The Crimson Brand (28 page)

“We’re meeting the investigators this morning,” Susan continued, then paused.

Penny descended to the second floor and followed Susan’s voice to her room.

Susan saw her at the door and motioned her in, patting the edge of the unmade bed.  She looked tired and was still dressed in her clothes from the night before.  Penny wondered if she’d had any sleep at all.

“No, he hasn’t confessed.”  Susan nudged Penny, mimicked drinking from an imaginary cup and raised her eyebrows. 

Penny nodded and ran downstairs.  She returned ten minutes later with two mugs to find Susan still talking.

“Morgan Duke still hasn’t turned up but Sheriff Price is questioning Ernest.”  Susan barked a short, cynical laugh.  “I don’t know if Ernest had anything to do with it but he was in business with them.  The sheriff says that kid went out of his way to make it look like arson ….”

The voice on the other end interrupted her, and she took advantage of the break to drain half her cup in two long, wincing swallows.

“A deal between them went bad. The sheriff is claiming Duke tried to set Ernest up by having his kid fake an insurance fire.”

More animated talk on the other end of Susan’s phone.  Penny wondered who it could be.

“No, it wasn’t common knowledge until the sheriff let it slip, but everyone knows now.”  Susan’s brow furrowed, and Penny thought Morgan Duke was very lucky Susan couldn’t get to him at the moment.  “If he hadn’t, I bet he’d be keeping it quiet now.  The Prices are taking a hit on this one whether Ernest goes down or not, and there’s an election coming up. 
Sheriff
Price could end up being plain old Avery Price again.”

Interested as she was to know what had happened since the catastrophe, Penny grew bored with her role as eavesdropper.  She decided to shower while Susan was occupied.  She’d get the full story afterward.

Gathering clean clothes, she noticed the little mirror and decided to give Zoe another try.  Zoe didn’t answer, so she tried Katie, then Ronan.  After half a minute of nothing, Penny gave up in frustration and descended to the second floor to clean up.

A half-hour later, showered and refreshed, feeling almost human again, Penny joined Susan in the kitchen.

“Hey, kiddo,” Susan greeted her, sounding more cheerful than Penny had expected.  She was finishing a bowl of cereal and working on what must have been her second or third cup of coffee.  “I’m headed to town.  Wanna go with me?”

Penny did.

Susan allowed her ten minutes to eat a rushed breakfast and chug a second cup of coffee, then they were on their way, her bike once again riding on the back bumper.

“Who were you on the phone with?”  Penny was less interested in who Susan was talking to than the information they’d shared, but couldn’t think of a way to ask outright without feeling nosey.

“June,” Susan said, and as always when speaking about her older sister, any vestige of gentleness left her face and voice.  “She just found out about it this morning and called too see how I was doing.”

For a moment a new question overrode Penny’s desire for information about the Dukes and the Prices. 

“Susan, how can you be so …,” Penny struggled to articulate what Susan was being.  “
Calm
?  How can you not be freaking out right now?”

A quick smile touched Susan’s lips, then vanished.  “Would you like me to
freak out
a bit?”

“No,” Penny said, knowing Susan was dodging the question.  “I’m glad you’re not freaking out, but it was your business.” 

Susan sighed.  “It still is, Penny.”

Susan maintained her calm for the rest of the car ride and said no more about it.

*   *   *

The stretch of Main Street from the school parking lot to Grumpy’s was cordoned off and closed, traffic through town being detoured through the residential district, but the devastated block was still the center of frenzied activity.  Susan parked the Falcon between a white car with a Washington State emblem on the door and the words
Fire Marshal
below it in bright red, and the sheriff’s car; Sheriff Price was sitting inside, red-faced and shouting into a cell phone.  The firemen who had been on duty the night before stood on the center line with a gray-haired man in a gray suit and Michael West, still in his muddied, torn uniform and newly elevated from football hero to supercop. 

Standing slightly away from them, Penny saw the old proprietor of Golden Arts, Zoe’s favorite shop; a plump, matronly looking woman who owned the bakery; and a scattering of others.

“Going to Zoe’s?”  Susan climbed from her open door, leaning on it heavily for a moment before straightening up.  Her strength seemed to be deserting her in the face of the destruction.  “I don’t think you’ll be allowed near that building.  In fact I won’t allow it.”

“Yeah,” Penny said.  She closed the door and hurried to Susan’s side of the car, knowing she wouldn’t be able to catch Susan if she fainted but determined to try.

Susan was pale and shaking, seemed to be moving forward through pure force of will.  She shut her own door, perhaps a little harder than was necessary, and strode forward without another second’s pause toward the barricade.

Penny watched her for a few steps, then lifted her bike from its rack and pushed it into the park.

The park was not the buzzing center of activity it had been the night before, but it was much fuller than usual.  Penny scanned the faces present for familiar ones but found neither Katie’s nor Zoe’s among them. 

Though she was in a hurry to see Zoe, she walked slowly through the park, taking in the full devastation.  She couldn’t help herself.  The light of day revealed far more than she had seen by the glare of electric lights and the dancing orange glow of the flames.

Everything from the bakery to the accountant’s office was gone, and Sullivan’s was a blackened shell.  Golden Arts seemed mostly intact, but with the building itself so badly ravaged Penny doubted that anyone would be buying a new watch or engagement ring there anytime soon.

Penny hated to think how far the fire might have gone if Michael hadn’t turned the water back on.

She had to go far out of the way, around Grumpy’s and up another block to skirt the closed-off street, but once she was off the grass and cruising along on the blacktop she made good time.

Penny was still a block away when she heard the first warbling notes of an approaching siren.  She looked back over her shoulder but the street behind her was empty.  She steered onto the sidewalk and continued.

The siren’s volume grew, and curious neighbors stepped out onto their porches to see what new trouble was brewing.  She peddled past them, looking up and down the street for the source of the noise, and as she turned the corner to Zoe’s house, a new, more alarming sound joined the approaching siren.

Crying.

Penny saw Zoe sitting on the porch in the same clothes she’d worn the night before, bent almost double, her face in her hands.  She wept into her hands, oblivious to the swelling wail of sirens and the stares of the growing crowd lining her street.

Dread filled Penny’s gut.  She peddled as fast as she could toward her friend.  She didn’t think to look as she crossed the street to Zoe’s house, didn’t see the ambulance, still a half-block away but moving fast, or the sheriff’s cruiser, coming from the other direction, that had to slow to avoid hitting her.  Forgetting caution in her haste, she flew her bike a few inches above the curb in front of Zoe’s house and leapt from it.  Unguided, it continued for a few more feet before hitting the ground and crashing onto its side. 

“Zoe!”  Penny shouted in alarm and ran to her friend, but Zoe didn’t look up, only shook her head wildly from side to side.  Her weeping had subsided to frame-racking sobs.

Penny heard a brief squeal of tires behind her, and a second later a car door slammed.  A new, familiar voice shouted Zoe’s name.

A second later Penny had fallen to her knees before Zoe.  She took her friend by the shoulders and called her name again, gently this time.

“Zoe … what happened?”

And now Zoe did look up, and the pain and fatigue in her face started Penny’s tears.  Zoe’s eyes were puffy from weeping, bloodshot and bleary from exhaustion.  For a moment she didn’t seem to recognize Penny, only stared into her face with pitiable confusion.

“Zoe, is it your grandmother?”  Penny recognized the voice behind her now.  It was Michael, Zoe’s crush.  His right hand fell onto Penny’s shoulder, his left onto Zoe’s. 

Zoe’s eyes rolled from Penny to Michael, and for once there was no shyness or embarrassment in them. 

“She’s dead,” Zoe said, sounding as if she didn’t quite believe it herself.  “I tried to save her but I didn’t know what to do ….”

Her eyes rolled back to Penny, and the pitiable confusion was gone, replaced with an even more pitiable expression.  Comprehension. 

Michael stepped away and she began to cry again.

The ambulance rolled to a stop, the siren cutting out midwarble but the lights still flashing panic-red. 

Michael led two paramedics past them and inside while Penny sat with Zoe and held her. 

After a while exhaustion took the sharpest edge off Zoe’s grief and she simply sat, leaning against Penny, leaking silent tears into her hands.

“Penny.”  It was Michael again, speaking softly.  “I need you to move.”

Penny, who had been staring into the distance, ignoring the curious onlookers drifting up and down the block, looked up at him.  She was about to ask why, then she understood.  The paramedics were still inside, waiting to bring Zoe’s grandma out.

She nodded, and he favored her with a pained little smile before stepping past them to the front yard.  She saw that he still had dried blood on his temple.

“Come on, let’s go.” Penny was too small to make Zoe stand. All she could do was apply gentle pressure and hope Zoe would follow her lead.

“Where?”  Zoe dropped her hands and turned to regard Penny.

But she rose and leaned on Penny as they walked away from the steps.  She was unsteady, and Penny knew if she fell, both of them would hit the ground.  Penny didn’t think she’d slept at all that night.  She wondered briefly if Zoe had been up all night long trying to save her grandma, trying to make her breathe again, or crying over her body, and made herself not think about it.

“I don’t know,” she admitted.  “Maybe Susan ….”

But she didn’t have time to finish before Susan herself arrived, running through the gathering crowd toward them and scattering the people in her path. 

Katie was chasing in her wake, her face a mask of shock.

That must be how I look
, Penny thought.

Then Susan and Katie were there, and Zoe found herself in the center of a group embrace. 

“I’m so sorry, honey,” Susan said.  “I’m so sorry for this.”

Katie seemed as lost for words as Penny was.  She just held Zoe, and when Susan stepped away, Katie moved to Zoe’s other side to help support her.

Over Zoe’s slumped shoulders, Penny saw the first paramedic backing out through the front door gripping one end of a gurney and guiding it down the narrow steps.  She looked away, grateful that Zoe couldn’t see it.

Where’s Susan
? 

They needed to get Zoe away from here.  Preferably to some place with a bed.

She searched the yard and found Susan standing next to Michael, dragging him away from the crowd of busybodies milling around the sidewalks.

“Do you know what happened?”  Susan spoke in a low voice, still guiding him away from the onlookers.  Penny could just hear their conversation over the low hum of gossip.

“I’ll need to talk to Zoe, but it looks like a heart attack,” Michael said.

“Can’t that wait?”  She sounded angry now.  “I think she’s been through enough this morning.”

“Yes,” Michael said.  “You’re right. She needs to rest, and I need to talk to social services.”

Penny grew cold at those words.  She remembered her time as a ward of the State of California, the group home.  She felt like grabbing Zoe’s hand and running.

“Social services?”  Susan’s voice was weak.

“She has no family here,” Michael spoke more softly still, but Penny could still hear him, and if she could ….

She turned to Zoe and found her staring at the ground, the exhaustion and grief on her face now fighting with a blooming fear.

Katie still looked shell-shocked.  She held Zoe’s hand and patted her shoulder but seemed a million miles away.

“She’s staying with me,” Susan said, and her voice invited no argument.  “With Penny and me.”

A moment of silence followed this. 

Katie seemed to snap out of her daze.  She turned her head to watch her brother and Susan. 

Penny saw Zoe’s fear slip away.  She fixed Penny with her dark eyes again.

“She was …,” Zoe couldn’t bring herself to say the word.  “She was in pain last night so I stayed with her, but she wouldn’t let me call an ambulance.  She said she could wait until morning and drive herself.  When I got up this morning to check on her she ….  I tried to save her, but it was too late.”

“It’s not your fault,” Katie said.

Zoe looked down at her feet again, then her eyes closed.

“I’m not letting her go to some damn orphanage or group home,” Susan said, her voice at the edge of a shout.  “I won’t allow it.”

Penny turned again and found Susan looking not at Michael but at her.  Her eyes were wide, almost insane, her cheeks flushed.  When she caught Penny’s glance, her face softened.

“Oh, no,” Katie gasped.

Standing across the street, staring at the three of them in their huddle, was her father.  He watched them, his face pale and neutral, and for a moment Penny thought he was looking directly into her eyes.

Don’t you dare
! 
Not now
!

He didn’t.  His eyes shifted from Penny to Katie, and a moment later he was striding through the crowd toward Susan and Michael.

On the other side of Zoe, Katie relaxed visibly. 

“I’m so tired,” Zoe murmured between them.