Chapter 3 #2
“Right.” The sheriff turned to Charlie. “Ms. Pax, I want to talk to you as soon as that oxygen mask comes off.”
Rebooting her innocent expression, Charlie gave a small wave of assent. She avoided nodding, since she wanted plausible deniability that she’d never actually agreed to the interview later. After a silent, steady glare at all four of them, the sheriff stalked away.
Once she was out of earshot, Charlie let out a long breath that was echoed by her sister. Rolling her eyes toward Kieran, she gestured for him to remove the mask. When he continued to frown at her, she turned her gaze pleading. He only lasted three-and-a-quarter seconds before folding.
“Fine,” he grumbled. “But if your cough gets worse, or you develop a headache or any other symptoms, go to the hospital.” He waited until she nodded before removing the mask.
“Thanks,” she said. Turning to Fifi and Bennett, she resisted the urge to clear her throat, since Kieran looked ready to jam the mask back on at the first sign of a cough. “First, I didn’t need rescuing. I’d just saved myself when he showed up.” She jerked a thumb at Kieran.
“You jumped into a fire.”
“Yes.” Charlie had to give Kieran that point. “But then I immediately jumped out of that tiny fire, without your help. When you snatched me up, I was standing on a section of floor that was very clearly not burning, thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome.” He turned and started putting equipment away.
“I didn’t…grr.” His grumpiness wasn’t quite as fun as it had been earlier—more like infuriating. She snuck a glance at his profile. He was still incredibly hot though. Tearing her gaze away from him, she refocused on her sister. “Second, you know better than to try to lie, Fifi.”
“Right?” Fifi sighed. “As soon as the words were out, I knew I shouldn’t have jumped off that verbal cliff.”
“It’s okay.” Charlie couldn’t stand to see her usually cheerful sister so down on herself. “If I had to have a sister-wife, I’d definitely pick you.”
Another amused grunt came from Kieran as Bennett looked slightly alarmed at the direction of the conversation.
“Don’t worry, B.” She gave her brother-in-law a pat on the arm. “I don’t think it’ll come to that. It’s too bad a certain overzealous firefighter didn’t have another oxygen mask he could’ve used on you, Fifi, rather than just leave you scrambling to answer the sheriff.”
“That would’ve been handy.” The subtle note of accusation in Fifi’s voice made Charlie hide a grin as Kieran glanced up, frowning.
Under their censorious gazes, he huffed, grumbled something unintelligible, and stomped away, looking ridiculously hot during the whole process.
“Charlie. Charlie. Charlie!”
“Hmm?” Charlie hummed, reluctantly turning away from her most excellent view of Kieran’s backside.
Fifi tried to glare, but her stern expression collapsed into a laugh. “Focus, sister-wife. Someone tried to kill us. We need to figure out who trapped us inside and set the coffee shop on fire.”
“Right.” Charlie shook her hands by her sides, bringing her brain back in line. “Attempted murder beats lust. There’ll be time to discuss the whole Kieran Byrne subject after we bring in Mom.”
Bennett suddenly looked very uncomfortable, making Charlie laugh and slap him on the shoulder.
“It’s okay, big guy,” she reassured him. “You don’t have to contribute to that conversation. But you have to admit that it’s better than having me as your second wife, right?”
“Yes,” he said, a little too quickly to do much for her ego, but Charlie just laughed again.
“C’mon,” she said, making her way toward the ambulance while keeping a wary eye out for the sheriff. “Let’s go talk to the president of the murder club. See if we can narrow down a suspect list.”
Fifi skipped a step to catch up. “Isn’t this place the best? I mean…a murder club.”
Rolling her eyes toward her sister, Charlie gave an amused snort. “We were almost just murdered by fire.”
Fifi grimaced. “I didn’t say Simpson was perfect.”
Bursting into laughter that changed to a coughing fit, Charlie gave her sister a flat look through watery eyes. She only lasted a few seconds before admitting, “Yeah, this place is the best.”
***
“I’ve lived a fairly enemy-free life for the past couple of years, so I’m thinking one of you—or all of you—were the target.” Lou gave the EMT a smile as he unwrapped the blood pressure cuff. “Am I good to go?”
“Sure, unless you want to have them check you out at the hospital,” the medic said with an answering grin. “I can give you a ride.”
“Nope.” She ignored Callum’s “Yes,” giving the EMT a wave as she moved away from the ambulance. Callum made unhappy grumbly noises but followed close behind his wife, joining their group with a bigger frown than usual.
“Probably,” Charlie agreed with Lou’s assessment. “We do tend to rack up the enemies.”
“Around here though?” Fifi sounded skeptical. “Bennett and I were only in Simpson what—a week?—and Charlie just got here. We couldn’t have made that many people want to kill us during that time.”
“What about the militia with the stupid name?” Charlie asked, a little offended at how Fifi was underestimating their ability to drive people to murder.
“The Freedom Survivors?” Fifi asked. “We did put three of their members—including their leader—in jail,” Fifi admitted. “I mean, I suppose one or two might be holding a grudge?”
“So the militia members are all going in the suspect column on the…oh.” Lou sounded sad.
“What’s wrong?” Callum asked immediately, as if he had an internal alarm that activated every time his wife’s mood dropped.
“I just realized the whiteboard burned up.”
Charlie stared at the forlorn woman, confused. “Um…I think you can get a new one at Target for about twenty bucks?”
“Sorry.” Although Lou waved off everyone’s baffled concern with a weak laugh, she still looked suspiciously teary-eyed. “I know it was just a whiteboard, but I was fond of it. Silly, I know. I hadn’t even named it or anything. I need to stop getting so attached to my murder boards.”
“Um…sorry for your loss?” Fifi offered, shooting Charlie a look.
Charlie just shrugged. Different people got attached to different things. Whenever Charlie killed an electronic device—something she did with unfortunate regularity—Norah always looked as if she was about to cry. “Who else can go in the suspect column?”
“Hey, guys?” Fifi stared into the crowd. “The sheriff’s heading this way. Hang on, some woman just grabbed her and is talking her ear off.”
“That’s my boss—the owner of the coffee shop. I don’t have the energy to deal with her, much less the sheriff. Let’s head back to our cars and plan to meet at the honeymoon suite in thirty?” Lou suggested, but Callum shook his head.
“No more murder meetings tonight.” When Lou frowned at him, his stoic expression slipped, and a flash of exhausted worry was visible before his poker face returned.
Lou must’ve spotted that glimpse of Callum’s emotions too, since she didn’t argue but took his arm instead. “We’ll chat tomorrow,” she said. “I think we need some time to mourn the murder board and for Cal to realize I didn’t die this time.”
He let out a low grunt, as if punched in the stomach.
“Sorry.” Lou grimaced and patted the arm she held. “Of course I didn’t die. Just a little fire…another fire, where I work, and the murder board didn’t make it out.” By the end, Lou was sounding a little weepy, and it was Callum’s turn to pat her.
“That’s fine,” Charlie hurried to reassure her, not wanting Lou to break down into full-on sobs.
She was terrible at consoling sad people.
Angry people, she could handle, but the sad ones made Charlie want to run away.
“Get some sleep, and we’ll regroup in the morning.
I have some treasure-hunter ass to kick anyway.
What’s the use of being stalked if your stalker doesn’t save you from being barricaded in a coffee shop and burned alive? ”
“Why’d you look at me?” Bennett asked, looking as offended as a man made out of a boulder could look.
“You were a stalker.” Charlie gestured toward him. “Don’t you know the stalker code of conduct?”
His eyes narrowed as he glared at her. “There’s not a club with rules.”
“Maybe you should think about starting one.” When he continued glowering at her, she shrugged. “I’m just saying that being a stalker comes with some expectations, like not allowing your stalkee to be killed by someone else.”
Callum, who’d flinched at the “burned alive” part and then even harder at the “killed by someone else,” was being led away by Lou. “See you tomorrow,” she called over her shoulder.
“Bye!” Fifi called back.
Preoccupied with a thought that just occurred to her, Charlie gave them an absent wave before asking Bennett and Fifi, “Maybe one of the treasure hunters saw the person who barricaded us in and set the building on fire.”
“I don’t know.” Fifi looked around them, frowning. “I don’t see any of them around. They’re always in everyone’s business, so they’d be watching the show if they could.”
“You don’t think the arsonist hurt them, do you?
” Charlie peered around the crowd, the faces easy to make out, thanks to the firefighters’ floodlights.
She didn’t even see Dave, who was the worst hider of the lot of them.
Even Bones’s VW Fox was missing from her parking spot in front of the bank.
A guilty twinge awoke in her middle. She and her sister had lured the treasure hunters here.
If they’d gotten hurt, Charlie would feel responsible. “Hang on, there’s Tassie.”
She headed toward the treasure hunter hovering by the edge of the onlookers. When Tassie spotted Charlie making her way toward her, she didn’t run or even try to fade into the crowd. Instead, she waved her arms as if to attract Charlie’s attention.