Tom Hubbard Is Dead

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  It started to pour almost as soon as Melanie and Julian left her house. The drive back to the Hubbard farmhouse had been tense and silent.

  “What’s that?” Melanie strained forward to see through the furious swipes of the windshield wipers.

  An orange hazy light jumped in the mist just above the tree line at the end of Hay Street.

  “Probably nothing,” Julian dismissed her. Too drunk to keep both eyes open, he drove with one eye closed and squinted through the lid of the other. He tried to concentrate on following the centerline of the road, yet he couldn’t keep the car from swinging too wide around the bend.

  Melanie glowered at him. She considered his dismissive tone and sloppy driving an undeserving attack resulting from their unsuccessful sexual romp. But she decided that his irritation was his problem—he’d been the one who’d let her down.

  Julian, however, was more concerned about his blood-alcohol level and the upcoming thirty-five mile drive from the Hubbard’s back to his apartment than he was about what he considered to be Melanie’s resentful attitude toward him after her pushiness in bed.

  Julian accelerated past the last stretch of trees that ran along Hay Street. He allowed the car to drift to the right before snapping the wheel sharply left, spinning the car onto Quinns Way.

  “Holy shit!” Melanie exclaimed.

  In the distance, the top of the chimney at the Hubbard farmhouse was ablaze. Like a roman candle, the chimney appeared to first breathe in and then push out a ball of fire with a boom.

  “Oh my God. Where’s my phone—” Melanie searched her jacket pockets as fire continued to exhale from the chimney. She had left her phone at her house. “Shit, gimmie your fucking phone.”

  “I don’t have one, I don’t have one—” Reaching anxiously into the back seat with one hand, Julian checked that his half-gallon bottle of vodka was properly hidden. Even though there were no flashing lights, he feared the police were already there.

  “Shit! Drive, drive!” Adrenaline mixed with the alcohol in Melanie’s brain and, thinking Julian’s reflexes too slow, she grasped the steering wheel. The car jerked back and forth between the bounds of the road.

  Julian pushed her away and retrieved the wheel.

  Horrified with her inability to do anything but watch, Melanie stuck her head out of the passenger side window and yelled into the pouring rain.

  “Auntie, I’m coming! I’m coming!”