“I don’t know if we have time. Your buddy seemed to want us there in a hurry.”
“Pshaw. He can wait. He already screwed up your project enough. He’s not going to make us go hungry too. Come on. We can leave the car here in the lot and walk. It’s not far.” She tugged him toward the sidewalk.
The stop at a nearby sandwich shop took slightly longer than expected, Emma exchanging updates on her brother’s medical condition with both the employees behind the counter and a few of the other patrons in line.
Chase smiled. “You keep reminding me it’s a small town, yet I’m continually surprised.” They turned the corner, heading toward her parents’ home near the end of the block. The air smelled acrid, an undeniable chemical taste in the wind. A thin plume of darkness twisted skyward, smudging against the clear afternoon sky.
Emma hesitated, freezing in place for half a moment before breaking into a run. Chase followed, pounding behind her toward her house. Thick smoke billowed from the wide-open front door. Emma was nowhere to be seen.
“Emma!” He ran toward the smoke choking on the strong chemical smell, panic lancing through his chest. “Emma!” He stopped short of the doorway, eyes burning and watering, unable to see much through the curtain of black.
“Chase! Don’t go in there!” Emma ran up from behind him, Hershey bounding after her. “I let the dog out the kitchen door before he clawed all the way through.”
He swept her into his arms and hugged tight, relief searing through him and catching his breath in his throat. “Don’t scare me like that again. I thought you went inside!”
She squeezed back. “I might be impulsive, but I’m not totally crazy.”
The fire truck arrived on the scene within minutes. Chase and Emma watched the men suit up with respirators and move in through the open door, walking directly into the pitch-black darkness of the interior. Moments later, two of them stumbled back out dragging a large metal trash barrel between them, similar to the ones down by the beach. Smoke billowed from the open top, flames still licking out at sporadic intervals. A third fireman approached the barrel with a fire extinguisher, spraying the interior until the smoke subsided, finally sputtering to a halt.
The other firemen who’d gone inside exited the building after several more tortuous minutes. One walked up to where Emma and Chase stood on the lawn, taking off his mask and shrugging off his protective coat. The tight T-shirt clung to his sweaty frame, revealing chiseled chest muscles. His eyes passed over Chase and settled on the woman by his side, giving her a toothy grin. “Hey, Emma. It’s been a while!”
“Justin! I didn’t recognize you with the respirator!”
The guy chuckled. “You would if you came home to visit more often. God, I’ve missed you.”
She stepped forward to give him a hug, pressing against his sweaty neck but taking care not to rub her skirt against the sooty pants. Jealousy flared within his chest as Chase watched her kiss the guy’s cheek with a resounding smack.
“P-town lost its prettiest girl when you up and moved to New York. Life’s not the same without my favorite dance partner.”
Emma giggled.
She actually giggled
. “Oh, Justin. You say the sweetest things.”
Chase cleared his throat.
The sweaty fireman jerked his head toward him, his gaze not leaving Emma. “Who’s this guy? He bothering you? Or did he follow you home from the city like some stray?”
She giggled again and stepped back to stand next to him, taking his hand between hers, for which Chase felt grateful. “Justin, this is my friend Dr. Chase Anderson. He’s doing research over at CCS. Chase, this is another friend from high school. And before you ask, yes, he also played football with my big brother.”
He tried not to scowl at the guy. After all, he’d helped save Emma’s house. But… Everywhere he turned there was another old high school “friend” hitting on Emma. It was starting to get old. Not that he felt insecure, but still.
It’s the principle of the thing
.
Justin nodded his approval. “Scientist, huh? That’s great. We can sure use some new blood over there at the Center.”
“Thanks, I think.” Chase had no idea what to make of the guy, or his relationship to Emma. Or what he knew about CCS. And he really didn’t care. What he wanted to learn was what caused the fire. “What’s going on inside?”
“Best I can figure is maybe a practical joke gone too far.” Justin jerked a thumb at the smoldering barrel on the far side of the lawn. A fireman stirred the contents with a long pole while a second man stood nearby with the extinguisher at the ready. “The trash bin was the only thing on fire inside the home, positioned in the living room entryway. Someone was bound to call it in since burning rubber makes such thick, noxious smoke. Lucky we got here quick enough that the damage seems pretty minimal.”
“A joke?” Emma frowned. “Not a very funny one if you ask me. What if the flames jumped to the curtains? Or a spark ignited Mom’s couch? The whole house could’ve burned down!”
Justin nodded, his expression serious. “We did a thorough search of the premises, and there are no other hot spots. My team is propping windows to air out the smoke, but I’m afraid you’ll have to have professionals come to clean up. Whoever burned tires in that trash barrel guaranteed quite the mess. We can let you in to take a look around, maybe see if anything is missing. Captain Matthews and the police should be here soon to take your statement and file an official report.”
“Captain Matthews?” Chase looked at Emma for enlightenment.
“The fire chief,” she said.
He turned back to Justin. “You’re not the chief?”
The guy laughed out loud. “Not by a long shot. But I recognized Sean’s address when it popped up. I grabbed the guys in the crew and we hightailed it here.” He turned back to Emma and took one of her hands. “I heard about your brother being in the hospital. Guess it’s a good thing you’re here to help.”
Her smile wasn’t convincing. “A good thing, unless I’m the reason someone lit a trash bin in my mom’s living room.”
Justin looked puzzled. “Who would do something like that to you?”
Chase had a couple ideas.
Chapter Nineteen
Emma sat across from Detective Wilton—a guy she’d known practically all her life—and couldn’t believe what he was saying. “Are you serious, Jim? How can any of this be my fault? I did not light a fire in my own home, I didn’t drown that man, and I certainly have no idea what’s going on with the Lenzini crime family.”
“Now, Emma, no one’s accusing you of anything. Hear me out before you jump off the deep end.” Jim’s patient expression pissed her off all the more. Did he think she was simple and he needed to use smaller words so she’d get his meaning?
“No, I don’t need to
hear you out
. I need you to tell me what’s going on! We came to the station to read the medical report and you grill me with questions about the fire and mobsters like I’m somehow at fault! This is nuts!”
Chase shifted in the seat next to hers and put a reassuring hand on her knee. She tried to ignore the desire that spread from his simple touch and focus on Jim’s words.
“No one’s saying it was your fault. It’s all getting complicated is all, and I’m trying to find a connection. You seem to be in the middle of something here.”
“The middle of what? All I did was identify a drowning victim. What has that got to do with kids burning tires in Mom’s living room?”
Jim blew out a heavy breath and opened the manila folder on his desk. “Okay, so your friend Vito didn’t simply drown…”
Emma held up a hand to stop him. “He wasn’t my friend.”
He rolled his eyes. “Right. Whatever.” He jabbed a forefinger on the medical report. “Can I continue?”
Chase sounded as annoyed as she felt. “Can you cut her some slack, Detective? We just came from our second crime scene in as many days. It might be business as usual for you cops, but not for the rest of us.”
Jim’s lips thinned into a tight line. “Believe it or not, this isn’t normal for us either. Maybe in the big city, but not in my town. I’m trying my best to get to the bottom of it all.”
“Hey, I’m sorry I snapped at you.” Emma patted Chase’s hand. “We both are. So tell us. What did the medical examiner find out? How did the guy drown?”
“Actually, he found no water in the lungs and wire-thin ligature marks around his neck. The officers on the scene didn’t notice them at first because of…well, you saw the state of the body. But it makes sense he died before going into the ocean. He floated in with the tide instead of sinking.”
A vision of the scurrying crabs from her nightmares ran through her head. “Ligature?”
“Death by strangulation is the expert opinion. M.E. pegged the time of death in the morning, probably soon after you had your conversation with the guy. Which makes it even more important to get every detail of what was said. The guy’s last words, so to speak.”
Bone-deep panic rocked her body in successive waves. Chase squeezed her knee again, bringing her back to the present. She glanced away, focusing on a poster on the far wall.
See something; Say something,
it read
.
She wished she had something helpful to say.
Chase cleared his throat. “Can we stick to the basic facts?”
“Right. Well, we know Vito talked to you before nine a.m. He was strangled and tossed into the ocean at some point after that, we assume from the deck of the Boston-bound ferry. The M.E. noted multiple hematomas around the right eye socket and cheekbone, which, because of the bruising patterns, he thinks occurred prior to time of death. We have uniforms down there interviewing crew right now, to see if someone on board saw or heard a scuffle—”
Emma interrupted again. “He had the bruises before he got on the ferry.”
“Excuse me?” Jim looked up from the report.
“When he came to see me. He had the bruises already.” She was about to add her assumption that Tony caused the bruising in exchange for Vito embarrassing him, but stopped herself. That part was pure speculation on her part, without a shred of evidence to back it up. She hadn’t even spoken to Tony since his jealous rage the other night on the phone, when he said he’d “take care” of Vito. Another shudder wracked her body.
Jim scribbled on a separate sheet of paper. “I’ll let the M.E. know your observations about the bruises.” He took out a second report. “Now, my partner spoke with the Harbormaster about yesterday’s currents and tides. It would seem the body must’ve been dumped off the ferry fairly close to shore in order for it to wash up under the wharf. Otherwise the current would drag it out to sea. Which would seem preferable to anyone strangling and dumping a body, so the M.E. speculates the killer wanted the body to wash up here, on Provincetown.”
“Which poses yet another dilemma, in that the body didn’t appear on the beach until later. Kids tend to play in and out of the shadows under the wharf all day long. Someone would’ve reported a body. So where was the corpse between time of death and time of discovery?” He looked at Emma as if expecting an answer.
She shrugged. “That sounds like your job, not mine, Jim.”
“Any ideas?”
“Not a clue. Does the ferry have closets?”
“Officers are sweeping every corner of the boat now, looking for clues. But we need to know if you had any further contact with the victim or his, um, family after that initial run-in at nine a.m.”
Before Emma could answer, Chase spoke up. “She already told you everything she remembers from yesterday. This is starting to sound like harassment.”
While the two men argued, Emma’s mind spun a mile a minute wondering how far Tony’s involvement with his cousin actually reached. She’d heard his temper on the phone, and Jim had told her he had bar fights on his police record…but murder? Could the man she knew be capable of killing his own cousin? Strangling him and stuffing the body somewhere to wait until dark? The Tony she knew wouldn’t do that. But then again…
She turned to Chase. “Could you do me a favor and get me a cup of coffee from the vending machine? I can’t seem to get rid of this chill.”
He smiled at her before turning a dark look toward the policeman. “I’ll be right back. Stick to the facts, please.”
Jim tapped his pen against the surface of his desk, watching Chase stalk away. “I can see the wheels turning. What are you thinking?”
“I’m really wondering how embroiled Tony is with the actual murder. I’m fairly certain he’s the one who beat up Vito the night before he…died.” She swallowed hard before relating the entire conversation as she remembered it, word for jealous word. “He actually told me he’d
take care
of Vito. Doesn’t that mean kill him, in mobster-speak?”
“Not sure.” Jim frowned, still tapping his pen.
“I kind of glossed over the fight last night when we were here,” she said. “Tony acted totally jealous and possessive and not like himself, and the things he said scared me. I didn’t want to have to explain everything to Chase.”
“Why’s that?”
She huffed. “It’s awkward. I really like this guy. I don’t want to mess things up because he thinks I’m dating a mobster.”
“Are you? Dating a mobster, that is?”
“No!”
“Did you date him at any time in the past?”
“God, no! I met him at a work event in January. We’re friends, that’s all.” She stopped short of telling Jim her suspicions about Tony’s sexual preferences, mostly because it was pure speculation on her part but really it was none of his business.
Jim nodded to someone behind her. She turned and saw Chase standing behind her, coffee cup in hand. “Hey,” she said, surprised and nervous and not sure what that look on his face meant.
“Hey.” He handed her the cardboard cup and cleared his throat. The storm in his grey eyes danced with unreadable emotion. “So you know I already believed you about Tony, right? You don’t have to hide details.”
She blinked. “I wasn’t trying to hide anything, but I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea. I don’t want another misunderstanding mucking things up.”
He lowered into the seat next to her. “First of all, you’re a pretty bad liar. And second, I’m not going anywhere.” He finally broke the eye contact, turning to quiz Jim. “What about the fire? Any leads on how a burning barrel of tires ended up in her living room, or why?”