The telescope had been left unattended.
Christine and her friends finished the remnants of an Italian takeout dinner which consisted of chicken Florentine, fettuccine pesto, and lasagna with a side of antipasto salad. Now the boys lounged in front of the TV while the girls rinsed plates and stacked them in the dish rack.
“Oh, I shouldn’t be away from the window for this long,” Tawny said to Christine. She shook excess water off her hands. “Dougie?”
“Yeah?”
“Would you be a dear and go peek through the scope for me? I’m busy at the moment with my hands wet.”
Dougie sauntered to the window and looked through the lens. He saw the yellow cab roll down the end of the driveway. It turned onto a street and disappeared from his field of vision. He also saw Peter and Iris standing and talking at the front door with luggage on the ground.
“Oh, damn!” Dougie said. “They’re back!”
“What?” Jimmy said.
“Hey, Christine!” Dougie said. “C’mere! They’re back!”
Christine dropped the dish towel onto the kitchen counter and ran to the window. Dougie stepped away from the telescope to let Christine look through it.
“Crap!” Christine said.
She saw that the lights had been turned on at the ground floor and at the east wing of the second floor. Peter and Iris had gone inside to open windows. Christine did not see Rose anywhere.
“They’re opening all the windows, though I don’t see the madam of the house,” Christine said. “Where the hell is she? She’s gotta be inside. I take it she’s resting. She’s probably dipping her arthritic toe in lukewarm bath water as we speak. Damn!” Christine pounded her fist into the palm of her other hand.
“I’m sorry,” Tawny said. “It’s my fault for stepping away for a few minutes to help you with the dishes.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Christine looked out the window. “At least, she wasn’t gone for months on end, which I’m grateful for. Well, it’s time to fight fire with fire. Let’s use the launcher.”
“Are you kidding?” Jimmy asked. “Everyone between here and there would see a flying missile and call Washington!”
Dougie chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” Christine asked with a sneer.
“Oh, can you imagine?” Dougie said, still chuckling. “People along Ventura Boulevard and the 101 Freeway seeing a fiery object whiz over them. They’d think it was a meteor or a UFO.” Dougie continued to chuckle.
“Or a SCUD missile,” Jimmy said.
Dougie laughed.
“Ready?” Christine asked.
“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Tawny said. “Not with the high winds and the fire danger.”
“All right,” Christine said, “forget the launcher then. Get the detonator. Now.”
“What’s your hurry?” Jimmy asked.
“If I can’t have it, neither can she.”
“But you got everything else you wanted.”
“I didn’t get the house.”
Jimmy went to the suitcase on the floor by the sofa and retrieved the detonator. He went back to the window and eyed Christine for a moment. Christine nodded in return. Jimmy looked through the viewfinder, then out the window. Christine blinked her eyes several times in rapid succession and slowly licked her lips. Her heart palpitated with nervous excitement.
Vivian picked up a battery-operated fluorescent lamp and a flashlight from the floor in the bedroom closet and carried them to the other end of the room. She set them on the bed, then went to the window. She watched trees sway and bend in the night.
Shadows cast by phosphorescent light from street lamps moved erratically along streets, sidewalks, rooftops, and walls of homes. She listened to the winds.
“Okay,” Christine said under her breath. “Let ’er blow.”
Jimmy poised his thumb over the red button and—
“Wait!” Christine said as she immediately thrust out her arm, palm forward and fingers splayed.
While Iris sifted through suitcases in the living room, Peter went to the sunroom toward the back of the house to unlock and open the sliding glass doors. He noticed a gaping hole near the brass door handle.
“Call the police,” Peter said as he briskly strode to the living room. “There’s been a break-in while we were gone. Maybe that explains why the house reeks of gas. I’m going to check the grounds.”
Iris picked up her cell phone and dialed 911.
“Gimme the detonator!” Christine said. She held out her hand, palm up. “I wanna do it.”
Jimmy handed it to her and recoiled when she grabbed it from him forcefully. She looked out the window and eyed the Hutchins’s residence.
“Fare thee well . . . bitch.”
She pressed the red button.
Bright yellow-white flames lit up within the walls of the house and rapidly spread through every room.
“Thar she blows!”
Windows and walls blew out with such incredible force that even the Weavers’ windows imploded, as did the windows of another house on the other side of the Hutchins’s residence. Debris sailed in the air and dispersed everywhere. Thunder from the explosion reverberated throughout the neighborhood and the whole hill shook.
The image of a tremendous orange ball of fire that shot thirty-five feet into the air reflected in the cornea of Christine’s one eye.
Clouds of thick black smoke billowed into the night sky and drifted with the winds. Flames perilously licked the hillside. The corners of Christine’s lips stretched to a wide face-splitting grin.
“Yeee-Haaaw!” Christine said. “Hoogah-boogah, hoogah-boogah, hoogah-boogah!”
Jimmy, Dougie, and Tawny watched the inferno spread along the hill as the winds fanned the flames.
“Thus perished Rose Hutchins,” Christine said.