Jakayla finished ringing up the last purchase of the day—a half bucket of fresh worms and a waffle cone with a double scoop of vanilla for good measure—and sent the happy customer on his way. She blew out an exaggerated sigh and rolled her eyes. “Whew! You don’t need a part-time job, do you, Kari?”
Kari’s stomach flipped as she set her cupcake boxes down on the counter by the dusty jars of pickled pigs’ feet Jakayla kept more as a conversation piece than an actual sales item. Kari hoped she wouldn’t need to resort to a part-time job. She hoped the trickle of new orders she was getting would be enough to keep her afloat until more orders started coming in. Or until this investigation was over and maybe the insurance would allow her to reopen her shop.
“You’re short of help?” Kari asked, deflecting the question. “I thought what’s-her-name, Tina Williams, worked for you at least part-time.”
“Man, am I! Tina just went into labor this morning, three weeks early. Everything’s all right with her and the baby—an eight-pound boy, by the way—but it’s caught me off guard, I can tell you,” Jakayla explained.
“And I should tell you thanks for remembering me when you needed cupcakes.”
“Remember? How could I forget? Demetrius asks every time we drive by your place if we can’t stop in for more goodies—oh, gosh, your bakery.” Jakayla’s face fell. “Could you save anything?”
“Some cookbooks, a few stainless steel bowls—honestly, that’s about it. But whatever I can, I will. I’m just glad you called me.”
Jakayla lifted up the box lid and filched a cupcake. “Oh, these are so cute! Look at that little race car!”
“You said a mix of things would be fine, so I hope it’s okay that they don’t all match,” Kari said.
“They’re great—the kids will have their choice.”
“Now, these are all peanut-free—no tree nuts, no peanuts, no cross contamination. But they do contain egg and dairy,” Kari warned. She tapped the little stickers on the side that indicated the egg and dairy.
“You remembered. Thank you—Demetrius has a friend or two in his class who have nut allergies, and I never know what’s safe.”
“My pleasure,” Kari replied.
“It’ll be the best birthday Demetrius has ever had.” Jakayla pointed at the invoice Kari had discreetly taped to the top of the box. “This is the amount, right?” When Kari nodded, Jakayla pulled out her checkbook and started writing. “My phone died on me—Demetrius is at that stage where he wants to see what things look like on the inside, and I made the mistake of using one of his favorite cartoons as my wallpaper. Wouldn’t you know? Kid tried to get the cartoon character out.” Jakayla shook her head. “So I’d lost your cell phone number, and your shop number is disconnected. I’d tried everywhere to find you—and nobody could tell me your new location or a phone number. I was beginning to think I’d have to disappoint Demetrius when Rob Monroe showed up yesterday.”
Kari’s scalp prickled. “Rob Monroe?” Her throat went dry, and she found it hard to get the name out.
“Yeah, you know, I knew he worked with the fire department—it’s practically a family tradition for the Monroes. But I didn’t know he was a—a—oh, here’s his card. Rob Monroe. Cause and Origin/Arson Investigator? What is he, some sort of fire cop?”
“He was here?”
“Uh-huh.” Jakayla ripped out the check and handed it to Kari.
Kari took it with numb fingers. “And he told you where to find me? How did you...know to ask him?”
“Oh, girl, I didn’t. He came in here asking about propane tank purchases—you remember the cage of tanks I keep? It’s a great draw—guys come here for the tanks, and nine times out of ten, they leave with a bucket of bait or a sweet treat, usually both. Anyway, Rob had your picture with him, and I said, ‘I know her! She’s my baker! And by the way, do you know how I can get in touch with her?’”
“Wow. What a referral,” Kari managed to joke.
“He said that your shop got torched on purpose. That’s a bummer. And he had to rule you out, you know, so you could get your insurance settlement.”
A flood of gratitude at Rob’s kindness welled up within Kari—he’d couched the question in such a way that she didn’t look like Felony Suspect Number One.
“So I let him look at all the surveillance tapes and gave him my propane-tank log, and he seemed happy as a clam—and he gave me your cell phone number. Two happy customers!” Jakayla’s smile flashed brightly. “Make that three—Demetrius will be so thrilled. You tell me when you get back into your shop, now—and I’ll be sure to come by and order something—although gracious, goodness, my hips sure don’t need any more temptation.” She slapped her palm against the offending curve.
“Hopefully they’re finishing up the investigation, and I’ll be back in my shop very soon,” Kari assured her. “I’ll let you know. But in the meantime, feel free to share my cell phone number with anybody who may need baked goods, okay?”
“Sure will!”
Kari gave her a wave and started for the walkway to her van, but Jakayla’s next words, delivered in a teasing lilt, made her pause. “Rob Monroe sure did seem interested in you,” Jakayla said. “He seemed awfully smitten for a cop. Anything going on there?”
Kari felt her face heat up. “No—no, he’s just a nice guy, that’s all.”
“Hey, there aren’t that many nice guys left—I know, I got one of the last good ones,” Jakayla cautioned her. “All those Monroe boys were raised right. None of that drinking or carousing around.”
“Uh...” Kari shook her head. How to dance around this one? “You know, I didn’t go to high school here. I was...”
Instantly Jakayla’s face registered bemusement. “You didn’t? Did you move here later? I thought you had family here.”
“Well...” Kari didn’t want to lie, but she didn’t want to remind Jakayla of her past. The woman may have heard and forgotten about it, or never connected it to Kari to begin with. “My mom is from here. But my parents were divorced.”
Jakayla flapped her hand in a never-you-mind manner. “Well, here’s the honest truth, all you need to know is those Monroe guys are all nice and all firefighters. If he’s as sweet on you as he seemed to me, then maybe you’d better snap him up.”
Kari pressed her lips together and ducked her head. She focused on the concrete pad out under Jakayla’s shelter. There were so many reasons Rob Monroe and she would never make it as a couple—her past, for one.
“I’ve got my hands full as it is—adding dating to the mix would stretch my juggling skills a wee bit too far,” Kari tried to joke.
Jakayla shook her finger at Kari. “Still, it’s a real good thing that you hadn’t bought a propane tank lately.”
Kari frowned. “I haven’t ever bought a propane tank.”
“Yeah, I meant—well, you know, Jake came in that time, got a tank for you. Remember? Y’all were grilling steaks? For his birthday?”
Jake’s birthday was in December, and she’d marked that with a stilted phone call of well wishes. She had most certainly not grilled steaks for him.
“Last year?” she asked.
“No, no...about a month ago, now. His birthday.” Jakayla repeated the phrase insistently as though it was supposed to jog Kari’s stubborn memory. “Or...no, maybe it was a friend’s? He was with some buddies.”
Suspicion pooled in Kari’s gut, as nauseating as sour milk. Had Jake bought a propane tank? Had he started the fire after all?
CHAPTER NINE
ROB WAITED WITH his brother Daniel in the DA’s dingy and cramped conference room. The DA had called an impromptu status meeting on the investigation, and now Rob cooled his heels as he sat, more fidgety and anxious than he cared to admit. He flipped through his notes, straightened the pertinent financial reports into
an even neater stack on the scratched woodgrain surface.
“Isn’t that stack straight enough?” Daniel observed from his seat across the conference table. “That’s the third time you’ve done it.”
“What’s he want, anyway?” Rob burst out. “If he wants the case solved, why jam me up and waste my time, calling me in and then making me wait on him?”
Daniel shrugged. But then, as fire chief, Daniel was used to being called in front of whatever authority wanted to quiz him—county commissioners, city manager, county manager.
Rob, too, had a murky chain of command. Ostensibly he was head of the Origin and Cause Investigative Division—but the arson squad was really just him. He reported to both Daniel, as the fire chief, and the DA, who would bring Rob’s cases to court eventually.
Still, it was odd for the DA himself to wade in. Usually Rob did most of his work with an assistant DA. Chase had been the one assigned to this case.
“It’s a big deal, Rob Roy,” Daniel reminded him. “Half the downtown was torched. And Franklin does answer to the voters.”
The door opened, and in swept the chief District Attorney Sam Franklin, his white hair high and away from his lined forehead, his pinpoint shirt still crisp and unwrinkled even midmorning, the cuffs precisely rolled up. Chase followed behind like a duckling keeping up with its mama.
“Rob, Daniel. Thank you, boys, for coming in. Chase tells me that you haven’t closed the downtown fire case. I want to know what the holdup is.”
Rob managed to bite back a “can’t arrest an unknown” retort. “Sir,” he said. “I am following every lead. Diligently. But you do know how tough arson cases are—”
“So you know who the culprit is, and you’re just nailing down the evidence?” Franklin cut in.
“Uh...that would be a no. Sir.” Rob fiddled with the papers on the desk to avoid meeting the man’s gaze. He realized what he’d done and lifted his chin up, giving him a direct look back. “I can bring you up to date, if you’d like.”
Franklin sighed, glanced at his watch, and sat down in the chair at the head of the table. Chase took a seat next to Rob and flipped open a notebook.
“I’m listening,” Franklin said.
Rob drew in a breath. “Indulge me if I tell you something you already know, because I don’t want to leave anything out. The fire started at the service door of the bakery, approximately 3:00 a.m., by means of a propane tank and a safety flare.”
Franklin waved his hand impatiently. “Yes, yes, I’m familiar with this. Chase has kept me in the loop, and I do read the newspapers. How’d you proceed?”
Rob stared down at the papers again to give him a moment to gather his thoughts. “I focused in on the bakery owner, Kari Hendrix, to see if she had any financial motive or opportunity to set it. Video from a security camera put her at her apartment the whole night of the fire, until she came out after the fire department had responded to the blaze—a neighboring shop owner called her and alerted her to the fire.”
“So she couldn’t have done it herself, then. Airtight alibi? No way to leave by a back entrance?” Franklin prodded.
“Airtight, sir,” Rob agreed. “No back entrance, and no neighbors heard or saw anything—and believe me, I raised a ruckus going back through that alley—dogs, cats, even a parrot that squawked loud enough to raise the dead. Plus, there’s a sort of voyeur type who knew a little too much about Kari’s comings and goings. Bordering on stalkerish, if you ask me. Anyway, he verified that he’d been up late—watching the stars, he said—and he saw no movement in that back alley.”
A flutter of thanksgiving pulsed through Rob that Kari was away from that weirdo. Maybe it had been a good thing she’d had to move in with her mom.
“Okay, so could she have paid to have it done?”
Rob pulled out a summary on his notes from the financials. “As you can see, sir, she had no large amounts of cash withdrawn from her bank, no checks written to individuals. The credit card charges to repairmen checked out, and they verified that it was for parts and labor for various repairs to the store.”
“Hmm.” Franklin scanned the sheet, the corners of his mouth pulling down in disappointment. He tossed it aside, and it slid a few inches toward Daniel. “But she’s done this before.”
It always came back to that, even for Rob. He felt ashamed, since there was so little evidence against Kari.
“Yes, sir. But say for instance she somehow managed to get out of the apartment and start the fire. She had to acquire the propane tank from somewhere.”
“You track the tank? Is there a way to do that?” Franklin mused.
“There are serial numbers and the like, sir. But I couldn’t tell what company had manufactured the tank or filled it. I theorized that perhaps I could find a clerk who remembered her—or some of the other people I was looking at—getting the tank, even if she didn’t have a paper trail. I couldn’t find a check or credit card purchase that reflected a propane tank purchase.”
“What about checks for cash? Or cash advances?” Chase interjected.
“I thought of that. Kari doesn’t do that—she either pays with a check or with a credit card, and she only has the one credit card.”
“Dang, she’s clever, then,” Franklin bit out. “Maybe she had an accomplice.”
Rob couldn’t help saying, “Maybe she’s innocent. Sir.”
Now Franklin steepled his index fingers together and squinted at him. “Rob.” The word was gentle and easy, all warning signs for anyone who knew Franklin even peripherally that the next words needed to be heeded. “You sweet on this girl?”
“No, sir!” Rob protested. “I just—can’t seem to find any hard evidence linking her to the crime.”
“Besides the fact that she was nearly bankrupt, and she’s solved her problems with a set of matches before,” Franklin muttered. “You called her Kari a couple of times. I notice things. I’m wondering if you haven’t let your...bias...cloud your judgment.”
“Sir, I will admit to being impressed with anybody who works as hard as Kari Hendrix does and has a reputation for making everything right with her customers. She’s smart, and she’s built up the beginnings of a solid business in the six months she’s been in operation. I don’t know very many who could break even on a bakery as quickly as she has—you said bankrupt, but that’s not an accurate picture. If it hadn’t been for Charlie Kirkman’s refusal to pay for some major repairs, she would have been turning a profit.”
“Maybe,” Chase interjected, “Charlie was the one who started the fire—after all, he wouldn’t want to sink any money into a building he was planning on burning down.”
Franklin guffawed. “Charlie Kirkman doesn’t want to sink money into any building ever. Stingiest man I ever saw. No, sir, he wouldn’t part with the money to buy the tank. He’d use somebody else’s kitchen matches, if I know that boy. Besides, we wouldn’t be talking about you chasing your tail, would we, Rob, if you’d found anything linking Charlie to this thing?”
Rob had to concede the point. “I looked hard at Charlie. He was out of town that night, and he has nothing in his financials that looks like arson-for-hire or the purchase of a propane tank. Plus, the buildings were actually under-insured—Charlie and his skin-flintiness, as you pointed out.”
“Chase said something about the pawnshop owner?” Franklin prompted. “What was that?”
“Er. Nothing, really. Another dead end,” Rob admitted. “He’d wanted to expand into Kari’s—Kari Hendrix’s shop. But he’s already got an offer on a larger location around the corner. I don’t think it’s him, either.”
Franklin shook his head in disgust. “So...nothing. You got nothing. Except a girl who has burned down one building just like this one—”
“Sir, I can’t say that for sure. I don’t know the nature of that fire. The inves
tigation’s records are sealed—the whole thing, because she was a juvenile.”
“But she confessed. She pleaded guilty.”
Now Daniel spoke up for the first time. “And she served her time, sir.”
Franklin huffed. “I can’t believe it. You two boys—of anybody in the whole wide world—ought to hate an arsonist with passion. And there are the both of you defending her? A self-confessed arsonist? Same as the coward who killed your father?”
Rob felt himself come halfway out of his chair, but saw his big brother wave him down.
Daniel’s reply to Franklin came in measured tones. “If I might, as fire chief, put in my perspective?”
“By all means.” Franklin made a show of looking at his watch again. “What’s another five more minutes of wasted time?”
“I agree with you, sir, that my brother seems...a little protective of Kari Hendrix. Still, I have to concede that he’s looked high and low for a connection. Rob?”
“I thought I’d found something yesterday,” Rob told the DA. “I went to every convenience store in town, every hardware store, every business that sold propane tanks that matched the one used in the fire. Kari’s brother Jake bought a tank at that bait and tackle shop on the outskirts of town about three weeks before the fire. He paid cash for it.”
Franklin gawked at him and threw out his hands in a wide palms-up move. “Well, there you have it, plain as day. She had help!”
“Uh, no, sir. The number on the tank used to start the fire did not match the number on the tank he bought—plus, it wasn’t the same make. This tank—the one used in the fire? It was older, like it had been around for a while.”
“Maybe she stole it.”
“Maybe the arsonist stole it, yes,” Rob ground out. In a more controlled tone, he added, “But, sir, even if I were willing to swear that Kari Hendrix started that fire, which I’m not, you’ve got no case. She has no motive—no financial gain, really, in burning her business. No financial paper trail showing her buying the means to start the fire. You got a hole of reasonable doubt big enough to drive an 18-wheeler through.”
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