Page 51 of Up In Smoke

“No,” she laughed at him, glad she could now find humor in the morning’s events.

“Is it okay if I stay? I've been here about an hour.”

“I saw your car in the driveway.” She told him and Luke hoped that meant yes, it was okay to stay.

He hoped everyone who looked saw the car and knew he was here. So far, Ivy had only been targeted when she was away from him. If he could, he would stick to her side like glue.

But as he watched her pace the small house, checking everything, he saw her movements were odd, a little off. Something was bugging her, something he didn’t yet know about.

“I see you found my work.” She waved her hand at the table where she'd left the papers out. He wondered if their arsonist had broken in and maybe found that they had been studying up. He hated that he’d looked the place through and tried to figure out what would happen if it burned again, what would go up first, what stood a chance to survive.

But he didn't tell Ivy any of that.

He kissed her softly and slowly and told himself it wasn’t a good time to strip her naked and bury both their worries for a while. He waited while she put her purse and keys on the hook, then he pulled her over to the table. “I think it has to be Mario.”

She looked at him a little sideways. “What makes you say that?”

He lined the pages up, pointing out each of the cases.

“But how would Mario know about the spa?” she asked.

“He stayed close with our mom. He and Carlos didn't know our dad much. But I remember him constantly asking about him. I remember him being angry about it as a kid.” He stopped and tried to sift through all the tangled memories that made up his childhood and pick out the right ones to stop the arsonist. He tried to leave the others behind—the ones that would incriminate his other brothers or himself.

“I don’t think I saw it at the time, but he was an angry kid. He had our dad around just enough to get used to him, but not long enough to have any real memories of him. If I was a therapist, I’d say it's probably part of what fueled the drug problem.” He sighed harshly. He couldn’t remember being mad about his father leaving. “Maybe Tiago and I saw the man enough that we knew we were better off with him gone. But Mario and Carlos, they didn't.”

He hadn’t thought about it at the time. Even as an adult, Mario just always had problems. Luke had simply reacted to each thing as it came up and never looked deeper. “I always brushed him off. It might explain why some of the targets seem to be a little more specifically at me.”

Ivy nodded, following along. “What about this fire?”

“That one I don’t know about. Maybe he set it and my mom covered for him.”

The way she nodded, slowly and unsurprised, told Luke that he was late to the party. Ivy had already figured these things out. But he’d learned something else today. “Kane and Taggart got in to talk to the spa manager in the hospital today. She's finally off the pain meds where she can speak clearly.”

Ivy sat down across from him, almost excited. “Did she have ideas about how he got the accelerant around the building?”

“She said an exterminator showed up that morning. She’d thought it was odd and she asked him about it, since he was totally out of season. He said the owner had hired the company and they were doing a new thing, putting down chemicals in the winter. So it had time to soak in and form a good seal around the base of the house before the bugs came out. Something about people waiting until it was too late, until after they had a problem.”

He watched as Ivy’s mouth dropped open. “That’s brilliant. He openly came and sprayed stinky chemicals on the building and they just let him … Wait, then she saw his face!”

But Luke shook his head. “He was wearing a covering over the lower portion of his face. The spa manager apparently didn't think anything of it, because he'd already done half of the house and it stank.”

He watched as Ivy sighed heavily, lowering her face in her hands. He’d felt the same. Each break hadn’t been one. They’d been closer, and all of it would help convict the guy when he was caught, but so far no one had caught him in the act or doing anything that would be enough evidence to bring him in.

The entire town was getting worried now. Luke heard the rumblings.

At first it had been old houses, abandoned places. Then empty buildings. Even Ivy’s house wasn’t everyone’s house. It wasn’t public. Anyone could look at it and think they were safe. But hitting the spa when it was full? Anyone could have been there … and the town was getting mad.

Luke just didn’t know if they suspectedhim.

He took a breath and turned his effort away from things he couldn’t change, to things he hoped he could. “Here's the thing, though, the description could be Mario. It’s too short to be Tiago, so we can rule him out.”

“Do you think Mario has been sober enough to pull this off? The exterminator cover requires some coordination.”

Again, Luke shrugged. He wished he had more to go on, but all he could say was Mario had been very high functioning in the past. “This isn't his first rodeo. And honestly, the fires started months ago. So it's plausible he started off knowing exactly what he was doing. Then he might be taking the drugs to counteract his conscience.”

“You think the fires spurred the drug use, not the other way around.”

Luke raised his hands, feeling helpless the way he had for so long now. “I wish I knew. It's just a theory.”

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