“Why?”
“I may have made it sound like the fire was in my house to get her out of there.”
Charlotte laughed. “Yikes.”
“You’re not kidding.”
“So maybe we can take her off our list. I wasn’t storm hoarding either, so that takes away her motive.”
“But your fire looked like an accident?”
Charlotte sighed. “Apparently, some effort was made. They left a candle behind. But they screwed boards across my hallway in the hopes I’d run out of the bedroom and bounce back into the pile of burning clothes they left outside my door.”
Frank sucked in a breath. “That’s crazy. That’s no accident.”
“No, but if the house had burned to the ground, it might have destroyed evidence.”
Frank looked at Charlotte’s house, imagining himself in the same predicament she’d found herself in that evening. “Why didn’t you go out the window?”
“Nailed shut.”
“By you?”
She shook her head. “Someone else, but I don’t know when. I’m guessing while I was out tonight. Could have been days ago. I don’t know. I never open them.”
Frank pulled at his mustache with his free hand. “Someone tried very hard to kill you.”
“Seems like it.” She motioned to his other hand. “What’s that?”
He looked down at the manilla envelope. “I don’t know. Found it outside my door when I went back.”
He pulled away the torn piece of the envelope flap he’d started picking at before and slid out a single piece of white paper. In the center sat a fingerprint with ‘C.F.’ printed near its edge in blue ink. He turned the sheet so Charlotte could see.
“Who gave you this?” she asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“A fingerprint? Do you mind if I keep this for a bit?”
He frowned. “I dunno...”
“I have the fingerprint book. I want to go through it and compare.”
He sighed and handed her the sheet. “Fine. Be careful with it. We don’t know if it’s important.”
“I know.”
She turned and walked toward Mac, who stood next to a pile of blackened clothes someone had raked out of her house. Frank followed behind, scuffing in his pig slippers.
The big fireman smiled as she approached. “I think we’re done here.”
“Can we go back in?” she asked.
He shook his head. “The damage wasn’t too bad. Mostly the clothes and the walls in the hall. The structure is safe, but I need you to stay out for a bit. The arson investigator needs to take a look.” He nodded at a pile of clothes at his feet. “Unless this is all yours and I have to bring you in for arson.”
Chuckling, Charlotte reached down and plucked a singed pink shirt from the pile, small enough to fit a five-year-old.
“This is not my size.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Corentine Flores pulled to the curb and sat in her car, her hands on the wheel, her chin against her chest, trying to breathe.
Her therapist’s breathing exercises weren’t working.
I’ve come too far to lose it all now.
The uneasy feeling she’d suffered since finding a man dead at the bottom of his ladder hadn’t gone away. Nobody felt good about stumbling on a dead guy, but she had reason to feel worse than most.
The morning newspaper brought her more bad news than she could bear. First, she read that the ladder man lived alone. That meant the odds his wife had called her cleaning business for a quote were low. Yet, that morning she’d received a call from a woman requesting a cleaning quote at Ted’s address—insisting she come in person. The area had a lot of retirement communities and old people could be strange, so she hadn’t thought too much about it at the time.
After finding Ladder Guy dead, she’d maybe been too willing to push the oddity to the back of her mind.
The woman who called could have been anyone. If not his wife, his daughter, or a friend...
But then she received the second call. Another person demanding an in-person quote. By the time she’d driven to the address, EMTs and gawkers had swarmed the place. When she spotted the stretcher with the covered body, she’d hightailed it out of there.
The newspaper only confirmed her suspicion—the man had died working on a gas generator in his garage, preparing, no doubt, for the hurricane.
Not good.
Someone was setting her up. Someone wanted her at the scene of these crimes.
She had an idea who, though the why still had her baffled.
Corentine stared at the house to her right. It belonged to the man who lived next to the man who’d died falling off the ladder.
It has to be him.
He’d been at the scene of the second murder as well. He’d pointed her out to the lady who worked with the sheriff, as if tattling on her. As if he wanted the authorities to see her there.
How does he know who I am?
She’d searched for his identity, knew his name was Jack Canton, but the name didn’t mean anything to her. She’d only spoken to her new witness protection handler once, and he hadn’t mentioned anyone named Jack, but then, he’d seemed pretty flustered. The U.S. Marshals were no doubt reeling after finding out one of their own was a notorious serial killer, who’d clumped an unknown number of criminals in the same general area for her own amusement.
After years of proximity, a lot of the criminals had found each other. A few had started their own support groups and small-scale criminal enterprises. She’d stayed clean. Started her business. Went to therapy.
Why was this happening to her?
Who was Jack Canton? And if Jack was in WITSEC too, why would he want to out her?
She’d worked too long for her new life.
Now, these people dying...
Corentine took a deep breath and climbed out
