Buried In Buttercream

Chapter 1
    “ T his ain’t exactly the roarin’ hot time we had planned for this evening, huh, babe?” Dirk Coulter said to the woman at his side.
    Savannah Reid couldn’t take her eyes off the red wall of flames that had jumped the fire line half an hour ago and was rapidly consuming the town’s community center. The building where she and the guy next to her were to have exchanged wedding vows an hour ago.
    “Not even close,” she said, slipping her arm around Dirk’s waist and leaning against him. “I had much more ambitious plans for you this evening, big boy.”
    He put his arm across her shoulders and pulled her closer. His voice cracked a bit when he kissed the top of her head and said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t get your wedding gown out, Van.”
    She blinked back some tears that had nothing to do with the smoke in the air or the ash falling like dirty snow around them and the crowd assembled to watch the battle. It was all-out war between the San Carmelita Fire Department versus Mother Nature, and Big Momma was winning.
    “Hey, you tried,” she replied. “If you’d tried any harder, I’d be bailing out my groom-to-be on our so-called wedding night, and that’d just be the cherry on the crap sundae.”
    “I only hit him once.”
    “Yeah, and that was one time too many, you knucklehead.”
    Dirk flexed his hand. “A love tap ... that’s all it was.”
    “And if you and Jim weren’t poker buddies, he’d have pressed charges then and there.”
    “Eh, he knows I’m a man under duress. If there’s anything harder on a guy’s nerves than gettin’ hitched, it’s having the place he’s supposed to do it in get torched on his wedding day.”
    “Well, you be sure and mention that ‘duress’ business to him,” she said, “ ’cause here he comes now. And he ain’t lookin’ none too friendly.”
    An enormous fireman was elbowing his way through the mob, composed of countless other firefighters, copious members of the media, town cops galore, and an overabundance of run-of-the-mill gawkers.
    When Jim Barbera reached them, he stuck his finger in Dirk’s face and said, “I don’t care if you do have a gold detective’s badge, Coulter. Don’t you ever lay a hand on me again like that or I swear, I’ll—”
    Slipping deftly between the two men, Savannah flashed the firefighter her best Southern belle, eyelash-batting, deep-dimpled smile. “Please don’t hold it against him, Jim,” she said in a soft, down-homesy drawl. “Dirk was willing to risk life and limb to go into that burning building to rescue my wedding gown. And I know you’d have done the same for that pretty little wife of yours ... what’s her name ... Lilly? She’s expecting, isn’t she? And this is, what, your third youngun?”
    “Uh-huh.” Jim was trying hard not to succumb to Dixie charm. “You shouldn’t have let your man go into a burning building, Savannah,” he grumbled. “Not for anything. That’s the number-one rule.”
    Savannah could feel her dander rising. The dimples got a tad less deep, the smile a bit less wide. The drawl had a bite to it when she said, “In the first place, he ain’t my man just yet, thanks to this blasted fire. And even if he was—knowing him like I do—I don’t reckon I’ll be doing a lot of ‘letting’ him do this or that. He’s got a mind of his own and that’s the way I like it ... most of the time.”
    Fortunately, Jim got a call on his cell phone. He answered it with a predictable degree of gruffness, considering the conversation he was having, the smoke he had inhaled, and the fact that the fire behind him had totally engulfed the structure he and his company had been fighting to save.
    “Yeah,” he said into the phone. “Oh? Okay.” He glanced around at the bystanders, then at Dirk. “Coulter’s standing right here. I’ll tell him.”
    He stuck the phone back into his pocket. “That was the chief,” he said. “They’re at the point of origin. It’s the same guy again ... a pentagram drawn in the dirt and a black candle in the center of it.”
    Immediately, Savannah turned toward the mob of spectators, and her eyes began to scan each face in the crowd, one by one. Nobody had to tell her what Jim and Dirk were thinking as they did the same. Odds were high that their arsonist with the creepy rituals was among them, watching with everyone else, enjoying the drama, the destructive fruits of his labor.
    What was the point of unleashing hell on a