Cold Fire

about it. I've never made good first impressions with people—”
    “You've made an excellent one with me, dear.”
    Grind my face under your heel, why don't you? Holly thought.
    She said, “I want to be careful. I want to know as much as possible about him before I knock on his door. I want to know what he likes, what he doesn't like, how he feels about… oh, about all sorts of things. God, Mrs. Moreno, I don't want to blow this.”
    Viola nodded. “I assume you've come to me because I know your brother, probably had him years ago in one of my classes?”
    “You do teach history at a junior high school here in Irvine—”
    “That's right. I've worked there since before Joe died.”
    “Well, my brother wasn't one of your students. He was an English instructor in the same school. I traced him there, and learned you'd taught in the room next to his for ten years, you knew him well.”
    Viola's face brightened into a smile. “You mean Jim Ironheart!”
    “That's right. My brother.”
    “This is lovely, wonderful, this is perfect!” Viola enthused.
    The woman's reaction was so excessive that Holly blinked in surprise and didn't know quite what to say next.
    “He's a good man,” Viola said with genuine affection. “I'd have liked nothing better than to've had a son like him. He comes around now and then for dinner, not as often as he used to, and I cook for him, mother him. I can't tell you how much pleasure that gives me.” A wistful expression had settled on her, and she was silent a moment. “Anyway … you couldn't have asked for a better brother, dear. He's one of the nicest people I've ever known, a dedicated teacher, so gentle and kind and patient.”
    Holly thought of Norman Rink, the psychopath who had killed a clerk and two customers in that Atlanta convenience store last May, and who had been killed in turn by gentle, kind Jim Ironheart. Eight rounds from a shotgun at point-blank range. Four rounds fired into the corpse after Rink was obviously dead. Viola Moreno might know the man well, but she clearly had no concept of the rage that he could tap when he needed it.
    “I've known good teachers in my time, but none as concerned about his students as Jim Ironheart was. He sincerely cared about them, as if they were his own kids.” She leaned back in her chair and shook her head, remembering. “He gave so much to them, wanted so much to make their lives better, and all but the worst-case misfits responded to him. He had a rapport with his students that other teachers would sell their souls for, yet he didn't have to surrender a proper student-teacher relationship to get it. So many of them try to be pals with their students, you see, and that never really works.”
    “Why did he quit teaching?”
    Viola hesitated, smile fading. “Partly, it was the lottery.”
    “What lottery?”
    “You don't know about that?”
    Holly frowned and shook her head.
    Viola said, “He won six million dollars in January.”
    “Holysmoke!”
    “The first time he ever bought a ticket.”
    Allowing her initial surprise to metamorphose into a look of worry, Holly said, “Oh, God, now he's going to think I only came around because he's suddenly rich.”
    “No, no,” Viola hastened to assure her. “Jim would never think the worst of anyone.”
    “I've done well myself,” Holly lied. “I don't need his money, I wouldn't take it if he tried to give it to me. My adoptive parents are doctors, not wealthy but well-to-do, and I'm an attorney with a nice practice.”
    Okay, okay, you really don't want his money, Holly thought with self-disgust as caustic as acid, but you're still a mean little lying bitch with a frightening talent for invented detail, and you'll spend eternity standing hip-deep in dung, polishing Satan's boots.
    Her mood changing, Viola pushed her chair back from the table, got up, and stepped to the edge of the patio. She plucked a weed from a large terra-cotta pot full of begonias, baby's breath, and copper-yellow marigolds. Absentmindedly rolling the slender weed into a ball between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand, she stared thoughtfully out at the parklike grounds.
    The woman was silent for a long time.
    Holly worried that she had said something wrong, unwittingly revealing her duplicity. Second by second, she became more nervous, and she found herself wanting to blurt out an apology for all the lies she'd told.
    Squirrels capered on the grass. A butterfly swooped under the patio