Over the flames, p.7
Over the Flames, page 7
She had a point. The accusation had been leveled against Baldwin Webb alone. There hadn’t been any mention of Jacqueline Day or what her role in this sick mind game had played. They still needed a connection between the two victims, but he couldn’t deny his need for a cold shower and space from the woman who’d carved her way back into his life and pushed at his internal boundaries. “I shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.”
Lawson hauled his duffel bag packed with toiletries and a fresh set of clothes over his shoulder then headed for the shower. Closing the door behind him, he secured the lock and set the bag onto the tile, and his nervous system immediately drained of pent up tension. He twisted on the water then unpocketed his phone. He took a seat on the edge of the bath-shower combo and wedged his elbows against his knees.
Baldwin Webb hadn’t been the man or the journalist Arden had believed him to be all these years. At least not according to the plagiarism accusation leveled against him two days prior his death. He stared at the victim’s photo from the background check the King County Sheriff’s Department had run after the ME confirmed identification of the remains. “What else have you been hiding?”
Chapter Nine
She could still taste him, still feel his mouth pressed against hers.
Lawson had broken the unspoken contract between them when they’d settled their divorce and pushed into the space where she’d locked their torturous past away. But what confused her more was the fact she’d kissed him back. Not with hesitation but a drive she hadn’t let herself fall prey to since before their worlds had been equally ripped apart. The kiss had been wild, rough, perfect. She’d lost herself in a haze of need and desire ten times more powerful than anything she’d felt during their marriage, yet those blistering few seconds hadn’t come close to easing the festering Ache she’d walked away with. There’d been desperation, connection. Peace.
Arden pressed her fingernails into her palms as they approached the quaint yellow house with the bright green door and large porch. Thick trees and pops of pink wildflowers encroached on the long, wet walkway leading to the stairs. It was beautiful, the kind of home Arden had dreamed of having most of her life. Cottage-style house, a big front porch to have family dinners on outside, grass for her kids to play with one another, and a successful, devoted husband at her side. The white picket fence gate swung closed behind them as they made their way toward the front door, and the fantasy bled away. That part of her life was over. It wasn’t coming back.
“The sheriff called ahead. Rose Hindley should be expecting us.” Lawson’s navy-blue jacket succumbed to the deep ridges and valleys of his massive arms. Styled, dark hair battled the humidity that clung to Arden’s exposed skin, and she couldn’t deny the intensity in his expression heightened the lingering remnants of what they’d shared during that kiss. Interviewing suspects and witnesses, following the evidence, uncovering the truth—this was what he did for a living. This was what he’d been trained for, and an inner knot of interest enjoyed experiencing him in his authoritative element. “With any luck, we’ll find out if plagiarism is a strong enough motive to kill two journalists.”
“Any motive can be strong enough if it effects someone’s way of life. It just depends on what you have to lose.” And if she dared herself to make an assumption as he had about Baldwin, Arden would say Rose Hindley wasn’t keen on losing all of this. According to the background check she’d run through a friend in the Seattle Police Department while Lawson had been in the shower, Baldwin’s accuser had worked as an investigative journalist for the Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber for the past year. It wasn’t a large paper in any sense of the word, circulating only three thousand copies weekly compared to the hundreds of thousands of The Seattle Times, but Hindley’s articles had left a distinct impression on Arden. They were passionate, well-written, thoroughly researched. Arden had instantly been drawn into the narrative Rose Hindley had constructed with her writing and found herself more impressed than skeptical. But she couldn’t ignore the fact the single mother was currently buried under mounting medical debt and on the verge of losing everything she cared about.
Lawson punched the small round doorbell with his thumb then set both hands on his hips. The shoulder holster beneath his jacket followed long, lean lines down his torso, and Arden stopped herself from remembering how close she’d been to driving her fingers under his T-shirt less than an hour ago. They’d shared plenty of passionate nights together before and during their marriage. Why had that kiss felt different? Gray eyes cut to her, and the answer blindsided her Because she hadn’t let herself feel anything for so long. “Do I have something on my face?”
“No.” She shook her head, catching sight of movement through the stained-glass cutout of the front door.
The garden green door protested on old hinges as Rose Hindley centered herself in the door frame. Arden recognized her from her photo on the newspaper’s website, but the bio picture hadn’t done the woman justice. Platinum-blonde hair waved over a thin set of shoulders and petite frame. Green eyes, the color of pine, brightened as perfectly full lips lifted into a smile and exaggerated the bow above Rose’s mouth. Around five-foot-five, five-foot-six, the journalist stretched her flawlessly manicured hand toward Lawson. “Hi, you must be the FBI agent Sheriff Sanders told me would be stopping by today.” That all-too-bright expression shifted to Arden as she offered her hand, and a hit of surprise knocked Rose’s smile down a peg. Her mouth parted as though she’d expected Lawson to come alone. “Oh. I can’t… I can’t believe you’re here.”
Confusion crippled Arden’s line of thought as she shook Rose’s hand. “You know me?”
“Only by reputation. I’ve been reading your work since your first article for The Seattle Times, the one detailing how that mother from the island poisoned her son in order to get attention from her doctors and family members. You inspired me to start researching my own articles and put my journalism degree to use for once.” Calluses scraped against the inside of Arden’s hand as Rose motioned them inside. “Please, come in.”
Lawson stepped over the threshold first, Arden close on his heels.
Bright yellow contrast walls and floor to ceiling windows gave off a calming, inviting feel to the openness of the home, but the pit in Arden’s stomach had yet to release. The woman sweeping crumbs from the cushions had accused Arden’s mentor and best friend of the worst crime a journalist could commit.
“Please excuse the mess.” Rose Hindley’s open, white button-down shirt and low tank top revealed a maze of blue veins across her chest as she pressed the power button for a baby monitor on the side table. “I hope you don’t mind. My son is taking a nap, and I need to be able to hear him when he wakes up.”
“Your biography didn’t mention you had a son. How old is he?” Lawson took a seat the same moment Arden settled into one of the chairs angled toward the dark wood coffee table.
“Four. He’s at that stage where he doesn’t think he needs to nap, but he’ll fall asleep right before dinner if he doesn’t.” Her laugh hit the high notes as she settled into another chair in the small sitting area. Rose crossed one knee over other and intertwined her fingers over her shin. Elegant flats accentuated the light color of her jeans and fed into her overall casualness in the face of an FBI agent and an investigative journalist. “Do you have children?”
“No,” Lawson said. “I don’t.”
An invisible knife cut through Arden’s heart, crushing the air from her lungs.
“Ms. Hindley, I’m sure you realize we’re not here about your son.” Lawson pulled a notepad from his suit jacket pocket and clicked the end of his pen.
“Call me Rose, please, and yes, I know why you’re here. Sheriff Sanders said this has something to do with the accusation I made against Baldwin Webb.” Rose’s attention slid to Arden, her thin pointed nose accentuating the severeness of her features, and a hint of familiarity slid into Arden’s focus. “My editor told me what happened last night. I’m sorry for your loss. I understand you and Baldwin were close.”
Arden swallowed past the lump building in her throat and straightened her spine a bit more. She hadn’t met this woman before, she was sure of it, but a tendril of connection pulsed in the back of her mind. “You emailed Baldwin three days ago with a dozen samples taken from an article published in The Seattle Times six weeks ago and compared it to similar samples in yours published a week prior.”
“I did.” Rose redirected her gaze to Lawson, and her face relaxed slightly. “I’ll be honest, I was as shocked as you were when I read Baldwin’s article last week. I’ve admired his work for years, but I couldn’t ignore the fact there were so many similarities between not just that single piece but nearly a dozen. He’d been pulling sections from my articles for months. Investigative writing makes it possible for me to put a roof over my son’s head on a single income, so when I saw Baldwin had blatantly taken credit for my work, I emailed him.”
A short series of coughs registered from the baby monitor on the side table. The yellow of the walls suddenly darker with evidence of the storm that had trapped them on the island the past twelve hours.
“A threat to your financial security, especially when it effects a loved one, can certainly be enough to make you lash out.” Lawson scribbled something illegible in his notebook. “Do you mind telling us where you were last night between six and eight?”
A humorless smile pulled at Rose’s mouth then vanished as the realization an FBI agent had asked for her alibi registered. “Wait. You can’t possible believe Baldwin plagiarizing my article was enough motive for me to kill him?”
“You said he’d taken credit for your work.” Arden sat forward in her chair. “Given The Seattle Times out subscribes the Beachcomber by more than twenty times, it’s not hard to believe you blamed him for poaching your work, maybe even keeping you from moving onto a bigger paper.”
“I sent that email to Baldwin three days ago. You’re right about that, but I didn’t kill him.” Rose uncrossed her legs and mirrored Arden on the edge of the couch, those brilliant green eyes harder than a few moments ago. She pressed her palms together, enunciating each word with a drop of her wrists in front of her knees. Her voice wavered, the light-hearted façade she’d greeted them with at the door draining. “After I found proof he’d been stealing pieces of my work for months, I was angry. Journalists aren’t supposed to do that to each other, and to have it come from someone I respected my entire career didn’t help. So, yes, I sent that email. I wasn’t only angry, I was hurt. I was worried if I let it go on any longer I would lose my job, but I also wasn’t sure a small island journalist was going to be able to do anything about it, so I handed everything I’d found over to my editor. She sent all the proof to The Seattle Times. They were taking care of it for me.”
Arden pressed her fingernails into her palms. How hadn’t she heard any of this? From the paper, from Baldwin?
“Taking care of it how?” Lawson asked, like the impartial special agent he was supposed to be.
“Baldwin was fired.” Rose turned that piercing gaze back to Arden. Shoving to her feet, she crossed to the dining room table where she’d left her laptop and phone, collected the smaller device, and returned. She turned the screen toward Lawson. “I got the notice from my editor this morning. With the side-by-side comparisons from my work alone, The Seattle Times had more than enough proof to warrant the termination.”
“You still haven’t answered his question.” Arden licked her dry lips. “Where were you yesterday evening between six and eight?”
“Here,” Rose said. “My nanny had the day off.”
“We’re going to need her contact information to verify.” Lawson studied the screen then handed the phone off the Arden. There, in plain text, was an email from Baldwin’s editor notifying Rose Hindley and her Beachcomber editor of Baldwin’s termination from the paper. Arden’s lungs collapsed, her heart rate spiking into dangerous territory. Rose Hindley was telling the truth. Baldwin had plagiarized another journalist, had stolen the work of a hardworking, small-time writer and tried to pass if off as his own. Why? “What did you mean by your work alone? Were there other plagiarism accusations against Baldwin?”
Blood rushed to Arden’s head and muffled the next words out of Rose’s mouth. Her grip strengthened around the phone in her hand to the point she feared she might crack the screen. A heavy weight settled in her legs, making it impossible for her to stand. Instead, she slid the phone onto the coffee table between her and the woman who’d destroyed her mentor’s career.
“When I was gathering proof Baldwin had stolen my work, I had the feeling he’d done it before. How else would he have been able to hide it so easily without anyone noticing?” Rose’s eyes ping ponged between Lawson and Arden. “I started looking into investigative journalists from smaller, citywide papers in the state like me. Journalists who might not have the means or resources to defend themselves against his caliber of writer or The Times. The Everett Herald, The Olympian. I found one other journalist who Baldwin had blatantly plagiarized before he’d set his sights on my work.” Collecting her phone from the coffee table, Rose swiped her thumb across the screen then faced the screen toward Lawson. “Phil Anderson. He worked for The Daily Herald until last year. I reached out to his former editor so I could contact him about our mutual situation, but he hadn’t heard from Phil for months. Said he’d stopped submitting stories, that Phil’s marriage dissolved, that he’d been depressed. According to public records, his parents died a while ago, and his editor didn’t know of any siblings I could contact. No one has heard from him since. The editor gave me a phone number to try, but the number’s been disconnected. I drove by the address listed in the phonebook under his name, but it hadn’t looked like anyone had lived there in a long time.”
The tendons in Lawson’s neck bunched with an obvious burst of suspicion, and Arden’s body couldn’t help but absorb its own healthy dose. “Do you have that address on you?”
Another set of coughing lit up the green lights on the baby monitor a few feet away, drawing Arden’s attention.
“If you’ll excuse me, I need to check on my son. I saved the address in my phone, but I don’t think it will do you any good. When you have what you need, you’re welcome to show yourselves out.” Rose handed him the phone a second time and got to her feet as Lawson wrote the address in his notebook. She headed for a long stretch of hallway on the other side of the kitchen, then stopped, turning. “A source informed me about how Baldwin died. That someone covered him in gasoline and set him on fire. Seems like such a hateful way to kill someone. Makes me wonder if Phil Anderson and I weren’t the only ones Baldwin Webb plagiarized. I went through Baldwin’s editor at The Seattle Times and got him fired. I’ve dealt with what happened, but when your entire livelihood is threatened from someone’s bitter selfishness like that… It makes me think another victim might’ve taken Baldwin’s punishment into their own hands.”
Chapter Ten
“I’ll have Sheriff Sanders follow up with the nanny to shore up Rose Hindley’s alibi.” Lawson descended the steps leading up to the yellow-painted cottage that’d looked brighter when they’d arrived. Phone in hand, he sent a quick message to Sanders then slid his phone into his pocket. Sprinkling rain pricked against his scalp and the back of his neck as he and Arden wound down the long path toward his SUV. The phones were back online. It stood to reason the ferries were, too. “From the sound of it, she wasn’t the only one who might have a reason to kill Baldwin.”
Only he wasn’t sure how the plagiarism accusations related to Jacqueline Day or if they connected both deaths at all.
“You think she was telling the truth.” Not a question.
The hesitation in her voice slowed his pace, and Lawson turned to face her. She’d asked good questions in there. He’d been impressed. Though now he could see the cracks in her control, the doubt bubbling to the surface. “She had the proof on her phone. The accusations got Baldwin Webb fired from The Seattle Times. She had no reason to kill him last night if her editor had already taken care of the issue.”
Her long, blonde hair lifted slightly with the breeze coming through the tall trees and wildflowers as she diverted her ethereal blue gaze somewhere over the white vinyl fence. “He never told me. That he’d been fired. Baldwin had never shared anything about his work with me, told me he didn’t want his opinion to color my own investigations.” She crossed her arms over her chest, and she suddenly looked so much…smaller than she’d been when they’d walked into that house. “Now I know why. He’d tried covering his tracks. Makes sense he wouldn’t want to tell me he’d been fired for stealing another journalist’s work. I trusted him, and now I’m wondering if I was going to be one of those writers someday. I’m wondering if he’d only been my friend so he could eventually steal from me. So many things I believed about Baldwin ended up being a lie. What am I supposed to do with that?”
“You learn from it and move on. The same thing you’ve been doing your entire life.” Lawson slipped his notepad and paper into the breast pocket of his jacket as rain grew heavier. He squinted up into the sky. Dark clouds rolled over one another in a hypnotic dance, and he reached for her. “Come on. We don’t want to be caught out in the open if the entire island shuts down again.”
She stepped into the circle of his arm and headed down the path, but the sense of being watched prickled the hair on the back of his neck. Lawson looked back over his shoulder, to the large window at the front of Rose Hindley’s house. It was empty. Nothing but a gray reflection of the clouds and trees filling the space. This case, Arden’s involvement—his mind was playing tricks on him. The gate slammed closed behind him, hiking his nerves into overdrive.
