7th Heaven

“Steve and Sandy Meacham were my closest friends,” she said. “I called 911 when I saw the fire. God, oh, God, it was already too late.”

“Mind coming down to the station with us?” I asked. “We need to know everything we can about your friends.”

Chapter 44

DEBRA KURTZ WAS DRINKING day-old coffee in the smaller, cleaner of our two interview rooms. “The Meachams were the greatest couple in the world,” she told us tearfully.

“Any reason you can think that anyone would want to hurt them?” I asked.

“I’m going to the soft drink machine downstairs,” Conklin said to Kurtz. “Can I get you something else?”

She shook her head no.

When Conklin was gone, Kurtz leaned across the table and told me about Sandy ’s drinking and that both Sandy and Steven had had casual affairs. “I don’t think that means anything, but just so you know.”

Kurtz told me that the Meachams had two children; a boy, Scott, nineteen or so, away at college, and a girl, Rebecca, older and married, living in Philadelphia. Kurtz choked up again, as though something painful was stuck in her gut – or her conscience.

“Is there something else you want to tell me, Debra? Something going on between you and Steven Meacham?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “Yes, there was.”

Kurtz watched the door as she talked, as if she wanted to finish talking before Conklin returned. She said, “I hated myself for cheating on Sandy. It’s hard to explain, but in a way I loved her as much as I loved Steve.”

I pushed a box of tissues over to her side of the table as Conklin came back into the interrogation room. He was holding a computer printout.

“You have a rap sheet, Ms. Kurtz,” said Conklin, pulling out a chair. “That kinda surprised me.”

“I was in grief,” the woman told us, her gray eyes flooding anew. “I didn’t hurt anyone but myself.”

Conklin turned the pages toward me.

“You were arrested for burglary.”

“My boyfriend talked me into it, and I was stupid enough to go along. Anyway, I was acquitted,” Kurtz said.

“You weren’t acquitted,” said Conklin. “You got probation. I think you made a deal to flip on your boyfriend, am I right? Oh, and then there’s the arson.”

“Randy, my husband Randy, was dead. I wanted to cut my heart out,” she said, pounding her chest with her fist. “I set fire to our house because it was the only way I could see what I felt. The bottomless grief.”

I leaned back in my chair. I think my mouth may have dropped open. Debra Kurtz reacted to the shock on my face.

“It was my own house,” she shouted. “I didn’t even file an insurance claim. I only hurt myself, do you understand? I only hurt myself!”

“Had Steven Meacham broken off your affair?”

“Yes. But it was weeks ago, and it was mutual.”

“You weren’t a little angry?” Conklin asked. “Didn’t feel a little bottomless grief?”

“No, no, whatever you’re thinking, I didn’t set fire to the Meachams’ house. I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.”

We asked Debra Kurtz where she was when the Malone house burned, and we asked her if she knew her way around Palo Alto. She had alibis, and we wrote everything down. What she told us added up to a crazy woman with a burning desire to both destroy and self-destruct.

It added up, and yet it didn’t add up at all. And now it was half past five in the morning.

“You have any trips pla

She shook her head. “No.”

“Good. Please don’t leave town without letting us know.”

Chapter 45

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, pi

“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.”

“Hah! She knows her way around the system. So she what? Sets fire to the house across the street – and just waits for the cops to take her in?”

“That’s what I’m saying, Joe. The whole package is too much. Kurtz had the means, the motive, the opportunity. ‘Hell hath no fury’ – plus once a firebug, you know, it’s a hard rush to kick.”

“She strike you as a killer?” Joe asked me.

“She struck me as a pathetic narcissist, in need of attention.”

“You got that right.”

I gave Joe a kiss. Then I gave him a few more, just loving the feeling of his rough cheek against my lips, his mouth on mine, and the fact of him, big and warm and in my bed.

“Don’t start something you’re too tired to finish, Blondie,” he growled at me.

I laughed again. Hugged him tight. Said, “Ms. Kurtz insists she didn’t do it. So what I’m thinking is…” My thoughts drifted back to the victims, soot-blackened water lapping around their bodies.

“What you’re thinking,” Joe prompted.

“I’m thinking either she set this fire because she’s so completely self-destructive, she wants to get caught. Or she did it and maybe she didn’t plan for her friends to die. Or else…”

“Your gut is telling you that she didn’t do it. That she’s just a total wackjob.”

“There ya go,” I said to my sweetheart. “There… ya… go…”

When I woke up, my arms were entwined around Martha, Joe was gone, and I was late for my meeting with Jacobi.

Chapter 46

I MET CLAIRE at her car after work. I moved a pair of galoshes, a flashlight, her crime scene kit, a giant bag of barbecued potato chips, and three maps into the backseat and then climbed up into the passenger side of her Pathfinder. I said, “Richie got a translation of that Latin phrase that was written inside that yachting book.”

“Oh yeah? And what did it mean?” she said, pulling her seat belt low across her belly, stretching it to the limit before locking it in place.

I cinched my seat belt, too, said, “It roughly translates as ‘Money is the root of all evil.’ I’d like to get my hands on the sucker who wrote that and show him the victims all crispy and curled up on your table. Show him what real evil is.”

Claire grunted. “You got that right,” she said, and pulled the car out onto Bryant heading us north, apparently deciding to take the 1.8 miles to Susie’s like she was racing the Daytona 500. She jerked the wheel around a slow-cruising sightseer, stepping on the gas. “You’re saying ‘him,’ ” Claire pointed out. “So that Debra Kurtz person is off your list?”

“She has an alibi,” I told Claire through clenched teeth. I grabbed the dashboard as she cleared the yellow light. “Also, her alibis check out for the nights of the Malone fire and the Jablonskys in Palo Alto.”