He was declared to be in debt to every tradesman in the place, and his intrigues, all honored with the title of seduction, had been extended into every tradesman’s family.
—Pride and Prejudice
“Tell me,” Emily said as Luke made a U-turn on the highway and headed back toward the south end of town.
“Sprang up out of nowhere around one o’clock. No renter in the house, thank God. Neighbor spotted smoke and called the fire department, who called me. I looked up the address, saw it was one of yours, and came looking for you. You know, you really ought to give me your cell phone number. Could’ve saved some time.”
Emily’s arm holding the ice-cream cone jerked. She caught the top scoop just as it was about to plummet onto the floor of the patrol car. “I don’t have a cell phone.”
He took his eyes off the road and stared at her. “No cell phone?”
“I know, I must be the last person on Earth. I just haven’t felt the need for one. We don’t get a lot of emergencies in Lit and Lang.”
“Starting to look like you might be more prone to emergencies in Stony Beach. You better get one. If I were you, I’d do it today.”
“Well, you’re not me, and I don’t want to.” Where had that tone come from? She’d never snapped like that at Luke—had she? “I hate the things. When I’m with someone, I want to be with that person, not on call for all the rest of the world. And when I’m alone, I want to be left alone to think a coherent thought without being interrupted.”
“You don’t have to give your number to ‘all the rest of the world.’ You could just give it to me.” His voice dropped till she could hardly hear it. “Unless I’m one of the people you don’t want to be interrupted by.”
“Don’t be silly.” She transferred her cone and laid her left hand on his arm as it gripped the wheel. “I always want to talk to you.”
“So get a phone. For my sake. Not just so I can find you—so you can reach me if…” He paused as he turned off the highway onto Cedar Street. “If anything happens.”
“Happens? Like what?”
“I don’t know what. But I’m starting to worry about you, Em. Everything that’s happening is all centered around you.”
Emily blanched. So it wasn’t her imagination—Luke saw it too. She’d stepped into Beatrice’s place, and the storm that had gathered around Beatrice threatened to engulf her as well.
She’d seen the plume of smoke as soon as they turned south. Now she could see the flames licking the sky beyond the roofs of the intervening houses. Luke pulled up across the street, behind the fire engines, and she saw what was left of a small one-story cottage. It looked like a box full of fire, flames leaking out the windows, door, and roof. Firefighters stood around the yard, watching it burn, as others directed hoses to the surrounding trees and the roofs of the houses on either side.
“They’ve given up, haven’t they?”
Luke nodded. “Looks like it.”
He strode over to a man in a fire chief’s uniform. Emily dropped her cone into a nearby garbage can and followed.
“What’s it look like, Dan?”
The chief lifted his helmet, ran a hand over his hair, and settled his helmet back into place. “Whole place went up in no time flat. Looks like arson to me. We’ll know more when it burns out and we can investigate.”
Arson. The word settled in Emily’s stomach like an overcooked dumpling. Unless it was the work of a random pyromaniac, such an act could only be directed toward her. Yet not designed to hurt her—only to cause trouble. To make her feel, perhaps, that being a landlord was more trouble than it was worth. To make her think about selling up and leaving town.
“Have you had many fires in town lately?” she asked the chief.
“First one this season.”
Even a pyromaniac had to start somewhere. But Emily’s gut told her this was not a random act.
“I better get to work,” Luke said to her. “Question all the neighbors.”
“I’ll come with you.”
He steered her out of the chief’s earshot, wearing a look she’d seen on his face once before. No. Not this again.
“Em, I can’t take you with me. In a case of arson on an insured, uninhabited structure, the first suspect is always the owner. Insurance fraud.”
She stared at him. “Why would I burn down my own cottage? It was in good shape—the accountant said they were all in good shape, with a high rate of occupancy. It would’ve sold in a minute if I’d wanted to unload it. It must have been worth a lot more to me alive than dead. As it were.”
“I know all that. I know you didn’t do it—heck, you must have been with me when the fire started. But it’s procedure. I just can’t.”
She closed her eyes, willing herself not to explode at him as she had before. It wasn’t his fault. He had a job to do. Still, she didn’t quite manage to keep the frost out of her voice. “Is there anything I can do without trespassing on the province of the almighty law?”
“Tell you what. Go find Marguerite and ask her exactly what times she was with Brock, whether he left her at any point. See if we can rule him out.”
“Fine.” She gazed north and inland, where she could barely see the cross atop the steeple of St. Bede’s winking in the sun. “It’s kind of a long walk back to the church from here.”
“Oh, right. I’ll run you back. Few minutes won’t make much difference.”
They drove in silence through downtown, then up the hill to St. Bede’s, where Emily’s PT Cruiser sat alone in the parking lot. Luke put the patrol car in park and set the brake, then turned to her.
“Emily, if this investigation is going to come between you and me—I’d quit my job sooner than let that happen. I can’t lose you again. Not when I’ve just found you after all this time.”
Emily couldn’t speak right away. Someone had put a balloon in her chest where her heart should be and then blown it up until it threatened to burst through her ribs.
She put up a hand to his cheek. “No. I can’t let you do that. We’ll get through this. I’ve been silly, but I’ll pull myself together. You just get on with your job, and I’ll do whatever I can without getting in your way.”
He pulled her hand to his lips and kissed it, then leaned over and kissed her lips. “I love you, Emily Worthing.”
That balloon in her chest had reached her throat. She couldn’t answer, though the words I love you were straining out her every pore. She told him with a kiss instead.
* * *
Emily drove down the hill to the highway and turned north, then on a whim parked in front of the bookstore. She noticed with a pang that the holidaymakers were avoiding the shop in droves.
A bell tinkled as she opened the door. “Be right with you,” came Ben’s resonant voice from the back room.
Emily browsed, not sure what she was looking for, until Ben came in. “Mrs. Cavanaugh! Nice to see you again. Looking for anything in particular?”
“I’m not sure. Actually, I have a question for you. Has anyone bought a book on fire lately? Or”—she scoured her mind for what little knowledge it contained on the subject of methods of arson—“maybe chemistry? Or electrical wiring?”
Ben gave her a quizzical look. “What’s this about?”
“One of my rentals is burning to the ground as we speak. It looks like arson.”
He gave a low whistle. “Nobody’s bought anything like that. I did notice someone browsing in the home improvement section the other day, but I was up on the ladder and couldn’t see who it was. A man, I know that much. He said he was just browsing, so I didn’t bother coming down.”
“Home improvement.” She grimaced. “Hard to call that suspicious in and of itself. You didn’t notice anything about him? Short, tall? Old, young? Bald or hairy?”
He screwed up his eyes. “Not bald, I think. About all I did see was the top of his head. Beyond that, I couldn’t say.” His mouth quirked in a half smile. “I could tell you the titles of the books I was shelving, but I can’t tell you what a customer looked like. Maybe that’s why my store’s empty most of the time.”
She patted his arm. “Don’t worry about it. It was just a hunch. But while we’re on the subject, do you have anything about fire? How fires start, that type of thing?”
“You know, I think I just might. Over here.” He led her to the back of the store to a bookcase marked MISCELLANEOUS. “Couldn’t figure out where to put it, but I thought it was fascinating. It’s a memoir of a fire investigator.” He put a trade paperback with a lurid cover into her hands. The title Fires I Have Known stood out in black against a background of leaping flames.
Emily turned it over and glanced at the back cover copy. “Could that customer have looked at this book as well?”
“Possible. I didn’t see him over here, but I was directly opposite, with my back turned.”
“I’ll take it. Maybe it’ll give me some ideas.”
She paid for the book and drove home, hoping Marguerite would be there before her.
As she turned up the drive, an unfamiliar car swept away from the house and passed her on its way out. Marguerite was waiting for her on the doorstep.
“Mon Dieu! That Brock, he has more arms than an octopus! I had to get the hotel manager to drive me back.”
“You didn’t go to his room? Margot, what were you thinking?”
“I was thinking, I would get more out of him in an atmosphere more intime than the restaurant. But he was thinking only what he could get out of me.” Her shudder was more like a shimmy.
Emily opened the door. “Come in and have a sherry and tell me all about it.”
When they were settled in the library, a cat on each lap, Marguerite began. “We went to Gifts from the Sea for lunch. You know it?”
Emily nodded.
“Not a bad place, for the—how you say?—boondocks. He slipped the garçon a twenty and got us a corner table with a view of the bay. We had a few cocktails—c’est a dire, I sipped one Kir Royale while he put back three neat whiskeys. Oh, I gave him the full treatment—the eyes, the lips, the finger on the glass.”
“I get the picture, Margot. You don’t have to draw it for me.”
Marguerite shrugged an eyebrow as if to imply Emily was a poor audience. “I got him to talk about himself—not a great feat; it is his favorite subject. He told me all about his acting career, all the famous people he knows, all the films he has made. He must have been an extra in most of them—I see many films, and I never saw his face on-screen.”
“I think you’re right about that. The great highlight of his career to date was playing a murderer in an episode of Abbott.”
“Exactement. With the meal, there was wine—one glass for me, the rest of the bottle for him. More flirting, but you do not wish to hear about that. Enfin, I contrived to help him forget I am your friend. He told me he does not plan to be an actor much longer. He plans to become très riche instead.”
“Brock? Rich? How?”
“He was not quite intoxicated enough to spell it out for me. But he dropped the broad hints that it will have something to do with Stony Beach.”
Emily was flabbergasted. The nerve of the man! “So he still thinks he can talk me into going along with the development scheme?”
Marguerite hesitated. “He did not mention you in that context. But he did say, ‘I’ll be lord of the manor one day. Just you wait. These yokels are going to see some big changes in Stony Beach.’”
A shiver passed over Emily, from her scalp to her toes. “In other words, he plans to get me out of the way. One way or another.”
“Oui, ma bonne amie. So it would appear.”
Emily pulled the blanket from the back of her chair, put it around her shoulders, and hugged Levin so tight, he squirmed. Then she remembered. “I’m supposed to ask you about times. What time did you leave the hotel?”
“Two o’clock.”
“Precisely?”
“Mon Dieu, I did not measure to the second. I was escaping from a ravening wolf! Somewhere around two o’clock, that is all I can say.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. The fire was reported at one.”
“Fire? What fire?”
Emily told her about the probable arson. “Was Brock with you the whole time?”
“Oui. Except when I went to powder my nose, but that was at the restaurant. Far from here.”
“He didn’t stop anywhere on the way back to the hotel?”
“Au contraire, he drove like one possessed. I am fortunate to be alive.”
Emily desperately wanted to pin this fire on Brock. For one thing, it would mean he hoped to get rid of her by means less drastic than murder. “Did you actually see him at the funeral? Before he came up to us at the end, I mean?”
“Oui, I noticed him when the service commenced. I always notice a handsome man.”
“And he stayed the whole time?”
“Bien sûr. I would have remarked it if he had left.”
The funeral had started at ten thirty. Far too early for him to have set a fire that wasn’t noticed till one o’clock and that then devoured the house in record time. Or at least, so she assumed. Time to read up on Fires I Have Known.