Firefly Mountain (24 page)

“And you make all them smelly oils from your herbs and flowers,” Walter said.

“But why would I leave them at the scene?”

“To confuse maybe? I don’t know, Gini. It just seems that it could be you. It’s more likely than Burnam suddenly having an arsonist. You’ve been among us all this time. Maybe you don’t have the control you used to. Maybe Barre set if off on a new level or something.”

“Daddy, Patrick has nothing to do with this, and it is
not
me. I did not start those fires.” Exhaustion crashed down onto Gini, and her head pounded.

“Maybe you should come stay with your mother and me for a little while. Jonah’s not in any condition to watch over you.”

“Watch over me? I don’t need watching.” She inhaled a cleansing breath and pictured herself riding Moon through a meadow on a sunny summer day. If she got angry and started a fire right now, her father would never believe her innocence. Panic washed over her—still better than anger—but she didn’t know what to do. She’d never been in this situation. Her family was always on her side. Always protecting her. Part of her knew Walter was still trying to protect her. He wanted her safe and their family secret kept secret. He also wanted the citizens of Burnam safe. Once a fire chief, always a fire chief.

“I didn’t want to upset you, honey. You know I love you. We all do. I just want these fires stopped.” He put the glass he’d used in the sink and turned to face her. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, but if there’s another fire soon, I’m going to insist you come stay with us.” He squeezed her arm and kissed her cheek.

The door opened and closed behind Gini. She stood in the middle of the kitchen, arms hanging by her sides, head down. She felt as if she’d been punched in the gut. Her father had never spoken to her like that. Some of the force of his words was directed at Patrick. That much she could see. Walter did not think Patrick belonged anywhere near her. Maybe he was right. After the bush at the fire station, however, Gini had shielded herself more carefully against anger around Patrick. In truth, she hadn’t needed to. The last few encounters with him had left her feeling aroused, curious, maybe a little frustrated, but certainly not angry.

Did Mama agree with Daddy? Did Jonah suspect her as well? Did her whole family doubt her control? Didn’t they know her better than that?

The questions brought her to her knees. A moment later, she was curled up on the cold, wood floor of the kitchen, tears streaming from her tired eyes.

Alone. She’d never been so alone.

****

The fire department was too efficient. Extinguishing the beauty she’d created far too quickly. That entire strip—bookstore, photography studio, pizzeria, lawyer’s office—all four of them should have been burned to the ground by now. Yet again, however, her work had been halted by the valiant efforts of Burnam’s persistent firefighters.

Damn them.
She’d watched those
heroes
descend on her flames with their hoses, ready to contain the most powerful of the elements. Their control was false, however. They could put out one fire, but that wouldn’t stop her from giving birth to another. And another. And another.

She’d leave her mark on this stupid little town. Several marks. Blackened and sooty with smoke that strangled. Decimated. She was just warming up. The house, the barn, the bookstore were all tiny steps up to something monumental. Unforgettable. Colossal.

The simple folks living their simple lives here would have their eyes opened. They couldn’t sequester themselves in the fairy tale they’d created in this backwoods town forever. They needed enlightening. Her fires would do that for them. In the brightness of her blazes as they hungrily consumed the props these people used to fool themselves, they would see that nowhere was safe. They could try to hold onto the illusion, but she would easily shatter it.

The world was a dangerous place. She knew that better than anyone. It was her duty to make everyone else see. See how they all had nothing. That they meant nothing. Were nothing.

Just like her.

****

Gini awoke to Saber’s sandpapery tongue on her cheek. She’d managed to crawl to her bedroom last night and roll into bed. She’d slept fitfully, snapping awake every couple of hours, hoping that her visit with her father had been only a dream. Looking down to her rumpled clothes—last night’s clothes that she’d slept in—she knew Daddy suspecting her of starting those fires had not been a dream.

“You know I wouldn’t do that, right, Saber?” She stroked the cat’s thick fur as Saber kneaded her stomach with his huge paws. His eyes shrunk to mere slices as he purred, and Gini took that as belief in her innocence.

She glanced at the alarm clock beside her bed. Seven o’clock. Haddy would be there soon to work. Gini had to get up. Get ready. Only she had absolutely no desire to move. If she stayed in bed all day then she didn’t have to face the fact that her daddy thought she was a loose cannon. That all the years she’d been practicing her control, managing her condition, snuffing out her anger, had gone to Hell. And, according to Walter, gone to Hell over the appearance of a new firefighter.

Her stomach flip-flopped as she pictured her father’s face. It had hurt him to ask her the question, to blame her, but he couldn’t possibly understand how much he’d hurt her.

Gini’s pretty narrow definition of living had just gotten narrower. Maybe she had taken some risks lately. Broken some of her own rules. Allowing herself to be drawn to Patrick. To kiss him. Touch him. None of that had to do with possibly starting fires, but no good could come of it. She’d only end up hurting him. She had to get back to following her strict guidelines. Maybe make a few more commandments as a precaution. If she started a fire now, that’d be the end of it. Her father would make her stay with him. He might decide she needed to be…put away somewhere.

A full body shudder wriggled through Gini. She sat up, pouring Saber off her stomach. The cat maneuvered onto her lap and picked up where he’d left off, but Gini couldn’t get the notion of her parents sending her off to an institution out of her mind. There had been a time when she wouldn’t have believed they’d ever do that to her.

Now, she wasn’t so sure.

Gini gathered Saber into her arms and eased off the bed. A shower. Everything would be better after a shower. Hell, it couldn’t be worse.

She soaked her troubles in twenty minutes of boiling hot water and lavender shampoo. After slipping on a peach-colored T-shirt and jean shorts, Gini padded barefoot to the kitchen. She forced herself into the room and made herself toast. She chased that down with a glass of orange juice and took the crate and her camera down the hall to her home office next to the darkroom. She set up shop in there and spent the next hour developing the bookstore photos.

Back in the office, she sorted out the projects she’d taken home and picked up the phone. Mason answered on the third ring.

“Detective Rivers,” he said.

“Photographer Claremont,” Gini said.

Mason laughed. “My favorite photographer.”

“Would you be willing to come over to get the bookstore photos from your favorite photographer? I had a late night last night and don’t have it in me to drive into town.”

“No problem,” Mason said. “You okay? You don’t sound like you.”

“Who do I sound like?”

“Okay, that sounded like you.” Mason laughed again. “But seriously, what’s up?”

“Nothing,” Gini lied. “I’m just tired.”

“You didn’t happen to have said ‘late night’ with a certain firefighter, did you?”

I wish
. “No, my daddy was here when I got home, then I slept like crap.”
My family thinks I’m a monster, and my heart’s in a billion pieces. That’s all I have to report.

“All right. I’ll be by in a few then. See you.”

Gini hung up as Haddy’s car pulled into the driveway. She managed to find her standard happy face and slapped it on as Haddy pushed open the door.

“Morning,” Gini said.

“Hiya.” Haddy carried her own crate of materials she’d collected from the studio under her arm.

“I’ve set us up in my office. It’s small, but it’ll work.”

Haddy nodded. “Okay, boss.” She headed out of the kitchen, but stopped at the threshold. She dug in the pocket of her shorts and pulled out a piece of paper. “I almost forgot.” Haddy handed the paper to Gini. “Jonah said to give this to you.”

Gini took the paper, and Haddy continued down the hall. The paper was folded into a neat triangle like the Chinese footballs Jonah used to make and get in trouble with at school when they were kids. Slowly, Gini unraveled it until it was the size of a full sheet of computer paper. Jonah’s scratchy handwriting, all in capital letters, filled a third of the sheet.

Gini,

I know what Pop asked you. He and Ma came by last night, and he told me what he’d gone and done. After I was through being rip-roaring mad at him, I let him explain his reasoning. He’s just trying to protect you, us, the town. You know how he is.

I’m not saying he was right to ask you what he did, but I can understand why he did. I hope you can forgive the old man. I also hope you know I’m always on your side, Gini. Whatever you say, I’ll believe. I love you. I always will.

Jonah

Gini smiled through her tears—different tears than last night—and folded the note back into its triangle. She carried it with her to the office and slipped it into her purse. Another one of her treasures.

Haddy glanced up from the photos of the christening she was formatting.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“For now,” Gini said. It was a relief to know Jonah was still on her team, but her father’s accusation would not be easily erased. “Let’s get some work done, shall we?”

Haddy held up a picture of the baptized baby wearing his long christening gown. His cheeks were chunky and pink, his hair a barely there blond wisp across his round head. “Is this baby precious or what?”

“Yes.” Gini flipped through the firefighter calendar pictures and held up three of the bare-chested beauties. “But so are these babies.”

Haddy giggled, and Gini had to join her. Yes, work would keep her busy. Haddy would keep her entertained. Gini could make it through the day.

Beyond that was still a gray area.

****

Patrick stood with Mason in the police department’s conference room. Gini’s photos were pinned up along a giant corkboard, and a whiteboard was filled with Mason’s block handwriting.

“The gasoline trail runs east to west in all three sites,” Mason said. “Forensics concludes the candles were homemade, not store bought or factory manufactured. No prints could be lifted from the globs of wax unfortunately, and the scents appear homegrown as well. No artificial ingredients.”

Patrick rubbed his jaw as he studied the photos. “So we’ve got a real do-it-yourselfer.”

“In every sense of the term.”

“Appears to be a build up happening here too.” Patrick examined the house, barn, and bookstore photos he’d pulled down and set on the long conference table.

“What do you mean?” Mason joined him at the table.

“This house was a small job. Just one family in possible danger. The barn is a step up in risk. Horses, trainers, and citizens plus a bigger building. The bookstore, although closed at the time, is a larger affair. More square footage and the potential of taking down the entire strip.”

Patrick’s hands clenched the edge of the table as he thought about Gini’s studio being part of that strip, part of the damage. Luckily it had been only one wall, but the possibilities had kept him up most of the night. He’d scurried into his garage as Gini left, afraid that if he’d watched her go, he wouldn’t have been able to let her. Though she hadn’t fallen apart over the damage to her studio, the urge to hold her, make it all right for her, had overwhelmed Patrick.

He didn’t like being overwhelmed.

“You think the next one will be bigger?” Mason’s voice brought Patrick back to the conference room.

“Not only bigger, but more dramatic.”

Mason rubbed his eyes. “We have no suspects, no leads, not a damn crumb here.” He sat and tapped his pen on the table. “I prefer burglars and killers. They tend to leave more clues behind. They get careless. This arsonist is a God-damned meticulous genius.”

“They usually are,” Patrick said. “What’s bigger than a strip of storefronts in Burnam?”

Mason sat up straighter in his chair as he pointed his pen at Patrick. “Umm, Groveston’s Market, our only grocery store. This police station, the fire station. My God, the hospital.” Mason scrawled all of these locations into his notepad. “I’ll post some officers around these spots. Have them keep an eye out for anything suspicious.”

“It’s something to do at least.” Patrick shrugged.

“Make us feel as if the arsonist isn’t the only one who’s plotting and planning.” Mason held his hand out to Patrick. “Good thinking.”

“Good thinking like a criminal is what you mean.” Patrick shook Mason’s hand.

“Hey, I don’t care if you think like a raving lunatic as long as it helps me catch the bad guys.” Mason gathered up his notepad and pushed the photos and files on the table into a haphazard pile. He laughed when Patrick cringed.

“I’m not any neater outside my office. You should see my apartment.”

“I’d probably have a full-blown breakdown in your apartment, Mason.” Patrick walked to the doors of the conference room.

“Wait a minute.” Mason was beside him, keeping him from opening the doors. “Is Raina like you? Does she like things neat?”

“She’s not as bad as me, but she doesn’t like a mess either. It’s how we were raised. My grandmother vacuumed every day, and my grandfather had a color-coded system for fasteners in his workshop. You know, red bins for screws, blue for nails, yellow for staples, and so on.”

“Shit.” Mason ripped open the doors and yelled, “Ronald, does your sister still clean houses?” He turned back to Patrick. “Catch you later, Patrick. I have to take care of some things before tomorrow night.”

“Later.” Patrick hoped Raina was serious about Mason, because the guy was trying so hard to get it right. And yet, it didn’t appear Mason minded trying so hard. The man was ready to let a stranger come into his home and reorganize the way he lived to make Raina comfortable.