Flames and embers shot high against the night sky as the roof of the house caved in. The house was burning fast like fat lighter kindling; to be expected from its construction mainly of old heart pine lumber. The sound of sirens lit up the night like the fire, but they were much too little and would arrive much too late. Willie Bagwell, Jr. stood in the street with his elderly parents and watched the last of their dreams go up in smoke.
Another pair of eyes eagerly watched from the driver’s seat of a nearby car, hands gripping the wheel hard; the eyes, excited, the hands, white with anticipation. The old Honda was parked sloppily on a side street, the burning house in full view through the windshield. The car may have once been red; who knew for sure? Now it was a faded orange with hints of rust in places where it had been dinged, dented fenders and a corner of the rear bumper bent at an awkward angle; it sat on four mismatched tires, one of which held little air. The car matched the owner of the hands and eyes that occupied it.
When houses start to burn mysteriously in a small Georgia town, Detective Mike Eiser teams up with a beautiful and talented arson investigator and an equally talented accelerant-sniffing canine to identify a local real estate agent with a talent for fraud.
"Hot Summer Nights" is the second short story in the Detective Mike Eiser Series. Also check out "Backslide", the first short story in the series, and "Schism" the first novel in the series.