Up In Smoke: Spirit of the Soul Wine Shop Mystery (A Rysen Morris Mystery Book 3) (2 page)

Not that Rysen blamed her.  She could hardly believe it herself.

“What happened?” Christina asked her for the fifth or sixth time.  “Rysen, what did you do?”

“Me?”  Rysen was aware of all the people around them starting to stare.  “Christina, this isn’t my fault!  You have to believe me, I didn’t do anything.  I just smelled smoke and then the flames and then…this.”

The firemen had set up their hoses and were entering the Spirit of the Soul in heavy coats and those helmets they wore and breathing masks.  Water sprayed everywhere.  Men shouted.  It was controlled chaos.  From what Rysen could see they had the fire almost out already.  Would it be enough to save the shop?

The fire chief stood in the middle of it all, directing everything.  He was a tall, burly man, even in his turnout gear.  Rysen recognized their father just from the way he stood.  He glanced over at them a few times, and it was obvious that he wanted to talk to them.  Concern flashed in his eyes.  It hadn’t been all that long since he and Rysen had made up and put a lifetime of hate behind them.  Just as things had been getting settled with their family, why did this have to happen?

Christina fell into Rysen’s arms.  She was crying and shaking.  Rysen felt tears against her own cheeks, too.  Why was this happening? 

It felt like forever before the firefighters wrapped things up.  They put away their hoses.  They put up barricades.  They stood around in front of the shop pointing and talking.  It was over.

“We have to go in,” Rysen said to Christina.  She didn’t want to.  What she wanted to do was go back home and climb under the covers and pretend this day had never happened.

She knew better.  That was what little children did to hide from the bad things.  Grownups faced their problems.  Right then, she wanted to be a little kid.

They had to see what the damage was.  They had to know what was going to happen to the shop that had been their livelihood for months.  Longer than that, for Christina.

“I can’t believe this,” her sister muttered through her tears.  “How could this happen?”

“I don’t know,” Rysen told her.  “We’ll find out.  I promise.”

Christina laughed in a strangled kind of way.  “You’ve helped me find out who was stealing from me, and who was trying to poison me.  Now you’re supposed to figure out how a fire started?”

“Sure.  Why not?”

“Because that’s my job,” their father said.  He had left his men to take care of the rest of everything and now he was there with them.  He wrapped his big arms around both of them at once and pulled them into a hug, towering over them.  It felt like when they were little girls and he had been there to protect them from whatever was wrong.  Better, even, than hiding under the covers.  “I’m sorry, Christina.”

“It’s okay, dad,” she said.  “I know it looks bad, but Rysen and I will get in there as soon as we can and clean up the place.  We might be closed for a few weeks but we’ll work hard and put it all back the way it was.  Well, except for those paintings, of course.  I don’t think I could paint them the same way twice.  So they’ll be different.  They’ll be better.”

Rysen leaned back from the family embrace so she could see her father’s reaction.  He set his jaw, and closed his eyes for a moment, and sighed.

“The whole shop will be better,” Christina continued.  “You’ll see.  It will just take a little hard work, is all.”

“Christina,” her father said, gently.

“No, I know what you’re going to say, dad.  We’ll need money.  I’ve got a little saved up.  And the bank will be happy to give us a loan, I’m sure.  My credit was always sterling.  So, don’t worry.  We’ll get the shop back open.”

“Christina,” he said to her again, more forcefully.  He waited for her to look up at him.  “I meant, I’m sorry about your shop.  It’s gone, sweetheart.”

The color drained from Christina’s face.  “What do you mean?”

“I mean I have to call it.  As the fire chief, I have to make the call.  The Spirit of the Soul is condemned.  There’s way too much damage inside.  I can’t let you open it again.”

Rysen was glad Christina was still being held in their father’s arms because she looked like she might faint.  She watched her sister’s lips move, trying to form words that wouldn’t come.

“I’m sorry,” their father said, to both of them.  “That’s the way it is.”

Things didn’t look any better the next morning.

Rysen and Christina ducked under yellow barrier tape that had been strung across the open front door.  A notice from the Chief of the Fire Department Robert Morris—their dad—had been taped in the window notifying all persons to remain off the premises.  The smell of charcoal and burnt wine was heavy in the air inside the shop.  Water still dripped from the ceiling fixtures.  A melted and warped hunk of plastic sat on top of a charred island that used to be the sales counter.  The cash register, hardly recognizable for what it used to be.

Glass crunched under their shoes.  The remains of wine bottles.  The stock that they would be financially responsible for.  Most of the local vendors who sold in their shop sold on commission, which meant that they only got paid if the bottles got sold.  Now, Christina and Rysen would have to pay them all back out of their own pockets.

The floor creaked.  It had never creaked before.

“We should…” Christina tried to say.  She swallowed, turning slowly and shaking her head sadly.  “We should try to see if any of the wine can be saved.  Maybe down in the cellar?  The fire wouldn’t have reached down there, would it?”

Looking around at what was left of Christina’s dream, Rysen hesitated to answer.  “There’s probably something we can save from down there.  What about the shop?  What are we going to do about the shop?”

“We’ll rebuild,” was her sister’s answer, but with just a little less enthusiasm than when they had talked about it last night.  “There will be insurance money.  That’s what insurance is for.  I’ll use that money to build a new shop, either here or somewhere else.”

They carefully picked their way through more of the ruined shop.  Rysen found a few bottles of wine that had been scorched but were otherwise intact.  With a sad frown, she left them where they were.  Even with the bottles intact the extreme heat from the fire would have cooked the wine.  All of these survivors would be sour and jammy tasting.  Nothing they would want to sell.

“The stuff downstairs would have survived.  Probably.”  Christina chewed at a fingernail absently as she said it, her eyes still taking in the loss of her store.  “We’ll look down there in a minute.  I want to see where the fire started.”

“Should we even be in here?” Rysen asked.  “Our dad condemned the place.”

She wished she could take the words back just as soon as she said them.  Her sister’s face twisted with an almost physical pain.  “I know, Ry.  I can’t just leave it alone, though.  This was my whole life’s work.  I have to know.”

Rysen understood.  In fact, she had been planning on going back in there herself, back to the offices where the fire seemed to have started.  She just didn’t know if her sister was up for it.

The back of the building had fared the worst.  The walls were blackened and crumbling.  Wall studs were visible in some places like the firemen had peeled the drywall away to get at the fire behind.  Metal filing cabinets stood silently in place, painted black and melted by the heat.  Nothing else had survived.

What shocked Rysen the most wasn’t seeing the damage the fire had done.  It was seeing Brandon Dennicort over in a corner of the room, squatting down, examining an exposed electrical socket.

He stood up when he heard them, brushing his hands off on the front of his jeans.  His tight, form fitting jeans.  Rysen had to peel her eyes up to look him in the eyes.  Those startlingly blue eyes.  He was wearing old clothes, she saw.  Rips in the jeans.  A tear in the left sleeve of his flannel shirt.  Apparently, he had come dressed for investigating a fire.

The question was, what was he doing here at all?

“Hello,” he said, his voice as smooth and deep as she remembered.  “Hope you don’t mind.  Let myself in.”

His accent made him so damned cute, no matter how mad at him Rysen wanted to be.  “You shouldn’t be here,” she blurted out.

“Oh, really?  Where should I be, when I hear your shop burned down?”  He gave her a cockeyed smile and as always, she wanted to strangle him and kiss him, both at once.  Here he was, saving the day again.  How could she stay mad at him? 

Even if it was going to make Josh blow his stack.

“Look.”  He came over to them, careful where he stepped.  “I know I said I would stay away until you had things figured out.  I just couldn’t do it.  Not now.  You need my help.”

“It’s just a fire,” Christina argued.  “I want to know what happened as badly as anyone but it really doesn’t matter.  The insurance company will cut us a check and we’ll start over.”

Brandon was already shaking his head.  “No, they won’t.  This here was arson.  Someone set this fire.  On purpose.”

***

“What are you saying?” Christina asked in disbelief.  “That this was arson?”

Brandon nodded his head yes.  “The bugger that did this didn’t cover their tracks very well.  I spoke with your dad earlier.  He said he saw the same lines in the ash that I did.  Darker lines that lead to an ignition point.  It’s an obvious accelerant trail.  Odor’s there, too.”

“No.”  Christina dropped her head into her hands.  They were sitting at a table in the Full Cup Diner now, where they had retreated for very large cups of coffee and a place to talk.  “Oh, no.  Who is doing this?  Who keeps trying to hurt me like this?”

“You and me both, sis,” Rysen pointed out.  “That was me in that shop.  You were off doing errands.  Wait.  Brandon, you talked to our dad?  Seriously?  This morning?”

“Yes, yes, and yes,” he said with mock seriousness.  “Why not?  He’s the fire chief.  Kind of had to.”

“I don’t care who he talked to, Rysen,” Christina said bitterly.  “I don’t care if it was the Pope himself he talked to.  Did you hear what he said?  Someone intentionally burned down our shop!”

“I heard, I heard.”  Rysen softened her tone because her sister was right.  It didn’t matter where the information came from.  Brandon being here was still throwing her.  A fact was a fact.  If someone had intentionally set that fire, then that was what mattered.  Arson.  Attempted murder, even, if they had meant for Rysen to die in the blaze.

“No worries,” Brandon said to both of them.  “You’re alive to fight another day.  That’s what’s really important.”

“Thanks for saying that,” Christina said to him, still talking into her hands, “but I just lost my entire life’s work.  My income.  Being alive doesn’t put money in the bank.  I’m done.  Finished.”

“Well, maybe not.”  Brandon drank from his coffee, swirling the half drank cup on the table afterward.  “If we can find out who was responsible for this, then the court can order them to pay you compensation.  You could always get a loan, too, and start over.”

“What’s the point?” Christina asked him.  “I mean, seriously.  We never found out who was behind all the trouble we’ve been having.  First, they stole from me.  Then, they tried to poison me.  Now, they’ve burned down my shop.”

Rysen frowned.  A thought was forming at the back of her mind.  A thought she wasn’t sure she liked.

“You can’t just give up,” Brandon was saying.  “Look.  Take some time to think it over.  Then, get back up on your feet and start over.  Don’t let them win.  In the meantime, I’ll do my best to find out who really is behind all of this, and why they seem to be targeting you.  Rysen will help me.”

“Me?”  She didn’t know how to take that.  Sure, she and Brandon had worked well as a team before, investigating the problems surrounding the Spirit of the Soul wine shop, to the point that she had even considered becoming a private investigator herself.  And, she did want to find out who kept trying to hurt her sister.

The thing of it was, Josh didn’t like her doing that sort of thing.  It was too dangerous, he said.  Even her father had said much the same thing.  Then again, her dad had come around to seeing Rysen’s point of view, and he’d admitted that without her sticking her nose into things, Christina’s shop would have gone under months ago.  Or worse, it might have been Christina poisoned and dead instead of that poor woman stabbed to death in Bea’s flower shop.  He wasn’t happy about it, but he could admit when he was wrong and his daughter was right.

Still…

“You know I’m not an actual detective, right?” she asked Brandon.  “You’re the guy with the license and the gun.”

“Well.”  He scratched at his cheek absently, not meeting her eyes.  “I may have done some asking around about that.  Turns out, you can become a private investigator without taking any official courses in the fine state of California.”

Her sister looked up, holding her hair back, the same questions in her eyes that Rysen wanted to ask.

“There’s things you have to do.”  Brandon leaned back in his chair as he explained.  “First, you have to have a background check done by the FBI.  I’m assuming you don’t have any major crimes or felonies in your background, right?”

“No, of course not,” Rysen said immediately.  The worst thing she’d ever done was when her car had been towed for unpaid parking tickets.  Her ex-boyfriend’s parking tickets, for that matter.

Jerk.

“Good,” Brandon said. He had this little smile curling up the corners of his mouth, and Rysen couldn’t help but feel the way she did.  “There’s more.  You can get your PI license if you pass the background check,
and
if you have at least three years of certified and compensated experience, minimum of two thousand hours each year.”

She blinked and tried to make heads or tails of what he’d just said.  “Huh?  What does that mean?”

“It means, if you want to be a PI, you can work with me for three years.  You’d have to put in about six hours a day, on average, less if we work overtime on the other days.”

“Wait.  What?”

Christina slapped her shoulder in a way that Rysen only ever let her sister get away with.  “He’s saying you’d be working with him for the next three years doing investigations, and then you’d have a license to work on your own.”

Oh.

Wow.

She didn’t know what to say.  That was really, really something she wanted to do.  When she’d left Cambria years ago, when she was young, it was with the dream of starting her own design company.  When that had fallen through she’d been completely lost.  No direction, no idea what the future would hold.  She’d had to come crawling back here to her hometown.  In a weird way that had been where her interest in doing investigative work had started.  If she hadn’t been here to help Christina with her troubles, she never would have found out how good she was at that sort of thing.  Now, Brandon was telling her that she could become a PI, if she wanted to.  A real private investigator.  He made it sound so simple.

The only thing standing in her way was Josh.

Knowing what he’d say to her when she brought this up left a sour taste in her mouth.  She frowned, pushing her coffee cup away.  It wasn’t as simple as Brandon made it sound, after all.

“Let me think about it,” she said to him. 

What she wanted to say to him was yes, oh hell yes.  But she couldn’t just commit to something like that without at least talking to Josh about it first.  They were on shaky ground with their relationship as it was.  They’d gotten back together after Brandon had left Cambria.  Things had started to click with them again.  Now Brandon was back, and she knew Josh wouldn’t be happy about it.

It was a good thing he was working a double at the hospital last night and today.  It gave her a little time to think of how she was going to explain Brandon being back.

“If it’s a question of money,” he said to her, “I’ll be paying you.  It’s one of the rules.  The work you do has to be compensated.  You have to get paid for it.  I’m not rich, you understand, but I get by on the work I do.  Enough to take on an assistant.”

“Thank you.”  It sounded so inadequate.  He was willing to take her on as an apprentice, partner, whatever, just to give her a start in a profession she practically had her heart set on now, and all she could say was thank you?  “Can I let you know tomorrow?”

He shrugged and picked up his drink again.  “Yeah, sure.  No worries.  In the meantime I’ll get to work on my end and see what I can figure out about this fire.”

“Uh, Brandon.”  Christina hadn’t touched her coffee.  She didn’t touch it now, either.  “Look, everything I had was tied up in my shop.  I can’t really afford to pay you to look into this for me.  Not yet, at least.”

He lifted his cup in her direction before tipping his head back and draining the rest of it.  “Don’t give it a second thought.  I’m here, and I’m helping.  That’s all there is to it.  Besides, might get me a cracker of an apprentice here.  I mean it, Rysen.  I know you can do this.”

So did Rysen.  She almost told him she was in anyway, almost let her feelings get the better of her before she’d had the chance to have a rational conversation about it with Josh.

Which was when Beatrice Leary joined them, and Rysen let whatever she had been about to say evaporate away.  Beatrice used to date Josh.  In fact, Bea had flat out accused Rysen of stealing Josh away from her.  Nothing could be further from the truth, but it was pretty obvious that her friend still held a lot of resentment toward Rysen over the whole thing.

This probably wasn’t a good time to mention Josh at all, or their relationship, or how she wanted him to have a say in her life.