Hot Nights with the Fireman

by Lynne Silver

  Again with the looks, this time accompanied by stifled grins. “Ms. Rose, that’s spray paint on the canvas. Not blood. No DNA involved.”

  “But can’t you find some evidence somewhere?” she asked, annoyance and fear threading her tone. Mostly fear. The threat spray painted on the canvas was starting to penetrate.

  “Sorry, the guy was too good. Check out your surveillance cameras.” The officer pointed up at one of the three surveillance cameras in the gallery. Red spray paint covered the camera lens with tiny drops spattered onto the floor below it. “I’m guessing the culprit entered through the back door”—he looked at her pointedly, and she flushed at the not-so-subtle reminder that she’d left her back door unlocked—“sprayed the paint, then tossed the brick through the window and ran. Spray paint can come from anywhere.” He pointed in the direction up the street. “Could’ve come from Monarch Paint. Or from the Home Depot across the bridge. Nearly impossible to track.”

  “But what about the threat? Shouldn’t you take that seriously?” The words Die rich bitch marred the beautiful painting and made her shiver with fear.

  “Look, Ms. Rose, we’ll see what we can do, but in all honesty, it’s probably someone blowing off some steam. Someone’s taking their anger toward your father out on you.”

  Tears threatened to spill but she blinked them back and swallowed hard. This was why she was alone on a Saturday night. Because thanks to her infamous, criminal father, her friends, save one, had abandoned her. It was bad enough no one wanted to come close enough for the taint to rub off, including her own mother, but now people were taking the cold shoulder to the next level. Getting ignored by people she could handle. Outright violence was no-go, but she had to suck it up.

  When the whole mess had started, she’d made the choice to put on a brave front. She hadn’t shown an ounce of weakness to the authorities investigating her father, and she didn’t plan on starting now. “That’s not fair,” she told the police. “I’ve done nothing wrong. I learned about my dad’s scam the same day as everyone else in the country. My only perk was that I got to hear it from the FBI, not The Washington Post.” Her words ended on a hiccup. So much for disguising her fear.

  “That’s life,” the officer said. “It’s not fair that my cousin can’t retire next year because he lost his savings to your dad, but that’s the way it goes.”

  “But your cousin’s not throwing bricks through my gallery windows and threatening to murder me in my sleep,” Ari said, motioning toward the horrible words sprayed across the painting.

  “No,” he agreed, “but he sure would like to.” He turned toward the door, the other officer close on his heels. “You’ve got insurance, right? I recommend you sweep up the glass and make a claim with insurance.”

  “That’s it?” Ari fisted her hands on her hips and spoke over the other officer’s obvious warning coughs and throat clearing. “My dad wrongs your family, so you’re going to basically ignore this crime?” she asked.

  He frowned and shook his head at her. “We’ll be in touch if we gain any leads. In the meantime, get your window fixed and use your alarm,” he said and exited.

  Ari glared at the closing door then headed downstairs to hunt for a broom. Hiding upstairs in her bedroom to have a good cry and to uncork the bottle of wine currently lying on its side in the middle of the room would be her first choice, but she didn’t get to have a pity party now. She unearthed a rarely used broom from the oft-used basement. She headed back upstairs to start cleaning up the disaster. The sun came down in roughly half an hour, and sleeping alone in a wide-open Georgetown row home was not her idea of fun.

  “Val, please be home,” she said, dialing her cell phone with one hand and sweeping haphazardly with the other. A few rings and her longtime BFF finally picked up. Valerie was the one friend who’d stuck by her side when the news of Stanley Rose’s grand Ponzi scheme had broken. For that she was forever grateful.

  “Ari, are you okay?” Valerie Moore answered with an urgency that had Ari wondering whether Val had a sixth sense and knew how bad her day was.

  “Val. I need your help.” That was the other thing that had changed: admitting weakness. She’d lived all twenty-seven years of her life playacting that everything was fine. When Mom moved out to live with her new boyfriend when Ari was seven, she’d been “fine.” And when Dad had pulled her from her school to enroll her in an all-girls prep school in a new city? Fine with her. She’d been so fine at age twenty, she’d slapped on a smile and a new dress to play bridesmaid for her mom’s third marriage. But seeing her beloved father’s name and face on the cover of every newspaper and blog in the world next to the headline CRIMINAL had forced Ari to reassess her definition of “fine.”

  “Absolutely, what do you need?” Val said without pause, reminding Ari for the trillionth time why she was her best friend.

  “Can you send…hang on a sec.” She lowered the phone as a flash of light shone through the storefront’s shattered glass. “Enough with the pictures. It’s just a freaking broken window!” she yelled to the people hovering around outside her gallery. Then she noticed these weren’t the average pedestrians taking an interest. This was a full-blown news crew. Shit. Word had spread, and the press had obviously decided her vandalized gallery was more interesting than her father’s McLean home, where he’d been on house arrest until the trial.

  “Arianna.” Valerie’s voice came sharply on the line. “What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

  Arianna turned her back out of view of the prying camera lens, and answered Val. “I’ve been better. If you turn on Channel Five, you’ll see what’s going on.”

  “Sweetie, it’ll be okay. They’ll find your dad.” Val’s annoyance came through loud and clear. “I can’t believe it.”

  Ari froze, camera in hand, suddenly not caring that the press was having a field day capturing her image like she was a deer in the headlights. “What do you mean, they’ll find Dad? What are you talking about?”

  There was total silence, and then Valerie said, “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “He pulled a Harry Houdini act. He’s gone, Ari.”

  “What?” she screeched. “Is that why I have news cameras in front of my gallery?”

  “Unless you put the porn picture up again, I’m guessing yes.”

  “It’s not porn. It’s art,” she protested. “And no. The press is here because some jerk decided to take his anger for my dad out on me. He tossed a brick through my window and defaced a painting.” The events of the day caught up, and she left the broken window to run to her back office and collapse onto her office chair, letting the broom fall against the desk with a loud clatter. “I have a gallery full of glass shards and a possible stalker gunning to kill me. And now my dad’s missing,” she wailed.

  “Oh, Ari, no,” Val said with deep concern. “I’m calling Jason. I’ll be right over.”

  “Really? That would be amazing, although I hate bothering you,” she said, feeling instant relief wash through her at the thought of reinforcements.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, friends bother one another. It’s in the job description. We’ll be there soon.”

  “Great. I need someone to sit in the gallery while I make a Home Depot run.”

  “You stay put. Jason and I will go to Home Depot. What do you need?”

  Ari’s stomach unknotted with relief at not having to navigate the huge box store after hearing her dad had pulled a runner. “Are you sure? I hate to ask?”

  “Of course I’m sure. What to you need?”

  “Um, let me think…a wooden board to cover the broken window and a vacuum cleaner,” Ari said. “A big one. What do they call it? A Shop-Vac?”

  A pause from Val. “Okay, got it.”

  “This is great of you.” Ari hung up feeling slightly less depressed. Val’s capable, handsome firefighter husband would solve the gaping window-hole problem, and she could deal with everything else that now had to be deal
t with such as the insurance company and her big gallery show plans. There was also the tiny but significant detail of her missing father. She instinctively grabbed her cell phone to call her father. They’d had one brief conversation ten months ago when this whole disaster began, but it had been radio silence since. Dad said he was protecting her, that he’d messed up and didn’t want her to get caught up in his mistakes. Well, good going, Dad. As the only remaining member of the Rose family, she was buried in it now.

  She dialed the old cell number and it went straight to voice mail as usual. A few months ago she’d called daily wanting her father to protect her, to tell her the FBI was mistaken, that the whole thing was a misunderstanding. But he’d stopped answering her calls, and she’d had ten long months to adjust to the idea of her father as a thief. She’d finally got the message loud and clear and stopped calling. Until today.

  She waited for the shrill beep. “Dad? It’s me. Ari. I…heard you’re missing. I’m, um, calling to…” To what? Beg him to come out of hiding? Talk about your Disney fantasies. “I’m just calling.” She hung up and sat in silence for a long minute until the noise outside her gallery forced her into action. Her father’s business was her father’s business, and she refused to take the fall for him. The paparazzi had to go.

  A dash upstairs and a quick search of her loft-apartment uncovered a king-size emerald bed sheet, a stepladder, and a staple gun. When she returned to the main gallery floor, the reporters called to her through the hole in her front window.

  “Ms. Rose, any comment on your father’s disappearance?”

  “Ms. Rose, what do you say to the hundreds of families out in the cold tonight thanks to your father’s theft?”

  From the vantage point of the stepladder, Ari sagged under the day’s emotional toll, leaving her completely unable to sift through the recommended lawyer-type answers, and she muttered the first thing that came to mind, “Let them eat cake.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she blanched, knowing she’d regret them sorely.

  With a deep breath, in a louder voice, she found her standard answer, “All questions regarding the Stanley Rose investigation should be directed to the law firm of Arnault and Skaten. I am happy, however, to field any questions about the upcoming Rose Gallery new artist show.” There, that would show them. Way to keep her cool in the face of adversity, she thought, conveniently ignoring her Marie Antoinette gaffe. A year ago no one had thought she’d be able to purchase and open an art gallery, but she’d done it, even under the scrutiny of her father’s scandal.

  Silence fell from the press, and then the roar of questions started up again. Of course, all about her dad. With a huff of annoyance, Ari swept up the sheet and stapled it to the top wall corner then made her way to the other side to repeat. The hard press of the staple gun felt good. She slammed a few more staples into the wall, fixing the sheet to block out the camera crews, fantasizing each staple pounding into her father’s traitorous, blackened heart.

  With a snort of disgust, Lance clicked off the six o’clock news on what may have been the last non-flat-screen television left in northern Virginia. “‘Let them eat cake’? What a heartless bitch.” Albeit a smoking hot one, if you went for that curvy, let’s-have-sex-all-night redheaded look, which he did. But a woman had to have a heart to score his attention for more than a minute. She reminded Lance of all the girls he’d grown up with—status conscious and only worried about their next ski vacation. Thank God he’d escaped that world.

  “Arianna’s not at all bitchy once you get to know her,” Jason said. “In fact, she’s hilarious.”

  He eyed his good friend. “You’re biased. She’s Valerie’s best friend, Valerie’s your wife, ergo…”

  “‘Ergo’ what?” Jason asked with an amused smile and leaned back into the nondescript beige corduroy recliner.

  Lance took a long pull of his Sam Adams before answering. “Ergo, you don’t insult the best friend if you want to get laid. Even I know that, and I’ve never been married.” Jason could defend her all he wanted, but a woman like Stanley Rose’s daughter ought to have known better than to mutter something like that with a camera crew nearby.

  Jason released a cross between a snort and a chuckle. “And you’re never getting married if you hole up in here moping.”

  “I’m not moping,” Lance protested, even though Jason was right. Ever since the shooting, he’d stayed close to home, venturing out only for physical therapy and supplies in the form of beer and frozen pizza. He ignored his buddy’s raised brow and took another swig of his beer. He’d better stop at this bottle if he wanted to make a good showing at physical therapy tomorrow and prove to the powers-that-be he was ready to return to work.

  The damn physical therapy was torture, but it was necessary if he wanted to be back guarding POTUS in six weeks, which he most certainly did.

  Jason laughed. “You have been hiding, but hell, I’d hide, too, if the whole world wanted to shake my hand or…”

  “Not everyone wants to shake my hand,” Lance said, hearing the darkness in his voice. “Obviously, there are enough people in the world who want the president dead. That’s why I have a job and a shiny new scar on my thigh.”

  “Maybe the attention’s blowing over.” Jason gestured to the television. “One good thing about Stanley Rose doing a runner is that the footage of you taking the bullet is relegated to YouTube or the late night news.”

  Lance smiled, grateful for some things. “Yep, lucky for me America has ADD when it comes to world events.” His fifteen seconds of unwanted fame played on monitors across the country. Hell, he’d even made the Tonight Show, but now thanks to America’s most wanted investment advisor, he could go back to anonymity.

  “Is your sister still calling every day?” Jason asked.

  He nodded. His sister wanted him to join her in Manhattan to have her personal physician take a look at his thigh, but he was a Secret Service agent, for the president for crying out loud. NIH docs knew a thing or two, but tell that to his sister. She was convinced the only orthopedist worth his salt was Dr. Peter Weiss on Seventy-eighth and Lexington.

  Jason’s cell phone rang and a private smile formed as he answered it. Probably Valerie. Maybe not, judging by the frown that appeared. A low murmur and Jason’s grunts of reply revealed nothing about the conversation.

  Jason finally looked up from his phone. “Listen, change of plans. Val’s picking me up to run an errand and then we’re heading to Georgetown.” He murmured one last thing into the phone then hung up.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “Do you need my help?” Lance made the offer although any change in plans that brought him to a bar or any active social scene rubbed him raw. “But I don’t want to go to a bar tonight.” He wanted to grab another beer, lie back on his couch, and, in the privacy of his own apartment, watch the Nationals play again.

  “We’re not going to a bar, but yeah, I could use your help.”

  “I’ll do it, but you owe me. I hate Georgetown and fighting the crowds of tourists and drunken college students,” he muttered.

  “Stop grumbling. I need you to go to Val’s friend’s house in Georgetown and wait there for me and Val. Can you drive my truck?” Jason knew he couldn’t ride his Harley for a few weeks, another bennie of getting shot.

  “Fine. But where are you and Valerie going?” He was starting to regret his offer to help.

  “We’re going to swing by Home Depot then head to G-Town.” Jason stood to leave, and Lance followed, trying to be a good host.

  “Home Depot?”

  “Yeah. Val’s friend’s having some trouble, and I’m not letting Val head over there alone.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “The kind you’re trained for,” Jason said.

  He groaned. “I’m a gimp, Jason. How am I going to defend anyone?”

  Jason slapped him on the back, sending him stumbling forward a few inches. The damn firefighter didn’t realize his strength, and Lance’s bala
nce was wacked. “Your trigger finger’s not gimpy, right?”

  “True.” He grabbed his wallet, Glock, cell phone, and keys, shoving them all in the pockets of his jeans, except for the gun. “Let’s go.” Both men stepped out the door and Jason waited while Lance locked up. “So who am I going to help?”

  Jason grinned. “Arianna Rose. No, don’t groan. You finally get to meet the heartless bitch.”

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