Frost Security: The Complete 5 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  Not far from my thoughts, either, was how good it had felt to step over that professional boundary. How his arm had felt on my lower back when he’d hugged me in surprise, how his smell of pine and faint campfire had filled my nose as I’d pressed myself to his collar. How right it had felt, even though I knew it was wrong. I knew it was just a reflexive hug on his part, the kind of thing anyone would do. But, damn, it had felt good, especially for someone who hadn’t been in the arms of a man in as long as I had.

  I shook my head. “Rebecca,” I whispered to no one in particular, “you need to be careful. You’re setting yourself up for heartbreak on this one. This guy is so not the type to date a high school English teacher.”

  But, God, pickings were so slim around here. Half the guys were just here for the season and another quarter were old codgers. The rest were just up here because they could smoke weed and work at a resort. And none of the ones I’d met looked or acted like Matthew Jones and the rest of the guys at Frost Security: polite, gentlemanly, and handsome.

  All that aside, though, a girl could dream. Couldn’t she?

  Moments later, Matthew came down the front steps of the office and approached my car, a small kit in one hand and a backpack strapped slung over his shoulder. “Meet you at the store? Figure we’ll start there and see what we can find.”

  I nodded. “See you there, then.”

  I pulled the car out of the lot and headed into town. It was still amazing how much this place had changed over the years and how it was starting to grow again. Not that it had ever been dying before, or anything, but there had definitely been some new blood coming to the area in the last couple years. A lot of people from Texas and New Mexico, from the East and West Coasts that wanted to just get away from the hustle and bustle of city life. But we still had the same police force as before, the same maintenance crews, and the same volunteer fire department. It was like the town was growing to hold all the people, but the town wasn’t growing fast enough to meet their demands.

  A few minutes later, I parked on the street across from the hardware store with its scorched exterior and boarded up front windows. It was going to take some serious work to get it back up to snuff when Uncle Zeke finally got out of jail. But, the only problem was, would his customers still be there waiting for him?

  Now that my uncle’s place had been gutted by the fire, people were going to just shift their business over to the nearest store, Pearson’s Hardware up in Yellow Rose. I really hoped that all this would be figured out before Pearson figured out they had a town ready and waiting for them in Enchanted Rock. I knew the owner of the large regional chain lived in town and had raised his family here, but he’d never owned a store inside city limits.

  Matthew pulled up in his newer pickup as I was getting out of my car. As he was climbing out of the cab, gear in hand, a county sheriff’s squad car pulled up and parked in a spot a couple car lengths up the road from mine.

  “Hey, Deputy Glick,” Matthew called, looking past me. “Thanks for coming out on such short notice.”

  Why had he invited one of the cops who’d put my uncle behind bars? Was he trying to shoot us in the foot? I gave my investigator a questioning look.

  Matthew must have read my mind. “We need to be completely above and beyond any suspicion when we go into court, Rebecca. I figured it’d be best to have the deputy here while I went through the crime scene.”

  “Hey, Jones,” Glick called as he got out of the squad car, adjusting all the tactical gear at his waist. He was a big man, and more muscle than fat. Something about him had always struck me as generally well meaning, but lazy. “Ms. Stokes,” he said, giving me a nod as he approached.

  Both Matthew and I shook hands with him, and walked to the scene. I unlocked the door and the three of us stepped inside.

  Immediately, the smell of soot, burnt plastic, and wood smoke hit my nose as we set foot in the dimly lit interior. Motes of dust and ash floated in the stale air, seeming to swim in and out of the spears of light coming through the cracks in the boards. The shelves were mostly empty now, cleared of the displays and most of the products.

  The fire had started in one of the backrooms, and hadn’t spread out to the main floor where the majority of Uncle Zeke’s inventory was kept. But, on the insurance company’s insistence, he’d hired a couple hands right after the fire to move the higher value items into storage to minimize any loss from theft.

  Suddenly, a little note of worry hit me. “This place is safe, right?”

  “Structurally?” Matthew asked. “Absolutely. Place has good bones, and the fire didn’t burn hot enough to do too much damage, just enough to shut your uncle’s business down. Definitely not going to collapse on us, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  I nodded as he pulled a mini Mag light out of his pocket and clicked it on. Behind me, Deputy Glick did the same, pulling a full-sized one from his belt. The building hadn’t had any power going to it since the night of the fire. “Where do we start?” I asked.

  “Source of the fire, of course.” He led us to the back of the eerily silent store. It was strange to be in there without the hum of the AC or heater, or even the buzzing of the overhead neon lights.

  The farther we went into the store, the more intense the smell became, like we were sticking our heads into a fire pit and rummaging around in the ashes and briquettes with our noses.

  We stepped into the backroom, and Matthew and Glick shined their lights all around. The smell of ash was stronger here, but underpinned by a strong smell of mildew and dampness from the hoses the firemen had used to put out the fire. There were two large windows back here, ones that Uncle Zeke would open during the hotter days of the month to get some airflow into the room since it didn’t have any A/C outlets. According to the official report, the one nearest the fire had been left open, but Zeke swore up and down he never would have left a window open after close. Off to the side, there was a small restroom that was for both customers and employees.

  “You weren’t on this fire, were you, Jones?” Glick asked from behind me, his light shifting around until we found the power junction, which had distinct soot marks climbing up to the ceiling. The tiles overhead were eaten through, seemingly burned down until they were nothing but charcoal.

  “No,” Matthew replied. “I was out at court hearing in Durango that day, so I missed this one. You have anything to do with the fire inspection?”

  “Why?” Glick asked as I wandered off to a back corner to pick through some burnt down tools, a pile of partially melted and warped wrenches and hammers that lay on the ground.

  “Curious. That’s all.”

  “No,” Glick said. “We brought in an outside person when your buddies at the VFD found the delayed burn device.”

  I looked around in back, at the little bathroom that sat off to the side.

  “Rebecca,” Matthew said from behind me. He’d squatted down on the floor and was digging out the small case file I’d given to him earlier. “Your uncle never kept the backroom locked, did he?”

  I shook my head. “No. The restroom was back here, and he had to keep it open for customers.”

  He nodded as he pulled out the file and, still squatting, began to rummage through the photocopied pictures of the locations of the various pieces of evidence.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Trying to reconstruct the scene,” he said as he held one of the photos at arm’s length, like he was trying to superimpose it over the surroundings. “So, the time-delayed device was here, with some flammable liquids. From the report, looks like lighter fluid.”

  The time-delayed device, as he referred to it, wasn’t really much more than several books of matches wadded together and attached to a fuse stuck through the base of a cigarette.

  “How’s that thing work?” I asked. “Just light the cigarette, then go?”

  “More or less,” Matthew said. “The cigarette burns down over the course of a few minutes, final
ly hits the fuse, then the fuse lights the books of matches. Most accelerants like gasoline and lighter fluid won’t light without an open flame. The bad guy dropping the cigar into a pool of gas? That’s just something Hollywood made up to look cool. You drop a cigarette in a puddle of gas, it’ll just go out. A book of matches, though? Then, I guess, you’re cooking with gas.”

  It certainly wasn’t complicated, but it was more than I thought my Uncle Zeke would’ve been able to come up with. He was handy, but not that devious.

  “Did he keep lighter fluid here, though? That’s our first question.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He was storing the lighter fluid because spring was about to be in full swing. Plenty of people remember they’re running low on the weekend, and don’t want to go out of their way to the grocery store or something. He swears he hadn’t stored it here, though, but that it was on the other side of the room.”

  Matthew nodded. “Someone could have moved it pretty easily.” He stood up, looked around the room, and pointed to one of the windows that was boarded up. “This window right here, I believe, was the one that had been left open after close, presumably to feed the fire oxygen since it was in the locked backroom. The other one probably shattered from the heat. Glick, do you mind if I take some of those boards off the window? I want to take a look at it.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Think your uncle will mind if I borrow a ladder from his store?” he asked. The windowsill was at about chest level, and getting to the top board was going to be a little awkward.

  “If he even has one. We moved most of the pricier merchandise out right after the fire.”

  Matthew turned to Deputy Glick with a grin. “Deputy?”

  Glick sighed as he looked Matthew up and down. “You kidding me?”

  “Come on, Deputy,” he cajoled, “give me a boost. I’m only about one-eighty. And I haven’t even eaten at Dixie’s today.”

  Glick shook his head. “Jesus Christ, Jones.” But, still, he went over and offered his hands linked together for Matthew to climb up to the window.

  Then I remembered one of the things we’d left behind in the store—a bunch of milk crates that Uncle Zeke had used for storing some different goods. “Wait!” I said as I snapped my fingers. “I think we have something for you stand on.”

  “Thank God,” Glick mumbled in relief.

  We went back into the main room and found the discarded crates, which had been set aside after the fire. They weren’t exactly worth insuring or stealing, so they hadn’t been sent off to storage. When Matthew bent to pick up a stack of them, though, he got a weird look on his face.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked as he sniffed the inside of the crates.

  “Nothing,” he said, pausing. “Are these the crates Zeke stored the lighter fluid in, by any chance?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied as I grabbed my own stack of them. “Maybe. They weren’t in the backroom, though, when the fire happened.”

  “No,” he said, “you’re right. There’s no heat damage to them, or any kind of warping to their structure. Definitely would’ve had to been out here when the fire was going.”

  “Think whoever did this took them the lighter fluid out of these and stacked them up out here instead?”

  “Maybe. It would make sense if you wanted the fire to spread as fast as possible. Even with an accelerant, you need oxygen reaching the flame. What strikes me as interesting, though, is that if your Uncle Zeke did this, he did it the right way.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked as we stacked the milk cartons two high and two abreast in front of the window so Matthew would have something to stand on.

  “What I mean,” he said as Deputy Glick steadied him on top of the cartons, “is that most people would probably just spray the lighter fluid on the ground in a pool, maybe douse the walls. Or even just move the milk crates over with the fluid still stacked in the cartons.”

  “Either way, though, would still get the job done,” Glick said.

  “Yeah, I agree.” Matthew began to pry the nails from one end of the boards. “But, still, one’s going to work better than the other. Just doesn’t make any sense. Why would he go out of his way to arrange the lighter fluid, rather than just leave them in the crates?”

  Glick shook his head. “What are you looking for behind those boards, anyways?”

  “See what kind of window it is,” Matthew replied as he yanked the rest of the nails out of the end he’d started on. He began to pry the boards off until he could get a look at the window beneath. “And, just as I suspected, it’s one of those older windows. Anyone with a long enough knife can get into these. All you have to do is slip the blade in between the different frames and zip it across. You flick the little clasp, and that’s it. Easy entry.”

  “What about exit, though? Thought about that?”

  “Right back out the way he came in. Just an alley back there, anyways. Probably no one to see him or her if they came over here at about eight or nine at night.”

  “Okay,” Glick said. “But who would want to go after Zeke? He’s the only one who profited from damaging his business.”

  “Did you ask him?”

  “Of course we asked him, Jones. What kind of outfit you think we are? He didn’t know of anyone, either bad customers, or disgruntled employees. No one. He claimed some guy had come by, I think, trying to extort him for money.”

  “The mob guy? Yeah, Rebecca said the same thing.”

  “But the mafia coming by to extort money? What is this, New Jersey?”

  “So you didn’t investigate it?”

  “Look, we asked around, and Peak didn’t find anyone mentioning it, so we dropped that line of inquiry. And Zeke didn’t have anyone else to point the finger at besides them.”

  Matthew shrugged as he grabbed the board and put it back over the window, nailing it back into the wall. “Just because a man doesn’t know he has enemies doesn’t mean he doesn’t have any.”

  “And just because a man doesn’t know who profits,” I added, “doesn’t mean someone else can’t.”

  Deputy Glick grumbled a little. “Still not enough for us to reconsider the case.”

  “No,” Matthew agreed. “But it’s enough for me to start one.”

  Chapter Five – Matthew

  An hour later, I was outside shaking Deputy Glick’s hand while Rebecca locked up the building behind us. “Hope we managed to ask a few new questions,” I told him as we parted.

  “I’ll mention your findings to the sheriff,” Glick replied as he hooked his thumbs into the top of his utility belt. “But I ain’t gonna make any promises. Far as we’re concerned, we got our man.”

  “Well, investigation’s not over yet.”

  He nodded. “You find anything you think might sway us, you let me know, alright? Zeke’s a good man, and I’d hate to see him go down for something like burning his own building out. Not a lot of people come back from something like that, especially in a small town.”

  Rebecca joined me as Glick lumbered off to his squad car and climbed back in.

  “Hungry?” I asked.

  She took her phone out of her back pocket and checked the time. “Geez, it’s that late?”

  We’d spent the last hour or so with Rebecca following me around like the perfect assistant, answering any questions I might have, pointing me to places where the photos or schematic were unclear. She and I fell into an easy routine right off the bat, which was remarkable since we’d just met only a couple hours before. But, as I was quickly realizing, she was a remarkable woman.

  Fire inspection work, though, was surprisingly taxing on both the brain and the stomach no matter how wonderful your assistant was. “Yeah,” I agreed, eager to both eat and to sit down with this beautiful woman I was so drawn to. “Want to grab a quick bite and go over everything else at Dixie’s?”

  She nodded and smiled a little. “Yeah, sure.”

  We went over to my pickup and tossed all my gear in
to the cab, keeping only the file on the fire. I hadn’t come out armed today, since this wasn’t a security detail. With fire inspection work, I preferred to not carry a sidearm. I needed people to look at me as something other than a cop or a bodyguard. I’d realized a lot of business owners saw a gun on your hip as somehow synonymous with a badge in your pocket, and being unarmed helped to put them at ease while I was asking questions about the events.

  “Let me just make a quick call while we walk,” I said, pulling my phone out and dialing Lacy Richter’s cell.

  Our IT girl picked up on the second ring. “What up fuzz-breath?”

  “Ha. Funny. Listen, I’m on a new case for a Rebecca Stokes, investigating the fire at Zeke Rogers’ hardware store, and I need you to do me a favor.”

  “Wait, Rebecca Stokes? Like Ms. Stokes? My old English teacher?”

  I glanced sideways at Rebecca. “You taught English to my computer girl?”

  Rebecca laughed. “Taught most of the kids in Enchanted Rock. Hell, Lacy’s cousin Mary is in my class right now, too.”

  “Lacy’s cousin? Oh, right!” I said. “Mary!”

  That was part of the lie, too. We’d doctored up some information to make it look like Genevieve was Mary’s long lost aunt so we could keep her out of foster care after her pack died in a fire. We’d brought her up here and she’d been living with Peter ever since. They weren’t cousins, not by blood at least, even if they had become friends over the ensuing months.

  “Yeah,” I replied to Lacy. “Your old English teacher. I need you to go over to Zeke Rogers’ place and grab his laptop or computer, whichever he has, and take an image of the hard drive, then do a complete analysis of it while following all the forensics protocols. Anything we do has to stand up in court.”

  “Got it, of course my work will stand up. What are we looking for, anyway?”

  “Anything that looks like it may be linked to Zeke researching fires or arson. Whoever tried to burn his place down did a pretty decent job of it and didn’t make any rookie mistakes. If he’s our man, he probably had to look up a few things before he decided how he was going to do it.”