Page 52 of Head Room

I neither groaned nor whined.There’s got to be a medal for that level of restraint.

“Not a whole lot there.”Mike wasn’t criticizing, just reporting accurately.“Sounds like it’s pretty well confirmed that Irene was a nice woman, they were crazy about each other, and Frank Jardos was lost when she died, but seemed to be regaining his footing.”

“Is it suspicious people said the same thing?”Jennifer asked hopefully.

“Like a conspiracy?Nah.Sometimes people share the same observations,” Mike said.

“All that smoke,” I muttered.

“What?”

“It’s what Penny said.Hannah, too, though I keyed in more on the flames with her.Another of those shared observations.”

“We’ve had wet weather,” Diana said, “and that will cause more smoke, though itwaspretty wet right around the cabin.”

“The firefighters—” Mike started.

“Miles Stevens said—.”I interrupted myself.“No, that’s too strong.He didn’t dispute that it was wetter than he would have expected when they got there.In other words, before their pumper trucks got to work.And there’s another interesting point.”

“The clear-cut area around the cabin had recently been cleaned up,” Mike said immediately.

“Yup.”

Not so long ago I wouldn’t have known what that meant.Now I knew it referred to the open area kept around a structure, especially one set amid lots of trees.The idea being to keep a structure fire from jumping to the trees or vice versa.

“Spotted that in Nola’s first piece,” he added.“Weird this time of year.”

“You mean it was weird he did it recently?”Jennifer asked.She’d been raised here, but always lived in Sherman.Plus, most of her free time had been spent with computers.“Maybe this was when he had time or it was on his mind.”

I jumped on that.“Maybe.But as everyone keeps pointing out, we’ve had a wet spring, so it’s the least likely time for the clear-cut to be on someone’s mind.”

And, yes, this time Iwasshowing off.

“Very good, Elizabeth,” Diana said.

She wasn’t even mocking me, not completely anyway.

Without much conviction, Diana said, “People sometimes do it at different times.A guy like him, retired, a widower, might do it whenever it occurred to him.”

“Maybe,” I agreed.After all, Miles Stevens said that, too.

“But?” Mike and Jennifer said in unison.Then she added, “There’s one of yourbutscoming after that.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.However,” I said with dignified emphasis, “amaybecould be in order, as I said.”

“C’mon, c’mon, Elizabeth, maybe what?”

Mike has become much bossier since...well, he became the boss.

“Maybe the sergeant did the clear-cut when he did because he intended to burn down his cabin and he wanted to minimize chances of the fire spreading.Maybe he even wet down the area, causing heavy smoke when the flames met the wet area.”

“But why?”Mike asked.“I mean burn it in the first place, not the stuff about trying to make sure it didn’t spread.”

“That is the question.And that, of course, depends on if he actually did that.”

“All right, all right,” Jennifer said.“You’re setting up for anothermaybe.Let’s skip that and get to the possibilities if he did do it.”

Fair enough.