October Twilight (A Year in Paradise Book 10) Page 3

  Even though she worried. She always worried.

  Oh, she didn’t have time to worry! She had birthday cakes to make, invitations to respond to, and goodie bags to put together! She had Halloween costumes to sew and candy to buy for the trick-or-treaters they never saw.

  She had dinners to make and laundry to wash. She had groceries to buy and cars to refuel.

  She had bills to pay with money she didn’t make.

  It was a damn good thing she put so much emphasis on making this family work and dying with this woman alongside her. Because Sally didn’t have any other choices. She was well into her forties with four kids and no money of her own.

  Candace pulled her into an unsolicited embrace. At first, Sally almost told her to keep her hands to herself. When she realized it wasn’t a sexual advance, she wrapped her arms back around Candace’s torso and sighed.

  Wasn’t it amazing what the simplest of gestures could do for her anxiety?

  Chapter 4

  CANDACE

  The station didn’t usually get so much uniformed traffic, outside of the biannual county meetings and the occasional high-profile perp in lockup.

  There were no perps, currently. No meetings. Only a meeting of the fire and law enforcement minds as one told the other how to do their jobs.

  “The way I see it,” Adam Trough, the county fire marshal who was in charge of the arsonist investigations, said, “we’re not getting anywhere with the Musgrave kid. Short of the county DA throwing the book at him, we either have to let it go or wait for his so-called buddies to attack again.” Before either Candace or Peterson could jump on him, he continued, “How many old barns are left in this whole county? Two? Now that it’s raining every day, we might as well admit that they’re done. This time next year, they’ll have either moved on to crispier pastures or…”

  “You seriously want to roll over?” Candace interrupted, the sheriff sucking in his breath over her outburst. “Let me at that kid and I’ll have him shitting his pants while calling for his mama.” She knew Mrs. Musgrave well enough. She knew how to get to that woman’s boy.

  “I didn’t say anything about rolling over,” Adam said. “I said that we needed to be careful about how we managed our resources. I’m only one man, for Christ’s sake. You want me expending more time on this, I’m gonna need help. Meanwhile, I’ve got housefires, car fires, and industrial kitchen fires every other week! Do you know how many open investigations I have?”

  The law enforcement contingency were silent, waiting.

  “Three! That’s not including the barn fire arsons!”

  Three. A whole three investigations. Wow. Amazing. Meanwhile, I’m backed up with a meth lab in Roundabout and a couple of kids street racing on the highway around midnight. This man wanted to talk about resources? They could start with how understaffed the sheriff’s office was! That was the whole point of this joint investigation. Three heads were better than one, especially if that one head was Adam Trough, a man who couldn’t rub his belly and pat his head at the same time. How he got to be fire marshal, I’ll never know. Candace could do a better job than him at this rate.

  “Give me the kid,” Candace repeated. “I’ll figure out who is helping him set those fires. The last thing we should do is roll over and pretend this never happened! What the hell are we, anyway? Are we the protectors of this town, or are we a bunch of ninnies who don’t know our asses from our elbows? What will people say if they found out we dropped the investigation?”

  Peterson shook his head. “People are gonna say what they say. Although I do agree that we shouldn’t completely give up at this point, although the trail is cold. I’d rather bring in an outside investigator to help than…”

  “Great. Yeah. Bring in the city boys,” Adam said with a snort. “I’m sure they don’t have better things to do than root through Portland’s hobo campfires.”

  He laughed, but both Candace and Peterson had thoroughly discussed the pros and cons of turning this over to Multnomah County investigators. Not only were they also understaffed – and overburdened – but without conclusive evidence that one of their citizens was involved, they were likely to laugh Paradise Valley out of the urban area.

  “Give me the kid,” Candace repeated. “I know him. I know his mother. He may not like me much, but he’ll open up to me more than some stranger from Portland.”

  “Speaking of the kids…” Adam tapped his finger against his lip. Already, Candace knew this was going somewhere else. “We need to go over the fire safety and first-aid course at the school this week.”

  While that was an order of business during this meeting, it was the kind of thing that could easily be coordinated over email. Candace knitted her brows into a tight knot, looked Adam in the eye, and said, “We can talk about that later. Right now is about the Musgrave kid.”

  “What’s the point if we’re letting more Musgrave kids get made out there? We need to make sure these kids know that there won’t be any more fires on our watch. You want to scare some sense into the kids of Paradise Valley?” That was directed at Candace. “Then let’s get them at the assembly.”

  Could Candace convey any more of her disgust? How like this little weasel to shift to something he had more control over, as if that made him the big man in the county! One of these days I’m gonna totally snap. Snap his back in half, that is. She could do it, too. Candace was bigger than anyone in the room, and that included Peterson.

  “The assembly won’t mean a damn thing if they’re laughing behind our backs,” Candace said. “Are you kidding me? Do you know anything about high schoolers? They’re ruthless little bastards who are big enough to start serious trouble but don’t have the brain development to know when to quit.” Harsh, but Candace had seen most of the crap kids got up to like she had a front-row seat. Before she was an honored deputy of the town, she had been the head Clark High School lunch lady. Every day, Monday through Friday, she served entrees to the ungrateful spawn of the county’s east side. Oh, sure, kids were great in their own special way, but when a woman worked around them every day for several years, she had seen and heard everything. Things their own parents hadn’t heard. She was old enough and experienced enough to have seen some of the great relationship blowups like she had bought tickets for the events. Ask me what I think about Mikaiya Marcott and Ariana Mura. You wanna talk about feeling old? She had been there when those two gangly teens started going out ten years ago! She had seen the breakup. Saw them get back together almost a whole year ago. Because it wasn’t enough that Candace arrived to car crash scenes where the likes of Ariana, who used to be so girly and scrawny, hauled victims into an ambulance, sometimes with her own big, bulky arms.

  Meanwhile, Candace felt like the same exact person she had been fifteen years ago, when she was slinging mashed potatoes and coleslaw onto plastic trays. Remembering that she had come so far into her dream job blew her mind. In fifteen years, she had not only changed careers, but gotten married and had four kids. I barely knew who Sally was when I was a lunch lady. These two gentlemen in their uniforms hadn’t known her as anyone but Officer Candace Greenhill, a later-in-life recruit who quickly became a town favorite until she was unanimously recommended for the role of town deputy. She may or may not have thought about gunning for sheriff whenever Peterson retired. Granted, that was an elected role, but nobody went against the incumbent around there.

  She really wished she were the sheriff right now. Peterson should be directing this meeting and making Adam see the idiocy of his statements. Adam didn’t have legal authority to make arrests, only conduct investigations. He required the aid of the sheriff’s office. He needed them more then they needed him!

  “You want to make a difference with kids?” Candace continued with a grunt in her throat. “You make sure that they know what is and isn’t acceptable. You make it clear that this isn’t about bossing them around and making them shit their pants for the fun of it. We’ve got their families and their friends to protect
. We’ve got their future kids to protect. It’s not about snitching and not about being a lame-o. It’s about letting them be kids without worry they’ll be fooling around in a barn that’s about to go up in smoke!”

  Peterson shook his head. “Yes, the real important thing here is that we preserve their make-out barns…”

  He totally missed the point, huh? Candace almost smacked her head against the table, but Adam finally said, “You’re right. Sorry. We still need to talk about the assembly, though. I’ve already had a chat with the fire department, and while they do their demonstrations, I want you guys to have a long chat with the audience about the importance of keeping things safe and chugging along. You do it however you see fit. I’m sure the principal and the superintendent won’t have any issues with us getting to the bottom of which of the devils are about to light their houses on fire.”

  “In the meantime,” Candace cut in, “I want the Musgrave kid in the interview room.”

  That was mostly for the sheriff to know. He was the only one with the authority to put Dillon Musgrave in the interview room, and he would undoubtedly want to take part in whatever Candace had up her sleeve. That’s fine. He can watch and give all the critiques he wants. Sometimes, Sally told Candace that she was “one-track minded.” That she indulged in a little too much tunnel vision thanks to her job. That sure was the truth, now wasn’t it? But where Sally said it like it was something to improve upon, Candace embraced it. That tunnel vision was what helped her keep her focus when times were tough and the tough got going. I’ll be damned if I let a group of organized firebugs go on my watch. She didn’t want one guilty kid. She wanted all of them.

  Only then would she be able to sleep at night. Because right now, she spent an awful lot of time fretting that her own children would wake up to the smell of smoke and kiss of fire on their cheeks.

  The more she thought about her family, the more she thought about putting the masterminds of the arsons behind bars.

  Chapter 5

  SALLY

  Moms with short haircuts and fuzzy cardigans wrapped around their bodies crammed into the hard, plastic chairs of Clark High School’s library. This has got to be the biggest PTA turnout in five years! Not since those rumors of party drugs going around the school had Sally seen so many moms, dads, and concerned grandparents in one tiny high school library. Usually, they couldn’t fill the five rows of plastic chairs if they paid people to attend.

  Tonight, however, Sally had to squeeze her glutes and hope she didn’t accidentally rub a thigh against her neighbor. She stuffed her purse into her lap and folded her hands through the strap loops, her nearest neighbor scoffing at the frizzy brown hair touching her cheek. I can’t help it, now can I! The static was unreal that night. Lightning storm was supposed to light the sky up, and whenever electricity was in the air, Sally’s hair took over the place.

  She was lucky she didn’t have any of the kids with her. Candace was home with them, a fact that both relieved Sally and gave her a taste of petty revenge. She has to feed them dinner, get them washed, and put them to bed – all by herself! Oh, Candace was perfectly capable. She simply didn’t have to do it that often. Every time Sally thought about it, her mouth twitched into another diabolical smile. I hadn’t changed the baby’s diaper yet! Have fun, Candy!

  Oh, this would have been a terrible environment for the baby, especially this late in the evening. With energy high and concerned parents flooding the meeting, Sally felt less petty toward Candace and more worried about the state of the world.

  “Hey, everyone! Please take your seats!” Greta Williams, the PTA president with a kid in every public school around, stood up from her seat and waved a small rainbow flag above her head. Flanking her were the vice president and the treasurer, two women who folded their hands on the table and looked up at Greta with pompous adoration in their eyes. Sally sank into her seat. She had personal beef with vice president Lisa Terrace. Namely, her son called mine a windbag on the playground two years ago, and now they’re mortal enemies. Lisa took it more personally than anyone else. More personally than their sons! “Thank you, thank you! We’ve got a lot to go over tonight and have quite the full house!”

  She could say that again. More people filed in five minutes before seven. They had long run out of chairs. Parents hung out in the doorway and awkwardly bumped into the computers and stacks of books lining the walls. One ambivalent granddad accidentally set off an alarm behind the librarian’s desk when his elbow slipped off the counter and bumped into the monitor.

  “Order! This meeting is called to order!” Greta smacked a plastic gavel against the table. “Thank you, everyone! Due to so many people being here, let’s try to stay on time so we can all get home to our families. First, a reading of last month’s minutes…”

  Everyone shifted in their seats as they waited for the formalities to end. Most people didn’t have the patience for these things, which was why they never came, regardless of how much skin they had in the public school race. This was the countryside, after all. Even with IVF populating half the school district, it wasn’t unusual for some families to have up to five children. Two or three was the norm. Sally always heard a joke that said “only children are test tube babies” because their parents were one and done after the financial and biological hassle of IVF. Sally wasn’t the only mom with a brood of kids brought to her by a doctor in a lab coat. In fact, the blond woman sitting next to her had five! It was supposed to be three, but then she had surprise triplets… Boy, didn’t Sally know that feeling.

  “…Now we shall address what I’m sure you’re all here for.” Greta cleared her throat. “As most of you know, in the past few weeks, one of Clark High’s own students has been apprehended as one of those responsible for the rash of arsons in our county.”

  Greta paused. She must have known that sighs and soughs would ripple through the crowd. Murmurs of “the Musgrave kid” and “the one whose cousin is from Alabama” made their way to Sally’s ears. Oh, yeah, everyone knew the story by now. Maybe they didn’t know the whole story, but they knew enough, and that was all they cared about when it came to saying, “The Musgrave kid burned all those barns down.”

  “Obviously, due to the nature of minors involved, we can’t divulge too many details,” Greta said. “We can tell you that there is still an ongoing investigation regarding possible other culprits, who may also be minors. It’s also possible that they’re not from the area.”

  Greta held off any questions as she read off what the sheriff’s department sent her. I wonder if Candace wrote it… Honestly, neither Candace nor the others in uniform were great writers or orators, not that they needed to be. Candace knew enough to fill out her reports and submit a weekly log to the newspaper, but when it came to proper statements for the media (and the PTA, apparently,) she often passed some of the buck to civilians. There was a part time assistant at the station. Maybe he was the one who wrote it.

  “…If you have any leads or information pertinent to this investigation,” Greta concluded at the end of her spiel, “please contact Sheriff Albert Peterson or Deputy Candace Greenhill via the non-emergency number. It’s in everyone’s best interests that we get to the bottom of…”

  Finally, someone cracked.

  “Lock that little shit up and make him tell you who the others are!”

  That started a barrage of comments that required the meager security presence to look around the room.

  “I’m not sending my kid back to school until we know who else is doing this!”

  “You ask me, we should round up all the seniors and make them start talking. Don’t let them leave the room until they’re ratting each other out!”

  “Ever heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment? Sounds like we should let the history class have at it or something!”

  “Do you know how often my little girl goes to sleep with tears in her eyes? She keeps having nightmares about our house being on fire!”

  Greta struggled to re
gain control of the meeting, her gavel smacking to no end. Finally, a middle-aged man in a black firefighter’s dress uniform stood up and bellowed, “Hello, everyone! I am Chief Johnson, from the Paradise Valley Fire Department!”

  That worked. Silence befell the library as parents sat down or grumbled against the wall.

  The fire chief stood beside the table where the Holy PTA Trinity resided. He left his hat on the end of the table and folded his hands behind his back. “Thank you,” he said with his inside voice, which still bounced off the ceiling. “Like I said, I’m Chief Johnson, and I represent the Paradise Valley Fire Department. We are the ones who have been responding to these fires and putting them out before they can spread.”

  Applause erupted. Sally realized she was the only one not clapping.

  “Thank you. I’m here to talk to you, not about the investigation, but what we’re doing to ensure the safety of your children in these troubling times. I’m sure most of you have already received notice that there will be special assemblies all this week about fire safety and what to do when you see trouble. Demonstrations will be put on by both members of the PVFD and our local sheriff’s department.”

  A few eyes glanced in Sally’s direction. What? Did he think she had anything to do with it? Ha! She was lucky if she found out about Candace doing an assembly before Tucker raced home to talk about it.

  Sometimes I feel like I’m the last to know everything. At least she hadn’t been the last to find out about the fires. Those were known to the whole town as soon as they happened, and it helped that Sally got out so much. Although “getting out” meant lugging her troublemaking kids.

  “I want to stress how seriously we are all taking this,” the chief continued. “Not only the fire department, but the sheriff’s office as well. Although we cannot provide much information at this time, be sure that everyone’s safety is at the forefront of our minds.”