There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell - v4 (36 page)

Even after most of the people had cleared the area, Maye and Mickey sat on the steps of City Hall, watching the last charred beams of the stage smolder. It was on those steps that Charlie found her, staring at the smoking, heaped mound like she was in a trance. He touched her shoulder, urged her to get up and come home, but she wouldn’t budge. Maye shook her head without looking at her husband. She was searching for Ruby, she said; she could be wearing a robe or she could be in a tracksuit, and she had to look, she had to keep looking. She had to be somewhere. She had simply vanished into thin air, and Maye needed to find her.

She tried to explain what had happened, but how can you possibly describe with any measure of rationale that a little old woman who was dressed up like death and burning people in the audience with her cigarette, POOF! suddenly disappeared before your eyes like a rabbit in a top hat, leaving only a puff of ash and bone and a lingering odor of sulfur behind? How can it possibly make sense that someone you knew disappeared as if sucked into a black hole? Who would remotely believe you unless they saw it for themselves? How do you expound that your little, wrinkled elderly friend suddenly combusted in front of hundreds of people, who applauded like she was David Blaine climbing out of a water tomb after a week? Certainly her blood-alcohol level ran an average of ninety proof and some part of her was always ablaze, making her not only a living Molotov cocktail, but the most obvious answer was also the most unbelievable.

Take Mickey home, Maye told Charlie. He’s hungry, tired. It’s been a long day.

Give him a special bone. Give him whatever he wants. He was a good boy.

Maye handed Charlie the makeshift rag leash and at the bottom of the steps saw John Smith, standing there with both hands on his hips, on duty. As Charlie climbed down, John climbed up, and they exchanged nods as they passed.

“Can you make sure she gets home okay, John?” Charlie asked.

John nodded again. He took two more steps and sat next to Maye.

“You all right?”

It took her some time to answer, and then she barely shrugged.

“People thought it was a magic trick,” she explained. “They clapped. But I am not understanding. Where is she? What could have happened to her? Please tell me she knew magic. Please tell me she’s back at the house falling asleep in her dirty slippers with a cigarette in her hand in that recliner watching Susan Hayward almost set her baby on fire.”

John paused and he took a deep breath. He didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t sure what happened, but he had seen it while writing out parking tickets along Broadway and wasn’t able to run more than four steps before the crowd turned and surged toward him.

“I can’t explain it, Maye,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “I’m as confused as you are. I only saw it from across the square, after I heard her yelling and hissing.”

“There wasn’t a trace of her left,” Maye said, feeling a tear break free and run down the side of her nose. “She didn’t make a sound. And then I—I couldn’t find her. Just some wisps of ash. She was just gone.”

“I’m sorry, Maye,” John said, patting Maye’s knee.

“I’m sorry, too, John,” she replied as she wiped her eyes, sniffled, and took a deep, deep breath. “I know she meant a lot to you.”

John nodded, his mouth pursed tightly. For a while, the two of them sat side by side on the steps, not saying anything but each understanding what the other wanted to say. They looked at the firefighters poking at the ruins, hosing down small eruptions of flame and trying to figure out what happened in the last seconds before Ruby went missing.

“They’re going to think she set this fire, too,” he finally told her. “It will be a couple of days before the investigation is fully over, but it looks like a deliberate fire, probably another lit cigarette, just like all the others. They’ll have to send evidence to the lab, but so far, it’s too much of a coincidence, Maye. The thinking will be that she comes back into Spaulding again and another town landmark goes up. Case closed.”

“If you’re sending stuff to the lab,” Maye said, pulling a bundle from her pocket, still with the evidence number marked on it, “send this, too. Ruby didn’t set this fire or any of the others. It’s the truth. I was holding her hand, her fingers were yellow, like a sinew yellow. The first knuckles on her pointer and middle fingers were like mummy yellow. I’ve seen a yellow finger like that before, the fingers of a heavy smoker, someone who’s smoked for decades. And I’ve seen it on Rowena Spaulding, who created quite a scene with Ruby before the fire spread.”

Maye handed him the red scarf, wrapped in plastic.

“Where did you get this?” he asked, puzzled.

“She had it, Ruby had it. She pulled it out, Rowena went for it, I got it. It’s the scarf that your father found, I’m guessing. Ruby said she never wore it before Rowena borrowed it and then planted it to implicate her. Check Rowena’s purse. You’ll find cigarettes, too. Whatever brand you’re looking for, you’ll find in there. But I’m betting whatever butts you have won’t match Viceroys.”

“Statute of limitations expired forty-five years ago for those fires,” John said, tucking the scarf into his pocket. “Even if we had DNA or photographic evidence it was her or a confession, we couldn’t prosecute her for any of that stuff.”

“Why can’t they just leave Ruby alone,” Maye said angrily. “She was in the audience the whole time. I saw her. Titball’s got it all on tape, her taking the pee girl hostage for a second and her fighting with the audience.”

“Considering the speed of acceleration, it looks like that fire was set right about the time you started your song,” John explained. “That’s three, maybe four minutes. They’ll estimate Ruby could have walked from backstage to the back of the audience in that time—it’s only a couple of hundred yards.”

“And ample time to walk from the backstage to onstage,” she added.

“Listen,” he said frankly. “I don’t want to believe that Ruby did it either, but we don’t have any proof that she didn’t. What do I have to rule her out? Unless you can give me something that’s feasible evidence Rowena did it, they’re going to go after Ruby like a pack of wolves, I’m just telling you. If she’s the scapegoat, then I want her name cleared more than anybody, believe me.”

Looking at the wreckage of the town square, Maye shook her head.

“I can’t,” she said simply, shrugging. “I don’t have it. I have nothing to give you. Rowena’s going to get away with this one just like the other ones. And Ruby will, once again, take the blame.”

“You know, Maye, I’m afraid you’re right,” John said simply. He stood up, then extended his hand to Maye, and she took it.

Maye looked out the window of the café to the florist across the street, trying to decide, if she was so inclined, which bouquet of the dozens of delightful ones that lined the sidewalk in buckets she would pick to take home after her tea. She saw peonies and tulips, some roses and even irises.

Spring had hit Spaulding sideways, spilling flowers onto the street from front yards and planters and forcing every tree to bloom and create canopied webs of foliage over every street. Crocuses and daffodils, finally free from the stiff, frigid ground of winter, ruptured out of any spot with soil, from raised beds to sidewalk cracks to traffic medians. In downtown Spaulding, two blocks away from her house, every light pole bore the weight of a blooming basket overflowing with pansies, petunias, and Queen Anne’s lace. The sun was bright and pale yellow; smooth, light breezes crept in, and in the morning a minuscule bubble of dew crowned every pointy blade of emerald-colored grass.

Maye decided she loved spring.

She had also decided on a daily routine, and that entailed getting up early every morning and heading down to the café where she would have her morning tea with honey, a blueberry muffin or a basil roll with a pat of butter, and read the freshly printed paper.

That morning marked the beginning of the second week of her routine. She had slipped on her loafers and a light sweater and headed out, arriving at the café and asking for a table for one. And every day, she’d look at the flowers lined up across the street and decide which ones she was going to take home. Looking through the window, she decided on a bouquet of pink, white, and lavender ruffled irises, since those seemed to be the most vibrant and alive representation of spring.

“Maye, how’s that tea holding up?” the waitress sang as she swished by.

“Oh, I’m great, thanks,” she replied as she looked up at the waitress, then turned her attention back to the paper.

The clanky, tinny bell from the door rattled as it opened and a middle-aged man with snowy white hair and a flashy smile stepped inside.

“Hey, Maye,” he said, tipping the brim of his Sierra Club baseball hat to her. “How’re you doing this morning?”

“Oh, I’m fine, Mr. Keene, and yourself?” she replied with a smile.

“Couldn’t be better, couldn’t be better,” he said, laughing, as he took a seat at the counter. “I’m planning on stirring up some trouble today. There’s a protest against field burning, and I’ve got the bullhorn! Don’t tell Mrs. Keene!”

“My lips are sealed,” Maye said with a wink.

The woman from the table behind her turned around and put her hand on Maye’s shoulder. “Is that a new sweater, Maye?” she asked, her lipstick far too perfect for that hour of the morning.

“It is, thank you for noticing,” Maye answered. “It’s my morning, afternoon, and night sweater.”

“It’s lovely on you, dear,” she said, giving Maye a pat before she turned back around to her Belgian waffle. “It shows off your boobies nicely.”

After she finished up with the city section, Maye took it back to the shared-newspaper stand up near the counter. She shuffled through the various sections until she found arts and entertainment and was just about to pull it out of the stack when the cook came out of the kitchen with a dish towel slapped over his shoulder.

“The batch of cranberry orange muffins I promised you yesterday are thirty seconds away from coming out of the oven,” he told her, pointing a finger gun at her. “You game?”

“Oh, you bet,” she replied. “I couldn’t sleep last night just thinking about them!”

She tried to pull the A&E section out of the stack to go back to her table, but it was stuck and wouldn’t budge. She went to give it another, more forceful tug, but this time it came effortlessly.

“I’m sorry!” a faceless voice on the other side of the rack exclaimed. “I didn’t know you were trying to get that section, too!”

“Ooops.” Maye laughed as she craned her neck around the rack to apologize to the person on the other side.

It was a young woman, about Maye’s age, with dark, perfectly messy cropped hair, pink cheeks, and bright, friendly eyes. She wore a white, slightly wrinkled linen shirt and a cotton knee-length skirt with daisies on it. Around her neck was a chalcedony pendant on a silver chain.

“Why, Mrs. Spaulding!” Maye blurted out joyously. “How nice to see you!”

The woman looked puzzled. “No, no, no,” she said with a hesitant laugh. “I used to work for her, but—”

“I’m sorry, I know that,” Maye said, a little embarrassed. “We met once before, in the fall, right when school started, at a faculty party.”

Not Mrs. Spaulding nodded. “I remember, you were from Arizona,” she said with a smile.

Maye nodded back. “You studied architecture and art history,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Maye.”

“Oh, I know who you are,” the young woman said with a laugh, shaking Maye’s hand. “You were on the front page of the paper and on the news every night for weeks for solving the town square mystery.”

“All of that is dying down now, thank God,” Maye replied. “My fifteen minutes seemed to get stuck in a time warp. I just kept waiting for it to end.”

“Well, it will probably kick back up when the trial starts, don’t you think?” the woman queried.

Maye shook her head. “Nah, it won’t be focused on me,” she answered, “I doubt I’ll even be called as a witness.”

“I’m so sorry about your friend,” the young woman said. “She seemed like quite a character. Did you ever find out what really happened?”

“Not really,” Maye said, trying to be stoic. “You know, her nephew and I got a copy of Rick Titball’s tape, and the only thing it showed is what we actually saw. She was there one minute and then she was gone. I don’t think there will ever be a very good explanation for any of us about what happened. I just know that I miss her, every day. There will never be another Ruby. But it was when we were scouring that tape that we caught a split-second glimpse of Rowena backstage, pouring accelerant on the canvas curtain and using a cigarette to light it. Old habits die hard, I guess. Wouldn’t you know, Rick Titball broke the biggest story of his life and had absolutely no idea he did it. But I’m sorry if you lost your job because of Rowena’s stay in county jail.”

“Oh no,” the woman told her. “I had quit long before then. She was…difficult. Impossible. Insulting. And that was usually even before I got there in the mornings. Besides, I was just in between things around that time. A curator’s position at the university art museum opened up, and I’m over there now. I’m pretty happy. Have you seen Dean Spaulding lately? He was such a nice man. I could never really pair those two, you know?”

“I always thought the same thing. I guess that’s why I just assumed you were Mrs. Spaulding.” Maye laughed. “I’ve seen him a few times. He arranged a beautiful memorial service for Ruby up at the house; it was incredible. Flowers, there were so many flowers, more flowers than this town has ever seen, and that’s saying something. It was held in one of the rose gardens off the terrace. It was very pretty. The service was lovely, right after he refused to bail Rowena out of jail. And he has donated all of the necessary funds for the statue of Ruby in the new town square. I think they decided to go with an image of her being crowned, which I think is appropriate, since it’s now Ruby Spicer Square.”

“I read they had revoked Rowena’s crown and had reinstated Ruby as Sewer Pipe Queen for that year,” the woman said. “For Rowena, that’s akin to a beheading. You know, I think you should have won the title yourself. I couldn’t have belted out that song better if I had a mirror and a hairbrush microphone! I even clapped along and yelled out when you had the dance-off with your dog.”