Love and Arson Read online

  Love and Arson

  Karen S. Woods

  Sleeping Beagle Books

  Jacksonville, Illinois

  Smashwords Edition

  Print ISBN#978-0-9792832-2-2

  Copyright 2008 by Karen S. Woods

  first e-book publication September 2009

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2008904587

  Cover photograph by Carlos, courtesy of morguefile.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to any person, living or dead,

  business establishments, events, or locales,

  is strictly co-incidental.

  All Rights Reserved.

  No portion of this book may be duplicated or reproduced without permission of the publisher, except for small sections which may be quoted in reviews.

  For permission email: [email protected]

  Please do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials in

  violation of author’s rights.

  A previous incarnation of this story was published by Triskellion Publishing

  in electronic format as The Devlin Diaries.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is dedicated in memory of all those who have died from cancer, particularly to my friends,

  Ronda Thompson and Patricia Lucas White.

  It is dedicated in memory of my mother-in-law,

  Reva Irene Meeker Woods,

  who survived ten years after her own battle with cancer

  before Alzheimer’s Disease took her from us.

  May Light Perpetual shine upon them!

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  Prologue

  Jason Wilton stood near the desk in the well appointed office of the president of Devlin Civil Engineering and Development. “Harry, for the love of God, please tell me you’re joking!”

  “Hardly, Jase. It’s far too serious to tease about,” his stepfather, Harrison Devlin, seated behind his desk, said. “I’ve sent Gil to see Mary Danielle.”

  “You can’t actually believe Nancy’s daughter is yours?” Jase asked, hearing the utter disbelief in his own voice. “On the strength of what? A letter Nancy arranged for her pastor to overnight to you after her death?”

  “I was still married to Nancy when Mary Danielle was born,” Harry replied, his voice sounding pained. “I’m named as her father on the girl’s birth certificate.”

  “You don’t need this kind of stress, Harry. It’s not good for your heart.”

  “Probably not,” the older man admitted. “But, I have to know if she’s really my daughter. And you’d have to know as well, if you were in this situation. You know you would.”

  Jase walked over to the window and looked out onto this late March Friday afternoon. He turned to face his stepfather. “Yes, I would. But, do me one favor?”

  “What?” Harry said, clearly unwilling to give a blanket agreement without knowing the request. That didn’t sur-prise Jase. His stepfather was a cautious man.

  “Let me have Lou investigate her.”

  Jase watched Harry’s lips tighten into a thin line. Then his stepfather nodded in agreement.

  “I’ll get Lou right on it,” Jase said.

  “Tell Lou there must be only the original of the report.”

  “Okay,” Jase agreed, puzzled at the request.

  Harry continued, “One copy of the report, in his own handwriting, and I get all his notes. That’s not negotiable. If Mary Danielle is my daughter, and there is anything compromising in her past, I’d rather keep it quiet.”

  Jase nodded. “Are you going to tell Mother about this?”

  “Of course, I’ve already discussed this with Lyn. I’ve never kept secrets from my wife. But, this stays in the family, for now. I’m not ready for it to get out.”

  Jase nodded in agreement. He looked at his watch. “I’ve got a meeting with Mike Peterson in twenty minutes to close on his property.”

  “I’m sure you’ll handle it.”

  Jase shrugged. “I’ll do what I can.”

  Harry smiled. “You always do. I couldn’t be more proud of you, if you were my own flesh and blood, Jason.”

  A couple of hours later, the signed deed and closing statement for the Peterson land lay on his desk. Jase looked at the papers and felt only marginal satisfaction. Ordinarily, he’d be more enthusiastic about this.

  But, just now, Jase had other concerns on his mind. He looked at his wristwatch. Lou should be here any minute. Louis Jacobs was the best private investigator Jase knew. The company used the retired FBI agent from time to time in profoundly sensitive matters. Lou would turn up the facts about Mary Danielle Devlin.

  He only hoped this wouldn’t be as painful to Harry as he feared that they might be. With a mother like Nancy, this Mary Danielle woman had to be a certifiable winner.

  God save them all! The last thing this family needed was another Nancy O’Brien wrecking havoc on them. Jase promised himself he’d do whatever he had to keep his stepfather safe.

  * * *

  Gil Jermon dialed a number and waited for the woman to answer. “Harry’s sending me to Illinois to see Nancy’s brat,” he said without preamble when she answered.

  “I see.”

  “You can’t talk right now?”

  “Correct.”

  “Call me back.”

  “Sure.” Then she hung up.

  She called him back in eleven minutes. “Okay, I’m alone behind a closed door. Where are you?”

  “I’m on my way to Dulles to catch a flight.”

  “Damned shame our contractor didn’t finish the job. What does Harry want with the girl?”

  “I’m supposed to either get her to agree either to a paternity test or take a settlement. He wants to meet her once the test results are in, if they come out proving the relationship.”

  “Sounds like Harry.”

  “Doesn’t it though?”

  “I don’t suppose you can make certain the results are definitely adverse?”

  “No. Harry wants a chain of custody lab to be used to protect his interests. I won’t have any access to the DNA samples.”

  “Too bad. That would have been the easiest solution to the entire problem. Are you anywhere near the cottage?” she asked.

  “No. I’m
already on the highway for the airport.”

  “Did you happen to take the inhaler with you?”

  “No.”

  “You know it’s at the cottage. Why didn’t you take it?”

  He sighed heavily. “That’s not my style.”

  “We both know that’s not true. You’ve never been averse to taking direct action. It would have been much cheaper than the fee the contractor wanted, if you or I had simply gone to see Nancy and the brat with the inhaler in our possession. A couple of sprays on their forks at dinner and the problem would have been over.”

  “Neither of us could afford to be seen there. You know that. And I can’t afford to be linked to any harm that comes to this young woman. You know that. Especially not now. There’s too much at stake right now. Besides, the inhaler’s for a later stage of the plan. It was entirely too hard to come by to waste it. We’ll need it by January for the final stage.”

  “There’s plenty there for multiple uses.”

  “It would be too suspicious for someone as young as Nancy’s brat to just drop dead from a coronary,” Gil said. “And if that’s later linked to Harry’s own future passing, there will be hell to pay.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And we don’t know she really is Harry’s daughter, to begin with. Why would you want to take chances on something that might be easily resolved through the lab tests.”

  “Do you think there’s really any chance she isn’t Harry’s child?” she dismissed.

  “There’s always a chance.”

  “I don’t like any of this.”

  “And you think I do? You’re not the one who has to approach this woman at her mother’s funeral. Nancy’s funeral is the last place I want to be.”

  Chapter One

  The standing room only crowd for the vigil last night and the funeral this morning had shown how well Nan Devlin had been respected, even loved, locally.

  Dani stood at her mother’s grave, long after almost everyone else had gone. Ron had wanted to stay with her, but she sent him home. He hadn’t liked being dismissed, but he’d gone. The sky on this last Saturday in March matched her mood; gloomy with threatening storms.

  As tears flowed freely down Dani’s face, the cemetery workers finished their work, climbed into their truck, and drove away. Through blurry eyes, she read her mother’s granite headstone, “Nancy ‘Nan’ O’Brien Devlin.” The stone carver hadn’t been out yet to add the date of death.

  Dani had fully expected she would lose her mother from the pancreatic cancer. The day after her mother’s diag-nosis last November, she and her mother had made these arrangements and paid for this simple funeral. Her mother had asked for memorials to the local food bank, in lieu of flowers and the “after funeral” meal. That was very much like her mother, always thinking about others.

  After planning for the worst, Nan Devlin had then poured all her energy into fighting the cancer with surgery, chemo, and radiation. Dani was angry to the point of murderous rage that her mother, already weak from the cancer treatments, had faced a fierce beating. It would take a special sort of sociopath to torture of a sick woman, then to torch the house to try to hide the evidence of that abuse.

  The police theorized Dani’s ex-fiancé, Edward, or one of his former money laundering/investment clients, had been responsible for Nan Devlin’s murder. But, thank God, they hadn’t talked about that theory publicly.

  Oh, Mother! I’m so sorry.

  Her new pistol hung heavily in its holster from her skirt waistband at the small of her back. She’d hated wearing a weapon into Church, hated breaking the state law forbid-ding concealed carry, but she needed to be able to defend herself. Bad times made for hard decisions.

  “Dani?” Father Smith asked, his voice gentle, from just behind her.

  She dashed the tears from her eyes and turned to see her pastor standing there with a tall, balding fellow. The balding man’s gray eyes reminded her of polished pewter in winter; beautiful but cold and totally lifeless.

  “Dani,” the Episcopal priest continued, “you need to meet Mr. Gilbert Jermon. He’s your father’s attorney.”

  “My father’s attorney?” Dani heard the shock in her own voice. The word ‘father’ rolled around in her mind, sounding fairly alien, even as the word ‘attorney’ sounded warning klaxons.

  “I represent Harrison Devlin, Miss Devlin. He sent me here to offer you his condolences,” Gilbert Jermon said.

  “I see,” she said, but she really didn’t “see” anything about this. Her mother was a widow. But, she let that slide, and asked, “He couldn’t have come himself?”

  “Mr. Devlin is a very busy man,” the lawyer dismissed.

  “Too busy to come to his wife’s funeral, obviously.”

  “Ex-wife’s funeral. They’ve been divorced for a quarter century,” the attorney corrected. “He’s been remarried for over twenty-four years. His relationship with Nancy is ancient history. And it would have remained ancient history without the letter she had your pastor send.”

  Dani sighed, not at all certain where to take this, or what this man, or rather his client, wanted from her.

  “You’ve now extended his condolences, such that they were. He could have sent a card if that’s all he wanted.”

  Gil Jermon nodded. “If you are my client’s child, he’ll want to establish a relationship with you.”

  “Oh, he will, will he?” Dani replied, unable to keep her anger and cynicism under control. “How very generous!”

  “Are you telling me you don’t wish to pursue this matter?” the lawyer asked.

  “What do you mean if, if, I am your client’s child?”

  “There was a reason your mother’s marriage failed. The Nancy I knew was a free spirit who lived by her own rules, which did not include fidelity.”

  “Don’t you dare slander my mother!” Dani said through her clinched teeth. “This conversation is over.”

  As she turned away, the lawyer took hold of her arm. “It’s not over until there is a resolution one way or another of your presumptive claim against my client.”

  Dani closed her eyes and took a couple of deep breaths trying without success to get her temper under control. God, help me. I don’t know how to handle this. Then, she looked at him, and spoke in a far too calm voice her friends would have been taken for a “run for shelter, she’s about to blow” signal. “Take your hands off of me, right now!”

  He loosened his grip and dropped his hand. “My client needs actual proof of paternity,” Gil Jermon said.

  “Proof?” Dani echoed, feeling rather dense. “What kind of proof could I possibly supply? Virtually everything I own was lost in the house fire in which my mother died.”

  “Your DNA remains yours,” the attorney answered. “My client is ready to offer you a generous settlement if you don’t wish to provide the proof necessary for him to be able to acknowledge kinship. But that’s contingent on your signing away all claims.”

  She sighed. “I’m calling my attorney. You can talk with her. I just can’t deal with this, today,” Dani said as she took out her cell phone.

  * * *

  Three weeks later, at 12:15 a.m., the display on the digital alarm clock/radio cast the only light in the dark room. She’d been tossing on the sleeper sofa for almost two hours, restless. The only good thing about it being Sunday morning was she didn’t have to be at school by seven. She would be at Church, though, by nine, as the schedule called for her to serve as lay reader this morning.

  Her sleeplessness was nothing new. She hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in the month since her mother died. Every bump in the night had her reaching for her pistol. Yesterday’s mail hadn’t at all helped her ability to rest.

  The lab report verifying Harrison Devlin to be her biological father came in Saturday’s mail. She’d found lab report among her mail when she’d returned from lunch with Ron. She hadn’t believed, even for one moment, her father’s lawyer’s allegation of her mother’s infide
lity. She knew her mother too well to believe those lies. Too bad her father hadn’t known her mother that well.

  Speaking of not knowing people well, she could have lived the rest of her life without ever having gone through yesterday’s lunch at her favorite Mom-and-Pop Italian restaurant. Over walnut cake and coffee, Ron had proposed marriage, complete with his grandmother’s diamond reset as an engagement ring for her. The expression passing over Ron’s face when she’d declined his marriage proposal had been one of profound relief, not of either sorrow or regret.

  With a sigh, she turned on the lamp and reached for her bible and prayer book. As she had every night since her mother was buried, she reread the burial office, praying once again the prayers, reading the scripture lessons that had been read at her mother’s funeral, reciting the psalms, and trying to find some measure of comfort by throwing herself into the arms of God. At least, now, she was able to do this without crying herself to sleep. But true comfort was still a mirage shimmering far in the distance in her angry spiritual desert.

  “God, please, help me!” she whispered. “I don’t know what to do about any of this. Are you calling me to renounce the world or to become more involved in it? I’m trying to listen, but you seem so very far away right now.”

  Putting down the books, she rose from the sleeper sofa and went over to her desk.

  The only good part of camping out in the office of her art studio was she had access to her high speed internet connection. Well, maybe not the only good part. It was cheaper to sleep here than renting an apartment. She powered on her laptop, intending to write an email to Harrison Devlin. Funny, how she couldn’t call him “father”, not even in the silence of her mind.