Chapter 13
“Sammy, why don’t you take Lady and go into the bedroom where we slept and play while the adults talk,” Seth said to his son.
“Okay,” Sammy replied. “Someday I’ll be an adult, and I’ll get to stay in the room.”
“That’s true,” Seth replied. “But you aren’t an adult yet.”
“I’m going. Goodbye, Mr. Policeman,” he said to Dallas, and then he picked up Lady and disappeared down the hallway.
Once Sammy left the room, Suzanna and Seth sat side by side on the sofa, and Dallas took the chair opposite them. She looked at Dallas intently. Deep lines were etched into the sides of his face. He looked as if he hadn’t slept at all.
How bad had the fire been? Was Seth’s house only a pile of ashes now? Grief ripped through her at the very thought. Her fault…it was all her fault. She should have faced the danger in her life alone and not involved the farmer and his son.
“We managed to contain the fire away from the rest of the house, but the bedroom where Suzanna had been sleeping and the hallway burned pretty badly,” he said.
“The point of ignition was outside the window to that room. An accelerant was used inside the house to cause the fire to follow a path directly into the hallway.”
“Inside the house?” Suzanna looked at him in surprise. “But how would an accelerant possibly get inside the house?”
“I think I know,” Seth replied. A deep frown tugged his dark brows closer together. “Early yesterday morning I went down to the barn to work for a couple of hours, and I accidentally left the back door unlocked. I knew I smelled something odd in the hallway last night.”
“Did it smell like pears?” Dallas asked.
“Maybe something like that,” Seth said in obvious surprise. “I thought it was just something in Suzanna’s perfume. So, what was it?”
“Acetone,” Dallas replied. “Easy to buy and highly flammable.”
“Can we get back into the house today?” Seth asked.
“Yeah, it’s cooled off enough, but don’t move or touch anything related to the fire before an insurance adjuster comes out to look at it. But I’m not finished talking about the acetone.”
What now? A new knot of anxiety twisted in the very pit of Suzanna’s stomach.
Dallas leaned forward in the chair and looked at each of them intently.
“Down by the tree line in your backyard, we found a couple of empty bottles of acetone. We immediately fingerprinted them, and when we ran them through the system, we got a hit.” His eyes appeared to brighten.
“Suzanna, we now have the person I believe was your attacker behind bars.”
She leaned forward eagerly. She had hoped this time would come, and a wave of deep relief rushed through her. “Who? Is it Ray?”
“No, it’s Eva Dayton,” Dallas replied.
She stared at him in stunned surprise. Eva Dayton? She had been the person who had run her off the road? The person who had attacked her with a knife? “Are you sure she’s really the guilty person?”
For the first time since he’d arrived, Dallas smiled.
“I’m one-hundred-percent positive. We executed a search warrant at her house early this morning, and in the garage was a black four-door sedan with front-end damage.
We also found a large butcher knife, and it is now at the lab to see if traces of your blood are found on it.
All the evidence points directly to her.
Suzanna, your ordeal is over, and you should be safe now. ”
She still found it hard to believe that Eva had tried to kill her. Why? Because she hadn’t liked what Suzanna had told her about Holly’s social skills at the parent-teacher meeting?
“What about Holly? If Eva is in jail, then where is her daughter?” Suzanna asked with concern.
“Right now, she’s with neighbors while we work to find her father,” Dallas replied.
“We’re hoping he’ll step up for her and take her in.
” Suzanna’s heart ached for the little girl whose life would never be the same.
In the end, Holly was just another victim in all this.
“Did Eva tell you why she did all this?”
“No. I couldn’t get a clear answer from her,” Dallas replied.
“Can I speak with Eva?” she asked.
Dallas looked surprised and then frowned. “I suppose that could be arranged. When would you want to do that?”
“As soon as possible…right now if it can be arranged,” she replied. The only way Suzanna would believe that the attractive brunette was behind all the attacks on her was if she could confront Eva herself.
“Okay, if you’re sure you want to do this, then you can follow me to the police station right now,” Dallas replied.
“I’ll go with you,” Seth said. “All I need to do is call Lydia to come stay with Sammy.”
“No, that’s not necessary,” she said firmly to Seth. “I’ll be fine going alone. In fact, I prefer it that way.” While she would have loved Seth’s support, it was time she stood on her own once again.
“Seth, there are a couple of my officers at your house, and I’m sure I’ll see you later,” Dallas said as he stood. Suzanna and Seth rose from the sofa. “Ready?” he asked Suzanna.
She nodded. “All I need to do is get my purse.” She hurried to her bedroom and grabbed her purse from the top of the dresser.
Thankfully Seth had managed to retrieve both the purse and her notebooks.
Despite her wiping them all down, they still smelled faintly of smoke.
She then went back down the hallway, where Dallas was waiting.
“Are you sure about doing this?” Seth asked, his eyes filled with a wealth of concern.
“I’m positive. This is something I have to do. Don’t worry, I’ll be just fine, and I’ll see you back here later.” With that, she followed Dallas out the front door.
She still had the rental car since there had been no opportunity to go car shopping. That was one of the first things she’d take care of now that she finally had her life back. A rush of emotion swept through her at the thought that her ordeal was finally over.
As she followed behind Dallas’s patrol car, once again she tried to wrap her head around the fact that her wicked boogeyman had been Eva. Why? She knew Eva was a disgruntled parent, but she hadn’t realized it had gone that deep.
She needed to talk to the woman to assure herself that the bad guy really was her. If she hated her so much as Holly’s teacher, then all she would have had to do was wait five months and the school year would be over and Holly would have been moving into Boone’s classroom.
It didn’t take long for them to arrive at the police station, where Dallas led her into a conference room with a long table and seating for four.
“Sit tight and I’ll bring her in,” Dallas said. He left the room and closed the door behind him.
Nerves jumped inside her as she waited for the face-to-face with a woman who had tried to kill her not once, not twice, but three times. Eva had set the fire that could have killed Sammy. If it was true, then there had to be such evil in Eva’s heart.
Suzanna wasn’t sure how long she waited before the door opened and Eva was led in by Dallas. They were followed by Officer Benjamin Cooper, who took up a position by the door.
Eva was clad in an ill-fitting orange jumpsuit. Her hair was a mess, and she wore no makeup. She looked far different from the well-put-together woman who had met Suzanna on parent-teacher night.
“Can you take off my cuffs?” she asked Dallas. She smiled at him. “I promise I’ll behave.”
Dallas moved behind her and unfastened the handcuffs, and then Eva sat in the chair opposite Suzanna’s and gazed at her. “Mrs. Michaels, I’ve been told of the charges against me, but I’ll tell you right now I’m totally innocent in all this. I would never try to harm you.”
She looked so earnest, and for a moment Suzanna believed her. But then she remembered all the evidence against her and saw there was something dark in the very depths of the woman’s eyes.
“What about the car in your garage that had front-end damage?” Suzanna asked.
“Oh, that old thing. When I bought it, it had the damage. I wanted a second car as a backup, and that was all I could afford at the time. I certainly didn’t use that car to run you off the road.
I haven’t driven that car in months and months.
In fact, the battery in it is probably dead from lack of use. ”
Oh, the woman was very good. It would be so easy to believe in her innocence if not for the hard darkness in the very center of her eyes. “What about the acetone bottles? How did your fingerprints get on them?”
Eva’s face flushed and she leaned forward.
“I truly don’t know, Mrs. Michaels. Maybe I touched them in the store.
It wasn’t that long ago that I bought myself a bottle of acetone to take off my nail polish.
I just can’t believe I’ve been arrested for things I didn’t do.
This is all just wrong…a complete miscarriage of justice, and you need to know that I’m an innocent woman. ”
“I just hope Holly gets through all this okay,” Suzanna replied.
It was like a switch went off. “Don’t you even say her name,” Eva said with a snarl. “It’s because you didn’t see Holly’s potential, you bitch. You had to die so my daughter could get a new teacher who would appreciate her special qualities. You had to be gone for my Holly’s sake.”
The words spewed out of her with utter rage.
“My teachers never saw my specialness. I was overlooked, and my mother was told I was average…average! None of them saw me for who I was, for how amazing I was, and now it’s happening all over again with my daughter.
I won’t have it. I simply won’t have it. ”
Suddenly, like a wild animal, she leaped across the table and managed to get her hands around Suzanna’s throat. “Die, you bitch. You were supposed to die.” Her hands squeezed tight, momentarily cutting off Suzanna’s air. She reached up and grabbed Eva’s hands in an effort to get them off her.