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testy. Tough. “Did you conduct a primary search?”
    “Didn’t reckon we needed to, not with this place shut down for years. I wouldn’t have sent a search team inside this place anyway. The Beast had too big of a head start on us. It wouldn’t have been safe.”
    “How did you locate the body?”
    “We came out the next morning to poke around the embers. I found Brown myself under a bit of wall. Not much left of him, God rest his soul. We notified the coroner immediately.”
    The coroner’s report listed smoke inhalation as the cause of death. “Show me where the body was.”
    Dinterman took the fire chief’s arm as he walked around the charred mess, stopping near a big chipped porcelain sink. “This is where the back door opened into the kitchen,” the chief said. “Seems like Brown could have walked on out of there, but he didn’t.”
    With a fracture to his skull, he could have been unconscious or immobilized. “Tell me about the candles.”
    “Found them in three different hot spots. At two places not all the drier sheets burned.”
    Everything tracked with what he expected to find so far. “Was this place gutted before the fire?”
    Chief Pratt snorted. “The MacMillan estate sold off everything that wasn’t nailed down to pay the old man’s funeral expenses. Even the dishes.”
    He was used to seeing more items in the ashes. “What about the stove? Did they sell that?”
    “I don’t rightly know,” Pratt said. “Laurie Ann, you know?”
    “I haven’t been out here since I was a kid,” she said. “I missed the yard sales when Mr. MacMillan closed the restaurant. That was about the time my grandpop went in the nursing home. I wasn’t paying attention, and then I never had reason to come back out here.”
    Wyatt made a note to check about the kitchen appliances. “To reiterate, there were no items worth stealing in here, except maybe an industrial stove and some refrigeration units. We have a man with smoke in his lungs and a bump on his head that perished in the fire. We don’t know if the fire started with Brown in the kitchen or elsewhere.”
    “That sounds right,” Pratt said.
    Wyatt snapped photos of the blackened spoils. He noted the V of heat on two of the restaurant’s wall fragments. “You’re right. This fire had multiple starting places. The arsonist certainly did his homework. What’s the square footage here?”
    “Lemme see,” Buford tapped his cheek with a finger. “The eating part was thirty by sixty and the cooking part plus restrooms were about thirty by ten.”
    “A little over 2,000 square feet then,” Wyatt said, though he’d measure it to be exact. “And the entire building burnt to the ground. I’ll gather soil and wood samples to confirm use of an accelerant. Like you, I’m betting the arsonist doused this place with gasoline.”
    Buford Pratt glanced at his watch. “You have more questions for me? I’ve got a three o’clock appointment.”
    Wyatt extended his hand to the chief. “I should be fine. Thank you for making the trip out here.”
    The chief shook his hand and nodded at Dinterman. “I’ll leave you young people to it. Take care, Laurie Ann.”
    “Bye, Uncle Buford,” Dinterman called out as the chief climbed in his truck and drove off.
    “Your uncle?” Wyatt asked.
    Her cheeks darkened to a near-crimson shade. “Small town. Uncle Buford lost his wife six months ago at exactly three o’clock, and every day at three he goes to sit with her in the cemetery.”
    That sounded like something his mom would do. She never gave up on any family member. Including him. “Are you from a large family?”
    She shook her head, her hair reflecting glints of sunlight. “Only child. My mother died when I was three, and my dad never remarried. How about you?”
    He didn’t talk about his family on the job, but she’d shared a bit of her history. It might encourage her to open up more if he reciprocated. Having a local liaison was his best chance