“That’s his intention, yes.”
“Good, because if your baby brother tried to kill us—”
“You have proof?”
He growled, and she got the impression not many people interrupted J.D. Maguire. “Close enough.”
Cozie swallowed. The receiver slipped in her hand. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Put the major on.”
She handed over the phone and drew away to the woodstove, and Daniel said, “Hey, J.D., how’s the leg?” His tone was cheerful, but his gray eyes, his stance, betrayed the tension he was feeling. Cozie mouthed that she was going out for wood.
Halfway to the woodpile, she stopped hard.
No one had checked the sawmill for her brother. Not the police, not Meg or Aunt Ethel, not even Daniel since he’d been so busy keeping an eye on her. But Seth knew the sawmill about as well as anyone—almost as well as well as she did—and he probably knew, too, that Daniel had been staying at the house.
If he were hiding there, where could he be?
“The root cellar,” she whispered.
It was worth a look.
Keeping an eye on the porch door, she hurried along the narrow path just above the stone dam to the opposite side of the sawmill, past the side door off the kitchen, up along where the rock foundation angled into the hillside. She tried to make as little sound as possible, in case Daniel decided to peek out the window.
She came to the five-foot wooden door to a small cellar room under the sawmill’s main floor. Originally it must have been some kind of storage room. She called it her root cellar, but she’d never gotten around to putting any roots in it.
The door was cracked open. That didn’t necessarily mean anything since it was warped. She yanked on it, and it creaked and groaned, finally sticking about eight inches out.
“Seth?” she called in a whisper.
She gave another hard tug, and there was enough space for her to slip into the damp, gloomy room. The ceiling was just over five feet, and she had to duck to keep from bumping her head. The open door provided very little light.
But she could see her brother slumped up against the drystone wall. “Hey, Coze,” he managed to say. “Heard you upstairs. I was just about to call it quits and come on up.”
“Good thinking.” As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could see that he was very pale, looking at once scared and relieved to see her. She crept over to him. “Seth, what happened?”
She saw the dark splotch on his left shoulder.
“I got shot,” he said simply.
“Seth!”
“It was my own fault; I got too close to the Vanackerns’ shooting range. Think I got grazed by a stray bullet when Thad or somebody was out target practicing.”
She knelt beside him. “Then the bullet didn’t go in?”
“I don’t think so. The bleeding’s stopped. It was just a stupid accident.”
“Are you sure?”
He sighed. “I’m not sure about anything right now.”
“I assume you didn’t tell Thad he’d shot you.”
“The way things are going, he’d find a way to blame me—and I don’t know that it was him. Julia and her mother like to shoot, and they’ve always got guests up. Could have been anyone. I should have been more careful.”
She quickly peeled back the place where the bullet had torn through his shirt. Blood had soaked through the gauze patches he’d taken from the first-aid kit at the house, but there didn’t appear to be any fresh blood. “This could get infected. You need a doctor, Seth.”
He grimaced. “I need to find out who the fuck’s setting me up. I’ve been thinking, a dead man’s easier to set up than one who can argue for himself.”
“Seth, Will Rubeno’s got a warrant for your arrest. We’ve found the Vanackerns’ stolen goods in your Land Rover. The police—Seth, there are calls on your bill to me from this last road trip.”
“What?”
“You don’t know anything about them?”
“Hell, no.”
“But your phone bill—”
“Cozie, I haven’t gotten my phone bill this month. The police must’ve checked with the phone company.” He bit off a curse. “It’s part of the set-up. Somebody waltzed in and used my phone.”
They were silent a moment. Cozie could smell her brother’s stale sweat, mingling with the dirt and mold and dampness of the small underground room.
Finally he said, “You don’t believe I’d make creepy calls to you, do you, Coze?”
“No. None of it.” She made sure she didn’t hesitate.
“Good.”
“About the Vanackerns’ missing cash and valuables…Thad said he saw you at your house right before I found them in your Rover.”
“Yeah, I was there,” he said wearily. “I was trying to figure out what to do. I saw Julia coming and cleared out, headed back down here.”
“You spent the night here?”
“Yeah. It was pretty comfortable.” Only her brother would think so. He leaned his head back against the rock wall and managed a feeble grin. “You and Daniel Foxworth, huh, Coze? Geez.”
“He’s upstairs,” she said briskly. “I told him I was getting wood. Seth, I think he can be convinced of your innocence. He says he’s keeping an open mind until he collects all the facts….”
“What if all the facts point to me?”
She thought of J.D.’s call. “I don’t know.”
“What about you, Coze? You still believe me?”
She heard his doubt. Felt it. “Yes.” She made herself smile. “You’d do a better job of covering your tracks if you were guilty.”
“I don’t know, I think I’ve made plenty of mistakes as it is. Cutting out—it was supposed to make things easier on you, not harder.” He drew a deep breath. She had never seen her brother so low. If he hated her, resented her success, he was doing a good job of not showing it. “And I was worried—I don’t know, Coze, but I think Julia…I think she’s pretty messed up. I thought maybe she was involved somehow in what’s going on and if I lay low for a while, maybe I could find out what was going on, figure something out. But things have gotten out of hand.”
Cozie nodded slowly, studying him in the dim light. “Yes, they have. When were you shot?”
“Just before Thad saw me at my place. I was going to get cleaned up, think about coming forward—then I saw Julia and I just couldn’t face her. So I came on down to the house. I cleared out just as you and Foxworth were coming up the driveway. A wonder you didn’t catch me.”
“Catch you? Seth…”
He gave her a wan smile. “I know. It sounds crazy. But I was scared, not thinking straight.”
“What about your truck at Meg’s?”
“I left it there the first day. I figured it’d throw you off my scent if you found it. I hiked from the farm out to the monk hut—it wasn’t bad.”
“Look,” Cozie said, rising as much as she dared before she’d hit her head, “I’ve got to get out of here before Daniel gets suspicious. He’s on the phone now with his partner in Texas.”
“I didn’t sabotage—”
“I know you didn’t. I’ll be back, Seth. We’ll work this thing out.”
“Yeah.” He sounded dejected and hopeless, not like himself at all. “Thanks, Coze.”
She gave him a quick, encouraging smile. “You’d do the same for me.”
“I would, you know,” he said.
She left him and snuck back to the wood pile, grabbing an armload of logs.
Daniel was sitting on the porch rail when she came up the steps. “Nice try, Cozie.”
“What, I can’t carry as many logs as you can?”
He was unamused. “How’s your brother?”
Refusing to answer, she opened the screen door with her toe and caught it with her elbow, then pushed open the oak door with her shoulder. She dumped the logs in the wood box she and her father had made. Sawdust and tiny wood chips clung to h
er front. Daniel, she knew even without looking around at him, had followed her inside.
She shoved a log on the fire and whipped around at him. He was leaning against the door frame, arms crossed, utterly calm. And why shouldn’t he be? Seth was trapped under the sawmill with a bullet wound, and she wasn’t about to go anywhere with Daniel blocking the doorway. He had both her and her brother right where he wanted them: under his control.
She did not mean more to him than his answers. She did not mean more to him than his sense of responsibility to J. D. Maguire. Than restoring the Foxworth honor and his own shattered reputation.
That much, she thought, was very clear to her.
But was the reverse also true? Did proving her brother innocent mean more to her than her complicated, overpowering feelings for Daniel Foxworth? Would she rather shove him out of her life than admit Seth’s guilt?
“The doctors got all the infection in J.D.’s leg,” Daniel said.
“That’s a relief, I’m sure.”
“He’s about ready to break out of the hospital and come up here, rattle a few chains.”
“Help you find my brother, you mean.”
Daniel didn’t move. “The experts have gone over our helicopter. They say they’ve found evidence of sabotage: part of a timing device.”
Cozie brushed the sawdust and wood chips off her front. She had nothing to say.
“J.D. and I have been around aircraft and explosives a long time. It wouldn’t take someone who knew what they were doing five minutes to slip a timer onto a detonator cap before we took off.”
“And that someone had to be Seth?”
“It could have been,” Daniel said calmly. “He’s in forestry. He knows how to handle explosives.”
“That’s not proof! That’s just speculation.”
She shut her mouth. Her pulse was racing. She almost fell back against the stove. She thought she saw Daniel take a step toward her, but he remained in the doorway.
“I’m going to talk to your brother, Cozie, and see what he has to say.”
He started back out to the porch. Short of knocking him on the head with a chunk of wood, there was little she could do to stop him.
But her brother was already staggering up the steps, looking even more haggard in the sunlight, as he clung to the railing. Cozie could see Daniel stiffen. “You need a doctor,” he said. “I’m calling an ambulance.”
“No,” Seth said. “It looks worse than it is. And if I don’t have any color, it’s because I’m waiting for a little vigilante justice to come down on my head.”
“That would be premature.”
“No kidding,” Cozie put in.
Seth paused on the top step, puffing, out of breath—or just scared. “I didn’t sabotage your helicopter, and there’s no way I’d…” His eyes met Cozie’s; he was at a loss for words. “She’s my sister. I might short-sheet her bed once in a while, but I’d never make those calls.”
Daniel sighed. “I think it’s high time we brought in the police and let them start sorting things out. It’s not easy for me to trust someone else’s instincts, but your sister here has been vouching for you since day one, even against increasingly damning evidence. That level of conviction…” He paused, not looking at Cozie, the hard lines of his face uncompromising despite his words. “I can’t ignore it.”
“I shouldn’t have ducked out,” Seth admitted. He was shaky, and Cozie wondered if he were being too sanguine about how fine his bullet wound was doing.
“It’s done now.” Daniel’s tone was neither condemning nor sympathetic, just that studied neutral Cozie had come to learn was a cover for his deeper, more powerful emotions. “I keep thinking it’s interesting that of all that has conveniently turned up to incriminate you, the stuff stolen from Cozie’s kitchen hasn’t. The log she kept of the calls, the recording, the message she found on her windshield—nobody’s seen any of it.”
“Because it could clear Seth!” Cozie blurted.
Daniel, however, wasn’t ready to go that far. “It’s possible.”
“I hadn’t thought of it,” she continued, “but maybe an expert listening to the cassette could eliminate Seth as a suspect; and he might have a foolproof alibi for some of the calls. To complete a successful frame, that evidence would have to be destroyed.”
Seth didn’t look as hopeful. His bony shoulders sagged. “Either that or the police could say they just haven’t found it, or I was better at getting rid of it than the other stuff.”
“Does one of you want to call the police,” Daniel said quietly, “or shall I?”
“I will,” Seth said, taking the final step onto the porch.
A sparkling 1972 Dodge Dart barreled down the steep driveway and careened to a crooked stop. Cozie ran down to it. Her aunt had the door open, but she hadn’t moved. “Aunt Ethel, what’s wrong?”
She was as pale as Cozie had ever seen her. “Get in the car, Cozie. The house is on fire.”
Chapter
18
Even before Aunt Ethel turned up the driveway Cozie could smell smoke. Acrid and black, it billowed up from the far end of the house. The porch and back room were engulfed in flames. She was too stricken to cry out. Her aunt braked hard and swerved onto the island created by the loop shape of the dirt driveway. Daniel and Seth barreled in beside them in Daniel’s truck.
Cozie staggered out onto the grass. She could feel the heat of the fire. She imagined things burning that shouldn’t be burning. The old cookstove. Her father’s chair. The television, the canning jars, the old boots and shoes. All her green tomatoes.
The volunteer fire department was out in full force. They’d had to bring a water tanker. One of the fire fighters was dragging a hose down to the brook. There were no fire hydrants on Hawthorne Orchard Road.
Seth yelled, swearing, re-energized, and shot past Cozie and Aunt Ethel, running and stumbling toward his childhood home. He was a volunteer firefighter himself. His buddies, apparently unaware of the warrant for his arrest, quickly gave him something to do.
Cozie didn’t know what to do with herself. She felt useless. Staying out of the way was probably the best thing she could do, but she hated being passive.
“My God, Cozie, I’m sorry.” Thad Vanackern appeared beside her. In her shock she hadn’t noticed him or his champagne-colored Mercedes. His face was streaked with soot and tears. “I called in the fire. I was passing by and saw the smoke, and I knew it couldn’t be from the woodstove. I don’t know, I think it was a chimney fire.”
“It’s not a chimney fire,” Daniel said with grim certainty as he came up beside Cozie. She fought an urge to sink against him, to let him handle everything. What was there to handle? Her house was burning.
How would she tell her mother? Her little niece and nephews?
“I suppose you would know,” Thad said coolly, clearly not appreciating being second-guessed.
Cozie touched Daniel’s hand when she saw his grim, knowing expression. “What is it?”
“The fire was set.” His steel eyes stayed on the older man. “There was an explosion.”
“My God—how can you be sure?”
“Because I’ve seen too damned many of them.” He turned to Cozie, his eyes softening. “I’ll see if I can give a hand.”
He moved off silently, the professional at work. She was ready to grab a bucket and get busy herself.
Beside her Thad said, “Will Rubeno is on his way.” But his gaze was riveted on Seth as he joined in the fire-fighting fray, bullet wound and all. “I doubt there’s any harm in Seth’s helping to put out the fire. If it was an explosion—well, that’s not for me to say.” He breathed out, exhaustion apparent in his redrimmed eyes and the gray pallor of his skin. It hadn’t been much of a peak foliage season for him. “Cozie, if the authorities need to speak with me, I’ll be at the house. Please let them know.”
“I will. Thank you, Thad.” Her voice was dull, as if it belonged to someone else. “If you hadn’t come a
long when you did…if you’d just gone on by…”
He sighed. “I never would have just gone by, Cozie. I’ll see you. I’m…I’m so sorry.”
When he’d gone, she noticed Aunt Ethel standing with her knees locked, staring sober and gray-faced at the burning house that had been in her family since the American Revolution. Cozie was afraid her elderly aunt was slipping into shock and took her bony hand; it was frozen.
“I used to have nightmares as a little girl about this place going up in flames,” Aunt Ethel said in a steady, clear voice. “The wood’s so old and dry; it would have burned to the ground before the fire trucks could get here if Thad hadn’t happened by.”
“Do you think there’s a chance they’ll save it?”
“Don’t know.” She frowned. “There’s your Texan up on the roof. Likes to take the hard jobs, doesn’t he?”
“I wonder why he said it was an explosion.”
“Because of the way the fire’s spread.” Aunt Ethel pulled her gaze from the burning house. Her green eyes were tired but confident. “A chimney fire or an electrical fire would spread out from one place; an explosion would start the fire in a bunch of different places at once. That’s what happened here.”
A chill swept through Cozie despite the hot flames. “Would a detonator cap do the trick?”
“It and some kind of starter, yes.”
“How do you know this stuff? I know you’ve been reading the Citizen forever, but…”
Her aunt squeezed her hand, her fingers as stiff and brittle as sticks. “Frannie’s dad taught us when we were in our teens. He worked up in the marble quarries. He taught Frannie, me, your father. Thad, too. His father wanted him to experience manual labor and had him work with Frannie’s dad part of one summer. We were all eager to learn. And Mr. Tucker—that was what he knew, explosives. He was a drinker and he never held a job for long, but he could almost always find work in those days because he could blow through rock like no one else.”
Cozie managed to speak. “I never knew.”
“No reason for you to know. He died a long time ago. He came to work drunk and blew up himself and one of his men. It was right after Frannie and Thad were engaged. Her mother had been dead several years already; she didn’t have any brothers and sisters. So then she became a Vanackern.” She withdrew her hand from Cozie’s and shook her head, a palpable sadness overcoming her. “I guess none of us wanted to remember Ernie Tucker.”
Finding You Page 27