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Out Of The Ashes
Cynthia Reese


Hope can rise from the smallest ember.After a devastating fire rages through Rob Monroe's rural Georgia community, the prime suspect is the pretty local baker. The blaze started in Kari Hendrix's shop—and she just confessed to being convicted of arson as a teenager.Rob knows in his heart that Kari's innocent. So what is she running from? Who's she protecting? As he digs deeper, he uncovers the truth about an unresolved crime in his own family. Now he has to make a choice. Is he going to let the past destroy his chance for a future with Kari?







Hope can rise from the smallest ember

After a devastating fire rages through Rob Monroe’s rural Georgia community, the prime suspect is the pretty local baker. The blaze started in Kari Hendrix’s shop—and she just confessed to being convicted of arson as a teenager.

Rob knows in his heart that Kari’s innocent. So what is she running from? Who’s she protecting? As he digs deeper, he uncovers the truth about an unresolved crime in his own family. Now he has to make a choice. Is he going to let the past destroy his chance for a future with Kari?


Kari roared with laughter.

Rob swung her wide, lifting her off the floor and twirling her. “Got another cake that needs decorating?”

“That’s the sugar high talking—I think you may have licked one too many bowls of buttercream,” Kari said. But her eyes were sparkling, and Rob knew it wasn’t the buttercream that made his heart do a triple beat.

“There’s sugar, and then...well...there’s sugar,” he whispered. He bent down to kiss her.

She tasted of sugar...vanilla buttercream, to be exact. She smelled of the stuff, which suited him just fine, because for that moment all he wanted to do was take in the scent of her, the taste and the feel of her. If he’d had to decorate a thousand more cakes, give him a kiss like this, and he was game.

Because it was plain and simple. He was addicted to the sugar high that was Kari Hendrix...regardless of whatever secret she might be keeping.


Dear Reader (#ulink_388471ef-455e-5920-9f07-418b56465901),

Until I had the privilege of working for the US House of Representatives, I had always thought a juvenile offense was no big deal. Wasn’t it sealed away, never to haunt the grown-up, much wiser version of that foolish teenage self?

The answer, I found, was no. Even a misdemeanor arrest as a juvenile can come back to haunt a person in her adult years. Men and women in their twenties and thirties, in search of college loans, job opportunities, security clearances and other things that might improve their career prospects all told me the same thing: an arrest is still an arrest, a conviction still a conviction, no matter how old you were when it happened. Even an expunged record, I found, wasn’t truly a clean slate. On a job application, you still had to check yes on that box that asked, “Have you ever been arrested or convicted of a crime?”

That’s what my character Kari faces in Out of the Ashes: one bad decision so many years before comes back to haunt her. She’s older, wiser and a good deal sadder for her bad decision, but it still impacts her present in ways she had no idea it would when she made it. And it has the power to destroy any chance of her future with Rob.

I hope you enjoy Kari and Rob’s story as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Cynthia




Out of the Ashes

Cynthia Reese





www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


CYNTHIA REESE lives with her husband and their daughter in south Georgia, along with their two dogs, three cats and however many strays show up for morning muster. She has been scribbling since she was knee-high to a grasshopper and reading even before that. A former journalist, teacher and college English instructor, she also enjoys cooking, traveling and photography when she gets the chance.


To my husband, my biggest fan.

This book, like the ones before it, owes a tremendous debt to the efforts of the best editors on the planet, Kathryn Lye and Victoria Curran. I am so thankful for their belief in my writing. Karen Rock has a huge part of this as well, as she helped me brainstorm the original story idea and the story arc for the Georgia Monroes.

Thanks, too, goes to Sgt. Tommy Windham and all the firefighters at the City of Dublin, Georgia’s, Fire Department, to John Lentini of Scientific Fire Analysis, to Judge Sherri McDonald, and to Blake Tillery for their patient answers to my dumb questions. All mistakes are mine.

No man is an island, and no woman can truly write a book on her own: thanks to my critique partner Tawna Fenske, my beta reader Jessica Brown, my cheering squad and inspiration for big happy families, Leslie and the gang, and, last but not least, to those who have had to talk me down from the ledges—my sister, my daughter and my husband. Thank you for all the times you didn’t strangle me when I replied to any request, “Not now, I’m writing.”


Contents

Cover (#u72362625-615a-5620-936d-2915936fc375)

Back Cover Text (#u89a8cc46-27c3-5ee2-a3d4-7ff305eb070c)

Introduction (#u81bdf095-a2fb-5599-a061-2fb3448fa462)

Dear Reader (#uad7a3884-8136-5b36-ae67-5ad9221a2ab6)

Title Page (#uaf77877e-eb48-54a3-9d7f-750d0cf97a77)

About the Author (#ufa962a4a-5b15-5e89-a96a-4839012555c0)

Dedication (#uaa31ed15-bf1a-5c9f-96ae-690ba5618d61)

CHAPTER ONE (#ua2746d9b-2699-569e-9d6b-b6e793f36359)

CHAPTER TWO (#u972c5274-cb06-50e6-88eb-2cd4b3871443)

CHAPTER THREE (#u02b7c439-8111-58f1-a126-19c446734970)

CHAPTER FOUR (#uec87d240-8507-535e-80f4-f6ed05b7b604)

CHAPTER FIVE (#ube3be0b1-c0bc-5deb-b56b-6de7f3374a8b)

CHAPTER SIX (#u23c822bf-80ed-53cf-939b-f0de61020b13)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)


CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_717c42b6-649e-5564-8bad-a70199f9979c)

SMOKE.

Ashes.

Kari Hendrix wanted to see neither ever again.

All around her in the predawn light were the loud industrial sounds of ventilator fans, the slap of boots against concrete, the beep-beep-beep of a fire truck as it backed up, the calls from one firefighter to another, the thwack and clank of fire hoses being rolled up, the pulse of red and blue lights streaking across puddles of water on the street.

And the wet smell of a building burned to a crisp.

Make that buildings. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself to ward off a chill despite the late summer temperatures still not dropping below seventy-five at night. Almost the whole section of the downtown on one side of the street was gutted and blackened. Her little bakery stood smack in the middle, an even darker smudge against the rest.

Gone. Up in smoke.

She’d checked everything twice the night before when she’d closed up: the oven, the stove, the lights. She always did.

If there was one thing Kari knew, it was the destructive power of fire.

The scrape of boots on the sidewalk came nearer—next to her. She pulled her attention away from her ruined bakery and switched it to the man who’d walked up to join her by the fluttering yellow tape that blocked off the scene from civilians.

The first thing that struck her about him was how tall he was—a good foot taller than her 5­4"—okay, 5­3½"—frame. Beside him, Kari felt even more like a munchkin than usual.

Unlike the rest of the men on the far side of the tape, the tall man wasn’t dressed in turnout gear. He wore no fire helmet or rubber boots, but he was in a uniform of sorts: khakis and a knit golf shirt with a shield of some sort embroidered on it.

She couldn’t make out the logo because of the third thing she noticed about him: in his hands he carried two paper cups of coffee and had a blanket slung over one arm.

“You’re Kari Hendrix.” It wasn’t a question, just a confident restating of a known fact. “Here. I figured you could use a cup of coffee.”

Kari’s hand reflexively took the coffee before she could get out, “What?”

But he wasn’t done. With his free hand, he awkwardly propped the blanket, marked PROPERTY OF LEVI COUNTY FIRE DEPT, around her. Kari grabbed at it before it slipped onto the sodden sidewalk and pulled it gratefully around her shoulders.

The man made a quick save of her fumbling coffee cup. “Whoops. So much for my being a gentleman. You nearly lost the coffee and the blanket,” he told her.

“Thank you,” she replied. She peered at the stitching on the shirt, which stretched over a well-constructed chest that looked more like a triathlete’s than a firefighter’s. This guy was built like a tree. In the dim light, though, she couldn’t really decipher the dark threads that made up the design.

“Oh, I’m Rob Monroe.” He offered a hand, realized she had both hands occupied—one with the cup and the other anchoring the blanket. He grinned.

It was a good grin—the smile of a guy who didn’t take himself too seriously and realized when he was being a goofball, Kari decided. It tugged at dimples and a cleft in his chin, and it showed off white teeth and the barest hint of stubble to devastatingly good advantage.

“Kari—well, you, hmm, you already know my name, don’t you?” she asked. She felt her face heat up. Suddenly she could picture how she looked to this guy: she could feel her blond hair slipping out of its hastily-rigged ponytail, imagine her face bare of makeup and still streaked with the tears she’d shed earlier as she’d stood watching the fire in all its gut-wrenching destruction. “You have me at a disadvantage.”

“The coffee and the blanket don’t make up for that?” His eyes were dark—not brown or black, but she couldn’t quite make out the color in the dawn light. But they were kind eyes. Intelligent ones.

Now they shifted beyond her, not apparently expecting an answer to his question, and they locked on the smoldering remains of the downtown section that had burned.

She followed his gaze. It was hard to watch it now that she’d looked away. She’d almost hoped that it had been a nightmare that she could wake up from and it would be gone.

But of course it wasn’t. No, the fire was out now and the firefighters were gathering up their equipment, tromping around the half-burned walls of the buildings, over rubble.

“Want to take a closer look?” Rob Monroe offered suddenly.

Kari opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Did she? Yes...and no. Even from here, she could tell nothing would be salvaged from her shop.

Still, she wanted to know what she’d done—or hadn’t done—that had turned her dreams into ashes.

“Okay,” she got out. “But can we? The chief told me to wait back here.”

Rob lifted the tape and jerked his head for her to go on. “I happen to have a little pull with the chief,” he said. “He’s my brother.”

“Oh. Are you—you’re a firefighter, too?” She glanced back over her shoulder.

Rob reached over and righted her coffee cup again—as she had again been on the verge of dumping it.

“Sorry. I seem to be a bit of a klutz today. I’m not usually,” Kari told him.

“It’s like that at four in the morning.” Now he walked beside her, matching her step for step, even though he could have easily crossed the distance in a fraction of the time it was taking her.

Especially when Kari’s feet felt nailed to the ground the closer she drew to the burned-out storefront.

“Do you know?” she blurted out. “How it started? What did I do? What did I leave on?”

Rob cast an appraising look her way, one eyebrow hiked in question. “You think you left something on?”

“I checked. Everything. I always check. But I must have, right?”

It was the only thing that made sense to her. More than one firefighter had said enough in passing to let her know that the fire had started in her bakery. So she must have done something wrong. She’d left something on in the oven, or maybe her old coffeepot had shorted out, or...something.

The acrid smell of drenched ashes and soot assailed her even more strongly now that they were just outside the front door of her shop. Rob drew up short, staying put. Kari was grateful for his consideration, because without a moment to collect herself, she would have surely burst into tears or succumbed to the roiling nausea in her stomach.

The plate glass window with the stenciled name of Lovin’ Oven was no more—splintered into pieces. Inside, the shop was inky-black, lit only by a few klieg lights and the sweeping beams of a firefighter’s flashlight.

Even so, Kari could see only the barest scraps of the gingham tablecloths she’d had covering the window’s deeply bayed display shelf. The window display with the four-tiered mock cake—nothing but a form made of hatboxes and decorated with frosting to showcase her skills—was no more.

A man almost as tall as Rob appeared out of the shadows. Even in his turnout gear and soot-covered face, Kari recognized him as the man who’d warned her to stay back what felt like hours earlier...the chief. Rob’s brother.

“I told him you’d said I should wait—” Kari rushed.

But the chief—Daniel Monroe, she remembered now, waved her words away. “Rob said he was going to take you through it.”

Kari gulped. Usually she was stronger than this, braver. She’d had to be braver for years now, so there was no point going all weepy over a fire. Nobody had gotten killed in it, thank goodness. And at least she’d been able to pay the insurance.

Rob cocked his head. “See? I told you I had pull.” He clicked on a huge and battered flashlight that rivaled a small baseball bat in size. “But we do need to be careful. Here—why don’t you leave your blanket and the coffee with Daniel?” He winked at his brother. “You won’t mind holding it for us while we’re in there, will you, bro?”

“Why not? You’ve left me holding far worse bags over the years, now, haven’t you?” But Daniel’s retort was devoid of malice... Kari found herself wishing she and her own brother could joke around like that. She handed him her coffee and slid off the blanket, shivering at the cool air.

Kari stepped through the door to an interior she would have never recognized as her very own shop. Black water was everywhere, walls were gone, tables reduced to ash and rubble.

The precious glass display cases she’d found online and got her brother to help her haul them home—gone. The kitschy fruit prints she’d framed on the walls—gone.

And the farther she went into the bowels of the beast, the worse it got.

The kitchen area in the back, smelling of burned sugar and flour and plastic, had taken on an apocalyptic appearance, all scorched earth and none of the cheerful, neat work space she’d left just a few hours earlier. Kari stood beside her Hobart floor mixer and slid a hand over its fire-blistered paint.

Gone. All gone.

She hadn’t even realized she was crying until Rob squeezed her shoulder. “Hey. If you want to do this later...”

He was so kind. As if he didn’t mind in the slightest standing by a squawling baker as she wept over her floor mixer. Kari swiped at her eyes and choked back her tears. “No, I’m—it’s okay.” She whirled around to escape his intense look of compassion, only to stumble and nearly fall on something in her path.

“Whoa, there!” Rob saved her from a nasty spill in the soot. He shined his light onto what had caused her to stumble: her bookshelf of cookbooks, now charred almost beyond recognition.

“Oh, no...” Kari hadn’t even thought of them—all these cookbooks, collected over the years from the first time she’d ever baked a cake, destroyed in seconds. “My recipes...all my recipes! Gone!”

“Wait—see? Not all gone.” Rob bent over and scooped up a thick book and flipped it open. Sure enough, though the edges of the pages were scalloped with an ugly carbon-black from the heat and flames, many pages were readable. “You’ll need to let them dry out, of course, because they got an extra good soaking.”

She couldn’t help it. She grabbed that cookbook and pressed it to her, giving up on holding back her tears.

“Your favorite cookbook?” he asked.

Kari managed a laugh, then sniffled. “Cookbooks are like children or dogs. You can’t have a favorite. They’re all my favorites.”

“Hmm. I had no idea.” His smile was sweet and patient. Kari realized that daylight was filtering through the front windows. “Come on.” He waved her toward the delivery door. “I want to show you something out back.”

Carefully she made her way there. Outside, a hulk of scorched metal lay in a heap near the remains of what had been a wooden door that Kari had daily battled with.

“What?” she asked as she joined Rob, who was staring at it intently.

“You don’t recognize it?”

She frowned. It had been white, maybe, or the lightest of blue, a tank of some sort...

A chill went down her spine.

A propane tank.

“Is that what I think it is?” she asked.

“What do you think it is?” Rob evaded answering her question.

She knelt down for a closer look.

Yes. A small propane tank, like the ones you’d see at a convenience store, ready to be taken home and hooked up to a grill.

But she had no grill. Her bakery ran on natural gas and electricity, not propane. She’d not had any need for a propane tank.

Jammed into the tank’s collar, next to the valve, was a scrap of metal and a heap of ashes.

She straightened up, her heart sinking to her toes. “It looks like a propane tank. For a grill.”

“Yep,” Rob agreed.

“It’s not mine.”

“That a fact?” he asked.

Now she met his eyes, and she could tell in the gray light of dawn that they were blue, a very dark blue that she hadn’t seen ever before—but she’d seen the speculation that filled them in others’ eyes—plenty of times.

“Is that what started the fire?” she asked. “This tank?”

“I couldn’t tell you yet. I’ve only just started to investigate.”

“Investigate? You?” Now it was Kari’s turn to look speculatively at her companion.

“Didn’t I tell you? I’m the fire marshal and arson investigator for Levi County.”

A renewed wave of nausea flooded through her. “Arson?” she asked and sagged against the scorched cement of the exterior wall. But she hadn’t needed to ask him to repeat it. She’d heard it the first time.

“It looks that way. That tank’s valve is open, and it appears to be the remains of a road flare stuck in there.”

Kari’s knees wouldn’t hold her up any longer. She found herself sliding to the wet ground, the masonry wall digging into her back as she descended. “Not again,” she whispered. “Oh, please, not again.”

“Again?” Rob knelt down beside her.

“You might as well know...” She stared down at the cookbook in her arms, the one thing she’d been able to salvage from the ashes of her fresh new start.

“Know what?” Rob prompted.

“You’ll find out soon enough. I was convicted of arson when I was fourteen years old.”


CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_0ef0108f-272d-5f37-9bb4-4d6e28202467)

ROB SAT BACK on his heels, stunned. Had she really said what he thought she’d said?

Yes.

But she’d said it in a curious, distancing way. Not “I started a fire,” or “I burned down a building.”

No. “I was convicted.” That was how Kari Hendrix had put it.

He took in her eyes. They were gray and flat and dull, devoid of the hope he’d seen sputter in them when she’d found the cookbook.

So the question wasn’t if this was arson. Rob switched his gaze away from Kari and back to the propane tank.

Revenge. That was the first thought that popped in his mind when he’d made his initial sweep after the firefighters had put the blaze out. He’d seen the way-too-obvious point of origin—an open valve on a propane tank, the remains of a safety flare jabbed into the tank’s collar—and it was impossible to miss the “take that!” message the arsonist had sent loud and clear.

Rob had taken Kari through the building in hopes she could fill him in on who it was she’d so badly ticked off. A boyfriend? A customer?

But now...

Now he had to consider whether Kari was the culprit. The propane tank was easy enough to acquire, as well as the safety flare. She owned a bakery—and any food-based small shop hemorrhaged money like nobody’s business at first. And she certainly knew the lay of the land and when no one would be around.

Means, motive and opportunity...and a past criminal history, albeit self-confessed.

Her head was bent, and Kari appeared to peer deeply at her knees as though the secret to the universe were there. He could see the fabric of the denim stretched over those knees was thin and threadbare—not some high-dollar distressing of the jeans, but literally worn through.

Kari hadn’t done this.

Rob knew it. It was a bone-deep knowledge he couldn’t explain, but he was just as certain that Kari Hendrix had not set this fire as he was that his big brother Daniel would throw back his head and roar with laughter at his conclusion. Daniel was always telling Rob that Rob was the cynical, suspicious one.

Still...

“Ahem. I should read you your rights,” Rob said. Funny how his voice seemed to strain and crack. “You have the right to remain silent—”

Kari lifted her head. Her mouth twisted in a grimace. “Yeah. I know. And whatever I say, you’ll use against me in court, and I can have an attorney—you’ll even give me a really, really bad one since I can’t afford one. I know the drill.”

“So? Did you? Do this?”

“No.” There was no equivocation, no hesitation, no fancy I-swear-on-a-stack-of-Bibles, no how-dare-you outrage. Just a plain and simple, no-frills, direct, “No.”

“Do you know who might have?”

But now Kari lied.

Not at first. Her initial headshake was vigorous and heartfelt. But somewhere in mid-shake, a lightbulb must have gone off. She froze—just for a split second. He could see more pain flare up in her eyes, the deep anguish of betrayal. And for a moment he was sure she was going to spill out a name.

Instead, she pressed her lips together in a tight, thin line and clutched the cookbook to her chest. “How could I know who burned this place? Why would they want to?”

“That’s what I’m asking you. Do you have trouble with your landlord?”

She laughed. It was a dry, bitter sound that would have been more fitting for a jaded seventy-year-old than someone Kari’s age. Kari pushed herself up to a standing position, wobbly on her knees, but still pointedly ignoring Rob’s outstretched hand.

“I take that as a yes?” Rob pressed.

“My landlord, as you probably already know, is Charlie Kirkman, and everybody has trouble with Charlie Kirkman. And when you ask around, you’ll probably find the customers who heard me screaming at him the other day when he refused—again—to send somebody to look at the roof. Or the air conditioner. Or the vent fan. Or the water heater. But if everybody who got into a screaming match with Charlie Kirkman burned his buildings down, Charlie Kirkman would have no buildings left to burn.”

She was right about that, Rob knew. Charlie was as skinflinty a landlord as he’d ever come across. Rob had had dealings with Charlie—and not in a good way—when he’d followed up with Charlie’s residential tenants about fire safety complaints. And he knew that Charlie was famous for finally getting around to repairing the problem—and then upping the rent and gleefully evicting the poor tenants.

So it was par for the course that Charlie’s commercial ventures would play out the same way.

“Why’d you keep renting from him, then? Why not move somewhere else?” Rob asked.

Kari shrugged slim shoulders. “Location, location, location. I haven’t been in business long enough to have a reputation yet, or a real customer base that would follow me if I moved. The location was perfect. Plus, I’d signed a year’s lease. It won’t be up for...gosh, another six months.”

Rob couldn’t believe that the Lovin’ Oven had been in business for six months already and he hadn’t availed himself of its goodies. But he hadn’t. Maybe it was because he could get all the free dessert he wanted at Ma’s...or maybe he’d somehow looked down on a boutique bakery that sold things like four-buck cupcakes that couldn’t be any better than the boxed brownies he made for himself whenever he had a snack attack.

If I’d known the cupcakes were baked by someone like you...

Rob gave himself a mental slap upside the head. What was he thinking? Four-buck cupcakes were four-buck cupcakes, and a suspect was a suspect.

Even if he knew she wasn’t.

“So what next?” Kari asked wearily.

“Next? I investigate. You say you didn’t do it, so that leaves me with no choice but to find out who actually did it.”

Rob could have sworn that Kari flinched at his words.

“I’d like to go home now,” she said quietly. “Is that okay? Can I?”

“You’re not under arrest.”

“You read me my rights,” she pointed out.

“Because I’m very careful about procedure. It would be like you—I dunno—reading a recipe before you start baking a cake.”

An even bleaker look filled her eyes. She made her way to the shop’s back door and leaned against the blackened doorjamb. “I won’t be baking anything for a long time yet. Maybe ever. The insurance—the insurance won’t pay if arson was involved.”

“Not if, Kari. It was arson. There are no ifs, ands or buts. It was definitely arson. If you tell me—”

She whirled around. Anger tightened the grim lines of her face. “I can’t. I can’t tell you what I don’t know. I can’t tell you why anybody would want to hurt me like this. I hate fire. I hate it. It destroys everything.”

And with that, she pushed past him and made her way down the back alley behind the burned-out hulls of the buildings. In the shadows formed by the dawn’s gray light pushing through the gaping holes of the buildings, Kari Hendrix appeared small and frail and bowed over with pain. And she was running—running away from something? What?

Rob was determined to find out.

* * *

“SO LET ME get this straight,” Daniel said, his words laced with amusement. Rob’s brother leaned back in his squeaky desk chair and stretched out his feet on an open desk drawer.

“What’s there to get straight? And are you asking as my brother or the chief of the fire department?” Rob stretched his own feet out on the concrete floor of his brother’s office at the fire station.

Daniel shrugged. “Brother, chief, what does it matter? I’m curious. You know it’s arson, I know it’s arson, and the owner of the business where the fire originated tells you she was convicted of arson, but you believe she didn’t do it? Wait. Who are you and what have you done with my got-to-believe-the-worst-in-everybody little brother?”

“I know. It’s not like me. If there’s one rule, it’s usually that the business owner or the landlord did it. But Charlie Kirkman is too stingy to properly insure his buildings, and... Daniel, you just had to be there. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense for her to spill it all. It was a sealed juvie record, and I would have had to move heaven and earth to get it unsealed. I might not have even thought to look at it first if she hadn’t said something.”

“So maybe it’s all an elaborate ploy to make you think she’s innocent.”

“Now you sound like me, and you’re always accusing me of being cynical.” Rob chuckled. He took a sip of bad firehouse coffee and grimaced, but swallowed another gulp down. He was on his third cup just for the caffeine’s sake. The downtown fire had started way too early. “Here’s what really doesn’t make sense. If she’d wanted to burn that place down, she could have left a cake in the oven or something on the stove and walked away. Nobody could have proven it was anything but an accident. This?” Rob shook his head. “A propane tank and a safety flare? It’s too obvious. Too stupid. Too brazen. And she—she would have known she would wind up a prime suspect.”

“But you just said you would have never thought to check her out—”

“Maybe not, but it would have come up, eventually. I do my job, Daniel, you know that.”

Daniel considered him. “Yeah. You do. And you’re good at it.”

For a moment, Rob let his thoughts wander back to Kari, weighing everything she’d said, every expression on her face. She’d been such an open, honest book. Everything—the pain, the misery, the fear—had been right there, as easy to read as one of those first-grade Dick and Jane primers.

The fear.

Kari had been afraid. Of what? Of who?

It hadn’t been a mortal fear, but more of a fear of having been betrayed. What had she said when he’d first mentioned arson?

Not again. Please not again.

“So what’s next, Rob Roy?” his brother asked him.

A momentary flicker of annoyance at his family nickname distracted him from his thoughts about Kari. Rob pulled his focus together and considered Daniel’s very valid question.

“Hmm. First I have to figure out exactly what sort of hole Kari Hendrix was in. Oh, and Charlie Kirkman. You never know. Even Charlie might have decided that a little insurance was better than fixing something—and maybe if that block was leveled, he could sell it. Maybe Kari—or some of his other tenants—didn’t want to leave. Or maybe somebody had it in for Kari.”

“I never knew cupcakes could be so deadly,” Daniel quipped.

Rob lifted his shoulders. “You got me. I’m not much for cupcakes. Give me a brownie any old day. But you know what I mean.”

“How long do you think it will take? To close the case?”

Rob rubbed at his eyes and considered whether another cup of coffee would help keep him awake. Fatigue and lack of sleep were catching up with him, and he still had the rest of the day to get through. “Probably not as long as it will take to write it up whenever I do figure it out. And definitely not as long as the grand jury and the trial will take.”

“I know. You’re always right, so why do those pesky lawmakers insist that you give the guilty party their day in court, huh?” Daniel grinned and winked at his brother. Then his smile faded. “I’m just kidding you, you know that, right? I meant what I said a while ago. You are good at what you do, Rob.”

For a long moment, Rob didn’t say anything. He looked past Daniel to the credenza behind him, loaded down with family pictures. There were Daniel and his new fiancée and her daughter, beaming at each other. There was a picture of the Monroe brothers, all around Ma—her birthday, Rob recalled. And at the far end, off to itself, almost as a shrine, stood a 5x7, a formal shot of their dad in his dress blues, back when he was chief.

Back when he was alive.

Before another arsonist had taken it upon himself to set fire to a building that had come crashing down on Rob’s dad—on all of the Monroes, come to think of it.

Rob stilled. An awareness, a memory, flickered.

He’d pulled the case file of that unsolved arson some months back and had been going through it again during his rare down times. And now he remembered.

That arson. It had been started with a propane tank, too.


CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_e0e461c1-f5e5-553d-bb17-8276f0dc676c)

“DID HE DO IT? Mom! You have to tell me!”

Kari’s mom didn’t answer, just protectively pulled the opening of her terrycloth robe together with a shaking hand. “I—Kari—I—it burned? Your shop burned?”

Now Chelle Hendrix tottered past Kari, a hand raking through her bottle-dye blond hair. Kari wheeled around to hear the clatter of the coffee carafe rattling as Chelle managed to pour coffee into a mug, her hand shaking.

Kari started to speak again, but Chelle held up a finger, then went back to her coffee. She poured a boatload of sugar into it, then a flood of cream. After giving it a brisk, businesslike stir, she held the mug up and took a quaff from it like a man stumbling into an oasis after being stranded in the desert for days.

Fortified, Chelle tottered back to the kitchen table and sank with a sigh into a chair. “Now tell me. Seriously? Your shop? It burned?”

“Mom... I am so sorry. The first thing that I thought about was your retirement money.”

Chelle would have wrinkled her forehead in shock and horror, but her Botoxed facial muscles wouldn’t cooperate. Her throat moved in a visible gulp. “Oh, honey. Don’t you worry about me. Sure, I borrowed against my 401(k), but it’s you who’s been putting all that hard work into making a go of it. How horrible! Now grab a cup of coffee and sit down and tell me all about it.”

Thinking about coffee made Kari think about Rob, and thinking about Rob made her think about the case he was probably busily building against her as she stood in her mother’s kitchen. “I don’t want coffee. I don’t want to sit down—”

“Well, you’re giving me a crick in the neck, honey. Sit. If you don’t want coffee, fine, but at least sit.”

Kari sat. Her mother quickly grasped Kari’s fingers in her own perfectly manicured hands. “Kari, what happened? Did you leave something turned on? No, I know you didn’t—you’re so careful. I’ll bet it was that wiring. I knew that old dump of a building was a firetrap.”

“No.” Kari swallowed, tried to get the lump in her throat to dislodge. “It was arson. Somebody—” her voice trembled over the word somebody. “Somebody took a propane tank, leaned it against the back door and stuck a lit safety flare in the top of it.”

Chelle recoiled. For a second, she just stared at Kari with rounded eyes, her hands clenched into fists against her robe. “Kari... Kari...you don’t honestly think...”

“Where’s Jake, Mom? I need to ask him—”

“No.” The word was harsh and sharp and brooked no argument. Sometimes her mother dispensed with her dithery ways and allowed an iron maiden to peek out. “No. You will not.”

“Mom—”

“He’s back, Kari. He’s back, and he’s doing fine. We’re all—we’re all doing just fine.” Kari’s mom’s eyes grew shiny and wet with tears. “What you’re saying...it just isn’t possible. He was young, Kari. It was a mistake. A stupid, stupid prank that went all wrong and his friends—oh—his friends!” A shuddering sound of disgust escaped her mother’s lips.

Kari put a palm over her eyes, which felt as raw as if they’d been sandblasted. Now was not the time to argue about Jake. It had been a mistake all right, taking the fall for his crime.

Kari still remembered standing in front of the judge that day, reciting the words she’d rehearsed for her confession. It was supposed to be simple: she was a juvenile first offender, sure to get off easy for a property crime. It was Jake who would get sent off if he were found guilty—and he was guilty.

But, her mom had explained, Jake would get sent to real prison—doing real time, since he’d turned eighteen. And her mother assured her that Kari wouldn’t—probation, that’s all, just like Jake had his first and second time before a judge.

Only the judge hadn’t given Kari probation.

He’d given her four years in juvie.

Four years of hell.

It had taken Kari a long time to even be able to speak to her mother...much less Jake. In fact, it was only in the past six months that Kari had reconciled any small bit with her brother.

Her mother spoke now in a firm voice. “Kari, Jake wouldn’t have done this. He loves you. And you know he feels awful...just awful about what happened. Why, he was telling me about how that Charlie Kirkman was treating you, how he wanted to ram that man’s words down his throat.” Kari’s mom’s eyes rounded again. “You don’t think Charlie Kirkman did it, do you?”

“No, I don’t think that.” Kari couldn’t look at her mother for another second. More for something to do than anything else, Kari stood and poured herself a cup of coffee. She’d give anything to have one of her bear claws or Danish rolls to go with this—

No point in thinking about that.

“I’m sure Jake will be just as horrified as I am,” Kari’s mother said. “Oh, Kari, grab that box of croissants there. We’ll have some breakfast.”

Kari followed her mother’s pointing finger to the top of the fridge, where a clear plastic grocery store bakery container held a few croissants. With a sigh, she yanked the things down and plopped them on the Formica tabletop. “You couldn’t have bought some from me, Mom?”

“Well, actually, these were leftover from the office brunch—I told them we should have had you cater it, but the girls at the office said that there wasn’t enough in petty cash. Besides, they’re not that bad.”

Kari bit into one. The pastry was tough and greasy, not at all flaky like the croissants she strove to make. She scanned the printed ingredients list: hydrogenated soybean oil, high fructose corn syrup, refined flour, soy flour.

She dropped the half-eaten pastry on her napkin. It was disappointing to the taste buds, a little stale, nothing like a fresh croissant. A good one was light and flaky and loaded with real butter. So what if they took hours to make? Better to have one really good croissant than a whole bin of these.

“See?” her mother said. “Not bad at all.”

What could she expect from her mom? Kari asked herself. Her mom always tried her best, but the results never turned out well.

True, such meals had been made lovingly and had been more than enough to keep Kari fed for the fourteen years she’d lived with her mom...and when she’d been in juvie, even her mom’s cooking had seemed way better than the glop they served.

Her mother reached up and caressed Kari’s cheek. “Oh, sweetie. This is horrible for you. But—I know! You can cook here! Why, this kitchen would do, wouldn’t it? It would be much better than trying to cook in that oversized kitchenette in your apartment. And that way you could bake all your cakes and keep your orders up—you’ve got the Gottman wedding to do, right? You can bake it right here.”

Kari couldn’t help but smile. “I might have to take you up on that. It will probably be a while before I’m back on my feet again.”

Her mom brightened and waved a hand around to encompass the kitchen. “Why, you’ve got everything you need, right here—and barely used at that. Isn’t it a good thing I was such a bad cook?”

Kari squeezed her mother’s fingers. “You’re not a bad cook.”

“Nope, next to you...you make those lovely little cupcakes that everybody always raves about. Oh, honey, where did you get your cooking mojo?”

Not for the first time did Kari utter some words of thanksgiving to Alice Heaton, the cook at the youth detention center where Kari had been incarcerated. If it hadn’t been for KP duty and a birthday cake, Kari might never have found a way to survive her years behind bars...or a way to make a living.

Well, strike that. She’d had a way to make a living, but now? Not so much.

Kari flicked the croissant with a fingernail. This was not breakfast. This wasn’t even really food.

“I think I’ll take you up on that offer to cook. I can make something better than this,” Kari said. She sprang from her chair and busied herself with rummaging through her mother’s cabinets.

“Oh, sweetie, you don’t have to cook—” her mother protested. “You’ve been through so much.”

Kari shrugged. “It helps me, Mom, the cooking. Cheap therapy, you know?” she tried to joke.

“Except for my hips,” her mother said. “If you really want to, I have some blueberries in the freezer. They’ve been there since the first of the summer, though.”

“Perfect. I’ll make us some blueberry muffins.”

What Kari really wanted was to tackle a brioche or a croissant or even a Danish, something that would require thought and energy and concentration. She’d welcome anything that would distract her from her worries.

But her stomach was rumbling in protest from the Franken-croissant, and muffins would be quick at least. Kari began dumping the ingredients into a bowl.

“Where’s Jake, Mom?” she asked again.

Her mother set her coffee mug down with a thud. “Out. Out with friends.”

Kari tried to suppress the predictable irritation that flared up within her. Jake acted as though he were still seventeen, not almost thirty. He was three years older than her...but she felt eons older than twenty-six.

“I tried his cell phone, but he didn’t answer,” Kari said.

“Oh, well, you know Jake...maybe he ran out of minutes.”

Kari stirred the batter a little more energetically than she normally would have. It sloshed onto the counter, and Kari made sure to wipe up the spill. “He’ll never grow up, Mom, if you don’t let him.”

“Let him! Kari, my goodness, of course he’s grown up. He’s older than you—what, twenty-seven?”

Kari leveled a gaze at her mom. “Try twenty-nine, Mom. And he still hasn’t figured out what he’s going to do with his life.”

“Oh, now, that’s not true. He’s registered for classes at the college.”

Despite Kari’s best attempts to level it, hope rose within her. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe Jake had nothing to do with this fire. Between that and the magic of baking, some of her pent-up tension began to melt away.

“Of course... I don’t like that boy he’s hanging out with these days,” her mother added in a murmur, completely destroying the peace that had begun to settle over Kari.

“Mom—” Kari bit her tongue and forestalled any additional reminders that Jake was way past requiring—or even wanting—assistance on the playdate front.

“Don’t say it, Kari. You’ve made it perfectly clear that I need to be tougher on Jake. But I don’t want to break his spirit...you know how sensitive he is.”

“He’s a guy, not a horse,” Kari protested. She began to pour the batter into one of her mother’s muffin tins.

As she slid the muffin tin into the oven, the back door swung open. She straightened to see Jake framed in the morning light of the open door.

He stood there, stock-still, all muscular legs and bare arms in his cargo shorts and rumpled T-shirt. He looked as though he’d just rolled off somebody’s couch.

Even so, with his hair all ruffled and his clothes a wrinkled mess, he had that angelic-choirboy look that made girls his age flock to him and old ladies beam at him with trusting adoration.

Jake was beautiful, her beautiful, gorgeous brother. If he’d wanted and had lived in a larger city, he was so arrestingly attractive that he could have landed a male modeling gig.

Next to him, Kari had always felt a little...dull. Not so shiny. Not so pretty. And yet, just like everybody else, when she’d been fourteen, she’d wanted to be in his orbit, soaking up the glamour-by-association cachet having such a good-looking brother had afforded her.

“Hey, Kare, what are you doing here? I figured you’d be downtown.” He did a double take, his eyes rounding. “Oh, wait, man, you don’t know? It was a fire—wicked bad. One of my buddies told me—we went down there. Sick, man.”

Relief flooded through Kari. Jake hadn’t set the fire. How could she have so instantly blamed him?

Because he set one years ago.

“I know. I came to tell Mom.”

“Somebody said it was arson.” Jake’s words came easily. Unlike their mother, he didn’t stumble over the word arson. “What? Old Charlie decide the insurance money was better than the rent money?”

Kari set the timer on the oven and waited to compose herself before she turned back to face him. “I don’t think it was Charlie. Why would he burn a perfectly good building?”

Jake snorted and flopped down into a chair beside their mom. “You cooking? Righteous. I’m about to starve. And I can’t believe you’re calling that dump a perfectly good building. Just yesterday you and he were in a screaming match about everything that was wrong with it.”

Kari felt her stomach churn. That very public argument was one more nail in her coffin. It was her motive. She could hear the DA’s opening argument already— revenge because her landlord wouldn’t repair the building.

She met Jake’s eyes. They were coolly speculative. “Jake...”

“You didn’t light it up yourself, did you, sis?” her brother asked.

“No!” She began dumping the dirty dishes in the sink, rinsing them out and loading them in the dishwasher. “Of course I didn’t.”

“So, was it? Arson?” Jake pressed.

“Yes, Jake, it was, but don’t badger your sister. She’s got a lot on her shoulders.”

“So do you, Mom. I mean, she burned up your retirement money, didn’t she?”

Kari slammed the dishwasher door shut a little too hard. “I did not burn—”

“Relax, sis. It’s too easy to get your goat.” Jake gave her that crooked little grin that worked on so many people—for at least a while until they realized that he had no interest in actually following through on any of his promises. “I was just joking.”

“Jakey!” her mom scolded. “Don’t even think about joking about this. Kari could get in real trouble—and think what she did for you. You should be grateful. If the police knew...”

Jake fixed Kari with a level stare. “But they don’t know. And they wouldn’t believe her now anyway. And, Mom,” he added, not moving his gaze from Kari, “I swear, scout’s honor, it wasn’t me. You can’t keep blaming me for every fire in a fifty-mile radius.”

Kari wanted to believe Jake. And she understood well enough how badly it felt to be the usual suspect in whatever trouble that surfaced.

His mom rushed to smooth things over. “Of course it wasn’t you, nobody said it was you—”

“Sure sounded like that to me,” Jake grumbled.

“I tried to call you—” Kari began.

“See? You’re still trying to pin it on me!” he snapped.

“No, that’s not what I—”

The doorbell rang—the front door bell. Jake was apparently ready to snatch at any excuse to end the conversation, because he leapt out of the chair and said, “I’ll get it.”

As he went down the hall to answer the living room door, Kari’s mom hissed, “Now, see? You’ve hurt his feelings.”

“Mom, I didn’t—”

But Jake’s voice rose and fell in counterpoint to whoever was at the door. Something about the timber of that other voice—male, deep, the barest hint of amusement in it, caused Kari to stiffen.

She heard Jake say, “Sure, she’s in the kitchen. You’re just in time for whatever she’s cooking. C’mon.”

Footsteps sounded closer and closer as Jake approached the kitchen with his companion.

She froze and watched.

“Hey, Kare...somebody here to see you. Didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”

Jake strolled back into the kitchen. Kari looked past his shoulder to see none other than Rob Monroe in his wake.

“Pardon me for tracking you down,” the arson investigator told her. “But I have just a few more questions for you.”


CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_da6ebfa6-4eac-5034-9bd1-2d593b5a1306)

ROB TOOK ADVANTAGE of Kari’s flustered silence to let his gaze slide around the kitchen. It was straight-up middle class suburbia, updated sometime in the past few years with granite counters and stainless steel appliances, but Rob knew a working kitchen when he saw one. And this kitchen? It wasn’t a working kitchen.

This one wasn’t like Ma’s—it showed none of the telltale wear that a kitchen offers when it’s used every day. No, Chelle Hendrix’s kitchen looked fresh out of a home improvement store brochure. And there was something about it that made him think that the whole thing was a wannabe setup. The appliances didn’t look substantial enough for the industrial look they aspired to. The floor and the cabinets and the hardware were all too...shiny, perfect, basically unused. There were no scuffmarks, no scratches, no worn finish around the doorknobs. Ma’s kitchen was scrupulously clean and cared for, but worn around the edges. This kitchen? It was too pretty to be a working kitchen.

But it sure smelled like a working kitchen. Something golden brown and delicious assailed Rob’s nostrils—blueberry muffins, if he knew his baked goods, and thanks to Ma and a family of good cooks, he did.

The guy who’d let Rob in—there was enough resemblance in the face to peg him as Kari’s brother—lounged against the too-pretty stainless steel fridge. “So, cool, you’re with the police, huh? I thought you were Kari’s main squeeze.”

Kari coughed in embarrassment. “Jake, Mom, this is Rob Monroe. He’s—what did you tell me? Fire marshal and arson investigator? He’s determining the cause of the fire at the bakery.”

“You mean the whole downtown, huh, sis?” her brother corrected.

There was something of a smirk in that correction. Rob couldn’t explain the instant and visceral dislike that flared up within him at Jake’s response. Maybe it was because, despite all the teasing that the Monroe brothers inflicted on their sisters, they knew the value of basic human kindness. He’d never kick Maegan, Cara or DeeDee when they were already down.

But not everybody was like him or his brothers. He pushed the thought away and concentrated on Kari’s reaction. Her head bowed, and she managed a tiny nod.

“Yes. You’re right, Jake. It wasn’t just my shop that burned. Thanks for reminding me not to be so self-absorbed.”

Rob did a double take. Kari’s tone was completely devoid of sarcasm—in fact, a mix of humility and gratitude bubbled up out of her words.

If he’d been surprised that she hadn’t clocked her brother, he didn’t miss the flash of irritation in Jake’s expression.

“Oh, yeah, Miss Goody Two Shoes. Guess you’ll be wading in and saving the day, huh?” Jake retorted.

Kari’s mouth compressed in real anger. Before she could say anything, Chelle piped up, “Jakey! Don’t poke fun at your sister!”

Chelle could have been talking to a nine-year-old, not someone about Rob’s age. But it must have given Kari the distraction she needed, because Rob heard her draw in an audible breath. He looked around to see her place both hands on the counter and press down hard. Control was obviously very important to Kari Hendrix.

“You’re right, Jake. You know me way too well. I really should do something for those folks. They’ll be going through and trying to salvage things now—right, Rob? The buildings have been released? People can go through them?”

Rob considered this. “Yes and no. If the building in question is structurally sound, then they can go in during daylight hours. But some of the structures will need to be reinforced. And...well, yours is a crime scene.”

Kari bit her lip. “Right.” She turned to her mother. “Mom, do you mind if I use up the rest of the blueberries and the flour? I’ll buy you some more. But I want to make a big batch of muffins for my downtown neighbors... Jake’s right. It’s not just about me. They’re going through the same thing I am.”

Chelle waved her hand expansively. “Mi kitchen es su kitchen, I told you that. Jakey, go get some money out of my purse and run to the grocery and get her whatever she needs, okay? She’ll make a list.”

Jake barely concealed a roll of his eyes. “Sure, sure. I’ll grab her a superhero cape while I’m at it. I think they’ve got ’em on aisle three. Hey, sis, just text me the list, okay? I’m outta here.”

He sauntered out of the kitchen, presumably toward wherever Chelle kept her purse.

The timer beeped on the oven. It galvanized Kari. She called after Jake, “Wait! The muffins! You said you were hungry?”

His reply wafted back toward the kitchen. “I’ll grab a honey-bun or something.” The front door banged shut.

Rude. Just plain rude and inconsiderate. Ma would have skinned any of her children who turned down home-cooked food as it was coming out of the oven.

Not everybody was raised by Ma. You can’t judge people by Monroe standards. Isn’t that what you’re always telling Daniel and Andrew?

Rob drew his thoughts back from his brothers and pinned his attention on Kari. It wasn’t hard to do—not with her pulling a delicious-smelling pan of muffins out of the oven.

These were huge, puffy confections, studded with steaming volcanoes of blueberries. His fingers itched to snatch one up.

Kari must have read his mind. “You’ll have one, won’t you, Rob?”

“Uh, sure. If you have enough.”

“Don’t worry. I’m cooking more for the downtown folks.” She smiled—a sweet curve of her lips that warmed her face in a way he hadn’t seen on her before. “Can I get you some coffee?”

“I guess I’ll take you up on that muffin. I don’t know, though, about the wisdom of me having more coffee. I’ve had something like six cups already since four, and I’m wired as a coat hanger. Maybe I’d better just have some water.”

“Milk,” Kari said instead, firmly, confidently. “Milk would go better with the muffins, and you look like the sort of fellow who would enjoy a glass of milk.”

“Yeah. That sounds perfect.” He pulled out a chair beside Chelle and watched as Kari deftly turned the muffins out in a wide shallow bowl. They came out perfectly, like something that would be in the pages of a cookbook or a magazine. His mouth watered as Kari set the bowl down on the table between him and Chelle. With quick efficient movements, Kari grabbed a stack of small plates from the cupboard.

“Let me get that milk,” she added as she set the plates down beside him with a clatter.

Kari was back in a flash, pouring two glasses of milk. As she handed him the milk, Rob saw that her face was still suffused with that warm expression. This was a different Kari from this morning, a confident, poised Kari who seemed to feel comfortable in her own skin, doing what came naturally to her.

Feeding others. Taking care of others. Rob had seen that same level of comfort and confidence in his mom and his sisters and even his brothers as they’d done the same thing.

The Monroes were like that, too—squirmy when the microscope was turned on them. He understood how a person could be uncomfortable with attention focused on herself, and then completely at ease when she could focus on the needs of others.

“Oh, Kari, you outdid yourself on these,” Chelle told her after an enthusiastic bite from her muffin.

Kari smiled, ducked her head. “Thanks, Mom,” she murmured as she tested one for herself.

Rob liked that. No “aw, shucks, it was nothing,” no “These? These are horrible!”

Now he tried one of the muffins. It was like biting into a piece of paradise: warm and comforting and with a burst of summer as a blueberry exploded into his mouth. The balance of sweetness and earthiness mingled perfectly, along with just the right cross of crunch and chew.

“Wow.” He managed to swallow the bite of muffin and not instantly stuff the rest of it in his mouth. Self-control. That was the ticket.

“You like it?” Kari glanced at him shyly.

“It’s head and shoulders above my attempts. But then, I do use one of those boxed mixes,” Rob admitted. He took a bigger bite of the muffin, trying to decide if it would be bad to eat two or three or the whole bowlful.

Kari shuddered. “Ugh. Really—I know I’m talking myself out of a job here—but muffins are just as easy to make from scratch as a box. And so much better.”

“You’ll have to teach me sometime.”

Chelle scarfed the rest of the muffin and said with a wink to Rob, “Oh, you can’t trust Kari. I follow her same recipe, and mine never turn out like this. She leaves something out when she writes it down.”

“I don’t,” Kari protested with a laugh. “You saw me, Mom. You saw me cook them in front of you. Just follow the recipe and don’t overmix. That’s the only secret.”

At the word secret, some of Kari’s confidence seemed to wilt. It was as if she had been instantly reminded of the morning’s events. She put down the half-eaten muffin and stared across the table at Rob.

“So you had some questions,” she said.

Rob let the sweetness from the muffin linger in his mouth for a second longer before he washed it away with a swig of milk—and like the muffin, it was perfect: not too cold, not too warm, no ice to mess it up, an exactly appropriate amount of bubbly froth ringed around its surface.

He dragged his thoughts back from the task of filling his belly...and from his appreciation of the woman who’d provided the food to do that. “Yes. Oh, and you’ll need to give a formal statement sometime today. You left this morning before I could finish.”

“Ha. That’s a polite way of putting it. I tucked my tail between my legs and ran,” Kari said. She toyed with a muffin, shredding it between fingers that were long and slender but still managed to look as though they could manhandle a bowlful of bread dough.

“Well...yeah. Mind telling me why that was?”

“It was—just too much. That bakery is my dream, the goal I’ve worked toward since I was fifteen. To see it all up in smoke and know that somebody intentionally did it...” Kari trailed off.

“But you did the same thing, didn’t you?” Rob scrutinized her face for any reaction his provocative question gained him. “You burned down someone’s dream, right?”

He’d not been able to pull up the case, so he was flying blind here. He had run Kari’s name through the system, and it came up clean except for the sealed record she’d had as a juvie. Not anything else—not so much as a parking ticket in the years since she was fourteen.

That was odd. Usually juvie for a kid that age was a first stop on a long path to the revolving door of prison. Either Kari had been scared straight or she’d not belonged there to begin with...

Now, that doesn’t make any sense. She’s a self-confessed arsonist. Of course she belonged there.

The reaction that Rob had hoped to provoke didn’t disappoint. He could have slapped her and got the same expression for his trouble: first the slack-jawed expression that followed any low blow, then the in-drawn breath, the narrowed eyes and compressed lips.

“I never—” she snarled.

Her mother quickly wrapped her fingers around Kari’s in a tight squeeze. It seemed to deflate Kari. Pain pushed away the anger around Kari’s eyes. She closed them, then dropped her head.

“It’s okay, Mom. I’m...” She freed her hand from her mother’s, and Rob noticed the red imprints of Chelle Hendrix’s fingers on Kari’s.

Kari put a trembling hand up to her forehead and leaned against it. “That’s fair enough, Rob. I guess you think it doesn’t matter, that what happened was only what I deserved.”

Kari’s listless words shamed Rob. “No. I’m not saying that at all. You paid your debt for that fire. And I can see from your record—or the lack of one as an adult—that you’ve mended your ways. Plus, there are other victims besides you, Kari.”

She raised her head. “But I’m the one you’re investigating.” It was a flat statement of fact, delivered with a direct and unflinching stare.

Rob shrugged. “You said you didn’t do it. And that you have no idea who would.” He couldn’t keep a faint trace of incredulity at this last out of his tone. To cover it—surely, yeah, just to keep his hands busy—he reached for another muffin.

“I don’t. I don’t know anything about who set that fire.”

The second muffin tasted just as delicious as the first one had, but the tension in the room took some of the joy out of it. Rob noticed how both Chelle and Kari seemed on tenterhooks, poised to run or flee or...something.

“Besides the ever-generous landlord, Charlie, have you had any run-ins with anyone else? Owe any money to...hmm, highly motivated lenders?” Rob drained the glass of milk and wanted more. Before he could even put the desire into a complete thought, Kari had risen from the table and pulled the milk out of the fridge.

Was it reflex? Or an attempt to distract him while she thought through her answer?

Whatever her motivation, Kari brought the milk to the table and refilled his glass. She returned the jug to the fridge and shut the door with a crisp thud. “I borrowed the money for the bakery from my mom—who borrowed it against her 401(k). So unless my mom has Mafia leanings—and that’s what you’re thinking, right? Some sort of loan shark? The answer is no.”

Rob focused his gaze on Chelle. She’d completely destroyed the paper napkin she’d been holding since Kari had pulled her hand free. It showered on her table like a mini snowstorm. “That right?” he prompted her.

Chelle jumped. She looked guilty as sin, to the roots of her pseudo blond hair. “Oh, yes. I borrowed the money. Kari’s been paying me back with interest—the same interest that I’m being charged. I can show you the paperwork, if you like?”

“I would like. Very much.” Maybe Chelle burned the place so that she could replenish her 401(k)? “Had she kept up with the note?” Rob pressed.

“Yes. Every month without fail—Kari’s actually the one who makes the payment. Let me... I’ll just go get that paperwork.” Chelle fluttered her hands, releasing the final blizzard of paper napkin. She pushed her chair away from the kitchen table and strode out of the room.

“Happy?” Kari snapped to Rob. “Satisfied that my mom didn’t torch the place to get her money back?” She didn’t bother to take her chair again, but instead paced back and forth, armed with a dishcloth and wiping up imaginary specks of dust from the counter.

“Hey, I’m just doing my job.” He held up both palms to ward off her sarcasm.

Her face fell again, with that same deflation that had occurred a few moments before when he’d reminded her about the consequences of her own arson. She put down the dishcloth and sighed. “Yes. You are. I’m sorry. This is—it’s hard.”

“You have to know how I’m going to see this, where my thoughts are heading,” Rob pointed out in the gentlest tone he could muster. “If you didn’t do it, and your mom didn’t do it, somebody still did. And whoever it is has it in for you. I can’t believe Charlie is the only person you’ve had cross words with.”

“I can’t—” Kari leaned against the counter, put her fingers to her mouth and closed her eyes. “Sure, I’ve had angry customers, disappointed customers, people who are after me to pay bills, but I can’t imagine that any of them would think burning my bakery—burning half a city block—would be the answer.”

“So you do owe money?” Rob’s scalp prickled. Now they were getting somewhere. Maybe with Mom out of the room, he could get to the bottom of this, get a viable suspect.

“Sure.” Kari shrugged her slim shoulders. “What bakery doesn’t? I have to buy the raw materials before my customers pay me, and sometimes it takes weeks on a big order before I do get paid. My suppliers—flour and sugar and all of that’s not cheap. And I have to keep the lights on and the gas paid. Plus...well, I’ve had to do repairs, since Charlie wouldn’t.”

The buzz of excitement within Rob fizzled. She was right; a regular creditor would take a merchant to small claims court and send a report to ding her credit rating. Creditors were more interested in getting their money, not in making a statement with arson.

In his mind, he turned over the few facts he knew for certain about the case. If not money, which was the number one reason for arson, then revenge.

Come to think of it, the whole setup did scream revenge.

“What about that other fire?” he asked.

Kari jerked with surprise, banging her elbow on the edge of the counter as she did. “The—the other fire?” she repeated, rubbing the injured elbow.

“Yeah. The one you set. Could this be related to it?”

“I’ve already told you I didn’t start this fire—”

Rob noted the neat evasion and stopped her with an interruption. “Tell me about it. That fire. The one you set. Who did it hurt?”

Her face completely closed down. “It hurt everybody.”

“No, I mean, who was the victim? There were two fires serious enough to get a first-time offending juvie a felony conviction for arson that year. Both big arsons. One was a convenience store. The other was a big warehouse fire. I know you didn’t set the warehouse fire—that was the fire that killed my dad—since you were already sent off by then. So it was the convenience store fire, right?”

“Wait...” Kari’s head tilted and she frowned, as if she were trying to hear something said at a great distance. Her fingers, their knuckles white, dug into the countertop as if to keep her upright and prevent her from sliding to the floor. “Wait. There was another fire that year? Your dad? Your dad got killed? In an arson?”


CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_f548ed0c-7a9f-513d-a1fc-a5813cb41ac5)

A WEEK AFTER the fire, and Kari still felt as though she were in disaster mode.

A trickle of perspiration coursed its way between her shoulder blades as she manhandled a huge cardboard box from her apartment’s kitchen to the front door. It wasn’t that the box was heavy, or that the distance was great. No, the box was awkward in its oversized dimensions, and negotiating the tight turns between her kitchen and the front door—

Not my kitchen. Not anymore.

The realization hit her with an almost physical force. She was actually doing this, packing up her bits and pieces of the scraps of the life she had salvaged from the first fire, and moving back in with her mother—the ultimate cliché, the ultimate punch line of so many bad jokes.

The very thing she wanted least in the world to do.

Kari hated being like Jake, freeloading off her mother’s generous spirit. Her mom had worked so hard as a single parent to raise them without any help. And look how the two of them had repaid her: both of them bouncing back every time they needed a roof over their heads.

Well, no, actually, this was the first time that Kari had ever taken up her mother’s repeated offers. But she had accepted her mother’s loan—and look how that had turned out.

The box slipped in her sweaty palms, and Kari tried to save it from falling by wedging it against a doorjamb. Just as she had righted it and was attempting a more secure hold, the doorbell rang.

She groaned. “Door’s unlocked!” she called out.

Whoever it was apparently didn’t hear her. The knocking resumed, louder this time. She called out again, “Come in!”

But the only sound she heard was a rattling of the doorknob—which meant that the door was locked after all—and more knocking. Kari took up her burden again and started making her way, slowly and ponderously, toward the front door. “I’m coming! I’m really coming—just give me—”

The box slipped from her grasp, its contents of pots and pans clattering down the hall and into the living room. Kari kicked aside the cardboard and stepped over three sheet pans, a roasting pan and a cupcake-shaped Bundt pan. She yanked open the door.

To see Rob Monroe on her stoop.

The last time she’d seen him, he’d revealed that his own father had died at the hands of an arsonist. No way he’d ever feel any sympathy for someone who’d pleaded guilty to arson. No way he’d ever give her the real benefit of the doubt, no matter what he said.

Just as she expected, he’d asked—though she knew it was not really voluntary—for her and Jake and her mother to come down to the station and sign formal statements. The machinery of the investigation had switched into gear, so she shouldn’t have been surprised that the guy showed up again with more questions.

“Gosh, are you happy to see me, or do you always break out the brass band when you have visitors?” he quipped.

“Huh?” His words were at such a paradox with what she’d been expecting that she was rendered speechless. A strand of hair fell into her face, and she swiped it out of the way.

“The noise? It sounded like a thousand cymbals just a minute ago.”

Kari looked over her shoulder. “Oh, that—it was a box I was trying to get to the car.” To punctuate her statement, the lid of a pan slid off something else and banged loudly onto her hardwood floor.

Not mine. Not anymore.

Kari shook her head to clear away the negativity. “You might as well come in. I’ve got about a thousand baking sheets to pick up.”

She left him to see himself in and squatted over the scattered contents she’d dropped. It surprised her when Rob knelt down beside her and began handing things to her.

“Baking pans for the baker?”

It occurred to her that maybe he’d think she’d moved these out of the bakery before she’d torched it—or had it torched. “Well, yeah, but these are old ones, not the nice ones I had at the bakery. These were the ones I used at home—the ones I picked up along the way, you know?” She let her fingers slide over the battered quarter sheet pan she’d found at a yard sale. It was a far cry from the heavy-duty professional pans she’d lovingly used at the bakery. “I can’t believe...”

“Hey, at least...” Rob’s hand closed over hers. “At least you still have a pan or two, right? Or do you want to hit me for saying ‘at least’?” He made a playful ducking move and shielded himself with his free hand.

She laughed. It sounded rough and broken even to her own ears, but it was definitely a chuckle. “No, I believe I can resist the temptation. Do you frequently provoke people to use violence?”

“Andrew, my little brother, says I have the art of pranks down to a science, so he might volunteer to clock me for you. My big brother tells me that I could annoy a saint, and I guess he’s right. Ma sure has put up with a lot from me, and she’d definitely make the saint category.”

“What, with your sunny personality?” Kari felt her knees ache in protest to the way she was kneeling, but she didn’t want to move. Any shift might make him move his hand from hers, and for some reason, the sensation it telegraphed to her nerve endings—calm, confidence, competence—washed over her. She didn’t want that feeling to stop.

“No, believe it or not, I’m the cynic of the family.”

“You?” Now she did move, out of surprise. “But you—well, you’re so—well, so sunny.”

She watched as he picked up the pan and dropped it with a clang into the box. Kari saw his frown—not of displeasure, but of thoughtfulness. She could practically see gears turning over in his mind.

“Thanks?” Rob said uncertainly.

Had she missed something? Insulted him in some way? “I didn’t mean—it’s just that you’re always joking—well, not always—”

He lifted an eyebrow wryly. “Ma does say my smart mouth will get me into trouble.”

The word mouth was a mistake. She found herself fixated on his lips. Usually they were as changeable as quicksilver—a crooked grin here, a broad smile there, a tiny knowing smile. But now... He wasn’t smiling, not exactly. The corners were lifted up, showing the hint of a dimple, and revealing a sliver of strong white teeth.

And he was close enough to lean over and kiss her.

“Uh—” Kari scrambled for a lid at the far edge of the living room, underneath the window. Anything to get her mind off the inappropriate thoughts she was having about the guy who probably was employing his investigative skills to put her behind bars again.

“So I take it you’re going somewhere?” Rob commented to her back.

“Another genius deduction on your part?” She returned with the lid and another pan—not to mention her composure.

“I am a detective, after all. Don’t try this at home, kids.” His quip was accompanied with a grin and a clang from yet another of her kitchen bowls. “Empty living room, box full of kitchenware, and bam, it just occurs to me that maybe you’re moving. Where’s the new nest?” A beat of silence, and then a tinge of suspicion crept into his next question. “You’re not leaving town, are you?”

“My mom’s.” Just saying the words made the defeat sting all the more. “I’m moving to my mom’s.”

He seemed to digest the words, chewing on them, staring at her as though he understood how ashamed she felt at this latest mess she’d found herself in.

“So you really do have money troubles?” Rob closed up the battered lid of the box.

“No more than usual—it’s not the rent here. I can afford the rent, just barely. No, it’s...well, my kitchen here is so tiny. I don’t even have a dishwasher.”

He wrinkled his brow. “I don’t follow.”

“State laws say that I can use a home kitchen to cook in, you know, to bake, but I have to live there. It’s the whole cottage industry law—as long as it’s home-baked goods in a regular home kitchen, then I don’t have to meet standards for a commercial kitchen.”

“So...you’re moving in with your mom to use her kitchen?”

“Yeah. Just, well, until I can—” Her face heated up. “Until I can save up to find me a new location that will pass a commercial kitchen inspection.” It smacked of Jake’s wheedled promises to their mom—just until I find another job, just until I save up for a deposit, just until I pay off these guys I owe.

“Or the insurance money comes in,” Rob added speculatively.

Kari couldn’t repress the snort of derision that bubbled up from her insides. “Yeah, right, like that’s going to happen. I can tell you when insurance is going to write out that check—half past never.”

“But you did have insurance, correct?”

“Sure. The whole bit, even paid extra for coverage in case of work stoppage. But it’s arson, Rob. And they’ll take one look at my record...” Kari shook her head. “Never mind. It is what it is. They’ll pay or they won’t. I’ve submitted the claim, so the ball’s in their court.”

“They won’t pay out until my investigation is finished,” he reminded her.

“I know that. So how can I help?”

Did he look surprised at her offer?

“I just had a few more questions.”

“Let me guess. You’re going to be like that old TV detective that was constantly going, ‘Just one more question, Miss,’ aren’t you?” she asked.

“Ma always said I was the curious type,” he acknowledged.

“Ma—whoever Ma is—is right on the money.”

“Ma is my mom, Colleen Monroe. She raised nearly all of us by herself after my dad was killed.”

Kari’s stomach turned at the thought of someone dying because of a stupid fire. She hated fire. Making a conscious effort to shift her attention to something else, she asked, “Who’s all of us?”

“Well, there was me and my brother Andrew, and you’ve met Daniel. And I have three sisters. Daniel had moved out—he was actually a professional baseball player in the minor leagues when it happened. But the rest of us were still at home.”

“That’s—that’s quite a big family.”

“What about you? Do you have just the one brother?”

“Jake? Yes. It’s just me and him.”

“How old is he, anyway?”

“Believe it or not, he’s three years older than me. He just—Mom says he hasn’t found his true calling in life.”

“But you don’t believe that.” It was a statement, not a question. Kari narrowed her eyes at his too-keen observation.

“I guess I’m hoping for Mom’s sake that he’ll find that true calling sooner rather than later,” she said. She made to pick up the box, but Rob closed his hands over hers.

“Allow me. Unless you want to give me another rendition of Clash of the Cymbals.”

“No way. It sounded like I’d let a two-year-old loose in my cupboards. If you don’t mind, I’d appreciate it—my car is just outside.”

“Wait, not the vintage Mustang convertible? Man, now that’s a car I could get excited about—”

She laughed. “No, that’s my next-door neighbor’s—he’s going through a midlife crisis. No, mine’s the brown minivan with the peeling paint. The back door should be unlocked.”

He pivoted with the box. “Just put it anywhere?”

“Wherever you can find a spot. I’ll be there in a jiff—I need to grab a few last things from the bedroom.”

Alone, she made one last tour of the empty apartment. It was a good thing she hadn’t had the money to buy a lot of furniture or bric-a-brac. She couldn’t have afforded the storage costs, and her mother’s house didn’t have the space.

With a lump in her throat, she surveyed the sunny rooms she’d first seen just six months ago. So much hope. So much promise.

“I’ll be back,” she whispered. “Maybe not here, but some place like this. Some place better, even. It’s not forever. It’s for now.”

And maybe she’d even believe that eventually. But at the moment, Kari would have to pretend that she did.

She tightened her hand on the handle of the big shopping bag with the toiletry items she’d waited to pack last, then turned for the door.

It was as she was locking the door for the last time that she spotted what Rob was doing.

The box was on the sidewalk. The doors to the van were open—all of them.

And Rob was very carefully, very thoroughly, searching her vehicle.


CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_5400f325-0795-5f7a-bfa6-0d1498b795bf)

“HEY!”

Kari Hendrix’s outrage was near palpable as she closed the gap between the two of them in a quick jog. “What are you doing?”

Rob laid the blanket he had in his hand down on the floor of the mini-van. “Shifting some things around. You did say anywhere.”

“No! You were searching my van! You were—you used me! You were looking for evidence—”

Rob squashed the guilty feeling that was worming its way onto his face. “I was doing what you asked. But should I, in my official capacity as an investigative officer, ask if there’s anything in this vehicle you mind me seeing?”

Okay, so he had taken advantage of the opportunity to do a quick toss of the vehicle. He was law enforcement, and she knew it—or she ought to. He’d found nothing in the vehicle the least bit suspicious. The only evidence he’d found pointed toward a careful and frugal lifestyle—that and a predilection for toffee bars, if the little trashcan’s cache of candy wrappers belonged to her.

“Well—no—it’s just—” Her expression was still full of wounded betrayal. “You could have told me that was why you came. And then I would have been prepared for you pawing through my things. That’s—that’s one of the things I hated most about juvie. They were always hunting and searching and—nothing was ever mine.”

The words rang true, even to his cynical self. Or maybe it was because he had searched the van and come up empty.

“I’m sorry. I was here. You had given me permission to go into your van—and my nosiness got the better of me.”

“It’s your job. I guess I just allowed myself to forget that.” This last she said with a baleful resignation. “So was that the reason? That you came?”

“Er—no.” Rob busied himself with putting the box in the van. “I really did have some more questions.”

She pushed past him and dropped the bag in her hand into the seat. When she saw his eyes trail the path of the bag, she gave an exasperated sigh and upturned the bag, emptying its contents. Shampoo, toothpaste, deodorant and other toiletries fell out.

“See any matches?” she snapped.

For the first time ever, he regretted his devious cleverness when it came to his job. He had a reputation for being able to charm confessions out of arsonists—he’d even been called into neighboring counties to help out with the odd case. And this, today, had been something of the same. She’d offered, and he’d taken the opportunity to dig around.

“Look, I said I was sorry,” Rob told her. “Maybe I wasn’t completely on the up-and-up with you, but if you’ve got nothing to hide, then no harm, no foul.”

“Just because I’ve got nothing to hide doesn’t mean I don’t value my privacy—or a little trust. You really are cynical, aren’t you?”

“Hey, you should look at it from the bright side—at least now I know you’re not hiding anything in your van,” he countered.

Kari rolled her eyes. “Oh, wow. A cynic who’s a closet Pollyanna. How many times do I have to tell you? I didn’t burn my bakery.”

“So who did? Give me one solid lead, one good suspect.” Rob heard the near pleading in his voice, and it scared him. He wanted her to be innocent. He wanted her to have nothing at all to do with the downtown fire. “Tell me who hates you enough to destroy your business and do a decent job framing you.”

Her anger faded to misery. “I can’t do this, Rob. I didn’t do it when I was in juvie, and I won’t do it now. I won’t get myself out of hot water by pushing someone else in.”

Rob shook his head in frustration. Looking at Kari Hendrix’s earnest face was only serving to confuse him. He kicked at pebbles strewn across the pavement by Kari’s beat-up van and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“And besides,” he said in a sour tone that he hated, “you don’t know anything to tell.”

She jumped—just a little jump, but one that he saw out of the corner of his eyes. Oh, yeah, Kari Hendrix had at least one suspect in mind. So who was she protecting?

“That’s right.” She nodded her head a little too vigorously. “I don’t know anything at all to tell.”

“Well, then. I guess it’s a good thing that I am a real, bona fide investigative officer, because...” He leaned forward, close enough to inhale the sweet flowery scent of her hair. “I will find this person, Kari. I will. With your help, or without it. It’s only a matter of time.”

* * *

ROB WENT BACK to the basics the next morning in his cramped windowless office. First he wiped the whiteboard clean of his previous scrawls and notes held up by magnets. And then he began again with what he knew.

The fire was arson.

The MO was a propane tank and a highway flare.

The motive—just looking at the MO—was probably revenge.

He swore as he looked at the vast amount of white space left on the board. In the past week, he’d found nothing—absolutely nothing— to point him in any direction except Kari.

And yet, conversely, he’d found nothing to tie Kari to the fire. In fact, he’d found direct evidence giving her a fairly solid alibi: a surveillance video from a business across the street from her house had shown her working in her yard the afternoon of the fire, going into the apartment and not coming out until after the fire engines had been paged.

And the apartment didn’t have a back door. He’d verified that today, though he’d already spoken to Kari’s landlord earlier in the week.

True, there were windows on the back, but they were high off the ground with no good access point for a woman as petite as Kari. She would have caused an almighty racket if she’d come down on the bank of metal trashcans along the rear of her apartment. He’d canvassed her neighbors—nobody had heard anything or seen anything. And one of those neighbors was a nosy Ned with a telescope on his deck and a roaming sort of eye.

Plus, Rob kept coming back to what he’d told Daniel that very first day: if Kari Hendrix had wanted to burn down her bakery, she could have figured out a way to make it look like an accident. The setup that had been used to start the fire, that MO so clear-cut a case of arson, was a clear threat or warning if he’d ever seen one.

Somewhere, somehow, in this entire week of digging, he’d missed something. He knew it.

So it was time to get off his backside and apply some elbow grease and shoe leather to the problem. He would go back and recanvass the business owners and employees downtown. Surely, someone had seen something.

Maybe it was the fresh air or not being cooped up in the office, but Rob instantly felt more cheerful as he strolled down the sidewalk in the direction of downtown Waverly.

The walk from his office was just long enough to lift his spirits—to Rob, Waverly was the right size, not too big, not too small, and the downtown part with its wealth of locally owned businesses had always been his favorite. He passed the carefully tended planters the Waverly-Levi County Garden Club kept overflowing with cheerful red geraniums and nodded to a rail-thin septuagenarian sporting a dapper fedora who was propped up against them.

As he waved away an inquisitive bee, he spotted a group of toddlers cooling off under the interactive fountain in the pocket park just at the edge of downtown proper. Their moms sat nearby, laughing as the kids opened their mouths and drank in the cool water. Something about the kids’ exuberance, their innocence, made Rob chuckle, too.

The burned-out remains of the buildings loomed ahead, but not even they could dampen his suddenly ebullient mood.

What did poke the air out of his bubble was the big zero that he turned up with his recanvassing. Besides Charlie Kirkman, the landlord, no one had ever seen anybody give Kari Hendrix so much as a hard stare.

For his last stop, Rob ducked into a jewelry store across the street, one with a good vantage point of the Lovin’ Oven’s front door. It was owned and run by the Sullivans, the same couple who’d been there since the 1960s.

“Well, if it isn’t young Mr. Monroe!” Hiram Sullivan greeted him from behind the counter. “Make my day, sir, and tell me that you have finally been caught, and you’re here to pick out an engagement ring.”

Rob laughed. The engagement ring deal was Mr. Hiram’s running joke with him—he said the same thing every time Rob came in. “You know me—a rolling stone, and all that. Nope, today it’s all official business, I’m afraid, but Ma’s got a birthday coming up, so maybe I do need something after all.”

“Ah, a good woman, Mrs. Colleen is, and a very wise one. I saw her earlier this week with Mrs. Kimberly. Your brother and she have their bridal registry picked out.” Mr. Hiram nodded toward the tables of china near the front of the store.

The idea of Daniel picking out china and other frou-frous boggled the mind. “Just let me know what they need toward the end and put me down for it—I know beans about wedding presents.”

Mr. Hiram nodded approvingly. “An easy customer. Now what is it that I can help you with in your official capacity?”

“I came back to ask again about the fire.”

Mr. Hiram tsked and began polishing his spectacles with a jewelry cloth he’d pulled from his apron. “A sad thing, isn’t it? Is it wrong to be glad that it was on the other side of the street? At our age, we couldn’t start over. Our whole life is in this shop.”

“And you’ve seen nothing out of the ordinary? Not in the weeks leading up to the fire?”

“No, like I told you before, nothing that stands out. No sinister folks—how do you law enforcement people put it? Casing the joint?”

The words sounded ludicrous coming out of the old man’s mouth, but Rob managed to suppress all but the smallest of grins. “What about Kari Hendrix? And the bakery?”

Mr. Hiram pursed his lips, considering. “A nice young woman, if you ask me. Hardworking. Reminded me of Mrs. Sullivan at that age.”

“How so?” Rob leaned forward on the jewelry counter.

“Well, she did so much of the work. The curtains—did you know that she sewed them herself? And every week she’d put in a new display in the window. She was there every morning when I opened up, and she stayed late a lot of nights. And have you sampled her wares?” Old Hiram kissed his fingertips and closed his eyes in satisfied memory. “That woman knows her way around a kitchen!”

“Did other folks appreciate her good points?”

Mr. Hiram frowned. “You mean did she have a good business?” He cocked an eyebrow. “Not at first. It was slow going, and you could see how dispirited she was. She’d come out and give free samples on the sidewalk—we looked forward to those, but my wife always said we shouldn’t be greedy. I liked the little mini blueberry muffins the best.”

“Her muffins are good,” Rob conceded. “So business was bad?”

“Lately, no. She’d gotten on a roll...it was steady, and improving. A few days before the fire she came over with a basket of goodies for me and the missus, and she was excited about the orders she was getting—the mayor’s daughter had ordered her wedding cake. Kari was sure it was a good sign.”

“Obviously she didn’t know the mayor’s daughter. Now, that one is a diva if I ever saw one,” Rob commented.

“Oh, yes. Changed her mind three times about her engagement ring, and I thought she’d drive my wife mad going back and forth about the china. But I could see why Kari thought it a good omen—if she pleases Mattie Gottman, she has a shot at the wedding cakes for all eight of the girl’s bridesmaids.”

“Eight?” Rob choked. “Who needs eight bridesmaids? I pity the poor guys they rope in for groomsmen.”

“She’d wanted ten, but two girls had the temerity to say no.” Mr. Hiram dusted his fingernails against the twill of his apron. “Can you imagine?”

“Saying no to Mattie Gottman? It takes a strong man—believe you me, I’ve had to do it. Not for the faint of heart.” Rob considered the import of what Hiram had told him. Kari had been given the golden ticket to high-society weddings, at least here locally. It would have translated into more work for her, he knew that.

So that was another nail in the coffin for the theory of Kari burning down her own business. Who would want to let down the mayor’s picky daughter? Or ruin her growing business, for that matter?

“Did anyone not like Kari?” Rob asked. “Anyone who saw her as a threat or her business an obstacle?”

Mr. Hiram screwed up his face in concentration. For a long moment, he just shook his head. A thought must have occurred to him, though, because his bushy white eyebrows sprang up in a classic “aha!” move. “There was a young man who seemed to agitate her—a repeat customer, I suppose. He’s been around more the past month or so. Tall, shaggy blond hair, wears T-shirts and those awful cargo shorts that hang from the waist and show off your underwear—oh, and flip-flops with socks.”

That sounded like a spot-on description for Jake, Kari’s brother. “Could you pick him out of a six-pack if I brought you one?”

“A six-pack?” Mr. Hiram frowned. “Of...beer?”

“No, I mean, six photos of similar looking men. Sorry. My police lingo got the best of me.”

Mr. Hiram had the audacity to smirk. “A six-pack, hmm? I shall have to remember that term. It will impress my wife—she’s always reading those police procedurals.” He began dusting off the spotless display case. “Why, yes, I believe I could. You bring your, eh, six-pack over to me and I shall give it a try.”

“And what made you think this fellow agitated Kari?”

“Well, they seemed to disagree, for one. They were talking excitedly the day of the fire. Oh, wait! I suppose you’ve checked out Mr. Charlie Kirkman? Because he certainly had a contentious relationship with all of his downtown tenants. And he was arguing with Kari that same afternoon.”

Rob sighed to himself. The brother and the landlord—nothing new at all in the way of leads.

“Yes, Charlie Kirkman’s been cleared of any direct involvement...and we can find no financial trail to indicate that he hired someone to do the job. But, er...” now Rob put his fingers to his lips and glanced ostentatiously to either side and said, “keep that under your hat, will you?”

Mr. Hiram nodded. “You have my word. Let’s see...let me think.” Now in an absent-minded way, he pulled out a tray of watches from the case and began polishing them with his jewelry cloth.

He’d made it to watch three before he said, “No, I can’t think of anyone who seemed to have a cross word to say about Miss Kari Hendrix. She does so many nice things for so many people. When Jack Stewart—they own the little bookshop down the street from her—wound up in the ICU, Kari made up a basket of treats for Mrs. Stewart and took it to her in the hospital. The only way I found out about that was when Mrs. Stewart came in here to buy a little thank-you gift for Kari. And Kari’s always donating things to the Downtown Association for raffles and fund-raisers. Look—there she is now—see Kari?” Mr. Hiram gestured with the cloth in his hand over Rob’s shoulder.

“She’s handing out treats for the business owners who are still trying to salvage things.”

Rob turned to see where Hiram was pointing. Sure enough, there was Kari, with a big basket lined with a gingham cloth, doling out...not muffins. A glazed pastry of some sort, from the looks of it.

“Well, how could I have forgotten!” Mr. Hiram murmured to himself. “Alan Simpson—he owns the pawn and gun shop next door to Kari. He’d been after Charlie to move Kari down to another spot, so that Alan could expand the shop. I didn’t think about that until I saw them together just now. See? Kari’s handing him—oh, my, do you think she’ll bring one of those bear claws of hers over here?” The jeweler’s eyes sparkled with anticipation. “I could do with a little midmorning pick-me up!”

It was as if Kari had read the old man’s mind. Rob saw her smile and nod at Simpson, then cross the street and head straight for the jewelry shop. A moment later, the bell jangled and she came breezing in.

“Mr. Hiram! I brought you a—” The bright smile on her face froze as she spotted Rob.

“A bear claw!” Mr. Hiram either didn’t notice her sudden stumble in speech or chose to ignore it. He put the watches back, deftly opened the walk-through gate between the counters and met Kari on the customer side. “I was just telling young Mr. Monroe here that I hoped you’d remember me.”

“Would...would you care for one?” she asked Rob. She held up the basket with a great deal less enthusiasm than she had for Mr. Hiram.




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