“She could wake the dead,” Kenny yelled over a boom of thunder.

“I need a dog sitter!” Joe yelled back, eyeing the pathetic puppy face plastered to the window, woefully watching them run away. “Or someone to just shoot me.”

“I’ll shoot you later,” Kenny promised, and pulled him inside Ally’s Treasures.

Ally was a tall, lean, haughty beanpole, with sharp eyes and a sharper tongue, who clearly did not like dripping wet fire marshals. “I’m busy,” she said when they identified themselves.

“This will only take a minute,” Kenny promised, and smiled his charm-the-witness smile.

Immune, Ally frowned. “Make it quick.”

“How do you feel about Creative Interiors?” Joe asked.

She lifted a shoulder. “They have the better building and street visibility, but since I do a better business, I don’t lose sleep over it.”

“How do you know?” Kenny asked, looking at a shelf of seashells filled with sand, all marked with shockingly astronomical prices.

“How do I know what?” Her tone was holier-than-thou, her nose so high in the air she was in jeopardy of a nosebleed.

“That you do a better business,” Kenny said patiently.

“Because I snoop, if you want the truth. I go into their stores and check out their stock and what their customers are buying. There’s no law against that. Camille does it to me right back.”

“Camille spies on you?” Kenny asked.

“Of course she does. She sends one of the twins, the one who smokes, to buy a Cosmo off my magazine rack, then she presumably goes back and tells them everything. If I were Camille I’d be more concerned about how much more work she does than her spacey sister, or that seriously creepy bookkeeper she just hired, or even that wild and crazy roam-the-planet daughter of hers, but whatever. To each her own.”

Joe bit his tongue with effort. “One of the twins smokes?”

“Yes. Don’t know which one.”

“Have you ever been to their warehouse?” Joe asked.

“The one that burned?” Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“Have you?”

Her cool veneer slipped a moment. “I don’t like where this is going.”

“Yes or no.”

“No.”

“What about the new store site?” Kenny asked. “Creative Interiors II. Were you there at all?”

She paled and shook her head.

“Are you sure?” Joe asked.

“Once,” she admitted. “At the opening party. They had quick-serve hors d’oeuvres set out. Please.”

“What about the next day?” Joe asked. “Were you there at all on opening day?”

Some of the snide light and superiority drained out of her eyes. “I drove by,” she said quietly, finally taking them seriously. “Right at ten o’clock. Just to see how many people they had, that’s all. I never went in.”

“Where were you between the hours of six and ten that night?”