He’d spent the past two hours in an intensive meeting with the fire chief and two arson investigators from Little Rock. A pile of new notes littered his desk now, but the meeting had actually accomplished very little. The consultants had looked over every scrap of evidence on the Edstown fires, including a long visit to the most recent crime scene, but the conclusions they’d drawn hadn’t been much different from what Dan and Fire Chief John Ford had already figured out. Someone around here was deliberately setting fires and covering his tracks so well there was no way to tell who he was. Yet.
Pushing a hand through his brown hair—which felt shaggy to him, reminding him he needed to make time for a cut—he wondered how long it would take Lindsey to come snooping around in an attempt to find out everything that had been said in the meeting. He’d have to be suitably vague—resulting, he hoped, in an article that the locals would find reassuring. He was sure they’d be glad to know that arson experts had been consulted—he just wouldn’t tell them the experts hadn’t provided much assistance so far.
Sure enough, it was less than an hour later when Hazel buzzed him. “Got a reporter here from the Evening Star, Chief. Are you in?”
Hearing the dry humor in her voice, he knew the reporter was aware that Dan was in. He could still say no, of course. But he might as well get this over with. “Yeah, Hazel, send her in.”
He pushed his hand through his hair again and made a halfhearted effort to straighten his desk, making sure no confidential paperwork was visible. He wouldn’t put it past Lindsey to snoop through them when he wasn’t paying close attention.
But it wasn’t Lindsey who ambled into his office a couple of minutes later. This was a man—young, tall, lanky-limbed, a lazy smile gracing his squarish face and reflecting in his cool-gray eyes.
“Well, hey, Riley,” Dan drawled, telling himself he wasn’t really disappointed that it wasn’t Lindsey. One reporter was just like another one, he assured himself. “Is Lindsey busy bugging the fire chief? The mayor, maybe?”
“Lindsey took the day off.” Riley O’Neal arranged himself loosely in one of the chairs on the other side of Dan’s desk. “Cam sent me to find out if there are any leads on the arson story.”
“Lindsey took the day off?” Dan repeated, surprised. “Is she sick?”
“Not as far as I know. Some people have lives outside their jobs, you know.”
The barb was delivered with a grin. Like everyone else in Edstown, Riley was well aware of the police chief’s workaholic tendencies—although it was hardly a trait Riley shared. Riley’s philosophy was to do exactly as much work as necessary to survive, and to spend the rest of his time taking it easy.
Thirty years old, Riley had been working on a novel—or claimed to have been—since he’d graduated from college. He hadn’t grown up in Edstown, but his maternal grandparents had lived here, as did a favorite uncle who still maintained a home here. Riley had visited often enough as a boy that nearly everyone knew him even before he took the job with the local newspaper. He asserted that he liked the slower pace of small town life. Made it easier for him to find time to write, he’d explained.
Dan had always considered Riley a bit of an eccentric, a borderline loner, and a wiseass to boot—but for all of that, he rather liked him. Besides, Riley wasn’t nearly as pushy a reporter as Lindsey was, which made it easier to deal with him when Dan wasn’t in the mood to cooperate with the press.
So there was no reason at all to be disappointed that Riley had shown up when Dan had been expecting Lindsey. After all, if Lindsey moved away, Dan would have to get used to working with other reporters from the local paper.
He would miss her, he realized again, even as he answered Riley’s questions about the arson investigation. Lindsey was practically family to him. So it made perfect sense that the thought of no longer having her in his life left a rather hollow feeling inside him.
“So you’re no closer now to solving these arsons than you were a month ago?” Riley asked, his pen poised over the battered, reporter’s notebook he’d pulled from his jacket pocket. “And have the charges officially been upgraded to murder since Truman Kellogg died in that fire two months ago?”
Deciding he’d better concentrate on his answers before he slipped up and said something stupid, Dan pushed thoughts of Lindsey to the back of his mind and gave his full attention to Riley, reminding him that there was no proof yet that the Kellogg fire was linked to the others. Riley would let him get away with that—Lindsey would have kept pushing. Dan couldn’t help smiling wryly at the thought…and realizing again that he would miss her when—if—she left.
Holding the tip of her tongue between her teeth, Lindsey leaned close to the lit makeup mirror, an eyeliner gripped in her right hand. She swore when her hand twitched, smearing liner across her right cheek. “I can’t do this.”
Connie Peterson laughed and handed Lindsey a moistened makeup-remover pad. “Of course you can do it. It just takes a little practice—something most women do before they reach your age, by the way.”
Lindsey scowled, making it more difficult to remove the smudge. “I haven’t had time to mess with makeup. I’ve just slapped on mascara and blusher and lip gloss, and that always seemed like enough.”
“So why have you decided to change that now?” the makeup consultant, whom Lindsey had known since high school, asked curiously.
“Oh, you know…getting older. Trying not to show it.” Lindsey hoped her answer was suitably vague and believable.
Connie’s laugh came perilously close to a snort. “Yeah, right. You hardly look old enough to drive legally. I bet you still get carded every time you order a drink.”
Keeping her eyes fixed on the mirror, Lindsey painstakingly followed the directions Connie had given her for applying the eyeliner. The effort was a bit more successful this time. “So maybe I’d like to look my age.”
“It’s a guy, isn’t it?”
Lindsey’s hand jerked again, resulting in a matching liner smudge on her other cheek. She reached for the remover again. “Why does everyone assume I’m changing my appearance for a guy?”
“Because we’ve all done it,” Connie replied with a smirk. “You’ve got a great new hairstyle, and now you’re investing in war paint. Definitely a guy.”
“You’ve changed your appearance to try to attract a guy?” Lindsey eyed the brown-haired, brown-eyed woman curiously. Attractive and extroverted, Connie had always seemed so comfortable around men, always having a date for local events, and rumored to have bruised a few hearts during the years. Lately she’d been deeply involved with a man from a neighboring town, and there was broad speculation that this time it was starting to look permanent.
“Oh, sure. Remember when I tried bleaching my hair my senior year in high school? Major mistake—but I did it because Curtis Hooper said he liked blondes.”
Lindsey couldn’t help laughing. “Curtis Hooper? No kidding? I didn’t know you ever had a thing for Curtis.”
“Yeah, well, how was I to know he meant he liked blond men?” Connie shook her head in self-derision. “He really was cute. But maybe I should have gotten a clue, when the only thing he and I really had in common was that we both enjoyed putting on makeup?”
“You think?” The shared humor relaxing her, Lindsey decided Connie’s feminine insight might come in handy, as long as Lindsey was careful about how she worded her questions. “So, have you ever seen it work? A woman changing her appearance to get a man’s attention, I mean.”
“Oh, sure. Lots of times. A guy gets used to seeing someone a