I'd come back here this afternoon to check out the structure, but I was once again struck by how much the clapboard building resembled Fletcher Lane's house.
Both featured the same white boards, the same kind of shutters, the same sloping tin roof. And it wasn't just the house that reminded me of Fletcher - it was everything about Warren T. Fox. The blue work clothes he wore, his grumpy nature, the old-fashioned store he ran. It was almost like Fletcher and Warren were identical twins separated at birth. The kind you read about who built separate, but almost identical, lives for themselves. Once again, I felt that faint softness stir in my chest. Because everything about Warren made me remember Fletcher and the love I'd had for him.
Lights blazed in several of the first-floor windows. I stepped up onto the porch and knocked on the front door.
"Hmph?" Sophia grunted through the heavy wood.
"It's Gin. "
A lock clicked, and the Goth dwarf opened the door.
Sophia clenched an aluminum baseball bat in one hand.
Her black eyes flicked over my oversize clothes, and she stepped back to let us inside. Sophia crooked her finger at us, and we followed her deeper into the house. For a moment, I felt like I was coming home to Fletcher's after a long day at the Pork Pit. Because the inside of Warren T. Fox's house could have been an exact duplicate of Fletcher Lane's. Same sort of well-worn, overstuffed furniture, same clutter of knickknacks, same piles of odds and ends that made a house a home. I blinked, and the illusion vanished.
The others were in a large den. Violet huddled on the sofa, a heavy textbook in her lap, a notepad and pen by her side. Studying. Jo-Jo perched on the other end of the sofa and flipped through a beauty magazine. Several more sat stacked at her bare feet. The dwarf had come prepared.
Warren rocked back and forth in an oversize recliner that made him seem older and more frail than he really was. The television was tuned to the Weather Channel.
Warren's brown eyes focused intently on the storm-front graphics on the flickering screen. Finn relaxed in a similar chair, which he'd reclined all the way back. His laptop drowsed on his lap. Finn was doing the same in the chair itself. Soft snores drifted out of his open mouth.
I went over, put my hand into Finn's broad shoulder, and shook him awake.
"What? What?" he mumbled in a sleepy voice. "I didn't touch her, I swear. "
"Relax, Casanova," I said.
Finn blinked a few times before his green eyes focused on me. "Oh, Gin, it's you. " He frowned. "Why are you wearing a T-shirt that says Ashland Police Department on it?"
I sighed. "It's a long story. "
Once Finn was more or less awake, I filled the others in on what Donovan Caine and I had found in Tobias Dawson's office. The detective e-mailed the cell phone photos he'd taken to Finn, who started pulling them up on his laptop and going through them.
"Anything happen on this end?" I asked Sophia.
"Quiet," she rasped.
"A couple of folks came in for sodas and cigarettes, but that was it," Jo-Jo agreed.
"Usual customers," Warren cut in. "Even Dawson can't scare off folks when they need their tobacco. "
"Those papers you found inside the safe," Jo-Jo said.
"What did they say? Anything interesting?"
I shrugged. "Ask Donovan. It was dark. I didn't really see them. "
All eyes turned to the detective, who also shrugged.
"Like Gin said, it was dark. We only used flashlights inside. They mostly looked like schematics to me. We'll have to wait and see what Finn says. "
"You're going to have to give me a few minutes," Finn said, typing on his laptop. "I've got to sort through and read some of this. It doesn't make much sense to me either. Not to mention that the photo quality isn't the best I've ever seen. "
"Sorry," Donovan sniped. "I was a little more worried about flashing too much light around and getting caught than taking perfect pictures for you. "
We lapsed into silence while we waited for Finn to read and decipher the documents. But I had a pretty good idea of what they'd say. So I leaned against the wall and started thinking about what came next - getting close enough to Tobias Dawson to kill him. Because that was the only way this thing was going to end, if my suspicions were correct.
Sophia stood beside me and twirled the baseball bat in her hand like it was a metal baton.