If she showed up on my doorstep tomorrow I’d take her back in a heartbeat, and no man alive would blame me. I’d go through the fires of Hell and follow her anywhere, except back to Tulsa because I am seriously done with the Olive Garden.
Like the book says, you can’t go homeward angel. And by God I’m not.
Yancy drove out to the detention center on Stock Island, a place where as a detective he’d interviewed numerous inmates though never a former lover. He was friends with the duty officer, so he and Bonnie had a room to themselves. She was excited to see him and disappointed by his chilly reponse.
“Andrew, why are you looking at me like that? It’s just a fire. Nobody died.”
“You’re right. It’s not like you burned down an orphanage.”
“Please, there’s no cause for sarcasm.”
Her county jumpsuit was the same blaze orange as Nick Stripling’s poncho. She wore the braided pigtails but the jailers had taken away her lip gloss.
“You think they’re recording us?” she said, looking around for a video camera.
Yancy said no. The phone calls usually got taped but he wasn’t sure about visitations.
“Cody wants to come see me, too, but Mr. Montenegro says absolutely not.”
“Why did you do this, Bonnie? So much drama.”
“Oh please. It was all for you. Don’t pretend like you don’t get it, or I’ll really be upset.”
“But I truly don’t get it.”
“You were right about Cody,” she said. “He was keeping a secret journal of everything we did, just like before. His notion is to do a book and get rich. He thinks he can write, which I suppose is my fault for building him up so much in class. But isn’t that what teachers are supposed to do? I didn’t know he would peak in eleventh grade! At first I was livid about the new diary, but then Mr. Montenegro said it’s good for my case in Oklahoma because they’d have to charge him with aiding a fugitive, which would be messy for the prosecutors.”
“Because he’s supposed to be the victim,” Yancy said.
“Exactly, Andrew. The boy I supposedly corrupted.”
“Here’s the thing: They don’t need Cody’s testimony to convict you for bail jumping. Also, Bonnie, this arson? Major felony. Nobody gets a free pass if they torch a home.”
“Insane people do. Eighteen months of treatment, then we can be together again. I’ve done my research.”
“Insanely jealous isn’t the same as clinically insane.” Yancy impatiently drummed two fingers on the table. “Why am I even bothering with this conversation? You are somewhat nuts, I’ll give you that. But no judge in Florida would let you walk.”
“I miss you so much, darling. Did you hear about Cliff strangling himself?”
“Yes, it was an inconsiderate choice of venue. The Kiwanians do good work.”
“He probably took me out of his will when I ran off with Cody. Not that I care about the money.”
“You and the doctor are still legally married. He dies tomorrow, you’ll get half the estate.” Yancy winked at her. “Not that you care.”
“God, when did you get so mean?”
“Ever since I drove down my street and saw flames shooting into the sky.”
She reached across the table and pinched him hard. “Why are you being like this? It was your idea—don’t you dare say you don’t remember. I did this for you!”
Yancy said, “Okay, now you are officially in lunar orbit.”
“It was that night at your place when we were lying out on the deck. You put the blanket down—that wool blanket that smelled like a wet puppy—then we smoked a number and drank a bottle of cabernet.” Bonnie’s jaw was working and she was squeezing her hands together.
“We went out there to make love and watch the moon set over the Gulf, right? You said it was the most peaceful sight imaginable, a golden spring moon. But then it turned out that guy’s new house was in the way.”
Yancy lowered his forehead to the table. “You can’t be serious.”
“It was so tall it blocked out the whole arc of the moon,” she went on. “You got real sad and then super angry, and that’s when you turned to me and said—”
“I oughta burn that fucking house down.”
“See, you do remember!”
“Word for word,” Yancy muttered to the tabletop.
The worst day of Evan Shook’s existence began when he sent a text message to his wife that read: “See you in Miami tonight. Don’t forget to bring our little friend!”
Mrs. Evan Shook was perplexed because she had no plans to visit him in Florida, engrossed as she was with hosting a cocktail party (including finger food) for the Republican Women’s Club of Greater Syracuse. Nor did she understand her husband’s reference to “our little friend,” which was actually a jackrabbit vibrator belonging to his mistress, the intended recipient of the text.
Only when his wife called to accuse him of arranging illicit threesomes did Evan Shook realize his calamitous typing mistake. She said she’d been hearing lurid rumors of his cheating ways, and now she had proof! It so happened that one of the most feared divorce lawyers in the tri-state region would be attending that night’s fund-raiser, and Evan Shook’s wife said she planned to fuck him and then hire him.
Against such a blindsiding Evan Shook rustled up what he regarded as a passable defense: The text had been meant for Ford Lipscomb, the “little friend” being a cashier’s check to cover construction overruns on the Keys house. This yarn was rejected with savage derision. Evan Shook’s wife advised him to hang on to his shriveled little nuts because she and her new attorney were coming with a blowtorch.
“And a Brink’s truck,” she added, and hung up.
So it was understandable that Evan Shook was preoccupied as he headed to Big Pine for a meeting with a landscape architect retained by Mrs. Lipscomb, also en route. On the highway his Suburban was passed by two speeding fire engines that normally would have aroused his curiosity, but he remained fogged with gloom. No internal alarms went off as he turned onto Key Deer Boulevard and saw the smoke; he thought it was just some redneck burning tires.
A green Sebring convertible went flying past in the opposite direction, and that’s when Evan Shook’s senses stirred: The woman at the wheel of the car was his next-door neighbor’s stalker. Suddenly the billowing plume held promise, and Evan Shook drove faster. He’d never made that pledged phone call to Agent John Wesley Weiderman, never reported his encounter with the pretty fugitive on Yancy’s backyard deck.
And he never would.
By the time he came around the corner of the block, Evan Shook was completely prepared to see a house on fire. He was not, however, expecting the house to be his own.
The first words from his lips were “Fuck me!” It was not an unapt metaphor for what had occurred, and he would repeat it often to no one in particular. The spec house was, in the parlance of professional firefighting, fully engulfed.
Impressive were the efforts to save it but everything except the slab was raw fuel, from the wooden baseboards to the wooden trusses. Evan Shook positioned himself upwind, leaning against one of the fire trucks and watching in a funereal stupor as the walls of his island investment buckled and turned to ash.
Mrs. Lipscomb showed up sobbing in the company of her landscaper, whose shared grief was triggered by the loss of a lucrative contract. Next to arrive on scene was Agent Weiderman, who provided the police with the name, description and automobile information of the suspected arsonist. Twenty minutes later Evan Shook was informed by a sweaty road sergeant that Plover Chase had been captured at a roadblock on Summerland Key. Four empty jerry cans smelling of gasoline were recovered from the trunk of her rental.