. He's an EMT and all; he got trained when he was in the army.

“Well, Joe told me, one of the reasons he wanted to go pro was that he didn't like some of the stuff the volunteers were doing.” She paused to find the UPC code on a box of cat food. “I swear, sometimes they hide these darn things. Anyway, Joe said, the attitude was that they could take whatever they wanted because the insurance company would be paying for it all anyway.” Dot's eyebrows shot up. “And I told him that was a lot of poppycock because we'd all end up paying higher insurance rates. There's no such thing as a free lunch, that's what I told him.”

Soon Dot had the woman's groceries bagged, and she turned to Lucy.

“Seems like I'm seeing an awful lot of you,” she said.

“I can't seem to stay away,” agreed Lucy, with a smile. “Last night was quite a night, wasn't it?”

“One I wouldn't care to repeat, thank you,” said Dot, reaching for a bag of apples and smoothing the plastic so the scanner could read the price code.

“Last night I thought those men were heroes, and today I hear on the radio that they're bums—I can't figure it out,” Lucy said.

“In my experience, most men are a little bit of both, if you know what I mean.” Dot leaned across the counter. “But I can tell you this much. If Chief Crowley was running things down at that police station, this would have been taken care of, and nobody would have been the wiser.”

“What do you mean?”

Dot shrugged. “He mostly turned a blind eye, figuring that the firemen deserved whatever they could salvage—it isn't like they get paid or anything. If somebody complained or something, he would have them return the stuff. It all would have been taken care of without making people look bad.”

“That's true,” chimed in Andrea Rogers, who had stepped up to the checkout behind Lucy. “Chief Crowley would never have brought charges against Tim. He would have given him a talking-to and brought him home, figuring his parents would take care of it. Now they've got this zero tolerance policy.” Andrea twisted her lips into a smirk. “It's supposed to be zero tolerance for drugs and booze, but I think it really means zero tolerance for kids.”

Lucy nodded in agreement; she was a sadder and wiser woman after Elizabeth's experience.

“I think you've got something there. Has Tim gone to court yet?”

“Not 'til January. Bob says they'll probably put him on probation and make him take an alcohol education course, plus he'll be stuck with a conviction.” Andrea sighed. “Every time he applies for a job or renews his driver's license or whatever, he'll have to check the yes box.”

“Look on the bright side,” said Lucy. “The way things are going, he'll have plenty of company. What about next year?”

“MCU doesn't want him anymore, that's for sure. We're thinking of sending him for a thirteenth year at Wolford Academy. He can play there and hopefully he'll get recruited by another college.”

“That's a good idea,” said Lucy, watching as Dot rang up the last of her order.

“That'll be one fifty-four and thirty-one cents.”

“Ouch,” said Lucy, reaching for her wallet.

 

At
The Pennysaver
, Lucy found Ted hunched over his desk, tapping away at his keyboard. She plopped down in the chair he saved for visitors, not bothering to move the clutter of press releases that had accumulated there.

“Listen, Ted. I'm not sure this firefighter story rates page one. From what I heard at the IGA this morning, this is nothing new. The firemen have taken stuff in the past, and Chief Crowley just turned a blind eye on it unless he got a complaint. Then he'd make them return the stuff, but he didn't bring charges or anything. Tom Scott's new on the job; he doesn't understand about small towns.”

Ted looked up and Lucy saw he looked like someone who hadn't been getting enough sleep. She also thought he looked terribly sad, showing none of the excitement he usually felt when working on a big story.

“I hate this story,” he confessed. “These men risk their lives, they get up out of warm beds in the middle of the night to put out fires and pry people out of crashed cars, and they don't get paid a penny. Do I care if they take some souvenirs from a fire? Do I care if they help themselves to some fire-damaged stuff that's going to get thrown out anyway? I don't give a damn, and that's the truth. But I've got to cover it because it's already been on the radio and Tom Scott held a big news conference this morning and invited media from all over New England. Goddamn
Globe
was there.”

He dropped his hands in his lap and shook his head. “What really gets me is that I'm the only one who's going to mention what this is really about—and only a few thousand people are going to read me and hundreds of thousands are going to read the story Scott's hand-fed to everybody else. It was slick, let me tell you. Piles of merchandise, stacked up on tables, for all to view. Gold and silver jewelry. Rare coins. Everything all polished up. Even a couple of stained-glass lamps. Worth thousands of dollars, or so he said.”

“I had no idea. I thought it was a couple of bricks or something like that.”

“Nope. You gotta hand it to the boys. They made quite a haul. But that's not the story, not really. Because it wasn't the shopkeepers who complained—I've been calling them, and they have nothing but good things to say about the firefighters. They all say their businesses were total losses anyway. Nope. You know who filed the complaint. The Gilead fire chief.”

Lucy was beginning to understand. “And Gilead is a professional force.”

“Right. And they're asking for a raise at the town meeting this year….”

“And they don't want to have to explain why folks in Gilead have to pay for something folks in Tinker's Cove get for free,” interjected Lucy.

Ted nodded. “And if the volunteers go on strike, which is what they're threatening to do, they'll look even worse, and the voters will get disgusted. This is the end of the volunteers, I'm telling you. When this is over, Tinker's Cove will have a professional fire department. It's the end of an era.”

He paused, studying his hands, then raised his head.

“Thanks for covering the meeting for me. I hated to ask, but the kids' Christmas concert is Monday night, and Pam says I have to go.”

“No problem,” said Lucy.