Playing with Fire

by Rachel Lee

  Charity eased onto the far end of the couch. “Then, what is?”

  “Friendship. A good person. Someone you can share with. Looks are only part of the package.”

  “I know,” she said, feeling her humor fade a bit.

  “Tell me?” he asked.

  She shrugged and asked herself why not. As he’d reminded her, what happened here would stay here when she left. Although the idea of leaving was becoming less attractive with each day. “His name was Ted. We were together for nearly a year.”

  He nodded. “Nice guy?”

  “I thought so, at first. And maybe he really is. I don’t like jerks as a rule. But after we’d been together awhile he started complaining in little ways about how much I was gone. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know when we got involved.” She shook her head. “I guess it doesn’t matter. Actually living it didn’t make him happy. I started hearing about how I was never there, we couldn’t plan a date more than a day in advance...”

  “Dang, I’ve heard all that,” he said.

  She glanced his way and saw him looking rueful. Some of the old tightness that gripped her heart every time she thought of Ted eased a little. “Yeah, you probably have. Anyway, it created tension, and finally a blowup.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He worked for a big accounting firm. Not as though we didn’t go through months of him never being around during tax season.”

  He sighed. “But that was different, I take it.” He sipped some coffee then put the cup aside. “It’s always the other person who needs to change. Never ourselves. The devil’s in it when that starts. Any chance of a compromise goes out the window.”

  “I’m not sure either of us could have compromised without a job change,” she admitted honestly.

  “And you love your work?”

  “It makes me feel good. Mostly. It’s sometimes boring, and sometimes fascinating. But am I wedded to it?” She shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. If something else came along that I really liked, I could change. So far nothing has. But you as much as said you’re wedded to what you do.”

  “I am,” he admitted. “Even my ex understood that. She tried getting me to move to a larger department in a bigger city, so I gave it a shot, but I couldn’t bring myself to stay with it. It’s not as if Glenwood Springs was a huge town. A little bigger than here, but not huge. I didn’t want to do that anymore. While there were lots of things to do because of tourists, and it was beautiful, there was a downside to that. Small department, lots more casualties to deal with. Lots of auto accidents in the canyon, wildfires on the mountains, which are hard to fight because of accessibility. I honestly like the slower pace here.”

  “Except lately.”

  “Things come in bunches. Especially arsonists, it seems. Speaking of which, we need to go out to the Buell place for one last lookover tomorrow. The bulldozers will be coming in to clear the barn debris for the barn raising on Saturday. I’ve persuaded them not to touch the house yet, but I’m not going to hold that back for long.”

  “No, the Buells need to get going on a new house,” she agreed. “We may never catch this guy. And frankly, that terrifies me.”

  “Me, too,” he admitted. “It’s one thing to have a stupid arsonist and keep putting out small fires. It’s another to have a genius one. One who isn’t afraid to kill people.”

  “I hear you.” She sat somberly for a few minutes, then stood. “I guess I need to get back. I still have some paperwork to do. Any chance we can talk to Mrs. Buell tomorrow?”

  “I’ll give her a call and let you know.”

  “Thanks. I’ll see myself out. And please let Linda know I had a wonderful time. She’s a lovely young lady.”

  He stood, smiling. “I’m pretty proud of her.”

  Charity could certainly understand why. Still, she felt the emptiness of the house behind her as she departed, and realized she was going back to an emptiness of her own. If she had half a brain, she would have stayed. Or better yet, invited him to come over. It was, after all, what she really wanted: a fling with the fire chief before she went home.

  But Linda rose in her mind, and she climbed into her car with determination. She might be leaving Wayne behind in an empty house, but she wasn’t leaving any pain behind for him or his daughter.

  * * *

  Wayne watched her go with an ache that was the height of folly. They could flirt a little, but anything more than that might spell trouble for either of them. He knew he was in a dangerous position because Linda would be leaving in a few months. He was acutely aware that he was facing new silences, new gaps to deal with. A new kind of missing and grief.

  Grabbing a light jacket, he went to sit on his small front porch. A few neighbors were out taking an after-dinner stroll in the twilight. He waved and chatted with some of them briefly. The Buell fire came up more than once, and he honestly told people they hadn’t found out who did it.

  Because no one believed it was an ordinary fire. As he chatted with his neighbors, however, he noted that there was an increasing anxiety in some of them. Well, why not? Three arsons in less than a year, and the last one could have killed a family. It wasn’t as scary as when they had that serial killer stalking boys, but it was scary in a different way: anyone could be the victim of arson.

  He’d bet half of them didn’t believe the Mackey fire had been caused by grease.

  Then his phone rang. It was Hank Jackson, the guy who was letting Charity stay at his rental house.

  “Chief, you better get over here. It’s not a fire, but I want you to see anyway. I think we’re moving from arson to murder.”

  Chapter 6

  When Charity got home, the house seemed warmer than usual. She checked the thermostat and saw that it had been turned up. Must have bumped it. She turned it down, then settled on the couch with her laptop, logged into the fire department’s Wi-Fi and went to finish her investigation into Fred Buell’s background.

  His credit report showed him with the kind of debt that appeared normal for someone in his business. No new debt that seemed unusual stood out. No police record for any member of the family, unless there was something juvenile. Timely payments with just an occasional tardiness over the past seven years that had been quickly cleaned up. Most people had a little more dirt on their records than Fred Buell or his wife.

  So a hardworking man who seemed to do everything right. Why the devil would anyone attack him that way? It seemed personal, as well as deadly, but she couldn’t be sure of that. Things could be misleading. He might have just been a target of opportunity, what with that new siding and the people working on the place. She supposed she could get the police to interview everyone Masters Construction had put on that job.

  But that was getting out of her line. She had one task and one task only: satisfy herself and her company that Fred Buell hadn’t done this or arranged for someone to do it.

  Not likely. He wouldn’t clear his debts and house his family on the insurance proceeds. To do that, he needed to keep his ranch going. A good thing his neighbors were building him a barn. And she couldn’t imagine the cost in lost livestock.

  She remembered him sitting there in Wayne’s office, twisting his hat in his hands, and didn’t think he’d at all looked or sounded like a man who was trying to get away with anything. If he was, he deserved an acting award.

  So she’d confirm his story with his wife in a separate interview and then go home.

  Amazing how reluctant she was to do that. She had a hankering to stay here, maybe going to the training session with the fire crew on Monday. She had an even bigger desire to find this monster. A whole family could have died.

  But she didn’t have the resources, she reminded herself. She wasn’t a cop. She couldn’t even analyze samples and determine what accelerant had been used.
<
br />   She wasn’t that kind of investigator, and for the first time that really bothered her. A glorified paper pusher—that was what she was.

  Sitting there in those stark moments of quiet, rubbing her temples a bit to ease a faint headache as the night deepened outside her window, she asked herself just how content she really was. And she remembered how good she’d often felt about herself when she was fighting fires. The feeling that she was really performing a useful service.

  Watching those guys twice since she’d come to this town had reawakened a long-forgotten appetite. It wasn’t just the excitement, although there was always a certain amount of rush involved in firefighting. But there’d been greater rewards. And, as Wayne had reminded her, ugly times, too. He spoke of bad memories, and she had a few of her own. They didn’t keep her up at night anymore, but there had been spells for a few years when memory had overcome her at odd moments, triggered by something seemingly innocent, casting her back into one horror or another.

  She’d been lucky, she guessed. She had recovered pretty well, but then she hadn’t done it for that long.

  Damn, she must be getting tense from all this heavy thinking. Her head was throbbing a bit now, and her stomach felt upset. She probably needed a long vacation, but how much better if she could leave herself at home. She almost laughed aloud at the idea.

  She looked up at a sudden sound. Faint but annoying. A definite squeal. Crap, she knew that sound.

  Pushing her laptop to the side, she went to find it. Sniffing the air, she couldn’t smell any smoke, but she went room by room, checking for fire. Nothing and still the squeal continued. The two detectors in the hallway outside her bedroom and the two in the kitchen remained silent. She didn’t bother looking in the basement because that was the worst place to install detectors. They were affected by temperature changes, and the furnace and water heater had to be down there, because she hadn’t found them in a closet up here.

  Looking up, she realized it came from the attic. It had to. She’d gone through every single room and found nothing, not even the source of the sound.

  She hated to bother her landlord, especially since he’d mentioned a new baby, but she had no choice. The squeal was ominous, and needed solving.

  Grabbing her jacket and her computer, she went next door and knocked. It took a minute, but Hank Jackson appeared, looking a little tired. A baby cried in the background.

  “Colic,” Hank said. “Sorry you had to wait, but I was helping Kelly. The baby’s been at it for hours.”

  Charity wished she could tell him to forget it, but this might be as important to him as to her. “I really, really hate to bother you, but there’s an alarm squealing in the house. I can’t find it. I can’t find any fire, either.”

  A new worry entered his weathered face. He half turned, grabbing a jacket from a peg. “Sweetheart, there’s a problem next door. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  His wife called back. “As if you being here is going to change one thing.” She sounded both frazzled and amused. “Get going, cowboy.”

  He limped slightly as they crossed the grass back to Charity’s place, pulling on his jacket as he did so. “An alarm you can’t find?”

  “It must be in the attic. I’ve been everywhere, and it’s hard to lose anything in that house.”

  He gave a short bark of laughter. “True enough. Well, I put a carbon monoxide detector and a smoke detector in the attic when I was remodeling the place. Can’t understand why the ones in the bedroom and kitchen wouldn’t go off, though. They’re supposed to have a feedback.”

  Which was the best setup possible, Charity thought. But that was what you’d expect from a fireman. Every detector in the place should be squealing.

  He stepped inside with her, and they both stood listening. “Yup,” he said. “Attic.”

  But he didn’t head straight for the attic access in the short hall leading to the bedroom and bathroom. Instead, he reached for one of the detectors in the kitchen. He pressed the test button and it beeped. “Fire’s okay,” he remarked. Then he pressed the button on a different detector. The test yielded no sound.

  “Hell,” he said. “Go around and open some windows.” With that he gave a twist of his wrist and pulled the detector off its base. “Well, ain’t this pretty,” he said.

  * * *

  Hank climbed up into the attic while they waited for Wayne to arrive. He was just descending as Wayne walked in the front door.

  “Well?” Wayne asked. The cool night breeze was blowing through the house, ruffling curtains. Charity shivered.

  “Take a look at that carbon monoxide detector on the kitchen table,” Hank said.

  Charity joined him, knowing what he was going to see. “No battery. So...” He stopped. “Who cut the wires?” He turned instantly to look for the wall mounting and saw more of the same.

  Hank joined them, another detector in his hand. “Somebody didn’t guess I’d put one in the attic. Almost nobody does that.” It had stopped squealing. “I need to see what’s been done to the furnace and water heater.”

  The words chilled Charity even more. A disabled carbon monoxide detector did indeed probably mean someone had messed with the furnace. A silent, odorless killer, without a detector the gas would fill the house, put her to sleep, then suffocate her. The adrenaline rushing through her held her emotions at bay, kept her tightly focused. For now.

  Wayne looked at Charity, and she saw that his eyes had narrowed and sparked with anger. “You’ll be okay for a minute?”

  “Of course,” she answered. It would hit her later, she supposed, the fact that someone had tried to kill her. And might have succeeded except for one hypercautious landlord. Right now, numbness filled her. She couldn’t even get angry yet.

  With the windows open, the house was safe. Her headache and nausea were beginning to vanish, mostly likely because of all the fresh air. At loose ends, she followed and found Wayne and Hank airing out the basement by holding the door open.

  “There’s a window down there we can open,” Hank said. “And a fan I can turn on.”

  Wayne looked at Charity again. “You should stay back. You’ve already been exposed, and more of that CO is likely coming up these stairs.”

  He had a point, and she backed up until fresh air blowing in through the bedroom window reached her. Her blood probably still contained a high level of the poison.

  The two men headed down into a small, dank basement. From the head of the stairs she thought it looked more like a root cellar.

  One yellow bulb lit it, but the two men picked up flashlights so they could see better. She waited, hating not being able to help, straining her ears to hear anything they might say.

  Somebody had tried to kill her. It just didn’t seem real. Not yet. But the indisputable evidence lay on the kitchen table with freshly cut wires and no battery.

  She heard their voices, but couldn’t make out the words. She hoped the fumes weren’t thick enough to harm them. Then she felt another strong draft as the basement window opened, and the whine of a fan turned on. Okay.

  Finally, cold to the bone, she went to the bedroom and got the comforter off the bed, wrapping it around her shoulders.

  She had no doubt what was going on here.

  After ten minutes, both men came upstairs. Wayne was saying, “You go home to the baby. I’m going to have the police and sheriff out here. We need some evidence collection.”

  Charity didn’t ask the obvious question. Someone had apparently tampered with the furnace or the water heater as well as the CO detector. Murder, like Hank had said when he called Wayne.

  Charity backed away from the door as Hank and Wayne reached the top of the stairs. Together they stood in the hall.

  “Well?” Charity asked.

  “Exhaust vents were disconnected.” Hank
looked pretty angry.

  Wayne’s face appeared even more grim. “It’s a good thing you weren’t here for long before that attic detector went off.” His tone was clipped, almost sharp. “Wanna stay warm in my car while I call the police?”

  A burst of resentment broke through Charity’s numbness. She ought to be able to help with this. But she couldn’t, because she was no longer even vaguely qualified. Just a paper pusher, really.

  And she was cold. Colder than the breeze blowing through the house. Cold to the depths of her being.

  “Thanks,” she said finally. Feeling utterly useless, she let Wayne escort her to his vehicle and turn on the ignition. “It should warm up quickly,” he said. Then before he climbed back out, he shocked her by leaning over and kissing her cheek. “We’ll get him, Charity. I swear.”

  She wished she believed him.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, the street seemed crowded. The Sheriff’s Department had sent a crime scene van and the city police had sent two cars. And fury was at last beginning to bubble inside of her.

  She’d come out here for one reason only: to ensure a man got his proper insurance payment after he’d lost everything, to ensure he wasn’t involved in the arson. Apparently her presence here scared someone enough that they’d first sent a message with that heap of fuel and gasoline, but now they were frightened enough to try to kill her.

  Because there could be no other reason for what had happened in that house. Leaving the CO detectors untouched would have been a warning. Silencing them had been a threat against her life. And it might have succeeded.

  She had never thought that her headache and nausea could be coming from carbon monoxide simply because she had seen the house had detectors. But others never felt a thing and simply fell asleep. Either way she’d have been dead by morning except for a landlord who had taken the trouble to install a detector in an unexpected place: the attic. An unoccupied attic rarely got that kind of attention because there was no one up there to be harmed. So most detectors were placed in the living areas. And those had been silenced deliberately.