by Liz Schulte
Firelight flickered across his face, dancing in the stranger’s eyes. Who was he? She knew all of the local boys who volunteered for the Deadwood Fire Department, and this guy wasn’t one of them. The lines fanning from his eyes and the sprinkling of silver she could see in his hair and mustache pegged him as a few years older than most of them, too—probably in his mid-forties if she were to guess. Maybe he was from Spearfish or Rapid City, up here in the hills to help out for a bit.
“I need to talk to the fire chief,” she told him.
“About what?”
“The cause of this fire.”
His soot-covered forehead creased. “Do you live here?” He pointed his big gloved finger at the burning house.
She shook her head.
“Were you inside when it started?”
She shook her head again.
“Did you start the fire?”
“Of course not,” her voice rose with indignation. She was in no mood to deal with this Curious George, and she was too tired to stick around much longer. After the long haul home from the glass gallery show in Sheridan, she wanted to go home and crawl into her warm, soft bed for half a day. She glanced around, searching for the chief. “Where’s your boss? He needs to know the truth behind the poltergeist-filled tale I’m sure the owner has been spinning.”
When she turned away from him to go find the chief, he caught her coat sleeve near her shoulder. “Did you say poltergeists? Like the movie?”
“Yes and no.” The poltergeists she was talking about were nothing like those closet dwellers in the old movie.
His forehead smoothed. Pink lines in the soot were the only evidence of his previous frown. A grin lifted the corners of his mouth, curving his mustache upward. “Who are you, lady?”
“Zoe Parker.” She yanked on her sleeve, pulling it free of his gloved grasp.
“Are you one of those ghost groupies the guys told me about who like to hang out in this town?”
“We’re not doing this dance.” She saw the chief standing across the street talking to a police officer. “So take your little hose and run along now.”
“My little hose?” His grin grew wider, showing off a nice set of teeth. “You’re funny. I like that in a woman.”
His preferences in the female gender weren’t of any interest to her. She’d heard enough about firemen to know better than to do more than admire them from afar.
She headed across the yard toward the chief.
Her new pal jogged after her. “Wait up.” He grabbed her sleeve, tugging her to a stop. “What do you know about the cause of this fire?”
“I’ll explain that to the chief.”
“Explain it to me. My name’s Reid Martin. I’m in charge of investigating and determining the cause of this fire.”
“Since when?”
“Since the chief recruited me a few months ago.”
“You’re a rookie?”
“Not even close.” Reid smiled down at her. A spark of charm lit his gaze, making her stare a little longer than normal. Maybe it was the firelight, or it could have been the hangover from that long drive across Wyoming’s dark prairie, but she suddenly noticed he was sort of handsome under all of that sweat and soot.
“Mrs. Parker, what can you tell me about this blaze?”
She blinked out of her stupor. “It’s Ms. Parker and I’d rather save my story for the chief.” The old fire chief knew her history of dabbling with non-human entities and wouldn’t laugh her off the fire scene. She pulled her hands from her coat pockets and managed to fumble and drop her pickup keys. “Damn it.”
Zoe bent down to scoop them up, not realizing Reid was also reaching down to grab them until she came up and clocked him square in the jaw with the back of her head.
“Owch!” She grimaced, rubbing her head. “Sorry about that.”
She looked up in time to watch the big fireman timber forward and crash to the ground at her feet.
“Oh, hell.” She grimaced down at his still form. “This is going to get messy.”
* * *
… “And let me tell you,” Aunt Zoe said to me, “it only went south from there.”
“What happened when Reid woke up? Was he mad at you?” And how long did boxers usually take to wake up? Reid hadn’t moved a muscle yet from where he lay in front of the glass furnace. How hard had Aunt Zoe clocked him this time? Why wasn’t she worried about a concussion?
“I don’t know. With Reid in the capable hands of the EMS guys, I left after giving the chief a message for his new fire investigator to check the bedroom in the attic for evidence of arson.”
“Were you right?”
“Yes.”
“How did you know?” Like me, she had no sixth sense.
“I’d stopped by there a couple weeks before to place some wards for the owner. We grew up together and she knew about your great grandmother and her abilities when it came to protection.”
Just the mention of my great grandmother made me shudder. Her gnarly hands and rune stones had been the source of many of my childhood nightmares.
“The owner called late one evening,” Aunt Zoe continued, “swearing she had poltergeists breaking things in the middle of the night, slamming cupboard doors, and making wailing sounds in her basement.”
For years Aunt Zoe had made intricate glass and metal charms to ward off trouble caused by the non-living. Until lately, I’d worn what she’d made for me to humor her, but then I’d moved to Deadwood and run into a few folks who were definitely in the category of NON homo sapiens. I hadn’t realized until then that she made the little symbolic pieces for friends as well as family.
“So you made some charms to ward off her troublemakers?” I asked.
“Yes and no.” When I raised my eyebrows at her, she explained. “It was a test. You see, if there were truly malevolent spirits in that house, my charms should have caused some change in entity behavior, at least something minor like a redirection of focus. The charms have always been effective in the past. But when I checked back a couple of weeks later, the owner said nothing had changed. Cupboards were still banging and now her family’s antique crystal pieces in her china cabinet were under attack. That told me it wasn’t paranormal. This was an act of man—well, of girl. Specifically, her teenage daughter.”
“Why was her daughter doing that?”
“Who knows why teenagers do what they do? Probably to get attention.”
“So did Reid check that room and figure it out for himself?”
Aunt Zoe nodded. “He showed up at my door a couple of days later with a bouquet of flowers. Said he’d found evidence that the fire was started in a wastebasket. The girl confessed when pressed, claiming it had spread to the curtains before she could put it out.”
“So your tip helped him.” I gave her a sly grin. “And did you invite him in?”
“Against my better judgment.” When my grin widened, she shrugged. “What can I say? He looked really good cleaned up, like young Sam Elliot good, you know?”
“Yeah, I know.” He still did.
She focused on her hands, stretching her fingers wide. “And I was in the midst of a long dry spell.”
“Did he spend the night?’
Her stare slammed into mine. “Violet Lynn, what kind of woman do you think I am?”
“The red-blooded kind.” I crossed my ankles, swinging my legs while sitting on her worktable like back when I had been a kid. “So did he?”
Her smile was sheepish. “Not that night. He was quite charming, but I wasn’t new to the game.”
“You kept the flowers and kicked him out the door?”
She laughed. “Something like that, but he was pretty persistent over the next few weeks.” …
* * *
It was almost quitting time. Zoe was arranging the last two of her hand-blown indigo and crimson swirled glass flower vases in the display window of her small store on Deadwood’s Main Street when a familiar face appeared outside the glas
s.
Reid Martin smiled at her, his blue eyes flirting before he’d even stepped foot inside her store.
She moved back from the display as he pushed in through the door and paused inside the threshold to peruse the small gallery.
“Looking for something in particular?” she asked him.
His gaze settled on her, inspecting her from head to toe. “Not something, someone.”
Her pulse fluttered at his blatant flirting, damn it. “There’s nobody here. I was just about to close.” She walked over to the cash register, the glass display case between them.
“Perfect.” He leaned his elbows on the case, a little too close for her comfort. “You’re the one I need to see.”
“I am?” She pretended to scan through several receipts, trying to ignore how good his cologne smelled. “Why’s that?”
“You’re not returning my calls.”
“I’ve been busy working on some new pieces for a gallery in Sioux Falls.” That was only a partial lie, since she’d spent a moment here and there at her worktable drawing some new designs for the upcoming show.
When she glanced up, his disbelief was written all over his face.
“Besides, I told you that I don’t date locals.” She’d made that mistake before, and learned the meaning of once bitten, twice shy a little too well.
“And I told you that I’m not local.”
She’d first used that defense with him weeks ago while standing on her front porch steps. He’d shot back that he’d recently moved to Deadwood from Missoula, Montana, and then stolen a goodbye kiss before she could come up with another excuse to put him off.
“You are now,” she said.
He picked up a pen that she had sitting out, tapping it on the glass. “It’s not the same, Zo, and you know it.”
“That’s Zo-E to you.” She took the pen away from him and laid it next to the register. “And unless you plan on just passing through Deadwood, it is the same. You’re now a local.”
“All I’m asking for is dinner.” At her arched brow, he added, “and maybe a drink or two.”
She shook her head. “Not going to happen.”
“Come on, are you going to stand there and tell me that you don’t feel this electricity between us?”
Of course she did. She’d have to be living in a glass box not to, but he didn’t need to know that. “Any feeling you’re perceiving is most likely the cause of too much smoke inhalation from your last fire.”
He grinned at her. “You know you’re really beautiful when you’re obstinate like this.”
A bark of laughter escaped her lips. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Reid.”
He captured her fingers, pulling her hand across to his side of the case. She probably should have resisted but didn’t. He traced the lines on her palm, his calloused fingertip tickling her own work hardened skin.
“You owe me one, Zo.”
“For what?” She stared, mesmerized as he continued to trace circles on her hand.
“For knocking me out at the fire.”
“I apologized for that the first time you came to my house. It was your fault anyway.”
“For trying to pick up your keys for you?”
“For getting too close to me.” Her whole body now tingled as his finger trailed up her wrist, tickling the tender underside of her forearm. “Besides, you owe me for helping you solve that arson case.”
“You’re right. I do owe you.” He lifted her hand to his mouth, his mustache brushing her palm as he kissed the sensitive center. “Let me repay you with dinner and drinks, maybe some dancing.”
She wasn’t much of a dancer. “I’d embarrass you on the dance floor.”
“I was thinking the dancing part would be in private.”
Her face burned from the heat in his gaze. She pulled her hand away, closing her fist over his kiss. “Are you always this persistent?”
“Only when flames are involved.”
Wow, he was good. Her pounding heart threw in the towel, but her brain refused to go down for the count. “This is never going to happen, Reid.”
“Never is a long time, beautiful.” He stood upright and pulled a piece of paper from his back pocket. “In the meantime, take a look at this.” He spread the paper flat on the glass case in front of her.
She leaned over to get a closer look, glad to have something to distract her from the good-looking man who was making her pulse redline. “What is it?”
“It’s the paperwork for a fire that happened six months ago.”
“A cold case?”
He nodded, pointing at the address. “Do you remember this fire? It was in an empty, century-old building across from the rodeo grounds.”
“Yeah. The roof was a total loss, but they were able to put out the fire before the rest of the building burned down.”
“That’s the one. The cause of the fire hasn’t been determined.”
She looked up at him. “It hasn’t?”
“No, and now it’s my problem. I’m getting pressure from the building’s owner to come up with an answer. His insurance refuses to pay anything without the final paperwork.”
“Sounds like you have your work cut out for you.”
He tapped his index finger on the paperwork. “You don’t happen to have any inside information for me on this, do you?”
“I don’t know the owner. He’s from down in Rapid, if I remember right.”
“He is.” Reid frowned across at her. “What I mean is do you happen to have any peculiar information about this fire that you would normally share only with the chief?”
Ohhh, he was wondering if there were something paranormal involved. “I thought you didn’t believe in that sort of ghost hoopla.” Hoopla had been his word that day he’d come to her house with a bouquet of thank-you flowers.
“Ignore what I said before.”
“What about the way you laughed at me when I told you that I dabble in other realms?”
“And that.”
They locked gazes, his brimming with charm, triggering hers to grow hard and steely. “I don’t have information for you, Reid.”
“I’m sorry for the way I acted before.”
She could tell he meant it. “Apology accepted.”
“Now pretend I’m the chief.”
“That’s not going to work for me.”
“Why not?”
“Because he was my elementary school gym teacher.”
“Oh, right. Someone mentioned he’s a retired teacher.”
“He was hard core when it came to the physical stuff but always lots of fun.”
Reid chuckled. “There you go. I’m the same.”
She had no doubt about him on the physical and fun front. “No, you’re not.”
The heat and thrill she felt whenever Reid touched her was very different than the warmth and respect that ruled when the chief patted her on the back.
Reid’s eyes darkened, his pupils dilating. He was picking up on the direction of her thoughts. “That’s good to hear.”
Things were heating up again. She stepped back from the counter and the paper he’d brought for show and tell. “I can’t help you with that fire.”
“Why not?”
“Because it was caused by a human hand, nothing more.”
“You sound sure about that.”
“When I was young, my grandmother took me to piano lessons on the second floor of that building. She would’ve told me if there was something else living there. Something non-human.”
“I thought you were the one who could sense ghosts.”
“No. My grandmother had an eye for the past and the future. I just have a few tricks up my sleeve that she taught me to deal with whatever comes my way.” Actually, Zoe had a lot of tricks up her sleeve, but nobody needed to know about those. At least not until she saw what had come of her niece, who was beginning to show signs of something emerging now that she’d had twins.
Reid folded the paper,
frowning. “Damn. I’d hoped you could shed some light on this case.”
“What I can tell you is that the place had knob-and-tube wiring both upstairs and downstairs. I remember seeing it during my lessons.”
His eyes narrowed. “The owner claimed the old wiring wasn’t in use anymore.”
“Are you sure he wasn’t still using runs of it?” She knew other old timers who’d rigged up incredibly dangerous wiring in order to get power to their outbuildings. “Can you tell if old runs were still being used when you investigate post-fire?”
He nodded slowly. “I need to go back up there and take another look.” He tapped the glass counter. “Thank you. Now I owe you a second dinner date.”
She chuckled. “You don’t take no for an answer very often, do you?”
“Not when it’s something I want this much.”
While she looked around for something to focus on besides the fire his words lit inside her, he gave her a one finger salute and headed for the door. “I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Maybe.”
“Answer your phone when I call, Zo.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Trust me, you won’t regret it.”
* * *
… “But he was wrong,” Aunt Zoe told me. “I did regret it, just not at first.” Her smile was edged with nostalgia. “Definitely not at first.”
“Did he figure out what caused the fire in that building over by the rodeo grounds?”
“Yes, it was the knob-and-tube wiring with a touch of arson-based inspiration from the building’s owner.”
“So you were right again.”
“Sort of. It turned out the building owner was trying to cheat his insurance company. He needed to make some upgrades before the town’s building inspector would allow him to sublet the place, including a new roof. But he couldn’t afford the fixes, so he came up with a scheme on how to get his insurance company to pay for it. Per the policy he’d signed with the insurance company, all of the knob-and-tube wiring was supposed to have been replaced, but he’d left some of it still wired into the system on the second floor. So he sparked a fire and let it go long enough to burn through most of the evidence of where it started and then called the fire department.”