“Well, call me if you need anything. I’ve talked with Tom Oliver, and he and his crew should be at your house when you arrive.”
When Sarah parked at the curb beside her house, a white van and a red pickup truck were already there. Three men in work clothes leaned on the van, talking and laughing together. As she exited her car, a middle-aged man in jeans and a tee shirt emerged from the pickup and walked toward her. He was clean-shaven. Brown hair in a brush cut. His face was pleasant but unremarkable. Average build. Sarah decided that an hour from now she’d be hard-pressed to describe him.
He stopped in front of her and held out his hand. “Tom Oliver.”
She took the proffered hand. “Sarah Gordon. Thank you for coming out on a weekend, Mr. Oliver,” she said.
“It’s Tom. And when people need us, they need us right then. Besides, Kyle’s pretty persuasive, and I owe him something,” he said. Then he pointed to the three men by the van. “Darrell, Carl, and Louie are ready to get started. Why don’t we see how much work we have to do?”
Sarah led Oliver inside. She was curious about the apparent debt Oliver owed Kyle, but decided not to pursue it right now. Instead, she briefly told him about the fire, where it had been located, and the fireman’s description of the damage as mainly cosmetic. “So, can you take care of this?” she said, waving her hand in the general direction of the soot-blackened wall in the kitchen.
“If the fire chief’s right and there’s no structural damage, we start by dealing with the residual smoke stains and soot. Ridding the house of most of the smell will take at least a day. We’ll shampoo the carpets, use fans and vacuum extractors, probably apply some air freshener, whatever it takes.”
“What will it take to get everything back like it was before the fire?”
“Just a little more work and expense. We’ll get rid of the smoke smell first. We may need to replace some of the carpets—I’ll have to see what they’re like after we shampoo them. We wash down the affected walls and treat them with a chemical that further neutralizes the smoke smell. Finally, we apply fresh paint. Of course, you’ll be trading the smell of smoke for the smell of paint, but that won’t last long, and pretty soon everything should be back like it was.”
No, the house will never again be like it was when Harry and I bought it, but at least I can remove the traces of this invasion. “What’s ‘pretty soon’?”
“Three days at the outside, probably less, certainly no more,” Oliver said.
“Do it.”
“Well, it’s going to cost—” he started to say.
“Never mind. I’ve already talked with my insurance agent. He told me that, beyond my deductible, everything is covered. Just do the best you can, and do it as quickly as possible.”
“I’ll get right on it,” Oliver said. “Should we start now, or wait until you get stuff together to move out? I presume you’ll be staying with a friend or at a hotel.”
Sarah repeated what she’d said before—no one was going to drive her out of her home. But even while she was saying it, she wondered if she wasn’t being stubborn without any valid reason. Well, whatever her motivation, she was staying put.
Oliver frowned. “Suit yourself,” he said. “If there’s anything you need from the kitchen, I suggest you get it now. We’ll probably be working in there for a while.”
Sarah didn’t have much appetite when she and Kyle went to lunch, and she still wasn’t hungry, but maybe she should eat something anyway. She stood in front of the refrigerator, but nothing caught her fancy. After about five minutes, she picked up an orange and wandered into the living room.
She had just started to peel the fruit when her cell phone rang. Sarah put the orange on an end table before she answered.
“I just heard,” a familiar voice said. “Are you all right?”
Sarah felt a twinge of conscience because she hadn’t thought to call Connie Douglas, who was both a friend and colleague. Connie had been an ER nurse for a number of years. Her hair was white, and Sarah initially took Connie to be much older than her late-forties. Later Connie revealed that her hair color had turned from blonde to silver-gray almost twenty years ago. Maybe it was because the prematurely white hair gave her an air of wisdom, it could have been the common-sense advice Connie gave, but Sarah treasured their friendship. The nurse had been a rock during the days and weeks after Harry’s death, and Sarah regretted that she hadn’t contacted her friend with news of this latest event.
“I’m fine, Connie. I’m sorry I didn’t call you,” Sarah said. “I’m not sure I was ever in any danger. It was just a fire among some oily rags in my garage.”
Connie leaped right to the point Sarah had ignored last night. “You don’t ever keep stuff like that around. Do you think the fire was deliberately set?”
Sarah wished she could go back, hit the “reset” button, rewind the tape, do something to make all this go away. She didn’t want to talk about it. She wished it had never happened. But Connie’s question was cloaked in genuine concern, and she deserved a straight answer. “Yes, the fire chief told me that last night. I was at the police department this morning giving a detective my statement about the fire.”
“Did you tell them about the harassment that went on before this?”
“Connie, I’m still not thinking straight, I guess, but what harassment are you talking about?”
“Sarah, you told me about these things when they happened. You just haven’t put it together. Think back to the phone calls after midnight. And what about the time someone was sneaking around outside your house?”
Sarah realized Connie was right. Maybe the events her friend had mentioned were connected to the fire. She’d ignored these things, pushed them out of her mind when they happened. They’d started after the deaths of her husband and daughter, and she guessed she was still too much in shock at her loss to realize they might all be tied together. At that time Sarah had tried to put an innocent face on each incident, but now she wondered if maybe the fire last night was simply the latest gesture in a series aimed at her.
She had poured a glass of water while looking for something to eat and brought it to the living room with her. Now she reached for the glass that sat beside the unpeeled orange on the end table. Sarah took a couple of swallows, but the dryness didn’t leave her throat. “I guess you’re right. And I suppose that means I need to call Bill Larson back.”
“Well, I won’t keep you from making the call. But don’t forget to stay in touch,” Connie said.
Sarah promised to do that, and quickly ended her call. Then she took a couple of deep breaths, pulled out the card Bill Larson had given her, and punched in the number. “Bill . . . Detective Larson? This is Sarah Gordon again. A friend has reminded me of some other things that might be helpful in your investigation.” Some things that may mean there’s someone trying to frighten me . . . or worse.
Chapter 3
3
Bill Larson hadn’t been home since he received the phone call twelve hours ago. Since then, other than his time at Sarah Gordon’s house, he’d felt almost chained to his desk and the surrounding parts of the squad room. It was time to repair the damage. That’s enough. If I look like I feel, I’ll frighten anyone who sees me.
He turned away from his computer, rose from his desk, and headed for the locker room. There, he pulled out the toiletry kit he kept in his locker. He did a quick above-the-belt wash with a wet cloth, then applied some Axe body spray. He wet a comb and ran it through his hair, although experience told him that five minutes later it would probably look unkempt again. As he observed himself in the mirror, he wondered idly when he’d have a chance to get a haircut. Finally, he changed into the clean shirt he kept in his locker. The same tie he’d been wearing would have