LITMIR.BIZ

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friends. You should have taken off Saturday afternoon to go fishing with Cameron, and a few hours yesterday for church and a nice Sunday dinner somewhere. But what did you do? You worked, except for having a quick sandwich with Lindsey.”

      “How did you—”

      “I saw Lindsey at church yesterday morning, and I asked her if she’d seen you during the weekend. She told me you popped in to tell her happy birthday and then came right back to the office.”

      “Do you ask everyone about my business, or just a select few?” He kept his tone mild, but he couldn’t help being a bit annoyed that Hazel had been monitoring his actions so closely. Her job was to keep up with his work schedule, not his personal life.

      “Your friends are worried about you, Dan—and so are your co-workers. You’re working too long and too hard, and if you don’t slow down you’re going to crash just as hard.”

      It was with some effort that he held on to his patience. “I’ll take some time off as soon as we catch whoever has been setting fires around here.”

      Still scowling, she shook her spray-stiffened, salt-and-pepper head. “This is just like those break-ins that took all your time last summer. You said that as soon as you solved those, you’d take a vacation. But Delbert Farley’s been in jail for weeks now and you’re still working just as hard as ever. Catch this firebug and something else will come up. And before you know it, your whole life will have passed you by.”

      “Thank you so much for that cheery prediction. Now perhaps you could go answer the phone before it rings right off your desk?”

      She turned and stalked away, mumbling something about foolish, stubborn men.

      Unable to resist the cliché, Dan shook his head and muttered, “Women.”

      What was going on with them these days, anyway? Lately it was either his secretary ragging him about his working hours, or his women friends nagging him to take a vacation. Concerned grandmas complaining about the blessedly few serious crimes that took place in Edstown, or his sister calling him to fuss about not making enough time for his family. Not to mention Lindsey—nipping around his heels one minute for every detail about his ongoing investigations…and then announcing out of the blue that she was considering moving away.

      What was she thinking? Sure, she’d managed well enough in Little Rock for a couple of years before she’d moved back here. But she was a small-town girl at heart, not one of those tough, big-city reporters. And frankly he wouldn’t want to see her turn into one.

      Not that she cared about that, of course. She hadn’t asked for his opinion. She’d simply stated that she was thinking about putting her house up for sale. It was actually none of his business—even if he had promised her brother that he would keep an eye on her now that their father had passed away.

      He’d known even as he’d made the promise that it was only a formality. Though ten years younger than Dan and B.J., Lindsey was still a grown woman, fully capable of making her own decisions. If she chose to move to Dallas or Atlanta—or Antarctica, for that matter—there was little anyone could do to stop her. Certainly not someone who was nothing more to her than a long-time friend of her older brother.

      Oddly enough, considering how often Dan complained about her hanging around so much in her professional capacity, he would miss her if she moved away.

      Forcing his concentration back to his work, he glanced at the files littering his desk. They contained summaries of the fires that had been set around town—starting with the old dairy barn last summer. A few weeks after that, a recently vacated rent house had burned, under strikingly similar conditions. An old garage a few weeks after that. And then the tragic cabin fire—the one in which Truman Kellogg had died.

      Kellogg had been asleep when the fire started and he’d died in his bed—probably never woke up, mercifully. None of the other suspicious fires had involved buildings that were occupied. Of course, there was the possibility that the arsonist hadn’t known anyone was there: Truman had rarely visited his vacation cabin and then usually only during summer months.

      There had been other details about that fire that differed from the others, but it was hard not to be suspicious about it, considering everything that had been going on in the past few months. Neither Dan nor the fire chief had ruled out arson in Kellogg’s death, though they had no proof that the fire had been deliberately set—not like the others, in which there were obvious signs of arson yet no clue about the arsonist.

      There’d been a long gap between that fire and the next one—the abandoned warehouse last week. Long enough that people had begun to hope the fires had ended. At least no one had died in the latest fire. Dan was determined to catch the guy before anyone else died.

      “Chief?” Hazel’s voice came through the desk intercom, her clipped tone letting him know she was still annoyed with him. “The mayor’s on line one.”

      Dan reached for the phone, knowing that this caller wouldn’t be nagging him about taking a vacation. The mayor would be quite content for Dan to work twenty-four hours a day if it meant putting a quick and quiet end to this increasingly troublesome arson problem.

      “Do something with it.”

      In response to the reckless order, Paula Campbell put her hands on her ample hips and studied Lindsey curiously. “And just what would you have me do with it?”

      Eyeing her reflection in the beauty-shop mirror, Lindsey shrugged. “I don’t know. Cut it. Curl it. Fluff it. Just do something so I don’t look like a twelve-year-old boy.”

      Paula chuckled and reached for a towel and a cape. “No one would mistake you for a boy. Not with those pretty, big green eyes of yours—or that perfect skin. But if you want a softer look than that shaggy style you’ve worn for so long, we can certainly take care of that. You want to flip through some style books?”

      “No. I trust you to know what looks good. Just make it a style I can maintain without a lot of fussing, okay?”

      “You got it.” Intrigued by the challenge Lindsey had just presented, Paula set to work with enthusiasm. “What’s inspired this makeover, anyway? Someone you’re trying to impress? Some male?”

      Painfully aware of the women listening openly from the three other stations in the four-operator salon, Lindsey responded with a laugh that she hoped was credibly casual and derisive. “Yeah, sure, I’m hoping Brad Pitt will leave his wife and find me on the streets of Edstown. Can’t a woman change her hairstyle without being accused of trying to catch a man? I’ve just had a birthday—isn’t that reason enough to want to make a change?”

      “Well, sure—especially a momentous birthday like thirty or forty or fifty. But you just turned twenty-six, not exactly one of those numbers that usually send women running for a makeover or a facelift. So I figured it must be a guy.”

      “Too bad your new boss is already taken, heh, Lindsey? That Cameron North is one fine-looking man,” the woman being tinted and permed in the next chair murmured.

      Lindsey smiled. “He’s definitely good-looking—and definitely taken. He and Serena are the most blissful newlyweds I’ve ever been around.”

      Lila Forsythe sighed wistfully from beneath her helmet of hair rollers. “Their story is so romantic. The way she saved his life—the way he fell in love with her before he even recovered his memories. Serena’s mother thinks it was love at first sight, you know. That’s why she wasn’t worried that they got married so quickly.”

      “Love at first sight.” Paula snorted as she spun Lindsey’s chair around so she could lower her to the sink for a hair washing. “I’ve hardly ever seen it work out. Maybe Serena and Cameron will be the exception.”

      Lindsey kept her mouth shut. She had no intention of confessing that her own experience with love at first sight had lasted twenty years and counting. She could just imagine Paula’s response to that scenario.

      She only half believed it, herself.

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