He sat at the scarred Formica table on a chair with ripped upholstery. She hadn’t replaced it yet and he had some hot memories from this piece of furniture. “What news?” Would she get to it already?
Shrugging out of his suit jacket, he slid it onto the isHback of what had been his chair. The same cat clock’s tail twitched the seconds. The place even smelled the same, a mixture of grease and cologne.
She stopped in the middle of making a sandwich. Her tired gaze came to him. “I’m pregnant.”
Chapter Two
Zach blinked. Holy shit. One night. “A baby?”
Dolores eyed him as if he would tell her the answer to a philosophical question.
When she didn’t deny it he said, “Oh?” His tongue couldn’t move properly.
She had always wanted children. He hadn’t and Dolores didn’t tell him her desire until after they married. Another example of how she manipulated him. He hoped she wasn’t doing it again.
“Thanks.” She whirled back to her lunch-making. “It’s yours.”
He glanced out the window then back to Dolores’ back. “Okay.”
A small child could have decked him at that moment.
“I know you didn’t want children, but I’m keeping this baby.”
Zach stood and bridged the distance between them. She didn’t shy away. He didn’t touch her, but she put her arms around him.
“Do you think it’s a good idea? Bringing this baby into an already broken home? Not even a home anymore.”
She shoved him away from her. “This is regardless of what contribution you planned to make.”
He swallowed hard. “Are you really prepared to take care of a baby? Financially and emotionally?”
Her gaze went through him. “Yes.”
He knew how to take responsibility. “I need to time to wrap my brain around this.”
He walked away from her, back to the chair. He paused, then sat down.
“Fine. I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” she said.
She dropped a plate with a sandwich in front of him.
He shook his head, but the idea of a baby lingered on in the outskirts of his consciousness. He could go with a subject change if she could. “So tell me about the car that pulled away,” Zach said.
Her butt landed in the chair across from him. “I’m renting out the apartment above the garage.”
He paused with the sandwich halfway to his mouth. The apartment was livable, but not luxurious. They’d planned on using it as a guest suite, but the marriage had fallen apart. “Why?”
“I need the money.”
“I’ll give you more if that’s what you need.”
She smiled. “That’s generous, but I know how much you make. And now you have a new business.”
“I could find something else to do.” Not.
The next best thing to being a cop was being a private investigator in his mind. That’s what he told himself each morning when he didn’t want to get out of bed.
She laughed. “Oh, Zach, you wouldn’t want to do anything else. It’s as if dead people call to you.”
Knowing she was correct, he blew out a breath. “Well, then at least let me have her checked out.”
Dolores ran a hand through her auburn hair. Passive aggressive alert. “Maybe. If you really want to, but I think she’s okay.”
“Let me find out for sure.”
She picked at her sandwich. “Her name’s Grace Harmony. She’s new in town.”
He reached across and took her hand. As always he said, “I’ll take care of everything.”
***
A background check of Grace Harmony topped Zach’s To-Do list.
But instead of coming back to an empty store front office on Main Street of Glen Hills, someone paced on the sidewalk in front. Why was she out front? She lived upstairs.
Dressed in a caftan in more colors than he could name, Celia Johnson looked worried and determined. He didn’t know why she felt the need to dress the part of a kook. When she’d come to the police station, out of deference to him, she’d looked respectable in a navy suit and sensible pumps. Now she looked like a circus clown on acid.
Zach groaned, then unlocked his front door as if the cause of his downfall with the Centre County Prosecutor’s office didn’t exist.
“Zach.”
Her shrill voice rattled his bones and sent a chill down his spine on such a warm day. His hand paused on the doorknob. “Yes, Celia.”
She stood with her tangled, from-a-bottle red hair rioting around her face while her bearing remained straight and true. “We need to speak.”
“I don’t think so. You’ve done plenty of damage and I’d hoped I’d seen the last of you.”
Trudging into his office, he tried to pull the door closed behind him. Celia held a multi-ringed hand on it. “This is serious. There’s going to be another fire.”
Frustration gnashed his teeth. He’d been down this road and he didn’t like the scenery. “That serial arsonist has been tried and convicted. He’s serving his sentence as we speak.”
“It isn’t the same one. A copycat.”
Zach landed in his chair then rubbed a hand down his face. Maybe if he “yessed” her to death she’d go away. “How do you know this?”
“May I sit?”
He indicated the second-hand chair he’d bought for real clients when he hung out his private eye shingle. Tugging a notepad closer, he reached for a pen. “Go ahead.”
She pressed her lips together as if something undesirable would escape them. He didn’t roll his eyes at her theatrics, but that took all of his restraint.
“I dreamt it last night,” she said when her gyrations were done.
“You said that last time and we arrested the wrong guy.”
She shook her head. “No, you didn’t listen to all that I said.”
“Whatever, Celia. Say what you have to say then leave. You probably have to be at work.”
She settled on the chair with her butt barely touched in the seat. “Listen carefully. An apartment building is going to burn. It will be arson for hire and the person is close to you or knows someone close to you. I’m not sure if it is firsthand or secondhand contact.”
His head spun. “Could you be more specific?” With his pen poised over the yellow pad he waited for her to elaborate.
“The apartment building is old.”
“We have at least three old buildings in Glen Hills alone. More in the rest of the county. What exactly do you expect me to do with this information?”
She stood, turning away from him. She waved her hands in the air. “Use it how you like. You will anyway.”
Her colorful robe
swirled as she exited his office. Multiple necklaces clanked together reminding him of a prison door closing.
Zach expected her to hop onto a broom, but instead she drove off in an expensive, foreign sedan. “Guess voodoo pays off.”
***
Grace fell into bed after her shift. Exhaustion slowed her body, while her mind moved at light speed. She needed to pack to move the next day, her only day off for a week. The details begged to be dealt with, but she had no energy.
Then the phone rang. Phone calls in the middle of the night were never good. She would have traded her ability for the ability to predict who was calling. Maybe she should get caller I.D.
“Hello,” she mumbled, hoping it wasn’t an insomniac telemarketer.
“Gracie,” a voice danced out of the receiver.
Her eyes flipped open and she sat up in her bed. Her heart warmed to hear his voice. “Mark. Where are you?” Her best friend Mark Handon.
“In California.”
“Oh? An acting gig?”
“Nah, I’m directing.” His laughed soothed her through the phone. She hadn’t talked to him in ages. She blinked. He hadn’t called last time she rewound.
“Are you sure you should be in that hotbed of excess and drugs?”
An exasperated sigh came out of him. “It’s been three months, Gracie. I truly want to stay clean. Trust me.”
“I’ll try.”
“Best I can hope for. Did I wake you?”
She shifted on her pillows then propped them behind her. “No, what’s up? How’d you find me?”