Fireproof Read online

  “And you’re only telling me this now?”

  “That’s not all. That night someone was seen back behind my property checking out my backyard.”

  “Could be some crazy who saw Jeffery Cole’s profile.”

  “I’ve taken a lot of precautions to not be found.”

  “Property taxes are all online now.”

  “Mine’s not listed under my name.”

  Racine raised an eyebrow but didn’t ask. She crossed her arms over her chest and Maggie waited for the lecture. None came. Instead of anger, Racine looked concerned. Very concerned. And that was more unsettling than having the detective angry with her.

  CHAPTER 56

  Sam tried not to jump to conclusions. Seeing Wes Harper at the scene of the warehouse fires wasn’t all that incriminating. After all, he was firefighter. But why was he dressed in casual clothes and standing back with the crowd of bystanders? Did he just show up to watch? Or was he already there, waiting to witness his handiwork and watch the real firefighters try to put it out?

  She spent the next hour looking up everything she could find on Harper, using the news station’s access to Internet databases. She found no criminal record except indication that there was a juvenile case that had been sealed when Harper was a teenager. But then he had admitted last night that he had been a firebug in his younger days. Youthful indiscretions hardly resulted in a repeat felony arsonist. It was probably nothing. From what she found about Braxton Protection Agency, Harper would never have been hired if there was something questionable in his past. Maybe she just wanted him to be guilty.

  Sam slipped the film footage into her bag and left the station, avoiding Nadira and Jeffery, sneaking through the hallways as though she were the one who had something to hide. She made it to the elevator bank almost home free when one of the doors opened and out came Jeffery.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Just checking on something.” She brushed past him to get inside the empty elevator.

  “Something I need to know about?” He held his hand over the elevator door so it wouldn’t close.

  “No. It’s no big deal.” And she wondered if Nadira had tattled on her. Why was her pulse racing? She hadn’t done anything wrong. Jeffery was the one keeping secrets.

  “Did you hear that O’Dell’s mother called Big Mac complaining about our interview? She’s insisting on a retraction. Says we cut and edited it to make her look bad.”

  Sam didn’t have anything to do with the interview, hadn’t even seen it, but she knew how Jeffery could edit a version so that even Sam didn’t recognize an interview after she stood by and filmed it.

  “Remember I said you shouldn’t mess with an FBI agent.”

  Jeffery shrugged, but he was still smiling when he dropped his hand away and let the elevator door close. Controversy pleased him, excited him. And Sam could tell by his expression that he viewed Kathleen O’Dell’s complaints as accolades. She knew the profile piece was getting all kinds of attention, the exact kind that Jeffery—and even Big Mac—thrived on. Sometimes she wondered just how far Jeffery was willing to blur the line between news and sensationalism. There seemed to be nothing that couldn’t be “touched up,” “edited out,” “beefed up,” or “deleted.” No wonder she was starting to feel like a paparazzo.

  Finally back home, Sam watched her son and mother making cookie dough. Her mother explained the instructions to Iggy in English and he would repeat them back to her in Spanish. It was their way of helping each other learn. It would take them a couple of hours, rolling out the dough, using the heart-shaped cookie cutters, baking, then frosting and decorating them. Her son wanted to make enough to take to school. Sam left them downstairs to take a long bath and read in the bathtub—a rare treat.

  The week had taken its toll. She immersed herself in the warm water and felt the tension start to slip away from her muscles. Without effort her mind drifted to Patrick Murphy—his soft brown eyes, the sexy dimple in his chin, his thick hair with the spiky cowlick that gave him that reckless, boyish charm.

  It was ridiculous for her to be thinking this way. He was too young for her. There was no doubt about that. Barely out of college and starting his career, his life. Sam had lived a lifetime of experiences already. At thirty she felt far too old and too cynical for someone like Patrick, who was just beginning his career. Nor did she have the patience to entertain a fling. It was best to get him out of her mind.

  She lay back and closed her eyes. She lost track of time and started to doze. She wanted to soak out the tension from the week, relieve her senses from the smell of smoke and the sounds of sirens and glass shattering. It would take more than a warm bath to settle the chaos that stayed with her. In fact, she could still smell the smoke as if it radiated off her body. Then she remembered what Wes Harper had said about burning flesh: “The arms and legs are the first to go.”

  Something was burning. She really could smell it. It wasn’t her imagination.

  She bolted upright, sending water over the edge of the tub. Something inside the house was on fire.

  CHAPTER 57

  Sam found her mother on a chair, trying to hit the screaming smoke alarm with the handle of a broom, only she kept missing and smacking the wall. Her son stood in the corner of the kitchen, his hands over his ears, but he was laughing at his nanna despite the smoke still belching from the oven. If Sam hadn’t been dripping wet in only her robe, if her heart hadn’t been racing out of control, she might have laughed, too. Her mother did look like she was trying to swat down a piñata.

  “It’s not funny,” Sam told her son, sounding too much like her mother. She put her hand around her mother’s waist. “Momma, leave it.”

  “It so loud.”

  “We’ll clear the smoke and it’ll stop.”

  Her mother didn’t look convinced, but she let Sam help her down off the chair.

  “What happened?”

  “We were watching TV,” Iggy confessed, no longer laughing and watching his nanna to see if it was okay to tell.

  They had become close these past years while Sam trudged around the world with Jeffery. Sometimes she found herself jealous of their closeness. Even now he wanted to protect his grandmother and didn’t like tattling on her, even when the entire house smelled of burned cookies.

  Sam opened the window. Cold air filled the room but the smoke and smell lifted quickly.

  “It’s okay,” she told them both when the alarm finally stopped screeching.

  Her mother pulled out the cookie sheet and shook her head. “Such a waste.”

  “Leave it,” Sam said. “I’m taking you both out to dinner.”

  They stared at her like she was speaking in a foreign language neither of them understood. She realized she couldn’t remember how long it had been since the three of them had eaten out.

  “I get to choose the restaurant.”

  Iggy and his nanna exchanged looks.

  “Go on.” Sam waved her hands at them. “Go get cleaned up. And dressed up.”

  Sam was ready before they were. She had found a skirt she hadn’t worn in years and put on a long sweater and high boots. When her mother came down the stairs in a burgundy knit dress and the peacock-print scarf Sam had brought her from Italy, Sam hardly recognized the beautiful woman before her.

  “This is all right?” her mother asked, worried by Sam’s dumbfounded stare.

  She kissed her mother’s cheek and said, “You look so pretty.”

  Her crusty, nagging mother blushed like a schoolgirl.

  Sam was going to check on Iggy, thinking the boy might need help. But her mother had told her, “Leave him be. He’s fine. He said he’s a big boy now.”

  He came marching down the stairs, watching his feet as though he didn’t trust the rarely worn leather dress shoes. Sam swallowed hard, but the lump stayed in her throat. He looked like a little man in his trousers and white button-down shirt with red suspenders that matched his red bow tie.

&
nbsp; “I tie it for him,” her mother said, then shook her hands in a go-away gesture.

  Sam’s cell phone rang and all three of them froze in place as if the ring had stung them. The two people she loved most in this world looked at her briefly with an innocent anxiousness before their eyes automatically switched over to disappointed resolve.

  Sam glanced at the caller ID, though she already knew it had to be Jeffery. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. In all the years as his camera technician she had always been there. Jeffery was just another reporter without a camera on him, but Sam knew he could replace her tonight and all the nights to come with a snap of his fingers.

  Of course, no one would put up with him as much as she did or for as long as she had. Sam and Jeffery had become like an old married couple, ignoring each other’s idiosyncrasies, taking the good with the bad. It had been Sam’s experience that marriages and relationships usually ended up with one person taking the brunt of the bad. Her mother and son certainly had in the last few years of her relationships with them.

  Sam’s finger hovered over the phone as it continued to ring. She saw her son put his hands under his suspenders, getting ready to flick them off his shoulders, and she put her hand up to stop him.

  “Don’t you dare,” she said to him, then moved her finger over the phone’s faceplate, taking Jeffery’s call and sliding it to Ignore. Before it could start ringing again, she shut the phone off.

  “Let’s go,” she said, but neither her son nor her mother moved. They stared at her, almost as stunned by what she had just done as Sam was.

  CHAPTER 58

  Patrick opened the door and recognized the woman without an introduction. By the surprise on her face, he knew she recognized him, too.

  “She said you looked exactly like your father.”

  “Maggie said that?”

  “No. Your mother.”

  “So you’re Kathleen O’Dell?”

  “And you’re Patrick.”

  “Maggie’s not here.” But he opened the door and invited her in anyway.

  She hesitated, but only for a second, staring at him as if she were seeing a ghost.

  “I know she’s not here. I didn’t come to see Maggie.”

  Now Patrick wished he hadn’t been so quick to open the door. Maggie had a security camera. He could have easily avoided this and just pretended to not be here.

  “You keep in touch with my mom?”

  “From time to time.” She made her way into the living room. “Don’t look so surprised. How do you suppose we kept the two of you from finding out about each other all these years?”

  He didn’t like the sarcasm in her voice. She might resemble Maggie in looks, but her brusque manner was nothing like Maggie. Not two minutes after their introductions and Patrick could detect a cruel edge to this woman.

  “What is it that you wanted to see me about?”

  “My, I don’t recall your mother mentioning how rude you are.”

  He felt the flash of heat crawl up the back of his neck.

  “Perhaps you could get me something to drink?”

  She followed him into the kitchen like she knew her way. Stopped at the island counter and watched him take out two glasses from the cabinet and open the refrigerator. Before he brought out the pitcher of ice tea she stopped him.

  “You must have something a little stronger than ice tea. I know you were tending bar at college, so you must be old enough to drink.”

  “You know exactly how old I am,” Patrick told her, allowing his irritation to show.

  She looked at him for a second and he saw a deep sadness in her eyes as she said, “Yes. Yes, I do know exactly how old you are.”

  It had taken Patrick’s mother a lifetime—Patrick’s lifetime—to admit that he was conceived during a three-month affair with Thomas O’Dell. Growing up, he knew little about his father except for the bits and pieces he kept in a Nike shoe box. It wasn’t until five years ago, when Maggie came looking to meet him at the University of New Haven, that Patrick learned the secret that Thomas O’Dell’s wife and mistress had kept for more than twenty years. He wondered what Kathleen O’Dell hoped to accomplish by coming here today.

  He pulled out the bottle of wine that he and Maggie hadn’t finished the night he fixed them dinner. He exchanged the tea glasses for goblets, popped up the cork, and poured. At first he was going to stick with tea for himself but then he decided this conversation might go down better with some wine.

  There was only half a bottle left. He emptied it into the glasses and slid hers over to her side of the center island, where she had already made herself comfortable on one of the bar stools. Patrick remained standing, taking his old bartender stance, and then remembered how Maggie and Sam had taken these exact positions during their midnight confrontation.

  “Maggie has a misguided sense of obligation to you,” Kathleen O’Dell said, taking a healthy gulp of the wine.

  “Unlike you and my mom.”

  “Why in the world would I feel any obligation to a bitch who tried to steal my husband?”

  Patrick kept himself from flinching at his mother being called a bitch.

  “What is it that you want to talk to me about, Mrs. O’Dell?”

  “I want you to leave. Pack up and get out of Maggie’s life.”

  “Maggie invited me to stay here. I didn’t ask her for a place to stay.”

  “But of course you jumped at the offer.”

  “I’m pretty sure this isn’t any of your business.”

  “So what will it cost?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What will it cost to get you to leave?”

  “I think you’re the one who needs to leave, Mom,” Maggie said from the doorway.

  Neither of them had heard her come in. Patrick had forgotten to lock the door and set the alarm. Maggie must have recognized her mom’s car in the circle drive.

  “Patrick’s a guest here. I suggest if you want to continue to be one, you’ll leave right now.”

  “I expected you to be curious about him. Maybe even want to meet him. I didn’t expect you to drag him into our lives.”

  “My life. Not yours.”

  Kathleen O’Dell slid off the bar stool and stood in front of Maggie. That’s when Patrick realized she was a bit wobbly on her feet. She may have had a few drinks before she arrived.

  “So you’re choosing this bastard half brother over your own mother?”

  “I’m not choosing anyone. You want to talk about choice, Mom? Maybe you should tell me how you chose to give a tell-all interview to some two-bit reporter.”

  “Jeffery Cole is an award-winning journalist. How was I supposed to know that he would twist my words?”

  “Right, he twisted your words to make it sound like you were betraying your daughter.”

  “Betraying? You see that as a betrayal? But this—inviting him into our lives—that’s not a betrayal?”

  Kathleen O’Dell waved her hand at Maggie like she thought she was being ridiculous. She shook her head, a slow side-to-side motion that Patrick thought looked melodramatic and perhaps even practiced. She made her way to the door without argument, either anxious to escape or simply needing the last word. Either way, Patrick realized she was willing to leave without further explanation or apology.

  Before she left she mumbled something that sounded like “You’ll be sorry.”

  From the disappointment on Maggie’s face, Patrick thought she already looked like she was sorry.

  CHAPTER 59

  Tully wore jeans, an old gray sweatshirt, the grimiest pair of high-tops he owned, and a threadbare jacket he’d bought earlier from a Salvation Army thrift shop. Last night when he carefully went through the red backpack he had found an interesting assortment of worthless junk. Or at least he had believed it to be worthless. Then he discovered that whoever had been using the backpack had one of the same habits Tully had—pocketing an extra napkin or two from whatever fast-food joint or vendor h
e ate at.

  Tully took out all of the napkins—eight different ones, plus four from the same place. Then he bought a tourist map of the District and started highlighting all the napkin food stops.

  More than half of the food places were around the fire site and close to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, where the homeless buses picked up and dropped off passengers. The others were downtown. The four duplicate napkins were from a small corner shop called Willie’s between the library and the fire site on Massachusetts Avenue.

  The guy who tripped Tully and ran away from Maggie, only to drop down a manhole, had looked homeless. Maybe it was just a disguise. If he was the arsonist, maybe that’s how he managed to blend in. Both Tully and Maggie suspected that the fire starter walked to the sites. How better to get away than to drop underground and make your way safely home?

  Of course, the church fires in Arlington threw Tully’s hunch way off. Still, he had a gut feeling that this guy—whoever he was—knew something more. Maybe he had seen something or someone. After all, why disappear down a manhole the night of the fire when he could have easily walked away without notice? And was it a coincidence that he disappeared before the second building burst into flames?

  Between the corner shop named Willie’s and the fire site, Tully had narrowed it down to three manholes that could easily be accessed without much notice or without traffic running over them. Then he found a place where he could watch all three.

  Along with the napkins he had found several store receipts smashed into the bottom of the backpack. Most of them were from Willie’s. And all of those had time stamps between five and seven o’clock in the evening.

  Tully bought a sandwich and coffee from Willie’s and found his place. It was ten minutes before five. He figured he could kill a couple of hours hanging out. He sat down on the cold concrete, realizing quickly why most of the steamy grates were already occupied.