Now Playing On The Jukebox In Hell Part 24

To Part 20 The Devil's Workshop (c) 2000, M.C. Sak Disclaimers, Credits, & E-Mail: See Part 1.

CHAPTER 20.

Late that afternoon, we left the demons watching the shopping channel and went out for pizza. Ca.s.sie was careful to cloak her triumph in finally getting me out of bed, but I knew she was enjoying it anyway.

"So? What do you think?" she asked.

"I think I need a bigger house if they're going to keep hanging around."

"That's not what I meant. I meant about what Vanessa said. But now that you bring up houses..."

I cut her off at the pa.s.s. "Vanessa's loony."

"Still mad about the s.h.i.+rt, honey?"

Of course I was still mad. Vanessa had given me a late Christmas present -- a T-s.h.i.+rt that said CLEOPATRA, QUEEN OF DENIAL -- and I didn't see why Ca.s.sie thought it was so all-fired funny.

"Guess you are," she observed. "Never mind, then -- we'll talk about her later. What do you think about going back to work?"

"I don't know. Jenner's sold us out twice already. And I don't think I can work for Jack if he's got religion -- he was bad enough without it. What do you want to do?"

"Seriously?"

I gave her a severe look. "Of course seriously."

"I want to start our own agency."

"We've had this talk before. You didn't really mean it. So..."

"I'm not going back there without you. Get that all the way out of your mind."

"Why?"

Ca.s.sie exhaled in frustration and pulled the BMW over to the curb -- not recklessly, for once. She put on her flashers. Then she turned all the way sideways in her seat and waited. And waited. And waited.

"What?" I finally asked.

"What do you think? I'm not going anywhere without you. Especially not back into that h.e.l.lhole." An involuntary smile tugged at her lips. "Who would scare clients for me when they need scaring?"

"Forget the clients. There are worse problems in-house."

Now she was smiling openly. "You're the worst problem. Remember the day Chip had to peel you off that creep from Meridian Motors?"

It was probably bad that I couldn't place him offhand. Then it came to me: He'd wanted to use his teenage stepdaughter in the ad as a hood ornament, in a bikini, so I'd flattened him. Fortunately, he didn't press charges. "I'm not big on incest."

"Or the time you told Walt to kiss his boys goodbye? In front of a client?"

"If we're going to dredge up the past, Ca.s.s, I could tell a few stories on you."

"We could tell stories on each other forever. That was half the fun. We did have fun, didn't we?"

Past tense.

"Yeah, we did," I finally said, wondering why it hurt. "Come on. Let's get a big pizza."

The sun was starting down by the time we drove back to my condo. It wasn't quite dark enough for headlights to help yet but too dark to do without them. Ca.s.sie squinted at the street ahead. "This is the worst time of day to drive," she complained. "I can hardly see."

As a pa.s.senger, I didn't find that statement rea.s.suring. But being her pa.s.senger was never rea.s.suring, so I saw no reason to panic. "Do your best. We're almost there."

We traveled another block or so, and then I noticed the smoke just over the treeline. She noticed too. "That's strange," she said. "It looks like somebody's burning something."

"Better not be. We've got all those open-burning ordinances."

Before she could say anything to that, we heard sirens. They were very high-pitched, higher than ambulance or police sirens, which meant...

"Fire," she said, pulling over.

For no reason, my blood went cold.

"It must be close," she added. "Look."

Now we could see an orange glow through the trees. It was close, all right. And the bad feeling was getting stronger.

I stood it another few seconds. Then I jumped out of the car and started running toward the trouble.

"Devvy! Where are you going?" Ca.s.sie yelled.

Home. I knew it for a fact now: My condo was on fire.

We sat on the curb, watching the firefighters finish the job. As fires went, it probably hadn't been much, but no fire is small when it's yours. I'd written off my living-room furniture an hour ago, when they'd started hosing it down through the hole in the roof. Now it was starting to dawn on me that what hadn't burned had drowned and was every bit as lost.

"It'll be OK, Dev," Heather said again. "You're insured. You can get all new stuff. We'll go shopping for days."

I gave her a tiny smile. She'd come over as soon as Ca.s.sie had called her and then started calling people herself on her cell phone. Half the agency was here now, and I thought I would be touched by their concern later, after the shock wore off.

Someone handed me another coffee. I thanked him and tried to warm my hands on the cup. The fire people had given Ca.s.sie and me blankets, but even with the blanket and my coat, I couldn't seem to get warm. Not even Ca.s.sie helped, and she'd been as close as decently possible the whole time.

Chip parked himself on the curb next to us. "I'm not that kind of person, Dev, but I wish I could beat somebody up for this."

"She usually does her own beating-up," Ca.s.sie said -- a little absently, watching a fireman carry a smoldering couch cus.h.i.+on out of the condo.

Where did I get this rep, anyway? I'd never really damaged anyone -- except Kurt and maybe the Meridian Motors guy -- and never anyone who didn't have it coming. "Thanks anyway, Chip. I appreciate the thought."

"Still wish I could. This sucks."

"Yeah. It does."

Ca.s.sie put her arms around me again and squeezed a little. There was nothing really to say beyond that.

Then I saw the top of a familiar head moving toward us. "Ca.s.s? Chip? Over there. Who does that look like to you?"

"Jenner," he said. "But it can't be. Can it?"

No, but it was. We just sat there, astonished, as he wormed his way through the crowd. Even more astonis.h.i.+ng, Wife No. 5 was tagging along behind. They were both dressed to the teeth, as though they were on their way to some nightmarish society event, and I couldn't imagine what they were doing here.

As soon as they got within view, Jenner made straight for us. "Derry? Are you all right?"

As opposed to what? But I bit the question back; he seemed to be genuinely concerned. "I'm fine. Thanks, Mr. Jenner. What brings you here?"

"Your house is on fire, isn't it?"

"Yes," I said thoughtfully. "It has been for a couple of hours now."

"Well, there you are. I don't like fires. They're bad for business."

Ca.s.sie pretended to be coughing. Under the blanket, she gave me a little nudge.

"I don't think insurance companies like them much either," I agreed. "But that still doesn't explain why you're here."

He wagged his finger at me. "I can't have an employee homeless. That would look bad."

"But I'm not an employee anymore. You fired me at the Christmas party."

"Yes. Well..." He s.h.i.+fted from foot to foot for a second, trying to think how to put it. "That was Howard Abner. Howard Abner was a mistake, Derry. A bad, bad mistake. I want you to come back. You and Miss Wolfe. It's not the same without the two of you."

"Yeah. It's a lot quieter," Heather chipped in.

I turned to glare at her. She'd sneaked up behind us, the better to eavesdrop.

"You read my offer, didn't you?" Jenner asked. "You're both getting raises, you know."

His wife, suddenly petulant, tugged on his coat sleeve.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Effie, you don't need another fur. And it's my money." He turned to Ca.s.sie. "You want to come back, don't you, Miss Wolfe?"

"Yes, I do," she admitted. "I may be partly insane. But I'm not coming back without Devvy. And she's not coming back if Jack..."

Jenner didn't have to hear the rest of that sentence. "Forget Harper. He's gone. The miserable son of a b.i.t.c.h found G.o.d. I can't have that. What do you say, Derry?"

"This probably isn't the time or place," I told him. "My house is on fire. Could we talk about this later?"

"No," Jenner said.

"No?"

"No." He dug in his coat pocket and produced a key ring. "This is for the house at the country club. We don't need it for clients right now, and you need a place to stay. The catch is, you have to be an employee to stay there. So if that would help you make up your mind..."

"She's not homeless," Ca.s.sie protested. "She'll move in with me."

"Is that what you want, Derry? Or is that what she wants?" A little glint appeared in his eyes under the streetlight. Unwillingly, I had to admire his deviousness. "It's a nice house. It'll give you a nice place of your own" -- he put a slight extra stress on own -- "to stay till you find a new one. So what do you say?"

Without any cooperation from my brain, my lips said yes. I may have been the most surprised person there. But a few seconds' reflection didn't change the answer.

As for Ca.s.sie, she didn't quite know what to think yet; she'd won one battle, lost another, and wasn't sure which counted more. "We'll talk about this later," she whispered.

"Of course we will," I a.s.sured her. "Let me finish this." I took the key ring from Jenner. "Thanks. Which key?"

"The square one. You can move in tonight. And now that you're both employees again, you'll come to the New Year's Eve party. Abner's going to be there." That little glint appeared again. "I won't be responsible for anything you might decide to do to him, Derry. Understood?"

Ahhhh. It was good to be back. "Understood, sir."

"All right, then. We're off to a dinner party. Good luck with your fire."

We waited until they were out of earshot again to breathe.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned," Heather remarked.

A faint possibility was tickling at me. But better not to discuss it yet. "We already are," I said.

Ca.s.sie was uncharacteristically quiet on the drive to her house. She'd talked me into waiting till morning to move in at the country club -- not that she'd had to do much talking-into, because we were both dead tired.

"Well," she finally said, "at least we get to do lots and lots of shopping now. I always did want to do something about your wardrobe."

"And you can just keep wanting."

She laughed. "We'll see. I still wish we knew what happened, though."

"They'll find out. It's probably electrical. The wiring in that place was never much good."

She glanced over -- maybe a little too long for safety, for someone who was driving. "Do you really believe that?"

"I don't have many choices, Ca.s.s. I can believe it was an electrical short. I can believe it was spontaneous combustion. Or I can believe that demons did it. Which explanation do you want to give my landlord?"

"I think it was them. They were there. They probably got into a fight over the remote and started throwing fireb.a.l.l.s around."