Burned Too Hot: A Thriller (Val Ryker series Book 2)

by Ann Voss Peterson

  So the news was out. Val felt sick to her stomach.

  “Is that true?”

  “It is.”

  He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his forehead, his movements abrupt to the point of spastic. “Do you want to know what they’re saying on TV now?”

  “What?”

  “That Hess took him. That even being in jail can’t stop him. Is that true?”

  “We don’t know who took him, sir.”

  “But it could be Hess?”

  “Hess is in jail.”

  “Someone helping Hess?”

  “It could.”

  “Are there any other possibilities?”

  Even though she had no faith that Haselow could keep anything to himself, she had to tell him something. “We have some evidence that suggests the arsonist could be trying to hurt Hess.”

  “Hurt him?”

  “Get revenge.”

  Haselow’s sweaty brow wrinkled. “Oh, I see what’s going on here.”

  “And what is that?”

  “You want to cut and run. Leave this village high and dry. Because you’re afraid he’ll come after you.”

  “He’s in jail.”

  “For now. People around here are panicking, like they believe Hess can walk through walls or something.”

  She wasn’t sure how much of the panic was coming from citizens and how much from Haselow himself, but she thought it better not to ask. “Dixon Hess is not the reason for my resignation.”

  “Can I ask what is?”

  She thrust the envelope toward him. “It’s all in here.”

  He stared at it as if she was offering him poison. “I’ve wanted to get rid of you for a long time. I think you know that. The chief job should have been Olson’s all along. It would have been if the commission had listened to me.”

  “So give him the job now.”

  “I can’t do that. You made yourself the hero. First when you created Hess, then when you brought him down. Now when houses are burning and people are dying and children are disappearing, you want to leave? You can’t leave.”

  “You don’t understand. I’m not sure I can physically do the job. Not anymore.”

  “Then you’d better figure out a way to fake it, because until Hess is sentenced tomorrow and on his way to prison, this town needs to believe someone can protect them.” He pulled the door open and gestured for her to leave. “Call a press conference for today. Convince a national audience you’re a hero, and I promise that tomorrow, after Hess is locked in prison in some other county and all this paranoid hoopla calms down, I’ll accept your letter.”

  Val hurried out into the sunlight as fast as her crutches could take her, the blurriness in her right eye more pronounced in the brightness. The possibility that Haselow wouldn’t accept her resignation had never occurred to her. She’d assumed he’d jump at the chance to get rid of her, not force her to stay on.

  She never should have kept her illness a secret in the first place. The moment she was officially diagnosed, she should have accepted the sentence, stepped aside. But she hadn’t, and now if she couldn’t perform the job, the town would pay the price.

  She reached the old-brewery-turned-police-station, hit the button, and waited for Oneida to buzz her in. Through the window, she could see the dispatcher was both on the phone and talking to someone inside. Multi-talented, Oneida reached over and hit the unlock button as well, and the door opened.

  Val didn’t see who the visitor was until she pushed inside, and by then it was too late to turn around.

  Chapter

  Twenty

  Emily

  Emily had never owned a cell phone. But when she got this job, she’d had to have one—she’d have to tell her employer if anything was wrong with Ethan, she’d have to be ready to answer at all times to find out what she needed to do next—so her employer had bought her a flip phone.

  Except for her employer, she didn’t have anyone to call. She didn’t have anyone to call her, either. But she liked to flip it open, hold it to her ear, then flip it closed again. Feeling what it would be like to be an adult on her own, with people to talk to and places to be. Practicing.

  When the phone finally rang for real, she got so excited, she hardly knew what to do.

  “Uh, hello?” she said. Hands shaking, she almost dropped it.

  “It’s time,” her employer told her. “Clean every bit of the house. Get Ethan ready. Pack all his things. You have to be prepared.”

  “Prepared for what?”

  “To do whatever I need you to do. Immediately and without question. Can you do that?”

  “Uh, yes.”

  “Good. I wouldn’t want to have to return you to your father.”

  “I can do it. I’ll be ready.”

  “You’d better be, Emily. Because I’ve worked too hard for you to mess things up for me now.”

  Val

  “Hey, gimpy. Jackie said you needed information about some doctor, but I figured it was all a ruse to see me again, so I drove up.”

  Val stared at Harry McGlade, and for a moment, she couldn’t get her jaw to close or mind to work. Finally after a babble or two, she managed to speak. “You work with Jack?”

  “Jackie and I are partners. I took her in, you know. Can’t have family jobless and living in the streets.”

  “Family?”

  “Jackie’s my sister. Where have you been? Oh, yeah. Wisconsin. How’s the fishing around here?”

  “What?”

  There were few people in this world more exasperating than Harry McGlade. When Val first met him, years ago back in Chicago, she’d thought he was one of the most outspoken chauvinists she’d ever met. It had been Jack who’d made her really see who Harry was. Exasperating, a little ridiculous, but not mean spirited in the least.

  From then on, working with him as her superior officer had been annoying at times, but surprisingly okay. Harry had even written her a glowing letter of recommendation for the job in Lake Loyal. All because Jack had cautioned her not to take Harry’s schtick too seriously.

  Just another favor Jack Daniels had done her. A favor Val had never repaid.

  But why was he here?

  “Is the information you found urgent?”

  “Urgent? Not really.”

  “So you didn’t have to drive all the way up here to deliver the report,” Val said. “We could have just done it over the phone.”

  Harry made a face. “I’m conflicted. So many responses bouncing around in my head. How about you pick your favorite?”

  Seeing her mistake in serving up a line Harry would no doubt take in a sexual way, Val let out a resigned sigh. “Go ahead.”

  “The first is, we could have done it over the phone, but I don’t know what you charge per minute.”

  “Too obvious.”

  “Second is, why don’t we just talk dirty face-to-face?”

  “Better.”

  “Third is, sure, if you talk in a husky voice, I’ll finish quick.”

  “I’ll bet you always finish quick.”

  “And finally, I could have said I have a lot of one-handed phone calls, but the person I’m talking to usually doesn’t know.”

  “I want to rewind time and take my statement back.”

  Harry grinned. “I get that a lot.”

  For the first time since Val had entered the station, she looked past McGlade and took in the chaos unfolding in the corner of the cavernous building that Jimmy Weiss had christened the dispatch patch. Phones ringing. All three lines flashing.

  Oneida glanced up from the phone, a trickle of sweat winding down her flushed face. Her eyes widened a little when she saw the crutches.

  “Everything okay, Oneida?”

  “I should ask you that. You said you just twisted your ankle a little.”

  “What’s going on with all these phone calls?” Val asked, hoping to redirect Oneida’s attention.

  The dispatcher let out a huff. “The me
dia. Not just local this time but Fox News, MSNBC, Nancy Grace… They’re portraying Hess as some kind of boogieman. Like no jail can hold him. Like he can just up and walk out any time he wants, collect his son, and wreak havoc on the town. Is the thermostat broken in here?”

  Of course, the news about Ethan’s parentage was spreading. Soon they’d be doing more than calling. They’d be camping out on the street, making this investigation more impossible than it was already. She needed to get out of here before they arrived.

  “Want a beer, McGlade? I’m buying. But only if you walk out the door.” Val managed to reverse direction on the crutches then shouted back to Oneida. “Don’t tell anyone where I’m going.”

  “Whatever you say, boss. So where are you going?” Oneida shot back.

  “The Doghouse.” Val pushed out the front door without waiting for Oneida’s reaction and headed for her Taurus.

  Harry followed.

  Val unlocked her car and reached for the door handle. McGlade circled around to the passenger side, as if he was under the impression he was riding with her.

  “Uh, I assume you have your own car, Harry.”

  He paused, as if his answer required thought. “I wish I still had the Crimebago.”

  “Crimebago?”

  “Crim-e-bago. Crime plus Winnebago. I used it for detecting, until it blew up. Would have made a great mobile fishing cabin. Now I’ll have to share your bed. In the platonic sense, of course. I hope you aren’t one of those prudes who wears pajamas.”

  Val collapsed into the driver’s seat, slammed the door behind her, and hit the lock button. Outside, Harry kept talking, although thanks to what the Taurus marketing material touted as an exceptionally quiet, cloud-nine ride—aka sound proofing—she couldn’t hear a word.

  He finally gave up, jumped in a very nice black Corvette parked at the curb, and pulled out behind her.

  Val drove to the Doghouse, Harry’s face in her rear view the whole way. The tavern was mercifully empty, and Val and Harry bellied up to the bar, Harry ordering a beer, Val a glass of ice water.

  “You’re not drinking? How are you going to rationalize taking advantage of me later?”

  Behind the bar, Nikki grinned.

  In light of that last comment, the next question Val had to ask was unfortunate. But since she couldn’t risk the news that she’d had Mark investigated getting back to Grace, she had little choice but to plunge forward. “Can we use your back room, Nikki? We need to talk in private.”

  “Wait, she can come along. She’s cute, even with the mutilated ear.”

  Nikki’s grin grew wider. “If talking is all you’re doing, you can do it here. I’m painting the back room, just finishing up.”

  “You don’t expect anyone to come in?”

  “No one ever comes in this time of day. But then, you did, so what do I know? If you need a refill, just yell.”

  As soon as Nikki closed the door to the back room behind her, Val turned what she hoped was a serious and commanding look on Harry. “What did you find out about Mark?”

  “Who?”

  “The doctor. The one you were supposed to be doing a background check on.”

  “Oh, him. He works in the ER at Northwestern Memorial. Before that, he did a stint with Doctors Without Borders. Before that, he was engaged… to you, but you probably know that.”

  “Outstanding debts?”

  “Drowning in them. Credit cards maxed out, mortgage on his apartment. And he has some interesting friends of the loan shark variety. And by interesting, I mean experienced in breaking legs.”

  Val felt sick to her stomach. Apparently Mark hadn’t changed at all, and here she’d believed him, once again. Only this time she’d shuttled him off to the Dells with her niece and given them her blessing. “You have a written report?”

  “Of course.” Harry reached into the inner pocket of his rumpled jacket, pulled out several sheets of paper folded into a wad, and handed them to her.

  Val tucked it into her bag and pulled out her cell phone. The first thing she saw was a text from Grace. Having fun. Wish you were here.

  The next was a missed call from JoAnn Pender and one from Lund.

  “JoAnn Pender?” Harry said, craning his neck to peer at her phone.

  Val twisted her stool to the side, blocking his view.

  “Some kind of counselor, right? Writes books or something?”

  Books? That was a new one for Val. “You know her?”

  “Yeah, she took me out for drinks, tried to get me to talk about my heroics back when I took down Charles Kork. But I was working with a TV producer to develop the rights, and I couldn’t tell her anything.”

  Although Val and Grace had already moved to Wisconsin at the time of the Gingerbread Man murders, Val knew enough of the story to understand what kind of steaming pile of fiction the television series had served up. “She was writing a book about you?”

  “Me, Charles Kork… but like I said, I couldn’t help her with that.”

  Interesting. And in the past year, something had enticed Pender to move to Lake Loyal, Wisconsin. “Did she ever mention anyone named Dixon Hess?”

  “No.”

  “Did she tell you why she was so interested in killers?”

  “Something about her sister.”

  “Her sister?” Val prompted.

  “She didn’t elaborate about the sister, just went on and on, asking me all sorts of things I couldn’t talk about. And try as I might, I couldn’t persuade her to change the focus of the book to my many unbelievable sexual exploits. I even had a title. SPUNKY: Harry McGlade and His Women. I even gave her the chance to be a footnote. Or a chapter, if she was into kinky stuff. She turned me down. Can you believe that? Her loss. Woulda been the greatest thirty seconds of her life.”

  “Can we get back on track?”

  “Spunky? You get it? Spunk is another name for sperm. I didn’t think the chain bookstores would carry a book called Spermy.” Harry took a sip of his beer. “I was also worried about what the reviewers might say. ‘Hard to swallow’ comes to mind.”

  “I have a few more questions.”

  “I was working with a ghost writer for a while, and she finished about half the book,” Harry ranted on, oblivious. “Good stuff, too. But then Little Miss Sensitive files a sexual harassment lawsuit, which was ridiculous, because if anything she was the one constantly harassing by asking me personal questions about my love life.”

  “I thought the book was supposed to be about your love life.”

  McGlade made a pensive face. “Huh. Never thought about it like that. Be honest, if I told you that I wanted to strap you on like a feedbag, is that creating a hostile workplace environment?”

  “Maybe she just took it the wrong way,” Val said, despite the fact that the wrong way was the only way to take a comment like that. She looked down at her glass of water, deeply regretting that she hadn’t ordered a beer.

  Or maybe a scotch. Double.

  “That’s what I’m saying. It was a nuisance lawsuit, frivolous and unwarranted. I treat women with respect. In fact, I only hire feminists to work for me, because they’ll accept a salary 40% less than men get.”

  Val swirled her water, the ice cubes clinking against the glass. Tuning out Harry’s voice, she let his earlier comments about Pender shuffle through her mind. So the woman had a history of authorial ambition. Not only that, but an interest in killers.

  Maybe she wasn’t all about victim support groups. Maybe she wasn’t concerned with support groups at all. Maybe something else had drawn her to Lake Loyal.

  Or someone else.

  Maybe the good Dr. Pender was one of those celebrity killer groupies. Maybe she’d even written Hess a letter asking for an interview.

  Harry carried on, although Val heard only bits and pieces of his monologue. Unfortunately she did catch parts like, “what guy hasn’t had sex with a bologna sandwich before?” and “she tried to convince me there was something called a cl
itoris” and “so it turned out to be a dude, but I’m cool with that.”

  Nikki returned, slipping behind the bar and pulling out her pack of smokes, just in time to hear Harry say, “Believe it or not, I know more than fifty synonyms for butt sex.”

  She raised a pierced brow in Val’s direction. “Do you think he actually does? Fifty is a lot.”

  Val glanced at her watch. Making sure Grace wasn’t at the mercy of a gambling addict was first on her list, but after that maybe she’d have to take another look at Hess’s fan mail and slip in a chat with JoAnn Pender, see what the woman was really about and what had brought her to Lake Loyal.

  She climbed off the bar stool and started for the door.

  Harry prattled on. “Wouldn’t be the first time an NDA prevented me from getting laid. Wait, is an NDA the same thing as a restraining order? Wait, where are you going?”

  “Saving my seventeen-year-old niece from her father.”

  “Her father? The guy in the report?”

  “Yeah.”

  Val reached for the door and started to pull it open.

  “Well that’s weird, because the guy you asked me to investigate had a nut cut twenty years ago.”

  Val felt heat rush to her face, her pulse spiking. “What?”

  “It’s in the report. Twenty years ago. Before you were engaged to him.” McGlade made a scissors motion with his fingers. “Snip, snip. So there’s no way he has a daughter who’s seventeen.”

  Chapter

  Twenty-One

  Lund

  For the second time in three days, Lund found himself at the mercy of Oneida Perkins. Only this Oneida Perkins was far from the cool and in control woman he was familiar with. And after seeing the news vans outside and hearing the phone ring almost non-stop while he waited for Oneida to buzz him through the door, the cause was not hard to guess.

  The media had discovered the identity of Ethan Tiedemann’s biological father.

  By the time Lund stepped into the station and peered through the open door of Val’s vacant office, he was well on his way to developing a stress ulcer. “Where’s Val?”

  Oneida held a palm while asking the next caller to please hold. All phone lines flashing, she glanced up at him. Her hair looked bigger than he’d ever seen, a frazzled puff of blond. Sweat beaded on her forehead, her face flushed a bright pink. “You look terrible, but I suppose that can be expected.”