Combustible (A Boone Childress Novel)

by CC Abbott

  Boone nodded to himself. His worst suspicions were true. Eugene Loach had known she was in the house. The question now was what was the next step? He would have to tell Sheriff Hoyt about Dewayne's slip of the tongue. Abner, too. But he wasn't sure about telling Lamar, whose mind was like a steel trap. Once it was closed, it was almost impossible to get it open without losing a body part.

  “Don’t blow me off, Boone. What the hell was that all about?” Cedar said as she grabbed him by the arm.

  Though Boone hated the cliché of “you’re beautiful when you’re angry,” in Cedar’s case, it was true. Her face with flushed scarlet, and her shoulders were tensed hard. She lifted her chin while her eyes cut him like a laser shaping a diamond.

  “Dewayne’s full of shit,” he said. “You know he’s just running his mouth.”

  “That’s not the that I meant.” She pointed at Brit and Heather walking down the hallway, stealing looks back at him. “That’s the that I meant!”

  “Oh,” he said. “That.”

  “Yes, them!”

  “Is it them or that?”

  She stepped toward him, seething. “Them, damn it! The hootchies!”

  “That them,” he said and wrapped an arm around her because hell, she was so close he might as well, and drew her tight, “mean nothing to me.”

  She punched him in the chest and broke out of his grasp. “Then why were you flirting with them, jerk face?”

  “There are too many meds in my system for me to care about hootchies, and besides, they were flirting with me.”

  “Same thing!”

  “Not really.”

  “Listen, Boone Childress,” she said, sticking a finger under his nose. “When you’re dating me, you’re dating just me, not flirting with a couple of hootchies. Got that?”

  “Who says we’re dating?” He was playing with her, but he really didn’t know if they were officially dating. One hot kiss on the beach didn’t always lead to a relationship. Neither did cuddling under a blanket.

  “You did,” Cedar said, “when you kissed me on the beach.”

  “Technically,” he said quietly, “I kissed you on the lips.”

  “Don’t try to charm me with semantics, mister,” she said, but the tone in her voice let him know that she was losing her edge. “And no flashing those cute dimples. I’m immune to it.”

  “That’s good,” he said and smiled. “I’d hate to think that I’d coerced you into not being mad at me, since I believe that males and females should be equal in any relationship, and in the future, I’ll make sure to ask your permission before—“

  “Just shut up,” she said and threw her arms around his neck, “and kiss me again.”

  Hands on her hips, he lifted her until she stood on tiptoes, then leaned in, his lips brushing hers lightly. He parted her lips with the tip of his tongue and felt her body tremble as he tasted her mouth, warm and wet and hungry.

  The kiss was as short as it was sweet. Reluctantly, he broke away. When he opened his eyes, Cedar was staring up at him.

  “I’m still mad at you,” she said, smiling.

  “Let me make it up to you.”

  “What have you got in mind?” she said, still smiling.

  Pulling that dress off and kissing every inch of that body, he thought as he felt a jolt of raw energy shot through his spine. But before he could process that thought into words that didn’t sound so honest and dirty, someone slapped him on the back, which sent an electric jolt of pain through his ribs.

  “Hey, Cedar!” Luigi said. “Are you ready to go?”

  “Damn,” she whispered. “I forgot.”

  “Forgot what?” Boone asked.

  “Cedar has date with me,” Luigi said. “We are ordering food.”

  Boone cocked an eyebrow at Cedar, as if to say WTF?

  “It’s not a date,” she said. “Just helping him with his conversational English.”

  “You come along, too,” Luigi said and clapped Boone on the shoulder. “We will make it a threesome.”

  “A what?” Cedar cried and stepped toward him, a fist balling up.

  “Let’s go, Luigi,” Boone said and steered him down the hallway out of harm’s way. “That one definitely gained something in translation.”

  "They didn't believe you?" Cedar said as she spooned Italian dressing onto her hoagie. "None of them?"

  The afternoon sun shone down on the patio in front of Red Fox Java, a small coffee house and used bookstore that was housed in a red brick, two-story building across from the Bragg County Courthouse. The patio was a favorite gathering place for courthouse employees during lunch on weekdays. On weekends, it was the place where band geeks and goth kids hung out, drinking the only double espressos to be had in town.

  At a table right next to the sidewalk, Boone sat with Luigi and Cedar, along with Cedar's beagle, Chigger, who lay under the metal table, his head resting on Cedar's tennis shoes.

  "Not a single, solitary word," Boone said, summarizing the phone conversations he'd just had with Hoyt and Lamar. "Hoyt said his office was too busy to talk to me, much less go chasing shadows. Lamar said that I have Eugene Loach on the brain."

  "What about your grandfather?" Luigi pushed his backup pair of glasses up on his nose. They were thick plastic and rectangular, making Luigi look like someone had circled his eyes with a black marker. Boone now understood why he avoided wearing them before. "Did he doubt your story?"

  "No," Boone said, "but I couldn’t get in touch with him, either. His cell goes straight to voicemail, and all I get is the answering machine on his home phone. He's out of touch, and I don't know if it's intentional or not. He may be working behind the scenes, or he may be in a hammock on his sleeping porch watching the tide coming in."

  "Let's assume he's working behind the scenes." Cedar rewarded Chigger with a bite of ham. "What would he be working on?"

  "The case."

  "Well, yes, the case," she said. “What do you know, exactly?"

  "I know this,” Boone said. “There have three suspicious fires. The first was the Tin City fire, where Stumpy found a finger. The second was Nagswood, where the woman was killed. The third was actually the first chronologically, a suspicious fire in north Dare County. That leaves us with three firefighters who seemed to know more than they're saying, three arsons that follow the same pattern, and an unidentified female."

  "Do you think the events are related in some way?" Luigi said.

  "I think there's a serial arsonist on the loose," Boone said. He slid off his shoe and rubbed Chigger's belly with his toe. "And I want to catch him."

  "So what's next?" Cedar said through a bite of her sub.

  Boone shrugged. What was next? With the cops stonewalling him, all he could do was cool his jets until something broke. "I don't know. Wait? Be patient? The gears are turning without me, and if I interfere, I'll never make it back on the Frisco VFD. Which leaves with what? Help with your research project?"

  "Music to my ears," Cedar said and went on a long involved explanation of her project, which had something to do with her beagle, circuit boards, terrorists, luggage, and a device that worked like a microphone for the nose.

  The details were lost on Boone, who was only listening with only one ear. It wasn't that he couldn't understand the concept of Cedar's project, but his attention was drawn away from the patio across the highway to the courthouse green, where a crew of county employees was raising a cherry picker up to a streetlight. Around the turn of the twentieth century, the Atlantic Coast Line installed gaslights all over downtown to show of its depot three blocks away. When electricity replaced gas, they kept the antique lamps.

  But it wasn't the ornate wrought iron that caught Boone's eye, it was the flags the workers were hanging for Bragg Fest, the festival that Bragg County held every year to celebrate itself.

  "Bragg Fest," Boone said. “isn’t that when you doing that thing you’re researching?”

  "You mean that thing you’re supposed to be
helping me with?” Cedar said. "The thing that you still haven’t gotten around to, even though Bragg Fest is next week?”

  "Oh yeah," Boone said, his attention now focused on a face he saw inside the restaurant. Trey Landis. What was a rich man doing at a shabby chic hangout?

  “Daniel-san has problems with his ears.” Luigi laughed and ate his French fries with gravy.

  Luigi tilted his head and dropped them down his gullet. Two of the fries missed and fell to the ground beside the patio. Chigger launched himself from his resting place and wolfed them down before Cedar could stop him.

  "Bad boy! No French-fries for you. They give you gas."

  "Me?" Boone said. "I tolerate potatoes fine."

  "No, not you.” Cedar patted her leg, and Chigger returned to his spot. “Well, yes, as a matter of a fact, you are a bad boy."

  Boone looked at Luigi with his arms raised, as if to say, Who? Me?

  "Don't try to play it off, Boone. You're a really smart guy, but you've got the attention span of a gnat. Focus!"

  She smacked him lightly on the forehead, but the palm of her hand turned in such a way that the sound was much louder. The other diners yanked their heads around.

  Boone lolled his head, pretending to be hurt.

  Cedar's neck turned red below the ears, and she covered her mouth, embarrassed. "I am so sorry. I didn't mean to hit you that hard. I was only trying to get your attention."

  Boone grinned. "Psyche."

  Pop! Cedar smacked him again.

  “Ow!” Boone said, his sprained neck killing him.

  Luigi started laughing and pointing at the shape of a handprint reddening on Boone's forehead.

  Boone rubbed the spot. "That one stung."

  "Serves you right," she said.

  Boone pressed his iced drink to his sprained neck. "Is it swelling? I think it's swelling."

  "What?" Cedar pulled the glass away. "It's fine. Stop being such a wuss."

  "I want to look for myself." The truth was, he needed to hit the head, but he wasn't about to announce that he needed to pee to the whole patio. "Be back in a minute."

  Cedar gave him an inquisitive look.

  "Lavatory," Luigi whispered loudly.

  Great. Boone rolled his eyes. So much for subtlety.

  When he finished his business, he passed near the espresso bar, where Landis sat, a cigarette cupped in his hand. A waitress crossed by him with a tray of food lifted to the shoulder. She stopped cold and said something that Boone couldn't hear.

  Landis stood up like he was going to leave the bar, then as the waitress was turning away, tapped the ash from his cigarette into a bowl of broccoli soup. Something like a mix between a grimace and grin split his face, and he dropped the cigarette into his own cup. He laid a five on the bar.

  What a jackass. Boone wondered if Trey Landis treated everyone badly when they weren't looking.

  "Everything come out okay?" Cedar said, smirking as Boone returned to the table.

  "Affirmative," he replied.

  Under the table Chigger let out a short growl. Boone watched him stand, his tail stuck straight out. He jumped over their feet, then bounded out to the sidewalk. He sniffed the air, turned, and sniffed again. Then his back arched, and he pointed across the street at the courthouse green.

  "What's he doing?" Boone asked.

  Cedar scooted her chair back. "Customs trained him to signal when he smelled certain chemicals. It used to happen all of the time. I'll get him."

  "Wait," Boone said. He reached out to stop her, but she had already scooped the dog up.

  “Fish sticks,” she said, the dog relaxed.

  Chigger looked surprised to see her. He applied a sloppy tongue to the corner of her mouth, where she had missed some Italian dressing with her napkin.

  "Silly doggy," she said and set him in her lap.

  Boone shrugged, disappointed. "I wanted to see what he would do."

  "That's all he does. He's not an attack dog, you know. That's why US Customs uses beagles in airports, so they don't scare the people…."

  Her voice trailed away as her gaze focused on something behind Boone.

  As Boone turned, he was greeted with the sight of an approaching Deputy Mercer, who had his ticket book open and was pulling an ink pen from the behind his ear.

  "Whose dog is that?" Mercer said, pointing the ink pen at Cedar.

  She rubbed Chigger behind the ears. "Mine, officer."

  "ID, miss."

  "What is this about?" Cedar asked. Most people her age didn't respond to law enforcement very well. Either they were good kids befuddled by a cop demanding answers, or they were bad boys who hated cops and immediately gave them attitude.

  Cedar was different. Maybe she learned confidence from demolishing the competition on the tennis court. Or maybe she was just born with it. Either way, she wasn't about to be cowed by a cocky little man in a khaki uniform.

  "I'll ask the questions," Mercer said. "Show me some ID."

  Cedar fished her license out of the pocket of her jeans. "Here you are."

  Mercer grilled her on every detail on the license, including whether or not she really understood the commitment it took to become an organ donor. Then he wrote her a ticket for having Chigger on her lap.

  "There's a law against bringing pets inside a restaurant, missy." He took the ticket from the pad and slapped it on the table when she didn’t offer to take it.

  "We're outside," Boone interjected.

  Mercer jabbed the pen behind his ear. "Food's being consumed."

  "Food is consumed outside all of the time." Boone shifted his weight in the chair, leaning toward Mercer. "Take the Bragg Fest, for example. There will be vendors all around town square, and they have a Frisbee catching contest for dogs right there on the green. Are you going to ticket all of those owners, too?"

  Mercer rested a hand on the table. He leaned in so that he was eye level with Boone, who saw his own face reflected in Mercer's sunglasses. He was surprised to see himself smirking.

  "Watch your mouth, sailor boy. You're already walking on thin ice around the department.”

  Boone decided not to respond. When Mercer didn't get a rise, he pushed himself back up, tipped his hat to the other diners. He strode off in the direction of the sheriff's office, which was on the opposite side of the courthouse.

  "What an asshole," Cedar said. She picked Chigger up and rubbed his belly. "He gave my puppy a ticket!"

  "American policemen are much less courteous than Japanese policemen," Luigi added.

  Cedar stabbed the ticket with her fork. She ripped it from the tines, folded it into a square, and stuck it into the small pocket with her license. "I'm not paying this, you know. It’s so unfair. They think I won’t show up for court, but I'm definitely going to show."

  Boone felt sorry for the judge who would have to hear the case. An angry Cedar was an unstoppable force, and he was about to say so when the cellphone buzzed in the pocket of his jacket.

  "It's Abner,” he said and answered. “Hey, Doc. Where've you been? I've left you—say that again. You're kidding. You're not kidding. He's not going to be very happy with us after last time. Okay. Okay. I'll take care of it."

  Boone hung up the phone and then drained his iced tea. "Anybody care to give an over-medicated guy a ride?"

  "Where to?" Cedar said, standing.

  "To the house in Tin City. Abner wants me to visit Stumpy. I have to ask him for the finger."

  "Again?"

  "Again."

  “Okay,” Cedar said, “but this time, you're coming along. I'm got getting anywhere near. Too weird."

  "It's just a finger."

  "What finger? I'm talking about Stumpy."

  Boone scooted the passenger seat back as far as it would go. He still had too much leg for Cedar's VW Bug, and his knee knocked against the dash vase holding an oversized tie-dye daisy made of silk.

  "I'm too much man for your car," he told Cedar as she backed out of the parking sp
ace.

  "And they say size doesn't matter." She laughed, then hit the gas, and Boone's head snapped against the seat.

  "Ow! What are you, a jackrabbit?" he asked.

  "You could use a little acceleration in your life," she said.

  Dust clouds billowed out behind the car as she whipped the car onto Highway 12.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" he said.

  "It means what it means."

  "Did I do something to make you mad?"

  "Nothing," she said. Her eyes were fixed on the road as she rammed the gearshift into fourth. "You haven't done a thing."

  Boone decided to take her at her word, but he could tell from her body language that she was upset about something.

  "Damn it," Cedar said, eyes fixed on the rearview.

  Boone knew that look. He glanced out the back window. A Bragg County sheriff's car was on their tail, lights flashing. It looked like Deputy Mercer had Cedar is his sights, too.

  "Pull over," Boone said.

  "I am pulling over."

  Cedar drifted to the shoulder of the highway, a soft berm that overlooked part of Black Oak Creek. He checked the side mirror. Deputy Mercer was not behind the wheel. It was the sheriff.

  Hoyt climbed out of his cruiser, adjusted his trooper hat then set his palm on the grip of his Glock. The flashing blue lights lent a purple shadow to his face, blanching the ruddy color away and highlighting the pockmarks on his cheeks. When he spoke, his voice full of the sound of gravels and dust, Boone didn't know him.

  "Put that away," the sheriff barked at Cedar. "I know who y'all are."

  She stuffed the license in her pocket, but she was steaming.

  "Boone," the sheriff said, "I'd like a minute of your time."

  After shrugging to Cedar that he had no earthly idea what was going on, Boone followed Hoyt to the prowler. The car's lights were still going, and the radio squawked like an angry chicken. The smell of the cedar trees that lined both sides of the highway reminded Boone of an antique wardrobe Mom kept in her bedroom. It was a strange thought to have just then, but the whole situation was strange.