Fire Raiser by Melanie Rawn Read Free Book Online

him.
    “Yeah. Evan knows he’s testifying next Thursday, right?”
    “I’ll make sure he’s freshly laundered and wearing a tie,” she promised.
    “He can arrive in a Santa Claus suit for all I care, as long as he’s on time. I want to get these people, Holly. They—” His pager and his BlackBerry went off at the same time. One hand fumbled at his belt while the other dipped into his breast pocket. The juggling act became more complicated when his cell phone shrilled from the vicinity of his right hip; he’d run out of hands and was in danger of dropping everything.
    Holly silently begged her husband’s pardon and reached for the back pocket of Jamey’s trousers, sternly forbidding herself to cop a feel while she was at it. The young man nodded gratefully, bless his innocent heart, as she answered the phone while he checked the other two electronic killjoys.
    She was astonished to hear her husband’s voice. “You’re gonna want to get out to First Baptist right now. There’s been another fire.”
    “Evan? Me. The whole church burned down?”
    “Almost to the foundation,” he affirmed.
    “Anybody hurt?”
    “Not even a singe. It happened after choir practice ended—” Away from the phone, he yelled, “Luther, get me a list of the choir members, okay? I want to know if any of ’em saw anything last night.”
    Holly sighed. “Does that fall into the category of ‘long shot’ or ‘just plain hopeless’?”
    “You never know. What are you doing answering the kid’s phone?”
    “Let’s just say I was handy,” she said, knowing he’d hear the pun in her voice. “And if you don’t stop calling him that, eventually you’ll say it in court or something and he won’t like us anymore. Who reported the fire?”
    “Mrs. Clark and the ladies changed their cleaning day this week. They called about twenty minutes ago. So help me, Holly, we gotta get some kind of alarm system set up for places like this. Way out here on undeveloped land—”
    “—which they got cheap because nobody wants it,” she added. “At night you’d have to be looking really hard to see a fireglow—and smoke wouldn’t show up at all.”
    “Cloudy last night, and no moon,” Evan agreed. “You’re not half bad at this. Luther!” he yelled again. “Send Charlotte to canvass the neighboring properties!” To Holly: “That’s in the ‘hopeless’ category, too. But if nobody saw or smelled anything—and most people around here get up at the butt-crack of dawn—then the place had burned out by sunrise. Shit! This means I gotta call in an arson guy.”
    “How about the Fibbies?”
    “Do I have to?” he whined.
    “Play nice,” she advised, grinning.
    “Do I have to? Listen, Holly, I gotta go. But could you check around a little? Probably another dead end, but I don’t have forty years of being familiar with this area. I’ll get Letisha looking into the Sheriff’s Office files, and if there’s anything similar anywhere in the tri-county area, but—”
    She knew what he was thinking. “I’ll ask Cousin Louvena over at the Record office. What she doesn’t know isn’t worth knowing, and if she knows something she can get the newspaper articles about it.”
    “You’re beautiful.”
    “I know.”
    “Gotta go. Tell Jamey to haul ass, and kiss Kirby and Bella for me. I may be late.”
    “Wake me up.”
    “Really late,” he warned.
    “Wake me up anyhow. ’Bye.”
    Sorting out Jamey’s gadgets and their information took an awkward while. After some more juggling—and an abrupt fall to the floor that could not have been salutary to the pager’s electronic health—he finally got the BlackBerry and its little stylus stashed in his jacket and the pager clipped to his belt.
    Holly held up his phone. “Why don’t I bring sandwiches out to you guys at the site?” she suggested. “I’m sure Evan hasn’t eaten, and probably nobody else has, either.”
    “Would you?” Jamey asked, abjectly grateful.
    She