Tin City Tinder by David Macinnis Gill Read Free Book Online Page B

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 know 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 waitress showed me to