I froze. Stopped trembling, stopped breathing. At the mention of Cody, I felt my hackles raise, sensing danger before I even understood where it might be coming from.
When I didn’t answer right away, Mosher looked up at me again. He smiled. “I’ve got a little girl myself. But at least I’ve got someone to look after her while I’m at work. I couldn’t imagine what I’d do if I didn’t have that kind of support.”
I stared at him. My mouth felt like it was all of a sudden stuffed full of cotton. It took me three times to swallow, then I forced myself to sit back down in the chair. A moment later, I found the words to speak. “It’s hard. But we do okay.”
He nodded. “Good.” It seemed to be his buzzword for this conversation. “I just have a couple of more questions for you, ma’am, then we can head down and take a look at the store.”
I nodded mutely.
“Do you have any other means of income to tide you over while your shop is out of commission?”
I failed to see how that was any of his business or had anything to do with the incident, but I was finally understanding that this wasn’t really about the shop or the fire. It was about taking a shot at me. At putting me in my place. And it only added more evidence, in my opinion, that Ethan Chambers was behind this whole thing. “No,” I answered flatly.
“I see. And do you have any enemies, Ms. Leone? Anyone that might hold a grudge against you personally?”
I felt his gaze on me, hot and hard, but I found I couldn’t meet it. Yes, as a matter of fact, I knew someone who was very likely to hold a grudge against me. Someone I deemed an enemy as of right now.
But I wasn’t stupid.
Chambers had connections. It was pretty clear he had enough connections to set fire to my shop and to get the police to dig into my personal background whether they had any right to or not. Which meant he had someone on the force who got his salary from Chambers, not just the city.
Slumping, I shook my head. “No, sir. I can’t think of anyone who would want to do something like this.” It was the first blatant lie I’d told, but I couldn’t risk ratting on Chambers. If he really did do this, pointing the finger at him wouldn’t make him back off.
“Great,” Mosher said. I glanced up to see him wearing a smile that I desperately wanted to smack off his face. Instead, I rose when he rose. “Let’s go take a look at the damage, shall we?”
# # #
It was bad.
I’d been expecting bad, but this was worse. The little convenience store where Jessie worked was toast. Barbequed. It looked like the site of a lightning strike mixed with a fire pit. Nothing got away unscathed.
Except about half of the register.
“The Cut is fine,” I muttered under my breath as I stared at the two places. They’d been attached and with one register between them, that desk where the machine sat was half on one shop and half on the other. Which was why it was so strange, comical almost, that just half the register was toast. Almost like someone had drawn an invisible line right where one store ended and the other began, then made sure to burn only that.
Deliberately.
My hands clenched tightly into fists at my side as I stared with suppressed rage at my store. The officer—Mosher—standing beside me was talking with one of the firemen. He was a younger man, in good shape, and barely looked like he’d broken a sweat even though he’d supposedly just been fighting a fire.
“Definitely an electrical fire,” the young man said, nodding his head as though this were the most obvious and mundane thing in the world. “Probably from some loose wiring in the back storage area.”
I had to clench my teeth from screaming. The back storage area. I could have killed someone. The message ringing in my ears was loud and clear. Everyone would say this was an accident and I’d lose not only the income from the convenience store, but my insurance wouldn’t be enough to cover the damage. I wouldn’t be able to repair the charcoal that was my shop. And that storage area Ethan had wanted? A non-issue now.
Turning abruptly on my heel, I ignored Mosher as he tried to call me back over. In fact, I ignored everyone and everything around me. I was a woman on a mission. Grabbing my phone from my purse, I sent out a quick text to Jessie.
It’s bad. Closed for at least today. I’ll let you know more later.
Then I jerked my car door open, threw my phone inside, and dropped down into the driver’s side. I slammed my door angrily, then took out of there at a speed entirely inappropriate given there were cops everywhere. But I didn’t care. I had to pay someone a visit.