Chapter 26

There was a quarter moon, which didn’t provide much light, and as the wind picked up, it caused clouds to scud across the narrow crescent, making what light there was intermittent. The driveway up to the barn was not well maintained, with deep ruts and loose rocks that were giving me trouble in my leather-soled shoes. I stopped for a moment to catch my breath and heard the sound of shoes scraping along behind me.

Turning quickly, I was not happy to see Cindy and Trish hobbling in my wake, arms around each other’s waist, making a rough go of it in their high heels.

“Go back,” I called softly. “You’re going to break your necks, and you’re making a racket.”

“You’re not going up there by yourself!” Cindy hissed. “Did you see how much Reed was drinking?”

“Yes. I’ll be okay if I don’t break a leg getting there. Stay back, dammit.” I turned and tried to go faster. Reed was almost at the barn.

I was not far behind him when he reached the door. I slowed and tried moving only when the moon was covered. Still, I wondered why he didn’t hear me. In one fairly lengthy bright period, I realized he was bent in concentration over the door, apparently having trouble with the key. I was now only a few feet behind him, and even Cindy and Trish were making progress.

Just what we needed: the four of us standing around trying to look as if we always took a moonlight stroll up the Matterhorn, while Zoe awoke, dizzy from her Snow White sleep, and fell naked out the window.

Ah, now he had it open. Why didn’t he turn on the interior lights? The switch was right inside the door. If I knew it from Dana, surely the guys had told him. I couldn’t really see, but sensed he had gone through the dark door and was inside. I got to the door and felt for the switch, moving it up and down with no results. Probably as some last-minute attempt to make Reed’s life more difficult, they had thrown the master switch, and God knows where that was. I took a step forward and stumbled over a bale of hay.

I wondered how the hell old it was, and then remembered Betsy had told me they had stabled two horses for the summer. A couple they knew just couldn’t bear to leave their pets at home in New Jersey, pining for them. What was it Fitzgerald said? That the rich were different? Indeed they were.

Reed’s feet clattered off to the left, telling me he had found the stairs leading to the apartment on the second floor. Hopefully now I could turn on the mini flashlight I carried on my key ring. It was strong for its size, and I immediately picked out the foot of the staircase.

As silently as possible, I ascended the stairs and crept through the guys’ living room and the tiny hall toward the kitchen. I noticed a flickering light ahead of me. My God, instead of bringing a flashlight, Reed was using some kind of large cigarette lighter that he had for his pipe! An open flame in a barn full of straw and hay. Swell. I’d discourage that as soon as I caught up with him.

Betsy and Jan had told me that the barn apartment had a living room, bedroom, bath and kitchen. They had planned to add another bedroom and bath on the other side of the kitchen, but hadn’t yet done so. Consequently, the end wall of the kitchen, really wasn’t a wall at all, but several vertical two-by-fours with a sheet of canvas nailed over them and a thin plywood door opening onto the rest of the loft. It was here that Zoe was domiciled when the Tweedles weren’t home, in case someone should come into their apartment.

Reed stopped in the kitchen, and I pulled up short in the small hallway that led into it. He removed his tux jacket, and I was not pleased to see the hilt of a pistol jammed into his trousers. I had some thin hope that it might go off and catch him in the . . . well, let’s be generous and say foot. Next, he removed his tie and undid several shirt buttons. I was getting uneasy with all this making himself at home. He turned to the refrigerator, scrabbled around in it and actually came up with a can of beer.

As he walked toward the makeshift door, he popped the can and took a long swig from it before he crossed to where Zoe lay on what looked like piled-up straw covered by a clean blanket and pillow. She wore only a T-shirt and panties and had pulled a corner of the blanket up over her legs.

He knelt over her, patting her cheeks none too gently, saying, “Come on, Zoe, wake up! This damn game of yours is over. The cops have got your boyfriends, and if I have my way, they’ll get Harry and Dana, too. God knows her father caused me enough trouble for a lifetime. Wake up! I’m sick of your tricks. You’re just like your mother.” He slapped her harder.

Zoe moved restlessly and murmured something unintelligible.

Obviously, it was time for me to make an entrance. I summoned up all the insouciance I could muster and leaned casually in the doorway.

“Hi, there, Reed. Looks like our girl is coming around. I can take it from here if you want to go down to the gallery and spread the good news.”

He was like a baseball player who couldn’t check his bat in mid-swing. He backhanded Zoe cruelly across her breast and certainly aided her in regaining consciousness.

She slurred, “Ouch! Quit it, Daddy. That hurt. What are you doing here?”

He started to hit her again, and she knocked his arm away. Unfortunately, in her still-groggy state she knocked the hand that held the lighter. It dropped to the straw-strewn floor and started a small blaze. Both Reed and I tried to step on it and succeeded only in jostling each other.

I dived for the lighter and got it and flipped the cap closed. I did my version of Cindy’s tarantella on the little flames, but for every one I stamped out, another grew stronger. I could have used some help, but Zoe had dozed off again, and Reed had sprinted for the kitchen. At first I thought he had run for a fire extinguisher I had noticed beside the stove, but when he did not return, I finally realized he had simply scarpered.

Truth to tell, I doubt if the extinguisher would have done much good anyway. Between the straw all over the place, the old dry timbers of the barn and the draft that seemed to be turning into a gale, I realized that the only thing left was to try to get Zoe and me the hell out. Soon.

And she looked like about a hundred and ten pounds of dead weight. I hoped I could handle it. I sat her up and poured the last half of Reed’s cold beer over her head and did a little cheek slapping of my own.

“Come on, get your arms around my neck and hang on unless you want to fry. This place is going up like a volcano. We gotta get out now!”

She tried. We both tried. We fell back onto her makeshift bed a couple of times, and finally found our balance at the same time. I started for the kitchen and the stairs, with some vague idea of getting the extinguisher and using it to cut us a path through the flames to the stairs. Just as we reached the door, the canvas wall went up with a frightening roar and unbearable heat.

We fell back, and I left Zoe sitting for a moment while I ran to the window and looked out. The ground, some fifteen feet below us, was rough and scattered with sizeable rocks. To jump would almost certainly mean permanent injury for one or both of us. Suddenly Trish was beneath the window, waving her arms and shouting something I couldn’t hear over the truly terrifying roar of flames. I knew I’d only increase the draft if I broke the window, but I couldn’t think of any other options. I kicked out the window.

“The other end of the loft!” Trish screamed. “A ladder. No flames yet. Hurry!”

I waved and got Zoe vertical again. We started for the east end of the barn, Zoe hanging on doggedly as I half dragged her behind me. It seemed to me we moved in some slow, drunken lockstep, and it was getting hard to see and harder still to breathe. We went on, although my legs were definitely wobbling. What the hell, I thought. We had nothing better to do.

Cool drops on my face and chest pulled me from my dreamy state. A thin stream of water like that from a garden hose was spouting up through a hole in the floor, with the top rung of a ladder sticking out. I had not seen the hole for the smoke, and we would have fallen through it in another two steps.

Cindy stood below us with the hose. Trish scrambled nearby, pushing bales of hay together around the bottom of the ladder. Suddenly there was a long, agonizing crack and then the crash of a rafter and section of the roof gave way in the west end of the barn. It cleared the smoke for a minute, though the roar—if it could—grew louder.

Cindy’s dirty wonderful face appeared near the ladder top. “Get Zoe over the edge, and I’ll put her feet on the ladder.” She sank out of sight as I struggled to obey. “Okay,” she said shortly, “We’ve got her. Let her go and come on. Don’t linger!”

I swung my shaking legs over the edge and onto the shaky old ladder. When my weight hit the second rung, it went flying, followed by the third, followed by my falling the rest of the way.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that baled hay is soft. It has all the give of an empty swimming pool. I knocked the breath out of myself, and even when I finally started to breathe again, it was simply too much trouble to move. I would just rest for a day or two and then move. Surely, no one would mind.

Someone did. I felt an icy stream of water move up and down my body, and I moved with an alacrity I thought was a lost art. “What the hell are you doing? That water is ice cold. I’ll have pneumonia.”

“Your clothes were smoldering,” Cindy said casually. “Now will you get the hell out of here before it all comes down? Can you walk?”

I walked, Cindy behind me with her trusty stream pointed back at the disintegrating barn. We propped on the rim of a nearby water trough and smiled at each other.

“Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?” I asked.

“Terrible. The ingénue was at least fifty, and the champagne at the interval was flat. Are you hurt anywhere? You look awful.”

“Have you looked in a mirror lately? I don’t think I’m hurt. Did Reed get out?”

“Not that we have seen. Wasn’t he with you?”

“Yes, he went into Zoe’s room to wake her up. That’s another story, but briefly, he was using a lighter for a flashlight and dropped it. When he saw the fire start to build, he ran. I don’t know where. I thought he went to get a fire extinguisher, but he never came back.”

At that point the fire engine arrived, groaning, lurching and spattering rocks behind it. They had had to lay hose for a long distance to a hydrant. Right behind it was the ambulance. Had they really been sitting behind the gallery all this time, waiting for a dim electric light to go on in the barn? Hanging tightly to the running board of the ambulance was my brother, looking worried. Hopping off, he looked around anxiously, found Cindy and me, then Trish and Zoe, and let out a breath audible even over the sound of the fire.

“Everybody okay here?”

“I’m fine,” Cindy said. “Your heroic sister has a small burn on the back of her hand and one around where her pants cuff burned. But not serious, I think. Trish is fine. Zoe is stoned, but seems otherwise okay. Reed is missing. Bastard is probably down at the gallery slugging down champagne and telling everyone how he walked through fire to try to save his beloved child.”

“Wherever he is, watch out,” I said. “He’s got a big automatic stuck in the waistband of his pants, and he’s had a good half pint of Scotch to drink.”

I stopped to cough. My throat felt raw when I talked. “He was working up to beating the hell out of Zoe. He is not in a happy mood. If he ever has been.”

“Excuse me, folks.” It was the fire chief, who had been standing quietly behind Sonny. “Sonny, who was the young lady you wanted taken to the clinic? And does anyone else need to go?”

“She goes.” Sonny pointed at Zoe. “Please have the driver ask whoever’s in charge to hold her overnight. She’s drugged. We don’t know with what or how much. And she goes.” He pointed at me.

I started to protest and coughed instead.

The chief smiled. “You’d better come along, miss. You probably need some oxygen. We’ve got some in the ambulance to start you on. They’ll probably release you later tonight.”

He took my arm and then turned back to Sonny. “Is everybody out?”

This time, I managed to speak. “We don’t know where Reed Catlett is. The last I saw he was running through the apartment toward the stairs. And he’s armed and nasty.”

The chief’s mouth tightened. “No way can I send men in there now, anyway. There’s nothing holding the structure up but stubbornness. It will go anytime now. Maybe Catlett got out a window and just wandered off. He could easily be injured and disoriented.”

At that point Reed solved the mystery for us. The firemen seemed to aim their hoses at one point in the roof and the flames momentarily grew small and harmless looking. And Reed cannonballed through a window, landing on a wet, grassy area, and rolling to his knees.

As he knelt there, probably getting his breath back, a section of the old tin roof slid to the ground with a crash and gave us a sad view of the remains of the apartment. I thought how easily Zoe and I could have been trapped there and began to shake in earnest. An EMT appeared, to put a blanket around my shoulders and handed me an oxygen cone.

I saw Reed get to his feet and turn toward the ambulance and our little group around the water trough. Above the noise of the fire, lessening some now, there came a light pop as if someone had pricked a balloon with a pin. And then another pop!

Almost simultaneously, I heard the old trough make a metallic noise, and a spate of dirty water shot out a small hole in the side. As I stared, there came a loud ping from the back bumper of the ambulance.

“Get down,” I yelled. “Reed’s got a gun. He’s firing!”

We all hit the ground except Sonny, who was peering cautiously around the corner of the leaking trough. The area was well lit now, between floodlights and flames, with the exception of little smoke puffs that skittered along the ground before joining their larger companions drifting skyward.

“He’s not shooting,” Sonny called. “I can see him perfectly well and both hands are empty. He’s just standing there. Who’s still inside? Who else had a weapon?”

Another pop sent Sonny diving behind our leaky shelter.” Oh, God,” he cried. “I know what it is. I’ll bet Reed dropped his automatic somewhere and the ammo is cooking off in the heat. Stay down. The damn bullets could go anywhere.”

Two more pops had issued forth as Sonny spoke. “Alex, you saw the gun. How many cartridges would it be if he had one in the chamber and a full clip?”

“Who do you think I am, the local gun dealer? I barely got a glimpse of the thing. It was big. Period. Maybe twelve, even fourteen cartridges. I don’t know. Three more pops, that’s seven. Sonny, Reed is lying on the ground.”

“Probably finally woke up to what’s happening and got to the ground. Another one, that’s eight.”

Then we all cringed at the sound of a small explosion. “That’s it,” Sonny sighed. “Thank God, the rest of them got hot enough to blow all at once. I don’t think there will be anymore.”

The chief got to his feet, his boots sucking in the now muddy area we inhabited.

“Okay, folks, party’s over. Everyone okay?”

Apparently everyone was. Now that the barn was just a low-burning mess, with only the bereft looking chimney to hold a hundred years of history. The chief was busy sending some of his minions down the hill to help the beleaguered cops make sure the crowd stayed safely down by the gallery. The EMTs were getting the ambulance turned around, preparatory to boarding one sleepy and one reluctant passenger.

I was making sure Cindy would come as soon as she could to the clinic and bail me out, when I noticed something odd.

“Sonny,” I called and pointed. “Reed isn’t getting up.”