She reached for her phone and glanced at the Two missed calls. She turned her ringer back on. “Sorry about that. I must have turned it off during the party.”
“Were you with Elijah?”
“I did go visit him. I wanted to see how he was doing.”
Moonlight slashed across his face, sharpening the hard angles. He had always been attractive, but the last decade had brought a few gray hairs and deepened the lines around his eyes. All looked good on him.
“If I told you the truth, you would not be happy,” she said.
“That’s almost a given,” he said. “I still want to hear it.”
A cold wind blew across the open land and coiled around her. “How about we talk in hypotheticals for a bit.”
“I’d rather you just spill it.”
“It would be better if we spoke about potential situations. Otherwise, we don’t talk at all, Gideon.”
His feet braced, as if he were ready for a hard tackle. “Okay. Let me have it.”
She considered her words, knowing honesty was likely going to get her booted out of town. “What if a town had an arsonist?”
“Okay.”
“And this arsonist was good at what he did. He didn’t leave traces of himself behind. In fact, he was so careful about what he did, he killed two women who could have told the world the truth about him.”
Gideon stared at her, silent, his gaze unwavering.
“What if this arsonist not only burned structures for money but also because he loved to see things consumed by fire. Fire energizes him. Fire makes him feel in control when his life is out of control.”
“You’re describing Elijah.”
And here was where the rubber met the road. “I’m also talking about Clarke.”
That provoked a mirthless smile and a shake of the head. “You’re joking. Clarke is a firefighter.”
“Some of the most prolific arsonists have been attached to fire prevention. They set the fires and then get the glory when they put them out.”
Gideon shook his head. “You’re wrong, Joan. Clarke is a straight shooter. I’ve known him for almost twenty years.”
“How well do you know him beyond sports, work, and the boys?”
“He’s a good father. He loves Ann.”
“I have no doubt he loves them very much, and he would do anything for them.”
“That’s not a bad thing. I’m the same with Kyle.”
She was sorry that she was about to torch the fragile bridges they had cobbled together these last few days. “Consider the College Fire. Ann had just broken up with Clarke. She was on the verge of moving east to study.”
Gideon’s frown deepened, as if his mind had tripped back to that time. Joan wondered if Clarke had said or done something that now struck Gideon as odd.
“And then her house burns down. Clarke rescues me from the flames, and then he rides in the ambulance with Ann to the hospital, where she soon learns she is pregnant. Mr. Superhero.”
“Elijah’s DNA was found at the scene.”
“He also reported to campus police a week earlier that his backpack had been stolen.”
“We’ve been through this. The backpack was found twenty-four hours later, which was nearly a week before the College Fire.”
“Elijah insists a sweatshirt was missing from the backpack after it was recovered. A portion of it was used as the wick for one of the incendiary devices.”
“What are you saying? Clarke framed Elijah? Why would he do that?”
She fished the fragment of the photo from her pocket and then scrolled on her phone to the picture she had found on Clarke’s grill. “Look at this remnant of a photo. It looks like one of the pictures found of me in Elijah’s dorm room.”
He studied the image on the phone. “I told you no evidence was to leave that conference room.”
“It didn’t. Technically. And yes, I bent the rules, but for now, can you put that aside and just compare the two?”
He glared at her and then dropped his gaze to the phone image and the fragment. “Where did you get this?”
“Perhaps I found it on the barbecue on Clarke’s back porch.”
“Damn it, Joan!”
“I know. I know. But before we get into a fight about that, I have something else.”
He kicked the dirt with his boot as he shook his head. “Okay.”
And here was the trickiest part. Should Joan break Ann’s confidence and tell Gideon what she knew? She trusted that Gideon would never tell Clarke if it were Kyle. “What if Ann had been going out with Elijah?”
“Ann and Elijah?” Disbelief mingled with humor. “I don’t see it.”
“What if she didn’t want you to see it? What if she wanted it to stay a secret forever?”
Gideon’s head cocked slightly, as if an idea he had never considered had blindsided him. “Nate?”
Joan drew in a breath. “She loves her boy more than anything.”
Gideon stared at her with a mixture of horror and disbelief. “And Clarke figured this out?”
“Not yet would be my assessment. But I think Clarke must have sensed that Elijah was a rival.”
“How could he? Ann and Elijah never openly dated.”
“But he seemed to be around us a lot. And if I noticed how Elijah looked at Ann, Clarke must have as well.”
“Okay, assuming he noticed.”
“Then he decided to drive a stake in the heart of his competition. He steals the backpack, plants the pictures, sets the fire, and then is on the scene to play hero. You got to Ann first, and I was saved only in the nick of time.”
“I begged him to save you as I was coming out with Ann.” A muscle pulsed in Gideon’s jaw. “They got married six weeks after the fire.”
“Exactly. The fire drove Ann right into her hero’s arms. Your sister got played by your best friend, Gideon.”
He dropped his gaze and pushed the gravel around with the tip of his boot. “And the recent fires?”
“The beauty shop was a job for hire and I think purposefully timed for just after Elijah’s release. He becomes a suspect all over again. Ann’s shed fire was a warning to me, and I think the cabin fire was a way of cleaning up a loose end.”
“You’re saying Jessica hired Clarke to burn down her salon?”
“She had a cash-flow problem and a big insurance policy.”
“If Jessica hired Clarke, why would she turn on him?”
“She wasn’t banking on someone dying in the fire.”
“And Lana?” Gideon challenged.
“We know she was in contact with Elijah, and she was sporting a ring similar to the one we found on Jessica’s body.”
Gideon ran his hand over his head. “That’s not anywhere near solid evidence.”
“You’re right. Which is why I think you need to test the DNA of Lana’s baby against Clarke’s.”
“Clarke and Lana were having an affair,” he said, looking like he was trying to wrap his brain around the idea.
“It would explain why Lana had the picture of Ann and me.”
“All Clarke has talked about is fixing his marriage.”
“I suggest you check Clarke’s phone records to see if he was in Helena at the time of the warehouse fire.”
“Joan, this is out of left field.”
“You need to consider it, Gideon.”
Gideon’s phone rang, and he looked almost relieved for the interruption. “Becca.” He listened for several seconds and then said, “Leaving now.”
“What?” Joan asked.
“Dan Tucker is dead.”
Minutes later, they were in his car and headed to town. Neither spoke as Gideon drove the back roads into town. He did not mention Clarke, and Joan did not press the point. He was still keeping her in the loop, and she took that as a sign he was considering what she had told him.
Gideon pulled up in front of the one-story rancher with the sloped roof. There were two other police cars parked out front, their flashing lights drawing the attention of curious neighbors who must have decided the blue lights trumped the week’s entertainment options.
They each donned rubber gloves. Someone commented about Joan entering the secured space, but Gideon vouched for her with a few terse words. They then stepped under the yellow crime scene tape that separated the insiders from the rest of the world.
She tugged at the edges of her gloves, working her fingers in deeper as she entered. The air temperature in the house was cold, which she knew would retard decomposition and the scent of death. She gave props to the killer for having the sense to turn off the furnace.
She followed Gideon down a narrow hallway that opened into a living room with closed curtains and a thick shag carpet. The main furniture piece was a worn brown recliner and a large television set playing a documentary on gold miners.
Beside the chair was a coffee table sporting six empty beer cans, gauze, and bloodied paper towels.
“You said his girlfriend found him?” Gideon asked.
“Yes. She’s in the back of my car,” Becca said. “Figured you’d want to talk to her there rather than in here.”
“I do,” he said.
Joan walked around the chair and studied Dan’s body. His face was covered in a clear plastic bag. His jaw was slack, his lips blue with eyes half-closed over glazed irises.