Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
As the sun came up, Joe drove from Summer’s cottage back to the fire site. His eyes were gritty from lack of sleep, and the already warm air didn’t help.
After he and Summer had given each other rug burns to be remembered, he’d carried her to bed and had then proceeded to watch her sleep for the next few hours. It hadn’t been her light snoring that kept him awake, but the woman herself.
He’d lain there with no covers—seemed she was also a bit of a blanket hog—staring up at the shadows on the ceiling, reliving the night.
The fire. The fear. The adrenaline. Then Summer slowly stripping out of her clothes as the bath filled up, standing there in a stark white sports bra and panties, looking long and willowy and curvy.
And irresistible.
He’d pictured it thousands of times, her naked in his arms, her fiery hair draping his body as she sank down on him, taking him deep inside her. The reality of her doing just that had blown the fantasy out of the water.
She was leaving today.
He wasn’t a complete fool. He knew enough about her to understand that what had happened between them wouldn’t get in her way.
Fine. So be it. When she was gone, he could get back to some semblance of normalcy, without wondering each day if she’d send one of her soulful smiles his way. Yep. Her leaving would free up a lot of mental time and energy.
He pulled into the parking lot of the burned-out Creative Interiors II and showed his badge to the officer who’d been there all night guarding the scene.
Kenny pulled up right after him. All around were a crew of firefighters, checking for hot spots.
The chief was there too, looking tired and haggard.
It’d been a bad season so far, the lot of them were overworked, and the hot weather hadn’t helped.
They had more fires than they could investigate, and as always when that happened, things slipped through the cracks.
In their county alone, they were working on two major arson cases, at least one of which was the work of a serial arsonist. Everyone was itchy because they’d had a dry spring, too dry, and the fears about the wildfires getting out of control again were running rampant.
The chief came over as he and Kenny were pulling out their gear. “Wrap this one up fast as you can,” he said quietly, and when he walked away, Kenny looked at Joe with an arched brow.
“This is Creative Interiors’s second fire in a month,” Joe said. “Big coincidence to ‘wrap up quickly.’”
They were sitting on the bumper of his truck getting their gear organized, which was easier for Kenny since he’d actually had his stuff organized in the first place.
“Yeah, but the warehouse appears to be accidental,” Kenny said, pulling out his clean boots.
“We both know ‘appears’ means nothing.”
“True.” Kenny watched as Joe pulled out his own boots, not clean. “Is it possible you’re too close to the case?”
“I’m not too close to the case.” Joe stared at his dirty boots. “How the hell do you stay clean?”
“It’s not that difficult. Look, just admit it. You’re in love with Camille’s daughter.”
Joe’s heart skipped a beat. “You sound like a grandma.”
“I notice you’re not denying anything here.”
Was it love? Joe hadn’t put a name to the bone-melting, heart-stretching emotion he’d experienced last night, he hadn’t been able to.
But whatever it was that he felt for Summer, it was a whole lot more complicated than he’d ever felt for Cindy, or any woman for that matter, and he had to look away from Kenny’s knowing expression.
“So it’s serious,” Kenny said.
A serious case of stupidity, maybe. “She’s leaving. Hell, she might already be gone.”
“That should suit you, the master of screwing up long-term relationships.”
“Maybe Summer isn’t my type.”
“Since when is smart, sexy, and funny not your type?” Kenny pulled on gloves, also clean. “Face it, man, she’s been your walking wet dream your entire life.”
“No, she’s not.” Joe didn’t have any clean gloves either, damn it. “She’s…flighty. Unstable. She’s…” Warm, compassionate, beautiful. Sexy as hell. “Christ.”
Kenny tossed him a pair of new gloves from his own kit. “If it helps, I think I could feel the same way about her mom.”
“Camille?”
Kenny’s smile faded. “You have a problem with me going out with Camille after the investigation’s over?”
“No, Camille would be so lucky to have you. But Kenny, she won’t keep you. Who do you think taught Summer that love is either a terrifying soul destroyer or skin-deep only?”
“They’re just both skittish, is all.” Kenny smiled confidently. “With the right man, they could learn to trust their hearts.”
“You’re scaring me, I mean it.”
“You girls going to work or gab all damn day?” the chief barked at them from fifty yards away.
Kenny and Joe looked at each other, then moved into the building, dropping all their problems at the door to concentrate, as they’d done for two years now.
Inside, the store was a mess. The walls were charred through to the studs, and the furnishings were either melted, burned to a crisp, or floating in the mud and debris on the ground. Joe began taking pics.
The first thing that stuck out were the puddles of wax throughout the store. Candles, he thought grimly, snapping pictures of them. “Summer thinks she might have left one lit.”
Kenny made a sorrowful noise. They both knew exactly how dangerous candles were. They saw hundreds of fires caused by them every year. They waded through an inch of water and grime to find each and every puddle of wax, and recorded it.
The hot spot had been in the small employees’ bathroom off the main floor, a room lined with wooden paneling and smooth parquet flooring.
According to the burn pattern, here was the area of origin.
There’d been a candle originally seated on the porcelain sink, now just another puddle of melted wax on the wood.
“If people knew the statistics on how many fires these votives started, would they stop buying them?” Kenny asked.
“Doubt it. People never think it’s going to happen to them.” Oddly enough, even if the candle had tipped here, there was no additional fuel to keep it burning, nor was it beneath the burn pattern on the opposite wall.
Which meant the candle hadn’t been the point of origin at all. Joe pulled out his handheld accelerant detector as a matter of course. The reading meter went crazy.
Joe exchanged a long look with Kenny.
“Interesting,” Kenny said.
Given that it was a bathroom, there were all sorts of possibilities. Nail polish remover. Oil. Chemicals. A neglectful accident.
Or…malicious intent. Joe looked closer. On the wall beneath the burn pattern had hung a toilet paper holder. The paper itself was long gone, but he eyed the wall and saw it as it might have been before the fire.
Paper hanging down, dipping into a puddle of gasoline, or paint thinner, whatever accelerant had caused the reading on his meter. It would have acted as a wick, and if the roll had been full, all the better.
A match could have been lit, tossed into the puddle of gasoline.
Poof.
Above the toilet paper had been a towel rack, with at least two towels on it. More fuel. By that time, the flames had been hot, leaping straight up, catching the wood-paneled walls, the wood ceiling.
A tinderbox waiting to explode.
All hidden by the more obvious “evidence,” the conveniently left-burning candle.
The flames would have leapt across the ceiling and down the other walls, and then outward. And with the store closed, and the bathroom right in the middle of the place, it had grown hotter and faster, burning out of control before anyone on the outside caught the scent.
There were any number of motives here. Revenge, excitement, insurance fraud. They both knew it. They’d both seen it all.
Kenny opened his evidence-collecting box. “Better get everything. We just went from accidental to God knows what.”
“Yeah.” Joe swiped at his brow and set his camera aside. Together in the hot, damp, tiny space, they meticulously swept the entire bathroom.
“So were you up all night or what?” Kenny asked when Joe couldn’t hold back his umpteenth yawn.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Ah.”
Joe scowled and sat back on his heels. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means now I get why you’re so prickly. You must not have gotten laid last night.”
A lot he knew. “I’m not prickly.”
“As a porcupine, but forget it. You don’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s right, damn it.” Joe shoved his flashlight into his kit. “Look, I was just trying to help her.”
“Because she’s nobody to you.”
Joe gritted his teeth and eyed what was left in the room. After the fire, the water, and now what he and Kenny had done over the past two hours, there wasn’t much.
“A mess,” Kenny muttered. “And if this is connected to the warehouse fire…”
“Yeah. A bigger mess.” Joe thought of how Summer had been in the basement, asleep, alone. Vulnerable. If she hadn’t had her phone, if she hadn’t woken up…
His gut clenched hard.
“What?” Kenny asked.
“She could have died.”
“Yeah. Now let’s use what we found here to prove whether or not it’d have been murder.”
A few hours after Joe had left, Summer turned over onto her back in her bed. Eyes still closed, she stretched, and decided she felt delicious. Thanks to Joe.
She opened her eyes, then gasped.
“Sorry, darling,” Tina said. She and Summer’s mother stood over the bed with twin worried expressions. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
Summer drew a breath and shoved her hair out of her face. “You’d better have caffeine.”
“Yes. And food too.”
They gathered in Summer’s tiny kitchen at the even tinier table.
“Tell us everything,” Tina said, and pushed a croissant toward Summer.
Her mom didn’t say a word, just poured tea.
Socks, who’d come with them, wound around their feet, purring, waiting for falling crumbs.