Playing With Fire Read online

  “Doesn’t surprise me. Probably those same people who had Eric killed in the first place are still trying to keep it under wraps. They’re out there, you know. Dad said everyone knew Eric was killed because he fought the county taking over the fire brigade. No one could prove it.”

  “So everyone said.”

  Ricky’s father—Ricky Senior—owned the Sweet Pepper Café with his wife, Lucille. Ricky Senior was the last man to see Eric alive. He was the one Eric saved in the silo that night, a member of the original fire brigade.

  Stella had talked to Ricky Senior first when she’d begun her investigation into Eric’s death. He said he’d only seen Eric briefly in the burning building, where he’d almost been overcome by smoke. Eric had given him his face mask and sent him out of the silo. Ricky thought Eric was right behind him when he’d made it to safety.

  They had all waited, but Eric had never come out. After the fire was contained, a crew from the coroner’s office had located Eric’s charred remains inside. The roof had collapsed on him during the fire.

  She’d read the accounts of it, written by members of the fire brigade and others. It had been a difficult fire, lasting for hours. Large amounts of dry grain had burned through the night.

  Eric never had a chance once he was trapped in there. They’d brought what was left of him out and there was a huge memorial service for him.

  Now they knew the truth and the question was, how did he get into a wall in the firehouse with a bullet in his head?

  Frustration filled Stella. With Chum’s statement about seeing two men take a body out of the silo, more questions were raised without the first one being answered.

  • • •

  Mace Chum wondered if he’d made a mistake going to see Chief Griffin before he’d left town. He glanced into his rearview mirror. There was no one behind him. The road stretched out empty before him.

  He was nervous. No reason for it. They’d never expect him to tell anything. Not after all these years. He was gonna be fine.

  A black car came out of nowhere. One minute, Chum was alone. The next, the car was speeding up beside him.

  He looked out the window, his heart racing.

  There was a popping sound.

  Then the old truck, and the trailer it pulled, crashed down the side of the mountain.

  Chapter 3

  “I’m going up to the cabin,” Stella finally told Ricky.

  She needed to talk to Eric about what Chum had said—and about her leaving Sweet Pepper.

  He’d known from the beginning that she wasn’t going to stay. She didn’t want to spring it on him right before she walked out the door.

  “I expect you’ll find Hero waiting for you up there,” Ricky said. “I saw him running up Firehouse Road. I think he likes it better up there ever since we had to rebuild the firehouse.”

  Stella thanked him for the information and went in back to get her Harley. She knew he was right about Hero, the fire brigade’s adopted Dalmatian puppy. Well, not so much a puppy anymore. He wasn’t a year old yet, but he was getting big.

  She knew why Hero liked it at the cabin—he liked being around Eric. She was fairly sure Eric liked the puppy too. In fact, she believed Eric used some kind of ghost telepathy to call the dog up there every day.

  It was all right with her that Hero spent his time there—unless there was training going on. Hero and his mother, Sylvia, were training for their own certifications as rescue dogs. It was good for them to work with the volunteers. At some point, she hoped the dogs would go out with them on calls.

  Hero was going to have to be added to that ever-growing list of things she had to take care of before she left Sweet Pepper. Eric would have to stop calling the puppy up to the cabin when no one was living there. The volunteers couldn’t go after him all the time. It would probably mean that he wouldn’t see Hero anymore.

  Something had happened after the firehouse was rebuilt. Eric couldn’t get down there anymore. She had no idea how that worked, though she thought it might be the trauma of seeing his own bones in the wall. What would that be like?

  Her ghostly roommate didn’t understand it either and had refused to discuss it. Eric could out-stubborn her anytime.

  Stella put on her helmet and sat down on her father’s old bike. The eighty-inch black Harley was one of the last made with a kick start. She and her father had rebuilt the engine and added a super E carburetor before she’d brought the bike to Sweet Pepper. They’d found some old fiberglass saddlebags, which had held everything she thought she’d need from home.

  She wasn’t supposed to buy extra things, but of course she did. A lot would be going home via FedEx.

  The bike started easily and purred through the firehouse parking lot. The transmission was getting a little tired and clunked into first.

  She passed the new red Jeep Cherokee the town had purchased for the fire brigade last year after she’d wrecked her bike. She knew it was for everyone, but right at that moment, the driver’s-side door said “Sweet Pepper Fire Chief, Stella Griffin.” It always made her smile when she saw it.

  Ego?

  Probably. She’d never be fire chief back home. She might as well enjoy it while she could.

  Once she got her Harley repaired, she never drove the Cherokee unless it was official business. She still liked her bike better anyway, but it had been great having the town look out for her that way.

  They’d never found the hit-and-run driver who’d left her in the ditch, unconscious. It seemed there were a lot of mysteries for such a small town.

  The bike took the curves on the road up the mountain as though it had been born to do it. Her father had taken the bike across the country when he’d graduated from college. He’d seen the Rockies and driven through the desert. The Harley did okay for all of its adventures. She hoped she’d be in that kind of shape when she was its age.

  Stella knew she would never forget the smell of the pine trees and the cool shadows on her way up this road. She’d never forget evenings sitting on the back deck of the old cabin, looking down at the Little Pigeon River. Even though she’d only been there a year, there were many memories she’d hold forever.

  Like Eric.

  She reached the log cabin too quickly. She’d wanted to have words prepared to tell him that she had to move on. Nothing had come to mind while she’d followed the road. It wasn’t going to be easy to say goodbye.

  The log cabin was two-story, built with large, rough-hewn pine logs. It wasn’t huge—there was one big bedroom, a large living area with a fireplace, and a small kitchen.

  She spent most of her time, even during the winter, on the big deck in back. It had required some serious layering to be out there while it was snowing and the winds were howling down the mountain, but it had been worth all the effort.

  Eric had laughed at her for wearing two sweaters and wrapping a blanket around her. Of course, he didn’t feel the cold anymore. He claimed he was warm-blooded when he was alive and wouldn’t have needed that much covering then either.

  Another piece of Eric Gamlyn’s mythology. It was always weird thinking that he’d been dead before she was even born.

  She parked the Harley and heard Hero barking inside the cabin. The front porch light was on. Eric always turned it on when she went out. It had been one of the first things that had made her wonder what was wrong with the cabin.

  Stella paused before she went inside. She realized that one of the reasons she felt guilty leaving Eric without answers about his death was because he had saved her life.

  When the old firehouse, the one he’d built at the same time as the cabin, had caught on fire last year, she didn’t expect to make it out. It was Eric who’d come for her. He’d helped her out of the smoke and flames, fulfilling his image as a local hero, even after his death.

  How could she leave before she found
answers for him? Where she came from, you repaid your debts.

  But what if Ricky was right and the answers never came? Was she willing to live her whole life here trying to figure out the mystery?

  The front door opened. Stella walked up the short flight of stairs, past the bear-proof trashcans, and inside the kitchen. Hero was jumping around and barking, happy to see her. Eric was indulging in his new pastime—cooking. It seemed that when he put his mind to being able to do something physical, he could do whatever it was.

  In this case, since the discovery of his bones in the firehouse, it was cooking. Thankfully, the kitchen was small, otherwise there was no telling how much food he could make in a day.

  As it was, she came home to three different types of cakes on the tiny table located between the kitchen area and the sofa. Eric had baked macaroni and cheese the night before.

  Obviously, he was trying to work out his frustrations over losing his dying hero status in the community. That was her diagnosis anyway. He’d claimed it didn’t matter to him how he died. She knew better.

  Eric hadn’t sulked after what had happened—he’d talked more than ever. Not about anything to do with the discovery of his true death or what had caused him to lose his ability to travel down to the firehouse to hang out. She had no idea how he really felt about the important things.

  “Stella! I’m making baked custard. I saw it on a cooking show today. I’m afraid we’re out of milk now. I have that, and some other things, on a list for when you go back out. I’m thinking about pickling my own fish. What do you think?”

  “I think everyone is enjoying all the food you’re making—that they think I’m making—but we’re not really dealing with the issues. Can you put the custard down long enough to talk to me about a few things? I have some news.”

  Eric was tall, well over six feet. He had broad shoulders and a wide chest. He’d been thirty-five when he died. He would always be young. His longish blond hair would always be tied back with a leather thong at the base of his neck. It seemed he was also doomed to go through the afterlife wearing a red Sweet Pepper Fire Brigade T-shirt and jeans. The outfit worked for him, though, emphasizing his muscled chest and arms.

  He had the most brilliant blue eyes Stella had ever seen. She wasn’t sure if that was because he was dead or if he’d always looked that way. The only pictures she’d seen of him were in black-and-white.

  “I’m about to put the custard in the oven. What do you want to talk about?”

  “I had a visitor today at the firehouse.” Stella sat down on the chair beside the sofa. “It seems Mace Chum is retiring from the sheriff’s department and moving away.”

  She explained what Chum had told her. She could see the thundercloud coming over his still handsome face.

  “That’s ridiculous. There’s no way fire brigade members took anyone out of the silo and stuffed him in a trunk. That goes for me or anyone else. Deputy Chum must have had a problem seeing through the smoke.”

  “Eric, someone took your body and moved it from the silo to the firehouse. You don’t have any idea who that was?”

  “I told you before, I don’t remember anything after I gave Ricky my face mask and watched him run out through the smoke. I don’t know what happened after that.”

  “Well then we have to assume that Chum knows more than you about what happened that night. Can you think of anyone who would have wanted you dead?”

  “I’m sure there were plenty of people I made angry down through the years. I wouldn’t have thought I made them angry enough to kill me—with one exception.”

  He gave her a knowing look and she smiled. “Except for Ben Carson, right? What did you do to him that he might want to kill you?”

  “It was the whole thing with the county taking over the fire brigade. We didn’t need them, and I knew they couldn’t fulfill their part of the bargain.” He grinned at her. “Which is why you’re here.”

  “There was a lot of money that the county was supposed to get for taking on the new fire departments that went missing too, according to Chum. Did you know about that?”

  “I guess that was after my time. When I died, they were starting to talk about appropriating money for the project. How much was involved?”

  “Chum said thirty million.”

  He whistled. “That’s a lot of incentive.”

  “Why blame my grandfather? He was already wealthy. He didn’t need that money.”

  “There’s no such thing as a wealthy man who doesn’t need more money.”

  They were about to get off-course, as they always did when they talked about Ben Carson. Stella steered them back to the important questions.

  “None of this seems familiar to you? Nothing that jogs your memory?”

  “No. I told you, I have no recollection of anything happening after helping Ricky Senior get out of the silo.”

  The timer went off on the stove and he rushed to take out a pan of brownies before putting the custard into the oven.

  Stella thought it was probably just as well that he couldn’t remember what had happened to him. It seemed to her that it would be more painful to remember his death than to suddenly find out he didn’t die the way he thought.

  It still left her with the same problem—no answers.

  “Chum told you this because he’s leaving town?” Eric looked at the brownies.

  “Yes. He said he never told anyone else because he was afraid of the consequences.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Eric—” She wanted to tell him that she might not have the time to make sense of the whole thing and that she might have to go home if she wanted to keep her real job.

  A knock on the door interrupted them.

  “You should hide,” she whispered.

  “Really? You’re the only one who can see me, except for Tagger.”

  “Sorry. Sometimes I forget.”

  It was Walt Fenway on the doorstep. He was the retired chief of police for Sweet Pepper and had been a good friend of Eric’s.

  “Hello, Stella.” He looked around her and into the kitchen. “Eric? Are you here, buddy?”

  Walt couldn’t see or hear Eric but he believed his ghost was there. He’d visited frequently since she’d told him she could communicate with his friend.

  Walt was different than Ricky Junior and some of the others in town. He was a hard-nosed, good-hearted man who believed in ghosts but wasn’t crazy about it. He wouldn’t go around spreading the word that the stories about the cabin were true.

  “He’s here.” She moved aside for him to enter. “He’s cooking. It seems to be his stress reliever. Please, take some food with you.”

  Walt laughed. He was barely five feet tall with a pelt of yellow-white hair that resembled an old bear rug. If it ever saw a comb or brush, Stella hadn’t seen it.

  He lived at Big Bear Springs, an unincorporated community outside of Sweet Pepper, served by the fire brigade.

  Stella and Walt watched the brownie pan float by from the stovetop to a cooling rack on the table.

  Walt didn’t bat an eyelash. “Smells good. I heard someone mention the other day what a good cook you are, Stella. Guess it wasn’t you, huh?”

  Eric laughed. “She can barely make toast.”

  “I can cook.” She frowned.

  “What did he say?” Walt asked.

  “Never mind,” Stella said. “Let’s say Eric fancies himself a gourmet chef now because he’s watched so many cooking shows.”

  Walt sat down at the table in front of a three-layer chocolate cake. “This is something! I think you should give these cakes to the church for their bake sale.”

  “Good idea,” she agreed. “Coffee?”

  “Please.” Walt glanced around the room as he always did, not sure where Eric was. He wanted more than anything to see
his old friend. He would’ve been satisfied just to hear him. Since he couldn’t do either, he had to let Stella tell him what Eric said.

  It was one thing to sit around and talk about ghosts and another thing to really know one was there. Craziest darn thing he’d ever encountered—and he’d seen some dillies while he was police chief.

  “Heard some news today, Stella,” Walt said. “The coroner received word back from the state. Those were definitely Eric’s bones in the firehouse. Looks like they have no choice but to dig up his coffin and take a look inside now—whether they want to or not.”

  Chapter 4

  “The coroner, Judd Streeter, is a friend of mine. We go way back. He actually did the autopsy on—” Walt grimaced and looked around the room. “Well, let’s just say the remains that were taken out of the silo forty years ago. He said that was Eric at the time. Now he’s saying that was Eric in the wall. The state doesn’t like those kinds of errors.”

  Stella watched Eric turn away. She guessed no amount of baking could make this any better. The sooner he acknowledged what had happened to him, the better. He kept saying he couldn’t remember. She wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or simply didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Whatever helps us figure out what happened.” She wished they didn’t have to talk about it in front of Eric. She knew it had to be hard for him.

  Walt didn’t like discussing Eric’s death either, knowing his friend was standing around listening. “Hope you’re okay, buddy. I don’t know if I’d want to be here with someone talking about me being dead.”

  “How could Eric’s bones have ended up in the firehouse instead of his coffin? No offense to your friend, but was he drinking or something?”

  “Judd is the most sober man I’ve ever known.” Walt defended Judd. “It was a mistake. Everyone makes them.”

  “So how did my body end up in the firehouse wall?” Eric stalked back and forth through the cabin, moving right through the furniture as though it wasn’t there. “And who’s in my coffin?”