Chapter 4: Background Check

A background check of Grace Harmony topped Zach’s To-Do list. She’d been familiar to him. He’d met her before and though he never forgot a face, he didn’t remember where he’d seen those deep, green eyes or shockingly white hair.

But instead of coming back to an empty store front office on Main Street of Glen Hills, someone paced on the sidewalk in front. Why was she out front? She lived upstairs.

Dressed in a caftan in more colors than he could name, Celia Johnson looked worried and determined. He didn’t know why she felt the need to dress the part of a kook. When she’d come to the police station, out of deference to him, she’d looked respectable in a navy suit and sensible pumps. Now she looked like a circus clown on acid.

Zach groaned, then unlocked his front door as if the cause of his downfall with the Centre County Prosecutor’s office didn’t exist.

“Zach.”

Her shrill voice rattled his bones and sent a chill down his spine on such a warm day. His hand paused on the doorknob. “Yes, Celia.”

She stood with her tangled, from-a-bottle red hair rioting around her face while her bearing remained straight and true. “We need to speak.”

“I don’t think so. You’ve done plenty of damage and I’d hoped I’d seen the last of you.”

Trudging into his office, he tried to pull the door closed behind him. Celia held a multi-ringed hand on it. “This is serious. There’s going to be another fire.”

Frustration gnashed his teeth. He’d been down this road and he didn’t like the scenery. “That serial arsonist has been tried and convicted. He’s serving his sentence as we speak.”

“It isn’t the same one. A copycat.”

Zach landed in his chair then rubbed a hand down his face. Maybe if he “yessed” her to death she’d go away. “How do you know this?”

“May I sit?”

He indicated the second-hand chair he’d bought for real clients when he hung out his private eye shingle. Tugging a notepad closer, he reached for a pen. “Go ahead.”

She pressed her lips together as if something undesirable would escape them. He didn’t roll his eyes at her theatrics, but that took all of his restraint.

“I dreamt it last night,” she said when her gyrations were done.

“You said that last time and we arrested the wrong guy.”

She shook her head. “No, you didn’t listen to all that I said.”

“Whatever, Celia. Say what you have to say then leave. You probably have to be at work.”

She settled on the chair as if it barely suited her needs. “Listen carefully. An apartment building is going to burn. It will be arson for hire and the person is close to you or knows someone close to you. I’m not sure if it is firsthand or secondhand contact.”

His head spun. “Could you be more specific?” With his pen poised over the yellow pad he waited for her to elaborate.

“The apartment building is old.”

“We have at least three old buildings in Glen Hills alone. More in the rest of the county. What exactly do you expect me to do with this information?”

She stood as if he were dismissed. As if she were done with him. “Use it how you like. You will anyway.”

Her colorful robe

swirled as she exited his office. Multiple necklaces clanked together reminding him of a prison door closing.

Zach expected her to hop onto a broom, but instead she drove off in an expensive, foreign sedan. “Guess voodoo pays off.”

***

Grace fell into bed after her shift. Exhaustion slowed her body, while her mind moved at light speed. She needed to pack to move the next day, her only day off for a week. The details begged to be dealt with, but she had no energy.

Then the phone rang. Phone calls in the middle of the night were never good. She would have traded her ability for the ability to predict who was calling. Maybe she should get caller I.D.

“Hello,” she mumbled, hoping it wasn’t an insomniac telemarketer.

“Gracie,” a voice danced out of the receiver.

Her eyes flipped open and she sat up in her bed. Her heart warmed to hear his voice. “Mark. Where are you?” Her best friend Mark Handon.

“In California.”

“Oh? An acting gig?”

“Nah, I’m directing.” His laughed soothed her through the phone. She hadn’t talked to him in ages. She blinked. He hadn’t called last time she rewound.

“Are you sure you should be in that hotbed of excess and drugs?”

An exasperated sigh came out of him. “It’s been three months, Gracie. I truly want to stay clean. Trust me.”

“I’ll try.”

“Best I can hope for. Did I wake you?”

She shifted on her pillows then propped them behind her. “No, what’s up. How’d you find me?”

“I have my ways. Besides I figured I sold you on Glen Hills. It was a neat town to grow up in.”

As if he were psychic, he did always find her. “If I didn’t trust you I’d think you were a stalker. Are you really in California?”

She checked her Mickey Mouse clock.

“It’s two in the morning, here. I’m waiting for the sun to come up. Too bad I’m on the beach facing west.”

She had to laugh. He didn’t sound stoned, but then he was a little off-center, even sober. “You can’t do anything the way the rest of us do it, can you?

“So how’s your new place? Shame about Ken.”

For a moment her recent breakup and relocation sent a pain through her heart. Part of her knew she had unfinished business with her ex. “It was time to move on.”

“Yeah, you’d been in that town for a whole two years. I was sure you were putting down roots,” Mark said.

“You make that sound like a bad thing.”

She shifted the sheet over her. Despite the continent separating them, she didn’t like speaking on the phone to Mark if she were naked.

“Well, you know me. I’m never gonna own a house.”

He’d be fifty wandering from acting job to acting job. She didn’t envy his wanderlust. Just once she’d like to stay in one place more than a few years. “No white picket fences in your future.”

“So, have you time slipped again?”