JOE WAS STILL ASLEEP when I crawled into bed. I gently shoved Martha out of my spot and snuggled up to Joe’s back, wanting to wake him up so that I could tell him what was bugging me. Joe turned toward me, pulled me close to his body, buried his face in my smoky hair.

  “Have you been barhopping, Blondie?”

  “House fire,” I said. “Two dead.”

  “Like the Malones?”

  “Just like the Malones.”

  I threw an arm across his chest, rested my face in the crook of his neck, exhaled loudly.

  “Talk to me, honey,” Joe said.

  Excellent.

  “It’s about this woman, Debra Kurtz,” I said, as Martha got back up on the bed, turned around a couple of times, then curled into the hollow behind my legs, pinning me in.

  “Lives across the street from the victims. She called in the fire.”

  “Firebugs often do.”

  “Right. Says she got up for a glass of water, saw the flames. Called the fire department, then joined the crowd watching them put the fire out.”

  “She was still standing there when you arrived?”

  “She’d been there for hours. Said she was best friends with the female victim, Sandy Meacham, and she’d also been sleeping with the second victim, Sandy’s husband -”

  “Weird definition of best friend.”

  I had to laugh. “Sleeping with her best friend’s husband until he dumped her. This Debra Kurtz has a key to the victims’ house. She also has a sheet. An old arrest for burglary. And guess what else? Arson.”

  ............