by Sheryl Lynn
He was too eager. His eyes were too bold and his smile was too big. Her defenses were too low to deal with a man like him. “Thank you for the blanket.” She lowered it slowly, hoping he offered to let her keep it. Tony followed the blanket’s progress with open interest.
“Keep the blanket,” Carson said, shifting impatiently from foot to foot. “I don’t need you taking a chill and coming down with pneumonia. Thanks for everything, man. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” He held the door and Madeline hurried outside.
“You need to see a doctor.” Carson opened the truck door for her. “Smoke inhalation can make you sick.”
She couldn’t afford to get sick, but she couldn’t afford a doctor bill, either. She had the money she needed until the Santa Fe show and not a penny more. She climbed inside the truck. He shut the door.
When he started driving, she said, “I’ve never been in jail before.”
He slid a puzzled look at her. “Good to know.”
He turned onto the road leading up the mesa. She mulled it over in her increasingly foggy brain before realizing they weren’t going to town. “Aren’t you putting me in jail?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Police protection.”
“I am the police. I apologize for Tony, by the way. He’s a good guy even if he does act like a jackass.”
So she hadn’t imagined that Tony was hitting on her. “At least he didn’t toss me out on my ear.”
He didn’t answer and she thought he hadn’t heard the comment. Which was okay, since she didn’t want to discuss it anyway.
“Tony is all right,” Carson said. Outlined by the dash lights his profile was thoughtful. “He’s not from around here.”
She would have bet good money that Tony knew who she was and what her father had done. “Oh.”
“He moved in about six, seven months ago. He takes a lot of business trips.”
“What does he do?”
“Computers, communications, something electronic. Whatever he does, it pays well. He has more expensive toys than anyone I know. You don’t have to worry about him hassling you or trying to run you off.” He steered around a circular driveway and parked in front of a large, two-story house.
She was so tired she had to force her feet to move up the steps onto the wide porch. She searched for flames on her property. Emergency lights pierced the night, but no orange fire glow. She caught a whiff of smoke, but wasn’t sure if she smelled the fire or her own hair.
Carson urged her inside and up a set of stairs. Numb, wanting only a place to rest, she stopped where he told her to stop. He turned on a light in a large bathroom with a claw-footed tub.
“Plenty of soap and clean towels in that cabinet. I’ll fetch something you can wear.”
She wanted to ask why he did this for her, but she was too tired. Across the hall, he turned on a light in another room. “Sleep in here. I’ll get the bed made up.”
He didn’t look at her while he talked. She sensed nervousness or discomfort or maybe he was kicking himself for bringing her here. He should have put her up in jail for the night. Or have her sleep on the porch. Anything had to be better than Frank Shay’s daughter sleeping under his roof.
Chapter Four
Clouds ringed the horizon, but Madeline didn’t sense an impending storm. A good thing, considering she’d be sleeping outside from now on. She wore men’s sweatpants, a T-shirt and a warm-up jacket so big the shoulder seams hung almost to her elbows. Time to see in the daylight the damage done. Carson offered breakfast, but she was too heartbroken over her ruined beadwork to eat.
She lifted her chin and straightened her shoulders. Even in borrowed clothing she had her pride. She approached the police cruiser. Through the open passenger window, she asked, “Shall I ride in back, Chief Cody?”
“Get in the front.” He looked as grim and angry as he had last night. With a tan uniform shirt tailored over his muscular chest and arms, his mouth set in a thin line, and dark glasses concealing his eyes, he looked like the kind of cop who’d ticket a nun for jaywalking. She buckled the seat belt and sat rigidly facing forward.
He drove away from the house. “Did you sleep okay?”
That seemed an odd question from an angry man. “I suppose. All things considered.”
“Your house is totaled. Are you prepared to face it?”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“You cannot imagine how sorry I am, Madeline.”
His apology stunned her. It almost made her think he wasn’t mad at her.
“I knew something like this would happen. I am very sorry.”
It was difficult keeping her defenses up when he said things like that. “I don’t know what you could have done. I wouldn’t have left even if you told me to. I just don’t know why you told everybody I was here in the first place.” She tried to catch his eye. “I kind of thought we had an agreement.”
His mouth tightened. He didn’t say another word until a female voice came over the radio. He picked up the mike. “Come again, Wanda? Did you say ten-fifty-four?”
“Dooley Duran just called it in,” Wanda replied. “He’s at the Shay ranch. You’re responding?”
“Ten-four. Notify Morales. Out.”
He shot Madeline a puzzled look. “You were alone last night, right?”
She touched her bruised mouth. “Until…you know. What’s going on?”
“The fire chief says he has a body.”
“At my house?” It occurred to her that whoever set the fire got caught in the flames. “Oh God.”
She smelled smoke long before she saw what remained of the house. She covered her nose against the stench. A yellow fire truck and a white SUV with a volunteer fire department logo emblazoned on the door were parked in the yard. The house had been reduced to smoldering embers with only the stone chimney intact. A few framing timbers poked from the ruins like charcoal fingers. Her van was a blackened hulk. The back doors lay twisted several feet away. The tires were black puddles.
It amazed her that she and Carson had escaped serious injury.
Several men garbed in canvas firefighting garb leaned on shovels and watched the smoking fire pit.
When Carson had parked, Madeline stepped out of the cruiser. The acrid air was uncomfortable on her raw throat. Heat waves shimmered over the ruins.
Some of the surrounding foliage was singed. The garage was still standing. Paint had blistered on the wall closest to the house, but otherwise it looked all right. Her beads, tools and finished pieces were in the garage. Heaviness lifted from her shoulders.
Carson stalked toward the men like a boxer revving up for the ring. As much as she longed to see for herself that her work was all right, distracting or annoying Carson right now seemed like a very bad idea.
The oldest of the men pointed at the center of the ruins. Carson leaned over, then straightened and shook his head. He looked at Madeline then at the fire pit then back to her. Curiosity overrode her trepidation. She approached him.
“Are you sure there was no one else with you last night?” Carson asked. He pointed into the center of the ashes where embers glowed. A black bone thrust skyward.
Madeline followed the line of bone until she picked out the blackened dome of a skull. That nasty smell from beneath the house suddenly made sense. Nausea rose and she clapped a hand over her mouth.
“We spotted it,” the oldest firefighter said, “and quit digging around. I swear it looks human.”
“I swear you’re right,” Carson said. “Keep working the perimeter. Stay as far away from the bones as you can, but we don’t need a wildfire on top of everything else.” He urged Madeline to follow him to the garage.
Madeline couldn’t tear her gaze away from the bone reaching skyward.
“Madeline?”
She swallowed hard and winced at the flare-up of pain. “That can’t be a person. I absolutely, positively cannot bear to think I was sleeping atop a corpse. Couldn’t it be a dog or a c
oyote? Or even a bear?”
“Wait here.” He wanted her in front of the garage door. “I’ll be right back.”
The longer she stood, the more the reality of the situation came home. Her money had been stashed in the van along with ID, tax records, and application forms for art shows. Her clothes, sleeping bag, camp stove, books, clippings, and all the odds and ends of life were gone.
She peered inside the garage. The burned paint and metal gave off a pungent, chemical odor. Parts of the tin roof had buckled from the heat. Other than smoke hovering around the ceiling, the interior was untouched. The boxes of beads, findings, and tools were as she left them. The finished pieces, wrapped in tissue to keep away dust, sat unharmed on the shelves. The ache in her chest eased.
She touched her throat then slid her finger down to the locket she wore on a ball chain around her neck. It figured it would escape the fire. Her gaze lit on the small box labeled Dumb Stuff. Laughter rose, choking and tight, so she clamped her jaw and covered her mouth, knowing if she started laughing at the absurdity of it all she might never stop.
“Madeline,” Carson said. “Do you remember anything else about last night?”
She welcomed the pain of swallowing hard—it killed the urge to laugh. “Only what I told you.”
“When I left my house it wasn’t much past eight o’clock. Do you always go to sleep that early?”
She searched his face for clues. “What are you getting at?”
“I’m trying to figure out what is going on here.”
“Yes, I go to sleep that early. I don’t have a television or radio. I don’t want to waste fuel, so I don’t read at night, either. When the sun goes down, I go to sleep.”
“May I see your hands?”
Instinctively she put her hands behind her back. It was ridiculous—she had nothing to hide. She thrust out her hands and he took them into his. His hands were large and suntanned. They made hers look small as a child’s. He studied her scraped, swollen knuckles.
“You did this when you escaped out a window?”
She jerked her hands from his grasp. “You think I killed a man then set my house on fire to cover it up?”
“I’m thinking you were assaulted. I want to know if you fought back.”
“I told you already. I put boards over the windows because the glass was broken.” She waggled her hands at him. “I busted boards with my hands.”
He peered inside the garage. “Looks like you saved your belongings.”
She bristled and steel studded her spine. How dare he? “Like father, like daughter? I must be a killer because I’m a Shay?”
“I need to know what happened.”
“Oh yeah, I saved my belongings all right. Except for the van, which is my only transportation. And my clothes and my cash and all my camping gear and food and dishes. Oh, and can’t forget, my toothbrush!” She pointed into the garage. “That is my work. It didn’t burn because even I have to get lucky sometimes.” She pointed at the van. “That was my life. But who cares, my life sucks rocks anyway.” Clamping her arms over her chest, she turned her back on him.
She was not going to cry. She refused. She’d set herself on fire before giving him the satisfaction of reducing her to tears.
Seconds ticked by. Her skin prickled in apprehension. If he arrested her, she would sit in jail because there wasn’t a person living who’d bail her out.
“This is my job,” Carson said. “I have to ask the hard questions. You’re the victim, not a suspect. I’m sorry if I implied otherwise.”
She was such a softie when it came to big men with gentle voices. “I don’t know if it means anything, but every once in a while a really awful smell would fill up the house. I thought an animal had died under there.”
“You never investigated?”
“I don’t care for snakes and spiders. So no.”
His broad chest rose and fell as if with a sigh. “What is that in the garage?”
“My beadwork. I’m supposed to display it at a juried show in Santa Fe. I have twelve more pieces to finish.” She couldn’t help a wry laugh at the irony. She had left Whiteriver because her mother made life unbearable. Some safe haven this turned out to be.
“The sheriff is on his way and so is the medical examiner. I’ll have to wait for their findings before I let you go back to Whiteriver.”
“Back to Whiteriver? What are you talking about?”
“Isn’t that where you live? Where your mother lives?”
She slumped against the garage wall and covered her eyes with a hand. She didn’t think the police chief was being deliberately thick. He didn’t understand. “This is my home.”
“What about your mother’s house?”
She clamped her mouth shut. Old habits died hard, especially the habit of keeping family nastiness to herself.
He folded his arms, waiting for an answer.
“My mother is not…right. She’s an alcoholic and bipolar. When she’s depressed she wants to kill herself. When she’s manic she wants to kill me. Then my father left me this stupid ranch.” The end of her rope looked very near. “It’s impossible for me to go back.”
He turned his attention to men shoveling dirt onto the ashes. When he faced her again, his expression had eased. “Is there anyone you can call? Someone who can help?”
She wasn’t the type to ask for help. She wished she were. “Maybe.”
“You can’t stay here.”
“If the well isn’t fouled, I can.”
“It’s a crime scene. And there’s the small matter of figuring out who set the fire.”
Good point, she thought reluctantly. “I can’t go anywhere without my beads. They’re all I have left.”
“I have a padlock in the cruiser to lock up the garage. Your beads will be safe until we can get back here with my truck so you can load everything up. We’ll figure out a place for you to stay.”
She didn’t trust him. She couldn’t trust him. Even if he acted out of a sense of duty or even altruism, sooner or later he would remember who she was and what she represented.
She eyed her dirty bare feet. She didn’t even have a pair of shoes or change of underwear. Her Apache ancestors had trekked through the desert and mountains barefoot and half-naked, relying on their wits for food, water and shelter. She wasn’t that tough.
“Okay,” she said.
Madeline waited in the cruiser. Carson padlocked the garage and placed a seal on the door, whether to protect her belongings or insure uncontaminated evidence she wasn’t certain. When Sergeant Morales arrived, he and Carson stretched yellow police tape around the yard. They walked the area, stopping every once in a while to plant yellow flags.
She longed for something to drink. Her throat felt lined with metal shavings and it still hurt to swallow. Watching Carson offered diversion, but it was a dangerous pastime in that the more she watched, the more attractive he looked.
He acted as if saving her life was no big deal, that anyone would have done it. The twisted remains of the van told her better. He had risked his life. She rubbed her throat, trying to push away the discomfort and rub away the yearning to hear his gentle voice again.
She tore her gaze away. Looking at the house, knowing it held a body, made her skin crawl.
A red Jeep Wrangler, outfitted with big tires, big lights, reinforced roll bars and a winch roared into the yard. Tony Rule hopped out, swinging a white paper bag.
Carson waved him back. “You can’t be here, Tony. It’s a crime scene.”
Tony held out the bag. “Doughnuts. A bribe to let me inspect the damage.” He whistled. “Damn. Hard to believe this whole area didn’t go up in flames. Is that a van? I’d have paid to watch that blow up.”
Carson pulled at his jaw and lowered his face. Madeline believed he was trying not to laugh at Tony’s irreverence. “You have to go. Now.”
“Come on. I love living here, but you gotta admit it’s boring as hell. This is the most interesting thing
that’s happened since I moved in.” He jerked a thumb toward the cruiser. “Watching the cops in action, up close and personal, is the chance of a lifetime. I’ll stay over there. Quiet as a mouse.” He made a zippering motion across his mouth.
“No can do,” Carson said. “Beat it.”
Tony loosed an exaggerated sigh. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.” He tossed the bag at Carson, who caught it with quick gracefulness that was magical to watch. “Keep the doughnuts anyway. I hear you coppers can’t live without them.”
Instead of returning to the Jeep, he sauntered over to the cruiser.
Carson harrumphed.
“Just a sec,” Tony said. He leaned an arm on the cruiser’s roof so he loomed over Madeline.
She knew his type. He had that cocky, loose-hipped air that said I’m sexy and you know it, so why fight it? “How are you doing this morning, Miss Shay?”
“Fine.”
“I notice your house is in need of a few repairs. You are more than welcome to camp out at my place.”
Incredulous over his flirtatious tone, she wished he would take her silence as a hint and leave.
Carson headed their way. He was furious. Warned by her alarm, Tony shoved away from the cruiser and held up his hands.
“I’m leaving, I’m leaving.”
“I don’t play around at crime scenes,” Carson said. “Especially when a death is involved.”
“Who died?”
“Don’t know yet and it’s none of your business.”
Head down, his manner conciliatory, Tony returned to his Jeep. He started the engine then yelled, “I’ll bring the beer later! You can give me the juicy details then.” He wheeled the Jeep in a tight circle and drove away.
Carson handed the bag of doughnuts to Madeline. He pulled off his hat and used a white handkerchief to wipe sweat from his brow and neck. “Walking, talking attitude,” he said with a chuckle. “Pete will handle things until the sheriff and coroner get here. I could use some coffee to go with those doughnuts.”
Carson slid behind the steering wheel and started the engine. Halfway to the road, a blue car blocked the driveway. “Damn it!” Carson muttered. “Did somebody put up a sign when I wasn’t looking?”