“All right, all right,” he muttered. “Why didn’t someone tell me so many of these fires would be in the middle of the night?”
He popped back into his room and from the thumping and scuffling noises, he appeared to be hauling out and donning his gear.
“I’ll fix coffee again,” Rose Noire said.
“And after that, could you watch the boys again while I trail after the firefighters?” I asked. “I have at least a dozen events scheduled in one or another of the temple’s meeting rooms today, and if I’m going to have to rework the schedule again, I’d like to know sooner rather than later.”
“Oh, dear,” she said. “So it’s the prankster again? Of course.”
She flitted downstairs and into the kitchen. I went to throw on my clothes. Warm clothes, in case we were in for another long stretch of standing about in the cold.
Temple Beth-El was also on the Clay County Road, a little farther out of town than the New Life Baptist Church. It was fairly new, and very modern, with a lot of floor-to-ceiling glass windows looking out over the surrounding woods. In any other season, the view from those windows was magical, since members of the congregation had subtly improved the natural beauty of the woods by planting dogwoods and redbuds at its edge for spring blossoms and Japanese maples for fall color.
But as I pulled into the temple parking lot and picked my way through the mounds of snow to find a good stopping place, I glanced up at the glass windows and shuddered. Even if they’d gone in for the kind of thick, energy-efficient glass that would make the inside toasty warm in this weather, just having a view of the snow and ice outside would chill me on a night like this. And knowing that every time I walked in front of one of those windows some lurking prankster might be watching me—
“Stop spooking yourself,” I muttered as I parked the car.
And my stomach tightened when I realized that this time the fire engines weren’t standing idly by. Michael and Rob and their colleagues were unrolling hoses and hauling equipment out of various compartments and then dashing off into the woods to the right of the temple.
Most of the deputies who had arrived on the scene were following them, although I could see a pair of deputies slowly working their way around the left side of the building, checking behind every twig. And my friend Aida Butler was talking to an excitable man in a fur-trimmed down jacket. I strolled over to eavesdrop.
“—and Chief Burke told us all to be on the lookout for the prankster,” the man was saying. “So when I saw the flames out in the woods, I called.”
“Did you go out to investigate?” Aida asked.
“I didn’t dare leave the temple,” he said.
Flames in the woods. I watched until the last fireman had disappeared into the woods, then followed the path of the hoses, keeping a good ten feet away from the nearest one. A half-moon shone down from the cloudless sky and reflected on the snow, making it easy to see where I was going.
Pretty soon I spotted the firefighters in a clearing. No flames, but a lot of steam rising from what had probably been a campfire before the hoses had gotten to it. Three hoses were still pouring water into the clearing—Rob was wielding the nozzle on one of them—and a couple of other firefighters were hacking at logs and turning over piles of leaves, presumably to uncover any lingering sparks.
Chief Burke and Chief Featherstone, the fire chief, were standing at the edge of the clearing, watching the excitement.
“You think maybe you could call them off now?” Chief Burke said. “I hate to dampen their enthusiasm, seeing as how for most of them it’s their first real fire—”
“But the fire’s long gone, and all they’re doing now is washing away any evidence that you might like to find,” Chief Featherstone said. “I hear you.”
He lifted a bullhorn to his mouth and barked out an order. “Stand down! Turn off your hoses and stand by to assist the deputies if needed.”
It took a few seconds, but the hoses cut off, and all the firefighters gathered around the clearing, except for a few who were running through the woods shouting “All clear here!” at intervals, and were probably too far away to hear their chief.
Two of the deputies sprang into action, searching the sodden leaves and ashes in the clearing.
“Found something,” one called. “Beer bottles. And the contents are still a little fizzy.”
He held up a bottle of Gwent Pale, a local microbrew.
“Never heard of that brand,” Chief Featherstone said.
“It’s not really sold anywhere but Caerphilly,” Michael told him. “Two retired agriculture professors from the college started a microbrewery as a hobby. The quality varies wildly, but since they’re not trying to make a profit, they keep the cost dirt cheap—making it the beer of choice for a lot of the college students who are old enough to drink.”