Shift Burn (Imogene Museum Mystery #6) (13 page)

I bit back a grin as Frankie colored into the magenta range and pursed her lips. Apparently someone else — someone in khaki — had also noticed Henry Parker’s pointed attentions lately.

“The sooner the better, I say. I like a nice, peaceful, quiet county. Married folks tend to stay home and not get into trouble,” Sheriff Marge finished.

I laughed. “Are you kidding? Your favorite thing is a good car chase.”

“These days I’m just driving around looking for smoke.” Sheriff Marge grunted. “We’re lucky if we go twenty-four hours without a flare-up somewhere. Good news is the wildfire upriver is about 65% contained. If the winds don’t pick up, we should be looking at just hot spot monitoring by next weekend. That’d be a relief. Those are DNR crews, getting paid. But Bob and his volunteers are exhausted too. Don’t know how they’re keeping up with their day jobs with the fire epidemic we’ve been facing.”

Greg nodded. “I’m staying out on the farm with Lindsay’s parents. They were telling me some of the fires are suspicious.”

Sheriff Marge heaved a sigh. “Lily, the arson dog, confirmed it. ‘Course, the lab will have to verify, but yeah. Guess it’s too late to keep the word from traveling now.”

“On a more cheerful note,” I said, “the FBI is sniffing around this shipment.” I waved my hand to encompass the mess surrounding us.

Sheriff Marge’s eyes narrowed behind her reading glasses. I’d managed to distract her. What does a worrier like best, but more things to worry about? I filled her in on the part of Karl and Ginger’s conversation I’d already shared with Greg and Frankie. It didn’t sound any better the second time around. The more eyes keeping watch, the better I’d feel.

“Huh. All about scraps of pottery?” she muttered.

“Really old pottery,” Greg amended. “Plus statuary, functional items like vases and bowls, some tools, if the list is correct.”

“You mean you haven’t actually seen any of the pieces yet?” She glared at me, then gave a short nod. “All right. I get it. By the book. But let’s have a peek before you wrap up for the night.”

A wide grin spread across Greg’s face, and he pointed at one of the smaller boxes. “This one.” At my arched brow question, he continued, “It thunked a bit when I unpacked it, and it’s heavy for its size. I’d like to check for damage.”

Frankie adjusted one of our long-armed lamps for better illumination, and we clustered around Greg as he began the arduous task of removing all the screws. We must have looked like a batch of medical interns observing a delicate surgical procedure.

Sheriff Marge’s phone rang, and she backed out of the circle. It turned out her conversation was much more interesting than watching Greg crank the screwdriver.

“Now, Beryl,” Sheriff Marge said. “Yeah — uh-huh. Now, Beryl—”

The caller’s excited voice carried enough that I could tell she was talking non-stop.

“Calm down, now. Uh-huh.” Sheriff Marge’s voice became gruff, and she blurted over the incessant voice, “Why were you in the woods? Beryl, we’ve talked about this. He has every right — well, it’s his property — were you wearing shoes?”

Frankie wrinkled her nose and shared an amused glance with me. Even Greg paused for a second and adjusted his glasses. I could tell by the way his jaw flexed that he was holding back on a ripe comment.

“How do you know it was gasoline?” Sheriff Marge continued. “Lots of good reasons to have gasoline on a farm. In what way did you threaten you?” She picked at some packing tape stuck to the side of a crate, her back stiff with irritation. “Yep. You want me to call your daughter? Well then you have to stay home. You have plenty of your own property. You can tromp through that all you want.”

The voice prattled on for several minutes.

Finally, Sheriff Marge interrupted. “All right. I’ll come out. But you’d better be on your front porch because I’m not gonna search for you, Beryl. Then you can give me your statement.”

When Sheriff Marge turned around, the three of us ducked over the box, pretending we’d been so intent upon the loosening screws that we hadn’t heard a peep.

“I gotta go,” Sheriff Marge sighed. “Beryl Triplett’s having a meltdown.” She glanced at her watch. “’Bout time, I guess. Think it’s been a couple months since the last one.”

Frankie tipped her head, a worry dent appearing between her brows. “Beryl Triplett? Isn’t she a neighbor of Henry’s?”

“Yep. But she likes Henry all right. The neighbor on the other side, however, has a problem with a ninety-year-old nude woman marching through his vegetable patch. Beryl likes to experience nature in her natural state, wanders around without much on, including her glasses, and invariably ends up on that particular neighbor’s property. This time he caught her while he happened to have a gas can in his hand — been mowing his lawn, I expect. Anyway, she’s convinced he’s going to burn down her house in revenge. These arson rumors have everyone on edge, including old Beryl.”

I couldn’t help it — I giggled.

Sheriff Marge scowled. “You know what I said about liking things nice and quite and peaceful?” She shook her head. “I need a vacation.”

I frowned, but held my tongue. It was the first time since I’ve known Sheriff Marge that she expressed less than satisfaction with her job. She had to be tired, not just from her long hours and stressful responsibilities, but from the duration of being the county’s main law enforcer for the past seventeen years. She never got a break, even when she wasn’t officially on duty. We — all of us — did exactly what Beryl had just done, called Sheriff Marge with our problems, whether personal or criminal or indeterminate.

Sheriff Marge elbowed into our tight group. “Well? Let’s see it. Wouldn’t hurt Beryl to cool her heels for a few more minutes.”

Greg lifted the lid and carefully peeled back a layer of cotton batting. The dull gray-green head of a snarling lion stared back. Perfect wrinkles around the muzzle, vicious teeth and a curled, extended tongue. Our collective gasp stirred the cotton batting.

I poked a pair of cotton gloves into Greg’s hand. He pulled them on and gingerly lifted the cast bronze piece from its nest in the box. The lion’s neck extended into a base with evenly spaced holes. It had originally been affixed to something.

“Wow,” Sheriff Marge breathed.

“What was it used for?” Frankie asked.

“Decorative finial in a nobleman’s house, maybe,” Greg said. “Definitely crafted for a ruler, a member of the aristocracy.” He ran a finger over the lion’s snout. “Amazing detail. Could be a chariot yoke pommel.”

“Like Ben-Hur?” Frankie squeaked.

I grinned. “About two thousand years older.”

“Wow,” Sheriff Marge murmured again. She straightened and resettled her Stratton hat on her head. “I’ll have the deputies on patrol tonight — Dale and Owen — do drive-by checks of the museum throughout the night. When will your new security system be operational?”

I shook my head. “Not until after the foundation repairs are finished.”

Sheriff Marge grunted. Yet another worry on her plate.

CHAPTER 13

Talk about exhaustion. Everyone I knew, including myself, had been run ragged the past week. I bundled Greg and Frankie off for the evening and triple-checked the locks on the Imogene’s front and basement doors. All the window frames on the main floor had been painted shut decades ago — and not by a measly single layer of paint, but by coats and coats and coats. Anyone trying to chip their way into the building would take long enough that the deputy patrols would catch them in the act. We were as secure as could be, given the circumstances.

I figured the jumble in the basement would be a deterrent as well, if a thief made it that far without detection. Somewhere, I’d read that mass confusion serves as an effective defensive tactic. I was counting on it.

We’d returned the lion head to its box, and Greg had even reaffixed the lid. Now it was buried in among the rest of the cases. It was probably one of the more valuable pieces, but for the moment it was a needle in the proverbial haystack.

I almost joined Tuppence in hanging my head out of the pickup’s window on the way home. The dry heat made me so prickly that I squirmed on the seat. I hadn’t realized just how hot it was outside since I’d spent the afternoon in a relatively cooler basement.

Pete greeted me with an even warmer kiss at our current home base — the campsite. The Tinsleys’ farmhouse stood alone across the expansive lawn, next to the charred wreckage of their barn. Soon it would be our responsibility. While I wanted it, very much, I was also a little scared of it. I just hoped to cross two or three major things off my list before I took on another one.

“I’m not cooking tonight,” Pete said, “and neither are you. Way too hot to use the oven or stove. I can’t even bring myself to fire up the barbecue.”

“Do we have ice cream?” I asked.

“I might have picked some up at Junction General.” He crinkled those blue eyes at me.

“You are a man after my own heart.”

“I know.”

We lounged in lawn chairs in the shade, trying to eat fast, before the chocolate chunks ended up swimming in pools of melted cream.

I dangled my sticky hands off the ends of the armrests and slouched. “How was the painting?”

Pete shook his head. “I hate painting when it’s this hot. Dries too fast. But I did the parts that needed it most. Installed a new shower head and performed maintenance checks too.”

The
Surely
might be small but she’s mighty and strictly utilitarian, both in form and function. Pete and his crew — Al Cordova, the engineer; Bert Mapes, deckhand; and Carlos Cordova, younger brother to Al and second deckhand — live aboard her for long stretches of time when they’re pushing loads. They can tow up to five barges at once, but the cargo is rarely all from the same customer. In addition to operating a tug, Pete excels at scheduling — moving wheat, sawdust, coal, scrap metal, and potash plus all kinds of specialty loads the big transport companies won’t touch.

So it goes without saying that the
Surely
’s accommodations are spartan and not particularly comfortable. The guys are usually too tired to notice by the time they hit their bunks. I hoped Pete remembered my request to slip away on the
Surely
with him, but I wasn’t going to bring it up again. His to-do list was as long as mine, if not longer. The crew would return next week, and from then on for the next few months they’d only shut down the
Surely
’s engines to release barges and cable on new ones.

Peace and quiet — I understood Sheriff Marge’s sentiments completely. We both wanted a big dose of the same thing. And I couldn’t think of a more peaceful place than floating on the
Columbia.

Pete captured my pinky finger in the crook of his index finger. It really was too hot for any more intimacy than that. I smiled at him.

“I love being quiet with you,” he whispered.

I nodded back. Pete comes awfully close to reading my mind, which is one of the many reasons I’m crazy about him.

I must have dozed off, because the next time I registered my surroundings, it was dark — that deep, velvety nearly-black blue you can only find out in the country, far away from ambient light. The stars were pinpricks, but moving closer as my eyes focused.

I flinched when my phone rang again — from my purse which I’d dumped in the trailer. Probably the noise that had awakened me. I squeezed Pete’s hand, and he released my fingers then stretched in his lawn chair.

I slowly reeled my limbs in, almost audibly creaking in the process, and pushed out of the chair. Oh man, my hamstrings were just about killing me, and my back, and my arms, and my neck — come to think of it.

I trudged to the fifth-wheel, rummaged a bit and finally located my phone.

“Meredith? Owen.” He could have said Deputy Owen Hobart, but he wasn’t the least bit pretentious. Besides I knew the sound of his voice. “You might want to head over to the Imogene. Got a fire here.”

“What?” I screeched.

“In the dumpsters out back and it’s spread to an overhanging tree. Fire department’s on the way. I think they’ll be able to put it out quickly, but we’ll need a representative on scene, in case we need access to the building or decisions made.”

“I understand,” I blurted. “I’m coming.”

“Babe?” Pete was beside me, hand on my arm.

“Another fire,” was all I had to say — was all I could say, my throat was so tight.

He grabbed the keys, and we ran to the truck.

oOo

I hated to think I was becoming accustomed to what fire scenes look like after the fact — puddles big enough you could stock them with largemouth bass; hoses crisscrossing the ground; sweaty, weary men stumping around in big boots.

The chaos behind the Imogene had one additional feature — the air reeked of fuel. I tried to pinpoint the odor while clamping a fistful of my shirt over my mouth and nose, and the closest I could come up with was charcoal lighter fluid.