Fresh beads of sweat popped out across Ethan’s face. He swiped at it with the back of his hand. “He got...scary, that’s all. Stuff I didn’t want to be involved in. Too much for me.” Ethan shook his head. “So I said adios and never looked back.”
“What sort of scary stuff?” Tim stretched out his legs and clasped his hands behind his head. “More scary than driving a hundred miles an hour in a fifty-five at three in the morning?”
Ethan blanched. “He got all crazy, you know?”
“No, I don’t know,” Rob replied. “Crazy how?”
“Ask him, man. You’re the cops. I need to get back to work before I don’t have a job.”
“You help him with any of this crazy, scary stuff?” Rob pressed. “Maybe that’s why you wised up? A near miss?”
Again Ethan’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. He ran his tongue over his lips. “Yeah, maybe. Or maybe I was smart enough to know it was gonna be my backside in hot water if I didn’t start listening to my granny.”
Rob flipped open the folder again, pretended to review its contents. He sighed and shook his head. “Ethan, maybe you’ve been in hot water all this time and didn’t realize it. Maybe Jake pushed you in that hot water, and you just thought you crawled out.”
“No, man.” Now Ethan was literally yanking at his hair with both hands. “I didn’t do squat—nothing, once I heard what he was gonna do—I was outta there. I didn’t want any part of that!”
“So you didn’t help him, huh?”
“Uh-uh!” The beads of sweat had multiplied on Ethan’s forehead. He swiped them away. “No, man, that was all Jake, not me. He was the one who had it in for that guy—just like that guy who dissed his little sister, man. But I ain’t started no fires. If Jake torched the downtown, that’s all him, bro. It ain’t on me.”
Rob swallowed the smile threatening to spread across his face. “Now, Ethan, who said anything about a fire?”
Ethan slammed his eyes shut, panted as though he’d just sprinted a sixty-yard dash, and put his face in his hands. He muttered a string of curse words.
“Ethan?” Rob pressed.
Ethan straightened up. “I ain’t saying nothing else. I ain’t saying another word. Not until I talk to a lawyer.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
ROB GROANED AS Sam Franklin himself swept into the police station, not a hair of his silver pompadour out of place. Chase followed two steps behind him. He’d called Chase to come down here—not Sam.
“Chase says you got a break in the downtown fire.” Sam jabbed an index finger toward the closely bent heads of Ethan and his lawyer through the one-way glass of the interrogation room. “That the guy?”
Rob ran a hand through his hair. “Not exactly. I need a search warrant.” He glared at Chase. “Which is what I told you on the phone.”
“So who’s this guy?” Franklin asked. “What’s he got to do with the case?”
“It’s...tangential. Bear with me.” Rob took a deep breath and jumped in, knowing Franklin didn’t have patience for convoluted stories. “This guy knows something about Jake Hendrix torching a convenience store—the fire Kari confessed to—and the warehouse fire later that summer.”
Franklin frowned. “Whoa. Stop right there. Are you telling me that all this guy can do is say maybe Jake burned something, what, ten, twelve years ago? You’ve had all this time, and this is the best you can do?”
“No. You’re the one with the timeline—if you’d be a little more patient, I could figure this out. But you’ve got me in a crunch,” Rob snapped.
It was the wrong thing to say to the man. His expression soured even more. “We’re on a timeline because people need their money, Rob. And insurance companies won’t pay until we tell them who’s good for this. Or do I need to send you back to school to learn Arson Investigation 101 again?”
Behind Franklin, Chase was giving Rob a vigorous headshake, a clear plea to pipe down. It took all of Rob’s will, but he bit back the retort he wanted to send stinging toward the DA. “Granted. I get that. I understand your position,” Rob ground out. “I’m thinking that we can connect Jake to the earlier two fires, and that he’s responsible for the one downtown. I managed to check his alibi, and it’s got enough holes to make Swiss cheese jealous.”
“But this guy here?” Franklin jabbed his thumb in Ethan’s direction again. “He can only say that Jake did what exactly?”
“He lawyered up, so I don’t know yet what he will say. The attorney’s been in there for a while now, but it’s a pretty good bet that Ethan can tie Jake to the convenience store fire and the fire later that summer. Both of them were started with a propane tank—”
“Wait. We got a big problem, Rob,” Chase interjected. “We’ve already got a conviction for that convenience store fire—your girl? She confessed. So we can’t charge somebody else for the same fire and expect it to stick. There’s your reasonable doubt, right there.”
Sam Franklin huffed. “That’s not the biggest problem, boys. The biggest problem? The reason this is a total waste of my time? Statute of limitations ran out on that fire about, oh, six years ago. Even if somebody saw him personally stick a lighted match to the place, the case is going to get dismissed. You got no leverage. And if that lawyer in there remembers anything from law school, he’ll tell him that.”
Rob forbore mentioning that he hadn’t called Franklin down to the station in the first place. “You said leverage. I do think this gives it to me. True, we can’t try Jake for the convenience store fire, but the warehouse fire, now, that’s a different story. I think Ethan here knew about Jake’s plans to burn the warehouse—”
Franklin cut him off again. “Let me guess—this Jake’s a secret pyromaniac that’s responsible for at least half the unsolved arsons in the county,” he said in a voice dripping with sarcasm. “You may think that pinning this on Kari Hendrix’s brother will do the trick—but it doesn’t clear her, Rob. It just makes it easier for me to prove a case against her to the jury. It’s more likely, not less, that she had something to do with it. How could somebody not know her own brother torched the place? She’s at least an accessory after the fact, and probably a coconspirator.”
“She didn’t do this, sir,” Rob insisted. “We’ve got absolutely no evidence tying her to the downtown fire. No motive. No opportunity. No weapon. And she was in custody when the warehouse fire happened later that summer, so she may not be aware of Jake’s involvement. I can’t believe she would stand by and knowingly let a killer go free—”
“Boy, I understand you want to find who killed your daddy!” Franklin burst out. “I get that. It’s an honor thing. But you got two obsessions that are getting in the way of you solving the one current case I need solved—trying to find somebody to blame for your daddy’s death, God rest his soul, and trying to pull your new gal pal outta trouble. Like I told you on the phone, I saw y’all playing house—”
Rob stood toe-to-toe with the arrogant DA, not sure what he’d do next. Chase put a hand on his shoulder and Rob backed away.
For his part, Franklin stepped back, as well. “Boy. I’m warning you. Don’t you ever—ever, hear me?—ignore what I say again. I get that this case is a mite tetchy for you, it bringing up all these memories of your daddy. But you got the answers staring you in the face. If you don’t do your job—if you don’t arrest this pair of firebugs—well, I’ll get it done for you, and I’ll make sure the county suspends you.”
With that, he turned and stalked out of the station.
* * *
SO MUCH FOR the power of chocolate. Kari stared down into her bowl full of the rich, dark batter for a German chocolate cake she was mixing and couldn’t help but think of Rob.
Not the fire investigator Rob—no, Rob Monroe was more than his job. She liked the way he cared about Ma, the way his affection for his olde
r brother Daniel came across every time he’d recounted a childhood memory. She liked the way he was willing to help her with just about anything.
Yeah, about the only thing troubling her about Rob was that he was an arson investigator.
What had he meant when he said they were running out of time? What did he know that he was keeping from her? Had Victor Miller made good on his threat to turn his report over to the authorities?
If Rob were going to arrest me, would he have let me stay and bake him brownies?
As she poured the batter into her prepared pans and slid them into the oven, the silence in the kitchen couldn’t drown out her nagging thoughts. She had to stop dwelling on this, Kari told herself.
Not exactly cheered by that, but determined to do something, anything, to get her mind off Rob and the fire, she reached up and switched on the old radio her mom kept in the kitchen. A techno-pop song with an insistent beat filled the air. Instantly Kari felt better.
She started on the decorative chocolate roses for the cake by kneading the decor chocolate she’d prepped the night before, a mix of bittersweet couverture chocolate and golden syrup. Kari had half of the petals formed when the DJ announced the top of the hour news. She pressed her thumb into yet another ball of chocolate, trying to get the form right, only half her attention on the way-too-cheerful newscaster chirping about rising rates for water and sewage.
“And in breaking news, District Attorney Sam Franklin has announced that his office has made a major break in the downtown arson that destroyed five local businesses and resulted in millions of dollars in property damages. Franklin’s office named local bakery owner Kari Hendrix and her brother Jacob Hendrix ‘persons of interest’ in the arson investigation. Hendrix is the owner of a popular downtown bakery damaged in the fire. The District Attorney’s office would not say if insurance fraud was a motive in the case, but did say that arrests are imminent. Hendrix could not be reached for comment.”
Kari’s thumb bore down so hard on the fragile petal that it smashed in two.
Arrests are imminent.
In a flash, Kari was back in that nightmare all those years before: the scratchy orange jumpsuit, the bite of the handcuffs on her wrists, the thin mat for her bed, the constant din of noise from miserable inmates being watched by equally miserable guards. She fought to keep herself upright, pressing down hard onto the counter and dragging in deep, ragged breaths.
To think that a few seconds before she’d been wishing she hadn’t been alone. How could she have forgotten how claustrophobic being surrounded by people 24/7 had been? No privacy, not even for a second?
She couldn’t face it again.
Despair welled up within Kari, that same hopelessness that had first overtaken her when the bailiff had dragged her weeping from the courtroom. How could Rob have not told her? How could he have stood a hair’s breadth away from her and let her go on believing that he was on her side? That he believed she was innocent, not just of the downtown fire, but even the fire she’d confessed to?
Bile rose in her throat as she reckoned the depth of his betrayal.
Kari had been wrong, so wrong, about Rob Monroe.
* * *
ROB YANKED HARD on the steering wheel of his truck to make the turn into Kari’s mom’s drive. Slamming it into park, he had the door open and his foot on the ground before he’d even switched off the ignition.
Why hadn’t Chase at least given him a heads-up on that confounded press release Franklin had put out? Didn’t the district attorney realize that naming someone as a person of interest was tantamount to arresting her? It was a bell that couldn’t really be un-rung.
He’d made it up the gravel walkway and almost to the back steps when the door flew open. Kari stood there, eyes flashing, hands on her hips.
“You stop right there,” she hissed. “Unless you have an arrest warrant, leave. Now.”
Rob’s heart sank. He’d hoped he could get to Kari before she heard the news from someone else.
“Kari—”
“Don’t you ‘Kari’ me! You—you slime. You let me bake you brownies, and you knew. You...you kissed me, and you knew.”
“No. That’s not true.” Rob took a step toward her, but she stopped him with the flat of her hand.
“Are you here to arrest me? Do I need to call a lawyer?”
“Of course not! You’re innocent—I know you are.”
“Right. And innocent people never get convicted, never get sent to prison.”
Something about her self-pitying sarcasm needled him. “That was your choice, Kari. You chose to take the fall for your brother.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be like that—I was supposed to get probation. They would have sent Jake to real prison—tried him as an adult.”
“So you admit it. You lied about it. You gave a false confession.” Somehow, hearing the truth from Kari didn’t hearten him the way he’d thought it would. Maybe she’d had the best of intentions, but it had still thwarted justice.
“What if I did?” she shot back. “Didn’t I serve four years for lying? Haven’t I been punished enough? I didn’t set the downtown fire. And I’m not about to confess to something I didn’t do—not ever again.”
“You may not have set that fire downtown, but you knew Jake did,” Rob told her.
“Oh, no.” She clutched the doorjamb, her knuckles turning white from the effort. Her anger dissolved into wide-eyed fear. “No, no, no. You can’t pin it on me, so you’re pinning it on Jake? What? Any Hendrix will do? So you can get an arrest? That’s what all this has been about, all the times you’ve oh, so, helpfully stopped by. You were stringing me along, trying to get me to incriminate myself or Jake or both of us.”
Now she stood up straighter, every inch of her rigid with indignation. “Jake may have some growing up to do—he’s immature, sure, and some people would even call him a screwup, and yeah, even a little lazy, but...he wouldn’t knowingly hurt anybody, Rob. He’s my brother. I ought to know my brother. And if I chose to serve time for him, well, it didn’t hurt anybody but me, did it?”
Rob stared at her in total disbelief. “You still don’t get it, do you, Kari? There’s a reason it’s illegal to give false confessions— because it leaves the real guilty party loose in society.”
No lightbulb seemed to go off for Kari; she kept drilling him with that same aggrieved expression. He struggled to explain just what her actions had cost him—cost all of the Monroes. “When you gave that false confession, you let your brother go free. Free, so he had the opportunity to set the fire that killed my dad. You took a husband and a father away from his family—forever. And to make matters worse? You seem to think you deserve some sort of medal for being a self-appointed martyr and doing it in the first place.”
Rob couldn’t bear to look at her another second. He started to speak, couldn’t get any more words out, so he turned and headed back down the path toward his truck.
Maybe Franklin was right. Maybe the answers had been staring Rob in the face the whole time and he’d let himself get sucked in by blue-gray eyes and dimples. Maybe Kari Hendrix couldn’t ever be the woman he’d hoped her to be.
But one thing was for certain: with or without her help, he intended to put Jake Hendrix away for killing his father.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
JAKE HAD DISAPPEARED on her again. He didn’t answer her texts. He didn’t answer her calls. He didn’t return her increasingly frantic voice mails.
Oh, the phone rang, all right. If it wasn’t near-hysterical calls every five seconds from her mom at work, it was a customer. People kept calling to tell her how suddenly they didn’t need those orders they’d been so desperate for earlier in the week. The customer who’d ordered the German chocolate cake she’d been working on when the radio news bulletin had aired wasn’t the first. The
woman had rung up and nervously tittered, “Uh, Kari—uh, hope you haven’t started on that cake yet. Looks like our plans have...uh, changed.”
Kari stared around the kitchen, taking in the hundreds of dollars’ worth of ingredients—not to mention the labor—she was now stuck with because Rob Monroe had named her a “person of interest.” Fury and betrayal and fear struggled to rise to the top like some inner “king of the mountain” battle. One moment she was weeping, while the next she was slamming doors so hard she endangered their hinges.
And the next? She was frantically dialing Jake’s number and pacing around the kitchen.
Kari had just hit redial when she turned to see Jake. She went weak with relief.
“Oh, thank goodness! I’ve been trying for over two hours to get hold of you,” Kari started.
Jake let loose a string of foul invectives. “Why’d you do it, Kari? Why’d you sell me out? Just ’cause you have the hots for that arson cop?”
She dropped the cordless phone on the countertop. “Me? I didn’t do anything, Jake.”
“You had to have known—didn’t your boy toy give you a heads-up? Didn’t he tell you he was nosing around in my business? I got two or three calls from buddies of mine—Rob Monroe’s been sniffing around, talking to my old bosses and other people. And I just found out that Ethan Blaire, the weasel backstabber, he’s been pouring his guts out for two days straight now. I’ll show him what it means to cross me just as soon as I get a chance—but for now, Kari, you better tell me just what junk you’ve been telling that Rob Monroe.”
His rage took Kari aback. “I haven’t said—” But she remembered her last angry words with Rob, when she’d told him that, yes, she’d taken the fall for Jake on that convenience store fire.
Her guilty expression was all that Jake needed. He sprang toward her, grabbing the neckline of her T-shirt up in a wad. “What’d you tell him?” he gritted out between clenched teeth.
Out of the Ashes Page 20
