After disembarking from the jumbo jet at Zurich Airport, Jack took a taxi to the Swiss bank.
When he looked inside the safe deposit box, his face paled. He stared ahead with a blank expression. The box was empty. Jack turned around and slowly walked away. A wave of nausea hit him. He hailed a cab and went back to the airport.
As soon as Jack returned to La Jolla, he inserted his key into the front door. For a moment, he wondered if Julia might have changed the locks. The key turned and the door opened with ease.
He immediately exhaled a sigh of relief, then went inside, turned off the alarm, and closed the door. As quietly as possible, he went upstairs to the master suite. Julia was asleep.
Jack went back downstairs, crossed the dark kitchen and went through a door into the unlit garage. He turned on the fluorescent light underneath a wall-mounted tool cabinet and retrieved two red canisters. He went into the living room and poured flammable fluid on the carpet, furniture, drapes, walls, tiled floor, and along the stairwell on his way up.
At the head of the stairs, he worked his way down the hall to the master bedroom where Julia was sleeping. He slowly opened the door and squatted on his knees while he carefully held the canister close to the floor and tipped it. The fluid spilled forth without a sound. He worked his way around the bed, and upon completion, left the bedroom without closing the door.
He returned to the garage and placed the first canister on the floor in front of the passenger seat of his silver-gray BMW. Once back inside the house, he poured the flammable liquid over other parts of the living room. In the study, he took several pages of an old newspaper and rolled them up into five makeshift torches.
Upstairs, he poured more liquid in the hall, on the floor, and on both sides of the walls that led to the master bedroom. He went back to the garage and placed the second canister alongside the first.
Moments later, he stood outside the master bedroom. He lit the first torch with a lighter and tossed it into the room. Flames instantly erupted. He lit the second torch and dropped it on the floor in the hall. The heat itself nearly seared the flesh off his face and hands, and smoke rose to the ceiling. Jack quickly backed away and ran downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs, he turned around, lit a third and tossed it on the steps.
A high-pitched shrill startled him. He realized the smoke alarm in the hall had gone off, as did the one in the master bedroom. He jumped in surprise since he had not considered the smoke alarms. If he had thought ahead, he would’ve removed the batteries from them prior to torching the master bedroom and hall.
He glanced behind him and saw more flames spreading along the second-floor hall. Black smoke billowed everywhere. He heard hissing and crackling from the blaze and winced at the heat that enveloped him. Still standing at the bottom of the stairs, he lit the fourth torch, then turned around and froze. Peter had come out of his room.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Peter asked.
Peter’s unexpected presence caused Jack to lose his grip on the torch in his hand. It dropped to the ground at his feet. Fire immediately flared upward and licked his expensive, patent leather shoes and the hems of his designer slacks. Jack yelped in fright as he waved his arms and slapped at the flames on his legs. He futilely kicked at the hot air filled with thick smoke that burned his eyes, and seared his sinus cavity and throat. In the midst of all this, he heard Julia scream.
“Iris! Peter!” Julia said. “Oh, my! Oh, my!”
“Mrs. Windom!” Iris said from her room, located two doors down the hall from the master bedroom.
“Help! Help me!” Jack said as he flailed his arms. He spun one way then the other, which made him dizzy. He tripped over his own feet and fell. Flames reached out and made contact with the hair on his head and the back of his suit jacket. He yelled at the top of his lungs as he rolled back and forth to snuff out the flames. As he did so, his sleeves caught on fire.
Peter circumvented the flames in the living room, jumped over some hot spots, and ran to the top of the stairs. He turned to look down at the burning body of the man responsible for this mayhem. The intense heat and heavy smoke knocked Peter aside. Fiery tendrils reached out like fingers ready to grab him. He dropped to the ground and lay on his stomach for a few seconds before he bounded to his feet and dodged the fire in the hall, which singed the hairs on his arm.
Iris dialed 911 and sobbed with fright. She could hear Julia’s screams. Peter ran into the guest bathroom adjacent to Iris’s room, grabbed some towels, and doused them with cold water. He beat the heavy, wet towel on the carpeting in the hall and exerted all his energy into extinguishing the flames in order to make his way to Julia’s room.
“I’m coming!” Peter said. The din of the roaring flames made it difficult for him to hear himself. “Hang on, I’m coming!”
Peter pressed his back against the wall and swiped at the flames with the towel as he slowly, cautiously inched his way to the door that led to Julia’s room. He put the towel on the threshold between the hall and the bedroom and hopped over it. He saw Julia on her knees near the bathroom.
“Get down on your stomach!” Peter said. He quickly crawled across the floor and grabbed her by the waist with one arm and dragged her into the bathroom. “Help me with the towels!” He pulled towels from the nearest wall-mounted rack and doused them in cold water in the sink. “Where is Dolph? Why isn’t he here?”
“I sent him to Los Angeles on an overnight assignment,” Julia said. “Oh, my house!” She bawled into her hands.
“Here,” Peter said as he forcibly handed the wet towel to her. “C’mon, lady! Let’s move!”
Julia shook her head. Frozen by fear, she couldn’t move.
“C’mon!” Peter said. “We have to get to Iris and get outta here!”
He wrapped the large, wet towel around Julia, then grasped her hand and pulled her behind him.
Iris kneeled on the floor next to a window in her room. She coughed and cried as she slowly rose to her feet with outstretched arms and yanked the drapes to one side. She picked up an expensive, white, porcelain table lamp from a night table nearby. With all her might and strength, she tossed it through the pane of glass. The window shattered and the lamp disintegrated upon impact on the roof below. Shards of porcelain slid off and fell to the ground and shattered into smaller pieces as they hit the concrete.
Iris hurriedly went to the bed, yanked the comforter off the mattress, and ripped the sheets off. She rolled one end of it into a small ball and brushed the remnants of broken glass from the window sill with some trepidation for fear of getting cut or lacerated.
Iris screamed as Peter burst through the door to her room with Julia at his side. They tumbled to the floor. Iris ran to them and helped Peter lift Julia to her feet. They went to the window where Peter put his right leg through. Unable to see in the darkness, and without thinking, he stepped on some shards of glass.
“Ow!” Peter said.
Pain coursed through the sole of his foot. He lifted it and saw a few beads of blood. He stood on his good foot with the other raised and beckoned Iris with his hand for her to toss him the rolled-up bed sheet. He carefully swept away the shards of glass and brushed them off the roof, then threw the sheet over the side. He crawled on all fours back to the window. When he reached it, he hobbled on his good foot and suddenly slipped. He grabbed the window’s exterior sill to steady himself.
Julia, Peter, and Iris could hear sirens and see red-and-white strobes flash in the night. The sight of a fire engine, an EMT truck, and an ambulance filled them with relief.
Peter and Iris flailed their arms and shouted, “Here! Over here!”
Curious onlookers and nervous neighbors in their pajamas and night robes came out from their homes.
Firemen cordoned off the area and immediately set to work. Hoses gushed forth water and a ladder was hoisted, which made its way to the second-floor window.
“We’ll get you down soon enough,” the battalion chief said. “How many are there?”
“Three up here,” Peter said. He held up three fingers and coughed. “There’s another one downstairs in the living room at the bottom of the stairs, but I don’t think he made it.”
The top of the ladder reached the ledge of the second-story window. Two firefighters climbed up the ladder and stepped onto the roof. They cautiously made their way toward the window. They helped Julia get on the ladder and slowly guided her backward until she was safe on the ground. Iris was next on the ladder.
“Oh, careful! Be careful!” Iris said. “Please, be careful . . .” She slowly worked her way down with the assistance of a fireman.
At one point, her foot slipped from one rung and she screamed. She then caught herself with the help of the fireman, who supported her with a firm grip. She tightly held on the rung with both hands, her knuckles white.
“Careful now, slowly,” the fireman said.
When she was on the ground, Iris went to Julia to comfort her, as well as to receive comfort, as they cried together.
“Do you have any idea of what may have happened, ma’am?” the battalion chief asked Iris.
Iris shivered from fright as she wiped tears from her eyes.
“I was asleep,” Iris said, “and the next thing I knew, smoke alarms were going off.”
“How about you?” the battalion chief asked Julia who coughed and gasped for air. She waved him away with agitation.
Peter made it to the ground safely, though he hobbled on one foot.
“You okay, sir?” the battalion chief asked Peter.
“Yeah, just a little smoke inhalation,” Peter said. “I got some minor burns and I stepped on some glass up there, but I’ll be all right.”
“Okay,” the battalion chief said. “Come with me and we’ll get someone to help take care of you.”
The battalion chief walked with Peter to the EMT truck nearby where he received oxygen, and treatment for minor burns on his arms and lacerations on his right foot.
When prompted by the battalion chief, Peter reiterated how the whole thing may have happened.
Julia, Iris, and Peter were taken to the emergency room where Peter’s injured foot had been treated with gauze bandages and antiseptics. All three were discharged about two hours later. They checked into a nearby hotel, where Julia brainstormed as to what to do next.
Two days later, Julia, Iris, Peter, and Dolph flew to Julia’s private resort in Antigua. Julia explained the circumstances to the Holcombs.
“I assure you,” Mr. Holcomb said to Julia, “it won’t be a problem to have you here with us. In fact, my wife and I are actually glad to have you back since it has been lonely and quiet without you. We look forward to assisting you, Iris, Peter, and Dolph any way we can.”
“As I have said,” Julia said to Iris one evening as she relaxed on the recliner in the drawing room and sipped herbal tea, “I am going to have this resort taken off the market. So, we will be here indefinitely. In the meantime, I will soon inform the Holcombs that since the Spanish villa in Belize is no longer of any interest to me, they can have it if they so wish. As far as I am concerned, it is theirs now and they are welcome to it, free of charge, of course. I will personally handle the paperwork.
“Now, in a few days,” Julia continued, “I will be renting a small single-family house in Los Angeles, where I will have Dolph stay and keep tabs on some property. It is the same property that Peter, Dolph, and I checked out a few weeks ago.” Julia raised her cup. “To perfect plans,” she said more to herself than to Iris.