Playing Dead in Dixie (20 page)

"I suppose it could have been an electrical glitch," Wes suggested.

"If everything else wasn't going on, maybe I'd buy that."

Wes pulled up at a stop sign and lingered a moment, though there was no traffic this late at night.  He turned to look at her, his slow gaze moving over her, taking in her soot-stained face and grimy clothes.

Dread slithered through her, cold and heavy.

Did he suspect her of setting the fire, too, like the fireman they'd met?

"The fire chief will call in arson investigators if he needs them."  Wes looked away finally, putting his truck in gear and crossing the intersection.   "We'll know soon enough."

Maybe too soon, Carly thought, if they couldn't provide another arson suspect before suspicion started to fall on the Stricklands.

Or on Carly herself.

Chapter Eleven

"Do you think Carly set the fire?"  Shannon startled Wes by voicing the fear that had swirled through his mind for the last hour, since Craig Levitt had put the thought in his head outside the burning store.  The fireman hadn't tried to hide his own suspicions.  Carly was an outsider.  New in town.  And the only person in the store at the time the fire started.

"Oh, God, you do," Shannon murmured, her eyes wide and scared.  "It can't be true."

Wes shook his head quickly.  "I don't think it is."

He couldn't figure out a motive for Carly to set fire to his uncle's store.  If she was trying to cover up something she'd done to the books, she'd have let them burn.  She hadn't stolen any money; he'd watched her double check the cash against receipts just a few minutes ago before she handed it over to him for safekeeping.  She'd insisted on doing it in front of him, to have a witness to verify that the totals matched.

Those weren't the actions of a thief.

Shannon put her head in her hands, her elbows propped on the kitchen table.  They'd been waiting for Carly to finish her bath for almost half an hour.  "I feel horrible for even saying it aloud.  She's been so good to me."

Wes patted her shoulder.  "I can't figure any reason she'd want to set a fire at the store.  I don't think she did it."

"Glad to hear it."  Carly's voice came from the kitchen doorway, low and tight.

He turned to look at her.  She was wrapped in a terrycloth robe, her hair tousled and wet.  Her expression was a mixture of pride and pain, sending guilt flooding through him.

He stood to face her.  "I wish you hadn't heard that."

Her chin angled higher.  "I'm glad I did."  She looked at Shannon.  "Did you wonder if I set the store on fire, too?"

"Don't do this."  Wes moved between them, blocking Shannon from Carly's view.  "The question had to be asked.  It was answered in your favor.  That's all you need to know."

She lowered her head.  "You're right.  I'd have wondered myself, if I were in your place."

He moved aside, letting her cross to the table and drop into the chair across from Shannon.

"Are you still feeling okay?" Shannon asked, her voice a little quavery.

Carly reached out and touched Shannon's hand.  "I'm feeling fine, now that I've washed off all the grime."

Shannon turned her hand to clasp Carly's.  "You should get some sleep.  You've had a hard night."

Carly shook her head.  "I'm too wired to sleep."

"You're the one who should be in bed," Wes said, holding out his hand to Shannon.  "Go ahead, I'll take care of Carly."

Shannon's pale lips curved as she took his hand and let him help her to her feet.  "I bet you will," she murmured close to his ear as she passed him on her way out of the kitchen.

Wes sat in the chair Shannon had vacated.  He licked his lips, trying to find something to say that would snap the tension coiling like a snake between them.

But Carly spoke first.  "Where'd you put the files?"

He blinked, surprised by the question.  "In your bedroom."

She stood up, moving toward the door.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Getting the files," she answered over her shoulder.

He caught up with her in the doorway of her bedroom.  He put his hand across the entrance, blocking the way.  "This can wait 'til Floyd gets back, can't it?"

She gazed up at him, her eyes shiny with determination.  "No, it can't.  Someone tried to burn down the hardware store because of whatever's in those files."

"You don't know that."

"Yes.  I do."  She ducked under his arm and went into the bedroom, heading for the duffel bag lying on her bed.

Wes caught her hand as she reached for the bag, pulling her around to face him.  He tried to keep his focus as the sweet, shower-fresh smell of her enveloped him, knocking the world off kilter.  "How can you know that?"

"Because the phone line was cut."

He let go of her arm, not following the logic.

She sank onto her bed and looked up at him.  "I couldn't figure out why someone bothered to cut the phone line. Nobody knew I was still at the store.  I don't have a car, and I cut off all the lights except the one in Floyd's office.  I even kept the door shut, in case someone could see the light from the front of the store."

"So?"

She threaded her fingers through her damp hair, pushing it back from her face.  His own fingers itched to follow, tangling in those dark waves.  "So if nobody knew I was there, why cut the phone line?  The power I could see; it would silence the fire alarm."

Wes sat next to her on the bed, finally starting to follow her logic.  "Right.  There's a battery back-up for the system, but it doesn't sound the alarm.  It only keeps the system going long enough to put in—"

"—a call to the fire department," they finished in unison.

"Which would go through the phone line," Wes added.

She nodded.  "Whoever set the fire knew that.  They cut both lines so that nobody'd get there in time to stop the fire."

Wes ran his hands across his face, a sick feeling churning in his gut.  "An inside job."

"Had to be."

"Why tonight, of all nights?"

She shook her head.  "Dumb luck?  Bad karma?"

Could that be the answer?  Wes's instincts told him no.  Too much of a coincidence.  "Who knew you were closing tonight?"

"Josh Scarborough.  Probably Janey Logan—she worked the afternoon shift."

"Did Sherry know?"

Carly turned her gaze to him.  "Yes."

Wes closed his eyes, the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach growing, changing into something dark and bitter.  The clues came together like slides in a projector, clicking across the screen in stark black and white images, one after the other.

Sherry, coming to his office with her suspicions about Carly on the basis of nothing more than a slip of notepaper.

Sherry, catching Carly and him at the store after hours on Saturday night, eyes full of suspicion.

Sherry, the only person with easy, daily access to the files and ledgers.

Right up to this very moment, he hadn't wanted to believe it.  He'd wanted to think Carly's suspicions were unfounded, that she'd work her way through the books and realize that something besides fraud was behind his uncle's failing business.

But Carly wasn't wrong.  Wes knew it gut deep.

It was the only explanation for the fire.  Someone wanted to destroy the files and ledger books because they were proof of whatever fraud had been perpetrated.  Someone who was almost certainly his old friend Sherry Mayfield Clayton.

As Carly reached for the duffel bag again, he stopped her, twining his fingers with hers.  "We don't have to go through those files tonight."

"I don't think I'll be getting much sleep anyway."

Wes squeezed her hand.  "I'm going to call Floyd at the bed and breakfast first thing in the morning so he and Bonnie can come on back and start dealing with the mess at the store.  We can talk to him about what we do next with the files.  I think it's time he's in on the investigation, don't you?"

"He's going to be so disappointed in me."  She nibbled her bottom lip.  "He'll probably fire me."

"Well, you won't take the fall alone, Jersey."  Wes tucked a damp strand of dark hair behind her ear.  "Thanks to the fire, probably nobody's going to be working at the store for a while."

She looked up at him, her brow furrowed.  "Oh no. Josh has a new baby.  He needs that money.  And Janey's been saving up so she could buy a car to replace the pile of rust she's been driving.  There's got to be some way to keep them working."

He wondered if she was listening to what she was saying.  The woman who didn't like to put down roots seemed to have them sprouting out all over.  "Well, there's plenty of clean-up to be done, and someone's going to have to rebuild the stockroom and the offices.  Floyd will probably do everything he can to keep everybody working."

Carly pulled her hand from his and tucked her knees up to her chest.  "Floyd's insurance is never going to cover the loss.  Since it's arson.  Enough people know the business has been having trouble.  It's going to look suspicious, especially since he was conveniently out of town at the time."

She was right, Wes realized, his heart sinking.  "I can explain away the overnight trip to Savannah, but we're definitely going to have to prove that there was some sort of fraud going on."

"We also have to prove who committed the fraud."

A new thought crossed Wes's mind.  One that apparently had yet to occur to Carly.

Her days of hiding behind an alias were over.

Though he'd been doing what he could on his own to figure out her real identity, she hadn't really committed a crime that he could legally investigate.  But now, she was a witness to a probable crime.  She'd probably be considered a suspect.  Even if Wes himself weren't obligated to investigate, there was no way she could avoid questions from the arson investigators or representatives from Floyd's insurance company.

And once she realized it, what would she do?

Wes had a real bad feeling he knew the answer.

Carly plucked at the canvas strap handles of the duffel bag.  "Are you sure I can't get started tonight?"

"Positive."  He rose to his feet and held out his hand.  "Know what you need?"

She took his hand and let him pull her to his feet.  "A trip to Tahiti and a million in spending money?"

"Hot chocolate with mini-marshmallows."

"Ooh, even better."  She scooted through the bedroom door ahead of him.

He glanced at his watch.  Ten-thirty p.m.  In about seven hours, he was going to have to put a call in to his uncle to let him know about the fire.  By eight or nine, the insurance company investigator would probably show up, wanting to ask questions.  The arson investigator would be right on his heels.

Seven hours to figure out the truth about Carly before she realized she was trapped and tried to make a run for it.

THE CHOCOLATE MILK HAD done the trick.  By eleven, Carly's eyelids started drooping, and it had taken little coaxing to put her to bed.  Once Wes was certain she was asleep, he headed out to his truck.

He arrived at the police station around eleven-twenty, surprising his two night shift officers in the middle of a game of poker.  He brushed away their guilty explanations and closed himself up in his office.

Okay.  Where to start?

Floyd knew Carly's real name.  He could call the bed and breakfast, say it was an emergency, and grill his uncle for the truth.  And maybe, if all else failed, he'd end up doing just that.  But he wanted to exhaust every other option first.  There was enough hell waiting for Floyd when he returned home without his being jarred from a dead sleep by a bad news phone call.

Wes unlocked his drawer and pulled out the file folder he'd been keeping since Carly arrived.  In it, he'd filed a record of every clue she'd given him.  He knew that she'd grown up in the southern part of New Jersey, in the general vicinity of Atlantic City.  She'd attended Richard Stockton University—he'd looked that one up on the internet, just to make sure it existed.  She'd been at one of the casinos the day of the bus crash.  At least, that's what she'd led him to believe.

That could be a place to start.  How could he find out what casinos the bus tour had visited that day?

He pulled out the report from the bus company, reading over the scanty details until he found the notation.  The bus had been to two casinos—the Breakers and the Palais Royale.  He marked the two names with a highlighter, then flipped through the rest of the pages to see if there was any more information about the tour stops that day but found nothing else.

He was about to close the folder when he caught sight of his cousin's name on one of the sheets of paper.  The bus manifest.

Wes ran his finger down the list slowly, remembering Steve's pale, lifeless body on the morgue slab.  How many other families had suffered through a moment like that?  He lowered his eyes to the tally listed at the bottom of the page.  Thirty-seven passengers.  Six dead, twenty-two injured, and nine missing at the time of this report.

The NTSB report had different tallies, he remembered.  They'd found most of the bodies now, hadn't they?

He picked up the file his friend had sent and opened it to the manifest.  Yeah, now thirty-seven were accounted for, out of thirty-eight.

Thirty-eight.

He grabbed the bus company manifest again.  Thirty-seven passengers on the bus manifest.

Thirty-eight on the NTSB list.

He found the name of the lone missing passenger on the NTSB list.

Lottie Sandano.

He looked over the bus manifest, trying to find the same name.  It wasn't there.

Wes sat back in his chair, a chill washing over him.

Lottie Sandano.  Short for what, Charlotte?

No.  Something Italian, like her last name.

Carlotta?

"Carly for short," he murmured.

Mind racing, he picked up the phone, glancing at the clock on the wall opposite his desk.  Almost midnight.  Too late to call his old buddy with the NTSB

But he picked up the phone anyway.