Abner would know.
I dialed my grandfather and got voicemail. “Hey, Doc. There’s some evidence I want to show you. Call me back before it starts to rot.”
11
My family lived in a split-timber log house at the end of Tobacco Road. Lamar had built the house himself, and he had named the road after a bestselling novel about white trash. He said it made him laugh.
It made my mother cringe.
Lamar’s farm was about two hundred acres. He grew organic strawberries, Christmas trees, and scuppernong grapes. He also raised horses, miniature goats, and thirty head of Angus beef. Lamar had inherited the farm from his parents, who grew tobacco for fifty years. They passed away just before the tobacco market in North Carolina collapsed. Unlike many farmers in Allegheny County, Lamar had taken the death of tobacco in stride and diversified. He hated smoking anyway. It had killed both of his grandparents, parents, and only brother.
I walked into the cabin to find Lamar nuking a plate in the microwave. Dinner was warmed up lasagna, one of the three he had baked over the weekend. With two firefighters and a veterinarian in the house, we never knew when dinner would be served, and Lamar liked to be prepared for any emergency.
He didn’t look up when I shut the door. I thought of heading upstairs to the loft. If Lamar was ignoring me, maybe I would return the favor. But doing that would only prolong the inevitable.
I put the plastic container way in the back of the freezer and grabbed a beer. I drained it while Lamar set a casserole pan and a tossed salad on the table.
“Plates,” Lamar said.
“Silverware, too?”
Lamar grunted a reply.
It was easy to tell when Lamar was perturbed. Most people yelled when they were upset. Lamar got very quiet and started fixing things. In high school, I learned about Occam’s Razor, which posits that the simplest solution to a problem is the right one. When Mom remarried, I learned about Lamar’s Hammer, which posits that the first step in fixing anything is to give it a good whack.
TV has lines rolling through it? Whack.
Glove box rattling in the truck? Whack.
Vent fan humming too loud in the bathroom? Whack.
Lamar sat at the table. His chair wobbled. He made a sour face like he’d sucked a lemon.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Lamar turned the chair upside down. He hammered the offending leg with an open palm. He sat down and wiggled his butt. It didn’t rock anymore.
I spooned lasagna on my plate. “Where’s Mom?”
“Horses.”
Horses was code. It meant that she was angry, too, and she had put herself in timeout. Taking care of the horses calmed her down, soothed the edges of her ragged temper. When Mom got mad, she got loud. It didn’t last long, but her temper was a sight to behold. That kind of flash fire anger didn’t bother me. Lamar’s cold stoicism always unnerved me more.
“Let’s eat.”
“What about Mom?”
“She’ll be along.”
For five minutes, neither of us spoke. I didn’t have much of an appetite. My mind was on the finger in the freezer. I wanted to give it to Abner tonight, before Mom found it next to her veal cutlets.
After pushing my food from one side of the plate to the other, I’d had enough. “There’s something I want to run past you.”
Lamar nodded for me to go on.
“Remember the house fire over in Duck? The empty house that caught fire in the middle of the night? Out of curiosity, I went over there today and found—“
Lamar stopped chewing. “Once firefighters leave a site, you need a search warrant to go poking around.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Now you do.”
Lamar stared into the distance. He chewed his food fifty times. He wiped the corners of his mouth. He took a drink of water.
The longer he took to speak, the more curious I became.
“Boone, serving as a firefighter is serious business. It takes determination and discipline. It also takes teamwork.”
“I known that. I’m not a kid.”
“Which is why I’m giving it to you straight. Today, you broke the most fundamental rules of the job. You tried to be a hero, and you almost got killed. Rookies make mistakes. Lord knows I made my share, too, but you took it to a new level.”
“Yet this morning, you toasted me. With beer that I bought.”
“That’s tradition. What was I supposed to do, embarrass you?” Lamar wiped his palms. He looked into the distance again, growing silent.
I waited until I couldn’t stand not to. “What’re you trying to say?”
“Speaking as your captain, you’re on probation from the Allegheny VFD. “
“Probation?”
“One more slip up, you’re suspended.”
A rushing sound filled my ears. It was a waste of breath to argue. Once he’d made a decision, Lamar never listened to reason. He just hid behind rules and regs like they were bulletproof glass.
But I could still see him behind the glass, and he couldn’t erase the evidence I already had. With Abner’s help, I could prove the Tin City and Duck fires were related. That they were both started by bombs.
“Have it your way, Captain.” I walked outside to the back porch and dialed Abner. “This is Boone again. Forgot tonight was bingo night or whatever lie you tell to cover your visits to the Widow Neff’s house. Meet me tomorrow, 0630 at the Town & Country. Don’t be late, or I’ll take my evidence to the Hyphenated Lady instead.”
TUESDAY
1
The next morning at 0630 hours, I found my grandfather inside the Town and Country restaurant. He was slouched over a table crowded with a ketchup bottle, salt-and-pepper shakers, sugar, and a bottomless decanter of coffee.
Abner’s silver hair was so shaggy, it looked like matted fur, and his face was hidden by a wild salt-and-pepper beard a pair of thick framed glasses. His body was a shorter, more weathered version of mine.
He looked up as the waitresses showed me to the booth. “You’re twenty two minutes, seventeen seconds late.”
“Make that forty-three seconds.” I slid into the booth and ordered coffee. “Your watch is fast.”
“Jeet?”
“Huh?”
“Did you eat yet?” Abner formed each word distinctly. “I’ve been snacking.”
“Snacking?” The waitress snorted. “Honey, we’ve been open a half hour, and you’ve about eat us out of house and home.”
Abner waved her away. “Shoo, urchin.”
“What’d you call me?”
“Ignore him, ma’am. My grandfather was raised by wild pigs.”
“I could tell that by the way he dresses.” She snorted and stuck a pencil behind her ear. “And the way he smells.”
“Don’t insult the woman who brings your food, Doc. It’s an excellent way to get poisoned.”
“The food here will kill you either way.” Abner removed a matchbox from his pocket. With a well-rehearsed flourish, he set it on the table. "What's inside the box?"
“How many?” I asked.
“Five.”
“Size?”
“Varies. Smallest is a couple millimeters.”
“Human?”
“You tell me.”
I slid the box open. There were five bone fragments inside. The smallest was two millimeters long. The largest was five millimeters. Not much to work on. I unfolded my napkin and moved the fragments onto the cloth. Four fragments were white, which suggested bleaching. The fifth was darker. Which could mean exposure to fire or burial, or recent death.