Already Dead (Laura Frost FBI)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Laura thought that it was good luck – or maybe not, given what they were investigating – that the owner of the candle store was still living in town. Despite losing everything in the blaze, Michael Noran had not moved on, and was still living in the same home he’d owned when he was working in his own store every day.

Laura let Agent Won approach the home first, going ahead to knock on the front door. It wasn’t a cheap-looking property: the yard was beautifully manicured and sculpted, with rose bushes shaped just so and flowerbeds beneath them looking ripe for spring. The home itself was decently sized, a two-floor building with a portico around the entrance and a few solar panels on the roof. Given its position towards the beachfront and in a town like this, Laura had to assume it had cost a pretty penny.

The man who opened the door was the same one she had seen in the photographs accompanying the article: balding, a little overweight, but with dark beetling brows and a tall stature. “Hello?” he said, looking at them suspiciously as though he though they were about to sell him something. Maybe, given their dark suits, a religion.

“Michael Noran,” Laura said, showing her badge. “We’re with the FBI. We’d like to talk to you a bit about your store and the circumstances of it burning down, as well as a few events that have been happening around Pacific Cove recently. Can we come in?”

He looked affronted, right away. Like there was no way he wanted to let a couple of strangers into his home, and now that he knew they were FBI agents, he was even less interested. But that didn’t mean he was going to have a choice. He spoke to them here, or at the precinct. Laura gave him an even look, until he seemed to get it.

“Okay,” he said, at last, pulling back from the door. “Just… brush off your shoes before you come in, will you?”

Laura had to hold back a smirk as Agent Won obediently did as he was told, scuffing his feet across the welcome mat to dislodge any dirt. There was no reason for them not to do it. In fact, it was something she did automatically whenever she entered someone’s home, because she wasn’t rude and didn’t like to leave them with a mess to clean up. But there was something about how Won just did as he was instructed that made her want to deliberately not do it at all. She made a perfunctory movement on the threshold and then stepped right through, following the figure of Michael Noran into a newly built sunroom.

Noran sat in a wicker chair there, letting it take his weight as he looked at them both. He had a guarded expression already, which meant he was not going to be easy to talk to necessarily. But that also buoyed Laura up a little. Those who wanted least to talk were often the ones with the most to hide.

“Can you tell us what happened to your store?” Laura asked, taking the initiative even as she and Agent Won both sunk down on a matching wicker sofa with a floral-patterned cushioned seat. “Lighting The Way, wasn’t it?”

“I’d have thought you’d be able to get all of the details from the local fire department,” Noran said sniffly. “They were the ones who did all the investigation.”

“We can,” Laura said, in a light tone that suggested they, indeed, would. “But I’d like to hear it from you. Your account, from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.”

If he had disliked their presence already, she could see that Noran liked being compared to a horse even less. His nostrils flared, a coincidence that Laura found highly amusing. He didn’t even know he was making himself look even more like a horse by doing it. She was in a contrary mood to begin with thanks to all the confusion of this case, and there was nothing wrong in running with it when you had a suspect like this.

Because he was a suspect, given how cagey he was already behaving. And with a man like this, it would be easy to sting him enough that he blurted out something he wasn’t supposed to. A death by a thousand cuts, resulting in him losing his temper and snapping out the truth.

“There’s not much to say,” Michael replied. “I owned a candle store, and we would often have a candle burning on display to show customers what they could expect. One night, I had an employee lock up and they forgot to blow out the candle before leaving. Somehow, it must have fallen over or something and the flame caught the display it was sitting on, and spread to the other candles, and pretty soon all my stock went up in flames along with the store itself.”

“You’ve decided not to reopen?” Laura asked. “We just went by the site. It’s apparently being remodeled as a restaurant now.”

Michael nodded, looking down as if he was too sad to think about it. “I couldn’t afford to start up again.”

“Didn’t your insurance pay out?” Laura asked.

Michael made a vague movement with his hand and his head, a kind of dismissal. “I didn’t get enough to consider opening up again. The rebuilding alone was going to cost me a fortune. I had to give up my dream.”

There was something about the way he was speaking that just didn’t sit right with her. It wasn’t just the way he so clearly didn’t want them to be there. It was the way he spoke the words – almost like they were rehearsed. He’d spoken about losing his dream in the interview, too. The same words.

It was possible that he’d been asked about it so many times that he simply had stock answers ready to go, but…

“Did you feel any suspicion that your employee started the fire on purpose?” Laura asked. What she really wanted to know was whether Michael himself could have done something but asking that outright would only get his back up. Going after someone else instead could have better results. The thing she really wanted to analyze, anyway, was his reaction.

“It was an accident,” Michael repeated, as if she was too stupid to understand what he was saying. “The fire department and the police both said so.”

“I know they did,” Laura said evenly. “I want to know what you thought about it. Did you ever have the feeling that the fire might not have been started by accident? Like maybe your employee enjoyed playing with fire?”

Michael snorted, shaking his head. “The insurance wouldn’t have paid out if it wasn’t an accident.”

Two mentions of the insurance. Not much effort to protect the reputation of his employee. That was interesting.

Normally, Laura would expect a range of responses mostly hinged around the innocence of the employee. The owner might react with shock and talk about how good that employee was, how bad they’d felt since it happened. Or they might talk about how yes, it was possible, they had their own suspicions. They might even rant about how the person had been careless, but ultimately made a mistake. But Michael clearly didn’t care about his employee’s reputation.

It sounded more to Laura like he was trying to justify the insurance payout and ensure that no one looked into the possibility of taking it away from him.

“Where were you last night, in the late evening?” Laura asked, because if he didn’t have an alibi there was a possibility that this needed to be taken further.

“What?” Michael blinked. “I was here.”

“Alone?”

“With my wife.”

Laura caught Agent Won looking at her and glanced his way. His expression was skeptical, and she felt the same. A wife was not exactly a reliable source for an alibi. A wife could reasonably be expected to lie in order to save her husband from prison. Especially if she assumed he was innocent, and this would all be blown out of proportion.

“And two nights ago – on Saturday?”

“I was here,” Michael said, frowning. “Why?”

“Two nights before that?” Laura pressed.

Michael’s expression cleared, but then clouded in an altogether different way. “This is about the murders,” he said, obviously having put two and two together with the dates. “You’re asking me for an alibi!”

“Yes, I am,” Laura said. “So? Where were you, and can anyone else testify to that?”

“On Thursday I was out at the bar,” Michael said.

“How late?”