Someone Always Knows by Marcia Muller

flat in the Sunset and gone home.
    She seemed to come fully awake then. “Did you see Nemo?”
    “Uh, no. He didn’t show.”
    “Then he’s a double-dog asshole.”
    “I wouldn’t say so. Chelle, there was a fire. The house burned down.”
    She gasped. “My God, was anybody hurt?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Nemo…he didn’t have anything to do with it, did he?”
    “I don’t know that either.”
    “Then why hasn’t he called me?” Her voice was spiraling upward in pitch.
    “There’re plenty of good reasons—”
    “Shar, I’ve got to stop talking about this. I’ll call you back later.” She broke our connection.
    I went upstairs, stripped off my clothes, and stuffed them in the hamper. Then I took a shower, vigorously washing my hair. A good comb-out, body lotion, and a touch of the Allure perfume Hy had given me for my birthday last month, and I felt back to normal. That is, as normal as a woman can feel when she can’t contact her husband, has just witnessed a horrific fire, and has a maniac breathing down her neck.
    Thinking of Hy, I went to my laptop and dashed off an e-mail to Craig, asking him to contact his former colleagues at the FBI to see if any of them knew about Hy’s presence in D.C. and why a deputy director had summoned him there. Then I crawled into bed. Five minutes later the landline rang. I picked up, hoping to hear Hy’s voice.
    Gage Renshaw.
    “Out late, McCone.”
    So he’d been trying to reach me, but not leaving messages. Or he’d been watching the house and waiting for me to go to bed. “I had business to attend to.”
    “What kind of business?”
    “None of yours.” Quickly I depressed the control Hy and I have on our home phone for recording calls.
    He said slyly, “Putting out fires, maybe?”
    “I don’t know what you mean, Renshaw.”
    “I’ll give you a hint: Webster Street.”
    “What about it?”
    “Are you tracing this call?”
    “We don’t have that capability on this line. Now what about Webster Street?”
    “You were there.”
    “How do you know that?
    “I know a great many things that you wouldn’t expect me to.”
    “Are you following me? Or having me followed?”
    He cackled in that annoying way he had. “Hell no. Why would I do something like that?”
    “I wouldn’t put anything past you, if you had something to gain.”
    “But I don’t. Or do I?”
    “Damn you! Why don’t you tell me what it is you’re after?”
    “Because I like to keep you guessing.”
    “Guessing games are for children. I don’t have time for them.”
    “My, you’ve turned into a sour bitch since I first knew you.”
    “Don’t call me again until you’re ready to talk sense. No more games!” I clicked off the phone.
    7:02 a.m.
    As I was having my first cup of coffee, Mick called my cell. “You seen the news?”
    “You know I don’t watch TV news in the morning.”
    “Where are you?”
    “Home.”
    “Well, turn on CNN and call me back.”
    “If this is about the fire last night, I was there—”
    “Just check it out, okay? Sounds like it was arson.”
    When I turned on the TV, CNN was reporting on a suicide bombing somewhere in the Middle East. A collapsed building, an old woman crying, a child bleeding in his mother’s arms. I looked away from all that misery until I heard the anchor’s voice say, “In other news, the investigation continues into the fire that consumed a deserted house in the Fillmore district of San Francisco last night, killing one.”
    Killing one.…
    I looked back, listened more intently. The anchor was one of those perfectly made-up, every-hair-sprayed-into-place women, and she was smiling. Actually smiling!
    The picture switched to the house sheeted in flames.
    “Fire chief Danielle Albin said the cause of the blaze has not yet been identified, and arson has not been ruled out. A body found early this morning by fire inspectors sifting through the site was burned beyond recognition.…”
    A body, burned beyond