Combustible (A Boone Childress Novel) (15 page)

“Damn,” she whispered. “I forgot.”

“Forgot what?” Boone asked.

“Cedar has date with me,” Luigi said. “We are ordering food.”

Boone cocked an eyebrow at Cedar, as if to say WTF?

“It’s not a date,” she said. “Just helping him with his conversational English.”

“You come along, too,” Luigi said and clapped Boone on the shoulder. “We will make it a threesome.”

“A what?” Cedar cried and stepped toward him, a fist balling up.

“Let’s go, Luigi,” Boone said and steered him down the hallway out of harm’s way. “That one definitely gained something in translation.”

"They
didn't believe you?" Cedar said as she spooned Italian dressing onto her hoagie. "None of them?"

The
afternoon sun shone down on the patio in front of Red Fox Java, a small coffee house and used bookstore that was housed in a red brick, two-story building across from the Bragg County Courthouse. The patio was a favorite gathering place for courthouse employees during lunch on weekdays. On weekends, it was the place where band geeks and goth kids hung out, drinking the only double espressos to be had in town.

At
a table right next to the sidewalk, Boone sat with Luigi and Cedar, along with Cedar's beagle, Chigger, who lay under the metal table, his head resting on Cedar's tennis shoes.

"Not
a single, solitary word," Boone said, summarizing the phone conversations he'd just had with Hoyt and Lamar. "Hoyt said his office was too busy to talk to me, much less go chasing shadows. Lamar said that I have Eugene Loach on the brain."

"What
about your grandfather?" Luigi pushed his backup pair of glasses up on his nose. They were thick plastic and rectangular, making Luigi look like someone had circled his eyes with a black marker. Boone now understood why he avoided wearing them before. "Did he doubt your story?"

"No,"
Boone said, "but I couldn’t get in touch with him, either. His cell goes straight to voicemail, and all I get is the answering machine on his home phone. He's out of touch, and I don't know if it's intentional or not. He may be working behind the scenes, or he may be in a hammock on his sleeping porch watching the tide coming in."

"Let's
assume he's working behind the scenes." Cedar rewarded Chigger with a bite of ham. "What would he be working on?"

"The
case."

"Well,
yes, the case," she said. “What do you know, exactly?"

"
I know this,” Boone said. “There have three suspicious fires. The first was the Tin City fire, where Stumpy found a finger. The second was Nagswood, where the woman was killed. The third was actually the first chronologically, a suspicious fire in north Dare County. That leaves us with three firefighters who seemed to know more than they're saying, three arsons that follow the same pattern, and an unidentified female."

"Do
you think the events are related in some way?" Luigi said.

"
I think there's a serial arsonist on the loose," Boone said. He slid off his shoe and rubbed Chigger's belly with his toe. "And I want to catch him."

"So
what's next?" Cedar said through a bite of her sub.

Boone
shrugged. What was next? With the cops stonewalling him, all he could do was cool his jets until something broke. "I don't know. Wait? Be patient? The gears are turning without me, and if I interfere, I'll never make it back on the Frisco VFD. Which leaves with what? Help with your research project?"

"Music
to my ears," Cedar said and went on a long involved explanation of her project, which had something to do with her beagle, circuit boards, terrorists, luggage, and a device that worked like a microphone for the nose.

The
details were lost on Boone, who was only listening with only one ear. It wasn't that he couldn't understand the concept of Cedar's project, but his attention was drawn away from the patio across the highway to the courthouse green, where a crew of county employees was raising a cherry picker up to a streetlight. Around the turn of the twentieth century, the Atlantic Coast Line installed gaslights all over downtown to show of its depot three blocks away. When electricity replaced gas, they kept the antique lamps.

But
it wasn't the ornate wrought iron that caught Boone's eye, it was the flags the workers were hanging for Bragg Fest, the festival that Bragg County held every year to celebrate itself.

"
Bragg Fest," Boone said. “isn’t that when you doing that thing you’re researching?”

"
You mean that thing you’re supposed to be helping me with?” Cedar said. "The thing that you still haven’t gotten around to, even though Bragg Fest is next week?”

"Oh yeah,
" Boone said, his attention now focused on a face he saw inside the restaurant. Trey Landis. What was a rich man doing at a shabby chic hangout?

“Daniel-san has problems with his ears.”
Luigi laughed and ate his French fries with gravy.

Luigi
tilted his head and dropped them down his gullet. Two of the fries missed and fell to the ground beside the patio. Chigger launched himself from his resting place and wolfed them down before Cedar could stop him.

"Bad
boy! No French-fries for you. They give you gas."

"Me?"
Boone said. "I tolerate potatoes fine."

"No,
not you.” Cedar patted her leg, and Chigger returned to his spot. “Well, yes, as a matter of a fact, you are a bad boy."

Boone
looked at Luigi with his arms raised, as if to say,
Who
?
Me
?

"Don't
try to play it off, Boone. You're a really smart guy, but you've got the attention span of a gnat. Focus!"

She
smacked him lightly on the forehead, but the palm of her hand turned in such a way that the sound was much louder. The other diners yanked their heads around.

Boone
lolled his head, pretending to be hurt.

Cedar's
neck turned red below the ears, and she covered her mouth, embarrassed. "I am so sorry. I didn't mean to hit you that hard. I was only trying to get your attention."

Boone
grinned. "Psyche."

Pop!
Cedar smacked him again.

“Ow!” Boone said, his sprained neck killing him.

Luigi started laughing and pointing at the shape of a handprint reddening on Boone's forehead.

Boone
rubbed the spot. "That one stung."

"Serves
you right," she said.

Boone pressed his iced drink to his
sprained neck. "Is it swelling? I think it's swelling."

"What?"
Cedar pulled the glass away. "It's fine. Stop being such a wuss."

"I want to look
for myself." The truth was, he needed to hit the head, but he wasn't about to announce that he needed to pee to the whole patio. "Be back in a minute."

Cedar gave him an
inquisitive look.

"Lavatory,"
Luigi whispered loudly.

Great. Boone rolled his eyes. So much for
subtlety.

When he finished his business, he passed near the espresso bar, where Landis sat
, a cigarette cupped in his hand. A waitress crossed by him with a tray of food lifted to the shoulder. She stopped cold and said something that Boone couldn't hear.

Landis stood up like he was going to leave the bar
, then as the waitress was turning away, tapped the ash from his cigarette into a bowl of broccoli soup. Something like a mix between a grimace and grin split his face, and he dropped the cigarette into his own cup. He laid a five on the bar.

What a jack
ass. Boone wondered if Trey Landis treated everyone badly when they weren't looking.

"Everything come
out okay?" Cedar said, smirking as Boone returned to the table.

"Affirmative,"
he replied.

Under
the table Chigger let out a short growl. Boone watched him stand, his tail stuck straight out. He jumped over their feet, then bounded out to the sidewalk. He sniffed the air, turned, and sniffed again. Then his back arched, and he pointed across the street at the courthouse green.

"What's
he doing?" Boone asked.

Cedar
scooted her chair back. "Customs trained him to signal when he smelled certain chemicals. It used to happen all of the time. I'll get him."

"Wait,"
Boone said. He reached out to stop her, but she had already scooped the dog up.

“Fish sticks,” she said, the dog relaxed.

Chigger looked surprised to see her. He applied a sloppy tongue to the corner of her mouth, where she had missed some Italian dressing with her napkin.

"Silly
doggy," she said and set him in her lap.

Boone
shrugged, disappointed. "I wanted to see what he would do."

"That's
all he does. He's not an attack dog, you know. That's why US Customs uses beagles in airports, so they don't scare the people…."

Her
voice trailed away as her gaze focused on something behind Boone.

As
Boone turned, he was greeted with the sight of an approaching Deputy Mercer, who had his ticket book open and was pulling an ink pen from the behind his ear.

"Whose
dog is that?" Mercer said, pointing the ink pen at Cedar.

She
rubbed Chigger behind the ears. "Mine, officer."

"ID
, miss."

"What
is this about?" Cedar asked. Most people her age didn't respond to law enforcement very well. Either they were good kids befuddled by a cop demanding answers, or they were bad boys who hated cops and immediately gave them attitude.

Cedar
was different. Maybe she learned confidence from demolishing the competition on the tennis court. Or maybe she was just born with it. Either way, she wasn't about to be cowed by a cocky little man in a khaki uniform.

"I'll
ask the questions," Mercer said. "Show me some ID."

Cedar
fished her license out of the pocket of her jeans. "Here you are."

Mercer
grilled her on every detail on the license, including whether or not she really understood the commitment it took to become an organ donor. Then he wrote her a ticket for having Chigger on her lap.

"There's
a law against bringing pets inside a restaurant, missy." He took the ticket from the pad and slapped it on the table when she didn’t offer to take it.

"W
e're outside," Boone interjected.

Mercer
jabbed the pen behind his ear. "Food's being consumed."

"Food
is consumed outside all of the time." Boone shifted his weight in the chair, leaning toward Mercer. "Take the Bragg Fest, for example. There will be vendors all around town square, and they have a Frisbee catching contest for dogs right there on the green. Are you going to ticket all of those owners, too?"

Mercer
rested a hand on the table. He leaned in so that he was eye level with Boone, who saw his own face reflected in Mercer's sunglasses. He was surprised to see himself smirking.

"Watch
your mouth, sailor boy. You're already walking on thin ice around the department.”

Boone
decided not to respond. When Mercer didn't get a rise, he pushed himself back up, tipped his hat to the other diners. He strode off in the direction of the sheriff's office, which was on the opposite side of the courthouse.

"What
an asshole," Cedar said. She picked Chigger up and rubbed his belly. "He gave my puppy a ticket!"

"
American policemen are much less courteous than Japanese policemen," Luigi added.

Cedar
stabbed the ticket with her fork. She ripped it from the tines, folded it into a square, and stuck it into the small pocket with her license. "I'm not paying this, you know. It’s so unfair. They think I won’t show up for court, but I'm definitely going to show."

Boone
felt sorry for the judge who would have to hear the case. An angry Cedar was an unstoppable force, and he was about to say so when the cellphone buzzed in the pocket of his jacket.

"It's
Abner,” he said and answered. “Hey, Doc. Where've you been? I've left you—say that again. You're kidding. You're not kidding. He's not going to be very happy with us after last time. Okay. Okay. I'll take care of it."

Boone
hung up the phone and then drained his iced tea. "Anybody care to give an over-medicated guy a ride?"

"Where
to?" Cedar said, standing.