Out of the Ashes

by Cynthia Reese

  Kari was back in a flash, pouring two glasses of milk. As she handed him the milk, Rob saw that her face was still suffused with that warm expression. This was a different Kari from this morning, a confident, poised Kari who seemed to feel comfortable in her own skin, doing what came naturally to her.

  Feeding others. Taking care of others. Rob had seen that same level of comfort and confidence in his mom and his sisters and even his brothers as they’d done the same thing.

  The Monroes were like that, too—squirmy when the microscope was turned on them. He understood how a person could be uncomfortable with attention focused on herself, and then completely at ease when she could focus on the needs of others.

  “Oh, Kari, you outdid yourself on these,” Chelle told her after an enthusiastic bite from her muffin.

  Kari smiled, ducked her head. “Thanks, Mom,” she murmured as she tested one for herself.

  Rob liked that. No “aw, shucks, it was nothing,” no “These? These are horrible!”

  Now he tried one of the muffins. It was like biting into a piece of paradise: warm and comforting and with a burst of summer as a blueberry exploded into his mouth. The balance of sweetness and earthiness mingled perfectly, along with just the right cross of crunch and chew.

  “Wow.” He managed to swallow the bite of muffin and not instantly stuff the rest of it in his mouth. Self-control. That was the ticket.

  “You like it?” Kari glanced at him shyly.

  “It’s head and shoulders above my attempts. But then, I do use one of those boxed mixes,” Rob admitted. He took a bigger bite of the muffin, trying to decide if it would be bad to eat two or three or the whole bowlful.

  Kari shuddered. “Ugh. Really—I know I’m talking myself out of a job here—but muffins are just as easy to make from scratch as a box. And so much better.”

  “You’ll have to teach me sometime.”

  Chelle scarfed the rest of the muffin and said with a wink to Rob, “Oh, you can’t trust Kari. I follow her same recipe, and mine never turn out like this. She leaves something out when she writes it down.”

  “I don’t,” Kari protested with a laugh. “You saw me, Mom. You saw me cook them in front of you. Just follow the recipe and don’t overmix. That’s the only secret.”

  At the word secret, some of Kari’s confidence seemed to wilt. It was as if she had been instantly reminded of the morning’s events. She put down the half-eaten muffin and stared across the table at Rob.

  “So you had some questions,” she said.

  Rob let the sweetness from the muffin linger in his mouth for a second longer before he washed it away with a swig of milk—and like the muffin, it was perfect: not too cold, not too warm, no ice to mess it up, an exactly appropriate amount of bubbly froth ringed around its surface.

  He dragged his thoughts back from the task of filling his belly...and from his appreciation of the woman who’d provided the food to do that. “Yes. Oh, and you’ll need to give a formal statement sometime today. You left this morning before I could finish.”

  “Ha. That’s a polite way of putting it. I tucked my tail between my legs and ran,” Kari said. She toyed with a muffin, shredding it between fingers that were long and slender but still managed to look as though they could manhandle a bowlful of bread dough.

  “Well...yeah. Mind telling me why that was?”

  “It was—just too much. That bakery is my dream, the goal I’ve worked toward since I was fifteen. To see it all up in smoke and know that somebody intentionally did it...” Kari trailed off.

  “But you did the same thing, didn’t you?” Rob scrutinized her face for any reaction his provocative question gained him. “You burned down someone’s dream, right?”

  He’d not been able to pull up the case, so he was flying blind here. He had run Kari’s name through the system, and it came up clean except for the sealed record she’d had as a juvie. Not anything else—not so much as a parking ticket in the years since she was fourteen.

  That was odd. Usually juvie for a kid that age was a first stop on a long path to the revolving door of prison. Either Kari had been scared straight or she’d not belonged there to begin with...

  Now, that doesn’t make any sense. She’s a self-confessed arsonist. Of course she belonged there.

  The reaction that Rob had hoped to provoke didn’t disappoint. He could have slapped her and got the same expression for his trouble: first the slack-jawed expression that followed any low blow, then the in-drawn breath, the narrowed eyes and compressed lips.

  “I never—” she snarled.

  Her mother quickly wrapped her fingers around Kari’s in a tight squeeze. It seemed to deflate Kari. Pain pushed away the anger around Kari’s eyes. She closed them, then dropped her head.

  “It’s okay, Mom. I’m...” She freed her hand from her mother’s, and Rob noticed the red imprints of Chelle Hendrix’s fingers on Kari’s.

  Kari put a trembling hand up to her forehead and leaned against it. “That’s fair enough, Rob. I guess you think it doesn’t matter, that what happened was only what I deserved.”

  Kari’s listless words shamed Rob. “No. I’m not saying that at all. You paid your debt for that fire. And I can see from your record—or the lack of one as an adult—that you’ve mended your ways. Plus, there are other victims besides you, Kari.”

  She raised her head. “But I’m the one you’re investigating.” It was a flat statement of fact, delivered with a direct and unflinching stare.

  Rob shrugged. “You said you didn’t do it. And that you have no idea who would.” He couldn’t keep a faint trace of incredulity at this last out of his tone. To cover it—surely, yeah, just to keep his hands busy—he reached for another muffin.

  “I don’t. I don’t know anything about who set that fire.”

  The second muffin tasted just as delicious as the first one had, but the tension in the room took some of the joy out of it. Rob noticed how both Chelle and Kari seemed on tenterhooks, poised to run or flee or...something.

  “Besides the ever-generous landlord, Charlie, have you had any run-ins with anyone else? Owe any money to...hmm, highly motivated lenders?” Rob drained the glass of milk and wanted more. Before he could even put the desire into a complete thought, Kari had risen from the table and pulled the milk out of the fridge.

  Was it reflex? Or an attempt to distract him while she thought through her answer?

  Whatever her motivation, Kari brought the milk to the table and refilled his glass. She returned the jug to the fridge and shut the door with a crisp thud. “I borrowed the money for the bakery from my mom—who borrowed it against her 401(k). So unless my mom has Mafia leanings—and that’s what you’re thinking, right? Some sort of loan shark? The answer is no.”

  Rob focused his gaze on Chelle. She’d completely destroyed the paper napkin she’d been holding since Kari had pulled her hand free. It showered on her table like a mini snowstorm. “That right?” he prompted her.

  Chelle jumped. She looked guilty as sin, to the roots of her pseudo blond hair. “Oh, yes. I borrowed the money. Kari’s been paying me back with interest—the same interest that I’m being charged. I can show you the paperwork, if you like?”

  “I would like. Very much.” Maybe Chelle burned the place so that she could replenish her 401(k)? “Had she kept up with the note?” Rob pressed.

  “Yes. Every month without fail—Kari’s actually the one who makes the payment. Let me... I’ll just go get that paperwork.” Chelle fluttered her hands, releasing the final blizzard of paper napkin. She pushed her chair away from the kitchen table and strode out of the room.

  “Happy?” Kari snapped to Rob. “Satisfied that my mom didn’t torch the place to get her money back?” She didn’t bother to take her chair again, but instead paced back and forth, armed with a dishcloth and wi
ping up imaginary specks of dust from the counter.

  “Hey, I’m just doing my job.” He held up both palms to ward off her sarcasm.

  Her face fell again, with that same deflation that had occurred a few moments before when he’d reminded her about the consequences of her own arson. She put down the dishcloth and sighed. “Yes. You are. I’m sorry. This is—it’s hard.”

  “You have to know how I’m going to see this, where my thoughts are heading,” Rob pointed out in the gentlest tone he could muster. “If you didn’t do it, and your mom didn’t do it, somebody still did. And whoever it is has it in for you. I can’t believe Charlie is the only person you’ve had cross words with.”

  “I can’t—” Kari leaned against the counter, put her fingers to her mouth and closed her eyes. “Sure, I’ve had angry customers, disappointed customers, people who are after me to pay bills, but I can’t imagine that any of them would think burning my bakery—burning half a city block—would be the answer.”

  “So you do owe money?” Rob’s scalp prickled. Now they were getting somewhere. Maybe with Mom out of the room, he could get to the bottom of this, get a viable suspect.

  “Sure.” Kari shrugged her slim shoulders. “What bakery doesn’t? I have to buy the raw materials before my customers pay me, and sometimes it takes weeks on a big order before I do get paid. My suppliers—flour and sugar and all of that’s not cheap. And I have to keep the lights on and the gas paid. Plus...well, I’ve had to do repairs, since Charlie wouldn’t.”

  The buzz of excitement within Rob fizzled. She was right; a regular creditor would take a merchant to small claims court and send a report to ding her credit rating. Creditors were more interested in getting their money, not in making a statement with arson.

  In his mind, he turned over the few facts he knew for certain about the case. If not money, which was the number one reason for arson, then revenge.

  Come to think of it, the whole setup did scream revenge.

  “What about that other fire?” he asked.

  Kari jerked with surprise, banging her elbow on the edge of the counter as she did. “The—the other fire?” she repeated, rubbing the injured elbow.

  “Yeah. The one you set. Could this be related to it?”

  “I’ve already told you I didn’t start this fire—”

  Rob noted the neat evasion and stopped her with an interruption. “Tell me about it. That fire. The one you set. Who did it hurt?”

  Her face completely closed down. “It hurt everybody.”

  “No, I mean, who was the victim? There were two fires serious enough to get a first-time offending juvie a felony conviction for arson that year. Both big arsons. One was a convenience store. The other was a big warehouse fire. I know you didn’t set the warehouse fire—that was the fire that killed my dad—since you were already sent off by then. So it was the convenience store fire, right?”

  “Wait...” Kari’s head tilted and she frowned, as if she were trying to hear something said at a great distance. Her fingers, their knuckles white, dug into the countertop as if to keep her upright and prevent her from sliding to the floor. “Wait. There was another fire that year? Your dad? Your dad got killed? In an arson?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A WEEK AFTER the fire, and Kari still felt as though she were in disaster mode.

  A trickle of perspiration coursed its way between her shoulder blades as she manhandled a huge cardboard box from her apartment’s kitchen to the front door. It wasn’t that the box was heavy, or that the distance was great. No, the box was awkward in its oversized dimensions, and negotiating the tight turns between her kitchen and the front door—

  Not my kitchen. Not anymore.

  The realization hit her with an almost physical force. She was actually doing this, packing up her bits and pieces of the scraps of the life she had salvaged from the first fire, and moving back in with her mother—the ultimate cliché, the ultimate punch line of so many bad jokes.

  The very thing she wanted least in the world to do.

  Kari hated being like Jake, freeloading off her mother’s generous spirit. Her mom had worked so hard as a single parent to raise them without any help. And look how the two of them had repaid her: both of them bouncing back every time they needed a roof over their heads.

  Well, no, actually, this was the first time that Kari had ever taken up her mother’s repeated offers. But she had accepted her mother’s loan—and look how that had turned out.

  The box slipped in her sweaty palms, and Kari tried to save it from falling by wedging it against a doorjamb. Just as she had righted it and was attempting a more secure hold, the doorbell rang.

  She groaned. “Door’s unlocked!” she called out.

  Whoever it was apparently didn’t hear her. The knocking resumed, louder this time. She called out again, “Come in!”

  But the only sound she heard was a rattling of the doorknob—which meant that the door was locked after all—and more knocking. Kari took up her burden again and started making her way, slowly and ponderously, toward the front door. “I’m coming! I’m really coming—just give me—”

  The box slipped from her grasp, its contents of pots and pans clattering down the hall and into the living room. Kari kicked aside the cardboard and stepped over three sheet pans, a roasting pan and a cupcake-shaped Bundt pan. She yanked open the door.

  To see Rob Monroe on her stoop.

  The last time she’d seen him, he’d revealed that his own father had died at the hands of an arsonist. No way he’d ever feel any sympathy for someone who’d pleaded guilty to arson. No way he’d ever give her the real benefit of the doubt, no matter what he said.

  Just as she expected, he’d asked—though she knew it was not really voluntary—for her and Jake and her mother to come down to the station and sign formal statements. The machinery of the investigation had switched into gear, so she shouldn’t have been surprised that the guy showed up again with more questions.

  “Gosh, are you happy to see me, or do you always break out the brass band when you have visitors?” he quipped.

  “Huh?” His words were at such a paradox with what she’d been expecting that she was rendered speechless. A strand of hair fell into her face, and she swiped it out of the way.

  “The noise? It sounded like a thousand cymbals just a minute ago.”

  Kari looked over her shoulder. “Oh, that—it was a box I was trying to get to the car.” To punctuate her statement, the lid of a pan slid off something else and banged loudly onto her hardwood floor.

  Not mine. Not anymore.

  Kari shook her head to clear away the negativity. “You might as well come in. I’ve got about a thousand baking sheets to pick up.”

  She left him to see himself in and squatted over the scattered contents she’d dropped. It surprised her when Rob knelt down beside her and began handing things to her.

  “Baking pans for the baker?”

  It occurred to her that maybe he’d think she’d moved these out of the bakery before she’d torched it—or had it torched. “Well, yeah, but these are old ones, not the nice ones I had at the bakery. These were the ones I used at home—the ones I picked up along the way, you know?” She let her fingers slide over the battered quarter sheet pan she’d found at a yard sale. It was a far cry from the heavy-duty professional pans she’d lovingly used at the bakery. “I can’t believe...”

  “Hey, at least...” Rob’s hand closed over hers. “At least you still have a pan or two, right? Or do you want to hit me for saying ‘at least’?” He made a playful ducking move and shielded himself with his free hand.

  She laughed. It sounded rough and broken even to her own ears, but it was definitely a chuckle. “No, I believe I can resist the temptation. Do you frequently provoke people to use violence?”

&nbs
p; “Andrew, my little brother, says I have the art of pranks down to a science, so he might volunteer to clock me for you. My big brother tells me that I could annoy a saint, and I guess he’s right. Ma sure has put up with a lot from me, and she’d definitely make the saint category.”

  “What, with your sunny personality?” Kari felt her knees ache in protest to the way she was kneeling, but she didn’t want to move. Any shift might make him move his hand from hers, and for some reason, the sensation it telegraphed to her nerve endings—calm, confidence, competence—washed over her. She didn’t want that feeling to stop.

  “No, believe it or not, I’m the cynic of the family.”

  “You?” Now she did move, out of surprise. “But you—well, you’re so—well, so sunny.”

  She watched as he picked up the pan and dropped it with a clang into the box. Kari saw his frown—not of displeasure, but of thoughtfulness. She could practically see gears turning over in his mind.

  “Thanks?” Rob said uncertainly.

  Had she missed something? Insulted him in some way? “I didn’t mean—it’s just that you’re always joking—well, not always—”

  He lifted an eyebrow wryly. “Ma does say my smart mouth will get me into trouble.”

  The word mouth was a mistake. She found herself fixated on his lips. Usually they were as changeable as quicksilver—a crooked grin here, a broad smile there, a tiny knowing smile. But now... He wasn’t smiling, not exactly. The corners were lifted up, showing the hint of a dimple, and revealing a sliver of strong white teeth.

  And he was close enough to lean over and kiss her.

  “Uh—” Kari scrambled for a lid at the far edge of the living room, underneath the window. Anything to get her mind off the inappropriate thoughts she was having about the guy who probably was employing his investigative skills to put her behind bars again.

  “So I take it you’re going somewhere?” Rob commented to her back.

  “Another genius deduction on your part?” She returned with the lid and another pan—not to mention her composure.