Up in Flames (5 page)

Not informative, but he’d provided a clue when he’d asked Zane about his actions during the past month. One month was enough time for flesh to rot and peel from bones, he imagined, and for organs to begin to dissolve. Enough time for what was left to change drastically, yet still look human. More gross images slid through his mind. Sophie had the real ones. Jesus.

He followed the cop outside, veering toward the open yard gate. Sophie stood where she’d been for the past half hour, hands deep in her pockets and shoulders drawn in, as if the eighty-degree sunshine had chilled her to the bone.

She turned as he approached, looking uncomfortable, and waited until he was close enough that no one else could hear them. “I’m sorry,” she said, low and soft, and he hated that her voice wrapped around him like velvet.

“For finding a dead person?”

She blinked. “No. I’m glad I found her. I mean, she needed to be found, but I’m sorry it happened this way, that it’s disrupting your work, that . . .” She waved her hand in a frustrated gesture, then returned it to her pocket. “I don’t know why. It just feels like I messed up.”

“Maybe you’re sorry you didn’t follow my orders.”

“No, that’s not it.”

Of course not. Anyway, that wasn’t the issue that had been eating at his mind. “Sophie, who questioned you?”

“That big cop, Connors, the one you were just talking to.”

She turned away to watch as a van backed up to the yellow tape and someone opened the double doors in back. He studied her profile. Her face was pale, her brow creased with pain, but she didn’t look away from the activity around the grave site.

“Why didn’t he know I told you not to dig in that area?”

She still didn’t look at him. “Because I didn’t tell him.”

“Why not?”

He saw her eyebrows pucker and her mouth purse tightly, as if the question bothered her. “I don’t know.”

He didn’t know, either. A lingering sense of loyalty? Not likely. If she thought about it long enough, she’d probably give the cop a call.

When she continued to stare toward what had now become a shallow excavation site inside the crime tape, he felt he’d been dismissed. He started walking away.

“Zane.”

He stopped, looked back. “What?”

“I quit.”

4

S
ophie couldn’t get
the pictures out of her mind, or the smell out of her nose.

She couldn’t stay at Natural Designs another minute, watching as they painstakingly disinterred the body, placing it piece by piece into a body bag. Revulsion overshadowed any nagging worry that Zane could have something to do with a dead girl buried on his property. Let the police worry about that; she could tell from the tight stares they focused on Zane that they would. If he was innocent, they’d find out. It wasn’t her problem.

She took off in her Jeep and was halfway home before she realized she didn’t want to be alone.

Her tension was already easing as she cruised through a downtown busy with midday shoppers and the lunch crowd. This was the normal Barringer’s Pass world of tourists, scenic views, and quaint shops. Dead bodies didn’t enter into it.

Stepping into Fortune’s Folly was a comforting reminder of the real world, even though the back wall of Maggie’s store gave the feeling of stepping five hundred million years into the past. Fossilized giant trilobites and dinosaur footprints hung on the wall like prized works of art. Fossilized sea creatures resided in display cases beneath them. Both tourists and the local residents loved Maggie’s quirky and exotic items, and it was the chattering shoppers that Sophie needed to settle her nerves and wipe the images of rotting flesh from her mind.

She helped wait on customers, and after a few horrified questions, Maggie left her alone. Being married to a cop helped her understand that some things needed to be left at the office. Things like accidentally ripping the arm off a dead woman with a backhoe.

Finishing with a customer, Sophie looked up to see one of Maggie’s old high school friends come in the front door.

“Hey, Sophie, good to see you back in town,” she said. “You look great.”

She searched her memory, coming up with a name. “Thanks, Carol, it’s good to be back.” Sophie smiled and braced herself for the obvious follow-up question, preparing to put a positive spin on her lack of a job. But Carol was already making a beeline for Maggie, at the jewelry counter in the center of the shop.

“Maggie! I just heard the news! Have you talked to Cal yet?”

Sophie’s smile faded as her sister pasted on a neutral expression. Maggie had to know what was coming as well as Sophie did. “No. What news?” Maggie asked.

“The dead body they found out at Zane Thorson’s house!” Carol said, excitement quivering in her voice. “Jessie told me half the cops in B-Pass are out there. Cal must know what’s going on.”

Sophie felt her stomach clench. She’d forgotten how fast news spread through their small town, and how fast the facts could be corrupted.

“I haven’t talked to Cal,” Maggie told her. “But I know the police aren’t at Zane’s house. The body was found at his landscape company.”

Sophie silently thanked her for the clarification, but knew it wouldn’t matter.

“Are you sure? I heard it was his house.”

“I’m sure.”

Carol’s excitement didn’t waver. “Well, either way, it was Zane’s place. And if that isn’t the other shoe dropping, I don’t know what is.”

Maggie’s gaze flicked to Sophie before returning to Carol. “What do you mean?”

“I mean everyone knew they were going to catch him at something sooner or later. He’s a Thorson, for heaven’s sake. Blood will tell. But my God, murder! I didn’t figure he would be that bad.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Maggie said softly, and Sophie clenched her hands into tight fists. She knew from the lack of conviction in her sister’s voice that she was already thinking the same thing. If she was honest with herself, the thought had occurred to her, too. How much criminal history could she overlook before admitting that Zane might be just as bad as the rest of his family?

It was the question of the day, the one she kept trying not to face.

Maggie’s warning went right past Carol. “Murder! Can you imagine? Bob sees him at the hardware store all the time, you know. He always said the guy’s a little weird. Never talks to anyone, just makes his purchase and leaves. Bob says he gives him the creeps.”

Anger rose unexpectedly, and Sophie ground her teeth in an effort to keep from shouting out her instinctive response.
Well, what do you expect?
She didn’t want to defend Zane’s character, but hell, with half the town watching him out of the corners of their eyes, just waiting for him to commit a crime, it was a wonder he spoke to anyone at all.

She hadn’t realized it had gotten this bad for him.

A sick feeling rose in her throat, and she didn’t want to hear any more. She walked out from behind the cash register just as a couple came in with two children, each parent clutching shopping bags. Tourists, in the mood to buy. She didn’t care, Maggie could handle it.

“I have to get something in the back room,” she muttered to Maggie, hurrying past as Carol began speculating on the identity of the dead girl and—glancing at the two young children—whether she’d been r-a-p-e-d. Sophie stopped in her tracks. Swearing under her breath, she turned back to Carol.

“Zane didn’t know anything about that body,” she blurted out. Carol and Maggie jerked their heads around, and Sophie noted the startled looks from the two parents. Damn, she didn’t want to drive off Maggie’s customers. “I was there,” she said, keeping her voice calm but deliberate. “I found her. And Zane didn’t know anything about it. You can tell Bob and the rest of the town that I said so.”

Giving them a final, hard look, she opened the door to the storeroom, stepped through, and pulled it shut behind her.

She stared at the storeroom contents, unseeing. Her impromptu speech had been brash and impulsive. She choked back a bitter laugh at the thought; brash and impulsive seemed to be a pattern with her when it came to Zane.

Slipping onto one of the metal stools at Maggie’s worktable, she propped her elbows on the scarred table and cradled her head in her hands. What in the hell was she doing, jumping to Zane’s defense? She might have known him once, but she’d been gone ten years. She and Zane weren’t the same people anymore. Maybe Carol was right. Maybe Zane’s resentment toward the town had festered, turning him ugly and cold. Turning him into a killer.

Something deep inside her rebelled at the image. That wasn’t Zane, and she knew it. The young man she’d known ten years ago had been deeply wounded by the crimes his father and brother had committed, and by the distrust of everyone in town. So wounded and withdrawn, she’d been curious to know what lay beneath. To her surprise, she’d found a sensitive, caring man, a man who’d barely finished high school yet stashed battered, dog-eared copies of Hemingway and Faulkner in the trunk of his car. A man who’d been screwed by the system that should have saved him, but had survived anyway. A man who’d seen the insecurities in her heart and held her safe in his arms.

That man couldn’t just disappear. Not even after the callous way he’d taken her virginity then ridiculed her academic ambitions, called her a snob, and accepted her leaving without so much as a backward glance. He might be a prick when it came to relationships, but he wasn’t a killer. She wouldn’t believe it, no matter what people said.

And she couldn’t stand by and say nothing while the whole town decided he was guilty.

She got up just as Maggie came through the door from the shop. “I’m sorry. I know Carol’s not the most tactful person, but she’s got a point. Zane Thorson isn’t someone you should be
—
Wait, where are you going?”

“To fix something.” She hurried to the back door, then paused before opening it. “And don’t start in about Zane, Maggie. I’m telling you, he didn’t have anything to do with that girl.”

She flung the door open and strode outside. Before it closed, she heard Maggie yell after her, “There’s a lot about Zane Thorson you don’t know!”

Zane watched yet another official car drive through the gates and onto the field next to the equipment barn. How many people had to take a look at that plot of ground, anyway? Half of them spoke to someone, then turned around to look at him, too. He met their stares with cold eyes and crossed arms until they looked away again.

A team had searched the barn and the office, and another team was bringing in cadaver dogs to search the whole property. He allowed it, knowing cooperation counted for something, but that didn’t mean he trusted them. He followed them around with a small video camera, recording their lack of results along with the pointed glares he got in return. He figured the videotaping alone would have shot him right to the top of their suspect list if not for the fact that he already owned that spot.

He’d lost more than half a day’s work and it looked like he might lose some tomorrow, too. He couldn’t afford that.

“Thorson.”

He turned, frowning at the cop striding toward him. Losing the “Mister” didn’t bode well.

“That your white pickup over there?” the cop asked.

“Yes.”

“We’ll be needing the keys. You own any other vehicles?”

He took several seconds to bite back the fury that could only get him deeper in shit. “Just the heavy equipment.”

“Yeah, we’ll be needing the keys to that old dump truck, too.”

He gritted his teeth and asked, even though he already knew the answer, “Why?”

“They’re going to the lab. Gotta test for latent prints, fibers, blood, the whole spectrum.” He gave it a couple of seconds to sink in. “Those boys can find anything.”

Zane returned the cop’s hard stare as he reached into his pocket and handed over the keys. “Check the oil and washer fluid, too, will ya?”

He got one last deadly look before the guy walked off with his keys. Shit. What was he supposed to do for transportation? Not to mention hauling stuff to job sites. He estimated the cost of renting a pickup, weighed it against his bank balance, and called Will instead.

Two minutes later he breathed his first small sigh of relief that day. It wasn’t the first time, or even the hundredth, that he was thankful for his friendship with Will Chambers.

As he ended the call, two cops with black lights and fingerprint kits walked out of the office. It reminded him that he should probably collect some of the contact information that Annie kept in her desk, since they’d probably need it before the police were done looking through everything. “Hey, can I get in there now?”

“Nope.” The cop started unrolling yellow crime scene tape.

Zane clenched his jaw over the profane words he wanted to say. “When can I?”

“Can’t say.”

They’d been that helpful with everything. On a normal day he didn’t care to deal with the local cops. Today, it infuriated him. Letting it show would only make things worse, so he clamped his jaw shut and stalked back to the yard to tape the investigation there. They might not like it, but there weren’t too many other ways they could screw him over today.

He hadn’t gotten twenty feet when Sophie’s red Jeep crunched onto the drive and pulled in front of him. For a brief moment his spirits rose with a deeply ingrained and undoubtedly masochistic pleasure at seeing her, until he remembered she was a persistent pain in the ass.

She slammed the door and came around to intercept him. The pink John Deere cap was gone, and he kind of missed it. It suited her.

He kept his expression neutral. “What’d you forget?”

“I need to talk to you.” Her steel-toed work boots crunched over the gravel much like her tires had. “I came to withdraw my resignation. I’m taking my job back.”

He allowed a wry smile. “I realize you princesses are used to getting what you want, but you’re no longer in an ivory tower, and I’m no longer hiring.”

She frowned. “What do you mean, you’re not hiring? You need me.”

He did, but he needed her away from the impending legal explosion even more. She had no idea how much hatred swirled around the Thorson name in this town, and how damaging that association could be. The least he could do was protect her from that. “Things change. Go home, Sophie. I’ll have Annie mail you a check for your day and a half of work.”

He started toward the yard, but she jumped in front of him. “What’s your problem? Are you mad because I used the shovel arm?”

“You mean because you disobeyed my direct orders? That would be a good reason, but no.”

“Then why?”

He didn’t stop walking, and she had to skip backward to stay ahead of him, bobbing around enough to make him want to take her by the arms and hold her still. But touching her would bring back too many erotic memories; he stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Because you shouldn’t be part of this.”

“But I still need the job.”

He stopped to keep from bumping into her. For a brief moment her plaintive expression showed how desperate she was for money, stabbing unexpectedly at his heart. But she covered it before he could weaken, tightening her jaw and flashing her usual stubborn look. It was a good reminder that he shouldn’t trust her—she would use every tool at her disposal to get what she wanted. She had before. “You’re fired, Sophie. Deal with it.”

He stepped around her and walked away. He listened for the crunch of her footsteps, but heard nothing. Maybe she watched in dismay. More likely, she flipped him off. Either way, he was glad she was no longer part of what looked to be a long, messy tangle with the Barringer’s Pass police and the local rumor mill.