“Yeah,” Rocky told him. “I felt just like you look. I apologized to the mom—she couldn’t even get a word out, she was so speechless. But what could I do? Exactly zip, that’s what. The funny thing is...if the girl had said nothing, if she’d kept her mouth shut, I didn’t have one single concrete piece of physical evidence to tie her to that fire.”
“Maybe the evidence burned up?”
“Nope. The smoke detectors were hardwired into the alarm system, so an engine got paged out PDQ. The back room was pretty well toast, but beyond that, the building was in fairly good shape. And the door she’d gained entry from? It was still intact.”
Rob felt that prickle of awareness course through him, the one that always told him where to look for clues and evidence that others might have overlooked.
“You dusted it for prints?” he asked Rocky.
“No fingerprints of hers. Not even a partial of hers—and it hadn’t been wiped down. There were plenty of prints on the jamb, on the door, on the doorknob. Not hers, though.”
“What about the key?”
Rocky dipped his head and gave him a mock salute. “Thought of that myself, and the ledge where the key had been hidden. No dice. Not one of her prints on it. Not so much as a partial match.”
“You’re kidding.”
“It gets stranger. We tested the clothes she said she wore to start the fire. No residue on any of her clothes, no sign of rust or dust—and she pulled them out of the dirty clothes hamper, plus the store owner and the video footage positively ID’d the clothes as the ones she’d worn into the store the day before the fire. The only thing we had was that the mom said the propane tank was hers from a backyard grill. But we didn’t even find prints on what was left of the tank. I mean it. We had zip.”
“That doesn’t seem possible,” Rob murmured.
“I know, right? How could a kid—one who had never done a crime before, so she didn’t even know what not to do, if you catch my drift—get into that building and not leave a scrap? Not a fiber, a fingerprint, even a hair—it was as though she could teleport herself.” Rocky handed the file back to Rob. “Either that...or...”
“She didn’t do it in the first place,” Rob said flatly.
* * *
THE CAKE WAS a gooey mess. Never mind that it had been baking for an hour. Never mind that Kari had used that same recipe a hundred times before at least.
She poked the toothpick in it one last time, in the vain hope that this time, the cake batter would magically have cooked and wouldn’t stick like glue to the toothpick.
No luck.
“Oh, Kari...” her mom moaned. “What now? Oh, wait! You can run it over to Sarah’s— use her oven—”
“No, Mom. It doesn’t work like that. I have a cottage industry permit—I have to actually live where I cook, remember? I can’t run around borrowing people’s ovens.”
“Surely they’d understand if your oven is broken—”
“Right now? Mom, I’ve got Rob Monroe breathing down my neck about both fires. I can’t take the chance that—”
“What do you mean, both fires?” Her mom’s voice wavered into a high register of alarm. “What fire, Kari?”
“Oh—” Kari kicked herself. She’d purposefully been keeping Rob’s latest round of questions to herself. She didn’t want her mom worried about Jake.
“Tell me, Kari. You have to tell me,” her mom insisted.
“They’re looking for similarities between...well, the old fire and the downtown fire. You had to know they would—”
“Your record’s sealed, though. They can’t use that against you now. Not after all these years.” Her mom claimed a chair at the kitchen table and wrung her hands, the crimson tips of her nails flashing in scarlet streaks.
Kari scoffed at her mom’s continued naïveté. “Yeah, sure. It’s sealed, all right. Only it keeps coming up in every job interview I have, any criminal background check. And you can bet your bottom dollar that they’ll figure out a way to use it at the trial.”
“But, honey, you’re innocent. There’s not going to be a trial. You didn’t do this.”
“I didn’t do the other fire, either, Mom.”
Her mother’s face crumpled. “I know. I know exactly what you sacrificed. I tell Jake all the time how grateful he should be, how much you gave up so that he could go free. I tell him how much he owes you—that he should at least finish his degree and get a good job—”
“Mom.” Kari held up a hand. She couldn’t bear to hear a rehash of how Jake had blown the scholarship he’d had and dropped out of college not even a year into her sentence, when that was his big reason for wanting to avoid prosecution. “I know. It’s okay. But I have to think about the oven, now, all right? I have to work this out.”
“I’m sorry...hey, wait—Janine George has a little countertop convection oven—let me drive over and see if we can borrow it.” With a jingle of her keys, her mom was out the door before Kari could point out that a countertop oven was nowhere near big enough to hold the bottom tier of the supersized wedding cake Mattie Gottman had ordered.
That was Mom, always rushing to fix things, and nine times out of ten making things worse than they had been to begin with—but who could be angry with someone like her?
Kari had removed the oven door and had her head all the way up inside the cavity when she heard the back door scrape open.
“Whoa! Hey, things aren’t that bad, are they?”
Instantly she felt hands on her as Rob Monroe dragged her bodily out of the oven.
“What?” She blinked at him. “I don’t—”
“You—you weren’t...uh, well, you had your head in an oven.”
Kari burst out laughing. “It’s an electric oven, Rob. Unless I’m trying to electrocute myself, I don’t see it as a viable way to commit suicide. And no, by the way, I’m not trying to end it all.”
Rob sat back on his heels. “I—sheesh. I feel stupid.”
Kari sagged back against the cabinet doors. “Don’t. I appreciate the concern. I’m sure I looked like a complete basket case the last time you were here. And I am the idiot who nearly burned down her mother’s kitchen.”
“So what’s the deal with the oven? Are you cleaning it?”
“I wish. It’s stopped working. It’s baking, but not at the right temperature. I was checking the elements to be sure they were still working, and the convection fan. Know anything about oven repair?”
Rob lifted his shoulders. “Sorry, no. The extent of my knowledge of ovens is how to turn ’em on and how to put out any fires they may start.”
“Exactly how does anyone start a fire in an oven?” Kari marveled.
“A million different ways, believe me. There’s the sugar boiling over into the bottom. There’s the oh-I-didn’t-realize-parchment-paper-really-didn’t-need-to-be-over-420-degrees fire. One lady turned on the oven without checking it, all the while completely forgetting that she’d done one of those quick clean-ups where you stuff all your dirty dishes into the oven. Let me tell you, plastic cutting boards can stink up a kitchen in an awful hurry.”
“I don’t feel like such a total doofus, then,” Kari told him. “Unless you’re completely fabricating this to make me feel better about myself?”
Something about her words cast a shadow over his face. “Well, no...but...I needed to go into more detail about that first fire. I’ve read the report. I’ve talked with the original investigator.”
Kari fixed her gaze on the floor. “Then you don’t really need to talk to me. You have everything you need.”
“No, I don’t.” He reached out and touched her arm. “Kari, it leaves me with a million questions. What gave you the idea to burn the place? How’d you know to start the fire that way? How’d you get the gas tank unhooked from the grill and
down to that convenience store?”
A chill ran through her. She couldn’t answer any of these questions because they weren’t part of what Jake had told her—not anything she’d rehearsed or memorized.
For lack of anything better to say, Kari shot back, “That’s one subject that is absolutely closed for further discussion. I’ve done my time. I’ve told the authorities all I need to. I don’t want to talk about it, Rob. And what’s more, I don’t have to talk about it.”
“Kari...I want to help you out. I’m on your side, believe me—”
“The last time I believed that an investigator was on my side, I wound up doing four years with hardened criminals. Do you know what juvie is like, Rob? It’s not boarding school. There were some seriously violent girls I was locked up with. And I’d never done anything—”
She bit down hard before she could spill out the rest of it. Why was it so important that Rob Monroe think well of her? Why did she want him to know she was not an arsonist?
It couldn’t help her now. She’d been convicted and sentenced, and the blot was on her record forevermore. If she could tell him everything that had happened, and if that could simply shift the suspicion off her, that might be one thing.
But all her story would do, even if Rob believed her, would be to pin suspicion on Jake.
She couldn’t do that to Jake. Or to her mother—especially her mother.
Kari rubbed her eyes. “I don’t have time for this. This cake is for the mayor’s daughter, and I have to get it done.”
“I thought she wasn’t getting married until...when is it? I got an invitation.”
“Oooh, touch you. I just get to deliver the cake and set it up—if, that is, I can get this stupid old oven to work.” She rammed the appliance in question with the toe of her sneaker. “I don’t know what’s wrong with it. And as for when the wedding is—this weekend. I need to bake the layers ahead and freeze them—it makes them easier to decorate. Plus, this is one mama-jama of a cake. It will take me a while to decorate it.”
“I’d guess Mattie Gottman’s cake would be a doozie.”
“Four tiers. With alternating layers decorated in Cornelli lace and Swiss dots. And a cascade of tons of roses, orchids and a beaucoup of other flowers. Plus I have the groom’s cake to do. So I really, really need this blasted oven to work.” She gave the oven another not-so-gentle kick with her toe.
“Feel better kicking a defenseless appliance?” Rob teased.
“Well, my toe hurts now, so it’s a great distraction.” Kari drew in a deep breath, concentrating on how good the kitchen smelled: vanilla and sugar and butter and chocolate and cinnamon mingled together to make her favorite perfume in the entire world. “And now I need to get back to my surgery.” She wriggled her head into the oven, peering at the various mechanisms.
“So you’ve repaired ovens before?” Rob asked her. Kari realized with a prickle of sensation that he was beside her, trying to peer into the oven with her. He splayed a hand out on the bottom rim of the oven for support, and Kari found herself fixated on it. The hand was huge, the kind that could make a basketball disappear into its grip, with strong lean fingers and neatly trimmed fingernails. She fought the urge to slide her own hand over his, to measure the vast difference in size, to feel the way bone and sinew and muscle combined to make a human hand look like the work of a sculptor.
“I said, have you worked on—” he repeated.
Embarrassed at the way her thoughts had run away with her, she cleared her throat and hurried to answer. “Minor repairs, sure. I can replace an element. My old boss could pretty well take an oven apart—and that was a gas oven. I’m—I don’t take chances like that. Gas scares me. Electric, though, as long as it’s unplugged...” She reached up, tested the connection that the element made with its socket.
“Why does gas scare you?”
Something about the way he said it, a studied casualness that seemed a little too casual, put her on alert. How could she tell when he was just making conversation rather than interrogating her?
Easy. Remember: anything you say can and will be used against you.
She pulled back. Space—she needed space away from him to think, to figure out the right answer to his question. Kari studied his profile, with its strongly chiseled features, the stubble across his jaw, the deep cleft in his chin. What was he really asking? “Well, it can blow up. And catch fire. I should know that, right?”
Now Rob pivoted in his half crouch to face her. If looking at his profile had unnerved her, staring into his inky blue eyes was even more disconcerting. It was an unflinching gaze, one that peered into her very soul, weighing her, sifting her parts to see what was wheat and what was chaff.
“Sure. You should know gas can blow up and catch fire. What are you not telling me, Kari? I thought all firebugs loved to talk about their work.”
He was definitely in cop mode now.
She crossed her arms, tried to swallow and found her mouth parched. And still she couldn’t pull her gaze away from his.
“If you’re here to cheer me on, you’re welcome to stay,” Kari managed finally. “But if you’re here to interrogate me...”
“Yeah?”
She tore herself away from his eyes and pinned them on her mom’s engineered hardwood floor. Impractical for a working kitchen—you needed something you could clean more easily and that wouldn’t scratch. But that was her mom, all fluff and appearance and making everything look right.
With a sinking heart, Kari realized that no matter how she tried to better herself, she would always be a convicted arsonist. The honey-blond finish on the floor was like her—if you scratched it the least little bit, the real core would be laid ugly and bare.
And she couldn’t stand for Rob to know that about her.
This relationship—if it even was a relationship and not some elaborate con to get her to trust him and confess all—was going nowhere.
Kari felt herself physically wince from the pain of that realization. How vulnerable and stupid must she be to fall for the guy who wanted to put her behind bars?
Finish this, she commanded herself sternly.
And so she did. In a tone she wished was a little less bleak, she still managed to get out, “If you’re here to interrogate me, I guess I’ll have to invoke my right to remain silent.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“YOU’RE GOING TO wear a hole in that wood if you keep pressure washing one spot, Rob.”
Ma’s gentle reminder yanked him back from his wandering thoughts. “Sorry. I was just—had my mind—” He began directing the spray of water across a wider swath of the front porch’s ceiling, keeping it in motion.
“A million miles away.” She smiled and settled back into her task of scraping paint along the top of the porch rails.
He hadn’t minded coming out and helping Ma with the porch. Daniel and Andrew had already done their share. Daniel had painted the rest of the exterior of the house, while Andrew had stripped and refinished the back deck and pool fence. The porch project seemed like a piece of cake compared to the other jobs.
Besides, it would give him something else to think about besides Kari.
Only, of course, it hadn’t. Here he was, still tangled up in the case.
In Kari.
After today’s set-to with her, he didn’t know what to think. He wanted to believe she was as innocent as pure driven snow. Still, who but a guilty person invoked her Fifth Amendment rights?
“So what’s got you so busy that you miss supper?” Ma asked. “You still working on the downtown fire?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Did you ever get Kari those eggs? Do you know if she liked them?”
“I didn’t think to ask her when I saw her today.”
“Hmm. Daniel tells me you’
ve been seeing a lot of Kari. So why all that hem-hawing about waiting to supply her eggs until the case is over?”
Ma never slowed the rhythm of her scrape-scrape-scrape, but Rob could tell she was waiting with more than idle curiosity for his reply.
“Not seeing her, exactly,” he corrected. “She’s part of the investigation, so I am talking to her a good bit. But I really meant it when I said I didn’t want my actions to be questioned. I want people to know I wasn’t biased. And Kari could be... She...” What could Rob say? Her juvenile record was sealed, so he really couldn’t talk about that with his mom any more than he could go into details about the current investigation.
“I know about her confession all those years ago, Rob. How she said she burned that convenience store.”
Rob let his finger slide from the pressure washer trigger and turned to his mom. “How? I mean—how do you know?”
“Your dad. It was not long before he died, you know? That fire?” Ma swiped her forehead. “Gracious, it’s hot! I think everybody will have to be satisfied with sandwiches for supper.”
“Dad told you about it?”
She smiled at him, warmly. “Yeah. Does that surprise you? Your dad needed someone to talk to, a sounding board, I guess you could say. And it bothered him, that case. He didn’t think she’d done it. Plus, you guys were about her age—a little older, but it’s just so easy to feel a parent’s pain. I didn’t know Chelle Hendrix except to recognize her when I saw her on the street, but I could tell she was going through a lot. You want your kids to be okay, to do well, to avoid trouble. You want to be able to rescue them and save them from themselves.”
“Why—” Rob hated the way hope sprang up at the mention of how his dad hadn’t believed in Kari’s guilt. She’d confessed, after all. She’d stood in court and told a judge she’d burned that building down. “Why did Dad doubt her confession?”
Ma shrugged her shoulders. “I can’t remember all his reasoning now...maybe he never went into detail about it. I just know he thought there was more to it. And your dad was very rarely wrong about things like that. He was like you, Rob. He could always figure out who was lying and who wasn’t. A human lie detector, people called him.”
Out of the Ashes Page 12
