Bitter Sweet (27 page)

She told what she’d done, never
taking her eyes off the men with the hoses. “I don’t know what happened.
Everything was fine this morning. I never had the oven on. I can’t imagine how
this—”

All at once she did imagine. Was
this the second warning? The note under the door hadn’t stopped her questions.

Beau caught her expression. His
face went still.

Sam’s mind reeled. What next? How
far would they go?

Beau turned her to face him
squarely. “We don’t know yet,
darlin
’. We can’t
assume anything at this point. These buildings are old. Faulty wiring . . .
other things.”

Sam clenched her teeth. The one
bit of faulty wiring in the whole building happened to be in her section of it?

“We have to let them get the fire
out,” Beau was saying. “We have to let them investigate.”

He squeezed her arms. “You do
have insurance, right? Even though you’re renting, you do have insurance.”

“Of course I do. It’s just—” Just
everything. She had orders due tomorrow, weddings next weekend whose brides
weren’t going to give a flip that the bakery burned down. Their special day
would be ruined without a cake. And nothing inside that shop would be usable.
No one would accept a smoke-flavored cake. She felt tears rise and start to
spill.

Could this week get any worse?

Possibly, yes.

Through the blur of tears she
spotted a reporter from the newspaper. She planted her face against Beau’s
uniform shirt.

The rest of the day passed in a
blur. The fire engines left but the entire block was cordoned off with
barricades and yellow tape, and vehicles kept coming and going as one inspector
after another pushed his way through to the scene.

At one point, the building’s
owner, Victor Tafoya, showed up and gave Sam such a blame-filled glare that she
had to turn away. The old man was no friend. He’d been giving her grief from
day one. At least the structure was still standing and it appeared from a
distance that none of the other businesses had been affected. Julio and Jen
stood by her side, the three of them facing down the old grouch.

Erica Davis-Jones, the owner of
Puppy Chic, stopped by and gave Sam a long and reassuring hug. Thankfully, no
dogs stayed overnight at the grooming shop so
Riki’s
liability was nil. Ivan Petrenko from the bookstore looked more worried. Smoke
could ruin his entire stock. Toward dusk one of the inspectors let Ivan into
his shop and he came away looking more relaxed.

Beau stayed as long as he could
but once the flames were out and the danger past, he really had to start taking
radio calls again. He assured her that he would work with the fire department
and that he would insist on a full investigation.

She’d called Kelly as soon as she
could manage to control her voice, reassuring her daughter that whatever they
might say on the news, she was safe and things were not that bad. But she truly
didn’t know—so far, no one would allow Sam inside and it was that fact that
most ate away at her.

Finally, an older guy in one of
those yellow jackets came over to her—she assumed, the chief investigator.

“There’s good news and bad news,”
he said.

She gulped. How bad?

“The damage appears to be
minimal. That’s the good news. But it was definitely arson. An accelerant was
poured on the floor. You’re darn lucky the vinyl tile was laid over concrete.
The tile caused all that smoke. It’s a good thing you didn’t go inside. That
stuff is highly toxic when it burns. Since your appliances are steel, they
fared all right.”

Sam felt relief flood through
her.

“I need to ask you some
questions, though,” he said. “Tell me about how you discovered the fire.”

She went through it all, from the
second she parked in the alley to her frantic 911 call.

“Did you see anyone else around?
Anyone at all?”

Sam closed her eyes and tried to
remember. She was pretty sure the alley had been deserted. She shook her head.

“Any vehicles in the alley that
might not belong here?”

“I don’t remember any.”

“That fire had only started
minutes before. Otherwise it would have gone a lot farther. It was inches from
touching the curtain that separates your kitchen from the other room. Those
hardwood floors and wood display cases would have gone up quickly,” he said.
“So the person who lit the match had just done it, then they ran.”

Sam tried hard to think. “Could
they have run out the front while I was back here?”

“Front door was locked.”

“He got in through the back,” she
said. “I remember that being the first thing that didn’t look right. The door
wasn’t fully closed.”

“The metal door and frame had pry
marks on them,” he said. “The fire starter came and went that way, I’m afraid.”
He stared at the high wooden fence that separated the alley from the building
behind, which faced the next street beyond.

“I would have definitely noticed
anyone climbing that fence,” Sam said.

He nodded. “Yeah. So the guy had
to have exited one end of this alley or the other.” He wagged his head back and
forth. “Well, be sure to let me know if something comes to you.”

He handed her a business card and
she jammed it into her pocket.

“I can’t let you inside until
morning. Everything needs to cool down,” he said. “Even then I’d recommend that
you don’t touch anything or start cleaning it up until your insurance adjuster
has come out.”

Sam braced herself. Clean up. Insurance.
The enormity of the task was only starting to hit her.

*

Sam lay awake in bed a long time
that night. Two showers hadn’t quite taken the smoky smell out of her skin and
hair. It was as if her nostrils were inundated with it. Not to mention that her
mind refused to leave overdrive.

Kelly had offered to make her
some dinner but by the time she got home Sam couldn’t think of food. They
talked—Sam reliving the whole experience for Kelly. Then she called Beau to let
him know what the arson investigator had told her.

“We’ll catch him,
darlin
’. I promise you that. I’ve started investigating
already.”

His words reassured her, but
nothing could put the business back to rights for a long time. A tear leaked
down each side of her face.

*

She woke at four-thirty in the
morning, without need of an alarm clock. For a split second she almost got up
and started to dress, ready to start making cakes. Then she remembered.

Her funk from the previous night
threatened to envelope her again. Waiting for dawn, with a cup of coffee at her
kitchen table, she couldn’t stop thinking.

At six there was finally enough
daylight to see her way around so she drove there, pen and pad on the seat
beside her. How could she possibly condense the enormity of it to a written
list?

She pushed the heat-warped metal
door open and stepped into a surreal black-and-gray world. Her dream, reduced
to char. The stench made her throat close. Tears spilled.

She gave in to the hopeless
feeling for a moment. Then it began to shift, replaced by anger.

“This isn’t me!” she shouted to
the hollow room. “They aren’t scaring me away!”

She pulled out the pen and began
to write.

Power to the building had been
restored, although her shop wouldn’t get back on line until repairs were made
and an inspector signed it off. By eight o’clock, when business offices would
begin their new week, she was ready to start making phone calls—insurance
adjuster, cleaning crew, food suppliers.

She was still deciding which of
her baking utensils were salvageable when her cell phone rang. She recognized
Zoë’s number.

“Sam, what’s this about the
bakery? I can’t believe it!”

“What have you heard?”

“Check the morning paper. Arson?
Really?”

Sam didn’t want to know what kind
of slant the newspaper had put on the story. If they went the typical way, it
probably sounded like she’d torched her own business for the insurance money.
She gave Zoë the condensed version and assured her friend she was all right.

“Well, if you need my kitchen—you
know, to get your orders done—you just let me know. And Darryl says if there
are repairs to the shop, you better call him.”

Sam’s eyes began to sting again.

Zoë’s contractor husband had done
so much to help Sam get the place ready in the beginning. Of course he would be
the one. She blinked and checked that item off her list. The insurance adjuster
showed up just as Zoë’s call ended. She walked him through the charred kitchen
and smoky sales area. While he made notes on a clipboard she jotted down other
things she’d thought of. Then her cell phone buzzed again.

“Fingerprints from that note you
received match James Butler,” Beau said. “I brought him in for questioning.
Still tracking down some others, and I’ll let you know.”

Sam tamped down the desire to
rush right over and confront Butler herself. Her secondary temptation was to
dash off to Renata Butler’s bedside and warn the woman just what kind of snake
she was married to. But, frankly she’d lost a lot of her zeal for that mission.
Torn between begging Renata to come to her senses and saving her shop, Sam knew
that her customers and her own business had to come first.

An hour later, the insurance man
had written out some figures for restoration costs and although Sam was under
no illusions about how quickly she might see the check she was pleased to see
that his estimate seemed fair. She found a company that specialized in fire
damage cleanup and begged them to get there as soon as possible.

Sam’s energy began to lag by
mid-afternoon. She left Jen to oversee cleanup at the shop and to answer the
telephone—miraculously, the line still worked. When panicky customers called to
find out what would happen to their orders, Jen was to take down all the
information and pass it along to Julio, who would be working out of Zoë’s
kitchen for the next few days. Sam and Becky could do a certain amount of
decorating in Sam’s home kitchen—after all, she’d run the business from there
for several years before Sweet’s Sweets came into being. But at the moment she
needed a rest.

When she got home she showered off
yet another layer of smoky grime and thought longingly of her bed. But when her
eyes fell on the wooden box on her dresser, she knew what she needed to do.

Her phone rang just as she set
the box back on the dresser. The wood’s glow gradually faded as Sam released
it, but her hands retained the warmth and she could feel that vibrant energy
singing through her arms, into her torso and legs. Bertha Martinez’s voice had
said in the dream,
Look to the box for answers
. Sam had a good feeling
that was about to happen. She picked up the phone.

“Things are hopping here,” Beau
said. “I’ve got two of our suspects in separate interrogation rooms and a
material witness on the way. Their stories aren’t matching and Butler is
getting a little nervous.”

“I’m coming over there,” Sam
said.

“I don’t—”

“Beau. This is my livelihood
we’re talking about.”

“I just meant that I don’t know
if what we’re getting from them is relevant to that. So far, all of my
questions have been about Redfearn’s connection to my mother and the other
nursing home cases. I haven’t gotten tough on Butler yet.”

“See you in ten minutes,” she
said. “Don’t let them go.”

She bent a few traffic rules on
the way, but frankly she didn’t care. She parked her red pickup next to Beau’s
cruiser in clear violation of the Department Employees Only sign. If someone
squawked, Beau would have to smooth it over.

One of the deputies answered her
tap at the back door and she asked where they were holding James Butler. Beau
met her halfway down the hall and filled in a few details. Butler and Ridley
Redfearn were in the two interrogation rooms, separated by a narrow room that
could look in on either suspect through two-way mirrors. She watched him as he
spoke and knew that Bertha’s advice had been sound. She touched his forearm.

“You’ll have to trust me on
this,” she said. “If you can put me in the viewing room, I can tell you if
these guys are being truthful.”

His forehead wrinkled.

“Remember that time a few months
ago? The candidate whose wife died . . .”

Beau nodded. “It’s not exactly
according to procedure, but I believe you.”

“Go in there and ask James Butler
something that we know the answer to—like his wife’s name or something,” she
suggested. “I need to watch him for a minute. Then start asking the questions
about the case.”

When Butler answered the question
about his wife’s name, Sam clearly saw an aura of orange-red. His response came
to her as truthful, his manner confident.

“Has your wife recently changed
her will?”

The aura became darker, more red,
a muddied tone when Butler said that she had. Although the answer was probably
truthful, something about the question made him angry. Outwardly he concealed
it well. Sam glanced at Beau.

“Do you know anything about how
your wife’s car accident happened?” Beau asked.

“I understand that the brakes on
her car failed,” James Butler said.

“Do you know why?”

“No! The car was serviced less
than a month ago. We thought it was in great shape.” That answer appeared to be
truthful.

Beau walked to the opposite end
of the room and back. “Do you know a man named Ridley Redfearn?”

Butler seemed puzzled at the
change in subject. “A little. Not very well.”

Truth.

Sam felt a doubt creep in. How
could that be? Renata said Redfearn had performed their marriage ceremony. Was
her aura-reading ability failing?