“Sorrels and Marsden. They wanted to meet me here, ask some questions about things.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“But I have your car,” she protested.
“I’ll be there.” He hung up without another word.
Miffed, but somehow reassured, she dropped her phone into her purse and got out of the car.
“Ms. Hagen, thanks for meeting us here.”
“Sure.” Torie looked at the gloppy pile in the yard. “That’s just awful, isn’t it?”
Sorrels nodded. “Yeah, they have to tear out so much drywall to be sure they’ve gotten to all the fire, then soak it down. It makes one damn-all mess.”
Marsden cleared his throat.
“Oh, sorry,” Sorrels offered.
“For what?”
“Language,” Sorrels said.
Torie laughed. “I work with engineers, gentlemen. Language doesn’t bother me.”
They looked relieved, even as they were moving toward the house. “We have the key to the padlocks here, since it is still a crime scene,” Sorrels said, unlocking the thing and swinging the makeshift plywood door away from the jamb. The shattered storm door creaked like doom when they pushed it open.
Torie couldn’t suppress a horrified gasp as they crossed the threshold and she saw the devastation. Virtually nothing was left of her living room. The lovely hardwood floors were blackened and hacked. The walls were stripped to the studs, all the wallboard torn away to insure the fire hadn’t spread. The ceiling joists were exposed; some of them were blackened as well, showing where the fire had roared through the ceiling when the bomb went off.
“Oh, my God,” Torie murmured, reaching for the newel post to steady herself. With total disregard for her new pants, she lowered herself to the steps. “This is…this is…”
“Horrible. Yes, it is. Fire always is, but one that’s set? With intent to harm? That’s worse.” Sorrels said it with matter-of-fact calm, but Torie heard the intensity of his conviction.
She managed to nod, but couldn’t speak. It looked like a war zone, like a movie set. It was so different, so surreal, it hardly seemed to be her house at all.
Marsden picked a careful way through the maze of broken floorboards. “We think the bomb landed here, then exploded,” he stated, turning to spread his hands in a wide pattern to mimic the blast.
“Can you tell us where you were when it went off?”
Torie corralled her chaotic thoughts which all centered on how terrible everything looked and smelled. She decided the smell of soaked floors, soggy drywall, and possible mildew were nearly as bad as the smell of the fire.
“I think I was here,” she said as she managed to make herself move toward the kitchen, tripping a bit over the warping floorboards. “I had just let the dog back in and I heard the noise.” She shuddered at the memory, the odor of gas. “I smelled gas, I went toward the living room,” she continued. Looking at the two men, she grimaced. “I guess that was really stupid.”
“It’s a natural response.” Marsden temporized his response. “But dangerous.”
“I guess. Anyway, that’s when the first explosion went off.”
“First?”
“There were two. Pickle and I were thrown back and we hit the door. When I heard another crash, I grabbed my purse to get the phone.” She pointed to where it had been, on the counter. The twisted, melted, and mangled plastic of her grocery bags were a bizarre sculpture on the counter. “I got the door to the deck open. The second blast knocked through the door, out onto the deck.”
Sorrels nodded. “That’s what we wanted to know.”
From the doorway, Paul cleared his throat. Torie jumped at the sound. “Oh, Paul. Inspector, Chief, you know Mister Jameson, don’t you?”
“Yes, indeed,” Sorrels commented, shooting looks between the two of them. “Obviously you two have come to some sort of truce?”
Torie nodded and prayed she wasn’t blushing, though she felt her cheeks heat. “Common enemy, it seems.”
“Yes, Ms. Hagen’s correct. I believe whoever killed our friend is responsible for this as well, and the additional attempts on Ms. Hagen’s life.”
“So you’re a detective now, too?” Marsden said, sarcasm tingeing his voice.
“No, but I’m a trained observer, Chief. And in talking with both of you, with Officer Tibbet, and with the officer who worked the scenes at the hotel, I can put a lot of pieces together.”
Paul turned to Torie, extended a hand as if to brush her arm, but changed the gesture at the last minute. Instead of a caress, he rested his hand on the door jamb. If the others found it odd, they didn’t show it. “So, Ms. Hagen, I know this is difficult.” His gaze was hot, but his tone cool. It was a strange combination.
With a grimace, Torie shook her head. “We’ve known each other for nearly twelve years, Paul. The inspectors know that.”
Paul smiled. “True, but I wanted to be sure you were comfortable.” He looked around, stepping away from the stairs and gazing into the trashed living room. “What a disaster.”
Marsden nodded. “The smallest fire can cause tremendous damage, and this was no small event.”
“May I take anything out of the house?” Torie finally gathered the courage to ask. “Or can I at least go upstairs and see if anything is left of my clothes?”
Sorrels and Marsden exchanged looks, but Sorrels spoke. “Yeah, but be careful. We don’t want you landing on our heads, okay?”
“I’ll come with you,” Paul said, following her up the stairway. The pictures on the wall were cracked and the glass blackened from the blast. She couldn’t tell if any of them were still whole. That alone broke her heart. The large picture of her grandparents was one of the only ones still hanging in place, but along with everything else, it was dark with soot, the black dust obscuring the seated couple.
The damage was only slightly less obvious upstairs. The scent of smoke permeated everything. Water stained the walls, and the enormous gaping hole in the floor and ceiling of her guest room showed the path of the flames. Plywood covered the windows here as well, making the room dark and dank. Everything in it was surely a total loss.
“Where do you want to start?” Paul said, his voice neutral, urging her to keep moving.
“The office,” Torie said, moving that way. She’d turned the third bedroom into an office overlooking the narrow garden in the back of the house. The windows here, unboarded, let in the spare sunlight. The trees and pretty bushes still stood, unmoved by the destruction in the house. At least the back was salvageable. “Oh.”
Stopping dead in her tracks, Torie surveyed the wreckage that had been her neat, pretty office. Soot and water stains were less visible here, with the fire concentrated in the front, but they were nevertheless present.
The large window overlooking the backyard was a haze of cracked panes. A storm front was blowing up outside, and the cloudy day made the formerly cheerful room seem sinister and murky.
“I don’t think anything in there will be useable,” Paul murmured, his voice ripe with sympathy.
“I have to see if my files are here. I have a fireproof box,” she managed, then stopped again, realizing that it alone would be undamaged.
Fetching it from the soot-covered drawer, she cradled it in her arms.
“I’ll hold onto that for you if you want to check on the things in your room.”
Not daring to look at him, knowing the least bit of pity would have her either flying into sobs, or the opposite, roaring into anger, Torie handed him the case. It was like a tackle box, only metal and bright red.
“You’re a smart woman,” he complimented, following behind her as she moved past him into the hallway. “Most people never get around to this sort of protection.”
She suppressed a shudder. “I never thought I’d need it.”
When she had to stop in the doorway to her room, he moved up behind her, his free hand pressing her shoulder in a reassuring squeeze. If nothing else had happened between them, if all were still wretched and horrible, that gesture alone would have gone miles toward mending things.