Irresistible Stranger

Chapter 11

It was almost noon before Lily located the old Department of Social Services building. Louella had held her up for the better part of an hour, wanting to gossip, hoping for more information. She’d changed clothes to a sleeveless shift, pale pink and white, as cool as anything she owned, and tried winding her hair with a clip on top of her head. The temperature by the time she returned to her rental car was the usual-hot, wet and steamy.

She’d have made it to the Department of Social Services building a good half hour earlier, if she didn’t make a couple wrong turns-and then had to fill up with gas. Finally, though, she located the flat-topped brick building on the far side of the railroad tracks. Once inside, everything got easier. She only had to ask for Loreen.

Griff’s contact had chocolate caramel skin, wore a print dress a size too small for her ample curves, and the tired face of a woman who’d seen it all. “Griff said you might stop. Heaven knows, I’ve been curious to lay eyes on you. Whole town’s talking about you and these fires. Come on back. I’ll get us both some sweet tea.”

“Oh, I don’t need-”

“I do. And from everything I’ve been hearing, you need all the sweet tea and sympathy you can get.”

Loreen’s office was jammed. File cabinets and desk overflowed with paper. The walls had pictures of missing kids, framed diplomas and credentials, schedules. One corner of the desk was reserved for a pitcher of sweet tea, cold and sweating on a tray with paper cups. “You just missed Griff by two shakes, was in here with the boy. Jason, his daddy’s bad to the bone. Got a nice smile, a nice look. It’s gonna kill me-and it’s gonna kill Griff worse-if the kid ends back in that house again.”

“I’m guessing you’ve tried to rescue him before.”

“So many times, I lost count. I guess I could send him to Alaska. But I swear, he’d run off and find his way back to his mama, no matter where I sent him. Has before. Three times. He thinks his daddy’s gonna kill his mama if he isn’t there. And I think he’s right.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Welcome to my world, honey. I can always get the dog put in jail. Just can’t get him sent up the river for good, when the only witnesses keep lying in court. Anyhow… That’s not what you’re here for.”

Lily admitted her visit was probably a lost cause. “I just wanted to ask if there was any chance the department kept records from twenty years ago.”

“Honey, there are probably records in this place from the beginning of time. I can’t give them to you without legal permission. But I can probably scare up what you want to know and then just tell you. What’s the name, and what exactly are you looking for?”

Lily ran through the whole Campbell history. “I don’t know if there’s anything else we can find about the fire for sure, but there’s been a question that has really troubled my sisters and me.”

“And that is?”

“Why we were separated. We were orphaned by the fire, obviously, but each of us was fostered to different families, in different states. Can you tell me why that happened? I assume no one could afford to take on three kids? I realize how expensive that would have been. But I’ve been led to believe that my dad had some savings, so it’s troubled all of us for a long time-why we were separated. And by such far distances.”

“It is odd,” Loreen agreed, and went on the hunt.

Old records and files had been computerized, but some of that historical data was saved on giant-sized floppies. Before reading them, they had to be converted and updated, which required a computer in a different room-which also required Loreen to order out for sandwiches, because she didn’t miss lunch, and that was that. The phone rang, interrupting her several times, but Loreen repeated, “Just stay. We’ll get our answers, and then we’ll be done. It’s not as if there’ll be more time another day. There won’t be. There never is.”

In the meantime, Loreen kept up a general patter about Jason and Steven and Walter-and a half-dozen other boys that Griff had taken on. “Under the covers, you understand. Always under the covers. Doesn’t foster. What he does is intervene, find some way for a boy in trouble to see another path. You can’t always fix what’s wrong. You can’t make bad people into good. But youngsters, if they can see a way out, they’re resilient. They’re…well, shoot, honey.”

“What?”

Loreen peered at the monitor, trying to read faded print on unclear copy. “I’ve got it. The report after your parents’ fire. It was the sheriff.”

“Pardon?”

“The sheriff was the one who advised the state that you three girls should be separated.”

Lily sank in the battered office chair. “Sheriff Conner? But I’ve talked to him a bunch of times. He never said. Does it say why he advised that?”

“Hmm.” Loreen scrolled through the document, which involved several pages of information. “Two families stepped up, said they’d take the three of you. But one was unsuitable-a farm. They really wanted child labor. Another, they only had a two-bedroom house, just wasn’t big enough to add three youngsters. But that wasn’t the problem. Apparently the social worker at the time-that’d be Samantha LaFitte, she retired around five years back, died last year-anyhow, she was the one who handled the case. Seems the sheriff’s opinion was the one that pulled the weight.”

“Why?” Lily repeated, feeling as if her world was being upended yet again.

All these years, her sisters could have been together? And Herman Conner, who she’d talked to over and over, had hidden that information all this time?”

Loreen finally looked up again with a frown. “You need to understand. I’m no mighty fan of the law. I see injustice done to women and children every day. But I do think a lot of Sheriff Conner. He’s never been the brightest knife in the drawer, but he had trouble with his own kids, never judged other people that I could see. He’ll turn his back if he thinks it’s the right thing. At least sometimes.”

“I hear you. I thought he was a good guy, too.”

“Apparently, he felt it was just the wrong thing for you three to stay in this town. He knew from personal experience that it was mighty hard for a child to live down a reputation. That an event or a problem could come back to haunt them. He thought it best if you three went somewhere where you’d make a completely clean start, forget about Pecan Valley altogether.”

Loreen paged through to the end of the document, added, “Samantha LaFitte, she didn’t agree. She apparently argued for you three to be together, wherever you landed. But the judge took the sheriff’s advice. There’s some comment here I can’t quite read, but it refers to the sheriff having good reasons to understand problems with children.”

Lily still had the oddest sinking sensation in her stomach. “What problems was that referring to?”

“I don’t know, honey. Problems in his personal life, maybe, with his own kids? Or with kids in town? I wasn’t in this job then. I always heard two of his girls were wild as teenagers, but really, I just don’t know. Everybody always said he’d die for his kids. Was a great dad, a family man all the way. But that’s all I know.”

When Lily left the office, she walked out to a blaze of heat, immediately lifted the hair off her nape and hoped she’d survive walking the hundred feet to the rental car. For once though, her mind wasn’t on whining about the Georgia summer. She was just plain confused.

There was nothing exactly wrong with the sheriff’s play in the Campbell girls’ future back then. It was the exact opposite of what the three sisters had wanted, but that didn’t mean anything sinister or wrong or weird was involved. It just felt weird. That she’d talked to Herman Conner so many times, and he’d ducked any reference to his vote in their future back then.

She opened the car door, almost fell over from the blast of cooped up heat, and climbed in anyway. She dialed Griff on her cell, didn’t reach him, left him a short message that she’d left social services and was headed for somewhere she could track down old high school yearbooks.

Surprisingly, Louella came up with that answer. Lily only popped back at the B and B to grab a notebook and change shoes, but Louella got talking, claimed that Susannah Danwell, who lived just three doors down-“She’s over eighty, if she’s a day, but still dressing like she’s sixty-five, bless her heart, thinking she’s fooling anyone. But she’s been keeping the high school yearbooks forever. Wants to think of herself as a historian, she does, but the real truth is, her Herbert died, and she had nobody, so people come to visit her sometimes, to see the yearbooks, and she gets to talk then. She gets the company. I do wish she’d dress her age, but it’s nothing to me, of course. Anyway, sugar, I’ll call her and set it up, and you can take some of my caramel brownies over there, and it’ll work like a charm. She’ll be happy and you’ll be happy, and it couldn’t possibly work out any better…”

Lily knew Louella better than to interrupt-or to try arguing until Louella had finally run out of steam. Normally, Lily wouldn’t have wanted to impose on a stranger, but Louella had dialed the number before she could stop her, told the infamous Susannah Danwell that Lily would be ambling over there in just a bit, and that she was a peach and a half.

“There now, honey, that’s done. And you don’t need to worry about a thing. I’ll just call over there if there’s any messages. That way, you can hole up and nobody’ll know where you are, and you can just put your feet up with Susannah, bless her heart…”

Susannah, it turned out, lived in another of the city-styled antebellum homes. The veranda was long enough to bowl in, with a double screen door leading to a Scarlett O’Hara central staircase that gleamed with fresh polish. Her mother used to take in boarders, Susannah told her. She was dressed-as warned-with an I Love Vegas T-shirt and matching capris. Her neck, ears, wrists and arms glittered with rhinestones and bangles. “I do like a touch of elegance, honey, and oh, you have no idea how glad I am to meet you. The whole town’s talking about what a wicked, wicked girl you are, and here, all I see is a little darling. Why, you’re no bigger than a minute, are you? And you know what? I met your mama. And I was here when that fire happened, when the mill closed, all of it. Why, these caramel brownies are probably the best Louella ever baked. She dresses way too old for her years, bless her heart, but…”

Lily figured she’d never escape here until 2014-maybe-but as much as the older lady talked, she moved just as fast. Before much time passed, they were both sitting on a horsehair sofa, a lazy fan whirling overhead, and three high school year books opened on the crowded coffee table in front of them. Susannah had asked the year when her parents died, and picked that year and the two earlier ones to “peruse,” as she put it.

“I don’t exactly know what I’m looking for,” Lily admitted. “I’ve picked up all kinds of new information, but nothing that pulls it all together.”

“You want a ‘bottom line,’ as you young people like to say.” Susannah licked her thumb, started peeling through pages. “You want proof your father didn’t set the fire.”

“Yes.”

“And the proof would be if you found who did set that fire. You think someone in this age bracket set the other troublesome fires. The arson stories that were in the paper.”

“Exactly. The person was never found, but all the evidence points to someone of high school age. A girl.”

“Well, that only narrows it down by half,” Susannah said wryly. “I think we need a glass of sherry, don’t you?”

Personally, Lily was no fan of sweet wines, but she couldn’t turn down the older woman. Susannah was having a great time. She produced wineglasses “from a pawn shop in Reno.”

“Real Irish crystal. Not that I’m a snob about such things. Oh, my…”

Lily scanned face after face, feeling increasingly foolish. She didn’t know anyone, couldn’t make any connection. But Susannah could, on every page.

“Oh, my heavens. Margo-you’ve met her, haven’t you, the insurance agent? She had two nieces in high school, one after the other, both of them brighter than sunshine. The one made it all the way to her Ph.D., but sorry to say, the youngest got herself in the family way…never married, I hear…

“And there’s Larry Wilson. Oh, what a heartthrob he was to the girls, every father’s nightmare…Cashner Warden, I know you know him, the fire chief, he graduated a year ahead. He was another heartthrob back then, believe it or not. Quarterback of the football team. They lost every game. They were that bad. But he still looked good in that uniform, and there was always talk of the girls he was getting in trouble…oh my, oh my…”

Susannah clutched her chest with one hand-and reached over for the decanter of sherry with the other. Poured both of them another glass. “I’d forgotten. Our Herman Conner had five kids, you know, but there was one pair of twins, girls. He lost the one to a car accident when she was around fifteen. The whole family went to pieces, but especially her twin. Mary Belle ran around like a wild thing…you recognize her, don’t you?”

“I do.” The hairdresser with the wild, red hair.

“Well, the scandals about the girl near broke Herman’s heart, but you know how it is. Some have to make mistakes their own way. She’s turned into a good mama. Still hasn’t got a lick of sense for men. But I think she still misses her sister, that something’s always been missing for her…and oh, my, you know Debbie of Debbie’s Diner? Well, her older brother…”

Lily sat straight.

She smelled it first. Just the barest whiff of smoke.

Followed by the distant scream of a fire truck engine.

“Oh my. Oh my.” Susannah grabbed a chair arm and pushed to her feet. “I’m afraid that’s close.”

So was Lily. She shot out the door, leaving her purse, her papers, everything. Before she could fly down the steps of the veranda, the only sound in her head was a fierce, angry no.

She knew it was Louella’s.

The bed and breakfast was the only other place in town where Lily had been that hadn’t been targeted. But she thought, no one would do that to darling Louella. To that beautiful old house. Why? Why?

A car honked-she crossed the street without looking, running like a gazelle, seeing neighbors step outside, crossing arms, worried about what was happening, kids being called to come in from playing. Lily just kept charging ahead.

It wasn’t the whole house. It was just one window where clouds of thick, blustery smoke was starting to rumble out. Her window. The room she stayed in. Another measure she was to blame for this somehow, involved in this somehow, but if Louella was hurt, she’d never forgive herself.

She could hear the fire truck siren joined by police sirens, but neither rescue vehicle was in sight yet. A new boarder was standing on the front lawn when Lily leaped up the porch steps and slammed inside, calling Louella’s name, not seeing her anywhere downstairs.

She took the stairs up two at a time, feeling the buildup of heat, her lungs whining at the choke of smoke. She found Louella in the hall, holding a handkerchief to her nose with one hand, trying to maneuver a heavy, unwieldy fire extinguisher with the other.

“Go!” Lily yelled at her.

Louella shook her head. “I’m not leaving my house!”

“I’ll do it, Louella!” She grabbed the extinguisher, hefted it, pulled the pin and aimed the nozzle full bore. “If you have another extinguisher, get it. Or see if the neighbors have some.”

“I-”

“I won’t leave your fire until the firemen get here, I promise, Louella. But you go. Outside. Don’t breathe this-” It was way too much talking. Both of them were starting to cough heavily, Louella bent over as she aimed for the stairs.

Lily turned back toward the bedroom, her eyes tearing in the rage of smoke-but she’d found the source. The wastebasket in her room was heaped with rags, reeked of gasoline. Fire danced up the lace curtains, shooting out the windows in scraps of seared lace and fabric. The white bedspread had caught a hem of fire now.

The extinguisher spewed foam, a white mousse that was almost as stinky as the fire. Lily kept aiming and shooting, her arms aching, screaming from holding the weight of the extinguisher.

“Lily!” Behind her, Louella had brought up another extinguisher. Lily took the fresh one, pulled the pin, let it rip.

“Go! Get out of the building!” she ordered the older woman.

“I am, I am. But the fire trucks. They just got here. So you can leave, too.”

“I will! I will!” Yet she couldn’t seem to desert the ship. She hadn’t caused this, but she still felt responsible. The things burning up in front of her eyes-her yellow shorts, her cosmetic bag, her white sandals with the cork heels-they were already smoked and soaked and destroyed. But it hurt, sharp as a wound, that it was her stuff, her room that had been targeted.

The heat built. The smell and smoke increasingly choked her. She couldn’t seem to get ahead of it. The bed pillow poofed, puffed, then came alive with fire, turning into a shower of sparks. The fire jumped, kept jumping. She put out curtains; then the lace scarf on the bureau sparked fresh. The old wallpaper on the far wall turned wet, shiny, started peeling.

The air seemed alive with moving, burning bits of debris. Clouds and wings of burning ash drifted in the air. Something tiny and sharp fell in her hair.

The burn was sharp and sudden. Instinctively, she dropped the extinguisher, batted at the pain in her head. Fear caught her like the sting of a whip. All these years she’d thought of fire as loss, as grief. Not as…personal. Not as something alive and lashing out. She spun, confused, choking, her palms stinging, her eyes blinded…

“Lily!”

Maybe she heard the fast thump of firemen’s boots, the noise of voices. But the only thing she spun around for was the sound of Griff, calling her name. She stumbled.

He caught her with a strong, sure grip. And with all the finesse of a tender lover, tossed a cold, soaking wet towel over her head.

The next stretch of time passed in a blur. Griff got her downstairs, set her up with a blanket in the front yard-and a medic. The medic was cute as a button, but it really, really hurt to have her palms cleaned, even though he talked to her nonstop. Jason hung tight to the periphery of her blanket like a scrawny, stubborn watchdog. Neighbors-some faces familiar, some not-clogged up the sidewalks and the yard.

Someone brought lemonade. Someone brought sweet tea. The party atmosphere built, completely at odds with the fire truck and official cars blocking the street. Louella, though, was holding court. Lily caught snatches of her conversation as the older lady poured lemonade and passed out spice cookies.

“See now? What did I tell you? She saved my house, she did. And Susannah’d be the first to tell you that she was at her house when this all happened. It’s primarily Lily’s things that were hurt. The child doesn’t even have a change of clothes to wear. She’s one of ours, has always been one of ours, and look at her now, bless her heart.”

The medic, the one who had gorgeous blue eyes and looked about nine years old, finished putting salve and bandages on her palms and various other places, and then examined the side of her head. Shook his head.

“Not a pretty picture?” she asked.

“It’s a gorgeous picture.” Griff seemed to show up from nowhere-for the second time-and looked as covered in soot and dirt as she did. “Hair grows, besides.”

“Uh-oh.” When he came closer, she said quickly, “Don’t come near me.”

“Why?”

“I think I smell worse than anything I’ve smelled in my entire life.”

He grinned. “Beneath all that fire and smoke, it’s still you, sugar.”

She remembered that. Remembered how his smooth soft lips had felt against hers. Remembered the sudden quiet of neighbors watching. Smiling. Griff…so not smiling.

Later, after talking to Cashner Warden and Herman Conner and Louella and Susannah-who had her purse and papers, thank heavens-Griff took her home. She seemed to need to cough her lungs out several times. Jason was there. He had ideas-like ice cream. Lots of cool, soothing ice cream. He thought she needed to watch a nice, soothing movie, an old one, like Batman, or The Fantastic Four.

But Jason wasn’t there when Griff lowered her into a bathtub. He’d started by sealing up her hands in bags with rubber bands, so the water wouldn’t touch the burns on her palms. Kneeling behind her, he washed her hair, washed her face, washed her toes, washed everything, slowly, carefully, tenderly. Silently.

“You know what I figured out?” she asked him.

“What?”

“That it’s about anger. Setting these fires. It’s not about destruction. Even those fires years ago didn’t actually destroy that much property. Or specifically aim to hurt a human being. It’s all about anger. Someone with a rage that’s just out of their control.”

When Griff said nothing-he was spraying water to rinse her hair at the time-she waited until she could open her eyes to look at him. Really look at him.

“I think I’m a little in shock,” she admitted.

“I know you are.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to go shopping tomorrow. I’m down to today’s clothes. Which aren’t exactly fit for man or beast.” When she couldn’t win a smile from him, she said, “In the background, I thought I heard Louella saying that insurance would cover the damage. Completely.”

“There was an insurance agent right there. Won’t be a problem.”

“I’ll need to borrow a toothbrush until tomorrow.”

“No sweat.”

“And from the way people have been looking at me, I’m afraid I’m definitely going to have to work in a haircut tomorrow, too.”

Again, that same expression in his eyes. What few words he said were short and curt, even as his hands, his magic hands, lingered as he soaped and rinsed, and finally, let her stand up so he could fold a towel around her.

“Griff.”

He looked up.

“What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” he echoed, his tone tight as a snap. But then he went back to his lazy, laid-back tone. “You’re going to take a nap, sugar. Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s going to be one hundred percent fine.”

“You know this how?”

“Because tomorrow-we’re getting to the bottom of this. Whatever sabers we have to rattle. Whatever it takes. You’re not going to be hurt again. There aren’t going to be any more fires. You can take it to the bank, we’re solving this once and for all.”

Lily heard the anger in his voice, and loved it-not that he was worried about her, but that he finally felt free with her, to let out that unsettling anger that so troubled him.

Yet her heart suddenly twisted in a totally unexpected knot. She, too, had had it with fires. She had had it with exhaustion and fear and worry. She thought she’d come to this town of her childhood to find answers.

Yet the irony hurt worse than any burn. If, by any chance, she and Griff did find the answers, her reasons for being in Pecan Valley disappeared.

She had no more reason to be with Griff.

No reason to stay.