Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Joe named the puppy Ashes for her rather disgusting love of rubbing her nose in soot. A friend of Kenny’s was an arson-dog trainer who agreed to work with Joe and the puppy. Given that Ashes fell asleep in the middle of their first session, Joe didn’t expect any miracles.
The next day, San Diego was hit by a hot, violent summer storm.
Joe and Kenny set out in it to talk to the people involved with the Creative Interiors case again, going to Ally’s Treasures first. As they ran from the truck, getting drenched in the process, an unhappy Ashes began to howl from her perch behind the wheel.
“She could wake the dead,” Kenny yelled over a boom of thunder.
“I need a dog sitter!” Joe yelled back, eyeing the pathetic puppy face plastered to the window as she woefully watched them run away. “Or someone to just shoot me.”
“I’ll shoot you later,” Kenny promised and pulled him inside Ally’s Treasures.
Ally was a tall, lean, haughty beanpole, with sharp eyes and a sharper tongue, who clearly did not like dripping wet fire marshals. “I’m busy,” she said when they identified themselves.
“This will only take a minute,” Kenny promised and smiled his charm-the-witness smile.
Immune, Ally frowned. “Make it quick.”
“How do you feel about Creative Interiors?” Joe asked.
She lifted a shoulder. “They have the better building and street visibility, but since I do a better business, I don’t lose sleep over it.”
“How do you know?” Kenny asked, looking at a shelf of seashells filled with sand, all marked with shockingly astronomical prices.
“How do I know what?” Her tone was holier-than-thou, her nose so high in the air she was in jeopardy of a nosebleed.
“That you do a better business,” Kenny said patiently.
“Because I snoop, if you want the truth. I go into their stores and check out their stock and what their customers are buying. There’s no law against that. Camille does it to me right back.”
“Camille spies on you?” Kenny asked.
“Of course she does. She sends one of the twins, the one who smokes, to buy a Cosmo off my magazine rack, then she presumably goes back and tells them everything. If I were Camille, I’d be more concerned about how much more work she does than her spacey sister, or that seriously creepy bookkeeper she just hired, or even that wild and crazy roam-the-planet daughter of hers, but whatever. To each her own.”
Joe bit his tongue with effort. “One of the twins smokes?”
“Yes. Don’t know which one.”
“Have you ever been to their warehouse?” Joe asked.
“The one that burned?” Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Have you?”
Her cool veneer slipped a moment. “I don’t like where this is going.”
“Yes or no.”
“No.”
“What about the new store site?” Kenny asked. “Creative Interiors II. Were you there at all?”
She paled and shook her head.
“Are you sure?” Joe asked.
“Once,” she admitted. “At the opening party. They had quick-serve hors d’oeuvres set out.”
“What about the next day?” Joe asked. “Were you there at all on opening day?”
Some of the snide light and superiority drained out of her eyes. “I drove by,” she admitted, finally taking them seriously. “Right at ten o’clock. Just to see how many people they had, that’s all. I never went in.”
“Where were you between the hours of six and ten that night?”
She straightened her shoulders and looked him right in the eye, all attitude gone.
“I was here. I closed at six and spent the next few hours working on my books. I was alone. I have no one who can verify that, but I can tell you right now, you’ll find no evidence of my doing Creative Interiors any harm.
I don’t need to, they do enough harm to themselves. ”
Next up on the interview list was Braden. Joe and Kenny crossed the street from Ally’s Treasures to Creative Interiors, getting drenched all over again. Halfway across, Ashes saw them from the truck and resumed her howling.
Kenny laughed, and because of it, Joe made him go back and get the damn puppy.
Kenny ran and opened the truck, scooping the puppy against his shirt. “She’s shedding.”
“Bummer for you.” Joe no longer bothered to swipe the rain out of his eyes. It was six o’clock, closing time, and as they came up to the door of Creative Interiors, Braden walked out.
“You’re looking for me,” he said, and opened his umbrella, tucking himself and his laptop neatly out of the way of the slashing rain.
Joe and Kenny, neither of whom had an umbrella, stood there with water running down their no longer repellent clothing. Ashes licked the rain off Kenny’s jaw.
“Make it quick.” Braden eyed them both with a cool gaze, not offering to share his umbrella or to go back inside. “Or do I need an attorney?”
Kenny squinted through the drops on his glasses. His blond hair was sleek to his head, his shirt clinging to him, and there was a squirming puppy in his arms shedding all over him. He was not a happy camper. “Can we take this inside?”
“Do I have a say in that decision?” Braden asked.
“What? Of course you have a say.” Kenny’s irritation was beginning to show, the way it always did when things weren’t neat and tidy. Or dry.
“Then no,” Braden said. “I don’t want to go inside. I’m perfectly comfortable out here.”
Kenny opened his mouth but Joe put a hand on his tense, wet arm. “We’d like to ask you a few questions,” he said calmly. “You don’t need a lawyer, unless you want one.”
Braden looked at his watch.
“You don’t seem all that surprised to see us,” Joe noted.
“Look, I’m not stupid. I’m the new guy and I don’t talk much. Plus, I was there the night of the fire. I was alone in the room where the fire originated.”
“Were you?”
“You know I was.”
Joe sighed. “Can you elaborate? Tell us how you came to be alone there?”
“The whole staff was around, working. Then they left, and it was just Summer and me. I think I scared her.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t mean to. I thought she knew I was still there.”
“What were you doing?”
“In the bathroom?” He arched a dry brow.
Joe waited, not at all bothered by the way his clothes had begun to stick to his entire body. He liked the rain, always had. But Kenny was a rare lit fuse. He was wet, wrinkled, holding a squirming puppy, and ready to blow.
Braden stayed rigid for a long moment, then caved when neither fire marshal moved. “I used the toilet,” he said. “And then the sink.”
“Anything else?” Kenny asked.
“Like?”
“Did you have gasoline in there for any reason?”
“Christ. No.”
Joe looked down at Braden’s black boots, still dry on the tops—unlike his own soaked athletic shoes. “What size shoe do you wear?”
“Depends on the shoe.”
“Approximately,” Kenny said tautly.
“I don’t know. An eleven.”
“Do you smoke?”
“Used to.”
“What does that mean exactly?” Joe asked.
“It means I quit.”
“How long ago?”
“I’ve quit several times. The last was a few weeks ago.” Braden swiped his hand over his mouth. “Is that all?”
“For now, thanks,” Joe said, and they watched him go.
“He’s involved with Chloe.” Kenny set the puppy on the ground. “Heel,” he commanded with quiet authority.
“She has no idea what that means.” Joe rolled his eyes when Ashes plopped to her back on the wet concrete, waiting for someone to squat down and pat her belly. “They’re dating then?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
Joe looked at the building and sighed. “They’re all connected.”
“And so are we.” Kenny smiled grimly. “Let’s finish this. Camille’s still inside.”
“She won’t thank you for this.”
“The job comes first,” Kenny said in a carefully even voice.
They stepped inside and stood by the door, not wanting to get anything wet. Kenny passed the puppy to Joe. “Your turn.”
Camille came out of the back and gasped. “A puppy!”
“A wet puppy,” Kenny warned as she scooped Ashes close.
“Oh, she’s adorable.” She lifted her smiling eyes. “You’re wet too. You’re all going to get sick.” She ushered them to the back and went directly to the teapot in the sink. “Let me make some hot tea.”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” Kenny said gently. “Why don’t you come sit down, Camille?”
“Oh. Okay.” She set Ashes on the ground.
The puppy immediately wriggled her way to Joe. He looked her right in the soft chocolate eyes and said, “Stay.”
Ashes set her butt to the floor, wriggled and panted, and shockers of all shockers, stayed.
Camille came close, sat in the chair Kenny pulled out for her, and folded her hands. “You’ve found something.” She divided a gaze between them. “Tell me.”
“The accelerant in the bathroom of the store proved to be the same mix of gasoline found at the warehouse fire,” Kenny said.
Her eyes went wide. “But—oh my God.”
“And you’re still certain gasoline isn’t something any of you would use?” Joe asked.
“I’m sure.”
“Do you or any of your employees smoke?” Joe asked.
She paused. “Is that relevant?”
They’d found two cigarette butts now. They were being tested for DNA, which wouldn’t help them unless they matched in their database with a convicted criminal. But both butts were the same brand, smoked down to the same length, and couldn’t be discounted.
Nothing when it came to this fire would be discounted, not now.
“It could be relevant, yes,” Kenny said.
“Well, no one smokes in the store, of course.”
“But what about outside? Anyone?”
For the first time, she looked away. Down at her clean, neat fingernails.
“Camille?” Kenny said.
“I can’t think of anyone off the top of my head.”
“Do any of your nieces smoke? Or your sister?”
“Oh, you know kids. They’re bound to try stupid things.”
Over her head, Joe exchanged a look with Kenny. She was holding back. Camille, holding back. He couldn’t believe it. “What made you call Summer on her phone the night of the fire?”
“I…she’s my daughter. We call.”
“But you don’t,” Kenny said very quietly. “You don’t call her.”
“I don’t want to bother her. But that night…she was leaving the next day. I wanted—I thought maybe—” She covered her mouth with a shaking hand.
“You thought what, Mom?”