McQueen's Heat Read online

  “I hope those two have medical insurance.” The emotion that Tamara had displayed a moment ago was gone. Her voice held a deadly calm. “Because I fully intend to rip both of them new—” She stopped. “Sorry about that, Uncle Jack,” she said in the same flat tone. “What are they basing this insane theory on, for God’s sake?”

  “It’s not so insane. It’s not even original.” Stone felt his jaw tighten. “I heard a few whispers before I resigned, but at the time I had more important things on my mind. Like going to five funerals,” he added harshly.

  “That’s all they ever were, laddie—whispers. Cowardly whispers and rumors, dammit,” Jack said heatedly. “Even your worst enemies never believed them.”

  Stone shrugged. “Bill and Tommy do.”

  “What rumors?” Tamara was looking frustratedly at them.

  “I wanted to fast-track myself to a promotion, so I created a fictional arsonist. The way I heard it, Robert Pascoe was the man who never was.”

  He was aware of Jack shaking his head and looking away, but Jack’s reaction wasn’t the one he was interested in. “Supposedly I patched together a bunch of old unsolved arsons and attributed them to him so he’d have a history. Then I started setting fires myself and blaming them on the bogeyman I’d created.”

  “I don’t get it. What about Glenda Fodor?” Tamara’s shoulders lifted impatiently. “How could the man have a girlfriend if he didn’t exist?”

  “She always denied she had a boyfriend, remember?” The whole thing made a crazy kind of sense, Stone thought, if you accepted the initial premise. “Since I was the only one who could claim to have laid eyes on the man I had to be making that up, too. The clincher is that the arsons stopped when I left—”

  “Hold on.” Jack was frowning at him. “You actually met Pascoe?”

  “On a crowded subway platform in the Charles Street station,” Stone said curtly. “He was a stranger standing beside me, and when we heard the train coming he turned to me as if he was going to ask me the time. Instead he told me he was Robert Pascoe, the man I’d been hunting, and he just wanted me to know that he was building up to something so big the fire department would never forget it. Even as I moved he pushed the pregnant woman standing in front of him off the platform. I managed to grab her before she fell. By the time the excitement died down he was long gone.”

  He shrugged, feeling again the old frustration. “I finally had a name for my mystery arsonist, but I knew a name wouldn’t convince anyone the man was real, especially since when I ran it through the computer I didn’t get any results. He was right—the Mitchell Towers blaze won’t be forgotten by the Boston jakeys. Not when four brothers and one brave sister lost their lives in it.”

  Once this conversation would have had him out of here and prowling for the nearest bar, Stone thought, seeing the shimmer in Tamara’s gaze. Unself-consciously she reached over and laid her palm softly on his unshaven jaw. Bringing his own hand up, he gripped her fingers with sudden fierceness. If Jack hadn’t known before, he’d probably clued in now, he reflected. That was fine by him. If it were up to him, the whole damn world would know how much he was in love with her.

  He didn’t need a drink. He just needed the woman beside him.

  “I resigned. The arsons stopped. That added fuel to the rumors. The theory went that I never meant anyone to die in the Mitchell Towers fire, I just wanted to be the big hero who warned them in the nick of time and when I screwed up I was crippled by guilt. I guess Trainor and Knopf figure I’m looking to get back into the limelight again.”

  “I set them straight pretty quick,” Jack said. He went on pugnaciously.

  “I was almost glad they’d found out you’d contacted me. Since that particular cat was out of the bag, I didn’t see any reason not to read them the riot act, especially that bully boy Knopf.” He picked up a donut. A spray of powdered sugar punctuated his next angry sentence. “I told them they might consider the possibility that you’d been right all along, and try talking to Glenda Fodor.”

  “Did they think it was worth a shot?” Stone asked carefully. He felt a muscle in his jaw twitch, and wondered if it was visible. Whether it was or not, something seemed to alert Jack. The blue eyes widened at him.

  “I shouldn’t have mentioned the Fodor woman to them, should I?” he said hollowly. “You think they’ll scare her off. Dammit, McQueen, I didn’t think of it that way.”

  “You went to bat for me to stop them from resurrecting the rumors, Jack,” he said quietly. “I appreciate it. Hell, who knows—maybe Knopf will let Trainor do the talking when they call on her. Bill doesn’t come on so strong.”

  “He didn’t strike me as the type women confide in,” Tamara said shortly. Slipping her hand from his, she leaned over and chose another donut from the box—not, Stone saw regretfully, a sugared one. She bit into it, catching the cream that oozed out with her tongue.

  Hastily he swallowed a mouthful of lukewarm coffee, nearly choking on it. Whipped cream on the next grocery list, he decided abruptly. Deadbolts on all the doors and whipped cream on Tam. Hell, on him, too, if it meant having that tongue licking it up.

  “…not only that she’d been my friend, but it seemed that he’d known her, Uncle Jack. Has he ever spoken of Claudia to you?”

  While he’d been indulging in a quick hot fantasy Tam had been asking about Trainor, Stone guessed. Jack’s reply proved him right.

  “You never knew? He was obsessed with her, for God’s sake. I had to talk to him about it.”

  “But how did he even meet her?”

  “He saw her here, whenever it was my turn to host the poker games and she was spending the evening with you.” Jack’s lips thinned. “He never took his eyes off her. He was years older than you and Claudie, and it just didn’t sit right with me. I told him I’d always seen myself in the role of a surrogate father to her, since her real dad wasn’t around to protect her. He got the message.”

  Arithmetic wasn’t Jack Foley’s weak subject, Stone thought wryly. Although he was looking at his Tammy as he spoke, there was no doubt as to whom his words were really directed to. He’d put two and two together, he’d come up with four, and he was telling the man whose life he’d once saved that it was going to be one-on-one if he suspected his little girl wasn’t being treated right.

  “You must run at about what, Jack?” He kept his tone casual. “Two-thirty? Two-forty?”

  Blue eyes turned his way. “Two-thirty-five, laddie,” Foley said. “And most of it’s still hard muscle.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Stone allowed a faint grin to cross his features. “I wouldn’t want to go up against you anytime, would I?”

  Slowly Jack grinned back at him. “We’d both do some damage, McQueen. But it’s not something we have to worry about, is it?”

  “No, Jack, you don’t have to worry.” Suddenly serious, Stone met the other man’s gaze directly. “You’ve got my word on that.”

  “What are you two talking about, anyway? Arm-wrestling?” Tamara sounded peeved. “I thought we were discussing Bill Trainor. I wonder how he felt when he heard that Claudia had run off and gotten married?”

  “He’d probably gotten over her by then, punkin.” Turning back to Stone, the older man continued. “I probably blew the Fodor lead. How do you want to approach this now?”

  “I’ll check out the address I have for Glenda, but if Bill and Tommy have gotten to her already I’ll question anyone I can find who lived at the rooming house, see if they noticed anyone suspicious hanging around.” Even to himself it sounded futile. “I never saw the rocket fuel as a solid lead to Pascoe. It was his calling card, sure, but that was because he was the only arsonist nervy enough to use it. When I was investigating this the first time I was told that anyone with access to equipment and the chemical formula could cook the stuff up, if they didn’t kill themselves doing it.”

  “Not anyone, surely.” Tamara frowned. “Just because you hand me some eggs and a recipe doesn’t m
ean I can whip up a cake like the kind Aunt Kate made. You’d have to have some idea of what you were doing.”

  “That still doesn’t narrow it down any,” Jack said. “Even Tommy Knopf’s probably got enough rudimentary knowledge to concoct it if he had to. I seem to recall he was in some kind of demolitions unit in the army. McQueen’s right, it’s not a case-cracking lead.”

  “Then we start with what we do know about Pascoe.” Leaning back against the counter, Tamara crossed her feet at the ankles and jammed her fists into the kangaroo pocket at the front of her hooded top.

  She looked tough, and determined, and with her pocket rounded out like that, pregnant, Stone thought. He blinked, disconcerted by the heat that rushed through him at the notion, but he couldn’t dispel the image— Tam pregnant with their child, getting gradually fuller with the seed he’d planted deep inside her, day by day displaying the evidence more and more clearly of what they’d created together.

  He wanted that. The certainty slammed into him with such force that it almost took his breath away. He’d probably drive her crazy, he thought shakily. Knowing Tam, she’d sail through pregnancy with all the unruffled aplomb of a mother cat, while he’d be racing around helping her into cars, going into spasms if he saw her lifting anything heavier than a nail file, treating her as if she was more fragile than porcelain. And he’d insist on being there beside her, feeling her squeeze down on his hands, when the child they’d made came squalling lustily into the world.

  Petra would go nuts, he thought, smiling a little to himself. She’d be a bossy, adoring big sister, and he’d make sure she always knew she was his Tiger, and just as much loved as any of his other children.

  He wanted to be Tam’s husband. He wanted to be the father of her children. He wanted to be allowed to love her for the rest of his life and beyond. That was the future he wanted.

  There was a good chance that wasn’t the future he was going to get.

  “It’s a lot harder for city council to turn down the department’s budget request when there’s a retired jakey standing there in his uniform and medals.”

  It seemed he’d missed yet another chunk of the conversation, Stone thought, forcing himself back to the here and now with an effort. Jack was on his feet. He pushed back his own chair and stood, wondering if there was some response he was supposed to be making.

  “Don’t worry about it, Uncle Jack. You go look brave and noble at your meeting and shame them into throwing wads of cash at us.” Tamara was smiling. “If something comes up, you’ve got your cell phone with you, right?”

  “That thing. Half the time when I hear it ringing I can’t find where I put it.” Jack was moving toward the door. “It’s in the car, punkin. I’ll make sure it’s on just in case.”

  He turned to Stone, and once again his manner shifted subtly. If anyone saw Jack Foley as a retired duffer whose time had passed, Stone realized, they’d be making a big mistake. The man standing in front of him was suddenly as formidable and tough as he must have been in his prime.

  “Good hunting, laddie.” He clapped a hand on Stone’s shoulder and fixed him with a glance. “A word of warning—don’t underestimate Knopf and Trainor. They’ve been wanting your blood for a long time, and Tommy, at least, can hold a hate forever. He’d have liked to have seen me go down, and that was just because of my friendship with Chuck.”

  “With Dad?” Tamara looked startled. “How in the world did their paths ever cross?”

  “They didn’t really.” Jack shook his head. “But even when Tom was still hauling hose he knew he wanted to be an arson investigator someday, and his mentor was Harley Perkins. Harley had been a good jakey. He’d even hauled me to safety once when a floor gave way underneath me. But he never should have been made an investigator.”

  “He was pensioned off before my time, but I’ve heard the stories.” Stone raised his eyebrows. “His sloppy techniques were legendary.”

  Jack nodded. “Tammy’s dad was an insurance investigator, and his company sent him out to check into a restaurant blaze Harley had written off as an accident. Chuck’s investigation not only proved the owner had paid to have the place torched, but it raised some pretty strong suspicions about Harley. Nothing was ever proven, but within months Perkins had taken the hint and retired. Knopf never forgave Chuck for that.”

  He tapped the side of his nose. “So watch your back, McQueen. And call if you need me.”

  “Trainor knew Claudia. Knopf held a grudge against my father,” Tamara said moments later as Jack drove away and she closed the door. “Sometimes I feel like I took on a second family when I joined the department. Did you ever see it like that?”

  He pulled her into his arms. “I don’t usually let myself think too much about the past, honey,” he said, inhaling the scent of her hair. “But talking about it today brought everything back.”

  “That’s a bad thing?” Her question was quiet. “I don’t know exactly what happened, Stone. I guess I could have asked Chandra but I wanted to hear it from you, and I only wanted to hear it if you wanted to tell me.”

  He was one sorry-ass son of a bitch, Stone thought, tightening his embrace around her. He’d been a screwup for most of his life, and he’d come too damned close to letting the only thing that mattered to him slip through his fingers.

  But no more. She was the woman he loved. She deserved to know everything. Or at least as much as he could find the courage to tell her right now.

  “I didn’t see the department as my second family, honey,” he said huskily against her hair. “I saw it as the only one I’d ever known, and Robert Pascoe tore my family apart.”

  He felt the pain lance through him, as fresh and as sharp as the first time, and he had to fight to keep his voice even.

  “Five went in,” he said, too harshly. “They didn’t come out. And I’ve never stopped wondering if somehow I couldn’t have prevented it.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Hell, sometimes I wondered if the rumors might be true.”

  They’d moved into the living room, and as Stone sat down on the sofa Tamara began to settle herself beside him. Without looking up he caught her wrist and pulled her onto him.

  “It’s very simple, honey,” he said tightly. “I always want you as close to me as you can get, okay? In my arms. On my lap. Surrounding me.”

  He’d felt the way she had while Uncle Jack had been with them, Tamara realized—as if keeping even the barest distance between them was intolerable. She felt the warmth of his breath on the corners of her mouth.

  “Like I say, once in a while I’d wonder if what they were saying was true—that the murderous bastard whose trail I believed I’d picked up was just a figment of my imagination. Then I’d read another PNI report and know I’d stumbled across his handiwork again.”

  “I’m a firefighter, not an investigator, Stone,” she reminded him. “What’s a PNI report?”

  “Perpetrator Never Identified.” He twined a strand of her hair around his finger. “I must have been the first one to have the accelerant analyzed, or maybe earlier investigators were simply told the lab was unfamiliar with the compound. I didn’t see the term ‘rocket fuel’ in any of the old reports, and more often than not it was obvious from the descriptions of the burns that it hadn’t been used.”

  “He didn’t always use the same method?” She frowned. “I just said this isn’t my field, but isn’t the theory that once arsonists find a method that works, they stick to it?”

  “Theories are like rules. There’s always an exception,” McQueen said. “Some of the arsons were just jobs to him—contracts he was paid to fulfill. He only used the rocket fuel for his own fires. He gets off on what he does,” he added savagely.

  Shaken by his intensity, Tamara tried to steer the conversation back on course. “How far into the past did his trail go?” she asked in a matter-of-fact tone. “When you eventually came face-to-face with him, did Pascoe seem to be in the right age range?”

 
“The man on the subway platform was a good ten or twelve years older than I was. That would have put him in his mid-to-late thirties, and the first PNI I felt could be his related to an arson from about fifteen years before. His age fit.”

  Her question seemed to have taken the edge from his anger, leaving hard implacability beneath. “Bracknell Curtiss was a tycoon who’d made his money out west before coming to Boston. He was into real estate development in a big way, though it wasn’t until forensic accountants were called in after his death that anyone knew just what shell companies had been controlled by him—which was why no one ever pointed the finger at him while he was alive. But when the pencil-pushers finally figured out what he’d owned, it was obvious how he’d gotten the prime pieces of property he’d wanted at such fire-sale prices.”

  “Pun intended?” She didn’t smile.

  “Pun intended.” Stone didn’t smile, either. “If he wanted the land and not the building and the owner wouldn’t sell, it was a safe bet that Joe Landlord would wake up the next morning and find that his comfortable little rental income had gone up in smoke, because the offices or apartments he’d been collecting it from no longer existed. At that point he’d be glad to unload his few thousand square feet of smoking ruins to Curtiss. If the property itself was valuable, the owner would find himself and his family standing on his own front lawn in the middle of the night, watching his home burn to the ground. Those guys signed on the dotted line when Curtiss handed them his fountain pen the second time.”

  “And Curtiss’s torch was Pascoe.” She didn’t phrase it as a question.

  “Right up to and including the night Bracknell Curtiss’s own mansion burned down,” Stone agreed. “With Curtiss and one of his servants trapped inside. The way I figure it, Pascoe must have parted ways with his employer over something, and for that particular fire he used the rocket fuel as an accelerant. The servant shouldn’t have died,” he added. “He went back in to save his boss.”