Free Valley of Ashes by Cornelia Read

the
very
sorry turnout for last night’s volleyball game—’ ”
    I understood every word of that, and laughed.
    She turned around and looked across the floor of the room again. “The problem with flashover… wipes out evidence. You lose the ‘pour pattern.’ ”
    “Yeah?”
    “Splash accelerant around and light it, burn pattern’s uneven. Flooring, carpeting…”
    “Okay,” I yelled back.
    “Usually fire burns
up
, pattern’s intact. Not with flashover.”
    I nodded for her to continue.
    “Extreme temperatures down low in a room? Pour pattern’s obliterated. No differentiation.”
    “Bummer,” I yelled, looking at the evenly scorched flooring. “So how do you check?”
    “Gimme that hammer,” said Mimi, pointing to an upper tray of her tackle box.
    I picked it up and held it out toward her.
    “Chisel,” she yelled, so I gave her that, too.
    She walked over to the corner of the room closest to the sofa. “See? Floor dips down?”
    I nodded. “Sure.”
    “Liquid accelerant runs downhill and pools. So if it’s near a
wall
…”
    She knelt. I watched her angle the chisel’s tip to rest against what looked like a join in the baseboard, about eight inches away from the corner of the room.
    Mimi gave the handle a good whack and the chisel bit into this seam. She pulled the tool free, then brought the narrow tip to rest at the topmost juncture of baseboard and wall.
    One more hard tap popped the entire piece of wood free. She picked this up, twisting at the waist so I could see it.
    “Accelerant pools next to a wall,” she yelled, “the baseboard gets charred up the
back
.”
    She turned the wood over.
    Goddamn if that side wasn’t charred to shit.
    I gave her a thumbs-up and watched her eyes crinkle into a smile, above the respirator.
    I checked my watch. We’d been here over an hour.
    “Babysitter?” she asked.
    “Half an hour left.”
    “I’ll show you the big room at the back.”
    “You are a total goddess,” I yelled.
    “What?”
    I gave up. “
Thank
you.”
    “Need to check one more thing,” said Mimi.
    “Sure.”
    She moved back over to the sofa, shining her flashlight down into the oddly white springs, angling it toward the arm of the thing.
    “Ha!” yelled Mimi, plunging her gloved hand down into the furniture guts.
    “What?”
    She raised her hand so I could see the little yellowy tube of fluff pincered between her thumb and index finger.
    “Cigarette filter,” she said. “Simplest fuse going—Marlboro stuck in a matchbook. Light it, stick it between the cushions, leave…”
    She bagged it up for evidence, then got to her feet, waving a thumb toward the back of the house.
    I nodded and followed her out of the room.
    We moved down the hallway, slowly.
    When she passed an open door on the left, Mimi stopped and played her flashlight slowly over the small room beyond its threshold.
    “See that?” she asked, as the beam of light came to rest on a scorched metal cup resting on a waist-high countertop.
    Downward-pointing spikes of multicolored plastic were hanging from all around the cup’s lip. It looked like a houseplant from Mars, but I nodded anyway.
    “Toothbrushes,” she yelled.
    I watched the light swing to the left, down a blackened rod a little higher than my head, draped with more plastic stalactites at regular intervals. “Shower-curtain rings?”
    She nodded at me.
    The curtain itself had joined the choir eternal, leaving not so much as a grommet in the wake of its cindery demise.
    Mimi dropped the tip of the flashlight lower, playing its beam across the tub surround. “Flame-retardant eats into marble, see that?”
    “Okay.”
    She turned away from the door frame, walking carefully toward the rear of the house.
    Stopping between some half-opened pocket doors at the end of the hall, Mimi whistled softly, a descending note of dismay. “I feel sorry for the claims adjustor…”
    She stepped into the room and I followed.
    “From the insurance company?” I