She heaved a sigh. Noah was right. There were dozens or even hundreds more possibilities. “Meaning we’ll never know?”
Without warning, he reached across the table to grab her hand. His skin was warm and his palms callused from physical labor. Something inside her relaxed at his touch.
“Wynter . . .”
His soothing words trailed away at the sharp screech of sirens. Like a flock of geese sensing danger, the entire diner craned their heads to watch the fire truck zoom down the narrow street with its lights flashing. A minute later the sheriff’s SUV flew past.
Voices buzzed as customers speculated on what had happened, then a man at the booth next to them pulled his phone from his pocket and lifted it to his ear. He shared a brief conversation with the caller then abruptly rose to his feet.
“Gotta go,” he announced in a terse voice. “Have Suzy put the bill on my account.”
His companion eyed him with a curious expression. “What’s happening?”
“Fire at the Lyddon place,” the man said. “They’re calling in the volunteers.”
“Tillie Lyddon?” the companion demanded.
“Yep. I warned the sheriff that place was a death trap.” The man reached to grab his coat and pulled it over his flannel shirt. “It was only a matter of time until she poisoned herself with toxic waste or burned herself to the ground.”
“Is Tillie okay?” someone asked from another booth.
The man looked grim. “Right now it looks as if she’s trapped inside.”
Wynter listened to the exchange in stunned disbelief.
“Shit,” Noah muttered, tightening his grip on her hand to urge her out of her seat. Then, tossing a twenty-dollar bill on the table, he tugged her out of the diner.
Wynter headed to her truck parked at the side of the building, taking her seat behind the steering wheel as Noah climbed in beside her. For several minutes they sat in silence as they considered the awful possibility.
Wynter was the first to say the words out loud. “Is this our fault?”
Noah turned in his seat to directly meet her worried gaze. “How could it be our fault?”
She grimaced as the sirens continued to echo through the street. “It’s no coincidence that Tillie’s house caught fire an hour after we spoke to her.”
“You heard them in the restaurant. They’ve been expecting her place to go up in flames—”
“Noah,” she interrupted.
He heaved a sigh, scrubbing his fingers through the dark mahogany strands of his hair.
“Okay, it does seem like more than a coincidence,” he grudgingly conceded.
Wynter clutched the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white. “There’s someone who didn’t want Tillie to talk to us.”
Noah’s expression was grim. “All the more reason to return to Larkin. This has gone beyond being unhealthy. It’s dangerous.”
Wynter considered his words. She wasn’t stupid. Or eager to attract the attention of someone who might have burned down Tillie’s house. Or worse, shot her mother in cold blood. But if there was a killer out there trying to protect his secrets, then would she really be safe sticking her head in the sand? “You think going home will protect me?”
“Yes.”
The word was said with blunt certainty, but there was an unease in his eyes that told Wynter he wasn’t as confident as he wanted her to believe. “I can’t just leave. I need answers.”
He heaved a harsh sigh. “Do you have any relatives in town?”
Wynter shook her head. “My grandpa died when my mother was a senior in high school and my grandma passed away ten years ago.”
“No aunts or uncles?”
“My grandma had a couple miscarriages after my mom so they stopped trying.”
Noah glanced out the side window of the truck, as if considering their limited possibilities. They couldn’t go door to door asking if anyone knew who might have set fire to Tillie’s house. Or if they remembered the shooting at the Shell station from twenty-five years ago.
“What happened to your grandmother’s house after she died?” he finally asked.
“My father sold it. I used part of the money to build my greenhouses.” Wynter had been sad but resigned when her father had told her they had a buyer for the house. It had felt as if she was losing a part of the older woman who’d lived there for over forty years. Still, she didn’t want to see it decay like ... “Oh, of course.”
“What?” Noah demanded as she dug her keys out of her purse and started the engine. “Where are we going?”
“To my mother’s cabin,” she told him, turning out of the lot and headed toward Park Street, the main street out of town.
“Where is it?”
“Just a few miles north of Pike. We can be there in less than half an hour,” she assured him.
He pulled on his seat belt even as he sent her a mystified glance. “Why are we going to the cabin?”
Wynter didn’t have a great answer. The truth was, she didn’t have any better ideas.
“The weekend my mother died, she brought me to Pike to visit my grandmother and she stayed there,” she murmured, picking up speed as they reached the main road.
“At the cabin?”
Wynter nodded. “It gave her the chance to work on her paintings without a child interrupting her muse.”
“Was it something she did on a regular basis?”
It wasn’t just a casual question. Wynter frowned, then belatedly realized he was wondering if someone might have known her routine and followed her. Maybe from Larkin. “We came to Pike at least one or two weekends every month.”
“And your mother always went to the cabin?”
“Yes, as far as I can remember.” Wynter furrowed her brow, trying to dredge up the ancient memories. “Usually she dropped me off at Grandma’s on Friday afternoon and picked me up Sunday,” she said. The precise details were fuzzy, but she never forgot how excited she was when her mother would pull out her Rugrats suitcase and start packing her clothes. She adored spending time with her grandma. No one would tell her to sit up straight or put on her shoes. Her nose would be dusted with flour and the air would smell like yeast and butter and warm cinnamon. “On that Sunday she was later than usual. I was already asleep when she put me in the car. That’s why I was lying in the back seat when . . .” Her words trailed away and she grimly pressed on the gas pedal as they reached the edge of town.
“Did your father sell the cabin?” Noah asked, thankfully not pressing for details of that night.
“No. My grandfather left it in a trust-fund for me. Until I turned eighteen it couldn’t be sold. By then we both rarely remembered I own it.”
Wynter veered onto an access road, forced to slow to a near crawl as her truck bounced over the potholes. Wisconsin winters had a habit of chewing up pavement and turning it into an obstacle course.
“When was the last time you were up here?”
Wynter leaned forward, concentrating on the trees that lined one side of the road. She didn’t want to miss the turnoff. “I haven’t been to the cabin since my mother died.”
“It hasn’t been used?”
Her lips twisted at his surprise. Noah was addicted to nature, to the point where he’d built his home in the middle of a patch of land ten miles from the nearest town. It would take half a day to walk to his nearest neighbor. It would be unthinkable for him to own a property in prime hunting and fishing territory and not spend every minute possible there.