“Okay—” Mitchell’s phone rings. “Hold that thought.” He looks at the screen. “It’s Wallace. I figured it would be O’Reilly.” Him and me both. “Brennan,” Mitchell answers. His face pales as the person on the other end of the line talks. “We’ll be right there,” he says before ending the call. He meets my gaze. “There’s been another fire.”
“And another body,” I say, knowing that’s where this is leading.
Chapter Nine
Mitchell and I leave Trevino Farm without being able to search through Tony’s invoices. It will have to wait since a dead body takes precedence.
“What did Officer Wallace tell you?” I ask on the way.
“The fire occurred in the homeowner’s shed. It was a she shed, believe it or not. They think the fire originated from faulty wiring in a coffee pot.”
A she shed. “The victim is female?” I ask.
“Yes, a woman in her mid-forties.” Mitchell turns to look at me. “What is it?”
“I’m not sure. Did Wallace see any similarities between that fire and the one at Trevino Farm?”
“You think we’re dealing with a serial arsonist?”
Yes.
“I wasn’t, but my senses say yes.”
“What were you thinking then?”
“I thought maybe we’d gotten lucky, and the woman Tony was having an affair with was killed by her husband.”
“That’s lucky?” he asks, quirking an eyebrow at me.
“Well, obviously not for her. But it would tie the two murders together and help us solve this case.”
“I see your point there. Are your senses saying this is the woman we’re searching for?”
I’m not getting an answer at all, so I just shrug. “Sorry.”
Mitchell reaches for my left hand. “Piper Rose Ashwell, how many times do I have to tell you to stop being so hard on yourself? No one expects you to have all the answers.”
“Officer O’Reilly doesn’t think I have any,” I say.
“I knew she was getting to you. You kept trying to tell me differently, but I knew.”
“She reasons away everything I do. I feel like she thinks I’m trying to pull one over on the entire WPD.”
“I don’t believe that’s true. I think she’s afraid of what she doesn’t understand, so she has to come up with an explanation for it.” Mitchell can be really insightful sometimes.
“Maybe you’re right, but having her do it every time I try to sense something is really hindering my abilities.”
“Because you can’t totally clear your mind when you know she’s watching you and trying to rationalize how you get your information?”
I nod. “Exactly.”
He exhales loudly. “I’m going to talk to Chief Johansen.”
“No.” I turn to face him in the seat. “Mitchell, if the chief thinks I’m too difficult to work with, he might stop asking me to consult.”
Mitchell smirks. “Are you worried we won’t be allowed to work together, and you’ll miss seeing my face all the time?”
I roll my eyes at him. “You know, every time I think you’re making progress and being more sensitive and less egotistical, you go right back to your old ways.”
He raises my hand and kisses the back of it. “I’d never go back to my old ways.”
Mitchell used to be a serial dater. He never went out with the same woman twice. It’s the reason we didn’t get along at first. But he’s done a full one-eighty since he developed feelings for me. I have to admit Mitchell’s transformation is what restored my faith in humanity.
“I do think I just made you blush,” he says.
“Eyes on the road, Detective.”
He smiles but does as I said. “You know, you say you’re worried the chief will think you can’t work with anyone but me, yet you work very well with Wallace, Gilbert, and Lewalski.”
“Yeah, it’s just a certain desk at the WPD that breeds people who don’t like me or my abilities. How long do you have to work with Officer O’Reilly anyway?” I ask.
“I’m just showing her the ropes. She wants to be a detective, so the chief thought it would be good for her to work with us.”
He thought wrong. “Maybe she should work on her own cases.”
Mitchell pulls up to the latest crime scene, which is swarming with WPD. “That’s a real possibility down the road. She’s very good at what she does.”
“If she’s such a great detective, she should be able to see I’m the real deal,” I say, getting out of the patrol car and walking smack into Officer O’Reilly. “Oh!”
“Sorry,” she says, and the expression on her face tells me she not only heard what I said, but she knows it was about her. “The whole team is still inside,” she tells Mitchell.
Wonderful. I hate when we show up at a crime scene and the body is still there. I’d much rather assess the scene after the body has been removed.
Officer O’Reilly hands me a mask. “You might want this after what happened at the Trevino Farm.”
I take it from her without arguing. I can’t convince her that it wasn’t the smoke at the scene that caused my lungs to feel like they were collapsing. There’s no point in even trying.
Mitchell is in full-on work mode, already taking long strides toward the shed. The smoke has just about cleared, but I slip the mask on my face anyway. Officer O’Reilly has a mask on as well.
The shed is the nicest one I’ve ever seen. There’s a couch, coffee table, paintings on the wall, a small kitchenette, and even a bathroom. It’s like an apartment. The coffee pot is being bagged up, and I’m drawn to it. “Wait,” I say.
Mitchell follows me over to it. “Hang on, guys. Don’t take that yet.” He turns to me. “What are you sensing, Piper?”
I hold out my hand, not touching the machine but trying to sense the energy coming from it.
“This is where the fire originated. The outlet isn’t wired properly.”
Electric.
“Well, that’s not helpful in the least,” I say.
“Of course, it is,” Officer O’Reilly says. “We need to know how the fire started.”
“I don’t think she was talking to us,” Mitchell says. “Were you, Piper?”
“No. My senses are telling me something about the electric.”
Officer O’Reilly nods. “Because that’s what caused the fire. It’s plain to see.”
That can’t be it. There has to be more to it. I step closer to the counter and stare at the outlet.
“Do not even think about touching that,” Mitchell says. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Hey, guys,” Officer Wallace says, walking over to us. “The victim is Janet Rake. Her husband found her about twenty-five minutes ago.”
“Where is the husband now?” Mitchell asks.
“In the house with Officer Gilbert.”
“Okay, Piper and I will do a quick sweep here to see if she gets a hit on anything, and then we’ll head inside the house to speak to him.”
Officer Wallace nods. “The body is pretty badly burned, so you might not want to look directly at it, Piper,” he warns me.
So far, I haven’t seen the body because the forensic team is gathered around it. And also because my senses drew me here to the outlet.
“Can we bag the coffee machine now?” someone asks Mitchell.
I nod.
“Yeah, go ahead,” he tells them.
Officer O’Reilly is by the body, and I’m grateful to not have her looking over my shoulder at the moment.
“Are you picking up on any of the same vibes as from the barn?” Mitchell asks me.
Thanks to the presence of smoke at both crime scenes, I’m not picking up on any vibes at all. “No.” Officer O’Reilly is going to have a field day with the fact that I can’t get a read on anything but what’s obvious to anyone with two working eyeballs.
Mitchell and I walk around the shed, and I open up my senses. Other than the smell of smoke, which I do my best to
keep from suffocating me, I don’t get a read on anything.
“Let’s go talk to the husband,” I suggest.
Mitchell puts his hand on my back as we walk out. Officer O’Reilly looks up at us but doesn’t follow.
Once we’re in the yard, I lower my mask and breathe in the fresh air.
“You okay?” Mitchell asks me.
“You need to stop asking me that. I’ll be fine. It wasn’t as bad as the previous fire.”
“The body wasn’t as burned either,” Mitchell says. He doesn’t address my other comment because we both know he’ll never stop asking me if I’m alright.
“I didn’t think you saw it.”
“I peeked when you were preoccupied with trying to sense something.”
Blanket.
“Was there a blanket this time, too?” I ask.
“Yeah. Did you see it?”
“No. My senses just told me.” Of course, Officer O’Reilly will think I saw the blanket. I guess anyone would assume that, though.
“That points to this being the same killer,” Mitchell says. “Both bodies were wrapped in blankets after being burned.”
“Was it the fire that killed her?” I ask.
“We don’t know yet. We’ll have to wait for the forensics team to confirm cause of death.”
If she was also killed by blunt force trauma to the head and then burned and wrapped in a blanket, we’ve most likely got a serial killer on our hands. That would be a definite pattern. And that could mean Tony’s affair had nothing to do with this.
No.
“Really? I thought I was on to something there.”
Mitchell stops walking and looks at me. “Fill me in.”
“I was thinking the affair might not be a component, but my senses say it is.”
“So, we have a potential serial killer targeting people who have affairs?” Mitchell asks.
Nothing comes to me as a truth. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
He nods. “Well, let’s talk to the husband and see if his wife was having an affair.”
We walk inside the house, and I immediately hear Officer Gilbert’s voice. He’s the most enthusiastic police officer I’ve ever met. I’m not sure there’s anyone who loves his job more than he does. I worry it might be off-putting to some family members of victims.
He looks up as we walk into the kitchen. “Detective Brennan, Ms. Ashwell, good to see you both. This is Nelson Rake, the victim’s husband.” Officer Gilbert has a huge smile on his face, and I’m not sure he realizes how inappropriate that is right now.
Nelson is a big man. Even though he’s seated, I can tell he’s well over six feet tall, and his arm muscles are larger than both my legs combined. Who in their right mind would dare have an affair with this man’s wife? It could only be someone with a death wish.
“Mr. Rake, my partner and I would like to ask you a few questions,” Mitchell says.
“I’ve already been through everything with Officer Gilbert here.” Nelson Rake’s voice doesn’t fit his stature. It’s actually very high-pitched.
“I’m sure Officer Gilbert was very thorough in his questioning, but I’m afraid this is necessary.”
I’m also sure we’ll have different questions than Officer Gilbert did since Officer Gilbert doesn’t know anything about the Trevino case. “I promise we’ll try to be as brief as possible,” I say.
Officer Gilbert stands up, letting me have his seat. Mitchell removes his pad and pen from his pocket.
“Mr. Rake found his wife about thirty-five minutes ago. She goes out to the shed every day to work on her art.” Officer Gilbert is trying to get the ball rolling, probably in hopes that Mr. Rake will jump in and take over.
“She’s an artist?” I ask, remembering the paintings on the walls.
Mr. Rake nods. “Yes. She converted the shed into her art space a while back because she didn’t want any distractions.”
“I didn’t see any easels set up,” Mitchell says.
“No, she doesn’t paint on canvases much lately. She mostly does things like coffee mugs, vases, that sort of stuff. She sells it online.”
“Do you know what she was working on today?” Mitchell asks.
Mr. Rake shakes his head. “I’ve been away. I’m a pharmaceutical rep. I have to go away for training and sales quite often. I just got back home from a week-long trip to Virginia when I found Janet.”
His work schedule would probably give his wife the opportunity to have an affair, so it fits with either possible scenario Mitchell and I have come up with.
“When did you last speak to your wife?” Mitchell asks.
“This morning. I called her while I was on the road.”
“Do you remember what time that was?” I ask.
“About ten thirty.”
I check the time on my phone. It’s afternoon already. The day is really getting away from me.
“How did she seem when you spoke to her?”
“Completely fine. She said she was working on a few online orders. We had plans to go to dinner tonight.”
Speaking of dinner, Mitchell and I need to find out if Marissa Trevino is still meeting Eugene Spicer for dinner tonight. I’m not sure we’re going to be able to keep up with all the directions this case—or cases now—are pulling us in. I guess the first step is to find out how closely related the two murder victims are.
“Mr. Rake, did you ever hire an electrician by the name of Tony Trevino?” I ask him.
“Trevino? I know that name. That’s the farm in town, right? The one with the ice cream stand?”
Everyone’s had this ice cream but me, apparently. “Yes, that’s the one. Tony worked as an electrician in the afternoons.”
“I don’t know him. At least, not really. I mean there was the guy who served me the ice cream. Short, mid-to-late twenties.”
“No, that’s not Tony. That’s his stepson, Nathan. He works on the farm as well,” Mitchell says.
“Then I guess I never met Tony. Why? What does an electrician have to do with my wife’s death?”
How do I tell a man I think his wife might have been having an affair and that’s what got her killed? There’s one other way I can try to confirm this before I drop a bombshell on the man who lost his wife today. “Mr. Rake, were you by any chance traveling during the week of Valentine’s Day?”
He furrows his brow. “That was a while ago. I don’t remember offhand. Why? I really don’t understand these questions you’re asking me. You’re supposed to be figuring out what happened to my wife.”
“There was faulty wiring in your shed,” Mitchell says.
Faulty wiring. If Tony Trevino wasn’t already dead, I’d think he had something to do with that since being an electrician would give him the necessary knowledge to pull off a crime like this.
“So, what? You’re trying to find an electrician to blame? Is that it? You think this Trevino guy is at fault?”
“No,” I say. “Mr. Trevino is dead. He died in a way that is very similar to your wife.”
“What? How is that possible? Did someone screw up the electric all around town, and now people are dying because of it?”
“I don’t think it’s anything like that.” Mitchell looks at me like he wants me to explain this.
“Mr. Rake, is there any possibility that your wife knew Tony Trevino?”
“You think she somehow knew the other victim?”
I nod.
“I guess she could have sold him some of her artwork. I think she kept records of that sort of stuff. It would be in the shed.”
I take a deep breath. “Actually, I think your wife might have been a client of Mr. Trevino’s. He was an electrician.”
“So you think he is responsible for this fire?” Mr. Rake stands up. “The guy is lucky he’s already dead then.”
“Ms. Ashwell can find out exactly what happened. Don’t you worry, Mr. Rake.” Officer Gilbert smiles at me.
“How?” Nelson Rake narrows his eyes
.
“She’s psychic. She’s amazing, too. She’ll be able to read your wife’s belongings and tell you who killed her.”
“What do you mean who killed her? She died in a fire, didn’t she?”
I raise my hands. “Hold on. We don’t know the cause of death yet. We don’t know much of anything yet.” I’m so not happy that Officer Gilbert outed me like this. “Mr. Rake, it’s true that I have certain psychic abilities, and that’s why the Weltunkin PD has me consult on cases. I will do everything I can to find out what happened to your wife, but anything you can tell us about her connection to Tony Trevino would be vastly helpful.”
“I don’t think she knew him.”
Wrong.
“She did. The question is how well did she know him.”
Mr. Rake stands up to his full stature, which is pretty darn intimidating. “I don’t think I like what you’re implying.”
Mitchell holds up a hand. “Mr. Rake, we have to pursue every possible avenue in cases like this. Given that your wife’s death is very reminiscent of a case we’re already working on, we have to assume there’s a connection between the two.”
“But she’s trying to say my wife…” He shakes his head. “Janet wouldn’t cheat on me. She wouldn’t.”
“If you could try to remember where you were last Valentine’s Day—”
“Stop!” He throws his arm out. “I want you out of my house. Now.”
“Mr. Rake—”
“Mitchell, it’s fine. Mr. Rake, I’ll leave. Please allow Officer Gilbert to continue questioning you,” I say, giving Officer Gilbert a look I hope he’ll understand to mean I need him to find out what this man isn’t telling me.
“I’d be happy to take over the case,” Officer Gilbert says.
Mitchell nods to Officer Gilbert as we leave. Once we’re outside, we run into Officer O’Reilly.
“I was about to join you two inside,” she says, looking back and forth between us. “What happened?”
“Mr. Rake doesn’t want to talk to me because I think his wife was having an affair with Tony Trevino.”
Officer O’Reilly’s head jerks back. “Based on what evidence?”
Since I know she won’t accept “my senses” as an answer, I walk away without responding.
Fight Fire with Foresight (Piper Ashwell Psychic P.I. Book 12) Page 8
