Page 12 of Crash and Burn

For the next twenty minutes, they sat at the table and he and Maggie took turns explaining what happened, while Marina took copious notes.

When it was his turn, Sebastian admitted, “I saw the lights go on, one at a time, all over the house.”

“And why were you watching her house in the middle of the night?”

Oh yeah, he’d known this had been coming. It was going to be bad when he explained it, but having his ex doing the questioning? He didn’t even know how or what to tell Maggie. Despite his feelings for her, they weren’t dating, and he suspected that Marina saw right through him.

The best he could do was not turn an embarrassing shade of red as he explained about the footprints, adding the date and time of day when he’d spotted them.

Marina next turned to what Maggie had heard from inside the house. He let Maggie explain how they’d swept each of the rooms and found nothing.

“Is there anything else I should know?” Marina asked, her eyes scanning the two of them as though they should start admitting to an extramarital affair. Neither of them was married, though probably everyone in town knew Maggie was with Rex.

Taking a deep breath, Sebastian said, “Actually there is.”

Something about his tone must have grabbed her. Her eyes snapped up to his.

But this wasn’t his to tell. He hadn’t been here when the box was found. “Maggie?”

“Follow me.” Maggie stood up and he watched his ex and his current wish head down the hallway to discuss more of the disturbing events of Maggie’s last week.

Maggie led the way to the back room, where she opened the closet and pointed up toward the shelf. The box was pushed so far back that even he couldn't see it. Maggie reached up on her tiptoes and pulled it out.

As she did, his mind put a few pieces of information together. The prowler had opened all the doors downstairs, Maggie said, possibly even this closet. But he hadn’t found the box.

Sebastian began thinking out loud, narrating for Marina as much as to organize his own thoughts. “If he was looking for this, he would have noticed the floorboard where it was originally hidden is torn up.”

Maggie still hadn't fixed it. Sebastian made a mental note to get on that right away.

“You think he was looking for this box?” Marina glanced between the two of them, still a bit in the dark.

“Who knows?” Maggie held it out, but Marina put a hand up, reached into her back pocket, and pulled out blue nitrile gloves.

Yeah, Sebastian thought,the police definitely needed to know about this.

Placing the box on the top of the antique dresser at the side of the room, Marina used a single blue-tipped finger to lift the lid. “Jewelry,” she said, stating the obvious. Then she looked up at Maggie. “Is there anything special about it?”

“Just that it's odd,” Maggie replied. “Who has dime store jewelry and expensive diamonds in the same box?”

Marina tipped her head as if to agree. Then she pulled a pen from her pocket. Using the tip, she attempted to untangle a few pieces, just as Sebastian had done.

“I have photos of the pieces,” he volunteered, then immediately spoke again, preempting her because he knew she would ask. “I didn't touch it. I used a pen. But I didn’t get it all untangled, so some of the pictures are a mess of several pieces.”

“So it's been disturbed?”

“Well, yes,” he said, but how would it not be? “It was disturbed when Maggie pulled it out from where it was hidden. It was shoved between the boards, sideways, so it wasn't preserved anyway.”

Marina nodded but kept pushing through the pieces as if inspecting a meal for stray peppers.

Sebastian pulled up the pictures on his phone just as she scooped her pen under the ankle bracelet and slowly pulled it out.

Her expression stilled, and even Maggie caught the look. She asked, “What is it?”

“I can't say for sure,” Marina uttered the words too quickly, tilting the pencil and letting the jewelry slide back into the box. She closed the lid carefully.

It was clear she wasn't going to tell them. Her jaw clenched a little bit. No one liked having information withheld, but Sebastian understood. Though he wasn't a law enforcement officer, being a firefighter he understood a lot about the privacy clauses that governed both their jobs.

He wasn't allowed to walk onto a scene and tell the homeowner it was arson, even if it was clearly arson. And Marina wasn't allowed to say anything just because she had a suspicion.

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