Kindling Flames—Gathering Tinder Page 4

  Darien chuckled lightly. “I know that. What are they doing on my desk?” He pinned Vicky with a sharp look.

  She shifted from foot to foot as she answered, “I, um…” she started, and then rephrased her thoughts. “You liked the one from yesterday so much, I thought you would like a few more.”

  Darien closed his eyes and smiled gently. The simple gesture warmed his heart, and he looked back at the girl waiting for him to respond. “Thank you.” Darien dropped the newspaper on his desk and picked up one of the little oranges to give it a light squeeze. He could smell the fresh tang of the rind as the oils released under his fingers.

  Vicky nodded her head and left the office, pulling the door shut.

  He tossed the clementine up and caught it before lifting it to his nose to breathe in its rich scent. It did more to liven his senses than the coffees he had taken to drinking.

  Sitting down in his chair, Darien pushed his drink away to look over the morning paper. His eyes took in the dreadful headline over the picture of the charred building that had once been a home. “Body Count Rises in Southside Slaughters.” He perused the article to see that three more people had met horrible ends at the hands of some unknown assailant. Two bodies had been burnt beyond recognition, and one had been torn to little bits and scattered across the yard of the burnt home. This brought the body count to nine.

  There had only been four fires, but every event had left at least one person reduced to palm-sized chunks. The police had no witnesses and no idea as to who was responsible. The few people that were able to help could only confirm that the fires went from nothing to full-blown in a matter of minutes, but no one had been able to tell how the bodies had been ground up. This entire thing had the smell of something supernatural, but as long as it stayed away from his world, Darien didn’t want to get involved. He shook his head and flipped the paper to the business section. Laying it across his desk, he tore into the fruit he had been playing with.

  ***

  Vicky looked at the time on her computer to find that Darien’s first appointment should be arriving soon. She stood up to knock on her boss’s door. “Your first appointment will be here in about ten minutes,” she informed him before her eyes fell to the massacre on the desk.

  He had absentmindedly shredded the peel of one of the clementines all over his desktop as he read through his morning paper. There wasn’t a single piece bigger than the nail on her pinky. Vicky nearly laughed as Darien looked at the mess, slightly surprised. It was like he had no idea how the rind had fragmented itself. The oil from the peel had colored his fingers yellow, and Vicky giggled at him. “Go wash your hands and I’ll clean this up,” she said as she walked towards the desk. Darien thanked her and disappeared out the office door to wash up. She folded the newspaper and swiped the pieces of peel into the trashcan.

  “Do you see anything else?” Darien asked when he came back from the restroom. He looked over the desk that Vicky had made presentable again. She had even picked up the pieces of peel that had fallen to the floor by his chair.

  She glanced over the room, and then up to her boss. “Fix your tie.” Vicky pointed out the only imperfection she could see.

  Darien looked at her, confused, and then studied his image reflected in the tinted office window. “What?” he asked, unable to see anything wrong with his tie.

  “The knot at the top is lopsided.”

  Darien stepped closer to the reflective surface and looked again. It was the same as it always was. He wiggled it a little to straighten it and turned back to his assistant.

  She shook her head signaling that it wasn’t right. “It’s the knot you used. Those are really hard to get straight.” She held her hands out, asking if she could fix it. “May I?”

  “Please.” Darien stood up straight to let her work. This was the same knot he had been using since bowties had gone out of style.

  Vicky took a deep breath and stepped into Darien’s personal space. Pulling his tie off, she flipped it over and proceeded to twist the ends around into a neat, Shelby knot. She pushed it up into place and patted his collar down over the band. Before stepping away, she fiddled with it for another moment, and then nodded her satisfaction.

  Darien turned to look at his reflection and was surprised at how much of a change the different style of knot made. “Where did you learn that?”

  “I learned it from my uncle when I was little and got good at it in college.” Vicky glanced away from her boss as she spoke. “One of the guys I dated could never get his tie straight, so he had me fix it for him.”

  He let out a light laugh. “You’ll have to teach me how it’s done later.”

  Vicky smiled and excused herself to go back out and wait for his appointment.

  Darien looked at his reflection in the glass again and grinned. That girl was just full of surprises.

  ***

  Vicky kicked her shoes off and dropped her bag on the couch in her apartment. Today had been another busy day, but nowhere near as crazy as yesterday. She had been ready to chase after Darien with her new voice recorder and more comfortable shoes, but the man seemed to take his time with everything today. She even had to prod him along so he would make it to his appointments on time. It boggled her mind how her boss could be so hectic one day and so relaxed the next. Was he messing with her? Pushing the thought away, Vicky pulled the wooden kimono box from her bag and took it to the bedroom so she could properly care for the beautiful robe from last night.

  The sound of Vicky’s normal cell phone interrupted her as she pulled the silken fabric into place. She retrieved it and smiled at the name showing on the caller ID.

  “Hey, Vanessa,” Vicky called down the line to her best friend. “What’s happening?” She was rewarded with a hardy laugh from the speaker.

  “Not much. Just calling to see how you’re doing.” Vicky and Vanessa had been roommates in college and had grown close in the four years they spent together.

  “Doing pretty good,” Vicky confessed. “I finally got a decent job.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Vicky could hear the curious note in Vanessa’s voice. “It’s not like that last one, is it?”

  Vicky shuddered as she remembered her previous job and the smelly, little man who invaded her personal space every time he saw her. He creeped her out so badly that she dreaded going to work. “Nothing like that. This boss may be a little more eccentric,” Vicky glanced at the kimono stretched out on her bed, “but he’s definitely better to work with.”

  “That’s good. Did you hear about the fire last night?” Vanessa changed the subject to the reason she called.

  “You mean the latest in the ‘Southside Slaughter’ case?” Vicky had scanned over the headlines briefly while cleaning the mess from Darien’s desk this morning.

  “Yeah, that’s the one. That was Becka’s house.”

  Vicky stood in shock as she took in this news. “You don’t mean Rebecca and Charlie, do you?” Vanessa made a positive noise, and Vicky had to sit down before she fell. “Are you sure?” Her mind flew over what little of the article she had read to see if she could remember if the victims’ names had been given.

  “I recognized it from the picture in the paper,” Vanessa sighed. “I was over there a few weeks ago to go shopping with her. She was four months pregnant.”

  Vicky’s heart clenched at hearing this news. Rebecca was more Vanessa’s friend then hers, but they had all hung out at college. “That’s horrible,” Vicky couldn’t believe what her friend was telling her. “That makes four people I knew who have been killed by this crazy arsonist.” She hugged herself as a chill ran down her back.

  “Four?” Vanessa exclaimed. “Who were the other two?”

  “Samantha Bridge and Carla Michaels. They were both in my creative writing class.”

  Vanessa whistled. “That’s scary. Marsha Thompson was in my business ethics class.” She fell quiet on the phone for a moment. “Between the two of us, we know five of the victims. I wonder i
f we’ll know the other four once they’re identified.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to sleep well until they catch this guy,” Vicky told her friend.

  “You’re safe,” Vanessa laughed at her. “He’s only hit single-family homes on the south side of town. I doubt he would try this shit on an apartment complex in the east. Now me, I’m a different matter. I live on the south side.”

  “Don’t say those kinds of things, Vanessa,” Vicky scolded. “If we knew everyone, there’s a possibility we could be the next targets. You want to come over and stay for a while till this thing blows over?”

  “Nah, I just had the smoke detectors in my house checked and bought a fire extinguisher to put under my bedside table,” Vanessa reassured her. “I should be fine.”

  Vicky nodded her approval. “Good.”

  “Hey, we’re getting together this weekend to go clubbing. You coming?”

  Vicky smirked at how fast Vanessa could go from grisly fires to the dorm girls’ monthly hangout. “Sure. Same place as always?”

  “Yup.”

  “Cool. Unless something comes up, I’ll be there at eight, like normal,” Vicky said with a smile.

  “Great! I’ll let the other girls know you’re coming. We can celebrate your new job. I’ve got to run now, so we’ll see you Saturday.”

  Vicky said farewell to her friend and hung up. She stood and turned to face the garment laying across her bed. Now, if she could just remember how that website had said to fold the thing up, she could get it in the

  Vicky clicked her way across the website of the local bookstore, looking for something that would help her with her plight. She had spent an hour last night trying to get the kimono folded correctly, but it never looked like the pictures on the website. She finally gave up and fed the handle of a broom through the sleeves, tacking it to the wall with a few lengths of yarn and some pushpins. It wasn’t the suggested way to store the amazing garment, but at least it got it up off the bed so she could sleep.

  Finally, she chose an available book that looked promising and ordered it for pick up. She looked up at the clock to find that it was almost four. It would probably be safe to go home at five.

  Most of the day had been spent sitting at her desk, learning about kimonos and their history. Darien was nowhere to be found this morning when Vicky arrived at seven. It wasn’t until she called the answering service to get his messages that she finally heard from her elusive boss. The message he’d left didn’t explain much, just that he wouldn’t be in this morning, and that she should cancel and reschedule his meetings for the day. Surprisingly, this hadn’t been difficult, and she was left twiddling her thumbs after nine. She did go down to chat with Sue at lunchtime, but she came back to her desk right away, worried that she would get in trouble for not being in the office during the day.

  Vicky sighed as she hit a bomb on what had to be her hundredth game of Minesweeper since she started playing after lunch. She wondered if it would be okay to download that game where you fought off zombies by planting flowers in the yard. It was cute and would be fun on days when she had nothing to do, but she decided to put it off until she could feel out her boss a little bit more. Yes, he had told her she could do whatever she wanted in her down time, but loading games onto the company laptop might be a little too tacky for the first week on the job.

  Vicky clicked the restart button and had just started popping little flags across the grid when the door to the outer office banged open, startling her. She looked up to find that her boss had finally shown up, carrying two large boxes stacked together. Jumping up, she rushed to relieve him of the top one so he could see where he was going.

  “Thank you,” Darien said, and stopped to look at the girl he hadn’t expected to see. “What are you still doing here?” he asked as he led the way to her desk to put the heavy boxes down.

  “I wasn’t sure what to do when you didn’t come in,” she confessed. “I got the message and rescheduled your appointments, but I didn’t know if I should stay or not.”

  Darien grinned at her. “So you hung around here all day with nothing to do?”

  She nodded.

  “That is very responsible, Miss Westernly. Next time I have you cancel everything and you have nothing to do, you can leave. If you’re still unsure, call and ask. You have my cell phone number.”

  Vicky blushed at her foolishness. Of course she should have called him.

  Darien dropped his box on the floor next to Vicky’s desk and moved so she could add her box to it. He knelt down to pull one of the tops off, showing the stacks of paper jammed inside. “These are from a business that I’m considering backing. This is all of their financial information for the last two years, but it’s a bit of a mess. I want it put into a spreadsheet, so I can see if this will be a good investment or not. I was going to leave it till tomorrow, but since you’re already here, could you sort it out?”

  Vicky’s eyes widened as she took in how much work her boss had just dropped on her. Did he expect her to do it all tonight?

  Looking up at his silent secretary, he chuckled at the surprise on her face. “I need it by the end of the month.”

  She let out a sigh of relief. As long as she had a little time to work on it, there wouldn’t be a problem. “Sure thing, Mr. Ritter,” Vicky agreed to the monumental task.

  Darien dropped the lid back onto the box and stood up. “If you need anything, just let me know.” He turned towards his office as she looked down at the two boxes, thinking about the best way to tackle this project. “Thank you, Miss Westernly,” he called from the doorway before disappearing inside.

  Vicky sighed. At least he was polite about ruining her plans to leave early. She checked the clock. If she hurried, she could make it down to the supply office for some manila folders before they cut out for the evening.

  ***

  Vicky looked up from the stack of papers she was sorting through to check the time. Ten o’clock AM. Her crazy boss hadn’t shown up again this morning, but there had been no message about canceling his day. There was only an hour until his next appointment, and if she had read the book correctly, this one was across town. Fearing Darien had forgotten about it, Vicky set the papers on her desk and fished out the cell phone to call him. He picked up on the second ring.

  “What can I do for you, Miss Westernly?” Darien’s voice crackled through the line. The reception was really bad.

  “I was just calling to remind you about the appointment this morning with Mr. Rodgers.” Vicky held the phone away from her ear, trying to save herself from the horrible static.

  “Can you drive a standard?”

  She was surprised by his question. “Yes.”

  “Good. Call Mr. Rodgers and tell him we’ll be about an hour late. Take the elevator to the basement garage, ask Charlie in the guardhouse for the keys to my car, and come pick me up. I’ll be landing at Hawking’s Field in about forty-five minutes. Understand?”

  Vicky confirmed his instructions before hanging up and scrambling to collect the files spread across the floor. Hawking’s Field was a tiny airfield on the outskirts of the city, and if she didn’t hurry she wouldn’t make it in time.

  ***

  With her ever-present messenger bag slung over her shoulder, Vicky stepped off the elevator into the building’s underground parking garage. Until Darien told her about it, she didn’t even know this floor existed. She looked around, found the little guardhouse, and knocked on the door. An elderly man who reminded Vicky of her grandfather greeted her. “I’m Victoria Westernly, and I was sent to get Mr. Ritter’s car,” she explained.

  The man smiled at her and pulled a key from a pegboard behind him. He made Vicky sign his log before handing over the key. “You’ll find her in Bay 465. She’s all ready for you, but please be careful.” Charlie pointed her in the direction of the car she was going to take.

  Vicky thanked him and promised to be careful before heading on her way. The layout of the garage was
interesting. On one side were normal parking places with a random assortment of vehicles ranging from shipping trucks to some very high-class sports cars. Vicky’s eyes found the Aston Martin that Darien had taken her to dinner in parked among these cars. On the other side were a series of enclosed bays. Each bay was twice as wide as a normal parking place and had a roll-up door that concealed and protected whatever was inside. Vicky counted the bays as she searched for the one she wanted. She couldn’t help but wonder what Darien had hidden behind all those doors.

  She soon found out when she came to Bay 465. The door was up, and the light came on as soon as she stepped inside. Vicky gasped at the cherry-red finish of the 1957 Ford Fairlane Skyliner waiting for her. Charlie had already opened the windows and put the top down. She had only seen pictures of the hardtop convertible, but it had always been a favorite of her father’s. A tear came to her eye as she thought about what her daddy would’ve said if he had known his little girl would get the chance to drive one.

  Vicky carefully dropped her bag into the back seat and pulled the door open to get in. A smile split her face as the V8 purred to life, and she carefully pulled the car out of the bay. She waved at Charlie as she passed the guard-shack on her way out. The sun was shining warmly as she headed out to pick up her boss. This was going to be a fun drive.

  ***

  Vicky pulled into the small airfield a few minutes before she was expected. The traffic had been light, and she had made good time. Parking the Skyliner near the main office, she checked her hair in the mirror. The pin she had used to hold it in place had come out when she hit the interstate, and the wind had done a number on her long locks. Lacking a brush to reset her hair, she pulled her fingers through it to ease most of the tangles out.

  Once presentable again, Vicky went into the office to check if her boss had arrived yet. “Good morning,” she greeted the woman in the office. “I’m here to pick up Mr. Ritter. Has he arrived yet?”

  The young woman considered Vicky for a moment before smiling at her. “Not yet, but his plane is due in at any time. Just follow this road down to the end of the field and park on the left, inside the hanger.” The woman pointed to the drive that passed in front of the building.