Determined to follow up her less-than-successful chat with Justin Garone, Beverly pondered her next move. She was itching to try another disguise and tackle the big kahuna himself, Ivon Kozak, but perhaps taking a different course was more in order.
After calling up Agnes Flamm to see how she was doing, Beverly got the name of one of Agnes’s acquaintances who owned an antiques store in the eastern edge of the county, named True Gems. And since Beverly had an “in” as a friend of Agnes, she wouldn’t need a disguise.
The shop was in a standalone building with a stand of balsam fir trees behind. A picturesque spot, like on a Vermont tourist postcard. And customers didn’t have to fight with any nearby businesses for parking, unlike Harlan’s shop.
The store closed at five, and Beverly was about ten minutes shy of that. Hopefully, that would mean she had the place—and the owner—to herself.
Even though part of her was already convinced Ivon Kozak must have his hand in the arsons, if she was going to go at this like Adam would, she needed to rule out other motives, right? What if it were a different antiques thug dispatching rivals? It might take a while to get to all the store owners in the area, but one thing Beverly had plenty of was time.
Yet, when Beverly walked into True Gems and introduced herself to Annika Grimes, it was difficult imagining this cheerful woman with wavy gray hair and a ready smile as a serial arsonist. Annika’s smiled threatened to go nuclear-bright when she learned who Beverly was. “You’re Genevieve Glas’s granddaughter? Oh, my dear, you’re every bit as lovely as she was.”
“That’s quite a compliment. When I was a little girl, I remember thinking that Grammie was the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“A wonderful soul, indeed. Did you go into antiques, too?”
“I dabble.” That was mostly honest, if by dabble, you meant recovering stolen pieces from crooks by pretending to be a buyer and then exchanging the real antiques with fakes.
Annika smiled. “It’s a fun business. If not a lucrative one.”
Beverly looked around her store. Lots of carved wooden folk art and duck decoys in the front. And also some pine butter molds and oak Amish bread boxes. Not high-value items but treasures to some hunters, no doubt. “You heard about the arsons?”
Annika rubbed her arm. “It’s the talk of the town. Among antiques folks hereabouts, anyway.”
“Aren’t you afraid it might be someone targeting businesses like yours?”
“Not sure why anybody would be interested in my store. Makes no sense whatsoever.”
Beverly eyed a display of celluloid dolls and picked up a windup doll wearing a sombrero. A curious little thing. “Are you a member of the NAL?”
“Used to be. Got out years ago when all the evil sorts starting elbowing their way in.”
“Evil sorts?”
“The Forsythes, for sure.” Annika didn’t bat an eye as she said that. Maybe she didn’t know about Beverly’s familial connections? Beverly rather hoped not.
Beverly replied, “They were all in the papers. After the murder.”
“Wasn’t at all surprised. My mother always said I had the gift of seeing people’s auras. And those two, Forsythe father and son, had some of the darkest auras I’ve ever seen.”
Beverly replaced the celluloid doll on its stand. “Who were some of the other bad actors in the NAL? I’d like to stay far away from them.” That was more of an out-and-out lie, and Beverly didn’t feel too comfortable with it.
Annika thought for a moment. “There was one other I took an instant dislike to. An Ivon Kozak. He wasn’t at the meetings much. Thank heavens I didn’t have to be around his negative energy.”
“I think I’ve heard some rumors about him.”
“Just don’t know what happened to the NAL. Used to be such camaraderie. This is going way back, mind you. But when the Forsythes and their minions entered the picture, it became more cut-throat. Those two tried to dominate the group and the antiques business like mob bosses. It was sickening. Kozak, well, he’s cut from the same cloth.”
“Surely, not murder?”
“Who knows? One of my friends, Martyn Agoston, who’s still part of the NAL, told me he once bid on an antique car at auction, a 1937 Ford Club Cabriolet. And won. The fellow he outbid was Kozak. Three days after the sale was complete, that car mysteriously caught fire. A total loss.”
“And your friend believes Kozak did it?”
“It was too coincidental. Next time Martyn saw Kozak, the guy was more smug than usual. Told my friend, ‘you know the saying, you play with fire, you get burned.’”
Beverly made a note of that. Maybe she should tell Adam? He couldn’t exactly get on her case about visiting a friend of her grandmother’s and “accidentally” learning something of interest, could he? She sighed inwardly. It had been so much easier when she was on her own and didn’t have to wonder about whether to share intel with someone else.
Annika pointed to the little celluloid doll Beverly had replaced on its stand. “You like unusual dolls? I’ve got a box of different types that just came into the store.” She looked at the Seth Thomas clock on the wall, which now said five, and turned the sign on the front door to “Closed.”
“Come with me.” She gestured to Beverly to follow and led the way into a stock room in the rear of the building.
For a stock room, the shelves were unusually empty. Just a few boxes here and there and some office supplies. A big contrast to Harlan Wilford’s filled-to-the-brim shelving at Tossed Treasures.
Annika grabbed a box from the floor and put in on a table, then dug into the contents. Beverly was getting a little impatient but tried not to show it as the older woman pulled out the items one by one.
“I know it’s in here,” Annika mumbled. “At least it’s supposed to be.”
Other than the sound of Annika’s rummaging through the box and the slight humming from the heating vent, the place was quiet and still. Peaceful, even. Until the sound of glass shattering made Beverly’s heart stop. An intruder?
Annika stared at her with eyes as wide as twin mini-moons. Beverly put her hand to her lips and tiptoed along the wooden floor to the door, trying not to make any sounds. She paused with her hand on the door knob, taking deep breaths to still her pulse. But those deep breaths made her explode into an uncontrollable coughing spell. And a whiff of something that shouldn’t be in the air made her realize exactly why.
She lunged into the main room to see shards from the front door’s glass pane mingling with pieces of a broken bottle. The bottle lay in the middle of a river of fire that was spreading rapidly from the door to the counter and getting dangerously close to their position. Clouds of thick, choking smoke began to billow throughout the space.
Still coughing, Beverly grabbed her sweater and pulled it up over her mouth and nose, making motions for Annika to do the same. Beverly ran toward the counter looking frantically for a fire extinguisher. When a flash of red paint caught her eye, she grabbed the canister and started spraying the foam onto the fire.
It hardly made a dent. Those wooden butter molds and bread boxes—and dear god, the flammable celluloid dolls—along the front of the store were making for a tasty pile of fuel for the hungry flames.
Beverly yelled out to Annika, “Is there another way out of the store?”
“Just the front door. A tiny window in the bathroom, but it’s over there,” Annika pointed to a small room at the far corner of the store. If they tried that, and the window failed, they would be totally trapped.
No, there wasn’t time to futz around with dead ends. With a look of apology at Annika, Beverly took the fire extinguisher canister and hurled it through the plate-glass window, obliterating it and all traces of the True Gems lettering.
She grabbed Annika’s arm and pulled her toward the opening in the broken window. Beverly kicked out some of the last jagged pieces of glass along the bottom of the window to make it safer for them to climb over. And then, she half-pushed Annika through the window and out into the cool air beyond.
Once she made sure she and Annika were far enough from the building to be safe, she piled into her rental car to move it to a safer distance while she called Adam on her cellphone.
Everything after that was a bit of a blur, but she was impressed by the speed at which Adam and the police, the firefighters, and the EMTs managed to get to their location. Beverly told the EMTs, “I’m fine. I don’t need to go to the hospital. But please check on Annika.”
She did allow the techs to give her some puffs of oxygen, which made her lungs feel much better. Adam and Jinks stepped off to one side as the firefighters trained their gear on the by-now raging fire that had engulfed True Gems. Beverly noted Adam kept looking at her with a worried expression, so she made an “A-okay” sign with her fingers.
As the EMTs piled Annika onto a gurney and loaded her into the ambulance, she said to Beverly, “I want to keep an eye on the store. Maybe there will be some items not burned. Don’t want them looted until I’m able to salvage what I can.”
Beverly patted her hand. “Things can be replaced, your health can’t. Besides, the police and fire department will be investigating for quite some time. They’ll keep an eye on it for you.”
After the ambulance drove away, Beverly walked over to the two detectives as Jinks asked, “You sure you’re okay, Beverly? You were almost roasted like a Thanksgiving turkey.”
Beverly rubbed her elbow. “Minor scrapes and bruises. Some smoke inhalation. But not too bad.”
“Quick thinking.” Adam smiled at her. “Using the fire extinguisher the way you did.”
“I’d hoped to put out the fire, Adam. I really wanted to save her store.”
“You say you think it was a Molotov cocktail?”
“Pretty damn sure of it. It spread fast because of all the wood.”
“The thick smoke you described could be a thickening agent added to a flammable liquid. That’s only done if you want to create a lot of smoke. And I guess it worked.”
Beverly frowned. “Did the fires at Justin Garone’s and Jared Lake’s businesses have that?”
Adam shook his head. “It’s almost as if this arsonist wanted to make it hard for someone inside to see their way out.”
Jinks added, “Well, this arsonist would also have noticed the parked cars outside.”
“And known someone was inside,” Adam said. “That means they might have intentionally targeted Annika. Or you, Beverly.”
She tapped her foot on the cold asphalt. “The sender of that threatening note?”
“Crossed my mind.”
The trio turned to watch as the firefighters finished spraying the front of the building, with the fire seemingly out. But clouds of smoke still filled the evening air, along with the pungent smell of charred wood and melted plastic cables. Fine pieces of ash flitted down like snow.
“That makes three antiques stores, now, Adam.”
“Actually, that makes five.”
Beverly stared at him in confusion. “Five?”
“There were two more businesses that burned in the past year. One up in Montpelier and the other in Burlington. They weren’t on our radar due to the timing and the distances between them and our cases. But the pattern seems to fit.”
Beverly wrinkled her brow. Now she was even more worried about Harlan’s shop. “What’s the connection between them? I mean, they’re all antiques stores. But why these particular stores, not others?”
“That’s one of the things we’re trying to find out.”
Adam and Jinks urged Beverly to return to the resort, take a nice long soak in the hot tub, and get some rest. She decided to follow their advice. They were going to be on the scene for some time, and there wasn’t anything else Beverly could do right then.
But maybe not the hot tub. After feeling the scorching heat from those flames that were dangerously close as she and Annika escaped out the front window, she didn’t think she wanted to be around anything hot again for quite some time. A cool shower followed by a mint julep with extra ice would be just about right.
Once showered, robed, and julep’d, Beverly stretched out on the bed, trying to recall every detail from the fire. Maybe she’d caught a glimpse of someone leaving the scene but had been too focused on Annika to make note of it at the time? But as hard as she concentrated, no such detail sprang into focus.
She rubbed the soft terry fabric of the robe, and for once, she was grateful for the strong cinnamon coming from the pine cones. Adam had been right—the acrid smoky smell still seemed to cling to her hair and nostrils despite the shower.
Had Annika really been personally targeted or had Beverly? If so, and it was the same culprit behind Jared Lake’s arson, then the arsonist was going to be mighty disappointed his target wasn’t a charred corpse this time.
She sighed and gulped some more of the julep. She was surrounded by luxury spa-pampering possibilities at the resort and didn’t have time for any of it. And instead of wrapping presents and singing carols, she was chasing crooks and arsonists. She lifted her julep glass in a mock toast. “Merry Christmas, Beverly. Ho ho ho.”