Exposed (12 page)

Frank wasn’t worried about taking notes. The app on his phone would record the conversation, in case there was anything he needed to access later. “Yeah. Abigail and Luke trust her. I wasn’t expecting anything to sneak out of her past.”

“The brother is a different story.”

That didn’t surprise him, either. “What’s he been up to?”

“After high school Ian Peele left town—”

“To be a war photographer,” Frank said, interrupting Doyle. “Sydney told me that much.”

“Well, the kid was a little free in his freelancing. Got himself into a few predicaments that had the Army having to move in to rescue his ass. Got the reputation of being a time-bomb. Trouble was, he always came out with a good story and photos that no other journalist could get. At least two soldiers were injured, and one killed, on rescue missions for the guy.”

“Sounds like trouble for the military.”

“Not just them. Peele got in the middle of a DEA investigation down in South America a few years back. Nearly blew the whole thing up. Luckily, the feds were able to close down the cartel, extract the troublemaking photographer, and use his photos as evidence for extradition of the cartel leaders.”

“Sounds like Ian can walk through a pile of manure and come out smelling like a rose.” Frank already didn’t like the fact the guy was ignoring his sister, since he was apparently still alive, but all these Lone Ranger antics really made him hate the guy. “Anything else?”

“There is one more thing.”

“What?”

“Word on the street is the elder Peele has a gambling problem.”

“Of course he does.” Frank moved the curtain to watch a blue sedan turn onto the street, headed their way. “How bad?”

“He’s gone as deep as twenty grand at any given time.”

“Would that time be now?”

“Locally? No. But given his job, he’s been to many cities around the world with big casinos. It’ll take me a little longer to find out that information.”

The sedan pulled up on the street outside the town house. The police detective had arrived. Frank glanced at his watch. Three exactly. The detective was punctual. “Let me know what you find out,” he said, then pocketed his phone, dropping the curtain and heading for the bedroom door.

Sydney, sitting sideways on the couch, legs crossed yoga style in front of her and her laptop on top of them, her hair pulled up into that ponytail-bun thing she seemed to prefer, resembled a teenager doing homework. She focused on him as he came down the stairs. “Finished?”

“Yeah. We’ve got company,” he said as the doorbell rang.

Ever cautious, he motioned for her to remain where she was, drew his weapon and stepped to the door. “Who’s there?”

“Detective Abrams, Columbus Police,” the man on the other side of the door said, holding up credentials to the peep hole.

Satisfied, Frank holstered his gun and opened the door. “Deputy U. S. Marshal, Frank Castello,” he said when the detective eyed the weapon and arm holster.

They shook hands and Frank closed the door behind him, turning the deadbolt out of habit.

“Ms. Peele?” Abrams said, shaking the hand she offered. She’d slid the closed laptop onto the coffee table and stood beside the couch. “I’m very sorry for the loss of your home.”

“Please have a seat,” she said, taking her seat once more and the detective sat in one of the side chairs. Frank took the other chair, closest to Sydney and flanking the coffee table.

“Have you any idea what happened at my house?” Sydney asked.

“Not at this time, ma’am,” Abrams said, pulling out a notebook and pen. “I was hoping you could answer a few questions. First, let me explain, anytime there’s a fire of this magnitude, and in this instance, an explosion, we’re required to do an investigation. We’re waiting on the report from the arson investigator—”

“Mike Feeny,” Frank interrupted him. “We spoke with him this morning.”

Abrams cocked his head slightly to the side. “Is there a reason the Marshals’ service is involved in this case?”

“They aren’t.” Frank fixed his you’re-going-to-tell-me-more-than-I’m-telling-you look on the other man. “I’m here unofficially, as Sydney’s friend.”

“Then you know the arson investigator will determine the actual cause. Once we have his report we’ll know if we need to take the investigation further. I’m just looking for some basic information and perhaps your timeline for yesterday at this time, Ms. Peele.” Abrams fixed a much friendlier look on Sydney.

Frank clenched one hand into a fist. He forced himself to relax it. The man was just doing his job. Besides, it wasn’t like he had any real connection to Sydney.

“I’ll do what I can to help,” she said and flashed the other man a smile.

Watch it, Syd. He’s not here as your friend.

“How long have you lived on Hamlett Street?”

“I bought the house a little over three years ago. It is…” She hesitated, blinked, and swallowed hard before continuing. “It
was
the first house I’ve ever owned.”

“You’re a photographer?” Abrams asked.

Man had done his homework getting background information on her
.

“Yes. Mostly fashion photography.”

“Did you keep a darkroom on the premises?”

“Yes,” Sydney said, this time a little crispy.
Good girl.
“I told the firemen last night and Mr. Feeny this morning that the chemicals I use in my darkroom are non-flammable.”

“I understand. These are just questions I’m required to ask,” the detective said marking in his notebook and giving her an I-assure-you-I’m-not-looking-to-find-a-reason-to-arrest-you look Frank was sure he’d honed with years of practice interrogating suspects.

“Okay,” Sydney said, looking a little contrite.
Don’t buy it, Syd, he’s as harmless as rattlesnake sunning in the desert.

“Do you ever store flammable chemicals in the house or garage? Gasoline, propane, turpentine?”

“No.”

Abrams made another checkmark in his notebook.

“Any kind of space heater?”

“No. It had central heating. I wouldn’t need one.” The crispness was back in Sydney’s voice and Frank found himself relaxing.

“Okay, let’s talk about yesterday. When did you know your property was on fire?”

“When Frank brought me home.”

“No one called you to let you know there was a fire?”

She shook her head. “No, I only have one neighbor on the left side that I really didn’t know well. The other house had just been sold and no one had moved in before I left town.”

“So you were out of town yesterday?”

“Yes. I’d been on a photo shoot in Vermont for the past week.”

“What time did your plane get in?”

“Around eleven.”

“In the morning?” Abrams cocked his head slightly, a sure sign he believed she was lying about being home yesterday.

“She went straight from the airport to a wedding,” Frank said, just to put a little kink in the guy’s line of questioning.

Abrams looked his way. “You know this, how?”

“Mutual friends.” Frank stared right at him.

“And you were with her until you brought her home.”

“And afterwards.”

“I see.”

Sydney watched the interchange between the two men.

It was like two grizzly bears sizing each other up before they went into a fight over a fish. She should be flattered. Two handsome—okay, he might be as surly as a bear, but Castello was still handsome—men were sparring off in their corners over her. Only she wasn’t a fish, or anything else resembling food or property.

She needed to put a stop to this and get the detective’s Q&A session over, so maybe he could help them figure out where her brother was. Besides, she glanced at Castello, wearing his gun and holster, at least one of her bears was armed.

“Here’s my timeline, detective,” she said, pulling her used airline tickets and hotel receipts from her purse where she’d dropped it on the floor. She handed them to him, breaking the staring contest between him and Frank. “As you can see, I was in Vermont for the past week, flew in yesterday, and as Marshall Castello has said, went straight to a wedding where I was doing the photography for a…” she glanced at Frank who gave his head an almost imperceptible shake. Yeah, they were on the same page. Keep Luke and Abby’s names out of the investigation if possible. “Some friends. The first time I knew anything about my home being up in flames was when I arrived there about…” Again she paused to look at Frank.

“Nine-thirty.”

She gave him a slight nod, then went back at Abrams. “Last night. A few minutes later, my home…my home exploded, and Frank took me to…his home, since I had nowhere else to go. Do you have any other questions for me?”

Abrams took the papers, looked at them, jotted information into his notebook and handed them back to her. “Thank you. Do you know if there was anyone in the house before the fire?”

And there was the question of the hour. Ian had been there while she was gone, but had he been there when the fire started?

She inhaled slowly, trying to keep the tears that suddenly burned her eyes from getting worse.

“Her brother was staying at her house while she was out of town,” Frank answered for her. “We haven’t been able to get in contact with him, yet.”

There he was, doing it again, running interference for her when it was all just a little overwhelming. She could kiss the big lug.

What would that be like?

Whoa. She had no business thinking of kissing Castello.

His eyes met hers.

Heat flooded her. She licked her suddenly dry lips.

He arched one brow.

“Do you have his information?” the detective asked from beside her, breaking the odd connection between her and Castello.

“Excuse me?” she said.

“Your brother’s contact information,” Abrams said, as if he was repeating the information to a confused witness. “Name, phone number, address, email? Maybe I’ll have luck tracking him down.”

“Oh, of course,” she said, focusing on her phone. “He doesn’t have a fixed address. That’s why he was staying at my place while he was in town, but I do have an email account for him.”

Once she’d given the detective Ian’s contact number and account, he bid them goodbye, saying he’d be in touch with them once he got the report from the Arson investigator.

While Castello let the other man out, she picked up her laptop again to focus on the fashion photos she’d been uploading. She needed to be doing something, anything, but thinking about the odd little connection she’d felt to the deputy marshal minutes earlier.

Her peripheral vision caught him moving around the kitchen, then sitting in the leather chair next to the sofa once more, extending his left leg out in front of him. Feeling his attention on her, she tried to ignore the odd tingling and concentrate on her work. Finally, no longer able to tolerate the silence she looked up to see him watching her with that dark, brooding gaze of his.

“What?”

He gave her an almost imperceptible shake of his head, as if to say nothing. “What are you working on?”

“I need to upload these photos so I can edit them before sending them off to Liv Cartwright.”

“Who?” he asked, looking totally blank.

She laughed. “Of course you’ve never heard of her. She’s only the most popular up-and-coming fashion designer to hit the fashion scene in the past few years.”

Blank face.

“The client I was doing the photo shoot for in Vermont.”

“Do you have a lot to do?”

“I have them all uploaded to my laptop, and sent Liv an email telling her it would be a few days before I can get her the results, because editing will take some time now.”

“Why?”

She inhaled and exhaled. “Because the program I use to edit my photos was on the hard drive that got blown to pieces last night.”

“Did you lose a lot of work?”

“Not really. I have an automatic backup of everything uploaded to my computer to the cloud.”

“The cloud?”

Again she laughed as she closed her computer. “Think of it as an internet safety deposit box for files you want to be able to access anywhere in the world. You know in case your computer gets zapped by lightning.”

“Or blown to pieces,” he said with a slight lift of the corner of his mouth, repeating her words.

“Yeah, that.”

“What program would you need to finish your work?”

“It’s a special one for editing photos professionally.”

“And it won’t work on your laptop?” He reached down and rubbed his left leg around his knee area.

“It could. I prefer to use the mouse and the hard drive. It gave me more accuracy and control.” She cocked her head sideways. “Why?”

“There’s a hard drive in my office at the other house. You could upload the program to it.”

“I hate to impose. You were kind enough to let me spend the night last night. In fact, I should probably start looking for a hotel for the night.” She opened up the laptop to bring up the search engine.

Suddenly, he was standing beside the couch. “Put it away.”

“Excuse me?” she said, tilting her head to stare up at him.

“No need for you to get a hotel room. The Victorian Village house is big enough for two. You’ll have the space to do your work until we figure out what happened to your home.” He held out her laptop case.

What he said made sense, and it was kind of him to make the suggestion. Only problem was, it sounded more like a command than a request.

She opened her mouth to protest, but he was already grabbing her camera case again and headed for the garage. Gathering her computer, case, phone and purse she hurried after him.

“You know you have to stop doing that,” she said, scrambling into the passenger side of the SUV once more.

“What?” he asked as he pushed the button on the garage door opener.

“Kidnapping my equipment and holding it hostage until I comply with your decisions.”

He just gave her that arched-brow, Vulcan stare and pulled out into the growing dusk.

She huffed, crossed her arms in front of her and stared straight ahead until he drove left instead of right towards the interstate.

“Where are we going?”