Money To Burn Read Online Free PDF

high-pressure hoses. It stood out obscenely against the surrounding destruction.
    Embers steamed in the morning air as firemen lightly hosed down banks of ashes to preserve any evidence that might be left. A breeze was blowing in from the north and, slowly, the choking odor of the fire lifted until the ruins smelled almost pleasant, like a campfire late at night.
    Where the hell was Thomas Nash?
    “Casey?” Doodle looked exhausted in the morning light, his face streaked with grime. He had shed the suffocating rubber suit and his T-shirt was soaked through with sweat. His eyes were criss-crossed with fine threads of blood. “This is Maynard Pope. He needs to ask you some questions.”
    Maynard Pope was a wiry little man with a white buzz cut and gray stubble dotting his pointed chin. I knew him by reputation. He’d been busting arsonists and insurance scam artists for over thirty years. His colleagues called him Mad Dog because he was so tenacious. His detractors called him nothing at all. It was safer that way.
    “I ain’t got but a minute,” he said flatly. He had a peculiar voice that sounded like a cross between Donald Duck and Elmer Fudd. “Doodle says you think there’s a body in there.”
    I winced. Thomas Nash had become a body.
    I explained how I had left my client at midnight and that he had been in the basement. I described the layout of the house as the arson investigator listened carefully. When I was done, he pulled a notepad from his pocket and asked me to sketch the rooms.
    “I’m gonna need your help,” he said in his odd nasal voice. “Doodle says you’re standup and I’m taking him at his word. From what I can tell so far, the flash point is on the first floor, midway into the structure. That indicates that the point of origin may have been just below, which brings us to the basement. The fire spread upward from there. We’ve already checked the remaining wa heremainills and what’s left of the wiring. There’s no signs of arcing and no internal wall fires. I doubt it was electrical. But I got a problem with the fire spread patterns and the scorch lines. They lead off in a lot of different directions.”
    “Multiple origin points?” Doodle suggested.
    “Looks that way,” the little man agreed. “Tell me again what the upper rooms were.” He handed me the pad and pen again.
    I went over the layout of the upper floors, sketching them out as best I could.
    “Did anything unusual happen earlier in the evening?” he asked. “Any visitors or indications that this Nash guy was upset?”
    I shook my head. “There was a threatening phone call,” I explained. “He’d been receiving them regularly. That’s why he hired me. But he seemed unfazed when I told him he’d gotten another one.”
    A short fireman appropriately shaped like a hydrant scurried up to Maynard Pope and interrupted us. “Gene’s finished sounding the floors. We can get into the basement now, but the stairs are gone. We’re laddering down.”
    Maynard nodded, then turned back to me. “I want you to stand by in case we find a body. You might be able to identify what’s left of it.”
    With those ominous words, he hurried off. I watched as a ladder was lowered through the scorched opening to the basement and a line of firefighters descended, some with masks still hanging around their necks. Above them, water ran in dirty rivulets across the soggy ground floor and dripped from what was left of the second-story flooring, the sound of trickling water incongruous with the sight of the charred structure.
    The men took forever down below, out of my sight, and were joined after half an hour by even more people. One was a photographer and the bounce of his flash strobed from the dark basement opening at intervals.
    I had been abandoned to wait out my fears alone. Lost in my thoughts, I gradually became aware of a panting in the vicinity of my right shin. I looked down to find a shepherd collie mix sitting obediently at