Up In Smoke: Spirit of the Soul Wine Shop Mystery (A Rysen Morris Mystery Book 3) (3 page)

Yeah.

Beatrice had been a good friend to Rysen most of her life, especially back when they were all girls together and Bea’s mom would babysit Rysen and Christina.  She had the classic girl-next-door looks, long body, angular face, deep blue eyes.  Her blonde hair had been long and wavy until just recently, when she’d had it cut.  Severely cut.  Hacked, might be the way to describe it.  Now it was all uneven and choppy.  Not a style that Rysen would have chosen for her friend.  It was almost like she’d gone after it herself in a fit of anger.

Which brought up the whole issue with the storm of emotions over who Josh was dating.

“Hi you guys,” Beatrice greeted them with a smile.  “Brandon!  Hi.  I didn’t know you were back in town.”

He nodded.  “I heard about the fire.  Decided to come and offer my help.”

Bea’s smile fell away.  “Oh, Christina, I’m so sorry about your shop.  I can’t believe something like that could happen!  This town used to be such a nice place to live, you know?”

Rysen knew exactly what she meant.  She just didn’t understand why Bea looked directly at her when she said it.

“We were just talking about what we were going to do,” Christina said with a heavy sigh.  “I don’t know.  I’m still stunned I guess.  I can’t stop thinking that if I had just been there, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”

“Nothing you could have done,” Brandon assured her.  “Like I said, the fire was set on purpose.  If they were scared to do it with both you and Rysen there, they would have just waited until the dark of night and set it then.”

“Unless they had a reason to set it during the day,” Rysen pointed out.  She still remembered the fear that had gripped her standing in that burning shop, the sound of the bottles exploding, the smell of the smoke.

Maybe whoever set the fire had wanted her to be there…

Brandon winked at her, approval in his eyes.  “That’s the Rysen I remember.  Always asking the right questions.”

“Wait a minute now,” Bea said, looking around the table at each of them.  “What do you mean, the fire was set on purpose?  I thought this was just an accident.”

“No.  It wasn’t.”  Christina shifted in her seat.  She picked up her cup of coffee finally but then just stared at it and set it back down.  “Someone did this to me, Bea.  Someone really wants me to fail.  They want my shop gone.  Maybe they want me gone, too.  I don’t know.”

“So,” Bea said slowly, “that means the insurance company won’t pay you for the damages.”

“Yup.  That’s what it means.  Isn’t that just fantastic?”

Rysen heard the desperation under her sister’s cutting sarcasm.  She put her hand over her sister’s wrist, trying to be comforting.  “Chris, we’ll figure something out.”

“Um, well.  Maybe I can help.”

All of them turned to Bea, who started fidgeting with a cloth napkin on the table.  She brushed her fingers back through her short hair with a shrug.  “I mean it, Christina.  I could help.  I want to expand my flower shop business anyway.  I was looking for another space to buy but you know how cramped everything is in Cambria.  Main Street is wall to wall shops.  I was looking over in Thornsburg and I found a decent place for sale, but if I could stay right here in town that would be even better.”

“So, two flower shops in town?” Rysen asked.  This was the first she’d heard of it.  Then again, she and Bea weren’t exactly speaking to each other these days.

“Why not?” Bea countered.  “There’s like, four wine shops in town, right?  Tourism is Cambria’s lifeblood.  Plus, I’m not looking to open the same kind of flower shop.  I was thinking about one of those places where you build your own stuffed animal.  I figure there’s always kids tagging along with their parents on vacation, and I think it could be a good return on my money.”

Rysen had to admit, it made sense.  Beatrice had always been good with business.  She’d inherited that from her mother.

Christina was still staring into her coffee.  Her eyes were damp with unshed tears.  It made Rysen want to cry for her.  “Christina?” she asked gently.  “What do you think?”

After a moment, her sister shook her head.  “I don’t know.  It might be my only chance to raise enough money to build another store, but where would I put it even if I get the money?  Bea’s right.  There’s no place to build on Main Street and if I build anywhere else the tourists might not even find us.  Plus, we have to pay off all the distributers who lost their product in our store.  I don’t know if a loan from the bank would even cover everything.”

Rysen didn’t have any money to speak of.  Certainly not enough to help her rebuild.  She wished it was different, but she had come back to town broke, and not much had changed as far as that situation went.  She had about three thousand dollars saved up to pay toward a place of her own and that was it.

But if her sister needed it, then Rysen would gladly give it.  “Christina—”

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Bea interrupted.  “I just want to help.  Think about my offer, at least?”

Rysen caught Brandon’s gaze.  He shrugged.  It wasn’t his decision to make.

Christina leaned over to give Beatrice a quick hug.  “Thanks, Bea.  I appreciate you trying to be there for us.  I’ll think about what you said.  Can I let you know in a few days?”

“Of course,” Beatrice said.  “Don’t decide now.  You’ve got a lot on your mind and I don’t want to add to your stress.  Is there anything else I can do for you?”

There wasn’t, and Christina said as much.  Beatrice got back up from the table to go.  “Would you mind if I came over to look at the shop later today?  I’d like to see what I’d have to do to renovate the place if you do decide to sell.”

“Beatrice,” Rysen said, shocked at their friend’s bluntness.  “Give us a couple of days, at least.  All right?”

Beatrice’s gaze narrowed at Rysen.  “Oh, I’m sorry.  I wouldn’t want to step in too early.  That would definitely be wrong of me, wouldn’t it?”

Rysen clamped her mouth around the snap answer she had been about to say.  Beatrice was still angry over Josh.  Rysen got that, but Josh and she had waited for a few days after Bea had broken things off with him.  Rysen had insisted on it, actually.

“It’s all right, Ry,” Christina said to her.  “I don’t mind.  Bea, we still have a few things to do in the store today.  Can you come tomorrow to look at it?”

With a smile and a toss of her uneven bangs, Beatrice nodded, then turned and left the diner without another word.

“You two need to work that out,” Christina said to Rysen.  “I don’t have the patience to be your mediator.  Not now.  Not after what just happened to my shop.”

“I don’t even know what to say to her anymore.  I thought she was over this.”

“Obviously not.”  There was a lot more Rysen wanted to say about it, but Christina changed the subject.  “Brandon, if you can find out who burned down my shop that would do a lot to settle my mind.  It might not matter in the long run, though.  If I can’t rebuild…”

The tears finally fell, and Christina took a moment to steady herself before she could go on.  “If I can’t rebuild,” she finished, “then it might be time to leave Cambria.”

Rysen had made herself believe it would be easier to see the destruction of the Spirit of the Soul this time.  She’d been wrong.

The charred walls.  The smoke staining the ruined ceiling.  The shelving units knocked over, broken bottles scattered across the floor.  Almost nothing had survived. 

Well.  Rysen had survived.  That had to count for something.

She and Christina took it all in again, then they started for the stairs down to the basement.  Neither of them talked about what they might find there. 

The door opened on creaky hinges.  Christina wiped soot from the handle off on her pants.  The stairway down used to be brightly lit from overhead, but now the electricity had been cut off and it was blacker than pitch down there.

Rysen turned on the flashlight they had brought with them.

The beam showed them the cellar, just like she remembered it.  Dusty stone walls.  Racks of wine bottles laying on their sides at an angle meant to keep sediments from collecting at the bottom.  Wooden crates.  Oak barrels.

It was like the fire had never reached down here at all.

Rysen whistled.  “Wow.  That’s lucky.”

“Sure,” her sister commented.  “I feel so blessed.”

Water dripped from the basement ceiling here and there like little raindrops.  Otherwise, it was all untouched by the blaze that had swept through overhead.  “This is a lot of stock down here,” Rysen pointed out.  “That’s money we don’t have to pay out.  Maybe we can even sell what’s left.”

“You mean, money
I
don’t have to pay out.  Ry, this isn’t coming out of your pocket.  I’m ruined.  I’m done.  I just don’t know what to do.”

She sat down on one of the upright barrels, hands on her knees, looking around at everything the flashlight illuminated.  “You know the funny thing?  The shop hadn’t only started to turn around this month.  We were barely covering expenses.  A fire and an insurance payout would have solved everything.  I would have enough money to pay off all of my bills and enough left over to live on while I figured everything out.”

Rysen was shocked.  This was the first she was hearing of this.  Christina liked to do the books all on her own, and she rarely let Rysen look at them.  Everything had seemed fine.

She felt sorry for her sister.  Here she’d been wishing for this exact tragedy to happen, and now that it had, she couldn’t even take advantage of it.  She must be racked with guilt.

“Sis, you know there was nothing you could have done.  If you were here, I mean.”  She scanned the flashlight around the room so she wouldn’t be shining it right on Christina.  The stone walls looked so solid.  Hard to believe the rest of the building had burned so easily.  “You couldn’t have done anything.  This is not your fault.”

Of course, Christina hadn’t been here.  She’d been off doing errands.  Good thing, too.  If Rysen hadn’t noticed the smell of smoke in time, who knew if she even would have made it out alive.

That same nagging thought from earlier came back to her.  About the timing of the fire.  She pushed it away again, because she had to be wrong.

She had to be.

She was just too afraid to ask.

“What do you want to do with all of this?” she asked instead.

The sound of Christina sliding down off the barrel was loud in the room, punctuated by the plink-plink-plink of water droplets.  “We should box it up and take it out.  You’re right about that.  We could sell it online or out of the back of my car or something.”  She managed a laugh.  “We can store it at the house for now.”

“The spare room can hold most of it.  If we box it right.”  Neither of them made any move to leave.  “What do you think about Beatrice’s offer?”

“It’s the only offer we have so far.”

“That doesn’t make it the right offer.”

The flashlight came back around in time to catch Christina’s shrug.  “I’m thinking about it.”

“Let me and Brandon work on it?” she urged.  “Please?  Just for a couple of days.  If we don’t find anything I’m sure Beatrice will still be willing to buy the building.”

“I don’t want to sell my shop, Ry.”

“But you may have to.”

Her sister came over and hugged Rysen, holding on and taking several slow breaths before she let go.  “I can’t believe the shop is gone.  Who would do this to us?”

They kept coming back to the same questions.  Why.  Who.  Rysen had already decided she would find out.  Like she did with the thefts from the shop and the poison that nearly killed Christina.  This time, she would find out the whole truth.  Not just part of it.  There was someone working terrible plans in the background and none of them knew why. 

Rysen would find out.  No matter who it turned out to be.

***

They could only bring a few boxes of wine home with them tonight.  They took the more expensive bottles and packed them in empty crates and carefully stacked them in the back of Christina’s car.  Another three boxes went into Rysen’s.  They drove back home slowly, somberly, obeying all of the traffic laws and signaling for every turn.  It was not a happy night.

When she saw Josh’s car in the driveway she allowed herself to hope it might get better.

Just goes to show where hope will get you, she told herself later.

The evening was cool and crisp.  The sun was painting the horizon red and the sky above was a deep, dark blue.  It was a perfect setting to come home and see Josh sitting on the front porch in an old lawn chair Christina had put up there a few weeks back.  He smiled as Rysen got out of her car and she flew across the yard and up the steps and into his arms.

“Boyfriend!”  She kissed his face over and over.  “I didn’t think you were coming over tonight.  Didn’t you have this great plan about going home and sleeping until Hell froze over?”

He caught her lips with his and made her knees go weak.  “I was going to go straight home but then I heard about Christina’s shop.  I wanted to see how you guys were doing.”

“Thanks, Josh,” Christina said, coming up behind them onto the porch with one of the boxes of wine in her hands.  “Really.  I appreciate it.”

“Sure, Christina.  Is there anything I can do to help?”

She handed her box over to him.  “Yes.  You can help by bringing in these boxes.”

They had them all inside and stacked up in the spare room in the next fifteen minutes.  Rysen watched Josh as they worked.  He was a strong, good looking man with his sandy brown hair and his ripped physique.  She liked the way his arms flexed in his shirt and his ass moved in those jeans.  He caught her looking a few times, and the little curl of his lips told her how much he enjoyed it.

Comparisons to Brandon came and went in her mind.  It was frustrating.

Christina went to bed right after they were done, explaining that she was tired.  Rysen knew it was probably true.  She was tired herself.  She also knew that Christina had really retreated to her bedroom because she wanted to give Rysen and Josh some alone time.

Curled up on the couch next to him, wrapped up in his arms with her legs laid over his, she was really enjoying alone time with Josh.

His lips were so warm and soft on hers.  One hand held her behind her neck, tucked into her hair, while his other hand stroked her leg up to her hip.  His breath slid across her cheek.  It was a perfect moment and all she wanted to do was stay like this all night long.

“You must be tired,” she finally whispered against his mouth.  Was he stealing her breath away?  It certainly felt like it.

“I am tired,” he admitted, his whisper loud in her ears.  “I ain’t slept in nearly twenty-four hours.  I’ll go to bed later.  Right now I want to spend some time with you.  For crying out loud, Ry, you were in a fire yesterday.  I was stuck at work, and you could have been hurt.”

“I wasn’t,” she reminded him.

“But you could’ve been.  Every time I turn around it’s like you get yourself in danger all over again.”

“I don’t do it on purpose.”

“Sure you don’t.”  He laughed, and his fingers felt up under her shirt, stroking the sensitive skin at the small of her back.  “You’re always the one in the middle of things.  You look for trouble.  You ask all the right questions, then you let the answers lead you wherever.  Even if it’s the middle of a burning building.”

“That’s funny,” she murmured, leaning in closer to kiss him again.  “That’s just what Brandon said.”

Josh’s head jerked back away from her.  “Brandon?”

Oh, hell.

“Um.  Yes.  That Brandon.  He’s back in town.  He heard about the fire too and then drove in to see if he could help find out how it happened.”

He was very silent and very still for a long moment.  Then he intentionally slid his legs out from under her to slide down to the far end of the couch.  “And you talked to him?”

It suddenly felt colder in the room.  Rysen folded her arms.  “Of course I spoke to him.  He was in the shop today when Christina and I got there.”

“I see.  So what did wonder boy find out?”

“Don’t do that,” she said to him.  “Don’t call him names.  He’s here to help.”

“I thought that’s what I came here to do.”

“Josh.”

“Fine.  What did he find out?”

Rysen sighed.  She could see where this was heading.  “He found out that the fire was intentionally set.  Dad agreed with him.”

“Well, I guess it helps when your father is the fire chief.”

She relaxed a little, but only a little.  “It didn’t seem like that when I was a girl.  It seemed like having a fire chief for a father kept me from doing anything I wanted to do.  So, anyway, the fire was intentional.  It was arson.”  He stayed where he was, miles away from her on the other end of the couch.  “Look, Josh, we didn’t ask Brandon to come back.  He just did.  All on his own.”

“Why am I having trouble believing that?”

His words hurt.  She had pushed aside her feelings for Brandon.  Josh knew that.  At least, he should know that.  Rysen didn’t want to keep explaining herself to him over and over again.  “I said, we didn’t call him.”

“Whatever.  I should get home and get some rest.  It’s been a long day.”

When he stood up to leave she almost wished he would just stay and argue with her.  At least that way they could talk about it.  “Josh.  Don’t be like this.  Please?”

“Like what?  Worried that my girlfriend is going to leave me for another man?  Isn’t that exactly what I should be worried about?  It ain’t like you try very hard to keep your hands off him whenever he’s around.”

“Josh!”

“Well, it’s true.  The last time he was here I caught you two kissing.  Twice!”

She folded her arms across her belly.  “We don’t do that anymore.”

That could have come out better, she thought to herself.

They had left the lights down low in the living room while they snuggled with each other.  In the dim glow of the one lamp Josh stared down at her.  It was impossible to see his eyes.

When he came over to her, it was to lean down and kiss her cheek.  “I’m sorry, Ry.  I shouldn’t doubt you like that.  I don’t like that he’s back, but I’ll trust you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.  It’s you and me.  I promise.”

The touch of his fingers on her cheek felt so nice.  It spread warmth through her whole being and lit a fire in her heart.  “You don’t have to go home, you know.  You could stay here.”

He made a small noise against the side of her neck where his mouth tickled her.  “Might have to take you up on that.  I am really tired.”

“Are you?”  She took him by the hand and eased him back down onto the couch.  He shifted and settled and ended up half on top of her, a comfortable weight in the near dark.

“Not that tired, I guess,” he told her, his breath shallow, his voice quiet.

Suddenly they were breathing the same air and touching each other everywhere and if he’d been tired before, he made up for it now.

When the lights snapped on Rysen hastily tugged her shirt back down into place. 

Josh pushed himself up, scurrying down to the end of the couch, combing his hair into place.  Damn it, Rysen thought to herself.  Just when things were getting good.

She twisted around to see her sister standing on the other side of the room, one hand still on the light switch, a look of “oops” on her face.

“Sorry, Ry,” she said.  “I thought Josh had gone home already.”

She was in her heavy blue pajamas with the oversized buttons on the front.  Her hair was mussed up.  She’d been to bed, apparently, but now she was back downstairs.  “What’s up?” Rysen asked, folding her hands in her lap and trying to look like nothing was going on even as her heart was pounding hard enough in her chest that she was sure Christina must have heard it.  “I figured you’d be fast asleep after the day we had.”

“I was,” Christina agreed, deciding it was safe to come into the room now.  She perched on the chair next to the couch, on her knees, talking excitedly with her hands.  “Then I had a dream and it spooked me and I woke up, and I couldn’t shake it, and I…”