Out Of The Ashes. Cynthia Reese

matter of time.”

      * * *

      ROB WENT BACK to the basics the next morning in his cramped windowless office. First he wiped the whiteboard clean of his previous scrawls and notes held up by magnets. And then he began again with what he knew.

      The fire was arson.

      The MO was a propane tank and a highway flare.

      The motive—just looking at the MO—was probably revenge.

      He swore as he looked at the vast amount of white space left on the board. In the past week, he’d found nothing—absolutely nothing— to point him in any direction except Kari.

      And yet, conversely, he’d found nothing to tie Kari to the fire. In fact, he’d found direct evidence giving her a fairly solid alibi: a surveillance video from a business across the street from her house had shown her working in her yard the afternoon of the fire, going into the apartment and not coming out until after the fire engines had been paged.

      And the apartment didn’t have a back door. He’d verified that today, though he’d already spoken to Kari’s landlord earlier in the week.

      True, there were windows on the back, but they were high off the ground with no good access point for a woman as petite as Kari. She would have caused an almighty racket if she’d come down on the bank of metal trashcans along the rear of her apartment. He’d canvassed her neighbors—nobody had heard anything or seen anything. And one of those neighbors was a nosy Ned with a telescope on his deck and a roaming sort of eye.

      Plus, Rob kept coming back to what he’d told Daniel that very first day: if Kari Hendrix had wanted to burn down her bakery, she could have figured out a way to make it look like an accident. The setup that had been used to start the fire, that MO so clear-cut a case of arson, was a clear threat or warning if he’d ever seen one.

      Somewhere, somehow, in this entire week of digging, he’d missed something. He knew it.

      So it was time to get off his backside and apply some elbow grease and shoe leather to the problem. He would go back and recanvass the business owners and employees downtown. Surely, someone had seen something.

      Maybe it was the fresh air or not being cooped up in the office, but Rob instantly felt more cheerful as he strolled down the sidewalk in the direction of downtown Waverly.

      The walk from his office was just long enough to lift his spirits—to Rob, Waverly was the right size, not too big, not too small, and the downtown part with its wealth of locally owned businesses had always been his favorite. He passed the carefully tended planters the Waverly-Levi County Garden Club kept overflowing with cheerful red geraniums and nodded to a rail-thin septuagenarian sporting a dapper fedora who was propped up against them.

      As he waved away an inquisitive bee, he spotted a group of toddlers cooling off under the interactive fountain in the pocket park just at the edge of downtown proper. Their moms sat nearby, laughing as the kids opened their mouths and drank in the cool water. Something about the kids’ exuberance, their innocence, made Rob chuckle, too.

      The burned-out remains of the buildings loomed ahead, but not even they could dampen his suddenly ebullient mood.

      What did poke the air out of his bubble was the big zero that he turned up with his recanvassing. Besides Charlie Kirkman, the landlord, no one had ever seen anybody give Kari Hendrix so much as a hard stare.

      For his last stop, Rob ducked into a jewelry store across the street, one with a good vantage point of the Lovin’ Oven’s front door. It was owned and run by the Sullivans, the same couple who’d been there since the 1960s.

      “Well, if it isn’t young Mr. Monroe!” Hiram Sullivan greeted him from behind the counter. “Make my day, sir, and tell me that you have finally been caught, and you’re here to pick out an engagement ring.”

      Rob laughed. The engagement ring deal was Mr. Hiram’s running joke with him—he said the same thing every time Rob came in. “You know me—a rolling stone, and all that. Nope, today it’s all official business, I’m afraid, but Ma’s got a birthday coming up, so maybe I do need something after all.”

      “Ah, a good woman, Mrs. Colleen is, and a very wise one. I saw her earlier this week with Mrs. Kimberly. Your brother and she have their bridal registry picked out.” Mr. Hiram nodded toward the tables of china near the front of the store.

      The idea of Daniel picking out china and other frou-frous boggled the mind. “Just let me know what they need toward the end and put me down for it—I know beans about wedding presents.”

      Mr. Hiram nodded approvingly. “An easy customer. Now what is it that I can help you with in your official capacity?”

      “I came back to ask again about the fire.”

      Mr. Hiram tsked and began polishing his spectacles with a jewelry cloth he’d pulled from his apron. “A sad thing, isn’t it? Is it wrong to be glad that it was on the other side of the street? At our age, we couldn’t start over. Our whole life is in this shop.”

      “And you’ve seen nothing out of the ordinary? Not in the weeks leading up to the fire?”

      “No, like I told you before, nothing that stands out. No sinister folks—how do you law enforcement people put it? Casing the joint?”

      The words sounded ludicrous coming out of the old man’s mouth, but Rob managed to suppress all but the smallest of grins. “What about Kari Hendrix? And the bakery?”

      Mr. Hiram pursed his lips, considering. “A nice young woman, if you ask me. Hardworking. Reminded me of Mrs. Sullivan at that age.”

      “How so?” Rob leaned forward on the jewelry counter.

      “Well, she did so much of the work. The curtains—did you know that she sewed them herself? And every week she’d put in a new display in the window. She was there every morning when I opened up, and she stayed late a lot of nights. And have you sampled her wares?” Old Hiram kissed his fingertips and closed his eyes in satisfied memory. “That woman knows her way around a kitchen!”

      “Did other folks appreciate her good points?”

      Mr. Hiram frowned. “You mean did she have a good business?” He cocked an eyebrow. “Not at first. It was slow going, and you could see how dispirited she was. She’d come out and give free samples on the sidewalk—we looked forward to those, but my wife always said we shouldn’t be greedy. I liked the little mini blueberry muffins the best.”

      “Her muffins are good,” Rob conceded. “So business was bad?”

      “Lately, no. She’d gotten on a roll...it was steady, and improving. A few days before the fire she came over with a basket of goodies for me and the missus, and she was excited about the orders she was getting—the mayor’s daughter had ordered her wedding cake. Kari was sure it was a good sign.”

      “Obviously she didn’t know the mayor’s daughter. Now, that one is a diva if I ever saw one,” Rob commented.

      “Oh, yes. Changed her mind three times about her engagement ring, and I thought she’d drive my wife mad going back and forth about the china. But I could see why Kari thought it a good omen—if she pleases Mattie Gottman, she has a shot at the wedding cakes for all eight of the girl’s bridesmaids.”

      “Eight?” Rob choked. “Who needs eight bridesmaids? I pity the poor guys they rope in for groomsmen.”

      “She’d wanted ten, but two girls had the temerity to say no.” Mr. Hiram dusted his fingernails against the twill of his apron. “Can you imagine?”

      “Saying no to Mattie Gottman? It takes a strong man—believe you me, I’ve had to do it. Not for the faint of heart.” Rob considered the import of what Hiram had told him. Kari had been given the golden ticket to high-society weddings, at least here locally. It would have translated into more work for her, he knew that.

      So that was another nail