“Not possible, I’m afraid. Both myself and the fire inspector will need to do our independent investigations. It will be tomorrow at the earliest before it’s handed back to the building owner, who is, I believe”—he flipped a couple pages back in his notepad—“a Mr. Aiden Caldwell.”
“That’s me,” Aiden said.
“Oh.” Inspector Samuels’s bushy eyebrows twitched. “Well, that’s convenient. And rather unfortunate for you.”
“What happens when it’s released to him?” Piper asked.
“Well, then it’s the insurance company’s call. They’ll perform their own separate investigation. I suspect the damage is severe enough that health and safety will have to get involved. Then you’re looking at claims adjusters, contractors—” He started to count on his fingers, but Piper interrupted.
“How long? I mean, I can’t keep them cooped up out there forever.”
“A few days at least.”
“Right, the neighbors are going to love that.” Not that she cared at the moment.
“Is there nowhere else they can go?” the inspector asked.
“Why do you think they’re here?” Her shoulders slumped. “Need a pet dog?”
He chuckled. “No, I don’t. I bring my job home enough as it is. Sorry.”
“Yeah, me too.” She shook her head. “I’ll figure something out.”
“You know, you’re very lucky you got out of there alive, not to mention all the dogs.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it,” she said. “I had help.” She glanced at Aiden, who squeezed her hand in return.
“About that,” the inspector said. “I’d like to ask the two of you some questions about what happened tonight. I’d like to interview you both separately.” He gestured to a quiet area on the sidewalk. “Piper, if I could start with you first.”
With an exasperated look at Aiden, Piper followed until they were out of earshot. She took a deep breath. Becoming all too familiar with the drill, she explained what happened. It all went down in probably less than ten minutes. Yet as she retold it, there was so much information to relay that it could have happened over the course of an hour or two.
Yes, she saw the guy start the fire. No, she didn’t see his face. She gave guesstimations about height and weight, but it had been dark, and it happened so fast. The only helpful thing she could recall that might identify him was that he’d have, she hoped, a large goose egg on his head and a nasty dachshund bite-mark anklet to match.
Piper watched the inspector scribble his notes onto his pad, serious and attentive. Two great bushy eyebrows with long strands of grey drew together or arched during her recounting, like a pair of thoughtful furry caterpillars crawling quizzically on his face. Already she had more confidence in Inspector Samuels than she did in Officer Sucker Tucker.
“So now that there’s a detective involved, does that mean an actual investigation is under way? Or are you going to tell me to hire a security guard too?”
“I’ve been briefed on this case already. I think that whoever is targeting this property isn’t going to stop.”
“Yeah. I’m starting to get that message.”
“Tonight, you interrupted him before he could finish his task. This could have been much worse.”
Piper remembered the second canister of fuel and grimaced. She thought of the dogs trapped in their kennels as the place burned down around them. “And there might still be a next time.”
He held up a hand. “Now, I’m not saying this to scare you. I’m trying to prepare you for the possibility.”
“You mean the eventuality.”
“We will do everything we can to find and stop whoever is doing this. But after tonight, it’s obvious that he’ll go to any lengths to get you out of this neighborhood, if that is his true motive. If we don’t catch him sooner rather than later…” He didn’t finish.
He didn’t need to.
They could raise funds, rebuild, add new locks, buy a new security system, but at the end of the day this guy was going to keep coming.
Her blanket had lost all of its toasty oven warmth and the soggy cold sank in, deep, like it had seeped into her bones. She thought she would never feel warm again. “Then our only option is to give him what he wants.”
“You don’t need to worry about all of this tonight,” Inspector Samuels said. “You’ve been through enough, and I realize you’ll need to discuss this with the property owner and business manager. In the meantime, we’ll be placing a patrol car outside to monitor the premises twenty-four hours a day for the next few days.”
“Do you think this guy will try something again? So soon?”
“Arsonists have a habit of coming back to see the results of their work. It’s common for them to even return while it’s still burning.”
Piper examined the crowd gathered outside the police tape, searching each face, wondering if the arsonist could be out there. Watching. Waiting to try something again. She shivered at the thought.
And to think, she’d been face-to-face with the slimeball, had been so close to seeing him. She might have been able to identify him, to put a stop to all this.
Suddenly, it occurred to her that while she didn’t see his face, he might have seen hers. In a way, she’d been there to thwart him both times, to undo what he did. He could have seen her on the news after the break-in, asking for donations. Maybe that’s why the car had tried to run her over in the alley during her date with Aiden. Maybe the guy wasn’t after both of them. Just her.
The inspector said the arsonist likely wouldn’t give up until he got what he wanted. What if this guy saw Piper as the one standing in his way?
24
Newshound
“Hi. Marilyn. It’s Piper. I have some bad news. You remember that dog shelter you asked me to look after? It burned to the ground. Oh, and all those sweet, homeless puppies that were inside? Yeah, they’re horribly traumatized. Hope you’re having a great time on your cruise. Cheers!”
Piper realized she looked crazy pacing back and forth in front of the rescue center, talking to herself—well, to Colin. The cops who were parked across the street for surveillance on the building were glancing over at her. They probably thought she was nuts. Hell, she felt a little nuts. Maybe they’d already put in a call to Inspector Samuels to tell him she should be the lead suspect in the arson case.
She wanted to rehearse what to say to Marilyn’s voice mail. To get it just right. Piper still hadn’t been able to get ahold of her since she’d left for vacation. Boy, was she going to get a bad string of voice mails when she finally checked them.
Piper turned to Colin, who watched her from the front steps. In Colin fashion, he sat just behind the bright yellow tape wrapped across the stair rails that said: POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS. Rebel without a cause.
After taking him home from the center the night before, she had assessed him thoroughly, patting him down, manipulating his joints. Or at least, she’d tried to, but he seemed to have mistaken her face for a lollypop. It seemed he graciously forgave her for yelling at him during the fire. Either that, or it was his five-minute memory span at work.
After her assessment, she was relieved to discover that other than being a bit sulky—nothing a treat couldn’t fix—he’d fared a lot better than she had. She had quite a bit more than a limp, but hell, at least she was alive.
The rest of the animals were fine—physically, anyway. Who knew how the traumatic event would affect them mentally long-term? But at least they were safe. She’d found temporary homes for most of the guests. A lot of the center’s usual foster families stepped up to help them out, and she managed to find a few of the other no-kill centers that opened their doors until she could figure something else out. Addison was out delivering some of the guests now. Unfortunately, Zoe was working a wedding gig that weekend. She couldn’t be at the center to help, but she sent her love and checked in frequently.
“So?” Piper asked Colin. “What do you think of my spe
ech?”
He grumbled before laying his head down and covering his face with his paws.
“Yup. That’s what I thought. It’s perfect.” Taking her phone out of her pocket, she searched for Marilyn’s number and hit dial. She’d hoped—and dreaded—that she might actually pick up, but like usual it rang until it went to voice mail. The beep sounded, and suddenly, anything Piper could say about the fire in a few sentences sounded so inadequate.
Until they caught the asshole responsible for the attacks there was no telling how bad things would get. Piper had never felt so helpless, so powerless. It was the worst kind of feeling. However, being thousands of miles away, somewhere in the Caribbean, Marilyn would feel this even more. When Piper thought about what it would be like to get a message like that, unable to ask any questions, she decided that less information was better.
“Hi, Marilyn. This is Piper. Listen, I’m not sure when you’re going to get this message. I’ve tried the cruise line a few times, but I can’t seem to get ahold of you. Please call me as soon as you get this, no matter what time it is. Hope you’re having a good vacation. Bye.”
As she hung up, Aiden rounded the corner of the building. He smiled when he saw her. She stopped pacing and took a deep breath, her muscles unknotting themselves.
That morning, she’d dragged her butt out of bed after only a few hours of sleep, wondering how she would get everything done. But then she arrived at the center, and Aiden was already there. While she and Addison sorted out temporary homes for the guests, he dealt with the business end of things.
To say he’d been amazing was the biggest understatement of the century. Without him, the center might have burned down completely. There might not have been anything left to sort out. Hell, she might have died. But she thought it was best not to dwell on that particular anecdote for now.
“I just left Marilyn a voice mail,” she said. “Did you want to leave a message? I could call her back.”
He shook his head. “No thanks. I e-mailed her earlier.”
“Really? Did she respond? What did you say?” She didn’t like the idea of Marilyn hearing about the fire from anyone else. She’d left Piper in charge of the rescue center. She wanted to be the one to answer for what had happened to it.
“Oh, nothing specific,” he said. “I just had some things to discuss with her about the center.”
“What things, exactly?” Piper asked, aiming for airily.
“Business things.” By his pointed tone of voice, she knew he wanted to end it there.
Piper’s eyebrows arched. “Business things?”
“Yes.” He countered with an eyebrow of his own. “Marilyn’s business and my business.”
“As in, not my business?” Irritated at being shut out, yet again, Piper’s jaw clenched. What was he keeping from her? Did Marilyn know what it was? “I guess I have no right to know what’s happening to the center?”
Aiden groaned, like the last thing he wanted was an argument. “I know I sound like a broken record, but I was serious when I said that I don’t like mixing business with pleasure.”
She remembered his motto all too well. “And I’m what? Doing all this”—she waved a hand at the general destruction—“for pleasure?”
“I don’t know,” he said testily. “I guess that’s your business.”
“Fine. Then excuse me while I go help feed the dogs. Unless, of course, that’s none of my business, either.” Whistling for Colin, she turned to head for the back, but Aiden grabbed her arm.
“This is exactly why I don’t like mixing the two.”
She pulled her arm away, but he gripped both her shoulders and turned her to face him. “If it were something that you needed to know, I would tell you. But this is between Marilyn and me.” He sighed. “I don’t want business to come between us. I don’t want you to be business at all.” He reached up and cupped her face in both hands. “I want you to be one hundred percent pleasure. Let me deal with this.”
“I don’t like not knowing what’s going on. Marilyn left the center in my care.” And look what’s already happened, she added in her head. She pushed away the thought. “I want to make sure everything turns out okay. I’m not used to people doing things for me that I should be doing.”
“It’s not for you. It’s with you. You have your part to play, so does Marilyn, and so do I. We’ll all work together. You’re not alone in this. We’re a team.”
She sighed, realizing she was turning into a control freak like Zoe. The issue wasn’t so much control as it was accepting help, admitting she needed it—which she totally didn’t, by the way. It tasted of failure, of bitterness, in her mouth. She closed her eyes for a moment, regaining a bit of perspective and tried for an easier-going expression, maybe even a hint of a smile.
“Is that the spirited speech you give your office every Monday?”
Aiden’s expression softened. “Something like that. Did it work?”
“Strangely enough, I suddenly feel like stapling things and sending interoffice memos.”
His arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her tight to him, and he dipped his head in for a kiss. Something neither of them could get enough of that day, not after the fire the night before. After coming so close to—
“Mr. Caldwell!” a shrill voice called behind them.
Aiden whipped around to find Holly charging down the sidewalk, the cameraman in her Chanel wake. With a God-give-me-the-strength sigh, he stepped away from Piper. Hey, You fiddled with his equipment and Holly snapped her fingers at him impatiently.
“A little strange to be viewing your investment properties on a weekend, isn’t it?” she asked Aiden. “Or was it something else you were hoping to view?” Her eyes widened and darted meaningfully to Piper.
“Holly, so nice to see you again.” But Aiden’s expression didn’t relay that happy feeling. It was guarded as she waved the cameraman in close, signaling with a flick of her manicured finger to get a shot of the young CEO.
She held the microphone dramatically in front of her. “Holly Hart, here, on location at San Francisco’s Dachshund Rescue Center to report on more bowwow woes. After last night’s devastating fire, the volunteers are hard at work trying to make the best of their dog day. So, tell us, Mr. Caldwell, where do you fit into all of this?” Holly shoved the microphone into his face.
“I’m here to help Miss Summers deal with the aftermath of last night’s fire.”
Holly leapt into Piper’s bubble, leaning aggressively toward her, on the trail of a hot story. “Rumor has it, you were inside the building when the fire started.”
“Ah, yes. I came by to check on the dogs and caught the arsonist setting fire to the place.”
“That must have been terrifying. What did you do?”
“Well, I tried to stop him, but it was too late and he got away.”
“Those could have been some hot dogs. But you bravely put your life on the line and fought the fire to protect the dogs you so love.” Her voice oozed drama. Piper thought she must have been good at her job at the Gate.
“Errr, well, I guess. I mean, I started to, but I never would have been able to do that and get the dogs to safety if Aiden hadn’t showed up.”
Holly spun to face Aiden. She grabbed his upper arm, and Piper could have sworn she squeezed his biceps. “That makes you quite the hero, Mr. Caldwell. Not only are you the most eligible bachelor in town, but a local hero.”
“I believe Miss Summers is—”
Holly pulled the microphone away before he could finish. “So what will happen to the residents of the Dachshund Rescue Center now? Where will they go?” She turned the mic back on Aiden.
“The building will need extensive repairs, which will be reviewed later today. In the meantime, Miss Summers has sorted out temporary arrangements until the renovations are complete.” He nodded to Piper, but Holly seemed reluctant to shift the focus away from her target.
“Mr. Caldwell, with your affiliation with the rescue
center”—her eyes flicked to Piper, but so subtly she didn’t think the camera caught it—“does Caldwell and Son Investments have any plans to offer the center aid?”
“Yes, the company plans to do whatever it can to assist the center. Discussions have already begun for future planning.”
Future planning? Piper’s gaze shot to him, but he studiously ignored her. Discussions? Piper’s brain scrambled. Maybe that was what he e-mailed Marilyn about. Or was it a vague business term to avoid giving a real answer? Piper sure wanted some real answers.
“There you have it,” Holly said. “The hound hater has struck again, but they haven’t shut this doghouse down yet. Is this dogfight over, or is it just beginning? This is Holly Hart for Channel Five News.”
Her veneer smile shone on her face like a plastic Barbie until Hey, You said, “And cut.”
She spun on her heel to face Piper. “Thanks for the interview. Bad luck for the center, but these stories have really boosted my ratings. The whole man’s best friend heart-wrenching angle has warmed the viewers up to me. Can you believe people rate me as insincere?”
Piper tried to keep a straight face. “Shocking.”
“I know, right?” She rolled her eyes. “Well, let me know if there are any big breaks in the case. I’d like to finish off with a good heartwarming piece. Something uplifting.”
“You and me both.”
“I’m thinking something along the lines of cute puppies and old people or, better yet, babies. You know, happily ever after kind of crap.”
“I’ll be sure to work on that.”
Holly turned and strutted back to the news van and snapped her fingers at the cameraman. Rolling his eyes, he muttered something under his breath before following her.
Piper turned back to Aiden, not quite ready to give up on their earlier conversation—not to mention, Holly’s interview had raised a whole new set of questions—but as she opened her mouth to confront him a BMW pulled up in front of the building. Aiden’s BMW. That would explain why he drove the Jaguar that day.
The driver’s side door opened and Tamara crawled out. Piper groaned inwardly. When Aiden gave her a funny look, she realized her brain-mouth filter had malfunctioned again and her inward groan was an outward one.
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