Free Ashes, Ashes, They All Fall Dead by Lena Diaz Page A

Pictures either hung haphazardly on the wall or lay on the floor, a soggy, warped mess.
    It was easy to figure out which woman in the pictures was Sharon Johnson, since she appeared in most of them. Medium height, shoulder-length brown hair with light-gray streaks, faded blue eyes. She wasn’t particularly pretty, but she had a friendly, easy smile.
    The police chief had told them over the phone that Sharon had lived alone. But Matt wasn’t sure he agreed with that. He studied one of the pictures before moving to the next, and the next. His suspicion grew with each new picture he examined. Time to verify his theory. If Sharon was anything like him, he’d find the evidence he needed in her kitchen. He turned around.
    Tessa stood just inside the front door, her green eyes practically flashing sparks at him. One of her hands tightened into a fist at her side. The other was perilously close to the gun in the holster on her hip.
    “Get out.” Her voice was tight and angry. “We were supposed to walk the property, not go inside and muck up the crime scene.”
    He pointed to the open sky above them. “I hardly think we can be accused of contaminating the scene.”
    Her gun hand twitched. He decided a retreat might be in order, and since it went along with what he wanted to do anyway, he moved past her through the archway into the next room. An old-fashioned china hutch sat in the corner and a table that could easily seat twelve occupied the middle of the room. He scanned the contents of the hutch before heading into the kitchen.
    There, on the floor beside the soot-blackened refrigerator, was proof of his theory.
    “What are you doing?” Tessa’s voice sounded from behind him. “We need to get out of here and let the police chief know he needs to reseal the door.”
    Her trigger hand was no longer hovering near her gun, so Matt figured she’d gotten over her initial burst of outrage.
    He gave her his most charming smile, but she continued to glower at him.
    He sighed and moved past her back into the dining room. She followed behind him, cursing beneath her breath.
    “Do you know anything about dishes?” He tried to head off the impending storm.
    Her brow crinkled. “What? Dishes?”
    He suppressed a smile, enjoying the war of emotions playing across her face. Part of her still wanted to shoot him, but the other part, the part that was winning, was her insatiable curiosity. That curiosity was probably what made her such a good agent. He’d heard so many glowing stories about her exploits over the years from his brother Pierce that he already knew her far better than she knew him. That gave him the advantage of knowing what buttons he could push to get a reaction out of her. Sneaky, not exactly fair, but useful.
    He waved at the shelves in the hutch, crammed full of colored glassware. In spite of the fire and the deluge of water that must have rained down, the solid, heavy hutch had done its job, protecting its precious cargo.
    “Is any of this worth anything?” he asked.
    “What makes you think I’d know? Just because I’m a woman?”
    “You caught me. I made an entirely chauvinistic assumption that, being a female, you’d have been raised with the requisite knowledge of dishes. So, are they? Expensive?”
    Her mouth curved into a reluctant half smile. “I wish I could throw that back in your face, but you’re right. I do know dishes. This looks like Depression glass.”
    She put on one of her ever-present latex gloves and took out a pink plate, turning it back and forth to catch the light.
    “Well?” he asked.
    “I was checking to see if it’s a reproduction. It’s not. See the bubbles in the glass, and the slightly wavy look? Those are imperfections typical of Depression-era glassware. My mom collects this stuff, same pattern—Cabbage Rose. And yes, to answer your earlier question, it’s expensive. People spend their entire lives trying to collect complete sets. Some of the pieces are really rare and