Fire Raiser Read online

  And besides all that, his eldest son, apple of his eye, was running against Evan for county sheriff.

  “Tell you what, judge—the November ballots haven’t been printed up yet, so why don’t you take your name off and let somebody else put up with me and Jamey from now on?”

  “What makes you think you’re gonna win an honest term as sheriff, runnin’ against Rick? This ain’t New York, boy. It ain’t even Richmond, where that fancy-ass pansy comes from. This is Pocahontas County, where I been the law for thirty-eight years. And I’ll be the law for thirty-eight more if the Almighty lets me live that long.”

  Or if your wife doesn’t find out what you do at legal conventions—or, rather, who you do at legal conventions. Evan widened his smile. Rausche was stupid, but he wasn’t stupid—he recognized the taunt, turned his head a fraction, spat onto the gravel about an inch and a half from Evan’s boots, and went to join his womenfolk.

  “Well, that was productive,” Evan muttered to himself.

  “I’d say predictable,” said a woman’s voice behind him, and he turned to give Louvena Cox a genuine smile. “Politics just ain’t your thing, are they, son?”

  He leaned down about a foot and a half to kiss her cheek, then offered his arm. “I leave the charm to Holly.”

  “Nice double meaning in that,” she approved. “Where is she?”

  “Changing clothes. Chocolate on silk seems to be out of fashion this year.” He escorted her toward the steps. “Are you here on or off the Record?”

  “You’re just full of puns tonight, aren’t you? I’m here for the champagne and crab quiche. And you.”

  “Me?”

  “Not to pat your pretty butt—though I’ll manage it sometime this evening, I’m sure. No, I figured out a little something about those church fires. It’s not much—”

  He drew her away from the front door and around the corner of the verandah. “I’ll take whatever I can get.”

  “The Methodist one doesn’t show up on any of the Look-see spells.”

  “You mean there’s magic involved in the others, but not the Methodists?”

  “Not a breath of it. I got to thinking about what Holly and I dug out of the files back in November—the articles we found using the spider crush. Now, I know damned good and well the barn fire over at Silver Rock in nineteen-and-twenty-four wasn’t dry lightning the way it got written up in the paper, and I know this because my daddy started it while he was practicing a coupla spells. Grandma whopped him for it, too. Same with the article on the fire here at Westmoreland, back when Jesse and Lulah cleaned the place out. If Old Man Hartford hadn’t called in to the Sheriff’s Office to report it, we would never have mentioned it in the paper a-tall. But those articles and a few others were about fires I knew for a fact had magic in ’em somehow. So I checked all the ones since last September.”

  “And all of them except for the Methodists . . .” Evan mulled this over. “Copycat? Nah, couldn’t be—there’s nothing to copy. Denominations, points of origin, accelerants—or not—there’s no pattern at all.”

  She lowered herself into an ornate white wicker chair. “Lord and Lady, it’s hot. That rain can’t come fast enough tonight.”

  Lachlan regarded her in silence for a moment. “Louvena, do you know something I should know?”

  “Many, many things,” she replied with a deep chuckle. “Where’d y’all like to start?”

  “I’ll let you pat my ass all night if you just give me a clue here,” he grinned back.

  “Let me?” she snorted. “Now, where’s the fun in that? It’s when they don’t know it’s comin’ that they jump the best. Timing, Evan. Life is all in the timing.”

  Because he had long ago acknowledged this as a Truth of the Universe, he applied it to the topic at hand. Seeing his frown, Louvena helped him out.

  “Here’s how I see it. It’s August of last year, and Cousin Poppy Bellew figures out three days ahead of the National Weather Service that Katrina is gonna be worse than the Battle of New Orleans and the New Madrid earthquake rolled into one. She and some of her Calvary Baptist ladies head down there to help, because that’s what Poppy’s always done. A couple of friends from Gospel Baptist join them. The Old Believers send down two pickups full of supplies the next day.”

  “But every church in the county sent stuff—”

  “Hush up and listen,” she snapped. “Katrina hits. Everybody from PoCo gets separated, nobody knows what anybody else is doin’—and the Feds couldn’t find their own asses with both hands and a road map. It’s more than a week after the hurricanes before our folks start limping back to home, bringing three New Orleans families who end up liking it here and decide to stay.”

  “The Westlees, the Dumaines, and the Thomsons,” he supplied. Latisha Dumaine had, in fact, become his secretary at the Sheriff’s Office. “Wait—they’re all Baptists?”

  “They surely are, and all at Gospel. But I’m not done yet. Everybody makes it back home eventually—except for Poppy.”

  Evan mulled this over, too. The last time anyone had heard from Poppy Bellew, she was at a rest stop in Mississippi on her way back to Virginia with three teenaged girls and a thirteen-year-old boy. Her brief conversation with Pastor Deutschman of Calvary Baptist had included no information about who the evacuees were or precisely where she had found them, but before the sketchy cell connection had been lost she had asked him to find host families for children who had been victims of human trafficking.

  The shock of this revelation was considerable; Poppy’s disappearance was even worse. Deutschman had done as much checking as he could—not much, in the chaos after Katrina and Rita—before Poppy’s friends had come home with tales of teenaged girls and boys who’d been kept in a New Orleans brothel. Poppy had taken four of them with her; the others had been turned over to the care of local church groups.

  Southern Baptists had been on the wrong side of the slavery issue. Deutschman decided neither he nor his flock—nor anybody he could buttonhole long enough to explain things to—would be indifferent to this resurgence of trade in human beings. Allied with most of the other Baptist denominations in PoCo, Calvary had organized a fundraising and awareness campaign.

  “It would work,” Evan said slowly, “except for two things. It’s not just Baptist churches that burned, and the charity didn’t get organized until late last October.”

  Louvena nodded. “Old Believers burned on the ninth of September.”

  “Timing,” he muttered.

  “Like I told you, we got four Baptist churches, St. Andrew’s Episcopal, and the Lutheran, all magic. Except for the Methodists.”

  “Could be cover,” he mused. “A smoke screen—”

  “That’s three puns, and that’s two too many,” she told him severely.

  “Camouflage,” he corrected himself, bowing an apology.

  “I said it wasn’t much,” Louvena reminded him. “Just somethin’ to ponder.”

  “I will. Thanks. Now, let’s go inside and find you that champagne.”

  “I hope it’s Californian, and not that prissy French stuff,” she remarked as they headed back toward the front door. “Nothin’ good ever came out of France except the books of Mr. Balzac. And maybe a couple of those haystack pictures.”

  “Most people prefer the water lilies.”

  “Huh. Very pretty, but what use are they? Haystacks, now—that’s the practical beauty of the gifts of the land brought forth by people’s hard labor. The water lily didn’t do nothin’ but grow. You look at those paintings, they’re all soft colors and make you feel nice and restful—but they don’t make you think because there’s nothing there to be thought about.”

  “Except maybe weeding the pond?”

  He sidestepped her slap at his ass, laughing. But mention of Monet coupled with a glimpse of white-blond hair nearby reminded him of the night of the Lutheran fire.

  THE SECOND WEEK IN DECEMBER, the Ayalas had invited the Lachlans over for coffee and desser
t. Erika’s note mentioned that she was trying out new recipes for pie and needed opinions on which to take to her mother’s in Atlanta for Christmas, her three boys having all the usual culinary discernment of teenagers—which was to say none at all. They simply inhaled whatever was put in front of them, and occasionally remembered to say thanks.

  The house was just outside the county line, and quite a drive from Woodhush. Erika turned out to be a fragile blonde a little younger than her husband, with big hair and too much mascara. Evan hid a grin, knowing that around tiny women Holly always felt like a complete galumph, terrified of stumbling over thin air and breaking treasured family antiques. Sure enough, her body language changed completely as she sidled into the house, her usual caution with long limbs and big feet turning perfectly pathological. Erika’s sons by her first husband—Troy, Titus, and Tristan—showed up just long enough to be introduced, then vanished upstairs to their video games in the third-floor attic that Gib had turned into a family room. Much of the first floor had been gutted to make a single barnlike great room with formal dining at one end, kitchen in the middle, and living room that doglegged the southwest corner of the house.

  The coffee was Dominican, the cream was real, and the pie crusts were so light they nearly floated off the plates. Evan gleefully pigged out on blackberry, apple-raisin, pecan, pumpkin, and coconut-banana. The only reason there was no lemon meringue was that the boys had hijacked it before dinner.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Holly told Erika after she apologized a second time for the lack. “Evan will be having dreams about this for a week—which will help when all he gets for dinner is half a head of iceberg lettuce and a tomato.”

  Later, on their way out to the car, Holly smacked Evan upside the head.

  “Ow!”

  “That’s for gobbling up those pies as if you never get a decent meal at home.”

  He grinned. “I’ve been trying to remember one.”

  “Oh, funny man. You just talked yourself out of the tomato.”

  “You’re a cold, cruel woman, McClure.” He swung her around and planted a great big sloppy kiss on her mouth. “That,” he told her, “is for knowing that framed posters of Monet water lilies don’t belong in the same house, let alone the same room, with black Naugahyde sofas.”

  She choked on a giggle even as she glanced over her shoulder to make sure Gib and Erika’s front door was closed. “God, you’re wicked!”

  “Just observant. They do pay me for that, y’know. Which means I heard what she said when you asked if she’d been over to Monticello yet.”

  Holly cast another guilty glance over her shoulder and slid into the driver’s seat. “I’m trying to think up something tactful to say, Lachlan. I’m not having any luck.”

  “Could there possibly be anything tactful to say about a woman who goes to Monticello and talks about the lawns?”

  “Wicked and nasty.” She switched on the engine and huddled into her coat while waiting for the heater to kick in.

  Evan eyed her profile for a moment. “Please tell me you’re not going to ask why he married her.”

  “Gently, Big Guy,” she advised. “Gib was the first person with a Y chromosome who, when he said I was pretty, I believed him. Besides, we’ll have to invite them to dinner soon. Social reciprocity, Southern hospitality, and all that.” When he snorted, she went on, “Yeah, okay, I noticed the Naugahyde. But furniture has to be washable when you’ve got kids running around the house.”

  “Teenagers ought to be civilized enough not to destroy stuff.”

  “Tell me that again in a dozen or so years,” she advised wryly. “But—oh wait, I forgot. Your children are perfect!”

  “Damned right they are,” he affirmed.

  She unlocked the parking brake and shifted into reverse. “You’re just being smug because you know Clary Sage has a foolproof spill spell. Although if we really want to do it up right, I’ll have to find out where Cousin Cam is gallivanting around to this millennium—he does things with textiles that you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Are you trying to change the subject?”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “To deflect me away from discussing your old boyfriend.”

  “He wasn’t.”

  “But he wanted to be. Or at least his wife thinks he wanted to be, and maybe that he still does.” As she slanted him a skeptical glance, he shook his head. “Look, Holly, I know he’s an old friend or whatever, but let’s get real, huh? A guy knows when another guy’s pussy-whipped.”

  She gave a derisive snort. “Is there any woman in the world so incredible in bed?”

  “I assume you’re asking out of pure intellectual curiosity.”

  “There’s nothing intellectual about the fact that if I ever tried to pussy-whip you, you’d be gone faster than—”

  Evan shook his head again. “That’s not how it works, babe. It’s not just the fucking. I mean, he’s her second husband, right? And they’ve only been married a few years. It’s gotta be something about her that makes him panic every time he thinks about losing her. And before you say it, I don’t want to lose you, ever—but it’s not the same. A man like that, he doesn’t think any other woman would ever want him.”

  She laughed. “You conceited son of a bitch!”

  “That’s not what I meant. Why don’t you astonish the world and just listen for a change? Thank you. This kind of guy, he’s always scared that somebody else is gonna look better to her than he does. That what he has with her isn’t enough to make her stay with him.”

  “But that makes him the controlling one.” She braked at the intersection of Highway 3 and Highway 8, and turned to stare at him.

  “It makes him create situations to test whether she still wants him enough to be suspicious. He flirts a little, passive-aggressive, nothing overt—just to make sure she still wants to own him.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said plaintively. “A man doesn’t trust that his wife loves him enough to stay with him, so he tries to make her jealous to prove to himself that she does love him? And this involves flirting with other women, so that his wife thinks other women want him, which makes her jealous—except that he doesn’t really think other women want him, which is why he has to reassure himself by flirting with other women so they will want him, thereby provoking his wife’s jealousy that proves other women want him even when he’s convinced they really don’t?”

  He was quiet for a moment. “Y’know, I didn’t completely follow all that.”

  “Neither did I,” she admitted. “And I’m the one who said it.” Somebody behind them honked, and she hastily shifted back into gear to make the turn. “So what was the point, again?”

  “That’s just it. I don’t see that there is a point.”

  “To what?” she asked, more confused than ever.

  “Jealousy. It’s all about possession, right? Ownership? The idea of anybody trying to own you—”

  “But I’m your wife.”

  “Because you chose to be. Holly, you made me a promise. I trust your promises. Jealous and possessive means suspicious and controlling to me—and I just don’t see the point. How do you control the thoughts in a person’s head? You can’t, so why bother trying? Do I go ballistic when you look at Jamey?”

  “He’s gay. Not a valid example.”

  “If you look at one guy, you’re gonna look at others.”

  “You look at women, too.” She snorted again. “If you didn’t, I’d have you hospitalized.”

  “Look, what are the classic questions? For the man, it’s Did you fuck him? But the question a woman asks—”

  “Do you love her? Are we really still that primitive? Men dedicated to making sure their offspring are in fact theirs, and women manipulating a man’s emotional commitment so her children are provided for?”

  “What would be your first question, if you thought I was foolin’ around?”

  She thought for a moment. “Evan, I’m trying to i
magine it, and I can’t. I mean I really can’t. You made me a promise, too. And I trust you.” She lobbed a whimsical smile at him. “Are we evolved, or just kidding ourselves?”

  “Do you really want to find out?”

  “No. But you’ve convinced me that the whole jealousy thing is fairly psychotic.”

  “That’s the way a lot of marriages work.” He paused, then shrugged. “My parents’, for one. Dad was the jealous one, always suspicious. He had good reason to be, of course. She always kept him on edge, just to prove what a catch she still was.”

  Holly shook her head. “I couldn’t live like that,” she stated, repressing a shudder. “Always suspicious, always distrustful—trying to control what you think and feel—”

  “Seems to work for some people.”

  “Does it?” she mused. “Partnership or power trip? I know not every-body’s lucky enough to have what we have, but—oh, hell, I don’t know. Maybe it’s that we actually like each other?”

  “Yeah, I guess I do kinda like you,” he teased. “But where’d a nice girl like you learn a term like ‘pussy-whipped,’ anyway?”

  “Whatever gave you the impression that I was a nice girl?”

  “Just what I wanted to hear,” he announced, and slid his fingers up her thigh.

  Holly laughed, then slowed the car and pulled over to the side of the road—but not for purposes of fooling around. Just as the fire truck roared past, Evan’s cell phone played the opening guitar riff of “Life in the Fast Lane.” He snagged the phone out of his jacket pocket with his right hand while his left delved beneath the seat for the flasher he insisted she keep in the car.

  “Don’t you scratch up my dashboard with that thing,” she warned. “Or scrape the paint off the roof with it, either.”

  “You want I should roll down the window and hold it outside while you’re doin’ eighty miles an hour?” He flipped the switch and wedged the flasher against the windshield while hitting the button on his phone. “Yeah, I know there’s a fire—the truck just went past. Where at?”