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A landscaping crew picked up takeout, while a group of senior citizens shared coffee and pie in a rear booth. Brenda was a pencil-thin older woman in jeans and a blue short-sleeved shirt. Her name was embroidered on the pocket. One of the biggest portraits, a man in a police dress uniform, was mounted behind the cash register. Her husband, who’d died about a decade ago, according to the gold plate on the frame. A wedding shot of the two was tucked into the corner.
Brenda had smiles for her customers, and banter for the fireman and police, while she kept tabs on the three waitresses hustling under her direction. They wore jeans with pink, purple or blue T-shirts bearing the restaurant’s logo.
Brick accepted a couple menus from her and guided Les to a booth. He exchanged a nod with the firefighter and cops.
“Specials are up on the board.” He pointed at it. “Get something for here and something to go, so I’ll know you have enough to eat tomorrow, between enemas and nauseous ten-year-olds.”
She glanced at her menu. “You’ve had food here? Because Brenda looks nice, but people have different ideas about what good Southern food tastes like.”
He shot her a grin. “Yes, I’ve eaten here.”
“All right then. Country fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans and corn bread. One for here, one to go.” She could easily divide into a couple meals what she’d have left over from the one for here. She’d share the to-go one with Beulah.
“Good choice. Drink?”
“Iced tea, if fresh brewed and certain to send me into a sugar coma.”
“They don’t know any other kind. Dessert?”
“I’ll decide if I have a place to put it when I’m done with the rest.”
“You can take it to go.”
“Not if it’s chocolate pie. Gotta eat that before it melts.”
“How about we start with it while we wait for the rest? I’ll share it with you.”
“You’re going to spoil me.”
“That’s the idea.”
As she met his gray eyes, she decided this night was going to be one of those one-off memories. Something she could hold onto and cherish, let it keep her warm for a lot of nights. Which, come to think of it, might be a better deal than the ups and downs of a relationship.
Their waitress’s nametag identified her as Sonja. Her accent suggested she was Russian or Ukrainian. “What will you have?”
“We’d like a piece of chocolate pie to start off,” he told her. Then he placed the rest of the order, including their drinks and Les’s to-go selection.
She’d never had a man order for her before. It wasn’t a bad feeling, not the way Brick did it. She was aware of his legs below the table, spread around her own feet, aligned and planted on the base in the center. Like in the truck, his presence surrounded her.
“So at the wedding, I didn’t get a chance to ask. What made you decide to leave the deputy fire chief role and go all the way into arson investigation? I thought you loved being a firefighter.”
“I did, and still do. I occasionally get the chance to pitch in as a pipe man or for search and rescue, when I’m training stations what to notice to help us with our investigations. The investigative process for arson cases is interesting, and forensic science is always evolving, just like with medicine. That alone can keep me busy, but I also do fire code reviews, talking to community groups about fire safety, that kind of thing.”
He looked toward the fireman at the bar. “People think setting fire to an empty building for insurance money is a victimless crime, but the financial losses have far greater impacts than they realize. More importantly, every fire can get out of control. Each of them has the potential to endanger the firefighters who have to put it out. Their families sure as hell care about that.”
He met her gaze. “So not only can I help firefighters do their job better with what we learn when we investigate a fire, I can catch the assholes who think they can get away with setting them. I like that.”
The waitress brought the pie, setting it down with two forks. Brick nudged one toward her. After one bite, she nodded decisively and waved her fork at him. “If I finish this and the tea, I’m definitely dropping into a diabetic coma. Before I pass out, give me an example of the science, how it’s evolving.”
He grinned. “You’re as big a science nerd as I am.”
“I don’t think anyone is as big a science nerd as you are. Physically.”
“Smartass.” He poked his fork at her hand. “Okay. So there’s this phenomenon you see in the aftermath of fires, called spalling. It looks like a shallow gully or chunks chipped out of the concrete. There’s also what’s known as glazed glass, like that spidery cracked look you see in glassware. For a lot of years, arson investigators took those two things as pretty sure evidence of arson. The concentrated heat level that produces it suggested an ignitable liquid started the fire.”
She had a smudge of chocolate on the corner of her mouth, but before she could reach for a napkin, he wiped it away with his thumb. Then he licked the chocolate off of it.
When he continued talking as if doing that was the most normal thing in the world, she thought about hitting him. Or fanning herself with the laminated menu. The heat of his touch lingered next to her mouth.
