need to check in, give her a break from him and the kids.”
“What motive would Lester have for killing her?”
“Coworkers, road trip away from everyone. Maybe there was a thing between them. Maybe he hit her on the head when she rejected him.”
“Would he have been mad enough to bludgeon her to death?”
Racine shrugged. “We’ve both seen people do worse for less reason. Makes more sense than a stranger. Someone bashes in another person’s face like that, it’s usually personal.”
“But the skull inside the building complicates your theory.”
“Only slightly. It could be two separate killers. You’ve been saying all along that you didn’t think the arsonist was the same guy who murdered Dobson.”
“He didn’t bother to burn her body.”
“But the victim inside was toast.”
“Dr. Ling said she didn’t find any other bones from the rest of that body.”
“Could they have burned up?”
Maggie simply shook her head, not wanting to go into Dr. Ling’s long explanation.
“Guess we’ll have to wait and ask Zach Lester what happened as soon as the Virginia State Patrol finds him and Dobson’s SUV.”
“There’s something I should probably tell you.” Maggie waited for Racine’s attention. “The other day when I went down the manhole? I think someone followed me down.”
“What do mean? Followed you down?”
“I heard footsteps in front of me. Then all of sudden there were footsteps behind me. Someone started smashing out the lightbulbs in the tunnel before you called down and scared him off.”
“And you’re only telling me this now?”
“That’s not all. That night someone was seen back behind my property checking out my backyard.”
“Could be some crazy who saw Jeffery Cole’s profile.”
“I’ve taken a lot of precautions to not be found.”
“Property taxes are all online now.”
“Mine’s not listed under my name.”
Racine raised an eyebrow but didn’t ask. She crossed her arms over her chest and Maggie waited for the lecture. None came. Instead of anger, Racine looked concerned. Very concerned. And that was more unsettling than having the detective angry with her.
CHAPTER 56
Sam tried not to jump to conclusions. Seeing Wes Harper at the scene of the warehouse fires wasn’t all that incriminating. After all, he was firefighter. But why was he dressed in casual clothes and standing back with the crowd of bystanders? Did he just show up to watch? Or was he already there, waiting to witness his handiwork and watch the real firefighters try to put it out?
She spent the next hour looking up everything she could find on Harper, using the news station’s access to Internet databases. She found no criminal record except indication that there was a juvenile case that had been sealed when Harper was a teenager. But then he had admitted last night that he had been a firebug in his younger days. Youthful indiscretions hardly resulted in a repeat felony arsonist. It was probably nothing. From what she found about Braxton Protection Agency, Harper would never have been hired if there was something questionable in his past. Maybe she just wanted him to be guilty.
Sam slipped the film footage into her bag and left the station, avoiding Nadira and Jeffery, sneaking through the hallways as though she were the one who had something to hide. She made it to the elevator bank almost home free when one of the doors opened and out came Jeffery.
“What are you doing here?”
“Just checking on something.” She brushed past him to get inside the empty elevator.
“Something I need to know about?” He held his hand over the elevator door so it wouldn’t close.
“No. It’s no big deal.” And she wondered if Nadira had tattled on her. Why was her pulse racing? She hadn’t done anything wrong. Jeffery was the one keeping secrets.
“Did you hear that O’Dell’s mother called Big Mac complaining about our interview? She’s insisting on a retraction. Says we cut and edited it to make her look bad.”
Sam didn’t have anything to do with the interview, hadn’t even seen it, but she knew how Jeffery could edit a version so that even Sam didn’t recognize an interview after she stood by and filmed it.
“Remember I said you shouldn’t mess with an FBI agent.”
Jeffery shrugged, but he was still smiling when he dropped his hand away and let the elevator door close. Controversy pleased him, excited him. And Sam could tell by his expression that he viewed Kathleen O’Dell’s complaints as accolades. She knew the profile piece was getting all kinds of attention, the exact kind that Jeffery— and even Big Mac—thrived on. Sometimes she wondered just how far Jeffery was willing to blur the line between news and sensationalism. There seemed to be nothing that couldn’t be “touched up,” “edited out,” “beefed up,” or “deleted.” No wonder she was starting to feel like a paparazzo.
Finally back home, Sam watched her son and mother making cookie dough. Her mother explained the instructions to Iggy in English and he would repeat them back to her in Spanish. It was their way of helping each other learn. It would take them a couple of hours, rolling out the dough, using the heart-shaped cookie cutters, baking, then frosting and decorating them. Her son wanted to make enough to take to school. Sam left them downstairs to take a long bath and read in the bathtub—a rare treat.
The week had taken its toll. She immersed herself in the warm water and felt the tension start to slip away from her muscles. Without effort her mind drifted to Patrick Murphy—his soft brown eyes, the sexy dimple in his chin, his thick hair with the spiky cowlick that gave him that reckless, boyish charm.
It was ridiculous for her to be thinking this way. He was too young for her. There was no doubt about that. Barely out of college and starting his career, his life. Sam had lived a lifetime of experiences already. At thirty she felt far too old and too cynical for someone like Patrick, who was just beginning his career. Nor did she have the patience to entertain a fling. It was best to get him out of her mind.
She lay back and closed her eyes. She lost track of time and started to doze. She wanted to soak out the tension from the week, relieve her senses from the smell of smoke and the sounds of sirens and glass shattering. It would take more than a warm bath to settle the chaos that stayed with her. In fact, she could still smell the smoke as if it radiated off her body. Then she remembered what Wes Harper had said about burning flesh: “The arms and legs are the first to go.”
Something was burning. She really could smell it. It wasn’t her imagination.
She bolted upright, sending water over the edge of the tub. Something inside the house was on fire.
CHAPTER 57
Sam found her mother on a chair, trying to hit the screaming smoke alarm with the handle of a broom, only she kept missing and smacking the wall. Her son stood in the corner of the kitchen, his hands over his ears, but he was laughing at his nanna despite the smoke still belching from the oven. If Sam hadn’t been dripping wet in only her robe, if her heart hadn’t been racing out of control, she might have laughed, too. Her mother did look like she was trying to swat down a pinata.
“It’s not funny,” Sam told her son, sounding too much like her mother. She put her hand around her mother’s waist. “Momma, leave it.”
“It so loud.”
“We’ll clear the smoke and it’ll stop.”
Her mother didn’t look convinced, but she let Sam help her down off the chair.
“What happened?”
“We were watching TV,” Iggy confessed, no longer laughing and watching his nanna to see if it was okay to
