The Arsonist (3 page)

Still, Darcy marched toward him, pulling her trash can with her. The idea of coming home had frayed her nerves and she realized she was spoiling for a fight. “This is an alleyway! It’s not meant for high-speed chases. You could have flattened me like a pancake.”

“You smell like smoke.”

“What?”

He looked around the alleyway. “What was burning?”

She nodded her head toward the restaurant kitchen’s door. “A grease fire in the Varsity’s kitchen. It’s out now.”

His gaze sharpened. “They had another one?”

Another one? What was happening to that place? When she’d been kid growing up and working there, they’d never had any trouble. Family loyalty had her keeping those thoughts to herself. “Like I said, it’s under control.”

His gloved leather hand tightened around the bike’s throttle. “So are you going to be okay, or do I have to call an ambulance?”

His sarcasm grated her nerves. “I’ll probably have nightmares for a month.”

Creases formed around his eyes, a sign he was grinning. “So are you the new waitress at the Varsity?”

“How do you know that?”

“Who else would be hauling around a trash can with the
Varsity
stenciled on it?”

She glanced at the faded lettering. “Right.”

“You don’t look like a waitress.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” She sounded bitchy—even to her own ears.

“Right. Well, sorry for the scare.” He flipped his visor down. “Watch where you are walking. You might not be so lucky next time.”

She gritted her teeth. “Drive more slowly!”

Laughter rumbled deep in his chest. “Try not to frighten the customers away.”

The laughter in his voice irritated her. “I’m a
good
waitress.”

“Right.” He revved the engine loudly and then slowly drove down the alley.

Muttering an oath under her breath, Darcy started back toward the Varsity.

She’d gone two feet when her high heel caught between cobblestones again and she stumbled. Gripping the handle of the trash can, she glanced back to make sure Motorcycle Man had left. He had.

With as much dignity as she could muster, she brushed her bangs off her face, and dragging the trash can behind her, retreated back into the kitchen.

Darcy shut the kitchen door and leaned against it. Closing her eyes, she let a sigh shudder through her body as she thought about Motorcycle Man’s laughing gaze. It seemed everyone had questioned her competency since she had arrived in Preston Springs.

But she’d prove them all wrong—when she found Nero.

Chapter 3

D
arcy spent the next half hour unpacking and changing into a cotton T-shirt, jeans and running shoes. She itched to go out for a long run before reviewing her notes on Nero, but it was already past three in the afternoon and the dinner crowd would be arriving at five o’clock.

As she brushed her hair up into a ponytail, she glanced around her old bedroom. Her mother had taken down her posters and painted over the purple. Her brass daybed was still there, but the black-and-white comforter was gone and in its place a green quilt and lots of pillows. Her mother’s sewing machine sat in the corner next to a white glider and footstool.

Her mother had done a good job of erasing any signs that her daughter had ever lived in this house. None of this would have bothered Darcy, if not for Trevor’s shrine in the diner.

“And why do you care?” Darcy mumbled as she tightened the rubber band around the thick handful of hair. “This is just a temporary stop. Deal with it.”

She started down the back staircase that led to the kitchen. As she approached the last step, she heard a man singing “When the Saints Come Marching In.” The voice was deep, the tone so off key it made her smile.

Darcy found a stocky man standing in front of the stove stirring a pot of chili. He wore a white cook’s uniform with the sleeves rolled up over tattooed forearms. A rawhide strip held back thinning gray hair in a tight ponytail.

“Hey,” she said. Her mother had told her the tavern had a new cook. His name was George Paris.

George didn’t look up. “What did you do to my kitchen?” Each word was coated in a thick Alabama accent.

Darcy glanced around and seeing no signs of her mother assumed the comment was directed at her. “Saved it.”

“It took me a half hour just to clean the flour out of the burner.”

The chili smelled good and she remembered she’d not eaten since breakfast. “You’re lucky to have a burner or a job for that matter. If I hadn’t shown up, Mom would have torched the place.”

Nodding thoughtfully, he tossed a handful of chili powder into the pot. If he’d worked here six months, he knew her mother could be a bit scattered at times. “Then I owe you my thanks. Unemployment doesn’t suit me so well.”

She snagged an apple from a bowl of fruit on the island. “Me either.”

He studied her, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Your mother said you are the new waitress.”

“That’s right.” She bit into the apple.

“You don’t look like your mother or Trevor.”

The apple tasted tart. “I take after my father.”

Eyeing her one last second, he turned back to his chili. “You can start making the dinner salads. Lettuce, two tomatoes, cucumber and three red onion rings.”

“I know the drill. I’ve made a million of those in my past life here.” Holding the apple in her teeth she washed and dried her hands. She took another bite of apple set it aside and crossed to the refrigerator. She pulled out a bag of precut lettuce, a box of cherry tomatoes, a cucumber and red onions. She set it all down on the island.

“Remember, only three slices of cucumber per plate,” he said.

She set the apple aside. “Tomatoes on the left, cucumbers in the middle, onions on the right. I remember.” She grabbed a stack of plates from the shelf on the wall above the sink and started to line them up assembly line fashion. She hated having to deal with this mundane stuff while knowing Nero could be alive, but for now she had to make like a waitress so no one would suspect her motives.

“Where is Trevor? Shouldn’t he be here now?” she asked.

He crushed a handful of dried red pepper flakes in his hand then dumped them into the pot. “He called your mother and said that he’ll be back by five o’clock.”

She noted a hint of irritation in his voice. “Trevor likes to play it fast and loose. Deadlines don’t get to him. Used to irritate his football coaches no end.”

“Then he is in the wrong business.” George sounded annoyed. “Restaurants are nothing but deadlines.”

“Mom says the business is doing well.” She kept her voice neutral, but she was fishing. Natural curiosity had been one of the reasons she’d become a reporter.

George shrugged. “I don’t think about things like that as long as I get paid on time.”

“Which you do?” She figured she had a right to know how Trevor ran the place.

“Most times.”

Frowning, she tore into the lettuce. She’d hoped when Trevor had taken over the restaurant that he’d grow up and become more responsible.

Let it go, Darcy.
This gig was strictly a stepping-stone to her Pulitzer. “And Mom is where?”

“She is rolling the napkins and checking the bar.”

“Okay.” Darcy set out thirty plates on the center island. As she started to lay torn lettuce leaves on each, a truck pulled up in the back alley.

George wiped his hands on his apron and glanced out the screened door. “It’s about time Thompsons got here. We are just about out of everything.” He went to the door and waved. “Hey, Harvey. You can bring our order right in. We’ve got to get those chickens started if they’re going to be ready on time.”

Harvey Thompson, a tall thin man in his midfifties, came in the back door, with only a clipboard in his hand. He glanced over at Darcy. “Hey, Darcy, when did you get back in town?”

She grinned. “Just today.”

“You look good. You lose weight?”

She smiled. “Sure did. Twenty pounds this last year. Thanks for noticing.”

George looked impatient. “Harvey, you can start unloading any time.”

But the man hesitated. “I’m going to need a check from Trevor.”

“What do you mean—we have to pay C.O.D., Harvey? You always bill us,” George said.

Harvey’s face turned red. “You’re behind.”

George muttered a curse. “I’m a cook, not a bookkeeper. I shouldn’t have to deal with these kinds of things when I got a roomful of customers showing up in less than two hours. Wait right here.” He stormed into the dining room in search of Darcy’s mother.

Harvey glanced awkwardly at Darcy. “I knew this wasn’t going to be easy. But my boss said no cash, no delivery.”

“Trevor that far behind?” Darcy said.

Before Harvey could answer, George returned with Mrs. Sampson. “Tell Mrs. S. what you just told me.”

Harvey’s face reddened as he addressed Mrs. Sampson. “I’m going to need cash on delivery today, Jan. No money, no food.”

Her mother’s laugh had an edge. “That can’t be right, Harvey. I know Trevor just sent you in a check last week.”

“It bounced,” Harvey said in a low voice.

“It didn’t bounce,” Mrs. Sampson said. “I made a huge deposit only last week into the account.”

Harvey shrugged. “I don’t know what to say. All I know is no cash, no delivery.”

Her mother looked flustered and embarrassed now. “This has to be a mistake.”

Darcy stepped forward. “How much would you need today to make your delivery?”

“If it were anybody else, I’d need it all. But seeing as it’s y’all, I’ll take a thousand. I figure this is just a paperwork glitch.”

Her mother had never been one to handle the business end of the diner. Her father had while he was alive, and since his death, Trevor had.

“I don’t keep that kind of money in my personal account,” Mrs. Sampson said.

“I can bring the order back tomorrow,” Harvey said.

“We need today’s order or we won’t be able to open tonight,” George said.

“Don’t know what to say,” Harvey said. He looked as if he’d just endured root canal work.

The last thing Darcy wanted was to be drawn further into tavern business. She only had twelve hundred in her checking account and most of that was earmarked for her credit card bill, which was due at the end of next week. Since she’d dropped the twenty pounds this year, she’d splurged on new clothes—a lot of new clothes.

But high interest rates and minimum payments aside, if the Varsity went down, so would her cover. “I can go to the bank and pull the cash out of my account. I’m going to need to be paid back by Monday, Mom.”

Mrs. Sampson looked relieved. “Trevor will pay you back as soon as he gets here.”

Darcy nodded. “Harvey, go ahead and start unloading. I’ll be back with the cash in five minutes.”

He hesitated. “Okay.”

Despite her mother’s assurance, she felt as if she’d just stepped in quicksand. She got her purse and headed out the back alley, this time looking both ways.

Once Harvey was paid, Darcy, George and her mother focused on prepping for the dinner crowd. The Varsity didn’t have any other staff so the pace was quick and the work more physically challenging than she remembered. Still, despite a few dropped plates, she, George and her mother were ready by the time five o’clock rolled around. There was still no sign of Trevor.

Oddly enough, before her mother flipped the Closed sign to Open she felt as jittery as when she’d turned in her first article. So much was riding on her getting information from Gannon on Nero.

Thoughts of Nero vanished when the customers started arriving right at five. Within an hour, the diner was buzzing. All fifteen booths were filled and she and her mother ran from table to table taking orders, refilling drinks and serving entrées. To her surprise, she remembered more and more as the evening progressed. She’d forgotten how good she was at working this place.

She thought about Motorcycle Man. If he saw her in action now, he’d be eating his words.

By eight o’clock, most of the regulars were sitting at the bar. There was Chief Wheeler, the town’s fire chief who was in his late forties. Chief’s hair was thinning and he’d grown paunchy in the last six years. Next to him sat a friend of hers from high school, Larry White, a tall, lean truck driver who worked for a wholesale electronics distributor.

“So your mom says you got canned,” Larry said to Darcy.

For the sake of the Nero investigation she wanted to downplay her reporting background. Folks had a way of clamming up when they knew a reporter, even a supposedly ex-reporter, was around. “Hey, do me a favor guys and drop the subject. Kinda touchy.”

Larry and the chief nodded thoughtfully.

“Will do. Been fired myself a couple of times,” Larry said. He sipped his cola. “It bites.”

“We can keep a secret,” the chief said.

“Thanks.”

Minutes later, a tall, lean man walked into the tavern. In his forties, he was very athletic and had thick blonde hair. He wore thin wire-rimmed glasses. He took a seat beside Larry and held out a smooth hand to the trucker who took it immediately. “How’s it going?”

“Can’t complain, Nathan,” Larry said. “Nathan, I’d like you to meet Darcy Sampson. Her family’s owned the Varsity for years and she’s back working at her old job.”

Nathan smiled at Darcy. “Pleasure.”

His gaze possessed an intensity that made her believe for an instant that she was the only person in the room. There was no denying he was a very attractive man. She sucked in her stomach. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

“Coffee.”

“Sure thing,” she said. She sounded cool, but for some reason he jumbled her nerves.
Cup. Coffeepot. Pour.
She poured him a cup and set it in front of him. “Cream? Sugar?”

The faint lines at his temples deepened when he smiled. “No thanks.” He sipped his coffee. “Good. So, you just start?”

“Tonight’s my first night.” Darcy felt herself blushing. “So, Chief, how did your day go?”

The chief grimaced. “We had one hell of a fire.”

Nathan’s face was blank. “I’ve been at the construction site all day. What’s the scoop?”

The chief leaned forward. “The Super 8 burned to the ground. Worst fire I’ve seen in years. Started in a storage closet and then quickly spread to the building’s roof. We evacuated the motel and put our hoses on the fire. But the damn thing wouldn’t go out. Within thirty minutes, the motel was burned to the ground.”

Darcy’s heart started to pound in her chest. The fire likely had nothing to do with Nero, but it was strange that the chief had battled an intense fire the day she arrived to investigate a serial arsonist.

Nathan sipped his coffee. “Do you know what started it?”

The chief shook his head. “Don’t know. We got the arson boys from Roanoke coming in tomorrow.”

Darcy lingered.

“You think someone set the fire on purpose?” Larry asked.

“No, I doubt it. Likely someone did something stupid,” the chief said. “They’ll have a report for us in a couple of days.”

Larry pulled a toothpick from his pocket and popped it into his mouth. “Bet it was teen gangs.”

Chief Wheeler laughed. “Larry you got teen gangs on the brain since you saw that
20/20
show last month.”

George rang a bell, which told Darcy another order was up. Swallowing an oath, she picked up the order and took the plates to table number six. By the time she’d gotten them ketchup and refilled their colas, the men at the bar were talking about another fire.

Darcy topped up the chief’s drink. “You get a lot of fires in the area?”

The chief shrugged. “Not many as a rule.”

Darcy held up the pitcher of cola. “Like a refill, Larry?”

“Not yet,” he said smiling.

“So how do you like Preston Springs so far, Nathan?” She wanted to stay in on this conversation without being too obvious.

Nathan sipped his coffee. “Love it.”

She held up the coffeepot. “So you’re working on the condo project off I-81?”

He held up his cup. “That’s right.”

She refilled it. Given time, she’d crack this Nero case. There was a story here and she could feel it in her bones. “Long hours?”

He nodded his thanks. “Always.”

George rang his bell and Darcy had to abandon her conversation and serve another customer.

Given time.
Who was she kidding? She barely had time to pee.

It was nine o’clock before Darcy could pull her head above water again to think. Nathan, the chief and Larry had left and there was still no sign of Trevor.

Her feet ached from running from table to table. If her brother had been here, she’d have had more time to talk to the chief, maybe find out something about Michael Gannon. But Trevor was nowhere in sight.