In Broad Daylight

“Let’s begin with the fire.” He pinned her with a look. “Was there an actual fire?” He hadn’t smelled any smoke entering the building, but something or someone had to have set off the alarm.

As if riding to her rescue, Harwood drew himself up behind his desk.

“Yes, there was,” he cut in. “A small one.” He glanced at Brenda before adding, “The fire chief told me that some papers in a wastepaper basket had caught fire. They used one of our fire extinguishers to put it out. It turned out simpler that way.”

Dax exchanged looks with Nathan. Wastepaper baskets didn’t just spontaneously combust. “That sounds as if it might have been deliberately set.” His gaze swept over Brenda before returning to the headmaster. “Are any of your kids budding pyromaniacs or overly fascinated with matches?”

Brenda’s eyes widened at the suggestion. “No!” she snapped. Some of her pupils were starved for attention and might on occasion act out, but they were five-and six-years-old and that kind of behavior was only normal.

Harwood was sputtering indignantly. “I assure you that my school—”

Dax waved his hand in a downward motion, as if banking down their protests.

“Just a question,” he told them mildly, although he had posed it to see both of their reactions. The woman was protective while the headmaster came off as concerned about his school’s reputation. “Would anyone else have set the fire?”

Nathan raised an eyebrow, looking up from the notes he was religiously scribbling down. “You’re thinking maybe it was a diversion?”

Dax nodded.

So had she, the moment she’d overheard the fire chief telling Matthew Harwood that the origin of the fire had been found in her wastepaper basket. A diversion to take attention away from the fact that Annie Tyler was being stolen.

The very thought ate away at her. She should have realized something was wrong. There was no earthly reason why, but somehow, her instincts should have told her that something was wrong.

She might as well tell him before he found out on his own. “It was my wastepaper basket.”

Her student, her wastepaper basket. Dax looked at the woman with deepening interest. It seemed too simple, but then, most criminals were not the masterminds that so frequently populated the more intriguing mysteries and action movies. Wanting to race, he still took it one step at a time.

Facing her, his back blocking out Harwood, he asked, “Were you in the room at the time?”

She could almost sense what he was thinking. Brenda took a breath and shook her head. “No. The class and I were giving a tour to Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley—”

She saw the good-looking detective’s eyes narrow just a little, as if he was filtering in this new information. “Who?”

“Parents of a prospective new student,” Harwood explained, moving so that Dax could see him. The man looked none-too-happy about being ignored. “It’s done all the time.”

That didn’t sound quite right to him. In his experience, teachers were all too happy to escape from their classroom for a few minutes, leaving a slightly more mature child in charge of the class for the duration of their absence.

“Taking your whole class out?” Dax asked in disbelief, waiting to be corrected.

No such correction came. “It’s to show how well-behaved our students are,” Harwood told him. “We’re quite proud of that.”

The detective still didn’t look as if he believed them. Brenda felt a spark of resentment building. She knew he was just doing his job, but she couldn’t help feeling that he was wasting precious time with these trivial details.

“The students each take turns telling the parents about the different activities we have here at Harwood.” She enumerated some of the highlights. “There’s a little theater group, an art room, things the regular schools cut back on.”

His face never changed expression as he listened to her description. She liked the shorter detective better, she thought. At least Detective Brown looked compassionate.

“And where was Annie during this show-and-tell process?” the suspicious detective asked.

In her mind’s eye, she could see the little girl. Annie had begun at the head of the group but with each step taken, she kept drifting toward the rear of the line. Strangers always affected her that way; made her even shyer than she was.

“She was hanging back.”

The poker face remained. “And you didn’t coax her forward?”

Was that suspicion she heard in his voice? Did he actually think she’d do anything to harm any of the children, especially Annie? Just what kind of a monster did he think she was? Fueled by guilt, it took effort to bank down her anger. “I was just about to do that when the alarm went off.”

“And then what?”

She’d heard the alarm just as they’d left the art room. She remembered feeling a sense of panic. The idea of a fire spreading through the school had always horrified her. Because of that, she had been the one to suggest to Matthew that they double the amount of fire drills performed. “And then I made sure that I got my class outside the building.”

Dax deliberately moved into her space, crowding her. “You didn’t stop to count heads?”

Her eyes narrowed. “No, not until we were all outside the building.”

“And then you counted heads.”

Brenda could feel her temper unraveling as guilt danced around it. She should have kept Annie with her. But she could remember how painful it was at times not to be able to just shrink away, to hang back. Annie had been making progress, opening up a little, but there’d been a relapse in the last few days and she’d been trying to get at the source of it without much success.

So she’d tried not to push too hard and then this had happened.

Brenda raised her chin up as if she were silently showing him she was up to any challenge he was throwing her way.

His sister did that move, Dax thought. Just before she lit into him.

“Yes,” the teacher responded between clenched teeth, “then I counted heads.”

Nathan looked up from the notes he was taking. “When you saw she was missing, what did you do?”

There had been no hesitation on her part. “I ran back into the building.”

As if he felt he had to vouch for her actions, Harwood interjected, “One of the firefighters attempted to stop her, but she went right around him.”

Nathan smiled at her before resuming his notes. “Brave lady.”

Stubborn would have been the way he’d have put it, Dax thought. He was well-acquainted with stubborn. His family, especially the female portion of it, had a patent on the emotion.

Brenda shrugged off the praise. Bravery had nothing to do with it.

“I had no idea where the fire was or how bad it was. I was just worried that Annie might have run back to the classroom.” She saw the silent question in the taller detective’s eyes and explained. “She has this stuffed animal she keeps in her desk, a rabbit.” It had taken more than a week of coaxing before Annie had told her about the rabbit. It had been a gift from her father and she clung to it whenever she missed him and wanted him close. “I thought she might have gone back for it.”

Dax never took his eyes from her face. “But she didn’t?”

Brenda shook her head. “She wasn’t there.”

“Was the rabbit?”

The question caught her short. “I didn’t think to check.” There had been a fireman in the room. He’d just finished putting out the fire and there was water everywhere. Water, smoke, but no Annie. “Why, was that important?”