Bubbles Ablaze (24 page)

He stopped and looked up at me. “God, you're great,” was all he said before kissing me again. I slinked over until I was fully on top, straddling him. My fingers deftly unbuttoned his shirt and spread it apart. His bare chest was warm and inviting. And then I moved down, unbuckling his belt and daringly reaching in . . .

“Bubbles,” he said, closing his eyes. “What about . . . Jane?”

“Shoot.” I pulled out my hand and rolled over the stick shift. Jane. What was I doing making out with Stiletto when my daughter was missing?

“Ahem,” he said, readjusting the seat and buttoning his shirt. “I thought I had to say something. We couldn't . . . you know . . . while your daughter was missing.”

I glanced in the rearview and tucked back a few strands of hair. “Absolutely.”

“Man,” Stiletto said, a grin on his face. “That was nice. Very nice.” He was all buttoned and belted now, ready to do battle. He put his hand on the door. “Good luck with Jane. I'm sure she's just fine. Remember, she's a very unusual kid. Extremely resourceful, like her mother.” He pecked me on the cheek and stepped out.

Just then I was struck by a thought. I leaned my head out the window. “Stiletto. What if the creep who set us up was Hugh McMullen? He's dead now, so I'd be safe.”

“I don't think so, Bubbles,” Stiletto said, starting up the Jeep. “Apparently my impersonator called Zeke this morning to tell him to stick it out in Colorado for the rest of the day. Because after tonight, he said, it would all be over.”

N
ow more than ever I had to find Jane. So what that she'd grumble and groan when she saw me stomping through the woods after her. I had no compunction about snatching my precocious kid even if she was on the verge of finding the Celtic Rosetta stone. If there was a person out there who had sent a bogus fax to the Passion Peak and arranged for Stiletto and me to plunge to our deaths with a corpse in a coal mine, what was there to prevent him from harming Jane?

As I careened through the peaceful back roads of coal country, past the odd, abandoned, rusted breaker with its mounds of stone and slag piled about, I asked myself the question that any good reporter asks: Did I buy what the cops were selling?

Donohue claimed that McMullen, who clearly had been distraught and apparently had financial problems, shot Price with the same weapon he had used to kill himself. There could be any number of reasons why McMullen would have shot Price. Maybe Price, having discovered that McMullen's company had mined underneath his land, wanted to renege on the deal? Maybe he wanted McMullen to fill in the mine—a very expensive undertaking.

Or maybe they were fighting over what Stinky had to offer.

Fire extinguishers.

It was a preliminary theory of mine and a kind of wacky one, but when I learned there were a bunch of odd fire extinguishers in the basement—the same basement where Stinky had been holed up before he went missing—it sparked my imagination. As Pete Zidukis said, any coal company would kill to discover a way
to put out the underground mine fire in Limbo. It wouldn't mean millions. It would mean billions.

Billions for McMullen, who was broke as well as broken. Billions for Price, who could then safely build a casino on his property without having to worry—or rather, without the state worrying—about a creeping mine fire next door. Billions for Stinky if his fire extinguisher worked and he managed to control the rights to it.

Stinky knew all about mining. He was a technical noodler and an ace cartographer for McMullen Coal. Was it so far-fetched to consider that he had invented a suitable method for extinguishing the Limbo fire? Maybe that's why he and Price were at the mine around the same time on Wednesday night?

But not only coal companies would have been interested in getting their hands on Stinky's formula. What about Donohue, the eavesdropping police chief? It seemed fathomable, given his access to all private communication in Slagville, that he would have discovered Stinky's secret and figured he could cash in. First, he had to get me out of town so he could find Stinky before anyone else did.

Then there was Chrissy Price. There was no underestimating the lengths to which a woman would go to free herself from a nightmare marriage. I didn't know much about Bud Price's personal life except that he was such a pig he wouldn't allow his wife's teenage daughter at the dinner table. That right there was cause for divorce, if not murder, in my mind.

What I did know was that Chrissy Price zoomed off on the same night Hugh McMullen shot himself, that she was alive and that she refused to tell her daughter where she was. Then there was Donohue's loaded statement about Chrissy's murky past. Seemed like a legitimate murder suspect to me.

I passed St. Ignatius Church standing like a sentinel in front of the gated cemetery, a white plume of smoke rising from the blackened earth around it. I headed down Troutwine Hill to what once had been the center of Limbo, cruising through the empty
intersection where a boarded-up and dilapidated store, one of the last buildings remaining, stood on the corner.

At the top of the next hill was the fire department, all brand spanking new brick. A monument to irony. It overlooked the abandoned town with its grassy lots and sidewalks to nowhere. No place to run. No place to hide. Nothing to burn, if you asked me.

Following the directions to Tallow's retreat from the press release Jane had left for me the day before, I pushed my odometer and kept an eye out for Tallow Road as I snaked up a winding mountain highway. I spied a rusted sign on the right and hooked it. Suddenly I was off the pavement and on a dirt road, bouncing and bopping over rocks and through ditches and under trees. Camaros aren't meant to bounce and bop over rocks and through ditches. They're meant to drag at two
A
.
M
. on Stefko.

After miles the road ended abruptly at a low-roofed cabin in the woods. It was made out of logs and as soon as I saw it, the word “Appalachia” sprang to mind. I could picture a hardscrabble woman in dirty cotton and bare feet on the front porch churning butter, any untold number of children climbing around her skirts along with a few chickens here and there. Except that in this case there was a mint-condition royal blue TR6 parked out front.

Have courage, Bubbles. Motherhood is not for the weak of heart, I thought, getting out of the Camaro and taking my purse with me. The air smelled of wood smoke and pine. I knocked on the screen door.

“Hello?” I shouted. “It's me. Jane's mom.” I gave the flimsy door a slight push.

“I'd say come in, but it appears you've already taken the liberty.” Tallow, still wearing his beautifully worn green Barbour, was sitting at a weathered picnic table in the middle of the dark cabin, studying a large white map.

The room was furnished with worn antiques, a mahogany dresser by a single, unmade bed in one corner and a glass cabinet in the other. By the door was a black iron woodstove, the orange
glow of a fire peeking through the glass. There was a gray soapstone sink with a pump against the same wall where a dusty window opened toward the woods. It was really tranquil except for Tallow's presence in the room.

“I'm looking for Jane,” I said, unsure if I should take another step. “Is she here?”

“No. She left a few hours ago. Insisted on walking back.” He removed his glasses. “We've finished for the day. No one showed up at my press conference. Horribly disappointing.” He replaced his glasses and returned to reading. “Ignorant reporters.”

I had not seen Jane on my drive from Slagville to here. I had my doubts—and my worries.

“I hope she's okay. Do you think it's safe for her to walk all the way back by herself?”

“I do not run a daycare service, Mrs. Yablonsky.”

“Miss. I'm not married, anymore.”

“Miss Yablonsky.” He twirled a black rock on the table and continued to focus on the map. “I teach college students. If your daughter is too young to be in my class, then I suggest you return her to high school.”

I closed the door behind me and peered at the rock. “Where did you get that?”

“What?”

“That rock. It's identical to the one I saw in Chrissy Price's hotel room.”

“If you recognize it, then I can only assume Mrs. Price purchased it from one of my collections.” Tallow shoved the rock in his pocket, threw down his bifocals and slid from behind the table. He knelt down and opened the door to the woodstove to poke at the fire. “My rocks are very popular in Lehigh. The historical society sells them in their museum.”

“They sell rocks? Rocks anyone could find for free?”

“They aren't just any rocks.” He slammed the door, fastened it and wiped off his hands on a towel by the sink. “Tell me, have you heard of Stonehenge?”

“Seems like lately I've been hearing about it a lot.”

“In case you don't know, Stonehenge is a collection of astronomically significant standing stones in Wiltshire, England, arranged thousands of year ago by Druids, otherwise known as Celtic philosophers. The inscriptions on the rocks around Stonehenge are ogam, the ancient alphabet used by Celts. For example,” he removed the rock from his pocket and held it out for my inspection, “this particular rock shows the symbol for Wa, or mourning.”

There was a big Y etched on it. Kindergartners could do better. “So?”

“So, I did not discover this rock in England.” He dropped it back in his pocket. “I discovered it here, in Limbo.”

He went over to a large, detailed wall map of the local area. “This unattractively named Dead Zone was once the site of an ancient Celtic colony. I believe it is because the topography, the undulation of the hills and the coal below them were familiar to the Welsh-born nomads who traveled up the Delaware and then the Lehigh river to Limbo around 55
B
.
C
.”

For a three-hour tour, my mind singsonged.

“As proof, I have unearthed numerous standing stones, a Druid throne and a winter solstice sunrise temple in that location.” He pointed to grainy black and white photos tacked next to the map. “Which is where I held the press conference this morning. Of course, no one showed and so I expect all these Celtic treasures will be destroyed for . . . a casino.” He punctuated casino with a tiny snort.

This was a perfect time to ready my trusty reporter's notebook and Bic pen.

“But what does that have to do with you and Chrissy Price?” I said, flipping to a clean page. “Chrissy has been active in the historical society, which sells your famous rocks. Chief Donohue said she sped off from Le Circe with a man in a little blue sports car last night. Just like yours. Plus you arrived in town when she arrived. Coincidence?”

“What are coincidences, really?” Tallow asked rhetorically. “I, indeed, was at Le Circe, but I did not leave with Mrs. Price. We had a drink at the bar where I hoped to impress upon her the reasons why her late husband's casino should not be constructed. I'd had no luck convincing Bud Price, but after meeting up with you, Miss Yablonsky, at my dig in Emmaus, I was struck by an epiphany. Why not approach his widow? I knew her to be supportive of my excavations in the Lehigh Valley. I had even certified authenticity of the rock you'd snooped around and discovered in her hotel room. Therefore, I came here straight away to beg her ear.”

“Couldn't you have waited until she'd buried her husband?”

“And risk his greedy car-dealing family brainwashing her to move forward on the project? In a word, no.”

“Okay,” I said, writing this all down. Brainwashing, car dealing, greedy family members. Loved it. “What did you do after meeting her at the bar?”

“Afterward I offered to walk her to her car, but she refused. As I drove out of the parking lot, I saw her climb into an antique pickup truck. I remember because I thought it very odd that a wealthy and cultured woman would be leaving in that kind of vehicle.”

“He's lying.”

Jane stood in the doorway, her hair electric blue in the sunlight filtering through the trees outside. In her hand she was holding yet another rock and some tools.

“About Chrissy Price?” I asked.

“What are you talking about? No, he's lying about these rocks.”

“For Pete's sake.” Tallow threw up his hands. “Enough with the rocks already.”

Jane ignored him. “It saddens me to say this, Professor Tallow, but I have long been disturbed by your failure to implement the scientific method in uncovering archeological artifacts.” Except for the ripped black T-shirt and mangled jeans, Jane had the air of a tenured professor on the university lecturing circuit.

“Therefore,” she continued, “after our hike in the woods this morning, I poked around a bit and this is what I found in a smokehouse out back.” She dropped the rock and metal tools on the table.

The rock resembled the other one he had shown me moments ago except that the Y was missing a line. “Your so-called Celtic treasures are no more authentic than the famous fraudulent 1885 Lenape Stone uncovered by a farmer in Bucks County.”

“Blasphemy!” Tallow proclaimed. “I have been criticized, yes, but no one has dared compare my finding to the Lenape Stone.”

“It's a risk I'm confident in taking,” Jane said.

Lenape Stone? Sounded like a cubic zirconia competitor on the shopping channel.

“Hey, Mom,” Jane said, as Tallow inspected the rock she had found, rolling it over in his hands. “What're you doing here? Oh no, you were checking up on me, weren't you?”

“No, no, no,” I said, holding up my notebook as though that would prove I hadn't been.

“What about when I'm in college next year? Are you going to like follow me from class to class, spying on me from the bushes?” Jane had dropped the tenured professor shtick and was back to being an manic teenager. “That would be complete humiliation. I'd totally freak.”

“You're going to college?” I slapped the notebook against my chest. “You changed your mind? What about grape picking? What about Mexico?”

“G and I talked about it and—.”

“She's not going to college,” Tallow said in a grave voice. There was an ear-piercing crash as he flung Jane's rock against the woodstove, smashing the stone into bits. “I'm her faculty advisor and I'll make sure that every university in the country learns that she is a plagiarist. She'll be blacklisted.”

“I don't think so,” I said. “It's you who'll be out in the cold when Jane's father threatens to sue his own university because you sexually harassed his daughter. Colleges are very sensitive
about professors hitting on students these days. It's a far cry from the love-ins when you were a freshman.”