Read Online Up In Smoke: Spirit of the Soul Wine Shop Mystery (A Rysen Morris Mystery Book 3) by K.J. Emrick - Free Book Online

black and white.  And red.
    Spirit of the Soul had been losing money before the fire happened.  That sounded like a good motive for arson.
    Damn it.
    “Christina, we need to talk.”
    Her sister jumped in her chair and spun around, her hand over her heart.  “Oh, Rysen, you scared me.  I didn’t hear you come in.  How did things go with Mason Blaithe?  Did he confess?  Is he our guy?”
    “Not exactly, no.”  She came around and sat in the chair next to Christina.  “He sure does hate us, but he said he didn’t set the fire.  To tell you the truth I believe him.”
    “It has to be him,” Christina insisted.  “No one else in this town hated us that much.  We were in good standing with all of our suppliers.  The customers loved us.  Everything was going fine.”
    “Are you sure about that?”  Rysen pointed to the laptop.  “Those numbers seem to say something else.”
    Christina waved a hand as if to dismiss the hard facts in front of her.  “Every store goes through a sales slump.  What, you think WalMart operates at a surplus all the time?  We were having a few bad months.  Things will pick up.  I mean, they would have picked up.  Now it looks like I won’t be able to raise the money to reopen the shop.  I spent the morning at the bank practically begging for a loan they’ll never give us.  The only thing we can do is take Beatrice’s offer and maybe start something smaller.  If only no one had found out this was arson!  Then the insurance company would have paid out and everything would be fine.”
    Rysen let those words settle in the room like a heavy blanket.  It was exactly what she had expected her sister to say, and exactly what she hadn’t wanted to hear.  An admission of guilt.
    “What?” Christina said to her.  “Why are you looking at me like that?”
    “You said it was too bad we found out the fire was arson.”
    “Come on, sis.  You know what I mean.  What’s the problem?”
    “Where were you?”
    Blinking in confusion, Christina shut her laptop down and closed the top.  “When?”
    “When the fire happened, Christina.  You were supposed to be there that morning and you weren’t.  Where were you?”
    “Where was I?  Why are you…Rysen!  You can’t be serious.  You think—  I can’t believe you would…I’m so mad at you right now I can’t even talk!  Rysen!”
    “Just tell me where you were, Chris.”
    Her sister sat further back in her chair, further away from Rysen.  “I was doing errands for the store.  Does that make me sound guilty?  Do you want to drag me downtown now, Detective?”
    The sarcasm in that stung, but Rysen made herself ignore it.  They’d been looking for a shadowy hand that had been moving silently against them from the background.  It was looking more and more like the danger had been a lot closer to home.
    “Okay, let’s try this,” Rysen said, unwilling to give up even in the face of her sister’s anger.  “Where were you this morning?”
    “Boy, you are just…  Where is this coming from?  I went down to our store this morning.  You know, the one where we use to work together and sell wine?  That place?  I went there, I took inventory of everything we could save, and I left.  Why do you want to know?”
    “Tell me why you destroyed the cellar.”
    Christina stood up, her hands shaking.  “What do you mean?”
    “I was just there.  I saw the whole thing.  Holes broken in the wall.  All of the wine stock was trashed.  I don’t know if we can save any of it.  Not anymore.  So why?  Tell me why.  Did you think it would help with the insurance company if the whole place was destroyed?”
    “You have no right to talk to me that way!” Christina screamed.  Her face was flushed red and there were tears in her eyes.  “I would never do anything like that!  The cellar was fine when I left.  We had close to two thousand dollars in stock down there!  It’s gone?  It’s destroyed?