Out of the Ashes Read online

  “Investigate? You?” Now it was Kari’s turn to look speculatively at her companion.

  “Didn’t I tell you? I’m the fire marshal and arson investigator for Levi County.”

  A renewed wave of nausea flooded through her. “Arson?” she asked and sagged against the scorched cement of the exterior wall. But she hadn’t needed to ask him to repeat it. She’d heard it the first time.

  “It looks that way. That tank’s valve is open, and it appears to be the remains of a road flare stuck in there.”

  Kari’s knees wouldn’t hold her up any longer. She found herself sliding to the wet ground, the masonry wall digging into her back as she descended. “Not again,” she whispered. “Oh, please, not again.”

  “Again?” Rob knelt down beside her.

  “You might as well know...” She stared down at the cookbook in her arms, the one thing she’d been able to salvage from the ashes of her fresh new start.

  “Know what?” Rob prompted.

  “You’ll find out soon enough. I was convicted of arson when I was fourteen years old.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  ROB SAT BACK on his heels, stunned. Had she really said what he thought she’d said?

  Yes.

  But she’d said it in a curious, distancing way. Not “I started a fire,” or “I burned down a building.”

  No. “I was convicted.” That was how Kari Hendrix had put it.

  He took in her eyes. They were gray and flat and dull, devoid of the hope he’d seen sputter in them when she’d found the cookbook.

  So the question wasn’t if this was arson. Rob switched his gaze away from Kari and back to the propane tank.

  Revenge. That was the first thought that popped in his mind when he’d made his initial sweep after the firefighters had put the blaze out. He’d seen the way-too-obvious point of origin—an open valve on a propane tank, the remains of a safety flare jabbed into the tank’s collar—and it was impossible to miss the “take that!” message the arsonist had sent loud and clear.

  Rob had taken Kari through the building in hopes she could fill him in on who it was she’d so badly ticked off. A boyfriend? A customer?

  But now...

  Now he had to consider whether Kari was the culprit. The propane tank was easy enough to acquire, as well as the safety flare. She owned a bakery—and any food-based small shop hemorrhaged money like nobody’s business at first. And she certainly knew the lay of the land and when no one would be around.

  Means, motive and opportunity...and a past criminal history, albeit self-confessed.

  Her head was bent, and Kari appeared to peer deeply at her knees as though the secret to the universe were there. He could see the fabric of the denim stretched over those knees was thin and threadbare—not some high-dollar distressing of the jeans, but literally worn through.

  Kari hadn’t done this.

  Rob knew it. It was a bone-deep knowledge he couldn’t explain, but he was just as certain that Kari Hendrix had not set this fire as he was that his big brother Daniel would throw back his head and roar with laughter at his conclusion. Daniel was always telling Rob that Rob was the cynical, suspicious one.

  Still...

  “Ahem. I should read you your rights,” Rob said. Funny how his voice seemed to strain and crack. “You have the right to remain silent—”

  Kari lifted her head. Her mouth twisted in a grimace. “Yeah. I know. And whatever I say, you’ll use against me in court, and I can have an attorney—you’ll even give me a really, really bad one since I can’t afford one. I know the drill.”

  “So? Did you? Do this?”

  “No.” There was no equivocation, no hesitation, no fancy I-swear-on-a-stack-of-Bibles, no how-dare-you outrage. Just a plain and simple, no-frills, direct, “No.”

  “Do you know who might have?”

  But now Kari lied.

  Not at first. Her initial headshake was vigorous and heartfelt. But somewhere in mid-shake, a lightbulb must have gone off. She froze—just for a split second. He could see more pain flare up in her eyes, the deep anguish of betrayal. And for a moment he was sure she was going to spill out a name.

  Instead, she pressed her lips together in a tight, thin line and clutched the cookbook to her chest. “How could I know who burned this place? Why would they want to?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you. Do you have trouble with your landlord?”

  She laughed. It was a dry, bitter sound that would have been more fitting for a jaded seventy-year-old than someone Kari’s age. Kari pushed herself up to a standing position, wobbly on her knees, but still pointedly ignoring Rob’s outstretched hand.

  “I take that as a yes?” Rob pressed.

  “My landlord, as you probably already know, is Charlie Kirkman, and everybody has trouble with Charlie Kirkman. And when you ask around, you’ll probably find the customers who heard me screaming at him the other day when he refused—again—to send somebody to look at the roof. Or the air conditioner. Or the vent fan. Or the water heater. But if everybody who got into a screaming match with Charlie Kirkman burned his buildings down, Charlie Kirkman would have no buildings left to burn.”

  She was right about that, Rob knew. Charlie was as skinflinty a landlord as he’d ever come across. Rob had had dealings with Charlie—and not in a good way—when he’d followed up with Charlie’s residential tenants about fire safety complaints. And he knew that Charlie was famous for finally getting around to repairing the problem—and then upping the rent and gleefully evicting the poor tenants.

  So it was par for the course that Charlie’s commercial ventures would play out the same way.

  “Why’d you keep renting from him, then? Why not move somewhere else?” Rob asked.

  Kari shrugged slim shoulders. “Location, location, location. I haven’t been in business long enough to have a reputation yet, or a real customer base that would follow me if I moved. The location was perfect. Plus, I’d signed a year’s lease. It won’t be up for...gosh, another six months.”

  Rob couldn’t believe that the Lovin’ Oven had been in business for six months already and he hadn’t availed himself of its goodies. But he hadn’t. Maybe it was because he could get all the free dessert he wanted at Ma’s...or maybe he’d somehow looked down on a boutique bakery that sold things like four-buck cupcakes that couldn’t be any better than the boxed brownies he made for himself whenever he had a snack attack.

  If I’d known the cupcakes were baked by someone like you...

  Rob gave himself a mental slap upside the head. What was he thinking? Four-buck cupcakes were four-buck cupcakes, and a suspect was a suspect.

  Even if he knew she wasn’t.

  “So what next?” Kari asked wearily.

  “Next? I investigate. You say you didn’t do it, so that leaves me with no choice but to find out who actually did it.”

  Rob could have sworn that Kari flinched at his words.

  “I’d like to go home now,” she said quietly. “Is that okay? Can I?”

  “You’re not under arrest.”

  “You read me my rights,” she pointed out.

  “Because I’m very careful about procedure. It would be like you—I dunno—reading a recipe before you start baking a cake.”

  An even bleaker look filled her eyes. She made her way to the shop’s back door and leaned against the blackened doorjamb. “I won’t be baking anything for a long time yet. Maybe ever. The insurance—the insurance won’t pay if arson was involved.”

  “Not if, Kari. It was arson. There are no ifs, ands or buts. It was definitely arson. If you tell me—”

  She whirled around. Anger tightened the grim lines of her face. “I can’t. I can’t tell you what I don’t know. I can’t tell you why anybody would want to hurt me like th
is. I hate fire. I hate it. It destroys everything.”

  And with that, she pushed past him and made her way down the back alley behind the burned-out hulls of the buildings. In the shadows formed by the dawn’s gray light pushing through the gaping holes of the buildings, Kari Hendrix appeared small and frail and bowed over with pain. And she was running—running away from something? What?

  Rob was determined to find out.

  * * *

  “SO LET ME get this straight,” Daniel said, his words laced with amusement. Rob’s brother leaned back in his squeaky desk chair and stretched out his feet on an open desk drawer.

  “What’s there to get straight? And are you asking as my brother or the chief of the fire department?” Rob stretched his own feet out on the concrete floor of his brother’s office at the fire station.

  Daniel shrugged. “Brother, chief, what does it matter? I’m curious. You know it’s arson, I know it’s arson, and the owner of the business where the fire originated tells you she was convicted of arson, but you believe she didn’t do it? Wait. Who are you and what have you done with my got-to-believe-the-worst-in-everybody little brother?”

  “I know. It’s not like me. If there’s one rule, it’s usually that the business owner or the landlord did it. But Charlie Kirkman is too stingy to properly insure his buildings, and... Daniel, you just had to be there. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense for her to spill it all. It was a sealed juvie record, and I would have had to move heaven and earth to get it unsealed. I might not have even thought to look at it first if she hadn’t said something.”

  “So maybe it’s all an elaborate ploy to make you think she’s innocent.”

  “Now you sound like me, and you’re always accusing me of being cynical.” Rob chuckled. He took a sip of bad firehouse coffee and grimaced, but swallowed another gulp down. He was on his third cup just for the caffeine’s sake. The downtown fire had started way too early. “Here’s what really doesn’t make sense. If she’d wanted to burn that place down, she could have left a cake in the oven or something on the stove and walked away. Nobody could have proven it was anything but an accident. This?” Rob shook his head. “A propane tank and a safety flare? It’s too obvious. Too stupid. Too brazen. And she—she would have known she would wind up a prime suspect.”

  “But you just said you would have never thought to check her out—”

  “Maybe not, but it would have come up, eventually. I do my job, Daniel, you know that.”

  Daniel considered him. “Yeah. You do. And you’re good at it.”

  For a moment, Rob let his thoughts wander back to Kari, weighing everything she’d said, every expression on her face. She’d been such an open, honest book. Everything—the pain, the misery, the fear—had been right there, as easy to read as one of those first-grade Dick and Jane primers.

  The fear.

  Kari had been afraid. Of what? Of who?

  It hadn’t been a mortal fear, but more of a fear of having been betrayed. What had she said when he’d first mentioned arson?

  Not again. Please not again.

  “So what’s next, Rob Roy?” his brother asked him.

  A momentary flicker of annoyance at his family nickname distracted him from his thoughts about Kari. Rob pulled his focus together and considered Daniel’s very valid question.

  “Hmm. First I have to figure out exactly what sort of hole Kari Hendrix was in. Oh, and Charlie Kirkman. You never know. Even Charlie might have decided that a little insurance was better than fixing something—and maybe if that block was leveled, he could sell it. Maybe Kari—or some of his other tenants—didn’t want to leave. Or maybe somebody had it in for Kari.”

  “I never knew cupcakes could be so deadly,” Daniel quipped.

  Rob lifted his shoulders. “You got me. I’m not much for cupcakes. Give me a brownie any old day. But you know what I mean.”

  “How long do you think it will take? To close the case?”

  Rob rubbed at his eyes and considered whether another cup of coffee would help keep him awake. Fatigue and lack of sleep were catching up with him, and he still had the rest of the day to get through. “Probably not as long as it will take to write it up whenever I do figure it out. And definitely not as long as the grand jury and the trial will take.”

  “I know. You’re always right, so why do those pesky lawmakers insist that you give the guilty party their day in court, huh?” Daniel grinned and winked at his brother. Then his smile faded. “I’m just kidding you, you know that, right? I meant what I said a while ago. You are good at what you do, Rob.”

  For a long moment, Rob didn’t say anything. He looked past Daniel to the credenza behind him, loaded down with family pictures. There were Daniel and his new fiancée and her daughter, beaming at each other. There was a picture of the Monroe brothers, all around Ma—her birthday, Rob recalled. And at the far end, off to itself, almost as a shrine, stood a 5x7, a formal shot of their dad in his dress blues, back when he was chief.

  Back when he was alive.

  Before another arsonist had taken it upon himself to set fire to a building that had come crashing down on Rob’s dad—on all of the Monroes, come to think of it.

  Rob stilled. An awareness, a memory, flickered.

  He’d pulled the case file of that unsolved arson some months back and had been going through it again during his rare down times. And now he remembered.

  That arson. It had been started with a propane tank, too.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “DID HE DO IT? Mom! You have to tell me!”

  Kari’s mom didn’t answer, just protectively pulled the opening of her terrycloth robe together with a shaking hand. “I—Kari—I—it burned? Your shop burned?”

  Now Chelle Hendrix tottered past Kari, a hand raking through her bottle-dye blond hair. Kari wheeled around to hear the clatter of the coffee carafe rattling as Chelle managed to pour coffee into a mug, her hand shaking.

  Kari started to speak again, but Chelle held up a finger, then went back to her coffee. She poured a boatload of sugar into it, then a flood of cream. After giving it a brisk, businesslike stir, she held the mug up and took a quaff from it like a man stumbling into an oasis after being stranded in the desert for days.

  Fortified, Chelle tottered back to the kitchen table and sank with a sigh into a chair. “Now tell me. Seriously? Your shop? It burned?”

  “Mom... I am so sorry. The first thing that I thought about was your retirement money.”

  Chelle would have wrinkled her forehead in shock and horror, but her Botoxed facial muscles wouldn’t cooperate. Her throat moved in a visible gulp. “Oh, honey. Don’t you worry about me. Sure, I borrowed against my 401(k), but it’s you who’s been putting all that hard work into making a go of it. How horrible! Now grab a cup of coffee and sit down and tell me all about it.”

  Thinking about coffee made Kari think about Rob, and thinking about Rob made her think about the case he was probably busily building against her as she stood in her mother’s kitchen. “I don’t want coffee. I don’t want to sit down—”

  “Well, you’re giving me a crick in the neck, honey. Sit. If you don’t want coffee, fine, but at least sit.”

  Kari sat. Her mother quickly grasped Kari’s fingers in her own perfectly manicured hands. “Kari, what happened? Did you leave something turned on? No, I know you didn’t—you’re so careful. I’ll bet it was that wiring. I knew that old dump of a building was a firetrap.”

  “No.” Kari swallowed, tried to get the lump in her throat to dislodge. “It was arson. Somebody—” her voice trembled over the word somebody. “Somebody took a propane tank, leaned it against the back door and stuck a lit safety flare in the top of it.”

  Chelle recoiled. For a second, she just stared at Kari with rounded eyes, her hands clenched into fists ag
ainst her robe. “Kari... Kari...you don’t honestly think...”

  “Where’s Jake, Mom? I need to ask him—”

  “No.” The word was harsh and sharp and brooked no argument. Sometimes her mother dispensed with her dithery ways and allowed an iron maiden to peek out. “No. You will not.”

  “Mom—”

  “He’s back, Kari. He’s back, and he’s doing fine. We’re all—we’re all doing just fine.” Kari’s mom’s eyes grew shiny and wet with tears. “What you’re saying...it just isn’t possible. He was young, Kari. It was a mistake. A stupid, stupid prank that went all wrong and his friends—oh—his friends!” A shuddering sound of disgust escaped her mother’s lips.

  Kari put a palm over her eyes, which felt as raw as if they’d been sandblasted. Now was not the time to argue about Jake. It had been a mistake all right, taking the fall for his crime.

  Kari still remembered standing in front of the judge that day, reciting the words she’d rehearsed for her confession. It was supposed to be simple: she was a juvenile first offender, sure to get off easy for a property crime. It was Jake who would get sent off if he were found guilty—and he was guilty.

  But, her mom had explained, Jake would get sent to real prison—doing real time, since he’d turned eighteen. And her mother assured her that Kari wouldn’t—probation, that’s all, just like Jake had his first and second time before a judge.

  Only the judge hadn’t given Kari probation.

  He’d given her four years in juvie.

  Four years of hell.

  It had taken Kari a long time to even be able to speak to her mother...much less Jake. In fact, it was only in the past six months that Kari had reconciled any small bit with her brother.

  Her mother spoke now in a firm voice. “Kari, Jake wouldn’t have done this. He loves you. And you know he feels awful...just awful about what happened. Why, he was telling me about how that Charlie Kirkman was treating you, how he wanted to ram that man’s words down his throat.” Kari’s mom’s eyes rounded again. “You don’t think Charlie Kirkman did it, do you?”