Read Online Through the Darkness by Marcia Talley - Free Book Online

the sleeve of my shirt and stared out over the Chesapeake Bay, but the calm beauty of the sun-dappled water, the cloudless blue sky, and even the gulls reeling leisurely overhead failed to soothe me as they usually did.
    Farther down the drive, I could see Norman Salterelli guarding the gates as I had asked him to, a formidable mountain of muscle and sinew barely contained by the black spandex workout clothes he wore. “Do you think they got past Norman?” I wondered aloud.
    Paul grunted. “Nobody gets by Norman.”
    In point of fact, nobody—not spa employees nor their clients—seemed anxious to challenge the body builder. Perhaps drawn by morbid curiosity, several dozen folks still lounged about the garden, milled around the patio or loitered on the beach, showing little inclination to go back inside and fetch their things. If anybody wondered why they couldn’t see flames or smell smoke, they didn’t mention it.
    The parking lot remained full, too. I noticed several individuals hanging around their vehicles, as if waiting for the alarm to stop ringing and the all clear to sound so they could get on with their business.
    A clean-cut military type, wearing his tools as proudly as a gun belt, paced next to a green and white van marked THOS. SOMERVILLE CO. François told me he’d been waiting for a repairman to fix a malfunctioning thermostat in the dishwasher, so I figured that had to be the guy. “H2O Tommy” waited, too, the five-gallon bottles of springwater he had been planning to deliver staying cool in his truck.
    A twenty-something gal wearing a blue windbreaker and tennis togs, looking wholesome in a L.L. Bean sort of way, sat sideways in the driver’s seat of a Volkswagen Jetta with the door open, her feet resting on the ground on either side of her gym bag. I glared at her suspiciously. Wasn’t that bag big enough to hide an infant the size of Timmy? I had just made up my mind to ask Paul what he thought about her when the young woman shrugged out of her jacket, leaned over, unzipped the bag, and stuffed the windbreaker into it. Then she stood, stretched, and plopped the gym bag on top of the VW. I sighed. Not a kidnapper. Just a dingaling who was going to drive off and forget about that bag sitting on her roof. In my youth I’d lost a fancy new camera that way.
    A Toyota Camry and a BMW wagon’s distance away from the Jetta, another man who looked vaguely familiar rested his backside against the hood of a late model, gold Chevy Malibu. I’d been wondering about him for a while, too, and just as I heard the wail of the first siren, the penny dropped. It was Eva’s husband, Roger Haberman, who had arrived for his interview. I hoped Roger would be happy with his job at the marina a little while longer because he sure as hell wouldn’t get hired at Spa Paradiso today. Maybe not any day, the way things were going now.
    â€œLooks like the police beat the fire brigade,” Paul murmured into my hair as a two-toned blue Anne Arundel County police car sped up the drive. It was followed by a second patrol car, lights flashing and sirens screaming. Seconds later a ladder truck from Eastport wheeled up the drive and, hot on its tail, the three-thousand-gallon water supply tanker engine the county keeps at the city’s Forest Drive facility.
    Paul kissed my hair, then released me to lope down the steps and speak to the officer. The officer, in turn, jogged down the drive to consult with the firemen, several of whom had already dismounted from their trucks dressed in full fire-fighting regalia. After a few moments the driver of the tanker engine removed his fire hat and set it on the seat of the vehicle, then accompanied Paul and the police officers up the drive, zeroing in on me as if they knew I was the guilty party who had called in the false alarm.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said before anyone could admonish me. “It’s my