Love in a Nutshell - Janet Evanovich [34]
“Is the whole town here?” Kate asked.
“More or less.”
He found a spot for his truck, and immediately noticed an ambulance parked at the brewery’s employee door. The vehicle’s back door was open and the interior was lit. Inside, a familiar figure lay on a stretcher.
Matt sprinted over to the ambulance. He’d barely reached it when Kate joined him. For a little thing, she had a long stride.
“Give me a second,” he said to her.
“I’ll be right here.”
Matt didn’t recognize the two paramedics working on Laila. All the same, he climbed into the back of the ambulance.
One of the paramedics was inflating some sort of air cast around Laila’s ankle. “You’ll have to get out, sir,” she said.
Laila tried to prop herself up on her elbows, despite the paramedics’ orders to stay still. “He’ll stay right where he is. Work around him.”
“What happened?” Matt asked.
“Twisted it hard.” She winced as she tried to settle more comfortably on the stretcher. “I had stepped outside for a second to use my phone when I saw the fire. I called 911, but the fencing around the Dumpster was already burning. I tried to run a hose from the loading dock door. The hose ran me, instead, I guess. Broke my phone when I went down, too.”
“Don’t worry about the phone. I’ll get you another one,” Matt said. “Let’s work on getting you fixed, okay?”
Laila had been with him since the day he’d started serving food. Yeah, she could be a little bossy, but he’d learned more from her than he could have from any number of highly paid consultants. She was family, plain and simple. And he felt sick that she had been hurt trying to help him.
“We’re ready to roll,” the larger of the paramedics said.
Matt touched Laila gently on her shoulder. “Can I do anything for you?”
“Get ahold of my son, Joe. Tell him where I am and that someone’s going to need to come get my car.”
“No problem. And I’ll be over to the emergency room in just a while.
“Don’t you dare. You’ve got enough to deal with right here. Clete already shut you down for the night.”
At that news, Matt bit back on a couple of his favorite curse words.
“The Dumpster was too far from the building for a spark to fly. And even if one did, the roof’s metal,” he said.
“I know,” Laila replied. “But you know Clete. And Steve went to look for Jerry to argue the closing, but Jerry was nowhere to be found.”
“Don’t worry,” Matt said. “Just focus on getting yourself better and let me deal with the rest of this, okay?”
“I will.”
He gave her hand a squeeze, which was about all the affection Laila would accept
“Hang in there,” he said before climbing out.
Kate still stood watching the firefighters spray down the smoking Dumpster and fence.
“Arson is a definite buzzkill,” she said without looking his way.
She’d voiced what Matt had been thinking since they’d pulled into the parking lot. If not for all the other incidents, Matt would have attributed it to Steve sneaking a cigarette by the trash. Matt had snagged him doing that countless times.
“It is. And I know I’m lucky it wasn’t worse. Laila’s fall was bad enough.”
“She’ll be okay, though, right?”
“I don’t know if her ankle is sprained or broken, but she’ll recover.” He paused. “And probably demand to come back to work long before she’s ready, too.”
“Speaking of which … Besides Laila, who was on staff tonight?”
“The usual. Amber and Steve were in the dining room. Ruby was busing dishes. Pat, Renaldo, and Manny were in the kitchen. And Jerry was supposed to be here, not that he is.” He paused a second. “Before I left for the hall, Nan and Floyd were in the brewery working on one of Bart’s new beer recipes. I don’t know if they’re still around. So what it comes down to is any one of my own employees could have done this to me.”
“Or maybe just a random firebug. I’m betting Keene’s Harbor has a pyro or two,” she said. “What’s frustrating is that I’d like to say everyone at the fund-raiser can be dropped from the suspect list but it’s too easy to