Free Deadly Donuts by Jessica Beck Page A

public spaces had been saved from the torrent of water.   What made it worse was that there was the sound of more water coming in as Angelica, Antonia, and Maria tried to stem the tide, but they were clearly in a losing battle.   The fourth daughter was nowhere to be found, but that didn’t surprise me.   Tianna had left the restaurant business abruptly over a boy that was sheer trouble, and sometimes Angelica was so distraught by it all that she claimed only three daughters, not four.   I even caught myself on occasion forgetting about Tianna, but I hoped that someday she would come back into the fold.   I knew that it must have broken Angelica’s heart to lose contact with one of her children.
    “Where’s the cutoff valve for the main supply line?” I asked frantically.
    “We don’t know,” Angelica said with great distraught.   “I called our landlord, but he isn’t picking up the phone.   Everything’s going to be ruined if we don’t stop this water, and fast.”
    I looked around and tried to trace the exposed overhead plumbing, searching for some kind of cutoff valve.   The only problem was that I couldn’t find one.   “How do you get up onto the roof?” I asked.
    “I can’t ask you to climb up there, Suzanne.   Sophia, you go.”
    “I’m afraid of heights, and you know it.”
    “Just go!” her mother urged her, but she wouldn’t move.
    “I’ll help you down here with a broom,” Grace said as she started trying to push more water out the backdoor.   It was clearly futile, but at least she was trying to do something.
    “Come on, Sophia,” I said as I grabbed her hand.
    Once we were outside, I asked, “Can you think of any way to get up there?”
    “I saw a ladder over there one time,” she said as she pointed to a spot along the back wall, “but I’m not climbing up it.   Suzanne, I wasn’t kidding.   I hate standing on a chair, let alone climbing around on a roof.”
    “Show me the ladder.   I’ll take care of the shutoff myself, but I have to be able to get up there first.”
    Sophia led me to the area she’d pointed to earlier, and there was indeed a ladder there, just as she’d promised.   After taking a look at it, though, I wasn’t at all certain that it was going to be tall enough for me to climb up onto the roof using it.
    I grabbed it and leaned it against the building anyway.   Just as I’d feared, it was a good two feet short of the roof.
    “It’s not going to work,” Sophia said.
    “I can climb it and pull myself up the rest of the way once I’m at the top,” I answered.   “Steady it for me, would you?”
    I started climbing before I could chicken out.   When I got to the top step, I reached up with both hands and pulled myself up the rest of the way.   I managed to get my waist onto the edge, and then I pulled myself up.   The T-shirt I was wearing was probably ruined by the hot tar on the lip of the roof, but I couldn’t worry about that right now.
    I had thought it was hot on the ground, but being up on that roof was a thousand times worse.   Gravel that had once been embedded in hot tar was now loose and stuck to my shoes with every step I took.   Hot exhausts from a dozen air conditioning units blew straight into my face, and I felt my feet grow heavier with every step.  
    I suddenly realized that I had to do this quickly if I was going to be able to do it at all.
    Sophia yelled up, “Are you okay?”
    “Walk to the restaurant’s back door,” I told her.
    I started in the general direction, and as I looked over the edge, I saw Sophia standing there, shielding her eyes with one hand.  
    It was a great deal further up than I’d originally thought.
    As I looked around the roof’s maze of pipes, I found a plumbing stack with valves clustered together over to one side.   This had to be where the leak was coming from.   I grabbed the nearest valve and tried to turn it, but there were two problems with that: the valve was burning hot