Chapter Four

Get Out of My House

In Chapter Four, we return our focus to Maggie’s mother Jan who’s about to get a very unwelcome visit from an unexpected person from her past. And we meet John Tamblyn, who works for the Toronto Police Services but only when all else fails…

✪

Jan Stuart was caught in traffic, just short of five o’clock, on Eglinton nearing the 401. She tapped the steering wheel with three short-bitten nails, absent in irritation.

On the passenger seat sat a small white cardboard box, tied with string. Butter tarts, from Maggie’s favourite British bake shop near Jan’s office on Bathurst. It would be a gesture, to help make peace.

She knew she hadn’t been spending nearly enough time with her daughter for a very long time—the thrill of a new and long-overdue romance had not so much diverted her from attention to Maggie, but made her realize how little she had given her.

The news came on the radio, and Jan, wanting to shut the world out, hit the presets until she came up with a station still playing music.

They would order out for Chinese, she decided. It would be a treat. Butter tarts for dessert, with their almond cookies. Throw moderation to the wind.

The traffic edged forward, and Jan, slow to respond, was rewarded with a honk from the car behind her. She felt like a very bad mother. It was a feeling which had come and gone through most of Maggie’s existence, but seemed particularly acute today. So much guilt.

Why couldn’t she have provided some stability, some continuity for Maggie? Friends, boyfriends, had come and gone. She was still searching herself, no idea at all what she really wanted out of life. Her job was interesting, she supposed, but she had done nothing at all to infuse Maggie with a sense of adventure or possibility.

And so her daughter spent her young life alone, nose in a book, dreaming of—dreaming of Jan couldn’t guess what.

But how could Maggie ever be expected to form close friendships, when Jan kept herself so aloof? You, she told herself, tilting the mirror down to smooth a straight length of blond hair and the wrinkles growing around the deep-set eyes, you are thirty-eight years old, and you’ve hardly lived. When were you going to start?

Maybe she and Maggie could do it together, but only if Jan could begin to build a bridge between them.

She felt better, having a goal. Of course she had to be prepared for Maggie to want to go her own way in the coming years. She was a teenager now. But maybe things would be easier for her if she knew that her mother could also be a friend.

The car behind her honked again, and Jan put the car in gear. “Maggie,” she told the traffic ahead, “I love you, sweetie.” It was just fancy, of course, but she imagined she could hear Maggie’s voice calling back to her.

✪

“Maggie!” called Janice. “Marguerite! I’ve got a treat for you. Come down, sweetie.”

Jan pulled the key out of the lock and pocketed it. She flipped on the front hall light and listened carefully for any sounds of life.

After half a minute, she dropped her smile and strode business-like to the kitchen. She set the butter tart box on the counter by the sink.

It was a relief, really, when Maggie wasn’t home. It could only mean she was out with a friend or two, doing something adolescent. The upstairs light she had seen driving up must have been left on that morning. Any time now, Jan would be getting a call, Maggie asking what time to be home, if there was anything planned for dinner.

Unless. Unless Maggie had come home angry, or upset, and was hiding in her room. Unless half a million things.

Jan went to the stairs, her own unease making her trot. An enormous woman, more a building than a human being, blocked her way.

Another, smaller but no less threatening, stepped out from the shadows of the living room and blocked her retreat.

A lamp was switched on, and by its light she saw the swarthy face of the man she had thought she was in love with thirteen years before in Paris, and then in Greece. Before he ran away, and took everything that mattered with him.

“Hello, Jan,” said Nick Marino.

✪

Not more than fifteen minutes later, Jan Stuart and Nick Marino sat in chairs, tied back to back in the upstairs walk-in closet.

Jan’s jaw was set. After the initial shock, the usual anger that rose whenever she though of her long-departed ex surged back, and she was determined not to be the one to speak first.

If she did at all. What was there to say that hadn’t been said through lawyers and Interpol officers, that hadn’t been yelled over telephones and through crowded airports?

It was Nick eventually who broke the silence. “Maybe if we’d tried some of this kinky stuff before, we’d still be married.”

For some reason, although she’d already decided to make him suffer either by silence or rage, her response matched his in tone. “Eh, you,” she said, “you shutta you face.” Her overdone mimicry of his slight accent used to make him laugh.

Now, the words out of her mouth, Jan regretted her familiarity. It felt like weakness.

“Does this mean we’re talking again?”

Then, old anger surged back. “Not until I get my lousy child support, you deadbeat.”

“Hey,” said Nick. “I’ve been having a bad year. Years. Whatever.”

Jan lowered her head, the cords in her neck resisting. “Oh, God. Oh, God.”

She felt Nick shift in the chair behind her.

“I don’t think they’re going to kill us,” he said, slow enough for Jan to doubt the statement immediately.

Practical Jan kicked in with a short, sharp shock, as she was fond of saying at the office.

“Why don’t you give me a run-down, a precis, so I can feel as confident?”

Nick was silent for a long moment. Then, so quietly Jan wasn’t convinced she heard him right, he said, “God, I’m so sorry.”

She laughed, briefly and very strained. It was a struggle to form his name, which she hadn’t allowed herself to say in years.

“Nick, what’s going on here?”

And then, because the moment seemed to demand a little bit of truth, “I am scared. I am scared out of my wits.”

“Me too, Jan,” he said, her name sealing the truce between them. “Me too.”

She laughed again, nervously but easier. “Why on Earth did I ever hook up with you?”

“Same reason I hooked up with you, I guess.”

“Which is?”

“We’re both a little crazy.”

She didn’t reply.

“How else would we have ended up in a closet like this?” he said.

Jan’s emotions suddenly rebelled. “You tell me.” She nearly spat the words.

Then she felt the fingers of his right hand brush her left.

She reached back as far as she could and was just able to take his. They sat for a moment in silence, the skin of his hand warm and leathery against the callouses on her palm.

“What the hell,” said Janice. “Let’s go for broke.”

She reached her right hand back and took his left.

“Jan—” he said, but nothing else came.

“God, I’m scared,” she said at last. The almost painful extension of her arms was suddenly necessary, absolutely necessary, to stop her from cracking. His worn hands, remembered even after all this time, remembered even with fondness, were no small part of this.

The truth was, he was the biggest unhealed wound of her life, the guy she’d never really stopped loving, no matter how awful and ridiculous things had become.

Her parents had been cautious, cool when they’d met him—hours before the wedding on a beach in Greece. They had returned for Maggie’s birth a year later, when things were starting to fall apart, although Jan had made sure they hadn’t noticed anything was wrong. And then …

Harrison, thought Jan. First guy I meet that I think I might have a chance with in nearly three years, and now you wander back into my life.

But she held onto Nick’s hands with a strength born out of more than fear.

After a minute or two, Nick sighed and said, “Sorry, you know this is nice and all, but it kind of hurts.”

Janice agreed and they dropped one of the hands.

With the other, there was no extra pressure, no quick squeeze of affection or recognition. She felt like she was receiving comfort from a stranger, someone who was terrified that his intentions would be misconstrued.

It was so unlike him, to be cautious in matters of physical contact—But, she caught herself. She hadn’t seen the man for years. He could have changed. He could be more responsible, more considerate. Anything was possible.

There was a dangerous respect growing in her every moment he chose not to squeeze her hand.

They were tied with some kind of nylon cord around the waist, chest, and ankles. Their arms were tied at the elbows, giving them some freedom of movement, but not enough to entertain even the hope of reaching the knots, which were behind Jan’s right shoulder, much less untying them.

The door of the closet opened and their captors entered. Janice had to crane her neck uncomfortably to get a proper look at the new arrivals.

The girl inside the room looked to be in her late teens. She had dark hair and fine features, and a slim athletic frame over which she wore utterly outlandish clothes. Jan took in the velvet and elaborate, ridiculous hairstyle, and felt even more out of her mind.

The second woman, the one who had tied her up and then added Nick to the deal, to his evident surprise, was dressed more functionally but no less strangely in a dark green uniform which seemed barely able to contain her enormous bulk.

The young woman glanced down at Jan and Nick’s joined hands. “That’s very nice,” she said. Her tone was pleasant, but mocking. “I see you’ve settled your little differences.”

Jan dropped Nick’s hand. “Where’s my daughter?” she hissed.

“Perfectly safe,” she said. She sighed theatrically. “What a shame. I was hoping for some more small talk before getting to the meat of the matter. Ms. Stuart, your daughter is in good hands. Or at least, in closely enfolding hands, if you understand me. We have her, and your usefulness has unfortunately come to an end. We thought, Nick, we might need you for leverage with Marguerite; unfortunately for you, things are going very nicely.”

“Where is she?” Jan spat.

“Aren’t you the least bit worried about what’s going to happen to you?” said the young woman.

“Get out of my house,” Jan whispered.

“Jan,” said Nick, a warning in his tone.

“Nicky, I can take care of myself,” Jan shot back, which instantly started them both bickering.

The young woman had been listening intently, head cocked, as if she was getting a good deal of enjoyment out of their argument. The two fell silent.

“Excellent,” said the young woman in a condescending tone, bringing her hands together. “Fight it out. Now is a very good time to confront your demons, perhaps even make amends.”

She placed her hand on the door knob. “Don’t worry; you won’t be uncomfortable for too much longer.”

Then, turning to address her companion, the mocking lightness dropped completely out of her voice. “Check their bindings.” She left the room without another look at her prisoners.

The other woman pulled at the ropes around them, while Jan shut her eyes so she wouldn’t be a willing witness to this part of the indignity. Soon, she nodded her approval to the girl who waited just outside the door, and they left, closing Jan and Nick in.

He sighed. “You know,” he said, “they’ve been holding me prisoner for a week, and I didn’t see it. They came to my flat in Paris and convinced me I wanted custody of Maggie.”

The words barely registered. “Shh,” said Jan.

“Huh?”

“Listen–” she whispered. There was a dull whoomph sound.

Jan closed her eyes in horror. “That’s what they meant. That’s what they’re doing. They’re setting my house on fire.”

Nick listened. It was unmistakable, a faint crackle. He tried to place the sound in terms of the house’s geography. “Can you tell where it is, from the sound?” he asked.

“Don’t be stupid,” she replied, her voice colourless and strained.

“Why didn’t they light it in here? Why didn’t they set fires all around the house?”

“They probably want to make it look like an accident,” she said. “So it doesn’t look like arson.”

“It is arson,” said Nick.

“Well, whatever. I hope I’ll be around to collect the insurance if it comes out looking like an accident. I could do with the money.”

It was a slam, directed at him. No matter what she’s said about child support, that was never part of their arrangement. When Nick was gone from her life, that’s where Jan had wanted him to stay. And now this.

Jan’s anger was back, worse because the situation was even more hopeless now. It was impotent fury.

“So, Nicky old friend, what’s the plan?”

Silence.

From Janice, as the crackling took on definition, “I thought you always had the answers to everything.”

She started crying, quietly, the tears running down her throat and into the neck of her blouse.

Because there was nothing he could think of to say, Nick stayed mute.

✪

There was no moon that evening. Puddles glinted yellow-silver in the reflected light of the street lamps, but the sky was overcast and dark. There was a fine haze descending slowly over the corner of Dunsinene Avenue. All was solemn and funereal.

Farther into the subdivision, the silence around the elementary school was broken by the thin echoes of voices and the crackle of two-way radios. Six blue and white police cars were parked around the driveway near the front doors, trailing crimson ghosts across each of the surrounding houses in turn with their circling red lights.

An elderly maroon Ford pulled into the parking lot. Its sole occupant, tallish and thin, was in his late thirties. He wore a battered fedora and beige trench coat, looking for all the world like a police detective from a 70s television series.

Police Constable Carla Szaba met him at the door, with the shortness of temper he had come to enjoy as his right.

“You took your sweet time getting here,” she told him, leading him into the building without waiting for a greeting. “Morritz is thrilled already to have to call you in.”

The detective frowned grimly. “Want to cut the act and tell me what going on?”

Szaba’s lip curled. She pushed a dark lock of hair behind her ear and refused to look at him. “It started with P.C. Kerr going missing around four this afternoon, which you already know. At least, I assume you do, since it was all over the police band. Now we’ve got at least four missing kids, all from this school, and Kerr, as you also probably know, is in the morgue with his throat cut.”

She stopped, and the detective glanced to the double doors ahead. “The auditorium?”

She nodded. “They call it a ‘gymnatorium,’ actually,” she corrected coolly, just for the sake of riling him, “combination gymnasium and auditorium. Hard floor, stage at one end.”

“Blood everywhere,” he added. “Any sign of a victim?”

“Coroner says victims,” she told him. “At least three, for the amount of blood. And if no more than three, they’re all dead. He’s doing tests now to see if he can sort out some different profiles.”

He rested one thin hand on the door handle. “Anything been moved?”

Szaba allowed herself her first smile of the encounter, wan and sour. “If you’d been here two hours ago, you’d have been in luck, Tamblyn.”

His hand tightened on the handle, began to open the heavy door.

He paused. “You want to send me someone in, preferably someone who isn’t queasy? I’ll need some notes taken.”

She turned away, and came close to spitting her answer. “Yes, sir.”

When he’d disappeared inside, she allowed herself one bitter shot at his back, just loud enough to entertain one of the other constables on the scene: “Our very own witch-boy, on the hunt. Huh.”

✪

Inside, Detective John Tamblyn took stock slowly, taking in every arc as he turned. “Garish,” he said at last under his breath.

The first thing he’d noticed was incidental to the facts: the colour scheme. The walls were white with green trim and the school emblem, a huge four-leaf clover, logoed over a basketball hoop. The blood slicked the three complete walls; the fourth was occupied mostly by the stage.

Strangely, there was none on the floor except near the junction of the walls and where it had been tracked around by child-sized runners. It had dried to a dense brown where it was thickest, and, under the strong fluorescent lights, still retained a shimmer of red where it was thin.

When it was all wet, bright red and green on white, it must have looked like Christmas in Hell.

Turning to the agitated constable who had just entered, Tamblyn asked, “So, what’s been moved?”

The young officer didn’t come any further into the room, even as Tamblyn himself moved in and began a slow circuit, craning to examine the smears of blood, such a small number of footprints for two hundred public school students with no memory of the afternoon’s events, for all that blood on the walls. The blood that looked like it had been painted on.

The constable got himself together enough to reply, flipping up the cover of his pad, “There were candles, black wax. Thirty or forty of them; I’m not sure of the exact number. They were entered into evidence. That’s all that’s been taken out of the room.”

The detective nodded, satisfied. He scanned the room, taking note of the greasy circles of black wax, their number and pattern. He was getting more and more uneasy himself as time progressed.

After an hour or so, he released the constable and they left the gym. Carla Szaba was nowhere in sight, but a beefy veteran cop, Detective Lieutenant William Morritz was waiting.

“Cambry, Tamblyn,” Morritz greeted them. “Walk with me,” he continued, addressing just Tamblyn.

“So, John,” began Morritz when they had passed the double doors into the school’s north wing. “Tell me what’s going on here.”

Tamblyn answered with questions of his own. “You’re telling me that none of the students have a clue what happened this afternoon? And that with all that blood in there, the most we’ve found on those kids are traces in the treads of a few of their sneakers?”

Morritz nodded. “That’s the picture. Not too pretty.”

Tamblyn sighed. “Well, at least I know why I’m here.”

He paused, taking stock. “I’ll need some more time. For now, let’s behave like detectives, why don’t we? Some prints, some samples, some measurements. I want to see everything the techs get—let’s cover all the bases before we go off fantasizing about cults and satanic rituals, okay? Bad for moral, right?”

“John…” Morritz grimaced. “We called you in, okay? Give us some results.”

Tamblyn lifted off his battered hat and ran his fingers through his blond hair. “Back in public school,” he said to himself. “Who’d have thought it?”

Morritz turned, responding to a hail from one of the other officers about a nearby fire alarm just called in. “You’re not going to believe this. What a neighbourhood.” He paced off back down the hall.

Tamblyn, ignoring the news for the moment, bent to drink at a water fountain which only came up to his knee. When he looked up from the fountain, a photo caught his eye. He straightened slowly, captivated by a familiar face.

The caption, on a plaque below, was “Westbrook Staff”, and the current year.

He scanned down to the names listed below, grimly breathless. “Son of a bitch,” he hissed under his breath. “The son of a bitch.”

✪

“Brace yourself, Jan. I’ve got an idea.”

Janice grimaced. Her hands were raw and becoming tender.

While the house burned, they had been alternately struggling to reach the knots and extricate themselves from the ropes, and resting to let the feeling seep back into their hands and feet. Janice was almost sure now they had lit the fire almost directly underneath them, in the big storage closet this side of the garage. A perfectly reasonable firetrap.

She prayed if they were going to die, the smoke killed them before either the fire got them or they went smashing through the floor into the lower level.

“Jan?” asked Nick.

“Do you mean brace myself literally or figuratively?” she said, then, with despair, “They have Maggie.”

“Yeah, but let’s get out of the burning house first, okay?”

“What’s the plan?” Jan was feeling suddenly exasperated.

It was a fine time, your daughter kidnapped, your death imminent, to imagine the most important thing on your plate was hating your ex-husband. She had been trying to learn not to procrastinate, especially where strong negative emotions were concerned. Deal with things when they happen was her recent self-help book inspired mantra. Focusing on escaping the fire felt like throwing away all her hard work.

She took a breath and tasted smoke. Time to put aside the rancour, at least for the moment, and listen to the bum.

“I’m going to tip the chair over to my left, your right. Towards the rack on the far wall. I think that might loosen the ropes a bit.”

Give us both concussions, more like, or break our arms, she thought, but kept it to herself with considerable effort.

She probably could handle a broken bone or two if it meant not burning to death.

“Okay,” she said, “What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing, kid,” he said. She felt his shoulders relax. He had been primed for a fight too. Now came that condescending tone she hated—“Just fall with papa.”

“Tell me when.” She gritted her teeth. There’d be lots of time to fight as soon as the end of their lives weren’t a heartbeat and a crashing floor away.

“Count of three. No time like the present. Okay?” asked Nick. “One… Two…”

Janice had an idea.

“Three!” said Nick and swayed momentarily to the right, using the momentum to carry them left to the floor.

Janice used the fall to twist against the ropes. By pulling Nick’s arm further around the side of the chair, she found she could turn almost right around to face the knots over her shoulder.

The ropes around her right elbow loosened just as they hit the ground. Janice cried out as she landed, her chin taking the brunt of the impact.

There was a moment of silence. When Nick spoke again, he sounded shaken. “Jan? That was bad stuff, Jan. No more trips for me. Jan? You okay?”

Janice didn’t answer. Part of her, a small part, once over the pain, was jubilant. The rest was strictly business.

She twisted as far as she could and found she could reach the knots. Her fingers were cramped and numb, but she set out trying to untie them with her one free hand.

Nick found his right elbow pulled into a new place by the ropes, and the configuration of their bindings had drastically changed since before the fall. He managed a peek over his shoulder to see what Janice was doing.

“Beautiful,” he said, appreciatively. “Just tell me next time before you carry out one of your brilliant ideas.”

Janice was making no progress on the knot. Realizing it was her only option, she got her mouth up to the rope and began to gnaw. She had to pause and restart every dozen seconds when her teeth felt tired. As each strand broke in her mouth, it felt like she was grating the enamel off her teeth.

“If this is going to take a while,” said Nick finally, “maybe I should start yelling for help.” He turned away and let the muscles in his neck relax. It wasn’t helping to overstrain them. Their salvation was completely out of his hands, and nothing he could do would aid her progress.

He watched the wall and followed the cracks in it up to the empty clothes rack. The floor was warm.

Then, softly, he started to sing. Janice stopped long enough to say, like she had cotton in her mouth, “I like that. Keep going,” and went back to work.

Nick sang snatches of every Christmas carol in his repertoire, representing four different languages. He could hear the grating sound of Jan’s teeth against the nylon ropes playing out-of-key counterpoint, but didn’t think a joke about it would go over well.

The carols didn’t really seem appropriate after a while, and he switched into some Buddy Holly.

“Didn’t he die in a fiery crash?” asked Janice.

“Keep eating rope, girl. This is your life.”

Nick fell silent. At least she hadn’t told him his singing hurt her ears or anything else guaranteed to make him defensive.

Jan stopped. “Just talk to me,” she said. “Tell me about Rome.”

“Well,” said Nick.

It was a long time ago. Those memories should still be good, even if they were distant. He had been very happy then.

“There was the time we were all high on life after seeing Roman Holiday, right? And we tried to find all the places in the film. You were Hepburn—man, I can’t even remember what you were wearing, and I know you’d want to hear I did. They did a remake of that I saw on television not so long ago …”

He talked, without thinking, without any direction in mind. He told her about eating the best pizza ever in the filthiest restaurant in the universe, about long lazy afternoons bookended by lunch and dinner and filled with wine, about hawking his paintings in the street to keep their apartment another week.

Finally, the last few strands of rope came away in a bunch. The ropes loosened.

Nick stopped talking to listen to the fire. How much time had elapsed? Minutes, precious minutes. He noticed for the first time how warm the floor was.

“Done,” said Jan, and pulled the ropes away. She rolled to her knees. Nick freed his arms and lifted a coil of rope over his head.

Jan got her feet free. She shambled awkwardly away from the chair and got slowly and painfully to her feet. Her leg cramped and she collapsed.

“I didn’t realize I was so stiff,” she said, out of breath. The smell of smoke was heavier in the air.

“Maybe we’d better keep down and not talk too much,” said Nick, taking her arm. He got to the door on his hands and knees and reached up to touch the knob.

“Warm,” he said, pulling back.

“I noticed,” said Jan, hand to the floor. “Aren’t we supposed to put wet cloths over our faces …?”

She rubbed at the cramp, but her heart was sinking slowly through her body to her heels. She was so proud of what she’d done, but it wasn’t enough and they were still going to die.

“Good thinking that,” said Nick, wheezing now. “Next time, tell me before… Did I already say that? Look, Jan, we’re getting out of here.”

He looked around the closet. “We can use the vacuum cleaner for a battering ram.”

Janice didn’t answer, just nodded. Her lungs were beginning to burn. If she tried speaking, she didn’t know if she’d bawl or choke.

She helped him lift the vacuum off its hook, not daring to say she wasn’t sure they could batter down the door with it. The chance of escape seemed so slight.

At least, she thought, she was grateful for once of the shoddy hollow construction of the modern doors, happy for not being in the historic Victorian townhouse she had looked at a couple of years ago downtown. Gorgeous, and way out of her price range, but man, did they know how to build real doors in those days, solid and heavy.

And thinking about the Victorian house she would never now buy, Jan Stuart began to sob.

Then, past hope, there was a distant voice calling over the growing roar of the fire which wasn’t, no matter how she wished, going out.

“Anyone here? Ms. Stuart! Ms. Stuart?”

“Here!” Janice screamed, her voice breaking with the previous exertion and her intense, almost painful relief. “In the hall closet upstairs—we’re locked in.”

Please, she thought, don’t let it be a trick. Please don’t let me be imagining this.

The voice spoke again, this time from just outside the door.

“Ms. Stuart?”

“We’re here!” she cried. “This one.”

She moved forward and banged her knuckles against the door.

An agonizing moment of silence followed. Then, the voice said, “I take it the lock wasn’t part of the original house plans.”

“Deadbolt,” Jan managed, “just slide—just slide it—”

“Padlock,” he shouted back, correcting her. “A new addition, I guess. I need something to jimmy it. Hang tight.”

She heard footsteps moving away. She wanted to scream for him to come back, to stay with her—Don’t leave us!

“Hurry,” she mouthed.

Nick pressed into her, filling her nose with a mixture of smoke and the scent of his skin.

There was no time. Below, she heard the distinctively sickening crack of some part of the ceiling losing integrity.

Then there was a new, explosive crack and the door of the closet was open.

“Come on,” said their rescuer. “I don’t know how solid this floor is.”

In his hands, he held the screw-in metal leg of one of her office chairs. She followed the man out of the room, Nick trailing.

Now that she was able to concentrate on him, he was very familiar. Not much taller than she, perhaps five eight or nine, he had dark salt-and-peppered hair that receded back from his forehead in a distinctive widow’s peak. He was lean, she could tell, but solid not slender, with strong shoulders and an athletic way of moving. Where had she seen him before?

He led them away from the stairs and toward the side bedroom that Maggie occupied.

Maggie! Where was she? She should have been home from school.

“My daughter—” she managed, choked, to the man’s back.

He replied without turning. “She’s not here.”

Relief surged through her. Far off, she heard another fine sound, the siren of a distant fire engine. But the walls of the hallway were already blackening, and smoke, she had seen, choked the stairwell.

In Maggie’s room, the window was up and the top of Janice’s extension ladder, tips swathed in paint rags, rested on the sill.

The man didn’t wait for Jan and Nick, but threw a leg over the window ledge and disappeared from view.

Jan followed, backing herself down the ladder at a pace which under other circumstances would have felt reckless.

Another pair of sharp reports came from the inside of the house.

By the time Nick’s feet reached the ground, their rescuer was gone. With a certain amount of wonderment in her voice, “That was Maggie’s science teacher,” said Janice as they moved into the front yard.

Even here, on the far side of the building from the kitchen, the heat was nearly unbearable. “I remember, I met him at parents’ night.”

Earlier in the year, when everything was normal.

Without thinking about what they were doing, Nick and Jan had linked arms, creating a visually united front. Jan, and the last person she ever would have believed would be an ally. Not after their history

“What was Maggie’s science teacher doing in your house?” asked Nick.

Janice shook her head. “I don’t know. But let’s not mention him, all right? I get the feeling we shouldn’t say anything.”

Nick rose, about to argue, then put a little comforting pressure into their joined arms and said, “Okay, just like you say.”

In front of the house was the real activity. There were two big fire trucks pulling in, along with a police car. The Fire Chief’s van entered the court and moved in to direct the action.

Jan turned to Nick. “Not a word yet, okay? See what they know first. Until I say, you’re a friend, you came for a visit, we were, I don’t know, taking a nap upstairs when the fire started and have no idea how it happened.”

“It’s your call,” said Nick. “I won’t say a thing.”

An officer noticed them, arm in arm under the neighbours’ crab apple tree and came running up, calling to another officer over his shoulder.

Two more police cars and an ambulance came rolling up the street, sirens flashing. Janice closed her eyes and savoured what she could of the air, not quite spoiled by the smoke pouring out of her beautiful home, all ruined.

They’d taken her daughter. They’d burnt her house. She would see they paid for turning her life upside down.

The officer introduced himself and led them back to the ambulance where there were blankets for them to wrap up in.

A severe-looking fair-haired man in a trench coat met them there. Janice put on a face of utter bewilderment, pretending to be in deep shock.

But deep inside her burned a desperate, implacable hatred for whoever had taken Maggie and burned her house, and an even blacker desire for retribution.