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“Myrtle!” I said, using my “this is exciting, so listen up” tone of voice. She jumped up from her circular Memory Foam doggy bed, where she’d collapsed right after our morning walk, and cocked her head to one side, ears perked. “Wanna go for a ride? In the car?”
She said “snarf!” but I knew what she meant was, “Do you really need to ask? Do you not yet know that rides in the car are my freaking raison d’être?”
What? She’s a smart bulldog.
I grabbed her leopard-print goggles and matching silk scarf from the peg on the wall, along with my keys, and we went out the front door. We could’ve gone straight from the kitchen into the attached garage, but the steps were a bit steep for her. This was easier. I pointed at the garage and clicked one of the buttons on the key fob. The door rose slowly, and Myrt, recognizing the sound, danced around my feet, snuffing and snarfing. “Come on, then.” We walked together into the garage. She went directly to the passenger-side door and then stood as straight as a pointer, smiling a mile wide. Yes, dogs smile. Don’t question it. It’s fact.
I opened her door, and she did what she always does. Put one forepaw on the floor, just inside the door, to accurately gauge her position relative to the car. Then she placed it on the seat instead, put the other paw beside it and waited.
I, her devoted servant, scooped her backside up for her and helped her get situated. I put her special harness on her while she panted for joy. Then I closed her door and went around to get behind the wheel. It was a gorgeous morning. Not quite warm enough yet to put the top down—I was leaving early and hoping to beat the press to my destination—so I lowered her window. She loved the wind in her face. Sitting on her ass, like a little person, leaning back slightly against the seat, she didn’t need to put any weight on her front paws. They were up. Think kangaroo pose. And her round, pink Buddha belly was fully exposed for all to see. She had no shame.
We drove to the end of our narrow dirt road, which was edged by the giant lake-like Whitney Point Reservoir. Myrt couldn’t see the way the sunlight was dancing on the water’s surface like liquid gold, but I knew she could smell the water. She loved the water. Mainly because, now that it was summer, she’d discovered that froggies lived there, and she loved few things more than trying to catch froggies. Even hearing the word froggy sent her into paroxysms of pleasure.
At the end of the road we took a left, putting us onto Whitney Point’s main drag. We did not pull in at the McDonald’s, because Myrtle needed to watch her waistline, and we’d already had a healthy breakfast. (Chicken breast for her, oatmeal for me.) Instead, we kept going all the way to the other end of the village, hung a right, followed by a left onto the on-ramp, and sailed onto I-81 south with the wind blowing in my hair and flapping Myrtle’s jowls. We got looks, waves, smiles and a few beeps from at least half the cars we passed. A bulldog wearing leopard-print goggles and a scarf, sitting up in the seat of a classic Inspiration Yellow T-Bird, was an attention grabber.
My pleasure faded just a little when we passed the Castle Creek exit, just a few miles down. I couldn’t see Mason’s little farmhouse from the highway, but I knew it was there, almost within shouting distance, and my heart clenched a little. I missed him. And I missed his rug rats, too.
But he was not my morning’s mission. Peter Rouse, the man who’d damn near killed him, was. And he was down in Endwell, not far from where Amy lived.
Amy. I hadn’t told her I was going to be out when she arrived at the house for work this morning. Not that it mattered. She knew her job. She’d busy herself answering fan mail, updating my fan page and reading over the latest set of galley proofs until I returned.
How would I ever get by without her?
I wouldn’t, that was how. I’d curl up and die.
Before long we were pulling into Rouse the Louse’s driveway. It was still only 8:00 a.m. No reporters were camped out. Yet.
I put up the windows, left the AC on and took the extra key with me so I could lock the running car with Myrt inside, leaving her safe, secure, and nice and cool. Then I went up to the house. It was a cream-colored ranch, with a matching one-car garage beside it. The driveway was paved, like most of the houses nearby. He had brown shutters, a white front door and a two-step concrete stoop with a tiny roof over it, supported by black iron filigree posts. There was an attached mailbox with the digits 117 on it in fake gold. And a doorbell right next to that.
My finger moved toward the doorbell, then stopped there as another car pulled into the little driveway behind mine. A loud (in a good way, the owner had repeatedly assured me) boat-sized, black ’72 Monte Carlo that Mason called classic and I called old.
Folding my arms over my chest, I leaned against one of the filigree pillars and watched Mason defy his doctor’s orders on his first full day out of the hospital. He got out of the Beast, closed the door and looked at me like I was the one doing something wrong.
“Don’t give me that look, Detective. You’re the one who’s not allowed to work yet.”
“I’m not working,” he said, palms up as he walked toward me.
“No? What do you call it, then?”
“Visiting?”
“Right.”
“And you?” he asked. “What are you doing here, Rache? I thought I told you to stay away from this guy.”
“Maybe you should have asked me instead.” Not that it would have made a difference. “Besides, I’m an official police consultant.” I know it was lame. It was the best I could come up with on short notice.
“And they’ve hired you to work on the arson case?”
I lowered my eyes. “Not exactly.”
“Then what—exactly?”
He was right in front of me now, though, so when I lifted my head, there he was. Close enough to kiss. I was sorely tempted, too, but the door suddenly opened behind me, and I spun around like a guilty teenager at Make-Out Point, caught in a flashlight’s beam.
Peter Rouse stood there, pajama bottoms, white T-shirt, coffee mug in one hand, hair looking as though he’d combed it with an egg beater, bleary eyes. “No press. Come on, my kids are sleeping.”
Liar. Or so my NFP told me.
“We’re not press,” Mason said, flipping his badge at the guy.
Yeah, sure he wasn’t working. I’m pretty sure flashing your badge at a suspect is the definition of working. You know, for a cop.
Rouse the Louse met Mason’s eyes, and then recognition hit. He gaped a little, then said, “Shit. Yeah, I guess you would want to talk to me.” Then he looked up. “That’s it, right? Just talk. ’Cause like I said, my kids are in bed. So if you want anything else...”
My lie detector was blinking like a beacon.
“Like what?” Mason asked.
“He thinks you’re here to kick his ass. Or worse,” I clarified. “He’s not like that, Rouse.” I don’t know why I called him by his last name, but it’s just what came out. Frankly, I’m glad I didn’t slip and call him Louse. “I’m like that, but since he’s here to stay my angry hand, chances are you’re pretty safe.”
Rouse thinned his lips, nodded heavily, opened the door farther and stood aside. “Come on in. Just keep it down. The kids—”
“Are still in the hospital,” Mason said.
So that was what he’d been lying about. The kids weren’t even home. The Louse looked alarmed, but Mason just went on.
“They moved them over to Golisano yesterday before I was discharged. I checked on their condition just this morning. I’m glad to hear they’re doing better, by the way.”
Guiltily, the vermin sighed and lowered his head. “Thanks to you,” he said.
He moved aside to let us walk in, then pushed the door closed and didn’t say a word as we followed him through the living room with its beige carpet, tan sofa, and matching love seat and chair. Cheap coffee table that probably came from Walmart, and a modest 32-inch TV mounted to the wall. The dining room was stark. Dinette, chairs, a few photos of the kids on the walls. His wife must have stripped the place down when she left him. Didn’t seem like the act of a woman who thought there was a snowball’s chance in hell she was ever coming back.
He led the way into the kitchen, a cluttered little room that looked as if it got a lot of use.
“Coffee?” he asked.
“Sure.” That was Mason. I didn’t want to socialize; I wanted to kick the guy in the balls. But not until I was positive he was the one who’d set the fire that had hurt Mason. I had that much of a hold on my temper, and to tell you the truth, I was fucking impressed with myself. I sat down in a kitchen chair. The table was metal with red Formica. The chairs were the same metal, with red vinyl cushions and backs. Very retro. I liked it.
Mason stayed standing, but Rouse the Louse filled two more cups and sat at the table. “I wanted to come to visit you, Detective Brown, in the hospital, but between my lawyer and your colleagues...” He lowered his head, letting the gesture finish the sentence for him.
“What did you want to do that for?” Mason asked.
Rouse lifted his head slowly, met Mason’s eyes. I closed mine and tried to open my brain. To feel him. He said, “To thank you. You saved my kids’ lives. Damn near got yourself killed doing it, the way they’re telling it.” His gaze drifted to Mason’s arm as he said it. Some of the bandages showed from under his shirt sleeve.
Mason turned away. He wasn’t good at accepting praise. “I just wish I could’ve gotten your wife out, too.”
“So do I.” Rouse’s voice thickened on those words, and I shivered a little. I picked up heartbreak. Grief. Anger. Regret. Huge regret. Waves of it that made it hard for him to breathe. “I didn’t set that fire, Detective.”
Mason shot me a look. I felt it, but I couldn’t let myself be distracted just then. I sipped my coffee. Let them think what they would about my closed eyes. Did I fucking care what an asshole who’d probably killed his wife and tried to kill his own kids thought about me? What do you think?
“I read your statement.” Mason was scary when he was in cop mode. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought he knew everything and could prove it already.
“I didn’t tell them everything in that statement,” Rouse said. “I didn’t want to make myself look more guilty. But then they found that hacksaw in my truck and arrested me. My lawyer’s telling me to keep quiet, but I can’t. I just can’t anymore. She’ll kill me, too, before she’s done. And the kids. God, the kids...”
“Who are you talking about?” My eyes popped open as I asked the question. His tone, his fear, completely pulled me out of my focus. But not before I got that his fear was genuine. That didn’t mean it was based on anything real. But it did mean that he believed what he was saying.
“I had an affair. That’s why Becky took the kids and moved into that freaking dump.”
I shot Mason a wide-eyed look. This was the first I was hearing about an affair, and from the look on his face, it was news to him, too.
Mason nodded, taking a notepad from a pocket. “So you had an affair. What does that have to do with the fire?”
“It was her—don’t you get it? I told her it was over, that I wanted my family back. The fire was her revenge.”
I felt my spinal fluid turning to ice.
“This woman have a name?” Mason asked.
“The one she gave me was Noelle Baker.”
“What do you mean, the one she gave you?”
“I don’t think it was real.”
“Why not, Peter?” Mason was so good at this, I thought. Using his first name. Being his pal.
“I’ve been trying to contact her ever since that night.” He shook his head. “Everything she told me was a lie. She said she had an apartment in Johnson City, on Bleeker. But I’ve been to every building on the street, and no one’s ever heard of her. She said she worked at Zales, you know the jewelry store at the mall?”
“Oakdale Mall?” Mason asked.
“Yeah. I called them, too. But no one there ever heard the name, either. And her cell’s no longer in service.”
My head was spinning as I tried to sort out what he was saying from the emotions he was emitting. It wasn’t easy. It was better when I could keep quiet, close my eyes and just feel, but I’d let myself get sucked into his story.
“Okay, so you had an affair with this woman. Noelle Baker. Your wife found out and—”
“She didn’t just find out, Noelle fucking told her. Called her at home and ruined my life with a single sentence.” He shook his head, his mouth pulling into a tight grimace, tears welling up and spilling over. “I’d tried to end it with her. I knew it was a mistake. I loved my wife. Noelle was furious. She said she’d make me pay. And that night she called Becky and told her about us.”
I wanted to say it wasn’t the other woman who’d destroyed his marriage but his own idiotic inability to keep his junk in his pants. But I didn’t because I could feel his suffering, and it was already plenty. I couldn’t make the guy feel worse than he already did, and I found I didn’t particularly want to.
Maybe I was going soft.
“She thought I’d come back to her once Becky left me,” he went on. “She came over here, pawing all over me. I told her there was no way in hell.” He closed his eyes. The lashes were wet. “She was like a crazy person. Screaming at me, tearing up the house.”
“So you think she started the fire out of vengeance?” I asked before Mason could get a word in.
“I don’t think it. I know it. No one else had any reason.” He looked from me to Mason and back again. “And then she put that hacksaw into my truck. It’s not mine. I never saw it before.”
“Do you have a hacksaw?” Mason asked.
“Yeah. It’s out in the garage. You want to see it?”
Mason nodded, and we headed out together.
4 (#ulink_0c0f7e80-9b92-531d-a9cb-3d3b68ef8ef3)
“Did you notice what I noticed out in the garage?” Mason asked an hour later.
We were sitting at our favorite spot in the park, eating takeout we’d grabbed from the Spiedie and Rib Pit on Front Street and watching the Susquehanna River roll by. It was hot already, pushing up toward ninety, and I was glad I’d dressed in layers earlier because that meant I could remove them as needed. I was down to my tank top and sitting on the shady side of the picnic table because I hadn’t brought any sunblock.
Mason sat in the shade, too, but he kept his sunglasses on. He looked hot in those solid black shades.
“What did you notice?” I asked, once I reminded myself of the question.
“His tools. All the same brand. Snap-on. Expensive.”
I didn’t know Snap-on tools from strap-on tools, which is why I was just a classic-car buff and not a true motorhead. “So?”
“So guys are the same way with tools that they are with cars. They have their brands. That’s what they buy. You’ll never catch a Chevy guy driving a Ford.”
“You’re a Chevy guy. But you’ve driven my Ford.”
“Owning. I should’ve said owning, not driving.”
“So your point is?”
“The hacksaw we found in the back of Rouse’s truck was made by Craftsman.”
I blinked at him. “Do you know that you’re a fucking genius?”
He smiled. “Yes, I was aware of it, but thanks for recognizing it, too.”
I rolled my eyes at him and handed another bite of my lunch down to Myrtle, who was lying on the cool grass, in full shade, and panting anyway.
“What did you sense from Peter Rouse?” Mason asked.
I nodded slowly as I chewed, took a swig of Diet Coke to wash it down. “He’s a bundle of emotions, all of them intense, but I didn’t get the liar alarm going off, other than when he kept insisting the kids were there so you’d be less inclined to kick his ass.”
He nodded. “So you think he was telling the truth? About this...Noelle Baker?”
I reviewed my mental data. Inconclusive. “Maybe. But there was so much guilt coming out of him I can’t be sure. Seems like a stretch that his mistress would kill his wife just to have him all to herself, doesn’t it? I mean, he’s not the kind of guy who seems likely to inspire that kind of devotion.”
“Obsession. Not devotion. Very different things.”
“If you say so.”
“So we’re looking for a Caucasian female of about five foot two with curly brown hair and blue eyes.”
