1 Portrait of a Gossip (16 page)

“Has anyone been hurt?”

“Not so far. We are lucky for the recent rain and that there
are no farms out that way. They have evacuated most of the town though, just in
case the fire jumps the freeway. It could happen if the wind veers. They are
also bringing in firefighters from outside the county. It’s only about forty
percent contained.”

She nodded and then looked at the image on Garret’s
computer.

“That looks eerily like Jillian Holmes.”

“Him?”
Garret said with surprise.

“What do you mean—oh my
God!
That’s
Charity King?”

“You thought it was Jillian Holmes?”

Before either of them could say or ask more, an alarm went
off at the firehouse. Juliet was suddenly aware that the smell of smoke was
much stronger. A look out the window showed them that visibility was falling to
the yellow-gray haze that was darkening the sun. The winds had moved.

The phone rang and Garret snatched it up, listened for about
ten seconds, and then reached for his hat.

“The fire jumped the line and is coming this way. We’ve got
to evacuate the town and the Wood! We’ll worry about Jillian later.”

To underline his words, the cars began coming in a wave, clogging
the streets with evacuees who opted to travel south to Santa Cruz instead of
north to San Francisco.

“I think everyone is out of the Wood. Robbie gave the all clear.
By the way, check your phone, Juliet. I couldn’t get hold of you this morning.”

Bartholomew’s Wood was evacuated?
But what
about the cat?

“Marley!”
Juliet breathed in horror
and ran for the door.

“Juliet! I mean it, stay away from Jillian Holmes!” he
shouted after her. “And don’t take crazy chances over a cat!”

Don’t take chances over a cat? Was he kidding?

Juliet had to drive aggressively and at one point used the
wooden walkway by the bakery as a passing lane.

The
wind shifted again as she pulled off
the paved road and onto the gravel drive
. It blew yellow smoke across
the road. It wasn’t as thick as some of the morning fogs, but the smell was
evil, threatening.

Juliet had seen a wildfire once as a child
and been terrified by its bellowing fury.
She knew that only a few miles
away, the dying trees were throwing off fiery bark like shrapnel and the
superheated sap had turned into nature’s napalm which stuck and ignited
everything it landed on. Flames would lengthen into orange lashes under the
wind and then would fall back into hissing blue embers that burned all the
hotter. She had hoped to never see such a thing again, but it might happen if
the wind didn’t start blowing the fire back.

Jillian was able to gain speed the further up the mountain
she traveled. The smoke had changed hue and aroma in the last several minutes.
The fire had reached the pumpkin fields and the air smelled like a perversion
of jack-o’-lanterns at Halloween.

The fields were only fifteen miles away.

A helicopter carrying a bladder of water flew overhead. Once
a fire entered a steep canyon, there was no way for men on the ground to fight
it. It was all down to the water tankers and the wind.

“Hang on, Marley! I’m coming.” She was thankful that she had
left her cabin door open but worried about finding him if he panicked and ran.

She pulled into the nearly empty lot and killed the engine.
The compound felt empty like a church on a Monday. None of the usual sounds of
music or chisels, or the usual smells of wood or paint were in the air—just
smoke and fearful expectation.

A wheelchair appeared around the side of the caretaker’s
cottage.

“Raphael!” she gasped, leaping from the car, and then,
“Marley! You’ve got him! Oh thank God!”

The cat, looking none the worse for wear, was sitting in
Raphael’s lap.

“Juliet, everyone came down twenty minutes ago except
Jillian and Jake Holmes and Carrie Simmons. Esteban went up ten minutes past
but he hasn’t come down either and he hasn’t called me to say why he’s delayed.”

“Damn it. I think Jillian’s the one who killed Harvey.” She
took a breath and pulled herself back from the brink of panic. Marley was fine.
Raphael was fine. She was able-bodied and could find the others long before the
fire reached them.
If it reached them.
It would have
to cross the river first. “Okay. Take my keys and you and Marley get in the
car. I’ll go after the others. If there’s time I’ll help you load your
paintings when I get back.”

“Only if there’s time.
Find Carrie and Esteban.”
He didn’t say anything about
either Holmes.

She started up the hill. It pleased Juliet that he shared
her priorities. There was no time to answer questions, though she supposed he
had them, and again she blessed his sense of urgency. And maybe her news about
Jillian wasn’t shocking. After all, he was the one who had suggested the killer
was female.

The gusts of hot wind made the tree branches grate against
one another, hissing protests at the heat and approaching fire they couldn’t
outrun. Juliet tasted blood on her lip and realized that she was biting it.
Panic wasn’t helpful, but the steady alarm fed her resolve which helped with
the pain in her legs and the shortage of oxygen, which simply had to be
ignored.

Her smooth soles slipped and she staggered and almost lost
her footing. But a fall was out of the question and she jerked herself upright,
refusing to acknowledge the wrenched ankle.

“Carrie!
Esteban!”
Her shout wasn’t
very loud and ended in a cough. The morning wind that traveled up the draw was
carrying smoke up its natural chimney.

The door to Carrie’s cottage was standing open and a light
burned inside. That this might be because the day was fine did not occur to Juliet.
Her heart was already laboring but she felt the adrenaline rush hit her as her
brain reacted to a new fear.

She stopped in the doorway; the space beyond was dark and
frightening. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust and she stayed by the door
until she could see. Juliet had never been inside Carrie’s cottage and a part
of her found it strange and sad that it had taken a crisis to get her
interested enough to visit. The room was surprisingly plain, unimaginative
white walls, bare wood floors, but there was a large mirror on one wall and
when she stepped toward it, it showed the body on the floor beside the bed.

“Carrie!” Juliet rushed over and felt for a pulse. It was
there but weak. The gash in her head was bleeding sluggishly. There was a lot
of blood on the floor.

Carrie was sprawled on her back, her legs at an awkward
angle that dimpled her thighs in a way which she would never have permitted anyone
to see had she been conscious. Her blouse was twisted so her red bra showed and
her stomach was bared. It was only then that Juliet realized Carrie was wearing
the same clothes she had had on the night before. Had she been there that long
without regaining consciousness?

“That’s bad—so bad.”

Jillian looked for a phone but there was only the old crank
phone with its internal line.

She hurried back to within hailing distance of the parking
lot and shouted, “Raphael! Does your phone have a signal?”

He closed the car door gently, shutting Marley inside, and
looked up at her.

“Yes.” Even in crisis his voice was moderated and it
occurred to her to wonder if his injury had affected him in other ways.

“Call the sheriff. I know it’s all hands on deck for the
evacuation, but we need an ambulance at Carrie’s cottage right now. Someone has
bashed her head in. She’s alive but looks bad.”

“I’m on it. Juliet, do you have a gun?”

“I’m going for it now,” she said and began to jog up the
trail. She knew that she would have to search every cottage in case Esteban or
Jake were injured and lying there, bleeding like Carrie, but first she wanted a
weapon. Clearly Jillian had snapped. Juliet would be of no use to anyone if she
also got injured or killed.

Why on earth had she decided to wear a dress and sandals?

She went into her cottage quickly, holding a fist-sized
stone and braced to find an intruder, but it was empty. She went to the rag bag
under the sink and pulled out the scraps of cloth until she found her gun. It
was a G26, a “baby Glock,” more gun than most ladies liked, but Juliet had
always believed that if the moment came that she needed to shoot someone she
didn’t want to have to do it more than once. Guns only do one thing; they
should do it magnificently.

She hated to take the time but kicked off her sandals and
stuffed her feet into sneakers. It felt odd to be without socks, but she didn’t
waste time putting them on or changing out of her dress. She could run if she
had to. That was all that mattered.

The gun was reassuring but Juliet wasn’t sure where to start
searching. Up or down? It was a small theater of operations but time was
running out. The thickening air was hard on the lungs and ash had begun to fall
in an ugly parody of snow. Weathermen talked all the time about chill factor,
but in a fire there was the opposite problem. She stood outside the bungalow, sweating,
turning in a circle, straining ears and eyes for some indication of where
people were. The lack of human noise was sinister.

Then she saw the ravens sitting in a distant tree that
marked the path to the upper gate and the river. They had their heads turned
and were staring fixedly at something that was moving slowly upward.

The gate.
The
river.
Where someone could perform acts they didn’t want witnessed, and
hide away things they didn’t want found.

“Oh no,” she whispered and started to run.

The carrion eaters were watching something and she could
only hope that she wasn’t too late.

Her breath grated, but she still heard the sirens as they
neared the compound. It should have been reassuring to know that assistance was
coming up the hill but she feared they wouldn’t arrive in time for whoever was
nearing the gate.
Supposing that the victim was alive.
That was a large assumption.

There was lots of cover on the lower part of the hill, but
after the last cottages there was little cover or concealment. Whoever was up
there would see her coming. Juliet tried to be quiet. She did some fast dashing
while avoiding patches of broken stone, aware that she was pushing the limits
of what guardian angels could do to preserve their charges.

It was Jake Holmes and not his wife who was dragging a dead
or unconscious Esteban through the withered uprights of the open gate.

Juliet leveled the gun, hoping the thuds of her heartbeat
would not make the pistol waver. This would be a bad moment for the killer to
think that she was too frightened or incapable of using her gun.

“Stop, Jake.” He did stop for a moment, just long enough to
lift his head, see who was there, and then dismiss her as a threat; an older
woman in a dress
who
couldn’t hold her small handgun
steady. Then he tensed his muscles for a final heave that would send Esteban
into the river.

She could use cooler blood, but her head was clear and
training took over. Juliet exhaled, stilled her hands, and then fired. The
bullet took him in the shoulder. The small handgun had a lot of power at close
range. It spun him around and it was Jake and not Esteban who went over the
cliff and into the river.

It took Juliet a second to lower the gun and then to force
her legs into walking. She went to Esteban and dropped by his side. The rock
burned on her bare legs and drops of her sweat rolled off her face and onto the
stone. The sun was pitiless and she tried to maneuver so her shadow fell on his
face. It seemed odd that she was sweating when she suddenly felt so very cold.

“Esteban.”
She laid a hand on him
when he stirred. One of his arms and shoulder hung over the crumbling edge and
Juliet, who suffered from vertigo, prayed that it held a few minutes more
because she felt too weak and dizzy to move him more than a couple feet.
Especially when she didn’t know how badly he was hurt. His shirt was unstained
on the chest side but there was blood, a long trail of it over the rocks
suggesting an injury to his back.

“Hang on, Esteban. Help’s almost here,” she tried to say but
her voice was no more than a croak. She realized that the straightjacket of
shock was buckling her in and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Jillian was somewhere, if not in the river then lying dead or injured in the
compound, but she couldn’t leave Esteban.
Couldn’t leave
period.
Her legs had stopped working.

His eyes flickered open and tried to focus.

“It’ll be okay,” she whispered, not knowing if that was true.

Juliet heard shouting below. She tried yelling back but her
throat was too constricted and the world was going dark. Instead she raised her
gun and fired a guiding shot into the air. Then set the gun down carefully.
Garret would probably know straight off that she hadn’t harmed Esteban, but it
might be state police and not the sheriff who was coming up the hill, and with
the police it was a good idea not to confront them with a gun in your hand.

Unable to fight off the dark, she lay down beside Esteban
and surrendered.

Whatever happened next could happen without her.

Garret, Juliet, and Raphael were sitting by Esteban’s
hospital bed. Quarters were tight and Juliet was pressed against Raphael’s
wheelchair. They had traveled down together in his car, stopping at the bakery
to get Esteban a contraband cinnamon-maple cupcake. She hoped Raphael didn’t
mind the enforced intimacy. If he objected he was too polite to make any sign.