Pancakes & Pandemonium - Culinary Competition Mystery #6

Chapter 24

(Amy)

The next morning, Amy opened her eyes. She took in a quick breath and held it as she stared at the shadowy bedroom ceiling. The bedroom. Not the living room. Every part of her was comfortably warm, even her nose, thanks to the purr of the furnace.

She rolled over. Alex was gone. More of the past twenty-four hours emerged from the fog of waking up from a dreamless, death-like sleep. Alex's quick reflexes had pulled him out of the path of a heavy falling ladder. Her mother had cheated death by somehow surviving a massive explosion. Most of the windows on the back of the house were cracked from the percussion and flying debris from the deck being blown to bits. The electricity was on, but life hadn't returned to normal. Two of the main suspects in Catherine's murder were lying in the same hospital.

It was so odd not to hear the choir of generator motors that had enveloped the neighborhood for a week. She listened for sounds that might indicate where Alex was but didn't hear anything. So she rolled out of bed and wrapped herself in a quilted, flannel robe. Downstairs there was hot coffee in the coffeemaker's carafe, but the kitchen was empty. She poured herself a mug of the indispensable morning beverage. A movement in her peripheral vision drew her attention to the windows in the breakfast nook. Alex was walking around the side of the house from the backyard.

"Good morning," he said when he opened the door. The greeting sounded cheerful, but the stoic mask of a facial expression looked grim.

"Hey, sweetheart." Amy stepped forward and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "What were you doing outside?"

"Surveying the damage. Trying to figure out what to do. It's going to be a busy day. The insurance agent will be here to assess the damage soon, and an investigator from the fire department will be here too to try to figure out what happened. Last night they suspected the propane tank had been leaking and blew up when your mom tried to light her cigarette. But they want to take a closer look in the daylight to see if something else may have happened."

Amy kneaded the sore muscles on the back of her neck. There were a lot of things that didn't make sense to her about the explosion. "Do propane tanks just spring a leak often?" she asked. "We haven't used the grill for days. Plus a lot of the guys who helped with the tree ate lunch on the deck. I was out there too. If the tank hadn't been properly shut off from the last time we used the grill, we should've smelled it during lunch, right?"

He rubbed his fingertips on his stubble-covered chin. "That's what I've been thinking too. But there is a possibility the valve failed suddenly in the evening. Moving parts can break sometimes with no apparent reason."

"If it makes any difference, I found out at the hospital that Mom was trying to turn on the grill. She'd dropped her lighter and lost it in the dark, so she figured she'd turn on the grill and light her cigarette from the flames. She said she didn't smell the propane until the second she hit the igniter button. I just can't imagine how that was possible considering how much gas must've been in the air to cause such a massive explosion. And how did she end up in the middle of the backyard? Wouldn't she have been injured more if the explosion had thrown her that far away from the deck?"

"I hadn't thought about those things. I don't know the answers to them."

While trying to fall asleep, Amy had come up with an idea that fit together all of those puzzle pieces. She didn't like it though. Her mom had been angry that Joe wanted to talk privately. What if she had blown up the grill for spite? If she had turned on the propane tank, could she have thrown something that was on fire at the grill from farther back in the yard—possibly a fallen branch that she'd ignited with her cigarette lighter, from what seemed to her to be a safe distance? It was a terrible accusation. Amy felt dirty and slimy for even coming up with it. She wouldn't share it with anyone, not even her husband. Yet she couldn't un-think it. Everything was logically explained in the theory. Everything except her mother's possible motivation for doing something so dangerous and destructive.