Shift Burn (Imogene Museum Mystery #6)

by Jerusha Jones

  Greg lifted the lid and carefully peeled back a layer of cotton batting. The dull gray-green head of a snarling lion stared back. Perfect wrinkles around the muzzle, vicious teeth and a curled, extended tongue. Our collective gasp stirred the cotton batting.

  I poked a pair of cotton gloves into Greg’s hand. He pulled them on and gingerly lifted the cast bronze piece from its nest in the box. The lion’s neck extended into a base with evenly spaced holes. It had originally been affixed to something.

  “Wow,” Sheriff Marge breathed.

  “What was it used for?” Frankie asked.

  “Decorative finial in a nobleman’s house, maybe,” Greg said. “Definitely crafted for a ruler, a member of the aristocracy.” He ran a finger over the lion’s snout. “Amazing detail. Could be a chariot yoke pommel.”

  “Like Ben-Hur?” Frankie squeaked.

  I grinned. “About two thousand years older.”

  “Wow,” Sheriff Marge murmured again. She straightened and resettled her Stratton hat on her head. “I’ll have the deputies on patrol tonight — Dale and Owen — do drive-by checks of the museum throughout the night. When will your new security system be operational?”

  I shook my head. “Not until after the foundation repairs are finished.”

  Sheriff Marge grunted. Yet another worry on her plate.

  CHAPTER 13

  Talk about exhaustion. Everyone I knew, including myself, had been run ragged the past week. I bundled Greg and Frankie off for the evening and triple-checked the locks on the Imogene’s front and basement doors. All the window frames on the main floor had been painted shut decades ago — and not by a measly single layer of paint, but by coats and coats and coats. Anyone trying to chip their way into the building would take long enough that the deputy patrols would catch them in the act. We were as secure as could be, given the circumstances.

  I figured the jumble in the basement would be a deterrent as well, if a thief made it that far without detection. Somewhere, I’d read that mass confusion serves as an effective defensive tactic. I was counting on it.

  We’d returned the lion head to its box, and Greg had even reaffixed the lid. Now it was buried in among the rest of the cases. It was probably one of the more valuable pieces, but for the moment it was a needle in the proverbial haystack.

  I almost joined Tuppence in hanging my head out of the pickup’s window on the way home. The dry heat made me so prickly that I squirmed on the seat. I hadn’t realized just how hot it was outside since I’d spent the afternoon in a relatively cooler basement.

  Pete greeted me with an even warmer kiss at our current home base — the campsite. The Tinsleys’ farmhouse stood alone across the expansive lawn, next to the charred wreckage of their barn. Soon it would be our responsibility. While I wanted it, very much, I was also a little scared of it. I just hoped to cross two or three major things off my list before I took on another one.

  “I’m not cooking tonight,” Pete said, “and neither are you. Way too hot to use the oven or stove. I can’t even bring myself to fire up the barbecue.”

  “Do we have ice cream?” I asked.

  “I might have picked some up at Junction General.” He crinkled those blue eyes at me.

  “You are a man after my own heart.”

  “I know.”

  We lounged in lawn chairs in the shade, trying to eat fast, before the chocolate chunks ended up swimming in pools of melted cream.

  I dangled my sticky hands off the ends of the armrests and slouched. “How was the painting?”

  Pete shook his head. “I hate painting when it’s this hot. Dries too fast. But I did the parts that needed it most. Installed a new shower head and performed maintenance checks too.”

  The Surely might be small but she’s mighty and strictly utilitarian, both in form and function. Pete and his crew — Al Cordova, the engineer; Bert Mapes, deckhand; and Carlos Cordova, younger brother to Al and second deckhand — live aboard her for long stretches of time when they’re pushing loads. They can tow up to five barges at once, but the cargo is rarely all from the same customer. In addition to operating a tug, Pete excels at scheduling — moving wheat, sawdust, coal, scrap metal, and potash plus all kinds of specialty loads the big transport companies won’t touch.

  So it goes without saying that the Surely’s accommodations are spartan and not particularly comfortable. The guys are usually too tired to notice by the time they hit their bunks. I hoped Pete remembered my request to slip away on the Surely with him, but I wasn’t going to bring it up again. His to-do list was as long as mine, if not longer. The crew would return next week, and from then on for the next few months they’d only shut down the Surely’s engines to release barges and cable on new ones.

  Peace and quiet — I understood Sheriff Marge’s sentiments completely. We both wanted a big dose of the same thing. And I couldn’t think of a more peaceful place than floating on the Columbia.

  Pete captured my pinky finger in the crook of his index finger. It really was too hot for any more intimacy than that. I smiled at him.

  “I love being quiet with you,” he whispered.

  I nodded back. Pete comes awfully close to reading my mind, which is one of the many reasons I’m crazy about him.

  I must have dozed off, because the next time I registered my surroundings, it was dark — that deep, velvety nearly-black blue you can only find out in the country, far away from ambient light. The stars were pinpricks, but moving closer as my eyes focused.

  I flinched when my phone rang again — from my purse which I’d dumped in the trailer. Probably the noise that had awakened me. I squeezed Pete’s hand, and he released my fingers then stretched in his lawn chair.

  I slowly reeled my limbs in, almost audibly creaking in the process, and pushed out of the chair. Oh man, my hamstrings were just about killing me, and my back, and my arms, and my neck — come to think of it.

  I trudged to the fifth-wheel, rummaged a bit and finally located my phone.

  “Meredith? Owen.” He could have said Deputy Owen Hobart, but he wasn’t the least bit pretentious. Besides I knew the sound of his voice. “You might want to head over to the Imogene. Got a fire here.”

  “What?” I screeched.

  “In the dumpsters out back and it’s spread to an overhanging tree. Fire department’s on the way. I think they’ll be able to put it out quickly, but we’ll need a representative on scene, in case we need access to the building or decisions made.”

  “I understand,” I blurted. “I’m coming.”

  “Babe?” Pete was beside me, hand on my arm.

  “Another fire,” was all I had to say — was all I could say, my throat was so tight.

  He grabbed the keys, and we ran to the truck.

  oOo

  I hated to think I was becoming accustomed to what fire scenes look like after the fact — puddles big enough you could stock them with largemouth bass; hoses crisscrossing the ground; sweaty, weary men stumping around in big boots.

  The chaos behind the Imogene had one additional feature — the air reeked of fuel. I tried to pinpoint the odor while clamping a fistful of my shirt over my mouth and nose, and the closest I could come up with was charcoal lighter fluid.

  The firefighters were all wearing masks. I couldn’t identify individuals under all the equipment, but one man wandered off to the side, shining a huge flashlight on the ground, searching for a trail of some sort. I figured he was Bob Cummins, the captain.

  “Not too much damage.” Owen joined Pete and me on the periphery, out of the way of the firefighters doing the mopping-up. “I must have just missed him.”

  “No fleeing vehicle?” Pete asked.

  Owen shook his head. “But I came in from the west. More likely he would have turned east anyway. The arsonist has to be a local, given the targets he’s chosen. Somebody who’s familiar with the area and our patterns — when people will be places and when they won’t. We’re lucky not all of the accelerant ignited.
We’re going to need a HazMat team and a truckload of cat litter out here to clean this up.”

  “Any danger of the excess accelerant igniting now?” My words were muffled by my shirt. My head was beginning to pound, and my eyes were streaming from the fumes.

  “Bob and his crew will stay until they’re sure there’s no more risk. It’ll be a long night. You should take shelter.”

  Pete and I retreated to the relative air-tightness of the pickup cab and sweltered out of the way of the emergency responders who seemed to know exactly what to do in a situation like this.

  Pete wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. I guess he didn’t care how sweaty I was. “Good thing the Imogene has stone walls,” he murmured into my hair.

  “Unscathed,” I whispered. “Let her be unscathed.” The Imogene was probably the second most important building in the county, outranked only by the courthouse. Trying to get her on the National Historic Register was on my list of things to do. Being on the Register might make us eligible for grants that would help with the additional restoration she needed. I curled my hands into fists. “Why? Why would someone do this?”

  I jumped at a knock on the window and propped open the passenger door for Sheriff Marge who had a large handkerchief tied over the bottom half of her face like an old-timey highway robber.

  “Phew. Mind if I join you?” She boosted her backside onto the seat, squashing me until she was able to swing her cast-encumbered leg inside as well. She pulled the door closed with a thud. The addition of a third body brought the cab’s temperature up to pressure cooker level.

  “Can’t do much in the way of investigation until these fumes dissipate — and until daylight.” Sheriff Marge pulled the handkerchief off and wiped her face with it. “I checked the museum’s entrances. No tampering. Just our resident arsonist at work, and nothing else going on tonight, I hope.”

  “At least the commotion will keep the maroon Taurus and its two skulkers away,” I muttered.

  Then I was subjected to the uncomfortable feeling of being fiercely stared at from both sides.

  “Care to elaborate?” Sheriff Marge grunted.

  I closed my eyes and inhaled. How could I have failed to mention it to her? I guess I hadn’t had a chance at a private word with her since the call from Karl and Ginger. And I’d forgotten to tell Pete about any of it. There was just so much swirling around in my head. Maybe I was getting old — my memory was certainly degenerating.

  I quickly filled them in on Karl and Ginger’s report about the trailing car. “Highly coincidental,” I finished. “Most likely nothing.”

  “They’re here,” Sheriff Marge gritted through clenched teeth. “Maroon Taurus with Florida plates. Owen spotted them in the hardware store parking lot in Lupine. No traffic violation or reason to stop them. He just thought they were a long way from home and gave them a second look, made sure they saw him looking because it never hurts to have visitors aware of the local law enforcement. He ran their plates to make sure they belonged on a maroon Taurus. They did. Two men in ball caps, he told me.”

  “Maybe they’re really tourists,” I murmured. But my stomach contradicted my wishful thinking by tightening into a hard knot.

  “Did he see what they were buying?” Pete asked.

  “Just sitting in their car when he saw them, but we can find out.” Sheriff Marge yanked her radio off her shoulder clip and barked into it, giving Owen instructions to wake every clerk who could have been on duty at the hardware store until he found the one who’d rung up the strangers’ purchases.

  That’s one of the great things — or not so great, depending on which side of the law you’re on — about a rural, sparsely populated county. Non-residents are carefully noted by every single resident they encounter, particularly the shopkeepers. Out-of-county dollars spent are a rare commodity and highly valued.

  We sat wedged together, panting and staring morosely through the windshield at the firefighters scurrying around in an organized sequence only they could negotiate.

  “There’s something wrong about this one,” Sheriff Marge muttered under her breath.

  “The accelerant?” Pete asked.

  “Who’s been talking now?” Sheriff Marge grumbled.

  “No one. But charcoal lighter fluid’s not common as an accelerant for anything other than barbecues, is it? More expensive than gas or kerosene or diesel. And he used way too much, unless he had grander plans. The Tinsleys’ barn didn’t have this kind of fume radius. Seems sloppy.”

  “He’s losing what’s left of his conscience — or his fear of getting caught — or just plain getting cocky.” Sheriff Marge sighed. “Or we have a copycat who’s not completely aware of his muse’s methods. This is going to delay your renovations.”

  “And thus, everything else,” I muttered, thinking of the security system that couldn’t be calibrated until the foundation stopped reverberating with every prod by the heavy machinery.

  “Yeah.” Sheriff Marge sighed so deeply this time that her body shuddered against my side.

  CHAPTER 14

  Sheriff Marge left us to continue her official business. At some point, the adrenaline I’d been running on evaporated, and I fell asleep against Pete.

  Face-first mashed into his shoulder and drooling, apparently, because that’s how I woke up. Pete was jostling me, hand on my knee. I grunted and squinted against the bright sunlight.

  “Babe,” Pete said, “Bob’s waving to us. I think he wants to talk to you.” He propped me upright and caressed my cheek. “You all right?”

  “No,” I muttered, still blinking my eyes into focus.

  Pete chuckled and kissed my forehead. “Come on.” He opened his door and slid off the seat, pulling me after him. He set me on my feet. “Be your usual charming self,” he whispered into my ear.

  That was something my mother would say to me, although she would probably add a none-to-pleasant smack on the backside for emphasis. I glared at him.

  Then I snorted and gave him a reluctant smile. “If you insist.”

  We strode over to the curb where Bob was conferring with a couple other firefighters.

  “Meredith, Pete,” Bob said, “sorry for the delay. You can go in the building now. But I have a few questions.” He dismissed his companions with a curt nod of his head.

  His eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed. His usually genial face was slack, cheeks stubbly. Soot was lodged in the creases in his neck and tracked where sweat had run down his face. I just wanted to hug him. The poor man. He was bearing a tremendous weight of worry.

  “What was in the dumpsters?” he asked.

  “The recycling bin was full of cardboard, plus there was additional cardboard stacked beside it because we were unpacking. The thirty-footer held regular museum trash — from the bathrooms and trash cans on the premises, probably mostly paper towels and people’s picnic remnants. We’d also just added all the non-recyclable packing material — wood fragments from the crates, bubble wrap, cotton batting.”

  “No flammables?”

  I shook my head, hard. “Definitely not. At least not from museum staff. Lots of potential fuel in the dumpsters, obviously, but no ignition agents. But anybody could have come back here and—” I shrugged.

  Bob ran a hand over his stubbled chin. “I have to ask, you understand. It’s glaringly clear what happened here. We don’t even need Lily, the wonder dog, to come sniff around to know this fire was set on purpose. I’m sorry, Meredith.”

  I laid a hand on his forearm and squeezed. “Thanks for protecting the Imogene.”

  “We’re gonna be in your hair for a while yet. We’re borrowing a HazMat team from across the river, and I have to collect samples for the lab to do headspace gas chromatography even though we all know it’s charcoal lighter fluid. I’ve set up a perimeter which your construction crew will need to work around for the time being. We’ll try to get out of here as soon as possible, but it might be two or three days.”

  I
bit my lip and nodded. It was actually really good news. A flurry of official activity on the Imogene’s premises would insulate her from the maroon Taurus men as well as anyone else abnormally interested in the treasures sitting in her basement. The fire investigation and clean-up actually bought me more time.

  “You should have an arborist come out and look at that tree.” Bob tipped his helmet toward the giant oak — now with blackened trunk and limbs, its remaining leaves withered to brittle stubs — that had so gloriously shaded the Imogene’s rear entrance. “It’ll become a hazard if it’s left to rot.”

  Pete and I slipped inside the basement door. I made a round of emergency phone calls to Rupert, Frankie and Greg. I hadn’t called earlier because there was nothing they could have done but worry. Now, we had plenty to do, and I needed all hands on board.

  When my crew arrived, I parceled out tasks. Frankie headed upstairs to schedule the arborist and deal with the phone which was already ringing off the hook. I suppose the Tinsleys had had to respond to concerned friends after their barn fire too, but Harriet hadn’t complained about it. I hadn’t realized just how constant the stream of people checking on us would be.

  Rupert also ascended — looking as though he’d been banished, but I had to send him; he’s the only one who can find anything in his office — to locate the fire insurance policy and begin the claim process.

  Pete stubbornly insisted that the Surely’s maintenance could wait and he wasn’t going anywhere, so that left him, Greg, and me to tackle the shipment.

  Greg took over checklist duties. He pulled up Guardado’s list in a spreadsheet application on the laptop and added columns for arrival, condition and the new ID number we would assign plus any notes we needed to make.

  Pete went out and borrowed a couple drills from Scott to speed up unscrewing the lids from all the cases. The construction supervisor apparently carried his personal supply of tools in the locked chest that ran the width of his pickup’s bed.