Chapter 12 #2
The fire marshal is an older man with gray hair and thick glasses.
He looks at her intently and responds soberly, “We won’t know until we can get inside and conduct a proper investigation.
But I need to warn you that it might be arson.
The firefighters reported smelling gasoline.
If we find someone brought in large containers of gasoline and then set the office on fire, it might explain the sounds you heard. ”
Nova’s hands fly to her mouth, and she makes a distressed sound.
The fire marshal’s eyes move from her to me. “Do you have any idea who might want to burn down your wife’s trucking business, Mr. Jackson?”
“No, I really don’t.”
He hands me a business card and says, “We’ll need you both to make yourselves available for questioning.”
“Surely we’re not suspects.”
“Unless we find evidence of intended insurance fraud, no. But I’m sure law enforcement will want to pick your brain about possible suspects.”
I give him my own business card and tell him, “We’ll be happy to talk to anyone who can help us find answers to this senseless destruction of property.”
As he walks off, I realize that this is not Devon Marsh’s doing. He was with us when this fire started.
I ask Nova, “Do you think you can drive?”
She nods. “Yeah, where are we going, back to the clubhouse?”
“No. We’re going to my office. We’ll set you up a temporary office there.”
Her eyes go wide. “Is that allowed? Do you even have space for me?”
I begin guiding her over to her vintage vehicle. “Yeah, I own the entire building, so whatever I say goes. We have an empty space right beside my office. It’s big enough for you. If you need more space, I’ll evict one of the other businesses.”
She gets behind the wheel on shaky legs and takes a minute to acclimate herself before following me to my office.
Rachel jumps up from her desk when she sees us walking into the office. “I wasn’t expecting you today.”
“Yeah, we weren’t expecting to be here. We’re both going to be working out of this office for the time being. Call the cleaning crew to get office one eleven ready for use.”
She stammers, looking from one to the other of us, “Yes, sir. I’ll make some coffee as well. The two of you look like you could use some.”
“Thank you, Rachel.” As she walks away, I remind her, “Call me Mica. Everyone does.”
“Yes, sir, I mean Mica.”
I jerk my chin at Nova. “Let’s hole up in my office. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
My hands move across the desk to cover hers. The moment we’re sitting across from each other, I ask, “How are you holding up, sweetheart?”
“I’m hanging on by a thread. It feels like everything I wanted to save from my grandfather is slowly slipping away.”
“This fire came out of nowhere. None of us saw it coming. Trust me, if I had, I would have done something to stop it.”
She nods, fighting back tears. “What I need right now is to figure out what went wrong, how this happened, and if it was really arson, who did it.”
I give her hands a squeeze before pulling out my laptop and setting it up. Nova does the same.
“Seeing Vulture’s trucking company burning reminds me that someone set fire to his clubhouse a while back. Unfortunately, that someone was Viper, and he’s pushing up daisies right now.”
She glances away and rubs her hands down the front of her jeans. “I suspected as much when you said he faced club justice.” After a brief pause, she adds, “It’s weird that Viper is long gone, but shit belonging to my family is still getting burned to the ground.”
“We need to think about who benefits if your trucking business fails.”
After a pensive pause, she shakes her head. “No one. Everybody associated with the trucking company loses. I lose the opportunity to inherit early, and the drivers lose their jobs. The estate attorney doesn’t have anything to gain personally.”
“Think about the performance clause in the estate documents, the twenty percent revenue decline trigger, the twelve-month marriage requirement, the man tasked with monitoring compliance.”
“What about it?” she asks innocently.
“What about Cray? What does he stand to gain?”
“I don’t know that he has anything, but walk through this with me. What could be construed as motive in his world? If the businesses fail, the estate reverts back to his oversight and control for ten years. The same thing happens if our marriage dissolves before the one-year mark.”
“No. I clearly remember the attorney saying the businesses would be sold, and the money would be held in trust and released to me when I turned thirty.”
“But we don’t know the specific conditions of when the sale has to take place. He might be planning to get a gigantic kickback from the buyer or some other shady shit going on.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Nova insists.
“Look, Cray is the one who contacted my father and set the whole arranged marriage up. He’s a club president. How many people could have pulled off a fire with double explosions? This has MC written all over it.”
“He advocated for our marriage because he wanted me to be protected and because he’s got his own businesses to worry about. He’s got no time to worry about running ours too. If he wanted to sell the businesses, it doesn’t make sense to burn them down.”
“You’re making good sense here, but maybe the value of the business is the property, not the buildings. Setting the trucking company on fire is the fastest way to force you off the property and trigger the reversion clause.”
“Anything is possible,” Nova finally admits.
“Here’s the rub. We can’t just call up a club president and accuse him of arson.”
“He’s my uncle. I can call him up and ask anything I want,” she insists.
“No,” I tell her. “You’re my old lady. Whatever you do blows back on me. That’s how the MC world works.”
“I need to meet with my father. He’s the only one in our club with the kind of clout to approach Cray without it looking like a personal insult.”
“Alright, if that’s what you want to do, I’m in. But I want to tell you right now that Cray’s got nothing to do with this. Make sure he knows I vouched for him.”
“We’ll be careful to be respectful,” I tell her. “I’m not trying to alienate the only family you have left.”
Her shoulders relax as she glances around the office. “You have a nice space here. I noticed it the first time we met. Do you really own this entire building?”
“Yes, I bought it fresh out of college and set it up on a ten-year mortgage,” I tell her. “The other office rentals pay the mortgage. In two years, the building will be paid off, and I’ll own it free and clear.”
“That’s really impressive,” she says quietly. “I don’t know if I can afford an office suite here. The trucking company did well because we didn’t have to pay for space. It sat on the same fifty-acre spread that the clubhouse did. Now, they’re both nothing but cinders.”
“You’re my wife, Nova. That means that whatever I own, you share. I’m not charging my own fuckin’ wife office rent.”
“That’s really generous of you, but I think this setback might be more than my company can bear. I hate that my grandfather worked thirty years to build that trucking company, and now we might lose it,” she says.
“Whoever did this is going to answer for it.”
We both get to work, but I start with an e-mail to my father about the fire and my suspicions about Cray.
I copy in Jasper, Onyx, and Slate. Then I dive into my own work for the day.
Concentrating is difficult because all I can think about is how the conversation with Cray is going to play out.
Eventually, I get a response from my old man that he’s set up a meeting for this evening with Cray.
Cray agreed to meet us at the neutral ground off Route 9.
It’s a roadhouse that’s been used for meetups between clubs for the better part of two decades. Noon. Just officers.
Nova doesn’t like being left out. “I should be there,” she says. “He’s my blood.”
“It’s an officers’ meeting,” I tell her. “No relatives or old ladies are invited.”
“It’s about my grandfather’s businesses, my inheritance, and involves my uncle. By all rights, none of you should be there. I should be having this conversation on my own.”
“Vulture wouldn’t have allowed you to come to an officers’ meeting either, sweetheart, and you know it. If your uncle is doing something shady, making you disappear might just be a preferred solution. So, you’re not going, and you’re most certainly not fuckin’ going by yourself.”
She holds my gaze. “Mica. You’re talking crazy. You know that, right?”
“Nova, Cray is the one with the unhinged club name, not me. I know he’s your uncle, but he’s also a man who has a checkered past and a history of making ruthless decisions. Can you blame me for wanting to play it safe with the best thing in my world?”
Her expression lights up. “I’m really the best thing in your world?”
I stand up, lean over the desk, and give her a quick kiss. “Yeah, you are. And I’m not taking any chances with you.” Cupping her cheek with one hand, I tell her, “You’re going to have to trust me with the things that matter in your life sooner or later. How about we use this as a starting point?”
“Alright, I’ll trust you. Just don’t leave me out of the loop. No matter what you find. I want to know.”
“If I’m wrong about this, you’ll know everything the minute we get back. If I’m right about this, you’ll know that immediately too. Either way, you’re not going to be kept in the dark.”
She gets out of her seat, comes around the desk, and sits in my lap. I cuddle her up, wrapping both arms around her soft body and tucking her head under my chin. This woman of mine has been through a lot today and needs me to comfort her.
I look up to see Rachel hesitating at the door. I motion her in with a hand and point to the side of my desk. She quietly drops two mugs of coffee and leaves quietly, shutting the door behind her.