Cut to the Quick (23 page)

Should she call the police? What would she say? She'd seen someone step back into the shadows. Not enough information. But she wouldn't go that way. Instead she headed to Parliament Street's crowds. After an uneventful walk, they trooped back upstairs, where they organized themselves for the night. They both had flashlights.

“I'll open the skylight. Because of Toronto's lights, we'll only see the brightest ones,” Etienne said. “Ready?”

Hollis followed Etienne's celestial guide, and they spotted the brightest stars, despite the glowing city lights. After more than an hour, Etienne's commentary slowed and stopped.

“Etienne,” Hollis whispered. She received no response. MacTee's snores had punctuated the studio's quiet soon after they'd returned from their walk. Hollis, who'd been aware for some time of increasing hordes of mosquitoes zeroing in to feast on her exposed skin, crept out of her sleeping bag and closed the skylight.

* * *

Hollis jerked awake.

MacTee pawed her shoulder. He was barking frantically with his face inches from hers. What was wrong? Why could she see him? It should be dark. Light flickered from somewhere.

She smelled smoke.

Fire.

“Okay. Stop. I'm awake.” She pushed MacTee to one side and crawled out of her sleeping bag. Flames flickered in the stairwell.

She grabbed Etienne's shoulders and shook him. “Etienne, wake up. There's a fire.”

Etienne barely stirred.

She gripped his shoulders and dragged him from his sleeping bag.

“Stand up.” No. Wrong thing to do. Close to the floor there wasn't any carbon monoxide. The fire burned below them. They couldn't use the stairs. The double doors—the only escape.

“What? What the heck?” Etienne sat up. “Pull your
T
-shirt up over your face and crawl.” She clicked her flashlight on and aimed it at the doors. “There. Crawl there. Now. Follow the beam. There's a fire.” Panic welled. She pushed it down—she had to stay calm. The block and tackle. She'd lower Etienne then MacTee. Thank heaven for Curt's huge paintings.

“Get going. I'll let you down. Run to the house. Yell ‘fire' as loud as you can.”

“What about you and MacTee?”

“We're coming after you. Move!”

Etienne scooted across the floor. MacTee and Hollis followed. Smoke drifted through the room. If it hadn't been for last night's mosquitos, the open skylight would have been a giant chimney sucking smoke up to asphyxiate them. She fumbled for the door frame. Her hands locked on the ropes fastening the sling to the wall.

She coughed. When the doors opened, there'd be a draught. Smoke would funnel upward and billow out. They had no time.

“Hang on and jump. I'll keep you from crashing,” she said as she fastened the rope around Etienne.

He swung out. His weight nearly jerked her off her feet, and she clutched the rope with both hands.

“I'm down. I'll wake Maman and call 911,” he yelled.

Hollis yanked the rope back up. And coughed. The smoke thickened. The
T
-shirt over her mouth kept slipping. While she fastened ropes around MacTee, she tried to breathe shallowly. Smoke killed.

She shoved MacTee's bulk toward the door. He braced his feet and resisted, but he went.

A yelp. Oh no. Brilliant, really brilliant.

Etienne's gone. MacTee's tied in the sling. How to release him? How to save herself? Hang on to the rope and let herself down? Too thin—not like a knotted bed sheet. She'd jump.

The air mattresses. She'd throw them out to land on. Drop— not throw. Right below. She'd hang by her hands and let go.

She pulled her
T
-shirt up over her mouth again and crawled back to where they'd been sleeping. The smoke was thicker. She didn't want to breathe. How to pull two mattresses and crawl? Impossible. One would have to do. On hands and knees, she pushed it ahead of her. At the door, she dropped it down.

Ready to let go. Back to the edge, hang on and...

Howling sirens. Flashing lights, trucks roaring down the street. Thank God.

“Help. I'm up here.”

Firefighters below.

They leaned a ladder against the wall. Hollis didn't wait. As soon as it thumped into position, she scrambled down, assured them she was okay and raced to MacTee. She freed him from his tangle of rope and urged him away from the fire. He stood up but whined and lifted a front paw. When Hollis, hand on his collar, coaxed him to hobble away, he lurched forward on three legs, refusing to put his weight on the other one.

Something was seriously wrong.

Etienne zoomed toward them. Manon, white cotton eyelet robe flowing behind her, slippers flapping, tore after Etienne. Curt followed more slowly.

“Stand back,” a firefighter ordered. Firefighters were everywhere. One wielded an axe to smash the lock on the garage door.

Through opened doors, they saw fire crackling under the stairs and licking toward the vehicles. A firefighter directed a torrent toward the flames.

Curt hugged Manon and Etienne close. His grip appeared to hurt Etienne, but the boy didn't pull away. Curt's white face and wide-eyes betrayed his ill health and his shock. His gaze met Hollis's.

“What the hell did you do?” he said as he pulled Manon and Etienne closer.

“What did
I
do?” Her voice shook with rage.
“I
saved your son's life—that's what I did.”

“Curt, stop.” Manon commanded. She grabbed his arm. “Stop. Fires start. It happens.” She tightened her grip. “Hollis saved Etienne.”

“Thank MacTee. He woke us with his barking.” Hollis could hardly speak; her teeth banged together like tin cans in a mill race. Her body shook. She was freezing. Shock—a delayed reaction to adrenaline flooding her body. What if MacTee
hadn't
been there? What if he
hadn't
barked? She wouldn't be here—they'd be dragging her corpse from the fire. She and Etienne would be dead.

Had the killer struck again? Had it been arson?

C
urt
muttered an apology. Hollis heard but didn't care. She'd nearly died—the enormity engulfed her.

“I wonder if it was arson,” Manon murmured.

An ever-growing crowd watched the hoses pour gallons of water onto the fire, creating clouds of hissing steam and stinking smoke. Flames consumed the door and interior stairs before they flickered out. The firefighters' prompt arrival saved but soaked the remainder of the building.

Arson—a frightening thought. If an arsonist had lit the fire, aware that a person was in the studio, he'd intended to cut off the escape route, to trap them upstairs. Without MacTee's frantic barking… Hollis's stomach churned with nausea. Had the killer intended to murder her and Etienne? Impossible. She didn't have enemies in Toronto. But how could she argue with facts? The fire had started in the stairwell. There was nothing there that would have ignited spontaneously. Someone must have stuffed something—gasoline-soaked rags maybe— through the mail slot in the antique door. One flick of a match, and the dry, paint-laden wood would have exploded. She didn't want to think about it. Practical things—she'd focus on them.

“Our vehicles have had it,” she said to Manon.

“Insurance will cover them—the vehicles and the building,” Manon said in her practical banker's voice.

“Only the vehicles,” Curt said.

Manon's head snapped up. “What do you mean?”

Curt refused to meet her gaze. “I never got around to extending the house insurance to cover the studio,” he said apologetically. “But what does it matter—Etienne and Hollis are okay.”

No matter how arrogant or insensitive to others Curt might be, he had suffered about as many blows as any man should have to endure. She had worried almost exclusively about Etienne and Manon. In fact, she'd blamed Curt for bringing disaster not only to himself, but also to his family. Whether he had or not, it was impossible not to feel sorry for him and to worry what havoc shock was wreaking on his already fragile health.

“What's done is done—we can't do anything about the vehicles tonight,” Manon said.

Hollis focused on MacTee. Although he lay quietly at her feet, he hadn't been able to walk on all four legs when she'd helped him away from the fire. How could she have ignored him when he'd saved their lives? She knelt down and gently felt his legs. He pulled away and whimpered when she lifted the right front one.

“He may have broken a bone.” She stroked the dog's head. “Which taxi company picks up a fare accompanied by a dog?” she asked Manon.

Manon bent over and stroked MacTee's head. “Our life saver,” she said affectionately. “You need treatment.” She shook her head. “None of them do. They only take seeing-eye dogs.”

“He has to get to a vet.”

Manon straightened up and considered the problem.

“He can't walk with his sore leg.” Etienne squirmed from his father's grasp. “Come on, Maman, Papa, you have to know
someone
we can phone.”

“We drove Beau to the clinic ourselves, but not everyone owns a car. The
SPCA
must have a vehicle or know who to call. There's an emergency veterinary clinic on Belmont or Merton. I'll call them,” Manon offered.

“I'll call—they'll want to ask what's wrong,” Hollis said.

Minutes later, she returned. “Either the
SPCA
or the veterinary vehicle will take more than an hour to arrive. I didn't want to wait, so I called David Nixon, who's in our class. He brought me home after the show. Since he told me to call him if we needed anything, I took him up on his offer. He drives a van and lives close by—somewhere on the Danforth. Etienne, grab a large towel. We'll improvise a sling and move MacTee to the front porch.”

“I want to come with you,” Etienne said.

Manon shook her head, but Etienne persisted. “Maman, MacTee saved
my
life. I
should
go with Hollis and make sure he's okay. Anyway, Hollis needs someone with her—someone who really cares about MacTee.”

“When you put it that way...” Manon pressed her lips together and half-smiled at Etienne. “Of course you may go.”

Manon waited on the front steps with them, while Curt spoke with the captain. The firefighters were gathering their equipment.

Arson. The word hung in the smoky air.

“If it
was
arson...” Manon's voice broke.

“If it was—who was the intended victim?” Curt had returned.

He posed the question Hollis didn't want to consider. Too bad Etienne hadn't gone to bed—he didn't need to hear this discussion. But, being a clever kid, he'd probably already asked himself the same thing. Maybe it was better to have everything in the open. She remembered her ninth summer and how distressed she'd been when her parents had whispered and shut her out.

“Not Etienne or me,” Hollis said. “Who knew we'd be stargazing?” Hollis hoped she'd chosen a reassuringly reasonable tone. But, even as she spoke, she flashed back to class break, when she'd said that Etienne would be stargazing. Then she thought back to their walk and her impression that someone who hadn't wanted to be seen lurked in the lane.

“Maybe it was all of us,” Curt said conversationally.

“Why on earth would you say that?” Hollis was furious. Manon's fear for Etienne gripped her like a straitjacket; she didn't need it tightened.

“The explosion would have rocked the neighbourhood if the gas tanks had blown.”

“But it wouldn't have killed us unless it set the house on fire and trapped us inside. Be serious. If someone intended to murder us, they would have targeted the house.” Manon's tone was chilly.

Hollis expelled a deep breath. She'd feared Manon would fall apart when she heard Curt's suggestion. Instead she'd come close to mocking him. Nevertheless, it felt surreal to sit on a Toronto porch discussing how someone might have set out to kill all of them. MacTee, lying at Hollis's feet, whimpered, an ordinarily imperceptible sound but one easily heard in the quiet, windless air. It was almost dawn. Thin drifts of magenta-tinted cloud added colour to the paling sky.

David arrived, and together they half-carried MacTee to the van. Minutes later, they shuttled him into the clinic's waiting room. A faintly antiseptic smell assaulted their noses. Even at five a.m., worried pet owners huddled on the beige molded plastic chairs. They gripped sad-faced dogs or clutched cats bundled in blankets or yowling in cages. After they checked in with the receptionist, whose pallor betrayed her fatigue, Hollis and David sat down. Released from his sling, MacTee hobbled to Etienne and lay down.

“Poor dog, he's as gimpy as I am,” David said.

Etienne, a polite eleven-year-old, normally would never have asked David about his limp. David's comment gave him permission.

“How come you're gimpy?”

“I was in the hospital and contracted osteomyelitis. The doctors operated, but I was left with a permanent limp.”

“Why were you in the hospital?” Etienne persisted.

David's jaw clenched. His eyes narrowed. “Something or other,” he shrugged. “I don't remember.”

Clearly, he remembered very well, but whatever it was, he didn't intend to talk about it. Time to rescue him from Etienne's curiosity. She'd focus on animals and veterinary clinics. “I wonder which night they see the most patients?”

“Obviously Saturday and Sunday, when regular vets aren't available,” David answered. “Was it arson?”

“Curt talked to the firefighters. They said it probably started inside the front door of the studio but that he'd have to wait for a definitive answer until the fire marshal had done his thing.”

“How can they tell where it starts?” Etienne asked.