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“Thank you so much for that cheery prediction. Now perhaps you could go answer the phone before it rings right off your desk?”
She turned and stalked away, mumbling something about foolish, stubborn men.
Unable to resist the cliché, Dan shook his head and muttered, “Women.”
What was going on with them these days, anyway? Lately it was either his secretary ragging him about his working hours, or his women friends nagging him to take a vacation. Concerned grandmas complaining about the blessedly few serious crimes that took place in Edstown, or his sister calling him to fuss about not making enough time for his family. Not to mention Lindsey—nipping around his heels one minute for every detail about his ongoing investigations…and then announcing out of the blue that she was considering moving away.
What was she thinking? Sure, she’d managed well enough in Little Rock for a couple of years before she’d moved back here. But she was a small-town girl at heart, not one of those tough, big-city reporters. And frankly he wouldn’t want to see her turn into one.
Not that she cared about that, of course. She hadn’t asked for his opinion. She’d simply stated that she was thinking about putting her house up for sale. It was actually none of his business—even if he had promised her brother that he would keep an eye on her now that their father had passed away.
He’d known even as he’d made the promise that it was only a formality. Though ten years younger than Dan and B.J., Lindsey was still a grown woman, fully capable of making her own decisions. If she chose to move to Dallas or Atlanta—or Antarctica, for that matter—there was little anyone could do to stop her. Certainly not someone who was nothing more to her than a long-time friend of her older brother.
Oddly enough, considering how often Dan complained about her hanging around so much in her professional capacity, he would miss her if she moved away.
Forcing his concentration back to his work, he glanced at the files littering his desk. They contained summaries of the fires that had been set around town—starting with the old dairy barn last summer. A few weeks after that, a recently vacated rent house had burned, under strikingly similar conditions. An old garage a few weeks after that. And then the tragic cabin fire—the one in which Truman Kellogg had died.
Kellogg had been asleep when the fire started and he’d died in his bed—probably never woke up, mercifully. None of the other suspicious fires had involved buildings that were occupied. Of course, there was the possibility that the arsonist hadn’t known anyone was there: Truman had rarely visited his vacation cabin and then usually only during summer months.
There had been other details about that fire that differed from the others, but it was hard not to be suspicious about it, considering everything that had been going on in the past few months. Neither Dan nor the fire chief had ruled out arson in Kellogg’s death, though they had no proof that the fire had been deliberately set—not like the others, in which there were obvious signs of arson yet no clue about the arsonist.
There’d been a long gap between that fire and the next one—the abandoned warehouse last week. Long enough that people had begun to hope the fires had ended. At least no one had died in the latest fire. Dan was determined to catch the guy before anyone else died.
“Chief?” Hazel’s voice came through the desk intercom, her clipped tone letting him know she was still annoyed with him. “The mayor’s on line one.”
Dan reached for the phone, knowing that this caller wouldn’t be nagging him about taking a vacation. The mayor would be quite content for Dan to work twenty-four hours a day if it meant putting a quick and quiet end to this increasingly troublesome arson problem.
“Do something with it.”
In response to the reckless order, Paula Campbell put her hands on her ample hips and studied Lindsey curiously. “And just what would you have me do with it?”
Eyeing her reflection in the beauty-shop mirror, Lindsey shrugged. “I don’t know. Cut it. Curl it. Fluff it. Just do something so I don’t look like a twelve-year-old boy.”
Paula chuckled and reached for a towel and a cape. “No one would mistake you for a boy. Not with those pretty, big green eyes of yours—or that perfect skin. But if you want a softer look than that shaggy style you’ve worn for so long, we can certainly take care of that. You want to flip through some style books?”
“No. I trust you to know what looks good. Just make it a style I can maintain without a lot of fussing, okay?”
“You got it.” Intrigued by the challenge Lindsey had just presented, Paula set to work with enthusiasm. “What’s inspired this makeover, anyway? Someone you’re trying to impress? Some male?”
Painfully aware of the women listening openly from the three other stations in the four-operator salon, Lindsey responded with a laugh that she hoped was credibly casual and derisive. “Yeah, sure, I’m hoping Brad Pitt will leave his wife and find me on the streets of Edstown. Can’t a woman change her hairstyle without being accused of trying to catch a man? I’ve just had a birthday—isn’t that reason enough to want to make a change?”
“Well, sure—especially a momentous birthday like thirty or forty or fifty. But you just turned twenty-six, not exactly one of those numbers that usually send women running for a makeover or a facelift. So I figured it must be a guy.”
“Too bad your new boss is already taken, heh, Lindsey? That Cameron North is one fine-looking man,” the woman being tinted and permed in the next chair murmured.
Lindsey smiled. “He’s definitely good-looking—and definitely taken. He and Serena are the most blissful newlyweds I’ve ever been around.”
Lila Forsythe sighed wistfully from beneath her helmet of hair rollers. “Their story is so romantic. The way she saved his life—the way he fell in love with her before he even recovered his memories. Serena’s mother thinks it was love at first sight, you know. That’s why she wasn’t worried that they got married so quickly.”
“Love at first sight.” Paula snorted as she spun Lindsey’s chair around so she could lower her to the sink for a hair washing. “I’ve hardly ever seen it work out. Maybe Serena and Cameron will be the exception.”
Lindsey kept her mouth shut. She had no intention of confessing that her own experience with love at first sight had lasted twenty years and counting. She could just imagine Paula’s response to that scenario.
She only half believed it, herself. Maybe she was just in the habit of being in love with Dan Meadows, rather than actually in love with him. But if she left town without at least trying to find out for sure, she suspected that the question would haunt the back of her mind for the rest of her life.
Dan thought of Lindsey again during lunch, which consisted of a deli sandwich at his desk. Hazel had brought him the sandwich when she returned from her own lunch break, and had then spent five minutes lecturing him about his work habits before he’d sent her away so he could eat in peace.
He’d spent the past two hours in an intensive meeting with the fire chief and two arson investigators from Little Rock. A pile of new notes littered his desk now, but the meeting had actually accomplished very little. The consultants had looked over every scrap of evidence on the Edstown fires, including a long visit to the most recent crime scene, but the conclusions they’d drawn hadn’t been much different from what Dan and Fire Chief John Ford had already figured out. Someone around here was deliberately setting fires and covering his tracks so well there was no way to tell who he was. Yet.
Pushing a hand through his brown hair—which felt shaggy to him, reminding him he needed to make time for a cut—he wondered how long it would take Lindsey to come snooping around in an attempt to find out everything that had been said in the meeting. He’d have to be suitably vague—resulting, he hoped, in an article that the locals would find reassuring. He was sure they’d be glad to know that arson experts had been consulted—he just wouldn’t tell them the experts hadn’t provided much assistance so far.
Sure enough, it was less than an hour later when Hazel buzzed him. “Got a reporter here from the Evening Star, Chief. Are you in?”
Hearing the dry humor in her voice, he knew the reporter was aware that Dan was in. He could still say no, of course. But he might as well get this over with. “Yeah, Hazel, send her in.”
He pushed his hand through his hair again and made a halfhearted effort to straighten his desk, making sure no confidential paperwork was visible. He wouldn’t put it past Lindsey to snoop through them when he wasn’t paying close attention.
But it wasn’t Lindsey who ambled into his office a couple of minutes later. This was a man—young, tall, lanky-limbed, a lazy smile gracing his squarish face and reflecting in his cool-gray eyes.
“Well, hey, Riley,” Dan drawled, telling himself he wasn’t really disappointed that it wasn’t Lindsey. One reporter was just like another one, he assured himself. “Is Lindsey busy bugging the fire chief? The mayor, maybe?”
“Lindsey took the day off.” Riley O’Neal arranged himself loosely in one of the chairs on the other side of Dan’s desk. “Cam sent me to find out if there are any leads on the arson story.”
“Lindsey took the day off?” Dan repeated, surprised. “Is she sick?”
“Not as far as I know. Some people have lives outside their jobs, you know.”
The barb was delivered with a grin. Like everyone else in Edstown, Riley was well aware of the police chief’s workaholic tendencies—although it was hardly a trait Riley shared. Riley’s philosophy was to do exactly as much work as necessary to survive, and to spend the rest of his time taking it easy.
Thirty years old, Riley had been working on a novel—or claimed to have been—since he’d graduated from college. He hadn’t grown up in Edstown, but his maternal grandparents had lived here, as did a favorite uncle who still maintained a home here. Riley had visited often enough as a boy that nearly everyone knew him even before he took the job with the local newspaper. He asserted that he liked the slower pace of small town life. Made it easier for him to find time to write, he’d explained.
Dan had always considered Riley a bit of an eccentric, a borderline loner, and a wiseass to boot—but for all of that, he rather liked him. Besides, Riley wasn’t nearly as pushy a reporter as Lindsey was, which made it easier to deal with him when Dan wasn’t in the mood to cooperate with the press.
So there was no reason at all to be disappointed that Riley had shown up when Dan had been expecting Lindsey. After all, if Lindsey moved away, Dan would have to get used to working with other reporters from the local paper.
He would miss her, he realized again, even as he answered Riley’s questions about the arson investigation. Lindsey was practically family to him. So it made perfect sense that the thought of no longer having her in his life left a rather hollow feeling inside him.
“So you’re no closer now to solving these arsons than you were a month ago?” Riley asked, his pen poised over the battered, reporter’s notebook he’d pulled from his jacket pocket. “And have the charges officially been upgraded to murder since Truman Kellogg died in that fire two months ago?”
Deciding he’d better concentrate on his answers before he slipped up and said something stupid, Dan pushed thoughts of Lindsey to the back of his mind and gave his full attention to Riley, reminding him that there was no proof yet that the Kellogg fire was linked to the others. Riley would let him get away with that—Lindsey would have kept pushing. Dan couldn’t help smiling wryly at the thought…and realizing again that he would miss her when—if—she left.
Holding the tip of her tongue between her teeth, Lindsey leaned close to the lit makeup mirror, an eyeliner gripped in her right hand. She swore when her hand twitched, smearing liner across her right cheek. “I can’t do this.”
Connie Peterson laughed and handed Lindsey a moistened makeup-remover pad. “Of course you can do it. It just takes a little practice—something most women do before they reach your age, by the way.”
Lindsey scowled, making it more difficult to remove the smudge. “I haven’t had time to mess with makeup. I’ve just slapped on mascara and blusher and lip gloss, and that always seemed like enough.”
“So why have you decided to change that now?” the makeup consultant, whom Lindsey had known since high school, asked curiously.
“Oh, you know…getting older. Trying not to show it.” Lindsey hoped her answer was suitably vague and believable.
Connie’s laugh came perilously close to a snort. “Yeah, right. You hardly look old enough to drive legally. I bet you still get carded every time you order a drink.”
Keeping her eyes fixed on the mirror, Lindsey painstakingly followed the directions Connie had given her for applying the eyeliner. The effort was a bit more successful this time. “So maybe I’d like to look my age.”
“It’s a guy, isn’t it?”
Lindsey’s hand jerked again, resulting in a matching liner smudge on her other cheek. She reached for the remover again. “Why does everyone assume I’m changing my appearance for a guy?”
“Because we’ve all done it,” Connie replied with a smirk. “You’ve got a great new hairstyle, and now you’re investing in war paint. Definitely a guy.”
“You’ve changed your appearance to try to attract a guy?” Lindsey eyed the brown-haired, brown-eyed woman curiously. Attractive and extroverted, Connie had always seemed so comfortable around men, always having a date for local events, and rumored to have bruised a few hearts during the years. Lately she’d been deeply involved with a man from a neighboring town, and there was broad speculation that this time it was starting to look permanent.
“Oh, sure. Remember when I tried bleaching my hair my senior year in high school? Major mistake—but I did it because Curtis Hooper said he liked blondes.”
Lindsey couldn’t help laughing. “Curtis Hooper? No kidding? I didn’t know you ever had a thing for Curtis.”
“Yeah, well, how was I to know he meant he liked blond men?” Connie shook her head in self-derision. “He really was cute. But maybe I should have gotten a clue, when the only thing he and I really had in common was that we both enjoyed putting on makeup?”
“You think?” The shared humor relaxing her, Lindsey decided Connie’s feminine insight might come in handy, as long as Lindsey was careful about how she worded her questions. “So, have you ever seen it work? A woman changing her appearance to get a man’s attention, I mean.”
“Oh, sure. Lots of times. A guy gets used to seeing someone a certain way, you know? Then when she makes a change, he starts looking at her in a different way—sometimes as if for the first time.”
Which, of course, was exactly what Lindsey was hoping for, though she had no intention of admitting that at the moment. “It doesn’t seem…well, a little desperate to you?”
Connie laughed. “Heck, no. Sometimes you just gotta hit ’em over the head, girl. Men just don’t get subtlety.”
“I heard that,” Lindsey muttered with a sigh, remembering all the subtle messages she’d sent Dan in past months. Messages that had apparently gone right past his thick male head.
“I don’t suppose you want to tell me who it is you’re trying to catch?”
Lindsey shook her head and answered gruffly. “Never mind about my reasons. Just teach me how to use this war paint, will you?”
“That’s my job.” Connie reached cheerfully for a mascara wand. “By the time I get through with you, you’re going to knock that guy—whoever he is—right off his feet.”
Lindsey was beginning to believe this entire day had been an exercise in humiliation. But she wasn’t a quitter. She’d started this, she might as well finish it. “What color lip liner should I use? And why the heck do my lips need lining, anyway?”
At six o’clock Friday evening Dan was helping two of his officers subdue a couple of angry and belligerent drunks in the parking lot at Gaylord’s, a bar-and-Cajun-food establishment on the seamier side of town. It was earlier than usual for this type of altercation. He’d gotten in on it only because he often dined at Gaylord’s on Fridays, and he had arrived just in time to see a drunk take a swing at one of his officers. His presence signaled a quick end to the commotion, and he watched in satisfaction as the two brawlers were subdued and hauled away.
He was greeted the moment he walked into Gaylord’s by the burly owner who worked behind the bar. “Hey, Chief, how you doing?” Chuck shouted over the manic zydeco music blaring from numerous speakers.
“Fine, thanks, Chuck. How’s the gumbo tonight?”
“Same’s always. Best you ever put in yo’ mouth. Find yourself a chair and I’ll send Gary over with a bowl. You want a beer with that?”
“Better make it water. I’m still on duty.”
“You always on duty, eh, Chief? I’ll send some corn fritters with your gumbo. Save room for dessert now, you hear? Mama’s been baking all afternoon, and I’ll make you a pot of fresh chicory coffee.”
“You don’t have to twist my arm.” Looking forward to the first hot meal he’d taken time for in several days, Dan crossed the scarred hardwood floor to his favorite booth, a small one in the back just big enough for two. He intended to dine there alone, as he usually did.
He certainly didn’t expect to be joined almost immediately by Lindsey Gray.
It took him a moment to realize it was Lindsey. She looked different somehow…and it had little to do with the red glow from the strings of chili-pepper-shaped plastic lights hanging over their heads. She’d changed her hair—it looked softer, a bit curlier. And she was wearing more makeup than usual. She didn’t need it, of course—but he had to admit she looked great.
Only then did he notice what she was wearing. It was a long-sleeved knit dress—unusual in itself for Lindsey—and it was cut up to here and down to there. Not a lot up top to flaunt, but what was showing looked good. And her legs—well, who’d have thought a woman so short could have legs that long?
“Hi, Dan. Fancy meeting you here.” The voice was definitely Lindsey’s—unexpectedly husky for such a little bit of a thing.
“Lindsey. What are you doing here? Do you, uh, have a date or something?”
“No,” she answered, and he wondered why he was glad to hear it. “I’m just in the mood for company and Cajun food tonight.”
“Will my company do?” He motioned toward the other side of the booth, managing at the same time to glare at a greasy-looking guy who was checking out Lindsey’s legs from a table nearby.
Lindsey hesitated just long enough to make his scowl deepen. So how come she was taking such a long time to answer? Had she been hoping to hook up with someone else tonight? Was that the reason she’d dressed to thrill? Did she like being ogled by greasy goofballs on the make? “Sit down.”
Lifting a freshly plucked eyebrow in response to his growled command, she slid onto the other bench. “I don’t want to intrude if you want a quiet dinner alone.”
Though he wasn’t entirely sure he bought the excuse, he answered, “I always enjoy visiting with you. You know that.”
Her dimples flashed in a smile that made her look more like B.J.’s gamine little sister than the sexy redhead who’d greeted him a moment earlier. “Very nice. What did you order?”
“Gumbo. Want the same?”
“Sure. Why not?”
Catching Chuck’s eye, Dan held up two fingers. Chuck responded by making a circle with his thumb and forefinger.
Knowing the food would arrive eventually—service here being dependable if not overly speedy— Dan tried to think of a conversation opener. “So…how’s your week been? I haven’t seen you around much.”
“I’ve been busy. And so have you, I hear. Riley said he’s had to practically chase you down whenever he had a question for you.”
“Yeah, what’s with that, anyway? How come Riley’s suddenly covering my office?”
Lindsey shrugged, one shoulder almost emerging from the deep neckline of the black dress. “I’ve been working on a series of features we’re going to run next week. They’re about the town’s oldest five citizens. It’s been fascinating.”
“Did you talk to Marshall Collier?”
“Of course. He’s 102—and still sharp as a tack. He tells great anecdotes.”
“And Nellie Pollard? You couldn’t interview her.”
“That was a bit more challenging,” she admitted. “Poor thing just sits in a chair and rocks and hums all day, when she’s not sleeping.”
“So what did you do?”
“I interviewed her one surviving son. And her grandsons. Then some of the people she gave piano lessons to during her years as a music teacher—her life reflected through the lives she touched.”
“Did you feel you got to know her that way?”
“I sat with her for a while yesterday,” she said. “The song she hums all the time? It was her favorite—one she taught all her students. Her husband sang it to her the night he proposed to her. She hasn’t played piano since I was in diapers, but she still hears that song in her head.”
“That’s pretty sad.”
“I know. She’s been in a steady decline for the past ten years. But for the almost sixty years prior to that, she brought music into the lives of several generations of young people. Now a lot of them are old, too—but they remember her music.”
Dan studied Lindsey’s face in the glow of the chili-pepper lights. She looked…dreamy, he thought. As if she could hear the music playing even now.
He had no doubt that the articles would be good. Better than should be expected from the average small-town newspaper. But then, the Evening Star was better than the average small-town paper, he conceded—especially now that Cameron had become managing editor, and as long as Lindsey and Riley wrote most of the articles. Cameron would stay—after all, he’d married the paper’s owner. But Riley would be leaving eventually, once he decided to get serious about that book he’d been writing for so long.
As for Lindsey—well, she probably should be utilizing her talents in a bigger market—as much as Dan hated to admit it.
Chuck’s son, Gary, appeared then, bearing a heavily loaded tray. Two big bowls of rice, two of spicy seafood-and-vegetable gumbo. A platter of warm corn fritters. Two mason jars filled with ice water.
“You guys don’t want beer with this?” Gary asked, setting the food in front of them.
“No.”
“Yes.”
They’d spoken simultaneously. Dan glared at Lindsey. “No,” he repeated.
She frowned, but shrugged. “No,” she said to Gary.
“Whatever. Give me a sign if you need anything.” Gary shuffled off at his usual speed—a mosey.
“I’m on duty,” Dan said in response to Lindsey’s questioning look.
“I’m not.”
He spooned gumbo over his rice, then added a liberal dash of hot sauce. “Since when do you drink beer?”
“I don’t very often. But sometimes it’s good with Chuck’s gumbo. I am of age, Dan—want to see my ID?” she asked a bit too sweetly.
He knew very well that she was old enough to drink legally—which didn’t mean he had to like it. How often did she show up here like this, anyway—dressed this way and drinking beer?
He was seeing an all new side to B.J.’s little sister—one he wasn’t sure he liked. But then, Dan had never liked change.
They ate in silence for a few minutes—until their meal was interrupted by a big-shouldered young man with a shock of brown hair, his blue eyes focused squarely on Lindsey’s petite, but prime, cleavage. “Hey, Chief,” the intruder said without looking at Dan.
“Hey, Jimmy. What’s up?”
“Not much. How you doing, Lindsey? Haven’t seen you around in a while.”
She responded with her usual friendliness. “Hi, Jimmy. How are things at the muffler shop?”
“Lot better now that Delbert Farley’s behind bars. I always hated working with that as—that jerk.”