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Once the house had been declared safe to enter and empty of suspects, Libby chose tea rather than coffee. She made it sweet and tried not to dribble down her chin when she sipped and look as badly shaken as she felt. She doubted anything would shake a man with the balls to be a matador, and Santos had impressed her with his level head tonight.
“What if the security system wasn’t tampered with but just turned off? Who knows the code?” she asked.
They’d given Manuel a piece of wedding cake to take back to his apartment, and they sat in the dining room. Santos licked frosting off his fork. “Is it Cirilda you’re wondering about?”
“She and Alfonso disappeared before any of us woke up Sunday morning. Or did they give you a private apology?”
He laughed. “Hell no. She knows the code, but she wouldn’t set fire to the house and risk damaging anything here. She’s far too mercenary for that. But we should have a list of who has the code for the arson inspector. It would also take someone who knew how to pick a lock.”
“I’ll get some paper.” She hurried into the den for supplies and returned to her chair ready to write. She folded the paper to make two columns. “Let’s start with family. Who besides Cirilda knows the code?”
“I changed it after Carmen was hospitalized, but we have people coming and going here all the time. Maggie knows it and has a key, so Rafael probably knows the code too. The twins know and Fox, but they don’t have keys. I’m usually the last one home at night, so I set it, and Tomas has a key and turns it off in the morning.”
She wrote the family names in the first column. “What about other employees?”
“Tomas, Manuel and Mrs. Lopez have keys and know the code; that’s it. I don’t share it with the boys who work in the kitchen or the maids.”
“Tomas is always here when food deliveries are made?”
“Yes, he checks the list to make certain we aren’t charged for something we didn’t order or shorted on what we did. He keeps an excellent set of books, records his recipes, and keeps track of party dates, who attended and what he served.”
“He is a treasure, isn’t he?”
He reached for her hand. “So are you, but if you’re afraid to stay here and want to fly home, I’ll help you arrange it.”
She sat back in her chair. “Go home and miss all this fun? No, I’m staying until the fall semester starts. We have a deal, remember?”
“Yes, but we didn’t expect a threat to your life. You were worried about your family being in danger when they were with me, but we didn’t anticipate anything like this.”
“Yes, I remember. Was that only last week? Every day poses one risk or another. That’s just the way life is.” They’d opened the windows to clear out the smell of smoke, and she was still too excited to feel cold. “Do you suppose the elevator is totaled?”
“I don’t know. It may just need new paneling, but I don’t think I can hop up the stairs as easily as I hopped down.”
“No, but you could sit and bump your butt upstairs one step at a time.”
His eyes widened in mock horror. “I wouldn’t want anyone to even suspect I’d done that. The den sofa is large enough for us both, and there are pillows and blankets in the bathroom cupboard. We’ll be all right until morning down here. Or at least I will be if you’d rather be upstairs.”
He fiddled with cake crumbs, and she easily read what he truly wanted. She reached for his hand. “I’ll stay with you. It’s where all the excitement is.”
“I’m not sure I should thank you for that.”
“Yes, you should.” It took them a while to get as comfortable on the sofa as they’d been in his bed, but she couldn’t sleep. She kept thinking of the awful eyeless drawing he’d received and wondered if there was no sane reason someone was out to harm him, but merely a most disturbed individual’s revenge for an imagined wrong.
Tomas nearly became hysterical when he arrived Monday morning and found the mess the firefighters had left. “I always carry out the trash in the evening. There is never so much as a used paper towel left in the kitchen.”
“I know, Tomas. Please don’t upset yourself over this,” Santos said. “Whoever lit the fire brought the flammable materials with him, or her.”
Mrs. Lopez was livid. “How could anyone wish to destroy such a magnificent home?”
“The house wasn’t the target,” Santos assured them. He’d not been able to sleep any better than Libby, and they’d both gotten up at dawn. He’d showered downstairs, and she’d brought him clean clothes. They’d been seated in the dining room, drinking coffee, when the chef and housekeeper arrived. “I hope we can catch whoever lit the fire before they cause any more damage.”
Mrs. Lopez stretched to her full five-foot height. “Will we have the police tramping through the house today?”
“The arson investigator from the fire department should be here soon, along with the security company to check their system. I need to inform our insurance agent and have someone come from the elevator company. The elevator needs whatever repairs necessary so I can get upstairs without making too great a spectacle of myself. The whole household needs it.”
“I’ll help you,” Tomas offered. “You can lean on me and hop up the stairs.”
The chef was five feet ten with a wiry build, and Santos wouldn’t even risk asking him to support his weight when they’d be sure to trip, fall and end up in a pile of broken bones. “Thank you, but I want you to concentrate on the kitchen. I’ll call on Manuel if I need help moving around the house.”
