Out of the Ashes

by Cynthia Reese

  She realized almost too late that she was about to confide in Rob about why her mom had asked her to take the blame for that first arson. That first arson—now Kari couldn’t help but wonder if Jake might have had something to do with the downtown fire.

  The thought ate into the scant hold she had on her self-control. Kari couldn’t even entertain such an idea sitting so close to Rob Monroe. What if she let something slip? She didn’t know what would be worse...that her nagging suspicion was true and Jake had resorted to his old ways again, or that she might hang a completely innocent Jake out to dry.

  Kari glanced up at Rob to see if he had noticed she’d become distracted.

  He hadn’t seemed to. His eyes were fixed on the little girl who appeared oblivious to anything but digging a very deep hole. “I can’t imagine any man turning his back on his children. My dad wasn’t like that at all—we were the most important things in the world to him, us and Ma. And that’s how I think it should be.”

  Something about the emphatic way he said that made Kari’s heart beat a little faster. She liked how he brooked no argument about commitment and responsibility.

  Kari traced the bench’s rough wooden slats that lay in the space between her and Rob. “To be fair, he did pay child support. And he sent us presents, you know, for birthdays and Christmas. He actually offered for me to come out to California to see him—”

  She stopped again, remembering how those plans had come to nothing because she’d ended up in juvie.

  “Sounds more like an uncle than a dad,” Rob protested.

  “I guess so. I never thought about it like that, but you’re right. Like I said before, he’s not a bad sort. Just somebody I don’t know really well.”

  She felt Rob’s gaze on her, made it a point to meet it so that he wouldn’t feel the need to pity her.

  But it wasn’t pity she saw in his eyes. It was wonderment. “I’m lucky, so lucky—my brothers and sisters and I. I should tell myself that every day. I had Dad for sixteen years, and he made every moment of those years count,” Rob said.

  “He died when you were sixteen?”

  “Yeah. That summer.”

  She sat back against the bench. That summer, she’d been incarcerated, scared to death, not yet taken under Alice Heaton’s wing. And yet...on this gorgeous fall day with a robin’s-egg-blue sky arching up and over them, she was out of that torment. Prison was behind her. She’d been given a fresh start.

  But Rob would never have another chance to help his dad raise chickens.

  “Hey, what’s all this about?” With his thumb, Rob carefully brushed away a tear she hadn’t even realized she’d wept.

  “I can’t—well, you.” She ducked her face away to hide the fact it felt all hot and sticky with unshed tears and embarrassment. “You saying you’re lucky to have had your dad when you lost him at such a young age. Jake—Jake is not like you at all. He’s so bitter about Dad...and Dad’s not even...well, dead.”

  “I imagine that might be harder, if you have less, hmm, what do they call it? Closure,” Rob speculated.

  “Maybe. Or maybe you’re a different sort of person. Alice says...”

  “And Alice is?”

  “Oh! Alice!” Kari leapt to her feet. “I left her at the homemade soap booth on the corner.”

  “Who’s Alice?” Rob asked.

  “My friend—oh, no, she’ll think I left without saying goodbye—”

  “No need to panic,” Rob said equably. “She’s probably still here. What’s she look like?”

  Kari rattled off a description, and as she did, a girl with long blond hair cruised by on a bicycle. Rob beckoned her over, and at once Kari recognized her as DeeDee’s daughter Taylor.

  “Hey, Taylor, have you seen a lady...” Here, Rob recited Kari’s description of Alice to a tee. “Can you go check by Mr. James’ soap booth?”

  “Roger that!” Immediately, Taylor pedaled hard, as though she were on a life-or-death mission.

  Kari watched her go. “I didn’t mean—gosh. When faced with a task, you Monroes are hard-core.”

  Rob smiled at her teasing. “So who’s Alice?”

  “The best friend a person could ever have,” Kari said staunchly. “She was the head cook when I was in juvie. She taught me how to cook and bake and...and then when I got out, I worked at a bakery that a friend of hers ran—she recommended me for the job. I was there for several years, until she retired and handed the business over to her son.”

  Kari felt her face flush anew at the memory of the son firing her the day he took over. “We don’t need any ex-cons around our cash drawer,” he’d said. “Maybe my mom took in Alice Heaton’s sob-story cases, but I don’t have to put up with you a minute longer.”

  She’d been devastated—and her former boss had been enraged at her son’s decision. There’d been nothing for it but to hang up her apron and clear out.

  The mention of juvie seemed to startle Rob. It was as though he’d genuinely forgotten that she had been incarcerated. He looked as though he were about to say something, stopped, then started again.

  “You say you didn’t start the fire. Okay. But you know, it would help if you’d cooperate with me.”

  “I have. Every time you come and talk to me, I tell you everything I know. What more can I do? It wouldn’t help you if I made up stuff.”

  Rob stood up, stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He took another long look at the little girl still digging in the flower bed.

  “Fair enough. But why do I have the feeling you’re not actually doing that? Telling me everything you know, I mean?”

  Because I’m not.

  Before she had to answer him, Alice came toward her, her hands full of the bags and parcels she and Kari had found during their trip, her face aglow and intent on Taylor. Taylor was pedaling slowly beside her, talking nonstop. Alice had that effect on young people. Something about her made kids just spill their secrets.

  Like Rob Monroe. He’s the same way.

  The thought brought Kari up short. Maybe she’d be better to limit the time around him because before she knew it, she might spill secrets that weren’t entirely hers.

  “Just let me know if I can get any eggs. And tell...Mrs. Colleen, right?”

  “Everybody calls her Ma. She’d be offended if you didn’t.”

  “Okay, Ma, then. Tell her I said thank you.”

  With that, she hurried toward Alice, and away from Rob Monroe, hoping to make her escape. In her haste, she tripped over her own two feet and fell to the ground.

  As Rob and Alice rushed over to help her up, mocking laughter floated over from the pavilion.

  Jake’s laughter.

  She spotted him, leaning against one of the tent’s support columns, his arms folded across his chest, his T-shirt looked as though he’d slept in it. Scrambling up, she said to Rob, “I am so—thank you—I’m okay.”

  “You just have to overlook my sister,” Jake observed. “Kari can be a klutz. Witness having two buildings burn on her watch.”

  * * *

  ROB FOUND HIMSELF gripping Kari’s arm a bit too tightly as he waited for Jake to stop smirking. He willed himself to ease up, smiled at Kari, made sure she was steady on her feet and then released her arm.

  He didn’t like this guy. He hadn’t liked him when he met him, and the feeling lingered right through the formal statement Rob had taken from him early in the investigation. It was a gut feeling that could have simply been in reaction to Jake’s self-absorption and amusement at being intentionally cruel to his sister.

  Rob had known guys like Jake—not a bully, exactly, but someone with a quick, cutting remark ever at the ready. True, Rob had spent his share of time on the bench outside the principal’s office, but it wasn’t because he’d been insulting his clas
smates—at least not the defenseless ones.

  No, Rob had gotten into trouble for using his wit to take guys like Jake down—either with an equally smart remark or an elaborate, well-timed prank that showed them for the empty windbags they really were. His big brother Daniel, weary of having to rescue him from the fallout of all those pranks, had dubbed him Rob Roy, after the heroic outlaw.

  Nickname or not, Rob couldn’t stand back and let people get pushed around.

  The same urge to protect the vulnerable was what prompted him to jab back at Jake.

  “Jake, have you noticed anyone who might have a problem with Kari or the bakery? You hung around her shop a lot, right?”

  Just for an instant, he’d seen Jake startled—and not in a good way. Rob felt the back of his neck prickle with awareness: he’d gotten a little too close to something for Jake’s comfort.

  He pressed his advantage. “So? Can you help your sister out, buddy?”

  But he’d overplayed his hand. Jake now had regained his bored expression and shrugged one shoulder. “What could I know about that fire? I told you everything in my statement, man.”

  “I didn’t ask about the fire. I asked if you’d seen anything or anyone suspicious.”

  “Didn’t you know, bro? My sister’s a big-time hero. Everybody loves Kari. Who’d want to hurt her?” Jake dug out a crumpled pack of cigarettes from the side pocket of his cargo shorts.

  Rob heard Alice and Kari’s twin sharp intakes of breath at Jake’s remark.

  Kari didn’t deserve this. These were low blows, and yet she seemed to go out of her way to be kind to people—witness the treat baskets she’d taken to the downtown merchants, and how she’d not wanted to hurt Alice’s feelings.

  Not to mention the tears that had sprung to her eyes when he’d talked about his dad. Kari definitely had a tender heart.

  “Kari, honey,” Alice said, busily brushing off the dust and dirt on Kari’s jeans. “Let’s get you to your car and if you can’t drive, I’ll drive you.”

  Rob kicked himself for not offering that a half moment earlier. Kari’s face was crimson with embarrassment at the fall or Jake or a combination of the two.

  With an awkward goodbye, she and Alice took off, and left Rob eying Jake.

  Jake...yes, Jake was a different kettle of fish altogether, and arson conviction or not, Rob thought, give him Kari any day.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ROB’S CELL PHONE rang even before he could unlock his office door the next morning. He juggled the keys and the phone with his hands until he could maneuver both.

  “Monroe,” he said into the phone.

  “Hey, Rob! Tried calling the office, but you weren’t in yet,” boomed the voice of Chase Chatmon, an ADA with the county prosecutor’s office. “I thought you were usually the early bird.”

  “Yeah, well, I had a few stops to make first. And, hey, it’s not even eight thirty yet. What’s up?” Rob pushed open the door and groaned at the stack of paperwork on his desk. “Please don’t tell me I have to be in court today.”

  “Not today. Nope, I have something for you—those warrants you asked for? On the Hendrix family? To check their financials? The banks and the credit card companies have released the info.”

  “Great. I appreciate you going to the judge and getting it together for me.”

  “You probably would have gotten the stuff even sooner if you’d asked the judge for the financials of those other business owners at the same time. You should also know he didn’t like the request to open Kari Hendrix’s sealed record—he hasn’t said no, mind you, but he still hasn’t said yes. So on the financial warrants, I consolidated both asks, and when he saw you weren’t picking on one family because of a juvenile offense—”

  “I have to check, Chase. It’s a reasonable assumption, right? If someone burned down a building before, then—”

  “Preaching to the choir, preaching to the choir. Anyway, all of this—the financials for all the Hendrix crew, the pawn shop owner next door and the landlord—all of that is wrapped up with a bow. Want me to swing by and drop off your Christmas present early?”

  Rob glowered at the paperwork he’d rather avoid. “I’ll be here. With all this stuff stacked up, who knows when I’ll dig out.”

  “Well, I’m warning you, this is a positive blizzard of paperwork I’m bringing you. The banks and the credit card companies are burying you with all the statements and loan info. Oh, and you’re cleared to run a credit check on all the people in the warrants. It’s lucky that I have a shovel in the car if I need to rescue you from that avalanche of paper.”

  “Since it was your office who sent most of this paperwork already on my desk, it’s only fitting. See you in a bit.”

  * * *

  CHASE WAS AS good as his word—including the part about the blizzard of paperwork. He had a file box full of papers from various financial institutions that he dropped with a thud on Rob’s desk. He gave it a pat. “Ask and ye shall receive. Hopefully they sent you everything that you requested.”

  “If not, I know where the complaint department is,” Rob replied with a grin. He abandoned the half-finished form on his desk and ripped off the box top.

  “Eager, aren’t you?” Chase asked.

  Rob realized he was eager—eager to rule out Kari as a suspect. But to Chase, he said, “I’ve just been at a standstill without this. You know how hard arson cases are to prove—I have to tie the motive to the individual. Something in here has got to pop.”

  “You look like the proverbial kid in a candy store, so I’ll leave you to it, then. Let me know when I need to show up to work out a plea bargain deal. My boss says he needs it yesterday.”

  “No pressure, huh?” Rob muttered as he began to scan the credit card statement he’d yanked out. But Chase had already banged the door shut behind him, leaving Rob alone to peer into the murky waters of Kari Hendrix’s financial habits.

  And they were murky. She carried a sizable balance on her credit card, but the interest rate seemed reasonable enough. That was a quick indicator to Rob of two things: one, that she was smart enough to choose a good card to begin with, and two, that she probably hadn’t missed a payment.

  Another scan, this one on her current charges, revealed the beginnings of a pattern. Kari used the card to pay for basic things, such as gas for her vehicle, online orders for what looked to be baking supplies and the like, albeit along with a few exorbitant big-ticket service charges recently to a local plumber and electrician. Even with the repair service charges, it looked like her latest payment covered the rest of the month’s expenses and something toward the interest and the balance.

  A flip back through past statements validated Rob’s theory. Six months earlier, when she’d first opened the account, she’d amassed the initial bloated balance. That statement was rife with orders from kitchenware suppliers and other industry wholesalers.

  Rob turned to the computer and eBay to see if he could track down by the item numbers what she’d bought. A few minutes later, he’d uncovered a used Hobart mixer, a countertop convection oven, a pasta roller with an electric motor, and a few other similar items.

  He realized tension was easing out of him. It caught him unaware. He remembered the genuine wounded expression on her face when he’d accidentally implied she’d set the fire. He wanted Kari to be innocent. He wanted her to be nothing more than a victim.

  Buddy, that’s a recipe for disaster. You know too well how an investigator can find what he wants to find. Forcing his mind open with the mental equivalent of a pry bar, he went back over the credit card statements and then her bank statements with a fine-tooth comb. For all Rob’s scrutiny, he could turn up no purchases of a propane tank or anything that shouted “roadside flare.”

  He leaned back in his chair and considered this. Just because he
hadn’t found it didn’t mean it wasn’t there, especially the roadside flare. That, she could have had before she opened the bakery.

  And, he conceded, Kari could have paid cash for the propane tank.

  Still, Rob had to admit he was relieved by what he hadn’t found: a real motive for burning the bakery. Based on the cash flow of deposits and credit card payments minus the debits, including a faithful payment in full to her mom each month on her mortgage note, a rough calculation showed that Kari was beginning to make a profit—at least before the latest repair bills.

  He couldn’t help but be impressed. A bakery showing up in the black after just six months? That took discipline and hard work—oh, and good cupcakes.

  The memory of those cupcakes, with their buttery texture and their perfect balance of sweetness and the tang of vanilla, taunted him. He found himself wondering if maybe she had some left over. He could swing by Chelle’s and ask Kari about the—

  No. He had to be honest with himself. Any “swing by” to see Kari was just a made-up excuse, even for the cupcakes.

  Rob wanted to get to know her better, to fall into the easy conversation that they were lulled into when the subject got away from the investigation that had brought them together in the first place.

  That was an excellent reason for avoiding Kari altogether until he could sort out this mess.

  His stomach rumbled in protest. “Cupcakes!” it seemed to demand.

  Or was that his heart?

  With a groan, he dove into the box of financials with the sincere and fervent hope that someone else was stupid enough to write a check for a propane tank and note it on the memo line.

  And if not? Well, he’d check every surveillance tape still available at every convenience store in town until he could say for certain—under oath in a court of law—that Kari Hendrix did not buy a propane tank, at least not within the county limits.

  * * *

  KARI FELT THE warm September sun bear down on her shoulders as she focused on not dropping the three large white cardboard boxes in her arms. Jakayla, the owner of the ice cream stand and bait and tackle shop, had called her in a panic this morning needing cupcakes for her son’s daycare the next day.