Chapter Forty
Glacial water splashing over her head could not have awakened Hannah with more bracing impact than did Bauer’s voice. He pressed his hand on her shoulder and was pushing it gently.
“Hannah, something terrible has happened,” he said. “A fire. Louise Wallace’s house is ablaze.”
She kicked off the bedspread and found the floor with her feet. Though it was 10 p.m., it was still gauzy daylight outside. She saw she was still in Bauer’s motel room. The television was on low, and Hannah could see that Bauer had kept some kind of vigil while she slept. He must have raided the vending machine a time or two, since peanut butter cups and Doritos wrappers curled next to his chair.
“What in the world?” she asked.
Bauer stepped back and stood in front of the green curtains. He was worried, and he could do little to hide it. “Marcella Hoffman called,” he said. “She’s already on her way out to Wallace’s place. There’s been a fire.”
“Fire?” Hannah’s mind sharpened, and she remembered how she had unburdened herself to Bauer. So in- timate had been her disclosure, Hannah felt a flush of embarrassment.
“This isn’t happening,” she said, looking for her purse. “What does Marcella have to do with it?”
Bauer shook his head. “She just hired the kid with the camera to keep a watch out there. The kid didn’t see anything. Not until he saw the smoke rising from the upper-floor door. Called the fire department, but by the time they got out there the place was half baked.”
“I’m going,” she said.
“There’s nothing out there.”
“My mother,” she said. “My mother could be there.”
“Get a coat,” he said. “Gets cold even at a fire site.”
“We can take my car.”
Bauer didn’t think so. “No, we can’t.”
“But it’s right out front,” she said.
“I’ve seen your car,” Bauer shot back. “And we’re not taking that pink thing anywhere. I’ll drive my rental. Come on.”
The Wallace house was remarkably unscathed by the fire, thanks in part to Marcella Hoffman’s insatiable need—and greed—for the ever-lucrative Claire Logan story. She promised her cameraman, Jackson, an extra $300 if he’d cover the house throughout the night. He parked across from the fishing cabins, surprised that all were boarded up for the season—a month early. He brought a sleeping bag, four liters of Coke, and a bag of barbecue chips. He was relieving himself against a 200-year-old cedar when Marge Morrison’s pickup passed by, headed for the highway. Twenty minutes later, he smelled smoke. When he walked closer to the Wallace house, he could see a thin stream of black smoke funneling from one of the turrets. A call to the fire department and one to Hoffman’s room at the Northern Lights brought immediate help and a surprising browbeating.
“I’m thinking of firing you right on the spot. If you called the fire department or the police before calling me, you don’t know the first thing about being a journalist.”
“I thought the women inside could use some help,” Doug muttered.
Smoke rubbed against the buttery yellow of the turrets, but there was no flame. Not that anyone could see. A squad of volunteer firemen with a pump truck and pickaxes arrived within ten minutes of Jackson’s call. It took only ten minutes to extinguish the fire. The staccato blue sheriff’s lights filtered through the smoky air.
By the time Bauer and Hannah arrived, the place was already considered a crime scene. Bauer parked next to sheriff’ Kim Stanton’s cruiser and surveyed the scene before he even reached for the door handle.
“This might be rough,” he said.
“I can handle it,” she said, getting out of the car.
“It started in the bedroom,” a fireman said. “Smoking in bed would be my guess.”
Hoffman and the other media types with their un-blinking eyes and cans of Coke and glowing cigarettes had gathered by the gazebo, the closest point to the scene the firemen and sheriff’s deputies would allow. If the sound could be turned off—the hissing of water against ash, the cracking of wood, and the shattering of glass—the scene would have been less ominous. A cloud of creamy white flowers had just unfurled in the garden. The air smelled of smoke and flowers. Hoffman was playing the part of queen bee, talking loudly and abrasively as always.
“Doug, get the shot!” Hoffman yelled at her beleaguered assistant. “The strobe of the fire truck lights makes good video!”
Bauer approached the sheriff, and a pair of firemen huddled halfway between the house and gazebo.
“One victim,” a fireman said. He was a handsome man with big shoulders and a mop of dark hair. He wore the kind of expression that indicated no matter how many times he’d had to do it, it hurt to say the words.
“Who?” Bauer asked.
“Woman. Elderly. Louise Wallace, I’d say. Found her in bed. Looks like there was a propane leak from the kitchen cooktop. Coroner’s taking her now.”
“Mrs. Wallace never hurt a soul,” Stanton said.
Three men carried a stretcher with a shroud-covered figure to the open jaws of an ambulance.
“Has she been identified?” Bauer asked.
“Not yet. Badly burned. Her face is in bad shape. We call her a ‘crispy critter.’ A visual identification won’t be possible.”
“Dental?” he asked.
“She apparently had china clippers, but they’re gone.”
Bauer’s expression revealed that he was unfamiliar with the term.
The young fireman was only too glad to explain something to the FBI. “China clippers. False teeth.”
Bauer nodded, and just as he did so, Hannah turned and grabbed his wrist. She put her fingers to her lips to indicate that he shouldn’t say anything. Her eyes were glistening with tears, spilling down her cheeks. He obliged. While Hoffman cackled on about how she was going to do this and that, Hannah and Bauer walked over to the car away from the ears of the media. Hannah’s crying eyes held an intensity that Bauer hadn’t seen since she was a child.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Call the airport,” she said. Her voice was low, muffled by her own sobs. “Notify the harbormaster. We can’t let Louise off this island. She’s alive. I don’t know who the woman that the coroner picked up is, though I suspect it is Mrs. Morrison.”
Hannah was possessed by what she was certain was absolutely true. Bauer didn’t get it, and his puzzlement annoyed her.
“What gives here?” he asked. “Pull yourself together. I knew you shouldn’t have come out here tonight.”
Bauer put his arms around her. He didn’t care what Hoffman or any of the other vultures thought. Hannah was in quicksand.
“The moonflowers,” Hannah sobbed into his shoulder. He held her, but she pushed away from his embrace and faced the garden. In the fading light of the day, the white of moonflowers floated above the greenery. “They were my mother’s favorite. They used to be mine, too.”
“You sure?”
“Jeff,” she said, “Louise Wallace is my mother. I know it.
“This morning you didn’t think Louise was her.”
“I didn’t know. I didn’t really want to know. But I feel certain now.”
Just then Marcella Hoffman walked up. She was wearing a Kodiak Island sweatshirt and jeans a size too small. Her hair was floppy in the summer wind. It was clear she’d been in bed when her associate alerted her that Louise Wallace’s house was spouting smoke and flames. She repeated an old nursery rhyme as she approached. Bauer’s face was stone. Hannah had turned away when she saw her coming.
“Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home. Your house is on fire and your children…” Hoffman stopped herself when it was apparent that neither the FBI agent nor the CSI from California thought much of her cleverness. “Hope I’m not
