The Fire Still Burns (13 page)

“We were just at the police station inquiring about your sister.”  Brynn decided straightforward was the best approach with Riley.  “They say she had a lot of money, more than anyone working for their family's small discount store would have.  You said she didn't have any money when she left—or was taken—from Black Bear Gorge.  What's up with that?”

Riley rolled her eyes, simultaneously snapping the magazine shut.  “She had a lot of nice things.  That doesn't mean she had money.”  

The tone of the discussion was reminiscent of conversations Brynn had had with her own son when Nate felt he was answering the most stupid question on Earth, something she had come to realize teens thought they were doing often.

Why does my best lead have to be a teenager?

“Where did she get the nice things from?”

“Stores.”  The teen smiled sweetly.

“You know what I mean, Riley.” 

With another eye roll, the dark-haired teen tossed the magazine on the counter.  “She was popular with the guys, all right?  She wasn't a slut though, regardless of the fact she got pregnant.  She had this one guy who took care of her, bought her nice things.  There's nothing wrong with that.”

“There is when she ends up missing and no one seems to know who her friend was.  Did you know who he was?”

“Like I said, she dated a lot of guys,” she answered sassily, glaring at Adam when she spoke.

Brynn glanced over her shoulder and noticed the awkward way Adam shuffled his feet, picking up on the girl's scrutiny.

Might as well cut to the chase.
“Did she date Zeke Good?”

“The town's golden child?” Riley quipped, returning her gaze to Brynn.

“Nobody would believe me if I said yes, so why bother.”  With that she gave another unfriendly look to Adam, chomping down harder on her gum.

“Do you think Zeke had something to do with Rachel's disappearance?”  She sensed Adam’s tension and glanced sideways to see him stiffen at her side, but she didn't have time to coddle him.

A young, pregnant girl was missing, an arsonist with an obvious grudge against his brother was lighting fires all over town and her gut screamed at her that somehow it was all related.

Riley released her glare from Adam for a short moment to glance at Brynn.  “It's possible, but we'll never know.  The police haven't exactly been helpful.”

Brynn sensed a change in the air and knew it was Adam's anger she was picking up on.  She grasped his hand and squeezed it once for reassurance, quickly so Riley wouldn't notice.  “We're looking into her disappearance.  We know she was rumored to have dated Zeke and with his death and her disappearance being so close…”

“Rachel didn't kill Zeke,” Riley stated firmly.  “She didn't have it in her.”

“I'm not accusing her of killing Zeke.  But, whoever did may have known of their relationship.  Rachel might be indirectly involved with the arsons.  Can we search her room?”

“Why?”  Riley's eyes widened, quickly narrowing when they landed once again on Adam.

“We might find clues there as to what happened to her, where she can be found.  Even if it turns out she isn't involved with the arson, I still would like to help you find your sister.”

“Do you believe my sister was a worthless tramp?” Riley asked, her gaze fixed on Adam.

“No,” he answered.  “I can't pass judgment on someone I didn't know well.”

Riley looked between the two of them, slowly chewing her gum.  “I guess that's good enough.  I'll let you into her room, but you won't find anything useful.  I've already looked.”

“I don't think she likes me,” Adam stated dryly moments later as they found themselves alone in Rachel Wood's bedroom, part of the small house attached to the store.

It was a typical nineteen-year-old girl's room, complete with band posters tacked to the pink and white striped walls, CDs and magazines stacked atop the dresser and desk in neat piles.  The floor was uncarpeted hardwood, free of clothing and other junk.

If only Nate kept his room this clean…

“I kind of got that impression, too, but I don't think it's you personally she dislikes.”

“You think she hates me because of my brother.”

Brynn paused in her perusal of the desk's contents to watch Adam search between the mattress and box spring of Rachel’s bed.  She hadn't picked up any hostility or accusation in his voice, nor could she see it on his face, but she knew it was in there somewhere just beneath the surface.

“I am keeping an open mind about him, Adam, I swear, but you have to admit Riley showed a definite dislike of the man once his name was mentioned.”

“Yes, I know.”  He settled the mattress back into its original position and rose to his feet.

“Nothing there.  You were a young girl once.  Where did you hide stuff?”

“Gee, thanks,” Brynn responded, feigning indignity as she crossed her arms, taking on a miffed stance. 

“You know what I mean,” he replied sheepishly while color suffused his face.

His lips twitched at the corners, and that was all it took to draw the laughter out of Brynn's system.  Adam joined in, both of them chuckling until Brynn’s belly tightened from the action.

“Man, I haven't had a good laugh in a while,” Adam admitted after they sobered.

“This must be very hard for you.”  Sadness replaced Brynn’s joviality.  For a moment, she’d joked and laughed with him like old times, but the reminder of why they were there, and the pain Adam had to be going through wondering who killed his brother, sucked the humor out of the room.

“I'm the only member of the fire department with any investigative training,” he responded while perusing the room.  “The initial homicide investigation led by the police department hasn't turned up anything so it's all on me to figure it out.  All on us now, I guess.”

“You're going to join the police department after this is over, aren't you?” Brynn asked.

“It's always been my dream.”

“So why didn't you join before like you had planned?”  Brynn leafed through the magazines on Rachel’s desk, flipping through the pages to see if anything had been hidden there.

“You know why.”  His tone was accusatory.

Brynn spun around to see him looking inside Rachel’s pink pillow case.

“My father would have treated you fairly.”

“We said we weren't going to bring up what happened thirteen years ago.”  He dropped the pillow back on the bed.

“I wasn't—”

“You're treading close enough,” he snapped, placing his hands on his hips.  “We're supposed to be conducting a case, not analyzing each other's career paths.”

“Fine.”  Brynn held her hands up in surrender and turned back toward the desk.  She opened each of the drawers one by one and analyzed each item she found inside.

There were quite a few poems, some dealing with loss, others dabbling in the subjects of love and what Brynn assumed to be self-loathing.  Brynn knew poems could be interpreted in many different ways all depending on the reader's perspective, but what she gathered was that Rachel didn't have a very high self-esteem.

The trait went hand in hand with the common belief that she'd dated several different men, typical behavior of a woman who didn't realize her own self-worth.

She found newspaper clippings from Rachel’s mother's accident.  Marla Wood had wrapped her car around a tree on a rainy winter night.  The rain had made the already icy roads even slicker.  From what Brynn could deduce from the articles, there was no foul play.

“Do you recall Marla Wood’s accident?”  She studied the woman’s picture, noting how much she looked like Riley, while waiting for an answer.

“Yes.”

“Anything suspicious about it?”

“Not at all,” came Adam’s reply from the other side of the room.  “The roads were awful that night.” 

After a thorough and disappointing search of the desk, Brynn closed the last drawer and turned to find Adam on his hands and knees prying at the floorboards with his fingertips.

“What are you doing?”

He glanced up long enough to respond.  “When we were kids, Zeke taught me how to dislodge a few floorboards, creating a hiding spot.  We used to hide candy and stuff we didn't want Mama to find.  I figure if Zeke was involved with Rachel, he might have taught her the same trick.”

“So that's where you hid your Playboy magazines,” Brynn quipped.

“Of course,” Adam responded, his lips quirking.

“Men.”  Brynn huffed in mock indignity as she crossed over to Rachel's white oak dresser, the sound of Adam's soft chuckling warming her insides.  She’d missed the warm sound, knew she would miss it even more when she left town again.

A quick perusal of Rachel Wood's underwear drawer indicated why the locals thought her a prostitute.  The girl had more sparkly, rhinestone-studded thongs than the entire staff of a strip club.

That didn't make her a prostitute, but Brynn had been outside Black Bear Gorge, most of the town's inhabitants had not and, to them, such attire was sinful.

She recalled a morning in church when the entire sermon had been focused on acceptable attire for women.  Brynn smiled as she wondered what would happen if someone like Madonna or Lil' Kim happened to travel through Black Bear Gorge on their way to a concert.  They'd probably be burned at the stake.

The other drawers revealed many designer items, clothing that wasn't available for purchase in Black Bear Gorge and to her knowledge, not in Gatlinburg either.  Such items could have been easily ordered over the internet, but Brynn doubted Rachel had ordered the items herself.

Going off the rumors and the information given to her directly from Riley's mouth, she deduced Rachel Wood had a sugar daddy, and it wasn't Jimmy Nelson.  He didn't make enough money to buy her such expensive clothes.

She heard the sound of wood dropping against wood and looked over to find Adam removing two-foot-long planks of wood from the floor of Rachel's closet.  She walked over to his side just in time to see him retrieve a thick wad of cash from the floorboards.

“So much for Rachel not having any money,” he stuck his hand back through the hole in the floor.  “Jackpot.  Looks like I just found her best friend,” he pulled out a small book, a diary.

He backed away from the closet to settle on the bed with Rachel's diary.  “She disappeared a couple months back so I guess I'll just start reading right before that time, see if anything odd was going on around then.”

“Good thinking,” Brynn replied, kneeling next to the hiding spot.  Fortunately, it wasn't deep so she could see the contents inside.  Money.  Lots and lots of money.

She scooped up the wad of twentys Adam had already removed and started to count them.  She'd just reached the five hundred mark when she heard a thump and looked up to see Adam storming out the bedroom door, the diary face down on the floor, still opened to the page she assumed he'd been reading.

She set the money aside to scoop up the diary.

Dear Diary,

I've done everything Zeke has ever asked me to do, even sleep with those disgusting men, but I can't do what he says this time.  I can't kill our baby.  I won't do it.  He'll have to kill me first.

Chapter Nine

Brynn stepped out of the drugstore and turned right to find Adam standing before the high school football field staring at the spot where his brother's football jersey had burned to a crisp two days earlier.  Although his hands were in the pockets of his jeans, she knew they were tightened into fists and the look on his face clearly stated he wanted to strangle someone.

The need to place her hand on his shoulder, comfort him until some of his inner torment eased, filled her, but she didn't know if her touch could still comfort.  Touching him might be the worst thing she could do at the moment.  He finally knew what a louse his brother was, and, despite the satisfaction of someone else knowing, she hurt for him.

“Adam?”

“What?”  He kept his gaze on the field, his tone hostile, abrasive enough to make Brynn flinch as though she'd been struck.

She took a breath and pressed on.  “Are you all right?”

He turned around, glaring down at her.  “If you're still the way I remember you to be, you read those diary pages after I walked out.”

“If you're still the way I remember you to be, you wanted me to, but you couldn't bring yourself to ask so you left it behind for me,” she responded with her chin raised.

He let out a mirthless chuckle, nodding his head.  “Well, since you know me so well, you know damn well I'm not all right.”

“I'm sorry.”  She put her hands in her front pockets to avoid reaching out to him.

“Are you?  You were right.  My brother was a horrible person.”  He threw his hands up in the air.

“He made that poor girl have sex with other men.  He put a child inside her and asked her to kill it.”  He choked on the last few words.