Familiar Fire

by Caroline Burnes

  She flipped the page and hunted for accounts which showed large amounts of red ink. She found one, which seemed insignificant, and another concerning Alexis Redfield that gave her pause. Alexis was the new owner of the Golden Nugget, and she was down for a $60,000 debt. For decorating and design work. And the account was two months in the red.

  Kate heard the sound of someone coming and she closed the account book and shoved it back under the counter. If she wanted to examine it officially, she could get a warrant at a later date. Perhaps it would be best if she asked a few questions without tipping her hand.

  She went to the back door and met the fireman who introduced himself as Led Gables. When she asked about Jake, he simply scratched his head. “Jake’s lights weren’t on, and he didn’t answer his door. That crazy dog of his didn’t even bark.”

  “That dog of his is running loose,” Kate said darkly.

  “No, ma’am, not Ouzo. Jake doesn’t let him run free. He gets after Mrs. Tanner’s cats and she doesn’t like it.”

  “Trust me, Led, the dog was running the streets, including the one beside Tanner’s house. I saw him.” When she saw he still didn’t believe her, she added, “I touched him. Or let me say he touched me. He knocked me down in the street.”

  “Oh, no,” Led said softly. “Are you gonna sue Jake?”

  His question was so unexpected that for a moment Kate didn’t know what to say. “Of course I’m not suing him because his dog tripped me.” It was unthinkable. Frowning, she began to wonder if part of Jake’s problem was the intelligence level of the men he hired to work for him. “You keep an eye on the scene. I’m going over to Jake’s and see if I can find him, or at least find a clue as to where he might be. He needs to examine this scene.”

  Since her truck was still at the sheriff’s office, she walked to the firehouse. It was eleven o’clock. Jake should have been home. From the sidewalk she gazed at the firehouse. It was dark, without a single light showing in the upstairs apartment where Jake lived. Kate felt a whisper of warning on her skin. She tried the front door that led to the firemen’s area and the garage where the two fire trucks were parked. It was locked.

  A tingle of worry nagged at Kate and she slipped around the building to the back. The total silence made her edgy. She pressed herself against the wall, her hand going automatically for her weapon. Something wasn’t right. Jake’s vehicle was parked under a tree. She left the protection of the wall to slip to the vehicle. Her hand brushed the hood and found it cool. It had been parked for some time.

  So where was Jake?

  She eased to the back door and found that it pushed open with a touch of her finger. She peered into the darkness but could see nothing at all. There wasn’t a sound to indicate that Jake might be home, but something kept Kate from calling out to him.

  She crept up the stairs, holding her breath and concentrating all of her energy on listening. At the top of the stairs she found an iron gate and assumed that it was designed to keep the dog in the apartment. The gate swung open at her touch.

  Not good, not good. Her mind repeated the phrase as she crept forward in the darkness.

  The hands that grabbed her came out of the blackness before she could react. She felt an arm slide to her throat, choking off her air and bruising her neck. She tried jabbing with her elbows, but the man who held her was very strong. His other arm went around her waist and tightened.

  Her hat was knocked askew and her hair spilled out across her face. The man’s hand moved up to capture a breast, then halted. His grip on her lessened, and she used all of her strength to twist. She’d caught him by surprise, and she could almost taste freedom.

  Suddenly she was free, and as she stumbled away from her attacker, the room was flooded with light.

  “Kate!” Jake looked at her in surprise.

  “Jake!” she answered, just as startled.

  “I thought you were breaking in,” he explained.

  “What were you doing hiding up here in the dark?” she snapped. She could still feel his hands on her, a lingering touch of heat.

  “What were you doing sneaking around in my house?” he countered.

  “Your dog is running loose all over town.” She was rattled, but she was determined not to show it. “And there’s been a fire.”

  “A fire?” Jake snapped to attention. “Where?”

  “Evelyn’s Boutique,” she answered, noticing for the first time that there was a trickle of blood in Jake’s hair. “What happened to you?”

  “Someone was in my apartment waiting for me when I got home. They hit me and knocked me out.” Jake checked his watch. “About forty-five minutes ago.” He rubbed his head. “I’d better get over there and check on the fire.”

  “Led Gables is there.”

  “You called Gables?” There was a hint of offense in his voice.

  “I called here, but no one answered. The phone rang over.”

  Jake nodded. “I was out cold. I didn’t hear a thing.”

  “Are you hurt?” Kate started forward, her hand reaching out to him before she caught herself.

  Jake rubbed the side of his head where a knot was clearly swelling. “I’m okay. The bastard caught me by surprise.”

  Kate went to the sink and ran a paper towel under the tap. She directed Jake to a chair and kept her expression very professional as she cleaned the blood around the edges of the wound. “You don’t need stitches, but an X-ray might be in order. That’s a nasty goose egg.”

  Jake allowed her to continue to dab at the wound, but his face showed he had no intention of seeking medical attention. “I’m really not hurt,” he insisted.

  “Any idea who attacked you? Or how they got into your apartment? Surely you keep the door locked?”

  Jake stood up. “No, no and yes. Now decide whether you’re going to play Florence Nightingale or a member of the Inquisition.”

  “It’s my job to ask questions.” Kate started out with some heat in her voice until it occurred to her that Jake might be suffering a bit of embarrassment at being knocked out. “But I can save most of them until later,” she added.

  Jake nodded slowly. “Thanks.”

  Kate sighed. “If you can stand one more bit of bad news, your dog is on the prowl. I saw him over at Mrs. Tanner’s. Jake, I have to warn you, she’s upset.”

  “I know. She’s going to shoot him, and I hate to say it, but I understand where she’s coming from. That dog is incorrigible. And I don’t have time to go chasing after him right now.”

  “I was going to walk around town. I’ll find him for you if you’ll give me his leash.” She saw something—maybe a flicker of desire in his eyes—that made her uncomfortable and she quickly looked away. “I was walking a beat anyway. I’d hate to see an animal get destroyed.”

  When Jake only continued to gaze at her, Kate cleared her throat. “I want to send a deputy over here to take some fingerprints, and you need to check and see if anything is missing.”

  “Nothing’s missing.”

  “Have you looked?”

  “I don’t have to.” Jake rubbed his head. “This wasn’t about burglary.”

  Kate looked at him sharply. He knew more than he was telling, and just like in the past, he wasn’t telling anything she didn’t drag out of him. Annoyed, she went to the phone and called for a deputy. She gave a brief summary of the facts and hung up.

  “You won’t find any prints,” Jake said. “He wore gloves.”

  “For someone who was attacked from behind, in the dark, and who didn’t see the attacker, you know a lot about him. Are you sure you didn’t see him?” Kate felt her patience growing thinner by the second.

  “No, but he wasn’t the type to make a bunch of stupid mistakes. You won’t find any clues.”

  Kate knew it was time for her to go, or else lose her temper. “The deputy will be here, Jake. Let him do his job.” She stepped around him. The hallway leading to the kitchen was clearly lighted now, and Kate saw the cluster of ye
llow roses that had been cast onto the floor. She looked at them a moment, startled by the pang that came with the idea that Jake had bought roses for someone.

  She felt his gaze on her. “I’ll check back with you,” she said, stepping over the flowers and hurrying down the stairs. At the iron gate she took a moment to check the lock. It hadn’t been forced. At the back door she checked the lock there. It was undamaged.

  When she turned around Jake was standing at the top of the stairs looking down at her. Silhouetted there, he was about the same size as the man she’d seen running down the back street behind Evelyn’s Boutique.

  Chapter Four

  Dawn was breaking over Silver City, and Kate and the cat stood outside the sheriff’s office watching the sky lighten from midnight to the promise of another achingly beautiful day. She leaned down to scratch Familiar’s back. He was pretty good company, especially to a woman who’d turned into an insomniac. After scouting the town, she’d returned to the office to find her reports of the fires scattered about her desk as if he’d been reading them. He was a smart cat—he’d found the device used to burn the church—but she wouldn’t go so far as to believe he could read a report. Still, he was smarter than the average human.

  Now, she was bone-weary and her shoulders ached. She’d found Ouzo and had a deputy take him home. Deputy Clyde Smith had dusted Jake’s place for prints and searched for signs of forced entry. He’d drawn a blank on both.

  Kate had called the Golden Nugget and discovered that Alexis Redfield was staying there. The prissy guy who’d answered the phone had told Kate to call “during business hours” to make an appointment. Kate didn’t really want an appointment; she wanted a shot at Red-field’s financial records. It seemed impossible that the Golden Nugget wasn’t making a good profit. It was a gold mine. Or it should have been: Alexis Redfield had brought some major talent into town, and the audience that came to listen brought pockets full of money to gamble.

  In recent weeks, the old stage where Kate’s grandmother had once sung and danced had been the setting for Elton John, B.B. King, Tina Turner, Reba McEntire and a host of comedians as well as Chinese acrobats, touring musical groups and magicians. The place had been packed night after night, and the roulette wheel, blackjack tables and slot machines had spun, dealt and whirred twenty-four hours a day with bettors waiting five deep in line. It wasn’t possible that the Golden Nugget was losing money.

  Something wasn’t right in that financial department, and Kate only hoped she could make it pan out. If not, her only suspect was the shadowy stranger. The one who had the exact body type as Jake.

  Jake and a thousand other guys, she found herself arguing. And Jake had an alibi.

  Some alibi. He’d been knocked out by a man who didn’t force an entry, didn’t leave a fingerprint and didn’t have a known motive.

  JAKE SAT ON HIS SOFA with Ouzo in front of him. The dog’s amber gaze looked mournfully into his.

  “This is the last warning, Ouzo. You chase Mrs. Tanner’s cats one more time, and I’m going to give you to her trussed up like a Christmas turkey. You know it’s wrong, and you do it anyway. You gleefully do it anyway.”

  Jake watched the dog, who appeared to be paying close attention. But Jake knew better. He’d had Ouzo for four years, and in that time he’d learned that Ouzo paid attention only when something he wanted was in the offing. For example, Jake could tell him to go and fetch a packet of steaks off the counter. Ouzo would willingly comply, on the off chance that he might be rewarded with a steak. On the other hand, an order to bring the paper in from the street, or a pair of slippers—hah! Jake had a better chance of waiting for the tooth fairy to deliver either of those things.

  “Ouzo?”

  “Err-err-err-aarr!” Ouzo lay down and put his paws over his ears.

  “Very funny,” Jake said. Another problem with the dog was that he wouldn’t do any of his crazy tricks, like this paws over ears, if anyone else was around. The end result was that all of the guys in the fire department thought that he, Jake Johnson, made up lies about Ouzo’s talents.

  “I mean it, Ouzo. I’m not saving your bacon another time. You should be ashamed of yourself. If you’d been here at home, where you belong, you might have prevented me from being knocked in the head. You abandoned me, your master, to a man who could have easily killed me.”

  Ouzo’s amber gaze was slightly glassy.

  “Go on, go to your room,” Jake said, finally giving up. An idea struck. He flipped open the yellow pages to dog trainer. There were three listed. All wasn’t lost. Not yet. The battle had only begun.

  With the matter of Ouzo settled in his mind, Jake walked to the window. Kate and the black cat, who, he saw with disgust, heeled perfectly, were coming down the sidewalk with a bag of sweet rolls and coffee from the bakery. It rankled Jake that a cat could behave better than his dog. But it was actually Kate he was watching. She’d returned to his life with the power of a natural element—fire. She could warm him to fever pitch, or she could toast him to a crisp. If he allowed her. He sighed and turned his thoughts to what had occurred at Evelyn’s Boutique.

  He’d studied the scene of the fire. Someone had tossed a match into a trash can full of paper soaked with kerosene and had then run out of the building into the back street. The fire had been deliberately—and hastily—set. It didn’t show the preparation and planning of the five previous fires. But Jake couldn’t be certain if the arsonist had actually intended to burn the building down, or if it was some kind of hoax. It had crossed his mind that it was even a setup, an attempt to frame him.

  In truth, he had no solid alibi. He’d been knocked cold during the time the fire was started, which might indicate that the fire starter had planned it exactly that way.

  Kate and the cat were just across the street, and he had an impulse to walk over and see if she’d discovered any new evidence. He didn’t think it through any more than that. If he gave it too much thought, he’d back out. Kate did things to him. She tied him in knots and then walked away. It wasn’t something he liked, but it also wasn’t something he could turn away from. Like it or not, they weren’t through with each other. Their future might be as antagonists, but it would never be casual or passing. At least not on his part.

  “Come on, Ouzo.”

  Just as Jake leaned down to snap on the leash, Ouzo sprinted out the back door. “Ouzo!” he called, but the black dog was only a memory.

  Jake hustled around the building just in time to see the Reverend Theodore Lyte step out of his new burgundy El Dorado and approach Kate in a long angry stride. Jake hurried forward with neither Lyte nor Kate aware of his approach.

  “Another fire!” Lyte cried, his fists clenched. “Roy Adams assured me that you’d stop this madness. We both know that Jake Johnson is behind this. I want him arrested.”

  “I want you to calm down, Reverend,” Kate said.

  “Listen here, I never believed a woman could do this job. You’ve proven me correct.”

  Jake felt the blood rush to his brain. He was furious. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of black. Ouzo was behind a car and sneaking straight toward the preacher. Jake halted in his tracks. When Ouzo stood right behind Lyte, he lifted his back leg. There was the sound of liquid striking cloth.

  Lyte whirled, his expression stunned. Ouzo took off running in the opposite direction. Across the street, Jake ducked into the doorway of his building.

  Lyte’s face was a violent shade of red. “Grab that dog. Grab him! I want that dog captured,” he huffed, shaking his leg. “He’s a menace!” He whirled back to Kate. “I demand that you pursue that dog.”

  “Sorry, Reverend, that’s the animal control officer’s responsibility. Since you seem to think I can’t manage my own job, I wouldn’t presume to tackle someone else’s.” She leaned closer to him. “My professional advice to you is that you clear out of town, go somewhere and cool off, and don’t come back until you can act like a mature adult. You see, running aro
und accusing folks of arson might be considered slander.” She brushed past the preacher and walked into the sheriff’s office with Familiar right on her heels.

  MY OLD DA ALWAYS told me that the best way to calm an angry fever was with a long draught. Ah, Da, did you see the man dance? He was doing a one-legged polka! A sight for sore eyes, it was. I’m sure you never meant the long draught to be anything other than a pint of Guinness, but a dog has to improvise. Indeed, it was a fine and lovely sight.

  When my ancestor, Red, first came over from the old country, he used almost the exact same bit of diplomacy on a lawman who’d cornered Billy the Kid. Now imagine, if you can, that Billy was wounded. It was just a flesh wound, but it was nasty and festering and it was in his gun arm. He’d been walking out of a saloon after a bit of blarney with some of the ladies. Without warning a shot rang out and Billy felt the burn of lead in his right arm. The bullet spun him around, and with the instincts of a man who lived on the edge of danger, he dropped to the ground and avoided the second bullet.

  It was a one-horse town up in southern Colorado, and dusk was falling. Billy was in the middle of the only street, his bright red blood spilling into the dust of the road. He looked at the saloon and saw there was no help from that quarter. No help from any gun-toting lead-driller in that place.

  From his right he heard a deep, ‘Billy. No sense dyin’ over this.”

  He looked up to see the sheriff, standing there. His gun was holstered but his hand was hovering over it, itching for a chance to draw, even if Billy was wounded

  Billy used his old noggin, though, thinking about the odds. He knew that in a draw-down, speed and accuracy are the only two things that count. Well, with his arm festering, he knew his speed was gone, and from his position in the dirt, accuracy was something only the saints could determine. Out of the corner of his eye, Billy saw a black shadow detach itself from the side of the saloon. There was a faint whine as Red sauntered into the empty street toward the sheriff.