Page 54 of Up In Smoke

“Honestly, I re-asked her questions that you said you asked. None of it quite added up. I can't put my finger on it, but she’s lying about something.”

She heard him suck in a breath. It was hard enough on him to think it was one of his brothers. But for Ivy to point a finger at his mother? Her heart broke for him.

“Okay, what did she say?”

“She said that Mario was there at the house with her. On one of the nights when we can clearly place him at a bar with friends. One of the fires we think he set after leaving the bar.”

“Which one?”

“The third house. The empty house.” She told him.

“Okay.” Luke knew which one she was speaking of. “And he doesn't have an alibi for the spa. At least that's what Taggart and Kane said.”

“But what about Tiago? What your mother said didn't add up there either. The night that Tiago was supposed to have been with her, she said they were out together. But when I asked, she said she thought she was out with friends that night, until I prompted her about Tiago. Then she said her friends were at the house when Tiago came over. So I asked her for names and she couldn't provide them. Don't you think the police would have found that?”

“I know they questioned her.” Luke sighed heavily and Ivy hated putting this on him, but they couldn’t work without him, he was the one who knew what was going on in that family.

“Yes, she told me the police questioned her and asked why I was asking the same things. I don't think the police will tell us what they find. We're not officially part of the investigation, except as witnesses.” His sigh spoke volumes.

“I think she’s just protecting you boys against anything anyone asks. Like, for any date anyone brings up, she’ll say her sons were with her.”

“Okay,” Luke said again as she gave him a moment to process it.

But if his mother was doing that, then almost nothing she said was reliable. So Ivy walked over to the table where she had the pages laid out and shuffled through them again. “If you look at it that way, if you say that Mario is our arsonist and Tiago did one of them for him,andif he did it on the night that your mother is covering for him, then Tiago did the old convenience store fire.”

Ivy could almost hear Luke thinking as a silence settled over the line. “It works, doesn't it?”

“I guess. What was the accelerant on that one?”

“Paraffin,” Ivy answered with a knowing tone in her voice. She’d been doing her homework. “Paraffin is less volatile. Mario could have set it out and left it, established his alibi with your mom. All Tiago had to do was light it.”

“That was the one where they found a lighter, not a match,” Luke filled in.

“Exactly.” A melted yellow Bic had been found at the scene. “And it's out in the middle of nowhere. Tiago doesn't even have to be a decent arsonist. He doesn't have to take a lot of time. He simply shows up, lights the place and leaves.”

“But why would he do that for Mario?” Luke asked and she knew he was just asking for himself.

This was the part Ivy hated. “It could be because they're brothers and he feels a loyalty. Look at what you did.” She knew Luke felt bad now, simply because his brother was on the line—not just one brother, but two. There was a reason she hadn't gone to the police with this.Not first. Luke would want a chance to talk to his siblings and let them turn themselves in. And he would want solid evidence before he did even that much.

“It could be that Mario has something on him,” she added, waiting while Luke absorbed that too. “Tiago's got a criminal history, Luke, a long one. There have to be some activities the police didn't catch. And he and Mario seem infinitely malleable. They both must have things that they'd want to keep hidden, which makes it possible to manipulate them.”

She spoke for a few more minutes, speaking things that he clearly already knew about his brothers—things that neither of them had wanted to know. Now, it appeared his mother was involved—at the very least she was covering for one or more of her sons.

When silence settled over the phone line, Ivy waited. She could only fill the space so much.

Luke sighed again, the heaviness of it filling Ivy’s heart about to breaking. “I guess I just have to be glad that Carlos got out unscathed.”

Ivy would simply agree. The youngest brother had moved somewhat out of town. He had stayed close enough to his family to be there but was far enough away not to get caught up in this the way Luke had. The boys had had such a rough childhood. But Luke and Carlos seemed to have come out okay and Ivy wondered if it was wrong to think that two out of four wasn’t too bad a number given the situation.

“This isn’t going to be easy for Carlos to hear. He’s the baby.”

Ivy thought about it for a moment. Her family, as far as she knew, had never quite had ababy of the familybecause more babies simply kept coming. But she knew how she felt about Violet and Rose, that they were so much younger than her. Even though she wasn’t there, and even though they were much older now, she still felt so protective. She could only imagine Luke feeling the same level of protectiveness toward his own baby brother.

“Do you want me to come home?” Luke asked, his voice soft.

For a moment Ivy shook her head, forgetting that he couldn't see her. “No.”

“Do you think you’re in danger?”

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