Page 6 of Playing With Fire

“My father is still getting over Long COVID, he’s back part-time at the plant. His lungs are shot. And my mom, she’s getting on too.”

Jodi nodded politely. The last time she had seen Lottie Sharp, the woman had looked in fine fettle. A little worn down by her husband’s health issues and the weary years of the pandemic like most folks but hardly decrepit.

Ricky was clearly another expert in avoiding hard questions about himself.

Her phone vibrated again, and she rolled her eyes apologetically and flipped it back over. They both gazed at the fresh string of messages, each stuffed with emojis like currants in a bun.

She sighed. “Save me from journalism graduates with their eyes on the next Pulitzer Prize.”

Ricky laughed. The kind of warm, caressing chuckle almost guaranteed to make a girl feel like she was the only woman in the world. Unless of course she was a hard-nosed journalist, in which case a woman might merely experience a frisson of heat and the slightest quickening of her heartbeat.

Not that it mattered. Jodi thrust the phone in her coat pocket and finished her coffee. Ten months into the role, she understood that acting editors had no private lives to speak of. And she was way past sighing over secret teenage kisses.

“I’m guessing that our jobs have a lot in common.” Ricky’s smile was wry. He rose to his feet to help her into her coat. “A bunch of needy customers and a phone that never stops.”

Jodi smiled. She slipped her arms through the sleeves, catching a whiff of something clean and woodsy under the musty smell of dog and fire retardant.

The firebug.

There was a story that any conscientious editor would snap up. One that could possibly require her to spend significant chunks of time with the Chief’s new assistant.

Ricky’s bare hand brushed against hers. Jodi ignored the faint tingle of pleasure and arranged her face into what she hoped was an expression of professional interest.

“I want to follow up on that story. It sounds like a real public safety issue.”

“Boodles?” His eyes danced.

“No, the firebug,” she said frostily.

He laughed again, and Jodi grinned, suddenly charmed. She had sounded pompous, and she knew it. Deep inside she felt the brittle wall between her cool professional persona and her private dreams crack a little.

“I agree,” he said, suddenly sober. “The Chief has been keeping it under wraps, but we need to get the town on alert before something bigger than a trash can goes up in flames. I’ll talk to him about media coverage and get back to you.”

He zipped up his mud brown jacket, pulled out his own phone.

Jodi bit back a sharp retort about press freedom and where Chief Leroy Browning could put his media management. She rattled out her cell number.

He keyed the number in and threw her a warm smile. “You didn’t say before...your grandpa is still a minister at Temple Mountain Community Church?”

“Sort of. He’s moved out to the retirement village but insists on being on the preaching roster. My theory is that most of the folks on the church council are aware that Gramps knows where the bodies are buried.”

Jodi huffed out a laugh that was part affection and part exasperation.

“I guess he finds it hard to let go after all those years ruling the roost.” She smiled and shook her head. “But there’s a new family in the rectory. The Beechams. Both ministers, a married couple with a passel of kids.”

Ricky nodded. “Mom keeps trying to get me to go to church along with her. I’ll...ah...be in touch, then. About the firebug.”

He waved and turned away, moving with the grace of a natural athlete. A man comfortable in his own skin.

Jodi knew she was smiling like a starstruck teenager. She stepped to the curb, watching the shadows of people moving around inside the newspaper office.

The traffic flowed past. It was taking the town a while to get back on its feet after the pandemic, but the empty shopfronts were slowly filling and tourists were returning.

Job vacancies were springing up here and there like pumpkin vines after a rainstorm. Suddenly everyone was desperate for staff. The job offer she’d turned down last month tugged at the edge of her thoughts.

Not the right time, she’d told herself. And making acting editor of The Temple Mountain Monitor at twenty-six? You couldn’t get that kind of experience in New York City.

A break in the traffic finally appeared. She dashed across between a large yellow school bus and an enormous motor home which probably had more appliances and furniture than her apartment.

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