Home Again: Starting Over

by Becki Willis

  Bertha Hamilton Cessna shook a crooked finger in her granddaughter’s face and spoke sternly. “Don’t think for one minute that I didn’t love my Joe. I doted on that man. I loved him completely, with my whole heart and soul. Not once did I think of another man when I was with your grandfather. Not once did I compare the two or think of what might have been. Not once did I regret the way my life turned out. But the heart is an amazing thing. It’s big enough to love more than just one person. Look at how much you love each of your children. What you feel for one doesn’t take away from the other. It multiplies your love. It’s a wise woman who knows that and lets herself love again.”

  Madison dropped her eyes. “You’re telling me not to feel guilty for loving Brash.”

  “Exactly. Even if Gray hadn’t messed up and ruined your marriage long before he died last fall, you have every right to get on with your life. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to find love again. And there aren’t many men as fine and decent as Brash deCordova.”

  A dreamy smile lit Madison’s face. “He wants to take the kids fishing. He even offered to take Blake hunting. How wonderful is that?”

  Granny Bert cackled with glee. “I knew the two of you were more serious than you’ve been letting on! Has he popped the question yet?”

  “Granny! Of course not! We’re not even officially dating.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything? The whole concept of dating is just a getting-to-know-you-better period. When you find the right person and know it, you can skip the audition and move right on to the main show. Your grandfather proposed to me on our second date.”

  “I bet you didn’t accept that quickly though, did you?”

  Her grandmother’s smile was sly. “No, but not because I wasn’t keen on the idea. I wanted to make him sweat it out a little. No need in letting a man get all cocky, right from the get go.”

  Maddy laughed, imagining the heartache her grandmother must have dished out to any man brave enough to trust her with his heart. She was thankful Joe Cessna was one of those men, even if he was not the first.

  “But we weren’t talking about me,” Granny Bert said, getting back on topic. “We were talking about Genny and Cutter, and how I completely missed this one. How can I be your partner if I’m losing my edge?”

  Madison was almost afraid to ask. “My partner?”

  Again, Granny’s gray head bobbed up and down. “Sure. You’re working for that private investigator now. You said yourself, after a year you can even get your own license. Either way, I figure you need me as a backup. We’ll make a great team, you and me. Beauty and brains. And don’t worry, you have plenty to offer to the partnership, as well.” She patted her granddaughter’s hand.

  Madison snorted at the obvious slight. “Thanks a lot!”

  “But this worries me, not seeing their little romance brewing right under my nose.”

  Seeing how the older woman truly did look troubled, Maddy spoke on a whim. “Okay, so I’ll give you the chance to redeem yourself. I’m investigating something. Maybe you can shed some light on it.”

  Granny Bert rubbed her hands together with exuberance. “Hot dog, we’ve got a case!”

  “I have a case,” Maddy corrected. “But I would appreciate your input.”

  “Is this about the scam at the Gold and Silver Exchange?”

  “What? No. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “The way Janet McSwain ‘misplaced’ her favorite recliner?”

  Madison frowned in confusion. How did a person misplace a chair that size? “No.”

  “The illegal cock fights still floating around town? You can tell your boyfriend he might want to show up at Billy Blackburn’s this Saturday night if he wants to catch them in the act.”

  “How do you— Never mind. No, that’s not it.”

  “That new car Howie Morse is driving, even though he lost his life savings on his last trip to Shreveport and the check he wrote for twenty dollars for the offering plate last Sunday bounced like a rubber ball?”

  Madison stared at her grandmother. “And you worry you’re slipping? I bet you even know who Barry Redmond has been messing around with.”

  The older woman never batted an eye. “Angie Jones thinks she’ll be wife number five. Then again, so does Marla Hedrick. But I’m guessing neither one of them knows about his late-night visits to the adult video store over in Riverton and the pretty little woman who runs it.”

  Madison shook her head in a mixture of horror and awe. “You are amazing. And that is not necessarily a compliment. But never mind the town gossip. I want to ask you about some fires that happened in the area over the last five or six years.”

  “I had nothing to do with Ray Sams’ motor home going up in smoke,” her grandmother was quick to say. “We had a friendly competition going on is all. Nothing worth setting a fire over.”

  “What are you talking about?” Madison cried.

  Her grandmother frowned. “That’s not the fire you were asking about?”

  “Actually, it is one of them, but what did you have to do with it?”

  “Nothing! That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “What are you—” Madison stopped herself mid-sentence, throwing up her hands. “You know what? Never mind. Let’s just skip this one. Tell me what you know about a kitchen fire over at Montelongo’s.”

  “For some fool reason, Tomas and Maria hired that no-count Bernie Havlicek to work in the restaurant. He’s about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. He hadn’t been there a good two weeks before he set fire to the kitchen. Claimed he burned his hand, but I figure he did that cooking up a batch of meth. Tried to sue and get some money out of the whole sorry mess.”

  “Was he successful?”

  “They settled out of court. Tomas had to hock the restaurant and get a loan, just to pay off that lazy rascal.”

  “Hmm.” Madison filed away the information in her mind. “What do you know about Jerry Don Peavey’s barn burning down?”

  “Just that he had it insured for more than it was worth. Might have been a smart move, except that the bank gobbled up most of the money to satisfy his mortgage. He was lucky to get out with enough to rebuild, even if it was half the size of his old one.”

  “What about a chimney fire over at Miss Wanda’s? Apparently, it was when she was still married.”

  “That sorry, no-good-for-nothing, two-timing buzzard she was married to blamed near burned their house down,” her grandmother grumbled. “Too lazy to clean out their fireplace. Too cheap to hire a chimney sweep. The whole mess caught fire, burned part of their roof and smoked up the entire house. Good thing they were home, or the whole thing would have burned down.”

  “Did they have problems getting their insurance to pay?”

  “Only because they had the bank listed as the first payee, and Willie had fallen behind on payments. They had to get Asa Bryant’s grandson to sort it all out. He took over the law practice after his grandpa died.”

  “Yes, I’ve been doing some work for him recently, remember?”

  “That’s right, so you are. Since Gloria up and died so suddenly, it kindly left him in a pickle, didn’t it? Well, it should all be in the files. You can read up on it. But by the time it was all said and done, they barely had enough to fix the roof and buy one of those gas inserts. Not one of those nice, full-size ones, either. Just a little rinky-dink version, but Wanda uses it for her main heat source. If it gets really cold, down into the twenties for a few days at a time, she has to crank up space heaters all around the house.”

  Madison corrected the other woman’s misconception. “I can’t read other people’s files, Granny. It would be unethical.”

  She should have kept her mouth shut. Granny Bert’s knowing gaze was cunning. “So that’s what this is all about. You came fishing with me, because you can’t look at the files. Not with a clear conscience, anyway.”

  “Maybe,” she hedged.

 
“I think it’s more than any maybe,” Granny Bert said on a harrumph. “I’ll bet Newly McArdle wasn’t on your list, was he?”

  “No. Why would he be?”

  “Because he had a fire, too. But he wasn’t represented by a lawyer or by an insurance company. Went belly up after his repair service burned to the ground.”

  “Where was this?” Madison questioned.

  “Over on Beacon Street in Naomi. That was several years ago, right where the taxidermist is today.”

  “You’re right, that wasn’t on my list.” Madison mulled the information over in her head, trying to see a connection between the fires. Nothing came to mind.

  “Granny? You mentioned Miss Gloria. How well did you know her?”

  Her grandmother snorted. “Apparently, not as well as I thought! I had no idea she was a souse. I always took her for a teetotaler.”

  Her grandmother’s candor caused her to grimace. “That’s not a very nice way to speak of the dead.”

  “The truth ain’t always pretty, girl. I don’t know how she managed to keep her drinking a secret all these years, but the truth came out in the end.” She snickered at her own unintentional joke. “Hey, that was a pretty good one, huh? It came out in the end!”

  “Granny, you’re incorrigible!” Madison tried her best to keep a stern look on her face, but a smile wiggled through.

  Her grandmother made several remarks, some of them rather crude. And most, Madison had to admit, were also quite funny. Before she succumbed to outright laughter and further encouraged the old woman’s antics, Madison pleaded exhaustion and said goodnight.

  As she reached the doorway, Granny Bert said, “Tell Brash I said hello.”

  Madison whirled around and saw her grandmother’s smirk. She hadn’t missed their romance, for sure. Rather than argue, Maddy just smiled. “Will do. G’night.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Tell me again. What is it we’re looking for?” Genny asked as she and Madison walked into the records room at the county courthouse.

  They were surrounded by filing cabinets and bookcases, every one of them stuffed to overflowing with the official records of River County. Madison’s head spun with the enormity of their mission.

  “Anything and everything we can find connected to the names and businesses on this paper. Miss Gloria had discovered something that tied them together. Look for anything you can and we’ll see what pops.”

  Genesis grinned at her friend. “Look at you, already talking like a real private eye.”

  Madison wrinkled her nose at her friend’s teasing. “I watch a lot of detective shows.”

  “Not tonight, you won’t. Our eyes will be permanently crossed,” Genny predicted, gaping at all the filing cabinets before them. “If we survive this day, you owe me dinner and a couple of margaritas at Montelongo’s.”

  “It’s a deal,” Madison readily agreed. “I know this isn’t how you wanted to spend your day off.”

  “Hey, jury duty was canceled, so I’m all yours.” Genny flashed her dimpled smile. “Torture me as you will.”

  “Great. You take the first two names on the list, I’ll take the next two. First one through gets the last name.”

  “I’m sure you’ve been thinking what I’ve been thinking. If Carson Elliot is right and Miss Gloria’s death wasn’t an accident…”

  Madison nodded and finished her friend’s thought, “… then maybe she was on to something, and someone wanted to keep her silent.” She looked pointedly at all the filing cabinets. “But first, we have to figure out what that something was.”

  They worked in silence most of the morning. Switching between computerized records, microfiche film, and paper files, Madison and Genny looked for all public records pertaining to their list of names. A few other people drifted in and out of the room, but for the most part, the two had the space to themselves.

  “Is this anything?” Genesis asked around noon. “After the fire at Montelongo’s, the State Fire Marshal fined the company that serviced their suppression system. They protested, insisting the equipment had been tampered with.”

  “I don’t know. Who was the company?”

  “A+ Fire Systems out of Giddings. They actually gave me a bid when I opened, but I went with someone else.”

  “Jot their name down. We can see if there’s anything else on them.”

  “You do realize this list is getting longer, not shorter.”

  “I know, but what choice do we have? We need to see who all the players are so we can get an overall picture of the situation.”

  “I see the situation. It’s one big mess.”

  Madison blew out a sigh. “I hate to say it, but I think I agree.” She looked around at the scattered files and multiple legal pads, scrawled with notes and names and possible leads. Her frustration mounted. “Maybe we’re chasing a dead end here. Maybe there was never a case to begin with. Miss Gloria may have just been experimenting with a new filing system. Who knows? I haven’t figured out her rationale for most of her other filings, either. Maybe this is all for naught.”

  “Or maybe not.”

  Madison perked up when she heard the note of excitement in her friend’s voice. “You found something?”

  “Possibly. I went to the website for A+ Fire Systems. They specialize in restaurant equipment and mobile food trucks. Which led to their newest endeavor, pairing up with a manufacturer to create a revolutionary new vent system, currently installed only in food trucks and upper-end motor homes, listed here by brand name.” She looked up from her computer screen with a triumphant air. “Ray Sams had one of these brands.”

  “So we have our first connection. At least two of our fire victims have ties to A+ Fire Systems.”

  “I could call them, pretend I’m not happy with the system I have. I could ask about their different models and get the conversation flowing where we want it. When we go to Montelongo’s tonight, I’ll find out what kind they have.”

  “Maybe we could start with that, and work our way around to the fire itself. Until I know there’s something concrete going on, I hate to question the victims outright.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve called them victims. You suspect arson, don’t you?”

  Madison’s shrug was vague. “You can be the victim of a fire, without arson being involved.”

  “True. Have you talked to Shawn Bryant about any of this? Maybe he knows why the files were together.”

  “No. I don’t want him to think I’ve been snooping around, doing something unethical. He might fire me, or give me a bad recommendation.”

  “But without looking into those files, we don’t even know which insurance companies were involved.”

  “That’s on the docket, so to speak, for this afternoon.” Madison waved a hand at the massive filing system toward the back of the room. “We’ll be searching through court records, seeing which cases were on the court room docket for these dates. If they went to trial, they are a matter of public record.”

  Genny gave her best friend an exaggerated glare. “Did I say you’re buying a couple of margaritas tonight? This is quickly becoming a three-margarita day.”

  Madison just laughed. “All in all, I’d say you’re pretty cheap labor. That was a good lead you found about the fire extinguishers. Well worth three margaritas.”

  ***

  Tomas Montelongo gladly spoke with them about his experience with A+ Fire Systems.

  “I was very pleased with the work they did,” the restaurant owner acknowledged. “I don’t know what went wrong. We had just been serviced a few days before the fire. Everything checked out fine. The fire department said a wire was unhooked, but A+ insisted it was impossible. They claimed someone had to have tampered with it, but who would do such a thing? My insurance company refused to pay when one of my employees filed a suit against me. It was a big mess. I had to get the lawyers involved and take out a huge mortgage before it was all over.”

  “Oh, goodness,” Genny murmur
ed in sympathy. In truth, she did empathize with the man’s plight. She could very well be in the same situation herself one day. “Do you remember the name of the technician who came out? Maybe I should ask for someone else, just in case he was at fault.”

  “His name is Tiny. But it’s a funny. In truth, he’s a big, huge, old German guy.” He held out both arms in a circle to indicate the other man’s girth.

  “That should be easy to remember.”

  “And maybe you should ask about the insurance carrier, as well,” Madison suggested. “You certainly don’t want to use the same one.”

  He was quick to supply the answer. “Magnus. Magnus Insurance. Whatever you do, steer clear of them. They do not honor their claims.”

  “So what actually happened?” Genesis asked. “I heard you were closed for several days.”

  “Even one day would have been too long. Three almost put us out of business.” His face turned dark. “At a weak moment, my Maria hired that fool Bernie Havlicek. He was nothing but trouble. Lazy as a hound dog. He was already on probation when he started the fire. He claimed his sleeve caught fire while he was frying, but other workers told a different story. No matter, he flung his coat off and the fire spread. Then the idiot tried to put it out with water. You know what happened then.” He spread his arms to mimic a mushroom effect. “Then, to top it all off, he had the nerve to sue me. Said we had unsafe work conditions!” Even though Tomas Montelongo spoke excellent English, he slipped into his native tongue to unleash a string of angry curse words. Both women knew just enough Spanish to pick up on the theme of his rant.

  After a few more questions, Genesis smiled at the fellow restaurant owner. “Thank you for taking the time to speak with us. You’ve been very helpful.”