That Old Flame of Mine (29 page)

Stella, in turn, gave them her pepper contest entry. They smiled and commented on the bright color, then took it to the correct judge.

Walt laughed from behind Stella as the two women left the judging booth. “You’re a raw recruit to them. They’ll probably enjoy talking about this for months. It will keep them warm this winter thinking about it. Didn’t anyone warn you?”

“I’m definitely out of my element here,” she admitted. “On the other hand, I don’t think either of them could run up and down stairs with a sixty-pound hose either. We all have our places in the world.”

“I’d like to see ’em try. Great idea for next year’s festival. Some kind of fireman-policeman contest. I’ll bet people would get a kick out of it.”

“I hope I don’t have to run to catch Adam today. It’s all I can do to walk in this dress.”

“You look real pretty though. Are you all set to taste some good Sweet Pepper cooking? Best in the world. I hope there are extras. It’s the only reason I agreed to do this.”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.” She whispered, “You brought your gun, right?”

He nodded and pulled a large pistol out of his jacket. “This will take care of anyone who’s looking for trouble—even men who are supposed to be dead.”

“Thanks. John was at my place first thing this morning. I didn’t have to wait that long to hear what Eric had to say about the plan.”

“I got a call at the hotel bright and early from Don. He said he thought we should both go to jail for putting that in the paper. I told him to go fly a kite. If he’s not careful, I might come out of retirement and run against him in the next election.”

He and Stella talked for half an hour. She was beginning to wonder if the newspaper story had kept everyone at home.

Then it was like someone opened the floodgates on a dam. People were everywhere. They wanted to see the food and taste it. They wanted to know how Stella got ready for the tasting. How did she decide which recipe was best?

Walt was right. She wasn’t prepared. She answered the questions the best she could. When she didn’t know the answer, she gave the questioner food.

The recipes had to be tasted and judged as the committee members walked around the booths where the judges waited. Someone had to be there to make sure she tasted everything, then wrote down her scores and comments. She was supposed to take a sip of water between each food to cleanse her palate.

The water was a lifesaver because some of the food was really spicy. There were two types of pepper brownies. Each was good, but the one with a chewy center was better. Then there were chocolate-covered peppers, which Stella was reluctant to try. She finally closed her eyes and took a bite. They were surprisingly good, with a snappy aftertaste.

Some of the chocolate pepper foods were very imaginative. There was a chocolate pudding cake with pepper garnish and bits of pepper inside. Another recipe was hot chocolate with pepper garnish. She didn’t really care for that. Valery’s mocha coffee from the Daily Grind, with pepper-whipped cream, was better.

Flo’s chocolate cookies she recognized right away. They were basically the same as the ones she’d tasted at the bed-and-breakfast, but these had walnuts as their secret new ingredient.

Each time Stella tasted one of the foods, the worried cook was there watching. She tried not to give away how she felt, but there were a few times—chocolate-covered pepper pizza—that she couldn’t hide her reaction.

The result was tears from the woman who worked at the post office. Stella couldn’t remember her name, but she knew she’d remember the terrible disappointment on her face. No wonder the festival committee had a hard time finding judges.

When her part of the contest was over, Stella slumped down in her chair and covered her eyes with her hands. “I never want to do this again.”

Walt had brought a thermos of hard cider. He saluted her with it. “You did fine. Now you only have to write everything up and pick your winner. Bear in mind that whoever loses will hate you forever.”

“Thanks. You’re a big help.”

Her emergency pager went off. There was only a weird scrambled message on it. “Great. What a time for an emergency. I hope we don’t have to try and get the engine down Main Street. Myra is lucky I’m not staying on as fire chief or we’d have to have a few words about how dangerous this is.”

She called the firehouse to see what was going on. Tagger was on duty. “Where is the call?”

“It’s a mess, Chief. I can’t tell what’s going on. I tried to call everyone. You’re the only one who got the page, I guess. You might have to come down and sort this out.”

“Okay. I’m on my way. Keep trying to call everyone in case we need them.”

Chapter 34

S
tella explained the emergency to Walt. “It’s probably nothing. Tagger gets a little confused sometimes.”

“And he has a problem with the bottle other times. Say no more.”

“Do you think you can handle the booth if I sneak off to the firehouse for a few minutes? If it takes more than that, there really is an emergency and it will have to take priority over chocolate-pepper judging.”

“Those are fighting words, my girl. But I’ve got your back. Go on. Get Tagger off the radio. If someone from the committee comes by, I’ll tell them you had female problems.”

“Thanks . . . I think. Is that a good enough excuse to leave my appointed booth?”

He shrugged. “Beats me. You better get moving before we find out.”

Stella hoped she’d run into one of the other volunteers who could go to the firehouse and handle the problem. No such luck. She knew it was probably just another case of Tagger screwing around with the computer. She couldn’t take that chance. If a real emergency came up, there would be no way to notify everyone.

She hiked up her skirt and made the best time she could getting to the makeshift festival parking lot. The hat was another story. Elvita had done a great job making it stay on. She wasn’t sure it was ever coming off. She finally gave up and got in the Cherokee with it still on her head. She felt like her neck was going to break when it smashed against the ceiling. She gritted her teeth and started the truck. There was nothing else to do.

There was no traffic going out of town. It was bumper- to-bumper coming in. She wished those latecomers good luck finding someplace to park. She hoped her space was still there when she got back.

It was quiet out at the firehouse. Traffic had died out a few miles back. It looked like everyone was at the festival. Even Beau’s bar was empty and closed.

She tried calling Tagger again as she turned into the parking lot. There was no answer. At least the loudspeaker wasn’t playing old Beatles music.

Stella walked into the firehouse and went through the kitchen into the communications room. There was no sign of Tagger, until she opened the door. He was sitting very still, staring at her, his face white and pasty.

“Tagger?” She rushed into the little room and put her fingers on his pulse. He was cool to the touch, but his heart was still beating. He must have had a heart attack or stroke. She reached for the landline, and the door closed behind her.

There was a small window in the old metal door. She looked out of it—and saw Charlie Johnson’s face looking back at her.

“I’m glad to see you,” she shouted. She knew it was hard to hear through the heavy door. “Can you let us out? Something is wrong with Tagger.”

“Insulin. I had some left over. You couldn’t leave it alone, could you? You had to keep putting that information on your laptop. I’d erase it and you’d do it again. I’d hoped you’d forget about it. Tory had a stake in it. You didn’t. Why didn’t you drop it?”

Stella tried the door as he spoke. It was jammed from outside. She still had the phone in the office. She could call for help. What was he thinking?

It was suddenly obvious that Charlie Johnson was Adam Presley. The good news was her plan was working. The bad news was that she wasn’t prepared for it to work so well. He wasn’t supposed to be at the firehouse. She wasn’t supposed to be alone.

She locked the door from the inside and stepped back to the desk. No help there. All the communication lines were cut. She reached for her cell phone, which would normally have been in her pocket. She didn’t have a pocket—or her cell phone—in the periwinkle gown. She’d left it in the SUV.

“Sorry, Stella.” Charlie/Adam pressed his face against the window. “This old shack should’ve been burned down years ago. I think I’ll take care of the job now.”

She smelled the gas long before the smoke started flowing under and around the old door. She ripped off some of her large petticoat and stuffed it into the cracks the best she could.

She couldn’t page her volunteers or use any other normal outlet to call for help. She thought about screaming for Eric. It seemed absurd to call a ghost to help her, yet it appeared to be her only hope.

* * * 

John poked his head inside Stella’s booth at the festival. Walt was drinking cider and helping himself to some chocolate and pepper cookies.

“Are you supposed to be eating those?” He grinned as Walt jumped.

“Oh, it’s you. I thought you were one of those festival ladies.”

“Where’s Stella?” John asked, looking around.

“There was an emergency at the firehouse. Old Tagger was at it again. He said he couldn’t reach any of the other volunteers.”

John looked at his pager. There were no messages, not even partials that might indicate a problem with communications. His heart started pounding, adrenaline kicking in. “How long?”

Walt’s face grew serious as he staggered to his feet. “You don’t think—”

“Let’s go. I’ll call for help on the way.”

* * * 

The communications room was heating up fast. Adam had started the fire right outside the door. Stella had moved Tagger to the concrete floor. He was still unresponsive. If he didn’t get help soon, she knew he could die.

Of course, if they didn’t get out of the firehouse, he’d die a lot sooner.

She’d screamed until her throat was raw. She could see the flames spreading through the old wood as she looked through the window in the door.

Where is Eric?

Or was this what happened when you believed you were talking to a ghost and it wasn’t real? All this time, she’d convinced herself that Eric existed. Now was a bad time to find out he didn’t.

The office was filled with heavy smoke. Charlie/Adam had doused the firehouse in gasoline, a much faster- and hotter-burning accelerant than the kerosene Victor had used at Tory’s. The irony was that the volunteers would have nothing to fight the fire with even if they got there in time.

As she lay on the concrete, trying to breath, Stella wondered how long it would be before the flames reached the engine and pumper.

She gave up calling for Eric. She closed her eyes and prayed as she had rarely prayed in the past. It wasn’t that she hadn’t considered that she could die in a fire—it was a hazard that went with the job.

Stella was suddenly afraid that she was going to die far from home, alone, the victim of a crazy arsonist. She was angry enough to beat on the metal door with her fists, if she could have stood up. She was having a hard time breathing, rapidly losing consciousness.

She thought it was a trick of desperation her brain was playing on her when the metal door swung open, bouncing back hard against the wall. She realized it wasn’t when she saw someone enter the office and bend over her.

“Stella? Can you walk?”

She didn’t recognize the face in the smoke, but she knew the voice. She coughed and nodded. “Get Tagger out of here. He can’t do it alone.”

Eric picked up the unconscious man and helped Stella to her feet. “The back door is open. Stay low. Move as fast as you can. The walls won’t make it much longer.”

Stella followed Eric through the kitchen. The flames were eating all the new appliances the town had purchased for the fire brigade. She focused on getting out, keeping her head down, and moving as fast as she could.

She could hardly think, but the one thought that consumed her was that Eric was
real
. He’d come to save her.

The door leading into the back parking lot was open. She could see the trees and the sunlight, the mountains, dark in the distance. The flames around them were hot, making it even harder to breathe. She was near the end of her strength. She’d felt that way before, when she’d been trapped inside a burning house a few months after she’d joined the fire department back home.

Home.

Stella started thinking about home. She could see her mother and father. She saw herself playing ball in the street when she was a kid. The heat she felt was from the summer sun high up in the sky. Her mom needed to turn on the sprinkler so she could cool down. Everything would be fine.

Eric put Tagger down on the rough asphalt. Stella had been right behind him. She’d faltered inside the doorway, the place most people died during a fire, inches away from being saved.

He ran back for her. The smoke and flames made it difficult to see, even for him.

She was leaning back against a smoldering wall. He grabbed her and put her across his shoulders, then headed back outside within the fifty-foot proximity that seemed to be allotted to him.

Vehicles were pulling up at the front of what was left of the firehouse. The volunteers had arrived. It was time for him to go.

* * * 

Stella only told Walt what had really happened at the firehouse. She didn’t think anyone else would believe that a dead hero had rescued her and Tagger from the fire. She waited impatiently to see Eric again for three days, while visitors came and went and balloons and flowers filled her room at the hospital.

Tagger was okay. He wandered up and down the hospital corridors telling people about his brush with death. He believed Stella had saved both of them—the story John had told when he’d come around the back of the firehouse and found both of them unconscious.

He’d even confessed to taking Adam Presley’s folder from her desk. “I didn’t want you to keep investigating, Chief. I thought you might get hurt. I didn’t know Adam was still alive. Please don’t fire me.”

Stella thanked him and assured him that she wouldn’t fire him. Maybe he really was a hero.

She took the praise from the mayor, the town council members, and the newspaper with a heavy heart. Eric deserved the honors and awards they’d promised her before she went back home. The only thing she could do was to relay the sentiments when she talked to him again.

The festival ladies brought her samples of all the winning foods from the festival and forgave her for leaving before the judging took place. “We’ve never had anything so exciting happen to one of our judges,” Elvita said. “Why it was all over the TV news that one of our judges solved a murder. It was wonderful publicity!”

Not enough for Eric’s candied peppers to win the festival prize, but there was a consolation green ribbon for their recipe.

The only one who didn’t compliment her was Chief Rogers. He criticized her foolhardiness, as he called it. “Here you are—a victim of your own crazy schemes, lucky to be alive. You almost killed Tagger too. I know everyone else thinks you’re a hero. I think you and I know the truth.”

Don and his officers had caught up with Adam, and he was in the county jail awaiting arraignment. He wasn’t talking about his fake death or how he’d pulled that off, but he had confessed to killing Tory. “That crazy woman didn’t know when to leave well enough alone,” he’d complained, according to Don. “Neither did the fire chief. Why couldn’t they just let me be?”

Adam said he’d come back to Sweet Pepper two years before, when he’d read an article in the
Sweet Pepper Gazette
about Tory trying to prove he hadn’t died in the fire forty years ago. He’d almost taken care of Tory right then. He’d left her alone when people seemed to ignore her story about him.

He’d stayed to help his father, who had Alzheimer’s, and couldn’t even remember him.

Adam admitted that he’d followed John and Stella to Walt’s place and knew Walt might get them started on the same path Tory had taken, trying to figure it all out. He’d meant to kill Walt, though. The fire hadn’t been meant as a warning at all.

John came by at a bad time—Marty and her grandfather were both visiting her. They’d brought an elaborate flower display that was almost too large to wheel into the room. John brought a handful of daisies he’d bought at the grocery store on the way from Sweet Pepper.

The three men stood and glared at each other before John dropped his bouquet on the bedside table and left. Marty and Ben stayed for a while, Ben talking about Stella’s future in Tennessee politics after her heroism.

Marty casually held her hand and sat on the side of her bed. When they were ready to go, he lightly kissed her cheek. There was nothing improper about it, but it made Stella uneasy.

It had taken a while to remember that night at the mansion, after her wreck on the motorcycle. Now that she did, she felt certain it was Marty and Vivian standing beside her bed, talking about her like she was a piece of meat. She still wasn’t sure what they were talking about that night, but she was beginning to think John was right about the two of them having it in for her.

She might never know why Marty had saved her that night either. Could it have been to get close to her? Is that why he’d joined the fire brigade too?

Stella was more than ready to leave the hospital. John drove her back to Sweet Pepper in the red Cherokee. She wished John would drive faster, almost wishing Ricky had picked her up. She couldn’t wait to get back to the cabin and assure herself that Eric was still there. She planned to demand that he show himself as he had at the firehouse.

Or was that a trick of the smoke and the fire? Maybe he
couldn’t
appear to her.