“Heard his wife left him again,” a third guy chimed in. “Might explain the day drinking.”
“Naw, Bo Hayes always drinks mornin’ till night, given the chance.”
A deputy had shown up, looking slightly dishevelled, as if he hadn’t expected to do any actual work this evening. He hitched up his belt and glanced in the direction of his patrol car. Yeah, yeah, we all wanted tonight to be over.
“I’ll talk with Bo in the morning, if he’s sober,” the deputy said. “Those boys of his too. Don’t you be going over there—Bo’s mean as a rattlesnake on a good day, and the last time Donna went off, he was pickin’ fights with everyone. Put Donna’s brother-in-law in the hospital.”
“I won’t go over there,” Nolan said.
“Nor me,” I told him. Jez, Storm, and Ari made no such promises.
But, it turned out, they wouldn’t be going to the Hayeses’ cabin either, not tomorrow at any rate. We watched the fire truck trundle off down the driveway, followed by the patrol car, and Nolan sank onto a scorched Adirondack chair outside the cottage. Marcel was in the house doing what Marcel did best—rearranging furniture, preparing snacks, and organising alternate accommodation for the couple who should have been staying in Cottage Number One. Luckily, they’d been understanding after he offered to comp their entire stay and pay for a hotel room for the rest of the trip.
“Who wants to shake up a hungover asshole tomorrow?” Jez asked, and Ari raised her hand. Usually, she wasn’t quite so eager when it came to confrontation, but I imagined that nearly being chargrilled would stoke a little anger. The windows at the back of the cottage were locked, and she’d had to smash her way out with a chair.
But Storm shook her head. “It wasn’t him.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I was the first to reach the cottage, and as I ran around the back, I saw someone disappearing into the trees beyond.”
“And you recognised them?”
“No, but I’m ninety percent sure it was a woman.”
“A woman?” Nolan asked. “But…but Marielle is gone.”
“Well, either she got reincarnated, or she has an evil twin.”
“You said ninety percent…?” Ari queried.
“I guess it could have been a slender man. Do we have a picture of this Bo Hayes?”
“Only his DMV picture,” I said. “He doesn’t have much of an online presence. But I’ve seen him in person, and he isn’t slender—he’s kinda pudgy with the beginnings of a beer belly.”
“Both of his boys are slender,” Nolan pointed out. “Wyatt’s only fourteen, but he’s almost as tall as his dad.”
“Then Wyatt’s a possibility,” Storm admitted. “But women move differently, you know?”
I wanted it to be Wyatt, I did, because that would be the easiest solution. But I trusted Storm, and since she lived half her life at Mach 1, she had to be able to process information and observations in a split second. If she said the firebug was a woman, then it was a woman. But who?
I didn’t believe in ghosts.
I believed in data.
And also in retribution.
CHAPTER 36
ALEXA
“Bo was in the Doodlebug until late,” Deputy Warnock said. He’d shown up with a coffee stain on his shirt and a smudge of powdered sugar on his chin. At least, I hoped it was powdered sugar. “Doug Colbert had to drive him home, and he said Bo wasn’t in any state to walk to the bathroom, let alone go hiking across your property.”
“How about Wyatt?” Nolan asked.
“Wyatt wasn’t there.”
“Wasn’t where? In the Doodlebug? Or at home?”
