Free Guilty Until Proven Innocent by Sarah Billington Page B

he?”
    That was the best question of them all. Where was Peter Gabarski?
    Snippets of news sped through the town and Bodecker’s Café became the hub, the one stop shop resource for anything and everything to do with the Gabarski Fire.
    Each new patron added to the discussion, I didn’t need to even step outside to hear what was happening. Apparently a handful of reporters from the city had ventured into town, not looking overly hopeful of an interesting story (it was after all, a domestic house fire in which no one had been hurt) but I guess the junior reporters had been assigned the story so they made the trek all the way to Carringwood on the off chance of a slow news day.
    Like Dave Keller, the editor, photographer and sole reporter for the Carringwood Gazette , they had stuck their voice recorders (Dave) and iPhones (city reporters) under the Sherriff’s nose, snapped a few photos of the arson investigators doing their thing and high-tailed it out of Nowheresville, USA as fast as their company cars would take them.
    Word went around that Sherriff Taylor and the forensic team had been very tight-lipped about what they found inside the house, and according to Dave when he came in for his afternoon deadline double espresso and raisin and oat cookie, their serious faces and hushed conversations said it all: The Gabarski’s had definitely been the unfortunate victims of an arsonist.
    “You better not be writing that,” Frances Billingsley said as she waited for Noah to whip up her vanilla chai latte.
    Dave blinked at her and pushed his glasses up his nose. “Why on Earth not?”
    “Oh come on, Dave,” she said. “There’s what, 200 people in Carringwood?”
    “204,” Garry Saunders said, gumming his lips. Mrs. P had left their table hours ago, but the old man refused to give up his table. I didn’t push him for it, though. On days like this when there was good gossip to be heard, Garry could spend the whole day with us, waving me down with irritation to refill his coffee whenever it got a bit low. After a couple of weeks on the job I not only learned to keep Garry’s cup a quarter full and above, but after 2pm to switch him over to decaf or he’d start getting the twitches and downright argumentative. Two years ago Garry bopped Teddy Berg on the nose because he ordered onion rings and Garry doesn’t like onion rings. Teddy had to be driven over an hour to the hospital in Ratchet Creek to have his nose set since happy-go-lucky Garry Saunders had broken it and all.
    Teddy never did get those onion rings.
    “Wait – 203. Ernest Berkowitz carked it on the crapper on Tuesday,” Garry said.
    There were murmurs and winces, but no one was overly surprised. The man was 96, after all.
    “Oh,” Frances said. “Okay, 203. And we all know every one of those 203, right?”
    “Right,” Dave said, nodding. We all nodded too.
    “So if it was arson, it would have to have been one of us.”
    The café went silent. The only noise was the steam hissing on the espresso machine. A car engine as Lucky Mike drove today’s haul down to Catch of the Day Restaurant for the dinner crowd.
    Bodecker’s iPod in the kitchen and the man himself singing along to Metallica. Maybe we should put the tip jar toward singing lessons.
    Noah handed Frances her takeaway cup. She fastened on the lid and her gaze wandered to each of us as she strode toward the front door once more. “Do any of you really think one of us would be capable of arson?” she asked. “Especially with the kids inside.” She opened the door, gave the room a little finger wave and was gone.
    She was right. I didn’t know one person in this town who I thought would be capable of murder. Well. Murder by arson, anyway. We have a lot of hunters in town, who come back after a day in the woods, a buck sprawled lifeless in the back of their pickup. They parade through the streets like they’ve taken down the beast, rifles slung triumphantly over their shoulders.
    If it