with each other were easier to take with eight hours of sleep under her belt. Without it, they just seemed shrill and spastic.
“Hey, Little Bear,” Kat said, tousling James’s hair. “You’re up early.”
“I couldn’t sleep.” He yawned for added emphasis. “Not without you in the house.”
Kat felt a familiar twinge of guilt in the pit of her stomach. It happened whenever she realized her job was affecting her son’s home life. Making it worse was James’s condition. Although he was more functional and self-reliant than many other children with Down syndrome, he still needed extra attention. When Kat couldn’t provide it, he often got sullen as a result.
During the Olmstead case, for instance, James’s behavior had reached new and frustrating levels. When he was born, a pediatrician who specialized in children with Down syndrome said they tended to wear their hearts on their sleeves. James had decided to wear his on his fists. The result was a suspension from school, a very long grounding, and a nagging worry that more behavioral problems waited just down the road.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I had to go to work. Something bad happened.”
She skipped over what exactly that bad thing was. She tried to shield James as best she could from the perils of her job. Still, she suspected he knew more than he let on. A mother could only have so many brushes with death before kids at school started to talk.
“I know,” James said. “Lou told me.”
Hearing her name, Louella van Sickle swept into the living room carrying breakfast on a tray. Professionally, she was the police station’s dispatcher. Personally, she was James’s surrogate grandmother, always willing to watch him when Kat was tied up with work. Lou was the person Kat had called at one in the morning when the museum fire broke out.
“Your couch is lumpy,” she announced. “I didn’t get a wink of sleep.”
“That’s funny,” Kat replied. “Neither did I.”
Lou set the tray on the coffee table. The meal she had prepared—scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast—gave Kat another guilt twinge. Most mornings, she just let James pour his own cold cereal.
“So how bad was the fire?”
Kat looked at James, who ate with his eyes glued to the TV, blindly guiding a forkful of eggs into his mouth. She gestured for Lou to join her in the kitchen.
“Listen,” she said once James was out of earshot. “It’s more than a fire. Constance Bishop was murdered in the museum last night.”
Lou excelled at three things—gossip, offering unwarranted advice about Kat’s personal life, and being totally unflappable. Yet the news of Constance’s death turned her face a chalky white.
“Jesus,” she said. “I thought this town was done with all that.”
“Me, too.”
“How are you holding up? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Kat said. “Just tired. And busy.”
She briefly told Lou about the rest of her night. Fire. Corpse. Skeleton. She left out the fact that Henry Goll was back in town. That was information too juicy for Lou not to share.
“I need to head back to the museum soon,” Kat finally said. “There’s still a lot of stuff to do there. So I was wondering—”
“If I could watch James the rest of the day?”
Kat nodded slowly. She had asked this favor of Lou on dozens of occasions. She knew that one of these days, Louella van Sickle was going to tell her no. She hoped today wasn’t that day.
“Of course I will,” Lou replied. “Although Al will be disappointed. He wanted to drive up to the Sands in Bethlehem today. Said he was in the mood for some blackjack.”
Lou’s husband had been bitten by the blackjack bug as soon as state law was changed to allow legalized gambling. He had plenty of places to choose from. Each year, it seemed, a new casino was popping up somewhere in Pennsylvania. From the way Lou talked, all Al van Sickle wanted to do on the weekends was head to the tables.
“I owe you one,” Kat said, knowing full well she still owed Lou for previous babysitting favors. “I don’t know how long I’ll be. Hopefully just until the afternoon.”
“I hope so, too, for your sake. You look like the walking dead.”
“I probably smell like it, too.” Kat sniffed her uniform, which was the same one she had worn the day before. It reeked of smoke. And sweat. And desperation, which, while technically odorless, was something Kat had smelled on suspects and first dates alike. “I’m going to take a quick shower. Go check on James.”
“Aye, aye, captain. Any other orders?”
“He has a science project due on Monday,” Kat said, hedging and hopeful. “You could help him with that?”
Lou shooed her out of the kitchen with a flap of her hands. “Now you’re just pushing it.”
Kat hurried upstairs. The shower—cold and quick—perked her up a bit. So did a clean uniform that didn’t reek. Then it was back downstairs, where James and Lou had pushed aside their empty breakfast plates for a glass jar and a book of matches. The sight caused her to halt at the bottom of the stairs.
“What are you two doing?”
James didn’t take his eyes off the jar. “My science project.”
“We’re learning about oxygen,” Lou said, picking up the book of matches.
She lit one before tilting the jar, laying the match at the bottom.
“Now what do you think will happen once you put the lid on the jar?” she asked James.
“I don’t know.” James stared at the flame, a triangle of orange and yellow that danced just beyond the glass. “The jar will fill with smoke?”
“Put the lid on and find out.”
James began to twist the lid onto the top of the jar. He didn’t even make it a full rotation before the lit match blinked out.
“What happened?”
“You cut off the flow of oxygen,” Lou said. “Fire needs air to burn. When it doesn’t get it, it goes out.”
Because he was eleven—and because he was a boy—James found this trick fascinating. Kat could see the astonished gleam in his eyes from across the room as he asked, “Can I try it again?”
“Not so fast.” Kat at last moved from the stairs to the coffee table, where she pocketed the matchbook. “I think you should come up with a different science project.”
“But, Mom—”
Kat cut him off with one of those sharp glances only attained through years of motherhood. “Educational or not, I don’t like the idea of you playing with matches. Especially today. Now give me a good-bye hug. I need to go back to work.”
After James gave her a halfhearted embrace and Lou assured her everything would be fine, Kat trudged back to her Crown Vic and headed to the police station. As usual, she took the long way, rolling down the streets to make sure things were mostly in order. They appeared to be, although it was still early. Once townsfolk woke up to the news that Constance Bishop was dead, Kat had a feeling Perry Hollow would be buzzing with activity. Tragedies did that to small towns.
She pulled into the police station parking lot at the same time Carl did. They got out of their cars simultaneously and walked to the station’s front door.
“Oak Knoll Cemetery is all clear,” Carl said. “No disturbed graves. Nothing suspicious. Just a bunch of souls now with the Lord.”
That was both good and bad news. While Kat was pleased to hear that no one had defiled the