if to prove his point, Lenny raised his voice and called out a warning into the semi-darkness, “If anyone were out here, doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing, now would be a good time to skedaddle.”
The sounds of hushed whispers and hurried feet had Bree chuckling. “I wish we’d had policemen like you when I was a teenager.”
He shrugged but smiled. “They’re just doing what kids do. Besides, I wanted to ensure we had some privacy.”
“You mean, you asked me out here for something other than pig races and lemonade, Officer Petraski?”
Lenny sat down atop a picnic table, his feet on the bench seat. “How’s your research coming?”
It seemed like an abrupt change of subject, but there was little doubt in Bree’s mind that they’d finally come to the real reason behind Lenny’s invitation.
She sat down beside him, giving her eyes a few moments to adjust to the darkness. Through the trees, she could see the lights and hear the music and crowds, but it was quiet where they were.
“It’s coming along well. I think I have everything I need. Unless, of course, there’s something you’d like to add.”
“Was Sanctuary what you expected?”
“Yes, and no,” she answered honestly, wondering where this was going. “I’d seen the pictures on the website, so I had known it was once a mountain resort at one time, but I’d expected it to be more ... I don’t know ... institutional, I suppose.”
Seconds ticked by in silence. Lenny’s pause felt deliberate. Calculated.
“And the people?”
“Also not what I’d pictured,” she admitted.
“Appearances can be deceiving, you know.”
Bree was growing frustrated with his continued cloaked aspersions. “Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? It’s clear to me that some locals have issues either with Sanctuary or with the men who run it. What’s not clear is why they feel that way. I’ve heard rumors, but no one, including you, has been willing to give me anything specific. All I have are these vague insinuations without substance. For all I know, your dislike might be based in nothing more than an old grudge that goes back generations.”
“It’s more than that,” he assured her grimly.
“Great. Prove it. Give me something to work with here. Something solid I can investigate and corroborate.”
She pulled her leather journal out, opened to a blank page, and waited expectantly.
* * *
Two hours later, Bree was back at the B & B. Her fingers flew over the laptop keyboard, translating her notes and typing in as much as she could remember while it was fresh in her mind. Lenny’s revelations had been stunning.
First, there had been the fires. As it turned out, the tragedy at the Winston resort wasn’t the only one to rock the area; there had been others as well. A mom-and-pop bakery had gone up in flames not too long after the resort, leveling the business and killing the elderly couple who lived above it. More recently, a popular coffee shop on Main Street had been destroyed in a suspicious blaze, followed by an apartment fire that had, thankfully, been caught in time to avoid widespread damage.
What was most shocking, however, was that all of those fires had one common person of interest: Samantha Applehoff, the woman Bree had spoken with in the Sanctuary parking lot while waiting for Nick. Sam had mentioned the coffee shop and the fact that it was no longer around, but she’d failed to mention that the place had gone up in flames less than a day after the owner refused to sign the place over to her.
Nor had Sam mentioned that the bakery that had burned down before that had belonged to her grandparents, and the fire had conveniently occurred while Sam was away at college. Coincidentally, it was the same bakery that had supplied bread and baked goods to the Winston resort—goods routinely delivered by a teenage Sam.
And the apartment that had caught fire? Sam’s.
Bree had a hard time reconciling Lenny’s reveals with the quiet, down-to-earth woman she’d spoken with. When she’d asked what possible motives Sam could have had, Lenny had described Sam as a loner, someone on the fringes who didn’t have friends. According to rumors, Sam had had a crush on Matt Winston and was devastated when he joined the service. It was shortly after he left that the fires had started.
“She tried to blame everything on a stalker,” Lenny told Bree, “but there was just too much that didn’t add up. We never found the guy, of course. Then, when