Man's Best Friend (The Dogmothers #5) - Roxanne St. Claire Page 0,74
debutante ball, but dear old Penelope won the recital battle.”
“You played a Beethoven symphony,” he said as they reached the double doors. “I was blown away.”
“‘Ode to Joy,’ Old Ludwig’s Ninth Symphony. Please, it impresses, but isn’t very difficult.”
“Do you ever play now?”
“I haven’t for years. But no one has asked me quite as frequently as your grandmother and Yiayia. I think they’ve suggested it every time I’ve seen them.”
He turned to her, frowning. “Really? I wonder why.”
“Who knows with those two?” She guided him toward a wall of gold-framed photographs, many sepia-toned and yellowed with age. “Here’s the picture. That’s my great-grandfather Montgomery Hewitt and Governor R. Gregg Cherry.”
He studied it for a moment, more interested in her great-grandfather than the stuffy-looking governor. “Granddaddy Monty?”
She laughed. “Maybe privately with Evangeline. To the rest of the world, he was Montgomery Jasper Hewitt the Third, the man who started the Bitter Bark Bank, which he ran until Max did.”
“Your father sold it, though, didn’t he?”
“Yes, when Granddaddy retired. That’s why it’s a Wells Fargo now.”
He stepped closer to the framed picture, squinting. “I can see your eyes.”
“But I don’t have the moustache.”
“Thank God.” He took a few steps to the right, his gaze drawn to a glass-covered display of close to fifty different lighters, some gold, some brass, some engraved, two shaped like cars, about seven shaped like various handguns, and one that looked like a genie’s lamp with a small placard that said 1821 on it. “Wow, that’s two hundred years old?”
“Worth a small fortune, too.”
Some of them might be, he thought. The more modern Zippos weren’t so impressive, though some had cool engravings, but even an untrained eye could see this collection was worth many thousands of dollars.
“Every man in the family has collected lighters,” Evie said. “Starting with Thad the First. His son was a supercollector, and Montgomery picked it up when he married Evangeline. Granddaddy kept up the tradition, but my dad wasn’t interested.”
All these lighters and lighter fluid on hand twenty years ago…yet all but one of the investigators had dismissed the idea that lighter fluid had been used as an accelerant to set the fire. He stared at the collection, gnawing at his lower lip as he thought about all he’d read that week about the fire.
Could someone in the house have set it using the—
“Declan?” Evie’s fingers curled around his arm. “What is it?”
He turned to her. “You always know when I’m thinking something, don’t you?”
“It’s my superpower,” she joked. “Animals and Declan.” She studied him for a moment. “What were you thinking just then?”
“Truth? About lighter fluid.”
He saw her expression change and instantly regretted that truth. He didn’t want to talk about the fire tonight. Didn’t want to think about it. Today had been too perfect and so long overdue that he wasn’t going to derail it by going…to that place, as she’d put it.
“Hey.” He flattened his hand over hers, giving her fingers a squeeze. “How about some of that wine you offered the other day?”
“After a Bloody Mary today? You’ve gone straight off the rails, Mahoney.”
He laughed. “I’m not on duty until tomorrow afternoon, and I enjoyed that drink.”
“I know. Your happy glow was the talk of the town.”
He rolled his eyes and walked away from the lighters toward the middle of the room. “They all act like I’ve been some kind of ogre. Someone had to take charge of that gang.”
“Well, no one has to take charge tonight,” she said. “I’ll be right back with wine, and we can make toasting jokes like the old days.”
“Perfect.”
When she left, he took a steadying breath and one more glance at the lighters, then looked away. Not tonight.
Instead, he walked over to the giant, gaudy piano that looked like it had been rolled right out of the Munsters’ house. Carved from dark wood with intricate designs and curlicues, the gold letters that said Krakauer above the keyboard were as shiny as he imagined they were the day this thing was built.
Which had to have been nearly a hundred years ago.
He grazed his finger along the key cover, noticing some very light prints in the fine, nearly invisible layer of dust. Had someone opened this recently? Evie said she hadn’t played in a long time, so who would have done that?
Didn’t she say Yiayia had been in here? And Grandma Finnie? So…
He put his hand over the fingerprints and lifted the keyboard lid, which weighed a ton and squeaked like a cat. The minute