by Janet Dailey
“And your sister married a Calder,” Logan remarked, idly wondering at that.
“Yup.” O’Rourke dropped his gaze to the ground, the brim of his hat casting his face in shadows. “He loved her. I’ll say that much for him.”
“Sometimes that’s all that needs to be said.”
“I guess.” He looked up, again observing him in that closely watchful way. “What did you think of the boy?”
Logan frowned, puzzled that O’Rourke would be asking about Calder’s grandson again. “He seemed like a good kid. I didn’t really pay that much attention. Why do you ask?”
“’Cause next time maybe you should.”
“Why’s that?” His pager beeped. Logan checked it and smothered a sigh of irritation. “Excuse me.” He walked to the patrol car, slid behind the wheel, switched on the radio and called in. “This is Echohawk. What’s the problem?”
There was an initial squawk and a crackle, followed by the excited voice of Deputy Rouch. “There’s a fire at Fedderson’s. Hubble just called from the scene and said the gas pumps are engulfed in flames.”
“Has the foam truck been called in?”
“I don’t know,” the deputy replied uncertainly. “I never asked.”
“Find out,” Logan replied. “I’m on my way.”
“Ten-four.” Rouch at last responded with the radio codes he was so fond of spouting.
“Did he say Fedderson’s was on fire?” O’Rourke stepped up to the driver’s side when Logan started the engine.
“Yep.” Reversing away from the barn, he peeled out of the yard, driving with one hand and buckling his seat belt with the other.
When he hit the highway, he turned on the siren and raced toward Blue Moon. His thoughts traveled along a dozen different tangents, and he found himself wondering again why O’Rourke had asked him about Calder’s grandson. But the answer to that would have to come at another time.
SIXTEEN
Daylight brought a steady stream of locals to view the damage of the previous night’s fire. It was the most exciting thing that had happened in Blue Moon in years. They stared at the blackened metal shells of the gasoline pumps, the charred tires propped beside them, the fire-scorched concrete around them, and the globs of melted plastic, and listened intently to accounts of those who had been on the scene. All speculated on the disaster that might have occurred if the underground tanks had blown, while others wondered where they were going to buy gas for their vehicles.
The constant flow of people brought business, more business than Sally Brogan had ever had at her restaurant. By four o’clock Saturday afternoon, she was down to one package of buns, a dozen eggs, and two pounds of hamburger, and was completely out of lettuce—and the evening crowd had yet to arrive. Left with no choice, she made a quick trip to Fedderson’s store and came out with an armload of groceries.
She was halfway back to the restaurant when a pickup pulled off the highway and parked in front of it. Sally didn’t have to see the Triple C brand emblazoned on its doors to recognize Chase behind the wheel. Jessy and Cat were with him, along with young Quint.
“Honestly, Chase, don’t tell me you came to gawk at Emmett’s burned pumps, too?” Sally walked up to him when he climbed out of the truck.
“Actually, I thought it was time I took these two young ladies out to dinner.” But his glance was already sliding past her to the station area. “I did hear there was a fire. It doesn’t look like there’s much damage.”
“It was confined to the island. The gasoline pumps are a total loss. Unfortunately, it may be as much as a week before he can get new ones installed.” Sally glanced that way as well, the paper sacks rattling in her arms.
Jessy came around the truck, followed by Cat and her son. “Let me give you hand with those sacks, Sally,” Jessy offered, reaching out.
“No, thanks. Right now I have them wedged together. If you took one, I’d probably drop the rest.” She turned her smile on the tall blonde. “You’re looking well. How are you feeling?”
“Wonderful,” Jessy replied, beaming with happiness.
“Where was the fire, Grandpa?” Quint caught hold of Chase’s hand, claiming his attention. “Can we go see?”
“We will in a minute,” he promised.
“Don’t worry, Quint,” Sally told him. “Your grandpa wants to see it as much as you do. It seems we never quite outgrow our fascination with fire and its aftermath, no matter how old we get.” Sally’s astute observation drew a smile from Cat and a quick, admitting chuckle from her father. With a smile of her own, Sally started toward her restaurant. “I’ll see you inside.”
“Let me get the door for you.” Jessy went after her.
Cat fell in step with her father and Quint when they headed across the graveled parking lot toward Fedderson’s. Wooden barricades blocked off the fire-damaged pump island and kept the handful of onlookers well away from the site.
A couple of Dy-Corp workers stood at the far end of the restaurant parking lot, watching a man inside the barricades as he inspected the burned area inch by inch. Hearing footsteps behind them, they glanced around and nodded a silent greeting.
The taller of the two said, without preamble, “Guess you heard about the fire last night. The fire marshal just got here a little while ago. That’s him going over it now.”
But it was the lean and rangy man behind the barricades, standing beside Emmett Fedderson, who claimed Cat’s attention. He was out of uniform, dressed in boot-cut jeans, a white western shirt, and a lacquered straw Stetson, looking much as he had the very first time she’d seen him. Her pulse skittered, the memory of last night’s hard kiss surfacing abruptly, and the air temperature seemed to rise a good ten degrees.
“Is arson suspected?” her father asked, stopping to talk to the two men.
But Quint kept walking toward the barricades. Cat hurriedly caught him by the shoulders, drawing him to a halt. “This is close enough, Quint.”
He stopped reluctantly. But any hope that she might escape Logan’s notice vanished as his gray eyes cut to her. She made a point of ignoring him, although she couldn’t ignore the vivid and unsettling effect of his presence.
“How come it’s all black over there?” Quint wanted to know.
“The fire did that.” A lazy breeze carried the smell of smoke and burned rubber. “Remember how black it is inside the fireplace?”
“Uh-huh.” Quint nodded.
“It’s the same thing.”
“You mean, it’s like soot?” He tilted his head back to look up at her, and Cat found herself glancing into another pair of equally gray eyes.
“Very much like it, yes.”
Quint squared around and stared at the fire scene for a long minute. “What’s he doing?” He pointed to the balding man behind the barricades as Jessy rejoined them.
“He’s trying to figure out how the fire got started,” Cat replied.
“How can he do that?”
“Now that’s a hard question.” She glanced at Jessy, uncertain how to answer it in terms Quint could understand.
“I think he went to a school to learn that,” Jessy put in.
“Will I learn that when I go to school?” Quint asked, clearly intrigued by the possibility.
“Probably not right away,” Jessy answered with more than a trace of amusement.
Cat smiled in response to it, but it was an absent movement of her lips as she cast an oblique glance at Logan. She hated this achy need she felt whenever he was around. Last night she had fought it as much as she had fought him; in the end, she had surrendered to both.
It shamed her to realize that she now thought of Logan in that same heated way she had once thought about Repp. The memory of Repp was just that—a memory. The thought of him no longer stirred up any of the old quiver of longings. It shook her faith in her own judgment and somehow cheapened the love she had felt for Repp. But she would not let go of her loyalty to him. She absolutely would not.
A pick
up truck turned off the highway, skirted the wooden barricades, and pulled up alongside the building. There was the metallic slam of doors, one an echo of the first as Norma Fedderson stepped from the store and hollered at her husband that he had a phone call.
“Maybe that’s the insurance adjuster,” he said to Logan and hustled off to take the call.
Logan managed a belated nod and snapped his gaze away from Cat and back to the fire marshal, half-irritated by his absorption with her. From the instant he saw her standing there, the sight of her had been like a potent whiskey racing through his bloodstream. Thirsty again, he looked back to take a second drink.
A silver concho belt cinched the waist of an emerald dress that matched and deepened the green of her eyes and turned her hair a more shining black. A playful wind teased at the hem of the dress’s full skirt, then molded the fabric to her and showed each ripely curved line of her body, a body he remembered in intimate detail.
There was a coolness to her expression now, but he knew the fire that lay just beneath it, the fire of both her anger and her passion. He had aroused both, and he could do it again. She knew it as well, and hated him for it.
The scuff of sauntering footsteps sounded behind him. Logan turned with an impatient swing of his shoulders, expecting to see Emmett Fedderson. His piercing glance collided with the mocking eyes of Lath Anderson.
“Heard there was some excitement here last night,” he remarked with seeming idleness.
“A little.” Recognizing the sudden shortness of his temper, Logan turned back, his glance running again to Cat.
Lath saw it. “That Cat Calder is quite a looker, isn’t she?”
“Keep your mouth off her, Anderson.”
“Now, there’s a picture,” he said with a marveling shake of his head. “Tell you the truth, about the only thing better than having my mouth on her, would be having hers on me. Just thinking about it is enough to make me hard.”
Lath glanced sideways to gauge the effect of his words, and shock ripped through him. Echohawk’s eyes were on him, cold and wicked like the black muzzles of a shotgun ringed with gray steel.
“One more word, Anderson, and you’ll find yourself spread-eagled on the ground eating concrete.” The tightly murmured words held a warning note of thinly repressed fury.
“Hey.” Backing up a step, Lath held up his hands in mock surrender and laughed to cover the fear churning through him. “How was I to know you had ideas in that direction yourself?”
“You’re wrong about that.” The reply was snapped out, giving lie to the denial.
“If you say so.” Lath shrugged, relieved when those cold eyes were directed elsewhere, and fully aware jealousy didn’t get any greener than what he had just witnessed. He looked to where the man was poking around in a pile of ash next to a charred gas pump. “Anybody know how the fire got started?”
“With a match.”
“You mean it was deliberately set?” He feigned surprise, and saw Echohawk wasn’t convinced. Confident again, he didn’t care.
“Where were you last night between midnight and one o’clock?”
“Me? You surely don’t think I had anything to do with starting this fire, do you?”
Logan gave him a level look, his temper once more under control. “According to Emmett, the two of you had words last night after he refused to reopen your family’s charge account with him. He said it wasn’t the first time you’d argued over it.”
“He said that?!” He whirled around as Emmett came out of the store, saw him and hesitated. “Am I glad to see you, Emmett. The sheriff here just told me something real distressing. He claims that you said we argued over my ma’s account with you. Now, you got to come here and set the record straight.”
Emmett shuffled wearily to them, his expression hard and bitter and careful. “What I said was a fact, Lath, and you know it. You was upset ’cause I wouldn’t reopen that account.”
“Sure, it grieved me, but I never said one cross word to you about it, did I?” he challenged.
“Well…no,” Emmett gave in, grudgingly. “But you was mad. I could see it in your eyes. And I remember the way you said ‘no gas.’ Well, I don’t have any gas now.”
Lath shook his head in a gesture of sad bewilderment. “It hurts me, Emmett, that you think I would have done this. Why, you’ve known me since I was a little shaver.”
“And I didn’t dare turn my back on you then, either, or you would have had a half dozen candy bars stuffed inside your pants.”
“Now, Emmett, I never took nothing that wasn’t paid for.”
“You’re damned right you didn’t, ’cause I always charged ’em to your ma’s account,” Emmett countered, a dark flush of anger purpling his face.
“This fire’s got him all upset, Sheriff,” Lath declared. “All I ever did was to ask him politely to consider reopening my ma’s account. Emmett’s never been anything but a fair and honest man, so I know after he’s had time to think about it, he’ll admit what I’m saying is true. Isn’t that right, Emmett?” He clamped a hand on the man’s shoulder, giving it a small shake.
“He was polite enough with his words,” Emmett conceded sourly.
Before he could say more, Lath threw a bright grin at Logan. “See? I knew he’d clear things up for me.”
“You still haven’t said where you were last night.”
“Sally closes up at midnight. Me and Rollie left a little before that. So I’d say we were either on our way home or else in bed.” His expression never changed. “Anything else you’d like to ask?”
“Not right now.”
“If you think of anything, you know where to find me,” he said with a wink, then walked off.
Watching him head into the store, Emmett grumbled, “I still think he’s the one who started it.”
“You could be right,” Logan agreed. “But suspicions are no good without proof.”
“And you can bet money Lath knows that, too.”
Across the way, Chase Calder said something to Cat. She nodded and turned, touching the shoulder of the young boy beside her. He caught hold of her hand, then reached out to take the outstretched hand of Jessy Calder. Logan watched as the two women lifted the boy off the ground and swung him between them. His giggle of delight drifted across the intervening space.
“I’m kinda surprised to see Calder in town when the Triple C is in the middle of roundup,” Emmett remarked. “Course, I don’t imagine Chase takes an active role in it anymore. Ty sees to it now, I guess.”
“I got that impression.” Logan nodded absently, his glance tracking Cat all the way to the restaurant entrance.
“That’s right. You were out there yesterday, weren’t you?” Emmett recalled. “Trouble comes in bunches, they say. My place gets set on fire and Calder gets his cattle killed. I guess you haven’t had much time to investigate that.”
“Not much.” The comment prompted a question he had planned to ask. “Do you know anybody around here that has a truck with a winch mounted in it?”
“Well, there’s the one I got, parked around back. We hardly use it anymore since we got the tow truck. And Jim Bradley over at the Lone Tree Ranch has one. Old Gaylord Archibald used to have one, but I think I heard he’d sold it to somebody over at Wolf Point. Farleys had one, but they blew the motor in it. The cost of fixing it was more than the whole thing was worth. I’m pretty sure they ended up junking it.” He paused, then shook his head. “I can’t think of anybody else. Why’d you want to know?”
“Just curious. Do you mind if I go take a look at yours?”
“Course not. Like I said, it’s parked around back in that old shed behind the store.”
“Where are the keys?”
Emmett cast a furtive look around them, then lowered his voice. “You don’t need one. That padlock on the shed door has been broke for years.”
Logan shot him a look, a sudden hunch forming. “And the keys to the truck?”
He blinked once, twic
e, then ducked his head and mumbled a little sheepishly, “On a hook inside the door.”
“I think you’d better come with me.”
“Why?” A note of anxiety crept into Emmett’s voice. “You don’t think somebody stole my truck, do you?”
Logan ignored the question and called to the fire marshal, “Frank, we’re going around back for a few minutes.” The man waved an acknowledgment, and Logan started toward the corner of the building. “When’s the last time you were in the shed, Emmett?”
“Probably a week.” Emmett hobbled after him, puffing a little at the swift pace he set. “It’s mostly for storage.”
The shed sat off by itself, about twenty yards from the store. Built of wood, its white painted boards chipped and coated with prairie dust, it had the look of an old two-car garage. Rusted wheel rims and old tires were piled along one side of it, half-hidden by the tall weeds and wild grasses that grew around the shed.
Following a narrow path through the weeds, Emmett went around to a side door that appeared to be secured by a large steel padlock. He gave it a downward yank, and it sprang apart. Unhooking it, he pushed the door open and stepped inside, flipping on a wall switch. Three bare light bulbs flashed on, illuminating dusty stacks of boxes, spare engine parts, an assortment of hubcaps, and the truck in question.
A weighty sigh of relief spilled from Emmett. “There it is. You had me thinking it wouldn’t be.”
“See if the keys are still hanging up.” Logan surveyed the windowless interior. Heat hung heavy in the airless shed, musty with the smell of dust and mildew.
Turning, Emmett took two shuffling steps to the right and ran his hand along a stud, then looked down, checking the concrete floor at his feet. “They’re gone,” he said in a dumbfounded voice. “That don’t make any sense. The truck’s still here.”
Still playing his hunch, Logan walked over to the truck and glanced through the passenger window. A set of keys dangled from the windshield wiper lever, the silver shine of them somehow taunting.
“They’re in the truck, Emmett.”
“The hell you say,” he murmured, momentarily stunned. Recovering, he hustled to the truck, his body pitched forward with his degree of haste. “They belong on the damned wall. Who—”