by Katie Ruggle
With a snort, she waved off his warning. “Did you see how many doughnuts Ellie and George brought? Everyone’s going to inhale about ten each before slipping into diabetic comas. No one will even want to hear the word ‘brownies.’”
“Brownies?” Lou’s excited voice chirped from the dining room, and Chris gave Daisy an I-told-you-so smirk.
Closing her eyes, Daisy shook her head. “I’ll hide the brownies.”
He chuckled and slipped out the door. After securing it behind him, Daisy hurried into the kitchen to start another cup of coffee and to slip the covered pan of brownies into a cupboard behind a salad spinner and her Crock-Pot.
“Daisy!” Lou shouted. “Get your toned little butt in here. And don’t forget those brownies.”
“Give me a minute, and I’ll bring some more coffee,” she yelled back. “But there aren’t any brownies.”
There were a few seconds of silence before a scowling Lou strode into the kitchen. “Daisy Little. Are you hiding brownies?”
“What brownies?” She widened her eyes in her best innocent expression.
“Fine. Be that way, B. H.” Lou’s sigh was heavy. “We’ll just have to make do with the gazillion doughnuts in there. Now hurry up. Ian gave Rory the arson scoop.”
“B. H.?”
“Brownie hoarder.”
As silly and most likely temporary as it was, it still made Daisy smile that she’d been given a nickname. “Just a few more seconds…”
The brewer gave its final gurgle, and Daisy grabbed the mug. With all the company she’d been having lately, she was going to have to get a coffeemaker that produced more than a single cup at a time.
“Ready! Let’s talk about fires.”
Rory’s scowl was so severe that it made Daisy stop abruptly as she entered the dining room.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, setting down the mug and carefully nudging it in Rory’s direction.
“I feel like I have to give an oral report,” Rory grumbled, playing with the notepad in front of her. “I’m supposed to tell you what Ian found out about the arsons.”
“It’s just us,” Ellie said. “We won’t judge. Besides, Lou won’t let you get out a full sentence before she interrupts, so your oral report will be a very short one.”
“Hey!” Lou protested.
Uncrossing her arms, Rory picked up the notepad and frowned at it. Daisy tapped her screen to start recording, resisting the urge to examine it, to try to figure out exactly why her phone still felt so strangely wrong. Corralling her straying thoughts, she focused on Rory.
“The first of this string of arsons was—”
“Hold up!” Lou jumped out of her chair and retrieved the oversized notepad that Daisy had propped against the dining room wall. “We need to do a timeline.”
Ellie started giggling so hard that she would’ve fallen off her chair if George hadn’t grabbed her and hoisted her upright again. Her laugh was so infectious that Daisy couldn’t help but join in.
“Did I call that or what?” Ellie asked when she’d recovered enough to speak, holding up her fist toward George. When he stared at it and then looked at Ellie, she sighed. “Don’t leave me hanging. Fist-bump me.”
Tentatively, George touched his knuckles against hers, although it was more of a nudge than a bump. Instead of withdrawing, he closed his fingers over her fist, his huge hand completely enveloping her small one. Bringing their hands to his mouth, he slid his down toward her wrist so he could kiss her fingers before lowering their hands into his lap.
Ellie gave him a tender look, and it was obvious that both had completely forgotten that they weren’t the only ones in the room. Despite the usual pang in her belly that she felt as she watched their sweet couple-y-ness, Daisy had to smile.
When they finally broke eye contact and turned their heads to see the other three women eyeing them with varying degrees of amusement, Ellie visibly jumped before blushing.
“Sorry.” Clearing her throat, she focused her gaze on the oversized pad. “What were you saying?”
“What was Rory saying before you mocked me, taught George of the Jungle here a native greeting, indulged in some googly eyes, and then returned to Earth?” Lou recapped cheerfully as she looked around the room in search of something. “B.H., where’d you hide the markers? Is it the same place you’re hiding the brownies?”
Three pairs of eyes fastened on Daisy, who tried not to flinch.
“Brownies?” Ellie repeated, her eyes wide and hopeful.
“No brownies.” To hide the fact that she was lying so badly her pants were most likely going to spontaneously combust, Daisy hurried into the living room. “The markers are still in here.”
She grabbed them off the coffee table and returned to the dining table, where everyone was still staring at her.
“Why are you all looking at me like a bunch of half-starved puppies?” she asked, sliding the markers across the table to Lou. “Eat another doughnut.”
“They’re gone,” Ellie said mournfully, tipping the container so Daisy could see the few scattered crumbs of icing that remained.
“But…how?” Daisy blinked at the empty box. “You guys must have bought every doughnut at the Gas and Guzzle. How are they all gone?”
Rory shrugged. “I was hungry.”
“Me too.” Lou didn’t look too concerned as she sorted through the markers, as if choosing the correct color would solve the case immediately.
Ellie said earnestly, “We had to eat as many doughnuts as possible before the post-workout, guilt-free window closed.”
“Wow,” was all Daisy could say.
George cleared his throat and tipped his head toward Rory.
“He’s right,” Lou said. “We only have an hour before Rory has to open the shop, so let’s get cracking. When was the first arson?” She drew a horizontal line across the top of the paper and then poised the marker on the left side of the line as she waited for the answer.
“About eleven months ago, on May thirtieth. It was the remains of a run-in shed in that field off of Easton Road.”
“Run-in shed?” Daisy repeated. “As in a shelter for horses and cows and things?”
Rory nodded. “The field hadn’t held any livestock for years before that, though. The shed had partially collapsed.”
“Well, I’m glad no animals were singed,” Daisy said as Lou scribbled below the timeline.
“Not to be the dumb out-of-towner,” Ellie said, “but where’s Easton Road?”
George looked at Daisy. “Map?”
She shook her head, but then reconsidered her answer, hopping up from her chair and heading into the kitchen. “Wait. I think I do. Hang on.”
In one of the drawers she hardly ever opened, she dug through a couple of emergency candles, a pair of scissors, and a calendar from several years back to unearth a Simpson phone book. She would have just recycled it, since she found everything she needed online, but her dad had insisted on keeping it, just in case. She’d have to remember to thank him the next time he was home.
As she returned to the dining room, she flipped to the back and found a map of Simpson. Bracing the phone book on the table, she carefully tore out the sheet and handed it to George.
“Would you mind doing the mapping?” she asked, and he nodded, holding out an open hand to Lou.
“Marker?” she asked, picking up the set. “What color?”
He didn’t answer, just gave a silent sigh and continued to hold out his hand.
“Purple,” Ellie answered for him.
He accepted the marker and started examining the map. He made a small circle and added a “1” next to it before sliding it closer to Ellie. She studied the map for a few moments, tracing a few streets in an attempt to get her bearings.
“Okay,” she finally said, returning the map to its origi
nal location in front of George. “I’ve never been there, but I have an idea of the general area. Where was the second one?”
“Eighty-one Bluebird Court.” Rory grimaced. “Those Esko Hills street names are obnoxious.”
Lou looked up from her timeline. “Esko Hills? Why does that subdivision keep popping up?”
“Could be a coincidence,” Daisy said, leaning forward to get a better look at the map as George added another circle with a “2” next to it. “Simpson isn’t that big, after all. There aren’t that many neighborhoods.”
“Maybe,” Lou said, but her tone was skeptical. “When was that?”
“July 4th. Ian put a question mark next to this one, since they were pretty sure it was kids messing around with fireworks who started it.”
Adding the date to the timeline, Lou asked, “What kind of structure?”
“Detached garage.”
“Okay. Next?”
Rory detailed the where, what, and when of the eleven arson cases. By the time she’d worked her way through all of her notes, George’s map had a cluster of purple numbers and circles, and Lou’s timeline covered three sheets of paper. Frowning, she flipped back and forth.
“Do you mind if I take this home with me so I can transfer it to the whiteboard?” Lou asked. “Not to borrow Callum’s OCDish tendencies, but this is a mess.”
“Of course,” Daisy said. “I’ll just get some pictures of it first, so I can show Chris. Oh, and the map, too.”
“Speaking of the map,” Ellie said, sliding it to the center of the table so everyone could see it, “any obvious patterns?”
The five of them studied it for a quiet minute.
“They’re all in town.” Daisy was the first to speak.
“What about the wildland fires?” Rory asked. “Shouldn’t we include those?”
Lou frowned thoughtfully. “Not yet. I think we need more information about those first. We don’t know the ignition points or dates or really anything about them. Did Ian talk to the chief?” She glanced at Rory, who shook her head. “Okay, so until we learn more about the wildland fires, we’ll just say that all the arsons were in Simpson.”
Everyone except for Rory nodded in agreement. “Unless Lou’s place should be on here, too.”
Daisy had forgotten that possibility. Darting a look toward Lou, who appeared a little grim, Daisy suggested, “Maybe we should add her place—former place—to the map.”
“Use a different color, though.” Lou’s tone was a little too casual. “I’m still not convinced that it wasn’t loony Clay.”
When George held out a hand, Lou slapped an orange marker in it. They all watched as he marked a “12” with a question mark and added an arrow pointing off the edge of the map.
Ellie tilted the map toward her when George had finished writing on it. “These two were really close to Willard Gray’s cabin.”
“What do you think the connection between Gray and the fires is?” Daisy asked, tilting her head to see the map at a different angle, as if the answer would jump out at her if she only looked at it in the right way. “We’ve already agreed that he couldn’t have been the arsonist, since more than half of the fires were after his death.”
“Could he have witnessed something?” Lou reached to tap the cluster of numbers closest to Gray’s cabin.
Rory hummed, but it was an unconvinced sound. “Would someone really have committed murder to hide burning down a few sheds? Seems like overkill to me.”
When Lou snorted, everyone looked at her. “Overkill? To commit murder? Never mind.”
Glancing at her watch, Rory rose abruptly, gathering the sheets of paper holding her notes. “I have to go open the shop.”
“We should probably get going, as well.” Ellie and George rose, followed by Lou.
“Can I get some pictures of the timeline?” Daisy asked, turning off the recording on her phone and opening the camera app. When Lou held up the notepad and flipped to the first sheet, Daisy took a picture and then nodded for Lou to turn the page. Once she had taken photos of all three sheets containing parts of the timeline, she gave Lou a smile of thanks. When Daisy held up her phone to George, he slid the map in front of her so she could get a shot of that, too.
“Oh!” As she lowered the phone after taking the picture, she realized what had seemed so strange. The dent was gone. Her fingers ran over the too-smooth surface, finding nothing. Her eyebrows drew together. It had to be her phone; it had all her stuff on it. But how did a dent just disappear?
“Daisy?” Lou’s voice drew her out of her confused thoughts. “You okay?”
“Sure.” She forced a smile. If she tried to explain, she was going to sound completely paranoid. Nodding toward the notes in Rory’s hand, Daisy asked, “Would you mind leaving those? Chris would probably like to see them.”
In response, Rory held the stack of paper toward Daisy.
“Thanks.”
She followed the last of her guests to the front door and ushered them into the entry as everyone said their good-byes. After securing the locks behind them, Daisy headed for the study, trying to understand how the dent in her phone could have just disappeared—unless there’d never been a dent in the first place, and she’d just imagined it. Why, though? Why would she remember a nonexistent dent? Was her brain that scattered, that unreliable? If she was wrong about that, what else could she have been wrong about?
Shoving the unanswerable question out of her mind, Daisy decided to do some doll research and stop obsessing.
As she waited for her laptop to boot up, she settled into her chair, resisting the urge to spin. That would just lead to more thinking about Chris and phones and dead guys and fires and the call she had to make that afternoon. Since her phone appointment was at one p.m., she had just over three hours to finish her research and list the dolls for sale.
It struck her how full her day was, and she realized that it must be how most people’s regular schedules were. Normally, she had to search for things to do to fill the days between Chris’s visits and her dad’s time between jobs. Daisy decided she liked being busy. Time flew, and she didn’t spend as many hours fighting off things she didn’t want in her head.
Pulling up an Internet browser window, she forced herself to go to the antique doll site she’d been looking at earlier. The lure of other, more entertaining and less profitable web pages called to her, but she was determined to get some work done. To give her motivation, she opened the box and carefully extracted one of the dolls, placing it on the desk to the left of her computer. Pulling out the second, Daisy laid it on her right. She started to look away from the second doll but then did a double take, leaning closer to the thing’s face.
“Are those…teeth?” she muttered. “That is so creepy. Great. Now I know this one can bite.”
Dragging her brain away from the mental image of an army of attacking zombie dolls, Daisy turned back to her computer screen. Having them staring at her—and one baring its two little teeth—was definitely giving her incentive to get them listed and sold.
* * *
Tyler leaned his head against the cool glass, eyeing the frozen meal options and trying to work up some enthusiasm. It was hard to care what he’d have for his solitary meal that night though, when his dad would be out doing what he needed to do.
His huff of annoyance made a foggy spot on the door. He’d caused the mess. Tyler should be allowed to help clean it up, but his dad insisted on treating him like he was still a kid.
“Is there any way you’d reconsider? It’d really help out Daisy. I’d be happy to pay extra for the service.”
Tyler lifted his head at the sound of Chris Jennings’s voice coming from the grocery-store owner’s office. Although Tyler had never had a problem with Chris, his nutso girlfriend was a different story, with her late-night spying and video-taking and trying to turn Chri
s against Tyler’s dad. He wished there was something he could do about her.
“I can’t,” Mr. Lee, the store owner, said. “If I offer delivery to one customer, everyone is going to want it, and that would be a mess. I’d have to buy a snowmobile—or a dog sled. Why don’t you just bring her groceries to her yourself? Heard that you’re over there just about every day.”
“Who’d you hear that from?” Chris’s voice had an undertone that was chillier than the freezer Tyler was leaning against.
“Uh…can’t remember,” Mr. Lee stammered. “But, anyway, there’s no way I can do the delivery. Maybe there’s some neighborhood kid who’d be willing to do it?”
Wheels started turning in Tyler’s mind, and he tuned out the rest of the conversation. Reaching into the freezer, he grabbed the first thing that came to hand and hurried through the store, finally finding his dad in the produce section. Tyler dropped his frozen selection into the cart.
“Black-bean burgers?” His father raised his eyebrows. “That’s a first. Are you going vegetarian on me?”
Tyler restrained a wince at his absentminded dinner choice. He wasn’t a big fan of beans. “No. Just didn’t notice they weren’t beef. I was thinking about something else.”
“Yeah?” Keeping his attention on Tyler, he started pushing the cart toward the registers. “What about?”
Trying to keep the excited smile off his face, Tyler pretended to be interested in a display of tomatoes. “I was thinking about getting a job.”
Chapter 11
A knock on the front door made her start. After the one o’clock call, she’d worked off her nervous energy on the treadmill for an hour before showering and returning to the computer just five minutes ago to dive back into research.
As she got up from her chair, her eyes flicked toward the clock in the corner of her laptop screen. It was still pretty early for Chris, and he would’ve texted her before showing up an hour and a half ahead of time. Walking to the front door, she pressed the intercom button.
