Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Alexandru
We pull up in front of a red brick building on the southern edge of town. The sun has just set, and the festive lights up and down Commerce Street are flickering to life.
A red and chrome firetruck gleams in the shadows of the open garage. Ms. Renfield glances over and flashes a grin. “Ready to use your bat senses on Chief Knox?”
“Not if you call them bat senses.”
She’s just shutting her door when her phone rings. “It’s Richardson Photography! Lemme get this quick.” She turns away to take the call.
I stand and wait.
Ashwood divides neatly along a north-south line, with the central Gazebo Park as its heart. The southern side is polished and charming—wine bars, a gourmet grocer, stylish boutiques, and the cheerful steak and seafood restaurant with its string lights and patio heat lamps.
The north end feels more lived-in. Harriet’s family’s antique shop is here, along with a bar, a hardware store, the library, a used clothing store, and a few other worn storefronts.
The farther south you go, the more the charm fades—until you hit the fire station, the drug store, and an obnoxiously well-lit gas station.
“We just need to take a look at a few old photographs from your archives. We won’t tell anybody your uncle showed them to us, and we won’t ask to copy them. We just need to take a look.”
The voice on the other end questions her. “Why do you need to look at old photographs?”
“It’s just really important,” she says.
“My uncle would need to have a good reason to open up the archives to prying eyes,” the voice says. “Especially the champagne tower pictures. That couple was extremely upset.”
Ms. Renfield pleads with him some more, even using the phrase “life or death.”
She pockets her phone with a huff. “Bo’s nephew, Manny. Apparently, stubbornness runs in the family.”
“He called you?”
“I left a message earlier to see if we could take a look at the full set of their photos for the twenty minutes from when the champagne tower was finished being built to when it collapsed, and he’s a big no on that.
Apparently, the bride and groom were devastated by the collapse and don’t want the photos shared. ”
“That is very extreme.”
“People have very extreme feelings about weddings in this culture,” she explains.
“I would be happy to convince him to change his mind about showing us the pictures,” I say.
“No, thanks. We won’t be putting the thumbscrews to Bo Richardson or his nephew.”
“Suit yourself.”
She blinks. “That’s not what you’d really do, though, right?”
“There are so many options,” I say. “But thumbscrews do have a certain charm.”
I watch Ms. Renfield check her electronic ledger in preparation for our meeting, wondering if she has extreme feelings about weddings.
Did Ms. Renfield want to be a bride? Does she imagine herself having a wedding with things like champagne towers and confetti cannons?
Did she have plans to get married? To have children? The face of Maverick Cooper pops into my mind. She is fond of him, and he of her. Not that it matters. If he so much as attempted to distract her from her duties with me, I would kill him.
“Earth to Alexandru! What’s going on?”
“Are you finally done checking your ledger?” I grumble.
“I was done forever ago, but you were somewhere else, and from the looks of it, you were imagining unpleasant things. Let me guess, people being happy and skipping through daisies with their blood flow intact?”
“Are we going to question this fire chief or not?” I ask.
Ms. Renfield stares up at the top of the firehouse.
There’s a circular medallion sunk into the bricks bearing the year 1989.
“I’m hoping to get more details of the curtain fire.
We still don’t know if Whitney was the wedding planner for that one.
And I’m curious about the reason for the lack of investigation.
I’m still a little suspicious of Harlan, too, like I know you are. ”
“I know a blackguard when I meet one.” But it’s more than that. He’s up to something, though men of his ilk always are.
“Right?”
I smile. There really is something satisfying about this mystery game—a small, intricate puzzle to untangle before I feed.
“Harriet!” somebody yells from inside the garage.
“Hey, Sully!” Harriet beelines across the driveway and the large truck and into the garage toward a tall, beanpole of a man. He’s wiping a wrench, grinning. He slings the cloth over his shoulder, and they embrace quickly.
I stiffen. A lot of embracing in this village. I do not like it.
Ms. Renfield introduces me as her father’s friend. She tells me that she and Sully worked on the high school newspaper together. They exchange pleasantries for what feels like a historical epoch before she reveals the true purpose of our visit.
“We were hoping to get a little information on a fire that happened at the Glassworks Galleria a few months back and maybe talk to Chief Knox about it if he’s around.”
“He’s out on an inspection, but I could try to answer your questions. I was there in the aftermath. It was pretty much of a nothingburger, as I recall.”
“We were curious who the wedding planner was.”
“The wedding planner? Huh. We could go check the incident report.” He leads us deeper into the garage, past yet another gleaming truck and through a side room that’s set up with a cooking area and a living area.
A husky-looking man with a shaved head watches some sort of sports on TV while eating highly pungent food from a white carton.
“Just checking something,” Sully says, though the man did not ask.
We end up in a small back chamber full of gray file cabinets. There’s a table in the middle piled with magazines and office supplies, and at the far end is a desk with a brass lamp and some sort of computer.
Sully mutters to himself as he opens drawers and fingers through files. He pulls out a manila file folder and opens it on the table. The folder contains handwritten notes and a few loose sheets of paper. “These are technically public domain. It’s not like there was a finding of arson or anything.”
“We really appreciate it,” Ms. Renfield says.
He seems to find what he’s looking for. “Okay, here it is—they didn’t have an official wedding planner. They used a day-of coordinator, which was Gabriella Baker.”
“Wait—it wasn’t Whitney Sternell?” Ms. Renfield says.
“No, it was Gabriella. I got the names myself.”
Ms. Renfield’s distress is acute. “Is Whitney anywhere there, maybe as a guest?” she asks.
He checks his list. “Nope.”
“And you’re sure?” Harriet says.
“Yeah, man. Our list is solid. We even cross-checked it against the bride’s list and the venue’s lists.
We didn’t know what we were dealing with, so at that point in the investigation, we were treating everything like it was potential arson and taking the names of everybody who’d been through there—guests, waitstaff, wedding staff. ”
Ms. Renfield studies the printed piece of paper.
“You say you were treating it as potential arson. Did you then rule it out?” I ask.
“Well... the accelerant was too degraded to identify.”
I look at Ms. Renfield. Did she notice this wasn’t an answer? Did she feel his unhappiness with the situation?
“Anything else about the case seem odd?” Ms. Renfield asks.
“Well, just that Harlan Delmere was telling people that one of the photogs had gotten cleaning fluid all over the curtain. It was a weird accusation that probably didn’t happen. And she was pissed.”
“Valerie Johnson was the photographer?”
“Yeah. So pissed. She gave me a whole earful about being in this boys’ club and getting blamed for everything.
Chief Knox told me she was setting up to sue Harlan for libel, but suddenly she dropped it.
I was surprised because she was angry as a hornet.
Chief thinks her boss, Bo, pressured her to back off, because obviously you don’t wanna piss off Harlan Delmere if you’re in the wedding photography business. ”
“Or any business,” Ms. Renfield observes.
“What’s going on back here?” A large figure fills the doorway. Chief Knox, I assume. He has a big beard, a big belly, and brilliant blue eyes.
“Harriet and Prince Alexandru had some questions about the Galleria curtain fire, and I figured…”
“You figured wrong,” Chief Knox says. “These are official records.”
Sully looks confused. “It’s just an incident report.”
“They don’t want people in the official records.”
Ms. Renfield’s interest piques like a silver spire. “Who do you mean? Who doesn’t want people in official records?”
“Officials and whatnot,” the man barks. He doesn’t want to say. Interesting.
“Sorry, Chief,” Sully says. “Harriet and I worked at the high school paper together.”
The chief scowls at Ms. Renfield and then at me. “What’s your interest in the Galleria fire?”
“Do you believe it was arson?” I ask point-blank.
Outrage surges through the chief. “There wasn’t enough physical evidence to conclude either way.”
“Is that why you decided not to pursue it?” I press.
Ms. Renfield panics.
The chief eyes me square on. “The amount of damage done by the fire itself was negligible. One curtain panel and a singed window frame. It was the sprinklers that did the most damage.” This, of course, is irrelevant to my question. He knows it, and he knows I know it.
This man wanted to pursue the arson investigation. Somebody or something stopped him, and his blood is still boiling about it.
Sully makes a sound in the back of his throat. “It was not pretty. A lot of people spent a lot of time and money to look their best, and suddenly it’s drowned-rat city.”
“Very distressing to people,” Chief Knox adds, leafing through the folder. He pulls out a glossy photograph of the fire itself and sets it on the table.
“Wow!” Ms. Renfield exclaims. “That’s quite a photograph!” She slides the photo toward me with a significant look.
The image is startlingly clear. The flame is a bright orange column licking toward the ceiling.
Guests are mid-scramble—chairs knocked askew, hands raised to faces.
But what stops me cold is Kip, caught in perfect focus near the edge of the chaos.
While everyone else is stunned or shouting, Kip looks… mesmerized.
“One person seems to be enjoying the experience,” Ms. Renfield observes.
Chief Knox grunts.
“Could he have started the fire?” I ask the chief.
“Are you asking if we looked at him as a suspect? No. The investigation simply didn’t get that far, and it’s not illegal to be fascinated.”
Ms. Renfield leans in. “If you had to guess—”
“I don’t make guesses like that,” he says.
“Kip does look... into it,” she observes.
“That man likes trouble. One of his favorite pastimes is tinkering with his Harley-Davidson to make it extra loud and then driving it up and down Commerce Avenue, breaking noise ordinances left and right. You have infants taking naps. You have people trying to concentrate on projects, and this guy thinks it’s fun to draw all kinds of attention to himself with his obnoxious motorcycle. ”
“No kidding,” Sully agrees. “Chief Knox was out there with a decibel meter one day, and he clocked that motorcycle at 117 decibels. You know what the ordinance is? Eighty-eight. Eighty-eight decibels is the legal limit.”
The chief grumbles. “But does Officer Maverick Cooper care? Not a whit.”
“Officer Maverick Cooper is not the most outstanding male in town.” I take another look at the photo and point to the corner. “Valerie Johnson, the photographer.”
“The assistant must’ve taken it,” Chief Knox says.
Ms. Renfield checks her electronic ledger. “Manny Richardson was the assistant for this one.”
I note that Valerie is quite near the blaze. Nearer to it than Kip is.
“Do you have other photographs?” Ms. Renfield asks.
“They’d be on the drive.”
She asks if she can see them.
“I’ll let you handle this, Sully. What’s public is public.” Chief Knox leaves.
Sully heads over to the computer and pulls up some files. It turns out to be a great number of photos from every conceivable angle, even before the fire happened.
“I would love to have these,” Ms. Renfield says.
“We’re not supposed to give copies of files out to people.” Sully goes to one of the shelves, grabs a bit of plastic, and sets it down on the desk in front of Ms. Renfield, winking. “Can I get you a coffee?”
“I’d love one, but just the smallest amount,” Ms. Renfield says.
Sully leaves, and Ms. Renfield shoves the plastic into the side of the computer.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m copying the photos onto this thumb drive.” She pulls the thing out and puts it in her pocket.
Sully returns a moment later and hands Ms. Renfield an empty cup. “The smallest amount of coffee is an atom.”
“Amazing. I really do appreciate it.” She hands the cup back to him.
Sully shrugs. “No sense in making you file an FOIA. The insurance company has the entire batch of them, too. So does the photographer. Not like it’s a state secret here.”