Dark Burning: Dark Falls, CO Romantic Thriller Book 6 Page 4

  Her head shot up and she narrowed her eyes on him. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. You need to back off this case and let us do our jobs. When we have something, we’ll let you know.”

  It was a nice offer. A good offer. One she should be glad to have. He was essentially telling her he’d give her a heads-up any time they had something newsworthy on the case. It wasn’t an offer he’d make to anyone else, even with the way they tried to share with the press when possible.

  But he needed her out of his hair. She was a distraction to him. One he should be able to fight off, yes, but a distraction nonetheless. It would make his life easier if he could know she wasn’t going to turn up everywhere he went. So, he’d share whatever news he had with her when he could.

  It was a good offer. He realized he was repeating his thoughts and cursed her effect on him again.

  Her eyes flashed and she opened her mouth, indignant anger brewing in her gaze. “I’m doing my job, Detective.”

  She loved to emphasize his title now that she knew it. She’d told him she had no idea he was a cop that first day they met. He called bullshit and then some on that one. It was common knowledge Leo’s Bar was a cop hangout. Common knowledge badge bunnies could go there for a hookup.

  He opened his mouth, but she didn’t let him get a word in. He had kept his voice low as they spoke, but she didn’t seem to be concerned with who heard their argument.

  “I’m not doing anything that’s interfering with your investigation,” she hissed, “and there’s not a damned thing you can do about me taking information that’s within the public realm and hunting down leads. It’s not my fault I’m better at it than you.”

  Eric stood, rearing back at the words. “Better at it than me?” He laughed. “You think you’re better at my job than I am? Is that what you’re saying?”

  She had more nerve than he thought.

  Eric opened his mouth, stepping in again.

  “Mom?”

  He looked down to find a skinny boy with dark black hair. His hair didn’t match Merritt’s cinnamon red, but the eyes sure did. The rich brown color and shape of them couldn’t be explained away as anything other than familial relationship.

  The boy slid his hand into Merritt’s, anxious eyes going from Merritt to Eric and back again. “Why is the man yelling at you, mom?”

  Merritt looked struck at the question and glanced around the room.

  Hell. The whole damned place was staring at them. Card games had stopped. Conversations hushed. All eyes were turned their way.

  The little boy’s chin was doing that shaky thing that meant he was getting ready to cry and Eric realized he’d been an idiot for confronting Merritt. What was he thinking? They were in the middle of a public place and he was reaming her out.

  He knelt to the boy’s level and put his best smile on his face. The one he used when he wanted to charm grandmothers into serving him cookies and milk during interviews.

  “Oh, it wasn’t nothing, little man. We were just bickering about pizza.”

  “Pizza?” The boy looked up at Merritt.

  She nodded, shooting a look at Eric that said he was indeed as stupid as he felt. Still, she hadn’t come up with anything better herself.

  “Pizza,” she confirmed. “Detective Cantu was just telling me he doesn’t like pepperoni pizza. Says it’s broccoli and mushrooms on his pizza or nothing.”

  Eric made a face that told her how he felt about vegetables on his pizza. “Your mother’s pulling your leg. She was saying tomatoes and artichokes are the only way to go on a pizza and I was telling her a pizza isn’t worth the crust it’s cooked on if it doesn’t have a pound of sausage and pepperoni. And it’s even better if you can get sweet sausage and hot sausage on the same pie like they make over at Andrighetti’s.”

  “Andrew who?”

  Eric couldn’t help it. He laughed. The boy had screwed up his face in a confused little twist as he struggled with the name.

  “Andrighetti’s. It’s the best pizza place in Dark Falls.”

  The kid nodded solemnly. “Pizza is important. We haven’t settled yet. Mom says we’ll get settled soon. I think finding a good pizza place is part of settling in.”

  Merritt came forward and put a hand on her son’s shoulder, and when Eric looked up he saw her eyes had calmed. She was focused on her son now, not on Eric.

  “Sorry, Collin. No pizza today. You’ll need to remember to keep your teeth to yourself if you want pizza.”

  Eric felt his brows go up. “Who’d you put your teeth on?”

  Collin looked down. “Davey. But he took my—”

  Merritt cleared her throat at her son and he stopped mid-sentence. Eric picked up on the gist of her correction.

  “No excuse for biting.” He paused after the words came out and rethought the statement. “Unless someone is hurting you physically. If someone is hurting you, you can bite.” He glanced up at Merritt and saw her give a slight nod.

  Eric shoved back and stood in one move. How the hell had he lost complete control of the situation? He’d come in here to make it clear to Merritt that she needed to back off their investigation and let them do their job, and now he was … he didn’t know what he was doing.

  He gave her a look and then gave the boy a small smile. “Keep your teeth in your mouth, kid.”

  He turned away, wondering when, if ever, he would be back to normal. Whatever had happened when he got in bed with Merritt McKenna, it wasn’t something he was able to shake easily, and he didn’t like that one bit.

  John came into the room, Mrs. Johnson, leaning on one arm.

  “Oh, Mrs. Johnson,” Merritt said, going to the older woman as she tapped on her phone. “I got the name of that company for you. My boss says they specialize in fire and smoke cleanup.”

  Eric watched as Merritt led the woman to a table and started writing down information for her. Merritt seemed to have her hands full, but she was making the time to help someone else. Even if she was doing it to try to get information for her story, it was a nice thing to do.

  Dammit, he didn’t like the feeling in his chest at all. He didn’t like any of this one freaking bit.

  Chapter Seven

  He put the article up on the wall, pressing the tape at the corners so it would stick.

  “Will, what have you got there?” His mother had come in again when he wasn’t looking and he jumped at the sound of her voice.

  He finished tacking up the article. “She understands,” he said pointing to the article. Merritt McKenna had noticed his fires long before anyone else had. She’d told the world what he was doing.

  He didn’t know how she’d seen it when no one else had, but that had to mean something, didn’t it?

  His mother came to stand next to him. She wasn’t leaning on her walker anymore. He scrunched his face in confusion. She had needed her walker for the last five years. Shouldn’t she have it?

  Was she getting strong again?

  He looked around the room, then back at his mom. She hadn’t been there a minute ago. Where had she come from?

  She peered at the articles he had tacked up. “I don’t like these fires, Willie,” she said, backing away. “I don’t like this. I smell the fire all the time now. I don’t like it.”

  He turned and put his hands up, trying to calm her the way he used to be able to when she was upset. “It’s okay, mom. I’m taking care of things for you now.”

  His eyes darted to the closet. “I’m taking care of all of it.”

  Chapter Eight

  As they walked back out to their car, Eric pulled up his texts and read one from Rhys Evans, one of the detectives in Major Crimes with them.

  “Rhys tracked down a lead for us. Says there’s a real estate agent who had listings for two of the houses our arsonist hit early on. The contracts were several years ago before the owners abandoned the properties, so no one picked up on them before.”

  John used the remote to unlock the doo
rs and each slid into the SUV, John behind the wheel. “He send us a name?”

  Eric scrolled down and continued reading. “Yep, and the address for the guy’s office. Also said the guy was the agent who listed Mrs. Johnson’s rental that sat on the market for so long. That gives him a connection to three of our target properties.”

  He punched the address into their unit’s navigation system and buckled his seatbelt as John pulled out onto the road.

  Eric used the time on the drive to pull up the real estate agent’s information. “Don Nicholl works for one of the bigger real estate agencies in town, Falco Realty. He’s fifty-two and handles sales and rentals on residential properties. Looks like he’s been with the company since 2001. Doesn’t handle commercial properties as far as I can tell, so he wouldn’t have a connection to the warehouse property.”

  “Maybe someone else in his office?” John asked as he merged onto the highway.

  Eric scrolled through the website for Falco Realty. “Owned by Ben Falco. They have a couple of agents who handle residential and commercial property and more who handle only residential. Let me ask Rhys to look into it.”

  He sent a text to Rhys before tucking his phone back into his pocket. It was the first connection they’d been able to find between all of the properties. Their first thought with the fires had been that they were vandals or kids screwing around. It was possible that’s what was going on, but with the movement up to an occupied residence, Eric didn’t think so. This had the feeling of someone who was practicing before perfecting technique or getting up the nerve for something else, maybe?

  They had ruled out any insurance connection early on and, so far, hadn’t found any overlap or connection between the owners of the properties or the properties themselves, other than the fact they’d all been abandoned.

  “I get the sense we’ve been looking at practice runs until now,” Eric said. “Like our guy was warming up, and now he’s going after the real thing.”

  John nodded. “But what is the real thing? Why this house? Jaylen Johnson hardly seems like the kind of person to be targeted for something like this. Same with the Chos.”

  Many arsonists had a personal or revenge motive in choosing their targets. Or something along the lines of a hate crime, a racial or social motivation. Here, they had none of those things. At least not that they could identify so far.

  Their guy wasn’t trying to cover up another crime or profit from an insurance claim. At least not that they’d been able to uncover.

  “What did Mrs. Johnson have to say? Anything there?”

  John shook his head, no. “Not that I can see. She and her husband lived in the house for five years. He worked as an electrician but retired a year after they moved into the house. She told me all about the woodworking and carpentry he took up after he retired. It was sad, really. Seems like he retired, found something he loved, then died. Cancer.”

  Eric didn’t say anything. What could you say to that, really? Mrs. Johnson had mentioned kids earlier. He wondered where they were and if they visited her in the home.

  He ignored the stab of guilt that tried to wheedle its way in at the thought of his own mom. She was in a home similar to the one Mrs. Johnson was in. He made sure her bills were all paid and she got the care she needed, but he didn’t visit. Ever.

  Still, totally different situation. Unless Mrs. Johnson had also cheated on her husband, lied repeatedly to her kids, and drove her husband to drink himself to death.

  Didn’t seem likely. Eric’s mom was one of a kind.

  John pulled into a small parking lot behind a bright yellow house with hot pink shutters and trim. A large stone sign on the front yard proclaimed it Falco Realty. Eric pulled himself out of his thoughts and back to the case. He stared in near-horror at the paint on the house. It was truly astonishingly tacky.

  “There once was a real estate man, who got ahold of some paint in a can,” Eric said.

  John grinned at him. His partner was used to his limericks.

  Eric kept going with the rhyme. “The paint was so bright, it caused quite a sight.” He paused, looking up at the sky. “Or maybe blight should go there. There once was a real estate man, who got ahold of some paint in a can. The paint was so bright, it caused quite the blight. He probably should have gone with plain tan.”

  “Retch tan,” John said with another smile and they both knew what he was talking about. The paint in their conference room at the precinct could easily have been named retch tan.

  Chapter Nine

  Don Nicholl was slimy. Not literally.

  Figuratively, though, he had that slimy appearance Eric always associated with salesmen. And he supposed that’s what he was. He was a salesman of homes instead of cars, but a snake oil pusher just the same.

  “What can I do for two of Dark Falls’ finest?” Don gestured to two chairs with a wide smile and then sat behind his desk. This was the kind of over-the-top offer of help they got from people sometimes. It didn’t necessarily mean this guy was guilty of something, but it set Eric’s teeth on edge.

  The bright yellow house had been turned into offices. They were currently at a desk in the far corner of what would have been the living room back when the house had been a home. The room held two rows of four desks each, all piled nearly one on top of the other. There were rows of filing cabinets along the back wall and the desk they were at now was in the row closest to the cabinets.

  “We need to ask about some properties you were involved with four years ago,” John said.

  Eric watched as the smile slipped momentarily before Don pulled it back into place.

  “Involved with?” A nervous laugh toppled out before Don could control it. “Uh, well, I can try. What properties are we talking about? I handle quite a few each year and four years is quite a while back.” He reached his left hand out and straightened some folders on his desk.

  Eric wondered if Don was left-handed. The information told him nothing so far as this case was concerned, but it was something Eric noted when he observed people. You never knew when a small detail like that could lead to something.

  John pushed his notepad across the desk to the man. Don looked down at the addresses and seemed to squint in recollection.

  “Well, now, let’s see.” He turned to one of the filing cabinets behind him, then shoved his rolling chair to the right, moving to another low cabinet. The floors of the old home were wood planked but they had buckled slightly over time, and the rolling chair made a thunking sound as it crossed the planks. The noise would drive Eric nuts if he had to listen to it all day but no one else in the room seemed to notice.

  Don pulled one folder out of a drawer before moving further down the cabinets to another.

  Did they really not do all this electronically? Eric shook his head. Sure, he assumed they had people sign things in paper, but wouldn’t they have files in the computer? Things they’d at least scanned in?

  Then again, he looked around the old house converted to an office and thought maybe they really preferred things old-school here.

  When Don had found a second folder, he rolled back, thunk thunk, to the desk and spread things out in front of them.

  “Let’s see,” he said again as he scanned the papers in one folder, then the other. “Oh yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh.”

  Eric pressed his lips together, locking them between his teeth. He’d be doing an impersonation of Don back in the office for sure.

  “Okay, yeah,” Don said looking up at John and Eric. “Okay, I remember these properties. What can I do you for?”

  John was better at suppressing his grin than Eric was, but Eric could still see one at the corner of his partner’s mouth, itching to come through.

  “Let’s start with the property off Rockridge. What can you tell us about that one?”

  Don rattled off things they already knew. The owner was a Mr. Ryan Kettering. He’d had it listed for sale for six months with no offers and then the property was left to rot. The bank fo
reclosed on it but even they let it sit there when it didn’t sell.

  “When did Mr. Kettering terminate his contract with you?” John asked.

  “He didn’t. He just stopped answering calls one day. I wanted him to lower the price on the listing, but he wouldn’t do that. He was upside-down on his mortgage.” He looked at them like they needed that explained and said, “he owed more than the place could be sold for. He was just hoping some idiot would buy the place without running the comps. Comparable properties.”

  “Why didn’t the bank sell it? Don’t they usually sell foreclosures for a good price just to recoup some of the money?” John asked.

  The agent shrugged. “Could be they just foreclosed on too many properties to sell at the time. There was a time they were foreclosing on things left and right here. Some of them, they let sit because it wasn’t even worth trying to turn them over again.”

  “And the other house?” Eric prompted.

  “Same story. Bought something they couldn’t afford then couldn’t sell it and cover their debt. That owner, a Mrs. Natalie Bouvier,” he said, looking down at his notes, “she called me and told me she was taking it off the market. I heard sometime later that she’d left the property sitting there. Neither had a nibble. The houses weren’t in places that could be rented easily and they both needed a lot of repair. The land wasn’t worth anything that far out of town.”

  Eric already knew the houses weren’t close to one another, but they were both out in remote areas. It was what they shared in common.

  “Are you aware that both of those properties burned down recently?” he asked.

  Don’s face went slack. “Burned?”

  “Arson,” Eric added.

  “Someone set them on fire?” Don gave another nervous laugh. “Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  Eric believed him. They questioned him a little longer, but there was nothing jumping out at him that said this guy was related to their fires.