A Fatal Stain (25 page)

Rafiel looked like he was considering what to ask next, then said, “Did you expect this to happen?”

Here I have to confess something. Having—absolutely through no fault of my own, and certainly not to gratify my parents—been involved in two murder investigations before, I knew this tone of voice. And it annoyed me.

Perhaps it was because I was, after all, engaged to a policeman and got to see policemen, as it were, in their natural environment. I don’t know. I suspect it was more than that, though, because even the very first time that Cas had used this tone on me had made me less than happy. Now it made me feel snippy and ill-used.

Partly it was because it was this extremely calm, almost insanely even tone of voice, the kind you might use to speak to a child or someone who is very ill. It was not the tone of voice two adults ever used. Second, I knew it was the tone of voice they used on those they suspected of having done something wrong. They thought this would lull the suspect into telling all—possibly so relieved at not being beaten and dragged away in chains that they cracked like a ripe nut.

Several people in the past had accused me of being a nut, and now I cracked. “Oh, yes,” I said, in a tone of exaggerated friendliness that would, under other circumstances—and now that I thought about it, maybe even under these ones—have led people to take me directly into the madhouse. “I have been piling up explosives for years. It was only a matter of time till they blew. I facilitated this by keeping a small—”

“Dyce,” Cas said, in a warning tone, while Ben snorted, the kind of snort that said I had finally lost my mind, and, frankly, this time he wasn’t looking for it,
because when he’d found it last time it had been covered in Cheez Whiz and cat hair.

Rafiel smiled, reached over, turned the recorder off, looked over at Cas, and said, “You know, you’re technically not even supposed to be here.”

“Why not?” Cas asked. “Regulations and all. Second officer present, and I’m very conscientious.”

Rafiel sighed and mumbled something under his breath that I swear was “One of these days I’m going to eat him.” Since he’d never impressed me as being one of Ben’s fraternity, I refused to ask what he meant. At any rate, he continued. “Look, why don’t you go out back to stay with Ashton, and send Nick in.”

“Well, first because Nick and that idiot”—a head gesture toward Ben—“are having some sort of tiff I don’t even understand, and since the idiot…Oh, pardon me,” he said, at a sound from Ben. “Since
Mister
Idiot is not likely to leave, you’d find yourself in the middle of a soap opera—”

“Which would be markedly different from where I find myself now, sure.”

“And second,” Cas said, as if Rafiel hadn’t spoken, “because you are handling Dyce entirely wrong and will only get nonsense from her. Unless you think she would let me and her son—let alone Ashton—march out there when the shed was about to explode. Or that, having done so, she would delay precious seconds to grab Ashton instead of just jumping back in the house and keeping E and me safe.”

Rafiel looked like he was counting to a hundred in his head, possibly in Sanskrit. After a long period of silence and intense concentration on something inward, he said,
“Right. Okay, then.” He reached over, erased the portion recorded, and then said, “Let’s start again.”

Once more, he asked if I knew what had happened and could I talk to him. Then he asked if I knew the shed would explode. This time he used a normal human voice, so I had no excuse to give him the runaround. Instead, I told him the truth. That the shed contained flammable materials, that these flammable materials might go off at any moment, of course, but would need a spark. And that I was very careful not to leave anything around that might create that spark, even unplugging the fan so it wouldn’t freakishly burst into an electric fire.

“I see,” he said. “And yet you jumped forward, you grabbed Ashton, and you jumped back. All before it blew.”

“I heard something, I think,” I said. “It sounded like a hiss, though that’s…I mean, it was so slight I wasn’t sure. And then I saw a red flash through the window, and, of course, since I’ve always been afraid of fire in there, I reacted.”

“All right,” he said at last, after he asked me a few more details. “That sounds plausible.” He paused. “Now, tell me why Ashton is here.”

So I told him about the semi-permanent garage sale, the table, everything leading to the talk with Jason this morning and, finally, to us coming here.

He was just turning the recorder off, when Nick opened the pocket door with some effort, and stuck his head in. “I have Ashton in the kitchen now, and the smoke has died down, so we can talk there. The explosives guys are looking through the shed.”

If our police department had explosives guys, it had
gone up in the world. Most of the trouble in town consisted of those darn students playing pranks or leaving graffiti. And not much of that, since the college had never made the party-college directory. In fact, Cas had once told me that for three years in a row it had made the “Best College for Daytime Naps” category, but I think he was joking.

At any rate, Rafiel got up from the sofa and followed Nick out. I noticed there was some sort of look between Nick and Ben before Nick turned away, but I couldn’t even guess what, and I started wondering if it was illegal to nail horseshoes to their feet, so they could stomp out their messages. I mean, they couldn’t say it was cruelty to animals, right? Although humans are technically animals, they usually don’t get dropped at the SPCA.

“No,” Cas said as soon as the pocket door closed. “I don’t think we can, Dyce. You know how it is, even though it wouldn’t be cruelty to animals, someone is bound to complain that it’s assault and possibly maiming.”

“What?” Ben and I said, in unison. I refused to believe that Cas could read my mind.

“No, I can’t read your mind,” he said, creepily enough. “But I know I was thinking that sooner or later we’re going to have to nail horseshoes to the feet of both of the goofballs, so that, since they won’t talk, they can communicate by stomping once for yes and twice for no.”

Ben made a sound much like an outraged horse, but Cas went on. “But they’re likely to complain we assaulted them. And then, you know, I’m almost their size, but there are two of them, and you’re not almost their size, and the force tends to get a little funny if I go around
shooting people with tranquilizer darts.” He looked up at Ben, all innocence. “Even if it’s for their own good.”

“We can talk,” he said, under his breath, in the tone of someone who is highly insulted. “We do talk to each other. We are resolving our differences.” And then, in the face of our silence, “Almost.”

Which is when we realized that E was missing, and we found him in his room, with Pythagoras, looking out his back window at the men dealing with the remains of the shed—one tilted window and a bunch of indistinct remains. All of them were wearing the sort of hazmat suits that made them look like space aliens. And E was explaining to Pythagoras that it was okay and they were just policemen who dressed funny.

“We have an explosives unit?” I asked Cas.

He shrugged. “Not exactly, but because of the risks of terrorism and all, we got some funding, and we’ve contracted with a firm that specializes in industrial accidents here in town, and who will look at the scene first—before the Denver guys who normally help out get here—so that if there should be rain or snow, or whatever, we have an investigation of the scene before all that. They’re part-time policemen, as far as legalities are concerned, and had additional training in techniques that conform with ours. They’re going to take samples, that sort of thing.”

“So…we don’t know what caused the fire?” I asked Cas.

“Probably not meth cooking,” he said.

“Oh, thank you.”

“I wasn’t accusing you,” he said. “But considering the other house, it had to be mentioned. However, I doubt
anyone would choose to do that in your shed, within watching distance of neighbors, upstairs and all.”

He paused for a moment. “Tell me you have renters’ insurance,” he said. “Including for catastrophic accidents.”

“She does,” Ben said. He was standing behind E, watching the work on the shed. “I made her get it, considering the stuff she works with.”

He didn’t say that he’d paid for it most of the months, as I’d refused to, telling him it was completely unnecessary, and I wouldn’t pay for it when I could use money for other things. It seemed like I owed him an apology and also would need to pay him back as soon as I could afford it. When that would be was something else again—as it occurred to me I’d just lost all my tools, all my chemicals, and all the small pieces in the shed. And the table. In fact, all that was left of Daring Finds were one or two pieces on consignment in stores and the horrible green trunk in the car. I felt suddenly very tired.

“Good,” Cas said, and put his arm over my shoulder, signaling that he understood my feelings—or at least knew that one hard truth at least had just hit me. “You’ll be okay, Dyce. I’ll lend you money to start you off, if you need. But I must tell you that you can’t stay here.”

“What?”

“You can’t stay here. I’d suggest you come to my place at least until we figure if the explosion was due to…well…enemy action, or just an accident. Besides, I don’t think anyone is going to be staying here, not even your upstairs neighbors.” His hand massaged up and down my arm, as he spoke. “The roof caught fire, a good portion of it burned, and I don’t think it will be safe or
structurally sound enough for anyone to live here for a few days at least, more likely weeks. They’ll have to cover the roof with tarps, and, you know, it will get cold.”

“But…I can’t stay with you,” I said, before I fully thought it out. I knew I couldn’t, but I had to think frantically to realize why I couldn’t. You see, it wasn’t right. Oh, sure, most of the time Cas stayed in my house overnight. He also bought food, but that was all right since he ate here so often. Ben did the same, although Ben wasn’t supposed to, and normally didn’t, come and spend the night.

But if I went and lived with Cas now, he would lend me money to restart the business—or not—and I’d just be living in his house and kept by him. Even as a wife, I would feel uncomfortable if I didn’t have something of my own to rely on. But, more important, I wasn’t his wife. And that would feel like I was just sponging off him.

Of course, I couldn’t tell him that because it wasn’t rational. Not that I had ever refrained from telling him stuff that wasn’t rational in the past. Oh, no. I’d told him just about everything that crossed my mind, and so much of that, so often, wasn’t particularly rational. But this was the sort of irrationality he was likely to resent and hold against me. So I had to find another excuse, fast.

Fortunately, the main thing I learned from my fruitless schooling was how to make up plausible—or so wildly implausible people believed them because they thought no one would make such a thing up—excuses. I was a professional when it came to the art of piling BS high and deep. So I said, “If I stay with you, and take E with me, it will technically violate my agreement with All-ex about E. He could claim that E is at risk and bring
up all the stuff about how boyfriends of the mother are more likely to hurt a child, and you know…”

“Oh, come on,” Cas said. “We’re engaged. We’re almost married. He can’t possibly be that stupid.”

“Oh, yes he can,” I said, firm in the conviction that my ex-husband could in fact be as stupid as anyone and often twice as stupid. “He’s good at it.”

“Much as I hate to disagree with you, Cas,” Ben said, “Dyce is absolutely right in this. Her ex-husband is absolutely capable of being as stupid as anyone.”

Cas looked like he’d argue the point, but instead he said, “But you can’t possibly stay here. I could book you a hotel.”

He was doubtlessly thinking that then he could stay at the hotel with me. I honestly hated to burst his bubble, but sometimes one has to do these things. If I stayed at a hotel, I’d have to pay for it—I’d just have to—and that would eat through the less than a thousand dollars I had in the bank. Money I was going to need to buy chemicals and tools. Besides, there was no way I could restart the business immediately from a hotel. I mean, I know there are some hotels that let you have pets, but I had yet to see a hotel advertisement that said
Refinishing encouraged in our spacious rooms.
And I had to restart the business right away, or some of those consignment shops in Denver would allot my space to another vendor who could make them more per square foot. I’d fought hard to get and expand the floor space they gave me. I explained this last part to Cas and then said the inevitable. “It will have to be my parents,” I said. “Mom will let me use the garage.”

This was bad news all around, because although it
was true that Mom would let me use the garage, and although it was true that my father probably wouldn’t notice if Cas moved in with me there—except perhaps to reproach me for being unfaithful to Ben, if he was having the sort of day when he thought Ben and I were an item—Mom was likely to notice and to give us that look of not-quite disapproval. And besides, two weeks with my parents telling him the plots of the best books coming out, urging him to buy some book or other because it would improve his police work, or reproaching him for not doing things literally
by the book
, and Cas would commit homicide. And no matter how justifiable it would be—I had considered it several times myself—the police were likely to take a dim view of his killing my parents. They could be quite stodgy that way.

And then, as though the bad news needed piling on, Nick came in looking grave. He put a hand possessively on Ben’s shoulder, but when he spoke, it was to Cas, and it was all official. “Bad news,” he said. “Or good, depending on how you look at it. The piece of the table that hit Dyce on the head? Ashton identified it with a high degree of certainty as being the one his wife took with her.”