Return of the Lawman

by Lisa Childs

  She jumped away from the sink, and a tinkle of ice on stain less steel rang out. He drew close enough to watch an ice cube disappear down the drain. “Hot?” He lifted a brow and detected a slight damp flush on her beautiful face.

  “I always put ice in my coffee. I’m too impatient to wait for it to cool,” she explained in a far-too-innocent-sounding voice.

  He laughed. “I don’t think anything manages to cool off around you. You never said what I’d done to deserve your torture this early in the morning.”

  “Torture? Not hardly. I came to make your life easier. I’m helping you solve your murder, Dylan.”

  He shivered. “Not my murder, Lindsey.”

  “You know what I mean.” But for once her tone was a bit more serious. He followed her glance to the stain on the kitchen floor.

  “Chet was a good man as far as I’ve heard.”

  “He was a baby thief,” she argued.

  “That’s your mother’s story.” And her motive.

  “And her motive.” Lindsey spoke his thought aloud. “Yeah, I know that. But other people had motives. I’ve found more suspects.”

  “You found the developer, right? Robert Hutchins. And if he has an alibi, he could have always sent his right-hand man, the mysterious Mr. Quade.”

  She glared at him, and he chuckled again. “Think I was just waiting for you to wrap this up for me? I may not know much about murder, but I know how to work a case.”

  “Hung out in Marge’s, huh?” She snorted.

  He grinned. “I take it that was your source of information, as well as cinnamon rolls. Of course, you reporters protect your sources.”

  “Nobody needs to protect Marge. She looks out for herself.”

  “She’s a nice lady,” Dylan defended.

  “She’s not been ragging on you since you got back,” Lindsey grumbled. Then she shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I have other suspects. You have to see that my mother isn’t the only one. And besides, the developer—”

  “I really don’t consider him a suspect,” Dylan cut in.

  “You don’t?”

  He leaned around her, grabbed the coffee pot and splashed some more dark liquid into his mug. She smelled of cinnamon and burning leaves. He took a deep breath, then quickly drew back. The soft purr of a car engine distracted him. Probably Mr. Smithers. He was the closest neighbor. “What?”

  “You don’t consider the developer a suspect?”

  He shook his head. “No. He would have bought off someone like Chet, not killed him.”

  “Maybe he tried and Chet refused the money.”

  “A man who sold babies would refuse money for a zoning vote?”

  “We haven’t proved he sold babies. My mother has never been the most reliable source of information, you know.”

  “She told your father about the adoption when they first met. She didn’t have any episodes until after several miscarriages following your birth.”

  She straightened from the sink and paced around his kitchen. “You’ve been checking out my mother?”

  “That’s pretty much common knowledge, Lindsey,” he said softly, and caught her on her next circuit around the kitchen table. Her shoulder tensed beneath his hand, and he could trace the bones. She was more fragile than she liked to appear.

  “This damn town and its gossips.” Her breath hitched, and her lids dropped over her dark, sad eyes. When she opened them again, the sadness was gone. She shrugged off his hand.

  “Lindsey, how do you feel about having a brother? Do you think it’s true?”

  “I don’t know. If it isn’t, my mother has no motive for murder. If it is, I have a brother.” She lifted her arms and dropped them back to her sides. “I don’t know what to think, let alone what to feel.”

  He under stood. Separating thinking and feeling kept him sane. Perhaps Lindsey had a degree of detachment, too. “Let’s find out what the truth is. I talked to Chet’s nephew, who took over Chet’s practice after his retirement. A few months ago, the office was broken into and some old files stolen. Chet was quite upset about it when Art Oliver told him.”

  Lindsey didn’t look surprised. “You knew that,” he guessed.

  She nodded. “I went to school with Art Oliver. So there’s no record of those adoptions?”

  “The sanatorium is looking for the old records from when it was the home for unwed mothers.”

  “I hate the way that sounds. That alone had to be quite a stigma for any girl who was sent there.” Lindsey ran her finger around the rim of her coffee cup, and Dylan suspected she thought of her mother’s embarrassment and pain.

  “I sense another story.” Absently he noted the grind of an engine starting.

  She sighed. “Yeah, one I should have been more interested in long ago. Maybe I would have known the truth then.”

  Dylan dragged in a deep breath and caught a whiff of gasoline. Had she fueled her tank before stopping by? Was it on her hands or did the rusty tank leak? She loved that Jeep because her dad had given it to her. “Are you talking to your dad yet?” She’d been so angry over her father’s silence.

  “Yeah. I’ve never been able to stop talking to my dad, but he knows I’m not happy with him.” She sloshed some more coffee into her cup. A few droplets ran over the back of her hand.

  He grabbed her wrist and brought her hand to his mouth. “Did you burn yourself?”

  She shook her head. “Naw, coffee’s getting cold. Your pot is ancient.”

  He licked the droplets from her skin. “You’re right. It is cold. Your hands are always cold.”

  She pulled her hand from his. “You know what they say. Cold hands, warm heart.” She rubbed at her eyes.

  Dylan smelled it then, the acrid smell of burning leaves and wood. “Smoke?”

  “Someone must have been burning leaves around here. There was smoke when I drove up.” Lindsey coughed. “But it’s getting worse.”

  Dylan strode to the kitchen door to peer out. Flames had eaten the scraggly grass close to the house, forming a three-foot-high wall at his back door. His heart slammed into his ribs.

  He grabbed the phone, but there was no dial tone. “Go out the front door, Lindsey. I’m going to grab the cell phone from my bedroom.”

  “Phone line’s dead?” She rifled through her leather backpack and flipped open a cell phone. “Use mine.”

  “Outside. Use the front door.” He didn’t wait for her compliance but wrapped his hand around her elbow and ushered her through the living room.

  The snap and crackle of the fire in creased with their steps. He let out a ragged breath at the sight of the smoke billowing under the front door.

  “Damn!” Lindsey cursed. She climbed over the back of his thread bare couch to the window and jerked up the blinds. Smoke and fingers of flames climbed over the ivy covering the windows.

  Dylan grabbed her hand. “There’s no time. Come on!” He pulled her to his bedroom.

  Lindsey sighed. “All these years of my begging, Dylan, and now you finally drag me to your bed! Talk about picking your moment!”

  “This isn’t it, Lindsey.” He yanked the comforter from the bed and dragged it and her into the shower stall across the hall. He got in and turned on the faucet, then wrapped the wet comforter around them both.

  With care he led Lindsey through the smoke-filled house. He glanced once toward the kitchen and the blood-stained floor before he turned to the front door.

  Lindsey’s fingers clutched his back, her face buried in his neck as he lifted her in his arms. He wouldn’t let her down as he’d let down Jimmy, his mother and his father. Smoke burned his lungs as guilt burned his soul.

  Then he burst through the wall of flames.

  Chapter Four

  DYLAN had never asked for her trust, but he had it. Lindsey penetrated a wall of fire with only his arms and a wet comforter wrapped around her.

  He dragged her to the ground and rolled them around on the gravel drive where the fire had not reached. Lin
dsey tightened her arms around his neck and buried her nose farther in his neck.

  He smelled of smoke, as did everything else. But she didn’t care. She took a deep breath of acrid air, burning her throat and lungs. A cough racked her.

  “Are you all right? Lindsey?” Dylan’s soot-darkened hands cradled her face.

  She marveled at his gentle ness when only an hour ago he’d pummeled a punching bag with those huge, callused hands.

  She nodded. “I’m fine. Right? I’m not on fire or anything?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “That’s reassuring.” Her heart beat furiously and she fought the trembling in her body. Tears stung her eyes, and she didn’t know if smoke or memories of another fire had evoked them. She glanced beyond him at the house, which was now fully engulfed.

  She squirmed around, pulled her backpack from underneath them and dragged out her phone. “Quick. Call it in. Your house—”

  “—is a lost cause.” But he took the phone. “And your Jeep…”

  Lindsey’s gaze shot to her sweet-sixteen present from her dad. Flames ate at the rusted and dented metal. Dylan pulled her to her feet, and she stumbled with him farther from the fire.

  Faintly, she heard him on the phone, as if he were talking in another room and not next to her. He reported the fire and dropped the phone back in her bag.

  He wrapped his arms around her from behind, linking his hands at her waist. Naturally she leaned into his muscled chest. “I’ll miss that Jeep, too.” His breath whispered into her ear, and his heart pounded heavily against her back.

  Lindsey gave up the battle and let the tears fall. “Your house… How stupid, all this destruction because someone was burning some leaves.”

  “Hmm,” was Dylan’s vague reply.

  “What?” asked her reporter’s instinct. “Smell that.”

  “Smoke.”

  “What kind?”

  Lindsey took a deep breath and sputtered again. “Leaves. Wood. The rubber tires and…”

  “Gasoline.”

  “From my Jeep?”

  “No, by the house. I smelled it earlier, just before the smoke.”

  His voice was as calm as always, but she knew what she’d find in his eyes. She tipped up her head and looked into the glazed rage she’d seen in the basement while he had pummeled the bag.

  “Dylan, you can’t mean this was intentional, that it was deliberately set.”

  “Maybe. Off the record, between two people who were almost toast, maybe. On the record, someone might have used gasoline to start his damp leaves burning. It’s possible.”

  “It’s stupid.”

  “Yeah, too stupid and too close to my house.”

  But his house was gone. She heard the tinkling of glass as the windows shattered and the flames licked the house inside out. It was gone.

  DYLAN PERCHED ON THE corner of his desk in the police station and kept an eye on Lindsey where she stood in the hall, talking on her cell phone. He hadn’t taken his eyes off her since the fire. She could have been killed. He could have let her down as badly as he had everyone else. But they’d been lucky this time.

  “So.” He turned to Sheriff Buck, who hovered at his side. “You checked with the sanatorium?”

  The sheriff matched his quiet tones, no easy feat for the big man with the naturally booming voice. “Retha Warner was in her room the entire time, heavily sedated. There’s no way she was anywhere else.”

  Dylan nodded. “Good.” He couldn’t imagine Lindsey’s pain if she discovered her mother had set this fire, too.

  “Old man Smithers was burning leaves late last night. He’s not far from your place. He doesn’t know if it was completely out when he went to bed. It was probably just an accident, Dylan. A terrible accident.”

  Dylan knew about those. He glanced at the sheriff, at the soft look in the older man’s eyes. He’d been there for Dylan then, too. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  “This is Winter Falls. People don’t do those kinds of things here.”

  Lindsey joined them. “What? Commit murder? Ask Chet Oliver about that, Sheriff.”

  Dylan drank her in. Her black curls had wilted and lost some of their gloss. Her delicately featured face was smeared with soot, and her eyes had lost a bit of their sparkle but none of their sass.

  “Hope you have insurance, Deputy,” she said, but her fingers skimming lightly over the back of his hand softened the callousness of her words.

  “What about you?”

  She shrugged. “Couldn’t afford the premiums for full coverage.”

  “You said parking tickets. You don’t get points for those.” He managed to lift his lips into a teasing smile.

  “Maybe a few speeding, too.” She winked, but the mascara and soot smeared around her eyes stole the sexiness from the gesture. Nevertheless, his pulse quickened.

  “And you must have checked on my mother. You know she never left the sanatorium.”

  “It was an accident, Lindsey,” the sheriff cut in. “Nobody was at fault.”

  She snorted. “Yeah. That’s easy for you to say. You didn’t nearly char broil.”

  Dylan laughed. “I can’t wait to read your article on this.”

  “Been reading my byline, Dylan?”

  She’d been careful in her coverage of Chet’s death. everything had been in conclusive and under investigation.

  She’d also done a story on the battle over the new mall. She hadn’t been able to get the developer’s side of the story, though. Dylan couldn’t imagine she hadn’t tried.

  “So you’re working for your dad, then, Lindsey?” the sheriff asked.

  Lindsey nodded. “Yup. I’m a reporter covering a story, Sheriff. There’s a story here.”

  Before the sheriff could bellow out a protest, Dylan clamped a hand on Lindsey’s wrist and turned to the older man. “Don’t worry, Sheriff. It’s under control.”

  The sheriff shook his balding head. “You’re smarter than to think that, boy.”

  “You talking about me? You think you have me under control?” Lindsey smiled. He didn’t like the wicked gleam in her dark brown eyes.

  “I wouldn’t be so foolish,” Dylan pro tested. “Come on. Let me drop you home.” He’d been lucky enough to shower and change into his uniform at the station. Lindsey was still dirty, but she didn’t complain, as other women he’d known would have.

  She glanced down at herself and grimaced. “I guess I’m a sight.”

  Before Dylan could grab his keys from his desk, William Warner burst through the doors of the station. Despite her grime, he caught his daughter tightly in his arms and buried his face in her hair.

  “I’m so glad you’re okay,” he whispered.

  “Have I got a story for the next edition,” Lindsey quipped, but Dylan spied the hint of tears in her eyes.

  For an eloquent news pa per editor, Will Warner only muttered a few in coherent words. “I’ll drive us home, Dad,” Lindsey said, and shot Dylan a look over her father’s shoulder.

  Dylan nodded. Lindsey’s father needed her. After the auto accident that had killed Dylan’s mother, his father had never needed him. A handful of years later, he’d managed to drink himself to death.

  With an effort he pulled himself from the depths of self-pity where he was tempted to drown. He hated to see Lindsey leave.

  But he wasn’t really alone. The sheriff had always been there for him, had always cared about him. Even when his own father hadn’t.

  The sheriff slapped a hand on Dylan’s shoulder after the Warners left the station. “That girl’s always been trouble.” Dylan didn’t need the reminder.

  LINDSEY SLUMPED in her corner booth at Marge’s Diner and ducked behind her news pa per. She had been there long enough that people had for got ten her presence. Conversation flowed around her with the late afternoon sunshine.

  Rumor had it that Dylan had burned down his own house. And more than one person was suspicious of his involvement in Chet Oliver’s
death. How was it the old lawyer was murdered on Dylan’s first day back on the job? And just after Chet Oliver had been in Marge’s Diner claiming he had something for Dylan from Steve Mars.

  Lindsey wanted to know that, too. She wanted to know a lot of things about Dylan Matthews. Some of it had been revealed to her when she’d peeked in his bathroom mirror yesterday. She let out a ragged breath and fanned herself with a corner of the paper. The man was built.

  Her paper snapped forward, and she noticed conversation had stopped. She lowered the paper and discovered Dylan’s handsome face. He wore the dark glasses again. But instead of his uniform, he wore a blue plaid shirt with the cuffs rolled to his elbows and faded jeans.

  “Very Sam Spade.” He smirked as he slid into the booth opposite her.

  “I didn’t cut eyeholes into it,” she defended herself.

  “But you were tempted.”

  She shrugged. “I haven’t been gone so long that I’ve for got ten voices.” She glanced around at their interested observers and offered a few glares.

  She’d had to control her sharp tongue when they’d maligned Dylan’s character. She knew he hadn’t set the fire, but what else did she really know about him?

  She stared at the twin reflections of herself in his dark glasses. Reflected back was a vulnerable woman who too easily believed the image, the veneer, but never knew the core of a man. She’d been burned before. She wouldn’t be that foolish again.

  Wasn’t Dylan just a man? No hero, no white knight? He was capable of rage. She’d seen it. She had to remember he was not the perfect image she’d created in her youth. But yesterday he’d saved her from a fire.

  “So you hear the rumor?” she asked in a loud voice.

  “What’s that?”

  “You torched your own house. Wanted the insurance money. What? You going to make a million off that old place?” She flashed another glare at a particularly outraged listener.

  Before Dylan could comment, Marge bustled over to their table with a pot of coffee. She turned over the cup in front of Dylan and filled it. Then she splashed a bit more in Lindsey’s cooling cup. “You don’t need any more caffeine, missy.” She tsked. Lindsey grimaced.