Under the Dog Star: A Rachel Goddard Mystery #4 (Rachel Goddard Mysteries)

by Parshall, Sandra

  Automatically she reached for her cell phone, which she always clipped to her shirt pocket. But she was in a robe, and her phone was upstairs. No phone in the den. The closest was—where? The kitchen? Tom’s home office?

  She was wasting time. She had to do something.

  Then she smelled it. Smoke.

  “Oh, god, no.” The terror of fire blotted out her fear of an intruder. She ran, following the odor. In the living room doorway, she halted, mouth agape. Glass shards littered the floor under the broken window. Orange and yellow flames ate their way up the drapes.

  Rachel shot into the darkened kitchen, grabbed the fire extinguisher from a hook inside the door, and ran back to the living room. She yanked out the pin and aimed at the flames, swinging the extinguisher back and forth as it spewed out a white chemical. Smoke and fumes gagged her and stung her eyes. In the kitchen, the smoke alarm went off, its high-pitched whine assaulting her ears. In the den, Cicero screeched, “Rachel! Rachel!”

  When the fire was out, the drapes hanging in ragged black threads, Rachel dropped the extinguisher and tried to catch her breath and calm her pounding heart. Her gasps pulled smoke into her lungs and set off a wracking cough.

  With tears streaming from her irritated eyes, she ran to the kitchen, grabbed the broom from the cupboard and jabbed at the red light on the smoke alarm until it fell silent. She shut the kitchen door to keep more smoke from drifting in. Now only moonlight lit the room, but when her hand found the light switch she hesitated.

  Somebody had thrown—what? a Molotov cocktail?—into the house. That person might still be outside, and she didn’t want to show herself in the kitchen window. She fumbled for the wall phone by the back door and ran her fingertips over the keypad, picking out 911.

  Chapter Nineteen

  No point in hanging around the hospital, Tom knew. Soo Jin wouldn’t be talking to him anytime soon—if she ever talked to anybody again. He sent Dennis to the hospital to wait for news, left the accident scene to the state police, and headed over to see Vicky Hall, hoping he would be the first to tell her about the crash.

  At the entrance to the Halls’ driveway, under the glare of a newly installed security light, a bulky guy with a shotgun stepped in front of Tom’s cruiser and raised a hand to stop him.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Tom muttered. He powered down the window and stuck his head out. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Tom couldn’t put a name to the face, but he’d seen the man in that gang of idiots on the Halls’ patio. The man was tall and beefy, with thinning dark hair slicked back behind his ears, and he balanced the butt of his shotgun on a sizable paunch. He pointed the gun directly at Tom. “I’m following orders,” he said. “I’m not supposed to let anybody but family in.”

  “Get out of my way,” Tom said. “This is police business. And if you don’t want a taste of real trouble, you’ll stop pointing that weapon in a cop’s face.”

  “I’ve got my orders.” The man jutted his chin and squared his shoulders, but he swung the barrel of the shotgun upward and to the side. “No visitors, Ethan said.”

  Tom unsnapped his seat belt and flung open the door. With one hand resting on the butt of his holstered pistol, he strode over to the man. He thrust his face close enough to make the guy take a quick step backward. “I want you to pay attention, because I’m not going to repeat myself. I don’t know who stuck you out here and made you think you can stand in the way of a police officer—”

  “Ethan hired—”

  “Shut up. I told you to listen. You’re going to get out of my way, and you’re going to do it right now, with no backtalk. Now move.”

  He moved.

  Tom slid behind the wheel again, slammed his door, and drove on, ignoring the flashing dashboard light warning that his seat belt wasn’t buckled.

  It was almost midnight, but most of the house’s windows were lit up, and Tom guessed he was too late. The hospital had already notified Vicky about Soo Jin’s accident.

  Again Tom wondered why the girl had gone out tonight and where she had been.

  Ethan answered the door with a somber expression. Before Tom could speak, Ethan said, “We’ve already heard.”

  He stepped back, opening the door wider to let Tom enter.

  “I’d like to speak to your mother,” Tom said when he was in the foyer. “It won’t take long.”

  To his surprise, Ethan didn’t argue. “She’s upstairs with Rayanne. You’ll have to go up. I don’t think she ought to try to come down, she shouldn’t be on the stairs. I’ll just go ahead of you and let her know, so she can put on a robe or whatever.”

  Tom followed Ethan up the broad staircase. In the hallway at the top, David and Marcy stood side by side against the wall as if waiting for instructions. David wore jeans and a tee shirt, but Marcy had on a robe, with striped pajama legs showing below it. Her bunny slippers still bore smudges of her father’s blood, now dried to a rusty brown.

  While Ethan tapped on the door and entered the bedroom, Tom studied David and Marcy. With his shoulders hunched and fists jammed into his jeans pockets, David stared sullenly at the floor, ignoring Tom. Marcy stood as rigid as a piece of furniture, arms pressed flat against her sides. For a second her eyes flicked up and met Tom’s, but she immediately lowered her lids again.

  How did Marcy and David survive in this household? Tom suspected that David would be a problem for the Sheriff’s Department before long. Although he hadn’t been in trouble before, he gave off the bad vibes of a kid who was holding back enough rage to blow his life apart. His sister Marcy’s sad history showed in her tense body and empty face. Was Rachel right in believing the girl was scared of her brother? Or was Marcy constantly terrified of being judged and punished by everyone around her?

  Tom could easily see how appealing this child would be to Rachel’s kind heart. What he’d learned of Rachel’s childhood from her hesitant, wrenching confidences told him she and a child like Marcy had a lot in common. In Tom’s view, that was good reason for Rachel to steer clear. She would bring a world of trouble on herself if she got tangled up in this family’s mess.

  Ethan emerged from the bedroom and told Tom, “You can go in.”

  Tom stepped into a room that stretched from the front of the house to the back, with one end used as a bedroom and the other as a sitting room complete with sofa, chairs, tables, and widescreen TV.

  Vicky sat up in a kingsize bed, with Rayanne Stuckey tugging the collar of a fluffy blue robe up around her chin. A coverlet lay over Vicky’s legs. To Tom she seemed even smaller, more shrunken, than before, the outlines of her gaunt body barely detectable inside the folds of fabric. Gray skin stretched tight over sharp cheekbones, and her eyes swam with tears.

  Tom paused inside the door. He heard it snick shut behind him. “I’m sorry about your daughter.”

  “They told me she’s critical,” Vicky said in a whisper. Rayanne kept a hand on her shoulder. “One of the ER nurses is going to call me with updates. Ethan doesn’t want me to go in to be with her, but if I don’t and she…” Her voice trailed off to nothing.

  “We’ll be looking into the accident,” Tom said, “trying to figure out what happened. Where had she been? What time did she go out?”

  Vicky’s shoulders rose and fell in a shrug, and the effort of the movement seemed to exhaust her. She sank farther back against her pillows. “I didn’t even know she’d gone out.”

  Tom moved closer, and Vicky gestured at the chair beside the bed. Rayanne retreated to a spot by the dresser.

  Sitting, Tom said, “Would she have gone out to see friends?”

  “No.” Vicky’s head swiveled slowly on the pillow so she could look at him. “Soo doesn’t have any friends here. Not that I’ve been aware of. She never went to school here, and she never spends much time at home.”

  Tom recalled Soo Jin sitting in his office, rigid and self-contained, her spine never touching the back of the chair, talking about
being abandoned in a Seoul orphanage and growing up at a distance from her adoptive family. He wondered if she’d ever found anyone to connect with. For a young woman with so much intelligence and inner strength, hers seemed a bleak existence.

  Tom decided not to tell Vicky, for the moment, that Soo’s crash was the result of tampering. She looked as if she couldn’t take another piece of bad news tonight. The stress of the past few days might well kill this woman. Then what would happen to David and Marcy? For that matter, what would happen to Beth? Tom couldn’t imagine Ethan taking over the role of parent to all of them.

  “I’ll let you get some rest.” Tom rose. Knowing how trite it sounded, but at a loss for anything else to say, he added, “I hope Soo Jin will be all right.”

  He motioned for Rayanne to follow him. Outside the door, Rayanne said, “I can’t leave her alone for long. She’s in real bad shape.”

  “You don’t usually work at night, do you?”

  “No, but somebody’s gotta take care of her.” She threw a scornful look at Ethan, who leaned against a wall a few feet away, arms folded, head down. In a second the flash of emotion vanished, and Rayanne’s face became a bland mask again. The good servant.

  “Do you have any idea where Soo Jin went tonight?” Tom asked.

  “Lord, no. She’d never tell me anything.”

  “When did she leave?”

  “I don’t know that, either.”

  “Where was her car parked today?” The tires could have been tampered with before she left the property, not while she was gone.

  “In the garage, I guess, if it wasn’t out front. I don’t really notice things like that. Is something… It was an accident, wasn’t it?”

  Ignoring the question, Tom said, “Thanks. You can get back to her now.”

  When Rayanne was back inside the bedroom, Tom asked Ethan, “How about you? Do you know what time Soo Jin left the house tonight?”

  “What the hell does it matter?” Ethan’s attitude and posture mirrored the glum-faced David a few feet farther along the hall.

  “It matters,” Tom said. “Do you know?”

  David said, “Eight o’clock. That’s when she left.”

  Tom swung around to look at the boy. Marcy remained in her stiff posture next to her brother. “You’re sure about that?”

  “I said it, didn’t I? I saw her drive off.”

  “Do you know where she went?”

  “Of course he doesn’t,” Ethan snapped. “How would he know anything?”

  Tom studied Ethan for a moment, wondering why he cared enough about this to be irritated. He turned back to the boy. “David? Do you know where she went?”

  Casting a wary glance at Ethan, David answered, “Don’t know and don’t care.”

  Tom pulled in a breath and released it slowly, trying not to lose patience. “Is anyone from the family going to the hospital tonight?” he asked Ethan.

  “Mom can’t go,” Ethan said without looking up. “She’s not strong enough.”

  “I know that, but how about you?”

  Now Ethan’s head came up and his eyes widened as if he were surprised by the question. “Me? Why would I go?”

  “Because she’s your sister, Ethan.” What was wrong with these people?

  Ethan rolled his eyes.

  Tom wanted to shake him until that damned juvenile sulkiness fell away and Ethan started acting like an adult human being. “I guess Beth wouldn’t be interested in going, after the row they had. Where is Beth, anyway?”

  “How should I know?” Ethan sounded like an irritated twelve-year-old. “I don’t keep track of everybody. She’s probably in her room.”

  “No, she’s not,” David said.

  Tom gave the boy his attention again.

  “She snuck out, I saw her,” David went on. “She’s probably out somewhere with Pete Rasey.”

  “Aw, crap,” Ethan said. “I told Ellis not to let her out. Mom’s going to have a hissy fit.”

  “There’s plenty of ways to get out,” David said, his lips twisted in a sneer. “You don’t have to go out the front.”

  “Is Ellis that goon out there with a gun?” Tom asked. “Are you saying you hired somebody to keep your sister from leaving the house?”

  “No. For god’s sake. I hired him to protect us.”

  “Why do you think the family needs protection?”

  “Because of what happened to Dad.”

  “I thought you believed the wild dogs killed your father,” Tom said. “So you’ve changed your mind? You believe he was murdered?”

  Ethan ran the tip of his tongue over his lips. “Yeah. Yeah, I believe he was murdered.”

  Well, hallelujah. “All right then, but you keep your friend Ellis under control. He pointed a gun at me when I drove up. Pointing a gun at a police officer is a good way to get himself shot.”

  Ethan winced. “I’ll talk to him.”

  “You ought to be worrying about where Beth is. She’s a minor, she’s not in the best company, and she’s not necessarily safe.”

  Ethan didn’t bother to answer.

  Tom shook his head. He’d had enough of this family. He wished he could go home to Rachel instead of spending half the night trying to figure out what happened to Soo Jin. “Well, I guess somebody from the hospital will let your mother know how Soo Jin is doing.”

  He was on his way down the stairs when his cell phone rang in his shirt pocket. He dug it out and answered.

  Gail, the night dispatcher, told him, “Captain, you need to get home. Dr. Goddard says somebody tried to burn down your house.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Score one for the psychic, Rachel thought. Mrs. Barker wouldn’t be the least bit surprised that this house was now a crime scene.

  Rachel sat on the stairs, reduced to an observer while the deputies and fire chief went about their work. She had shut Frank and Cicero in the den to keep them out of the way, and every now and then a piteous yowl issued from behind the closed door, followed by a screech.

  A lurid kaleidoscope of red and blue spilled through the open front door from the flashing light bars atop Sheriff’s Department cruisers. Four deputies bustled in and out, and the fire chief gathered glass shards in the living room and deposited them in brown paper evidence bags.

  Rachel’s heart rate had slowed, but when she held out her hands she saw they still trembled. The night air blowing into the house chilled her, even after she’d changed into jeans and a sweatshirt. Leaning her head against the stair railing, she closed her eyes and willed the tension that gripped her to let go and drain away. The dispatcher had located Tom, and he was on his way home. All of this would seem less threatening when he was here.

  But she couldn’t shake off the horrifying reality of what had happened. Somebody had set fire to the house with her in it. If she’d been asleep, if Tom had been home and they’d both been asleep—

  Was this my fault? Did I bring this on by trying to save the dogs?

  But what else, in good conscience, could she do? She couldn’t leave the fate of the animals to cretins like that. Dealing with Tom’s reaction was what she dreaded. It didn’t take much to kick him into super-protective mode, and he drove her crazy when he took that I-know-what’s-best-for-you attitude.

  Footfalls pounded up the front steps and across the porch. She opened her eyes as Tom barreled through the front door. He caught Rachel in his arms before she was fully on her feet.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m fine, I’m not hurt.” For a moment she clung to him, soaking up his warmth and strength, feeling safe again. Then she glanced toward the living room, where the fire chief now stood on a ladder to take down the damaged drapes. “That window’s going to need some work, though.”

  “I don’t care about the damned window, I care about you,” Tom said. He kissed the top of her head.

  She might as well put it into words before he did. Moving out of his embrace, she said, “I suppose this happened
because I’m trying to rescue—”

  “No.” Tom shook his head. “I think it was a message for me.” He stepped over to the living room doorway. “Nobody but an idiot would do something like this at a cop’s house, and I know exactly which idiot to look at first.”

  “Who?” Rachel followed him. “And why do you think it was aimed at you? You weren’t even here, your department car wasn’t here.”

  “This is how a coward would do it. If you get hurt, it hurts me, too.”

  “Who do you think is responsible?”

  “I’d rather not say right now.”

  “Don’t you think I have a right to—” Rachel stopped herself. “Okay. I understand. I just hope you’ll be able to prove it and arrest him, whoever he is.”

  In the living room, the fire chief had taken down both drapery panels and laid them over the top of the ladder. The odors of burnt cotton fabric and fire extinguisher chemicals still hung in the air, despite the draft through the shattered window.

  “Stay where you are,” the chief said from the ladder. “I’ll show you what we’ve got.”

  He backed down off the ladder. Dressed in a rumpled plaid shirt and baggy khakis, he looked like he’d thrown on whatever was handy after being roused from a sound sleep.

  From a cardboard box he pulled out a sealed plastic bag containing a brick. “This was probably used just to make sure the window broke and there was an opening. Then this came in.” He swapped the first bag for one that held a beer bottle. “Gasoline was the accelerant, I’d say, with a burning rag as a wick. Instead of exploding like an amateur might expect it to, most of the gas splashed out. See the pattern here?”

  He pointed to the draperies. Ragged swaths edged with black marked the uneven burns on the fabric.

  “But here’s where the bottle landed.” With the toe of his boot he indicated the black patch on the rug in front of the window. The red fire extinguisher still lay where Rachel had dropped it.

  For a second she was back in that moment, her heart thudding, her throat dry with terror, swinging the extinguisher back and forth.