Page 34 of Demon and the Raven

“Yeah. Kathy had a thriving business—both online and brick and mortar—where she sold wet specimens. Lots of dead insects and animals, and they’re normally preserved in ethanol. I bet if you check her store, you’ll find lots of them there as well.”

“Ethanol?”

“Yep.”

“Holy crap, it’s a wonder this whole place didn’t burn to the ground, then.”

It certainly was.

“Does she have family here?”

“Her parents are in Westfield, I think. I’m sure Pete knows, or his mother does. Just have him call them. We all went to high school together.”

Stepping into me, he took my face in his hands. “How come Kathy didn’t like you?”

“I’m a weirdo. It’s a wonder you like me.”

“Lots of people like you,” he murmured, drawing me close, kissing my forehead and then easing me into his arms, wrapping me up tight for a moment. “I have to stay until the CSI team gets here and then through them processing the scene.”

“Which will take hours.”

“Yes, it will.”

“And you said Gedrick, the arson inspector, will be here in the morning, so does that mean you have to stay here all night? If you do, I’ll stay with you.”

“No, I called over to the state police, and they’re helping us out by putting two officers on the house. Until I know what happened, I don’t want either Pete or Victoria here alone, and I could stay, but I need to be ready to talk to the ME tomorrow and get all the information from the director of the crime lab, so yeah, I need help, and I got it.”

“You could have called over to Westfield and gotten some backup.”

The squint I got, like I was out of my mind, made me chuckle. “Okay, maybe not.”

“The Westfield chief of police hates me, and you know it.”

Not immediately not when Lorne initially took over the chief of police vacancy in Osprey, but now, I was thinking yes. Yes, he did.

The first problem was that Byron Dale knew, without question, that Lorne was more qualified than him. Lorne had been a homicide detective in Boston, so he had far more experience with people and situations than a small-town cop could even imagine. There was no way for Dale to compete with that.

Second, though Osprey was smaller than Westfield by at least a thousand people, that amount did not denote an overwhelming number of citizens. Meaning, they were more or less performing a similar job. Added to that was the jump in tourism, and suddenly, with the extra revenue and traffic, we had triple the volume of visitors Westfield had, with lots of people bypassing the other town altogether. The last time Dale was visiting Osprey with the sheriff—the man in charge of all of Chautauqua County—the sheriff had mentioned that perhaps Lorne needed to bring on another deputy to have an equal number with Westfield. From what my beloved told me later, Dale was pissed.

Third, and this was petty, but between the two of them, Lorne was much better-looking. Lorne was, without question, a beautiful man. And yes, I was biased, but how many black-haired men with cobalt-blue eyes, hard-hewn bodies, and deep, sultry voices did most people come across in their lifetime? If I were Dale, I’d have been jealous too.

“Hello?”

“Sorry. I agree. Dale hates you, and⁠—”

“You’re supposed to say no, that’s not true, be the voice of reason,” he scolded me.

“Or a realist,” I teased him. “But I was going to say I’m glad the state police will be here to help.”

“Me too, but I do appreciate your willingness to camp out in my rig with me.”

“I would do anything with you,” I blurted out.

“That sounded a bit like you’d be up for getting naked in the back seat with me.”

“Which makes me sound like a ghoul since we’re standing in the house of a dead woman.”

“No,” he assured me. “When experiencing a loss, the knee-jerk reaction is to make plans, get married, or have sex. There are other options, of course, but the main thread that runs through them all is that they are life-affirming.”