And then someone stepped up to the window and looked down at me.

It wasn't Marcus. And it wasn't Jesse, either, though this person was giving off a tell-tale glow.

It was someone who waved cheerfully down at me.

Mrs. Deirdre Fiske.

CHAPTER 22

I never saw Marcus Beaumont again.

Oh, stop worrying: he didn't croak. Of course, the firemen looked for him. I told them I thought there was at least one person trapped in that burning room, and they did their best to get in there in time to save him.

But they didn't find anyone. And no human remains were discovered by the investigators who went in after the fire was finally put out. They found an awful lot of burned fish, but no Marcus Beaumont.

Marcus Beaumont was officially missing.

Much in the same way, I realized, that his victims had gone missing. He simply vanished, as if into thin air.

A lot of people were puzzled by the disappearance of this prominent businessman. In later weeks, there would be articles about it in the local papers, and even a mention on one cable news network. Interestingly, the person who knew the most about Marcus Beaumont's last moments before he vanished was never interviewed, much less questioned, about what might have led up to his bizarre disappearance.

Which is probably just as well, considering the fact that she had way more important things to worry about. For instance, being grounded.

That's right. Grounded.

If you think about it, the only thing I'd really done wrong on the day in question was dress a little less conservatively than I should have. Seriously. If I'd gone Banana Republic instead of Betsey Johnson, none of this might have happened. Because then I wouldn't have been sent home to change, and Marcus would never have gotten his mitts on me.

On the other hand, then he'd still probably be going around, slipping environmentalists into cement booties and tossing them off the side of his brother's yacht … or however it was he got rid of all those people without ever being caught. I never really did get the full story on that one.

In any case, I got grounded, completely unjustly, although I wasn't exactly in a position to defend myself . . . not without telling the truth, and I couldn't, of course, do that.

I guess you could imagine how it must have looked to my mother and stepfather when the cop car pulled up in front of our house and Officer Green opened the back door to reveal . . . well, me.

I looked like something out of a movie about post-apocalyptic America. Tank Girl, but without the awful haircut. Sister Ernestine wasn't going to have to worry about me showing up to school in Betsey Johnson ever again, either. The skirt was completely ruined, as was my cashmere sweater set. My fabulous leather motorcycle jacket might be all right, someday, if I can ever figure out a way to get the fishy smell out of it. The boots, however, are a lost cause.

Boy, was my mom mad. And not because of my clothes, either.

Interestingly, Andy was even madder. Interestingly because, of course, he's not even my real parent.

But you should have seen the way he lit into me right there in the living room. Because of course I'd had to explain to them what it was I'd been doing at the Beaumonts' place when the fire broke out, instead of being where I was supposed to have been: school.

And the only lie I could think of that seemed the least bit believable was my newspaper article story.

So I told them that I'd skipped school in order to do some follow-up work on my interview with Mr. Beaumont.

They didn't believe me, of course. It turned out they knew I'd been sent home from school to change clothes. Father Dominic, alarmed when I didn't return in a timely fashion, had immediately called my mother and stepfather at their respective places of work to alert them to the fact that I was missing.

"Well," I explained. "I was on my way home to change when Mr. Beaumont's brother drove by and offered me a ride, and so I took it, and then when I was sitting in Mr. B's office, I started to smell smoke, and so I jumped out the window...."

Okay, even I have to admit that the whole thing sounded super suspicious. But it was better than the truth, right? I mean, were they really going to believe that Tad's uncle Marcus had been trying to kill me because I knew too much about a bunch of murders he'd committed for the sake of urban sprawl?

Not very likely. Even Tad didn't try that one on the cops who showed up along with the fire department, and demanded an explanation as to why he was hanging around the house in a swim-suit on a schoolday. I guess he didn't want to get his uncle in trouble since it would look bad for his dad, and all. He started lying like crazy about how he had a cold, and the doctor had recommended he try to clear his sinuses by sitting for long bouts in his hot tub (good one: I was definitely going to have remember it for future reference - Andy was talking about building a hot tub onto our deck out back).

Tad's father, God bless him, denied both our stories completely, insisting he'd been in his room waiting for his lunch to be delivered when one of the servants had informed him that his office was in flames. No one had said anything about Tad having stayed home with a cold, or a girl waiting for an interview with him.

Fortunately, however, he also claimed that while waiting for his lunch to be delivered, he'd been taking a nap in his coffin.

That's right: his coffin.

This caused a number of raised eyebrows, and eventually, it was decided that Mr. Beaumont ought to be admitted to the local hospital's psychiatric floor for a few days' observation. This, as you might understand, necessarily cut off any conversation Tad and I might have had at the time, and while he went off with EMS and his father, I was unceremoniously led to a squad car and, eventually, when the cops remembered me, driven home.

Where, instead of being welcomed into the bosom of my family, I received the bawling out of a lifetime.

I'm not even kidding. Andy was enraged. He said I should have gone straight home, changed clothes, and gone straight back to school. I had no business accepting rides from anyone, particularly wealthy businessmen I hardly knew.

Furthermore, I had skipped school, and no matter how many times I pointed out that a) I'd actually been kicked out of school, and b) I'd been doing an assignment for school (at least according to the story I told him), I had, essentially, betrayed everyone's trust. I was grounded for one week.

I tell you, it was almost enough to make me consider telling the truth.

Almost. But not quite.

I was getting ready to slink upstairs to my room - in order to "think about what I'd done" - when Dopey strolled in and casually announced that, by the way, on top of all my other sins, I had also punched him very hard in the stomach that morning for no apparent reason.

This, of course, was an outright lie, and I was quick to remind him of this: I had been provoked, unnecessarily so. But Andy, who does not condone violence for any reason, promptly grounded me for another week. Since he also grounded Dopey for whatever it was he had said that had led to my punching him, I didn't mind too much, but still, it seemed a bit extreme. So extreme, in fact, that after Andy had left the room, I sort of had to sit down, exhausted in the wake of his rage, which I had never before seen unleashed - well, not in my direction, anyway.

"You really," my mother said, taking a seat opposite me, and looking a bit worriedly down at the slipcover on which I was slumped, "should have let us know where you were. Poor Father Dominic was frightened out of his mind for you."

"Sorry," I said woefully, fingering the remnants of my skirt. "I'll remember next time."

"Still," my mother said. "Officer Green told us that you were very helpful during the fire. So I guess …"

I looked at her. "You guess what?"

"Well," my mother said. "Andy doesn't want me to tell you now, but …"

She actually got up - my mother, who had once interviewed Yasir Arafat - and slunk out of the room, ostensibly to check whether or not Andy was within earshot.

I rolled my eyes. Love. It could make a pretty big sap out of you.

As I rolled my eyes, I noticed that my mother, who always gets a lot of nervous energy in a crisis, had spent the time that I'd been missing hanging up more pictures in the living room. There were some new ones, ones I hadn't seen before. I got up to inspect them more closely.

There was one of her and my dad on their wedding day. They were coming down the steps of the courthouse where they'd been married, and their friends were throwing rice at them. They looked impossibly young and happy. I was surprised to see a picture of my mom and dad right alongside the pictures of my mom's wedding to Andy.

But then I noticed that beside the photo of my mom and dad was a picture from what had to have been Andy's wedding to his first wife. This was more of a studio portrait than a candid shot. Andy was standing, looking stiff and a little embarrassed, next to a very skinny, hippyish-looking girl with long, straight hair.

"Of course she does," a voice at my shoulder said.

"Jeez, Dad," I hissed, whirling around. "When are you going to stop doing that?"

"You are in a heap of trouble, young lady," my father said. He looked sore. Well, as sore as a guy in jogging pants could look. "Just what were you thinking?"

I whispered, "I was thinking of making it safe for people to protest the corporate destruction of northern California's natural resources without having to worry about being sealed up in an oil drum and buried ten feet under."