Page 45 of Playing With Fire

“I can’t accuse a man of a crime he didn’t do. And the reason I know he didn’t do it—and you didn’t hear this from me, Ms. Acting Editor—is that I saw who did it.”

Jodi’s eyes flew open, then narrowed. “Spit it out. This isn’t The Late Show.”

Her grandfather looked sad. Jodi’s heart sank. She knew what was coming.

“It had to be those boys. The twins over at the rectory. They were hanging around the tennis courts this morning, looking real shifty. You know I’m the last person to criticize a child who has lost his way. But no question, it was Joshua and Judah.”

***

The garden shed was a stinking mess of blackened tools, half-melted plastic containers of pesticide, and disintegrating bags of everything from mulch to fertilizer. Added to this noisome collection was a stack of insect netting, a shade cloth, and the sharp tang of extinguisher foam.

Ricky pulled down his breathing mask. He poked through the piles with his heavy gloves.

“Typical garden shed,” he muttered. “Full of enough chemicals to flatten the place if they explode, along with every bit of crap that no one wants but no one is game to throw away.”

His foot nudged a charred pair of boots and a couple of cans with the labels burned off. There were even the remains of a backpack and a wadded-up Little League jacket.

He shook his head in disbelief.

Even watching a few episodes of Chicago Fire ought to give the average idiot some idea of what could happen when you combined fertilizer, fire accelerants, and who knew what other chemicals were present in those harmless-looking bags and bottles! He shuddered.

His eyes traveled around the small space, looking for the telltale signs of arson. But he knew it was too late. Only the high-tech labs in New York City could find something in this mess, and Ricky doubted very much that they would even look at a couple of firebugs who tried to burn down the shed in the old folks’ home.

“No harm, no foul,” he muttered. “Chuck the kids into juvie court and get back to chasing boodles.”

Ricky closed his eyes briefly, pushing down the anger and frustration. Now was the time for a cool head, not for wondering what the hell Leroy Browning was thinking when he got the call from his daughter and decided to check it out on the way home from a long and no doubt boozy lunch.

“Well, look it this!”

A shadow blocked the light from the doorway. Ricky turned and saw the Chief in an awkward half-squat, pointing to the corner space between the door post and the corrugated iron wall.

A couple of cigarette butts, damp and half-covered with soot. For a brief second Ricky was reminded of Hercule Poirot.

“We must use the little grey cells, mon ami,” he muttered under his breath.

Browning raised his eyebrows.

“Quit mumbling, boy,” he barked. “And go get those little bastards. This ends right here. And get Sally and that girl from the newspaper over here. They’ll need a picture of this.”

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