Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

The hissing grew in pitch. “What’s Regina doing, Eric?” He already knew the answer as the unmistakable odor of natural gas filled the room.

Eric sneezed, sniffed, muttered, “shut up,” and pulled a Bic lighter from his pocket.

Tina’s eyes widened, but McLean moved his face into hers and whispered, “Close your eyes and hold your breath.” Tina crossed her eyes mockingly but followed his example.

The flat whump, heard a mile away, lifted the roof six inches and blew out every window on the second floor, raining glass and bricks on startled pedestrians and an irate Regina Thom.

McLean’s hearing, already damaged by years of sirens, was slower returning than Tina’s. They sat across from each other in Hank’s Bistro, two days and two blocks removed from Zoe’s former apartment. Mort occupied the end of the table. A jaunty lavender scarf covered Tina’s singed curls. McLean had settled for a baseball cap, but the fried ends of his brown hair jutted out in demoniacal tufts. Zoe, sitting beside her granddaughter, had escaped the blast with little more than a powdering of brick dust.

“I still don’t understand how we survived. All of us. And how could anyone be so stupid?”

McLean smiled at Tina. “Eric forgot he couldn’t smell. He knew what Regina was up to but thought he’d have some warning. Not that it would have mattered. She’d planned on killing him as well. She hasn’t admitted as much, but the look on her face on seeing him walk out of the hospital was not relief.”

Tina rubbed her temples. “Explain how we survived.”

McLean laid a yellowed picture on the table and nudged it toward the two women, who studied it with mock horror, then genuine perplexity. “That looks like a sofa sticking through the roof.”

Both Mort and McLean laughed. “This happened years ago. Two less than experienced handymen decided to fix a gas-fired heater in their basement, only they didn’t shut off the gas. The repairs made, they tried to relight the pilot light.”

Tina rolled her eyes. “Let me guess. They wound up on Mars.”

“Nope, they wound up with minor burns and a wrecked house. The explosion launched the sofa and parted the roof like a clam shell, which snapped shut with the results you see.”

“In other words, you were willing to risk our lives using information based on a flying couch.”

McLean shot Tina a baleful look. “Well, considering the alternative...”

Mort spoke up. “What happened isn’t all that unusual. P. J. took a chance, sure, but people have blown the walls off house trailers and suffered nothing more than minor bums and temporary hearing loss. It’s just the nature of gas explosions. Had Eric waited for Regina to trigger the blast, after the gas had run for a while and the mixture was considerably richer, everyone in the building would have died.”

McLean scratched his mustache. “It was a close thing, to be sure, but not as carefully planned as Clement’s death. How she and Eric managed it may never be known, but they loaded him up with lidocaine, which she’d snagged thanks to Eric’s hospital connections, and together they pulled him into the hallway.”

Zoe interrupted. “Weren’t they afraid of a drug test or something on the corpse?”

McLean looked at Mort, who said, “It was a calculated risk. He had quite a bit in his system anyway from having his arm set. It was a nasty break, and they hoped it’d be overlooked.”

“After sending Eric away,” McLean said, “Regina took a long extension cord, wadded it up, tied foam rubber around it, then sank it in the middle of a barrel of Styrofoam packing pellets. She plugged in the two hair dryers, turned them on, and went to join you at the health club.”

Tina lifted her eyebrows. “So? This started a fire? Is that why you asked about the fuses?”

McLean nodded. “Yes. There were thirty-amp fuses in all the sockets. Should have been fifteens or twenties. That was Clement’s doing. I won’t get into the math of it, but those two hair dryers were pulling far more electricity than the extension cord could handle, but not nearly enough to blow the fuses. The cord got hot, and wrapped in foam and buried in the barrel it got a lot hotter a lot faster until it burst into flames. After that... well, that plastic popcorn bums like gasoline.”

“I still don’t see why it wasn’t just Clement setting up another fraud,” Mort said.

“I thought it was at first, but after studying Clement’s history and the way he’d rebuilt the store, I wondered. His location of choice was the first floor storage room underneath the stairs. He’d already begun to set his own plan in motion. He shifted the inventory that he’d sell later. Regina just moved first.”

Mort studied his fingers. “What made you suspect it wasn’t a simple mistake by Clement?”

“Tom Lopez. He found Firth lying on his back, hands across his chest. Someone fleeing a fire is almost always going to be on their stomach crawling, and their hands are usually up near their mouths.”

Tina pressed both palms into her eyes. “But why? Why kill Clement, why kill us?”