Spontaneous Combustion Page 6

  But why would the department parachute an applicant in from New York when Shannon knew of at least three great guys who’d finished their training right here in Courage Bay, and were perfect for the job?

  There was going to be some controversy about this posting, that was certain. But then, who knew what the higher ups were thinking? Maybe this guy had more experience. Or maybe he just had pull with the powers that be.

  “O’Shea will give you a guided tour of the firehouse, John,” Rolando added. “And if you’re available tomorrow evening, we’ll all introduce you to our favorite hangout, the Courage Bay Bar and Grill, just down the street.”

  “I’ll look forward to that.” He turned to Shannon and raised an eyebrow. “Good to go, tour guide?”

  “Absolutely, just follow me,” she managed to say in a cheerful, helpful tone. She smiled up at him, acting cool even though inside she was trying to figure out why this huge man should be having such a weird effect on her.

  She’d felt sexual attraction before—what red-blooded woman hadn’t? But this immediate and powerful reaction was different. She felt she’d actually known this man before, and yet she could swear she’d never met him.

  CHAPTER SIX

  JOHN FORESTER WASN’T exactly somebody who’d slip a normal woman’s mind—not unless she had Alzheimer’s, Shannon told herself.

  Maybe there was something to this reincarnation thing that Willow had talked about. Maybe Shannon had known Forester in another lifetime. Because he made her nervous as hell in this one, and the result was she talked too much.

  “You probably noticed that the police headquarters are right across the compound from us—we share the outside exercise area. So far we’re beating them at basketball. With your height, you’ll be a welcome addition to our team. Losers have to supply the barbecue on the outdoor grill. Now, the grand tour. Here we have the workout room, and this is the TV room. Ta da—these are the offices, here’s our kitchen, and of course you’d never guess these are the three bays where our trucks live, one engine, one ladder, one rescue. The fourth bay is maintenance. Two entrances, one on Jefferson, one on Fifth. Two bunk rooms, two bathrooms, common shower. If the sign’s turned over, it means I’m in there.”

  Cute. Not. Stop it, O’Shea. You sound like a wound-up Energizer bunny. Ask questions. Get him talking. Let yourself off the hook.

  “So you’re from New York, John?” Brilliant, just brilliant.

  “Born and bred. How about you, Shannon?”

  Neat, fast turnaround. “Courage Bay, born and bred.” Two more members were just coming in, and Shannon introduced them. Then she led the way to the garage area.

  “Bud Patchett, John Forester,” she said next. “Bud does all the maintenance and repairs on our trucks, and he also gives free advice when my poor old car breaks down.” She liked the friendly mechanic. Everyone did. “John’s our newest member, Bud, just in from New York.”

  “Good to meet you.” Bud wiped off his fingers with a cloth before he shook John’s hand. “Hope you like our little city. Must seem small compared to New York.”

  “I haven’t been here long enough to really look around, but I think I’m gonna love it,” John assured him.

  Before they could say any more, the bells sounded and the dispatcher’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Engine One, Rescue One, Ladder One. First alarm to Forty-fifth and Smythe. Report of apartment fire.”

  Shannon joined the general rush for turnout uniforms and jumped on the truck.

  The call-out was a false alarm. Some kids had put a flashing red light in an empty apartment, and it looked like flames from the street. But the crew had no sooner arrived back at the hall than the alarm sounded again.

  This time it was a thirty-seven-year-old man in a luxury apartment building, who’d had a heart attack. Shannon and the others resuscitated him, and he was breathing when the ambulance arrived, but when they got back to the firehouse, they heard he’d been DOA when he reached the hospital.

  No one said much over dinner. Shannon didn’t know what the others were thinking, but she kept seeing the young man’s face in her mind. He hadn’t been much older than her, and now he was dead.

  She glanced up from the ice cream they were having for dessert and caught Forester studying her. He gave a tiny nod and a wink, and for some reason she figured he knew exactly what she’d been thinking.

  There was a motor vehicle accident just after midnight with three serious injuries, and at three in the morning a woman in labor who didn’t have cab fare called the fire department instead. They got her to the hospital in the very nick of time. The baby was a healthy boy, and the atmosphere in the truck on the way back to the station was almost hysterically lighthearted. In some crazy fashion, the baby’s birth seemed to balance out the young man’s death.

  Through it all, Shannon was intensely aware of the newest member of the team, and the feeling grew even stronger as the twenty-four-hour shift progressed. When she did get a few stolen hours of sleep toward morning, she was grateful that Forester was assigned sleeping space in the other bunk room. The energy between them was disconcerting.

  By six the next morning, when her shift was over, Shannon felt the usual buzz, a combination of leftover adrenaline and weariness. She was pulling on her runners when John came up to her.

  “I wondered if you were going to this Bar and Grill place this afternoon, Shannon?”

  “Yeah, of course. Having a beer together is a tradition when a new guy arrives at the hall.”

  “Where is it, exactly?”

  “Right along Jefferson Avenue, a couple of blocks from here. I’ll walk over with you now and show you the place, if you like.”

  “You wouldn’t mind?”

  “Not at all.” But as they started out, she wasn’t exactly sure that was true. Being close to him made her hyperaware of being female, a situation that usually didn’t come up with the guys at work. They were a team, and gender wasn’t an issue.

  During the short walk to the bar, the strange and powerful attraction she’d felt earlier was back in full force. He wasn’t touching her, but every nerve ending in her body telegraphed awareness. Tension grew, and Shannon again found herself taking nervous refuge in words.

  “The Bar and Grill’s smack-dab in the middle of the emergency services district,” she said. “So it’s become an off-duty hangout for the police, the firemen and the medical emergency teams.” And you’ve become a chatty tour guide.

  “There’s a couple places in New York like that, too,” he said. “Family places, in a way.”

  Shannon nodded. “It’s got an interesting and tragic history, actually. The owners, Larry and Louise Goodman, geared the place to the emergency teams after their only son, Peter, died ten years ago. He was a paramedic, and he died as a result of treating victims of a chemical spill at a paint factory. They’ve devoted an entire wall to photos of emergency personnel who’ve lost their lives in the line of duty.” She pointed ahead, relieved that they’d reached their destination. “That’s the building there.”

  “Brick, huh? You’d almost think it was built by firefighters.”

  Shannon smiled at him and shook her head. “It was an old movie theater, built back in 1914 when movies first caught on. Larry’s father bought it in the seventies and converted it to the Bar and Grill. Larry inherited it. He’s added a rooftop patio—it’s nice up there on summer evenings.”

  “You can probably use it all year round in this climate.” John nodded up at the sky. “Just look at that color.”

  Above the hills, the eastern sky was still streaked with gold and yellow, remnants of the sunrise.

  “We don’t have this much sky in New York,” John said. “Too many tall buildings.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  “New York?” They’d reached the bar, and he stopped and turned toward her. The guy had a killer smile. “I haven’t been away long enough to get homesick.”

  “So when did you arrive in Courag
e Bay?”

  He named a date.

  “That was the day after the first warehouse fire,” Shannon said.

  “Yeah. I heard all about that. The place went up again, right?”

  “It sure did. That would have happened the day you arrived here. Our chief, Dan Egan, and the arson investigator, Sam Prophet, were hurt in that second fire. There’s some indication it was arson. I heard they’ve sent in a bomb specialist. Maybe the first one was arson, too. I was there, and things went bad really fast, much faster than an ordinary blaze should have.”

  “I’ve been in some like that. We had one in the Bronx, in a carpet warehouse. Place went up like tinder.”

  “Was that one arson?”

  “Nope.” John shook his head. He didn’t seem inclined to say any more about it. Usually when guys were loath to talk, it meant something bad had happened, somebody hurt or dead, so Shannon let the subject drop.

  “Well, I should be heading home.” She adjusted her backpack. “See you here at about five this afternoon.”

  He nodded and held her gaze longer than necessary. “I’ll be waiting, Shannon.”

  Now what exactly did he mean by that? She had the distinct impression he was watching her as she jogged down the street. But when she turned the corner at the end of the block, she glanced back and he was gone.

  So much for an overactive imagination.

  WHEN SHANNON GOT HOME ten minutes later, it didn’t take any imagination at all to see that her front steps were missing. Nothing but a pile of rubble remained, and Willow was already busy loading the old lumber into a wheelbarrow Shannon hadn’t seen before.

  Willow set it down and waved a cheerful greeting as Shannon jogged up.

  The dogs came racing over to greet her, and Willow said, “Hi, boss. I thought I’d get started early on those steps. They could give out at any time, and I’ve heard how Californians will sue at the drop of a hat.”

  Shannon was a little surprised and not a little dismayed. She’d been thinking more along the lines of repairs rather than total annihilation. But what did she know? Maybe the stairs were too rotten to save. And she hadn’t been specific.

  Cleo was lying on her back on the grass, waving her legs in the air, and Shannon knelt to give her belly a scratch. It gave her a chance to recover. “Did we buy enough wood to rebuild these?” She knew they hadn’t. And her charge card was already dangerously close to maxing out.

  “Pepsi, don’t you dare.” Shannon took a swipe at him just as he raised a leg above her right running shoe.

  “Don’t worry about lumber,” Willow chirped. “Donald’s going for some when the stores open. He brought over his wheelbarrow, too. We’re piling all this junk in the backyard. I thought we could light it and have a wiener roast a little later.”

  “Good idea.” Did she have any wieners? Shannon didn’t think so. She was making a mental shopping list as she made her way around the house to the back, dogs trailing behind her.

  She stopped short when she rounded the corner of the house, and her jaw dropped. The back deck was also demolished. A ladder had been propped on an angle against the back door, obviously to gain access to the house.

  A not so little niggle of concern was beginning to take the place of surprise. It was one thing to knock things down, but it dawned on Shannon that she had no real proof Willow was capable of building them back up again.

  “I figured we might as well get the lumber for both,” Willow said cheerfully as she wheeled a load past Shannon and dumped it on the already enormous pile of rubble.

  “Absolutely,” Shannon agreed in a weak voice, noting that the pile was almost as high as the back fence. When they lit that scrap heap on fire for their weiner roast, she’d better have an engine standing by, or the whole neighborhood could go up.

  “Don’t worry,” Willow called after her as Shannon climbed the ladder into the kitchen. “I’m going to fix up a ramp so the dogs can go in.”

  Shannon was getting to her feet when she noticed the countertops. The Arborite was gone, leaving a mess of worn wood and old, ugly glue.

  “Omigod.” She stared at the mess. Exactly how far had Willow gone with this demolition kick? Almost afraid to find out, she made her way through the rest of her house. The walls in the hall had been generously spackled but not yet sanded. Well, that wasn’t too bad. They’d needed spackle, although it looked as if Willow had been more than a little generous with the stuff. The banister was now missing from the stairs.

  The downstairs bathroom had no glass doors on the tub, which was what Shannon had planned would eventually happen, but neither did it have a rod and shower curtain. That was going to make showering a little tricky, but it wasn’t really an issue, Shannon realized an instant later, because there was no longer a shower. Instead, there was a gaping hole in the wall, which exposed the pipes.

  “There was a leak in the line, and the shower was rusted, so I just took the whole thing out,” Willow said from behind her. “I haven’t done much plumbing, but I don’t think it’s too complicated. After all, men do it all the time.”

  Take two deep breaths, Shannon cautioned herself. And then turn around and try to smile. Keep your hands at your sides. Remember, sometimes you don’t know your own strength.

  “You don’t think maybe you’ve taken on too much, Willow? I mean, with the job at the vet clinic and all?” Gad, she was proud of herself. She didn’t sound furious.

  “Heavens no.” Willow shook her head. “You know what they say—if you want something done, find a busy person.”

  “Right.” Get out of here before you explode, O’Shea. “Well, I think I’ll head off to the grocery store for some mustard and wieners.”

  “That would be nice. I think that’s Donald’s truck I hear. Good. He’s back with the materials we need.”

  Shannon was exiting via the ladder when her uncle rounded the corner carrying a stack of lumber on his shoulder.

  “Hey, how’s my girl?” He put the lumber on the grass and came over to kiss Shannon’s cheek. He was puffing hard and sweating heavily. Shannon studied him, wondering if he ought to be carting around heavy loads of lumber.

  Uncle Donald was a good forty pounds overweight, and from the color of his face, Shannon guessed he might also have high blood pressure. He’d had a desk job all his working life, and he hadn’t taken up any exercise more strenuous than table tennis since his retirement four years before.

  “I think Willow wants to talk to you,” Shannon lied. “Go see what she needs and I’ll finish unloading the lumber.”

  “Okay.” Donald’s face registered relief. “Oh, Shannon, here’s the bill for the supplies. I put it all on my credit card.”

  Shannon took the slip of paper. One glance, and she could feel her own blood pressure rising rapidly. “I’ll write you a check.” And then I’ll go see about a loan at the bank.

  “No rush, honey.” He headed up the ladder, but Donald wasn’t that agile. He slipped halfway up. He caught himself before he fell, but Shannon started wondering about her liability insurance. What, exactly, did it cover?

  She carried lumber until she’d cooled down somewhat. Then she went up the ladder herself, determined to lay down the law.

  Willow was making coffee in the kitchen. Uncle Donald was sitting on a stool at the counter, looking at her as if she was a multibillion-dollar policy he was writing up.

  Shannon took a deep, calming breath. “Willow, I want you to replace at least one set of stairs as soon as possible. I’m concerned about safety.” There, that should do it.

  “Oh, absolutely.” Her eyes went big and round. Donald turned and gave Shannon a wounded look.

  “We’re planning to do that right away, aren’t we, Willow? You don’t mind if we just have a cup of coffee first? And a sandwich?”

  Shannon felt like crap. They were both pensioners, for God’s sake. What was she thinking? “Take all the time you need,” she muttered. “There’s ham and cheese in the fridge.” Shoulders
hunched, she turned and made her way out the door and back down the ladder.

  She opened the dog pen. Pepsi and Cleo burst out as though they’d been incarcerated for years. “C’mon, you two. I need a walk. And we’d better all hope the geriatric wrecking crew don’t decide on some upgrades to your doghouse while we’re gone.”

  By the time she left for the Bar and Grill that afternoon, there was a ramp the dogs could manage that led up to the back door, but that was all. Willow and Donald had made two attempts before they got it right, and it had taken most of the afternoon to construct, which Shannon figured didn’t bode well for the rest of the renovations. On the positive side, Willow had decided against lighting the pile of rubble.

  “Donald’s invited me out for a nice dinner instead of hot dogs,” she told Shannon. “We’ll have the wiener roast another day.”

  And she’d make certain she had a hose and maybe an engine standing by, Shannon thought as she headed out the door. She wondered if Willow’s husband drank. The woman had been living with her for only a little over a week, and already Shannon felt the need for liquor.

  When she walked into the Bar and Grill, the guys from the firehouse hailed her. Some had their wives and girlfriends with them. All of them were grouped around the long, U-shaped bar. John was sitting beside Spike Hilborn.

  “Hey, Biceps, c’mon over,” Spike said, scooting aside to make room. “We saved a seat for ya.” She sat down between the two of them, conscious all over again of the magnetism John exuded. Was it only her, or did every woman in the room feel it?

  “John just got here,” Spike said to her. “So I’m introducing him to the guys he didn’t meet this morning. This is Monte, better known as the Bull,” he related. “And Brian, also known as Sleepy. Gary, and his lady, Maria. That’s Chug, and his wife, Belinda. And the beautiful blond bartender is Carolee Pollack. Meet John Forester, everybody. He’s our newest member, which means he’s buying.”