In Hot Water Read Free Page A

house several times to gauge their response limits and ask ridiculous questions about what they did and how they did it. He had once been a powerful man, according to everyone else in Sweet Pepper.
    To Stella he was just an annoyance.
    “I’m with you.” Stella put her gear on as she ran out to the engine. She climbed up on the passenger seat and closed the door. “If this is another wild-goose chase, we’ll turn the hoses on him.”
    Everyone who heard her knew she was joking, but they enjoyed the idea. Whether Barney Falk was powerful or not, the volunteers knew the chief was dedicated to a code of conduct.
    The rest of the volunteers scrambled into the back of the fire engine. Stella saw Hero running down Firehouse Road from the cabin to turn out for the fire. His mother, Sylvia, barked a greeting to him, and he jumped in the back of the pumper-tanker with her. Volunteers Kimmie and David Spratt welcomed him.
    The pumper-tanker followed the engine/ladder truck down the main road into Sweet Pepper. They continued their high rate of speed past dozens of small shops and the town hall. People waved when they saw them go by. Folks in Sweet Pepper and the surrounding areas, who had been left high and dry when the county pulled their fire service, loved the fire brigade. It had meant lower house insurance premiums as well as knowing their emergency needs would be met.
    “Looks like they finally got around to paving the road,” Stella observed as they started up the steep slope into the Sunset Beach community. The road had been deeply rutted and sparsely graveled, making it difficult to get the two large vehicles into the area where the expensive houses were located.
    “Yeah, after you gave them hell at the town council a few times,” JC said. “Then they made the rich folks who live out here take care of it.”
    “Whatever—it’s a lot better than it was the first time we came out here.”
    “I wouldn’t have had any problem with it. It was Ricky Junior driving back then. He was good for a young upstart. I’ve got experience with these babies.”
    Which was why Stella had asked JC to drive when Ricky Hutchins Jr. had to leave the fire brigade. She’d hated to see Ricky go. He was one of her first volunteers. He was young and a little wild, but he was the best mechanic she’d ever seen. The fire brigade still missed him.
    He’d had to quit the fire brigade to help his mother at the family restaurant after his father had gone to prison. It had been a hard time for them. Everyone from Sweet Pepper had done what they could to make it easier on Ricky and his mother. There was only so much to do with a bad situation.
    Both the pumper-tanker and the engine/ladder truck rolled smoothly into the heart of the lake community. There were no old-lady gingerbread houses here from a hundred years ago to give the place character, as there were in town. Everything had been built in the last ten years. The houses were new, huge, and modern—several of them worth millions of dollars.
    “Doesn’t look like much to me.” JC parked the engine on the street in front of Falk’s home. “I think that old dude is bored or something. Maybe you can get an injunction against him. I left my little girl’s birthday party to be here, Chief.”
    “We need to get out and take a look around.” Stella got on the radio with Tagger. “Who called in the fire?”
    Before Tagger could answer, a loud explosion ripped through the house that stood three stories above the lake. The entire area shuddered. Flames and debris were everywhere. The house became an inferno in an instant.
    “Get the pumper in back,” Stella yelled at Kent Norris, who was driving that vehicle. “We have to get water on the house from all sides. Tagger, call the police and get someone out here.”
    “Chief?” Tagger waited for her response. “The phone call wasn’t routed through 911. I have the cell number on the computer.”
    “Hold on to it. This may be