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DONNIE’S HOME WAS A blackened heap. The gorgeous living room with its hardwood floors, the paintings, the lithographs, the quarter-sawn oak side table with the jaw-droppingly expensive jade green bud vase, the wine collection, the designer aloha shirts in now-discontinued patterns—all crushed under the remains of the charred metal roof.
Donnie climbed out of the driver’s seat and stood, one hand braced on the roof of his car, watching yellow-jacketed firemen finish hosing down the already sodden ruins. The rain had subsided to a mist. The wet smell of burned wood filled the air.
I went around the car and quietly stood next to Donnie. Davison got out of the car and waded directly into the rubble. Surprisingly, no one stopped him. Far down the street, past the fire trucks and police cars, my turquoise and white Thunderbird sat where I’d parked it, apparently still intact.
I couldn’t imagine what Donnie was feeling. I remembered how upset I had been when my office chair broke and I found out I’d have to pay for the replacement out of my own pocket. Iker Legazpi, my sweet-natured colleague in the accounting department, had tried to put things in perspective for me with a section of the Beatitudes.
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.
On many occasions, Iker told me, he had found comfort in these verses. Iker had never volunteered much information about his background, and I didn’t pry. He’d apparently grown up in one of those remote but highly-contested corners of Europe, where ancient blood feuds came blazing into the twenty-first century armed with high-tech weaponry.
But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.
At the time, Iker’s little sermon had simply made me feel petty for complaining about my chair. But now, I saw what he meant. Getting attached to earthly things was a recipe for heartbreak. All of the fine, beautiful objects Donnie had been collecting over the decades had been lost in an instant, devoured by an irreversible exothermic reaction. Even the celebrated Ettore Sottsass sofa, with its clean lines and black and gunmetal fabrics, was somewhere under the collapsed roof, now a waterlogged, smoke-reeking glob of toxic waste.
Ka`imi Medeiros walked up and placed his hand on Donnie’s shoulder. Donnie blinked, as if coming back from somewhere else.
“Was anyone hurt?” Donnie asked.
“No,” Medeiros said, and then spotted Davison.
“Eh,” he shouted. “Davison.”
Davison looked up, and Medeiros motioned with his head: Get back here. Davison hitched his backpack onto his shoulder and trudged back in our direction.
“I just wanted to look see if there was any stuff I could save,” he said.
“You find anything?” Donnie asked.
“Jus’ small kine.”
“You gotta stay out of there until we can get the fire investigators in. Donnie, you have insurance, ah?”
Donnie nodded. “Neighbors are okay?”
“Yeah, good thing you get three acre lots. Neighbors called in, reported an explosion. They said they felt their houses shaking, and some of them get debris flying into their yards. No actual damage to the neighbors’ property, but by the time the firefighters arrived, your structure was fully involved. No saving it. Professor Barda, who knows you’re still working on the biotech grant?”
“What?” Donnie stared at me. “I thought you put it on hold.”
“That’s correct. We announced we put it on hold. But then at that donor dinner, Randy Randolph insisted he wanted us to hear his side of the story, and Victor Santiago, our marketing guy, made it clear we should humor him.”
“Who was present during the conversation?” Medeiros asked.
“Me, Pat, Emma, Randy Randolph, Victor Santiago. Wait, that’s only five.”
“Me,” Davison said. “Ho Molly, you get absent-minded, ah?”
“Right, of course. Davison was there.”
“Who else might know about this?” Medeiros asked. “That you didn’t discontinue your research?”
“Let’s see. Today, after I found out about my department’s tenure requirements changing, I sent a message to Marshall Dixon and copied the chancellor, and my dean, and a few of the other administrators. I assured them even though I had to keep a low profile, I was still working on the grant as an active investigator. I wanted to make sure they knew I qualified for tenure according to the new standards set by my department.”
“I want you to send me a copy of the email, with the distribution list,” Medeiros said.
“You have email?”
“It’s on our website,” he said. “Mahina PD. Look under Contact Us.”
“Wish I’d known that sooner.”
“Where did the fire start?” Donnie’s voice was flat.
“Hard to say,” Medeiros said. “Looks like most of the damage is near the front of the house. A blast of this magnitude, we’d look for a propane explosion, but then the origin would usually be from the back of the house or the kitchen, not the front.”
Donnie looked at Davison. “Unless propane tanks were sitting on the front porch, because someone forgot to bring them in.”
Davison looked down at his feet.
“Do propane tanks explode on their own?” I asked.
“No,” Medeiros said. “A propane tank would have to be subjected to extreme heat in order to get the liquid to boiling point. The fire would have to come first. Our investigator will be looking for an accelerant.”
“What does that mean?” Davison asked.
Donnie took a deep breath. “It means someone set the fire on purpose.”