Page 154 of Summers at the Saint
Felice yawned.
“Rest now,” Traci said.
She closed the guest room door and went into her own bedroom. She dropped her clothes on the floor, walked into the bathroom, and ran a hot shower. She sniffed a strand of her damp hair. Whelan was right. She smelled like smoke and ash.
After she’d dressed she went out to the kitchen and brewed herself a cup of tea. She’d intended to make a list of phone calls. There was so much to do. She glanced over at the phone she’d plugged into a charger, then resisted the urge to start making calls, start the search for a new general manager and new headwaiter. And probably, she sensed, she’d also have to look for a new guest relations manager.
Instead, when she pulled a pad of paper and a pen from a kitchen drawer, she started making a list of things to be grateful for. It was a coping mechanism she’d learned in therapy, after Hoke’s death, when every day seemed bleak and pointless.
Number one on the list was that Livvy and Felice were alive.
Two was that Shannon was back in her life again.
And number three? Easy. Whelan was number three, with a bullet. He was a good man.
Everything else in her life, and her work, she concluded, would take care of itself.
CHAPTER 68
The county fire marshal was waiting when Traci arrived at the dorm. She gasped and felt physically ill when she saw the burnt-out wreckage of the former golf cart barn. The concrete-block walls were smoke-blackened, but still standing, and the roof had caved in. It was a miracle that Felice and Livvy had escaped death.
The fire marshal was a woman named Dahlia Diaz. In her forties, she wore a long braid down her back and was outfitted in a Bonaventure Fire Department baseball cap, polo shirt, jeans, and knee-high rubber boots.
Traci introduced herself. “I know this is probably a dumb question, but I did promise I’d ask. Was there anything salvageable in there? Like laptop computers, for instance?”
“No, ma’am,” Dahlia said sadly in her thick Southern accent. “It’s all a total loss. If you want, I’ll walk you around and tell you what we found.”
The fire marshal led her around to the rear of the dorm, the area where the kitchen and laundry room had been. She pointed at a hole in the block wall near the back door, which was resting on the ground nearby. “The fire started here. You can see the washer and that gas dryer. See how the door was blown off?” She pointed at the jagged hole in the concrete block. “It looks like your arsonists put some articles soaked in an accelerant in the dryer. Likely kerosene. It was also sprinkled throughout the kitchen and the restof the building. Then they set the dryer on high. When it got hot enough with the built-up pressure, it blew the door off and ripped the gas line here open.”
Traci’s mouth went dry, thinking of the narrowly avoided potential of that explosion. “Smart,” she murmured.
“Not that smart,” Dahlia said. “We can trace the fire’s route. We know accelerants were used, from the burn patterns on the floor. I will say your employees were fortunate they got out when they did.”
“What’s the next step?” Traci asked.
“Up to the sheriff’s office,” Dahlia said. “I’ll file my report with them. No question it’s arson, though.”
She was almost back to her cottage when her phone rang. Someone from the Bonaventure sheriff’s office was calling.
“Mrs. Eddings? This is Deputy Shapley. We met earlier today at the ER?”
“Yes. What can I do for you?”
“We could use your assistance. We’ve been trying to interview KJ Parkhurst, but he insists you’re the only one he’ll talk to.”
“Me?” Traci was stunned.
“He wants to get some stuff off his chest. We believe it’s only a matter of time before his rich daddy figures out what all kind of trouble sonny boy is in. When that happens, he’ll bring in some high-dollar Atlanta criminal attorney and KJ won’t say another word to us. So if you could come down here and talk to him that’d be real helpful.”
Shapley met her in the lobby of the sheriff’s headquarters.
“What exactly do you want me to say to KJ?” she asked as they walked down a long hallway lined with stern-faced portraits of past sheriffs.
“Let him do the talking. Try to stay friendly. Neutral. If you can get him to tell us about the fire, and how it started, great. But thebigger issue is the murder of your niece. We’d really like to get him talking about that.”
They stopped at a desk where a female deputy was seated, typing at a computer monitor. “This is Deputy Gruver.”
The deputy was a dumpling-shaped woman with a pleasant smile. She took Traci behind a screen, patted her every which way possible, then nodded and returned her to Shapley.
