Chapter 5 Fire at Night
“Derision, Sarcasm, and Scoffing, Attorneys at Law. May I help you?”
“Confusion, this is Dignity. May I speak to Lawyer Sarcasm?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Confusion murmured from her end of the phone line. “Miss Sarcasm is in court now. May I take a message?”
“Yes. Tell her that there was vandalism and burglary last night at Founder’s Grove. There’s broken area lights, and some tools missing from the main shed, and the lock on that shed door broken. Tell her…” He paused, remembering that Confusion was unlikely to communicate any of this to Sarcasm intelligibly if she reported the matter at all. “I’ll call back later, OK?”
“Of course. Have a nice day, Mr. Dimity.”
“OK, Dignity, I haven’t got much time. What have you got?”
“Is that Sarcasm?” he replied. Her cell phone connection was a little weak.
“No, it’s Ally McBeal. What’s Confusion telling me? Something about a broken door hinge?”
“No, a lock, the lock on the main shed at the Grove. And the thief got away with tools. I found it this morning and reported it to the police. I thought you’d want to know.”
“Of course,” Sarcasm said lightly. “That all?”
“Well, no, that’s not all. I want to know if I’m responsible to replace or repair anything?”
“Nope. That all?”
“No, no, not all. I’ve noticed a big ruffian around the park who I think may be responsible, and he was actually hanging around again today. When I pointed him out to Sgt. Booker, he said he knew the guy as an unsavory character named Adversity. But they can’t arrest him without evidence.” He paused to give her a chance to comment but she was silent. “Anyway, I just thought I’d replace the lock, I mean at my own expense.”
“That’s the spirit,” she said with her first hint of interest. “Thank you for letting me know about it. Keep me up to date, OK?”
“Sure.”
“Bye now.”
Dignity was a fumbler with such things, so his wife Obscurity offered to replace the lock. They drove out together to the Grove where, outside the tool shed, they were soon joined by two loiterers. One was a Mr. Whistler, who lived across the street from the Grove. He was sympathetic and ready, if needed, to help with the repair. He even took Dignity’s phone number, promising to call if he noticed anything suspicious going on in the Grove. The other man was the hulking, red-haired man named Adversity, who grinned at Dignity with the warmth and sincerity of a vulture.
While Obscurity was unpackaging and installing the new lock, Adversity talked to Dignity in a loud, carefree voice, asking him what his plans were to further secure the half dozen small maintenance buildings in the Grove, what specific times he might be expected to be coming by, and who he suspected had stolen the tools. Weighed down by a combination of agitation, anger, and fear, Dignity put him off as best he could.
When Obscurity had finished with the lock, they drove home together. Dignity was silent at first because he felt on the verge of weeping from the stress. Any of the buildings, including the one with the new lock, could be broken into in the days ahead. He could not watch them constantly, and Sgt. Booker had only promised that the police would patrol the Grove more often, not that they would be present all the time. Adversity could just pick his night.
“That thug is a cool hand,” he managed to say to Obscurity without his voice breaking.
“Who, Mr. Adversity?” Obscurity said. “I thought he was a likeable guy. Not a bad sort. Maybe he isn’t the thief like Sgt. Booker thought.”
“Likeable! You liked him?”
“Sure, big talkers aren’t so bad. And even if he is the thief, that doesn’t make him the worst person in the world. His clothes are shabby, so maybe he needed to sell those tools for a few bucks to get food.”
“But, he’ll be back, you know, for more. Maybe he’ll steal the riding mower too. He’s got to be stopped. I mean whoever the thief is.”
She patted his shoulder. “Try not to worry about it.”
Two nights later, on Friday, they were awakened by a phone call shortly before midnight.
“Founder’s Grove is on fire,” Mr. Whistler told Dignity. “There’s fire trucks over there. I thought I’d better let you know.”
Obscurity offered to go, but he told her to stay home with the kids. With a miserable sense of duty, he rose, dressed, and drove to the Grove. As he approached, he could see over intervening buildings that the fire was still burning, flaming high in the tops of many trees. He parked his car outside the Grove on a side street, passed through some light wooden barriers that had been hastily put in place, and came to where a small crowd from the neighborhood was watching the efforts of the firemen. He was surprised at how many fire trucks were present, seemingly every one in town.
Over the roar of the burning and of the gushing fire hoses, he identified himself as the Grove’s Marshal to the fire chief, who took his information and promised to stay in touch with him. The cause of the fire, he learned, was unknown, but arson was suspected. One of the sheds, he then remembered, had contained combustibles, including many gallons of oil paint. Having passed on this information, he had nothing more to do but watch the trees burn in the contained acres the firemen had surrounded, an area that included most of the Grove’s sheds.
Overwhelmed, he leaned against a post for support and just stared. The people around him were, of course, entertained, making comments about the fire and guessing at its cause. No one was smiling, but no one was much disturbed either. After all, it was a free show. He could think of nothing but that every burning tree saved was increasing the danger to Grove visitors. When all was over, those blackened but still standing would be ready to fall over or drop limbs. A tree might even crash down on a car parked at a curb at the Grove’s edge. A tall tree might even fall across a street and damage a house. And he was legally liable for it all, could be bankrupted by lawsuits. It might actually be safer if the trees were allowed to burn completely. But he knew that could not be, for the danger of the fire spreading through the City had to be the main consideration.
An odd thing that again and again distracted his attention from his depression was that the firemen were not behaving in the way he had learned to expect from City employees. They were using their gear efficiently! Every one of them seemed to be a thoroughly trained professional, and when he caught a glimpse of a face, it was always brave and resolute. What had become of the usual bumbling? But it was more than that. What was it about them that reminded him of, well, angels? That was wild, and yet again and again came that impression that angels were at work here. They were all that was between him and the untamed horrors of the night, but they were sufficient. How very strange.
He turned to go back to his car but had not gone far before he encountered Adversity. The big man came forward to meet him, removing a glowing cigar from his mouth before he spoke.
“Tough luck, pal! Seems like misfortune just follows you around. Listen, I got to tell you something I know about your cousin Guiles.”
Dignity stared at him. “You know Guiles?”
“Yeah, we’ve done a little business together. One of my sidelines is to buy people’s furniture.”
Dignity was reminded of the park benches that had disappeared under Guiles’ Marshal-ship. “Indoor or outdoor furniture?” he asked quietly.
“Either one, it don’t matter. Anyhow, I was talking to Guiles just yesterday and—do you have any idea how burnt up he is at you since you got to be Marshal in his place? Oh, he’s bitter. Anyhow, he was saying that, if he couldn’t have Marshal’s Grove, nobody would. And—did you know that the power has been off to the sheds?”
Dignity nodded, for he remembered that he had been unable to get their interior lights to come on.
“You knew that? Guiles said he thought that the City had it turned off lately to save money. He was
telling me that he was going to call and have it turned back on.”
“But he can’t do that. He’s not the Marshal anymore.”
“He was gonna try. Maybe the power company people would do it because they’d think he was still Marshal.”
“But why would he want the power on?” Dignity asked as a terrible suspicion began to form.
“Said he was going to use the sheds to store some things that belonged to him and that he might want to come out here at night.”
“That’s crazy. He can’t use public buildings like that.”
Adversity took a puff on his cigar. “Sure sounded crazy to me. But, you know, when you look at it—power on—then there’s a fire. He has keys to the sheds too. He showed them to me.”
Dignity did not want to stand there and piece it all together with Adversity’s help. He did not even trust the man. He excused himself and returned to his car.
The rest of that night he barely slept, and on Saturday morning he consulted with Reason, laying it all out for her as they sat in the breakfast nook at Grace House. Her little brow furrowed as she took out her cell phone and made a call to the power company. When the call was over, she looked at Dignity with wide brown eyes.
“They either don’t know or wouldn’t tell me who called them yesterday,” she said, “but they did say that, at someone’s request, they turned the power on to the sheds yesterday evening.”
“And the fire started at maybe 11:30!”
“It’s very cleverly done,” she went on. “All he had to do was go there in daylight and stuff papers into, let’s say, a space heater that was plugged in and turned on. That way he could be at home in bed when the power comes on and starts the papers burning. And if he called the power company with a cell phone, it’s hard to trace.”
Dignity clenched his hands and stared at the table top. “Couldn’t you just kill him?”
“Yes—from a distance—like for instance turning the power on while he’s strapped to an electric chair.”
Reason too had had all she ever wanted of Guiles’ evil doings. He noted that her lips were trembling.
“I’ll call Sgt. Booker again,” he said sadly. “I know he can’t arrest Guiles on the word of someone like Adversity, but he still ought to know about the electricity.” He sighed. “Then I’ve got to get to work. The shed that holds the riding mower is one of the few that survived the fire. I don’t know if you could call that luck. It means I have no excuse not to get on it and start mowing the Grove’s lawn areas.”