“I’m announcing a fire ban in town,” Glenn called back from his truck, the driver’s side door hanging open. “It’s drier than we thought.”
“Ava won’t like the sound of that,” Chase mumbled about his sister. She’d been looking forward to a birthday spent around the backyard fire pit he’d helped his soon-to-be brother-in-law Brayden install first thing this spring when the ground thawed. But the way the dry ground was cracked around him, he agreed with Glenn.
“I’ve kicked more than a couple squatters out of this place in the past year alone,” Ryder said about the ruins as Glenn’s truck disappeared down the road. “One just a couple of weeks ago. Could be what he thinks.”
“Maybe.” Chase walked the perimeter, searching for suspicious items—containers that might have been accelerants, clothing, footprints fleeing the scene. But the ground was much too dry for that. No shattered glass lay on the ground to give him any clues, because the windows had either been boarded up or exposed to the elements. The shack hadn’t had glass in its windows in years.
Zeus sniffed happily enough, though nothing stopped him in his tracks.
Chase dug his fingers into his neck, pressing them into a knot his office chair had created. “Maybe he’s right,” he said to Ryder. “A squatter.”
“Certainly be easier for you if that was the case,” Ryder pointed out. “Not for me, because I have a hefty fine to hand out if we catch the squatter.”
He gently kicked at one of the few boards that survived the fire and it turned to ash. “This house was just waiting to go up in flames. Can’t believe it took this long, to be honest.”
Ryder followed him through the rubble, stopping in front of the only remaining part of the structure still standing: the brick fireplace. “You talk to Henry Davenport yet?” Chase asked as he crouched down to look inside the chimney. A pile of ashes sat there now, but no poker to sift through them with. Though the man owned the property, he didn’t live out this way. He and his wife had a place in town. Something about that bothered Chase, but he couldn’t pin it.
“He stopped by the station this morning to give his official statement, in case we needed it.”
“Anything out of the ordinary about it?”
“You don’t think this was a squatter.”
“I’m not ruling anything out yet.” Chase pushed to his feet and searched around for clues that the fire might’ve been intentional. It was his job to push at every angle before making a final determination, and that was what he was going to do. Even if the delay aggravated the chief.
“I’ll send you a copy of the statement,” Ryder offered. “But it’s pretty typical. Davenport saw the fire from down the road and called it in. He said he didn’t see anyone fleeing the scene, but he was a mile back when he spotted the flames.”
Chase went in search of a stick, returning to push around the pile of ashes. The closer he crouched toward the inside of the fireplace, the stronger the sulphury scent hit him. “Do you smell that?” he asked Ryder.
“Kerosene?”
“Yeah.” Chase found flakes of paper in the ashes, but no pieces larger than a silver dollar. He’d bag the biggest ones just in case, but he doubted they were anything more than junk mail or flyers. “Looks like whoever it was doused extra paper with too much kerosene and the fire got too hot.” He stood, searching once more for clues that this was more than what it seemed. Despite his hope that it was an open-and-shut case so he could focus on a plan to win Laurel back before she inked her signature on those papers, that nagging feeling wouldn’t leave him alone. “No one’s picked up any hitchhikers headed north?”
“Murph made the call last night while she kept an eye on the scene. Asked the state patrol to keep an eye out. Haven’t heard anything yet.”
Chase dug out the camera and powered it up.
“You told her yet?” Ryder asked.
Chase had been expecting the question since Ryder drove past Chase and Laurel parting ways outside Jenkins Law Office earlier. The only surprise was that Ryder waited this long to bring it up. Chase felt like a teenage boy with an all-consuming crush, but he wasn’t about to let Ryder see that side of him. He’d never hear the end of it. “This morning.”
“How’d she take the news?”
“About how I expected.”
“And you’re not throwing in the towel, even now?”
Chase couldn’t hide his goofy, slightly lovestruck grin. “Would you?”
“Geez.” Ryder rubbed Zeus’ neck when the dog leaned against his leg. “What’s your plan, then?”
“I’m working on it.”Seven days. Why did it have to feel so final? All the years Laurel was gone and they both believed they were legally divorced, he still held out hope she’d come back to him. He waited, gambling that it was only time she needed to heal and not a whole new life. Now, with that one signature looming over them, it felt absolute. “I just got to keep her out of hiding,” Chase mumbled.
“She has grown an affinity for that,” Ryder agreed.
Before Chase could ask for any suggestions, the dispatcher’s voice echoed on Ryder’s shoulder-clipped radio. Chase caught something about shoplifting before Ryder stepped out of earshot.
Chase drew Zeus against his leg and rubbed him hard around the tailbone the way he liked. The dog’s tail stood at attention as he grumbled in delight. “What do you think, Zeus? Any ideas, on this fire or Laurel? I’m all ears, buddy.”
