Dangerous Alterations (17 page)

Unsure of what to say or even think, Tori continued toward the library’s main room, her feet growing heavier with each step. It was hard enough to see her office the way that it was, but the books? The shelves? The computers? She could only pray they’d fared as well as Fred had indicated the night before.

Georgina clapped her hands as they stopped just inside the room. “Oh, Victoria, it’s fine!”

Fred released Tori’s elbow and held his hand out. “Structurally, it appears sound to me, but the final verdict will come later today.”

She felt the knot in her chest loosen its grip as she looked around the room. “I can’t believe it … it looks … okay.”

“The big window in your office and the back entrance allowed us to get in and tend the fire without needing to upset things in here too much. Though smoke damage is smoke damage and it will need to be addressed before the library can open again.”

Her gaze ricocheted around the room—bouncing from section to section as a sense of peace settled over her. “We could be open in a matter of days.”

“Again, if the structure is okay, that might be possible. But your office, of course, will be unusable.”

Rising up on the balls of her feet, she swiveled back toward the hallway. “Can I see the children’s room?”

Fred led the way. “The children’s room fared pretty well, too, though there’s some water damage on the floor. Probably affected some of the books on the lower shelves. But, all in all, it’s okay.”

She peeked into the room, her shoulders slumping momentarily.

“Water can be dried. A handful of books replaced,” Georgina mused in her ear. “But what matters is the fact that the murals on the wall are still there, the majority of the books are fine, and we’ll have an army of parents at the door the day we open to get everything in tip-top shape once again.”

She knew Georgina was right, she really did. But still, seeing the water, the soaked books, the drenched hook rugs … it was unsettling.

“We got lucky, Tori. Real lucky.”

Fred’s words were like a slap to the side of the head, his honest assessment, born from experience with the devastating effects of fire, bringing her up short.

Floors could be dried.

Books could be replaced.

What mattered was the fact that the library was still standing. And standing well enough to open in a matter of days if the structural report came back as Fred anticipated.

She couldn’t ask for anything better under the circumstances.

Pulling her gaze from the hand-painted murals on the walls, she fixed it, instead, on Fred Granderson. “Thank you, Fred. For saving our library.”

A smile spread across the man’s face, igniting a spark in his eyes. “If I was to show my face in front of my grandson again, I had no choice. He loves this room more than you can imagine. Made him love books even more than he already did.”

She sagged against Georgina as relief’s exhaustion grabbed hold of her body. “I’m just so, so grateful. I don’t know what I would have done if—if …”

Georgina’s arms were around her as the tears she tried valiantly to fight finally made their debut. “There, there, Victoria. Everything is okay. Your beloved library is okay.”

Fred’s waist-mounted radio squawked.

Pulling the device from his belt, he held it to his mouth. “Yes?”

“Arson is here.”

“Roger.” Fred replaced the radio in its holder. “Looks like our tour is over. I’ve got to get outside and get this investigation rolling.”

Investigation …

Georgina pulled her arm from behind Tori and extended her hand to the chief. “Give me a call the moment you know anything. Victoria and I will be just a few hours north of here until sometime late tomorrow.”

“Do you think we should still go? Maybe it would be better if we just stayed here … waited for Fred’s call.”

“The phone lines reach into the mountains, Victoria. Being here won’t change anything. And besides, you need the break.”

Fred gestured toward the back door. “The mayor is right, Tori. I’ll let you know what I can as soon as I know what’s going on.”

They stepped around the chief as he pushed the door open, the brightness of the summer day nearly blinding them.

“Of course I’m right,” Georgina stated. “
You
need this.
I
need this. And
Dixie
needs this perhaps even more than either of us do.”

Suddenly, the tear-swollen face of the elderly woman who loved Sweet Briar Public Library as much as Tori did filled her mind. Dixie had been nothing short of devastated the night before, a combination of grief and panic adding years to a woman who’d seen seven-plus decades’ worth already.

Accidents happened. They happened every day in homes and businesses across the country. Only
they’d
gotten lucky.

Very, very lucky.

There was no way either of them could have known the coffeepot would cause a fire. She knew that as surely as she knew Dixie was hurting.

She also knew there was nothing she could do to change the damage to her office. Only time and hard work could do that. But the weight Dixie was carrying on her shoulders because of her perceived part in the fire? That was something Tori could change.

“You’re right, Georgina. Let’s go get Dixie.”

By the time Georgina’s late-model BMW pulled onto the gravel driveway that led to the cabin, Tori was spent. Part of that, she knew, was from her sleepless night and the nearly nonstop drama that had been her life the past few weeks. Margaret Louise had warned that it would catch up and she’d been right, as usual.

But it was more than that.

From the moment Dixie had gotten in the car, Tori had been trying. Trying to pick up the woman’s spirits. Trying to offer hope regarding the library. Trying to make her smile. Trying to establish some sort of real connection.

Yet her efforts had fallen flat.

Dixie Dunn may have been in the car from a physical standpoint, but mentally? She was somewhere else entirely.

They’d given it the old college try, they really had. But even the rarely daunted Georgina had grown silent behind the steering wheel, lost in thoughts Tori could only imagine.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it, Dixie?” She looked over her shoulder into the backseat. “Margaret Louise couldn’t have picked a more perfect place as a getaway.”

“For her, maybe.”

Tori studied her predecessor closely as the car bounced along the rutted ground. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

Dixie’s shoulders rose and fell beneath her pale pink cotton shirt. “It hasn’t been much of a getaway for you or Georgina … thanks to me.”

“It was an accident, Dixie. It could have happened to me. It could have happened to Nina. It could have happened to anyone.” She waited for some sort of understanding to chase the sadness from the woman’s eyes, some sort of tentative smile to nudge her lips upward, but there was nothing. Nothing except the same vacant look the woman had sported for the past few hours.

Georgina gave it one more try. “Do you know how many homes and businesses burn to the ground every year because of faulty wiring? It happens all the time.”

“But
I’m
the one who brought the coffeemaker upstairs.
I’m
the one who was hell-bent on trying to be cool and fresh … to prove to anyone and everyone that I’m not the dinosaur the board thought I was two years ago.” Dixie pressed her forehead against the window. “All I did, though, was make a mess. Of the library
and
your weekend.”

“Dixie, it could have happened to me just as easily,” Tori countered as the car came to a stop beside Margaret Louise’s station wagon.

“But it didn’t.”

Georgina yanked the key from the ignition and dropped it into her purse, her eyes seeking Dixie’s in the rearview mirror. “If I drove you back to Sweet Briar right now, could you wiggle your nose and make the fire a bad dream?”

Dixie glanced down at her hands. “No.”

“What’s done is done, right?”

Dixie nodded.

“This weekend is not over yet.” Georgina spat. “Was it dampened by the fire? Of course. But there’s still a good twenty-four hours of fun yet to be had. Do you really want to ruin that by being a sourpuss?”

Tori nibbled her lower lip inward and stole a quick peek over her shoulder once again, Georgina’s strong words and Tori’s own reluctance to be confrontational leaving her torn between the urge to rubberneck and to run from the car with her hands over her ears.

For a moment, the silence that had claimed the backseat off and on for the past several hours returned, accompanied by an expression Tori knew all too well. An expression she’d once coined to Milo as the Don’t-Look-Now-Dixie’s-Gonna-Rip-Someone’s-Head-Off expression. It was one she’d seen often during the past two years.

Only when it was trained in her direction, it didn’t disappear quite as fast as it did for Georgina.

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll do my part to make sure the rest of the weekend is better.”

Tori’s mouth dropped open as she looked from Dixie to Georgina and back again before checking the window for any indication of a sudden and severe ice storm. Or even a burst of flames to indicate they were at least in the right place when the deep freeze took place.

Grabbing her overnight bag from the floor, Dixie pushed her door open and stepped from the car, slamming the door in her wake.

Tori shook her head at Georgina. “H-how did you do that?”

“Do what?” Georgina asked.

“Get her to apologize?”

Georgina lifted her straw hat from the center console and positioned it on top of her dark brown bob. “I didn’t hold any punches.”

She leaned forward, visually following Dixie as she walked around the car and onto the cabin’s front porch. “I see that. But … but that’s
Dixie
.”

“I don’t care if it’s the Prince of Wales … or the Queen of Spain. A wet blanket is a wet blanket and I’d had enough.”

“Yeah but—”

Georgina shoved her door open and stepped from the car. “Let’s go have some fun, shall we?”

Fun.
The word alone was a foreign concept as of late. But Georgina was right. Tori couldn’t control the stuff that had happened over the past few weeks. Nor could she wipe away the work now in front of her. But the rest of today and the bulk of tomorrow?
That
she could control. And
that
she could enjoy.

Tori followed Georgina down the path to the front porch, her thoughts racing ahead to the remainder of the weekend. If she had a chance to pull Margaret Louise aside and fill her in on the latest concerning Jeff’s death, she would. If not, it would wait until they got back to Sweet Briar.

“I swear, Victoria, my mouth is already salivating at the thought of what Margaret Louise might be cooking for us tonight—”

“Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire.”

She stopped short to keep from running into Georgina. “That’s Fred’s ring, isn’t it?”

Georgina nodded, pulling the phone from her purse as she did. “Good afternoon, Fred, what can I do for you?”

Her heart began to pound in her chest as Georgina’s brows rose, then dipped, and then rose again in reaction to whatever was being said in her ear. She tried to convince herself it was good news, that Chief Granderson had called simply as a courtesy, but she knew better.

Georgina’s expression and string of hushed murmurs told her so.

“But why would someone do something like that?”

She heard the cabin’s screen door open and then shut, knew Dixie had made her way inside, but beyond that she was at a loss for anything but Georgina’s call.

“What’s going on?” she whispered to Georgina only to have her question thwarted by an index finger.

“Will we still be able to open the library despite an active crime scene?”

“Crime scene?” she echoed.

Georgina’s finger rose farther into the air just as the screen door opened for the second time.

“Dixie said you were out here.” Margaret Louise stopped midway down the steps, her infamous face-splitting smile slipping away. “What’s going on?”

Tori shrugged.

“Keep me in the loop. And yes, I’m sure Dixie will speak with you as soon as we get back.” Closing the phone inside her hand, Georgina closed her eyes. “It wasn’t Dixie’s fault.”

She stared at her friend. “What wasn’t?”

“The fire.” Georgina opened her eyes and gestured for Tori and Margaret Louise to follow her back to the car. Once there, she leaned against the shiny black finish and pulled her hat from her head. “It wasn’t the coffeepot.”

“It wasn’t?”

“Well, it was … but only because that’s what was plugged into that particular outlet.”

Margaret Louise jumped into the mix. “So the outlet was bad?”

“Not exactly,” Georgina said. “It was, for lack of a better word, tampered with.”

Tori looked from Georgina to Margaret Louise and back again, confident she was hearing things. The expression on their faces told her otherwise. “Tampered with? What do you mean
tampered
with?”

Georgina pushed off her car, walked ten paces, and then came back, repeating the same sequence again and again. “I mean someone intentionally started that fire.”

“How?” It was all she could think to ask in the absence of anything resembling a clear thought.

“By putting some sort of device inside the outlet that essentially caused a short the second Dixie plugged in the coffeepot.”

“But how?” She knew she sounded like a parrot, but she couldn’t help it. None of what she was hearing made any sense. “And why? And—and
when
?”

Georgina shrugged. “That’s what the arson investigator will be trying to figure out.”

“Did you let anyone in your office recently?” Margaret Louise asked.