“What?” Luc demanded. She sounded downright panicked.
“There’s black smoke pouring out of my brick oven. The fire’s gone out of control!” And she hung up.
CHAPTER FIVE
LUC DIDN’T THINK, he acted. He dialed the head of the volunteer fire department, Chuck Bell, to tell him there was a fire at the Indigo Bakery. Then he ran out of the house, jumped into his car and headed to Loretta’s as fast as he could go. He narrowly managed to avoid hitting a fat chicken that had wandered out onto the road in front of Yvonne Valois’s house.
He was reassured when he caught sight of the Indigo Bakery and didn’t see any flames. But the front door was open, and wisps of black smoke wafted out.
He was out of the Tahoe before it came to a full stop and ran full tilt for the bakery entrance. “Loretta! Loretta, where are you?”
She appeared at the door, waving a newspaper to dispel the smoke, and she was coughing.
Luc reached in and grabbed her arm, dragging her out into the fresh air. “The fire department is on its way.”
She shook her head. “There’s no need. The fire is out. The chimney on my wood stove wasn’t drafting, that’s all.”
“Did you forget to open the flue?”
“No, I’m sure it was open.”
Luc called Chuck back and let him know he could call off the brigade, everything was fine. Then he went inside to assess the situation. The smoke was already dissipating.
“I don’t think there’s any real damage,” Loretta said. “Thanks for coming so quickly.”
Luc walked through the bakery back into Loretta’s house, though she hadn’t invited him to do so, and found a back door off the kitchen. He opened it to help draft the smoke. On the way, he couldn’t help take notice of Loretta’s home. It was clean and uncluttered, decorated simply, but the walls were painted in vibrant shades-turquoise, bright green, magenta.
It seemed there was a wild side to Loretta Castille that Luc had yet to experience. But he wanted to. Oh, yeah.
He found an empty box by the back door. Flattened, it made a good fan, and he joined Loretta back in the bakery to get rid of the last of the smoke. The scent was still in the air, and probably would be for a while, but at least his eyes were no longer burning and Loretta had stopped coughing.
“Have you ever had trouble with the oven before?” he asked.
“No, never. My father drew up the plans-after consulting fifteen books on the subject, of course-and we built it together. I have a small commercial oven in my kitchen, but I liked the idea of using a wood stove. Bread just tastes better, somehow. I’ve been experimenting with artisanal bread-I really want to push it at the festival.”
“What’s artisanal bread?”
“It’s bread crafted by hand the old-fashioned way. Traditionally, you use just flour, water, salt and yeast. You knead it by hand and make it into round loaves, the way bakers have done for centuries-you don’t use pans.”
“I see.” Though he wasn’t sure he did. He was all in favor of natural ingredients, but he wasn’t sure what difference a wood oven or the absence of a pan would make. Still, Loretta was the expert.
“It’s all the rage in California. I want to print up a little flyer about how it’s made. But I need to experiment more so I get it just right. And I can’t do that if my oven won’t draft!”
Luc walked over to the oven and inspected it. He hadn’t paid that much attention to it before. But now that he knew Loretta had helped to build it, brick by brick, it was a lot more interesting. There was a large lower compartment, where the wood was stored, and a smaller baking chamber above, which was currently covered with white residue from a fire extinguisher.
“How does it work?” he asked.
She was more than happy to explain. “You build up the fire in the baking chamber. And when it gets good and hot, you push the embers to the edges and put your bread right on the floor of the oven. The oven stays hot for hours and hours, so you just keep baking.”
“Can you make pizza in here?”
Loretta laughed. “You’re such a guy. Yes, pizza made in a wood-burning oven is to die for.” She joined him, standing close enough that he could smell the lavender scent of her shampoo even underneath the smoke. “Ugh, what a mess.” She poked at the soggy wood, which was now covered with white powder. “This fire extinguisher stuff is bound to be horribly toxic, and it’s all over my beautiful oven.”
“I’ll help you clean it up.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Just let me, okay?”
She smiled. “All right.”
Using insulated gloves, Loretta removed the ruined logs from the oven, and Luc carried them out to the backyard, where he doused them with the hose to be sure they were truly extinguished. When he returned, Loretta was scouring the inside of her oven with soapy water and a scrub brush. He found another brush and went to work on the oven’s exterior and the floor, all of which had gotten sprayed by the fire extinguisher.
When everything was sparkling clean and cool to the touch, Loretta dried it with old towels.
“The damper is definitely open,” she said. “I need to look up inside the chimney and see if it’s stopped up or something. Maybe some leaves collected in there.”
“You’re going to climb inside your oven?”
“It’s not hot. I’d barely lit the fire when it started smoking and I put it out right away.”
She got a flashlight and pulled a chair over to the oven and climbed onto it, then leaned back and stuck her head in the baking chamber so she was facing up. Then she wiggled her way farther inside. Luc watched with fascination.
She switched on the flashlight. “I can’t see anything. It’s pitch-black and I should be seeing blue sky. There’s definitely something stopping up the chimney.”
“Maybe we should go at it from outside.”
She emerged from the oven and climbed off the chair, allowing Luc to give her a hand for support.
“Maybe I should call my dad.”
“No need to bother him,” Luc said. “We can figure this out.”
“Are you willing to get up on the roof?”
“Sure.” In renovating the cottage, he’d gotten used to being up on the roof. “Where’s your ladder?”
She showed him where the ladder was stored, and he leaned it against the roof and climbed up while she watched anxiously. “I could call a chimney sweep.”
“I can handle it,” he said again with more confidence than he felt. He’d never unclogged a chimney before. But how hard could it be?
The roof pitch wasn’t too steep. Luc made his way to the chimney and peered down.
Something hissed at him.
He jumped back. “Holy-”
“What?” Loretta called.
“There’s a creature in there.”
“A creature?” She sounded alarmed. “What kind of creature?”
“Toss me up the flashlight.”
She did, and when he shone it down the chimney, he saw two beady black eyes in a masked face. “Raccoon. And it’s not very happy. I think it’s stuck.”
“Oh, the poor thing! I almost burned it up. Can you get it out?”
Only a complete fool would stick his bare hands inside a chimney with an angry raccoon. They grew big in bayou country. “Can you get me those gloves you used earlier?” They were thick, heat-resistant gloves, similar to the kind firefighters used.
She disappeared inside and returned moments later with the gloves, tossing them up to him. They were a tight fit, but he hoped they would offer some protection if the creature decided to bite.
“Now, maybe if you could push it from below, I could pull it from up here,” he said.
“You’re kidding.”
“Unless you want to take your chimney apart brick by brick-”
“No! I’ll-I’ll get a plunger and try to push with that. At least I won’t hurt it that way.”