Steve was the first to move. “Stay here,” he said to Elsie and Daisy, but of course they didn’t. They ran after him to the living room, stopping abruptly at the sight of fire. It raced along baseboards and swept up the front wall. It quickly gained momentum, crackling and hissing as it destroyed everything in its path.

Steve pushed Elsie and Daisy back into the kitchen. “Call the fire department and get out of the house,” he said, giving the phone to Daisy. He hooked his hand around a kitchen fire extinguisher and ran back to the living room.

Seconds later Daisy was beside him with an extinguisher from the family room. In minutes sirens screamed in the distance and the house shook with the rumble of fire trucks.

Elsie was standing her ground with the garden hose when Fairfax Number 4 broke into the foyer. “I think I’ve got it licked,” she said, “but it’s nice of you to come to help out anyway.”

Half an hour later the house was certified safe to reenter. The fire had been pretty well confined to the living room. The front windows had been blown out by the blast, and the rug and walls were charred, as were the few pieces of furniture. Gray sooty water pooled on the floor and spilled out the front door, down the steps. Elsie, Daisy, Kevin, and Steve stood on the scarred lawn and looked at the smoke-blackened exterior of the colonial.

“Firebomb,” Steve said. “If we’d been in the living room, we’d be dead.”

Daisy had her arm around Kevin. She was ready to pay serious attention to the threats. The phone call had been almost laughable, and the intruder might have been a random burglary, but this vicious act of vengeance couldn’t be denied.

There was a dark blue-and-white squad car angled into the curb, behind the one remaining fire truck. A tan late-model sedan pulled in next to the squad car and two men got out. Detectives, Daisy decided, noting the street clothes on the men and the antennae on the sedan. They approached a uniformed cop and a discussion followed. Daisy caught one of the men looking over at her. His face was impassive, his mouth grim. His shirt had lost its starch hours ago, his suit slacks had begun to bag in the seat, his brown shoes carried a film of dust. He’d had a long day, Daisy thought.